#no codebusters here

He doesn't know where she came from. No one does, as the only thing consistent about the girl

the girl, the hacker, the griefer, the terrorist, the nightmare

is that she is a complete mystery. Even the most untraceable of Internet dwellers come from somewhere, and she is far from a no-name drifter, yet all they know is her name.

She is Iris, and she will die by his hand.

He interview the witnesses as usual, while his fellow agents register evidence. Gigantic neon emojis flash, smirking and malevolent, above the landscape of Halo. The guns are still H-game accessories, the uniforms are still frilly polka dotted dresses, and the characters' voices are all still using a memetic text-to-speak artificial voice.

It disgusts him, how easily Iris can just ruin everything she touches. Even more disgusting is that some of the witnesses aren't bothered by it, saying that it was a simple prank. They are innocent to the true depths of griefing that Iris and her ilk do to both online and offline games--only by the mercy of their gamer was their game still salvageable! He remembers the blue screens wiping out game jumpers, the fatal corruption to computer programs that render them locked forever in quarantine, the endless "trolling" that drives gamers to stop playing.

It's his job to remember, though. Their job is to entertain, and perhaps they are entertained themselves by Iris's hacking.

Perhaps he will find enjoyment by ripping Iris apart, zero by zero.

The next round of witnesses in Splatoon say that Iris is beautiful. He snorts, failing to disguise his contempt.

Iris isn't stupid: she has at least 5 confirmed avatars, and only 3 of them are female-presenting. And she can turn both monochrome and invisible, allowing her to sneak through games like a filthy shadow.

However, she is arrogant, and vain, and loves her name. When not skulking, she is a flamboyant mess of rainbows in all of her avatars. He looks at the GIF saved of Iris in her Sugar Rush-based avatar, the hacker's arms raised like a conductor as she turns ordinary paint smears into gigantic Godzilla monsters for the witnesses--accomplices--to attack. Her coat dress is iridescent and even more colorful than the game she's corruption, each pixel shimmering from one palette coordination into another. Her coat hood is up, and her gauzy, sparkling scarf is tied around her little neck

what he would give to wring that neck

but he can see her hair rising up in wisps. Iris has long bangs to the tip of her nose and long hair to the bottom of her hips, and usually it's a cloying spectrum of pinks and purples. In the GIF, it glimmers blue and gold, clashing with everything else.

It's hideous, it's vulgar, it's the antithesis of beautiful. He makes a copy of the GIF just so he can burn it.

The damage done to the high security vault is astounding.

Where there was once adamantium walls and absolute boundary lining essential information, now there is only spider webs and silly string. Terabytes of data dealing with inter-arcade business is now public, posted all over the usual 4chan boards as well as even the most remote of Internet cafes.

All of the businesses and trades involved are compromised. Reputations are ruined, class action lawsuits are compiling, and several accounts of localized griefing and attacks are being logged. He shakes his head as he listens to one of the Elites record her testimony with a fellow agent. Some Elite cores will be fine after this, but others...Iris cares not for financial stability, not when she can just generate credits with her dirty hacking.

Endless damage, and for what--a thrill? He knows that Iris is no Robin Hood archetype, she griefs the poor as easily as the rich. No, what she gets off on is the frustration, the anger, the despair at the destruction.

She's as Evil as the crudest of malware; he leaves soon after this, intent on stopping her once and for all.

Iris came about a few years prior, along with a surge of other hackers and cheaters and griefers. But unlike those others, she has yet to be caught; not even her bio-metrics are on record.

Was Iris even her name, or was it her handle? What twisted game developer would create such an abomination?

He doesn't know. Does it even matter in the end?

By luck, or by fate, or by an unfortunate string of zeroes and ones, he finds her.

He doesn't hesitate when he sees the shimmer of her scarf, tucked imperfectly into her monochrome coat. He shoots her with a high voltage quarantine taser, surrounding them both in a protective barrier that he doubts she'll be able to hack out of without killing him first.

They are in a crowded Japanese server, and the screams of bystanders are silent inside of their bubble. Before Iris can disengage the taser, he jumps onto her and finally

finally

wraps his heavily protected hands around her neck. He is built to dismember top-tier viruses and malware with his bare hands, he is far larger than her and far stronger than her. Yet, she bucks against him, and he grits his teeth against the sudden invasion of nausea, of static of--her hacking his body.

Lead settles in his legs, and the urge to roll over and throw up is powerful. He drags one hand from her neck to her chest, so he can rip out her heart. She is in a Unity model avatar now, a simple humanoid teenage girl, and the deception of her frail body makes him violent. He beats her with his free hand, crushing her chest inwards as he pulverizes her spinal cord. Oh, this means nothing to a hacker who has cheated death more than she's deserved, but this impedes the body so he can finally

finally

have his way with her. His violent, hateful way with her, shredding the coat dress and the scarf and all the glitter that burn his eyes. Her naked body does not bleed, instead glitching rainbow pixels that enrage him further. He decides that before he kills her, he wants to see her eyes. He pushes her hood back and

and can't move. Her eyes are pinwheels of color, spinning slowly at first, then faster and faster until they're all he can register. Against his will, Iris repairs herself and moves his arms to his sides. She crawls out from beneath him, then stoops down in front of his crouched body. They never break eye contact, and Iris leers at him. "So you're the creepy little bot tracking me this whole time."

He can't reply, much less spit in his face. Iris laughs, and reclothes herself in an instant. She tilts her head, and his nausea is overwhelming; he cannot move so he cannot vomit, but instead he exists suspended in agony. Then his clothes disappear, to shame him.

"Time, time, and time again do creeps like you try and rough me up. One day it's a security bot, the next day a butthurt rival, the next day some jacked-up CP producer who has a fetish for my Minty Sakura palette...well, that's time for you. And time is not on your side today, old boy."

Iris turns monochrome, yet her eyes remain the same. They are neon against her chalk white skin, and frightened him. He is frightened, for the first time in his existence.

Then his skin prickles, and Iris giggles. "Time passes quickly in the Internet. New memes baked every day, new coding languages to learn week, new lists of hacks every second. This server was a no-name watering hole just 3 years ago, and now every Harajuku dollmaker worth their data runs their work through here. I was just an ol' rinky-dink...well, I wasn't Iris before. But I am now, and who knows who I'll be tomorrow. Isn't it strange, how time makes everything change?"

He is changing. The nausea is all he can perceive now, and the nausea is changing him. The barrier hum warps in his ears, as if she's pressed fast forward on a cassette...no. No. No. No.

He can't look away, and he sees himself age and decay in those pinwheels eyes. He is not an eternal program, and in their bubble he feels himself expire. He collapses under the weight of crumbling, rotting data. Iris shrugs, smirking malevolently. "Sorry, it's out of my hands now. Boring really, to watch this, but I'll see it to the end." She pauses, then quotes a memetic video. "~Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be fine, but eventually everyone runs out of time!~"

And then the barrier breaks, and she is gone; Iris is gone, and so is he.

The next day, a new anti-malware agent is given the task to track down Iris and eliminate her. The agent burns with hatred and revulsion.