2019-11-17 - Who Are You?

Summary:

Two spider-chicks try using the Dark Web to find the location of the femme ninja's they're hunting, but they find they're about to have a little help.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Sun Nov 17 01:11:17 2019
Location: Midtown

Related Logs

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Theme Song

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HAMMER INDUSTRIES HQ

Manhattan, New York

1:30 AM on a Sunday morning is a time when very few people are inside the Hammer Industries building. Most of its workers have gone home for the day, leaving it empty of everyone save security. Gene Bishop is munching on Cheetos and drinking a can of Pepsi, but his attention is split between monitoring the feeds and his game of Online Poker, which is why he misses the security feeds briefly switching over to a video loop.

"Big spenders," Spider-Girl mutters to herself, observing how easy it was to get in. She and her counterpart are concealed amongst the many decorative outcroppings upon the skyscraper's roof, and has not only hacked into the corporation's private WiFi, but is using it to get back into the dark web.

"We're in," she tells Gwen. "This time, if they trace us, we'll let them find us." Her masked face is lit by the soft glow of a laptop, which is drawing power from her idling spider-drone. Looking up to Gwen, she grins mischievously. "You ready, hermana?"

Gwen has her laptop set up beside Anya's, logged in to do… well, exactly the same thing that Anya is doing. Also, she's saved all of her personal (and identifying) stuff onto an external hard drive that she left at home, just in case. "Ready," she confirms. "This is gonna be great. I hate Hammer Tech, they're so scuzzy."

She sits back, and having brought the two-bite donuts with her, fishes them out of her backpack and sets them up in front of the laptops, where they'll be in easy reach. "Not quite popcorn, but it oughta do," she muses. "Something to munch on, anyway."

Spider-Woman pauses, and rubs her chin. "So… how many attacks do you think we'll get this time? It was one, then four, last time. Think it'll keep increasing? Are we taking bets?"

There's been a lot on Skye's mind lately. The adjustment to a new city and a new way of life had been difficult enough. Not content to leave matters at that a bunch of other curiosities landed into her lap. It's been, in a word..amazing, but it hasn't been so kind to her ability to sleep.

Tucked into the blanket-strewn cocoon that is the back of her van with a cheap cup of coffee and a cheeseburger nearby, her attention largely remains upon the trio of monitors in front of her. Pale LCD light is all which keeps the shadows at bay while she 'sweeps through the signals' in search of ..something. Anything, really. She's bored, restless, and surrounded by wireless opportunity. Even a random shot in the dark around here is likely going to land near something curious!

"'Hammer Industries,'" she mutters to herself with a snort. "Wonder what kind of secrets you're keeping from the world."

A few keystrokes are followed by a pause..then a few more taps at the board. "Lacking security, that's for sure. Did someone forget to close the gate tonight?"

Or did someone already breach the system..?

"Tell me about it," Anya retorts, smirking. "Did you bring protein, too?" she asks, before chiding herself. "Right. Webshooters." As for the attacks? She shakes her head. "No idea. I've got our suit tech and Arana completely walled off, so there's no way they can get into them, but, these laptops'll likely end up fried if we get hit too hard. That's why we backed everything up and did clean OS installs."

Which took forever, of course.

"Alright, we'll use the same logins as before, and see if we can draw these girls out." Cracking her fingers, Spider-Girl gets to it, and begins opening portals into the dark web. She's masking it from Hammer Industries' defenses, but she's already found that their defenses are… lacking. So, she hasn't put that much work into it, meaning that the other incoming probe is likely to pick up on these dark web inquiries pretty easily.

"We're gonna get flooded the moment these ID's are out there, so get ready."

"Protein, and potassium," Gwen confirms, producing a bag of pepperoni sticks (the good stuff) and a couple of bananas. She sets about destroying a protein stick, lifting her mask to her nose and stuffing one end in her mouth and just leaving it there, as if she were rapidly consuming a cigar so she can leave both hands free. She taps away rapidly at the keys, getting herself logged in to both accounts.

"Okay, losers. I'm here, just a sexy piece of bait, come'n get me," she half-sings, way off key, to the computer.

