Long Road Ahead (1x1 with Sori)

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

----H A N D S O M E J A C K ----

• Jack takes a deep breath when rhys states that if he did, he'd die because opening a third vault kills him. That just confirmed it for him, he'd have to try and change what elpis showed him. Thus he nods his head as he folds his arms in his lap. He watched rhys move around the room a bit more, a faint smile on his lips when Rhys called him handsome again and chuckles faintly. "I said no pet names, but that is also part of my name. Guess you just found a loop hole Sugar" He stated with a small chuckle.
  
  
• He watched rhys pick his mask up and ask if he wanted help putting it back on, thus making him shrug a bit. "I was actually thinking about... not wearing it around here? I mean, it is the future after all, who exactly is going to know? Or really tell anyone?" He stated after a few moments of thought. Was it a good idea to go around without his mask, who knew, but he could still give it a go. It might make people here a lot less tense at least.

[Sori]

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Rhys grinned, very happy with the discovery of that loophole. He was also quite pleasantly surprised at the notion of Jack not wanting to wear the mask. "Keep it off it you want to, I just assumed you'd prefer to keep it on." Rhys set the mask back down on the table with a small shrug. "I'll have that ECHO sent back to you in a bit so you can contact me. All I ask is you try your best not to wake me up in the middle of the night with it just to explain the difference between choking and strangulation," he said with a little laugh. When the AI was in his head, Jack was always waking him up to tell him or talk to him about something Rhys didn't quite care about, just to annoy him and ruin his sleep if he'd done anything to upset Jack that specific day. Having the real deal around was much better so far than having a glorified copy uploaded in his brain.

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

----H A N D S O M E J A C K ----

• Jack looked alittle amused with that as he shrugs slightly. "Never know when you have to give that lesson." He answered in amusement as he watched rhys set the mask aside. he finishes off the cup of water, sets is aside before finally deciding to lay back down, thought he's pretty relaxed. He chats for a bit longer, he pauses a lot, micro-napping through their conversations practically. During one of those little micro-naps, rhys must of left him. A couple guards are waiting to take him back to his room. He doesn't mind it as much as he did the first time. Thus follows them with mask in hand instead of mask on.
  
  
• When back to the room he'd been given, he occupies himself a bit. He makes the transfer of funds official, so those would be in the Atlas financial account by morning. Then he eats a few power bars he had in his pocket, things he kept in his pocket for when he couldn't eat a full course meal. Which was quite often. He practically lived off these power bars and coffee. Then he ends up tking a shower after determining he didn't need the bandages anymore because the wounds were fully healed. They didn't even leave a scar, interesting.
  
  
• After the shower, he sits on his bed, looks at what he can on the ECHO. After a while, he lays on the bed while looking at the ECHO before finally he switches. It is little late at night and decides against calling, just to send a message. A full explanation on why he freaked out earlier and such. A full explanation about his childhood, father walked out, bused by his mother, beaten within n inch of his life every day by his grandmother every day until he managed to stash enough credits away so to leave pandora and go through his college courses for Engineering and Programming. Getting hired by hyperion and so on. He even explained what happened on Elpis. He stayed on helios while everyone else evacuated to keep it stable despite dahl invading. Explained that the elpis vault burned information into his mind after lilith, the siren, burned/punched the vault mark into his face and all. Then killing tassiter and the rest was known.
  
  
• By the time he was finished typing the message and sending it, he was fighting to stay awake, yawning loudly as he set a wake up call on the ECHO for eight then set it aside before rolling over and was asleep rather quickly for once. His sleep was surprisingly nice for once, not plagued by nightmares or flash backs from the elpis vault. So when the alarm did go off at Eight AM sharp like it was supposed to, he grounded, rolled over and roughly smacked about the table top before finally turning it off, then letting his arm hang off the bed. He could sleep for a bit longer, its not like he was needed right now. Besides, if anyone did need him, they'd come get him yeah? Yeah.

[Sori]

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Rhys stayed up for a while longer after he left Jack alone again. He had to put together their little team for tomorrow, and it probably wasn't what Jack wanted but Vaughn and Whitney were going to be with them. Not Yvette, however- she was tasked with running the company whenever Rhys was away, and this case wasn't an exception. Before he headed to his own room, Rhys stopped by his office again briefly to grab the picture he'd taken from Jack's desk to keep the AI company in that locked-up drawer. He did feel bad keeping Jack imprisoned in the eye implant, but to him in that moment of decision straight up killing him when he was on his knees begging seemed even worse.

Rhys let out a sigh of relief when he flicked on the lights of his room- it never felt more welcoming than it had after today. Even though he kept it on the same floor, Rhys's room was a lot bigger than the others. There was a small private living room area crammed in one of the corners, and an extremely basic kitchen across from it with a two-person dining table. Then up the two steps that spread across the floor there was a queen-sized bed with nightstands on either side of it. Off to the right there was a door leading to his bathroom, and one leading to a moderate-sized closet.

