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Seeking the Source [Cas - Mission Set-Up]
D-Reaper Scout
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Never The End
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OOC Name: NolChannel™
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Post by D-Reaper Scout on Apr 18, 2019 3:44:47 GMT
[01:17:22] Holy shit, never ask me for anything again, this was tough.
1972, sometime in March, a black-out took out power in half the city for upwards of three hours. A cause was never determined at the time. Considering its location to an active portal, it was about one of three incidents that made sense.
Cross-reference that with real estate in the area, and there's one run-down house outside of Shibuya that seems suspect. Ownership's never changed since 1965, but its got the works: overgrown greenery cut once in a blue moon by the government, condemned signs, the works. Just be glad no-one's tried to buy it or it would have been long gone. The coordinates are as follows.
Its slim, but there's a chance. 'There's a chance'.
This lead, that had cost a British spirit wielder about fifty hours of her time, a fair bit of her sanity, and potentially a screwed up hard drive, had led Cassandra to the outskirts, a good fifteen minutes outside Shibuya. Here, there was the occasional proper house - and unfortunately, this part of town never really kicked off. It wasn't a high-crime area, but unfortunate problems with infrastructure in the area made it difficult to maintain, several property owners abandoning it in the mid '80s.
Perhaps Cassandra would know the story more than most, but they were here for one property in particular. It was a corner lot at the back of a street, its yard filled with sour-looking weeds and a slight foul scent that seemed to waft from the inside.
"... Of course, you guys would need me along for this in the end..." Emma gave a sigh, cracking her knuckles as she sat at a discontinued bus stop in wait. Despite a cane off to her side and braces around her knees, it seemed that the tech expert still brought a backpack full of equipment for this.
And why not? It was about time to see how one even tried to hack the Digital World.
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Post by Cross on Apr 18, 2019 4:45:56 GMT
The woman formerly known as Doctor Cassandra Cross stared at the property with an intensity that would have been likely considered highly unhealthy in a more sane individual. Given the twitching living mass of contradictions and eldritch things that should not be that had given birth to what she was now, the rare display of emotion beyond cold mechanical calculation was likely preferable in all regards. The Doctors breaths came slow and deep taking in the acrid scent of the area in all it's mixed foulness with a sort of nostalgic disgust that could only be described as 'home.' The irony of how incredibly close she'd been all this time to the place that had possibly started it all was not lost upon her as she slowly wrenched her blue eyes, never quite the right shade, back to Emma and tried her best not to be startled by her own reflection in the hazy glass shards the littered the cracked sidewalk. "With as much time and effort as you've invested into it can you really tell me you'd let us go off and solve the mystery without you?" Cas questioned arching a single pale blonde brow at the other woman as she savored the feel of the wind on her face. Well not really her face. Not any longer. The holosuit after all was an illusion of who she once was, but the air passed through it freely all the same tussling the Doctors wild locks as she moved towards the fence. Vaulting over it with an ease born of years of back alley hopping and a grace that was no longer entirely human. "Shall we go knock?" She quipped with a tilt of her head and a smile that was far more teeth then warmth.
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Post by D-Reaper Scout on Apr 18, 2019 5:45:38 GMT
"I wouldn't be me if I didn't say I was hoping that was the case." Giving a short chuckle to the holo-suited doctor, Emma gave a nod. Despite her appearance, she stood up rather easily. While Cassandra vaulted the fence, Emma instead pushed through, the lock entirely ineffective after so long.
'Knocking', of course, was merely a formality. Whether it was the disguised Digimon ripping the door out of its frame, or Emma tossing a brick through a front window, reaching in and unlocking the door, it didn't take long for the abode to be open to them, Emma immediately retching in response. "Oh, god, that stench..."
Screw tact, it wasn't worth getting poisoned over this! Briefly clutching at her pocket, a brief shine of light replaced the spirit wielder with that of a Mercurymon (X), mercifully with no nose or blood to get infected. The knight would press inside, out of sight, and draw a flashlight. The front room looked about how one would expect for being abandoned for forty-plus-years: water stains plagued the floor, the wall was cracked in more than a few places, and the mats underneath their feet were near entirely rotted through.
