Pressing Player 2 Start without asking
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MothMan had been feeling off his game for the past couple of days, no thanks to the weird chatroom that had spontaneously manifested on all of Sophia's devices and stubbornly refused to be uninstalled. In addition to fumbling a scam directly in front of an Official (not that they had any real identity to go on at least), the last conversation he had there seemed tailor-made to prey off his anxieties surrounding DarkChips; anxieties he needed to get off his chest.
It wasn't a secret Sophia wasn't in a great mood either, having been dragged to another flipping birthday party she was too old for, all for some random-ass family member she wouldn't even recognise the face of. At least it being hosted at an arcade gave her ample amounts of dark corners to sulk in, and kept the debate between her and her Navi well-obscured by bellowing attract demos throughout the building.
"I'm telling you, we really shouldn't be involved with anything to do with Nebula. Or that EventHorizon person." MothMan sternly asserted, flying in place on the middle of the PET screen. "I thought we agreed to never handle DarkChips, because you know if we were spotted with-"
"I only wanna know what this new Nebula is up to, I don't plan to join them." Sophia half-heartedly cut in, slumped against the wall. "Look, I just think this is the kind of thing we need to have optics on, 'cuz if Nebula's still around they'll want to take all the other chumps by surprise. We need to stay in the loop." Sophia's voice gradually became more assertive as the thought of being one step of people ahead entered her head. "And it's not as if looking into Official Navi patrol patterns means I want to join those jerks."
MothMan stopped fluttering and landed on the homepage ground, retracting his wings. He could tell Sophia probably would have wanted to join Nebula if she had a Navi with a less... sordid history with DarkChips, but the conversation was going in the right direction. "Well we still should keep an arms length." MothMan had relaxed his tone a little, but he wasn't faltering with the sternness. "Nebula's entire M.O. is about the spread and distribution of DarkChips, you can't not be involved with them if you're interacting with the group..."
MothMan simulated an exhale while fiddling with his antennae. "Sorry, it's just ever since that chatroom showed up I've been... feeling off." He admitted. "Especially with those weirdos going on about multiverse BS..."
"Join the club." Sophia confided, not that anyone other than MothMan would have sensed any empathy with the cold tone of her voice. Both the Navi and Operator looked as if they had something else to say, but the commotion nearby from Sophia's family was getting louder and harder to ignore.
"...Let's see if we can hack into the ticket machines." Sophia broke the silence between the two of them as she got off the wall and stood up (not that her posture changed much), before stuffing her PET into her jacket and walking towards the thicket of arcade machines, and well away from where the main party was taking place. It's not as if the family communion would notice her sneaking off, because when was the last time they paid actual attention to her anyway?
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The arcade seemed unreasonably full, but the crowd seemed to congregate at one end. It left the dance machine open with an audience to entertain, so Bambi set up HQ while Pointe gathered intel via the cameras.
She was two songs in before Pointe sounded in. "It's a birthday party, little star, and I think your new girl is in attendance!"
Bambi took her time entering her name on the scoreboard and getting water while Pointe pulled up a swiped screenshot from the security cameras. Face mask check, bug theming check. Cute sulky edgy girl energy, super check!
"I couldn't hear the Navi through the cameras, but the NetOp was talking about Nebula being back and Officials." Pointe spun in place, before closing the image. "They're going to hack the ticket machines!"
"Great job, Pointe! Let me know if anything else comes up, but I think I've got the rest." Bambi gave the hologram a little kiss before Pointe disappeared. She needed to get the girl's attention, and that was easy enough. Bambi was hard to ignore regularly, but if the girl was a scammer, it wouldn't be hard to speed things along. Edgy girls like easy victims, especially if they thought they could knock them off a high horse.
No one had stepped up to the dance machine in her absence so she took up post again and spotted a young girl in a birthday crown. Perfect. "Is it your birthday? Oh my gosh, come up and dance with me! My treat!"
Birthday Girl was small enough that Bambi could hold her by the arms and spin her around on the dance mat to hit the buttons with more accuracy than an eight year old could alone. It wasn't anything like her own perfect score glowing at the top of the board, but it put her on the first page. and Bambi sent her off squealing in delight when she handed her the giant pile of tickets she had accumulated. A cute and loud siren to snag Buggy's attention, and a generous gift to establish herself as the honeypot worth trying to get into.
