Borderlands - Highland Hardcore

Story by Leo_Todrius on SoFurry

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#4 of Borderlands

Written by

Commissioned by Zyxxs

When a muscled berserker attacks a Hyperion transport, not everything goes to plan as he's cornered by threshers...


Borderlands -Highland Hardcore-

Written by Leo_Todrius Commissioned by Zyxxs

To the outside worlds, Pandora was a barren, blight prone planet. Arid deserts, rocky volcanoes, crazed bandits and hideous monstrosities. They were right, of course, but few knew of one of Pandora's few temperate regions... the Highlands. Crystal clear waters ran down stream beds toward the sea, nourishing the soft green grasses that covered the area. There was even an occasional rainbow or two, adding to the majesty of the area. Sure, there were occasional problems - clan feuds, slag poisoning and horrendous creatures bent on human death and destruction, but what place didn't have its drawbacks?

One of the highland's greatest features was also one of its greatest drawbacks, its infrastructure. Hyperion had dug its claws in deep after the opening of the vault and few regions had been dominated more than the Highlands. From the Isotope reclamation facility to Extraction Point, Hyperion had left its mark. Even the massive Hyperion city of Opportunity was built just off shore from the Highlands, though the interest in the city had declined after videos of rampant destruction had made its way to the hypernet.

The highlands acted as a major hub of industry and commerce for Hyperion, and with the sheer number of enemies the company had accumulated, that meant business... something the Great Scott was very interested in. The large man stood on the hillside, his size eighteen boots sunk into the sandy dirt. His shaggy red hair blew in the salty breeze as he brought a cigar up to his pierced lips, drawing in a drag before expelling the thick cloud of pungent smoke.

Scott was six feet and ten inches tall when he slouched, towering over almost anyone on Pandora. He had at least two hundred pounds of pure muscle on him; his green sleeveless shirt split almost all of the way down to his navel from the sheer girth of his hairy chest. Scott's fists were as big as many people's heads, the knuckles thick and the skin tough despite countless scars. It was clear Scott was a brawler, even a berserker... one that had spent a long time trying to find his niche.

He had been born on Eden 6, a planet so fixated on their renowned space vixens that his sheer size had made him an outcast. He'd traveled to Promethea to try and find a place to belong, but even with constant warring and strife on the planet that started the vault hunts, the Crimson Lance had no place for someone like Scott. The behemoth had almost given up hope when he'd heard the stories of Pandora, of bandits mutated in the Headstone Mine to become muscled monstrosities, of the normal citizens scraping through life by the strength of their own body. It sounded like his kind of place.

Since arriving on Pandora, everything was starting to make sense to Scott. He had bought a shack by Cranky's Pond and Overlook gave him enough jobs to keep busy... just as it did today. Scott had been waiting, but as a flashing diamond appeared on his HUD, advancing toward him, he knew it was time to move. He clenched his cigar between his lips as he leapt into his stolen Bandit Technical, powering the vehicle up. The truck rumbled down the slopes toward the highway, the massive launching arm shimmering as a barrel of slag was digistructed from the Technical's inventory.

Scott looked to the horizon, seeing his target approaching - a Hyperion transport tanker. A sly grin crossed the red headed berserker's lips as he moved to intercept. The transport had to be stopped before it reached Opportunity and he had figured out the perfect point. Scott moved along, staying off the road as long as possible as the transport approached Blake Bridge. Scott let out a whoop of excitement as he moved for the kill.

The Technical veered onto the road before the launching arm shot forward, lobbing the barrel through the air. It arched out and hit the road just in front of the transport, exploding into a pool of molten purple eridium slag. The transport swerved, the slag getting all over the tires and the engine, steaming as it corroded the metal. Scott moved toward the transport, opening fire, riddling the vehicle with bullets... but the transport was still coming.

