*Hypnotizing voice* It's only be two days since this story has been updateeeeeed, it has not been two yeaaaaarrrrsss.

Did that work? Hope so!

This chapter is the beginnings of Vaughn the badass leader! Gotta love Vaughn, right? Hope you guys enjoy!

thewalrus: One day they'll make friendship bracelets!... probably. Maybe.

Starland: I secretly keep a handful of unions hidden on my person to help provoke the feels! I love August too, and I always liked their interactions in the game! Thanks for taking the time to review!

Guest: Judy is best plant. For August's mom I took a lot of creative liberty with that but I really like how it turned out. It seemed to stay pretty in character for both of them so I'm glad you liked it! Thanks for the review!

Justpayed: I kind of binge played the game over a few times so I've definitely killed Yvette probably too many times. In this story it follows the %100 good route, so she's alive. On the evil route everyone's assholishness was totally justified, but in the good route… poor Rhys. I don't really like Yvette either; she didn't get any character development that made her betraying them seem understandable to me. Thanks for reviewing friend!

Potent Spells: Don't even worry about it; I appreciate you taking the time to even review in the first place! Rhys is adorkable, I'm glad he's in character! Thanks for the nice compliments!

Metallicpotato: You ask and I shall deliver (much later on in time but the delivery will be made nonetheless!). Your review is super nice, it made me smile! Thank you!

The Blade of the Osh-Tekk: Aw, thank you! I completely understand, a good story keeps your attention away from everything else once you're hooked. I'm really touched that you consider this one that has the potential!

Ilove: Sorry about that friend, I'll try to be better at keeping up with updates T-T Thanks for reviewing!

Thekightenforcer: Will do! Thanks for the kind compliment!

-00-

Chapter 3: After the Fall

-00-

Vaughn ran a shaking hand through his hair, wincing as it got caught in the many knots. It was starting to get much longer, and more unmanageable.

Helios had fallen no more than a week ago and things were looking grim. He had been so far away and so very, very lost when it had happened. Ditching Vallory's goons had been the easy part. He was able to pinpoint the nearest settlement (at least, he's pretty sure it was some kind of settlement) and just took off.

He did his best not to look back. Tried not to think about how he was running and leaving his best friend in the hands of lunatics. But it would be better for all of them if he wasn't in the way as leverage. As much as he hated leaving Rhys behind, he hated the idea of Rhys getting hurt because of him even more. At least this way he couldn't be used to hurt his friends.

It was still a stupid plan though.

Three hours in he had been chased by a pack of Skags and lost his glasses in the escape. He'd had to… had to break one of those god-awful thing's necks with his bare hands just to get away with his leg in tact.

Things didn't really get better from there.

He never made it to the settlement. He found a little mini pool of water (probably not clean and full of disease, but he was going to die without it so he took the chance) where he set up a camp. Rhys had always made fun of him for reading those survival books ("What if I can't find a clean source of water Rhys?!" "Dude, we've got water fountains like, every twenty feet"), but it was definitely paying off now. Kind of. An unsteady roof of loose twigs and a really primitive looking spear (also made of twigs and a rock he just kind of smashed against a bigger rock to make it sharper) didn't make for the greatest shelter but it was better than nothing.

The first day had been spent running from those Skags, but the second day was blissfully uneventful after he found the water. He had been so exhausted that he slept for most of it, which was a really, really stupid idea but he just couldn't muster up the will to move for a while. The third day a group of Psycho's also found his little sanctuary and trashed it. He had been out trying to map out where he was, thankfully, but the idea of them coming back made him move his camp much further away from the water. That night he killed another Skag, getting a nice slash along his arm for his troubles. He… ate it.

He had been desperate. No food for days, no signs of civilization, there hadn't been much choice. He made the smallest campfire he could possible manage, attempting to block out the light with a little barricade of twigs. After overcooking the small Skag (which smelt like burnt rubber by the way) he threw the first few bites right back up. It took him the whole night to eat at least half of the creature. He spaced the bites about ten minutes apart. Enough time for him to control his gag reflex and force his stomach to calm down.

The next day the sky caught on fire and he watched in horror as his home slammed into the ground, creating a huge dust cloud that shot out for miles. He barely remembered running until he tripped over the first piece of debris. It had taken him so long to get there; most of the dust had already cleared.

It was the most horrific thing he had ever seen.

There were innumerous… bodies. Maybe. Some of them were so burnt and melted that he couldn't actually tell all of them apart from the melted metal they were crushed under. What survivors made it in their escape pods were either running around screaming or curled up into balls and sobbing. All of them were covered in blood. Their eyes were bright with fear and they looked nothing like a typical employee would. They looked like a lot of scared people who just lost everything they had ever known.

"Rhys!" he had called for his best friend. He new they were planning to go to Helios. There was no way the crash and their mission was a coincidence. "Rhys! Where are you!"

