Turn 8

--- Maya ---

She groaned as she rolled out of bed, noticing that the sun was just breaking across the horizon, sunlight just beginning to push back the darkness of the night prior.

(Why am I up at this unholy hour?)

“Oh, sorry.” A voice apologized from the other side of her room, where Izzy was getting dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie… in July.

“Wha’ ‘s goin’ on?” She asked, her voice slurring as she fought herself to full wakefulness.

(No! I don’t wanna get up!)

“I’m just going for my morning run.”

That woke her up.

“Wait, you’re leaving? At this hour? In this neighborhood?!” She asked as she enter ‘big sister’ mode.

Izzy merely rolled her eyes. “Our neighborhood isn’t that bad, and I’m taking Missy with me.”

“And you’re twelve!” She reminded her sister. “Do mom and dad know you go running this early?”

“You’re going to make a thing about this aren’t you.” Izzy asked, before eventually relenting under Maya’s glare. “I leave before dad gets up and he’s usually at work by the time I get back, and I hop the back fence to make it look like I was working out in the backyard.”

“And how long have you been doing this?” She asked, knowing her sister was advanced for her age -all of the Williams children were- and hoping this was a recent development, rather than something reckless they’d been missing for years.

“Most of the summer.” Izzy admitted with a shrug.

“Okay…” (That’s not that bad.) “And where exactly do you go on these runs?”

“Just around the neighborhood a few times.” Izzy assured her.

“Okay…” She nodded, already knowing she was going to regret this. “Then I’ll go with you.”

Izzy just blinked. “What?”

“I said, I’ll go on your run with you.” She explained.

“Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Izzy told her reluctantly.

She couldn’t help the way her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

“Uh, Maya… you’re kind of out of shape.” Izzy admitted with a grimace.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not that-”

“And fat.”

“…”

“…”

“I should start my run early shouldn’t I?”

“Yep.”

She spent the next hour, less running with her little sister, and more chasing after her with the intent to harm.

Now under normal circumstances, she would have lasted nowhere near this long.

Luckily, her superior brain was capable of a superhuman level of spite and vengeance, that allowed her to push through her burning muscles and aching lungs. Enough so that she was even able to climb over the various fences her sister had tried to jump over to escape her.

(Actually, why the fuck is she this good at jumping fences?!)

---

She collapsed on the couch, her every muscle aching after her attempt at retribution towards her little sister and proceeded to remain in this state for a good twenty minutes. At which point she managed to force herself to sit up, leaving her in the perfect position to spot Seamus drawing at the living room table.

(Maybe my other baby sibling will be nice today.)

“What cha working on little man?” She asked as she walked over to the table.

“I’m dwawing everyone!” Seamus told her, waving his unfinished drawing in the air.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah!” Her little brother nodded back excitedly.

“Well, who’ve you drawn so far?”

“That’s Mommy, daddy, and me.” He pointed at a figure in a red dress and long brown hair, and next to the woman was a tall man in a white shirt with a red tie. Between them was a small smiling figure.

“Here’s Vivi and Tommy.” Next was a pair of tall figures one in a jacket with long brown hair, and the other with big green ears.

(Must be Tommy’s headphones.)

“That’s Izzy there.” This was a small figure with a ponytail wearing a karate Gi.

“And here’s you.” Seamus pointed to the last figure on the page, who was shorter than all but Izzy and Seamus, as well as being the… roundest of the figures.

(…)

(We are not that fat!)

Sure, she was a little pudgier than her siblings, but that was because she hadn’t quite lost her baby fat. Something she was sure would be fixed just as soon as she had the growth spurt that would catch her up to the rest of her family. And even if it didn’t, plenty of people like women with a little more meat to their bones than her borderline anorexic-

(Okay, I’m just going to cut off this line of lashing self-hate…)

(I do not hate myself!)

“And I’m not that fat.” She added towards Seamus.

Seamus blinked at her confused. “But you’re bigger than everyone else. I can wrap my arms around mommy and Tommy and Izzy, but it would take like five of me to wrap them around you!”

(Remember murdering children is wrong!)

(How about child experimentation?) The whispers were giving some very interesting ideas on that front.

