Ok, so yet again I don't have a clever opening. Oh well, not much I can do about that other than going straight into what this new pilot is.
So a while back I saw a story "challenge" that was of the same vein that I wanted to attempt here called "Harry Potter and the Infinite Stratos" by Rennard (id: 11554101). Now in his prologue fic Harry reveals the fact that muggles will eventually discover magic and there's nothing that the Ministry of Magic nor the ICW can do about it because as technology evolves so does the fact that magic WILL be discovered and with the Internet becoming more and more evolved it will become impossible to cover up magic forever, and for that he is exiled and becomes a silent architect and partner in the building of the Infinite Stratos machine.
So how am I going to use this? Well, first and foremost I am still going to keep the same idea going forward: Harry reveals the fact that the knowledge of magic will soon become commonplace as the knowledge that the Earth is round and there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it during his farce of a trial at the beginning of the fifth year. Because of his remark Fudge listens to his toadie of a Toad and has him exiled. Thanks to some pre-death intervention from his mother was able to have money and not be completely reliant on any heirloom treasures that he was locked out from.
Rating: T+ due to some sexual content but nothing overtly explicit. Some language and suggestive content eventually.
Disclaimer: I only own my copy of MS Word and my laptop. Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and Infinite Stratos belongs to Izuru Yumizuru and Media Factory. See the foreword for the full disclaimer.
XxXxXxX
"Talking."
'Thinking.'
[Music suggestion]
XxXxXxX
British Ministry of Magic, Courtroom. August 20XX.
Harry Potter sat in a courtroom in the middle of the Ministry of Magic feeling nervous. Understandable since this was his first, and hopefully last trial. He was terrified at the thought of being expelled from Hogwarts as that was the only place he could be himself and had friends that understood his situation, especially with magic hating relatives that wanted little to nothing to do with him. The only other thing that he had outside of Hogwarts was coding things. Growing up, whenever he was chased by Dudley and his ilk he would retreat to the library where he discovered coding and programming applications and computers. He was damned good at it and some considered a prodigy when it came to his code. When he started at Hogwarts he had to cut back as Hogwarts had no electricity (unless you wanted to wrangle with lightning) and did it in his spare time on holidays and the summers. He would go on to create his first successful app for all phone and tablet platforms under the name DedSec (1).
The app in and of itself had a simple concept of a free dating app for introverts that used a personality test of his own creation that was based off widely used tests like the Mayer-Briggs personality test to match people with their best possible, potential other half. Within a few weeks, he had the cash flow from several million concurrent users from banner ads which he had all converted to crypto as he didn't understand taxes and tax law at the age of twelve. He was known as a ghost online as he had no presence and purposefully neglected to upload any image of himself.
As he went to school at Hogwarts he got several members of the coding community approach him for help in debugging their software or apps, of which he was paid fairly for his time. He even got a few very high clearance level things from what he could tell based on the small sample of code he had been given at the time. He never knew what it was for and he was pretty sure whomever it was that was sharing these small snippets of code were more than likely breaking some kind of law or agreement.
When the end of fourth year rolled around he started to do some digging online and ended up exploring some of the surface parts of the Deep Web for any sightings of magic as the world became more and more technological and information could be shared instantly around the world. There were articles on conspiracy message boards about secret societies hidden in plain sight that was spot on. In particular, magical shopping nexuses like Diagon Alley and secret schools where kids from ages ten or eleven until they were seventeen or eighteen disappeared off the grid. They were also right about mind wiping as Harry had seen that personally during the World Cup with those Obliviators who kept wiping the mind of that poor groundskeeper and his family. Although, the last one that they got was well needed as they were tortured by Death Eaters. This information shocked him as he read on other message boards over the years that images and video had been taken of 'weirdos in LARPing gear' wandering around or some even performing actual magic on camera. One guy said that he found the video on his phone and he didn't remember where it came from (2).
