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[attr="class","skullbody"]Of course Isaac's computer was glowing! At this point there were so many pop-up ads tessellating across the screen that they could no longer all fit on the monitor. There were connections open to the old web, the new web, the dark web, the grey web, and the underweb. The computer was muted, if only so the good people of Wiz Kid Tech wouldn't be disturbed by the blaring sounds of slot machines, suspicious moans, and dangerously outdated memes.[break][break]

If this was an orchestra of bad net practices, then Isaac was its mad conductor. His fingers flew across the keyboard in a downright arbitrary fashion, as if Isaac cared less about what he was doing and more about pressing as many buttons as possible. He deleted important system files seemingly at random, seeing just what he could do to further destabilize his computer. If you were a tech-head, this was a grizzly murder. If you were Isaac, this was just putting more irresistible bait on his trap.[break][break]

Judging by the commotion he had heard in the back of the store earlier, it was working. Lights were flickering. Electronics were shuddering themselves off of the shelves. At one point, something had gotten outright fried, the undeniable smell of ozone tickling at Isaac's nose. But his hunting ground was equal parts a blessing and a curse. Wiz Kids was practically an all you can eat buffet of electronics, and when you were at a buffet you didn't immediately beeline for the best thing on the menu. This Porygon was going to sample damn near everything in the store before making its way to Isaac, unless he made himself too irresistible to ignore.[break][break]

Occasionally, Isaac glanced over to the wall of monitors by his side. Most of the time they were blank, but occasionally he caught a Porygon drifting through one of the ultra-high-definition 8k TV stations. It was almost like he was seeing the creature's reflection, but whenever he peered over his shoulder to confirm it was nowhere to be seen. It was, quite literally, a digital ghost.[break][break]

But it was close now, and getting even closer. And with how engrossed Isaac was in priming his trap, he wouldn't even notice the ranger that was approaching his position.

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[attr="class","skullbody"]To an outside observer, Isaac seemed too engrossed in what he was doing to even notice the Porygon's approach. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. If anything, with each monitor the Porygon approached, the bigger Isaac's grin stretched. This was exactly what he wanted. C'mon! Just a little closer![break][break]

Finally, Isaac saw a little cone of blue nudge into the corner of his screen. Keeping dead silent, Isaac shoved his mouse pointer to the rightmost edge of the screen. From that angle, Isaac couldn't even see it anymore. Would the Porygon have the same problem? Just in case, Isaac kept his drags slow and steady, creeping his pointer towards the Porygon like he was sneaking through the brush of the Safari Zone.[break][break]

And then, once he was brushing up against the cursor, Isaac clicked and dragged. "Ha! Gotcha!" he called, yanking his mouse to the left with all of his might. Against all logic and sense, there was actually resistance to it. His hand was trembling as the Porygon pulled back, as if instead of using his mouse he was tugging a fishing rod for dear life. And Ruby Garcia thought his underwater fishing strategy was weird; wait 'til she got a taste of cyber fishing![break][break]

It was a surprisingly intense back and forth. At times, the Porygon managed to retreat all the way back to the edge of the screen. At other times, Isaac managed to drag him all the way back to the center of the screen. There was just one problem; how was he supposed to do anything with this computer while he was wrestling with a Porygon?[break][break]

An idea hit him, one just crazy enough to work. Isaac began furiously rubbing the mouse against the desk, his cursor shooting across the screen in every direction. The Porygon, still being clicked and dragged behind him, began shaking back and forth as it tried to resist. Its head was spinning and its eyes were swirling; shit, did this actually have a shot at dazing him?[break][break]

Maybe it did. Maybe it had a little too good of a shot. Maybe that needed to change. The Porygon looked towards the screen, glaring as it knocked its beak against the screen a few times. At first, Isaac just thought it was a cute little animation. Then it became a lot less cute as Isaac's mouse started to overheat. He let out a shout of pain, pulling his hand back to avoid getting it singed.[break][break]

That meant the Porygon was no longer being grappled. "Shit, shit, shit, where's the wi-fi toggle on this freaking thing?" he asked, fumbling desperately with all the buttons on the sides of the laptop's base. It seemed the guy was in need of some major help.

