Turn 28

--- Maya ---

“If we’re going for a patrol we need to have a ranged option.” She told her other counterparts as she began tweaking her Blaster Protocols () to let her attacks work a little further without dissipating.

(Yes, that would’ve been useful to get past Decker’s Speaker Spire.) Her inner reason agreed. (Though I do sincerely hope we don’t have to deal with a fight on that level again.)

(Meh, fight or no fight, you can’t say no to more dakka.) Her inner child told them in a sage like manner.

With the mutual agreement of her inner selves, she found herself working through her program significantly faster than she normally would, going so far as to finish the program upgrade in just a few hours. Leaving her with plenty of time to actually test her upgrades.

“Okay, let’s see…” She pressed the trigger to unleash a blast from her cannons, and then held it down for a moment longer, before finally throwing her hand forward and sending a bolt of lightning shooting down the hospital hall, only to fade halfway down.

(Looks like its got about a ten, fifteen meter limit.) Her inner logic pointed out.

“That’s still a lot better than the meter or two we had before, even if there’s no actual spread.” She reminded herself.

(Either way… there’s nothing like a fistful of lightning, now, is there?)

“Definitely.” She laughed at the reference before switching her cannons to sound. “Still let’s see how well the upgrade carries over to sound?”

With that goal in mind she once more charged up a shot before throwing her hand forward.

A loud boom echoed from her hand sending out a wave of force almost five meters away, pushing all dirt and debris out of its path as it did so, though some of trash further away wasn’t pushed all that far.

“Hmm…” She frowned, seeing the relative lack of effect. “I was kind of expecting more.”

(Do you think the lack of range is because of the fact we’re firing sound or because electricity could jump further?) Her inner logic wondered.

(Don’t know…) Her inner passion admitted, with a surprising amount of thoughtfulness before telling her to, (Punch the wall.)

Her face scrunched up in confusion. “What? Why?”

(Just hit it point blank.)

“Fine…”

She wasn’t sure why she was giving in to her inner child, but she couldn’t really see why not to, and so she readied another ranged sound blast and shot it at a nearby wall.

What she hadn’t expected was to blast a massive hole into said wall, as it was hit with nearly twice the power of her usual sound shots.

“Holy shit!” She cursed, coughing through the dust and debris.

(Well, that’s a thing.)

---

Realizing that one act of destruction towards her base was enough –(Are you sure we’re a M.A.D. scientist, because that sounds an awful lot like quitter talk.)- she instead decided to focus on fixing some of the blind spots in her scanner’s programming.

To this effort she took some of the last bits of medical equipment she’d collected while cleaning up the hospital and pieced them together into something resembling a sonar radar. And while said radar wasn’t completely infallible it was more than enough to get a general 3D image of the space around her. (Though we’re going to have to do something if we want to start seeing through walls…)

(Speaking of, we should probably sort out that mess in detecting out more supernatural neighbor.) Her inner reason reminded her.

“Oh, right! Uh, you think thermal should work for that?” She asked picking through a number of parts from the cabinet where she stored all of her electronic parts.

(Yeah, ghosts are supposed to cause cold spots, so that should let us keep an eye on any invisible creepers.) Her inner madness agreed as she began making the modifications to both her Scanner and its corresponding programs.

(Oh, that might be a problem…) Her inner reason commented a little nervously as she began to wrap up her final upgrade for the scanner that day.

“What might be a problem?” She asked going over everything she could see.

(Well, you know how our COMP can only run so many programs at one time.)

“Yeah.”

(You do realize our Scan () is now forcing us over that limit, yes?)

“…” She stared blankly at the screen displaying a warning prompt from her COMP. “No. No I did not.”

(Then this poses a bit of a problem.)

“Yes, yes it does.” She agreed as she began to go over her list of programs.

(Uh, we’re not wussing out of our patrol are we?)

“What? No, of course not.” She frowned.

(Uh, perhaps it should?) Her inner reason attempted to warn.

“Yeah, no. All we have to do is remove some of our non-essential programs. Sure, we won’t be able to use them until we fix our memory problems but going a day without any of our building programs isn’t going to kill us.” She explained picking which of those programs to remove.

(Good, because I really want to use our new dakka on something.)

(I feel like this may be a bad idea.)

---

Getting permission to stay out a little later than usual was as easy as telling her parents she was staying at a late-night gaming event at a local game shop. Something they were admittedly against, until Tommy offered to go with her to make sure she stayed safe, while asking to borrow the car so they don’t have to spend too long outside.

This of course was his own lie to give him the perfect excuse to sneak out for a couple of hours to go to a party down by the Trainyard.

(I suppose the best way to lie to our parents is to get our siblings to back us.)

(Haven’t we known that since we were like eight?)

(Never hurts to refresh your knowledge.)

“You sure you’re going to be okay, hermanita?” Tommy double checked as they pulled over a block away from the address of the game shop she’d given him.

“I’ll be fine.” She assured him as she climbed out of the car. “After all, I’ve been sparring with Izzy a lot lately and I’ve picked up a fair bit.” (Besides I’ve fought and beaten a super villain, even if he was an affably evil one.)

(We’ve also got our dakka can’t forget about the dakka.)

(I feel there may be something wrong with both of you reasoning.) Her inner reason felt the need to point out.

“Alright.” Tommy nodded a little hesitantly. “And you’ve got your phone in case something happens, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes dad.”

Tommy rolled his eyes right on back at her. “Your little game convention thing ends at midnight, right?”

“About then, but I’ll call you if it lets out early.” She promised getting another nod from her brother.

“Right, well… love you, mija!” Tommy called as he drove off just fast enough to miss her giving him the bird.

Still, she couldn’t help but give a snort of amusement as his car rounded the corner. “Pinche pendejo.”

(Actually, I kind of wish dad acted like that too…)

She forced that thought away with a shake of her head, before turning towards the more criminally active parts of the area as she began pulling her equipment from her backpack.

Snapping the last piece into place she loaded her Hand Cannons with a whine, before triggering her face guard to close.

“Alright, time to kick ass.”