A Dangerous Encounter
The silence was loud today in the wastelands of what used to be Southwestern America. Not even the wind could be heard as small flakes of trash gently flew along the sandy ground. Not a living thing was in sight. The blue sky was slowly fading away and the sun was as blistering as ever. No clouds filled the endless sky. A red dot suddenly appeared on the ground, followed by a bunch more, forming a circle around this other red dot. Before long, the silence was soon broken as the thrusters of an AR-V rocket gently touched down onto the flat desert land. As the smoke cleared, the ship began to set down a strange container. An extendable arm reached out to punch in a code then retracted. The pieces of this pod cracked open with small hints of steam floating out. EVE probe number one from the Buy N' Large Jewel Fleet Starliner Axiom had been deployed.
The beautiful robot awoke, with her body floating over the desert land, along with her arms and head free-floating from her torso by the magnets built into her. The sun beat down against her body, causing it to shine as if she were an angel from the heavens. Sadly, nobody was around to admire this gorgeous sight. She soon turned around and began following her directive. She began to scan the ground, while three short blips chirped and a large red circle came from her chest, making a flat beeping noise. At the same time, the AR-V's thrusters began to whir as the rocket lifted itself off the ground and shot off back into the sky, heading out of the atmosphere to drop off the next probe on another part of the Earth. EVE looked up as the rocket left the atmosphere and went back to her scanning. Everything she scanned resulted in the same pattern of lights and beeps, which she had become accustomed to after almost a hundred years of doing it over and over again. She continued this for a few hours, finding zero signs of organic life anywhere, which easily began aggravating her. The fact that the AR-V chose this place of all others to drop her off was absurd to her.
While she continued scanning, she could hear something off in the distance. Intrigued yet staying vigilant, her right arm switched into an ion cannon and she followed the strange noise. As she approached one of the mountains, the noises grew louder quickly. They were the sounds of engines, whirring and roaring like bats out of the depths of hell. The probe poked her head over the mountain and looked below. It was here she could see a long stretch of tarmac, where several scrappy looking cars and off-road motorcycles were chasing this strange looking car.
The car being chased was flat looking and very sleek, with twin rockets and a blower sticking out of the rear, and two sets of weapons on its roof, one being a missile launcher and another being a minigun. Its wheels were covered with steel basket net, a large spiked bull bar protected the rear of the car, along with a straight bar also carrying spikes in the front under the flat headlights. It looked as if the car had no doors, as the canopy which lifted upwards was the only method of going inside the vehicle. It looked as if someone took an exotic vehicle and transformed it into a speedy and tough war machine.
The other three cars and one motorcycle chasing him were the definition of scrappy. These were modified worn-out rusted clunkers from a time long forgotten. Their only modifications were their engines and armor. Each of them had at least two others inside them, wielding worn out rifles that are somehow still operational. There was only one cyclist, holding a crowbar wrapped in barbed wire. Each of them could be seen clear as day since each car had no roof, only a roll cage. The drivers, biker and gunners all wore worn out camo, and other bland torn and dirty clothing. Some had bandanas or rusted helmets on their heads, and some had shoulder pads covered in coyote skins, spikes, and other assorted junk acting as armor.
EVE watched as the vehicles raced further down the two-lane highway, while thinking to herself whether or not she should help whoever was behind the wheel. It didn't take long for her to decide. Either she was going to continue the same boring directive in an obviously lifeless desert, or put it off for a little bit and put some action in her way. With her ion cannon still out, she flew off as fast as she could after the scrappy cars.
As she drew closer, the rocket boosters on the car slowly died down and the speed of the car had been reduced, but was still racing on. The biker drew closer to the car and began hitting the right rear fender with his crowbar. The car then sideswiped the simple minded barbarian, causing him to dump his bike over and slide his body along the blistering hot asphalt. His armor and worn clothing couldn't save him from the serious road rash. A second didn't pass after this and one of the scrappy cars ran over the bike and their fellow rider, putting him out of his painful misery. EVE couldn't believe what she had witnessed, but shook it off as she regained her focus.
