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dollarstoreartsupplies · 3 months

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okay so I can't stop thinking about a nerdy prudes star trek au

Pete: Android, Chief of Science

second “son” and creation of infamous non-federation cyberneticist t'noy karaxis (because come on that just sounds like a Star Trek name)

t’noy’s first creation (ted) was considered unstable/aggressive by the federation standards and was incredibly dangerous, but when they went to handle the situation both ted and t’noy karaxis had ~mysteriously disappeared~

pete doesn’t know where they went either and he’s always very worried about them showing up again (but also, secretly, really wants at least ted to)

pete was never completely finished because of the disappearance, so he’s faulty, prone to power fluctuations (woah,,,, almost like low blood sugar,,, crazy,,,,)

he’s got an emotion chip, but it’s also faulty, in that it spikes hard into overdrive, and he has a hard time controlling it some of the time

If he’s feeling really upset/worried about something important/embarrassed he’s prone to remove it (especially when he’s younger/before he’s got his established friend-group-crew; they really try to stop him from doing that)

VERY IN LOVE WITH STEPH BUT HE DOES NOT REALLY UNDERSTAND IT AND IT’S STRESSING HIM OUT

started just as a normal science officer but like six people died and now he’s got the position– he’s also really stressed out about that precedent

he loves outer space so bad, they regularly have to reign him in on ground missions or during very dangerous space-issues because he’s just so excited about learning cool new space facts

his room is just books and experiments and a huge window so when everyone else goes to sleep he kind of just Stares out at the stars

he has little cyber-glasses that ‘help him analyze things’ but mostly he wears them because he thinks they look cool

not great with people both for android reasons and for ‘spent the vast majority of his early existence entirely alone and isolated, finishing building himself’ reasons

Steph: Half-betazoid, Security Officer (She’s….. the brawn……. he’s the brains)

okay first things first I know betazoid's irises that are all black but I've always thought it would be cool if it was their whole eye and this is my au, gene roddenberry, so leave me alone

back to actual au: her dad (human) is a high ranking starfleet officer who nepo-babies her through the academy and onto a starship but he’s incredibly open, both vocally and projecting-his-emotions wise, that he’s doing it to get rid of her

her mom (betazoid) died when she was really little and she was raised across multiple starships/bases by her dad, so she’s entirely cut off from that part of her culture

she’s flying completely blind with her emotion/mind reading abilities and from a very young age has learned how to take advantage of it for her own benefit

it’s basically masking times four hundred because she’s navigating all of her relationships and interactions based on the thoughts of those around her/what they’d like or want from her

she’s constantly subjected to the really gross thoughts of her crewmates and it’s GROSS AND BAD and has really heightened her defenses

especially in her academy days (at the behest of her friends) or when she’s feeling threatened she can and will use her mind reading abilities to be really, really mean but,,,, she doesn’t do it much anymore and does feel very bad about it

she really hates pete at first because he’s the first person she’s never been able to read the mind of and she doesn’t know how to navigate it/it’s way, way too vulnerable for her but it actually ends up making them way closer because it’s the first relationship she’s ever had based fully on trust

never actually gave a shit about star fleet or it’s missions before, she was honestly really annoyed by the academy and her dad all but forcing her to take this position, but it’s… sort of growing on her (don’t tell anyone)

Grace: Human, Medical Officer

human and incredibly proud of that

she’s like…. maybe a little prejudiced about it,,, she certainly doesn’t mean to be,,,, but she’s always the one to deliver that classic star trek ‘I thought this race didn’t have BLANK advancement, humans do this better, etc...’ lines that kicks off an episode to tell you about the new alien race of the episode

both her parents worked with star fleet but never actually made it off of earth (because they didn’t want to) so she’s her family’s equivalent of ‘kind of a rebel’ for wanting to be on a starship

she’s just a really high achiever and is treating it sort of like a mission trip to help other planets

(she also just… really wanted to and thinks it’s cool but she thinks that's kind of selfish so she keeps that a secret)

doesn’t trust pete and is at least somewhat miffed about him not needing help from medical

met steph in academy and was really, really, really excited when they got assigned on the same ship (steph was NOT)

huge stickler for rules and regulations and it’s either incredibly helpful or causes all their problems there's no in between

morally against the holodeck and no one is necessarily clear on why

because her parents worked for star fleet on earth she still lived with them during academy so being on the ship is her first time ever being apart from them and it’s causing some sort of crisis (though who know which way said crisis is going to hard pivot) (you hope it’s in a gay way but it’s also grace so it could be in a space murder way,.,., only time will tell)

