Chapter One
Error [401]? .ku Disagrees
It's not uncommon for Ochako to encounter computer errors. In fact, it's quite regular with anyone that works under 'DiamondEdge' to have computer problems. Part of the reason is that there was limited funding for a Pro that wasn't in the top fifty, and the other was due to the fact that he isn't truly all that popular either. He was old-fashioned in his style and managed mostly straight forward crime busts or cut and dry cases of robbery.
But regardless, it was a good first sidekick position for Ochako, and Ms. Joke had encouraged her to use it as a platform to push her own agenda and seek out her own agency. It would be a good place to learn specifically, 'How Not to Run an Agency like a Meathead!' as she had said. Ochako hadn't understood quite what that meant at the time, but she accepted the offer nonetheless and as a result became one of DiamondEdge's sidekicks, keeping the agency afloat and managing the paperwork while he rushed around the streets searching for cases to close.
"Work!" She hisses out at her computer, smashing a set of keys in a vain attempt to get the system to register anything.
In response, the Excel spreadsheet she has open dulls, the annoying little blue loading circle idling for a moment before resuming its trek. She kicks away from her desk, throwing her hands up with a growl.
The past six months working under DiamondEdge had been both educational and infuriating from a Hero standpoint, as well as a future agency owner perspective. Nothing was scheduled, nothing was organized, and most often it was her, another intern named GrapeJuice she really didn't like, and a wisp of a man nicknamed 'Shade' that only took the night patrol that pulled the appropriate reports together at the last minute or filed expenses and cases. It taught her a lot about management styles, and even more about how she wanted her own future agency to run.
Not that any of that experience would help her if her computer wouldn't update her spreadsheet.
"I have been here for fourteen hours today," she monologues to the ceiling. "I am on my fifth cup of coffee, and my second all-nighter, just load and I swear by All-Might's grave I will go home and sleep."
Her computer stubbornly whirrs, the fan buzzing a bit faster before the blue circle continues swirling on her frozen page.
"Fuck," she growls, shoving herself up and marching about the room.
There is little else to do other than pace in the office. Her cubicle is separated from the other sidekicks, but even without the barriers she would feel disconnected. GrapeJuice is usually catching up with his friends from UA. 'Shade' is a recluse and only appears and disappears for his night patrol and the occasional report if he runs into something. The other two sidekicks are older and work in silence, already accustomed to DiamondEdge's rough and disorderly management.
And even if she got along better with her coworkers, it wouldn't change the fact that none of them are even here for her to talk to.
She paces back and forth across the carpet, combing her fingers through her hair, tugging at the brown locks before huffing out a sigh. Her phone finds its way into her hand as usual, and she flips it open to stare at the nearly ancient device.
At the time, it had been what her parents could afford, and going into her sophomore year with all the craziness that happened at UA the year before, it had been an expense that was justified. Now, nearly four years from then, she feels like she still owes her parents for it. It's not the latest model, nor is it the best, but it was a heartfelt gift, and it makes her think of them every time she pulls it out.
She tabs through the contacts- really just her coworkers, two of her former classmates, and her parents- before hovering her thumb over the call button.
'Dad' is highlighted in all caps, the little blue selection bar taunts her with its blinking.
She knew he would answer. Despite it being nearly midnight, and despite it being only a few days since she last saw them in person. He has a custom ringtone for her, and while he would answer with a voice full of sleep and laced with concern, he would answer and talk with her until her computer resumed its functioning.
She tabs down, staring at the next line- 'Mom'.
She could call either, though knowing her mom, it would turn into a discussion with both. There was just something that her mom liked about putting her on speaker phone and talking to her like that. Not that it was bad, or even something that annoyed Ochako- she did it a lot when doing chores- but it would inevitably draw her father from slumber and into the conversation.
She closes her phone, clipping it back to her belt with a heavy sigh.
They need their sleep.
She dredges her fingers through her hair again before turning back to her computer. "Alright. Let's get this done," she mutters to herself, dropping into her chair.
She jiggles her mouse and mashes the spacebar a few dozen times to confirm that her computer is still frozen and dead to her responses. She leans back in the chair, drumming her fingers against her desk for a moment.
"I could just turn it off…" she mutters, "and lose what I've been working on for the last four hours… and guarantee another all-nighter… Or…" She fixes her gaze on the system and sighs. "Get another cup of coffee and stare at the screen till it unfreezes."
Neither option sounds appealing, but she knows which one she prefers because she gets up with a groan.
If there is anything that is decent about working at DiamondEdge's agency, it's that the sidekicks pick the office supplies and 'Shade' somehow knows where to get the best coffee beans. Not that she's complaining. Far from it.
