Not the original author - consider this non-canonical, if you like
Caroline realized she was passing by the 188 again, and sighed. As delicious as that Michelle bitch looked, it wasn't a good idea to find toys in the same place more than once. Maybe no one would miss Veronica, but everyone here had seen her leave with her. People started to get suspicious. That was why she'd taken the courier job in the first place - they naturally roamed from place to place, and no one paid any attention to them most of the time.
She hadn't noticed there were people underneath the overpass the last time she was here. Vaguely curious, she headed over. Anything for some entertainment. There were some boring-looking men, but there was also something more unusual: a boy wearing a weird headset, with a bunch of junk piled behind him in this makeshift camp. She headed over. Maybe she could steal his stuff and make him cry.
As she approached, he took off his headset. He suddenly screamed. "Devourer, ravager, beast!" he managed to get out in between screams, clutching his head with one hand and pointing at her with the other. "The poison blinds...!"
Shit. Jennifer turned and ran, noticing the men under the bridge turning to look at her. Someone shouted at her to stop. She didn't, scrambling over the dunes to the south. The sound of the sand and the shouting behind her drowned out a new, strange noise, a sort of periodic mechanical whirring, getting increasingly loud.
She finally stopped, past the fire ants, fairly sure they wouldn't try to follow her through them. Catching her breath, she heard the whirring for the first time, rapidly getting louder. Scanning, she quickly spotted something approaching, fast, from the southeast. What the fuck?
It was human, at least some of it. The legs and arms looked like metal; one eye was covered by a patch, with a dull red glow coming from the other socket. Then Jennifer recognized the face, and scrabbled for her gun.
If Jennifer had known to sidestep, Veronica would probably have stumbled and fallen; the mechanical legs were great for speed but turned badly. But she didn't, and stood her ground, firing two shots that glanced harmlessly off one of the legs and a chest plate. The front of one of Veronica's steel claws was the last thing Jennifer ever saw.
Re: Mojave Hunts (29/?)
Caroline realized she was passing by the 188 again, and sighed. As delicious as that Michelle bitch looked, it wasn't a good idea to find toys in the same place more than once. Maybe no one would miss Veronica, but everyone here had seen her leave with her. People started to get suspicious. That was why she'd taken the courier job in the first place - they naturally roamed from place to place, and no one paid any attention to them most of the time.
She hadn't noticed there were people underneath the overpass the last time she was here. Vaguely curious, she headed over. Anything for some entertainment. There were some boring-looking men, but there was also something more unusual: a boy wearing a weird headset, with a bunch of junk piled behind him in this makeshift camp. She headed over. Maybe she could steal his stuff and make him cry.
As she approached, he took off his headset. He suddenly screamed. "Devourer, ravager, beast!" he managed to get out in between screams, clutching his head with one hand and pointing at her with the other. "The poison blinds...!"
Shit. Jennifer turned and ran, noticing the men under the bridge turning to look at her. Someone shouted at her to stop. She didn't, scrambling over the dunes to the south. The sound of the sand and the shouting behind her drowned out a new, strange noise, a sort of periodic mechanical whirring, getting increasingly loud.
She finally stopped, past the fire ants, fairly sure they wouldn't try to follow her through them. Catching her breath, she heard the whirring for the first time, rapidly getting louder. Scanning, she quickly spotted something approaching, fast, from the southeast. What the fuck?
It was human, at least some of it. The legs and arms looked like metal; one eye was covered by a patch, with a dull red glow coming from the other socket. Then Jennifer recognized the face, and scrabbled for her gun.
If Jennifer had known to sidestep, Veronica would probably have stumbled and fallen; the mechanical legs were great for speed but turned badly. But she didn't, and stood her ground, firing two shots that glanced harmlessly off one of the legs and a chest plate. The front of one of Veronica's steel claws was the last thing Jennifer ever saw.