"I'd kinda rather not get my laptop fried, my Dad is gonna be annoyed if I have to come to him and say "Daddy, I need a new laptop for university 'cause somehow I got my old one fried like an egg, easy over and everything, and I've got no idea how."

As she talks about hopefully not frying a laptop, she's busy throwing up requests for someone to do an illegal job, much like before. Might as well get the word out.

It takes a little while of watching the flow of data to realize that something may be amiss here. Charting the various pings from different IP's, realizing that there are some repeat offenders, then realizing that there is indeed activity here and it appears to be more than usual.

"..Huh."

Skye could use the opportunity to root around in Hammer's servers but she's suddenly more intrigued about the outside signals which are already working their way past the firewalls. One, no -two- rogue signals. If others are already here then they probably have a good idea of what they're after.

Naturally, this means that she wants to have whatever they're going after!

With the two signals seemingly occupied doing ..whatever it is that they're doing, Skye attempts to trace them back to their source. Neither are likely going to notice something coming at them from the side, as it is.

The first one is easy. -Too- freaking easy. "What..?" she mutters while squinting and leaning closer to the screen, similarly typing at a near furious pace. Someone's putting out a lot of really shady requests and looking like a -total- amateur in the process. "Are you for real? Dude you're just -asking- for troub—"

Hang on… She's barking up the wrong tree here, isn't she.

"Tu perra caliente," Spider-Girl all but coos, and reaches out to snatch up one of those pepperoni sticks, which is fortunate… it hides the grimace that comes to her face when Gwen trie to sing.

"Oh, not like literally fried," she defends. "Don't worry, I'll fix whatever happens to it!" Anya giggles and then begins smirking at her laptop. "Here's the thing; if the same people come after us, I already have a sample of their malicious code. So, I've been, like, working on something, and if they do come at us, I'm gonna blast 'em right back in the face."

Meanwhile, Anya's attempts at pinging the dark web do not come across nearly as amateur as those of Gwen's… mainly the language. It's a damn fine black market professional in nature, with the occasional peppering of vulgarity. Not too much, not too little. She's well aware that this is all new to Gwen, which is something she's using to her advantage.

"I think I might have them," Spider-Girl says to Gwen. "Arabian vampires, remember that?" Her expression has gone dark; middle eastern sex slaves are for sale, and she's pretending to be an interested party. Even though this isn't her first rodeo, it still makes her skin crawl.

"Wait…" Spider-Girl minimizes the window and monitors the subtraffic with a frown. "Gwen, I don't think we're alone…"

Gwen is still trying to sing, and… and there's a reason why she's the drummer for her band, apparently. Either that, or she's just being intentionally bad. …Actually, it just might be the latter? Maybe? So hard to tell. But mercifully, she stops as she picks up one of the bananas, and unzips it by sticking her fingers to the peel and just pulling it into three pieces in one go.

"What? Not alone?" She stuffs a third of the banana in her mouth at once. "As in, we've got our bad people, or…" She leans over to look at Anya's screen, where she's forced to admit she has exactly no clue what she's looking at. "Man, you gotta teach me this stuff sometime," she muses, rapidly inhaling another bite of banana.

"Doesn't a group of well-prepared ninjas, female ninjas at that, selling sex-slaves seem just a little out to lunch, somehow?" she adds. "Maybe it's code for something else? or… might they just be having us on to eliminate us?" Yeah, like they could eliminate us. They're welcome to try, though.

They're probably going to try.

Right on queue, while Anya is still having a conversation, a trio of sophisticated cyber attacks come in, two targetting Anya's computer and one going after Gwen's. They're all different, but they all share the same descructive intent, along with code to send back their location, accounting for any VPN's. Skye will probably notice those attacks coming in, too; they're not being sneaky about it.

|ROLL| Anya Corazon +rolls 1d20 for: 16

|ROLL| Gwen Stacy +rolls 1d20 for: 16

"Egh, god. Of all the things I could have bumped into," Skye grumbles. Maybe she doesn't understand what 'Arabian vampires' are at first but the remark about seven days doesn't need any further translation. There's always something ugly going on in the dark web but she doesn't have the time or energy to go after all of the little fish. She wants the earth-shattering bombs, the Big Deals which would leave the news covering for the next week or two.