An explosive barrel digistructed in the launching arm before it was hurled forward, hitting the transport square on. The windshield exploded, the driver flung from the vehicle... but the transport hadn't stopped. It was on auto-pilot, heading to its destination with or without a pilot. Scott knew he would have to take more drastic steps. His huge foot came down onto the accelerator, driving the Technical on. The truck roared with power, hurtling out onto the bridge... and right at the mid point, the two collided.

The hood of the Technical crumpled as it hit the square bumper of the Hyperion transport, but then the give was gone... and so was the engine. Scott leapt out of the door of the Technical as the gas tank was hit, the two vehicles erupting into a fiery ball of fire and shrapnel. The pieces of metal whistled through the air around the behemoth as he fell over the side of the bridge toward the sandy river bed below.

The transport erupted into a second explosion, and then a third as its cargo was compromised. The entire tanker of eridium slag ruptured, sending out a flood of the purple slime. The slag rained down over the sides of the bridge in sheets, landing in the dried out river bed left by the dam up stream... but the slag wasn't the only thing to drop into the river bed. After his fall, Scott landed in the sand, sending up a plume of dust around himself.

The Great Scott's shield chirped as its power was depleted, his heads up display indicating that he had been somewhat injured in the fall as well. One massive meaty hand reached out to push himself up, then the other. He brought himself to his knee and then stood, looking around. His Echo indicated that he was in the Whispering Riverbed that ran beneath Blake Bridge. The walls of the river bed were quite steep, though there seemed to be some way to get back up to the road down stream.

Scott turned and took a few steps, but something wasn't right. The sand beneath his feet was shuddering, rippling. The muscled man looked around before he saw why - a bulge of sand was creeping along near by, something squirming beneath the surface. Scott felt a chill run down his spine. He'd stumbled into Thresher territory. Scot soon held still, not wanting to give the Thresher any clue of where he was standing, but the Thresher didn't seem interested in him... at least not for the moment.

The mound of sand made its way to the bridge where the slag was dripping before it surfaced. A bulbous, multi-eyes head emerged from the sand, its fleshy beak like mouth swinging around. It continued to surface, propelled upwards by its snake like body, though several tentacles emerged from it's over sized head just in front of its 'neck'. The Thresher looked like some sort of land octopus, one that had come to feed. The many tentacles started scooping up the eridium soaked sand, bringing it up to its mouth where it fed, processing the dirt almost like a worm might.

Scott looked around as several more Threshers gathered, feeding on the slag as if it were candy. Scott knew that was not at all a good idea to stick around. He brought up the map and saw that the natural ramp up to the road was on the other side of the beasts, though there was a cement and metal cat walk running half way up the bridge. It could provide him temporary shelter, or at least a way to wait the creatures out. Scott turned and began moving toward the metal steps on the bridge supports, hoping not to be noticed... but few men on Pandora were larger than he was.

Blue glowing eyes turned to face Scott as he moved, one of the Threshers taking an interest. It plunged several tentacles into the ground, snaking their way toward the man. Scott felt the ground rumble beneath him and picked up the pace, narrowly moving before tentacles shot up to impale where he had been. The running behemoth drew the attention of the other Threshers and the creatures soon turned. Some started slinging spikes, the boney vestiges arching through the air, hitting the sand and the cement and the metal around Scott as he ran up onto the platform, rounding the steps and moving up almost eight feet. He looked around and spotted another catwalk above him, but the two weren't connected. There wasn't a way back to the road from there... and the Threshers were quite interested in him now.

The spikes slung from the creatures rained down all around him, a few hitting his shield as it tried to recharge. The shield was whittled down again and soon the spikes sliced Scott's skin, red blood pooling at the cuts. Scott grunted. He'd tried to play it nice, but now he was going to have to slaughter them all. He pulled out his grenade and lobbed it at them, but no sooner had the grenade left his fingers before he realized he had made a mistake... He had used a slag grenade. The grenade dropped down to the sand, bouncing a few times before it shot back up into the air; suspending itself about six feet off the ground. The grenade spun before it began to spray out slag in every direction. The purple spray hit the threshers, coating them in thick sheets of the stuff... but rather than become weakened, they started to absorb it and drink it like food.