But, all of this background information wasn't why Harry was here at the moment. Oh no, it was because he had decided to be the better man and save his lard-ass of a cousin who always picked on him (or in some instances, beat him up) from a Dementor. You know Dementors, the soul sucking, happiness stealing demons? Yeah, those. He had saved his cousin by using the only harmful to Dementors Patronus charm in the sight of a muggle (Dudley) and a squib (Mrs. Figg) and had received a notice from the Ministry for the use of magic in the sight of them as well as being underage. If that weren't enough he was expelled from Hogwarts. This trial, which Harry could see though thanks to many hours of Law and Order as well as daytime court shows his aunt watched while he did chores, that this was a farce of a trial. You know the kind, a kangaroo court.
He sat in a chair that looked like it had straps attached to it like old torture devices that he saw in a museum. There appeared to be two halves to this oddly small courtroom that gave him the feeling that this was used for more clandestine purposes as the forward half that he could see was filled to the brim with what looked like men dressed as Cardinals while behind him he saw no one at all. There was a bailiff that stood to the side dressed in what looked like robes meant for law enforcement but definitely not what muggle law enforcement wore. Sitting on a raised platform was Minister Cornelius Fudge who wore what looked like a judge's outfit as it just had that look to it. Sitting beside him was a woman who could only be described in appearance of what the offspring of a man had a child with a toad. Yes, it's as disgusting as you think it looks. She wore the garish outfit consisting entirely of the color pink. While Harry was thankful for the change in color in wardrobes which usually consisted of dark colors like black, he wished it wasn't pink. He also felt sorry for whoever the poor soul that was married to that woman. Assuming she even was, that is.
"Mr. Potter, so you why you are here today?" Fudge asked from atop his high up pedestal.
"To testify that a Dementor attacked me and my cousin so you can do a formal inquiry into how that could have happened?" Harry asked in turn in the most respectful light he could give Fudge, especially considering that this man was pretty much defaming him in the papers. Even if It wasn't outright, Fudge still signed off on it.
"Dementors? No, we're here to discuss Professor Dumbledore's appeal on your expulsion for the misuse of magic in the presence of a Muggle," Fudge replied. He looked down at his notes and continued, "You used the Patronus charm, is this correct?"
"That was the only spell-," Harry was only able to get out before he was rudely cut off.
"And you did this in Little Whinging, Surrey in the presence of one Dudley Dursley. Is this also correct?"
"Yes, my cousin was-," yet again he was rudely cut off.
"Then I believe that this is all the evidence we need to-," Fudge got off right before Harry interrupted him instead.
"Can I at least have five bloody seconds to explain WHY?" Harry exclaimed, shocking the gathered people in the room. "Thank you. Now Dudley is my cousin on my mother's side whose parents are my legal guardians so they know about magic, despite how much they hate it and I respect the rules of the house and don't perform magic in it and only generally speak about it around them. Now how many of you know the Patronus charm? Come on now, I want a little class participation." Quite a few raised their hands slowly. "And what are the two uses of the Patronus? As a way to send a message to another person or to ward off Dementors. Why would I send a message in the middle of a street when I could just do it in the privacy of my room and get nothing more than a small fine or a warning as no one saw it? The only logical conclusion was that I was using the aforementioned other purpose of the charm, to ward off a Dementor," Harry concluded (3).
"That's impossible!" the woman on the right of Fudge shouted. "Every Dementor is currently stationed at Azkaban and the control stone is locked away deep within the Ministry under heavy security measures."
"Then either one of the Dementors that were stationed by the order of the Minister was unaccounted for after their recall decided to take revenge on me two years later, or something is rotten in the State of Denmark."
"I'm sorry?" Fudge asked.
"There's someone who has access to whatever controls the Dementors and firmly believes that killing me will gain them some kind of favor with Voldemort," Harry clarified, to his utter surprise (sarcasm intended) they all gasped in shock similarly how prudes would at seeing anything provocative, like pornography for instance.
"That's impossible, the Dark Lord is dead!" the pink toad shouted, although something inside Harry told him that she didn't believe her own words one bit.
"Ideals are much harder to kill than people are," Harry simply replied. This had many of the people in the 'jury' whispering among themselves. After all, it did make sense in the context of things. The pink toad started to whisper in the ear of the Minister. It seemed as though the toad was providing her own straw man argument without allowing Harry to rebut it. When she pulled away she had the smuggest look on her face that would have made the Cheshire cat jealous at how smug it looked.
