Turn 54

--- Maya ---

Sitting in her classes having finished her work (very) early, she was left with more than enough time to try and figure out how she was going to find the person responsible for putting Tommy under a Slaver effect.

(The most obvious solution would be to try and gather the funds necessary to hire Hack & Slash once more.) Her inner reason supplied.

(Yeah, no. I don’t care for that one.) She admitted to herself, not wanting to rely on someone else to deal with this kind of thing, no matter how much easier and safer it would be for all parties involved. (Still not doing it.)

(Well, given how that cancels out the next most obvious choice of letting Sanctuary or the Heroes’ Guild deal with this, our next best bet would be to talk to Tommy. Though we’ll likely have to wait until he was actually feeling well enough to leave his bed, before trying that.) Her inner logic continued. (From there we’d have to actually look into the local Arcane scene, if we want to track down a rogue Arcane.)

(Right, though that’s not something we can do given how they probably don’t just advertise that kind of thing online.) She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

(Given human stupidity we may be surprised.) Her inner passion argued with a scoff. (Though there’s also people we could ask for help with that kind of thing, without handing it over to someone else.)

(There is that Arcane club I guess, but I’m not sure how much help they’ll be with this kind of thing.) She frowned. (I mean they’re supposed to be a bunch of posers aren’t they?)

(Perhaps they do know a thing or two about their given subject matter?) Her inner reason mentally shrugged, wanting to believe in the intelligence of humanity.

(Yeah, no, that’s not what I was talking about.) Her inner madness shot down bluntly. (I was thinking more about trying to call Decker. He might want a favor for helping us but he’s also a gang lieutenant, so he’s probably got a line on things we don’t.)

She couldn’t help but blink at the sheer insanity of that idea. (This, this is why we call you my inner madness.)

(No wait, they’re may be some merit to this idea.) Her inner logic stepped in.

(You can’t be serious.)

(I’m not calling it a good idea, I’m saying there may be merit in at least seeing if he can point us in the right direction.) Her inner reason explained. (At the very least it could set up a line of contact for a criminal informant if things play out decently.)

(Uh, still don’t like that idea.) She grimaced, before offering her own alternative. (What if we could try running a couple of Tommy’s pictures through our Informant Network () instead?)

(That could work, but with our current parameters it’ll only flag someone if they have a criminal record, or a very public face.) Her inner logic pointed out.

(Still a better idea than going to the gang lieutenant we picked a fight with month before last.)

(Eh, you never know. Cabron might not even be holding a grudge.)

---

“So what’s up?” She asked, having only been half paying attention when Aisha had dragged her and Ying to the library to play a game.

“Well, um, the thing is…” Aisha mumbled along nervously. “There’s this uh, game I’ve been wanting to play, but um, I’ve never had enough fr- er, people to play it with.”

(Ah, she’s embarrassed to be a social outcast, how cute!) Her inner passion cooed.

(That’s… that’s not a good thing.) Her inner reason pointed out, though whether towards Aisha’s status or the other voice’s reaction she couldn’t tell. (Just to be clear it was both.)

“Well, we’re all gamer girls, so what game do you want to play?” She tried to encourage awkwardly, remembering how she’d felt in grade school back before Ying had befriended her.

“Okay, so, um, you know about the Deviant’s Masquerade games, right?”

“The series published by the Arcane Association with copyright permissions from Sanctuary and the Heroes’ Guild to try and spread Deviant awareness and acceptability while also turning enough profit to help fund their numerous charities and the guild?” Ying checked before noticing the other girls staring at her and nodding. “Yes, I know a thing or two about it.”

(More than a thing or two from the sound of it…)

(Seriously, how does she know more about Deviants than us?!)

(Well, we do spend the majority of our time inventing rather than studying other Deviancies.) Her inner logic reminded her other selves.

“Right, well um, they have a tabletop version of the game and I was wondering if you two would mind… getting together every so often to play?” Aisha asked a little nervously. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to but, I know Maya likes games, and I’ve always wanted to try it so…”

“Sure, that’s one of the few I can’t get my siblings to play.” She admitted, knowing that game wasn’t allowed for the Williams Sibling Game Night due to the fact that by the time everyone’s turn to pick had passed everyone had forgotten what was going on in-game.

(Well that and you’re all far too competitive to work all together.) Her inner reason added dryly.

(We must maintain Alpha sibling status!) Her inner madness shot back.

(Doesn’t Vi currently have Alpha sibling status?)

(Only because she cheats at cards.)

“G-great!” Aisha smiled, Ying apparently having agreed while she was busy arguing with herself. “Hold on, I have character sheets printed out here!”

The excited teen reached into her backpack before handing a set of pages to each of them, and setting a book on the table between the three of them.

“Um, I feel this might be a little more complex than I was expecting…” Ying admitted, not sounding like she actually minded that detail as she pulled the book to herself. “So how exactly does this work?”