But there's a vast inconsistency between these two signals.

"Not exactly the good cop-bad cop, are you guys," she mutters while zeroing in on the more secured connection between the two. "Alright, let's see if you guys remembered to shutter the ol' camera—yikes, hey!"

Before Skye can really dig into trying to grab actual mugshots of those behind the two connections there's additional intruders at the gate. Attacks are focused. Not on her, not yet, but if she sticks around they just might pick her out as well.

"Okay, seriously guys, SOMEONE has to give me some dirt here. What the hell!"

Should she sit back and wait for something to happen? Rush in from the sideline and try to disrupt it? No..she's going to mask her connection even further then try to focus on the more secure of the two. That's where the money'll be. These other attacks are a good distraction, they'll buy her some time.

"Yeah, it's super weird," Spider-Girl agrees, "But it might be what the f…"

The young woman is suddenly leaning over her laptop, smirking. "They're back! Gwen, there's an .exe on your desktop, hit it."

Anya waits for a fraction of a moment, letting them get close, before she unleashes her counter-virus. The code is turned back on itself, and is suddenly blazing back at the source. It's the equivalent of a full blown Normandy style exchange, all there for the mysterious Skye to see.

"That third party just went dark," Spider-Girl reports, frowning. "I wonder if thats them?" she asks aloud, while monitoring her programming at work. "Makes sense, right? Create a big noise, then try and sneak in and get under our skin?"

She's shifting then, and making to swap her laptop with Gwen's. "Gimme," she says quickly, and grabs Gwen's laptop from her. "I'm going after the other one, try to find a location."

While the proverbial digital volleys are at work, Anya's suddenly poking at the masked connection. All she needs is a WiFi node and a location…

Gwen doesn't waste any time, she closes the window she's got up and double-clicks on that .exe file like she's trying to murder it. Well… maybe not murder it, but make it go and do its own thing. Hopefully murder, against evil bad programs trying to be mean to her laptop (which totally has Darkest Dungeon, FTL, and Into The Breach on it).

"Looks like… things are happening," Gwen admits, "And I wish I could help, but I— Okay! Go for it," she acknowledges, going pretty much hands-off when Anya snatches her laptop. She moves to watch over Anya's shoulder, while finishing her banana; she unzips the other one and holds it out, so that her compatriot can have a bite without having to actually hold it, or even really look away from the twin monitors, if she so desires.

"Our third party went dark? …Is it possible someone else is also being bad on the… nevermind, that's a dumb question. …Think it's anyone nearby? Or even inside the building?"

Meanwhile, the electronic salvoes are on their way back where they came from; and they're following the trails, bouncing from one location to another. Of course, whoever is on the other end isn't sitting by idly; they've sent ouf their own attacks, to terminate their own code coming back at them. It's unclear yet if that will work, but no further attacks are launched, at least not yet. Looks like the other side is focused on defense, at least for this moment.

Skye actually leans away from the monitors with eyes wide. "Holy -crap.- Someone came prepared." Which means they KNEW this was going to happen. They were baiting the others into attacking. If she had followed alongside the first wave she'd be fending off a serious countermeasure right alongside them!

"Okay..you are -definitely- playing for keeps. Let's do this."

With multiple devices and a sophisticated setup at Skye's fingertips it's almost trivial to scatter the virtual trail of breadcrumbs into what may seem like infinite loops. She can't hold the title of being the best hacker on the planet but she'd give SHIELD a definite run for their money.

Just in case someone else comes nipping at her heels there's a shiny red button (thank you, ThinkGeek) nearby which will kill the wifi to all of her active devices. Her proverbial 'nuclear option' if she's faced with a losing battle. But that's not likely to happen. That doesn't happen often.

But this one guy is -skilled-…

A hand darts out to move her coffee aside, clearing the way for The Button. This may well be one of those times.

