Turn 59

--- Maya ---

(Okay this is a literal garbage fire.) Her inner madness stated dryly.

“Oh, it’s not that bad.” She tried to disagree quietly.

(No, I mean there is a literal garbage fire two steps to our left.)

She glanced to the side where a fire had in fact begun in the trash bin. “Oh…”

(You know on second thought perhaps we shouldn’t have asked the M.A.D. who regularly sets his lab on fire for tips.) Her inner reason pointed out.

“Yeah, I uh, I kind of thought the robots catching fire was a one time thing…” She admitted.

“Sorry.” Jim apologized from next to her. “It usually is but I always end up screwing up my wiring, even if the chassis, casing, and programming all work perfectly.” As if to emphasize this point the robot in front of them had its arm blown off. “I can fix that.”

“Uh, yeah…” She nodded, beginning to regret her choice to be here.

(Why are we here?)

(I believe he is the only other M.A.D. we know by name besides Kim and Melvin.)

There was more crackling from the machine’s frame before it caught fire. “I can fix that too!”

(Yeah, next time let’s just ask the scary-in-a-sexy-kind-of-way club secretary for assistance.) Her inner passion told her.

The room’s auto-extinguishers chose that moment to finally kicked in, dousing the room in a foamy substance that would put out fires without damaging electronics if her whispers were to be believed.

(There’s something wrong with you, but you’re not wrong here…)

---

“Hey, I’m allowed to take the stuff I build here, home with me, right?” She asked, ducking into Kim’s lab real quick.

“Uh, yeah?” Kim nodded looking up from one of her critters she’d been inspecting. “Why wouldn’t you… have something in your hair.”

She scowled running her hands through her hair since she thought she’d gotten all of it. “I was in Jim’s lab when the auto-extinguishers went off.”

“Ah.” Kim nodded with a grimace full of sympathy. “But uh, yeah, you can bring anything you build here back to your house. I mean isn’t that what you did with your scanner thing?”

“Yeah, but I brought that here. I wanted to make sure I could actually leave with them.” She explained making her way to the corner she’d stashed her Bio-Pod to grow. “Anyway I’m going to take this home so I can make sure everything grows right.”

“Uh, yeah, you… you do that.” Kim agreed, her face pinching a bit as she caught sight of Maya’s Bio-Pod.

(Huh, you’d think she’d never grown her own Bio-Pod before.)

---

Once she’d deposited her Bio-Pod next to her other one, she began setting it to grow another LCM. Something she hadn’t been willing to do back at the M.A.D. club, due to the mild legal dubiousness of her growing them without a license.

“I’m pretty sure it’s legal to grow them as long as we don’t sell them to anyone.” She argued, filling out the genetic sequences.

(Which we won’t because they’re our babies.) Her inner passion agreed with a mental nod. (We’re just growing them here so they’ll be with the rest of our kids.)

---

With her Bio-Pod set, Maya moved back to her computer and began working on something that should hopefully make it easier for her to find the person responsible for enslaving Tommy.

Under her current kit she could only really gather information on people by using Scan() on someone, which required being close enough to get a solid image of their face. Or by scanning their phone to cross reference all of the information linked to said phone with her Informant Network()’s link to the police database.

Which is why she spent the rest of her afternoon setting it up so that she could run any image through her Informant Network() and pull up any data related to those images. Something that -thanks to a bit of nudging from the whispers- would also allow her to run the images of objects through her database as well as the images of people, though with less specific information gathered about said object.

“That doesn’t matter right now.” She told herself, as she finished installing the upgrade to her Informant Network(). “Especially since we only need it to be able to recognize whoever this girl is.”

(So, any idea how long this will take?) Her inner madness asked as she took a picture of one of Tommy’s drawings, more specifically the only one her mamá -(and her)- didn’t burn.

“I don’t know a day or two?” She shrugged, setting the Network to look for anything related to the drawing’s image. “I mean this thing basically has to run a data net through the entire net… or the parts it can get into without setting off any flags anyway.”

(Well, in that case we may wish to start heading home.) Her inner reason warned. (It’s already getting late and our mamá has been on another protective street since everything with Tommy.)

“Right…” She sighed, running a hand down her face. “Well at least she’s actually letting us out of the house, unlike Tommy.”

(Eh, don’t worry she’ll mellow out once the whole ‘my babies are in danger’ thing wears off.) Her inner passion assured her.

(And if not he can always sneak out through the window of his room.)

(Wait, doesn’t he already do that?) Her inner madness mentally frowned. (Actually, why don’t we do that when we want to patrol at night?)

“Because we share a room with our younger sister?” She reminded herself.

(Hmm…)

(No drugging, knocking out, or memory wiping middle schoolers.) Her inner conscience stated quickly.

(Aww…)

“Should… Should I be worried part of me was legitimately considering any of that?”

(Probably.)

(Definitely.)