Turn 29

--- Maya ---

“Hey, you doing alright?” She asked, as she and Izzy continued their lap around the block.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Izzy answered, with an unusual tenseness from the middle schooler.

“No, it’s just you have your whole tournament thing in a couple of days.” She tried explaining. “And well you’ve, kind of been on edge the last few days.”

Izzy rolled her eyes. “I’m just trying to get that last bit of practice in before my tournament.”

“Uh-huh, you’ve also got rings around your eyes worse than my own, hermanita.” She told her sister dryly.

This time Izzy glared at her. “You’ve got rings around your eyes too.”

“Yeah, and I spend half my nights playing video games when I should be sleeping.” She freely admitted, as she slowed to a stop that her sister was forced to match if she wanted to keep arguing.

“Look what exactly do you want here?”

“Well, if you’re allowed to worry about me pushing myself, I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to do the same about you.” She pointed out blandly.

Izzy scoffed. “I know my limits a lot better than you do.”

“Clearly.” She nodded along, before slowly and obviously -by Izzy’s standards- shoving her sister’s shoulder. “Which is why you didn’t stop me from doing that.”

“I-mm.” Izzy growled at her.

“You’re burning yourself out.” She told Izzy directly, deciding that anything else was either going to be ignored or end with her getting punched. “You stopped me when you thought I was going too far, so I’m stopping you now that I think you are.”

“And I told you it’s different.” Izzy argued.

“And I’m telling you it’s not.” She argued right back. “You’ve spent all summer practicing for this thing, if you don’t take a break you’re not going to be in any shape for your tournament.”

Izzy started glaring at her, and she met it without flinching. “You. Need. A. Break.”

“Fine.” Izzy spat before storming off.

“Do you think we should tell mamá to keep an eye on her?” She asked once she was sure Izzy was far enough not to hear her. “I mean if we keep pressing she’ll probably just ignore us outright.”

(Mm, it couldn’t hurt.) Her inner logic admitted.

(Yeah, let’s be honest if she’s anything like us she’s going to outright ignore us the moment we leave the house.)

“Right,” She sighed. “I’ll talk to mamá before we head out for the day.”

---

After talking with her mother about Izzy, she decided to try and take her mind off of things by remedying the issue that forced her to uninstall her Alchemy () program. Of course to do this she had to spend most of the day raiding her nearby gathering spots for more Electronics to use.

Unfortunately, even after all of the time spent searching, she’d only managed to find a portion of what she actually needed for her goal.

“Damn it. Where am I going to get the rest?”

(Well we do have a bit of money saved up. It wouldn’t hurt to just outright buy them.)

“Hmm…”

---

Deciding to heed her inner reason’s suggestion, she took a detour to a nearby general store to pick up the last few pieces she needed with the money she’d picked up over the last few weeks.

(We might want to grab a few extra parts while we’re here.) Her inner reason told her as she walked down an aisle wondering how many parts she could get out of a few cheap appliances.

“Maybe, but we don’t want to blow too much money.” She pointed out in a whisper, more comfortable talking to her voices aloud, but still not wanting to be seen as crazy.

(Meh, we’re all mad here.)

(Still if buy too few we’ll probably be tapping ourselves out of parts given what we’re trying to do with our COMP.)

“I know…” She agreed, grabbing as many parts as she was comfortable getting.

As she started making her way towards the registers, something off to the side caught her attention. Standing at the end of an aisle was an ‘on sale’ sign surrounded by a number of sports helmets.

“Hmm…” She picked one of the helmets up, noting the padding inside of it. “You know it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of padding for our head.”

(Perhaps.)

(Yeah, but that means we have to bundle up and cover our hair, and then we have to have that weight on our head all day. Isn’t that the kind of thing that can give you migraines?) Her inner child whined.

“You’re not wrong, but maybe we can figure out something else with this at the very least?”

(We might have to put a few of our parts back if it’s too expensive.) Her inner reason pointed out.

“So, helmet, more electronics, or save some money and leave both?”

---

As she made her way through the hospital, arms loaded with parts, she tripped and stumbled on a piece of debris that she normally managed to avoid by being able to look at where she was stepping.

(You know what, fuck it.)

“DM-1!” She called into her lair, her little spider drone peeking out a few minutes later. “Start cleaning up the hospital.”

The little drone looked around the hall at the various debris she hadn’t bothered to clean up when she was setting up shop.

She could almost swear the thing gave her a depressingly resigned nod.

---

With that settled, she began setting her various parts down and getting to work on another upgrade to her COMP so as to reinstall all of her programs.

(You know from the look of this we aren’t going to be able to fit any more memory upgrades into this model.) Her inner reason warned her.

“I know, but at the very least we have all of our programs and enough space for one or two more upgrades.” She told herself. “After this we’ll just have to make something for the base I guess.”

(About time too, we’ve been here almost two weeks and we haven’t built a single upgrade for this place.) Her inner madness complained. (I mean come on! How are we going to have a kickass base if we don’t actually work on it?!)

This tirade continued for a good hour more, during which she pointedly ignored the voice in her head speaking gibberish. As any sane person should- (Wait… Actually, no. You really should listen to us more.)

“…”

(Maya?)

“…”

(Maya!)

“…”

(Maya!!!)