She dumps out the old grinds, replacing the coffee filter and pouring in new grounds before carrying the coffeepot to the sink. She fills it enough to have a small cup, then trudges back and fills the tank, shoving the kettle into it and flicking on the machine. It immediately starts to boil, and she turns back to her desk to pick up her mug.
She needs to wash it, and she's momentarily distracted looking at the last few drops of her last cup circle around the edges of the mug as she picks it up. In fact, she's distracted enough that she turns away and heads back to the sink, only to stop and whip her head back to her computer.
Her screen has shifted, and instead of looking at a faded-white Excel spreadsheet she's looking at her desktop- a dozen file folders open and her mouse frozen between them.
What in the…?
She stares at it for a moment longer, then turns away and goes to the sink.
It's probably just that the system glitched and closed out her Excel file. She could recover the unsaved spreadsheet when she got back. Auto-save was a feature that had saved her many, many hours of work.
She rinses out her mug, wiping the inside clean with a paper towel before meandering back to the coffeemaker. It was situated by DiamondEdge's office door, which let her look over the other cubicles with ease and see a slice of her computer screen. She stalls, listening to the boiling water surge through the machine before draining through the coffee grinds and leaking into the kettle and letting her gaze rest on the empty agency.
"Great learning experience, Ms. Joke." She grumbles.
The lighting from her computer shifts.
It's a slight thing.
The intensity of the white alters, and she frowns, but decides it's a result of staying up too long and drinking too much caffeine.
She waits a bit longer, then turns back to the coffeemaker, pulling the still-filling kettle out and pouring what has been made into her cup. She probably doesn't need a full or even a half-cup anyway. She just needs enough to coax her brain into functioning for another hour or so.
Her feet carry her back to her desk as she inhales the sweet aroma of magical coffee. She stops at the corner of her cubicle though, frozen in shock as her mouse drags individual files back and forth across her screen and uploads them to the Hero Networks' Auto-Expense report system.
It closes out a file, then pulls a new one, and she recognizes it as the receipts of her lunch on patrol, before depositing them in the file. The system hesitates only a moment before the file is linked. The next file- a rough GPS rendition of her patrol route- is the next item loaded, followed by her copy of her report. Once all of this is loaded into the system, the files are closed and her excel spreadsheet is pulled back up.
Numbers are filled, a formula she's not familiar with is loaded into the cells she needs, before it's dragged back up and through her spreadsheet.
The mug slips from her hands, but five fingers of contact allow it to spin and float instead of fall and shatter. Hot coffee splashes onto the carpet, but that's an issue she'll deal with later as she scrambles to save her spreadsheet.
"No no no no. Please please please." She grabs her mouse, jerking it and mashing the 'ESC' button to stop the movements.
Instead, the mouse finishes dragging through, and her carefully entered numbers are overwritten by the strange formula. Her numbers flash, the spreadsheet reloads.
Her numbers remain the same.
She frowns.
A prompt box appears shortly, without summons or explanation. She jolts, flinching away from the screen as words appear in it.
'Don't worry Uravity. It's just a VLOOKUP. If anything, your data is more accurate.'
"What in the fuck."
She's too tired for this.
Maybe she actually fell asleep at her desk, and what she's seeing is a dream.
She turns back, staring at the steaming carpet and her favorite coffee cup still slowly spinning around in the air behind her.
She taps her fingers together to release it, and the ceramic mug drops and shatters on the carpeted floor.
"Hope I'm dreaming, because I really liked that mug," she deadpans, turning back to the screen.
The box is gone, and instead she sees a finished copy of her expense report, her mouse hovering over the 'Submit' button.
She should probably check it first.
Then again, she should probably be asleep.
She clicks it. The page loads. Blinks. Then the usual symbol of All-Might giving her a thumbs up appears as a 'Accepted!' appears. The browser page closes automatically, and she's stuck looking at her spreadsheet.
There are multiple tabs in it now, marked with each individual Hero's name. No doubt they're a copy of her own, numbers and expenses carefully tabled by 'Date/Time/Hero /Reason/Cost'. It was a meticulous thing really, she'd agonized over it, but now it seemed to be auto-filling itself, lines of data rushing through the table.
A total appears at the bottom of her page before it jumps to 'Shade's tab and does the same.
She's not even sure what she's looking at anymore, other than a demon-possessed computer. The system runs through the entire spreadsheet, pulling data from some unknown source and loading it into her tables and totaling it up based on months and days and times and Heroes. It would have been amazing, if she wasn't convinced it was a fever dream.
It idles for a moment once it finishes DiamondEdge's report.
A secondary line is added. She barely sees it being typed 'Not Including Embezzled Funds' before it saves again and closes out.
Now she is looking only at her screensaver, her mouse idling in the exact middle of the screen. A picture of her graduating class- something appearing personal but definitely not- looks back at her.
