Turn 85 (Pt. 2): Deviant Questions Between Teenage Deviants

--- Maya Williams ---

“Do you… do you know if there is anyone kidnapping M.A.D.s right now?” She already knew the answer, but… given how she’d already (for some reason) admitted that was her greatest fear she figured that was the best place to start.

“Actively? No.” Noah told her in a way that said he was trying to be reassuring. “Kidnapping Deviants… it’s a thing, but none of the Deviant gangs here are involved in human trafficking. The closest you’ll find is Covenant and their supernatural brothels.”

“Supernatural… brothels?” She repeated slowly.

The other teen blinked before looking away as his face gained some color. “Uh, yeah… they uh, supposedly summon succubi and… stuff… supposedly…”

“Supposedly?”

(Supposedly interesting~)

Noah coughed, still not meeting her eyes. “That’s what people say, and um, the, the point is that none of the Deviant gangs I know are going to kidnap you! They’re shortsighted assholes but they’re, they’re not monsters.”

“What do you mean?” She frowned. “I mean, do you really know no one in the gangs would pull something like that?”

“If they did it would be some crazy breaking their gang’s creed.” Noah explained, before elaborating that, “The Gamer’s Guild is all about turning life into a game, half their people aren’t even criminals and are basically just sports fans. Kidnapping people is too… real for their stuff, especially since the GM was kidnapped as a kid and her siblings saved her.”

“Okay… and what about the other gangs, like Covenant?” She continued to press.

“Covenant’s entire brand is being a blackmarket for things the cops don’t like, but people want. I’m sure that would normally include… kidnapping, but hiring interdimensional prostitutes is cheaper and safer since they can disappear and reappear with the snap of a finger.” Noah emphasized this point by making a black book appear and then disappear from his hand. “Other than them are those battle nuts in the Mad Dogs, and they’ve no interest in anything but fighting.”

(The Mad Dogs… that’s the group that Anavi works for, right?) She… didn’t actually know enough about them outside of Anavi to make a judgment call.

(And she’s hot, so she can’t be evil. Though… she is a magic user…)

Ignoring the voice in her head, she instead asked about the one other gang she knew, “What about the uh, the South Market Enforcers?”

“The who?” Noah frowned, reminding her that (the South Market Enforcers were a suspected gang, not a publicly known one.) “Is that one of the smaller gangs? There’s a bunch of those in town, they might be big in your neighborhood but trust me they aren’t big as far as the city is concerned.”

“So there’s… there’s no one trying to pull an Asylum?” She checked, fairly certain that Noah knew nothing of worth about this.

“No. And trust me, if anyone was trying that the Heroes Guild and my- The Night Raven would shut it down.” The other teen assured her.

“The Night Raven?” She repeated. “I… don’t know that hero?”

“She’s uh, she’s not a hero.” Noah admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “She’s a… sleeping dragon… She retired after the Rift Riots, but… she’s still probably the strongest Deviant in the city.”

Maya bit her lip for a minute as she tried to think of some other faction in the city that might be causing trouble. “What about… Sanctuary, I know they’re not as bad as Asylum but…”

Noah let out a huff of annoyance. “They’re still a bunch of racist assholes that want to stick their noses in any Deviant business and trying regulate shit they don’t…” The other teen trailed off before looking at her and taking a deep breath that he slowly let out.“But as much as I don’t like them, we need them just like we need cops on the street. They’re assholes but they’re also invaluable during stuff like the Halloween Haunt. Probably more so than the Hero’s Guild, even if just because of how many of them there are.”

“The Halloween Haunt?” She frowned, before realizing. (That’s probably the Creep invasion Decker warned us about.)

“A… yearly Deviant problem involving a supernatural that, uh, just follow the curfew next Halloween and it won’t be a problem.” Noah assured her with a pained expression. “I don’t suppose you have any questions that don’t revolve around kidnapping and monsters? Because if you want rumors and horror stories you’re better off just looking them up on the internet.”

She thought about it for a moment, letting her mind wander before voicing the first question her inner Madness could come up with. “Can animals be Deviants?”

Noah let out a snort of amusement at the sudden topic change. “Yeah, sure. They’re just super rare… unless you make them.”

“Make them?” She blinked, her mind immediately going to her various minions.

“Yeah, it’s an old practice where… Here let me show you.” Noah made several gestures with his hands causing a black swirl of shadows to erupt between his hands before collapsing into the shape of a black cat with yellow-green eyes. “This is Nyx the cat, my familiar.”

“Aw, aren’t you a little cutie.” She cooed at the little cat as it began to preen.

(Pet the kitty!)

