Turn 33

--- Maya ---

She needed materials. Lot’s of them if she wanted to complete her project for the day.

Unfortunately, -as the day before showed- despite finding a superior source of electronics by raiding the recycling bins of the various electronics stores, she also learned that raiding these things brought negative attention upon her.

(Yeah, I know we’re crazy and desperate, but having a kid point it out does drive the home just how low we’ve fallen.) Her inner madness pointed out depressively.

(Moving on…)

(Right.)

So, in an attempt to circumvent too much credit building in a single day, she collected her Minion from her lab and with a few programs through her AI she had her minions help her run a series of-

(Am I allowed to call them capers? I mean we’re trying to be a hero.)

(Well, I mean, we are raiding a bunch of donation bins here…)

(Yeah, but that’s big business saving money by letting people feel good about themselves.)

(So, we’re stealing from big businesses who conned the innocent?)

(Yeah, sure, let’s call it… robin hood-ing.)

(Well, we are robbin’ the hood I suppose.)

(Shut up.)

(I feel I should point out that ‘robin hooding’ -while not real thing- is more importantly a verb rather than a noun.)

(Fine, just figure something out.)

(Yeah, this bit has been going on a little too long now.)

(Right… Ahem,)

With the assistance of her Drone and AI, she proceeded to run a series of escapades across the city, using the two to rob bins and hack cameras respectively. Thus, allowing her to gather a formidable number of electronic parts, casings, and other useable materials.

In fact, her haul was so good that she actually needed to make more than one return trip to her base to offload her… requisitioned property.

(You know if this is any indication, we would’ve made a killing if we’d stuck to the whole super criminal thing.) Her inner madness pointed out as the dropped off the last of said loads.

(Perhaps, but I’m also fairly certain we’d be spending more time fighting should we have taken that route.) Her inner logic argued.

(Pfft, you make that sound like a bad thing.) Her inner child laughed. (And we could’ve gone after those kidnapping sons of bitches either way.)

“Yeah but having thought about it more. I think the villain thing would’ve bitten us in ass eventually.” She admitted to herself, not entirely liking the conclusions she’d come to. “I mean, look at our competition in this town. A magic black market, guys who sell superpower drugs, and a gang that can create as many Deviants as it wants. At least as heroes we have backup from the police and hopefully the other heroes if we run into them. And that’s not even bringing up the fact that we can quit being a mask whenever we want, when if we’d joined a gang there’d be no ‘out’.”

The main reason she hadn’t considered any of those points back when she first sparked out, was due to the fact that she’d been riding something of a power high those first few weeks.

“Honestly, I’m glad all of that’s toned down some.” She admitted remembering how all over the place and panicky she’d been.

(I suppose building as much as we have has worked as a sort of medication for whatever madness our powers bring forth.) Her inner reason figured.

(Uh, are we saying we’re not a unstoppable super genius?) Her inner passion asked, with a hint of wariness.

“What? Fuck no.” She laughed, with just a tinge of madness. “We’re smarter than everyone else in this city, and we’re going to prove that by dismantling the gangs one by one, until we’re the only rogue superpower in town.”

(Oh, phew,) Her inner madness sighed with a relieved chuckle. (Just the direction that was going… I thought we were doing some weird character-building moment or some shit.)

“Yeah, no, no.” She waved away her other self’s concerns. “I’m just saying, making decisions while riding a power high is probably a bad idea going forward.”

(Oh, yes, that’s probably a very wise decision.) Her inner conscience agreed with just a touch of sass.

(Aw, but that’s when we have the most fun!)

---

With all of her parts gathered together, Maya got to work building the first major upgrade for her base.

(And it only took us two weeks to do it too!) Her inner passion cheered sarcastically.

“We had other priorities.” She told her inner child. “Family stuff, patrolling, things like that.”

(You mean things that took up about a fifth of our time?)

“Alright ignoring you now.”

(That’s what I usually do.) Her inner reason admitted.

(Fuck you guys.)

(Weren’t you the one that established that was insult to yourself?) Her inner logic wondered aloud.

(Why you little bit-)

Shaking her head, she doubled down on her work.

Given the frequency she found herself running out of room on her COMP for further programming, she decided it was time to create a sever specifically designated for any programs she didn’t need on her in the middle of a random fight, -such as her tool programs for molding plastic and designing her few organic projects or even the Minion Protocols she so rarely used- thus freeing more space for more programs.

The beauty of this project however was in the fact that even though she couldn’t offload her combat and information programs, the fact that she didn’t have to work to compress as much memory as possible into a device she had to carry around, meant that she could in fact fit more memory space into her storage server. (Even if said server is the size of a small fridge…)

(Yeah, we definitely aren’t going to be moving this thing on our own…) Her inner passion admitted, now that she was actually paying attention to the voices in her head again.

(Well, the point of a base of operations is to hold everything that we can’t move with ease.) Her inner logic reminded.

(Still what if we do have to move it? Like if our less-than-lively neighbor decides she wants us gone?)

“Eh, hold on I’ve got an idea. DM-1!” She called, getting the drone to crawl out from whatever corner of the lab it had hidden away in. “Try lifting this thing.”

The little drone looked at the server than back at her, and she could’ve sworn if it had more expressive features it would be telling her, ‘Yeah, don’t know why you thought that would be happening, boss.’

(Note to self: If we ever program speech into our minions have them call us boss in a suitable accent.)

(Noted.)

“Okay, well how many drones do you think it would take to move this thing?” She asked herself with a clap of her hands.

(Mm, probably a dozen or so.) Her inner reason, well, reasoned out.

(We could probably do it with half if we give them some team skills.) Her inner madness pointed out. (Sure, we’d be pushing the whole Skynet thing by teaching them teamwork, but meh, they work for us right now.)

“Those are both valid points.” She agreed, deciding whether or not it was worth it.

(On that note, am I the only one to notice all of the dried blood on our drone minion?)

---

She turned to her minion and noticed that (yes, that is dried blood…)

“Uh, DM-1?” She asked a little weakly, gaining the drone’s attention once more. “Why do you have dried blood on you?”

The drone stared at her for a moment, during which she eventually realized her drone didn’t actually know what blood was.

“Right, uh…” She grabbed a nearby rag she’d used to clean her lab at some point, before wiping at the dried blood and showing it to the little minion. “Where, uh, where did this come from?”

DM-1 turned its camera to the rag before turning around and running off to something.

Reluctantly, she followed her minion to another dead rat, one that had a small trail of blood showing that her little (murder machine) had been moving the rat prior to her calling it.

“Um, where exactly were you taking this thing?” She asked the drone more than a little nervous now.

Nodding to her, DM-1 began dragging the dead rat towards a nearby counter, where -using a bunch of debris arranged into a makeshift ramp- the little drone managed to pull its cargo onto the counter, where it then proceeded to push it towards and then into her Bio-pod.

“…”

(…)

(…)

DM-1 looked towards her for approval as the Bio-pod somehow digested the rat, and not the first one if the device’s material counter was to be believed.

“…”

(…)

(Okay, before I was just joking about the whole Skynet/Zerg thing, but now I’m actually concerned…)