An unexpected encounter in the desert
BOOM
In the passenger side front sat, Lucy came awake to find the car swerving, a 'whump whump whump' noise coming from the front as Kouta fought to get the car under control and stopped. Poised to use her vectors, Lucy relaxed as Kouta managed to pull over to the side of the road and stop. Lucy was thankful they were not hurt. Looking out at the vast expanse of rock and scrub brush that extended for miles in every direction, she knew this hot land where the bright sun beat mercilessly down on them was a terrible place to be stuck.
"Great, the car broke," Lucy said in an irritated huff.
"Blew a tire," Kouta explained and opened his door. "I'll get it fixed, don't worry."
As Kouta opened the door, the hot Nevada desert air rushed in. Not wanting Kouta outside working alone, Lucy got out with him.
They had come here to escape Kakuzawa and his homicidal lunatics. Lucy was glad to be far away from Kamakura. No troops of soldiers to attack them and better yet, no Yuka to constantly harass and beat on Kouta. The place they landed was nice. Good temperature, lots of things to see, and as long as Lucy and Nana wore the big wide brim hats, no one seemed to take notice of them. Many people had strange hair colors. Someone then took a picture of them, and becoming nervous, Kouta got a car and drove them out here into the middle of nowhere.
Seeing Kouta begin to sweat as he got out the small spare tire, Lucy lifted the front of the car with a vector, then held the tire still as Kouta removed the nuts holding it in place.
Rolling down her window, Nana asked from the back seat, " Is this going to take long? It's getting hot in here."
"Just hold on, Nana, we'll be done soon," Kouta assured her. He changed tires and got the nuts back on. He nodded to Lucy. "Done, thank you for helping."
"Anything for you, Kouta," Lucy assured him, and lowered the car back down.
"You don't mean, 'anything'," Kouta said teasingly.
"For you, I do mean anything," Lucy replied softly.
Kouta blushed and seemed to sweat a bit more in the heat. "It's really hot out here," he said, his eyes sweeping over Lucy's body. To change the subject, he opened Lucy's door and said, "I saw a sign for a service station a few miles back. That spare won't go far, so I'll get this tire repaired there. We can take a break from riding for a while too."
Kouta stored the bad tire and they got back in the car to resume their trip.
"Hey Kouta, Nana misses Mayu and Wanta," Nana said wistfully.
Kouta looked back at he through the rear view mirror. "I know, Nana. Have patience. Mayu has to finish school, and we have to find a good place to live. Then Yuka and Mayu can join us."
Lucy frowned at that. She was glad to leave Yuka behind. For the first time, Kouta was able to show her small bits of affection and didn't get slapped or punched for it. If it wasn't for Kouta caring about Yuka, that girl would at least be missing an arm or two by now. With any luck, they'd go so far Yuka would never find them.
.
Cameron, John Conner's personal Terminator and protector, drove the four door pickup through the desert as John beside her, and Sarah in the back, slept from the boredom of miles and miles of straight, flat road. Cameron was not bored. This, as any other thing she did, was merely a task to assist John. Scanning the gauges as well as their surroundings as they flew down the highway, she noted the internal temperature of the vehicle was 81 degrees. Warm for a human, but much cooler than the 112 degrees outside the vehicle. If she regulated the air conditioning down to the optimum of 70 degrees, then exiting the vehicle would put extra stress on John's body. If it was a stress that she could rub out of his muscles, that would be acceptable. He smiled at her when she did that. That type of temperature stress would make him sick, and that was not acceptable.
The fuel gauge indicated this vehicle had only enough fuel left for another fifty miles. Passing a sign advertising a service station, Cameron decided they needed to stop. They would not make the other eighty miles they had to travel without more fuel.
Coming upon the service station, Cameron slowed as she scanned the single story building and parking area. On this side of the structures just off the parking lot was a tow truck and an old school bus. No vehicles were at the pumps. On the other side of the lot was a man changing a tire and a pink haired woman wearing a sun dress and a large straw hat watching him. Going into the station was a girl Cameron calculated was about fifteen, maybe sixteen years old wearing the same type of straw hat over her purple hair. The desert across from the station held no vehicles or people. No energy signatures, no signs of an ambush.
Threat level zero.
"John, pit stop," Cameron announced as she pulled into the station. Lining up with the gas pumps, Cameron noted John had opened his eyes a crack. She got out to go pay for the fuel.