Ruth: Human, Engineer

human and livid about it

desperately wants to be captain one day, and has dreams of being on the bridge, but it became clear very quickly in the academy that she was too anxious to ‘boldly go’ as far as she’d need to to achieve that :(

she’s very good at engineering but she thinks it’s boring, and she thinks just being a human amongst all these cool aliens is lame, and she kind of is under the impression everyone is judging her for it (they’re not)

don’t let this bitch around an visiting vulcans she will ask them about pon farr

she asks steph about “the phase” IMMEDIATELY (context: the phase is where mature betazoids suddenly become horny forever basically) and was like ‘is that going to happen even though ur only half??’ and steph, who had never heard about it, was HORRIFIED

met richie and pete in academy and thought they were so cool she needed them to be her friends or she’d die

they were both very okay with it

they’re all buddies :)

she helps pete with any repairs when he gets damaged or something happens- she’s the only one he trusts to do anything other than himself

(... she also wants to test if he’s actually ‘fully functional’... pete’s said no so far though :/)

spends hours on the holodeck

Richie: Andorian, Communications Officer

he’s not much of a fighter, despite being andorian, and initially wanted to go more into the artistic side of his culture but his fascination with other planets/cultures/people as well as the concept of ‘boldly going’ pushed him into joining starfleet

still draws/creates art in his free time tho

managed to be fluent in like forty different alien languages and the universal translator pisses him off in CONCEPT (even though it’s still incredibly helpful that he doesn’t Need it and is part of why he has his job)

he keeps his room freezing and pete’s the only one willing to hang out with him in it because he can’t get cold :)

he’s mad he has to wear the red uniform because of his job >:( he’s blue why can’t he wear blue >:(

constantly gets in trouble for wearing increasingly non regulation layers over his uniform

single handedly caused the tribble outbreak on their starship

he’s banned from ground duty anytime they’re on a random planet because he gets over excited and keeps almost dying from getting straight up phaser-set-to-stunned (because he’s not only andorian but he’s a particularly fragile andorian like it doesn’t even need to be a phaser pistol just a normal phaser fucks him up)

also spends hours on the holodeck, often with ruth, and they like to drag pete with them even if he doesn’t really get it

#OKAY SO I KNOW THIS IS OG SERIES COLOR SCHEME WITH NEXT GEN UNIFORMS LEAVE ME ALONE #I ALSO KNOW SOME OF THEM SHOULD HAVE PIPS I DIDN'T FEEL LIKE FIGURING THAT OUT #nerdy prudes must die #peter spankoffski #stephanie lauter #lautski #grace chasity #ruth fleming #richie lipschitz #hatchetfield #star trek #npmd #starkid #click for quality dear GOD #my art :)

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mariacallous · 2 months

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You’ve been asked to serve on the jury in the first-ever criminal prosecution of a United States president. What could possibly go wrong? The answer, of course, is everything.

A juror in former president Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial in New York was excused on Thursday after voicing fears that she could be identified based on biographical details that she had given in court. The dismissal of Juror 2 highlights the potential dangers of participating in one of the most politicized trials in US history, especially in an age of social media frenzies, a highly partisan electorate, and a glut of readily available personal information online.

Unlike jurors in federal cases, whose identities can be kept completely anonymous, New York law allows—and can require—the personal information of jurors and potential jurors to be divulged in court. Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Trump’s prosecution in Manhattan, last month ordered that jurors’ names and addresses would be withheld. But he could not prevent potential jurors from providing biographical details about themselves during the jury selection process, and many did. Those details were then widely reported in the press, potentially subjecting jurors and potential jurors to harassment, intimidation, and threats—possibly by Trump himself. Merchan has since blocked reporters from publishing potential jurors’ employment details.

The doxing dangers that potential jurors face became apparent on Monday, day one of the proceedings. An update in a Washington Post liveblog about Trump’s trial revealed the Manhattan neighborhood where one potential juror lived, how long he’d lived there, how many children he has, and the name of his employer. Screenshots of the liveblog update quickly circulated on social media, as people warned that the man could be doxed, or have his identity revealed publicly against his will with the intent to cause harm, based solely on that information.

“It's quite alarming how much information someone skilled in OSINT could potentially gather based on just a few publicly available details about jurors or potential jurors,” says Bob Diachenko, cyber intelligence director at data-breach research organization Security Discovery and an expert in open source intelligence research.

Armed with basic personal details about jurors and certain tools and databases, “an OSINT researcher could potentially uncover a significant amount of personal information by cross-referencing all this together,” Diachenko says. “That's why it's crucial to consider the implications of publicly revealing jurors' personal information and take steps to protect their privacy during criminal trials.”

Even without special OSINT training, it can be trivial to uncover details about a juror’s life. To test the sensitivity of the information the Post published, WIRED used a common reporting tool to look up the man’s employer. From there, we were able to identify his name, home address, phone number, email address, his children’s and spouse’s identities, voter registration information, and more. The entire process took roughly two minutes. The Post added a clarification to its liveblog explaining that it now excludes the man’s personal details.

