Stale Bravery and the Unforgettable Paranoia

The majority of the resistance of KillJoys occupied their time in the hiding facilities, attempting to win back any sanity that Better Living Industries robbed from them. Those who entered spent most of their time assisting whatever group of scientists they could rally together, people leaving BLI and switching over to the resistance. The only other habitable place was in another zone (like most of the other habitable buildings) to treacherous to walk to, and even more daring to drive to. Sometimes, she would risk it—no risk, no reward, she always thought.

She had a old vehicle that she took ownership to; mainly being that it had working air conditioning, which was coveted, especially in the heat of the desert. She would pull her black, skull printed bandana up to her nose, shield her eyes with the scratched sunglasses, and prepared to die with her mask on if she had too. The body of the vehicle resembled the frame of a Jeep, with the mixture of wheels on a pickup truck, if you looked at just the right angle it didn’t look proportional. She had spent weeks in the back garage, working with whatever she could find the piece the final product together; black (of course) with a welded mantle for holding a gun equipped on the top, something she wired to be controlled from the cabin while she drove. She was pretty proud of it, especially with having no formal training—not now, or before the war. In its plain glory, black matte paint covered the body, and she thought about putting a draculoid mask on the front, but knew she better not advertise what she planned to do with the car.

It only had a driver and passenger seat (not that she planned to carry anyone, anyways) and the back was reserved for her most valuable companion: a jet black Great Dane. She had spent many hours with him, whom she named Bullet (being that her Killjoy alias was Gun Powder, it seemed fitting). She figured she must have spent as much time with her beast as she did with her car, in attempts to make something out of nothing. All she wanted to feel was pride; in herself.

She had come from a family of pharmaceutical scientists who had developed one of the prototypes of the medicine that would propel itself into becoming the main drug of choice for BLI. She was expected to follow in their footsteps, and in the early parts of the company; she did. When the slaughter of innocent human lives came, she rebelled, like several other employees did. The company was too powerful; especially to those who were taking the medication. Soon, they were using biochemical warfare, even before the war broke out in its entirety. Throw into a concentration camp turned prison, she was left to rot in the closest thing to hell.

With her truck loaded with her prized revolver, and other larger guns, enough ammunition to put a small country's army to shame, and food that would last her and Bullet until the made it to where they wanted to set up camp, she left without saying her goodbyes to anyone in the base. Her truck (as she called it) would not stand out any more than any of the other junk pieces of cars that were scattered around the zones. The killjoys always were infamous to lead colorful lives, but her truck reflected nothing more than the internal darkness and mental scars that had been so badly beaten on her.

Driving this truck as long as it would allow, and refueling when she managed to get to a gas pump (if they hadn't been drained already) she slept in the back of it, curled up with her dog. She would fuel up, knowing she was being tracked by BLI—one of the main reasons she left the base as a whole, was to not have her wrongdoings go punished on them. She needed to leave behind what she could never join, and that was working on a drug to bring down the effects of a different drug. Although she knew most of what would go into its opposing force, she neglected to speak up and talk about her past.

When she reached a foreign part of the zone, she saw lonely landscape in front of her, a small building was in the far sight of her view, and she knew better than to drive straight up to it. The only thing visible in the land around her, was old machinery that had been stripped of everything and seen better days; she looked through the scope of one of her rifles and saw another car parked up against the building, painted crazily with a spider on it's hood.

She toyed with the watch around her wrist, although it would no longer show the exact time, fidgeted with her bandana and cleaned her glasses the best they she would allow. She peered through the scope once more, and saw the building come into clear view, and knew all too well what it was: it was the diner.

"Fuck," she mumbled to herself. If she were to drive up there, then she could politely knock on the door and ask to spare a cup of sugar; or any ammunition she could muster. She also thought about stealing what she could while holding everyone in there (if there were people) at gunpoint. Her final thought was to send Bullet up there looking like a rabid beast to scare them all out of the place, but she wasn't about to risk his life to save her own.

She moved the car behind the machinery, taking a quick moment to glance over the skeletons of the parts and see if she could find anything useful, which, not to her dismay, she didn't.

Hearing the engine of the car rumble up, she jerked her head and watched the car creep its way towards her. She took the most powerful shotgun out of her car, and piled ammunition around her, holding extra shells in her teeth. She cocked the gun and held it steady in preparation that these Killjoys would shoot at her, or if they were no longer rebels, and Draculoids had taken their identity.

About a hundred feet in front of her, the car stopped rumbling and she head the audible hum of the engine shutting down. She continued to hold her weapon like a statue, and placed her finger on the trigger.

"Come on," she moaned slightly.

The door flew open on the car, and after the weapon came out a man with brightly colored red hair.

"I don't plan on shooting a fellow Killjoy today," he said, his weapon on its holster and his hands in the air.

"Maybe not you, but today ain't over," she yelled back.

He crept closer to her, stalking each step, as sand flew from his boots. When he was about ten feet away from her, he stopped. She remained standing there, as if he was enjoying looking down the barrel of the loaded gun. Suddenly, she noticed his face was bare, which perplexed her knowing how important it was to keep your identity a secret, his gun was still resting in its holster, and about ten feet from her he stopped and put his hands down.

"What do you want?" Gunpowder sneered at him, as if his answer would calm her, let alone be simple.

"Well, I want to know if what they say about you, Gunpowder, is true,"

Notes