CHARACTER AGE INFORMATION (Not all):
Kagome Higurashi: Start of Story: 18, Most of Story: 21, End of Story: 27
Sesshoumaru Taisho: Most of Story: 26, End of Story: 32
Inuyasha Taisho: Most of Story: 23, End of Story: 29
Kikyou Yukama: Start of Story: 20, Most of Story: 23, End of Story: 29
Sango Tajiya: Start of Story: 18, Most of Story: 21, End of Story: 27
Miroku Suzuki: Most of Story: 23, End of Story: 29
Shippou Kitsune: Most of Story: 19, End of story: 25
Rin Myaki: Start of Story: 16, Most of Story: 19, End of Story: 25
Naraku: Unknown.
Hakudoushi: 23 (age is fixed)
Kanna: 27 (age is fixed)
Kagura: 24 (age is fixed)
Bankotsu Shinji: Start of Story: 23, Most of Story: 26
Summary: Once you join the group, there's no turning back... eight hackers, two separate lives, one mastermind out there controlling them. Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru, Miroku, and Shippou start the day off normal. They come to their computer programming work late, get yelled at, wake up late, sleep late while hacking, eat junk food, and watch the news. Kagome, Kikyou, Sango, and Rin are four friends who have been already wired to the network of the nation's wanted criminals, areconstantly on the run. While escaping from her unknown boss who calls himself Naraku along with Chasers (Hakudoushi, Kanna, Kagura)on her back, Kagome runs into Sesshoumaru at a convenient store while running from government officials and drops the deadliest USB he had ever laid eyes on...
Disclaimer: Do not own Inuyasha, but plot is mine, mine, mine!
Prologue: Action!
Three Years Ago…
Kagome Higurashi sat around idly in her room. It was very spacious, yet all the computer screens and software, laptops, and multimedia made it look impossibly tiny. Right in the center of Kagome's room was a jumble of homemade super computers that were so fast that with the current technology rate, it would take at least another century to create such computers. The computers sat on a wide semi-circular desk with a wheeling chair that could rotate 360 degrees so that Kagome didn't have to move much while working. On the sides of the table were stacks and stacks of other computers and a huge bookshelf that contained millions of fake books that held hidden discs, USB, and files. Mixed with these were simple JAVA script books, flash books, computer manuscripts and so on along with normal books and textbooks. The floor was littered with clothes, broken CD cases, and other software that she had. Yes, whatever it was that related to computers, Kagome had it all: Macs, PCs, laptops, software, hardware,everything.
This was her life, and she was bound to it forever. Once she had accepted this strange hodge-podge of illegal hackers, there was no turning back. It was just the four of them: Kagome, Sango, Kikyou, and Rin. Kagome sighed and leaned back on her chair tapping her keyboard with a bored look stretching across her beautiful face. Her brown eyes twinkled as she put her foot on her keyboard and leaned back. The sound of her door creaking open scared her out of her wits forcing her to crash down on the ground grumbling. Rin, the youngest, stuck her head into the room with a curious expression on her face. "Hey Kagome, whacha doing?"
Cursing to herself, Kagome picked herself off the floor and straightened her wheeling chair that had crashed down along with her. "Nothing. I'm completely bored out of my skull, all the hacking jobs Naraku gave us weren't exciting enough, and Kikyou rejected all the exciting ones. I mean yeah, they are brain-teasing and extremely hard hacking jobs, but they don't seem to bring any fun into our lives."
"Be careful with what you wish for." Kagome scowled as she swiveled her chair towards the direction of a new voice that interrupted her conversation with Rin. She knew that voice, it came from none other than Kikyou Yukama, the eldest and the most cautious. Kikyou entered the room behind Rin, whose eyes had turned larger than sausage pans from Kagome's earlier comment. "Be glad that we're not on illegal hackers list, some of them had already disappeared!" Kagome sighed. Kikyou was right, it was always better to live a normal, quiet life without interference from people they never even knew.
"Yeah… I guess you're right Kikyou."
"So, what are you doing?" Rin chirped as she pulled a chair up to Kagome. Kagome had now bent over her computer and was typing furiously. Strange computer language blotted one ofthe manyscreens up in green and black characters. Rin tilted her head as she watched Kagome smirk. Kikyou, in the meantime, playfully rolled her eyes.
