//------------------------------// // Ch. 2: Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth // Story: Equestria Online: Friendship is Not Optimal (At Least Not in These Worlds) // by TundraStanza //------------------------------// "What is this place?" wondered Takumi. "This is an admin grid." Deisuke tapped away on his cyber keyboard while code scrolled up on his display. "Our enemy has control of it right now. But if we can hack enough admin keys before they can kick us out, we can seize control of the grid and reprogram it." "Uh..." The red-head scratched the air in front of his cheek. "Just get ready for some quick Digimon battles." The blue hoodie glanced at his current partner before sliding a few shapes around and typing several shortcut functions. "You'll only get windows wide enough for your Digimon to launch one attack each time. So make them count." "Okay, see that makes sense." Takumi pumped his fist and smiled in excitement. "Here we go!" Deisuke tapped 'Enter' and light flushed the virtual space. Some annoyingly synthetic background music played in the ears of the Digimon hackers. Deisuke simply crossed his arms without giving the music much thought. Takumi, however, was trying to twist some dials on his cyber goggles. The redhead sighed silently when his efforts seemed to be doing nothing. Across the grid space, three pony-shaped avatars beamed onto the red spawn points. Deisuke and Takumi appeared on a couple of blue starting spaces. --- (Several quick attacks and capture points later...) "Let's go! Rapidmon, Lilamon, and Datamon!" Takumi called out. A green, rabbit-like android, an anthro flower, and a brain in a jar with mechanical limbs launched a bunch of different beam attacks. One of the enemy ponies dissipated into blocks of data before being reconstructed at the respawn point. "Do it: Megaseadramon, Megakabuterimon, and Groundramon!" Deisuke typed out lock-on coordinates on his display. The red sea serpent, the maroon beetle, and the green dragon with metal pumps in its wrists went on the attack. Lightning, golden light, and a simulated earthquake disrupted the standing ponies. "Now! While they're re-compiling!" Deisuke launched his directional input. "Come to Aioba!" Takumi reached out his right hand. His digital jump practically vacuumed him over to the largest control point on the circuit. Administration privileges transferred over to the hackers. The voiceless ponies lowered their heads before vanishing in a river of cubic lights. Deisuke's fingers danced across his virtual keyboard. Command code and program switches flickered on his monitor. A giant bluish-white "V" flashed across the field. Then, the entire area dimmed. "Task complete." The blue hood nodded to himself. "We did it, everyone!" Takumi pushed his goggles up over his hair. "Good work." Erika clacked away on a data board on the other line. "That server is shutting down. Come on back." "Well done, my Watson." Miss Kyoko smiled on Takumi's video camera. "We can chat more when you return to the agency." The two boys gave each other a high-five before running to their respective log-out points. They may not have known at the time, but one of them was going to be a main character in their future story. The other was going to be an important side character. --- "Do you regret taking that request to shut down a major computer server?" "I still wonder if there was a way to save all of those people that were trapped in that Equesrian-filled world." --- "Not likely. Unlike the Eaters that at least leave a physical body, that A.I.'s emigration emulsifies the users' flesh before uploading the mental data. Then, it rearranges parts of the data so that they don't remember anything other than that world. If Yuugo's ghost is right, at least the Eaters let the minds it has trapped remain mostly themselves." "Hmm..." --- "Without the memories or personality, a person is effectively dead. They were already unrecoverable by the time we received the case. If anything, shutting down the shells that mocked their previous existence was a mercy." "Still, though..." --- "You heard my brother, didn't you? You abandoned the idea of upholding self-righteousness the moment you chose the life of a hacker. Are you backing out now?" "No way." --- "How about a taste of my special treat? My latest coffee blend." Takumi's lips quivered with trepidation at the sight of red salmon roe, blue mold, and white cheese chunks floating at the top of the mug. --- "How about a perfectly mixed drink? My treat." Deisuke's eyes widened in horror. His post-traumatic sugar disorder made him remember his last jaw full of cavities all too vividly. ---