Trail 41

--- Maya ---

“So, this club you’re joining, you’re sure it’s safe?” Her mamá asked as she measured out the ingredients for the next batch of cookies and Maya mixed together the current one.

“Yeah, it’s a… tinkerers club, they run a nearby science museum so it’s free for teenagers in exchange for occasionally helping clean up the museum or watching the kids.” She explained, editing her story just a bit since she wasn’t quite ready to deal with the fallout of anyone else in her life finding out about her Deviancy while she was still trying to deal with Vi’s worries.

(That and it’ll be easier to convince the rest if we already have Viviana’s support.) Her inner reason reminded her.

(Not that we should need it.) Her inner passion scoffed.

“Well, if you’re sure.” Her mamá sighed. “Though if you’re going to be traveling so far from the house I’d rather see this place for myself, mija.”

(Why? I mean we run off almost every day, and you don’t care about that…)

(Yes, but I believe she thinks we’re only visiting the game shop a few blocks away.) Her inner logic pointed out. (Which is a misunderstanding we may wish to keep intact given our actual extracurriculars.)

(Right…) It honestly felt a little manipulative to her, but she couldn’t say her other selves reasoning was off.

(Well, I am our inner reason after all).

Shaking her attention, she turned back to her mamá, “That’s fine, I’m actually trying to figure out if I can get everyone discounts to the actual museum tours, but that uh, that might take me a few weeks.”

“That’d be fun.” Her mamá admitted before frowning. “But if you really end up liking this place you shouldn’t take advantage of it or else they might throw you out.”

“Maybe, but it wouldn’t hurt to find out either way.” She shrugged, before looking at the bowl in her hands. “This look good? Because there’s still a few chunks but they aren’t breaking up.”

Her mamá checked the bowl. “Mm, scrape the bottom and make sure none is sticking, if there is keep stirring if not it might just be the batter clumping together a little too thickly.”

“Got it.” She nodded, shifting the thick batter around.

---

“So, what are you up two up to?” She asked her brothers as she joined them at the kitchen table while her cookies baked in the oven.

“Drawing.” Seamus told her, though he didn’t sound particularly happy.

“Yeah, got to get those bad vibes out with a creative outlet.” Tommy explained, as his pencil moved back and forth rapidly.

“Oh, what kind of bad vibes have got you down?”

“School.” Seamus growled, or as close as a four-year-old could manage at least.

“Ah, gotcha.” She nodded in understanding, as her eyes slowly drifted to the extremely detailed pencil sketch of a pretty young woman. “Who’s that?”

“Just someone I saw on the street.” Tommy admitted. “Don’t know what it was about her but there was just… something I had to draw out you know?”

“Sort of?” She’d gotten a couple bouts of inspiration here and there that demanded she bring them to life. (Well, them or the whispers anyway.)

While she couldn’t be entirely sure of the color due to being a pencil sketch, the woman had long wavy hair of a darker color, with a much brighter color of eyes that, with the detail Tommy had put in, gave off an almost haunting feel, despite the young woman’s seemingly cheerful expression.

(You know Tommy really is a good artist.)

“How do you get that much detail into your drawings?”

Tommy blinked before looking back at her, “With pencils a lot of it is about pressure variance, and… Actually, here let me show you.”

---

Maya couldn’t help but coo internally as she followed Kim into a large room with a soft padding like material on the ground, and wall covered in see through cubbies housing a number of little beds and hamster-like creatures. Or rather she couldn’t help but coo at the two or three dozen little critters gathered in the center of the room and watching PBS kids on a little TV.

“Okay, it’ll still be a few days until we’ve got everything together for your space, but if you don’t mind hanging around my lab you can work on…” Kim paused before turning back to Maya. “What are you working on?”

“An upgrade for my COMP.” She explained holding up the electronic brick. “I think I can rework it to get a little more power out of my battery before I have to remake the whole thing.” It was also one of the few inventions she had at the moment that didn’t just scream ‘Mask’ to anyone who saw it.

“Ah, power issues.” The other M.A.D. nodded in understanding, as she picked up a few of the critters who’d begun to clamor for her attention. “I mostly deal with biological stuff but the few bits of tech I use are still power hogs. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Kevin’s stuff I doubt I’d be able to cover the electricity bills.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, uh, Kevin is a tech M.A.D. specializes in electricity and power supplies. He covered the roof in these tricked out solar panels that take in like three times as much power as the normal kind. Let’s us more or less break even with all of the tech everyone has running in here.” Kim explained, as she took a few of the critters to a table covered in what looked to be a bunch of veterinarian supplies.

“Huh… That’s cool.”

Power wasn’t really something she had to worry about in the long term given how much a single COMP could generate. The only reason she had to put so much effort into upgrading her COMP was because she was trying to get as much power as possible without carrying a bunch of the bricks with her everywhere. That said, she could still appreciate the fact that another M.A.D. could set up a system that could do the same for the M.A.D. club, without outright breaking reality.

(Heh, our hacking is so broken.)

(And these critters are adorable.) She agreed, playing with one of the curious little critters.

---

Knowing that she couldn’t work on too many projects without possibly drawing attention to herself at the M.A.D. club, she decided to work on her second project from the secure anonymity of her lab.

The project in question was figuring out how to best copy the foam padding of the helmet she’d bought a few weeks prior. After all, once she figured this out she could make a number of improvements to her armor without increasing the weight by very much. She could even apply said padding to DM-1 and any future minions to improve their own defenses. (The only problem is figuring out how…)

Since the padding was made of several plastic materials, reshaping it was easy enough with a few minor tweaks, but that didn’t solve her problem of actually making more of the padding. Something the whispers were being oddly quiet about.

(Perhaps instead of creating our padding from scratch, we can try scanning the existing padding?) Her inner logic offered in partial solution.

“Maybe…” She conceded, before grabbing her COMP and Headset off of another table.

It took a few tried and while it wasn’t quite a full chemical makeup, at the very least she was able to get enough data about the polymer that she thought she might be able to make a cheap knock off of the stuff if she poured enough plastic into it. (Though I can probably do better in the long run.)

(Eh, it doesn’t matter if we can do better just so long as we can build a proof of concept.) Her inner passion argued impatiently.

“You’re not wrong.” She admitted, as she loaded up an updated version of her Alchemy() program.

(We never are!) Her inner madness laughed as she gathered together a few bits of plastic.

Weakening the plastics molecular structure, she began to roll the plastic into a small ball before applying the new sub-function of her Alchemy () program, causing the ball to slowly expand to twice its size.

“Uh… was it supposed to do that?” She asked more than a little unsure herself, as she inspected the sphere, taking note of the slight change in its texture.

(If it was, it’s possible that this new polymer has a lower density than the plastic we’re used to working with.) Her inner reason theorized. (Which fits since the increase in surface area and volume would also have an influence on pressure and impact force. So-)

(That doesn’t matter.) Her inner passion cut in. (All that matters is if-)

She smooshed the sphere in her hand without her programs.

(-it’s squishy!)

“Now we’ve just got to figure out if it makes decent armor.” She nodded, once more smooshing the ball.

(Squish.)