Plug It In

Crystal Ball Networks was ripe with problems, as it normally was. After having re-established his job among the servers, Firewire saw why they hired him again. There were ridiculous amounts of shortages and server crashes throughout the entire system. He saw that they had rebooted everything more than once, which prompted more angry calls from customers and further slowed progress of actually finding the problems. It took him three hours just to get the host server running smooth again. After a few dings here and there, he couldn’t help but marvel at the broadband this place had with its recently acquired fiber optic cables. With this much speed at his disposal, he could totally kill on Xero Shot servers with no lag and no server crashes.

There were only three other ponies in Firewire’s office who ran the mainframe. Among them was an earth pony with pinkish red fur and bright blonde hair named Red Ribbon. Within just two days, she discovered that, after firing him, that he knew the most about the servers. It pained her to admit that she was wrong, but there she was. She was so desperate for his help that she made him a deal.

It was his first day back on the job, and she found herself fulfilling her promise very quickly. While the other two employees out to lunch, Firewire sat in the break room with the table in front of him. Both of his arms rested on the top while he sank a bit more into the chair. His ears cocked to the side at any slight sound, even something so minuscule as the air conditioner kicking on. His eyes went over to the door’s small, vertical window to see if anyone was walking by.

“You know no one is here, right?” Red Ribbon said, her hand firmly gripped on the shaft of his penis under the table as she jerked him. He was stiff as ever, but this was her first time actually seeing his genitals for herself. She had to admit, he had an impressive set of balls to match a very handsome dick.

The naval blue pegasus kept himself from sinking too deep down the seat as she enclosed her mouth around the head of his dick, starting to tongue it with her lips clamping tight. To be honest, Firewire wondered how awkward she was going to make this whole thing. It’s not as if the terms of this agreement were stacked in her favor. The thought of a girl sucking him off as an added bonus for coming back to this job seemed like she would approach it with hostility or an unfavorable attitude. To his surprise, once he got to work, he walked into her office and she grinned in his face before grabbing his crotch with an eager hand.

Red always hated being proven wrong, but for some reason she took to his agreement as if she were the one coming out on top. Whatever the reason, it was hard to think too deeply into the circumstances. Her mouth was very talented, and was somehow able to take his dick all the way down her throat.

Of course, Firewire had no idea that Red had spent the entire night, imagining his unsheathed sex organ rubbing her whole body down. She’d never really liked her job to begin with, if she were being completely honest. When she agreed to suck his cock in the breakroom, it really was a bonus for the two of them. The poor girl got one single taste of his dick and her braless nipples poked against her shirt like two extra stiff thumb tacs. That’s not even mentioning the leash he held in his hand, attached to a collar around her neck. He was given specific instructions to pull on her tight enough to keep the pressure on her.

Her extensive moans only accentuated as he tugged on her leash, her tongue salivating and streaming all down the length of his pulsing erection. Not only was she twice as enthusiastic, but her hand could not stop gently squeezing his balls.

That’s when Red began to feel her juices begin to collect in her hot sex. The joy of having a cock in her mouth was completely lost on her for a very long time. She hadn’t had a boyfriend in ages and the batteries on her various sized toys were running perpetually low as of late. They paled in comparison to a hot, fleshy piece of meat between her lips. Without even knowing she was doing it, Red’s brisk sucking was turning into a hardcore blow fest and his twitching member was lost on her.

As he let out gasps of breath in response, she graciously accepted the spurts into her gob. Her hums of pleasure soon turned into muffled squeals as she finished drinking his hot cum. One of her hands went down to her crotch, feeling the very wet pussy that resulted. Her vagina was pulsing, making her cheeks beet red and she was suddenly out of breath.

“You alright down there?” Firewire finally asked, his pulsing dick still very hard after such a harsh orgasm. She attempted to speak, but all that came out was havering. She leaned forward, her head leaning against his cock. Her eyes closed and her mouth opened as she attempted to catch her breath. “Ummm, Red? Did you just…”

“N-no!” She finally said, her entire face growing flush as her hand clutched her crotch tighter. “I--I always act like I orgasmed when I suck a meaty dick in my lunch break.” She gave a soft moan as two of her fingers ran circles around her labial folds.

“Oh, my mistake.” Firewire gave her a knowing gaze as she crawled out from under the table and stretched as she got up. The breakroom was rather large for how many employees they had working there. The TV was rarely on unless one of them had a flash drive connected with all of their movies and TV shows loaded onto it. Beyond that, they never watched cable, although it was free for them. There were two tables and a refrigerator in the corner of the room.

