Turn 67- Talks and a Decision

--- Maya ---

Coming across Vi working on one of her school projects at the kitchen table, a thought popped into Maya’s head. (Hey, isn’t Vi taking a Deviant studies class?)

(Yeah, and?)

(Do you think those Bleed monsters pop up in her lessons?)

(Why would they?)

(Ah, I see.) Her inner logic cut in, realizing where their other self was going. (Given how they’re dealt with by heroes, hunters, and or Sanctuary, these creatures might be considered a Deviant threat.)

(Yeah, that.)

(Huh, that makes sense.) She admitted to herself, before turning her attention back to her elder sister. “Hey, uh, Vi I have a question, but I’m not entirely sure if you can help?”

Vi blinked, looking up from her work. “Huh, uh, what’s up, My?”

“Right, so you’re taking a Deviant studies class, and I was kind of wondering if you were also covering things like the Rifts and Bleeds, and stuff like that?” She tried to explain.

“Uh, well we don’t really go in depth about where the rifts all go -Since that’s a separate class altogether.- but we do at least get an overview about them.” Vi answered, before asking. “Why?”

“No, it’s just I was thinking about that mess at the summer festival the other month, and realized I don’t actually know all that much about Bleeds and those monsters, or even how they’re dealt with beyond calling Sanctuary or a Hunter.”

“Right.” Vi grimaced at the reminder of that mess. “Well, uh, where to start? Okay, so do you know the difference between a Rift and a Bleed?”

She considered it for a moment before shrugging. “Rifts are portals to other worlds while Bleeds spit out monsters?”

Vi’s face scrunched up as she gave a so-so gesture. “Sort of. Rifts are portals to other worlds but so are Bleeds, the big difference is that Bleeds are more… invasive almost, with Creeps -That’s what everyone calls them.- tearing their way through and ending up here.”

“And how do they do that?” She frowned.

“Magic, Madness, no idea.” Vi admitted with a shrug. “We just know that Rifts stay open for a prolonged period of time, while Bleeds open for short intervals but can have a lot more of them open at one time, spreading the whole mess out. Also it’s fifty-fifty on if a Rift will lead somewhere hostile, while given how they’re invading it’s almost guaranteed with Bleeds.”

“Okay…” Most of that was stuff she could figure out from her Deviant Masquerade games, -(though I always thought creep was just another word for a game mob). At the same time however, having those details confirmed was helpful in its own way. “Oh, actually that reminds me? Since it’s from my games I’m not sure if it holds true, but what about those Boss Creeps?”

“Uh, those are real.” Vi nodded with another scrunched up look. “I’m not sure how it works, but apparently when a lot of weak Creeps die near each other it’ll attract the attention of a bigger Creep, though I only really know that from watching a couple of Masks dealing with Bleeds on the news.”

(Meaning even if I clear out all of the monsters running around the hospital, )

---

“I uh, I feel like this isn’t quite… right?” Aisha admitted in their party chat.

“Yeah, because no one is playing any fear spamming bitches!” She cursed, as her character looked down on a small group of enemies guarding an objective.

“Um, that’s… not really the uh, problem.” Her friend pointed out.

“Then what is?” She asked, legitimately confused since the entire point of this little gaming session was for her to try and kill the users of that (stupid) form of crowd control.

“Several things…” Aisha muttered on the mic. “But uh, you do know that fear isn’t really an effect in this game, right?”

“What are you talking about?” She frowned. “I know like five Masks with fear effects that make their enemies run away. I mean just look at the Vigils, even the nice guy of the group has one!”

“Yeah, for the um mobs, but they don’t really, uh, work that way on other masks. Instead they um, they lower stats, disrupt focus, and cause stun damage depending on the, uh, upgrades.” Aisha reminded her nervously. “And the, uh, runaway thing only happens when you max the effect on standard mobs.”

(Not quite what happened to us then.)

(Eh, it’s close enough for the bitches to deserve to die.)

(Agreed.)

“Still, I haven’t found any of them to beat up!” She growled, both at her words and the fact that an enemy player killed her after she’d cleared the objective guards, effectively stealing it from her.

“That’s uh…” Aisha sighed, before continuing in a resigned tone. “If you want to beat up fear users, why are we playing PVP?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Bleed Maps all have at least one fear spamming unit.” Aisha explained. “In fact they’re one of the more common enemies after Ravagers and Husks.”

(Husks?) That sounded familiar.

(Because it’s what Officer Whitaker called those monsters from the summer festival.)

“The most annoying are the, -gah, what was it?- something phobius.” Her friend continued unaware of her revelation. “I don’t know most people just call them bloodhounds since they come from Bleeds and look like these furless red werewolf things.”

“Furless red werewolf?” She repeated, making a connection she really didn’t like.

“Well aside from this really matted black hair on their heads, it really makes their glowing eyes stand out.” Aisha told her. “Though it's most visible on the night maps.”