"No wonder this place never got any traction for sale. It's so underwater you'd need an exterminator just to tear it down." This was definitely not Emma's strongest suit, but she knew what she was looking for. A quick scan of the ground floor revealed not too much interesting - except for the fact that the furniture was still fully 'present', though far from in-tact. At a glance, it might have looked like one just walked away from an underwater mortgage.
It took a few minutes to try the doors, but they would eventually find one that led to a lower level - down to an unfurnished basement, and completely unsafe wooden stairs. Kicking the last support away, the champion-level knight simply fell down the floor, and pointed the light forward.
... There it was: several tall black carts, each covered under a gray sheet. "Isn't that a treat - he at least took the time to mothball his work." Alright, so there were the servers, at least - but where to go from there?
"... I really don't want to think that this trail ends cold here. Tch."
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Post by Cross on Apr 18, 2019 5:56:56 GMT
With a few muffled curses that might have been agreement Cas was quick to activate her EV suit once more no matter how much she'd come to loath the thing. The sudden lack of sensation even for the trade off of sanitation briefly sending her pulse skyrocketing with panic until she got her panic attack under control. Having been following Emma in her Mercurymon form rather listlessly until the crack of wood brought her back to her sense.
"Don't touch those sheets!" The Doctor was quick to snap out her eyes going wide as she surveyed the room for once grateful for the dark vision that came natural too her new form.
"If he took the time to mothball them then he could very well have setup some failsafes," Cas quickly explained, the basement an almost eerie if aged mirror of her own work area beneath her clinic. She only hoped his traps were less lethal then her own and that the man was only a fraction as paranoid as herself. Perhaps he wasn't paranoid at all, but she'd be damned if she set off some sort of trigger and the trail went cold just because she didn't clear the room.
Which clearing the room was what the Doctor did then and there with a nearly obsessive level of detail as she carefully checked over the door they had come through, checked the sheet, checked the walls, and floor. Covering the place inch by inch.
"Let's see...If I were the fucked up insane bastard that created the Sovereigns and the D-reaper thus creating me...where would I hide the important..." Cas trailed off then looked up at the beams of the basement above their heads.
"No one ever thinks to look up."
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Post by D-Reaper Scout on Apr 18, 2019 22:53:58 GMT
"Hm?"
'Don't touch those sheets'? That comment would have brought Emma to give a blank stare if she was able, but Cassandra's thoughts were in the right place. Emma did anticipate fail-safes, but not in the manner that Cassandra was expecting. Was she checking for traps, of all things?
"Doctor, with all due respect, what you're looking at are old computers from the 60s. Computer security as we know it today didn't even exist until the 80s." That, and if these were the model that Emma was thinking of, the entirety of those eight towards probably had little more power than one modern smartphone. Still, she did her due diligence, checking the surrounding area, only finding a few rotted-through mousetraps - and as Cassandra looked up, she'd be greeted with a drop of gross-looking water on her face. The beam looked sketchy, but not rigged.
"Now, stand back just in case." The spirit wielder would give a nod, pull back on the sheet - and give an impressed whistle at the sight. "These aren't early-chip IBMs... well, no, part of it is. But it looks like he rigged it with mechanical parts dragged in from the Digital World? Might explain why he needed to throttle the power. Still junk, by today's standards..."
But fun junk. Cassandra could probably tell in Emma's nonexistent eyes just how much she was looking forward to tearing into this piece of work.
"You got a portal up? Swing us by base for a second, I'll use mine to drop us back in my flat in London." She sighed: "I'd rather not have DATS on our ass right now - probably wonder what the heck a foreign spirit wielder is doing in Japan."
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Post by Cross on Apr 19, 2019 2:51:51 GMT
"Explosives, deadfalls, and burners have been around since longer then that. Forgive me if I'm a bit paranoid," Cassandra snarked as the water slid off her EV suit with a splat causing the Doctor to make a face of disgust. In truth she was almost disappointed the man hadn't had the foresight to believe someone would come after his work and protect it. Sovereigns only knew the shit she rigged her own consoles with. Technology could be hacked, but few people expected a good old fashioned tripwire triggered trap with a cascade set-off.
