After a long night of grinding work inside the comforting silence of Sanctuary, Raven leaned back in the Ironhowl X4’s driver’s seat, eyes half closed with satisfaction. The repairs to her damaged drone were complete they are now twice as deadly as before. More importantly, she finally finished her first non-drone companion: a mechanical masterpiece meant to be a raccoon-sized zombie core mouse catcher quick and efficient.
But her ambitions got the best of her again. Instead, her appatite for destruction went into overdrive, and what now stood ready inside her system space was a hulking, armored bear-sized monstrosity of steel that is a mouse of pure kinetic death. Raven officially went overboard. But she didn’t regret a single nut or bolt of her time spent on him.
“So what if it’s huge?” she said as she drove onto New York’s cracked, overgrown streets. “It gets the job done and very well."
Sitting beside her, Alara gnawed delicately on another zombie core like it was candy, her blank but curious expression locked onto the passing ruins outside. The only sound inside the SUV was the faint bumping of the reinforced tires on the road. Raven tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and thought about a name for her new massive mechanical creation. One came to her mind naturally.
“Metal Mouse,” she said with a small sigh of amusement. A childish name from a long-dead cartoon she used to binge watch when life was simpler before her father began stealing every design she ever loved, trading them for more favors from his criminal contacts.
Raven narrowed her eyes slightly. Her family probably bought their protection with her stolen creations. But it doesn't matter now. Whatever technology they took from her is already obsolete. With her memory of her previous life, she possesses in her mind technology that most people could not begin to imagine, and her drones and Metal Mouse are only the beginning.
And now she had a giant bear seized Metal Mouse with shoulder-mounted machine guns and rocket launchers and an internal compartment for gathering zombie cores.
“Totally not overkill,” she smiled, saying.
The Ironhowl X4 rolled past a broken storefront. Alara shifted her posture in the passenger seat and adjusted something on her face. Raven turned and caught sight of her glasses. Thin Black-rimmed glasses that sat elegantly on her face. A faint blue glow showed around their edges as a sign of their hidden power.
These glasses are not just aestheticly pleasing. Raven managed to modify their internal structure with high-powered kinetic magnets powered by an internal energy source located in the ear part of the glasses. They can reflect any metal based threat from bullets to a pipe they effectively make Alara’s head untouchable her only weakness has been neutralized.
Why chose glasses you ask. Well, it's definitely not because Alara looks hot in glasses. Nope, definitely not.
Alara moved her head and tapped the side of her frames, amused by her reflection in the side SUV mirror. Raven glanced at her again, then focused back on the road.
“Good enough for now,” she said.
With both drones standing by fully operational in her system space and Metal Mouse looking like a steel titan ready to be unleashed, Raven could finally get serious. Momma Jean and her crew would reach the NYS Civil Defense Communications Center Bunker in a few days, assuming they moved fast and didn’t screw up. Raven had faith in that old woman’s abilities if nothing else.
But her own work can't wait.
Raven scanned the horizon of New York as the Ironhowl drove over a shattered overpass. A massive pounding sound caught her attention, the sound of thousands of feet moving together in unison.
A zombie horde several thousand strong.
Raven didn’t speak. Alara silently put her zombie core aside and touched her glasses again, eyes lighting up. The faintest trace of a smile showed at the corners of her mouth. Not quite human. But not quite mindless, either.
Rave understood exactly what was coming down the road in front of them.
Raven eased the Ironhowl to a silent stop in front of the remains of a crushed pizza delivery truck. Dust settled slowly around the wheels. The street ahead of them is filled with thousands of zombies looking for a meal, and Raven Salvatore is on the menu.
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