Letting John take his time waking up, Cameron went into the station. Inside was the average convenience store with coolers in the back and racks of edibles. The purple haired girl brought an armload of drinks and bagged snacks to plop them on the counter. Cameron took her place waiting behind the girl.
The greasy looking clerk in his undershirt rang up the items. "Twelve sixty two," he said bluntly.
The girl gazed at him as if she were lost and handed him a twenty. The man handed her back three dollars.
"That's not the correct change," Cameron stated.
"No Engles," the man said with a smirk.
"You are cheating her," Cameron replied in Spanish.
"Oriental, she won't know," the man said.
The girl looked back at her. In Japanese, she asked, "What did he say?"
Cameron answered her in Japanese. "I said he is cheating you. He gave you the incorrect change. He doesn't think it matters."
The girl frowned at the man. "Give me the right change ... or you'll be sorry!" she said firmly.
Cameron translated. "Give her the correct change, or there will be trouble," she said in Spanish.
The clerk eyed Cameron. With a huff, he passed over the rest of the change. The girl took it, then turned and happily said, "Hi Lady, my name is Nana. Who are you?"
"Cameron," she said, flicking her eyes at the girl. She then handed the man a hundred dollar bill. "I am getting gas and I know how to count. It would be a very bad idea to try to cheat me."
Cameron walked out of the store behind the girl. Going outside, she noted John had gotten out of the truck and was working the kinks out as he wandered toward her. To the side, the car dropped down a bit too fast for being lowered on a jack. Turning, she saw the man rolling the spare tire to the back, the woman was walking towards her. There was no jack. Cameron stopped to assess the situation.
No jack, that woman had been holding the car up. Humanly impossible.
The woman bore a stern, almost hard look, and red eyes. No human had red eyes.
The path John was walking would intersect with the path the woman was walking in fifteen steps. Although Cameron found no energy signals that would indicate the woman as a Terminator, there was no other explanation. Striding out towards the woman, Cameron pulled the 9MM hidden in her waistband and locked on target.
.
Lucy was becoming irritated. It wasn't Kouta's fault, he didn't break the car on purpose. Nana, although sweet, was becoming an irritant as she asked her simple questions. And the heat was really getting on her nerves.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
Lucy stopped short and blocked the bullets as the girl coming out of the store shot at her. Firing two shots for every step she took, the girl came close to see all her bullets hanging in the air in front of Lucy. She paused.
"My turn," Lucy grated as her eyes glowed crimson. She snapped the gun out of the girls' hand with a vector. The gun came apart from the strain of being held in an iron grip, and being torn loose from an irresistible force, but Lucy didn't notice. She hit the girl with her other three vectors square in the chest. As a shocked Nan watched, the girl didn't explode in a spray of red, but flew back to crash into the old bus so hard, she punched a hole through it.
The man who had been walking into the store stopped and gapped at first the rapid shots, then the girl flying back to impact the old bus so hard, it rocked up, threatening to tip over before it dropped back on it's wheels.
"Nana, get in the car," Lucy said in a deadpan voice.
Nana gapped at her. "But ... she helped me in the store!" Nana cried.
"And she shot at me. Get in the car!" Lucy roared.
The sound of ripping metal announced the girl climbing out of the bus, her hair frazzled and her clothes ripped. She charged. Lucy let her come on a few steps, then hit her again with all four vectors, adding a push. The girl shot back into the bus to make another hole. This time the bus tipped over on it's side from the impact.
A cry sounded out near the truck. A brunette woman was holding a shogun. Lucy grabbed it out of her hands, which sent the woman sprawling. Lucy threw the shotgun over the station roof to sail away in the distance.
"What's going on?" Kouta asked as he ran up to Lucy.
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Sarah Conner had awoken to gunfire. The neatly full automatic sound from a 9MM. Cameron, that meant they had trouble. She'd grabbed the shotgun and stumbled out as she came awake. John was standing in the lot. She yelled his name, then something grabbed her gun. She'd tried to hold on, but it was ripped from her hands. Now, she was lying prone, gapping at John, and a pink haired woman by him. A purple haired girl yammered briefly in an oriental language. She then ran over and gave her bags to another oriental man as John ran for the overturned bus. The purple haired girl followed him.
.
"Cameron!" John cried as he got to the rear door of the bus. He tried to open it. It was jammed.