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Lugging her body past several arcade machines, ranging from corny ticket redemption games, pinball tables and some weird cabinets she didn't recognise (Tournament Bushido Ball? My Hero 3?? Super Turbo Mettenna Puncher?! What even was a "Mettenna"???), Sophia landed upon her target: a row of three ticket exchange machines. The rightmost one was out of order, but the other two were unoccupied and fully operational. Despite the gaudy artwork slapped on front, the machines were generic and unremarkable models; the front had a single row of LCD text, a slot to feed in tickets, a small printer to convert the tickets into a single barcode receipt, and the actual important feature: A jack-in port for maintenance.
...Or at least, a jack-in port behind a small locked hatch. Sophia rolled her eyes at the pathetic attempt at security. Sure, it would stop any old idiot from jacking in, but "any old idiot" wouldn't have a PET modded with an overclocked IR sensor, outputting way stronger signals than legal electronics manufacturers would allow. Discretely digging her PET out from her pocket with a tight grip on the handle (the tape holding the handle together was starring to give out, better put a fresh wrapping on once I'm out of this dunghole...), Sophia touched the IR sensor directly on the hatch, pressed the jack-in button and "casually" turned the corner and walked away, making sure there was good distance between her and the machine. Lest it be blatantly obvious she was breaking into it...
Sophia only caught a glimpse of MothMan successfully entering the comp space before having her attention diverted by an ear-piercing squeal from nearby. Startled and recoiling, she instinctively snapped her head up towards the banshee wail's source: a dance machine right at the end of the current row of cabinets. Taking a needlessly hard stare, she sighted two people: A little brat wearing a birthday crown (was she the barely-related family member of the hour or someone who just happened to have the same birthday? Sophia had such little investment in the party she genuinely couldn't tell) and a girl closer to her age with black and white hair, dressed appropriately for a marathon session of the dance game.
Normally Sophia would have brushed it off as a brief distraction and got right back to MothMan, but something seemed... odd. The DDR girl was making a very animated showing of handing princess eardrum-burster a big knot of tickets; while she could just be acting cutesy for the kid, Sophia was getting the feeling she was trying to make the exchange as overt as humanly possible. Bet she wants brownie points from the other arcade-goers for being oh so generous by giving away her worthless tickets... (Sophia was only trying hack her way to a free high-value ticket coupon out of having nothing better to, or so she told herself)
Thankfully the birthday girl excitedly ran off in the opposite direction, hopefully preventing Sophia from being caught off-guard by her again. Regaining her composure and focusing on her PET (but not thinking to move out of DDR girl's sight, which would soon prove to be a fatal mistake), Sophia addressed MothMan. "Anything out of the ordinary in there?"
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Bingo. Buggy had caught sight of her. And she looked pissed about it too. God, Bambi hoped she was Throwawayaccount_307h. She needed her in her collection of crusty girls ASAP.
Then Buggy stopped looking at her and turned back to her PET. That wouldn't do. Bambi didn't get ignored.
Pointe gave her a conspiratory 'pssst' through her earbud. "They're using an IR scanner! He's in! But the door opens both ways."
Bambi smiled. "Yeah? You wanna do some recon? Make sure we got the right girl?"
"Tactical lesbionage action time!" was the only sign off Pointe gave before disappearing. Bug Girl's PET was a bit of a disaster, and Pointe resisted the urge to color code and sort while she was there. Progs were scattered, but they barely acknowledged her even when she waved and simply went back to the (probably illegal) mods they were handling. Amazing what acting like you belonged there did.
The chat was easy enough find, since she saw it in her own PET every day. She only gave it a quick glance, careful to avoid the DMs to maintain some level of privacy despite her current actions. She gave a victorious pirouette before logging out in a shower of holographic glitter.
"Mission success! She's the one!" She exclaimed.
"You're a dream, Pointe! Let's get our new girl!" Bambi chucked her empty water bottle into the nearest garbage can and disentangled herself from the loose circle of children still june-bugging to her since her little show. Buggy hadn't bothered to move from her line of sight, so she power walked her way through the crowd, not bothering to pretend she wasn't heading straight for her.
She seemed distracted, so Bambi gave her a polite tap on the shoulder to bring her attention back to its rightful place. "Hi Throwawayaccount, I'm Doe_Eyed, but you can call me Bambi!""
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MothMan was fully prepared to report there wasn't anything of note inside the comp, even before Sophia asked the question. As the Jack-In sequence completed, MothMan materialised inside the comp and laid his eyes upon... an utterly perfunctory and indistinct cyberspace, sure enough.
