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”Clown.”
“I’m awake.”
”You don’t look it.”
“Well, I am.”
Clown rolled over, away from certain irritating AIs he’d built himself, coming to face against the wall. His eyes were still shut. Awake didn’t mean active.
”Bro. Do you really need help?”
“I don’t need to get up.”
”You really do. Just- a bit.”
Mugm sounded awkward, just like he did whenever he had to disagree with Clown. It was funny, really. He was pretty arrogant with everyone else, messing with Kaboodle’s gear just for the fun of it, but he had this kind of ingrained respect for his creator.
As well he should. It was for moments like this, when his creator just didn’t want to get up for possibly the next five hours. Or ever.
”Class starts in twenty minutes.”
“It what?”
That got Clown to sit up. He grabbed his phone, checked it, and cursed. He had no reason not to trust Mugm. The AI was physically incapable of lying to him, anyway.
Twenty minutes was loads of time. Even if it meant his routine was screwed. Clown didn’t need to go insane about this. He was damn sure awake now.
Rolling out of bed, Clown spared a moment to be thankful Mugm had chosen to tap into his room via the speakers, not using his physical body, which would just be getting in the way right now.
School. That meant… normal clothes. He owned normal clothes, for sure.
Clown did this more than half the days in his life, how did he suck at this so much?
”Are you… looking for your clothes?”
“Yes. Fuck off.”
”Uh- I can. Or I can help you.”
“…Second one.”
Clown was pulling off his nightwear, rummaging through his wardrobe and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Multitasking. He was so smart. He was going to go to school, and laugh at all the heroes who were doing their extra-credit projects on a thousand ways to put him in a cell, and trade deathtrap designs with Jude. As soon as he found his clothes.
”School shirts are in the second compartment down. You moved them yesterday.”
Oh, and it was Monday too. That explained a lot. Clown wasn’t normally this bad.
And he remembered doing that, actually. He’d had a spare afternoon he couldn’t bear to spend spring-loading guns anymore, so he’d decided to rearrange his wardrobe. It had seemed a good idea at the time, Clown was sure.
Wasn’t helping him much now, though.
Clown rolled his arms backwards, stretching with his hands above his head. He unfurled his wings too, and let his eyes flutter closed, feeling every muscle in his body stretched as far they would go. That would wake him up.
”Sir.”
Clown startled awake, catching himself before he fell over as his mind slipped back towards unconsciousness. Mugm had caught him off guard with that.
”That worked.”
Clown eyed the speaker in the corner of his room in suspicion. He didn’t like Mugm having that sort of agency. He’d probably gotten it from Branzy.
Groaning, Clown added that to his mental to-do list. He needed to see Branzy. He was running low on supplies. Maybe Ashswag, if it was really dire.
”Need me to write anything down?”
Mugm shouldn’t be allowed to be this perceptive. Clown gritted his teeth, and would have resolved to remove the independence from his AI’s system, if it hadn’t been well-justified. He would forget. And Mugm knew it, because Mugm had watched him forget to make an entire rune-blaster for Ashswag, actually.
Now he remembered, Clown wondered what the villain had even done with that. Maybe something about courting that street artist Doly had taken too much delight in recounting Ash’s awkward interactions with during his status report on the whole of Unstable. Clown liked to keep an eye. Or have a computer keep an eye for him.
“Yes. I need to organise a meeting with Branzy.”
”I can organise it.”
“No. I can do this one. Just remind me to. You can get in touch with Ashswag, though.”
”Will do, Sir.”
Clown scowled. He was going to school. He didn’t need his AIs pulling this sort of shit on him.
“You only call me that if I’m working. Not… on a fucking Monday morning. I don’t even know the fucking time.”
”8:46”
“Fuck.”
Clown pulled a smart white shirt on, and a dark crimson hoodie, zipped up halfway. Add some dark jeans, sock, and his fingerless gloves, and he looked… fine.
”Mask.”
“Mask.”
Clown grabbed his mask, hooking it over his ears and glancing over himself in his mirror hung on corrugated steel. He looked like a teenager. Like not much of anyone. That was good enough.
He remembered his bag, because fuck Mugm, pre-packed from the weekend. Clown swung it onto his shoulder, just long enough to hurry out of his bedroom and across the main area of his warehouse, past his half-constructed weaponry and gadgets littering the majority of the space.
He dropped it again, just by the door, grabbed a protein bar from the kitchenette, and was honoured with Mugm’s continued narration of how late he was in the process of shoving it in his pocket. No time to eat, now he’d gotten his mask on.
”8:54-“
“Fuck off. I didn’t take eight minutes to get dressed.”
”You did.”
Sentient computers were the worst thing ever to happen to him. Clown caught his own eye in a sheet of metal he had propped against the opposite wall, and he was glaring as he grabbed his beanie and carrying knife.
He was just glad he didn’t have to brush his hair. He could hide his increasingly messy braids under a hat, mostly. At least until he got Kaboodle to redo them for him.
Knife went in his belt.
Fuck, he’d forgotten his belt.
Clown turned around, and would you look at that, he was a genius, just like all those tests had said. His belt was on his chair, for some reason, the singular wooden thing he was pretty sure he’d found left there from the previous owners, because it was the only rustic furniture he owned.
But the belt was important. This wasn’t his utility one, but it still had his tracker in. His knife didn’t even go in this one, it went under his trousers.
Clown’s thoughts were a mess, as he pulled up his jeans’ cuff, strapping his knife to his shin one-handed as he tried to get his belt on with the other.
Bag. Belt. Knife. Food. He might eat it. A whole six minutes before class started. Suitable clothes. Mask. He was forgetting something.
Earpiece.
Clown grabbed it, hanging off his tool rack, in an almost sensible place. That would be a first, around here. He’d been to Branzy’s studio, and he had everything neatly organised, partitioned into sections and subsections and a catalogued organising system…
Clown didn’t have the patience for that. He was a teenager with a world to rule. He could make robots pick up after him.
He had his earpiece in, too, wrestling between it and his backpack as he shouldered out of the rusty metal doors he really needed to get replaced. They didn’t shut properly. He’d rigged a thick curtain up, and it wasn’t like anyone lived around here, but there was a principle. He should be entitled to privacy.
”You want a traffic report, right?”
“No. I want Doly.”
”Hey, Clown, c’mon…”
“Doly.” Clown rounded the corner, dropping his voice as he hurried down the side of his warehouse. “And my helmet”
There was a momentary silence, which must be purely Mugm sulking, because they could swap out near-instantaneously. Clown waited, spotting his helmet on the wall beside his bike and pulling it on over his beanie.
”Hello. Doly speaking.”
“Wonderful. Traffic report.”
”Fine, fine, yes, getting a- traffic report, right now…”
Clown was going to regret this. Mugm might be pushing him a little, today, but at least he was a little more tolerable. Doly was chatty. And Clown was three minutes away from being late.
”Main road all good. Normal route clear. Hero activity sometime in the middle of the night- nope, sorry, vigilantes, actually. All cleared up now, except a cordon around that cafe. Not your usual.”
Clown began to tune Doly out. As he’d expected. Chatty.
His bike didn’t need time to warm up. Clown was better than that. And his schedule was usually better, hence why it had been idling since when Mugm had turned it on at the normal time. So, it was warmed up anyway. Bonus.
His fingers found the ignition, and Clown felt the engine hum underneath him, making him grin, under his mask. He didn’t really care if he was late. None of it mattered that much, not compared to him.
”One minute to nine. You might want to-“
“Yes. Thank you, Doly.”