Turn 72: Halloween Plans, Heavy Metal, and Studying Madness

--- Maya ---

“Are you sure you don’t want to dress up for Halloween mija?” Her mamá asked as they walked down the costume aisle of the store. “I mean, Tommy and Vi are dressing up.”

“Yeah, but they’re going to a halloween party, while I’m probably just going to stay home and pass out candy.” She pointed out, figuring that in all likelihood she might be a bit too out of it after dealing with Bloodhounds to actually go out and do anything. (Which kind of sucks…)

(Sadly this is the price of responsibility.)

(Boo! Responsibility sucks!) Her inner child whined. (I say screw the trick or treaters, let's just eat all of the candy ourselves since we can’t be a trick or treater with Izzy or Seamus!)

“Hmm, well you don’t have to stay home.” Her mamá reminded her. “I mean you could come with us to the Halloween Party at the police station, I hear they’re doing a haunted house this year!”

“Eh, public haunted houses tend to be kind of lame.” She frowned before shaking her head. “Why are you going to the police station instead of just trick or treating anyway?”

“Apparently there’s been a rise in crime this year so they’re being a little stricter with the children’s curfew to try and keep them safe.” Her mamá explained looking at a witch’s costume on the wall. “It’s a bit of a pain, but given how much damage people do on a normal year I can’t blame them for wanting to keep the niños safe. Either way, since we can’t really go trick or treating we figure taking everyone to a Halloween party with other families is a safer bet.”

(Hear that? No trick or treaters means we can eat all the candy guilt free!)

(If our parents bought candy, they may not have if they weren’t expecting any children.)

(What of course they bought candy for the children, their children at least. We can just steal everyone’s candy while they’re at the party.)

“So are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Her mamá asked once more. “I’m not sure if you remember but we did something similar the last time things got bad like this a few years back.”

She did remember that, though she didn’t recall it being all that fun for her given how she wasn’t really a ‘party’ kind of person.

“I’ll think about it, but I probably won’t go.” She admitted after a moment before pausing as she caught sight of a mad scientist costume featuring a white lab coat, goggles, and rubber gloves.

(Is this derogatory to us?)

(Possibly.)

Scene Consequences

-Grown a bit closer to Seamus and Mamá.

---

Having come to realize that she was distinctly lacking in options should her COMP ever run out of power after being forced to tap out of the Dungeon due to power concerns, she decided the best way to remedy this was to create a melee weapon of some kind.

Of course being an M.A.D. she couldn’t settle for any weapon as mundane as a knife or a baseball bat but instead needed to make something with a suitable amount of tech tacked onto it.

And given how her Hand Cannons mostly filled the slot of speedy attacks, she figured that the best way to cover her bases was to make something designed more for… damage than anything else.

Which is how she came to create the monstrosity of scrap metal that laid before her.

“Come on, it's not that bad.” She frowned, having taken some effort to make the weapon look decent.

(It looks like you stuck a piece of rebar into a pile of scrap and somehow turned it into a sledgehammer.) Her inner critic argued.

(You know, I wasn’t really paying attention but I do think that is what she did.)

“No, it’s not!” She told herself, before picking up the weapon that while needing a bit of strength to wield was nowhere near as heavy as it looked. “In the middle of this I’ve got a small gravity generator like my grav-pak to let me lug this thing around. All I’ve got to do is give the thing a good swing and then kill the power to the generator and it’ll be like I took an actual sledgehammer to someone’s face. Whatsmore with a couple tweaks I can probably figure out how to make my grav-engine invert making this thing hit even harder than that!”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

(While all of that may be true, even if ingenious it doesn’t change the fact that this thing is something of an eyesore. Honestly, I thought it would come out more aesthetically pleasing given how much time you’ve been putting into the arts.) Her inner reason pointed out.

(I don’t know it may look like an eyesore but it does have this sort of Mad Max, Junker tech look.) Her inner passion noted. (It’s not the prettiest thing but we could make a theme out of this if we wanted.)

“Uh, no… I may be making things out of scrap but I’d rather not look like I made this stuff by dumpster diving.” She told herself dryly.

(Isn’t that how you got like half the stuff to make this?)

“...” She picked up the metal monstrosity and threw it over her shoulder as she walked out of her lab. “I need to go hit something.”