"Oh, you know what Kagome loves to do." Came a new voice, "What else would she do on the computer other than furiously hacking away into other people's computers to scramble their files and then email them to another completely random person?" Kagome snickered and hit the enter key. Then she swiveled around on her computer to face Sango, who was the same age as she was. Sango raised one thin eyebrow and asked sarcastically, "Making another virus?"
Both Kikyou and Rin groaned while Kagome grinned cheekily. "YUP!"
"Bite me," Kikyou said dryly, "What does this one do?"
Laughing maniacally and scaring both Kirara and Buyo, Kagome stood up and walked about three paces to grab the most low-tech laptopanyone had ever seenand flipped it open. Rin cringed at the age of the laptop also wearing a look of disgust.The laptop, unlike most of the technology in her room, was huge and bulky. It was also very heavy and mind-numbingly slow. "Since I cannot describe how my virus works in words, I shall give you a visual demonstration on my beloved first computer: Sesshy." Sango and Kikyou looked at each other while Rin leaned eagerly over to observe.
Humming a small tune to herself, Kagome turned the computer on and swiveled back to her seat chuckling evilly. "This virus has been specifically designed to break down the computer it has infected, and then!" Kagome tapped the enter key of her mainframe computer, "Once it infects the computer, it gives the searcher a excellent trace back to the computer. BUT! This is not the computer that has started the virus but the mainframe computer of the infectee…" Kagome began running her fingers smoothly over the keyboard while smirking to herself.
"Then why use an ugly-ass computer?" Sango asked staring down at Kagome's old and first computer in distain.
"Sango, please, do not insult Sesshy, he wasthe very first computer I gotwhen I was in the third grade. Also, this virus tends to work better on older computers. Now stop complaining about how ugly my computer is and observe." Rin looked extremely excited and nearly drooled on the keyboard while Kagome glared at her. "Shove off Rin! You'll damage my computer, it's not water-proof like the rest!" Rin sighed and reluctantly pulled away from ancient computer in Kagome's lap. "Now, lets see how Abraham Lincoln High likes it when I annihilate their whole computer system!" Kagome giggled as she connected a chord from the ancient laptop to her mainframe computers then she typed the code in and began to make other strange complicated characters. "AND. WE. ARE. DONE! HAHA!" Kagome slammed her finger on the enter key for the umpteenth time andbanged the computer shut. "As for these babies you see on my mainframe computers, they are actually monitoring all computer users in Abraham Lincoln High through the code I had just made up. Thus, this makes a good hacking tool, provided that we can see the reaction of all users so that we can avoid being caught…"
"And then pull the plug, right?" Kikyou asked as she sat down on the desk.
"Yup, yup!Actually, not really...now observe carefully."
"HEY!" Rin shouted, "That's the bimbo that shoved my laptop into the bathroom sink! What was her name again? Karen… Coreana, Ah! Karan!" Kikyou, Sango,and Kagome put on looks of confusion and leaned in on the screen where Rin was constantly jabbing with her forefinger. "I wonder what's she doing?"
"Well then, let's find out!" Kagome double-clicked on the tiny screen of a red-haired girl with bushy hair and cat-shaped eyes. "Ooh… chatting, I see. How boring! I thought she could do something more interesting such as hacking into Principal Wagner's computer or something!" Kagome pouted, but the pout didn't last long when another one of her many monitors flashed a sign reading: Please name virus… Kagome tapped her chin for a while before happily typing in: S-A-U-R-O-N.
"Speaking of Sauron, when are you not going to get over your Lord of the Rings craze?" Rin asked in a deadpan voice.
"NEVAH! Besides, Sauron is considered the all-seeing eye! So... with my complete visual of all computer users I become the all-seeing eye! I am SAURON!" Kagome shouted as the sign disappeared and changed to another one reading: Would you like to send sauron.jpg now? Y, N? "Unfortunately, you have to send it twice." Kagome pressed Y and the glowing green sign immediately vanished from the screen and changed to: Sending sauron.jpg… along with the long empty ribbon under it that showed it's process. "Now, I can also interrupt the chat! All I have to do is make a username… SK8TERBOIZSUX and then do this…" Kagome began typing in a bunch of characters and pressed enter again, "And… I'm in."
