Borderlands Bootylicious Edition: Meet the Chef/Meet the Crew (Patreon)

"There ain't no rest for the wicked...

Money don't grow on trees..."

"Holy hell, I hate that song!" Keiko snapped. She beat her fist on the wall of her food truck. "Hey, asshole! That song's done to death! Play something else!"

"It's a classic, lady!" The scruffy guy was sitting on a stone near the cart, playing his guitar for change. She didn't mind the kind of mutually attractive business, but she had her limits. "If you don't like it, you play something-"

Four inches of metal punched through the wood in his guitar while he was still between words. He stared at the cooking knife for a few seconds before looking back up at Keiko and her truck. She leaned on the counter and glared at him.

"I said..." she spelled out with pursed lips. "Something else. Otherwise I'll turn on the radio and turn YOU off." The man swallowed and went on plinking out some simple, local tune while the handful of patrons went on eating.

Keiko was an odd sight in general. Her dark blue hair with the shaved sides was one of the least concerning things about her. An Asian-looking woman running a food truck that sold Trexican food in the middle of the desert spoke volumes about the strange woman while not actually telling you anything about her. She apparently had the supplies and the courage to head out into the crappiest parts of Pandora to serve outlaws and Vault hunters who were dying for an actual meal this far away from a fast-travel station or a settlement.

The man with the red visor and the peg leg dropped some money on the counter for a couple of skinless rakk sausage cakes. Keiko started cooking them up on the long and clean grill when inevitably, someone asked. "So what how'd you get a rig like this?"

Keiko looked up from her work. She was in her usual attire; a sleeveless shirt, an apron and some tight leather pants. She flipped over the meat patty and a quick glow across the grill's electronic subsystems vaporized the excess grease and burnt leftover bits of meat. The automated thermal systems kept her cool in the desert while her meat stayed even cooler. She held out a hand, tapping at a digistruct device until another long, clean carving knife appeared in her hand. She sliced up the meat with a few quick and practiced chops, sliding it off into a crust.

"I dunno," Keiko answered simply.

"You don't know?" the man asked, leering behind his visor.

"Yea. I don't... remember. Family business. Been in it for ages. That kind of thing." Keiko dismissed it as she focused on the next cake, flipping a piece of toast over the top of the meat pie and flipping the crust to seal it off. She let it cook while she itched one side of her shaved head. She didn't remember all the details, but the Vladov mega corporation had been glad to offer her a business of her own. All she needed to do was a few days of testing in their labs for a sleep study...

She shrugged it off and started no the next cake. She listened to the new tune from the guitarist while a couple of nomads covered head to toe in armor and thick cloth talked about old raids while slipping mini tacos under their breathing masks.

"So I'm out there fighting off these cultists, see..." the one of them recalled. "They've got these effogees and that kind of bullshit, screamin' about cleansing fire. So I step up-"

"Hey!" Keiko raised one of her knives, skillfully holding its tip between two of her fingers like a ninja rather than a chef. "Read the sign! You play by my rules, fuckers!" She turned the blade back around with a deft gesture and tapped the tip against a sign posted on the outside of her truck.

-NO talk about politics

-NO shootin' anybody

-NO talk about religion

-NO talk about Earth geography

"Yea... so?" one of the nomad said with a shrug that clanked his heavy armor around.

"Cults are a religion. It's a fucked up religion but it's still one of them. That kind of talk's not welcome here and don't think I won't put a spork through your eye if you cross me."

"Jeez, lady! Alright," he grumbled, popping his taco back under his mask. Keiko sighed and sealed off the second meat pie. It was just something about those certain topics that really set her off. Just getting close to them got her tense. The men lowered their voices so she couldn't hear them anymore, but no matter how quiet they were her ears started ringing at one precise moment.

"He's all 'burn the witch! Cleanse the earth with purging fire!' and some shit. So I'm like 'I got some purging fire right here, big-"

The ringing in Keiko's ear reached a skull-splitting pitch as she shuddered violently. It had happened a few times before. It was why she had the rules. The ringing suddenly stopped, but her heart was racing. Everything seemed to slow down for her as the targets eating at her restaurant stopped being people and turned various shades of red to yellow to organize them by threat levels. The microchip on her temple blinked red through the skin and buzz cut along the sides of her head. The words seemed to throb in her head, the chanting Vladov trigger words replacing all other thoughts; 'burn the witch!"