"Mr. Harry James Potter. It is the decision of this court that your previous sentence of expulsion from Hogwarts is to be upheld," Fudge announced. "Your wand will be confiscated and will be held in Ministry custody and returned to you should you attend another school. You have until the beginning of the next term to find another school else your wand will be forfeit and will be destroyed."
For whatever reason, in that moment, Harry lost it. He suddenly stood up and shouted, "Does it really matter?!" This got the attention of the wizards and witch before him.
"Does what really matter, Mr. Potter?" Fudge asked completely unsure.
"The Statute of Secrecy, that's what!"
"Of course it's important, Mr. Potter," Fudge replied. "Without it the Muggles would discover our society and would commit atrocities upon our citizenry."
"You don't get it, do you? Muggle technology has advanced substantially over the years. Where physical sight easy to manipulate, digital cameras are not, especially if they're viewing from afar. Haven't you stopped to think, even for a moment WHEN the existence of magic will get out? WHEN not IF? The internet stretches across the planet where you can share media and messages with anyone on the other side of the planet in the blink of an eye. All it will take is one wizard slipping up being recorded on some blogger's livestream for it to be spread world-wide, for it to become viral. How will the Ministry, no, the ICW keep magic under wraps then when the entire world, billions, have seen it?"
"Mr. Potter, such a thing would never happen," Umbridge said with pompousness that could only be found in the upper echelons that produce the Pureblood superiority that they're known for.
"And how do you know that?" Harry snapped back. "Every year cameras are being installed by the government to monitor their citizens to keep them safe and they aren't obvious unless you're looking for them. These 'hidden' cameras will record everything and some wizard, especially one who thinks they can get away with anything, will get caught. At that point, there will be nothing you can do, you can't cover it up when it becomes public knowledge (4)."
"That's enough!" Fudge shouted just as angrily, shooting off a blasting hex at the ceiling of the courtroom. Umbridge whispered into Fudge's ear once more like the little backroom politician she was. When she was done Fudge cleared his throat, "Mr. Potter, your threat of exposing the magical world is not to go unpunished. From this day forth you are banished from Magical Britain, effective immediately."
Harry was guffawed, but not entirely surprised. He took out his wand, which caused several guards to pull their wands in return and tossed it half-assed towards Fudge, landing but a few feet in front of him. "Do you know what? Fuck you," he said gaining an immediate reaction from those in front of him. "When Voldemort eventually comes back for you, and we all know deep within our minds who is and isn't in his camp ideologically," Harry made sure to shoot a glare towards both Umbridge and Malfoy, "you'll remember what I said during the end of the Triwizard Tournament about him being back. You'll ask for me to come back and help, I won't. Your own hubris will be your own undoing." Harry said nothing else and left the room giving the shocked group and guards the bowman's salute (5) as he left.
XxXxXxX
Six months later, Tokyo docks.
Harry sat on the edge of the docks near one of the ports near Tokyo where ferries, cruise ships, freighters, and even some military vessels that were resupplying were moored. He cast out the line of his fishing rod as he sat in the camping chair he purchased a while back when he was in America and camped for a good month in the Appalachian Mountains. He wore a fisherman's hat with various hooks and lures on it while next to his chair was a tackle box that was high enough to set a drink on. As he propped up his fishing rod he thought back on what happened over the last six months.
The British Ministry of Magic froze his accounts at Gringotts leaving him with almost nothing. He was told by a representative via mail that if he were to enter the bank he would be arrested as per the treaty set in stone a thousand years earlier. However, they did send him a safe deposit key that belonged to a local bank. Inside the safe deposit box was a note from his mother. She had siphoned a substantial amount from the Potter fortune in the amount of the tuition for an Ivy league school for all four years adding in the amount that room and board would cost. He converted most of it into crypto and the remaining cash he took and saw the world, well, except Britain due to his banishment from the country. His only companion being his owl Hedwig.
He flew to New York City where he discovered Vertic Alley, a Wizarding shopping center (see: mall) hiding right next to Times Square in plain sight and was considered the only place on the East Coast to get all your high-quality Wizarding goods. Of course, there were other malls like one in Chicago and another in Los Angeles, but being in the middle of the high society Vertic Alley prided themselves on having the best quality goods. He purchased another wand there as he was blacklisted from the British Isles, he was allowed to purchase another wand in the US which didn't have the Trace on it. From there both he and Hedwig made their way east until they eventually reached Hawaii. And to be honest? He intentionally stayed there longer than any other place he had stayed before at a long four months. After that, he made his way across the Pacific to Japan until he reached his current position of sitting on the docks fishing.
