Serefina and Akira still have an important decision to make. This flash drive… what could be on it? Will the truth finally be revealed?
Also, thank you to everyone who read my story "The Heir to the Dragon". I would appreciate if you continue to read and support it in the future! You can get there through my profile! The story is finally completed! Thank you for reading!
ON ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE! The contest has reached the judging stage! And one of my stories, Love Bites, has made it to the semi-finals of the Impossible Romance category! But I need votes! If you would like to support me, go to MyAnimeList/MAL, find the flag for Impossible Romance, and download the app to cast your vote! It would be much appreciated!
The Pokemon Academy Best Girl 2 Finals are up and running! Who do you think is deserving of the title of Best Girl in the second year of the contest? Cast your votes! We've only gotten one vote so far, and I know that a lot of people are reading, so come on guys! The poll's in the profile, who do you think deserves to take the crown?
Finalists: Sylvia, Marion, Sango
Guest: I guess we'll just have to see, won't we?
JoshGamerV: I'm glad so many people are theorizing, it tells me I made something really engaging!
Rowlets and Oshawotts: Blake's dream had a lot of hints for future plot points, yes. More on the way, don't worry!
Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings
Chapter 695
Serefina explained what had happened as best as possible. When her explanation was finished, Akira didn't look all that enthusiastic. He was downright pissed, with a little bit of worry thrown in, for good measure.
"Sylvia…" Akira ground his teeth together, glaring past Serefina and at the far wall, his hatred for Sylvia burning intensely in his eyes. Serefina sighed, understanding how he felt. She wasn't very happy about what had gone down with the blonde, either.
"She said that she would figure out what happened," Serefina said. "And keep in touch with us. But I'm not entirely sure she was being honest."
Akira snorted. "Of course she wasn't," he snarled. "Whenever that bitch breathes the air comes out crooked."
"I think she was after this," Serefina said, showing him the flash drive. "Dakota hid this in a book before she got attacked by her attempted killer. It's got to be something important, it's probably the reason that she was attacked in the first place."
Akira took the flash drive and turned it over in his hands.
"Whatever's on here, it's definitely important," Serefina continued. She didn't like the sound of this, but she couldn't deny reality. "I think right now, we're in the middle of something really, really big. It's a conspiracy, and we're right in the thick of it."
"Dakota… she figured out this conspiracy, didn't she?" Akira asked quietly. "And that's why she was attacked, to shut her up."
He clenched his fist around the flash drive. His hand was trembling. He turned to Serefina, and she hadn't been happier that Dakota was alive. The look of murder in his eyes… how dark would it have been if she had been killed?
"That's just like her," Akira muttered. "Always digging for the truth, even when something like this ends up happening. Someone like her… I just wish she would calm down…"
Serefina could see the pain in Akira's eyes. He really did love her so much. It made her want to help him, seeing how desperately his love for Dakota was controlling his emotions. They just needed to calm down and take this slowly.
"Akira, whoever attacked Dakota, they did it because of this flash drive. And I think that's what Sylvia's actually looking for. It's not about solving the truth." Serefina remembered seeing Sylvia put that book away on the shelf when she had come back to get her. It was all starting to make a sick amount of sense, Sylvia had never been concerned for the truth, had she?
If she had pretended to care about the mystery in order to find the flash drive… now that Serefina thought about it, she had probably dragged her into this whole thing just to confirm her existence, hadn't she? With those pictures. That had to be it.
"You think Sylvia was looking for this?" Akira asked. "Yeah, that makes sense. But if that was the case, then…"
"Then what?" Serefina didn't like the look in his eye.
"Do you think… it was the Phantom who attacked Dakota?" Akira asked warily. Serefina gasped. She hadn't considered that.
"The Phantom?" She asked.
"Well, it's Sylvia," Akira reminded her. "She does whatever she wants, sure, but she's still working for the Phantom. Think about it. The Phantom is up to some suspicious stuff with the Shadow Pokemon. And you said that Sylvia had been checking her camera feed from the Phantom Cup when she suddenly ran off to the library, right?"
"Oh! That's right!" Serefina gasped. She'd completely forgotten about that! "So wait, you think… but no, that's…"
Serefina didn't want to believe it was true, but it was making sense.
