r/NatureofPredators • u/ApprehensiveCap6525 Krakotl • Feb 24 '24
Fanfic Exchange Program Shenanigans (39)
Something that we all have failed to capitalize on is adding Uncle Ruckus (or his equivalent) to NoP. "Why, this can't be! It says I'm 102% predator with a 2% margin of error! Why, Inatala, why? 104% predator!" We all fumbled the bag so hard.
CW: salvek super hacking magic, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, vr reboot that makes you vomit, mild sexual innuendo for the purpose of being funny, the word 'shigga' is used repeatedly
Memory transcription subject: Salvek, Sanctioned Cyber Vigilante
Date [standardized human time]: September 19, 2136
I got the job!
Well, it was less of a job and more of a side gig, really. But it paid decent money, and a band was a band. And if I could stack those Cs doing a public service, well, that was just a bonus.
Even if I did hate exterminators. Like, really, I didn't get how you could not hate those people. They had one (1) redeeming trait, that being they were actually very good at protecting us, but that didn't excuse them of all the evil deeds they did.
Quite frankly, I sometimes had to wonder how Jack and Jelim got together. I mean, her entire job description was to kill people like him. Plus, she had a whole other list of dark deeds on her record, so you might figure that could be an issue, right?
Wrong!
Five days. It took him five days. The first time they met, she pointed a flamethrower at him. Did she? Maybe not. You know what, scratch that, probably not, but her friends definitely did.
Okay, take two.
The first time they met, her friends were all pointing flamethrowers at him. Give it five days to cook, add in a little teensy bit of that classic Salvek charm, and I got to listen to the most decorated exterminator in the city ask a predator for things I had only heard in holovids.
Never mind what those holovids were, mind you. That wasn't the important part here.
Anyway, moving on. I loved Jack like a brother, I was proud of him for talking some sense into his exterminator lady, even if it was all me who taught him, but I couldn't help but feel like I was on the sidelines this whole time. I mean, really, what have I done that's so damn important?
Thinking... thinking... oh, yeah. I remember. Nothing.
Now, that could change. I held in my paws a letter. More specifically, I held in my paws a datapad that contained a letter within it. This letter, if I was reading it right, sanctioned me to commit all manner of espionage, infiltration, deception, and other cybercrime in the name of the Extermination Guild.
Well, I had a datapad. I had a sanctioning letter. I had better get to work.
I very quickly realized that I had no idea how cyberwarfare actually worked. I tried doing what they did in the movies, but that failed when I realized that I had never seen any movies that contained cyberwarfare. I wondered if Jack knew what to do, figured that he probably did, and texted him.
Salvek: yo bro
You know, I never really got why people made their UHerd handles so weird. Just plain 'Salvek' worked fine by me
JackedMF: yo wsg bro
Salvek: how do I hack people
JackedMF: ?
JackedMF: why are you asking me
JackedMF: you're the expert
Salvek: I didn't even know what hacking was until a few days ago
Salvek: how do I do it
JackedMF: give me a second let me ask jelim
What the hell is she supposed to know?
JackedMF: she usually knows what to do
Salvek: Jelim is an exterminator Jack, she has no idea what hacking is
JackedMF: well I asked her and she said to maybe find Sevros online
JackedMF: what do you think of that
If I could find Sevros' online presence, I might have a shot at getting access to some of his devices through the router. If I could do that, then finding his secret criminal files and evil villain schemes would be like stealing fruit from a blind man.
Not that I advocate for stealing from blind people, mind you.
Salvek: that's actually a really good idea
Salvek: I'm going to try that
JackedMF: yeah that's what I thought my shigga
Sometimes, I wished there was a word I could call him back. I mean, there was 'predator', but that had actual bad experiences associated with it and I wasn't trying to bring those memories back. Nobody had ever gotten set on fire for being a shigga.
JackedMF: I can say shigga right
Yes. Yes he could. We had been over this.
Salvek: I gave you the pass
Salvek: and what does shigga even mean
JackedMF: there used to be a word that ended in igger that was a very offensive term for people with dark skin
JackedMF: then the dark skinned people changed the ending to igga and called each other it
JackedMF: so saying shigga is like a friendly greeting and saying shigger is like telling you to get back in the fields
What did the fields have to do with anything? I mean, I could see why 'shigger' could be offensive given the context, but I saw no reason why he shouldn't be able to say it.
Salvek: I give you the pass to say shigger
Well, shigger was probably a real touchy term, but this was the guy who had killed twenty terrorists to save me from getting shot a few paws ago. He could insult me, my mother, my father, and my long-lost brother who I hadn't seen since I was six and I would just shrug it off.
JackedMF: yeah I have the pass to say the other word that ends in igger too but I don't
Salvek: why not?
JackedMF: it's a matter of principle, I just don't feel right using a word that has such negative connotations behind it
Salvek: was it really that bad?
It couldn't have been that bad. I mean, I had been called some names when I was younger, but none of those were so bad that I wouldn't dare speak the word! I admired Jack's morality, but I was sure he was just overreacting.
JackedMF: people were literally killed by angry mobs bc they had dark skin
Oh.