There's only one minor dilemma. While she's going after Signal Prime she's paying much less attention to the Decoy. If she had any idea that the two were sitting -literally right next to each other- she might have been more wary of them BOTH.

In a manner of speaking, Anya is part amateur. She may have hacked into the DoD database when she was fourteen, but she does not have a sophisticated setup. What she does manage to do, as soon as all of those signal trails are scattered, is blast a simple text message onto every single one of those trails.

"Not everyone on the dark web is a piece of slime," she spits out quickly, "But I- I dunno. But they're good." She shakes her head, fighting off the overwhelming sense that she's in over her head. "Fuck! If I just knew… - Gwen. Task Manager on my lappy, kill 'PUNKASSB'."

She wants Gwen to kill the countermeasures on her laptop, but not on Gwen's. See if the big bad guys come back at her, to further destabilize the playing field… and then her mouth is full of banana.

"Got it!" Gwen leans back over to Anya's computer, and with just one hand flying over the mouse and keyboard, finds the aforementioned program and puts it to electronic sleep. All this while holding the banana neatly in place; don't want to accidentally moosh Anya in the face with it, afterall. Potassium only does you any good when taken internally, it doesn't make for a super good lipstick.

"So are we going to beat these people?" Gwen is already devouring a two-bite donut in one bite. "I mean, we are, right? You're the best hacker on the planet." Gwen knows that's not true as much as Anya does, but hey, a little psyching up never hurt.

<SOMEONE YOU SHOULD BACK OFF FROM RIGHT NOW> is the answer that comes back in regards to Anya's queery; and then the second salvo is launched. Four seperate programs come bouncing through the internet, rushing through four different routes. Two are headed to Anya's computer, like before, and one to Gwen's; the fourth one, just seems to be sniffing around, for… something. A third party, maybe? But it's very definitely in a hunter-killed mode. Definite emphasis on killer. Looks like somoene doesn't want either competition, or witnesses.

Throw a question at enough signals and sooner or later it's going to reach one which is actively being monitored. A pause follows when the message comes through, a spike of adrenaline failing to keep an amused smile from creeping onto the hackerette's face. They're shotgunning over there. It's a little curious all on its own, this other individual is going through more effort to get a username out of her than to try and shut her down.

"Feeling chatty, are we." Of course, the -other- team decides to respond first. "Oh, someone's feelings are getting hurt tonight. Alright, may as well establish some brand awareness while I'm here."

Because what good is having a name like 'Skye' if you can't have a little fun with it?

Still trying to get her electronic hooks into the 'Prime' machine out of the duet, a more targeted message soon follows. <Getting deep. Want help?>

Whatever they're hunting for, she can identify bad operators when she sees them. Whoever's behind the threatening response? Totally a bad operator.

"I don't wanna beat them, I wanna find them," Anya retorts, clearly frustrated. She's got hands on each keyboard now, and when the first response comes in, she audibly snorts. "So lame," she quips. "But it sounds like them!"

Suddenly, Anya goes very quiet. She stares at the second response, and zeroes in on it with a few quick keystrokes, which is precisely when she reads the targeted message. "Holy shit. We have help."

<Need a physical location on BACK OFF.> she fires back.

She reactivates her defenses then, only this time she adds a quick /2 in the code, which essentially cuts her own program's return fire by half. It doesn't appear to be weakened, but it is, it just adds a bunch of nonsense noise. She's hoping the move will put their target onto the same level of defensive, but that her program will take twice as long to push back, giving this mysterious SKYE a way to sneak in and do the real dirty work.

Another bite of banana is taken, and she swivels Gwen's laptop back around to her. "You see that?" she asks. "I think third party is a helper."

Gwen eyeballs her laptop, and hunhs softly. "Well, go figure," she muses. "Doesn't look like they were specifically here for the same reason as us, but… maybe on our side? Could be a ruse, though. Might just be the people we're after trying to screw with us."

Well, it might, but you never know. And that first response was certainly ominous, in a… cheesy sort of way. "So, 'Mrs. Back off — I'm guessing it's a she, all the ninjas were girls — that's pretty cliche, isn't it? Even on the Dark Web?" Gwen shrugs her shoulders lightly. "But, I guess the only way to find out is to let them do their thing and see… just… be ready to turn their computer into a smoking ruin if they don't play nice, right? You can do that… right? They could totally do it in the movies." Sure, Gwen; because movies are always a great indicator of reality.