She finally flew close enough towards the vehicles and began firing at them. Because of the speed at which they were driving, she found it hard to make accurate shots. The drivers and gunners of the cars were in a state of surprise after noticing her and began firing their primitive weapons back. EVE dodged their attacks, and the bullets that did manage to strike her didn't do much damage to her body, only causing a few scuffs, nor did the bullets hinder her performance whatsoever. After a short firefight, she had shot down the rear of the first car. The blast killed the gunner and made the driver jump, causing the car to swerve violently around and tumble onto its roof, crushing the driver, killing him in seconds.
EVE began trying to gun down the second car, but her plasma blasts weren't doing much as they either missed or the armor plating this one had deflected the plasma blasts. The driver being chased, seeing a window of opportunity, suddenly pulled a three-hundred and sixty degree turn and fired one of its last three missiles at the car. The driver tried dodging the missile, but it was too late. He crashed his car into a small abandoned roadside rest stop and was hit by the missile, causing the building to explode into a fiery inferno as the chase continued.
One car left. The driver in desperation rear-ended the sleek car and fired at the EVE probe behind him. This proved to be unsuccessful as none of the shots even came close to scraping the probe. EVE prepared her ion cannon and locked onto the front engine of the junky muscle car. However, the car was way too close to the other, and she didn't want to hurt the car being chased down. EVE had no other choice but to wait for her chance, which didn't take long. Soon, one side of the road was a flat ridge, the other side a cliff, dropping hundreds of feet down. All that divided the road and the cliff was a broken guardrail. EVE and both cars soon approached a sharp turn. The driver once again pulled another three-hundred and sixty degree turn just as EVE fired her ion cannon at the car's hood. The rusted car burst into a ball of fire as it drove down the rocky cliff and crashed to the ground below, leaving behind a burning wreck of metal, rubber and vermin. EVE looked below as the wreck continued to burn.
The tires from the car she saved screeched as it drifted around the sharp corner and turned to face the robot. EVE looked back at it, forgetting she still had her ion cannon out. The driver inside, who EVE couldn't see through the blackened windshield, stared at her. Thoughts raced around in their head as fast as the vehicle they were driving. Was this robot saving them from those guys? Or does it have other ideas? Was that driver next? Past experiences with Buy N' Large's savage war machines began to raise the driver's skepticism as well. Thirty seconds felt like an hour as they glared at each other. The car's front tires began to screech once more as the car raced towards the probe, and the minigun from the roof started firing at the probe. EVE quickly flew away from the bullets as the car began chasing her, taking her by surprise. She couldn't understand it, why was this one trying to kill her even after she saved them?
EVE had no choice, there was no time to think about it now. She began to fire her ion cannon at the car, but the driver with as much dexterity as they had managed to dodge each blast of plasma. Knowing their minigun wouldn't do much damage, the second to last missile shot out of its compartment and began chasing after EVE. The probe immediately began flying faster as the missile locked onto her and was drawing closer. EVE desperately tried serpentining in an attempt to shake the missile off, but to no avail. In a last ditch effort, she curved around to face the driver she was trying to save earlier. EVE flew right towards the car with the missile still following behind. In seconds, EVE flew up and over the car, with the missile suddenly changing its lock onto the car it was launched from. It was far too late to even think about anything, as the missile penetrated the car, causing it to combust into a great ball of flames, incinerating the driver inside in a matter of seconds.
EVE stopped and looked back at the explosion, and began recollecting on this experience. Afterwards, it was back to her mission. As if nothing had happened, she deactivated her ion cannon, booted up her scanners, and continued searching for any photosynthetic organisms she could find. EVE learned something that day. Even in this parched and garbage plagued wasteland, even when there seems to be no life at all, she must stay vigilant. From that mission onwards, she would clench her weapons close, and if anything dared to stand in her way, she would not hesitate to become their judge, jury, and executioner in a matter of seconds, and will never regret her decisions for as long as she lives.
THE END