Firewire pulled back from the table and adjusted his raging boner as best he could into his pants as he stood. This was just in time, as Jade and Harddrive walked in. The green furred mare and yellow stallion coming in with empty Wheatery bags.

“Well, it’s nice to see you two aren’t at each other’s throats.” Harddrive said as he grinned. “Though, you might want to look out for Red’s.”

There was a pause for a moment, until Firewire looked over at Red Ribbon to see her collar and leash were still around her neck. He motioned her, and her face went blood red once again as she hurried to take it off. This caused them to laugh a bit as Harddrive threw away their bags.

“So, now that you’re back, Fire, I had a few cases I was wanting you to take a look at.” Jade said as she strode over to the fridge to pull out a bottle of water. “For some reason, there have been a few customers who can’t upgrade their systems properly, not even with prompting. Everything else in their system checks out. It’s not the drivers, nor is it any of the firmware.”

Fire already had a few ideas as to what it could be, but the prospect of such an interesting job right off the bat was very intriguing. It actually felt quite good to get back to the trenches again. The internet was a vast network of debauchery, cuteness, money and poverty all rolled into one. Every single time he logged in to see what wonders others were finding in the ways of spy bots, viruses, scams and identity theft was at least twice as depraved and awkward as he expected. It was a marvelous experience.

The four of them got to their computers in the main office and just like that, it was business as usual. As if he had never left, Firewire found his old system settings were not changed in the slightest. It’s almost like they expected him to come back. Fire grinned at the thought, eying Red on the computer across from his on the long table. It was set up with the four computers, two on each side with Jade next to him and Harddrive on the opposite corner. There was a table much like this one in the separate office in the next building. Their group was kind of a B-Team, although they had six technicians against their four.

The fifth wheel wasn’t there that day, which was fine. Firewire didn’t like them all that much anyway.

“I’ll send you their fix-it ticket now. It has their IP info.” Jade said, looking over at Firewire with a smile. “I’m glad you’re back, Fire.”

“Thanks, Jade. Glad to be back.” Fire smiled back at her, but then turned back to the screen with a puzzled look. Already, two of his theories were proven very wrong. In fact, the stats on the computer were looking at little too good. His eyebrow raised as he saw that not only was the computer running at peak capacity, but it had enough memory to two fully rendered graphic games at one time. No signs of a virus and no tell-tale signs of wear. Something was definitely wrong.

He decided that anymore diagnostics on the system was more or less useless, especially if what he suspected was true. He immediately put on his headset and typed in a call to the home.

Across town, in the college campus side of town, Disterious’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He leaned a little to his side on his couch, Fiction Tale’s arm draped around the gray unicorn’s shoulder as they watched hockey on the screen in their apartment living room. As he pulled the phone from his pocket, he turned the volume down a bit as he clicked the talk button.

“Hello?” Disty answered and his eyes widened as there was a very strong voice on the other end of the phone.

“Hi, I’m sorry to bother you right now, but my name is Firewire, and I’m calling in regards to the ticket you sent in for your computer. You say that it is not updating, and you didn’t notice any other problems with it?” The words left his mouth at about a mile a minute as he kept looking over the diagnostics he’d already done, shaking his head.

“Umm, yeah, I mean, it may be nothing but…” Disty said, looking over at the blue bat pony beside him who gave him a puzzled look.

“Yes? What is it? Anything else amiss?” Fire asked, leaning forward some.

“Well, it’s not very noticeable, but my ping has been a little high, and my internet seems to be slowing down a bit.” Disterious said, and he didn’t notice when Fire cringed.

“Yeah, that’s not your internet, that’s your processor. Sir, I’m going to need permission to come over and take a look at your computer myself.” Fire said as he began to gather his things. His laptop with the slave drive and safe modes all built in as the main components. He also had to bring his flash drives, all of them. He had no idea what he was dealing with, and he wasn’t taking any chances.

All three of the other operators looked at Firewire as he seemed to scramble. He had just put all of this stuff back when he returned to work, now he was frantically throwing them all back into his very large backpack.

“Ummm, Fire?” Jade asked as she saw him looking around for something, checking the filing cabinets, desk drawers and any other surface. There was a pause before Jade spoke again. “Fire?”

He cursed under his breath, asking where they were as he kept checking in different places over and over again. He’d check more thoroughly sometimes but then check the same way twice in a row as well.

“Fire!?” She finally blurted out, startling him back down to reality. Then she held up the keys to the company car. “Looking for these?”