“She is.” Noah agreed, petting the cat that proceeded to hop onto his shoulders and lounge there. “She also is magical because of my magic infusing her, and a few… enchantments my mom taught me, essentially making her an Arcane Cat.”

(Kill the kitty!)

To emphasize this point, Nyx turned into a black blur that shot to the side before returning and weightless reappearing on her shoulder.

.“Huh, I wonder if there are any M.A.D. animals?” She wondered, running a hand through the cat’s fur.

(She’s so soft! But she’s mag~ick!)

“Maybe, but I doubt they can get much done without opposable thumbs.” Noah shrugged.

With both of them in a slightly better mood as they played with the magical cat on the ground between them, she asked the other teen, “Is there anything you think I should know about this whole Deviant thing?”

Noah ran a hand through his hair. “I… don’t know. It kind of depends on what you want to do I guess. I mean, as long as you don’t get in their way most of the Deviant gangs are harmless, or at least more harmless than the street gangs, and honestly most of my stuff is about magic and junk…”

She remembered something Decker had told her, something that sort of tied into another plan of hers. “What if I wanted to… sell some of my stuff? Like my M.A.D. stuff?”

“That… would depend on what kind of stuff you can make?” Noah admitted, seeming to actually consider it. “Like what’s your specialty? Tech, Biology, or… the dead stuff.”

(Don’t tell him we’re the fourth kind.) Her inner logic (needlessly) interrupted.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

(It’s not like he’d know what the fourth kind of M.A.D. was.)

“I’m… a bit of both, Technology and Biology I mean.” She hastily added. “If I specialize one way or the other… I don’t know.”

“Honestly, your specialty doesn’t matter so much as what you make, I guess.” Noah rubbed the back of his neck as he thought about it. “If… you’ve got some… chemical stuff, my family can maybe sell it at our store as a potion, but you’d have to impress my mom on that. And while she’s not as good at potions as my aunt Edna she’d still have a high bar to let someone outside of the family into the shop.”

“Okay… any other ideas?” She asked, not sure how she felt about selling her chems as ‘potions’ especially when she didn’t have that many of them.

“Well I mean you could make Deviant toys I guess, those tend to sell with tourists and kids but my mom is an enchanter and that’ll be even harder to impress her on.” Noah warned before thinking about it. “Given how… popular our store is with some Hunters, if you’ve got something interesting I could middleman you there… for a cut.”

She glared at the other teen. “A cut?”

Noah didn’t even flinch, instead giving an unimpressed glare of his own. “Answering questions is easy, getting someone to buy something is a lot harder.”

“Fair enough…” She eventually relented, since he would be doing her a solid in that case. (I’ll just… have to figure out whether or not he’s ripping me off… somehow…)

“Anyway, from there it’s basic marketing. Sell enough stuff and it’ll get easier to sell more as your reputation grows.” Noah assured her. “As long as your stuff is good enough to sell anyway.”

She couldn’t help but scoff at the very idea that her stuff wasn’t good enough to sell if she wanted to. “Yeah, that won’t be a problem.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “Well, there’s the infamous M.A.D. arrogance.”

“It’s not arrogance if you can back it up.” She argued with a growl.

The other teen raised his hands in surrender. “We’ll see. You got anything else you want to ask?”

She considered it, going over what she could think about tossing aside any questions that she felt would touch a little too closely on the secrets she wanted to keep before thinking about one that Noah was already aware of… if tangentially.

“Hey, um, you uh, you remember why I went looking for you… the first time?” She asked after a moment.

Noah frowned in thought. “Um, your brother needed help with something, right?”

“Yeah, a magic user whammied him with a Slaver effect… We paid a Hunter to fix him and he’s better now but… that doesn’t really solve the actual problem…” She tried to explain.

The other teen gave her a look before eventually sighing. “The magic user that enslaved him is still out there, and you're worried they’ll get him again.”

“Uh, yeah…”

“Most Hunters wouldn’t stop at just fixing your brother, they would’ve also tried turning the one who caused it into Sanctuary… There’s a standing bounty on Slavers like that.” Noah told her. “Who did you guys get exactly?”

“My parents called Hack & Slash, a man and a woman showed up… a magic user and a psychic, I think?” She answered, trying to remember as much as she could about the event almost two months ago.

“Right, those guys… They’re fairly new to town, don’t actually know that much about them… especially since I’m pretty sure they’re using Covenant as their supplier rather than my family.” Noah frowned, thinking it over, before asking, “What exactly happened with them?”

She bit her lip. “They said… he’d gotten hit by a… focusing charm of some kind, and had it all fixed in… maybe twenty minutes total.”

Noah pet Nyx as he thought about the problem. “Well, that would explain why they didn’t follow up at least.”

“What do you mean?”