Keiko instantly thrust the knife over the counter, shaking the man through his visor and burying it between his eyes. The man gave a brief, wet gurgle before falling over dead. Keiko braced her hands on the grill and flung herself over the counter with the skill of a gymnast rather than a down on her luck street vendor turned businesswoman. With another wave, her digistructer manifested an assault rifle into her hands that she fired in several controlled bursts across her dining area. The guitarist went down without a fight, as did the crazy old hermit lady, but the nomads panicked quickly enough to jump up and draw their weapons. Keiko kicked the nearest folding table to fly into one of them, knocking his aim aside when he tried to fire off his shotgun. The shots went wild into the air while her eyes swiftly scanned over his weapon. A Tediore Scouring Avenger. Perfect.

Everything froze as the title card slammed onto the screen. “Keiko: The ‘Chef.’ She gets like this sometimes..!”

Keiko threw herself into the sand as the other nomad fired at her with his machine gun. She performed an oddly perfect combat roll for a woman wearing an apron, her eyes wide and glassy as she ducked behind a rock. She leaned out to one side and fired with hardly a split second to assess the scene, spraying her semi-auto across the target's knees. He howled and went down holding his legs as Keiko darted the short distance towards him, pouncing on the husky armored man. She caught the gleam of his eyes through the slot in his helmet as she reached into his apron's pocket. She pulled out a spork and started stabbing as quickly as she could into his twitching corpse.

"Hold it, ya crazy bitch!" The first nomad swung his shotgun around towards her as Keiko went on relentlessly stabbing the dead man. She looked up just in time to swing her spork, knocking the long barrel away to shoot wild again and blow apart another table. The gun emitted a few beeping noises, a standard issue for Tediore brand guns. They were so cheap to build that the company had decided that it was easier to just blow up and replace the weapon than it was to manufacture ammunition for them.

Keiko flipped over the nomad's head and wrapped her thighs around his neck. While in any other circumstance it would be a pleasant experience, she grabbed his arms and pulled them behind his back. There was a concerning crackling noise as she held them in place, holding the beeping gun against his back. "No! NO wait a damn-!"

The gun went off in a small, sharp explosion against his spine. Some of his blood and guts trickled out the front of his armor as he crumbled to the ground with Keiko sitting on top of him. Her wide eyes scoured the area before deciding there were no further targets. The chip stopped blinking and Keiko came back out of her trance.

"What th.... ah shit!" she hissed. She jumped off of the corpse, shaking her head. She hurriedly wiped some of the blood off her hands and onto her apron. "This shit again!" She kicked one of the nomad corpses. "I told you to read the sign! This dumb shit happens when you don't read the sign!" She sighed and looked back at her food cart. She leaned over and picked up one of the rakk pies for herself, shaking her head. "Guess I can't sell in these parts either," she mused as she went about gathering up any decent guns and cash she could off the deceased customers.

Svetlana was pleased with how things were going. After her incident at the gun vendor, the Siren had struck out for the desert in the borrowed clothes. They fit tightly on the husky woman, baring some of her hard abs and thick calves, but they were better than her old prisoner jumpsuit. Eventually a hover cycle came buzzing by and a woman with dreadlocks and a giant metal arm offered her a ride. Svetlana was ready to apply some of her Siren charms but the woman had already been dropping flirty lines before she could bother. It was going to be easier than she thought.

"We could do better than that," Goldie grumbled. The robotic arm's fingers drummed on the handlebars like she did when she was annoyed. At least nobody else could heard the voice in KC's head. The biker rolled her eyes and swept over to the coordinates she was given. When she came over the dunes, there was an Asian woman dragging a corpse away from a food truck.

"Hey!" Keiko looked up at the familiar humming of a hover engine as a dark-skinned woman with dreads came over the hill. "You still open?"

Keiko looked around at the corpses and shrugged. "I guess. I guess you beat the rush." She considered them and plucked up the extra meat pie she'd kept warm inside the truck before she accidentally killed the customer. "Free sample?"

"Oh, da!" Svetlana hopped off the bike and stepped forward, popping most of the miniature pie into her mouth in one go. "Is good. Thank you! You were having more?"