“Oh, yeah.” He shook his head out of the stupor and caught them as she flicked them toward him. “Thanks. I’ll be back.”

“Good--” Red almost said, but he nearly flew across the room, closing the door behind him before she even finished. “--Luck…” She blinked.

As Disterious opened the door, he saw the naval blue furred, red maned pegasus at his door and blinked. He was certain that it was at least a fifteen minute drive to the Crystal Ball Internet provider building. It barely seemed like five minutes since he called them. Fiction leaned back on the couch with just as surprised an expression as his boyfriend.

“Hi,” He gripped Disty’s hand in a firm shake. “Pardon my tardiness. I need to see your computer.”

“Is something wrong?” The pegasus led him back into the extra bedroom that doubled as a study. His computer was on the wall perpendicular to Fiction’s. It was a decent laptop. Around two years old, it seemed and lacking a bit in the graphics department. Though, looking over the games that were in the store application, it looked like he didn’t have a great deal of high end ones that needed much in the ways of a graphics card. They were mostly hockey manager games and a few older ones.

“It could be nothing, but I highly doubt it.” Fire hopped onto the computer without asking permission. He pulled up the system settings, the DOS program. Then he started to pull hardware out of his backpack. “The most important thing is to not panic.”

“What could it be?” Disterious asked, then looked with a worried expression toward Fiction, who poked his head into the door.

“If I’m reading the signs correctly, you may have a hacker.” He opened the case to the computer’s motherboard case, and brought a connector with a ribbon wire in, hooking his laptop in as a slave drive.

“A hacker?” Fiction asked, now fully in the room. Both of them looked at one another and started looking over Fire’s shoulder. He did his best to ignore them as he connected his laptop directly to his system. “Why would a hacker want his computer?”

“Why do hackers hack any computers? It could be a number of reasons, but most likely they’re syphoning your processor. They covered their tracks very, very well. Whoever this hacker is, they have some style.”

Firewire pulled a VR headset from his bag, unraveling the cord for it before hooking it into his laptop. His eyes were locked onto the screen as he typed some more. Then he turned to the keyboard on Disty’s computer and typed a few more times at lightning fast speed.

“Can you do anything about it?” Disty asked, Fiction held his shoulders, trying to console him some.

“Yes, but I’ll need time and concentration.” Fire placed the headset on and flipped the visor over his eyes as the L.E.D. lit up in a blue strip across the front. Immediately the interface popped up, and he was looking at the computer system from the inside. Pure data streams popped up all around him. There were numbers, folders, images, videos, files and HUDs of all sorts.

His avatar stood in the center of all seven hundred gigabytes and he immediately began deliberating all of it, looking for anything that looked out of place. Apparently, this hacker was doing some diligent work. All of the old familiar files looked wholly untouched, but that’s where the slave drive came into play. With the push of a button, the corrupted files began to pop into view.

Immediately, he started to see a pattern of tampering and from that point, he found the tracks he was looking for. Apparently, someone put up a good first layer, but they weren’t expecting any opposition. As soon as he got the trail, it was clear as the summer sun. All of the corrupted data needed to be cleared out, and he needed answers.

His digital persona walked through all of the data streams that he saw were going corrupt and he cleaned them as best he could on the fly. He knew that tampering with them too long would draw unwanted attention. The red slowly turned into yellow, which was gaining on to green territory. The farther he travelled into the computer’s data stream, the hotter the trail became. His digital avatar opened a floating console to his side and typed in a few numbers, activating something of a pathfinder program.

He had to be careful, though. Hackers didn’t really take kindly to anyone trying to trace their IP address. As if the thought was a catalyst to Murphy’s law, the mechanism started beeping. He tripped an alarm! He tried to punch the cancel, but it was locked. It was like an alarm and a bear trap all rolled into one! He should have sealed the breach and just called it a day. Firewire cursed his curiosity and was about to pull the plug.

However, that’s when another avatar rendered itself through the breach. It was a glowing pink avatar of a smaller pony who couldn’t have been older than twenty. She soared into the database through the hole and hit the ground on one knee. Her skintight suit was solid neon pink with a shining streak that mapped out all of her curves, as modest as they were. Her glowing, electric silver hair floated around her head as her solid blue eyes scowled toward the digital pegasus.

“Well, of all the rudeness I’ve walked in on, this has to be the utmost disrespectful thing I’ve seen in a long time!” The high pitched voice emitting from the avatar signified her younger age, but also a maturity about her that came from a few years of dealing with this sort of scenario. “What do you think you’re doing to my code?”