"V-Vaughn?" a soft voice croaked to his left. He immediately turned on his heel and rushed over to a half destroyed escape pod.

It wasn't Rhys.

"Yvette?" Vaughn gapped once he could see through the glass. She was still strapped in, a track of dried blood going from her temple all the way down to her chin. Her glasses were cracked and her eyes were glazed over. "Oh my god, hold on! I'll get you out of there!"

The back half of the pod had been caught under a large chunk of debris twice its size. It had smashed the glass down, bending the rim and shattering a good chunk of it, but not enough that he could just pull her out without hurting her.

"Hey!" he called over towards a group of three Helios workers huddled up a few feet from him. "Hey, you three! Come here!"

They startled violently, heads snapping up to look at him. They stared at him dumbly for a long while.

Vaughn scowled at them. He didn't want to get angry with them but one of his friends was stuck and quite possibly dying and the other was missing or… worse.

"I said get over here!" he snapped. They all flinched, jumping to their feet and shuffling over. From the looks of their charred clothes it looked like the two men worked in media and the woman worked in engineering. "Look," he huffed angrily, "she's trapped in here and I can't get her out on my own." He pointed at the engineer. "I need you to see if you can unlatch the top and, if she can, I need you two to hold it up while I pull her out. Got it?"

They seemed unsure but having directions seemed to help them focus a bit more. The woman used a small slip of metal nearby to twist the front panel open, revealing a mess of wires. She worked quickly, small but deft hands tugging and reorganizing the internal systems. There was a small click and the two men stepped forward, curling their fingers around the slit between the window and the metal holding. They slowly lifted it, grunting from the effort. Being in media didn't really require much strength but they were obviously trying.

Once the space was big enough Vaughn crawled in and pulled out his makeshift spear. He used the tip to saw through the straps holding Yvette in the chair. Her eyes were open, barely, and her head was lolling to the side a bit.

"Yvette," he reached out and tapped her cheek lightly. Her eyes rolled to look at him dazedly. "Hey, so I'm gonna lift you out okay? I need you to tell me if it hurts too much alright? I'm not sure how badly you're hurt."

She stared at him for a long, worrying second before nodding slowly. Tossing the spear back outside the pod he carefully slid one arm behind her shoulders, using his hand to hold the back of her head, while the other wrapped around the middle of her back to pull her forward enough so that she was leaning on his chest. Tensing his muscles he slowly began to pull back. The men were obviously straining to hold on, but thankfully the moment Yvette was halfway out the window the engineering woman was reaching out to grab Yvette's legs and carefully lift them out as well. Once the three were clear the men let go with a heavy exhale, one leaning on the wreckage and the other slumping to sit down.

Vaughn rested Yvette on the ground, propping up his knee and resting her back on it. She seemed a bit more awake now, but also in more pain.

"There you go," Vaughn breathed, brushing back her hair to see where the blood trail had started. There was a scrape just above her hairline but it wasn't bleeding anymore, so he took it as a good sign. "Where else are you hurt?"

"Ugh," she moaned, hands tightening at her sides. "M-my head hurts. Pret-tty bad. My a-ankle and… s-shoulder."

Vaughn bit his lip. "Anywhere else?"

She twitched one hand up uncertainly. "C-can't te-tell."

"Okay, it's going to be okay," he assured. "I don't really know how to help you as much as you need it, but I'm sure there's a doctor nearby. I'm going to go find one, alright? Will you be okay?"

Her eyes were squeezed shut in pain now, but she managed a slight nod. Vaughn wasn't too sure about that, but she really needed a doctor more than him right now. When he looked up the three that had helped him were hovering back a bit, shifting nervously.

"Uh, hey, I know we don't really know each other, but can one of you stay with her while I find a doctor?"

The woman immediately nodded, kneeling down to pull Yvette over to her arms instead. She rested Yvette's head and upper back against her legs for support.

"I-I'll make sure it doesn't get worse," she coughed out, her voice sounding like it was covered in soot.

"Thanks," Vaughn offered a small, but grateful smile. He didn't know or trust these people, but options were limited.

"What about us?" one of the men asked suddenly. "What should we do?"

Vaughn blinked at them. "What? Uh, I don't- um." He paused. "You could always, I don't know, look for more people that need help? Find anyone else that needs medical attention?"

"Got it," the other guy nodded, the two rushing off immediately.

Vaughn shook his head. That was a little weird but whatever. He had a job to do.

"Hey!" he shouted, running through the wreckage as quickly as he could without accidentally impaling himself on anything. "Hey! Is there a doctor around here?! Is anyone here a doctor?!"

…It took a long time.