“Huh…” She frowned, knowing something that matched that description a little too well.

(You know we probably should’ve seen this coming when Vi confirmed how realistic our games actually are.)

(Well, at least we can actually kill the fear spamming fuckers in our game rather than pretending that’s what we’re doing.)

---

“So uh, what are you working on there?” Kim asked, looking over her shoulder to get a better look at the piece of electronics and plastic in her hand.

“A rebreather.” She answered, trying very hard to keep the other M.A.D. from seeing the bits that also made her headset a Mask’s mask.

(You know perhaps working on our mask at the club was a mistake…) Her inner logic couldn’t help but point out. (Especially since we’re trying to hide our desire to be a hero at the moment.)

(Bah, fuck our secret identity if it means being labeled a minion.)

(I’m fairly certain Melvin was just joking when he told us that.) Her inner reason admitted before mentally frowning. (Also isn’t that an insult to all of our minions?)

(You leave my babies out of this!)

Kim gave her a look. “Uh-huh, and why exactly do you need a rebreather?”

“Um,” (Quick brain, come up with a lie for me!)

(I got squat.)

(Same.)

(Well fuck you too!)

“I’ve… got allergies.” She admitted, which while not an actual lie, wasn't the reason she was building the rebreather, especially since her filter already took care of that stuff for her. “And since I’m starting to work on those healing herb things, I figured it’d be good to have something to keep any pollen out of my eyes and lungs.”

“That makes sense.” Kim nodded, seemingly buying her lie. “You know I never actually thought about what I’d do if I was allergic to one of my critters.”

“Well, unfortunately some of us are allergic to the stuff we work with… or some of it anyway.” She continued, going all in with her lie.

---

(Uh, are we sure we want to do this?) Her inner madness asked with some reluctance.

“It’s not like we have much of a choice.” She sighed, spinning in her chair as her computer compiled the basic programs to bounce her phone around and leave her anonymous on her next call. “Especially if, with our luck, something goes wrong on Halloween which is barely two weeks away.”

(And it also happens to be a full moon this year.) Her inner reason tacked on to underline that point.

“Yeah, Halloween with a full moon, you know something is going down on that night.” She told herself.

(But the heroes are going to know where our base is.) Her inner child whined. (And then they’ll be snooping through our stuff, and watching us, and they’ll probably come over to try and recruit us and all of that garbage.)

(If worse comes to worse, we can always change bases.) Her inner logic pointed out.

(Yeah, but then we’d have to abandon our servers, our generator, the LCM’s stuff and make the minions move to a whole new place on top of it!) Her maternal instincts reminded her. (And the hospital is all the LCMs know!)

“Okay, then what would you suggest?” She asked herself. “I mean we could fight the Creeps in the hospital but there’s no telling if that’ll get rid of them permanently, and then there’ll be the Boss Creep on top of those fuckers.”

(True, but then again we never did look into how exactly Bleeds are dealt with beyond the matter of simply fighting them. And we only know that bit works due to those Mask videos Vi showed us.) Her inner reason threw out, playing devil’s advocate. (Then again if we must fight them, perhaps having the Heroes’ Guild on our side could be of some aid.)

(Or they’d sideline us while trying to get us to join up.) Her inner passion argued. (And on top of that what’s to keep them from trying to confiscate our stuff if they decide it’s too dangerous for a civilian?)

(I doubt they’d do that given how it would alienate any M.A.D. they try to pull it with.) Her inner logic dismissed. (And the only reason we didn’t sign up with them in the first place was because it would require us to out ourselves to our parents, which as long as we don’t reveal our identity they cannot do themselves.)

(You think that’d stop them? If they want to know who we are they’ll figure it out one way or another.) Her inner Madness scoffed. (And the reason we didn’t sign up for them in the first place is because we wanted a way to make money off of this to help out family! Something we can still do as an independent even if we didn’t take the villain route. While I’m sure those goody-two-shoes will want to confiscate all of the money for their own funds like the police do!)

(We don’t have to join them just because they can find us.) Her inner reason told her other self. (And even if we did I’m sure they would offer us proper funding and resources in exchange for following their rules-)

(Rules and red tape that could slow us down!) Her inner passion cut in. (Right now we can focus on and do whatever we want, but if we join them we’d have to do whatever they tell us to or else have those precious resources cut off!)

(As I said we do not have to join them regardless of if they press, but having allies in the Mask community could only be beneficial to us!)

(What about the Masks who aren’t part of the Guild, I doubt they’ll want to see much of us if we sold out!)

(And where exactly do you see these other masks?)

(Just because we haven’t met them doesn’t mean they aren’t there!)

(That is hardly-)

“Will you both shut up!” She yelled, ending the argument that was giving her a migraine.

Silence echoed around her both from within and without.

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath before slowly letting it out as she made her decision.