#anonymous;

symbol memes // accepting! send a symbol to give my muse: a gift of berries, granola bars, toasted acorns, and mammoth jerky.

The grin that spreads on her face is quite a rare sight nowadays. Fangs is already sniffing the box and trying to get it open but she carefully swats her cat away and he listens, sitting down patiently as Flint rummages through it's contents with a sigh of relief.

symbol memes // accepting! send a symbol to give my muse: an umbrella

Her first instinct is to laugh. She never understood the need to make practical things "cute" but she had to admit the umbrella she held in her hands was charming of sorts.

Send me a word or theme and " + drabble " and I will write a dabble / one-shot surrounding the given word. [ accepting ]

— — — The darknet was like a series of pandora’s boxes, each one its own special surprise when you pry one open.

Click. Click click.

The mouse on the monitor was pushed around. He had his TOR browser open on the one bureau issued screen he had been provided. The poor computer under his desk stuttered to load each page, the onion-routed network slow as it wrapped and unwrapped each packet that flowed through it, making it nearly impossible to track.

Milo had always found that a little funny. The way the cyber criminals he was tracking, often high-tech and well equipped, did most of their business over infrastructure that was painfully slow. After all these years they still didn’t have a better solution. He understood why. But there was something very ironic about the situation.

“Agent Brennan.” The voice seemed to come out of nowhere despite the fact that his desk was in the middle of the bullpen with other agents occupying identical desks. A young man in the crisp suit and tie, badge on one hip, a gun on the other. Agent Bradley. Fresh to the agency. “Your two o’clock is here.”

Also the lowest on the totem pole.

Milo nodded, not bothering to look up while he gathered some loose papers off his desk. “Thanks, I’ll come get them shortly.” Bradley nodded and kept moving, looking to the next agent he had a message for.

“So, you got one to come in.” Agent Reyes, Milo’s partner for several years now, chuffed from across his own desk, polished shoes kicked up while he flipped through a folder. He didn’t look up from the papers, but there was a faint grin that crossed his features. “Need some backup in there?”

“No.” Milo huffed, tucking the stack of papers into a folder neatly. “No, it’s just a kid. Don’t need to spook him more than he is. He already got in trouble with the local P.D.”

“This for the Coyote case?” Reyes asked, dropping his feet down and leaning forward.

Milo drummed his fingers against the manila folder once before tucking it under his arm. “Yeah. His schoolteacher snagged him accessing the darknet while in class. She overreacted, thought he was looking for drugs or weapons.” He pulled open a drawer while he talked, grabbing a pen and a pad of paper and adding it to his stack. “Reported it to the local authorities even. She said she was worried he might become violent. They seized his computer. Forensics ultimately found nothing criminal. Just a curious teenager who thought surfing the underbelly of the Internet was cool.”

Kids these days.

Reyes hummed. “If he’s clean, why are you talking to him?”

“I think he has access to the Coyote’s marketplace. Or did. The forensics report was flagged with indicators.” Chances were high that access had been revoked by now. That would be his luck. “I want to hear if the invite came the way I think it did. And if he saw anything.”

His partner arched a brow up, not quite disbelieving but close, as he watched Milo do a final pocket check to make sure he had what he needed. “Sounds… boring. I rescind my offer.” Reyes kicked his feet up again and leaned back in his chair, returning to his own stack of papers. “Call me if it becomes revenge of the nerd in there.”

Send me a word or theme and " + drabble " and I will write a dabble / one-shot surrounding the given word. [ accepting ]

— — — The code scrolled down her screen, the debugger doing the dirty work to try and help her sort out why it failed to compile. Exploit development, particularly of the buffer overflow flavor, often took many attempts at getting it right. This was her seventh attempt and it showed. Her hand had raked through her hair countless times, leaving it a ruffled mess, and she’d gone through at least two pots of coffee over the many hours she’d been hacking away.

The thing was taking its sweet time, stepping through her code and analyzing each line as it went. The underlying machine language, the binary ones and zeros, scrolled along as her rig converted her code into a format that it could consume.

And with each passing digit, she found her mind wandering.

Binary.

The woman, currently miles away back in Gotham, who’d managed to hijack Sen’s own code to pull at the heart strings the Coyote thought she’d snipped a long time ago.

A sigh escaped her, unbidden, and she leaned back in her chair. She couldn’t help but think of the smile, the laugh, the nights shared over takeout and more…

Her hand reached for her phone — then shifted at the last moment to the half burned joint amongst the junk on her desk. And with a few lighter flicks it was lit, a deep inhale followed that was meant to drown out whatever it was that she was trying to avoid and poorly. She tilted her chin back and blew the ghostly wisps up.

She didn’t want to be a burden, she thought. Binary had plenty going on in her own life. To add anything on top would be unacceptable. Besides, who was Sen to fold to a wanting she had not planned for?

She tried to convince herself it would pass.

— It didn’t work. In fact, her traitorous heart did something more as the inebriation set in.

She grabbed the phone.

msg >> b1n4ry: hey msg >> b1n4ry: thinkin about u

Nope.

Sen deleted that message before she sent it.

Too needy, too much. She never wanted to be too much.

msg >> b1n4ry: u busy? i got a problem & need 2 talk it out w/ sum1 smarter than me. msg >> b1n4ry: chicago has been short on smarts lately…

Then the phone was tossed back on to the desk, her attention returned to the code that was being as fickle as her feelings.

unprompted [ always accepting ]

— — — “Aw, you thought about me long enough to make a comparison? I’m flattered.”

unprompted [ always accepting ]

— — — “I don’t think you know what or who you’re messing with. You think you have power or rep because you’re with Anonymous? I hope not because that group is just as aimless as everyone else who claims to have a mission, bogged down by so called ‘goals’ that cause noise for two seconds before everyone forgets about ‘em. And you don’t even move the fuckin’ needle with your so called ‘operations’. Do you remember #OpUSA? No? Of course you don’t. Because it achieved nothing because Anonymous is nothing. Ya wanna make an actual difference? Get outta my channel and go fuckin’ volunteer at your local soup kitchen or learn how to actually hack something worthwhile before I bring out the biggest ban hammer you’ve ever seen.”

unprompted [ always accepting ]

— — — “Oh, I’m sorry, did I hit a nerve? Come at me, skid. I fucking DARE you. Let’s see what you all got behind those stupid ass videos and cheap masks because I PROMISE, my firepower is bigger and better.”