More often then not he would run into media people again (their escape pods would have landed close together, being shot out from the same department, but damn it they weren't useful at all!) or a handful of janitors and service workers. He hadn't really been in the mood, or had the time, to make sure all of them okay so he would just kind of… yell at whoever looked the healthiest to help find anyone that was injured and take them over to where Yvette was.

It was finally after about thirty minutes of searching that he found where the medical pods had landed.

Half of them had been crushed by one of the outer walls of Helios.

All the blood drained out of his face, the warm sweat that had been beading his forehead turning a sudden icy cold.

Yvette needed help.

Shaking his head and resolutely averting his eyes he marched towards the pods that remained relatively unharmed. A few men and women were out on the ground already, looking just as dazed, confused, and panicked as all the others but a handful of the pods still had their lids closed.

"Hey!" he barked, putting more force into his words than he meant to. They all flinched, heads whipping around to stare at him. "You guys are doctors, right?"

Some nodded, others shaking their heads. Vaughn could tell from their scrubs that they were part of the support staff.

"There's a lot of people back that way that need your help," he threw his arm back to motion towards the direction he had come from. "I know you all just went through a lot but so have they. They just don't have the knowledge you guys do to save themselves."

All he got were blank eyed stares, like they were all stuck in some crazy dream and they'd wake up any second now.

"Damn it," Vaughn almost choked on the frustration, stress, and fear filling up his lungs. Pinching the bridge of his nose he took a deep breath to steady himself. "Okay, first things first. Are any of you so injured you can't move?"

Two hands went up. A tall man with black hair had his back pressed against what might have been a vending machine once with his shirt torn raggedly at the bottom in order to create the makeshift bandage around his left thigh and a shorter, brown haired woman with-

Jesus fucking Christ, was that her bone sticking out of her arm?!

"Oh shit, that looks bad!" he yelped, definitely not helping matters in the slightest. "How do we- can we even fix that?!"

Another woman, this one blond, moved closer.

"W-we have to reset the bone," her voice quivered, soot making her face look dark and grey. "But… we don't have anything with us to clean it, or bind it, or anything!"

Vaughn shuddered, heart aching in sympathy as the injured woman closed her eyes and bit her lip to help manage what must have been unbearable pain.

"There's got to be something around here," he folded his arms across his chest, looking out over the wreckage. "We should look around, try to scavenge as much as we can."

"Why?" one of the men, the one with a long, stretchy kind of face huffed bitterly.

Vaughn felt his patience snap.

"Because if you don't we're all going to die!" he yelled, feet moving on their own. Before he could even process what he was doing the idiot that had spoke was being held in front of him by the collar of his shirt. "Hyperion is gone and we're in the middle of a fucking wasteland, okay?! We either help each other for as long as we possible can or the crazy psychos on this planet pick us off like Skags! You can either sit here and whine and complain about how this crap is unfair or you can get off your ass, help the people around you survive, and pray to God that they'll return the favor when you need cause I can guarantee that if you do nothing to help them now then no one will do anything when you get dragged away to get eaten by the weird ass creatures in this place!"

He dropped the moron, hands physically shaking with rage. Turning his burning glare on the rest of the dipshits that were surrounding him he did the one thing he always sucked at.

He took charge.

"You five," he barked, pointing at the people closest to him that looked like they wouldn't fall over just from walking around, "get up and start looking around for anything we can use as medical supplies. You four start looking for other survivors and you three head back that way until you come across a large group of people. We'll bring the supplies to you but do whatever you can for the people there until we do, got it?"

The dumb, doe-eyed stares were back.

"Got it?!" he roared.

"Y-yes!" the scrambled to their feet, rushing to do as he'd said. Even the asshole with the long face was moving.

Vaughn breath sharply through his nose, nodding his head in a pleased manned, before he approached the two injured ones. They stared at him with wide, scared eyes.

"Ah geez," he rubbed the back of his neck, anger slowly fading away to leave a bone deep exhaustion in its wake. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you guys. How are you both holding up?"

"I-I'm fine," the man stuttered, hands clasped tightly around the remains of his shirt. "The wound isn't very deep, it's just making it hard to stand on."

"Okay," Vaughn nodded, thinking it over. "We'll see about getting you a crutch or something to help with that. What about you? Is there anything I can do for, uh, that?"

The girl sent him a weak, wavering smile that he appreciated more than he thinks she realizes. "Not really, but I appreciate the thought. I-It's nice to see someone that cares."

Vaughn huffed a bitter laugh. "Yeah, well, if we all want to get out of here a live I think we're all going to need a little kindness to make it through."

Kindness was like a disease on Hyperion. It killed you, slowly but surely, until you were just a husk of your former self. You'd have to be something really special to survive up there and somehow manage to keep your heart while you did so.

…

Gods he whished Rhys were here.

"I'm gonna take a look around," Vaughn shook his head violently to clear his head. "Will you two be okay while I check things out?"

