Turn 40

--- Maya ---

“Come on, tell me~e!”

“Mm,” Ying paused to think about it. “No.”

“Why not?” She groaned as overdramatically as possible.

“Because your suffering amuses me.” Ying admitted with a smirk. “Besides, how I choose to spend my summer doesn’t really bear influence on you.”

“It does when it means I don’t get to see you all summer.” She pouted.

“Hmm,” Ying tapped her lips in thought, before grinning. “How about a compromise?”

“What kind of compromise?” She asked, recognizing that grin as an ill omen.

“Oh, nothing too extreme.” Ying assured her. “I’ll give you a hint, and you have to guess what I spend my summers doing. Your prize is of course having your curiosity settled.”

(I do not like the way she worded that.) Her survival instincts cautioned.

“And what’s your prize if I can’t?” She asked, agreeing with her inner logic.

“My amusement mostly, though if you want me to name something specific… I’m sure I can think of something.” Ying grinned with a few too many teeth.

(Okay, seriously what the fuck is up with Ying?!) Her inner passion panicked. (She was not like this before summer!)

(I don’t know, I mean she always enjoyed teasing people before but… it was always more of her dry sarcasm, and she was never this open about it either!)

(Quite…)

She blinked, before shaking her head. “Um, uh, that hint?”

Ying gave her a huff of amusement. “My summer involved children, a hunter, a dark well, and a fair bit of madness.”

(…)

(…)

(The fuck is all of that supposed to mean?)

She glared at Ying. “You know that’s not a real hint!”

“Really, because from my perspective that covers about half of my summer.” Ying admitted, pretending to be shocked that Maya couldn’t figure it out from that vague bit of information. “Well, if you really need it, I suppose I can give you one more hint.”

“Fine, but this better be an actual hint this time.” She warned.

Ying smiled. “Shenlong.”

She stared at her friend for a dry moment. “Eres un pendejo.”

“Now that’s just rude.”

“You know what Ying, Aisha’s my new best friend.” Maya decided as she took the few steps necessary to sit next to their new friend.

“Well, given the size of our friend circle wouldn’t that make her mine as well?” Ying asked, sitting on the other side of the confused girl.

“Um, what’s going on?” Aisha asked, not quite following since she’d been looking at her handheld game.

“You’re my new best friend and Ying has to find her own.” She explained, pulling Aisha closer to herself.

“Maya personal space.” Ying reminded her.

“Oh, sorry.” She apologized, letting the flustered girl go. “I sometimes forget about that kind of thing.”

“It’s uh, it’s no problem.” Aisha assured her with a nervous laugh even as she seemed to shrink in on herself as an awkward silence fell over them.

(Shit, I messed up already!) She knew she wasn’t the best at dealing with people given her various issues, and preference towards avoiding people, but she’d thought after getting along with Kim the couple of times they’d hung out she’d gotten over whatever caused her to screw up when dealing with other people.

(Apparently, not.)

Shaking her head, she glanced at the handheld Aisha had set down, before asking, “So, uh, what were you playing?” in an attempt to break the silence.

“Oh, it’s uh… King of the Masquerade…” Aisha admitted, though she sounded embarrassed by that fact.

Her eyes narrowed. “What faction?”

Aisha blinked. “Wonderlander Warfare?”

(Eww.)

She tilted her head from one side and then to the other. “I’ll allow it, but only because of their resource generation.”

Now Aisha’s eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with Wonderlander Warfare?”

“Aside from being the basic Wonderlander faction?” She asked, knowing that there were at least two Wonderlander factions who were more specialized than the base faction. “All of your units are weak outside of a couple of Masks.”

“Oh, you’re one of those.” Aisha sneered. “There is nothing wrong with playing a general faction over the specialized ones, and so what if Wonderlander minions are weak, they’re cheap and I can respawn them.”

“Yeah, but how much do those respawns cost you?”

“Not as much as I make without even pursuing objectives.”

“Because you can’t pursue them with the competition!”

“Which is why you chip away at all of the objectives, that way you can sweep in and steal them when the other players have to pull back.”

“If you want to play like that why not just play Traitorous Travelers?”

“Because that’s a specialized sub-faction again!”

“Which automatically makes it better! Back me up Ying!”

Ying blinked realizing everyone’s attention was on her. “I… have never played this game before in my life.”

Aisha visibly recoiled.

“I keep forgetting your mom’s a bitch, never letting you play video games, or have fun, or…” She trailed off in her grumblings earning an amused look from Ying.

“Quite.”

“Well, um… If you want, you can play a game on my handheld.” Aisha offered shyly.

Ying blinked again before giving their new friend a soft smile. “I would greatly appreciate that.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” She nodded, trying to encourage both Aisha and Ying. “Just so long as you play a real faction.”

“The basic factions are better for learning the game.” Aisha argued.

“Hmm, Arcane Arcanum?” Ying read scrolling through the device. “That sounds interesting.”

“Ha!”

“Traitor.”

---

Rather than make her way home, or to her lab, Maya instead responded to a text Kim had sent her about the M.A.D. club reopening for new members. Which is why she found herself waiting in the club’s lobby, while trying to pretend the secretary Carol wasn’t watching her like a hawk.

(Hmm, you’d think she’d be a little less aggressive after handing us our club ID.) Her inner reason admitted as she fiddled with the card and lanyard she’d been given.

(Meh, she’s probably just a bitch by default.) Her inner passion scoffed, as Kim finally entered the building.

“Hey, Maya, sorry it took me so long.”

“It’s no problem.” She assured the other M.A.D. “Honestly, I’m a bit nervous walking around a place where they know I’m an M.A.D.”

