Turn 34

--- Maya ---

“Okay, is it me or are you kicking my ass harder than usual?” She couldn’t help but ask as she picked herself off the floor.

“Don’t know what you mean.” Izzy told her hoping foot to foot.

“No, it’s like you’ve I don’t know leveled up or something…” She tried explaining.

Her little sister stopped, giving her an odd look. “Uh, Maya, have you been playing video games until you pass out again?”

(We had to fit in our game time at some point.) Her inner logic reasoned.

(Sleep is for the weak!) Her inner passion declared for all -of her- to hear.

“No…” She trailed off, already knowing she’d failed that Bluff check.

“Maya, what did I say about taking care of yourself?” Izzy asked, her shaking shoulders far more intimidating than any middle schooler had the right to be.

“To be fair I am fitting in a ton of power naps throughout the day.” She pointed out, backing away from the tiny terror trudging towards her. “Wait, hold up. Back off! Izzy!”

By the end of their sparring session she was more than convinced Izzy had in fact leveled up her ass kicking skills. (The shoe print on said ass proves that much at least…)

“Ouchies…”

---

“Ah, mija, there you are!” Her mother stopped her as she was about to leave the house.

“Uh, what’s up?” She asked, feeling like her plans for the day were about to be overwritten like the last time she left Seamus alone with her system.

(So many hours lost…) Her inner child wept.

(At least we did better on the next playthrough.) Her inner logic attempted to console.

(But it wasn’t even the game we left him on!)

“Well my schedule has cleared up a bit for the day, and I’ve decided to try and teach you something about cooking.” Her mamá explained dragging her into the kitchen.

“But, uh, why?”

“We’ve already covered all of this.” Her mother reminded her. “If you want to get through life you need to know how to cook for yourself and your family.”

“But I already know how to cook!” She couldn’t help but argue.

“Like three meals,” Her mother scoffed. “That’s nowhere near enough for a healthy diet.”

“But I-”

“Nah, nah, nah, that’s enough buts.” Her mother told her setting in front of the stove. “Now it’s time for cooking!”

“But-”

“Nah!”

---

By the time she managed to escape her mother’s clutches, it was a bit too late to make the trip to her lab and back, so instead of starting a new project like she’d intended, she proceeded to pull out her laptop and finish working on a program she’d begun a few days prior.

(Alright, and we’re sure this won’t melt our eyes out of our sockets this time?)

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes as she adjusted her headset on her face a bit. “Oh, don’t be such a drama queen.”

(To be fair the last time we did this you nearly blinded us.)

“That’s only because I mis-calibrated the facial scanner.” She scowled at herself. “And this time I made sure to account for the fact that the visor’s UI is projecting light as well as the scanner, so there shouldn’t be anything too bad.”

(So instead of blinding ourselves, we’re making it so we’ll need glasses in a few years?)

“Meh, we can just give ourselves laser eye surgery if it gets too bad.” She told herself, waving any concerns towards her long-term vision.

(And I’m getting Dead Space 2 flashbacks. Fun.)

(Honestly, it’s a miracle none of our siblings need glasses, given how our father has them.) Her inner logic pointed out.

“Technically that’s a degradation thing.” She explained, using her eyes to shift through a mostly empty menu on her HUD. “Our family’s vision deteriorates faster than most, so either way we might need glasses in another decade if we don’t do the whole eye surgery thing. Dad says he didn’t need them until he was almost thirty, though they said he should’ve started wearing them in high school.”

(Now that you mention it, doesn’t Vi wear contacts?)

“Yeah, she’s actually nearsighted as hell.”

(Hmm, this whole split memory thing is beginning to annoy me.) Her inner reason admitted with just a touch of irritation.

“Eh, don’t go looking at me. I don’t get how any of this works beyond you two are me, and the whispers tell me how to make cool shit.” She told her more logical self as she began looking around. “Like these things.”

With a slight twitch of her eye, a small filling circle appeared over her desk, before vanishing as soon as the circle filled and replacing itself with a small box that looked right above it telling her all sorts of things about the piece of furniture.

Looking around her room she began to fire off Scan () after Scan (), proving that she could now run the program through her headset.

“Oh, this is so cool!” She squee’d. “All we’ve got to do is make it passive, and it’ll be just like a video game!”

(I feel this isn’t going to help our distinction between reality and fiction at all…)

(Pfft, reality is overrated.)

---

Law was a boring subject as she quickly discovered.

Or at the very least the people who wrote laws saw fit for some ungodly reason to implement their own sub language of English to write said laws in a way that made them barely comprehensible to anyone who didn’t already have a law degree.

(That’s how they keep lawyers in business. No one likes them, so they created a difficult language and made it so other people needed them to do their job. That way they will never die out!) Her inner madness declared in a method worthy of the title known as a ‘conspiracy theory’. (But it is a conspiracy by the law!)

(It’s far more likely people simple need the language to be a specific as possible so as to keep people from misinterpreting it.) Her inner logic argued. (Well that and to slip in loopholes for big business to screw everyone over.)

“Look it doesn’t matter how the law is fucking us over, just that it is!” She told the voices in her head. “Now shut up all of this legalese is already giving me a headache without all of your arguing.”

(…)

(…)

(Out of curiosity why aren’t you just looking up laws related to independent heroes?) her inner reason questioned.

“That is what I’m doing!”

(Uh, yeah, but you’re looking at the complicated legal stuff. All we really need is the summary and public policy.) Her inner passion pointed out. (We don’t actually need to know how the law works, so much as whether or not we’re breaking it.)

(Quite.)

She blinked, before looking at the wall of text she’d spent the last hour slogging through and opening a second page on her laptop where she instead searched for a ‘Is it legal for heroes to (blank)?’ version of the law document she’d pulled up. Within minutes she found a much simpler version of the law she was looking up, and while there was wiggle room for context, the page itself was significantly easier to understand.

Upon seeing this, she continued to stare at the screen blankly for another good minute before inhaling deeply and-

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!”