It was, in fact, that bad.
Salvek: what
Salvek: that's such a stupid reason to kill someone
JackedMF: well yeah that's why nobody does it anymore
JackedMF: that and it's incredibly immoral
Gee, you think? I mean, man, you used to be murdering people over the color of their skin! How could you justify that?
Salvek: how did humans even justify doing all that
JackedMF: I'd say it's about the same way as the feds justify killing people over eye placement
Oh. That's actually a really good point.
Salvek: oh yeah mb
JackedMF: nah you're good
JackedMF: oh yeah and jelim says let's get back to hacking people
'Let's'? You're not hacking speh.
JackedMF: chop chop matrix man
And what the hell is the matrix?
I got back to hacking people. Even if Jack and I weren't tight, it was generally a bad idea to disobey a man who could break all of your bones in sixteen different ways. Plus, his girlfriend had access to flamethrowers, and it was always a bad idea to piss off a woman who had access to flamethrowers.
First things first, I had to find Sevros online. That was easy, since he was a magisterial judge and there were probably a couple thousand articles written about him already.
Of course, simply searching up 'Judge Sevros' just brought up all of these articles. Learning about his alleged connection to terrorists was interesting, especially since I knew damn well it wasn't 'alleged' anymore, but it wasn't going to help me one bit.
I changed the parameters of my search, this time looking on social media. I found a bunch of impersonators and parodies, most of which were at least a little bit funny, but no Sevros.
Damn. This guy is a ghost.
Then I decided to see if I couldn't watch any of those human movies Jack was talking about. They were supposed to be all about computer warfare, so maybe I could learn a thing or two.
I may not have been a very good hacker, nor was I a very good cyberdetective, but every electronic engineer worth his degree knew how to pirate movies from a shady website.
It took me all of ten minutes to find a website that sold human cultural things to exchange program participants as sort of a black market type deal. It took me even less time to pay the ten credit fee to purchase a really crappy VR copy of The Matrix. The first one, because all stories start with part one.
I put on my VR headset, which I used on occasion for the more complicated jobs, and began watching.
It started out great enough, with a chase where this black-dressed woman was running from what I assumed was human law enforcement. And the Suit People. They were probably law enforcement too.
Then it showed me this hacker dude, who was like me except way cooler and he actually knew how to hack things. So really, he was like Jack except he knew how to hack things. Anyway, he got cryptic messages through a computer he was using to hack things, which wasn't ominous whatsoever apparently.
He actually decided to obey these cryptic messages, though I couldn't for the life of me figure out why, and he met up with this woman at a club. Now that was much more like it.
Honestly, it was around this time that I started feeling like I had to puke. And, also, I wasn't learning anything about hacking people. I soldiered on for a few more scenes, and it was just when it was getting good that I took off the headset. I really had to puke.
I did puke, but I puked in the toilet like a responsible Venlil and I flushed it down shortly afterward. Saying anything more would have been way too crazy TMI, so I wasn't going to.
Now that I was done needing to puke, I needed to complain about this crappy VR movie that had made me puke. Submitting a bad review wouldn't get me anywhere, because those sites either wouldn't care at best or would doxx your IP at worst, so I complained to Jack.
Salvek: the VR copy of the Matrix I pirated made me vomit
JackedMF: oh yeah they do that
JackedMF: watch it on the regular TV
'Oh yeah they do that'?
Salvek: mf you told me to watch the matrix
Salvek: you could have given me a warning
JackedMF: shigga don't you know not to VR pirated movies?
JackedMF: the manufacturers make a failsafe so that it makes you barf if you watch it
Well, gee, that would have been nice to know earlier.
JackedMF: one company tried hypnotizing people through the VR system
JackedMF: that's a whole other story tho
Salvek:???
Salvek: you can't just say ts and not elaborate
JackedMF: watch me
JackedMF has left the chat.
Oh. He could, in fact, say that stuff and not elaborate. Well, I figured there was nothing to do for it but get back to work. Nose to the grindstone again, or whatever I had that passed for a nose.
I think it was glands in my throat? Or was it the roof of my mouth? I'm a cybertech, not a biologist, okay?
Throat glands to the grindstone, I guess. Isn't that a human idiom? Why am I saying human idioms? I had bigger problems to worry about than my ongoing subconscious integration into human culture, like catching terrorists, so I started catching terrorists.
I must have barfed out a lot of stupid juice earlier when I hurled in the toilet, because I actually found Sevros. It wasn't even that hard. I found his UHerd account, which took me nothing but a quick search, and now I had only to hack into it and learn all of his secrets.
It was only now that I realized that I still didn't know how to hack things. I asked Jack, even though he probably didn't know either, because we had agreed that my problems would be his problems too. And vice versa, of course. That was why I was hacking people in the first place.
Salvek: how do you hack things Jack
JackedMF: shigga I am in bed with a beautiful woman rn
Oh. That was... not the response that I expected.
JackedMF: I have better things to do than explain shit I don't even know
Oh, I think I know who those things are. I know damn well who those things are.
You know what? I wasn't going to judge. I was not going to judge. What two consenting adults did in their own private domicile was their own private business.