"Uh... yea. Just a minute." Keiko looked the big foreign woman over cautiously before starting back towards the truck. "Just read the sign and stick to the rules, okay?"

"Hey, uh, lady?" KC checked the recording from her bike's computer, reviewing the notes that Goldie had saved for her on her wrist. "Does uh... 'don't open umbrellas indoors' mean anything to you?"

"You sound like a lunatic right now. You know that?" Goldie reminded her.

"Thanks, voice in my head," KC growled, but Keiko was staring at her blankly. The implant blinked blue by her temple as she froze in place. It was enough that KC touched her hip and manifested her pistol. Keiko's memories and thoughts shuffled around as the Vladov cerebral chip sorted some things out for her. Thankfully, she didn't enter a killing spree this time.

"Nadir Gladislava," Keiko answered stiffly. "Third chairman at Vladov industries and current head of the Pandoran independence project HOW DO I KNOW THAT!?"

"Good. Then it's still working." Another woman's dry voice spoke up as a hologram appeared out of the projector of KC's bike. She was grim and gray-haired, scowling across the odd mix of people present. "The one in all the makeup. You aren't in the files. Who are you?"

Svetlana looked around before realizing she meant her. "Oh me? I am Svetlana. No one you would know." She smiled widely as she popped the last piece of her pie into her mouth.

"Uh huh." The woman didn't seem convinced. She hit a few keys on her data pad and looked back the Siren. She found a few leads, but there were only so many things that Pandorans tended to be after. "How would you like to make thousands of dollars and wipe your personal record clean?"

"Is velcome to be aboard, madam!" Svetlana saluted. Keiko shook her head and started pacing.

"Is velcome to be aboard, madam!" Svetlana saluted. Keiko shook her head and started pacing.

"Okay. Hold on a second..."

"I am holding on," Gladislava said dryly as ever. "It's why I'm not triggering your loyalty chip to just do what I say, Miss Corona."

"Is that what that is!? You guys put a mind control chip in me?" Keiko snapped.

"Oh hey! You got voices in your head too!" KC said brightly. "We can totally share notes later!" With that comment, Svetlana quietly darted her eyes between them but kept her mouth shut.

"An entire franchise and a limitless supply of food resources is not something worthy of a few days of testing," said Gladislava. "However if you're willing to work with the independence project, I'd be willing to deactivate the chip and leave you to your business."

"Listen, whatever you're thinking, I'm not a merc," Keiko warned. "Or a vault hunter or a bandit anything like that. I'm not a killer." She looked over at the pile of corpses in her makeshift restaurant. "Not... naturally anyway."

"I can provide a number of helpful trigger words and phrases that can help with the task. Otherwise, we can leave you as our little element of chaos on Pandora as just one more deadly, random, mildly amusing thing on that uninhabitably wealthy planet of poison and monsters."

Keiko sighed and rubbed her face. "What do you want us to do?"

"That's the spirit. As you know, the fall of Handsome Jack and his various illegal activities and war crimes have been massive blow to the Hyperion corporation. We want to keep it that way." The old business woman smiled wryly. "They're crippled by the damage that dealt. We want that wound to scar, and not until a couple more vital organs have fallen out in the process."

"Colorful description," Keiko sighed.

"Yea, I liked it too," KC grinned. "So it's espionage stuff? Corporate warfare?"

"To an extent. There are still automated systems, loyal factions, stranded Hyperion soldiers... things left in the wake of Jack's demise. Things that could threaten the planet if left unchecked. We want Pandora to thrive in Hyperion's absence while throwing their mistakes into their face. Deal with the problems while delivering evidence and I'll see you all rewarded."

"Vith blood money and clean slates," Svetlana added. "Sounds like better zan vat I was doing."

"What was that?" KC asked. Svetlana tilted her hand back and forth uncertainly.

"Let us say... it was mostly sex for guns."

"Ah!" KC said knowingly. "The real currency of Pandora."

"IS MY KINDA LANGUAGE!!" With a roar, a pair of psychos suddenly leapt over the food truck and landed in the sand between the ladies. It wasn't clearly a pair until the one, hulking and huge and barely recognizable as a female from all the muscle and scars beneath her loincloth and few strips of leather. The busted gas mask over her crooked, wild grin and small but thick patch of red hair added to her distracting appearance from the midget riding on her backpack. The shorter, purple-haired psycho popped up to stand on her shoulders, brandishing a few makeshift tomahawks. The girls quickly overcame the shock and pulled their weapons.