"You do NOT hate skater boys!" Kikyou protested thumping Kagome over the head with an HTML book.
"Hey! Stop! STOP! That's so Karan doesn't fish me out!" Kagome moaned as Kikyou mercilessly beat Kagome with the book. "I mean… what if she makes an excellent guess and finds out I was the one behind all this?"
"Karan doesn't even KNOW you, you idiot! The only one she knows out of the four of us is Rin!"
"Okay, Rin likes Skater boys too you know!"
"STILL…"
Kikyou didn't have a chance to finish speaking, because a message directing to them from Karan read: "Hey, freak! Who said sk8ter boys sucked?"
"BINGO!" Kagome somehow pulled herself out from Kikyou's merciless beatings and happily added a reply: SO?
DONNA-KARAN: What do you mean so?
SK8TERBOIZSUX: It's none of your business!
SK8TERBOIZSUX: Hey! Do any of you know what Sauron looks like?
DONNA-KARAN: Duh we all do! What kind of a freak are you?
SK8TERBOIZSUX: Uh… I mean, the actor of Sauron… he doesn't seem to get much attention from anyone… you know… people like Frodo, or Legolas, or Aragorn…
DONNA-KARAN: So?
SK8TERBOIZSUX: So I found a picture of the actor… he's a lot hotter than you think he is…
DONNA-KARAN: Really? Can you send it to me?
Rin and Sango quickly clamped their hands over their mouths and began to giggle like mad, while Kikyou slapped high-fives with Kagome. Kagome quickly typed her reply and sent sauron.jpg to Karan, who was going to have a hell of a lot of trouble. While the file was being sent, the four of them started to chant together: SEND! SEND! SEND! SEND… YEAH! The moment the computer on Karan's screen read: FILE RECEIVED, all computers around Karan and the ones that were being used crashed down. Kagome jumped up in the air and hugged Rin while jumping up and down and screaming her head off. Soon, Sango and Kikyou joined them and they kept on jumping up and down until the old man downstairs began to slam his hands on the ceiling and scream obscenities.
When they stopped screaming and laughing, the index-computer read: School Hacker is tracing you, do you wish to send the Destroyer? Y, N? "This was the part I wanted to show you. Absolutely beautiful!" Kagome typed in Y and immediately, the file was sent, no slower than half a second. Once again, the four women leaned in on the computer, eagerly watching the reaction of the hacker: Kouga. Kouga wore a smug look on his face as he finished the last of his work to find the hacker while Principal Wagner paced back and forth behind him. Suddenly, the server behind them exploded leaving nothing but a mess of wires and metals. The two of them yelled and ran out of the room. Rin was ecstatically jumping around the room looking absolutely priceless.
"Go Kagome! GO!" She shouted as she did her victory dance around the room. Rin's excitement didn't last long because they were interrupted by Naraku's message, which had appeared on Kagome's index-monitor. It read: this is not a test run, this is your very first, SERIOUSassignment that you haven't turned down yet;and I can see that you have the capabilities of doing this job. Do you wish to accept? Y, N? Kagome excitedly pushed Y and drummed her hands on one of her many keyboards lightly.
She scowled when another message flashed: are you absolutely sure? This was the file that our fellow hackers had been trying to get for years and were always caught. Do you WISH to proceed? Y, N? "YES DAMMIT!" Kagome shouted and was about to jab her finger down on the Y, when Kikyou suddenly grabbed her arm. Kagome sighed. She knew that Kikyou was going to start talking about safety precautions and how they really might get royally screwed. "Kikyou, don't start with me…"
"Kagome, listen to me. What Naraku is talking about is those HUGE underground governmental files that not even the best of the best of the best hackers could get into! All of them were caught! And we're talking about hackers that had been hacking since the day they were born, we're talking about hackers that has been hacking for what? At least thirty fucking years! And how long have we been hacking into computers?"
"Kikyou… come ON!"
"We've only been hacking into computer systems for ten years! TEN compared to thirty years! Jesus, that's a third of the lifetime of hacking of all those hackers that were caught! Do you honestly think that we could do it? Those hackers disappeared without a trace and haven't been heard from ever since! Who knows what happened to them!"