"The Phantom must have been the one to attack Dakota," Akira growled, his anger rising. "She figured out what he was up to, and he attacked her to keep her quiet. Then he destroyed her camera and computer to cut off the information, but he couldn't find her flash drive. He left, but he was probably still suspicious that it existed. So he had Sylvia go look for it. Pretending to want to find the truth, she was playing you to find that flash drive."
Akira's voice trembled with rage, and Serefina could sympathize. She felt the same way. She knew she despised Sylvia, but if what Akira was theorizing was true, then this was a situation that wasn't okay at all.
"So what do we do now?" She asked, staring at the flash drive. She had a good idea, but she didn't want to do it without Akira's say-so.
"In a second," Akira said, turning over the flash drive in his hands. "There's still something that you haven't explained."
Serefina glanced at him, confused. "What do you mean?"
"This flash drive, you said it was hidden in a book, right? And that Sylvia was trying to find it? But why do you have it?" He asked, curious. "I mean, I don't think that Sylvia would have missed you lifting it behind her back. So she probably knows that you have it and is waiting for… well, I don't know what," he admitted, shaking his head.
Serefina knew that wasn't the case, but she wasn't sure how she should explain without mentioning Satsuki.
"Well, uh… be… before Sylvia came to get me, I just had to see the crime scene for myself!" She explained. "So… So I snuck in, yeah, and that's when I spotted the book! And since I knew how much your Gyarados meant to you and Dakota, I knew that it had to be a message to you, so I took a look, and that's how I found it! Yeah…"
Hopefully Akira would buy that explanation. She looked warily at him, but if he had his suspicions, they didn't show.
Instead, he laughed. Akira actually laughed.
Serefina was stunned. She had expected to never here his laugh again.
She could tell that his laugh was meant to conceal the pain he was feeling and try to lighten the mood, but it was still appreciated.
"Wow, Serefina, I had no idea you could be such a bad girl, breaking into the crime scene like that," Akira said.
"Y-Yeah, that's me," Serefina said, wishing her laugh could sound as natural as his was. She didn't want to give him any suspicions. "A-Anyway, I was thinking, um… we need to check out this flash drive, you know? Figure out what's on it. If we do that, then we'll know why Dakota was attacked, and what Sylvia was after."
It was definitely a risky move. Looking at the flash drive would put a target on both their heads. But Serefina had already been prepared for that, even before she knew that Sylvia was after it. Right now, that more important thing was figuring out the truth.
Would Akira see it that way?
"You're right," he agreed. "This is Dakota's last message to me, after all. And more importantly… she's still in danger."
Serefina swallowed. The traces of levity she'd heard in his voice were gone, and the anger was back. She had to admit, he had a point. Dakota had been attacked to keep this information quiet. There was no reason to assume that she would be safe in the hospital. In fact, it was more than likely that she would get attacked again to keep her quiet.
Serefina didn't like that possibility.
"We need to make sure that she's safe," Akira continued, handing the flash drive over to Serefina. "And the only way we can make sure that she's safe is if we figure out why she was attacked. If we know what they were trying to keep quiet, then we can leak that information and then there won't be any reason to keep going after her."
Serefina nodded, a tight smile pinching across her lips. That was exactly what Dakota would do in this situation, too.
"When she wakes up, she's going to be so surprised that the two of us broke the story," Serefina said, chuckling a little. It still came out forced and stilted. She wondered if she would ever laugh naturally again.
"You're right," Akira agreed. "So… do we do it?"
Serefina nodded. "Let's go." She flipped open her computer and inserted the flash drive, waiting for it to boot up.
When she got to the desktop, she found the file labeled "DAKOTA: PRIVATE! (THIS MEANS YOU)" and clicked on it.
What happened next was a bit of a surprise.
She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting to pop up on her screen. Picture files? A long document string? Links to websites?
It wasn't what she got, though.
Instead, a small figure popped up on her desktop. It was an animated girl with curly red hair and brown eyes, dressed up like Sherlock Holmes.
"He-Hello!" The animated shape said, twitching a little. "Welcome to Decoder's Stream! Hi, fans! Get it? Decoder? Heh heh!"
Akira and Serefina looked at each other, stunned.
"Okay! Let's go! Today, we're playing Mr. Mimecraft," she continued. "It's going to be super fun, make sure you subscribe!"
"…Why am I staring at a V-Tuber?" Akira asked, turning to Serefina. "Serefina, is my girlfriend secretly a V-Tuber?"