Scott watched in horror as the Threshers started to grow. Their tails thickened, their tentacles lengthened and their heads bulged. New spikes and ridges pushed out from their bodies, making them look generally more hard core. The threshers basked in the shower, moving back and forth, wriggling around. One of the tadpole threshers pushed off, arching through the air toward Scott. The behemoth ducked as they hit the bridge support, bouncing off like a ricocheting bullet. The tadpole hit the sand below and burrowed again, but it seemed they were growing far more aggressive.

Scott grumbled at his idiocy, searching through his inventory. He had favored slag weapons as they weakened enemies, but this was not the case for the threshers. He had to find something that could hurt them... and at last he found something, Transfusion grenades. He loaded the grenade mod onto the clip on his shoulder before he started hurtling grenades down. They weren't going to leave him alone and he couldn't wait forever. He was going to have to take the fight to them.

As the first grenades burst and nanobots started swarming the threshers to steal their life force, Scott lunged and leapt over the guard rail, dropping back down to the sandy ground once more. He felt the adrenaline coursing through his body, filling his muscles and his mind, knowing that he could do anything. He charged at the nearest thresher and brought his fists up, belting the Thresher with his fist. He punched it in the jaw, the cheek, even the eye. The creature squealed and pulled back, but Scott kept pummeling it.

All around him, the transfusion grenades had extracted the life force of the slagged Threshers and were bringing it back to Scott. Even as Scott was wounded by spikes and slashes, the nanites started to push the life force back into Scott. He felt his wounds healing right back up, though something wasn't quite right. As the wounds closed, a few drops of purple slag leaked from them. He grunted in shock, realizing that he was getting the mutated health of the Threshers, getting tainted just like them.

Scott felt stronger by the moment but also dizzy, almost light headed. He dropped one Thresher and moved onto the next, but he started to stumble, feeling strange and uneven. The threshers seemed to sense something was different as well. They sniffed the air with their beak like noses, looking at the human. They backed up to keep out of the way of his fists, though one thresher started advancing. Unlike the others, its plating was white, lighter than the others... and it was covered in far more spines. The thresher pushed up all the way to the surface, drawing its tentacles out before it summoned its internal strength... a singularity.

The microscopic black hole formed and it began drawing everything in. Sand swirled around, building up into the hole... but that wasn't the target. The wormhole thresher wanted Scott. The behemoth grunted and screamed in shock as he started sliding back. He had spent his whole life being impassible, immovable, a pillar and a foundation. Now it seemed like his mass was being used against him. He dropped his gun and clawed at the sand, trying not to slide, but it was too late.

Before Scott had any change to grab onto anything, he was off his feet and flying through the air. He was a three hundred pound paper airplane on a gust, a gust that took him right to the wormhole thresher. As Scott was pulled in, the wormhole thresher pushed out its spikes. Scott hit the thresher and felt the spines pierce his shield and his flesh, stabbing into him like a thousand needles. His muscles ached and throbbed, blood leaked from his wounds... and soon he started to feel even lighter headed. The gravity field kept him in place, he knew this was likely going to be the end of him - but he wasn't going down without a fight. Scott brought his fists up and started punching, hitting the Thresher in the throat, the side, the tentacles, the head, anything he could reach. The thresher's health was visibly dropping on the echo analysis, but Scott wasn't prepared for what the beast did next... The thresher opened his mouth wide, letting out a call like a whale before he came down.

Scott was plunged into a wet darkness as the creature swallowed him, the mouth closing easily around his feet. Scott knew he was too big for the thresher's throat, but his huge bulbous head was just the right size to contain him. Slag and saliva coated Scott as he wriggled around, riding on the beast's tongue. He rolled onto his back and lifted his head, trying to keep breathing, using the air that the thresher drew in through his nostril slits. Scott started trying to punch his way out but the inside of the thresher's mouth was just as tough as the outside and Scott didn't have the room to build up momentum. He was trapped, swallowed alive into the mouth of the beast... and the beast was moving.