They both nodded, settling in to wait for the others to return.

Vaughn turned his attention to the remaining, unopened pods. He really, really hoped there were living people in those things.

"You've got this Vaughn," he whispered under his breath, a voice in the back of his head that sounded just like Rhys echoing the words back to him. "You've got this."

Time to get to work

-00-

"Can you hold this down for me?" Rhys questioned hesitantly, gesturing towards the metal plate on the table in front of him.

August rolled his eyes but leaned over to press the plate down firmly. While he held it Rhys hunched over with a screwdriver and began twisting in the screws on both sides.

"Perfect!" Rhys grinned once he was done. "It's almost finished."

August looked over the robotic arm the nerd had been working on for the past few days. "…looks like shit."

Rhys gave him a side-eyed glare. "It's just a prototype, okay? Something to give me at least a basic range of motion. There isn't much I can do with out all ten fingers."

"Still looks like shit," August yawned, leaning back in his chair. His wound was healing alright, only hurting when he twisted the wrong way, but he was still feeling exhausted all the time. It was annoying.

Rhys grumbled under his breath angrily. August was able to pick a few tail remarks, but it was mostly gibberish. "…looks that way now…ass….the final arm…totally badass…"

The scrawnier male was perched at the end of his chair, face practically touching the metal contraption. August's eyes landed on the wheel at the bottom of Rhys' chair and his lips twitched up into a smirk.

"Hold down this one too- ack!"

Rhys felt something knock into his chair, causing it to roll violently to the side. Since he was not sitting on it fully he fell off right away, landing in an awkward heap by the table.

August's loud laugh grated on his ears as he levered himself up on his arm.

"Careful there Hyperion," the large man laughed, "wouldn't want to loose anything else!"

"Screw you," Rhys scowled, rising to his feet and brushing off his clothes. Oh how he wished he had a better assistant. One that wasn't constantly insulting him or messing with him. August was the absolute worst choice in helpers there could possibly be.

"Ah, so I've already been replaced. Should've known."

Rhys jolted, twirling around to see Cassius standing in the doorway with a large backpack slung over his shoulders.

"Cassius!" he cheered, throwing his arm up in joy. "Thank goodness you're back! I really think Judy was going to eat me today, she's been getting really moody while you've been gone."

Cassius had been blank faced when he had first made himself known but the genuine happiness Rhys seemed to feel at him being back made his lips twitch.

"She'd only eat you if you did a bad job of taking care of her, I left you very specific instructions," he pointed out.

Rhys scratched the back of head with a nervous chuckle. "Yeah, I… might have lost that little book you gave me."

Cassius sighed heavily through his nose, fully stepping into the room and setting the backpack down.

"I'm sure I have a spare around here somewhere, you'll just have to make do without it until it turns up. I brought the things you asked for," Cassius stretched his aching back, dutifully ignoring the hulking behemoth watching them from the corner. That was Rhys' problem, not his.

"Awesome!" Rhys lunged forward, happily digging through the trinkets Cassius had managed to salvage from mechanical structures throughout the forest. "Thanks Cassius."

"Don't forget to fix those computers," the old man reminded him. I'll give you a few days to get that weird arm back in shape and then I want them back on and functional."

"Yeah, of course," Rhys called back distractedly, checking over a handful of wires that had been stuffed in one of the pockets. "Functional and everything, piece of cake."

Cassius yawned wide enough for his jaw to crack. "Well then, I'm going to go check in on Judy and go to sleep. Don't wake me up with all of your clanging around!"

Rhys waved away his worries, not bothering to respond.

Cassius sent a wayward glance to the bandit, meeting his eyes.

August scowled at him and Cassius scowled right back but the blond didn't seem like he was going to attack anytime soon so Cassius let it go. He would sleep in one of the little safe rooms around the place until August left, just to be sure. Perhaps, if Rhys did manage to fix those computers, he would show the young man where a few of them were in case the need ever arose.

Against his better judgment he was beginning to like the hyperactive brunette. It was nice to have some company (that wasn't trying to kill or steal from him) after all of these years alone.

"Stop poking me with that!" Rhys shout echoed down the hall as Cassius walked away.

"Stop getting in the way then."

"You literally had to stretch your arm all the way out and lean over to hit me, how was I in the way?"

"Don't be a dumbass. See? You're still in the way."

"Stop hitting me!"

Ah, now if only the company could have been more pleasant. That would have really been nice.

Cassius likes them (or at least Rhys) even if he won't admit it. If anything Rhys + Judy is always good for a nice laugh :D

Next chapter will have Fiona and Sasha, and don't think to hard about the time line of this thing so far. This stuff with Vaughn is happening while August is still passed out and unconscious from his wounds so the time jumps around a lot and will until they all meet up again.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed!