Turn 32

--- Maya ---

As she made her way down the stairs that morning she found Tommy sitting on the couch strumming a few notes on his guitar.

“Uh, is everything okay?” She asked, knowing he’d usually play his music in either his room or the basement.

“Hmm, what?” Tommy looked at her before blinking. “Oh, yeah. Everything ‘s fine it’s just mom ‘s doing laundry, and I don’t feel like playing over the washer.”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded, before something occurred to her. “Hey, uh, your concert thing is next up right?”

“Yep, three days away.” Tommy nodded back.

“Well, uh, you doing okay with all of that?” She felt the need to ask.

“Mm-hmm, doing just fine hermanita.” Tommy told her.

“No, it’s just Izzy sort of went a little crazy leading up to her tournament.” She tried explaining, “And I’m not really sure how you’re handling the build up to your own thing.”

Tommy gave a bit of a laugh at that. “Hate to break it to you, but I’m a lot more laidback than Izzy’s ball of wound up crazy.”

(Wait, I thought we were the crazy in the family.)

(Different kind of crazy.)

“Still…” She trailed off, not wanting to validate the voices in her head and their opinions on her sanity.

(You just did.)

“Look me and my band have been practicing for this all summer.” Tommy leveled with her “What’s more this isn’t my first big competition, and the fact is you win some, you lose some. Either way I’ve got plenty of things other than just my music going on.”

“Like what?” He’d always devoted so much time to his music that she actually wasn’t all that aware of what he did outside of it.

“Well I’ve got my art thing too, since I, you know, do all of our single and album covers.” Tommy told her.

“Right, those are pretty good.” She told him, not wanting to let him know she’d always thought he was paying an art student to do those instead.

“Uh-huh.” Tommy agreed. “Something you need to learn hermanita, is that while it’s good to have passions you still need hobbies or else those passions consume you.”

“That’s… surprisingly deep from a high school senior…” She admitted, just a little impressed.

“My other hobby is philosophy.” Tommy shrugged. “It’s good for lyric inspiration.”

“Huh…” She sat there listening to Tommy strum a few more chords, before her eyes slowly drifted around the room taking in the various photos and familial knick-knacks. Eventually though, her gaze wandered towards the kitchen and through it out the backdoor where she spotted (the little bitch.)

“I just remembered, if you don’t need anything, then I need to go and kick the shit out of our little sister.” She told Tommy as she started making he way out of the room.

“Good luck with that.” Tommy told her before muttering, “You’re going to need it.” Just under his breath.

---

“Hey Izzy.” She greeted as calmly as she could. “You holding up okay?”

“Yeah.” Izzy nodded from where she was sitting. “You here to train today?”

“Depends on if you’re still going crazy over your whole tournament thing.” She told her little sister as she took a seat next to her.

“Nah. I’m doing alright.” Izzy admitted. “Just got a little too obsessed with winning.”

“That you did. Any reason why?” She asked wrapping an arm around her baby sister and giving her a chance to defend herself from her impending execution.

“Mm, don’t know.” Her -soon to be dead- little sister shrugged. “I just really did not like the idea of losing.”

(The only person a Williams is willing to lose to is another Williams.) Her inner madness confirmed in a sagely tone. (Which is why she’ll be okay with us horrifically murdering her.)

(Quite right.) Her inner reason agreed.

“Yeah, I guess that’s why you spent the last couple of weeks kicking the shit out of me despite the fact that none of your fights were even half as violent as ours.” She usually tried to avoid cursing in front of her younger siblings, but she felt this was a valid time for an exception to that particular rule.

It took Izzy a moment to process what she’d said, but Maya knew exactly when her little sister realized how screwed she was by the subtle widening of her eyes.

It took Izzy much less time to realize Maya already had her trapped.

“Wait, Maya-”

Her little sister didn’t get a chance to finish as Maya tackled her.

---

(I’m not sure if this is illegal, but it is shady as fuck.) Her inner passion warned her.

“Look the places we usually go for supplies are starting to run dry, and we aren’t always going to luck out and find junk being thrown out on the side of the road.” She reminded herself. “Besides raiding the recycled donations of an electronics store isn’t illegal… I think.”

(Maybe, but like I said it is shady, and I’m pretty sure that rent a cop we saw a few minutes ago would chase us off if he saw us.)

“We’re not that suspicious.” She argued.

(Chica, you’re stealing from a recycling bin while talking to yourself. We have ascended to the point of being the crazy person no one wants to look at on the street corner.) Said crazy informed her.

“No, we’re-”

A nearby mother quickly pulled their child away while said child pointed at her as she dug through the recycling bin.

“I… suddenly feel like I need to reevaluate several of my life choices.” She admitted.

(I have been trying to get you to do that for the last month or so.) Her inner reason pointed out drolly. (I’ve met minimal success.)

(Eh, that just means I’m better at my job than you.)

---

Setting a voice changer into her Headset was a relatively straightforward thing, that only involved her having to take out and mess with the speakers from some device she’d already harvested for everything else. Or at least that’s all it should’ve taken…

(Why exactly do we need to make a reality hacking program for a voice changer?) Her inner child wondered.

“We don’t.” She admitted. “But there are a couple of cool ideas I have for our voice changer that I think we could pull off with a bit of work.”

(What kind of ideas?) Her inner reason asked with a fair amount of caution given who she was dealing with.

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

(Erm, it means what it means.) Her inner logic tactfully evaded. (Still, as I asked, what kind of ideas were you thinking?)

“The voice synthesizer from Arkham Knight.” She told herself plainly.

(Are people actually stupid enough to- Yeah, sorry, it’s not even a question of if people are stupid enough to fall for that kind of thing…) Her inner madness sighed with something resembling disappointment.