Turn 18

--- Maya ---

Sneaking off for the day was easy enough, especially since Izzy had decided after one look that Maya was not going to be training with her that day.

And with the way she was feeling, she wasn’t willing to put up a fight about it.

“Once I get this stuff set up I seriously need to consider building some kind of armor.” She told herself, feeling the aches and pains of the various bruises and light burns across her body.

(If this is what Decker was capable of ‘playing’ with us, I don’t think we should pick a proper fight with him just yet.) Her inner logic warned.

“Yeah, I wasn’t planning on it.” She agreed, as she continued cleaning up the first room she’d decided to convert into her own at the hospital.

The place may’ve been creepy as hell, but hopefully it would keep people from looking too closely for her base. Admittedly there was a chance of her scaring off potential allies for the same reason, but she was hoping she’d have cleaned the place up enough to undo that effect by the time she actually started making allies with the other heroes of the city.

She pointedly ignored the fact that the room she’d decided to use was her third choice, and the first one without any dark patterns on the wall and floors.

(It’s also the dustiest.) Her inner child whined as she was forced to sneeze.

“Maybe, but since we’re going to be here awhile we need to get this place as close to useable as we can.” She reminded herself, sweeping another pile of dust and trash to the side before picking up a rag from a bucket filled with dark water. “Ugh, need to throw this out again.”

She’d lucked out in the fact that after a decade the hospital still had some water in the pipes after the last decade, even if it was too stagnant to actually drink, it was still good enough to help her clean the place. Though this of course meant she had to carry the bucket back and forth from the windows to the bathroom and her chosen base, which happened to be a distance from both.

“This would be so much easier if we could just gather the water in the air or some shit.” She cursed hauling another bucket around.

(That sounds a few steps out of our current level right now…)

“Maybe once we crack the cold we could figure out how to use the heat and that to condense water from the air somewhere and then run it to our lab.” She thought out, whispers already hinting at how to jump that gap.

(That sounds plausible.) Her inner reason admitted as she got back to cleaning up her new lab.

(Ugh, how much longer are we going to do this?!) Her inner passion groaned in boredom.

“Until we have a workable space.” She told herself, “And once we do we can get started on our first couple of base expansions.”

She’d managed to scrounge together enough supplies across the hospital from abandoned machines and computers that she’d be able to make the absolute essentials of her base, as well as a few other bits and bobbles that would probably make her life easier, all things considered.

“Fuck.” She cursed as one of her bruises flared up when she wiped the counter at a bad angle. “Argh… I should’ve known my first fight would end with me getting my ass kicked. I mean I can’t even beat Izzy in a straight fight.”

(Well, at least we kicked Decker’s ass!) Her inner battle nut cheered.

(While he was taking it easy on us.) Her inner logic saw fit to remind.

“Yeah, if we want to arrest him next time we’re going to need a lot better equipment to do it.” She agreed.

(We should also look up how Masks actually go about arresting people.) Her inner reason pointed out.

“Yeah…” She tried very hard not to think about just how embarrassing it was to be so thoroughly picked apart after the fight, the way he made it clear in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t actually touch him legally speaking.

(We should’ve kneed him in the face while he was bent over.) Her inner child growled.

(He might’ve slapped us with assault if we did that.)

(But we’re the heroes!)

(And he’s apparently a very good lawyer.)

(Gah! Fuck lawyers!)

“Come on, that’s enough of that you two.” She told the voices in her head as they continued to bicker, giving her the beginnings of a headache. “We’ve got enough space cleared out now that we can probably manage a bit of simple tinkering, so long as we don’t take it too far. So, let’s figure out what we need most importantly, and get to work on that, okay?”

(Fine.) Her inner passion agreed. (But only because we’re going to build something kickass.)

(Hmm… What are you thinking we need right now?) Her inner logic wondered.

“Well, there are few things we could do with. A memory storage for any programs we don’t need direct access to. We need to hobble together a power supply, though if we spend a few more of those parts we found we could probably turn it into something better functioning. And then there’s setting up training equipment and defenses too…” She listed off before sighing. “There’s a lot to do, and we need to figure out where to start.”