First things first, Rhys stepped up to one of the nightstands and opened up the top drawer, putting the eye-implant and picture of Angel in it before sliding it shut again. Then he just flopped face first down onto his bed. Rhys was exhausted. Having obviously no idea of what was going to happen today, Rhys stayed up working later than he was supposed to the previous night. Which now he knew was a big mistake. He was ready to crawl under the covers and die for the night- he'd take a shower in the morning. With some hesitance Rhys stood back up with a groan to take off his shoes and put on some pajamas. Of course, his pajama pants had to have a pattern on them- little Atlas logos scattered across the fabric.

As tired as he was, he had a hard time falling asleep. His brain was too busy overthinking and processing everything. After a lot of tossing and turning, Rhys was able to slip out of consciousness. He didn't have the most pleasant dreams- another nightmare about Helios, all the people that died because of him damaging the ship's power core. Nightmare's like this were all to common for him, but at least the main focus of this one wasn't Jack and was more on the guilt. He'd forgotten to set an alarm, but thankfully Vaughn stopped by his room to check in if he was ready or not, saw Rhys sleeping, and got Rhys to snap up rather quickly by stating what time it was. So, Vaughn woke him up a little past 8:30. Rhys crammed in a very speedy shower before getting himself prepared for the day ahead. It wasn't until he was done getting everything he needed together- a bag to put any crystals in, a backpack for food and water just in case the trip was longer than it needed to be- that Rhys noticed he'd had a rather long message on his ECHO. With a look at the clock, he didn't have the time to read it right now.

The two headed down the hall to Jack's room, and of course Jack didn't seem to be awake yet either as there was no response when Rhys rapped his knuckles on the door. Rhys slowly opened the door up, and Jack was peacefully asleep on the bed, all sprawled out with an mess of a bed-head. It was really cute. Which was a thought Rhys did not think he'd be having about Handsome Jack. He glanced at Vaughn before clearing his throat and saying rather loudly, "Time to wake up, we're leaving in a little less than an hour."

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

----H A N D S O M E J A C K ----

• Jack just wanted five more minutes. Five more blissful minutes of no nightmares or flash backs to the Vault information. But he wasn't getting that, or maybe he did becuse when rhys shouted at him to get up practiclly, he did prop himself up nd check the time on the echo. 9AM. He got n entire extra hour of sleep. Well... Fine then. He puts the echo down, drops back down into lying position before waving a dismissive hand as he got himself sitting up. "Yeah, okay, i'm up, i'm up. Give me five minutes to make myself look.... um...." He didn't notice Vaughn until now.
  
  
• Yeah, he still felt alittle self conscious about the no mask thing. He didn't expect someone to see him without it besides rhys so quickly. Thus he just turns quickly and speed walks to small adjacent room where he'd thrown all his things into. He guessed it was like a laundry room, who really knew anyways. But in this little room, he was quick to pull on his clothes (sweater, vest and tailcoat seeing as he's slept in his socks, jeans and button down), pull on his sneakers then fix on his mask and fix his hair before stepping out of the room. He brushes himself down, picks up the old echo instead of the new one, before loosely crossing his arms at his chest. "Alright, i'm good to go. First set of credits has already been transferred to your financial department. Information on the second set was sent directly to you since i have a feeling your girl might be ready to backstab me." He hummed in amusement.

[Sori]

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Vaughn was staring at Jack's face when he sat up, just as shocked as Rhys was when he first saw what was under the mask not long ago. Jack seemed quite bothered by it as Rhys could tell by how fast he basically threw himself into the little side-room. Rhys forgot to tell Vaughn about Jack not wearing his mask, so he felt it was partially his fault Jack got uncomfortable so quick. He offered a brief explanation to his friend while Jack was getting changed. That Jack felt comfortable enough yesterday to show Rhys his face, and he wanted to try going without the mask for a while since he was already dead in this timeline and didn't think it would matter much. "Try not to stare, though. I'm pretty sure he doesn't like his scars." Rhys nodded at Vaughn.

When Jack stepped back out relatively tidied up, and with the mask snug against his face again, Rhys's heart sank a little. Maybe Jack was just too self-conscious to have the mask off around anyone besides Rhys just yet. Which was understandable, but ever so slightly disappointing. "Okay, thank you." Rhys made a mental note not to call Jack 'handsome' when they weren't alone, even though he very much wanted to. Vaughn would certainly be ten times more worried about everything if he found out Rhys's crush on Jack was sort-of starting to return. Rhys rolled his eyes. "Pfff, Yvette wouldn't do that." A lie that everyone knew was very false as she literally even tried to backstab Rhys and Vaughn back when everything started, but Rhys felt like he had to at least try to defend her. He straightened himself out before continuing- he had to put up some sort of act when any of his friends were in the room with them so they wouldn't think he trusted Jack a ton already. "Anyway, Whitney, my head of security who you sorta met yesterday is coming with us, too, which I hope won't be a problem for you."

