Turn 76: Mysteries, Secrets, And Tragedies

--- Maya ---

“So what did you two end up doing for Halloween?” She asked Ying and Aisha as they all sat down for lunch the following Monday. “Anything fun?”

“No, just one of the usual holiday parties my mother puts on for every holiday.” Ying shrugged, her eyes flashing with a look of irritation. “All in all it was just another evening of dealing with people wearing a mask all night…” The other teen grew a smirk. “Though I suppose they were wearing two this evening.”

Aisha gave Ying a concerned look before shaking her head. “Um, my family didn’t do much for Halloween with the curfew and everything… Ommi, er, my mother thought about taking us to one of those police parties they do, but my, uh, father… decided it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

She couldn’t help but grimace as she remembered how her family’s trip to the local station, the same one Aisha’s family might have gone to. “Yeah, that was… that was probably a good call… The, uh, the local station ended up having a Creep invasion.”

“What?” Ying frowned as her eyes snapped over.

“Right, not sure if that made the news yet, but uh, the local station was overrun with Creeps. Um, none of the civilians were hurt, or at least no one in my family was, but I doubt that was a fun experience.”

Yings scowl deepened as she pulled out her phone. “I don’t suppose either of you knows how many stations are in our city?”

“Uh, no.” She shook her head, not getting why Ying wanted to know.

(Hmm, curious…)

“Are you… you said no one in your family was hurt, r-right?” Aisha asked, recapturing her attention.

“Uh, yeah, no. Everyone is safe. In fact I wasn’t even there when it happened.” She admitted.

“You weren’t?” Aisha frowned, more in curiosity than whatever was going on with Ying.

“No, my uh, my older brother and sister took me to this party down by the trainyard.” She explained, before thinking about it and adding. “It, uh, it wasn’t my thing so we cut out early.”

(Probably best not to worry her about the whole fire Deviant thing…)

“That’s good.” Aisha nodded looking relieved.

(Yeah, no need to upset the card waifu over something that didn’t happen.)

“Damn it, of course it was that station.” Ying cursed suddenly.

“Uh, everything okay, Ying?” She asked, a little wary of her usually calm friend’s outburst.

Ying blinked as if just remembering they were there before slipping on a smile and nodding as she stood from her seat. “Yes, everything is perfectly fine. I simply need to make a phone call. I will be back in but a moment.”

She couldn’t help but frown as she watched Ying walk away. “Okay… That was weird… right?”

Scene Consequences

-Grown closer to Aisha and Ying.

---

After everything that had happened over the previous night, it took her a fair bit of convincing to get her mamá to let her out of the house on her own, but eventually she managed to get permission to leave and take care of a few personal errands such as visiting the M.A.D. club to meet up with Kim.

“Hey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” She admitted with little prelude.

“Hmm, what’s up?” Kim blinked, one of her little critters in hand as it practiced several vocal exercises in a deep bass of a voice.

“I wanted to ask you what the um, policy is about inviting family to the club.” She explained. “I’m pretty sure you told me, but I’ve uh, I’ve kind of forgotten what you said…”

“Oh, uh, give me a sec.” Kim raised her hand and made a gesture to the little critter she was holding, who in turn nodded before hopping off of her hand and scurrying away. “Okay, so as long as you’ve been here for roughly sixty days you can bring over whomever you want, you’ll just have to do some paperwork stuff with Carol at the front.”

“What kind of… paperwork?” She grimaced as she followed the other teen out of the room, remembering all of the forms she had to fill out upon joining the club.

“Just standard liability stuff, like how you’re responsible for any damages your guest causes..” Kim answered, before quickly adding. “And how they acknowledge they cannot sue us if there’s another robot uprising or something during their time here.”

“Robot uprising?” She repeated with a bit of wariness.

Kim gave her a nervous chuckle. “Heh, uh, yeah, um… Oh, look, it's Carol! Carol, we need your help getting some guest forms for Maya here!”

The overworked blonde let out a sigh, before beginning to click things on her tablet.

“Uh, Kim, that didn’t really answer my question about the robo-” Her mouth snapped shut as Carol glared at her and Kim both.

“We do not talk about the incident.” The older woman told them through grit teeth. “Understand?”

“Mm-hmm.” They both nodded.

“Very good.” Carol nodded back before looking at her tablet. “Hmm, you’re still a couple of weeks early from being able to bring guests but if you fill out the paperwork now, I’m willing to allow you to start bringing them as of next weekend. So long as you only bring one guest at a time.”

“But I kind of wanted to bring both my…” She trailed off under the secretary’s stern look.

Carol tapped a few more things on her tablet. “I’ve added a single double ticket, but this does not include our typical tour package. Any guests you bring are not allowed to attend any shows or events our other members are putting on during the day of their visit.”

“R-right, that uh, that sounds good.” She accepted, not wanting to further irritate the older woman.

“Good, now follow along so we can sort this out. I’ve many other things I need to get done before someone burns this place to the ground.”

Scene Consequences

-Starting Turn 80, Maya can invite people to the M.A.D. club.

---

(You’re stalling.)

“What? No I’m not.” She scoffed, continuing to chip away at the mini-stealth packs she was making for her DMs.