"ANY WANNA GO TO FUCK TOWN!?" Liddie shrieked in her high voice as she mounted Biggs' shoulder.

"Just a second," Gladislava warned, pulling up a small digital list on her projector. "Miss Corona, would you please... 'introduce me to the local color?"

Keiko twitched as her eyes fluttered, just to drop her gun in a deliberate throw to one side. She stormed up to the pair of lunatics with a furious look on her face that made her look like another person entirely. "DO NOT FUCK WITH THE ONE THAT JUST HUMPED A SKULL WITH MY SPORK!" she screamed at the bigger one, poking her in her densely muscular tits.

Biggs blinked behind her gas mask before looking back at Liddie. "ALL ABOUT THE DUBSTEP, SHOELACES!" the little one barked back.

"TIME AGAIN I'VE TOLD YOU BLOOD AND FINGERS RIGHT WHERE YOU WANT EM!" Keiko snarled back. The big one slumped her shoulders, leaning on her staff that they realized was just a beat up old sniper rifle. Liddie climbed off of Biggs and lifted her leg, licking herself like a cat.

"What in the shit just happened?" KC asked, starting to lower her gun.

"I'm not sure, exactly," Gladislava said with a shrug. "I expect the temporary insanity trigger worked nicely for communicating with the more ravenous locals."

Keiko shook her head and turned back to the others with her expression back to normal. "I... I think I offered them food and weapons." She hesitantly went into her food truck and came back out with a few tacos. The bandits ravenously wolfed them down. "I mean, they're manageable. More than I can say more most psychos."

"Well, not exactly what I was expecting," Gladislava admitted. "But a surprising set of assets. Can you get them to work with you?"

"I don't know." Keiko looked at them, twitched, and put on her sinister face again. "GULP AND GROWL AT THE BLOODY BLACK MOON, PUCK MONKEY!"

"GUZZLIN' CUM FOR FIRE AND FAME!" Biggs grunted in her ominously deep voice.

"They don't travel far from their home," Keiko reported to their employer. "They can get food and weapons anywhere. Not unless... uh..." Keiko pursed her lips. "Sex. They want sex out of it."

"I can hire some whores easily enough," Gladislava mused. "Or a geishabot might be safer for both parties..."

"No. I can fix," Svetlana said, cracking her knuckles. She held hand hands to her lips and blew a kiss with both of them. A wave of black and pink energy in the shape of a few hearts floated into them and the psychos visibly slumped for a moment.

"Pretty pretty face mask," Liddie cooed, staring longingly at the husky Siren.

"Lovely bone munching monster..." Biggs purred in the same way. "Follow the path of brittle blood..."

Keiko looked at the quizzically. "They... seem onboard. I don't want to know what that was, do I?"

"Is little tease," Svetlana said with a shrug. "They will cooperate."

"I expect the same from the rest of you." The Vladov chairman tapped a few more keys and their HUD devices blinked with new data. "I've sent you the location for your first assignment. If you do end up fucking things up too terribly, at least make it look like it was Hyperion's fault. Best of luck."

With that, she switched off her console. Keiko looked over the group, tossing her hands up limply before they clapped back against her thighs. "Great. So just making sure..." She gestured at Svetlana. "You're some kind of runaway empath... they're only listening to us for sex and guns... you're a biker with a voice in your head."

"Ex biker," KC corrected. "I left the gang and now they want me dead. Also the voice is in my arm, not my head." She waved Goldie, her giant prosthetic arm.

"Noted. And I'm a food truck driver who unconsciously kills people on command. This is great..."

"Da!" Svetlana said cheerily. "We are... diverse! Many skills for the job."

"And the only ones fucked up enough to take this kind of job!" KC added proudly.

"Good company tastes delicious!" Biggs snarled with what might have been a smile.

"Yea. High hopes. I guess everyone into the truck," Keiko sighed. "I've got some leftovers off those dead guys and an autopilot function. Looks like it's a long ride to... New Gomorrah."

Piling into the food truck, The Killers, The Nomad, The Siren, and The "Chef" loaded up on food and ammo for their excuse of a team's first big day at work.

Borderlands: Bootylicious Edition! Coming out sometime probably!