When Oil runs Red

PRELUDE / / / SECOND: LAY OF THE LAND

As V1 soared down into the snowy forest, its metal plating glowed orange from the heat generated from descending at such a speed. It aimed to land at a forest on the outskirts of the city it had seen earlier, and braced for impact.

A gigantic crash was heard as the machine collided with the snowy ground, though it came out relatively unharmed from the descent from the clouds. "Would not be the first time I've fallen from massive heights." The machine thought to itself, as it remember all the times it rode high into the sky with its rocket launcher, only to dismount high in the air and fall onto unsuspecting demons and machines.

Back to its current predicament, the machine came out of the crater it had left in the ground too assess the situation that it had found itself in. Nearby trees were toppled, burning or straight up flattened from the impact of V1's descent, debris of the elevator room lied all over the place. Looking at its supply of blood, its heads up display showed '30' over its fuel. It was low on fuel, it had reserve fuel stored up for its other functions such as movement and storing its weapons. It was still dangerously low at its main source, some fuel to find was its number 1 priority at the moment.

Speaking of it's weapons, V1 quickly inspected if any of its firearms were damaged or lost. Quickly cycling through its weapons, there were some oddities with its current loadout. All of its various arm variants were present but the piercer revolver had reverted back to its default variation, the marksman was in its alternate variation and the sharpshooter was in its standard variation. As for the shotgun, nailgun, railcannon and rocket launcher they were nowhere to be found. The machine felt a twinge of annoyance, "More things to look out for." It thought to itself, as it finally strode out of the crater.

The snow poured down heavily in the forest, the searing temperature of V1's plating cooled down quickly from the extreme cold. It followed the debris raining down from the skies, it had guessed that with all the debris raining down of the elevator room, the terminal could not be far from the wreckage. Whether it had survived that drop was something that it had yet to be seen.

Some time had passed and V1 kept following the path of debris, the terminal had not been found yet. Luckily enough the blood flowing within its systems were not freezing up. The last thing it needed was heating issues, it spotted yellow metal that was jutting out of the snow on the ground, V1 quickly made it sway over and began digging out the snow. It had unearthed a good portion of it, and lo and behold the terminal was found, the screen was now visible but it had a large vertical crack. It took a moment for the screen to come to life but it came on, the familiar tune played and as V1 navigated to the weapons tab-

ERROR: ARSENAL DATA CORRUPTED, DAMAGE TO DATA STORES DETECTED. REPAIRS TO DRIVES REQUIRED.

"That's the culprit if I had to guess." V1 thought to itself. It tried to reequip its weapons and switch back the proper variants but the terminal only flashed the error message in response.

CURRENT OBJECTIVES:
1. FIND MORE FUEL
2. REPAIR THE TERMINAL.

With those objectives in mind, V1 kept digging the terminal out of the snow. It had made some good progress at unearthing the thing, but suddenly the screen had begun flickering. A strange symbol had flashed on the screen for a moment, it was a hexagon with three arrows pointing outwards. Lines of code quickly enveloped the screen, the symbol disappeared as fast as it had appeared.

MALWARE DETECTED
TYPE:AI
NAME:ABSOLUTESOLVER
STATUS:REMOVED
SEE REMOVAL LOG FOR MORE DETAILS.

"AI huh? How cute.", while AI had definitely existed in the wars back on the surface, with how commonly they were used as viruses to subdue, sabotage or even take over other machines, countermeasures were quickly developed that rendered ai based methods of infiltration useless.