[hot chef is who now]
Masen swaggers into the office twenty minutes later than he said he was going to be there, which is so unlike him that Peter briefly entertains the idea that he's somehow been transported to a parallel alternate dimension where everyone is the same, except not exactly. Peter squints at Masen, notes the red of his mouth and the tousle of his hair, and then banishes the Alternate Dimension Theory altogether.
Masen is late because he was busy getting busy with Bella, who as far as Peter knows, has been personally escorted to some frozen yogurt shop for a long-awaited make-up with her friend. Obviously, because he is proving to be a red-blooded male and not, as Peter had suspected, a cold-blooded lizard-man, Masen had taken the opportunity to squeeze in some squeezin' time before he deigned to return back to work.
Peter isn't sure if he would prefer the alternate dimension. Seriously, like, Masen being normal and not a close approximation of Android 17 is messing with Peter. Like, he's obviously happy that his bro is happy or whatever, but also at the same time - Masen laughs out loud now instead of smirking his ass off and he, like, actually responds to texts instead of just leaving everyone on read. He's still an asshole, of course, because he's Masen and he was born with arrogance instead of blood, but he's, like, almost like a normal person now. Would alternate dimension Masen be the same? Maybe. Or maybe not. Peter doesn't know. Didn't those physicists say the parallel universe was moving backward? Yeah, hard fucking pass from Peter. He doesn't want to go back to high school, no way, never again.
But back to the point - should Peter make a reference to Masen's lateness? Nah. That's just like inviting trouble. It's a trap and Peter is not falling for it, thanks.
Instead, Peter focuses back on the bigger problem at hand, which is now Huge and he is sick of it. "Great! Now that Masen's here, can we nail the motherfucker hacking into my computer? I'm tired of looking at these damn monks!"
"Are they too handsome?" Alistair wonders.
"That one guy was pretty ripped," Emmett acknowledges, looking at his own arms.
"They could be lady monks and I'd still be pissed!" Peter says defensively. Although, like, Emmett did have a point that some of those monks had real nice arms. Nobody is skipping Arm Day in Tibet, he guesses. Not that he cares, but still.
Emmett scoffs.
"I think you mean nuns," Alistair says flatly.
Peter rolls his eyes. "Yeah, whatever. Lady monks, nuns, it's all the same." Peter trots after Masen, dogging his heels until Masen looks at him with a muted sigh and goes to sit at Peter's computer. Peter points at the incriminating evidence and says, "See! Do you see? I've been victimized again. Fix it."
Masen does what he does best, which is to say absolutely nothing, do something mystical to Peter's computer that he, as a programmer, should be able to follow but that he really, truly does not, and then sit back with the air of a man who has just solved all the world's problems.
Peter watches and waits eagerly for a sign. The sign doesn't come because unlike the other times Masen has done this, Peter's desktop screen is still monks praying in front of a temple. "Well," Peter says at length. "The fuck just happened?"
"Invitation," Masen replies, standing from the chair and wandering around to the kitchen. Emmett and Alistair, who are seated at the barstools, join Peter's confusion.
"Invitation?"
"Invitation to what?"
"The hacker's funeral, maybe?"
"That lacks class. Masen would never."
Masen takes a generous swig from a bottle of water. "Invitation to a challenge," he clarifies. At the three blank stares he receives in response, Masen is compelled to clarify. "Global Blackhat Hacker Challenges."
"What is that? How do you know about that?" Emmett asks, sounding just as surprised as Peter feels, because yeah, Masen, how do you know about underground hacker challenges what the fuck?
But Peter flaps his hands, moving quickly beyond a question he knows will never be answered to his satisfaction. "Wait, wait! Are you - did you throw down a gauntlet for this guy?"
"Mm."
Peter preens. Holy shit, he feels really important right now, because Masen is going to take some guy down for Peter, and if that isn't the type of spirit life-long friendships are made of then -
"Hacker has talent. I'd like him on our team," Masen adds, and all of Peter's pride promptly vanishes.
"I don't want to work with some asshole who's been targeting me with monks!" Peter whines.
"I'm with Pete on this one," Emmett says with a twist of his features. "Do we will really want to work with someone like that?"
"Talent is talent," Alistair says. Alistair, of course, is inclined to agree with Masen. He's still a little fucked up about the accident and hasn't directly disagreed with anything Masen does since.
Does Alistair have a point? Maybe…But still!
"What talent could a hacker possibly have that we would want? We already have the best of the best here!" Peter insists.
"We're up for that Volturi contract," Alistair counters. "If we get that, then we're going to have to shuttle through Menagerie, which means we need more people to do both projects."
"It pains me to admit it," Emmett says, shaking his head. "But Al does have a point. Hey, Mase, have we heard back from Volturi yet?"