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[attr="class","skullbody"]Damnit, no, no, no! Isaac gripped the computer in a panic as the screen went black. "No, damnit, not like this!" he said. In the silence, he finally noticed another man standing right behind him. The man, clearly every bit as worked up as Isaac was, asked if he had any bright ideas. "Til this guy hit me with a power surge? Yeah, plenty," Isaac said. In his frustration, he gave the computer a little shake.[break][break]

Wait. Was that the dazed cry of a Porygon? Upon listening more closely, Isaac could still make out the sound of whirring fans. A slight amount of heat brushed into his face. The computer wasn't off. The monitor was just fried. Okay. That was far from the end of the world. He could work with this![break][break]

In a haste, Isaac set the computer on the ground, making a break for the nearest big screen TV. One HDMI cable later, and he was able to rig it up to his computer. "Guessing that Zorua's yours? 'Cause if so, here's his big screen debut!" Isaac said, the HDMI settings syncing up to bring the monitor to life.[break][break]

Sure enough, there the Zorua and Porygon were. It had taken advantage of the blackness to charge up the mother of all Tri Attacks, and it looked just about ready to fire. On paper, this was a brilliant idea. There were few targets that couldn't be worn down by the combined forces of fire, ice, and lightning. Yet in practice, Porygon had made a crucial underestimation; it's target was immune to the whole shebang. Caleb would have plenty of time to capitalize on this mistake.[break][break]

As this went on, Isaac slung HDMI cables onto a few other monitors. All it would take was a quick swap to get around another fried monitor incident. "This thing's been eating it's way through the web, and making a mess of everything in it's path. I figure if I can trap it in my computer, we can grab anything it's made a mess of," he explained. "Almost like beating it at it's own game. But I'll need to keep it busy before it can hop elsewhere. Think you and your Zorua can run distraction duty for me?"[break][break]

It sounded like a smart enough plan. The other man didn't need to know that "trapping it in the computer" was less going full hackerman and more kentucky frying his computer to hell and back. But these were documents that needed to be destroyed, not preserved, so it really didn't matter. This weird Zorua ghost'd be fine, too. Ghost types were notoriously impossible to trap, and it wasn't like the Pokemon was made out of data like Porygon was.[break][break]

Yes. This plan'd do nicely. But he just needed a little bit more time . . .

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[attr="class","skullbody"]Isaac's shoulders squared. His eyes sharpened. His mouse hand snapped into action like clockwork. Compared to the lackadaisical looking guy that had been lounging over a laptop a minute earlier, the transformation was like night and day. But how was he supposed to react? The job needed to get done, damnit! Or else Zev Harcourt-[break][break]

Wait. Hold on a minute.[break][break]

Ugh. No. Processing later. Succeeding now. If Isaac's brain wasn't going to cooperate with him, his body could shoulder the load. His fingers fell on the keyboard like a hailstorm, the keystrokes echoing through a room that had fallen silent in the wake of Caleb's command. Every killswitch, every malware, every wastefully optimized program Isaac had loaded onto this trojan horse began firing off at once. His latop's fans whined in protest, then screamed in agony. The air visibly shimmered and distorted form the sheer output of heap.[break][break]

Most importantly, the screen had devolved into a laggy mess. Any digital beings, such as the Porygon, would find themselves near incapable of moving. Even Zorua would have been somewhat uncomfortable, though as a flesh and blood (or ectoplasm?) Pokemon it would have no issues with leaving the computer.[break][break]

Isaac had expected that this would be the end. The Porygon would be imprisoned, the files would be corrupted and damaged, and the job could be turned in. However, computer viruses seemed to hit Porygon how regular viruses hit most. The Porygon's eyes flickered into dazed spirals as it jittered towards the recycling bin, grabbing it with its polygonal wings and retching.[break][break]

Bits and pieces of documents started popping all over the screen. Some of these were hilariously mundane; shopping lists, love letters, forum rants about the most inane television shows. Others were pretty important; Isaac almost wished that the floor plan of the Mossdeep space center wasn't a blurry, indistinguishable mess.[break][break]

Yet the most important document was front and center on the screen; a fragment of a Rocket hit list, with but a single name highlighted.[break][break]

Caleb Harcourt.