The girl with purple hair came up and motioned him aside as she said something he couldn't understand. She stared at the door. The door ripped free and few to the side.
"How did you do that?" John cried.
"Ahio?" The girl asked as she looked in.
John looked inside. Cameron lay in broken glass, debris and synthetic blood. She was trying to get up as her servos whined. Sparks flew from the back of one shoulder where her skin had been torn off to expose the metal underneath.
Pushing his way past the girl, John climbed in. "Cameron!" he cried. Going over to her, John knelt by her. "We'll get out out of here," he assured her. He was still trying to wrap his mind around what just happened.
.
Cameron's vision flickered and speckled with snow-static. She heard John' voice. Not being able to reason out why all her bullets stopped before hitting the woman, or how that woman had thrown her into the bus twice, she said, "John, run. I can't protect you."
The girl named Nana appeared beside John. "Aww wow, you're still alive! Usually no one lives after Lucy hits them, and you got hit twice!"
John eyed Nana, taken aback by her happy tone. "Who's this?" he asked.
"Her name is Nana," Cameron said. Summing up John's best chances for survival, she said to Nana, "Please let John go. I am the one you want to kill. Not him."
"Nana doesn't want to kill anyone," Nana announced. Pointing a scolding finger at her, Nana added, "And you shot at Lucy first! That doesn't help us keep Lucy from killing people. Please do not do that again! Now go apologize!"
Cameron struggled up with John and Nana's help. Crawling to the back, Nana ripped open the back to allow them to get Cameron out.
.
Sarah got up as the man who'd been talking to the pink haired woman came over to her. In broken English, he asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yes," Sarah said vacantly as she watched the woman fold her arms and stand watching them. 'What ... what happened?"
"Cameron is alive, but she's in bad shape," John called as he stepped from the wreckage with Cameron's arm over his shoulder. The purple haired girl was on Cameron's other side, helping to hold her up.
"I am Kouta, there was a misunderstanding," Kouta told Sarah apologetically. "No need for the police."
As Sarah watched, Cameron stumbled over toward the woman, then made John let her go. She moved to bow and fell to her knees. Bowing down before the woman, Cameron said, "Komenesai, Lucy Sama. Komenesai."
Sarah blinked. Since when did Terminators bow before anyone?
.
"I am so sorry," the girl said as she bowed to Lucy again. Her bare metal shoulder sparked again. "I mistakenly thought you were a threat to John. Please forgive me for attacking you."
Lucy let out a snort as she looked down on the ... whatever she was. She glanced at the man who was watching them "John did not shoot at me. I have no reason to harm him. What are you?"
"I am a Terminator, I was assigned to protect John."
"Terminator?" Lucy asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I was designed to kill humans," Cameron said.
"So was I," Lucy stated. "I would suggest you stick to killing humans. You didn't seem to do very well against me."
"Yes, I am sorry. May you please let John go?" Cameron asked in a meek voice. This was the only tactical option she had left that might work. Begging for John's life.
Lucy called over to Kouta. "Kouta, tell John there to keep his toy robot away from me, or next time I will rip her apart and shove her pieces up his ass. I'm going in to the bathroom."
.
John watched the woman Lucy give one last glare at Cameron, the walk inside the station. He gently grabbed Cameron's arm to help her up. "Come on, let's get back in the truck."
Sarah came over to them. "What in the hell was THAT?" she snapped.
Cameron's head twitched as she looked at Sarah. "Now I know why no Terminator ever survived in Japan," she said, and her head twitched again as her shoulder sparked. "Neither did the HK's, or land rovers sent there. People like that lived there. Skynet stopped sending equipment, reasoning it was an off-grid automated defense system that was destroying their machines."
On Camerons' other side, Nana asked a question as she gazed up innocently at her.
"People like what?" Sarah asked.
Looking at Nana, Cameron talked to the girl briefly. She then said to Sarah, "People like this girl, and that woman. They are not human. They are called Diclonius. You would call them monsters. Perfect biological killers."
"Is it safe to be here?" John asked.
Cameron nodded. "Yes, but do not antagonize them. Especially Lucy. If she decided to kill, there is nothing you can do to stop her. It may become very uncomfortable for you if I attacked her again."
Thinking of the advantage of having people that could easily do so much damage to a Terminator, Sarah said, "We could use them here against Skynet."
"They hate humans too. We should do what we need to and leave," Cameron told her.
.