Abrupt Clarity

[Nina Vi'dreya]

C O R U S C A N T​

[member="Whisper"]​

She didn't like mysteries.

Kaila Saedrin didn't scare quickly, but not knowing made her uneasy. Her career was built on solving mysteries with the potential to be dangerous left unsolved, and it had caught up to her over years to the level where she rested easier without loose ends to tug on.

It was late, but she hadn't logged off for the night yet. Her segues across the HoloNet were rarely without a tangible purpose, and if she had been the sort to count her personal quests as purposeful today's would have been no exception. Naturally, she was not, and it was not. She wasn't uncovering secrets and she wasn't infiltrating for data. She was just tracing a name (one file, one file with something valuable and the hunt ended. But hunting never proved so hard). Searching rarely took this long - her search had dragged to all ends of the net. But Kaila was stubborn. And she was persistent.

Please enter passcode: ********1

Access database? (y/n)

...

Accessing file.

...

Error 404: File not found.

Error. Error. Kaila was too reckless for perfectionism, but she hated to fail. Years of slicing, good slicing, and she'd never beaten her fists against a brick wall for so long before it crumbled. But this one...wouldn't. She didn't know how many files she'd tracked to find deleted. How many programs she'd run searches through for each one to turn up blank.

And she definitely didn't realise how much each failure was making her steadily more traceable.

 

[Whisper]

"MOOOOOOM! I THINK THE FREEZER PIZZAS ARE READY!"
As her mother pulled the tray of small discs of bread, cheese, and meat from the oven, Kitten Roice sat at the counter of her dwelling, blue eyes swiveling over a long list of letters and numbers she had set her browser to randomize in patterns only she could decipher at the speed it was moving. It was simply things she had highlighted as interesting to her teenage mind.
Ooohhh, that was an interesting one. The stock market on a mining colony in the Outer Rim had just opened up. The prime of its existence, bursting with money and trade. Lot of livelihoods depending on those stocks, and the growth of this colony as a whole. Her finger lazily reached out to tap a few keys, and *boop*. All stocks were now worthless. Oops. How could a tragedy like that happen, from an untraceable source by all but the absolute greatest slicers this galaxy had ever seen? A mystery for the ages.

Debby Roice set a plate of the pizza in front of her on the table, glancing over her daughter's shoulder at her terminal screen.
"What is you're doing there, sweetie?"
Kitty grunted.
"Stuff. Thanks for the pizza."
She shoved a section into her mouth as her mother moved to another part of the house, and she continued to examine her screen. Wait, what was that? An anomaly. Someone was searching up every part of the Holonet relating to the world 'Whisper'. Curious. She leaned forward, prioritizing this tracking. Hm. They were trying to find traces of her, her old proxies that she constantly recycled and deleted. Anything to get a lock on her.

Whoever this was, they were good. Whisper was just the best there was, in her humble opinion. Tracking was simple, an apartment on Coruscant registered to a '[member="Kaila Saedrin"]'. This girl knew how to cover her tracks, because there wasn't much out there on her. Just enough hidden away for her to find.

Elsewhere in the room, another screen would light up. Perhaps a television, perhaps another terminal, it didn't really matter what it was. On it was Kaali's picture, her address, aaaannnnddd enough fabricated evidence of heinous crimes to bring the Coruscanti cops kicking down her door in about fifteen minutes. Finally, a small message in text.
Is there a reason you're fething around with things you don't know anything about?

 

[Nina Vi'dreya]

Bleep!

The terminal pinged just as Kaila returned from her kitchen, steaming hot caf in hand. She exhaled hair out of her face she sat, setting the mug down beside her and turning to the lit screen-

That-
-was her.

"Oh-"​

And her address.
And a great long list of misdoings. Not her misdoings.
But truth was so hard to come by these days.
"chit."

Well, this wasn't good.
At all.

What now? There was always vanishing off the face of the earth, she supposed. Mask herself and move to some place nobody'd ever heard of, much less cared about - maybe start a fire? That was always a classic. Gave her a nice way out, very dramatic, very effective. Oh, it was perfectly doable. It was just hideously inconvenient.

Kaila swore some more, downing her caf in rushed gulps as she mulled over her options. Then finally, she dragged her chair closer to the screen and leant over the keyboard.

Well, that's just rude.

Feth off, y

Sigh.

Tying up loose ends.

>Enter

[member="Whisper"]

 

[Whisper]

"Tying up loose ends? What the feth does that mean?"

Kitten's mother looked up from the kitchen sink, where she was doing the evening dishes, frowning.

"Kitty, please, watch your language."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

The teenager huddled behind her screen, muttering expletives to herself. Stupid mom and her stupid rules. She stuffed another piece of pizza into her mouth, chewing as she examined the message. Tying up loose ends. What a dumb response. Ha. Ha ha ha.

Kitten turned back into Whisper as she tapped on the keyboard thoughtfully. Thinking. Thinking harder than she normally did. As she thought about what to do, she activated the fire alarm in the apartment complex across from Kailia's, and shut down all the elevators and door. Watching the people mill about and scream in panic when there was no real danger brought a smile to her face.

Finally, she responded back.

Listen, I don't know why you're trying to feth with my operation, but I need you to not. I can bury you in enough legal trouble to have half the galaxy after you, and your family, your friends, anyone close to you, really. I will feth with the guy that sells you bread if you piss me off.

[member="Kaila Saedrin"]

 

[Nina Vi'dreya]

Threats to her safety rarely got under her skin. She wasn't the most selfless person you'd ever meet--by a long shot--but what she lacked in willingness for self sacrifice she made up for in confidence that any danger thrown her way wouldn't be the end of her.

Threats to other people?

She didn't like those so much.

Kaila wasn't a selfless person by a long shot. But she liked the security of knowledge, and she held fiercely to knowing she'd done the right thing. Now, Whisper she'd first caught word of for rewriting the security system Kaila'd been hacking in the middle of a mission. Venus hadn't been searching for a good person and she'd known that from the start.

This on the other hand, well. This was a direct threat to the people around her, just for her own vendetta. Anyone this Whisper wanted, not because it was necessary but because it was fun. It was unjust. Wrong.

Kaila had a fierce temper. This checked just about every box there was on how to spark it.

She took a sip of her caf- oh, feth. It had gone cold. Chucking the mug across the room, Kaila drummed her fingers on the desk. An operation. She'd been looking for a name without knowing there was any specific mission attached to it. But searching after such an operation now would have been too obvious even without Whisper's uncanny powers of detection.

Not trying to interfere. My employers reckon they can benefit from your operation and wanted me to investigate.

Also, the guy who sells me bread is cute, leave him alone.

With some more furious backspacing she hit enter, then opened a new window. That fire alarm was grating on her nerves.

[member="Whisper"]​