» Fri Jul 01, 2011 7:43 am 
Joe Larson
Occupation: Prospector
Location: Somewhere in the Mojave wasteland...
Age: 48
Height: 5’ 11”
Weight: 157 lbs. (currently 142 lbs.)
June 30, 2281
11:14 P.M.
The prospector, his eyes bloodshot and baggy from sleep deprivation, struggled over another hill in the darkness. His throat was parched and his face, once handsome, was covered with a grizzled beard. He had been out of luck finding anything trade-worthy recently, and therefore was out of food and water. This was his only shot. As he tried to walk over the hilltop, a jagged rock caused him to trip over, sending him tumbling down the decline and dropping his radio.
“Oof! [censored], [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored]!” he yelled uncontrollably. After he hit the bottom of the rise, he regained himself and crawled around in the darkness. He could barely see his hands in front of his face as he tried to find the radio. “Come on, you [censored] piece of [censored]! Where did you go? WHERE THE [censored] ARE YOU?!”
In his rage he misplaced his hand and stumbled (somehow while he was crawling), falling face first onto the machine.
“Oh, there you are, baby. I knew I’d find you. And we’ll find those aliens, too. ‘Loony Larson,’ they called me. Said I was crazy. I’m not crazy.” he told his radio. “I’ve got my camera right here, and once I find where the signal comes from, they’ll be all wrong. And I’ll be right. We’re gonna be rich! We’re so close...”
He clambered over one more hill and saw a light from the other side. It was... it looked like a big... well, Joe couldn’t describe it, since it was out of this world!
“This is it! No one on Earth could have made this!” he was about to run to it, but thought of something first. “Wait, no, no. Let me take a picture first.”
He fiddled with the camera and took a clumsy shot of the thing. He approached it slowly at first, but became confident and ran up to it. Suddenly, his eyes were blinded by The Light, coming from above.
“Ah! What the hell?”
He was blinded, and felt his body begin to rise up. Through the bright light, he was able to get a glimpse at some sort of spaceship he was being svcked into. He panicked.
“[censored]! Let me go, you [censored]! You [censored] pieces of [censored]! If you don’t put me back down right now, I’ll beat the [censored] out of every [censored] one of you!”
Suddenly, a missile flew out of the sky, hitting the hull of the spaceship and exploding. The ship’s force field crackled and blocked it, but it was enough to move The Light out of alignment, dropping the man back down again. He landed on his feet, spraining his ankle. Larson screamed in pain, but remembering the greater cause, pulled out his camera again. He was optimistic until he saw that the left side of the camera was completely smashed, and the film had been torn. More swearing released out of his mouth for a while, but when he regained himself, he looked up and saw what was happening.
The spaceship that tried to abduct him, which was shiny and grey with an elliptical shape, was firing some sort of laser weapons into the darkness. At least, he thought it was darkness until he saw another ship, a black one, firing strange-looking spiky missiles back at the grey ship. The black ship didn’t seem to have shields, so eventually a large laser beam penetrated its hull and with a big explosion it went down, making a huge noise and a tremor in the ground as it hit the sand. All was calm for a while, and the other ship hovered in the air silently. Out of nowhere, though, the fallen ship released a giant volley of missiles out of itself, each one of them hitting the grey ship. Its shields burst with the impact and explosions covered its surface. On fire, this one fell to the ground as well, close enough to send dust and debris at the prospector. Covered in sand and on his back, he continued to gaze in amazement.
Although he couldn’t see them very well, he heard and glimpsed movement coming out of the black ship. Green aliens in white-silver suits poured out of emergency hatches and walkways of the other ship as well, and many of them were armed. They fired more laser beams from glistening rifles and pistols, lighting up the night. For fractions of seconds, when the lasers came near, Joe could make out the other creatures, horrible things. They were jet black like their ships, and some were running at an ungodly speed, while others seemed to have lots of legs like radscorpions except they were jumping around all over the place.
The black ones began to return fire, but with different weapons that seemed less advanced. While the green men’s weapons seemed to disintegrate the black creatures in a few hits, the other group’s weapons were stopped by a strange transparent force field, and even when the fields went away it took many hits to take them down. The battle looked one-sided, with the black ones losing over half their soldiers and barely a dent in the green alien's numbers. However, that all changed when the advancing black creatures got into melee range. He could see them clearly by the burning fires on the grey ship, and felt even more scared. The ones on their feet seemed to produce glowing-hot blades from their arms and cut the green aliens to shreds. The crawlers used their sheer mass to crush their enemy, and also used some sort of mechanical jaw to chew up and spit them out. They also had large, rounded plates on the outside of their legs that worked double as blades, cutting down the green creatures in seconds.
It was all so horrifying, but Joe kept completely still. That was, until he heard the loud hiss of a black alien much closer than the other ones. He looked to his left to see two large, glowing eyes of a “walker” staring right into him. He hoped that if he stayed still it might not see him in the darkness, but it took a step directly toward his location. Joe ran. He ran like he never had before, ignoring his ankle sprain, adrenaline keeping him from tripping like he did before. It wasn’t nearly fast enough, though, and in seconds he felt the large foot of the beast smash down onto his back, driving him into the ground and smashing a good half of his ribs. The prospector wanted to cry out in pain, but his lungs had been crushed. It didn’t last too long, though, because he heard the drawing of blades, and a painless death came by a swift decapitation.
Rose of Sharon Cassidy
Occupation: Caravaneer
Location: Mojave Outpost
Age: 25
Height: 5’ 10”
Weight: 176 lbs.
July 1, 2281
12:38 P.M.
“Yes, Ranger Jackson, I understand he was insane.” Cass pleaded. “But isn’t it a little bit of a coincidence that the same night he says he’s going to find aliens, myself and almost a dozen other soldiers and merchants spot strange lights in the sky?”
“You were drunk. Probably the others too.”
“I know what I saw. Ask everyone else, we for sure saw lights in the sky, flashing. Odd colors too, not like thunder. There were colors like green and yellow and blue.”
“Okay, so what do you suggest I do about it? Mourn over the death of some crazy scavenger?”
“All I’m asking is you send a small patrol to check it out.”
“You know we’re short on men-”
“Yes, of course I [censored] know that! Not a single NCR camp or outpost or ranger station or whatever [censored] installation out there will ever say ‘Oh, sure, we have plenty of men, and we’re thriving with supplies.’” she had an officer say that one too many times. “Just one squad, Jackson. It’s not far. They’ll be back by evening. And like you said, if they don’t find anything, nothing will happen to them, right?”
“Okay. One squad. If they don’t see [censored], which they won’t, you don’t bring this nonsense up again. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Joker Squad
Occupation: NCR Military
Location: South of Mojave Outpost (Somewhere in the Mojave Wasteland)
Age: N/A
Height: N/A
Weight: N/A
July 1, 2281
3:21 P.M.
“So, boss, why the [censored] are we here again?” PFC Benson asked.
“Because some unusual activity was spotted last night and we were ordered to investigate the scene for anything important.” the squad leader mocked Jackson. The other three men laughed.
They sweated under the hot sun in their continued journey, wishing to be anywhere except where they were, doing anything besides this. Most of them were thinking either about girlfriends, how they wanted to be a war hero, or how someone had found a beetle in their lunch at the mess hall that day. All their minds snapped to the same thing, though, when they made their way over a certain hill and froze. Two of them dropped their rifles in amazement, mouthes gaping.
“...Holy [censored].”
That’s all I’m posting for now, guys. Before I go writing any more, I would like to know if anyone thinks it’s worth reading. Leave comments and be honest.