The wormhole thresher's nostril slits sealed shut before it dove down. Scott bounced between the thick tongue and the roof of the mouth, buffeted around in a sea of slag saliva. He clung on for dear life, grunting and moaning as the thresher swam through the sand like it was water. Minutes passed and the air was starting to grow stale, but then Scott felt the thresher right itself, traveling up... and up... and up... before finally breaking through.

The massive jaw of the thresher opened up and Scott was dumped out unceremoniously, coated in slime as he bounced across the rocky ground. He sprung to his feet and looked around, realizing he was in a cave. There was a narrow, tiny hole in the ceiling letting in a single ray of light and some fresh air, but other than that there was no way in our out... only the way the threshers used. Several more of the tentacle beasts rose up through the ground into the cave, eyeing Scott carefully.

Scott backed up against the cave wall, reaching for his belt to activate another gun, but before his hand could tap his echo, a tentacle wrapped around it. Scott yelped and reached to punch the tentacle but his other hand was ensnared as well. Two threshers moved in, lifting him up by his arms. More tentacles wrapped around his shoulders and one around his waist, hoisting him up for the wormhole thresher to examine.

"What do you want? Why don't you just kill me?!" Scott screamed, though the threshers didn't understand his language. The wormhole thresher reached out, using one of his tentacles to pull along Scott's body. It gripped at his clothes before tugging, tearing the cloth apart. His hairy, muscled chest was exposed as the shirt came off, the grenade belt following soon after. His echo chirped and whistled as it was ripped from his belt, his pants being torn off next.

Scott struggled to resist the tentacles, but they easily had their way with him. They even managed to cut through his boots and socks, the leather and rubber falling to the sand along with the scraps of shirt and pants. The last of his gear toppled to the ground and rolled to the side, leaving the behemoth naked, held up in the air. Scott tried once more to free himself but he merely dangled in mid air, held in place, his uncut cock swinging from his groin.

The wormhole thresher moved forward, examining the human, leaning in. It ran its tentacles over his wounds that the transfusion grenade had healed, then it felt his muscled arms and finally it coiled around his manhood, giving it a few strokes. Scott grunted in unwanted pleasure as his manhood started to harden and lengthen, though the Thresher seemed pleased that it had helped Scott's own 'tentacle' grow. It stroked it more, feeling it thicken and stretch before it moved on to massage the rest of his body. Soon the wormhole thresher let out a warbling growl to the others.

"Hey!" Scott yelped as several thick tentacles wrapped around his legs, coiling around them and squeezing them tight, the flesh squished quite completely. He was ensnared almost all the way up to his waist, though his groin was still exposed. He had no idea what the Threshers wanted with him. It seemed like the most elaborate way to eat him he could think of... but as one of the threshers moved toward him again, he looked it in the eyes without fear.

The advancing thresher leaned in, bringing its mouth to Scott's, pushing in. Scott grunted as his lips were pried apart, but he had no way to brace for what came next - a flood of thresher gunk. His cheeks bulged out as the slime was pumped in, though Scott didn't want to swallow it. He closed off his throat, causing the slop to back up and spray out of his nostrils... but the strategy wasn't sound. Even then it was overwhelming him, stinging his sinuses... and the pressure was only growing more intense.