“Ey, lady, I don’t remember this computer’s owner asking for you to hack their computer and syphon their processor. I should be asking you what you’re doing on his system, draining his data?” Firewire crossed his arms, standing his ground in the face of someone who obviously knew their way around a keyboard. He wasn’t sure what her raised eyebrows signified. Whether she was intrigued by a challenge or admiring the fact that he was standing his ground, it was up in the air.

“Well, instead of closing my breach, you thought you’d go nosing around it, didn’t you? How in the world did you get past my viral traps, I wonder?” She tapped her chin in thought as she looked him over. Then she waved it off. “Ah, it doesn’t matter. What matters now is what to do with you.”

His brow narrowed as they starting staring each other down, measuring out one another as he still didn’t back down from her advances. He hadn’t dealt with hackers in a while, and the ones he faced were nowhere near this caliber. Someone who could not only cover her tracks so well, but also one who could trace his work as he was doing it as if she were always on alert. Fire had no idea how far this rabbit hole went, but at the same time, he knew that if he didn’t take care of this now, she could very well become a problem.

“Well then, I suppose we shall see.” She tilted her head to left and right popping both ways as she made a floating console pop up to her side. With just the push of three buttons, the area around her digital form shimmered as something began to appear around her. Before he knew it, she was clad in some sort of power armor that enhanced her size a great deal. A shield covered her left arm while a whip formed in her right hand. Fire’s face went incredulous as his eyes widened. She laughed at his expression and cracked her whip without a thought. “I’m sorry, did you think this was going to be a simple in and out job? I can’t have you tampering with my work, it’s bad for business!”

She heaved her whip back, rearing it as she lashed it forward in an instant. It extended the length between them in the blink of an eye and he was barely able to hold up his arm in defense. As soon as it wrapped around his forearm, he opened his own console, clicking two buttons. His own skin tight avatar suit shimmered as well, only he didn’t gain any power armor. Electricity formed over him and his pupils disappeared from his eyes. Her eyes narrowed and he grunted as his own power resonated through her whip.

The energy traveled through the whip before she could react. The shock jolted her through her armor, causing her to yelp in surprise and pain as the whip burst into nothingness. She glared at her hand, the sparks dissipating as she waved it left and right. She clenched her fist, and scowled at the pegasus with whom she obviously underestimated.

Without warning, Firewire held out one hand, and a collection of electricity pulsing with webs of light connected to the data plane floor. She cringed hard as she held up her shield against the assault. The attack assaulted her armor and caused her image to falter, glitching as a result.

“What the--” She growled as she finally was able to cancel out the attack. Her shield was damaged to the point of cracking, and her arm went numb. Before she knew it, he was onto her. Both of his hands were enhanced with the same lightning attack as he swung his punches. Her now useless shield was broken into pure data, disappearing and her armored vambrace was soon to follow as she struggled against the assault.

In an instant, her still armored hand transformed into that of a spiked ball mace. With one thrust of her arm, she smashed into his chest and sent him sprawling to the ground. His electricity died out as his back hit the ground. The hacker mare was gasping for breath as she wielded her newly formed weapon in front of her. The extent of her underestimation was a little astounding. She honestly hadn’t had this much trouble with a white hat in quite some time, not since her amateur days.

Knowing that she needed to finish this fight quickly, she began to charge. Her feet began to skid across the data field of ever streaming information as she neared him. With gritted teeth, she leaped into the air with her spiked ball hand swinging downward.

One single impromptu attack came in a flash of light as Firewire held up both of his hands in front of himself. With his back to the ground and his palms straight up, he blasted a concentrated beam straight into her. Digitized armor shards burst from her as she shrieked in pain. She lurched backward, smashing against the ground after a long hang time. Her form skidded across the data field and she blacked out for two seconds.

As she opened her eyes again, laying on her stomach. She looked up to see him standing over her, looking down on her with a smug expression that only sharpened her anger in that moment. She struggled to get to her feet and stand against him, but his attack did a number on her energy levels. She was barely keeping it together as it was.

“You bastard! No one can beat me at my own game!” She tried to transform herself into her fighting avatar once again. Not only did she not transform, but she noticed that her arm was bare now. In fact, she looked over herself to see that her entire top was gone. Her breasts were the size of large apples and her avatar suit was singed all the way down to her hips.

Then she noticed that the bulge in his crotch was growing every moment he stared. She growled in anger, knowing it would take too much time to build herself up another battle sequence against him. He was already prepared, and he was no slouch, it seemed.