"All right give me one second and I'll get the portal open. I'd rather not speak with DAT'S either as I doubt they'd just let me walk away if they have an inkling of who we are." She murmured with a shrug as she tapped at her D-terminal for a moment till with a soft whine a portal opened.
"And before you say I'm overly paranoid when it comes to traps remember my lab took out a nice chunk of Lumina's forces when they invaded our last base," Cas quipped with a soft vindictive chuckle. She imagined liquid nitrogen was hell on angel feathers.
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Post by D-Reaper Scout on Apr 19, 2019 5:19:12 GMT
"Clearly, he didn't think someone would be that thorough - that, or rats have already bitten through all of the wires and scurried off with the pieces."
Take your pick, really. Fortunately, it wouldn't take them long: even if DATS was already on the way, the first portal would take them to a nondescript location in the middle of the Folder Desert - and after that first one closed, the second would open up to the London residence. The Mercurymon carted those servers right along through both portals, idly sighing at the doctor's comments. "Frustrating, yes, but different times, Doctor." Back in the real world - across an ocean and technically violating a few transport laws - the pair would find themselves, servers in tow, in a mostly vacant room set up for just this occasion. Wheeling the servers off to a corner, and dispelling her spirit, Emma would set off to get her set-up for this analysis:
A fresh laptop, a custom running system to work with common computer programs back in the day, and a mess of different cords and power strips were at her disposal. Eventually, she found a converter that worked for the servers at hand - and at this point, gave Cassandra a nod. "This is honestly going to take a while to get running - you want tea, anything? Feel free to help yourself - the only other person here is Vigilant."
And Vigilant knew better than to get in Emma's way when she was about to be on a roll! "Now, what secrets are you hiding..."
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Post by Cross on Apr 19, 2019 6:19:20 GMT
"I'll go maybe have some tea and crackers with Vigilant. I'm sure he could use the company," Cas chose eyeing the mass of servers and the laptop in Emma's hand. Taking into account that familiar glint in the hackers eyes as she sighed, clicked off her holo and EV suit for comfort and ambled off to settle in for the long haul.
"Shout if you need anything. We'll bring you food in a few hours if you don't." The Doctor assured her as she went in search of the familiar Knightmon. Prowling on silent booted feet through the halls as she ghosted through the rooms looking for the Digimon.
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Post by D-Reaper Scout on Apr 19, 2019 18:17:10 GMT
A few hours sounded about right.
Cassandra would meet that Knightmon a room off of the kitchen, in a simple holosuit and idly reading a book as Cassandra stepped on in - and after a bit of pleasantries, he'd get a kettle on the stove and a few sweets out for their guest ("Though if you were to head out for a bit, we could always call you back? Emma tends to get really into these projects...")
That she did: dedicated to breaking open that server and extracting every ounce of information that she could out of it, Emma set out to work. As it was technology from the early 70s, she started by copying the information, wholesale, into a few back-up hard-drives before beginning the analysis proper. The server's password itself was easy enough to force through, an impressive list of files coming up. Emma blinked as that scroll bar shrank further and further down the side of the screen.
"Crack wide open for me why don't you." She grinned, cracking her knuckles, and set right off to work. ...And a good three hours later, Emma's set-up had quickly evolved.
She brought in a small desktop, another table, and used another hard-drive to start test-running a program that she'd re-compiled from the server. The window showed the file in dark grey font on a white background:
DigiCal D 1.00.08 That ran more-or-less on its own, as Emma poured into different files - looking through notes, correspondence, contact information, even going as far as to pull up a phone book from Japan on her phone and a pad of paper to start scribbling through and writing down potential addresses.
"... Um, Emma?" Vigilant peered into the room, giving a sigh as he shook his head. Emma perked up at the sound, seeing the Knightmon. "Hm? Its only been like an hour, right?"
"Three and a half, actually." He shrugged, likely leading Cassandra back into the room. "Any headway?"
