Long Road Ahead (1x1 with Sori)

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

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• Jack gives a two fingered wave after he took the Echo comm. When rhys requested he try not to give the guards reason to report back, he shrugged a bit in a playful manner. "No promises." He stated playfully as he lets Rhys leave with pleasant hum. Thus with Rhys away, jack occupied himself round the room at first and with learning how to use the new Echo Comm. He got the data from his old one transferred to the new one with a bit of fiddling. Thought ever so slowly, jack started getting really bored.
  
  
• Don't go anywhere without a guard. Jack huffs a bit as he rolls his shoulders. He wanted to check out that little lounge thing rhys had mentioned. He hums a bit in thought before n idea comes cross his mind. He smiles to himself as he grabs his lapel and taps throught it a few times. It doesn't take long for it to activate and cloak him. He quietly chuckles to himself with a mumbled 'handsome jack doesn't take an escort' before he moves to the door. He pops the door open carefully and slips out before moving down the hall. Its just a short trip, no distractions, just check it out and go back to alleviate some boredom.
  
  
• He gets to the little gaming room or ht ever it was, its pretty empty, thus jack lets the cloaking disperse. He hums as he looks around, he looks at a few of the games. One game does catch his interest as he picks up a controller, sits down a bit roughly on couch. He could pass bit of time before the guards get smart or rhys came looking for him with his friend if they did want to see him. After all, rhys said the guy apparently didn't like him so probably wouldn't want to see him. That was perfectly fine with him anyways. So might as well make use of the new, impromptu vacation.

[Sori]

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Rhys left Jack alone in the room, and the guards were stood outside. Should be secure enough. He made his way back up to the third floor with a lot on his mind. This was the first time he was away from Jack since he arrived, and Rhys could take a moment to think over some things before he got a different office set up for him. He tapped his foot on the floor of the elevator. His friends despised Jack, for good reason, and Rhys did too after Helios fell but... this Jack wasn't the same person as the hologram. He seemed different, a little younger perhaps, and much less quick to try murdering you if you upset him in the slightest. From the state of his ECHO comm the timeline he was from seemed to be around when Rhys started at Hyperion. He looked up to Jack the most back then- wanted to be just like him. Anyway, Rhys was too quick to trust him again after everything, but he'd convinced himself this was a different Jack. This time was going to be very different from the last since Jack wasn't literally in his head- and Rhys was determined to not let any past events repeat themselves. This whole day seemed like an odd fever-dream.

Rhys visited his own office briefly first. Oh, he'd forgotten about returning that guard's helmet- but he wasn't going to do that right now. He unlocked one of the drawers behind his desk with a voice recognition password. If they were going to be remodeling, he really didn't want anyone finding his old eye implant. He looked at it for a moment before shoving it in his back pocket with a sigh. He didn't know why he kept it- it's not like he was ever going to connect it to anything. Rhys cleared out a few important papers out of the drawer as well before heading to the borrowed office for the, probably boring, meetings.

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

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

• Jack spends a bit of time just simply playing the games and entertaining himself. He spends a good amount of time in there until he hears a group o people coming. He's quick to save his high score, activate his cloaking and slip out again. Yeah, he'd much prefer not to interact with anyone else right now until he was sure he knew what might be going on later. Those employee folders didn't have much information, and the ECHO comm he has appears to have some of its capabilities limited. Its pretty much got a parental lock on it, and normally jack would find that rather hilarious, right now it annoyed him because it wouldn't let him look up anything to do with hyperion or pandora and the likes.
  
  
• Its almost like they want to keep him in the dark. Which is understandable, but still extremely annoying. He takes a deep breath, carefully slips past the security again to sneak into his room again before dispersing the cloaking. He tries to occupy himself gain with the little things in the room. Thus Ever so slowly, jack ends up taking off some of his layers. His tail coat across the back of a chair, his brown vest on the floor, then his yellow sweater on the bed where he also laid in his white button down dress shirt.
  
  
• So there he laid, across the bed, head and shoulders handing off the bed, legs propped up even as he toyed with his ECHO comm, tried bypassing the parental controls so he could get better access to the ECHOnet. Then he could research everything that'd happened. A low hum escaping him as he tapped at keys and such, tried reworking everything with his programmer's intuition.