“A focusing charm isn’t technically a Slaver effect in the… harmful sense.” Noah explained. “It’s a way of maintaining focus and allowing faster thought processes, it’s… basically it’s the magical equivalent of adderall, just… not an actual drug. A lot of Arcane and Practitioners have their own versions of it, honestly we pop those spells like candy… or that might just be my family…”

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why he was obsessed with drawing that one girl.” She frowned.

“Well, if it was a girl, then she might’ve hit him with it trying to make a non-invasive love spell.” Noah suggested with a shrug.

“A love spell?!” She growled.

“Yeah.” Noah nodded. “Technically illegal, but maybe not depending on how she did it. I mean if it was an actual love spell it would’ve been a Slaver effect, which those Hunters would’ve been all over but because it wasn’t. It technically isn’t illegal since it would’ve just made him notice her more than usual for a couple of days before fading.”

“But it didn’t fade!” She practically yelled. “It lasted for weeks of him drawing the same girl over and over again!”

“Meaning whoever this is, she screwed up and overcharged it…” Noah sighed.

She inhaled before exhaling and deciding that, “I’m going to kill this bitch.”

(Yes! Finally you choose the correct response to dealing with a magic user!)

“What?” Noah blinked, before suddenly jumping and sending Nyx into alert. “No! Bad idea! No offense but Arcane are a lot more dangerous than an M.A.D. when you pick a fight. You guys may be better at like… equipment and bases and junk, but we’re better at spontaneous fights. In fact, pretty much every other Deviancy is better in a straight fight than an M.A.D. You can’t just… rush into a fight because you’re angry!”

(You know, barring our equipment, he is right about this.)

(No he’s not. He’s a filthy magic user, so clearly he’s wrong about this like every other choice he’s made in his life.)

Ignoring them, she disagreed with Noah, telling him that, “Nah, I’d win.” After all, all she had to do was bring her Hand Cannons and fire it point blank into the bitch’s face.

(Hey, narrating is my job!)

“Okay, okay, um…” Noah looked her in the eye. “Do, do you know where this girl is?”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea.” She admitted, before frowning. (Why’d I admit that?)

“That’s… not good.” Noah told her. “You know if you attack her she can claim self-defense, right? The, the focusing charm is just circumstantial or maybe that’ll make it premeditated on your part since you had to find her… Fuck, this is not how I saw this conversation going.”

“Does your family’s store have anything that can heal injuries?” She asked the panicking boy.

“Uh, yes, but… I’m not going to let them sell it to you!” Noah yelled looking increasingly frazzled.

“That’s fine. I won’t need it.” She had her own healing serums if it came down to it. “I just need to figure out how to get my tech to disrupt her stupid magic.”

With that plan in play she turned to leave the park.

“You um, you need a magic user to help you on that!” Noah suddenly told her as he moved to follow. “So given how I’m the only magic user you seem to know, that means you have no one to stress test your tech. So why don’t we take violence off the table for now, I mean, have you ever been in a fight before?”

“My sister taught me self-defense and she’s got like an MMA black belt.” She answered, pointedly not mentioning how Izzy was her younger sister.

“Look there’s a difference between fighting a monster and fighting a teenage girl, one is okay and the other is not.” Noah tried to reason with her.

“So as a teenage girl going after the monster who tried to roofie my brother, I’m in the clear.” She nodded, glad that he was finally getting the picture.

Instead of accepting this reasoning, Noah let out a frustrated groan while mumbling, “Stupid, crazy, M.A.D., gah!!”

“Wait, wait.” Noah stepped in front of her. “Okay, I… completely disagree with you beating the shit out of someone but if, and I mean if you insist on going after this girl… at least let me come with you.”

“Why?” She frowned, fully aware that his reason was something along the lines of, (Please, don’t murder anyone.)

“Um, uh… if she’s got a focus charm… then she might be able to do something to your mind to… mess you up and… do to you what she did to your brother, which… he would not want to happen.” Noah clearly pieced together as he spoke. “So, I can go with you and disrupt whatever she tries to pull on you.”

She paused for a moment as she gnawed on her lip, aware that (picking a fight with someone who can manipulate your mind is bad, having someone who can snap you out of it is a good idea.)

“Fine… I’ll think about it.” She finally conceded. “But I’m still going to find someone to punch today.”

“Might I recommend Tru Grit’s Fight Pits, they’re just filled with violent nutjobs like you.” Noah suggested, with no small amount of derision as he finally gave up on trying to convince her not to hospitalize someone.

(Oh, I completely forgot about my tournament!)

(We’re going to slaughter them all!)

(I was really hoping we could take a step back from the murderous thoughts.)

(No, no.) “I’m going to slaughter them all.” She was in that kind of mood.