"Kikyou… you're always over exaggerating!" Rin complained, Sango nodded in calm and silent agreement. "If we wimp out here, then we'd never get the job and our contract with Naraku would be broken. Who then would pay for all our computers? We all have at least a million computers in this apartment alone!"
Kagome nodded and leaned seriously in on Kikyou, the playful gleam in her beautiful brown eyes were gone and replaced with a hollow look of dead-seriousness. "KIKYOU…" She said very slowly, "You know so damn well how much all our computers cost. What about the Apple airport thingies you have? One of them costs around a hundred and thirty dollars and how many of those do you have? What about the fifty HP computers and printers, that Rin got yesterday, top of the line? And the latest apple laptop I just got today? What about these keyboards, these monitors, the computer run heating system, the wireless hot water system, the wireless lock, the… the… T.V., the automatic lights, the closet openers, the MP3s, the stereos, Sango's twenty Power Mac G5s, my Toshiba computers, everything in this house? How much would those BE? You can't even count them! Our clothes, our self-defense mechanisms in case we're being trailed, our food, our everything all goes to Naraku or whoever the hell's behind that computer just for our dingy little hacking skills. Where would all those items come from if we just chopped Naraku off our bodies just like that?" Kagome slapped her hands together making everyone jump. "Kikyou… because of you, we HAVE already declined at least nineteen other offers for the past year, if we reject Naraku's offer now, then that brings our offer-reject to it's limit. We HAVE to take this project or else we're finished!"
The room was deadly silent except for Kagome's raging breath for talking so much with so little breaths. "All right." Kikyou said at last, "Lets accept it."
"Done!" Kagome clapped her hands together and quickly typed Y before Kikyou could change her mind. All the writing from Naraku immediately deleted themselves and one of Kagome's many screens changed into the file they were to look in on.
"Oh great. Just great!" Kikyou said looking obviously pissed, "Out of all the projects he had for us out there, why the fuck did this have to land in our laps?" Kikyou made furious gestures to the computer screen that made all three girls, even Kagome pale considerably. "Kagome, move over a bit will you? I need to speak to Naraku about this." Kagome didn't respond, but she did shift her chair over so that she gave Kikyou room to type into the keyboard that connected with the index monitor.
Naraku, I'm not sure if you're over estimating us, but don't you think that this project is a little TOO hard for us to take on?
Absolutely not! I do hope you remember that I said I would be keeping an eye on you… of course I sent that message through one of my other hackers. And like I told you before, I have been keeping track of your skills and found that they are absolutely superb compared to even the most experienced and skilled hacker. Thus, I felt that you could handle this job.
But, we can't! And lets say we did get the files and somehow… MIRACULOUSLY… escaped by a hair, do you think we'd want to do this again?
Not to worry, my friend, everything would be all cool for you. And remember, there IS no turning back. If you do, there will be consequences. You will do the job accordingly until it is either completed or if all four of you are completely annihilated. End of discussion. Now that is your file, so review it carefully before you can do anything else, and review it carefully. I do NOT want to lose my best hackers in this again.
The green letters all vanished leaving the ones that Kagome had chosen not to delete yet. The green cursor box blinked slowly and nothing else was said. Finally Kagome pushed her chair back and sighed. "We have to do this. Besides, think of all the trouble we'd be in right now. Think brightly! Beisdes, Naraku said that he was counting on us! Come on! Pull off the long face and lets get a bit positive here!"
Although she was truly petrified on the inside, Kagome pretended to be her chirpy self, just to keep Rin from worrying too much. She tried her best to hum a random tune like she always did as she read their project, but knew she was failing miserably, especially since the background on these governmental files and the workers were simply terrifying. First of all, she had never even heard of GTC, maybe the CIA or FBI, but not GTC. What was more terrifying was that the GTC had been using IA for many, many years, which made Kagome not want to even think about what the IAs were like now. But they had chosen to hack into the files and this was what they had to do now.
Without further or do, Kagome immediately moved in for the kill. "Okay guys, grab an unlicensed computer. With that, it would be heck of a lot easier to worm past these freaks. But I doubt that even that would work." Immediately, the three girls disappeared into their respective rooms to start hacking. Kagome quickly pulled a headphone around her head. It fit snuggly around her head and over her ears so that a small bulb was snug into her ear. She reached up and touched a tiny button on the outside of the bulb and a small screen formed in front of her left eye surveying Sango, Rin, and Kikyou. "Okay, so you guys ready?"