Soon Scott's throat failed and a thick torrent sprayed down into his stomach, sloshing around as it hit his bile. He involuntarily gulped, then gulped again, soon guzzling the slime down. It filled his stomach and throat to overflowing before finally the thresher pulled back. Scott coughed and wretched, spitting out the brownish purple slime, gasping for breath. He hung limp in the tentacles that held him up, though as he looked around, his eyes started to glow... but only for a moment. The threshers looked at each other, knowing that they would have to work much harder to save him. ****

Scott mumbled as he awoke, feeling another force feeding starting. Days had passed since he was abducted and he no longer fought it. There was no point. The threshers traded off who was restraining him and they all took turns feeding him the pre-digested slop, regurgitating it into his mouth like he was a baby Rakk. He had started to figure it out, that they thought he was one of them after the transfusion grenades... but the food they were feeding him was growing richer, his grasp on reality slipping.

The behemoth had no way of realizing, but his body was already mutating because of the slag in the food. His legs had gone numb, turning a reddish brown as the skin grew together. His bones were softening while his muscles hardened. Even his feet had fused, the toes slowly webbing together and merging. In many ways Scott was looking more like a mythical naga with a snake tail from the waist down, but that was not what he was becoming... not in the slightest.

Scott's arms had grown longer, his fists hanging down to where his knees had once been, though it had come at the cost of his arm's girth. His muscles had shifted, the arms thinning out as they grew longer. They were still strong, they were just different... just like how his shoulders had angled in toward his neck, making him look a bit more hunched. The threshers seemed pleased with their work, but they needed to do more, to save their brother.

The thresher feeding Scott pulled back from the embrace, watching the slop dribble from his pierced lips. It reached a tentacle up to stroke his head, feeling his smooth, tough scalp where his hair had receded. Scott gazed up with unnaturally blue eyes, looking at the thresher, wondering if it thought it was his mommy or daddy. It'd been so long since there had been anyone to look after him. He smiled faintly before he passed out again, limp in the arms of those that had him.

The threshers looked to one another, warbling in their natural tone. They needed something stronger, they needed to work faster. They had to save their brethren from the human blight before it was too late. They would have to work together... and attack the isotope facility. One by one they dropped down into the Earth until only two remained, watching over Scott and keeping him in place, his body adopting the slag and the thresher food as its own. ****

Scott moaned and groaned in his sleep, swearing that he could hear someone talking.... Whispers, warblings, murmurs. He opened his eyes in time to see several threshers surfacing in the cave... but at the center of it all was the massive white wormhole thresher that had captured him. The beast moved forward, coming up to the human. It ran its tentacles over his chest and his cock, cupped his ass cheeks and his ribs before it leaned in, bringing its beak like mouth to his. His pierced lips were pried open and the flow of gunk started, but it was unlike anything Scott had ever tasted.

It had the metallic tang of eridium, buzzing and tingling in his bones... but it was warm, spicy, hot, radiating with energy. He gulped it down and felt the waves of energy flow through him. Each gulp made him feel stronger, but it also made it harder to think, harder to remember his life... but it tasted so good he didn't care anymore. He wanted it, he craved it, and he needed it.

Scott gulped at the slime, taking it down, groaning sharply in the sloppy feeding as his body started to react faster than ever before. His head ached and throbbed before his jaw started to extend, pushing forward. His lips widened around his face as his skull extended into a muzzle, but the muzzle wasn't the only thing growing. His nose widened and flattened out, creating an upper palate to his mouth as his tongue swelled and engorged. His forehead bulged out and widened, the back of his skull rounded. All in all, his head was growing in every direction.

The behemoth started to move his arms around, trying to hug the wormhole thresher in thanks. His arms wiggled and warped like wet noodles, though as he tried to use them they gained strength. His fingers had gone completely numb and as he guzzled down the radioactive sludge, the fingers grew together and solidified into tentacle tips. It seemed his mutation was picking up speed.

Scott's shoulders lifted up all the way into his massive head, his arms becoming more like tentacles. His mouth curved and rounded like a beak as his nose disappeared into the maw, leaving only nostril slits. His eyes were glowing blue, but his head was bulging in other places as his skin toughened. All over, his pale freckled skin was turning brown and red like the rich sea clay of the highlands. The color swept over his head, covering even the bulges as they split open, revealing a second and third pair of blue eyes.