"Nah. It's flat, square and there's not even any stray mystery data floating about. Just a couple of progs here." MothMan relayed. One the two Mr. Progs in question was at the furthest end of the comp space and could be heard muttering the same phrases on repeat; MothMan presumed that one was controlling the LCD, and the one in the comp's centre was responsible for the rest of the machine's functions. Both were conveniently facing away from the point of entry, totally oblivious to the intruder or the fact he was eyeing them up and down.
"Of course it'd be just as boring as the 'games' here." Sophia sneered. "Think you can talk the Prog into giving us free crud?" MothMan flashed a small, but wry grin. "With the old repairman scheme? Don't even need to ask me twice!" he confidently responded. Being far from the first time the two had done a hack like this, the Navi and NetOp didn't even need to discuss a plan; they were already mutually picturing the exact same steps:
- MothMan disguises himself as a NormalNavi, claiming to the main Prog he's a repairman doing routine maintenance.
- Get the machine into maintenance mode, and then poke around to see how the printed receipts format their barcodes.
- With that figured out, make the machine print out an ultra-high value receipt, with zero tells it wasn't legitimately earned.
- Have Sophia swoop around the corner and grab the print-out off the floor, acting as if she was just searching for something she dropped earlier.
- PROFIT!!!
The two gave each other an affirmative nod, followed by MothMan quickly curling into a cocoon and just as quickly bursting out looking far less moth-like. As he approached the central Prog, Sophia herself got closer to the wall and perched her backside on the hand railing. The main congregation further up seemed to be slowly trickling down, and she was fully anticipating some dumbass overexcited kid to run straight into her at breakneck speed if she didn't get out the way. There also appeared to be a small crowd forming nearby; a handy masking noise, provided it didn't get too lively for Sophia's low tolerance of loud sheeple.
But what self-respecting plan survives contact with the enemy? Just as Sophia got herself on standby to look up any technical information MothMan needed, she was taken aback by the familiar sound of a Navi jacking back into her PET. What? MothMan sure as heck wouldn't bail out that quickly, and he hadn't left the PET's view of the comp at all, being well into his repairman routine with the Mr. Prog. Her heart rate rising, Sophia mashed her way through the PET menus to pop up the homepage, coming face-to-face with... nothing? Huh? She then anxiously flicked through her files for any tampering, but everything seemed accounted for and none of the Last Read/Modified dates had jumped to the current date and time.
Sophia's anxiety was now replaced by pure confusion. What just happened? Was one of her hardware mods acting weird? Did the Jack-In port pick up a false positive from some kind of IR light in the arcade? Did a virus try to sneak in her PET, but got deleted by the automatic antivirus program? She closed her wide eyes and shook her head. She needed lock in and be MothMan's second pair of eyes instead of falling for another badly-timed distraction, darn it! Composure regained, Sophia hurriedly closed all the menus and returned to the view of the comp... perhaps in too much of a hurry, as she failed to notice the lingering glitter particles that weren't on the homepage pop up earlier.
The storm of confusion was too brief to break MothMan's attention from the Mr. Prog, whom he had just convinced to put the machine in maintenance mode. "ONE MOMENT GOOD SIR..." The green program spun around and yelled to his fellow Prog: "HEY, WE'RE GOING INTO MAINTENANCE!" The other Mr. Prog yelped and jumped, before beginning to quietly mutter "
*** SERVICE MODE ***" ad nauseam. That's as much as Sophia got to see before a third distraction made itself unwelcome: A small tap on her shoulder."Ugh. Has one member of the Bugby Extended Universe crawled their way here to force family time down my throat?" Sophia thought to herself. Expecting to see someone from main party, she apathetically raised her gaze, asking: "What do you wan-"
Sophia did a massive double-take as her eyes laid upon the DDR girl?! And if her close-up, rosy-cheeked smile didn't throw Sophia off already, calling her by the chatroom username certainly did!!
Leaping off the railing, Sophia could only muster a few variations on "Wha- Whu-" while eyeing up this "Bambi" and trying to get her thoughts in a row. Wasn't this the person who was acting all cutesy and wanting friendship, and then said she would have doxxed you if you ignored her?! Was she trying to get specifically my attention earlier?!
Sophia stood still and took a sharp breath, staring Bambi down. "Have you been following me?" she growled, trying to act cold but failing to hide her incredulity to the situation.