As he relaxed he felt the presence of someone approach him. "You know? It's sort of rude to approach someone from behind without making yourself known," he more or less lazily said.
"Aww, how did you know that I was here?" a woman's voice said from behind, she definitely sounded like a teenager and she definitely had an accent showing that she wasn't at least a native English speaker but was practiced.
"Well, you weren't being very quiet. Plus, the cars you arrived in a diesel engine which are notoriously noisy," he replied.
"Ah! That makes sense," she cheerily replied, clapping like a younger child. That wasn't further from the truth, the familiar bond that he shared with Hedwig conveyed her approach.
"So, what do you want?" Harry asked before she could go off on any tangent as she seemed to be the type.
"Are you the one that goes by the name 'DedSec' online?"
That immediately made Harry freeze and summon his wand into his hand from the holster that had been hidden on his body with a modified 'Notice-me-not' spell that made everyone but the owner's eyes 'slip' away from it, making it seem almost invisible. "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. Who wants to know?" Harry asked very carefully. After all, in the past he had written code for clandestine projects, perhaps one of the governments that he had 'unofficially' attributed code to one of their projects was going to off him. 'But why use a teenage girl?' he asked himself.
Harry turned around and saw that the woman was actually a girl confirming his whole teenage theory. She looked to be around thirteen to fourteen with pink hair. She wore what looked like an oversized shirt with a skirt that edged on slightly too short. Next to her were slightly beefy bodyguards that wore black suits that definitely had inspiration from Men in Black if the sunglasses were anything to go by. Both of them had a hand reaching inside their suit more than likely gripping a handgun. "I'm Tabane Shinonono, you may know me as Tabane the Genius," she boasted.
"Never heard of you," Harry replied.
She seemed to visually deflate at that. "You've never heard of me? Maybe you received a certain code package a year or two back that you included the comment in the code 'written by the wizard of hackers, DedSec'?"
"I can neither confirm nor deny that," Harry replied all too quickly. "So… what do you want? No one goes through the trouble of back tracing a coder just to say hello when you could have done that with a simple message."
"I want to recruit you to a project I'm working on, in fact, you helped participate in it and I want to have you work on it full time," Tabane replied.
"Not really hearing any upsides to this for me," Harry commented.
"You'd get paid a lot, more than what you have in your crypto wallet right now. You'd also get full health and dental benefits. Plus, this project may take up to ten years to complete. Given the fact that you don't have a house on record you'd also be provided a home to live in as well as one paid week-long holiday a year."
Harry had to admit, that sounded pretty great. Especially given the fact that he was pretty much on his own and his own funds were slowly but surely depleting. He had been staying in hotels for the most part and he had a few times where he splurged quite a few times. Especially to get some new toys on the market and then modifying them to fit his tastes, like his personal laptop which was much more powerful than what was on the market for consumers and his phone which served as a miniaturized computer and routing point if needed. "I have two conditions," Harry said breaking the silence.
"Oh, and that is?"
"I don't want my name attached to this project officially and I want one favor, no questions asked."
She seemed to hum in thought, placing a finger on her chin. "So I would get all the glory, ne?" she asked.
"If that's what you want," Harry shrugged.
She stuck out her hand, the international symbol of offering the finalization of a deal. "I think we have ourselves a deal." Harry took her hand and shook it.
"Deal."
XxXxXxX
2 years later. Undisclosed bunker.
Harry sat in front of a computer that had a joystick coming out of it on the side as a peripheral. On the screen, he saw a greyscale camera image with some white human silhouettes standing around one single one while in front of that singular dot there was another who looked like it was standing in defiance to the one with all of the people on its side. On the screen, there was a targeting reticle that was aimed towards the one that had more on their side (6).
"Ne, Harry-kun, why do you need a UCAV?" Tabane asked.