"Mm."
Peter leaps up along with Emmett and Alistair. "What? When? When did we hear? What did they say? Do we have the project? Did we beat those Denali dicks?"
Masen screws the cap back onto his bottle. "Today," he answers. His expression is just as flat as ever, but Peter thinks he might see a glint in his eyes that only comes around when Masen is in the mood to PWN some idiots. "Volturi have elected to decide the creators of DOW2 after the submission of demo."
"Hold on, we didn't get it?"
"Not yet," Masen says.
"But. But why?" Peter asks plaintively. "We already put together all those little demos for our presentation and our ideas were good! We should have gotten it."
Masen has a faraway look in his eye when he answers. "Business is about certainty. We made promises. Volturi wants to be sure we can deliver."
"So, what you're saying is that Volturi likes us, but we aren't a sure thing," Emmett surmises.
"And that Denali's ideas, while likely inferior, appear more achievable," Alistair adds with a curl of his lips.
"Mm."
"That's not fair!" Peter says hotly. "We're way better than those Denali dipshits!"
"We'll prove it," Masen says, as if that's the easiest thing in the world, as if it's the most obvious conclusion, like a foregone thing.
"What does that mean for Menagerie?" Alistair asks.
"Yeah, are we going to have to shelve it? The investors won't be happy." Emmett frowns, probably already thinking about the numbers he'll have to turn over to make that work.
"No need," Masen answers. "The Volturi demo is due just before Christmas. We have time."
That's only, like, four months. Less than four, really, because Menagerie is still two months from completion even if everyone is working around the clock. But Masen says that they have time and, hell, Masen hasn't ever been wrong before. So. Peter can only slump over the counter and say a silent prayer for his fingers, which are certain to fall off with the months of coding coding coding that Peter has ahead of him.
Ugh. More work.
"Chin up, Pete," Emmett says cheerfully, clapping a hand across Peter's back. "If Mase is right, then this hacker guy will help us get it all done."
Peter scrunches his face up. Oh, sure, it's great. The guy that has been tormenting Peter for weeks is apparently the answer to all of Midnight Sun's new problems. How convenient.
Peter hates this hacker guy twice as much now. Dick. Hacker Dude probably set this all up just so he can get the skinny on what Midnight Sun is doing for Volturi. He wants in on the action! He wants a share of the pie! Ha! As if! Peter can see through that bullshit a mile away!
And, yeah, maybe it's a bit of a convoluted plot to, like, hack only into Peter's computer and change only Peter's wallpaper - but! But Peter is a founding member of the company! He could have some interesting shit on his hard drive that someone might want to steal! He does have a few cool algorithms that aren't done yet - but, oh boy, when they are, they'll be something that someone wants to steal.
Peter is going to encrypt the ever-loving shit out of all his stuff now. That'll show this wiseass Hacker Dude with his suspicious timing and his suspicious targeting of only Peter.
Oh, hell. Only Peter is being targeted. Is Peter the weak link? What the fuck? That sucks. He doesn't want to be the weak link. Alistair can be the weak link! Why does it have to be Peter? Ugh. Well, if he is the weak link, then he'll just -
From across the room, Peter's computer dings - and his stomach drops, because ugh, now it's time to actually deal with this guy. Or, well, time for Masen to deal with him, which he does with that stupidly impressive flair he always has.
Now, okay. Peter isn't a hacker. He doesn't get the whole point, mostly because it seems like a lot of effort, and he's already a master programmer and he doesn't have the need to wear as many hats as Masen constantly does. But all the same, even Peter's programming brain can't quite follow the challenges for this blackhat challenge thing. Masen, on the other hand, seems to breeze through it along with Peter's hacker. The whole thing takes two or three hours. Emmett gathers snacks while they all sit behind Masen, watching the timer tick down, and the screen prod through what would be considered the computer version of gymnastics.
Peter eats Sun Chips and despairs, grumpily looking on. He wishes he was cool enough to be playing some global hacking challenge. He should work on that, or else he really will be Forever Alone.
It's inevitable that Masen wins, of course. That had been the challenge, apparently. If the hacker won, then Masen would let the whole thing go, but if Masen won, then the hacker would have to come to Midnight Sun and meet up and hash out the details of whatever devilish scheme is in Masen's head.
"So, when's this guy coming?"
"Midnight," Masen says, standing up from Peter's desk and circling around back to the kitchen. Oh, look, he's thirsty again. Side effect of being badass? Maybe.
Evidently Peter isn't the only one who is a little impatient. Even Alistair is rapping his fingers against his now-beaten up cast. "That's less than an hour from now," Alistair points out.
"Mm."
"Then he must be close," Emmett deduces.
"Mm."
Peter squints. "Wait, so this hacker is just, like, conveniently hanging around within an hour of us? You don't find that suspicious as fuck?"