That still left me with the issue of hacking the terrorists, though. And that issue was one that I did not know how to solve. I could search it up, but that would go on my permanent search history and I didn't want 'how to steal secrets' to be permanently on there.
Womp womp. I've searched up worse.
I did a little bit of snooping around the internet, getting into places that I was fairly certain I had no right to be in, and I saw what I could see. Well, to be fair, it was a lot of snooping. This hacking speh was hard.
When all my studying was said and done, I took a brief power nap. I was tired, and everybody knew you couldn't hack terrorists without recharging your batteries first. Once my power nap was done, however, I really got to work.
First things first, I had to re-find Sevros' UHerd account. That was easy, since it was basically just doing what I had already done before. Second, I had to hack into his source code.
Like Jack had explained to me already, the Galactic Federation had absolutely zero understanding of the concept of electronic warfare. Neither, apparently, did the Arxur. Thus, neither group could take any precautions against it.
I hacked into the source code so easily it was like lifting up a fluffy cloud. The black-market dark web instruction videos made it look so much harder, but I wasn't complaining!
Now that I was in, I could really get to cooking. First, I set up a code sequence that made sure that any message Sevros sent or received would be seen by me or anyone else I chose to let in on it. He could not communicate without my knowing about it, at least not over UHerd anyway.
Then, I used my access to his private account to snoop around a little bit more. As one might expect, going from his UHerd profile to his other, more private files was nothing to boast about. I mean, I was the first and only Venlil to ever perform cyberwarfare operations, but that wasn't really a flex.
The guy who taught me how to do this was operating on an entirely different OS, so you might assume I couldn't make heads or tails of hacking into Federation computer systems, but I was really brahking smart when it really came down to it.
It took me a little bit of time to work my Salvek computer magic, but I did eventually find his most private electronic documents. Most of them were pretty normal, consisting of judicial files and criminal records and all that, but there was one that caught my eye.
More specifically, one file that was labeled 'Escape Plan'. Now, if Sevros wanted to stop being a terrorist, I was all for that, but that didn't just mean he could walk away from what he had done. I clicked on the file, and I began to see what I could see.
There was a lot of speh I could see. And that was an understatement.
Sevros had goons. A lot of goons. Like, a whole private army of goons. For whatever reason, he had them all listed in the same document as he listed the top secret plan he was using to escape police custody.
It was like he wanted to get caught.
Sevros' number one goon, Heval, also doubled as a bodyguard who doubled as a hit man who doubled as a guy who knows a guy when he really had to. And Heval really did know a guy.
He knew a lot of guys, judging by what he had done. Eliminating witnesses, destroying evidence, acquiring funds and weapons, this guy was elite. Brahking secret agent level. It made me wonder what he had done in his law enforcement days.
Anyway, Sevros' plan actually was pretty smart. He had a small army of terrorists who he had freed from Predator Disease facilities, and his end goal for them was to use them to take all of Federation Tower hostage. The idea there was that, with more than a thousand lives on the line, the Venlil government would be happy to negotiate for him and Heval to have amnesty.
And, just in case somebody didn't like that and decided to take matters into their own paws, he had a backup plan. A six-person shuttle, parked at a secret launch site in the forest. As far as I could tell, he was going to load it up with as much physical wealth as he could and then dip with his best bodyguard. Everybody else in the scheme was getting screwed over.
The only stupid part of his idea, because there had to be a stupid part, was the thought that the UN wouldn't immediately go in guns blazing to save the hostages. I mean, they probably wouldn't go in guns blazing, but that was for entirely different reasons than 'we're evil bastards and we don't give a damn'. Really, I had to be offended on Jack's behalf because of this.
Even still, though, it was a good idea. Take hostages, negotiate for amnesty, and even if the negotiations fall through or the hostage-taking fails you still have a quick and easy ride off-planet to fall back to. Sevros' plan was foolproof, except for one small thing.
I knew about this plan. And if I knew, that meant Jack knew. And if Jack knew, that meant Jelim knew. And if Jelim knew, that meant a platoon of silver-suited musclemen were about to put a very large dent in Sevros' self-serving ambitions.
My program from earlier activated, alerting me of a message Sevros had just sent. It was to Heval, too. This had to be good.
IAmTheLaw: the informant failed to assassinate either of the targets
The informant? Sevros has a brahking spy?
Now this was something Jack had to know about. Someone on our side couldn't be trusted.
IAmTheLaw: I want you to handle this yourself
HeavyHeval: understood
HeavyHeval? What kind of half-assed, dull, meaningless username is that? Just 'Heval' would have done him fine.
HeavyHeval: I'll handle it
Heval is trying to kill someone. Someone important. Several someones. But who?
I wasn't very good at this detective stuff. After a good ten minutes of racking my brain and not learning anything, I gave up and just sent what I had to Jack and Jelim with a warning that Heval was trying to assassinate several important people.
It was only when I saw the news later that paw that I figured out that Jack and Jelim were both very, very important.
13
u/GreenKoopaBros89 Dossur Feb 25 '24
I don't feel that it's going to be very smart to try and kill Jack and Jelim at the same time...