"Ms. Genius, what did I say was part of our deal? One favor, no questions asked. The fact that you're asking almost makes me want to amend our deal to add another favor to it," Harry joked. "Let's just put it this way, I'm just taking care of some personal business back in my homeland that needed to be taken care of," he said as he pushed a button on the joystick, highlighting the white silhouettes behind the one, marking them with orange-red rectangles along with the single one. "The kind that if it's left to fester will come to bite us in the rear." He then pulled the trigger and several white lances leaped out from the UCAV and hit each of the orange rectangle targets in the head, killing them instantly. The single silhouette on the other side looked around as confused as all hell. "I do have some good news for you though, Ms. Genius: the therm-optic cloak and multi-target energy weapons are working at optimal efficiency for anti-personnel uses in a smaller package."
"Do I WANT to know what that was all about?" Tabane asked with slight chills at the borderline psychopathic way that Harry reported the after action status of the UCAV.
"Vengeance that I've waited many years for," Harry replied scarily.
XxXxXxX
8 years later. IS Academy.
[Waltz for Zizi, The Seatbelts – Cowboy Bebop OST (7)]
Sitting at the docks once more was a twenty-six-year-old man strumming an acoustic guitar while peeking from time to time at the fishing rod sitting next to him. Out on the horizon, the sun was starting to set creating a beautiful skyline of yellows, oranges, and reds. What looked like sound waves lighting up on his right arm as he strummed in time with the notes. He hummed the bass line to what the bass guitar would be playing.
"What are you doing here?" a woman demanded from behind him, sounding authoritative.
Without losing time or a beat he continued on strumming and replied, "Fishing."
"Why are you fishing here? Don't you know that this is a restricted area?" she demanded an answer.
"Only to those who don't already have clearance," he replied. "As for the fishing, that sunset right there. After a long day's work, this makes it all worth it." He sighed in relief, "You know, I think I have another guitar sitting around here somewhere if you want to make this a duet. I could use a bassist."
"I'm not interested in playing," she said as she activated her IS sword and arm.
"It's a shame," he shrugged.
"The fact remains, who are you?" she asked as she held her sword to his neck.
"Well, that's nor very nice," Harry commented. "The least you could do is give your name first."
"Chifuyu Orimura," she replied after much deliberation.
Harry raised an eyebrow. "So it was you, Archangel!" he said chipperly.
She brought the tip of the sword closer to his neck. "How do you know that name?" she seethed as though she was worried someone would hear it.
"Have you forgotten me already? It's only been ten years, after all."
Her eyes widened and she exclaimed, "You!"
"So you do remember me!"
"You were in the control room!"
"But do you know why?" Harry eluded her by asking another one of his questions. "Ok, fine. Just don't tell anyone. Override, initiate deactivation. Authorization: DedSec."
The IS immediately seized up before the gauntlet piece and sword disappeared. Chifuyu tried to activate her IS again but only got an interface window that had the normal interface, but as she attempted to reboot her IS with the on-screen option but the screen seized up and became pixelated right before black and white concentric rings began to emerge from the center of the screen before a stylized skeleton appeared and looked like it was laughing.
"What is going on?!" she exclaimed in frustration.
"It was either that or a pirate with a parrot going 'hush hush', 'what what', 'butt boat'," Harry replied nonchalantly with a shrug (8). He took a moment to really think, "Do you know what? I'm going to have Tabane implement that in the next series of IS cores; I could really use a laugh."
"How did-," Chifuyu asked before she was cut off by Harry.
"I'm the programmer that wrote a mass majority of the code that allows the operator to interface with the IS," Harry finally revealed.
Chifuyu looked absolutely shocked. "That's impossible, only Tabane worked on the IS!"
"Oh, she built it, alright. But she couldn't figure out how to get the core and the hardware to talk to each other in a satisfactory way, so she years ago had me help her by sending me a stack of incomplete code that I fixed which went into the first IS suit. Hence the reason I was there at the testing," Harry explained.
"How are you not the most wanted man in the world?"
"That's an easy question. Because I allowed her to take all the credit," he shrugged.
"Why would you allow her to take all the credit?"