"Yeah." Came Rin's shaky, but determined reply. Sango and Kikyou all but nodded.
"Good. Here's the plan. I KNOW that the GTC will find a way to track us down. How, I don't know, but I know they will find us. So, here's the plan. We've all been training on speed with Naraku, right?"
"Right." All three girls replied.
"Good, so, how long does it take if we were to hit the fire alarm."
"Kagome… are you thinking of blowing this building up or something?"
"That's exactly what I'm thinking of doing. What we're going to do is put ourselves on timing. Rin, you invented the fire-alarm stalling device as a joke right?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, so how long does it stall the fire alarm?"
"Wait, wait, wait! Kagome, you can't just BLOW up a fucking building!" Kikyou complained on the other end of the earphone.
"We have no choice. Now, Rin tell me, the maximum time the fire alarm would be stalled."
"Uh… no more than fifteen minutes."
"Perfect! Sango, give me the timing on this when I say go, make it the maximum time we use. OKAY? GO! I want you to use that on the fire alarms. Make sure no one is looking and you know what to do with the surveillance cameras. Once you're finished get back here and create six thousand different users. You can do that under three seconds flat. I, in the meantime will send SAURON into the system. Nobody can catch that since the maker is unknown. Sango, according to Naraku, there are five different fake accounts that many hackers mucked up on; search and destroy. Kikyou, you and I are going in for the kill. You get Information A and I'll get information B. Once that's done, I set the place on self-destruction and we're out. Time?"
"Uh… twenty-nine minutes fifty-nine seconds."
"DAMN! Look, we're going to have to do this anyway, if we're faster, so much the better. Now Rin, go!"
The background around Rin changed as she dashed out of her room holding a gun-like thing in her hand and a box. In the meantime, the three older girls began to warm up on their hackings. Kagome set the time to thirty minutes. Within seconds, Rin was back and immediately hacked into the site. She started up with making the different people and Kagome immediately sent SAURON into the system. Automatically, all the computer users were on. She checked her watch before cracking her fingers to set the self-destruction to forty minutes. Sango was now typing furiously away while figuring out all the fake files and automatically deleting them from the list. Kagome kept her eyes on the screens of the people, impatiently tapping her fingers on the desk, while Kikyou looked tense. The people haven't reacted yet. That was very strange… they should have reacted by now. Come on Sango… Kagome muttered to herself. "DONE!" Sango shouted in her mouth piece.
Kagome and Kikyou immediately began to search through the databank. This was the part she hated and liked the most. The searching was going to take ages, provided that there were so many files to go through. Eventually, Kagome and Kikyou came upon the information they were looking for and began to save them on their USB. The fire alarm gave off a shrill ring, which indicated that the building was going to be evacuated while they were saving.
Suddenly, Naraku came on the index board: Girls… be careful here, this was the part where all my hackers had been caught. The file takes ages to load. Luckily, with your computers it should take another ten minutes to download. Good luck.
"Good luck, my fucking ass!" Kagome snarled , "You mean you want us to sit here and sweat for ten minutes just waiting for one measly information to download?"
"What?" Kikyou's voice came in from the speaker.
"He said that it would take ten fucking minutes just to download one stupid file!"
"Be glad we're a team."
"Oh yeah, I sure am glad of that!" Ten minutes later, the girls finished their jobs and yanked their USB out. But across the screen, letters came blotching out: WE HAVE OUR EYES ON YOU… Kagome didn't stay long enough to worry about that, she shouted into her mic, "Okay! Lets get out of here…" She tore the headphones off her head and rushed out, "The hell with you GTC…" She muttered to herself as she was joined shortly by Sango, Kikyou, and Rin. The quartet rushed down the stairs of their apartments with many other confused apartment folks.
The fire fighters had already come and were ushering people away from the building. Kagome, Rin, Sango, and Kikyou immediately rushed away from the building mingling with the crowd. What Kagome saw made her skin crawl with terror. Giving Kikyou a silent kick amongst the people, she motioned for her to hide the USB. Kikyou responded by slipping the USB into her pocket while Kagome did the same.
