Turn 19

--- Maya ---

The next day unfortunately wasn’t much better.

She still had aches and pains from spending the day cleaning up her lab and setting up a half-way decent power station. While it wasn’t the best she could think of, she was able to make a few modifications and rig a massive battery to run a stronger version of her Generator () program, giving her a solution to pretty much any power problems she could have outside of her COMP running dry in the field.

(Which luckily wasn’t a problem this time.) Her inner logic reminded.

(Because we made efficient Dakka.) Her inner passion agreed.

Shaking her head, she forced herself to sit up with a pained groan.

“Maya are you okay?”

She blinked before realizing Izzy hadn’t left for her morning run yet.

“Uh, yeah… why do you ask?”

“Because you look even worse for wear than the last time you ran yourself into the ground.” Izzy told her bluntly.

“Eh, just… Just pushed myself a little too hard the last few days.” She admitted with a half-hearted half-truth.

Izzy gave her a look. “Really because that looks like a really nasty bruise on your arm.”

She glanced down, only now realizing that her sleeping shirt didn’t cover up a visible bruise on her forearm from one of the numerous times she’d been thrown around the night before last.

“Like I said, it’s nothing to worry about.” She waved off her little sister’s concerns. “I ended up tripping and falling but given how it didn’t even break skin I figure it’s not that big of a deal.” She explained, bending the truth at several points.

“Just because it didn’t break skin, doesn’t mean you didn’t hurt yourself.” Izzy scolded her. “My martial arts classes give us all sorts of warnings about this kind of stuff!”

“Izzy, it’s my forearm,” (and half my ribs) “it’s not like a bruise there is going to reach any of my organs.” She argued with a roll of her eyes.

Izzy glared at her. “The skin is an organ, and you bruised it.”

(Ooh, and the middle schooler wins with fourth grade biology!)

“Shut up.” She told both her sister and the voice in her head. “And it’s nothing an ice pack and a day or two of rest won’t fix up.”

“You need to take better care of yourself!” Izzy told her. “This is the second time I’ve had to tell you to do that!”

“Look I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself, Iz.” She tried to assure her little sister.

Izzy continued to frown at her. “Maybe, but I’m not letting you run or fight with me until you quit looking like you’re going to fall to the wind.”

She opened her mouth to protest, only for her inner reason to cut her off, saying, (it’s honestly not the worst idea to take a break for a few days.)

(But I don’t wanna!) She whined to herself.

(Yeah what she said!) Her inner child agreed.

(I see what you did there, and it doesn’t change anything.)

(Good, because what you want doesn’t change, what Izzy wants.)

“Fine…” She groaned, knowing she wasn’t going to win against either her inner stubbornness or her equally stubborn little sister.

“Good.” Izzy nodded with hard look, or as hard as a middle schooler could manage at least.

---

Knowing Izzy was at least partially right about her need to take care of herself, she began pulling out various bits and pieces of equipment she’d found while cleaning up the hospital.

She’d been toying around with a few ideas on what to do with the parts, and given it’s originally intended purpose, figured repurposing them wouldn’t be the worst way to use them.

With the aid of the whispers she was able to tweak the bits of machinery she’d taken, modifying and compressing them into a watch she’d swiped from somewhere she couldn’t quite recall. This watch would in turn monitor her heartrate, blood pressure, temperature, and a number of other parameters of her health and then filter them through her Scan () program to determine where she stood, letting her know when her health was beginning to fall into an uncomfortable level.

(Such as right now, and how we’re reading as in poor health.)

(Ah, what does this watch know!)

“Everything we programmed it to?” She felt the need to point out, as she began to tweak the tech and her program so that she’d be able to figure out other people’s biometrics with a Scan (), something she was having trouble getting to work at a range for some reason.

(It’s fine we can figure it out later.) Her inner reason promised her. (Right now, we have another engagement to get to.)

(That’s right, it’s game night!) Her inner passion cheered.

“Right, and it’s our turn to pick too.” She nodded.

---

Having finished her work on her scanning system, she went ahead and started making her way downstairs for sibling game night. But as she walked through the house she began to hear a disturbingly familiar song coming from the living room.

“That can’t be…”

As she made her way downstairs she saw Tommy showing Vi a video on his phone as they both sat on the living room couch, and from what she could hear of the video it really did sound like the song Decker had been playing throughout their fight a few nights prior.

“I… What is that?” She asked, as Vi laughed at something in the video.

“Huh,” Tommy blinked just noticing her. “Oh, this music guy I’m following posted a fight between these two Masks down in the warehouse district a couple of nights ago.”

“Uh-huh, and uh, who were the Masks involved?” She asked curiously more for show than anything else. Especially given how she was already pretty sure she knew who the Masks in the video were, as she watched herself pixelate one of Decker’s blitz wolves.

(I’m really lucky my visor and the shifting lights hid my features.)

“Um, not sure who the girl is, but the guy is DJ Decker.” Tommy told her.

She couldn’t help but frown at the fact that Tommy already knew about Decker, despite the fact that she hadn’t known he existed until the night she’d met him. “Who’s that?”

“He’s this Deviant DJ that holds parties all over town,” Tommy explained. “I’ve never met him myself, but he’s pretty big throughout the city’s music scene. They say if he takes an interest in a musician he can make their career for the next decade.”

“Oh, so is he a rogue or something?” She pressed softly, wondering if her brother realized the Deviant musician was a known criminal.

“Or something…” Tommy admitted as he trailed off a bit.

(Meaning he knows Decker ‘s a gang member.) She thought just a little bitterly.

“It doesn’t really matter,” Vi cut in. “What’s important is the new Mask.”