"Hey! Hey! I'm not a V-Tuber! Sure, I'm virtual, and I play video games for my streamers, but… okay haaaaah!" Decoder hissed from the screen, startling the two of them.
"You can hear us?!" Akira exclaimed incredulously.
"No! No! I just know exaaaaaactly how Akira would have responded, heh," Decoder snickered. "He'd be all like 'waaaaah! It's a V-Tuber! Why is Dakota a V-Tuber?!' I'm right, huh? Heh! Because it's definitely Akira looking! No one else would care enough! Akira's definitely trying to find those dirty pictures on Dakota's files. Noooo no no, ecchi is no good, hey, we're a wholesome stream here!"
Akira felt his face get hot. He scowled at the computer.
"So! So! If you're watching this, then that means you're trying to get into Dakota's private files." Decoder bobbed around, shaking her head. "No good! Those files are private! She held her hands up and made an 'X'. That means you, Akira! No nudes! Rude!"
"Hey, listen you little-"
"If you want access, then you have to input the password, or buy some of my products at the V hololive store! Don't forget to get a t-shirt!" Decoder snickered.
Suddenly, a password bar appeared in front of her.
"It's simple, super simple! Enter the password, and you can come in!"
"Okay, Akira, enter the password," Serefina urged him.
"How am I supposed to know the password?" Akira demanded. "This girl doesn't let her flash drive out of her sight, why on earth is it password protected?! God, Dakota's so paranoid!"
"I suspect that Akira's thinking about a password right now," Decoder mused, stroking her chin. "But think careful! This password is super-important! Get it wrong too many times, and then… boom!" An explosion effect rocked the screen.
"So the files will get deleted if we get the password wrong too many times, that's not good," Akira frowned. "How many tries do we have?"
"Oh, I forgot to tell you!" Decoder gasped. "The number of tries is… um…"
She stroked her chin thoughtfully. Then bonked her head and winked, sticking out her tongue. "Whoopsies! I forgot!"
Akira wanted to throw the laptop across the room. Somehow, Dakota was still annoying him, even when she wasn't here.
He hadn't felt this happy in a long time. Just seeing her, even this virtual counterpart, feeling her irritate and tease him like this, it was really like his girlfriend was here, messing with him all over again. He'd forgotten how much he missed that.
"So we don't know how many tries we get?"
"Hehehe…" Decoder whispered. "Look at chat right now, they're all going "OwO" and " " don't worry guys, I'm sure they'll get it right!" A fake chat was scrolling up the side of the screen as Decoder opened the worldcrafting game behind the password bar, going through with this absurd "V-Tuber" pretense.
"I'm not the only one really annoyed by this, am I?" Akira asked hotly.
"No, this is Dakota, through and through," Serefina sighed.
"Oh, don't worry, 'BasedRedheadReporter', they'll be fine. If not… BOOOOM!" Decoder shook like she was having a seizure. "But but, it's not the files that go boom, it's the laptop! BOOM!"
"Wait, what did she just-" Serefina went pale.
"See, there's a worm in the drive," Decoder explained. "Right now, I've downloaded all your personal information. Get the passwords wrong, or take the flash drive out, and it all gets uploaded to the cloud! And then broadcast!"
She winked. "Violating the privacy of others is bad."
Serefina's hands shook. She was happy Dakota was alive, because that meant she had the chance to murder the girl herself! "That fucking bitch…"
Akira could sympathize with her.
"So, good luck!" Decoder said. "And don't forget to donate to my stream!"
She went back to playing Mr. Mimecraft, laughing with her chat and going on random tangents as Akira and Serefina stared at the password bar burning a hole in front of them.
"Number one victory royale, yeah Forretressnite we bout to get down, ten kills on the board right now, just blew up Tamato Town~" Decoder's annoying voice, a high-pitched warp of Dakota's own that was even more grating, burst out of the speakers of Serefina's laptop. It had been a solid hour of Decoder's annoying singing, inside jokes with her "chat", and goading taunts, and Serefina and Akira were just about ready to give up this whole thing.
"I'm going to kill her," Serefina seethed. "I'm going to choke her out…"
"How long is this fucking thing going to go like this?!" Akira exclaimed. He loved Dakota, but why did she have to be this annoying?! He just wanted to figure out what had happened to his girlfriend, but somehow that just made everything worse.