[Sori]

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Rhys was in his third meeting, which he had no problem excusing himself from, when he got the notice that Vaughn had arrived. He met with him and Yvette in a conference room on the first floor. Yvette had already briefed Vaughn on what the situation was. Even though Vaughn was indeed also very concerned about Jack being in the building, Rhys went in for a friendly hug as soon as he saw his friend. They messaged each other everyday, sure, but he hadn't actually seen Vaughn in a week. "Good to see you, buddy." Rhys smiled as he stepped back from the hug. "So, um," he cleared his throat. "Jack is staying in the basement right now, like the actual Jack. He's alive and other people can see him, so I'm not going crazy. And I know you're both worried about me-" Rhys looked between his friends, feeling a little bit guilty. Their faces showed 'worried' was a drastic understatement. But Rhys believed he was making the right decisions here. "I really am okay. I've had a talk with him, and he seems to trust me." Vaughn put his head in his hands and groaned. "You don't trust him, though, right? It's Jack, Rhys."

"Seems like he does since he gave Jack a room and an ECHO," Yvette grumbled, answering for him which Rhys didn't appreciate. "Of course I don't trust him! I'm not that dumb." He scoffed. Yes, he very much was that dumb. Dumb enough to even try flirting with Jack. "We just need to make sure he stays here until we can find out how to get him back to his timeline. So rumors don't start to travel." Rhys didn't have to lie about that. If the word got around Pandora that Handsome Jack was rooming at Atlas people would not be too happy, and they would certainly have unwanted violent visitors. "Also um, he heard we were having some financial trouble with the company, and offered us a lot of money." Rhys shook his head in disbelief thinking about how much it was. They could start rebuilding a lot more locations with the first half and they'd still have extra after. "Believe it or not, with no strings attached. He has access to Jack's old bank accounts in this timeline that weren't shut down, and since he's dead here Jack doesn't care about the money." Rhys shrugged. It was a good deal to him at least if all they had to do was help figure out how to get Jack home in exchange for trillions of dollars.

"That- would help us out a lot." Yvette said, eyes wide. Rhys could tell she also had a hard time believing Jack made that offer. Before they could discuss that further, Rhys was getting another echo call from Whitney. He automatically assumed it was about Jack, and he was right. No promises, indeed. He'd tried bypassing the security on the echo Rhys gave him, and the system had detected an attempt of unauthorized access. "Thanks, Whitney. I'll deal with it," Rhys huffed as he hung up the call. He looked over at Vaughn. "Ready to meet the actual Handsome Jack?"

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

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• Jack continues for a bit longer before finally growing bored and frustrated with it, thus tossed the echo somewhere onto the bed before rolling over, digging his elbows into the bed and resting his chin on his palms for a moment, fingers curled. He sits there for a moment before finally shifting his hands, pushes himself up then finally off the bed. His sneakers hit the floor alittle roughly as he grabbed his sweater and at least pulled that back on over the white dress shirt. He looks at his watch and huffs a bit.
  
  
• This was about the time he talked to angel. They were supposed to start looking into some other information on Pandora. He takes a deep breath and shoves his hands into his pocket for a few moments before he begins pacing the room, tapping the ear piece he's connected to the new ECHO comm. "Handsome Jack Personnal Echo log um... Lets go with one. I've seen some real crazy stuff. Elpis' vault showed me A LOT when it pretty much leeched all its information into my head. However, it was always snippets and stuff, never really full, straight details. However, i'm pretty sure this new situation was not included. I'm apparently about five, maybe six years into the future and i've concluded that something goes wrong. Obviously. Theres questions i want to ask, but the people here are rather scared and seem to distrust me. I need to find out why. I'll make another log and list the full details later." He ends the log with another tap to the ear piece and sighs.
  
  
• He goes about, getting his vest off the floor, dusting it off and putting it back on. brushes fingers through his hair to neaten it up then checks his mask to ensure its on properly and all before grabbing his tailcoat. He turns his back to the door as he slips/shrugs it on right as he hears the security guards greet someone. This makes him pop a brow as he moves to sit on the bed while rolling up the sleeves to the coat and button down. Left leg crossed over right as he speaks without looking. "Done with those errands kitten?" He teases before looking up. His duel colored eyes look at the doorway and he stops seeing vaughn and Yvette with rhys.
  