The ready availability of those details illustrates the challenges in informing the public about a highly newsworthy criminal case without interfering in the justice process, says Kathleen Bartzen Culver, the James E. Burgess Chair in Journalism Ethics and director of the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Simply because a notable figure is on trial does not mean that a juror automatically surrenders any claim to privacy,” Bartzen Culver says. “People who have been drawn into a case that is exceptionally newsworthy are not aware that a simple statement that they make about where they work might identify them and open them up to scrutiny and possibly risk.”

The dangers to jurors or potential jurors has only increased since the first day of jury selection, which remains ongoing, in part due to the challenges of prosecuting a former US president and the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2024 US presidential election. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, a class E felony in New York state, for payments made ahead of the 2016 presidential election related to alleged affairs with two women, adult performer Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump has claimed his prosecution is a “communist show trial” and a “witch hunt” and has pleaded not guilty.

On Fox News, coverage of Trump’s trial has repeatedly focused on the potential political motivations of the jurors, bolstering the former president’s claims. Trump, in turn, has repeated the claims by the conservative news network’s hosts. In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump quoted Fox News commentator Jesse Watters claiming on air that potential jurors in Trump’s trial are “undercover liberal activists lying to the judge in order to get on the Trump jury.” This, despite a gag order that forbids Trump from “making or directing others to make public statements about any prospective juror or any juror in this criminal proceeding.”

Broader media coverage of the Trump trial jurors appears to often be the work of political reporters who are unfamiliar with the journalism ethics specific to covering a criminal trial, says UW-Madison’s Bartzen Culver. “It's like when political reporters covered Covid and science journalists lost their minds.” She adds that it’s important for any journalist covering a criminal case—Trump’s or otherwise—to “consider our role within the justice system.”

“Unethical behavior by journalists can delay trials. It can result in overturned convictions and the people having to go back and do a retrial,” Bartzen Culver says. “That all works against our system of justice.”

The New York case is one of four ongoing criminal proceedings against Trump. In Georgia, where he faces multiple felony charges for alleged attempts to interfere with the state’s electoral process in 2020, Trump supporters leaked the addresses of members of the grand jury, after their names were listed in the 98-page indictment against the former president, as required by state law. Georgia’s Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said last August that it was investigating threats against the jury members. The incident highlights the persistent dangers people can face from Trump’s supporters, both in the near term and for the rest of their lives, if they’re viewed as having acted against him.

The leaks were discovered by Advance Democracy Inc. (ADI), a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and investigations organization founded by Daniel J. Jones, a former investigator for the FBI and the US Senate Intelligence Committee. So far, Jones tells WIRED, ADI has not uncovered attempts to dox jurors in Trump’s New York trial. But it’s still early days.

“We have not yet found identifying information on the extremist forums we monitor,” Jones says. “Having said that, I share your concern that it is only a matter of time before this happens.”

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 8 months

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Maryland’s top utility regulator was watching the news one February morning when a headline blindsided him: Two suspects with neo-Nazi ties had been charged with plotting to take down Baltimore’s power grid.

Jason Stanek, the then-chair of the state’s Public Service Commission, said Maryland regulators were “caught flat-footed,” not hearing a word from law enforcement before the news broke — or in the months afterward. Federal prosecutors have alleged the defendants were driven by “racially motivated hatred” to try to cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in the state’s largest city, which has a predominantly Black population.

The FBI declined to comment on its communications with the Maryland commission. But Stanek’s experience is not uncommon.

A POLITICO analysis of federal data and interviews with a dozen security, extremism and electricity experts revealed that despite a record surge in attacks on the grid nationwide, communication gaps between law enforcement and state and federal regulators have left many officials largely in the dark about the extent of the threat. They have also hampered efforts to safeguard the power network.

Adding to the difficulties, no single agency keeps a complete record of all such incidents. But the attacks they know about have regulators and other power experts alarmed:

— Utilities reported 60 incidents they characterized as physical threats or attacks on major grid infrastructure, in addition to two cyberattacks, during the first three months of 2023 alone, according to mandatory disclosures they filed with the Department of Energy. That’s more than double the number from the same period last year. DOE has not yet released data past March.

— Nine of this year’s attacks led to power disruptions, the DOE records indicate.

— The U.S. is on pace to meet or exceed last year’s record of 164 major cyber and physical attacks.

— And additional analyses imply that the true number of incidents for both 2022 and 2023 is probably even higher. POLITICO’s analysis found several incidents that utilities had reported to homeland security officials but did not show up in DOE data.

According to a report on grid security compiled by a power industry cyber clearinghouse, obtained by POLITICO, a total of 1,665 security incidents involving the U.S. and Canadian power grids occurred last year. That count included 60 incidents that led to outages, 71% more than in 2021.

