Borderlands: Unnatural selection

"Mr. Torgue must have gotten a pretty good deal if the old man is so upset about it." I said but Clay just laughed confusing me.

"If the dumb bastard had gotten a good deal for it I wouldn't give a shit. The fool only got twelve dollars and a high five for the tech!" the old man said with irritation clear.

"The fuck? If it's become a staple damage type wouldn't that mean that billions of guns with that stuff on it have been sold?" I asked incredulously.

"And that's why Monty here has a grudge against Torgue, the price he got was an insult to the Jakobs name." Clay said with a shrug.

"Enough about that muscle brained buffoon. We need to make a plan for the next year if we are to get you up to snuff boy and you ain't gonna like it." the old man said seriously and he was gods damn right.

No new lifeforce, traits or fights outside an hour in the sim training room for the next six bloody months. No instead of focusing on my personal power the old man had my ass literally strapped to a chair and forced to endure the worst torture imaginable, SCHOOL.-

I knew it was for my own good, really I did but FUCK SCHOOL! Ten motherfucking hours a day having my head crammed with information on my new reality that I was willing to bet my left nut I'll never use. Like why the flying fuck did I need to know about the siege of Medes five and how it started because a clerk made an error on a food order? The story was insane as apparently some important dipshit had a food allergy and the clerk accidentally made a mistake on his order so the dude died in the middle of a peace summit of all things. -

They thought it was a declaration of war from the planet that the food came from and sieged that shit killing millions before the error that caused it was discovered. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried, plain retarded. The memorization and tests weren't the worst part though no that came from the old man denying me memory and intelligence traits despite in fact know exactly where I could go to get them.-

"If you need traits for nonsense like this then you'll never be worth the hairs on a Jabbers ass." he said.

I knew he was talking about knowing the value of hard work and effort but this was Grog shit. Like I could get through this so much faster and you know ACTUALLY spend the time getting strong enough to face Pandora but he thought it was a cop out to rely on traits for everything. I tried to argue that he could at least let me stockpile lifeforce but once again that was futile since he thought I might still try to grab traits while I was at it, which you know I totally would so that's fair I guess.-

Not all the lessons were boring and a slog to get through though, some were actually really interesting. Like the lessons on Eridians and all that was known about them and the vaults they left behind. That was how I learnt that the aliens just up and vanished a long long time ago and nobody is exactly sure why. There were theories that the vaults were supposed to be a sort of museum esque deal where the tech and "treasures" inside were supposed to be reminders of their greatness.-

I had my doubts though after having those logs stuffed in my head after getting my powers. The logs were very brief and didn't explain much but that last one made it sound as if the species had been getting overwhelmed by the appearance of the anomalies. Logically it would then make sense that they might simply have been killed by some form of anomaly. My second favorite type of lessons were the ones on guns. The old man considered basic gunsmithing knowledge absolutely vital to anyone who worked for the Jakobs family.-

Yes the family and not the company, apparently while in charge of the company the family itself didn't actually get much of the profits as all that money went right back into the company. This was apparently something set up so no one stupid could take the reigns and crash the ship as it were. Don't get me wrong the Jakobs were filthy fucking rich but they weren't "swimming in a lake of gold" rich, at least not in money that is. See the Jakobs actually own whole ass planets including the one I am currently on.-

That particular lesson blew my fucking mind. That and how nobody knew where humans came from. The most recent recorded history of humanity was when they all suddenly found themselves existing on different planets in this cluster of six "close" galaxies. Nobody remembered what came before that point, it was like someone had hit the cosmic reset button on our asses. Apparently humans were really damn racist at the start of this time as once we once again started to take to the stars and go to new habitable planets that also had people, Genocide on scales that would make the devil queasy happened.-

That was until the tech started to get advanced enough that galactic travel became almost commonplace and some racist dude did a genetic comparison of the "aliens" of all these different planets only to discover that they were with small evolutionary changes the same species. As you might imagine that revelation made the next galactic cook out awkward as fuck. But Americans know how this whole song and dance goes as the problem switched from race to "planetism" where the slurs and nasty stuff was now about the planets one was born on, aren't we just the nicest species ever?-