"Mm... I think so." She gave a nod to the monitor: "Believe it or not, that piece of work over there's the initial version of the D-Reaper that was on file on the date of the blackout. Going through the notes here..." She muttered: "It looks like he got up to version one-point-six before the entire server went dark. But I want to at least try the initial program to see how it behaves. Its something like running a stability inquiry on every file over a certain size - though it seems more effective on 'active' programs. Granted, it crashed that thing like four times before I just said 'you aren't allowed to blue-screen anymore, just break for me'."
"Huh..." He looked to the laptop. "And this?"
"What Cassandra probably actually cares about. Names, addresses, contact information. Looks like this guy was a 'Dr. Lee', of all things. Don't worry, I managed to scrounge up his social and used that to look back into him... aaaand..."
The grand reveal? "... Rushed to intensive care in 1974. The server was active up near that date too."
"... Explains why none of it was trapped, then. But that also would mean that he didn't leave behind the project in malice?"
"Gave up looking on that as soon as I found it out. Been screening through this guy's personal life to see if I can find ties through anyone else..."
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Post by Cross on Apr 22, 2019 3:32:07 GMT
Standing just behind the disguised Knightmon the Doctor's eyes locked onto the computer monitor. White noise filling her ears as she drifted closer to it like a puppet tugged along by it's strings as disgust warred with morbid curiosity as she reached out. Fingerpads brushing lightly against the screen as she stared out at the program and code running across the surface as Emma rambled on in the background. Her words falling upon deaf ears until. . .
"Rushed to intensive care in 1974" Emma's words breaking through the high pitched tone that had been ringing in Cassandra's ears as the woman's head jerked up. Breaking eye contact with the screen for the first time as she swiveled to face the Hacker.
"Is he dead?" She questioned the words coming out colder and far more blunt then she intended in regards to the man who had more or less made her.
"You never mentioned a death date and if he did not leave the project in malice then he likely would have returned to finish his work," Cas explained wincing as she struggled to find the right words and wondering if this, like her first father, was simply another man destined to be dead before they could ever meet.
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Post by D-Reaper Scout on Apr 22, 2019 4:07:28 GMT
"Good ear, but unfortunately, he's dead."
Emma clarified that rather plainly, even despite Cassandra's grave tone. "I imagine the stress in trying to re-code the program was a part of it, but unfortunately, its a part of living in the Digital World. When time progresses seven times faster on the other side, you appear to age seven times as quickly on this side. But, let's open that can of worms another time."
Indeed, rather than stay on that line of thought, Emma proceeded to go through the information that she did have: "Once I figured it was next to impossible to follow-up with Dr. Lee, I went to look through his personal history, as best as I could. Court records show that he was divorced in 1972, had a single son who would have been eight at that time, and worked in commercial research at the time - which explains why he was so flush in these resources..."
"Its sounding like you have somewhat of a lead?"
"Of course." Emma pressed on: "The wife and company aren't all that interesting, but the son had multiple problems with truancy and long stretches of simply vanishing during breaks. So closely related to another tamer, I considered that he could have been among the next set of tamers. It was when I was trying to track him down that I found this."
Emma clicked to a window on her browser, and tapped at the screen. "Its dated at this point, in fact, the last point of editing this site was in the mid-90s, but it was a message board that pretty openly discussed Digimon. He seemed obsessed with trying to fix something below the surface - more-or-less convinced he could do it solely from the side of the Digital World."
"Is it possible that he's still active as a tamer?"
"At this point, its the only lead we have. I have his surname, early college pictures, and expected age... that's about all I could manage. People really didn't put a lot online back then. If he had a Facebook I could just crack his life wide open..."
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Post by Cross on Apr 22, 2019 4:14:17 GMT
"I see. . ." Cassandra sighed returning her gaze back to the monitor in front of her as she watched the early stages of the Reaper play out before her eyes.
"I take it since nothing else has come up on this side that he hasn't resurfaced in the human world. Which means if he's not dead he's still in the digital world." She mused mourning the fact that she like he had been left to walk in another dead man's shoes.
