Two and the Last Year on Earth ✓ [humor, sci-fi, romance]

Act 0: Where are we?

A fourteen-year-old girl wearing a black leather jacket with her hair tied up in a purple and pink scrunchy, set her bag down on a boulder. Taking a deep breath, she tasted the toxic fumes of a stale apocalypse. Its bitterness made her wrinkle her nose, but low oxygen levels at least made breathing easier.

Ten days ago, she arrived at this depressing place called the Ruined Lands and had to stay here to plant seeds for past beings to find in the future. Time worked differently here than she was used to, but the girl was not in the top class for nothing. She was assigned to this mission because the Director knew she would succeed.

It wasn't her first time to come here though. But, the last time she was here, beings and creatures were running amok and colliding with each other all over the place in ordered chaos. Now, there was nothing. But that was all going to change.

"Have you got it yet?" she called at her colleagues. She checked her neckwatch again and looked up at the sky. It was blue and bright with not a cloud in sight. It was supposed to be raining at this hour, but it seemed like the Scheduled Monsoon Machine was out of whack or something. Her colleagues were scrambling to find the necessary droplets of motivation the machine spat out when they turned it on.

"The heck with them," the girl huffed knowing it was definitely something the boys did wrong. At least today was their last day together and from here on they were to set foot into different zones of the planet to tackle the human problems.

The girl put on her sunglasses, grabbed her bag, and decided to go and enter her own coordinates in the Travelnywhere Machine first. It was a hybrid made out of the best lettuce seeds and avocado skins available in the southern hemisphere of the Vegetation Asteroid. The Machine used electronic nodes created from sunspots and could travel at the speed of light in a flimsy. The girl was glad she had forced the Director to give her team the best of the best.

I mean, technically speaking, we are the best team, she rolled her eyes as her colleagues finally found the motivation droplets and dropped them into the Scheduled Monsoon Machine's slots. Pulling the lever made the little pictures flicker and settle on three pictures of rain clouds with numbers indicating today's date.

At long last, clouds huffed out of the machine, gathered in the sky, and out came a down pour. Rain bounced off her skin but soaked her colleagues because they forgot to spray themselves with Rain Repellent.

Which they should have, the girl frowned at them. The best should always make sure to be prepared for everything. Even for rain.

The two drenched boys glanced up in her direction, waiting for her response. With a sigh she said, "Mission completed. Time to go our separate ways now."

"Roger that mate," said one of the boys in his signature Australian accent while the other saluted her.

"Oh, heck with you both." The girl frowned at them as they continued to grin. "I'll see you at the end of this," she huffed. Making sure she had everything with her, she hopped into the Travelnywhere Machine. It sang a little song about sunlight and strawberries which the girl hummed along to. Once the song finished, there was a flash of yellow and pink light, and she was in a new time.

Breathing in the sweet toxic fumes and coughing on the disgusting oxygen, she adjusted her lungs to accept the air in the area and set her foot down on the new soil she was now to call home for seven years.

Gravity almost weighed her down, but she fixed the electronic signals in her brain and transformed her inner workings into those of the inhabitants—which she was not particularly excited to meet.

"Well, here goes," she said and turned her body into an eight-year-old so that she would make sense.

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Note: Where do YOU think we are? ;)