“Well first you have to decide what kind of character you want.” She supplied filling in her own sheet, based on what she could remember from the video game version of the RPG. “You can pick any of the given expansions accepted Deviancies or non-, and then you just sort of go from there. Assigning a number of stat and skill points based on whatever starting Rank our characters are going to be?” She gave Aisha a look at that.

“Oh, um, E-Rank.” Aisha answered, having already filled in her character sheet before this. “Which means ten points for primary and secondary stats both, plus forty skill levels with eight being the cap for skills. Excluding Deviancy bonuses.”

“Primary and secondary stats?” Ying asked, reading over the outlines of each Deviancy in the character creation section.

“The primary four are Physical, Mental, Reflexive, and Social, with each having three sub-stats depending on what the main stat does. You then add the two together to decide how many dice you roll for a given type of action as well as certain stat bonuses.” She explained, once more keeping her Social stats at the minimum while focusing on her Mental stats.

(Like a good M.A.D.)

“I see…” Ying nodded, before frowning as she read something on one of the Deviancies and flipping to another section.

“Oh you can also break your primary stat points into two secondary stats.” Aisha added in helpfully. “They’re technically worth less that way, but it makes it easier to min-max your stats.”

“Huh.” Ying grunted, more focused on what she was reading than what they were saying. “Out of curiosity is there a way to use an Arcane in a more melee role? Because this doesn’t seem to have that.”

She looked up from where she was assigning her skill points and blinked. “Uh, technically, though they aren’t really built for it? They’re more about summoning allies, attacking from a distance, and making gear for everyone than getting into an upclose brawl.”

“I see…” Ying frowned in thought. “So up close magic users aren’t a thing in the game… hmm.”

“Um, if you want a more, uh, warrior-like magic-user, Deadmen and Malcontent tend to work in that role.” Aisha offered. “I mean you’d have to take both a Reputation and Hunger debuff due to their, uh… situations but you could still use them.”

“And what would the difference between the two be?” Ying asked curiously.

“Well... Most Deadmen characters make for better Infiltrators and most Malcontent have a scaling buff/debuff the longer they fight.” Aisha explained after thinking about it for a moment. “Oh, though both are also limited to a single ‘Affinity’ if you want to go that route.”

“Hmm… I can work with that.” Ying nodded, beginning to fill in her character sheet.

“You sure? Because those are probably the hardest Deviancies to play.” She felt the need to point out. “It might be a bit much for your first RPG in general.”

“I think I’ll be able to handle it.” Ying argued, filling her Deviancy section out first.

“If you’re sure.” She hedged, before blinking as she read Ying’s chosen attribute. “Huh, ‘Storm’… that is actually a really broken affinity all things considered.”

Ying gave her a snort of amusement as she smiled. “Yes, yes it is.”

---

Once she was done setting up for the first game with the girls next week, she made her way to her lab to try and work on a skill she felt was going to be of extreme importance over the course of the next few weeks. Of course that necessity did not mean much for her actual ability with said skill.

“How am I still missing?!” She screamed after missing her twentieth shot in a row.

(Because you apparently can’t hit the broadside of a barn?)

“But I managed to hit stuff the last time we did this!”

(Beginner’s luck?)

“Fu-” (The minions are watching.) “-dge luck!”

(Out of curiosity why aren’t we taking a more… unique approach to this problem.)

“What do you mean?” She asked just a touch too aggressively. “Not the time.”

(What she’s talking about is an aimbot.) Her inner madness answered. (Though we’d be admitting we’re a scrub if we do that.)

(We’re an M.A.D., using tech to cheat is our entire Deviancy.) Her inner reason argued. (Ergo practicing a skill we can hack is the act of a scrub.)

(I want to argue but you have a fairly valid point.) Her inner passion admitted.

She considered the voices’ suggestion before looking at her hand cannons and focusing on the whispers, slowly pulling out their ideas for rapidly improving her aim.

“Yeah…” (Training is for scrubs.)

---

Despite having an idea for using her programming to help improve her aim, she decided that she wanted to spend the rest of the day doing something other than focusing on her failed marksmanship practice. This combined with remembering Jack’s words about him and his partner’s scanning abilities, is why she instead got to work on improving her own Scan() capabilities.

Namely by creating a system by which she could quantify and classify the various things her scanner had picked up on. A system that as she slowly pieced it together, she came to a revelation that had the gamer in her slowly growing more and more excited.

(We need it!) Her inner madness declared as she began running simulations on how best to quantify structural damage to a given object, as well as how to determine what said object’s maximum damage threshold was.

(Normally, I’d find a reason to argue with her just to be contrary or play devil’s advocate, but in this case I wholeheartedly agree.) Her inner logic admitted. (We need it!)

“I know.” She told herself with just as much need as she continued to work away at the program that would essentially let her quantify the world around her into one massive RPG. “We need it.”

Sadly-

(No.)

-as the day weighed on and her curfew began to approach-

(Come on don’t do this to us!) She begged.

(I’m sorry, I have no choice in the matter.) Her reason whimpered.

-she found she didn’t have enough time to finish her program.

(Motherfucker!)

(I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…)

(Fuck you quest game balance! FUCK YOU TO HELL!)