"How can we not have any idea what her password is?" That was what Serefina wanted to know. "We probably know her better than anybody, are you seriously telling me that neither one of us can guess what it is?"
"For someone who seems to value truth and the free exposure of information, Dakota is really fucking bad at sharing her thoughts with others," Akira griped.
They were tense. The longer they spent stalled on this screen, the more danger Dakota was in. Every second counted, they didn't have time to waste on this stupid V-Tuber shtick of hers, damn it! Akira was particularly incensed.
"Hey! I just want to help my girlfriend!" Akira screamed, shaking Serefina's laptop. "Just tell me what's in there you fucking pixel bot!"
"Akira, you realize you're screaming at a computer program, right?" Serefina dryly asked. But she had to admit, she could understand his feelings. She was growing irritated as well. Somehow, the knowledge that Dakota was still alive made most of the sympathy that Serefina had for her start to dry up. Now she was just annoyed.
"I know, but it's not like we can just do nothing!" Akira groaned. "Come on, we have to come up with something! There's no way that one wrong answer is going to get us."
"Yes, but that's one less wrong answer," Serefina reminded him.
"Knowing Dakota, there's probably no worm at all," Akira scowled. "We get as many chances at the password as we want, and this is all one big troll to get people to back off."
"That…" Serefina opened her mouth, but couldn't say one way or the other. That actually sounded exactly like Dakota, if she was being honest. "Actually, yeah, you have a point," she agreed, looking warily at the screen.
"So what should we do?" Akira asked. "Just give up, or start making guesses? Because sitting here won't solve anything."
"What about birthdays?" Serefina asked. "Dakota's birthday is April 6th, we might want to try that one, maybe?"
"Or it could be my birthday," Akira said, typing in his birthday.
"BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!" Decoder screamed, her buzzer sounding like static backlash. Akira winced, glaring at the screen.
"That was the WRONG answer, LOSER! Hehehe!" Decoder cackled. The chat exploded in derisive comments. Akira's eye twitched in frustration.
"What about hers?" Serefina asked, typing in Dakota's birthday next. Another wrong answer. Decoder continued to mock them, laughing at her with chat. Serefina nearly through her computer across the room in frustration.
"Hey, I just thought of something!" Akira gasped. "Hey, maybe… maybe it's Mew."
Serefina blinked in confusion. "Mew? What's that?"
"Mew is a pokemon that… well, the way Dakota puts it, it's a mythical pokemon that's so rare most people don't even know anything about it, let alone see it as a real pokemon out there," Akira explained. "She told me that her dream was to become the first person to get a photograph of Mew. So maybe that's her password."
Serefina nodded, it was as good a shot as any. "Careful, though, we've already gotten two wrong answers. Maybe it'll blow up on the third one."
Akira admitted that was a possibility. But he knew Dakota, at least, he hoped he did. He hoped she wouldn't ACTUALLY go through with something like that…
He typed "MEW" into the slot.
"BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!" Decoder's buzzer was deafening. She was cackling, and chat exploded. "That's THREE wrong tries, LOSERS! Come on, better think carefully! If you don't get the next one right, who knows? Maybe you'll get a BOOM?"
A stream of "BOOM"s shot up the screen as chat got involved in this, too.
"Oooh! $5.00 donation from 'BOOMFan' saying 'I want them to go BOOM El-Oh-El'," Decoder read. She giggled. "I agree, BOOMFan! I want them to go 'BOOM' too! HAHAHA!"
"I want to punch her so much…" Akira sighed.
"I don't get it," Serefina said, shaking her head. "How are we supposed to guess what this password is? It could be anything! And it's not like we're brilliant hackers or anything, this isn't fair!"
"We have to think like Dakota," Akira said. "What would she put for a password?"
"We've been doing that already," Serefina reminded him. "And it's not working. So what next? We're the ones who know Dakota best out of everyone!"
Akira wracked his mind. They had to figure out what was on this flash drive, but neither one of them was sure what more they could do.
"Wait!" He gasped in realization. "That's right! There is someone else we can go to, someone who can think EXACTLY like Dakota and figure out her password!"
Serefina gasped. She knew who he was talking about, too.
So who could this mysterious contact be? Will they be able to decipher the flash drive? We'll have to find out!