#「♔ minji;pixelis | para」

[heroicisms]

( evidence 002 ) ha minji; pixelis

          PIXELIS USUALLY REVELLED in the weightlessness of her body as she travelled through the wires, letting herself be carried to her destination, but she had to remain alert for this one. saturn was known for having top-notch security and she didn’t want to injure herself by bumping into a firewall, even if she’d removed as many of the precautions as she could before entering cyberspace.

          the principal’s computer was the furthest in the long line of saturn’s technological destinations, which she assumed was on purpose. of course he would have the most protection on his own device. he probably thought he was important or something. tragic, really, because he was the last person she was here for.

          she knew the computer was powered down when she landed in complete darkness, and she closed her eyes as she tapped into her power. turning the computer on was like flicking a light switch when one got the hang of it, and soon she was facing the principal’s desktop background -- a picture of him and his daughter.

          fang hadn’t been able to give her much information the last time she spoke to him. all he knew was how the student portals were set up, not the staff ones, and he wasn’t about to ask in case he raised suspicions. she could respect that. instead, she’d had him tell her what he knew and made assumptions based on that. a quick scan of the desktop shortcuts proved her right. close to the top of the screen, in the third column, was a notebook icon with saturn’s logo. it was labelled ❛ student files ❜.

          she jumped on the closest desktop icon ( seriously, who still used internet explorer in this day and age ?? or whatever the damn thing was called now ) and continued to do just that, moving higher and higher until she was standing on top of the notebook icon. she tapped the icon twice with her foot and bent her legs, bracing herself to land on the task-bar as the student files opened for her.

          squinting at the bright light, she found herself in the centre of a circle of doors, six of them, all with a different hero’s face printed on them. the homeroom teachers. one for each year.

          she knew she should probably start with the first years and make the climb to the sixth years, but if she was doing this, she was going to do this her way, and so she strode over to cecily alton’s class. as far as she was concerned, this was the most interesting group of students. this door brought her to a room similar to the one she’d just left, only there were far more doors.

          while she didn’t need fang’s profile, it was a good starting point. she could judge the amount of helpful information more effectively that way. it didn’t take long for her to find his, either, squished in between ridley vidraru ( she wasn’t touching his or his sister’s with a ten foot pole, not that she wanted to in the first place ) and that one kidnapped girl.

          walking through this door brought her to an interface in the middle of a white room, decorated only by photographs of fang throughout his time at saturn. the interface displayed his full name, his birthday, his ( fake ) family, all the basic things a school would need to know. clicking on the other tabs brought her to his academic progress and athletic progress respectively, mostly comments made by his teacher. while helpful, she felt that there was something missing.

          she closed her eyes. the computer’s coding thrummed through her veins, like it had a heartbeat and it was matching with hers. when she concentrated hard enough, it was part of her, and she could tell where all the hidden nooks and crannies were.

          and in this device ?? there were plenty.

          she reached out, palms facing forward, and she spread her arms outwards. when she opened her eyes, things had changed. the room was now dark with a single light shining on the interface, which now had a new tab simply labelled ❛ notes ❜. one look at these told her that these weren’t written by cecily alton or any of his other teachers.

          ❛ fang’s quirk is passive. it’s useless for combat as he has to close his eyes to use it, so he can’t use it when he’s trying to move. disappointing, but he has his uses. should anything happen, he can be called to my side and used as the radar he is to prevent enemies from harming me.

          ❛ as stated in his files, he keeps to himself and falls somewhere in the middle of the class, a more normal student compared to some of the others there. he’s unnoticed, but this doesn’t seem to bother him. where is his drive ?? he has the opportunity to come here under my tutelage and he’s wasting it on normal. ❜

          if she wasn’t scowling so hard, pixelis would have scoffed. this man’s sense of entitlement was like nothing she’d ever seen.

          ❛ liability level: low. his parents have never been seen, as they are always away on business and, according to staff, are rather flippant about their son’s progress. they can be easily subdued. ❜

          nothing was outright stated, but pixelis considered herself an expert in finding hidden things. was this man really ranking his students on whether their families would care if something happened to them ??

          copying the data to show fang later, she returned the folder to its original state, once again blinded by the white walls. after making sure she hadn’t left any trace of her involvement, she headed out the door.

          with the hefty amount of students, she didn’t have enough time to check everyone’s files before the ball ended, and even then, she just skimmed the principal’s notes to see if there was anything useful before sending it back to her own computer. she could have done this from the comfort of her own home, but there was a higher chance of her leaving traces of her hack, and she needed to be as stealthy as possible.

          there seemed to be patterns forming within the information, too. with one of her top priorities being the collection of intel on the children of professional heroes, she noticed that all of their liability levels were marked as ❛ very high ❜. choi jaesung, noh areum, kwon haneul, and anyone like them was automatically considered more important because of their parents’ fame, and while pixelis wanted to call the man out ( not because she cared, but because catching people in the middle of their bullshit was one of her favourite past times ), she knew it would be hypocritical. the league thought the same, didn’t they ??

          any of the students who had placed in the top three at any of their sport festivals were automatically ranked ❛ medium ❜ or higher, depending on their social status, parental involvement, and abilities. they had proven themselves enough for the principal to give a damn, at least.

          no matter who the student was, however, the principal always had some pretentious opinion of them. they were either too aggressive or too passive, too friendly or too distant, too reliant on natural talent or too focused on training their quirk. there was always something wrong with them, and it was always phrased in a way that made mister bang sound better than everyone around him.

          it wasn’t long before pixelis was desperate to leave, sick of being in the mind of this man who didn’t give a damn about the children in his care ( sure, she despised the heroes in training herself, but she wasn’t supposed to care about them -- that was the biggest difference ), and once she’d gathered the information on the last student, she leapt towards the ❛ x ❜ button.

          facing the desktop picture of bang and his daughter yet again, pixelis was tempted to spit in his face. that was impossible in her virus form, but it was fine.

          karma would come around for him soon enough.

          she selected ❛ shutdown ❜ from the start menu before disappearing into the maze of wires once more.