  
• He's not sure what he expected. Maybe someone still dressed formally like Rhys and Yvette, not someone dressed like a freaking pandorian bandit lord. THAT he's not trusting. Thus he's quick to his feet and shifting his footing, right foot behind the left, ready to move incase a move is made against him. "So um... Hope there was some kind of costume party going on in one of your departments here kitten. Because i, hahaha, i'd really like to not be stabbed here." He stated, gaze flickering from rhys down to vaughn then back up to rhys.

[Sori]

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"Calm down, he gave me his word he wasn't going to hurt anyone." Rhys reassured Vaughn, who was visibly getting more uncomfortable as they approached the room. Rhys was incredibly nervous about Vaughn meeting Jack for a few reasons. One, Vaughn would definitely be freaked out by Jack since he never even had to deal with the hologram version. His department on Helios had been threatened with spacing quite a few times, too, which didn't help. Two, Jack might be freaked out by Vaughn since he presented himself like a Pandoran. Three, if Jack made a comment about how Vaughn had abs Rhys was going to throw something.

Jack seemed to have made himself relatively comfortable in the room as Rhys could tell by the shifted bed sheets. And like Rhys thought, he also wasn't too happy about how Vaughn was a bandit leader, and immediately seemed defensive. "Jesus, keep your shirt on you're not going to get stabbed." Rhys put his hands on his hips, honestly a little angry with Jack due to the attempted hacking. "Jack, this is Vaughn, he leads a bandit camp called the Children of Helios. You can probably guess that it was made out of the wreckage- and Vaughn, this is Handsome Jack." Jack for sure didn't need an introduction, but he didn't want to be rude.

"I'd say nice to meet you, but it's really not." Vaughn said matter-of-factly before looking at the floor. Yvette put a hand on Vaughn's shoulder and stepped forward, narrowing her eyes at Jack. "Rhys said you offered the company money? Why? What are you after?" Rhys huffed and frowned at her. She didn't believe him that there were no consequences, which he guessed made sense- but still Yvette had not one shred of trust for Jack in her. Or Rhys, at the current moment.

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

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

• Jack seems to squint almost, gaze narrowing a bit as he just makes a suspicious noise, thought what ever he's got going through his head is broken when Yvette bursts forward practically, marching past rhys and into the room like jack was a defenceless dout. When she asks what he's after practically, he crosses his arms at his chest, rolling his eyes as he moves to collect his echo, reopen that interface to the accounts and near shove it into yvette's hands.
  
  
• "What i'after honey, is a chance to get back to Helios. If i have a single chance at saving my company and my daughter from poor decisions i make in the future thats going to lead to this hell, then i'm going to take any chance i get. But i can't exactly get home, if you and your departments are under funded and don't have the resources to use to help me accomplish that. So think of this as a last will and testament from a dead man sweetie." He stated with just a much force and venom as Yvette was giving him before releasing the interface so it remained in Yvette's hands then stepping back.
  
  
• His attention then goes to Vaughn and rhys. "And i'd say the feelings mutual, but i haven't known you long enough to form a real opinion." He stated with a shrug of his shoulders. "And its pandora. I've nearly gotten a shiv to the kidney before princess. Not to mention you keep saying people are going to flip knowing i'm here. So sorry for not trusting right away just like ya'll seem to not trust me. And i'd REALLY like these damn restrictions off the echonet thank you! I'm confined to a room for christ sakes. Its not like i'm going to do something terrible besides find out what happened! You're keeping information from me, i can already tell so i'd like to know what went wrong so i know how to prevent it!" Jack stated, venting frustration with a bit of shouting as he threw his hands in the air, turning around and taking several larger steps into the room before turning back to face them, then dropping down on the end of the bed with arms crossed.
  
  
• He needs to calm down a bit, his sensitive temper is getting the best of him but he can't exactly help that he's been in this situation before, albiet much younger and with a lot more pain and blood. The thought back to his childhood made his shoulder ache. His shoulders were always prime targets for his grandmother's buzz axe. It made him subconsciously rub and squeeze one of his shoulders to relieve the phantom ache even.