Then came the corporations where monopolies started to be a thing, kinda. See the first corporations were just small businesses that grew over time after a galaxies wide currency was finally hashed out(it took awhile). At some point the businesses started spanning multiple planets and eventually galaxies and new laws and regulations had to be agreed on by humanity as a collective(again this took awhile). Once those were set the first "true" corporations formed from businesses that purchased entire planets with their vast funds and kicked out or absorbed all smaller businesses on the planets so all that was left was a planet of consumers who only ever bought that one corporations stuff.-

The real competition for these mega businesses came from each other and spurred them to create ever better and better products and scientific marvels like the fast travel units. There was also a bit of a whole corporation war from underhanded business tactics in unauthorized locations that ended up creating most of the bandits that currently exist in the borderlands. Speaking of that term "borderlands" actually referred to the planets found at the outer rim of each of the galaxies that were far from the ideal world locations.-

These planets were effectively labeled "do whatever" and left alone by the rest of the galaxies. That was the "brief" version of the history lessons I myself took, mine was so fucking detailed it literally hurt to remember. Montgomery Jakobs was thorough if nothing else though and had me taught mathematics(blegh), cursive(meh), law(blegh), business(Surprisingly something i'm good at), engineering(I was pretty good here), botany(meh), zoology(I paid attention here), biology(here too), physics(I was decent at this), Eridian(I learnt everything they could find, it was unsatisfyingly little) and chemistry(I almost died here). -

Still I persevered for six whole months of that torture and came out with a solid B- average which apparently put me in the top five percent of educated people here in the borderlands and top fifteen percent in the entire six galaxies. I wasn't sure if the vast majority of humanity was that stupid or if education was just that bad all round. Finally though the old man got to the part of his grand "make the best Alex possible in a year" plan that I actually was excited for, power usage.-

"Alright boy now that you've got the best education my money can buy for such a short timeframe we can get you powered up. The catch is that you'll have to hunt everything on your own starting from here on Eden six and once you get all that this planet can offer you i'll have Clay drop you off on another planet of your choice to hunt there since you can mark those planets with that house of yours and go back afterwards. Ifin I'm right you only have time for these two planets before Pandora will come callin, make the most of em." the old man said sternly before kicking me out of the manor with just an echo, my clothes(got some new ones) and my gun and shield that had gotten a little upgrade.

[Name: Adaptive Death+

Level: legendary/unique

Type: Repeater pistol

Damage type: N/A

Manufacturer: DRAKE

Customizations: Extended barrel, Caliber conversion up, textured grip, Digistruct autoloading mechanism

Affix: Some say death is the end...

If the Adaptive Rebirth is equipped damage changes based on the element equipped to it.]

See like I said just a "small" upgrade that made my gun a fucking beast of a pistol that hits like a sniper, mostly because I converted the caliber size of the gun up to standard sniper range. For any normal person the recoil on this gun would make it nigh unusable as it was basically a high caliber sniper rifle reduced to a single handed revolver. For me though it was JUST right. The biggest downside though was that the firing rate had dropped a good bit as I could only get off three shots in the same amount of time I used to be able to get off all seven. Reloading also would have been a bitch if I hadn't put an autoloading mechanism on it.-

Thanks to it reloading after emptying the cylinder only takes about a second and a half. The way it worked was that it had a sensor that detected my shots left and when I'm out it digidestructs the empty casings and then digistructs full ones in place so long as I have bullets saved up in my "inventory". Monty had made sure I had an Echo within the same day I started living in the manor and I had been getting familiar with it for the last six months so I was pretty well versed in it's uses.-

I suppose I should also mention I got acquainted with Monty's son and heir Wainwright as well as his sons lover/best friend Alistair Hammerlock. Wainwright Jakobs wasn't a very imposing person like his father but rather more of a mild mannered gentleman. He had wild graying brown hair and bad eyesight but was a peach to just sit around and shoot the shit with. Hammerlock was kinda a stereotypical british explorer/biologist/hunter with a robotic eye and arm and all about "the call of adventure". Let me tell you the dude was an absolute encyclopedia of knowledge on all things animal.

Both of these men had been made privy to my rather "special" circumstances and Hammerlock in particular expressed no small amount of envy at the nature of my powers.

"To hunt a beast and truly make it's very life's essence and power your own, a thing of great envy for any hunter worth his salt I assure you." He had said genuinely at that time.