(Yeah, we’re just getting the DMs ready for their assassin evolutions.)

That made her pause. “Uh, what?”

(You know, when we rebuild the DMs for their Mk. 2 forms. We’re going to have to focus them in one direction or another, so whatever upgrades we give them are going to tell us what those directions are!) Her inner madness explained as if this were obvious. (It is.)

“If life was a video game or something.” She mumbled with a shake of her head.

(Poor naive Maya…)

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She frowned.

(Multiple things, but for the sake of the wall, I will point out that if you joined the Gamer’s Guild life really would become a game.)

“At the price of possibly enslaving myself to the guild.” She reminded herself. “Which I thought you were supposed to be against my inner paranoia?”

(But Madness makes me all tingly on the inside!) Her inner idiot (Hey!) cheered before pausing for a moment. (Er, line? No, wait I remember! Ahem. Well, inside the inside anyway since I’m already inside of your head.)

She pinched the bridge of her nose, wondering if she should even begin trying to piece any of that insanity together.

(I would suggest not.) Her inner logic warned. (That way lies Madness…)

(Ooh, more tinglies!)

“What’s it going to take for you two to shut up for five minutes so I can finish this upgrade for the DMs?” She asked herself, hoping to side step her growing migraine.

(...)

(...)

(Will quit procrastinating?)

“I’m not procrastinating!” She groaned.

(Really, because the LCMs can easily finish up what’s left of the stealth packs.) Her inner reason pointed out.

“What, no they-” She paused upon seeing her three little critter minions had in fact finished one of the stealth packs while she was distracted with herself. “Okay, so they can…”

(Meaning?)

“Fine…”

Scene Consequences

-Drone Minions upgraded to Mk. 1.2

--Drone Minions can now use any Stealth Protocol() functions.

---

Unable to stall any longer- (I was not stalling!) -she was forced to once more begin looking through the files and records of one Elizabeth Addams, a young woman who had passed away around her age, and was currently living in her basement.

“Right, okay…” She nodded to herself after a while of gathering what information she could from the internet. A feat that was notably more difficult given how Elizabeth had died before social media had hit it big and towards the end of the Rift Riots when a lot of records were… sketchy at best. “I think I’ve got an idea of what happened… or the broad strokes at least…”

Unfortunately it wasn’t much of a happy picture.

“From what I can tell Elizabeth’s family lived here around twenty years ago but left around the time Elizabeth passed away. Not too surprising though the fact that when her family does eventually pop on social media they don’t have anyone around her baby’s age means this is a dead end on that front.” She had to admit, having hoped the baby had simply grown up with Elizabeth’s family rather than wound up in the system.

This lack of information is what had really forced her hand to finish reading the Deadwoman’s hospital reports.

“She was admitted to the hospital due to claiming to know things she shouldn’t, and a mix of audio visual hallucinations. Something that some of the doctors suspected of being a Deviancy, but hoped that due to its mental nature… they could cure.” She grimaced, unable to help but imagine herself in Elizabeth’s place given the whispers her own Deviancy left her with.

(I really am lucky Iron Guardian made us all look sane…) She sighed before shaking her head and forcing herself to continue.

“Due to the fact that Deviants had only been public for a few years, they couldn’t figure out what her Deviancy was… Though I’m guessing she was either a weak Psychic or… an M.A.D…”

Her fingers tapped against her work table, her mind blanking out for a moment the same way it had when she’d first come to that possibility.

“Technically her family could’ve kept her from being institutionalized, but when asked for permission to… ‘cure’ her, her family gave it. I’d want to give them the benefit of the doubt about them being worried about a Deviant with Asylum still fresh on everyone’s mind, but the psychos who ran this place made a note about her parents being unable to cover a second scandal like they had the fact that Elizabeth was an unwed mother…” She may not have been alive in the nineties but she knew enough about how things used to be to know that was a big no-no, especially when at the time their state was a place of ‘traditional’ values.

Which was another point of the local past that bothered her, given how double checking what those traditional values were had led to the discovery that her being bi would’ve been illegal just a year prior to her birth. (At least it’s a little better now…)

Running a hand down her face, she had to once more force herself to continue. “Between the fact that her mental conditions had led to her being expelled from the unwed mother’s home her parents had sent her to, and the possible Deviancy her parents seemingly washed their hands of her with no future visits on record.”

(Please tell me we’re going to cyber-bully them into oblivion?) Her inner passion begged.

“We’ll ruin their lives after we help fix Elizabeths.” She promised herself with no small amount of disgust. “Alongside any doctors who worked at this hell hole, because with her parents’ permission to remove her Deviancy, Elizabeth spent the last few years of her life being used as a guinea pig for the doctors. With her obedience ensured with the promise of seeing her daughter just so long as she remained a ‘good girl’.”

“A daughter the fucking doctors had lost, and had no idea where she was!” She yelled, throwing the wretched file off her table.

Filling no small amount of rage she held her head in her hands as she tried to think of anything she could do to make this horrible wrong, right.

“We’ve got to find Elizabeth’s daughter.”

Scene Consequences

-Gained (4D6 = 14 + Crit D6 = 5 =) 19 Intel towards Elizabeth investigation.

--Current Progress: 64/100.