Prologue Pt.1

--- Maya ---

Her eyes darted around the room she was in, taking inventory of everything in range of her, and of every way she could use it to her aid in her escape.

(Let’s see… Locked door. Bucket. Plastic bowl full of… gruel(?) And a water bottle…)

Of course, being an M.A.D. her captors had stripped the room bare of the non-essentials necessary to keep her alive.

They’d kidnapped her early that morning when she’d been making her way to her testing grounds, to test out her latest invention. She hadn’t even known what hit her when they did, just that she’d been knocked unconscious and when she’d come to she’d found herself in this room, locked far away from any means of assistance.

“Damn it!” She kicked the room’s door, as she paced in frustration. “I’ve been here for hours already!” (I need to get home…)

Part of her was worried, because by now her family had realized she was missing and were planning on doing something foolish in an attempt to save her or to get the hero’s guild to intervene. Both of which would make the people who kidnapped her react poorly.

(That’s if they even noticed…)

“No, I can’t afford to wait for my family to save me!” She shouted, slapping her cheeks to make sure she was focused on this moment. “After all I’m an M.A.D., I’m not helpless!”

True it was one of the more common Deviancies, but the super intelligence of a mad scientist was nothing to scoff at either. (The only reason no one believed me is because of my weird specialty!)

All M.A.D.s had a ‘specialty’ of sorts, not something as specific as a field of study so much as a blanket category of science. Such as machines, biology, and (whatever the fuck) let people bring the dead back to life.

Unfortunately, her specialty was a little more esoteric than the powers made renowned by heroes and villains alike. Instead of the typical three, because by some means she’d gotten a fourth category revolving around math, physics, and writing.

At first she’d thought it odd that her specialty had involved ‘coding’ of all things, when other M.A.D.s focused on more physical things such as mechanical monstrosities, biological biohazards, or demented dead things in the case of the creepier M.A.D.s.

But eventually she’d realized her own brilliance!

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

From what little she’d managed to gather on her strain of M.A.D., they were rare polymaths whose instinctive understanding of math was on a level that they were able to actually crack the formula behind practitioner-type magic. Or in more straightforward terms, they could actually hack reality through math and science.

That wasn’t to say she’d actually gotten that far yet… (But I’ve got the proof of concept! So, ha-ha!)

Still, regardless of if she could actually make reality her bitch, (yet.) The fact that she might be able to do it one day was of course considered a very valuable commodity by those aware of it. Enough so for whatever organization that had kidnapped her to, well, kidnap her. (Which’ll be the biggest mistake of their fucking lives!)

Her eyes darted around the room as she ran a hand through her hair, her anger fighting against her fear as she tried to keep her composure. Tried to think of a way out, and not about the fact that this was all probably her fault in some way…

(I should’ve known not to search for the ‘fourth-type of M.A.D.’…)

She was mostly convinced those searches had somehow flagged her in a way that the local gang was able to detect. After all, there weren’t too many reasons to kidnap her besides her being an M.A.D. and given how common that deviancy was it was usually easier for a gang to just hire one with looser morals.

On a side note she’d actually been considering finding one such morally ambiguous organization to work for and fund her research. At least until her abduction at which point she decided (fuck these assholes) and promptly began planning their imminent demise.

Letting her anger flare once more to push back the despair, she took another look around the room to make absolutely sure that no one was secretly spying on her.

(Looks like it’s safe…)

Nodding to herself, she pulled out the sole invention she’d managed to build in the months since realizing she was an M.A.D. before flicking a few of the switches lining its sides.

To most people the device she’d managed to hide on her person would look like a Frankenstein-style phone, with a few random bits and pieces sticking out of it. What it actually was, was her Computational Operating Mega Processor, or COMP for short.

(She was willing to admit she may’ve put a little too much effort into giving her first piece of Spark-Tech an acronym.)

On its own, the COMP was meant as a sort of conduit to run her various reality hacking programs, or it would once she worked out a few bugs, the memory issues, and upgraded the battery capacity, as well as a few other things she’d have to work on…

“I already said none of that matters!” She yelled at the little voice in her head narrating everything. “I knew M.A.D.s were supposed to be crazy, but I didn’t realize it’d be the annoying kind of crazy…” She grumbled like a petulant child. “Hey!”

But redirecting the focus from her own madness and towards the device in her hand, she recalled the upgrade she’d managed to implement to her COMP mere days before her abduction. The upgrade responsible for her impending ingenious escape, an AI capable of hacking nearby electronics, something beyond the paltry AI of the common man!

She couldn’t help but laugh at her own brilliant genius!