Chapter Thirty-Eight – Maple’s Marvelous Makings

Maple hummed as she looked over everything she had to work with.

She had heaps of gardening tools, donated by the nice people who lived here before. She had some hunting supplies from the hardware store, as well as a bunch of other stuff they’d picked up. Wheelbarrows worth. It was more stuff than she’d ever had to work with before, really.

Next to that, in a cardboard box, were some more natural things she’d picked up while out of the house. Branches, twigs, some bark, a few pieces of wood, and a couple of interesting looking rocks. She wasn’t sure what to do with those yet, but it might come in handy.

Right! She smacked her cheeks to refocus. The Ideas were happening at her, and if she didn’t focus, her fingers might start making things.

There was a pile of bombs in the corner of the room, all of them taken apart, at least partially. Once she realized what she’d done while distracted and that Big Sister Emily didn’t like bombs, she’d taken some time to unmake them all.

What did they need right now?

She considered it, but it didn’t take too long. They were looking for the Orbject in the Endgame, so they’d need something to be able to find it. While they were looking, they’d need a way to not be found themselves. And while they were there, they needed a way to send all of those drones that the HRF was using away.

Taking out drones…

She looked at a long pipe that she had, then a bucket of fertilizer, and another with iron shavings and powdered aluminum. Hmm, a clever-missile launcher that sent out mini-missiles that could track drones in mid-air and explode them? That would be super-duper easy to make.

Wait, no. Missiles were bombs.

Maple shook her head and flapped her tail. No good! Big Sister Emily would be upset with her, and then no pats.

Okay, so she needed another solution to take out the drones… Wait, no, first, a list!

She had a small white-board on one wall, so she erased the scribbles she had on it and wrote down the list of things she needed.

1 – Sneky stuf

2 – anti-drone things

3 – Orbject finder things

She nodded. Good! A list would keep her on task. And in that order, things were easier to figure out. Sneaky stuff wouldn’t be too hard. Big Sister Emily seemed to like the ponchos of invisibility that she had made for Trinity… oh, and she had some more ponchos in a baggie, didn’t she? They were in the hunting supplies that they’d found.

First, she ripped open the packages for the ponchos. They had grabbed five of them, which was a good number. One for her, the Boss, Teddy, Athena, and Aurora. Trinity had her own already, so that was nice.

Then she started looking for some things around the garage and the piles she’d sorted her materials into already. She ripped apart a remote (for on/off buttons!) and then found some reflective tape and some batteries, which was always useful.

There were a few cans of spray paint, and some sponges too, not that she thought she’d need them too much, the ponchos were already a deep, forest-y green, which everyone knew was the most hidden of all colours.

She laid the first of the ponchos out, then used normal duct-tape with holes poked into it to hold the wires, batteries, and the buttons from the remote in place. Then she taped the wires around here and there.

Those powered the reflective tape, which she put on backwards so that they’d do negative visibility.

After that, she sprayed grey and green and brown paints onto a sponge and dabbed it all the spread-out poncho, turning it from just green to camo.

Half an hour passed before she was done with the first, but when she turned it on, and after she stepped on the few sparks that flew out of it, the poncho warped and blended in almost perfectly with the floor.

Good! That’d help a bunch! And while it would only cover half of their bodies, combined with something like Minor Shadow Blend, it would make her sisters real tough to spot, especially in the dark.

It took another hour to make the next four, but now that she knew what she was doing, it was a lot easier, though she was starting to run low on wires and duct tape… maybe she could take some things apart?

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Next!

The anti-drone thing… she looked around for a while before deciding to build two things.

The first involved a leaf-blower she found in a corner. It would be a bit loud, but still, that was okay. That would be their way of destroying drones if they caught sight of them, and since it was blowing and not blowing-up, it was technically not explosive and so it was okay!

She had a bag-full of confetti, long strips of paper and tinsel in all sorts of colours. So she took that, sharpened the edges of the paper using a whetstone, then placed it in a big baggy. She had enough to fill three baggies like that. Then she used a soda bottle as the shell, and added just a teensy bit of explosives inside of it. Like, just a pinch? A few firecrackers and a ziplock baggy full of gasoline. Not much!

The result, after some additional tinkering with the leaf-blower, as a girl-portable surface-to-air anti-drone device. If it worked like she wanted to, then they’d be able to launch a shell up into the air where the magnet on the end would be attracted to the nearest drone, then it would explode (like, a small one!) and send a wave of sharpened confetti out in every direction, hopefully ripping any drone apart into hundreds of little pieces.

It wasn’t very subtle, though.

So, she made a second thing.

This one was simpler. She had some lengths of wood that she made some wings for out of a stack of old CDs with some hot glue. Then she attached a battery to it, a remote, and made a little elastic-powered propeller for the front that would spin and spin for a while.

The whole thing was somewhat foldable, so they could carry them along. Once activated, the idea was that it would fly up and away, then move in a more or less straight line, drawing the attention of any drone with it. Like shinies in front of a magpie.

Actually, that gave her an idea for her next gadget.

She made some birds.

They weren’t very nice. She made three of them out of some wire mesh and papier-maché, with beady eyes and a hole in their chest for a camera. She squeezed in some electronics and batteries to make them work, then spray-painted the three in light greys.

In the end they looked… well, they looked like really lame pigeons.

She was a bit upset. The pigeons she saw outside looked way better. Whoever the government had making them to spy on people (like she’d learned on the internet, birds weren’t real) were way better at this than she was.

Still, these three would be given an important mission. She snuck some speakers into them, and recorded herself making chirping noises.

Now, when she released them, they’d fly out in big circles, looking for the Orbject across the city, and when one of them found it, it would land on the nearest rooftop and play her recorded chirping as loud as it could.

That way, they’d be able to track it down, and find the Orbject themselves! And the other Villains would dismiss it, just the same way as most people dismissed the government-made birds out on the streets.

She could probably make something better, but that would take a while, and maybe some more stuff. When she looked outside, it was already dark… and her tummy was giving her the grumbles, letting her know that it had been a while since she’d had breakfast, and lunch hadn’t ever actually happened.

Oops?

She couldn’t be too upset though. She’d made a whole heap of things for her sisters and was actually quite proud of the results.

Now she just had to show this all to her big sister! Then, tomorrow…

Oh no, she’d have to go with all the rest, wouldn’t she? She… wasn’t sure she liked that idea. Being out in the field was for others.

Maybe if it was just a snoop-around kind of mission it’d be okay?

She decided to go back inside, before she could worry too much about it all. Lunch first, then stress!

“Hi Maple,” Aurora said as she stumbled into the house. “Did you finish everything you wanted to?”

“Uh-huh,” Maple replied.

“Good! We checked in on you a few times, but you seemed real focused.”

They had?

Maybe she could build an alarm for that? And maybe one to let her know when she hadn’t eaten for a while? All she’d need was…

***

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