Harry only raised an eyebrow. "Do you REALLY think that I want to be the most wanted man in the world? Plus, Tabane knew the risks involved and agreed to my terms of being a silent partner in the IS's development." There was a silence between the two as the wind from the sea blew in allowing Chifuyu to very briefly see a faded lightning-shaped scar on Harry's brow. "You know the reason behind why Tabane made the IS female only, but do you know my reasoning behind supporting it?" She also raised an eyebrow at Harry's statement. "I know, strange right? A man supporting a potential war machine that changes warfare forever by placing the power that men usually had on the battlefield by women wielding machines of great power (although officers, tacticians, and strategists in militaries are still men by an overwhelming majority). But I have my reasons."
Seeing as she didn't object, he went on. "You see, twenty-five years ago I was but a wee babe when my parents were brutally murdered. Before you attempt to give me your sympathies, you don't need to; for a long time now I've come to terms with it. I'm going to skip a decade as I'm sure you don't want to hear about my abysmal home life under the care of my aunt, uncle, and cousin and skip right to when a certain truth was revealed to me. This truth? That my parents were not only not drunkards and druggies but had died to protect me from a mass murderer, but that they were part of a secret enclave of beings capable of using a field of energy that they could manipulate to do many fantastic, and horrible, things with. The name of this mystical field is magic. I know what you're thinking already, 'Magic, this man is daft!' Allow me to demonstrate," Harry said as he brandished his wand seemingly out of nowhere. He flicked it at a discarded disposable cup which transformed into a dog that barked at Chifuyu. Harry flicked his wand once more and the dog returned to being a cup.
"How did you-?" she asked in confusion.
"Magic," he replied simply with a 'Marauder's grin'. "You see, this community of magic users call themselves witches and wizards, for women and men respectively, and they seclude themselves from the world worried that the populace would either be exploited or killed because of the power they possess. These abilities range from levitation of an object to summoning sentient fire which consumes whatever it comes into contact with to ash which can only be controlled only by those with a strong mental fortitude; otherwise it will run out of control and consume not only what the one who cast it at wanted, but they themselves as well. Imagine a borderline unstoppable army capable of literally making the world burn to ash," Harry said with mystery and disturbing reverence, to an extent.
Chifuyu was outright disturbed at that implication. 'Sentient fire? Consuming whatever it touches to ash?' she thought.
"Imagine the military applications such a people would have? You could unleash a few of these people and have them make an entire battlefield turn against whoever's side they're on. Imagine unleashing someone who can use this sentient fire in a crowded city. Imagine a country having to cope with someone doing that. The possibilities are both endless and horrifying from a loss of human life perspective. So, they hide themselves away to prevent themselves from being used. But I bet you're asking yourself what happens if someone who isn't supposed to know about them finds out about them. Well, they get their mind wiped. And they better hope that the person doing is competent, because if they aren't then you might just end up a vegetable in the hospital; if they are then you'll just have a lapse in memory on what you were doing. I've seen this happen several times to the same person and he just looked like he wasn't there at all, it was quite disturbing.
"And the government. Don't get me started on that. If what feminists thought about governments and societies not too long ago was Patriarchal, they've never seen the hidden, magical side of humanity. They actually legitimately are. To a mass majority of the Pureblood factions, those that had families that held magic for more than five generations believed the only thing women were good for were for fucking, cooking, bearing children, rearing children, and forming alliances by marrying them off to their sons. Of course, not everyone shared that sentiment, but they were in the minority. And now we get down to my reasoning. You see, about ten years ago I warned them that one day magic would become common knowledge to those who didn't possess it and that it would be better to come out with it now on their own terms rather than a camera catching it and uploading it to the most popular video sharing sites and then allowing people to form their own opinions on it without knowing all the facts or intricacies of magic and magical society. And do you know what they did to me for 'opening their eyes' to this? They banished me. I am no longer allowed in the UK for the rest of my days, or at least until someone overturns it. Hell, they may have already but since I don't really care about that world that much anymore I really don't care, I've moved on."
"So why did you support Tabane, then?" Chifuyu asked.
"As a big old bowman's salute to the magical world. A big old 'fuck you' to them and their ideologies. Sure, it may seem petty of me, but I'm sure whatever government is out there trying to keep magic a secret has their hands full, how much easier would it be to just let the secret be sprung loose. We've seen the absolute power of the IS and what it can do with abilities that some may consider magic. There becomes a point where magic and technology become one in the same and are indistinguishable from each other."