The various lines of code clash; Anya's behaves much like she planned, taking longer to push but putting the mysterious 'back off' person onto the defensive. …Of course, some of the code that's already been launched is still in the proverbial water; that hunter-killer program twigs to the mesaging back and forth between Anya and Skye, and it goes right after the latter, attacking with some serious electronic teeth.

Meanwhile, another text message arrives, for Anya and Gwen's edification; and it's a link, to a youtube video.

|ROLL| Daisy Johnson +rolls 1d20 for: 10

It's dangerous work but it doesn't stop Skye from smiling. <Let's play.>

She could spend all evening going around in circles trying to sneak through all of these attacks and countermeasures. Ooor…she can potentially make a friend in the moment and get something useful out of the exchange without having to scavenge through an active warzone for it.

One quick glug of coffee and she's breaking off of one attempt and doing a wireless one-eighty, turning her focus on the other actor(s). The change in the countermeasure pattern is noticed, a finding which has her smiling all the more. It's not any different from online gaming, one person opens the door enough for the other person to take their shot.

She'll have to see about catching their handles later. For now it's all hands on deck. Keep her proverbial head down and ignore the crossfire. And if she happens to find their location? Well, then maybe she can get some answers about what's going on with ol' Hammer Industries.

"You guys are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at this. Afraid of something? Oh..-crap- that's not good."

Enter the Hunter-Killer! Quick motions have her trying to load up another program on a neighboring laptop but the offending executable's too darn aggressive to let her guard down. "Okay—okay, these guys aren't fresh out of I.T. Come on, you've got this."

"If it is," Anya tells Gwen, "we get one more piece of the puzzle." She then snorts aloud and says, "No, that is not how it works, like, at all!" A grin is shot Gwen's way. An eyebrow is lifted behind her mask, and a finger moves to open the YouTube link.

Meanwhile, she's focusing on maintaining the activity behind her countermeasure, and begins shifting the attack waves in intensity. Stronger here, weaker there, like the pawns designed to distract an opponent from what's being set up behind closed doors.

The YouTube link pops up, and it begins to show a fight from earlier in the evening; a group of female ninjas, all wearing black, and totally kicking ass. Anya's smirk drops away, and her mouth opens in a silent gasp. "Gwen… it's them. It's them. We've got them now." She dials back a little more this time, letting Mrs. Back Off get dangerously close to her own laptop. "C'mon, Skye, c'mon," she says quietly, hoping that the other player has enough time to… "Oh, shit!"

Reaching for Gwen's computer, she shakes her head. "I'm splitting you off. Sorry." She suddenly dials back the countermeasures on Gwen's laptop, giving the hackers FULL ACCESS to do their worst. The Knight is out in the open, ready to be beheaded. She did promise to fix Gwen's computer when this all ends, after all.

She then calls up the YouTube link and sends a blast of information directly toward the Hunter-Killer program going after Skye. It's the YouTube link… repeated 1,785,925 times.

Hello, kitchen sink.

"Noooooo, not Twilight Sparkle!" Gwen sighs heavily. Did she name her computer after a My Little Pony? …Well, it does have a sticker of the same character on the back of the monitor, so that's entirely possible. She ditches the banana peel (still has a little banana in it, but whatever), and holds her head in her hands as she watches the horror unfold; the screen goes all fritzy, bad things happen, it goes blue and then the whole things shuts down.

"Well… that's not going to get turned back on today," she remarks. "But you said you can fix it, so I'm not worried." She's totally worried, but she consoles herself with a stick of pepperoni. At least she got the good stuff.

"Hey, just a thought," she points out, "Not that this was ever in doubt really, but… I mean the whole video they just sent us, that was them telling us they know who we are too, isn't that kind of threatening?" Not that she sounds worried about that, at least, more bemused.

