Turn 25

--- Maya ---

Having fled the hospital after that nightmarish encounter, Maya rapidly made her way back to her home in the desperate hopes of forgetting about the whole thing.

(We should just ditch the hospital and set up somewhere else!) Her inner emotion cried. (I mean we’ve already got a minion at the Trainyard, so why don’t we move shop over there?)

(Because our Base Generator isn’t exactly mobile.) Her inner reason pointed out. (What’s more, we’d have to waste an entire day setting up a new base, while throwing away all of our work on the hospital.)

(If it means not getting our ass haunted, let the bitch have the hospital!)

“Look, let’s… let’s just see if there’s a way to deal with the ghost, without abandoning the hospital.” She eventually told the voices in her head.

Already knowing she was going to have trouble sleeping, she stayed up later than she probably should’ve been trying to find ways of dealing with the undead online.

This of course led her to even more videos of Deadmen eating people.

(Come on let’s just abandon the place…) Her inner child whimpered as they closed another horrifying clip less than a minute into it.

“No, I’m not quitting that easy.” She argued, the Williams’ stubbornness shining through. “Look, we just need to figure out how other people deal with hauntings. I mean it can’t be that uncommon for a Deadman to haunt a place.”

(I believe most people would call Sanctuary in such a situation.) Her inner reason pointed out.

(Yeah, no.) Her inner passion vetoed. (I’d rather deal with the ghost than those racist assholes.)

“Right… Since we can’t call Sanctuary, -and I don’t think this falls under the hero’s guild’s charter since they’re all about saving people, dead people included- who should we call?” She asked herself.

(What about a local hunter?) Her inner logic offered, after all in a world filled with rifts to other worlds, Arcane summoned anomalies, and M.A.D. crafted monstrosities, who better to deal with those than someone who makes a living hunting all of them.

(But aren’t most of those guys just assholes looking for a TV deal?) Her inner child countered, remembering the various shows they’d seen online and on the TV about people hunting non-threats.

“No, at least a few of them would have to be legit.” She agreed with her reason, remembering a news report about how Deviants were more comfortable asking Hunters for help than Sanctuary. (Which holds true here.)

“The trick this though, is going to be sorting through all of the posers for someone who can actually handle a haunting.” She decided as she began to shift through the handful of hunter agencies in her city.

(Then we’d also have to explain why a teenager wants a hospital de-haunted.) Her logic reminded her.

(Yeah, I doubt we want to tell some random fuck we’re building an M.A.D. lair in it.)

“Right. That is going to be a problem…” She admitted.

(Still at the very least we might be able to get pointers from a professional on how to handle our problem.) Her inner reason told her.

“Mm-hmm, oh here’s something that might help either way.” She commented as she pulled up an article on determining if a hunter was a hack or not. “Okay, let’s see… Skipping to the bit on dealing with hauntings…”

Her eyes drifted through the article, seeing if she could find something immediately useful to herself or not. “Alright, so from what I can tell while most Hunter Agencies hire people of all deviancies and non, they always have someone who can practice ‘magic’ and that’s usually the person they send to find out if something funny is going on.”

(Meaning this is outside our wheelhouse.)

(No.) Her inner madness disagreed. (Meaning we need to hack magic.)

(Which is probably beyond our current skill level.) Her inner logic felt the need to point out. (Especially since it’s its own system of doing much the same.)

“Yeah, we’d probably have to start from scratch if we wanted to take that route, and I doubt the whispers will be all that helpful with it.” She agreed. “But since we already know we’re haunted, we just have to figure out how to deal with it.”

(Well, according to this most Hunters if they aren’t trying to outright kill a Deadman, which this says is a sign of a hack given how hard they are to kill, then they’ll try to find the Deadman’s ‘obsession’ so that they can negotiate getting the spirit to leave.)

“Alright, and how do we do that?”

(It says the easiest way is to find the Deadman’s identity and use that to find out what was important to said Deadman when they were still alive.)

(Wait, hold up. Weren’t we just watching videos of Deadmen eating people?) Her inner fear reminded them. (If we mess with this thing it might try to eat us.)

“No, this says that if a Deadman haunts a specific location then usually they’ll lack the thing that makes other Deadmen cannibalistic, since it’s apparently tied to their independence and their ability to exist apart from their obsession or something like that anyway.” She explained learning more about Deadmen than her previous research had given her.

(Meaning unless we intrude upon her domain this ghost will probably leave us be, just like she did before we stepped into her territory.) Her inner reason pointed out.

(Maybe, but I don’t feel comfortable sharing our base with something that might be an undead cannibal.) Her inner emotion told them.

“Well, this says it’s the Deadmen that are closer to the zombie end of the ghost-zombie spectrum that actually eat people, and the more spiritual ones are usually passive unless they feel threatened. It’s just the attacks are noted more often than the ones who keep to themselves.” She realized with some concern.

(Still attack, ignore, aid, or investigate. At the very least we have a fair number of options.)

“Yeah, now it’s just deciding what to do with them.” She agreed.

---

Despite staying up late to research how to deal with ghosts, she forced herself to get up in the morning and spar with Izzy once more.

(After all a hero never rests.) She thought wryly.

(Screw that! This hero wants to go back to sleep!) Her inner child whined.

While she’d been expecting Izzy to kick her ass –(which she did)- she hadn’t been expecting to do nearly as good as she did, due to her self-inflicted exhaustion. (Which wasn’t actually all that impressive.)

“Fuck you…” She wheezed still trying to catch her breath.

(You really need to learn better insults, you’re starting to default on that.)

“Most of my Spanish insults would insult me since you’re a part of me… or insult our mamá anyway.”

(By that thought process, aren’t you still insulting yourself?) Her inner logic wondered. (I mean you’re directing them at ‘you’ but she is part of you so it would be more of a ‘me’ in actual usage…)

(Yeah, you’re not saying ‘fuck you’ you’re saying ‘fuck me.’) Her inner insanity agreed. (Which means you’re still insulting yourself.)

“You know what? Fuck both of you.”

(‘Eff both of me’, doesn’t really track very well…)

---

After finishing her morning spar with Izzy, she made her way back to her room, not bothering to go back to the (haunted) hospital until she had a way of at least detecting if the ghost was invading her workshop.

To this endeavor she began working up an upgrade to her Headset, using a few electronic bits and pieces as well as a few modifications to her UI program, she rigged her Headset to be able to visually represent anything her Scanner was able to detect.

(If it could detect anything anyway.) Her inner impatience scoffed.

“I guess we’ll just have to make a few upgrades to our Scanner then, won’t we?”

(Regardless, at the very least our modifications should grant us a form of night vision.) Her inner reason cut in before she could start arguing with herself.

“Right, right…” She nodded going through her programs. “That said, we should probably look into a few more upgrades for our Scanner. Something that detects thermal energy should help us with our little ghost problem.”

---

Seeing as she was already working on her headset, she decided to take her upgrades a step further and implement something she’d been meaning to do for a while, attaching a faceplate to her headset.

The faceplate itself was a relatively easy thing she could make with five minutes of Alchemy (), a few empty water bottles, and one of Seamus’s crayons she’d melted in the microwave. The real work came in creating a small filter that would allow her to breathe even with the solid mask covering her mouth and nose.

“Ugh, well… it’s not the ugliest mask I’ve seen.” She tried reassuring herself as she wore her mask in the mirror.

(It’s not the nicest looking one either.) Her inner passion grimaced.

(Well… We won’t be winning any beauty contests but at the very least no one will know who we are with this on.)

(Yeah, but we’re likely to make little kids cry with this thing.)

“Yeah… we’re going to have to do something about that…”