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[attr="class","skullbody"]Caleb wasn't the only one whose heart dropped at the sight. Stunned by what he saw, Isaac whipped out his phone. "I gotta snap this," he muttered. With how his body was angled, it seemed like he was trying to record or photograph the list before it was too late.[break][break]

Needless to say, Isaac wasn't doing that. Instead, he awkwardly traced his finger along the touchscreen keyboard. He was a man on a missiom, and this interloper didn't need the details. Zev Harcourt would receive a text containing one word and a whole lot of punctuation; brother!?!?!!!?!??!!?[break][break]

Then, for good measure, he snapped a few pictures of the screen. Just as he suspected (and hope), any attempt at taking footage basically returned a blurred, pixelated mess. "Fuck, it's no good," he muttered. "Between the static and all the docs opening, picking something out's like finding a needle in a haystack."[break][break]

That was by his design, of course. But the successful execution of this little scheme required him to play along. What was the harm in struggling against his own restraints? "This hunk of junk's more lag than computer at this point. But I can try," Isaac said. He jittered the mouse cursor towards the sea of rapidly opening documents. At this point, it less scrolled and more crawled, and Isaac had a hard time picking it out among the static. But finally, he found a window labeled "list" poking out from the pile. Moment of truth. He clicked it hard and hoped for the best.[break][break]

The good news: it actually said El Sunderland Surprise Party Guest List. The better news: it was an ilegible jumble of distorted text, a blaring pop-up on screen reading FILE CORRUPTED.[break][break]

"Fuck!" Isaac said, channeling his relief into the facsimile of some particularly spirited anger
He opened another document. FILE CORRUPTED. And another. FILE CORRUPTED. Another, another, another. All corrupted, a wall of angry red exclamation points glaring down at Isaac and Caleb. "Between the machine straining for dear life and this thing's indigestion, something tells me finding a file that isn't FUBAR is gonna take a miracle . . ."

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[attr="class","skullbody"]what are you talking about?[break][break]

Classic Zev Harcourt. Even in a post autocorrect era, the guy avoided capital letters like they were the plague. Was he . . . unselecting them just to seem more normal and casual? Ugh. No. Isaac wasn't playing Zev Chess now. He was busy, damnit! Thoughts raced through his head as he tried to figure out just how he'd reply.[break][break]

The answer ended up being "not now." The other man asked to see the phone, and Isaac wasn't going to air Zev's personal business to some stranger. He did the unthinkable and left the man on read, instead opening his phone gallery to show Caleb the fruits of his labor. Zev would surely understand. It was for the good of the mission.[break][break]

Caleb would see a good 10 pictures worth of attempted data grabs, each in a worse state than the last. The most recent pictures in Isaac's gallery were basically messes of static, literal chunks of deleted files spread across FILE CORRUPTED notifications. The earlier ones were more legible, but enough new windows had popped up to completely bury the Rocket Hit List.[break][break]

It was actually the first of Isaac's photos that would have the most evidence. The hit list itself wasn't very visible, completely covered up by deep-fried memes about some pig-looking Pokemon from Paldea. However, the header could faintly be seen poking out from the pile of files. Caleb's presence on the list would forever be a secret, but at least he had proof of its existence.[break][break]

Not that this rattled Isaac much. Grass grew, birds flew, sun shined, Rocket killed people. It was no secret.[break][break]

"That's the most I could save," Isaac said. "Shit, we're lucky we even saved that. Pretty sure there were, like, ten tabs opening a second by the end there." With his evidence shown, his focus went back to his phone. He wasn't going to leave Zev hanging forever![break][break]

caleb harcourt[break][break]
not a common name[break][break]
familiar?

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