[Sori]

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Yvette stared at the ECHO shoved into her hands, now seeing what Rhys meant by a lot of money. He could tell she was also stunned by it, but still she did not like the idea of helping Jack with anything and held her ground. She looked up from the ECHO and right at Jack- obviously not liking the way Jack was talking to her- which Rhys wasn't a huge fan of either. The extremely condescending and temperamental Jack he knew and had developed a deep resentment for was showing through more than it did when Rhys was just alone with him. "I'll think about it," Yvette said bitterly, a scowl on her face.

Rhys crossed his arm and raised an eyebrow at the not-so polite request. "Yeah, maybe I'd consider it if you didn't try hacking the system. We take breaches in security extremely seriously here, Jack." Mostly due to the Erudium research- because of what he found in the vault there were very specific things he was looking into that he didn't want Jack to start asking questions about. If Jack had it in the other timeline it could really mess things up. Rhys probably shouldn't be concerned about whatever happened there- but he wouldn't wish a timeline where Handsome Jack won on anyone. "I told you to call me if you needed anything," Rhys shrugged, shifting his weight to one foot. "You could've asked earlier and I might've given you higher clearance." Either way, Jack wouldn't know absolutely everything since Rhys kept all the information about the AI and the vault on a separate secure database- that was personal. But everyone was on edge, and Rhys was angry for too many reasons. Mostly at himself for thinking Jack was going to be nice this time around. And at Jack for ruining it. "If we're keeping anything from you, it's because it's none of of you're business."

[Agent Maine(Meta)]

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• Jack scowled heavily at rhys' tone and response to him and what he was doing. He'd much rather this have gone a different way as well as he got up once more and stepped towards rhys. "Fine. Ya want it your way, then have it your way princess. As I said, do what you want with the funds. Its pandora, robbing a dead man doesn't seem all that low for you. But i'm not going to sit there and take... This. Not again, not ever again. You understand?" He stated, his anger and frustration high enough that his hands had even been moving, like he was yelling at rhys with his hands as well. Which he probably was.
  
  
• But either was, he forcefully shoved himself past rhys, vaughn and the security guards, heading directly for the elevator while he snarled and growled to himself. Now normally he would of either up and shot all three of them in his anger as he was known to do, or he would of blatantly tried strangling Rhys. But he didn't do either. No, he was actually storming away from the three. He wanted distance before he just up and lost it.
  
  
• He wasn't going to let anyone push him around like when he was younger. He just barely reaches the elevator, sees two people get out who stop dead in their tracks to gawk at him as he hits the button for the lobby. He's glaring the entire time before shouting 'Take a picture why don't you it'll last longer!' just as the elevator doors close and begin lifting him up to the desired floor.

[Sori]

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"Oh come on-!" Rhys exclaimed with a dramatic huff as Jack hastily vacated the area. Jack was so full of himself, could he really not handle not being the person in charge for one day. Rhys started to storm after him, but he was stopped by someone grabbing his wrist. "Maybe you should let him go?" Vaughn. "There are people way better equipped than we are on Pandora to handle him. Like the crimson raiders, vault hunters, and everyone on Pandora wants him dead so-"

"Are you done?" Rhys asked, and Vaughn looked a little hurt which in turn hurt Rhys. "Sorry. I just. Think we can handle this ourselves. We need to figure out more about this crystal and how he came here so it won't happen again. And as much as we all don't like it I'm pretty sure Jack could help." He needed to calm down- the idea of letting someone else deal with Jack when fate put him right on Atlas's door step was very tempting in his anger. Rhys took a deep breath and opened up his ECHO- Jack had already made it to the elevator by now. "Whitney- hey- can you initiate a tight lockdown of the lobby? No one allowed in or out of the building." In a moment, Whitney initiated the lockdown of the main floor, and Rhys winced when the lockdown alert came over the speakers again- slightly different as it was only the lobby on lockdown. He was really going to have to make a statement explaining these lockdowns later- it would be bad to keep everyone in the dark about why there were so many. Rhys turned to his friends. "You don't have to come with me, but I'm going to deal with this, okay?" Vaughn met his eyes and let go of Rhys's wrist. "Don't be dumb." He held out his hand for a fist bump.

Rhys obliged and shot Vaughn a smile before stepping in the direction of the elevator. "Am I ever?"