(Yes! That is significantly worse in some ways!) Her inner reason desperately tried to remind her. (How about… how about we show him how to draw us right?)

She considered it for a moment, before deciding a bionic brother probably wasn’t worth the lecture she’d receive from her parents.

“Hey, Seamus, you mind if I sit down and draw with you?” She asked through a tight smile.

“Yeah!” Seamus nodded happily. “Here, you can borrow my cwayons!”

(See he’s too cute to kill.)

(He’d still be cute with laser eyes…)

---

“If we’re going to be going out, then we’re going to need a couple upgrades for our defenses.” She told herself as she set her Hand Cannon on the table.

(That seems like a reasonable compromise.) Her inner logic accepted.

(I don’t know it feels like you’re kind of stall-)

“We need more dakka.” She interrupted calmly.

(WE NEED MORE DAKKA!!!)

(I don’t whether that’s impressive or disturbing…)

“I like to think of myself as disturbingly impressive.” She admitted, as she pulled out a number of bits and pieces she could repurpose into her Hand Cannon.

(Fair.) Her inner reason accepted easily enough. (Now aside from distracting the idiot, what are we actually building?)

“I have two hands and one hand cannon.” She half-explained, as she began listening for the whispers. They weren’t quite as loud or as vocal as the first time she’d built a hand cannon, but they were filling in the gaps of what she couldn’t remember doing at the very least.

The real trick was figuring out how to transfer energy from her COMP to her new Hand Cannon, before she’d had a handful of wires managing the transfer. Now, since she didn’t think covering herself in unprotected wiring was a good idea -(Glad I didn’t have to point that out.)- she instead was using a variation of wi-fi to transfer the energy wirelessly between her COMP and her cannons.

Sure, she still had to wait for the minute reload between shots, but now she’d have a back-up shot if she was busy reloading, and that was to say nothing of if one of her arms was pinned in a fight.

(Yeah! We’ve got Dakka-Dakka now baby!)

---

Running a few tests on her COMP to make sure her MAP () was working properly for her return to the outside world, she came to a rather important conclusion.

“This is giving me a crick in the neck.” She groaned rubbing at said crick.

(Maybe if we had something to project the COMP’s information for us?)

(Ooh, like a game UI!)

“Huh, that’s not a bad idea.” She admitted, pushing to see if the whispers had any ideas, before shaking her head. “But it looks like I don’t have much I can make in that direction…”

(Boo!) Her inner child whined. (What about a VR headset? We can run the COMP screen through that can’t we?)

She considered it for a moment, because admittedly she’d been wanting one for a while. But at the same time she’d always thought those VR consoles were more gimmick than game as they were. With only the super expensive VR rooms being worth anything, and even then only the ones made by M.A.D.s were supposedly worth the price of a sold kidney.

(Wait… we’re an M.A.D… Doesn’t that mean we can make our own?)

She froze as she realized she was completely right.

“Brain, add that to the to-do list for our future lair.” She told herself.

(And… Done.)

Still regardless of her future plans, she didn’t have a VR headset she could use to sync with her COMP. “Guess that just means I’m going to have to make one myself!”

Looking around her room she started picking up a number of parts that her whispers were declaring as useful, including a pair of sunglasses and the mic-less gaming headset her parents had gotten her because she was too loud with an actual mic.

(It’s not our fault we get teamed with basement dwelling scrubs and squeakers…)

Shaking her head, she removed she began taking the headset apart as she set her COMP to begin running her Alchemy () program.

On its own the Alchemy () program wasn’t particularly powerful as it was, the most it allowed for was the softening of some materials -namely plastics- by method of spreading a light heat across an object. This in turn allowed her to mold the plastic with her hands as if it were a particularly rough clay, though she could only handle touching it for a few minutes at a time before needing to drop the too hot substance and let it cool.

What this meant was that with a bit of effort she was able to use a few bits of recycled plastic, to connect her headset and her sunglasses, while rigging the glasses to work as a makeshift screen to show whatever information the COMP was showing off. Be it her MAP (), or the ammo and reload times of her Hand Cannons.

By the time she’d finished, the whole thing looked like ring around her head, with the headphone speakers bulging out from where her ears would go.