Maniac’s Mayhem

We all have our weaknesses. For some, it is nineteen-ton plant-matter deathmachines, for others it's snacks or a screaming child.

– Magenta

(Crow)

After having a very long dinner, I had to keep wondering if Jack had a stroke. As he kept looking paler by the second, his speech started to sound a bit weird and broken. Sadly, my expertise on medical stuff was not adequate, so I could not check. Lyssa, however, assured me he was fine and that it was a result of being in a stressful environment for too long.

Besides that minor concern, the rest of lunch was a rather simple affair. His wife was a nice lady, or at least I think. Her asking Jack which one of us was the crazy one seemed a bit rude, but Luna was giggling about it. So that made me think that I just missed the critical context to figure it out.

Luckily, when lunch is over and Jack and I are walking back into the office, it gives me the perfect moment to get the context. “Jack, are you all right? You seem off.”

Jack jerks his head toward me. “What do you mean, you basically invited our boss to dinner. What were you thinking?”

“Networking,” I say with a shrug. Being pretty sure that the word had come up in at least some of my how-to corporate textbooks.

“Right, uhm, just next time try doing it with people that are not angry at us and can rip our spines out.” Jack says with a sigh.

“The better question is, how do you know Foxfire in the first place,” Anna-Marie asks as she walks up to the two of us. “At least it looked like the two of you knew each other?”

“I fixed her Wi-Fi once,” I lie, using the first excuse that was available.

Jack frowns, “Her Wi-Fi, really?”

I shrug, "Almost every human watches porn. She has to get it somehow."

"I thought she was ace," Jack mumbles. "Also, you can't know her that well after just that, weren't you afraid she was going to hurt you?"

I shake my head. "No, she promised she would never hurt me, even used her pinky, and I have been told that is sacred for humans."

Jack puts his head in his hands, rubbing his face. "Crow, I think some of those things don't mean what you think they mean."

I frown, wondering what I could have gotten incorrect. "Right, so you feel better?"

Jack lets out a sigh, "Yeah I do. Just weird, also why did she want to fight you?"

I give Jack a long look, trying to figure out if this is one of those jokes or not. "She wanted to fight me again?"

"What do you mean again?!" Jack almost shouts.

"We might have tried to kill each other at one point.” I explain, then quickly add. “In my defence, I did not start that fight."

"I don't care who started it, who finished it?" Anna-Maria asks, looking a bit more interested as well.

"No one, I assume, since we were both still alive, thought that it was a draw." I conclude.

“Be that as it may”, Anna-Marie continues as I sit down at my desk. “Why do you keep calling her a wolf?”

“Isn’t she a wolf?” I ask, continuing to feel more and more baffled at the conversation.

Anna-Marie shakes her head. “No, she is a fox.”

“Both are dogs, so not that much of a difference,” I conclude

“Foxfire did not tell you the difference?” Anna-Marie asks, confused.

“No,” I say, thinking back to lunch. “She was mostly busy eating the food and messing with Jack’s wife.”

“That, uhm I guess she really is as much of a scatterbrain as they say.” Anna-Marie says.

I nod to myself, thinking it smarter to agree than to ask what that exactly means. “Right.”

“Putting all of Crow’s… crowisms aside,” Anna-Marie starts again. “Management wants to find out how Maniac got in here exactly, since those are possible weaknesses we need to fix.”

I nod, thinking the task is reasonable, but I already know how she got in, and I feel like finding the answers within a minute would look suspicious. “I’ll see what I can find. Where do you want me to start on that?”

“You can start by seeing if something is wrong in the database?” Anna-Marie says.

I give her a nod, open up the terminal on my PC and start going through them one by one, very slowly, hoping that it at least looks like I am busy at work. I spent the next few hours shuffling files around, reorganising the entire database to make it a lot more organised.

After I am completely done refiling everything and commenting on the different skirts Evelin thinks of buying for Shinon, I raise my hand to wave at Anna-Marie. The woman gives me a small nod and wraps up her conversation before coming to me.

“Did you find anything?” Anna-Marie asks.

“Yes,” I answer curtly.

“Show me?”

I nod, opening the first file. “So yesterday evening, at the time Maniac was here, only one employee badge was registered inside. A certain Mae Nyac .” I explain, showing the employee ID that instead of having a human face has the picture of a small hyena chewing on a helmet.

Anna-Marie purses her lips. “So she is making fun of us, it seems.”

“Oh, is that what it was? I thought she chose that picture because she did not want to show her face.” I suggest.

“Honestly, the picture is the least of our worries.” The manager says, shaking her head. “Just the name, and it does not matter. Can you disable the ID and see when it was created?”

“Yes, that was the major issue I had with the ID,” I say with a smile. “The ID, according to the logs, was created over a year ago.”

Anna-Marie pauses for a second. “Did you check the back-ups?”

“I checked the ones I had access to; they said the same.” I open the other versions just to make sure she believes me. “So unless you have one hidden away somewhere, they're all the same.”

I hope that this at least confused them somewhat, even if they went to their private, air-gapped copy of the main server backups, they would find the same. After all, I had been here for some weeks and had made extensive renovations to their information network with the help of some small drones.

“Assuming she managed to change all the data and not have this planned more than a year in advance how difficult would it be?” Anna-Marie asks me.

“Why do we assume she did not plan this a year in advance?” I ask curious why she made the assumption; I was pretty, though, after all.

“Because, if she did set it up over a year ago, Maniac would be a lot more scary than anyone ever gave her credit for, and I don't want to live in that world,” Anna-Marie answers.

I nod, not understanding why it would be scary, but ignoring it for now. “The simple answer is I don’t know. It would take me several weeks to spoof the system, and that would only include the main servers and not any offline backups.” I pause, letting the information sink in. “Noting that it depends on what Samurai technologies she has access to.”

“You think Maniac spent points on hacking equipment?” Anna-Marie asks, and if I have my human social cues correct, she is asking it in a tone that indicates that she does not believe it.

“Maybe or borrowed some from either Deatnite, Magenta or Luna.” I point out not wanting to give away our background in coding.

Anna-Marie lets out a deep sigh. “Well, that is great, so we are nowhere, or do you have something else?”

“Not really, just an advert for adopting baby foxes that keeps popping up in the system, but with the amount of fox Samurai around, I am not even sure Maniac did that.”

Anna-Marie mutters something under her breath about fluffy tailed idiots before speaking again. “Anything that could be a threat.”

“Not that I could find, but if we believe Maniac to be capable enough, I would not be able to find it in the first place.” I say, trying to sound as diplomatic as possible.

“Great, any other news?” Anna- Marrie asks, throwing her arms in the air.

“Yes, actually, I would like to request leave to go to a wedding and a family trip, please.” I say, giving my best smile, showing all my teeth.

Anna-Marie blinks at me a few times. But I am pretty sure her Morse code is awful because watering a car can’t be the right thing to do in any situation. “Just send me a request. I will approve it. We all could use some time off.”

I give her a small nod. “Thank you. Do you need me to do anything else?”

“If you think you are done, go help Jack; otherwise, go home early. We all need some more rest,” Anna-Marie says, walking away.