Masen levels him with a dry sort of stare and very pointedly shrugs his shoulders.
Peter wants to throttle his stupid pretty-boy neck sometimes. Seriously.
"You know who he is, don't you?" Emmett asks, his eyes widening. "Masen, my dude, don't tell me this whole time you actually already knew who this guy was?"
"Coding looks familiar," Masen answers nonchalantly.
And, yeah, that isn't exactly an adequate answer. Who on God's green fucking Earth recognizes what individual code looks like? What, does this hacker leave a signature?
Actually, leaving a signature sounds cool as hell. Peter might take a page out of that playbook!
But! That isn't the point!
Peter wags his finger at Masen. "You totally broke the bro code, you wily bastard" he admonishes. "Thou shalt not let thy bro be hacked on purpose to poach said hacker for the express purpose of bettering thine company without telling thy bro about thy bullshit. Amen."
Alistair sighs, long-suffering as he always is at Peter's incredible wit.
Emmett, on the other hand, is nodding along, for once being a stand-up bro. "I agree with Pete on this one. If this was part of some grand plan, we should have been told. Or at least I should have been told. I don't care about how much Peter suffers."
And there goes all the good-will Peter was filling. He flips Emmett off.
"Didn't know if he'd take the bait," Masen says.
Wow. Just wow. Peter is bait. How fuckawesome. Really.
"Well. Okay, fine for this time. But in the future, you should loop us in, okay?"
"Mm."
Peter narrows his eyes. He knows Masen's hum and that one did not sound like an agreement. Jeez. Where's Bella when he really needs her around to reign in the monster?
"This is shady," Peter says. "I'm too salty to be involved in anything shady right now."
Emmett groans. "Would it kill you to just talk like a normal person?"
"I don't know," Peter snipes back. "Would it kill you to not be a dick?"
"I might kill you both if you don't shut up," Alistair warns darkly.
This time - and only this time - Peter listens to him, but it's only because he's thinking about this hacker asshole who Masen has been plotting with - or against - or whatever it is that Masen is doing.
The clock tick-tocks closer and closer to midnight, the most auspicious hour for this most auspicious occasion, and Peter finds himself pacing at the lobby door. There's nobody out on the street because it's dark as shit on a cloudy night, but he has no doubt about this hacker showing up. And sure enough, straight on the dot, the door opens up and in walks -
"Hot Chef?" Peter blurts out.
Hot Chef looks up as he closes the door, eyebrows as angry as ever.
Peter glances all over, taking in the bomber jacket on Hot Chef's shoulders and the deep V of his plain tee and the way his jeans hug his thighs just right, and frowns. "Hey, man. Did you get the order wrong? We didn't call for delivery. Do you even do delivery?"
Hot Chef casts his dark eyes aside, hands in his pockets.
Huh. Hot Chef doesn't even have any food on him. Not a delivery then.
"Oh, I see!" Peter crows victoriously. "You're here to see me! I get it, I get it! One day without this handsome face and you want to see more! Totally understandable. But, dude, it is kind of late and my associates are waiting for some hacker asshole to show up."
Hot Chef stares at him with this unreadable expression and Peter grins.
And then Masen comes up from behind him and says, "Hello, K.O."
"Master Culler," Hot Chef replies gravely.
Peter's jaw just about drops to the goddamn floor, because wait a fucking second! What is happening! Hot Chef is - did Hot Chef just say that he's K.O, as in the one from Dawn of Warcraft that has been looking for some poor bastard for, like, three months? That K.O.?
"But, but!" Peter sputters. "But I've never even seen you use a computer!"
Hot Chef - no, K.O. - looks at him and Peter's stomach squirms. He clicks his mouth shut and watches as Masen and K.O. circle each other like sharks, searching for blood in the water or weaknesses or something.
"I'm here," K.O. says finally, his voice a low rumble. "What do you want?"
Masen tilts his head. "You've been hacking into my colleague's computer for a while," Masen says coolly like he's talking about the weather and not weeks of upset for Peter. Ugh. "What do you think I should do about such direct harassment? Will anti-stalking laws be on your side, I wonder?"
Peter flushes to the roots of his fucking hair, his neck heating up like he's on fire, because what. Peter isn't being stalked. "I'm not being stalked!" he yelps. He looks at Hot Chef or K.O. or whoever, eyes wide and beseeching. "You're not stalking me, are you? You just, like, suck at communication. I'm cool with it, or at least, like, it would be nice if you didn't fuck with my computer, but I could maybe forgive you if you could keep me stuffed and happy! I wouldn't mind!"
Somewhere in the background, Emmett chokes on his own tongue, and Alistair audibly sighs. Masen silently lifts a brow at Peter. K.O. levels him with one of those trademark heavy stares and it's all Peter can do to laugh nervously, scratching at the back of his head.
