Miranda: War On Steel #0 (Part 1)

War On Steel #0: Cold Comfort (Part 1)

Miranda hated machines. But they started it.

As far as she could think back, there was always a machine hanging around, just waiting on a chance to do her dirty. Damn things even hurt her eyes when she was just a baby, showing pictures of the way she would look when she growed up. She turned out that way, sure, not that it did her any good.

At least machines bothered to get a hate on. People had no use at all for her.

What kind of dad leaves his baby girl all alone for hours on end? And always coming back to find her thumb pinched in the baby gate, or a toy Nuka Cola truck repainted in bright red from the gash it left falling on her head.

Maybe that last one happened a few too many times. It would explain some things.

Being the Vault Whipping Girl made her quick to talk her way out of trouble, but that just made damn sure to get her into even more dutch. Even her birthday party got her pounded on by the local bully and insulted a dozen times. Her dad got her a BB Gun that year she turned ten. Guns and cherry bombs were the only machines she could talk to. The rest just growled like angry animals and tried to take pieces of her whenever she got too close.

The special feeling she got killing radroaches with them didn't hurt none at all.

She got her periods the week after her birthday. That was bad enough, but then Dad made that damn machine do her exam. Cold metal just did not belong up in some places.

Somehow, Butch and his stupid gang knew all about it. The teasing and beatings never quite took a day off after, and she soon took to “helping them out” to avoid the beatings as they matured. Fingers and foul tastes mostly kept her from getting beat up. Mostly. She still got a good cuff now and again cause she never did let them in where the damn Robot hurt her. Not even the day she had to “help out” all three of them at once in the Men's Room to get them off Amata's back. Her smart mouth got her in trouble there too, cause Amata was mad at her. And then Mister Brotch gave her the business for being late.

The G.O.A.T. exam making her a member of the Maintenance Department was just the last straw. Spending her days getting cut, scraped, banged up, and bloody while bowing and scraping to the metal monsters made her even more sour than she started.

When Dad up and left without so much as a goodbye, they all blamed her too. She was ready to be stuck sumping the reactor forever, but the damn Overseer wanted her dead. “Thanks, Dad.”. If the whole world was gonna give her up for a bad job, she decided to make a bad job of it and get the hell out. Amata gave her a real gun to get out with.

The first man she killed caused shivers and a kind of joy she had never felt before deep inside, leaving her sweating and panting and her Vault jumpsuit feeling way too tight around her chest. But in a really good way. “Way better than Radroaches.”

Miranda killed every guard she couldn't hide from on her way out.
She only stopped when she heard Amata's dad and his chief thug about to do her some harm. She killed the Security Chief with a single shot to the back of the head. He never saw it coming. She let out a cry as a powerful spasm took her for a moment.

The Overseer turned pale as a ghost seeing the orgasmic flush come over her as she shot a man in the back in cold blood. He ran and locked himself in the jail cell as she was reloading.

Amata ran too. Miranda just scared the hell out of her.

Computers hated Miranda in special kinds of ways. She not only couldn't open the cell door, but she somehow managed to seal the room. The Overseer would just have to live with the fact he was scared of a girl.

Amata was hiding in her room. She gave Miranda the key to her dad's office, and hacked into his computer for her before running off. She learned about the outside, the people, about where her dad had come from.

Her life sucked because her dad ran away from men who wore machines. Machines were everything wrong in the world except for people, who were almost as bad.

Miranda killed two more guards as she left the Vault forever. There was a world out there, were men could not be trusted, and machines kept them alive. A world that men with machines had ruined in the first place.

Miranda stepped out into the light and decided that it was time to make things even. Cocking her pistol, she cradled the ice cold metal against her cheek. With the only machine that was her ally in her hand, she headed off to begin her one-woman War On Steel.