Scene Consequences

-Heavy Weight (Mk 1)

--This special weapon requires a long action to use but hits for (Strength * 2) Damage. Additionally this weapon applies stacks of [Stun] on Crits reducing enemy AP on their next turn.

---

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.” She whimpered, staring off into the distance.

(Come on, it's not that bad.) Her inner madness consoled her.

(Not that bad? Not that bad?!) Her inner reason shrieked. (None of this makes any sense!)

(Uh, you sure?) Her inner madness asked. (This all makes sense to me.)

“How does this make sense?!” She cried. “As far as I can tell these things are practically… the M word!”

(Madness?)

“No! The M-A-G-I-C word!”

(Please?)

“Gah!” She screamed in frustration.

(Yeah, okay. I’m done fucking with you.) Her inner Madness assured her. (Anyway like I said, most of this is pretty straightforward in how it works, as long as you let go of the hard science stuff.)

(All science is hard science!)

(Sociology, Economics, Psychology, Linguistics, Political Science?)

(... I hate you more than you can possibly understand.)

(I’m emotion. I know the exact limit of Maya’s rage before coming full circle.)

(Fine. Fine. Explain how these, these… abominations work.)

(Well clearly Madness is really fond of the Observer effect, meaning just observing it causes it to change, generating the illusion that it is uncontrolled or in a constant state of variable. The easiest way to solve this is to simply recognize the fact that Madness will remain a variable in any equation you try to factor it into.) Her own madness explained in a surprisingly mature tone.

(Now in this case both of the trinkets from the dungeon are generating a small Madness field which while we can’t observe with technology we can pick up on through the whispers’ excitement. Accepting this field as our variable we can then conclude the ring converts this field with an unknown amount of energy into electricity by responding to an innate -if usually passive- field that seems to be inherent in all sapient -and possibly sentient- life, which we can test via having the DMs and LCMs use it.)

Mildly stunned she handed the ring to the LCMs and while 1A seemed to be stumped by it, 1B managed to get it to spark a bit eliciting an excited clap from the minion as M2 seemed to copy him.

(Good, now continuing with the existence of this field the ‘trap enhancement’ is likely a residual field applied to other objects that stimulates other people’s fields in such a way that they end up subconsciously triggering the trap via some sort of artificial blind spot or perception filter.) Her inner Madness continued. (The stealth enhancement is likely this same field more passively applied to whoever holds the talisman.)

“Okay…” She understood most of that, and honestly if she hadn’t gotten so caught up in trying to decipher ‘Madness’ as an energy she might’ve been able to figure it out on her own, but still… “Leaving this as just a ‘variable field’ feels wrong, it’s like admitting it’s really… the M word and I don’t understand it.”

(Because you don’t, you can’t, and you probably shouldn’t.) Her inner insanity told her as she picked up the talisman.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She frowned.

(You know how in Lovecraftian horror learning about the great ones drives you inSane?)

“Uh, yeah?” She nodded, a little weirded out by the question.

(Then you already know, EnLiGHteNmEnT cAn DrIVe yOU maD MaYa.)

A chill ran down her spine as she felt something run its fingers across her mind, whatsmore it felt as if that something was coming from the-

She threw the talisman to the other side of the room and proceeded to back as far away from it as she could.

“What the fuck was that?!” She half-screamed.

(What was what?)

“That, that ‘enlightenment can drive you mad’ shit!”

(I’m sorry but the what?) Her inner reason asked with some concern. ()

“Oh, please tell me you two are just fucking with me right now…”

(Uh, no… I said I was done with that so I could remind you two that I’m the real brains of our trio.) Her inner (Madness) reminded her. (Oh, speaking of we were just about to get to the cool ideas I’d gotten from the dungeon trinkets.)

She couldn’t help but whimper at the mention of the clearly cursed things.

(Ah, ah. Curses are part of the M word and Maya doesn’t like the M word.)

Scene Consequences

-Kobold Lightning Ring Studied

--Inspiration Increased by (D6=4) Turns, new expiration date is Turn 80.

--New Project Unlocked: Shock Rings

-Kobold Talisman Studied

--Inspiration Increased by (D6=4) Turns, new expiration date is Turn 80.

--New Projects Unlocked: Basic Infiltrator Set

(A/N: I rolled that twice because I didn’t like them ending on the same turn, and got double 4s both times.)