K.O. looks at Masen. "What do you want?" he repeats, twice as flat as before.
"Come work with us," Masen offers, almost nicely.
"Why?"
"You're talented and useful. It's a waste of your skills to do anything else."
Not swayed by the blunt honesty, K.O. says, "My food truck."
"Keep it."
"Where?"
"Here. Wherever." Masen pauses and surely his lizard brain is calculating something because his next words are an actual fucking concession. "I would only request you for special projects. Interesting things. Challenges."
"Challenges?"
"We want to revolutionize the industry," Masen says. "But, of course, you already knew that."
K.O.'s brows furrow in thought. Inexplicably, he glances at Peter and Peter smiles brightly without even thinking about it. And then K.O. says, "Fine."
That's it. Just. Just fine, like he hasn't just basically sold his soul to Masen and his scheming mastermind ways. Which…Should Peter say something about it? He feels like he owes it to the guy to at least warn him about what he's signed up for, because by God does he wish someone had warned him. But, then again, even if K.O. is Hot Chef and can cook up all the food that Peter will gladly eat into a coma, he did still pick on Peter and do that monk prank with a truly astonishing amount of commitment.
And then there's the added layer that Masen apparently knows this guy in some other way. Like, not just from NOMAD, not just from DOW, but also because of the way he codes. Which is something important, Peter thinks, and it ultimately means that Masen will connive a way to get this guy in his books one way or another - and fuck no Peter will not be getting in the way of Masen's plans, not ever.
Plus! Now that Peter knows Hot Chef is K.O., he can't help but want to unravel the whole thing about K.O. hunting that Pettish handle in DOW. Like, it makes him nervous to even think about - and surely it's impossible, right, because it's been years and the handle isn't even the same one - but still, Peter wants to know. Because of reasons.
Masen offers a nod of his hand and the slightest of self-satisfied smiles and promptly turns away, pulling out his phone and tapping at the screen. Probably updating his plans for world domination now that he has another piece on his chessboard or whatever.
Alistair trails his eyes between Masen and K.O. with a certain level of skepticism that Peter appreciates, but Emmett seems ready to welcome a new recruit to the team. "Well, alright!" Emmett says loudly, walking forward with his hand held out. "Welcome to Midnight Sun, uh, K.O. I'm Emmett, CFO and all-around gift, the scowly vampire behind me is Alistair, our head graphic designer, and you obviously already know Pete."
K.O. does not shake Emmett's hand. He does, however, stare darkly at Emmett when Emmett drapes a friendly arm over Peter's shoulders until Emmett clears his throat and steps away. Weird.
Whatever. Peter has more important things to think about. "Listen here, friend," he says to K.O., formerly known as Hot Chef, immediately gaining the guy's full, undivided attention. "I'll forgive you for pranking me, because I too understand the value of a good prank, but only if you promise to keep me filled with some delicious every day!"
"I promise," K.O. says solemnly.
Peter beams.
Behind him, Alistair is griping to Emmett and Masen, who does not seem to be paying any attention, something about is this is what it's going to be like now? Peter ignores them all because the promise of food is oh-so-sweet and pretty much guaranteed.
"So," he says, leaning into K.O.'s space, bemused by the way the guy stares back without blinking. "What's your real name, anyway?"
A/N: This is update 1 of 4 this weekend. Would LOVE to hear what you think K.O.'s real name is! Peter was feeling super reference-y, so I have a few explanations to include!
So, the alternate dimension Peter mentions in the beginning is something physicists discovered the first signs of in June 2020, where they think they have evidence of a parallel alternate reality on the same stream as ours, except it's moving backwards in time, not forward like us. Like Peter, I also would not like to back to high school!
Android 17 is the male bionic android from Dragon Ball Z. While everyone knows that Android 18 is better (fight me, her arc was awesome), Android 17 is pretty cool too!
PWN is leet speak for "to own" or "to conquer". Leet speak, which was mentioned in the previous chapter, is internet jargon that was predominately used in the early 2000s but is still being used on online gaming platforms. For context, if you are playing a game and you beat someone, you can say that you "pwn" them, or "own" them. Other examples of leet speak include using numbers for letters, such as L8r or l33t sp34k. It's similar to what might be used over text, but is generally seen as a slightly dated way of communicating online. Leet speak, like other languages and code, will continue to evolve.
Forever Alone is a meme from the golden age, which is between 2010-2016. I suggest Googling if you don't know what Forever Alone is, because there's no real way to describe the meme, but it is 100% hilarious.
As always, be brutally honest. I can take it. Stay smart, stay safe, and stay healthy! Wear your masks and advocate for police (and government) accountablity!
~Rae