“You pig!” She covered her chest with her arms. “You’re going down, asshole! Don’t think for a second that this is over! I’ll find your CPU and next time I’ll come with a vengeance!” With the press of a button on her floating console, her image wavered, and she disappeared into the void of her own data breach. To make sure he didn’t follow her, she closed the hole she had made to initially get into the system.

He entertained the notion of following her, but he knew that going into her territory would be a lot more dangerous. Fire simply shrugged it off and opened his own console, logging out of the virtual reality.

Firewire took off his headset and took in a deep breath. A big part of him didn’t expect to make it out of that fight without getting hacked himself. If she gained control of his avatar, she could have taken over his entire system and that would have been the end of it. He took a great deal of risk, but came out on top and saved Disterious’s computer. Now he had to consider what to do about this adversary.

As he started to type on his laptop, he suddenly had a quick feeling of eyes watching him. Fire turned his head to see that he was, indeed being spied on by the two tenants of the apartment.

Both Disterious and Fiction Tale sat across from him, devilish grins on their faces. Disterious had a deep red flushed face as they smiled at the computer tech pony. This puzzled him at first, but then he felt that there was a bit of a draft in his crotch. He looked down to see that his zipper was down, and his ever present boner was up and lavishing the fresh air. Firewire’s cheeks went deep red as he looked up at the two of them.

“Oh, by all means, don’t be too quick to right yourself.” Fiction said as he reached over to Disterious with a kiss on his neck. His hand went down to squeeze the gray unicorn’s bulge. “We were enjoying the show.”

It became evident that, in his haste, he had not redone his pants after his session with Red. He gave a sheepish smile as he tucked in his very long cock. Then he cleared his throat and sat up straight as he began to look over the information he gathered from that little encounter.

“Well, it turns out I was right, there was a hacker connected to your database. Now your computer should be able to update and run smoothly from now on. If you have anymore strange happenings, be sure to give us a call again, alright?” Firewire said all of this, and it really didn’t seem like they were listening. The bright blue bat pony just kept grinning and staring at that accentuated outline of a cock in Fire’s pants. As he did this, he brought out the bright gray colored dick of his lover. His fingers ran over the tight flesh of his erection, gazing at Fire while he licked his lips.

“Won’t you stay for some lunch?” Disterious asked as Fiction’s teeth ran over the skin of his neck’s side. He grunted with approval as his cock was squeezed and stroked through his shorts.

“I’d--” Firewire cleared his throat. “I’d love to, but I should be getting back to the office now.” His boner was not going away at all. He very tentatively gathered his equipment and put it all back into his backpack. The victory was a good one, but for some reason, it did very little to comfort him. For all he knew, he could have just swatted a beehive and the oncoming swarm was going to be a big one. With a promise to return, Firewire left.

“So, not only was this hacker doing things that are wholly impossible in other people’s computers,” Harddrive said as all of them sat in the breakroom. “But she was siphoning processor power for some unknown goal using unknown means and even matched you in a hacker fight?”

Fire was nodding the entire time, and all three of his coworkers sat with incredulous expressions. To say this girl sounded dangerous would be putting it very mildly.

“And I’m thinking very seriously that she is not even close to being finished. Whatever she has planned, I became a bit of a speed bump. So, for all intents and purposes, I should probably be on alert for an attack.” Firewire looked at all of them, then looked off into empty space. “Not bad for my first day back.”

“Fucking hell, Fire.” Red Ribbon massaged her t-zone with thumb and forefinger. “I don’t think there’s anything left for you to break. If she’s as bad ass as you say, then you may very well have put our office at risk.”

“Yeah, looks like we’ll have to update the firmware on our anti-virus.” Jade said with a hearty giggle. She drew a glower from her female co-worker.

“I’m glad you’re all in such high spirits, but this may be a much bigger problem than all of you are giving it credit for. What we need is a plan. Since we have no idea where she’s going to strike next, we’re going to be playing the guessing game all the way through, hoping she doesn’t come after us! It looks like we’re going to be burning the midnight oil, because I don’t even know where to start!”

“Well, I do.” Firewire said. From his seated position on the breakroom table, he dug into his backpack behind him. He started pulling things out until he finally got to his small laptop. He opened it up and brought it back to life from its sleep mode. Then he turned it around to show them the DOS program with a whole bunch of green letters. The only characters that were mapped out in red was a sequence of numbers and hyphens. This raised eyebrows across the table, as they knew what it was.

“I got her real IP address.” Fire smiled at the red mare who looked like she was cooling her temper a bit, but still not quite convinced. If anything, it was a start.