Vaughn chimed in on the conversation. "We're taking a Bandit Technical, Whitney's going to be in the gunner seat, and Rhys is driving." He motioned with his hands a little as he talked.

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

----H A N D S O M E J A C K ----

• Jack shrugged a bit in response, thought to vaughn's chime in, he couldn't help his amused smile. "Do the seats in those things even push back far enough for those long legs of his?" He asked in a joking manner, chuckling ever so faintly as well. However he does note a disappointed glint in rhys eyes, possibly because he's got his mask on. Or maybe its worry, who knows who'd recognize him with his mask on and try coming at them. He faintly shrugs to himself at this.
  
  
• "Don't worry Sugar, its temporary. Don't want to freak out your entire building after all. I'll take it back off in the technical because who knows who we'll pass on the drive there that might recognize it. Don't need a horde of people chasing us because of it. After all, i'd prefer to get back to my daughter, alice and relatively soon." He states dismissively, even waving a hand as he moved to step out of the room and head for the elevator. "Now come on, we're wasting time here, and time is Eridium as we use to say on Helios if you two remember that." He states with a small laugh.

[Sori]

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"Speak for yourself, you're taller than him," Vaughn threw back, crossing his arms. The problem of recognition hadn't even crossed Rhys's mind until Jack brought it up. Rhys let out a breath- Jack made a good point. The mask was super recognizable, but only nine- well, now ten- people had seen the scar lying underneath it. At a distance he'd be less easily recognized with it off. For the moment however it was very reasonable that he didn't want to show off that highly-noticeable scar to the rest of the building. Rhys nodded in acknowledgement and the two stepped out of the room after Jack. Vaughn shared a look with Rhys at the phrase. "Yeah, we remember." Rhys smiled a little, and Vaughn didn't. His friend was obviously still uncomfortable about Jack's presence, as while they walked to the elevator Jack was on one side of Rhys and Vaughn was on the other.

"Alright," Rhys started, "The plan is to get some crystals in this bag and bring them back here." Rhys lifted the bag he was carrying slightly for emphasis. "Preferably without touching them. We don't know anything about them yet so we don't want to send you back to the wrong timeline where you'd probably be stuck." They waited a moment for the elevator, and when it came filed inside.

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

----H A N D S O M E J A C K ----

• Jack shrugged a bit with an amused noise. "I'm still not ninety percent leg." He responded with a small chuckle. He can hear the confusion behind him and how only rhys responded. Only one of them seemed to remember the saying, or neither did and rhys just said they did.
  
  
• Filed into the elevator was interesting. It definitely did give jack perspective. He definitely was taller then both of them. Which was kind of funny to jack thought he didn't say anything for now. So when the elevator brought them up to the lobby, jack stepped out easily and easily headed for the front. Whitney had to be waiting outside with the technical yeah?
  
  
• He's also noticed how rhys isn't staring at him in pity or anything. He must not of read the ECHO message he left him. He rolls his shoulders in thought as he stops infront of the lobby door and turns to wait for vaughn and rhys to catch up. "I'll try making an effort on looking but no touching but, no promises." He stated with a small shrug, he remembered how the crystal on Helios drew him in, its odd humming sound. If he found one that might sound similarly then that had to be the one he was looking for.

[Sori]

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When they got outside, Whitney was waiting for them with the technical. Despite her job position, she was a rather small woman. She was maybe a little shorter than Vaughn and about just as buff even if her muscles were less defined. Unlike a lot of the people now employed at Atlas, Whitney was actually Pandoran- which was a great benefit to the company as she knew a lot more about the planet's threats than the rest of them did. She straightened herself out when the group approached. "You all set?" She glanced between the three of them, her eyes staying on Jack a little longer than the other two. Rhys could tell she was also nervous about Jack being here- Rhys seemed to be the only one that wasn't phased by it anymore.

He nodded, and Vaughn was already climbing in the back of the truck with the empty bag Rhys had set down. "What about you? Got everything set up in your department for today?" Whitney offered Rhys a friendly smile. "Mhm, assigned everyone their roles and Micha is in charge until we get back." Rhys smiled back and clapped his hands together, which might have hurt his left hand a little due to the cybernetics pinching him. "Cool, then let's get this show on the road!" He took off the backpack and slung it into the back of the car with Vaughn. "Jack, you're in front with me," he stated as he stepped up into the driver's seat. He might not be the smoothest driver, but with his ECHO eye it was a lot easier to avoid any unwanted accidents.