Turn 22

--- Maya ---

“Ugh, why am I the one who has to go school shopping?” She whined, as she followed her mother through the first checkout of three different stores.

“Because you’re older than Izzy and Seamus.” Her mother explained in that way that explained nothing at all.

“So are Tommy and Vi.” She pointed out.

“Yes, but Vi is at college and buys her own supplies each semester, and Tommy is helping your father at work today. Which leaves you.” Her mother (actually) explained.

“Being the middle child sucks.” She told her mom after a moment of thought.

Her mother gave her a snort of amusement. “I’m sure it does.”

As they walked out of the store, Maya couldn’t help but voice a question she’d been wondering. “Why exactly are we going to three different stores? I mean can’t we buy all of this crap at a single shopping center?”

“We could.” Her mother admitted. “But we’d be missing out on a number of back to school sales, on clothing, shoes, backpacks, and so on.”

“Uh-huh, and shouldn’t everyone be here to get their own clothes and shoes?” She asked. “You know make sure everything fits the way it’s supposed to.”

“I’m buying everything a couple of sizes bigger than what you all wear now, so you can grow into it.” Her mother explained, before giving her a look as they began to load the school supplies into the trunk of the car. “It also means I only have to drag one of you through the stores, which is honestly all I have the patience for.”

“Ay, pobrecita.” Her mother said with false compassion, before quickly dropping it. “Look at it this way, your brother and sister were in the same position just last year. This is just you paying your dues.”

“Honestly, that doesn’t do much for me, since I’m the one getting screwed here.” She admitted with a straight face as her mother closed the car trunk.

Rolling her eyes, her mother climbed into the car’s driver seat. “Look if it’ll make you feel better, I won’t ask for your help prepping for Seamus’s play group this week.”

“Yay, no cooking.” She cheered matching her mother’s previous sarcasm as she got into the passenger’s seat. “Now I’ve just got to con one of the boys into doing laundry and I’ll have the day off.”

“Eres la hija de tu madre.” Her mother laughed with a shake of her head as she started the car.

“Damn straight.” She agreed with a grin.

It wasn’t for a few more minutes before something important occurred to her. “Uh, mamá?”

“Yes, corazoncita?”

“Isn’t Seamus’s play group usually today?”

Her mother froze, before hitting her head on the steering wheel.

“¡Ah, chingá!”

---

“Okay, so I need you to watch Seamus and his friends while I take care of the school shopping.” Her mother had told her. “Just leave Missy outside, the other parents get a little antsy with their kids around big dogs.”

“But I can’t watch five toddlers by myself.” She had argued.

“Don’t worry the other parents will be there if you need help.” Her mother had assured her. “Just put something animated on and it’ll be an easy hour.”

Her mother had lied.

Almost as soon as the other parents had shown up, and found out there would be no food, they’d ditched their kids on her as a free babysitter and booked it to wherever they were all at. Meanwhile she was stuck running around trying to keep up with five hangry and bored toddlers, all wondering where their parents were and- “I’m never going into childcare.”

(Well look at the bright side, at least Seamus isn’t giving us any problems.)

She glanced away from what she was doing to see Seamus was sitting their happily playing with a toy car, unlike the rest of the screaming children.

(That’s because he’s a little angel, unlike the rest of these filthy demons!)

“They’re kids that’s a bit of an over exaggeration.” She told herself, as she continued making the kids lunch.

As if to prove her wrong, she heard something break in the background.

(Still think that?)

“Shut up.” She sighed, regretting a number of choices.

When the parents finally began to show up she looked them dead in the eye and said. “You were gone two hours and I charge ten an hour.”

Of course, there were protests at first, at least until she reminded them how easy it would be to convince her mother to take Seamus out of the playgroup now that he’d be starting pre-school and would no longer need it. Leaving all of said parents with an extra night each week where they have to watch their own kids.

Said parents quickly reached for their wallets.

And while her mother was pissed about what the kids had broken, she was proud Maya managed to extor-(Ahem.)- persuade, the parents into paying for it.

Doubly so that she also made a profit off of them.

---

Plastic while not as durable as most metals, was a significantly lighter material to work with, as well as an easier one thanks to her Alchemy () program.

Unfortunately, it was also a fair bit harder to get a hold of in a useable quantity.

(What about all of these bottles we’re swiping from the recycling bins?)

(I said in a useable quantity.) Her inner reason pointed out. (It takes a good two or three dozen water bottles to make a single useable unit of plastic, and given how hard it is to carry that many around inconspicuously…)

(Right, that’s fair.) Her inner child conceded. (But what are we going to do with all of this plastic? We only have one blueprint that uses it right now.)

“Technically we have three.” She felt the need to point out. “Our visor, our armor, and our face mask.”

(Okay, but we built two of those and one of them is an upgrade to the former.)

(She’s not wrong.)

“Well, maybe we’ll use it to upgrade our armor again, or I don’t know… I’ll come up with an invention for it eventually, and then we’ll be glad I have it.”

(Until then we’ll continue to raid our neighbors recycling bins like a starved racoon.)

(We have a little more dignity that that.)

“Uh, little miss?”

She froze like a (racoon in the porch) light, before slowly turning towards an old man with a trash bag in his hand.

“What are you doing?”

“Uh…”

(Point made.)

---

Having set her all of her -embarrassingly- gathered plastic to be cleaned and melted down by her Alchemy (), she decided that she was done doing all of the minion work. And since no one with any self-respect would work for a teenager free, she was going make one.

Hence the small dog sized spider drone on her lab table.

(You have to go with the classics.)

Now admittedly, this drone wasn’t necessarily the smartest, given how she’d essentially copy and pasted her Simple AI after modifying it to have a body and no wi-fi access, which was actually a fairly easy task given her growing skill with programming.

“Right, creating an AI with the intelligence of a trained dog is easy.” She growled, as she finished the program’s upload into her drone.

(To be fair we did it in a scene devoted to something else.)

“And done.” She told the voices in her head as she began disconnecting wires from her newly finished drone minion. “Come on, wakey, wakey.”

She leaned in front of the Drone’s camera lens eye, before smiling as it flashed on with a red glow. “¡Eso es!”

The drone shook a little before locking its gaze onto her, and… doing nothing else.

(Why isn’t it doing anything?)

(He have to give it something to do.)

“Oh, right, right. Mm…” She glanced around the lab getting a simple idea. “Explore the lab, but don’t leave it.”

The drone gave her a little nod before walking to the edge of the table and hopping onto the ground a few feet below it. Leaving her to excitedly watch as the drone stumbled around the lab-

“Ooh, this so cool! Think of all the good we can do with this little guy!”

-before getting in a fight with a rat, ripping it to shreds, and then looking to her for approval.

(We’re totally going to be responsible for Skynet.)