The scene that Kagome saw were a group of agents dressed completely in black. Despite the night sky and the rain, they all wore dark sunglasses along with heavily looking black clothing, save their crisp white shirts. The women had their hair tied back in a neat, long ponytail that had not even one strand of hair out of place. They wore six-inch high heels that were slightly pointed at their toe and their legs were immaculate. Each and every one of these agents had an earphone in one of their ears along with a black umbrella they held. Some were speaking into their cell phones in cold, clipped tones. Sango and Kikyou looked at each other. Their hair now matted on their head from their rain. Although they had rarely even heard of GTC agents let alone see one in person, the briefing that Naraku gave them sent them the message that these terrifying group of twelve were GTC agents.
The most horrifying one was a man with long black hair that had been braided back and hung down his back. He had something that resembled a cross on his forehead and was deeply tanned, unlike the rest of the GTC agents. He shut his umbrella and tossed it behind him. The other eleven agents followed suit, this probably meant that he was the leading agent. He coolly made his way towards the building but was stopped by a fireman. "Excuse me sir, but you can't go in." The leading agent turned his head towards the fireman, his expression unreadable behind his dark shades.
"Agent Bankotsu. I'm afraid that this is not a real fire."
"Excuse me?"
Without replying Agent Bankotsu pushed past the man and stopped outside the entrance while the rest of the agents filed into the building. Kagome checked her watch, she knew that they were going to go up to her old apartment that was going to blow within three minutes. She begged to the gods that it would blow up without them flipping through her files. Now a minute left… did they figure out who she was? Thirty seconds remaining… she saw that Agent Bankotsu had a phone call, but it lasted only twenty seconds before the top floor of the apartment (the one Kagome and her friends resided in) blew up sending debris of glass, metal, and concrete everywhere.
All the apartment members screamed in shock, while the firemen began pushing them away from the building. Kagome and her friends let themselves be pushed back while the apartment below them blew up and the one below that. It kept on going down until all that was left of the apartment was a mess of concrete and ashes. Kagome looked at her friends who looked back at her. When no one was looking, they ran down the dark streets without anyone noticing. In the distance, police sirens wailed and passed the quartet…
Agent Bankotsu was extremely angered. All eleven agents were killed under his supervision. The last thing he heard from Agent Jakotsu was: "One of their names is Hig… holly SHIT! It was a trap! Everyone get the hell out of here! The place is gonna blow!" That was all he heard of his agent before the building blasted into smithereens. He calmly stepped over the debris. If only the top floor had blown apart then he could have started from the stop, but all the upper floors had collapsed into the first floor.
He stepped over the mess searching for anything, but came up with nothing. His toe kicked a piece of metal that flipped over and skittered across the wreckage. Bankotsu suddenly stopped when he noticed that the first three letters on the metal plaque was: H-I-G. He slowly crouched down on his heels while pulling on latex gloves. Gently, he pulled the plaque out and stood up. Much to his disappointment, there was only one name and a last name: Higurashi, but it would do. Because of the previous fire before, all finger prints on the plaque had been burned off, but with his position and with his prestigious position in GTC, finger prints weren't needed to find their victim. His eyes flared as he glared down at the name. "Higurashi huh? Well, I'll find you out. Higurashi… I will kill you for what you've done."
How did you like it peeps? All you Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru, Miroku, and Shippou fans out there, sorry about them not appearing in this chapter… err… make that prologue. I assure you that they will appear in Chapter 1: The Dangerous USB. As for Kagome, Kikyou, Sango, and Rin, they won't appear after this prologue until much later, maybe chapter four or five. And also, the couples won't meet each other until like chapter eight. Next chapter, we will meet Kagura, Kanna, and Hakudoushi as well. Sorry about this short chapter… usually my chapters are about eighteen pages long, but this is a prologue, so it's going to be about eight to nine pages short!
NB: On Kanna, Hakudoushi, and Kagura: In this story these three characters are NOT, I repeat, NOT human, nor are they youkai. These characters in this story are AI, so basically, they're androids that keep regenerating whatever limb they lost. These characters cannot be blown up, melted, or electrocuted. Electrocution can only slow their movements, but it cannot kill them. They are extremely fast, but not as fast as either Sesshoumaru, Inuyasha, or Shippou (which is a relief).
On Inuyasha, Shippou, and Sesshoumaru: They are STILL youkai in this story!