Turn 42

--- Maya ---

As she came down the stairs for breakfast she once more found Tommy at the table working on drawing something out with a level of detail she herself was not capable of.

(It’s also of the same girl he was drawing yesterday.) She noted with some interest.

(Teasing material?)

(Teasing material.) She agreed. “So, still drawing your mystery crush, huh?”

Tommy barely glanced her way. “Depends you still reading your smut?”

“It’s not smut!” She cried, face red because she hadn’t known the story he saw was going to be smut until the exact scene he read.

(Not that that stopped us from reading.)

(Honestly, we’ve read better.)

Shaking her head, and pointedly ignoring the voices in her head, she turned her attention back to the drawing Tommy was sketching in an attempt to divert attention away from herself, before noticing something.

“Why does this one feel different than your last one?”

“I told you there’s something about her I’ve got to draw.” Tommy reminded her. “I don’t know what that thing is, so I’m trying to draw her in as many emotions as I can.”

“Okay, but it’s the same drawing as yesterday isn’t it?” She couldn’t see an actual difference between this one and the drawing she’d seen yesterday, but she could feel a difference. (Somehow...)

“Ah, that...” He looked at the picture he’d drawn and set it to the side before grabbing a spare sheet of paper and drawing a bunch of lines and sketch patterns on it. “Alright, so you see every line and pattern has a ‘feel’ to it, now on their own they don’t give off too much of this feel but, when you put them together in a large enough volume.” Tommy gestured to the sketch of the girl he’d been working on.

“Huh...”

“Here, why don’t you give it a try.” Tommy suggested, offering her a pencil.

---

Despite the fact that she had a steady stream of supplies available from the M.A.D. club, she was also aware of the fact that if she started working on too many projects or projects that were clearly Mask gear, then she may draw attention to the fact that she was probably on the higher end of the M.A.D. scale. Something she wanted to avoid given her kidnapping nearly two months prior.

(At least not until we can crush our enemies beneath our heel anyway.)

(Quite.)

What this meant was that even with said club resources, she was still going to need resources she could work with in her own lab. Which is why she found herself in the forest just past the city’s suburbs, searching for anything she felt could be used to feed her next biological project after collecting her new critter.

(Speaking of, what exactly are we feeding this thing?)

“We made it capable of digesting pretty much anything organic.” She reminded the voice in her head. “But I’d rather not carry around a garbage bag full of leaves, so let’s try to find something with a decent amount of mass to it.”

(In that case wouldn’t it be easiest to acquire a fallen log or tree branch?)

“Maybe, but we’ll still have to heft around whatever we’re carrying. Which is going to be a pain no matter what we grab.” She admitted with a resigned sigh.

(You know this honestly wouldn’t be so bad if we just grew our own organics.) Her inner madness pointed out.

(Perhaps, but we’re using our Biopod for our critter at the moment.) Her inner logic explained.

(Then just build another Biopod, we’ve got the materials.)

“We don’t have the materials yet.” She argued, “Hell, that’s why we’re walking through the woods like a pair of-”

She tripped over a piece of wood that had been half buried beneath the dirt, leaves, and grass.

(On second thought let’s build an entire greenhouse, because fuck nature.) Her inner passion growled as she kicked the piece of moss covered wood, revealing it to be a fair bit bigger than she’d initially thought.

(If I break it down I can work with this.) She decided, wanting out of the forest as soon as possible.

(Wouldn’t a greenhouse just be contributing to nature’s growth?) Her inner reason pointed out.

(Yeah, but it’d be our nature and it’ll love us. Unlike this wild humanity hating bullshit! Seriously why the fuck do people enjoy camping?! Nature hates us!)

---

Seeing as it was on the way, Maya decided to take a second detour through the trainyard to pick up a few bits of scrap in addition to the wood she’d already grabbed. After breaking said wood down in a violent act of reve-(Ahem.)- recycling.

Luckily, given how much metal was simply lying around the train yard abandoned, she didn’t have to go to as much effort to find said metal as she would to get a hold of her other resources. Meaning she was able to collect everything with relative speed, before returning back to the hospital with her haul.

“Which is a good thing given how much all of this shit weighs.” She groaned, dropping the bag full of metal and wood on the hospital floor, before cracking her back as she stood up straight.

(Yes, we may’ve overdone it all things considered.) Her inner logic admitted, her opinion coming perhaps just a little too late as they stared at the large amount of supplies they’d managed to gather.

(You think?) Her inner passion growled. (In fact, you know what? This is minion work, let’s add some more to the to do list so they can carry all of this shit.)

(Hmm, you do realize that we’d still have to transport the material here as well as whatever minions we assign to the task.) Her inner reason pointed out. (Meaning if done correctly, we’d actually be carrying significantly more weight than this.)

(Not if we just gravity COMP all of that shit so it doesn’t weigh as much!)

(Actually, thinking about it. Why didn’t we just do that in the first place?)

(...)

(...)

(...)

“Fucking idiot!)

---

Once she’d calmed down from her (stupid) revelation and managed to stash all of her newly acquired resources, she took out her armor and a fair amount of plastic so that she could begin applying foam padding to the inside of her armor.

“Actually… thinking about this, this is going to be a bit of a tight fit.” She admitted, as she began working a layer of the foam padding to the inside of her armor. “Honestly, I’m going to have to take the plastic bits that are already here and reshape them so this whole thing is a size larger if I want to have more than a millimeter of padding.”

(Which isn’t worth shit.)

(Actually, at the very least it’d prevent any of the minor injuries the harder armor pieces might cause us via simply wearing the armor.) Her inner logic explained.

(Yeah, but the whole point of this is to protect us, not be comfortable!) Her passion argued.

“It can be both.” She told the voices in her head, hoping to kill another pointless argument before it could begin.

(Our arguments are not pointless, they provide exposition and comedic relief!)

“To who?” She scoffed. “You’re in my head, and all your arguing ever does is give me a headache.”

(Well, it’s not for you so neh.)

(Don’t be childish.)

(Maya ‘s the one being childish!) Her inner child cried. (Hey!)

(No I’m not.) Her inner logic disagreed, as she turned the majority of her focus back to resizing her armor for the new layer of padding, fully resigning herself to listening to another one of their arguments.

(Yes she is!)

(How is she being childish?)

(Because I’m part of her, so if I’m being childish then Maya is the one being childish! In fact because we’re both a part of Maya that means you’re being childish too!)

She actually had to stop what she was doing upon hearing that one, if only to process it.

(I… I can’t actually argue against that one… and that hurts me.)