She blinked. “Uh, what do you mean?”

“Right, Masks weren’t really your thing, outside of video games.” Vi grumbled, before shaking her head. “Anyway, Masks are usually a pretty big deal due to the fact they’re the more… active, members of the Deviant community.”

“Okay… That doesn’t really explain anything.” She admitted.

Vi sighed. “Okay, think of it like this. Deviants make up a little under one percent of the population, right? Well, about one percent of those become masks.”

Her face scrunched up at that. “But aren’t two of the local gangs largely made of Deviants.”

“Sort of,” Tommy admitted, scratching the back of his head. “But that’s a little different.”

“Yeah, the Deviants who become masks are typically the ones who make a sort of… splash on the world.” Vi tried explaining. “Normal Deviants have some small powers, making them no better than someone with a doctorate, a gun, or a guard dog. Masks on the other hand are… symbols, be it good or bad.”

“Okay… Um, can you explain that bit about symbols?” She asked, just a little worried.

“Alright, so you’re too young to remember it, but the Rift Riots-”

“Which happened before any of us were born.” Tommy helpfully threw out there.

Vi glared at him for a moment before turning back to her. “Anyway, the Rift Riots were when Masks first came out, and in turn what led to the public outing of Deviants to the world.”

“Right, they covered all of this in history class.” She reminded them impatiently. “Still doesn’t explain the whole symbol thing.”

“I’m getting to that.” Vi told her. “These Masks were the first wave of heroes, rogues, and villains. And as such they came to represent the hope, peace, terror, and strife of the time. Something that has trended on every generation since.”

“Something that’s covered in any modern history class.” Tommy informed her.

“Fuck off.” Vi told him with a slap to the arm.

“Okay… I get most of what you’re saying, but what does that have to do with some random new mask?” She wondered, because even with her (immense) intelligence she wasn’t quite getting that part.

“Well, the way it usually works is that when a new Mask pops up, new ones pop up on both sides of the law, before things reach an equilibrium of sorts for a few years. At least until the next few Masks shake things up.” Tommy explained. “The fact that we’re getting new a Mask after having the same for the last four or five, means things are going to start changing for our city.”

“Which is why everyone is talking about this new Mask; they’re wondering if she’s going to shake things up for better or for worse.” Vi concluded.

“Huh…”

(Well if that isn’t a fuck ton of pressure.)

“Either way,” Tommy began, breaking her from her thoughts. “Regardless of whether she’s good or bad news, chica has got a mouth on her!”

“I know, right!” Vi agreed. “Like every other word out of her mouth is a curse word!”

(And this had gone from worrying to embarrassing real fast.) She thought feeling a bit of heat to her face as she heard herself cursing throughout the video depicting her unplanned Mask debut.

She was honestly grateful that Decker had edited out the part where he tore her apart about the legality of her little raid and jumped straight from their fight to the point where she decked him.

(Heh, we decked Decker.)

Ignoring the insane voice in her head, she kept watching the video that trailed until just after Zylah’s appearance, where she proceeded to knee Decker -which got a wince from Tommy- before giving the rogue an awkward wave, and booking it from the scene.

(I’m a little worried about what kind of reputation this will give us…)

(An awesome one.)

---

“Alright, now that everyone ‘s here, what are we playing Maya?” Tommy asked, holding the squirming Seamus in place.

She paced in front of her siblings, before declaring that, “Today we’re playing a strategy game!”

“Okay… Uh, which strategy game?” Vi glanced around a bit. “I’m not seeing any board games or anything.”

“King of the Masquerade.” She revealed, turning the TV on to show the game was already loaded and ready to play.

“Uh, I don’t think that one has co-op?” Tommy reminded her. “I mean we can play, but it’ll take forever for each of us to get our own turn.”

“Not if one of us plays off the system in our room.” Izzy pointed out. “But even then we can’t really play together.”

“Actually, they just patched in cross-play.” She told them happily.

“So, what two of us take turns on one, and the other two on the other one?” Vi asked, “I mean I don’t think Seamus can really play this one.”

“Wha? But I want to play!” Seamus shouted indignantly.

“You can.” Maya told him, handing him her phone with a children’s learning game set to it. “But since you’re the smallest you’ve got to play on here.”

“Okay, so what, older siblings versus younger siblings?” Tommy asked taking the remote controller off of the table.

“Nope, four-player versus.” She told him.

“But there’s only two sys-” Tommy began, only to stop as she pulled out her and Vi’s laptop with the game already set to run.

“Wait, how did you get my computer?” Vi demanded. “Did you go in my room again?!”

“Better question is how she got on your computer.” Izzy pointed out.

“All of your passwords are laughably easy.” She informed her siblings bluntly.

“Uh, does that mean I get to go back upstairs?” Izzy asked, leaning away from their growling elder sister. “You two are the only ones with your own laptops.”

“I could always go on the family’s old desktop, but since we don’t have this game installed, it’ll be a couple of hours.” Tommy offered.

“No need. I’ve already got it covered.” She told them dragging the TV from her room out from behind the couch, once more with the game ready to run.

“When did you put that there?” Izzy wondered looking behind the couch and back at the TV.

“Between this scene and the last.” She admitted tossing Izzy the controller. “I’ve already got all four of them set to go against each other, you’ve just got to choose your factions.”

“Okay, in that case… I call Stylish Sounds.” Tommy told them, quickly selecting the music-oriented faction.

“Arcane Arcanum!” Vi called, choosing the faction of spell casters.

“Traitorous Travelers!” Izzy declared, picking the group of inhuman travelers.

“Laborious Laboratories!” She shouted, as she of course took M.A.D. faction.