"Are you paraphrasing that Thor movie?" she asked.
"Kind of, but the point still remains. The magical community fears what you can do to them and they are much safer now than they were centuries ago during the Salem Witch Trials or other periods of history where Witch Hunts happened," Harry answered.
"So what are you doing here then?" Chifuyu asked once more.
Harry shrugged before answering, "Maintaining your shiny metal exoskeletons and fishing. I don't intend to cause trouble, but to prevent it. Does that answer your questions?"
She noticed the image on his arms, "What is that? They don't act like normal tattoos."
"These? They're nanotech," Harry replied. He had the nanobots beneath his skin to form an intricate sleeve tattoo to appear instead of audio waveforms.
"Nanotech! That's dangerous!" she exclaimed.
Harry pointed casually at her and replied, "Only if you don't know what you're doing. I programmed this batch of buggers myself with custom code and encryption to keep people from messing with them." He conjured another fishing rod and continued, "You know, you're welcome to join me."
"You do realize there are no fish here, right?" she deadpanned.
Harry just shrugged, "That doesn't mean it's not relaxing." (9) Chifuyu only walked away in confusion at all the information she just received while Harry went on to play the refrain from David Bowie's rendition of "The Man Who Sold the World."
XxXxXxX
And that's all I got this time around for this pilot. But before I head off to my normal things, I do have numbered notes this time around.
1. And that's my reference to Watch_Dogs.
2. Here I'm referencing the story "Lightning Dragon's Roar" by Zero Rewind (id: 10681251) where the exact same thing happened.
3. I know that Harry was a bit OOC in this section, and a little after, but how did they not figure that out? There's only two known uses for the Patronus charm which is Dementor repelling and messaging other wizards.
4. Both a reference to Watch_Dogs ctOS as well as the cameras that are live right now in London that the police use (as well as other big cities around the world).
5. For us Americans: the British version of the middle finger.
6. Think of the reticle in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare where the AC-130 has that thermal camera, that was the image I was going for whereas the orange squares what you see in some of the trailers for Ghost Recon: Wildlands for where the drone has marked enemy soldiers.
7. (YouTube) watch?v=Qbip5oZVL94. I honestly like this song and I wish I could play it on guitar, but I have no musical talent with the guitar. If anyone's seen the trailer embedded in Watch_Dogs 2 side mission where you hack yourself inside of Ubisoft San Francisco and see a new trailer. Many people online say that it has a lot of a resemblance to Cowboy Bebop in terms of musical tone.
8. An Archer reference where the pirate virus plagued the office. An absolutely hilarious scene.
9. This is one of my favorite references from Stargate: SG-1 where the pond/lake behind Jack's house has no fish, but yet he always wants to go fish in said lake/pond. It's hilarious in my opinion.
Now on to what I would wish to accomplish in this fic.
Ok, so pairings. As we know Infinite Stratos is a harem anime so I am undecided whether or not to pair Harry up with multiple girls or not. The first conflict with this is that all of the students are all underage and it would be beyond awkward for me to write a romance (even if it were a subplot) with 26-year-old and teenage girls. Therefore, I want to either pair him up with one of the teachers like Chifuyu or even Tabane while leaving Ichika and his girls alone in terms of that.
Next is the role that Harry plays in the story. What will he do? Will he be a troll? (Yes.) Will he be able to prevent any specific event that plays out primarily during Season 2 of the anime? Although, I do want him to expose the magical world with how he contributed to the IS project specifically with magic.
In the end, I have to come up with enough ideas to justify a series for this story. As a pilot, though, I had enough for that. But that's all I have for now.
Also, I can't believe I have to say this but please keep reviews pertaining to the pilot or oneshot being reviewed relevant; please don't "review" if you're just going to review spam me about updating a story that you like that I haven't updated in a long time. Seriously, I agree with Quatermass about this where it is excessively annoying and if you do it repeatedly is borderline harassment, you're extremely lucky I have tough skin concerning these things and not overly sensitive. Again, I can't believe I have to put this PSA on my own story archive here; Jesus H. Christ, man.
Regardless though, I'll see you guys again all next time in whatever I do next.