NOVEL NEXT Turn 91: Preparing For Delivering A Beating
Turn 91: Preparing For Delivering A Beating
--- Maya Williams ---
After more than a month of searching, preparing, and more Maya's patience had finally reached an end. While her desire to hunt down the (filthy) magic user responsible for placing her brother under a slaver effect had been temporarily dulled by the tournament she'd entered, she had also proven herself capable of fighting other Deviants. If admittedly as more of a burst fighter than a marathon sustain.
Which is why after having spent the last week working on a variety of projects as she waited for her COMP to recharge, she decided that it was time to do her final preparations before using the last day of her weekend to actually confront said magic user.
The first of which was going over her scan of Decker from their original confrontation at his rave. The Guild Lieutenant being the closest thing to a true Mask fight she'd been a part of, at least when comparing the various news reports she'd seen to her interactions with Artemis, Audrey, and Anavi.
(Such a large variety of styles likely underlines the sheer amount of variety magic users can bring to bear. Meaning that even if Decker was likely the most visually impressive of them, it's fully possible studying his scan won't actually offer us much in aid against our target.)
As much as she hated to admit it, "He's still the strongest Deviant we've met…" The videos she'd found of his various 'games' proved he'd been taking it easy on her when they'd fought at the rave that night. The man was easily capable of summoning a small horde of monsters, and that was before taking into account the fact that the rhythm game he'd made her play had been set to Easy rather than 'True Musician'.
Something that was even further proven as she sorted through the data she'd gathered, most of which seemed to revolve not around Decker himself but rather the pocket dimension he'd trapped her in to make her play his game.
A pocket dimension that she couldn't quite replicate due to not actually knowing how to create a pocket dimension that wouldn't inadvertently collapse, killing her and anyone else caught inside of it by trapping them in a black hole where they theoretically would be trapped for all eternity as seconds turned into years.
"Why did you need to go into detail about that?!" She whined to herself pretty sure she was going to have nightmares from the math currently running through her head.
(So you wouldn't be stupid enough to try it.) Her inner reason explained.
(On the bright side, mimicking his light show should be pretty straightforward if we make a dedicated projector and set it to loop things. Heck we can probably even use elements other than Light and Sound if we do it right.)
Scene Consequences
-Maya has unlocked the [Field Projector] for development. If built and upgraded this would allow her to passively apply an elemental Field effect every Turn.
---
Wanting to focus on anything other than the fact that she could theoretically pop an absolutely lethal hole into reality -something the whispers refused to refute no matter how hard she begged them- she decided that the best way to do so was to work on upgrading her COMP with some new shiner parts.
And when that proved to take nowhere near the amount of brainpower necessary to occupy her thoughts -even as she soldered and upgraded the electronic bits she was working on- she decided to also ring up Artemis to try and further distract herself with a conversation on seamlessly merging together energy projections from multiple outputs for a multiplicative effect.
"Typically speaking that would only result in an additive effect, and would be made redundant by you just being able to overclock the circuit doing the power transition." Artemis pointed out from her end of the phone.
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"Yeah, but there's a stability issue with the hardware." She explained as she moved some of the parts from an old smart phone and began rerouting them through the modified cpu she used to let her COMP handle breaking reality. "If you push too much power through it at one time it'll cause everything to break down, which is part of why I have to let it all cool down for a moment after overcharging everything."
"For magic that's something of a skill issue given how we can just resize the circuit to process different amounts of energy at different speeds." The arcane informed her. "I suppose it makes sense that for a tech version to be more hardware locked."
"Was that jab?" She frowned.
"A little one." Artemis confessed. "Still using two output points should be easy for an additive effect like I said, I don't get why you can't just do that even if you have to let everything cool down afterwards."
"Because all of my hardware is interconnected. While I have two output points -for this- I can't actually use both of them at the same time without frying everything."
"Ah, the Ring problem." Artemis sighed as if she understood completely.
"The Ring problem?" She repeated, guessing that was some kind of common Arcane issue. (Because they clearly have all sorts of issues.)
(Will you shut up?)
"If you wear too many enchanted rings at the same time you risk blowing your fingers off as they interfere with each other." Artemis explained with an audible grimace to her voice.
"Ah." She grimaced at the image her head conjured.
(That's why science is better. We can calculate when our shit is going to blow up and then weaponize it all.)
"Still, even if you can't merge your overclocked blasts, if you time it right an additive boost from your normal ones does have a few advantages regardless of how similar the input and output variables remain." Artemis assured her.
"What do you mean?" Because no matter how she did the math, two times two always equaled four.
"If you can time it right -which would focus on pre-writing a timing formula into your circuits- you could set it up so that should one of your bursts manage to break a weak point or resistance variable in the environment then the second would exploit it as well." Artemis told her. "Though figuring out the timing would be key."
(So instead of increasing our base damage we're increasing our crit power?)
"Huh… I think I can work with that."
Scene Consequences
-Blaster Protocols: V2.1
--Crossbeam: When using the same blaster action twice in one Turn, if one Crits they both will.
---
Having finished what preparations she could (even if only one of them will help us right now) or rather the ones her impatience would allow her, Maya began gathering her equipment to go and (kick the ass of whoever fucked with my brother.) During which a rather important question popped into her mind.
(Should we really be revealing all of this to Noah?)
"Uh… what?" She blinked.
(I'm asking if we should reveal all of our equipment -equipment that very clearly marks us a Mask- to Noah Delacroix, a boy we barely know?) Her inner reason explained.
"Uh, doesn't he come from a Deviant family or something like that?" She couldn't help but frown.
(He does, but there's a difference between just being a Deviant and being a Mask.)
(Yeah, one are normal people and the other is a bunch of badasses.) Her inner Madness agreed.
(Not the point I'm trying to make. I'm asking if we want to risk sharing our -admittedly barely used- secret identity as a Mask with Noah.) Her inner logic told her.
"But I kind of need all of my gear to kick the magic user's ass…" She pointed out while waving her hand cannon around.
(Technically -depending on how skilled Noah is- we might only need our COMP for this fight.)
(Or alternatively, with all of our badass equipment we won't need Noah to help us in this fight.)
(In a fight against a magic user?)
(Science kicks magic's ass any day of the week.)
Maya… wasn't entirely sure about that as she looked at all of her gear, trying to figure out how much of it was actually necessary. (I can probably talk off one or two pieces as me just wanting to be prepared for a fight, but… I doubt I can cover for everything, especially if I end up making it big at some point and he recognizes me… Though I'm not sure how much of my tech is equal to a Noah in a fight either… Actually, can he even fight?)
Either way she was going to have to figure this out.