“Yeah, I can get that.” Kim nodded in sympathy. “I honestly wasn’t expecting you to put yourself down as an M.A.D. I mean, I had a feeling you were an M.A.D., but it usually takes new club members a few weeks before they’re comfortable outing themselves.”

“I… uh, I know what you mean.” She chuckled nervously.

After a moment, when she realized Maya had nothing else to say, Kim gestured towards the doors to the back of the building. “So, I guess I should give you a tour of the place?”

“That’d be appreciated.” She admitted as she followed the other M.A.D.

“Okay, so the majority of the building is dedicated to the science museum that keeps this place running.” Kim began, pointing towards a number of walls that were moving on their own. “A lot of the walls are rigged so that they can be moved and rearranged to fit whatever demonstration an M.A.D. is putting on. Though with the way things are it’ll probably be a week or two before we start doing tours again.”

“That bad?” She couldn’t help but ask.

“Yeah, the way things went at the festival set us back a good bit since a lot of our stuff was lost or stolen in the panic or confiscated by Sanctuary when they were doing their rounds.” Kim explained.

“Do they confiscate things a lot from here?”

(It’d be just like those fuckers to go taking everyone’s toys.)

“They only take things when we’re too close to an ‘incident’. And how much they take is usually proportional to how bad the incident is.” Kim admitted.

“That’s not right.” She frowned. “I mean it’s not like you guys caused any of that mess.”

“I know, but the way it was explained to me is that there’s this weird correlation between Deviants and Rifts.” Kim gnawed on her lip for a moment, apparently trying to remember just what she was told about the situation. “There not sure if its Rifts attracted to Deviants or the other way around, but there have been people of all Deviancies who can open Rifts even if those people are few and far between.”

“So, it’s considered a better safe than sorry kind of thing?” She finished, not liking the sound of that.

“Pretty much.” Kim shrugged, before turning her attention to a nearby set of doors. “Oh, since you’re an M.A.D. this is going to be important, this here is our material requisitions area.” The other M.A.D. told her while opening the door to reveal shelves filled with various bits and pieces of metal, plastics, and circuitry. “This one is just for our more mechanically minded M.A.D.s while we’ve got another one on the other side of the building for the more organic materials you might need. Though that’s admittedly just a bunch of rooms with soil, water, and windows to get in some sunlight.”

“Isn’t that all most Bio-M.A.D.s need?” She wondered, knowing she could do a fair bit with that much even if her bio-pods made the whole affair easier.

“Eh, some need actual animals, and that’s a whole lot of paperwork you’re going to have to fill out on your own.” Kim told her. “I’ve already got my hands full with everything I have to do for my ham-pets.”

“That’s fair.” She shrugged, not seeing any problem with that given how she could just keep any ‘active’ bio-minions at the hospital.

“Oh, that does remind me.” Kim stopped and grabbed a series of forms off of a table in the requisitions room. “If you want we can probably reserve a room for you and your projects, but I’m going to need to know what your specialty is to do that.”

“My specialty?” Maya repeated.

“Yeah, you have any idea what yours is? It’s okay if you don’t.” Kim assured her.

“Um…”

(I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell her about our reality hacking.) Her inner logic warned.

(Yeah, we don’t need to get our asses kidnapped again.)

“It’s a bit of this and that.” She tried, before pulling her COMP out. “I built this thing, and it’s got a bunch of sensors and stuff I can use, but I’ve also had a few ideas for a couple of plants and such.”

“Mm, well while most people specialize in machines or organics, sometimes M.A.D.s will have a theme instead…” Kim admitted in an unsure tone. “Though those guys are usually a bit higher in the Rankings…”

“Is… is that going to be a problem?” She asked, remembering how Kim had told her about the way the club didn’t have any high-ranking members to try and avoid gang attention.

Kim bit her lip. “Yes and no? So long as you don’t make anything too advanced they’re shouldn’t be a problem.”

“And how will I know if something is too advanced?”

Kim just shrugged. “You’re going to have to play it by ear, but it sounds like you’ve got a medical theme going on so it shouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“Uh, yeah…” She nodded, trying to ignore the fact that the machine in her hands was passively generating enough power to run this entire building if not the block, as well as having the knowledge necessary to bend gravity over its knee. “No trouble at all…”

---

Given how she didn’t have much time left in the day to actually work on anything -and the fact that the whispers kept bugging her to build something- she decided to try looking at and finishing the project she’d been working on before she’d gotten her nose bleed a few days prior.

“Okay, do either of you actually remember writing any of this?” She asked herself, as she shifted through a number of modifications to her Simple AI that would enable it to be able to crack more secure computers and even access any public servers those computers may be attached to without her having to take direct control of it.

(No… I was admittedly out of it towards the end of the day.) Her inner logic admitted.

(Same.) Her inner madness metaphorically nodded. (Though I do think it was my part of the brain that was bleeding, so let’s try to avoid that next time okay?)

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “My brain wasn’t ‘bleeding’ my nose was.”

(You do know that nosebleeds and ‘worst headache of my life’ are the common symptoms of a brain aneurysm, don’t you?) Her inner passion asked dryly.

“Quit exaggerating.” She told her inner child, as she began cleaning up the mess of code in front of her, her migraine apparently having wrecked her equivalent of a coding grammar.

(Regardless of if our other self is exaggerating, we may not wish to push ourselves that hard again.) Her inner reason chimed in. (After all, we don’t want to push Izzy even further than we already have.)

She frowned, her fingers stopping just above her keyboard. “I guess so…”

(Good, because there are three of us in here, plus the whispers, and it’s cramped enough without us losing any real estate to brain damage.)