After half an hour of mowing down zombies with the garbage truck, the last of the horde was finally chopped up, the streets littered with crushed, shredded bodies. Alara, her eyes bright with excitement, turned towards Raven, her hands still gripping the joystick controller trembeling with happiness. "Are you going to have Metal Mouse go out and gather up the zombie cores?" Alara asked, Raven, her voice excited.
Raven shook her head slowly, as faint amusement played at the corner of her lips. "No need," she said, tapping her finger against the side of the controller. "Press the red button—the one that says 'Don't press me'—and watch what happens."
Alara's gaze dropped to the controller, her pupils dilating when she saw the shiny red button labeled just as Raven described. Without a second thought, she pressed it with gleeful enthusiasm. A moment later, she glanced out the window in shock.
Outside, the garbage truck began to transform. The front bumper split open with a loud mechanical whir, revealing a massive metal filtration system that unfolded like the jaws of some mechanical predator. As the garbage truck started vacuuming through the carnage, sucking up gore and bones, while its internal AI expertly filtered and stored every intact zombie nucleus core in a massive rear compartment.
Alara blinked, then turned to Raven, suspicion coming across her face. "That… garbage truck vacuum cleaner is new, right? Not used or something gross like that from other people's garbage right?"
Raven waved her hand dismissively, her voice calm and casual. "Alara, don't worry about it. That garbage truck is brand new factory sealed. I only use the best weapons of mass slaughter when I go shopping for your food. You don't need to worry your pretty blond head about that."
Outside, the truck continued its work, rolling forward and backward, sucking up everything left on the street. Alara watched, mesmerized, as it reduced what had been a hellish battlefield to a near-clean state in under fifteen minutes. Raven drove the Ironhowl X4 slowly forward, the vehicle driving over remains and pulverized bones like it's nothing.
When the garbage truck finished, Raven recalled it back into her system space. She knew the system would automatically clean and sanitize the collected zombie cores and the garbage truck. It was, after all, one of the perks of her system space.
Raven stepped out of the Ironhowl X4, stretching her arms with elegance. Alara followed her out, her eyes bright as she realized how many cores they have gathered in just one afternoon. Tens of thousands more than enough to keep her fed for a few days.
Raven felt a strange warmth in her chest, a soft feeling of something she didn't fully understand. Is this all in a day's work… is this a wife's duty. Raven found her thoughts drifting once again to Alara's constant talk of marriage. A concept she once disdained because of her step parents' toxic relationship. Yet now, she found her resistance to the idea of marriage eroding away day by day.
Her mind wandered to what she would use as a wedding ring. She thought of the massive nucleus core from the level one polar bear. Perhaps she can forge it into an wedding ring—a symbol that can be upgraded endlessly as she kills more mutated creatures and acquires new cores. It seems fitting, somehow having a ring with rotating wedding cores. One for every day of the year.
And then there is the wedding gift she has in mind. Her thoughts turned to Adam Carter, hiding in the New York Public Library with his Red Blood Raiders. The perfect wedding gift the death of an enemy how romantic.
With those thoughts lingering, Raven turned her attention back to the present. She stored the Ironhowl X4 back into her system space and turned towards Fabulous Fabrics. She gestured for Alara to follow her, and together, they went inside, unaware of the eyes watching them from across the street.
On the rooftop of a nearby building, a small team of three men crouched behind the ledge. Their leader, a tall, squinty eyed man, lifted a pair of binoculars to his face and watched Raven and Alara enter the store. Lowering the binoculars, he glanced at the photograph in his hand a clear image of Raven displayed.
"It's her," he said, his voice urgent. "Raven Salvatore. The one we've been looking for."
The man turned to one of his subordinates, a younger man with a comm device strapped to his ear. "Call it in to base," the man ordered. "Tell them to send reinforcements. We'll capture her here."
The subordinate nodded quickly and began transmitting the message, unaware that just a few feet behind them, one of Raven's drones hovered silently in the air. The drone recorded every word, every movement, and relayed the information directly back to Raven's mind.
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