'Hope that helps Uravity. Get some sleep. You'll need it in the morning.
Friendly Neighborhood Hacker [.ku]
She's not dreaming.
Which means two things.
She slowly looks from her computer screen to her shattered coffee mug.
"What just happened?"
Her computer does not reply, and the strange chat box that appeared momentarily does not return to answer her question. Instead, she is left staring at her screensaver, wondering if there's a virus, a bug, or if maybe 'Shade' is using his ability to hide in some dark corner of the office and mess with her again.
She allows those thoughts to stew silently in her mind for a minute.
Just long enough that she starts to question her sanity. Then she got up, slammed her laptop closed, stuffed it into her backpack and threw it over her shoulder.
"This shit can wait till tomorrow." She declares to the dark office space.
If the server got hacked, she'll get a report in the morning. If her computer got hacked, she could turn it into the Hero IT division and hopefully they could solve it. If her mug remained shattered on the carpet floor, she would buy a new one, get baking soda and vinegar to get the stain out, and then move on with her life.
Ochako has had enough shit for one day anyway.
She marches out the office doors, letting them swing closed and lock behind her as she makes her way down the street. Ordinarily she would be vigilant- peering down each alley and sticking close to streetlights, but tonight she is exhausted, braindead, and ultimately done with the entirety of her existence.
Her walk back to her little apartment is uneventful, and she spends the majority of it considering that the back of her eyelids seems to have a truer dark than the world ever will- before realizing that she's already stuck her key into her apartment door, walked in, and dumped her backpack onto her kitchen table. She checks the door, makes sure she hasn't left her keys in it, before affirming she's thrown them onto the kitchen counter.
Wow. Auto-pilot Ochako is improving.
Last time she walked home this exhausted, she left her keys in the door, her backpack in the sink, and had woken up with her boots tossed into her laundry bin.
She wriggles her toes, glancing around at the thought before finding her shoes hanging on the coat rack.
She blinks slowly at them, then shakes her head, stripping down and marching through her apartment.
Bed first.
Life later.
Her mattress has never felt so soft. And sleep hits her like an All-Might Detroit Smash, ripping her from the waking world.
Unfortunately, consciousness hits her like a freight train, and she wakes feeling like she had only been asleep for a few minutes. Her alarm continues to blare, a recording of Ms. Joke laughing obnoxiously at her own joke. It's an effective tool, and it forces Ochako to roll out of bed and frantically search for her phone before her eyes have snapped open and before her brain has processed the rest of her body is still asleep.
She hits the ground face first, gritting her teeth as her hand finds her phone and clicks the button to silence the laughter, and her blankets toppled over her. She lays there for a moment, eyes firmly closed as she contemplates her life choices.
She should have invested in a nightstand or a bedside table, or something. Instead of just letting her phone lay on the floor next to her bed and charge.
Then again.
That costs money, and she still hasn't paid her parents back for her cellphone- or for helping out with the security deposit on her apartment. Or for taking out loans to pay for her tuition.
She keeps a list.
It's with a monumental amount of effort that she peels her face off the floor and flails her limbs enough to escape her impromptu blanket cocoon. She's heard stories from GrapeJuice about one of his teachers that would worm his way around the halls in a sleeping bag, and that thought permeates her mind as she crawls out of her blankets and slowly gets to her feet.
She carries herself to the bathroom, dumping her phone onto the sink counter where it spills into the sink itself- cracked pink case spinning around on the slick surface before idling by the drain- before she jumps into the shower.
Auto-pilot engages as she flips on the water, momentarily paused as freezing water blasts out of the faucet and she squeals before it warms, and then flips back on to wash, shampoo her hair, dry off, move her phone from the sink, brush her teeth, get dressed again, and plops down at her kitchen table with a bowl of yogurt and granola.
She picks up her TV remote, flicking it on as she picks up her phone.
She has two missed calls, and three texts. One call is from DiamondEdge himself, the other is from 'Shade'. All three texts are from GrapeJuice, all asking her what happened and if she knows anything.
She replies to that one.
Anything about what?
Her phone immediately chirps in her hands. Huh. Must have had his phone on him. Weird, he was supposed to be on patrol this morning.
The agency just got put on hold!
We're being investigated!
What happened last night?
Investigated?
Check the news!
DiamondEdge is all over it!
The news?
She frowns but grabs the remote and clicks it a few times to get to a Hero News channel. She sits through a few commercials about assorted hero merch items before a reporter gets back on the air.
"As a shock to the community, ProHero Diamond Edge, has been put under arrest following a set of anonymous tips and forwarded files to police. According to their analysts, DiamondEdge has been embezzling and falsifying his expense reports for the last six years! Imagine that!"
The hostess turns to her partner, "What are your thoughts on it Dede?"