Whoever is on the other end most definitely has the location of the two spiders; but seeing as how they're literally sitting on top of Hammer Tech Industries, well, that… might not be such a big problem? Who knows? The Hunter-Killer program that was after Skye suddenly finds it's getting asked to watch a youtube video an absolutely ungodly number of times. The actual hacker, though, has sunk their teeth straight into Gwen's computer with a vengeance; and like a predator in the wild, they've killed it good and dead, but they might just have left themselves exposed to Skye. This could be the moment that they've collectively been waiting for.

The program Skye would have liked to have prepped for this attack turns out to not be necessary after all. Whatever the duet are up to over there suddenly involves a shot out of nowhere like a sniper's bullet aimed straight for the H-K's coded head.

She actually hesitates for a second, telling the screen "Thank you." It's like they read her mind and loaded up the very same 'bullet' which she didn't have a chance to prepare!

Duck back, flank right, drive forward. Here's where it gets good. The VIP gets traced back from one location to another to another, skipping across the globe as she tries to rapidly unwind the complex ball of string they've created.

"Stay on the defensive stay on the defensive all I need is a location nothing to see here…"

*Blip*

"GOTCHA."

Typing like her hands are on fire Skye tabs through numerous windows and starts shutting things down. There isn't time to launch an offensive, whoever these guys are their kung-fu is strong. All she can do is pull the plug and go dark on the unknown party. She still has a link to the Duet though it would appear they've gone to a solo act. Lost one of their cruisers in the tides…

"HOkay! That was exciting!"

But the part which everyone is waiting for? She goes back to the surviving link with her teammates of the evening.

"We fried Morlun," Anya is quick to remind Gwen. "They're ninjas."

She's tempted to watch the other hacker at work, but even doing so would create one extra line of code that doesn't need to be there. It isn't until she sees the street name come up that she nearly jumps to her feet with excitement. "Yes!" she cries, and immediately opens access to her laptop camera. Spider-Woman may still be a bit of an unknown, but Spider-Girl is not. Scummy types across Spanish Harlem are really afraid of her.

She flashes a thumbs up to the camera before disabling the WiFi, disconnecting them altogether.

"We got them," she says, turning to Gwen. "And we better move, quick. You ready to go kick some culo?"

Gwen closes her poor, defeated laptop, and picks it up for a cuddle. "There there," she coos to it. "Auntie Anya will get you all fixed up like new. Promise." Whelp, pressure's on, then. She tucks the computer into her backpack, and humms softly. "Should probably leave the computers back at my place — or yours, if it's closer," she muses, "Don't need them getting busted up in a ifght."

The Spider-woman tosses a couple more Pepperoni sticks to Anya, knowing she's likely to need 'em, before taking a bit out of the last one. She cleans up the plastic bag into her backpack, too, along with the remaining donuts, but… NOT the banana peels! Those are biodegradable and they can stay up here, 'cause screw Hammer Tech.

Skye's hands leap away from the keyboard and hover in the air as she slumps back into her chair, breathing a heavy sigh now that the stress of the moment has passed..and the baddies have been pinned down. Right here in the city! Fortunately Delaney's far enough away from her van or she might start to get concerned.

She's just going back to her coffee when the webcam link pops to life. And she sees the costumed face of a spider lady. Coffee very nearly sprays out across all three of her monitors.

"Holy crap!" Did that -really- just happen?!

Should she tell Spider-Man about this..? Maybe not now.

Of course she can still drop the initials of his codename to earn herself some extra cred with the Spider behind tonight's keys!

"Ooohmygod I am SO not getting any sleep today…"

"No time," Anya says. "We'll have to web 'em up somewhere out of sight."

Slinging her own laptop away within her backpack, she smirks. "Skye, huh," she says, glancing toward Gwen. "Cool name. I wonder if she, like, flies, or something."

The meat sticks are mashed into her mouth and gobbled up quickly. Then she's creeping out of their hiding place and into the cold, breezy night, and the long drop from the top of the Hammer building.

"This is my favorite part." She checks the straps on her backpack, then goes for a swan dive from the sky rise, watching the ground plummet toward her.

Empire State Heroes MUSH

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