"Can you tell me the name, age, and show me the most up-to-date picture we have of him? With luck my digital contacts can help us track him. . ." Cassandra paused something niggling in the back of her mind. Something familiar about this situation.
"Down," She finished with a shake of her head resolving to wait to see if the dots connected though her resolve not easing the way her stomach tightened with something akin to dread.
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Post by D-Reaper Scout on Apr 22, 2019 4:41:07 GMT
"Of course... let me just pull that one up again..."
Honestly, it wasn't much to go on: "It looks like he went be 'Lee', so there's a bit of a Senior-Junior going on here. Family's surname is Inari - not sure how much that's going to matter. If he were to remain in the human world... let's see, 1972 to 2019, add 8... um, fifty-five."
"Provided that he spend most of his time in the human world," the Knightmon corrected. "Correctly speaking-"
"What, he'd be somewhere between 55 and 337 years old?" Emma shook her head: "It looks like once he was busted for truancy once or twice, he somewhat kept himself in line since then. If I were to guess, he's at-best a moderate user of the Digital World - not to mention that the medical field there might make him look even younger than 50."
As for the college picture? Black hair, dark eyes, trim and proper tie in a school uniform. Emma showed it to Cassandra, but honestly the British person in the room could barely tell the difference between him and the pictures immediately to the left and the right of him.
Putting that aside for the moment, Emma gave a nod towards the program. "Its criminally simple - in modern terms, it would be less than fifty lines of code." She explained it, in brief: "It flags programs that exceed a certain size capacity based on the total size of the server, then runs a cross-analysis to see if that part of data is running in proper parameter. If it isn't, it deletes the excess and tries to repair the base code underneath to its proper state. You could think of it as your computer automatically resetting itself to a previous update and save point if it detects a virus."
"Something that simple?" Vigilant seemed confused, as Emma nodded. "Its simplicity led to its danger. But I suppose if you were trying to change the root of the Digital World, you couldn't inject an overly complicated program."
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Post by Cross on Apr 22, 2019 5:01:57 GMT
"So in truth we only have a name, possible medical knowledge, and the fact he's a human in the digital world to go on," Cassandra murmured running a hand over her tired face as she considered the task ahead of them. "Which means it will be difficult to find him unless. . ." The Baalmon trailed off lifting her head to narrow her eyes at the code.
"Unless we make him come to us. He obviously wants to stop the D-reaper and is likely seeking knowledge and tools to do so. It's likely he already knows about this code and has picked up where his Father left off. If he's been following the Reaper's recent incursions then he must on some level be aware of our work. There aren't many of us who study the D-reaper." Cas spoke thinking aloud as she slowly put together her plan.
"So we reach out to him. Either through Reaper-X or through the Archive near the Sea of Blood. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he knew of it or if the Wizardmon running it was aware of him. Offer him knowledge too important for him to resist." The Doctor spoke eyes never leaving the monitor.
"It's ironic. It started out as such a simple code and look how it's grown." She murmured with a sigh her thoughts lingering on the sea of red she saw whenever she closed her eyes.
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Post by D-Reaper Scout on Apr 22, 2019 5:17:08 GMT
"Dr. Cross, you mean to bait him in?" The disguised Knightmon considered it for a moment, as Emma gave a nod in agreement.
"I'll draft up a few messages. If he still monitors his old message board at all, we could potentially use that to our advantage as well. Besides, if he's still after the answer, I'm interested, too." The hacker gave a smirk, holding up a red card between her index and middle finger. "There's just something frustrating about accidentally following in these guys' footsteps. But if he's still looking for the answer to help the world, I have what he wants right here."
"... That's a pretty loud 'if' there, Emma." The Knightmon shook his head, as their attention was drawn to the monitor.
"Again, its simplicity allowed its complexity. If it had a larger set of rules, its growth would have been far more stilted. In either case, though, no-one could have really imagined the program gaining sentience... unless something pushed it into motion."
"... Tch."
"Yeah, I know, V." She shook her head: "We're always at least one step off the answer."
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