"Glad you asked!" Her cohost is a chipper old man, and Ochako wonders idly if he has to wax the gray mustache or if it's just that rigid all on its own. "DiamondEdge has definitely fallen from the spotlight! He's been suffering in the rankings for the past decade as newer heroes are taking the scene! He's even openly talked about retirement and came close to doing so during the brief Dark Age we experienced three years ago! We're lucky that whoever tipped off the police included the right files for their investigation!"
"Do you think it was a fellow Hero that caught his colleague red-handed?" The hostess asks.
"There isn't any-"
Ochako flips the channel again to something else as she takes another bite of her yogurt. She dials GrapeJuice with one tap of her phone, shoving the receiver up to her ear as she pulls her laptop out of her bag and snaps it open in front of her.
Her phone rings twice before he picks up.
"Did ya see!?" He demands.
"Embezzling?" She asks in way of answering.
"Yeah! According to what they told me, DiamondEdge has been doing this for years! And he's been filing his own reports all this time too! Ugh! What a shitty Hero!"
Ochako purses her lips, watching her loading icon swirl around the screen. DiamondEdge's agency would close as a result… And working under him would basically be a red card on their resume. Any experience they gained from working under DiamondEdge could be tossed out the window considering he'd been a criminal all along and he hadn't been caught by them. It was a career disaster.
Her email boots up slowly, and she grits her teeth and waits for it.
"What's that going to mean for us?" GrapeJuice whines into the phone.
"Well we should probably start looking for a new job." She replies, "Are you at the agency now?"
"Huh? Nah. I just got out of a debrief from the police. They said a hacker contacted them last night and spilled all the info they needed for a bust on him."
She freezes, and ironically that's when her email loads, four emails popping up in her inbox. Two are from emails, a third is from .net, and the fourth has no email.
It's a contact, somehow already registered despite her never adding it, and it not being on any server.
[.ku]
"I'm going to call you back." She says, hanging up and setting her phone aside as she stares at the emails.
Thirteen emailed her.
GunHead emailed her.
One Detective Tsukauchi which was somewhat expected given the embezzling charge leveled at the agency.
And [.ku].
She clicked the last one.
Greetings Uravity.
I double checked on your expense report and verified that it went through. Also, since I took the liberty of using your computer as a portal to obtain DiamondEdge's expense reports and the other incriminating files, I also sent an email to Thirteen and GunHead through your email.
Your original application to Ketsubutsu Academy had your main interest listed as Search and Rescue Operations. I reached out to Thirteen and attached a few relevant files to get their interest. You're asking for help since you wanted to get back into that field.
I emailed Gunhead for you. Your combat style, while effective, would greatly benefit from getting some training in his martial arts and just some general familiarization with Close Combat.
Since DiamondEdge's agency is closing soon, I would recommend that you look for alternative employment as well. (Your salary is abysmal, and just about any other agency can pay your triple.) My suggestion would be to look at 'Rainy Day', or to pursue an interning sidekick position under Ryukyu, Mt. Lady, or possibly under GunHead if you excel at his training.
Hope this helps.
You… have a good attitude for being a Hero. I would hate to see you struggle in your career as a result of me.
Good luck.
- Friendly Neighborhood Hacker
[.ku]
She stared at the email, leaning back in her chair and sighing. So, she hadn't been dreaming. Her laptop really had been hacked. And a hacker really had redone her expense reports. And slipped private information to the police about her boss embezzling and falsifying reports, and whatever else.
A knock at her door startled her, and she stood. "H-hello?" She called.
"Ochako Uraraka? This is Detective Tsukauchi. Please open the door."
She glances back at her laptop, but frowns as the email she has opened suddenly shifts, and she's looking at the email from Detective Tsukauchi. The fourth email is nowhere to be seen.
That's…
Concerning.
He knocks on the door again. "Ms. Uraraka?"
"Coming!" She calls, rushing to the door and throwing it open. "How can I help you?"
He gives her a tired look, and suddenly she can sympathize. A hacker on her laptop? Her boss in jail? Her employment suddenly drifting in the wind? And a police detective at her door?
And she had only gotten up.
"Have you recently been contacted by a hacker known as dot-ku?" He asks, blunt and straightforward and without any preamble.
Ochako glances back at her laptop, then to the detective at her door. She huffs and shrugs. "I think so."
He stares at her for a time, then nods and suggests, "I think we might have some things to talk about. How do you take your coffee Ms. Uraraka?"
She cocks an eyebrow at him but decides it's best to not question things for right now. She pulls her boots off the coat rack, slipping them on and grabbing her wallet and keys from the counter. She closes and locks her door, then shoves her hands in her pockets.
"I'm in for a long day, aren't I?"
He chuckles and gives her a joyless smile. "That sounds like the truth to me."