As Scott looked out at the world from his new perspective, his life as a vault hunter faded away. His memories of being outcast, of being muscled, of being human disappeared. It was as if his brain had turned off and on again and all he remembered was being force fed by Threshers, of being taken care of, of being tended to. Scott's throat reshaped and his organs shifted, his abdomen simplifying. His legs had long ago disappeared, replaced with the snake body of a thresher but soon his torso did the same.

Seeing a familiar face emerging from the body of Scott, the threshers holding him up began to uncoil from his body. His now alien tail was allowed to touch down, standing on his own power. His tentacles flailed about and his six eyes blinked as the wormhole thresher finally pulled back. All traces of humanity had been removed from Scott, both in his body and mind... save for the tiny silver rings in the thresher's bottom lip, the lone remnant of the behemoth that had been. In fact, Scott was hardly a behemoth at all any more.

While he had been huge for a human, the threshers crowded around the new beast were all bigger than him. Even the tadpole threshers were a few feet longer and wider than Scott. He was the runt of the litter, the small one, the baby... but he was finally home. The threshers cooed and warbled in delight, nuzzling and rubbing against Scott in bliss and Scott rubbed back, feeling that he was finally with his family... his hardcore family of the highlands. ****

Soft metal clinks came as the yellow and black armored boots stepped out onto the bridge. The Hyperion engineer looked around at the evaporated remnants of slag, the burned out hulk of the vehicles and the dead driver's body over on the rocks. He lifted his arm to use the scanner, checking for any left over deposits of the precious cargo. His sensors were rather vague in their readings, though it seemed that there was a higher scan down below.

The engineer leapt off the bridge, using jump jets on his suit before he touched down onto the sand in the whispering riverbed. He looked around curiously before he froze in place, watching as a single tentacle rose up out of the sand, quivering and slithering back and forth almost hypnotically.

As the engineer gazed at the single tentacle, Scott rose up behind him, eyeing him with particular focus. As a thresher, he was entering his puberty... and tentacle monsters had certain needs. The tentacle distracting the engineer suddenly wrapped around his neck and lifted him up while several more began to tear off his armor.

The yellow and black metal fell to the ground as Scott went to work, stripping the engineer just as he had been stripped... but Scott could tell the engineer was simply human, no good for anything other than fun or food... and Scott wasn't hungry. Tentacles wrapped around the engineer's wrists and ankles, spreading him wide before a long, slimy appendage emerged from Scott's torso.

The central tentacle drooled and dripped its musky slime before it slathered against the engineer's ass, sliding up and down the cheeks before it plunged into him. The engineer called out in shock and pleasure as he was invaded, squirming on the spire, though two more tentacles started pushing into his mouth, muffling his screams.

Scott filled his ass and mouth, played with his body and went to work. The human was impaled, thrusted into, slid back and forth and used as a cock sheath. He squirmed and moaned and drooled. The engineer was clearly enjoying himself, but so was Scott. The young thresher shuddered, unable to hold back his first orgasm as a new species. His entire snake tail quivered before his cock pushed his sperm into the engineer.

The volume of slime was so much that the engineer's stomach distended some, though the rest of the semen spilled out of his ass, splattering down to the ground. Scott's eyes squeezed shut in pleasure before he pulled the human off his rod and dropped him on the sand, sliding back a few feet to enjoy his afterglow.

The orgasm was truly wondrous, but Scott knew it would only get better. He'd grow up to be a big and strong Thresher, one worthy of Terramorphous one day. The sand behind Scott rippled as two tadpole threshers surfaced, letting out their warbling call. More humans were on the way. While one alone was easy to deal with, swarms were hard. The tadpoles dropped down into the sand again and Scott turned, burrowing down into the ground, swimming through the sand with ease... an ease he had never known as a human. The behemoth had traveled from world to world, searching for a place and a home. He had finally found it on Pandora... and Pandora had found itself in the human, a highland hardcore through and through.