While that report does not break down how many of those incidents occurred in which country, the U.S. has a significantly larger grid, serving 145 million homes and businesses, with nearly seven times Canada’s power-generating capacity.

Law enforcement officials have blamed much of the rise in grid assaults on white nationalist and far-right extremists, who they say are using online forums to spread tactical advice on how to shut down the power supply.

Concerns about the attacks have continued in recent months, with incidents including a June indictment of an Idaho man accused of shooting two hydroelectric stations in the state.

But law enforcement officers investigating alleged plots against the grid don’t necessarily alert the Energy Department or other regulatory bodies.

“We have no idea” how many attacks on the grid are occurring, said Jon Wellinghoff, a former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the U.S. electric grid. “It looks like they’re escalating if you look at the data. But if you don’t have enough data, you can’t discern patterns and proactively work to stop these things from happening.”

Wellinghoff was FERC’s chair when an unknown sniper attacked a Pacific Gas and Electric substation in San Jose, Calif., in 2013 — an incident regulators have described as a “wake-up call” on the electricity supply’s vulnerability to sabotage.

Last year’s record number of physical and cyber disruptions to the U.S. power system included several incidents that captured public attention, such as a December shooting attack against two North Carolina substations that left 45,000 people without power for four days. The state’s medical examiner has blamed the attack for the death of an 87-year-old woman who died after her oxygen machine failed, ruling it a homicide. Nobody has been charged.

“There is no doubt there’s been an uptick over the last three years in the amount of incidents and also the severity of the incidents,” said Manny Cancel, senior vice president at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the nonprofit body in charge of setting reliability standards for the bulk power system. He is also CEO of its Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which gathers and analyzes data from power companies.

Cancel said NERC has “seen two pretty substantial increases” in incidents coinciding with the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.

Grid attacks that led to power outages increased 71% from 2021 to 2022, totaling 55 incidents in 2022, according to a NERC briefing to utilities that POLITICO obtained. That increase was primarily due to a rise in gunfire assaults against critical infrastructure.

The largest outage reported from a physical attack early this year — which occurred in March in Clark County, Nev. — affected more than 11,000 people, according to DOE data.

But the state Public Utilities Commission was not aware of any outage due to an attack occurring that day, spokesperson Peter Kostes told POLITICO by email. That’s even though state regulations require utilities to contact the commission within four hours of a significant outage.

The state’s largest utility, NV Energy, said in a statement that it had reported the incident to local law enforcement “as soon as we learned about this incident ... so we can continue to increase our resilience against ongoing threats to the energy industry.” A spokesperson for the utility did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether it had informed the commission.

Federal regulations also require utilities to report cyber or physical attacks to DOE, including physical attacks that cause “major interruptions or impacts” to operations.

They must also tell the department about disruptions from weather or other causes that meet certain criteria, such as those that cut off service to more than 50,000 customers for at least an hour, an uncontrolled loss of more than 200 megawatts of power, or a utility voluntarily shutting more than 100 megawatts, according to an Energy Department spokesperson. The spokesperson provided the information on the condition that they not be identified by name.

The Energy Department’s records don’t include at least seven reported physical assaults last year and this year that the Department of Homeland Security and the affected utilities said caused substantive economic damage or cut off power to thousands of customers. POLITICO found these incidents by cross-checking the department’s data against warnings issued by DHS and the FBI’s Office of the Private Sector.

DOE said the incidents may not meet its reporting thresholds.

Several of the incidents missing from DOE’s data involved clear physical attacks, based on other agencies’ descriptions. But the utilities involved said they did not report the incidents to the department because the attacks did not affect the kind of major equipment that could lead to widespread, regional power failures.

One of the incidents not found in DOE’s records cut off power to about 12,000 people for roughly two hours in Maysville, N.C., after a shooting damaged a substation in November, according to a DHS report. The FBI’s investigation into the incident is ongoing, according to the intelligence agency.

The utility affected by the incident, Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative, reported the incident to NERC’s Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, but didn’t report the attack to DOE because it was a “distribution-level” incident, said Melissa Glenn, a spokesperson for the utility. That means the outages caused by the damage would have been limited to local power customers and not lead to the wider blackouts federal regulators are most concerned with.

In another case unreported to the Energy Department, a substation owned by the East River Electric Cooperative serving the Keystone oil pipeline in South Dakota was attacked by gunfire late at night in July 2022, according to DHS. The incident caused more than $1 million in damage and forced the pipeline to reduce operations while repairs were underway.

East River co-op spokesperson Chris Studer said the utility reported the incident to local law enforcement, which brought in the FBI. East River also reported the incident to NERC and its E-ISAC, along with regional grid agencies, but said it did not report it to DOE because the attack did not affect the bulk power system.

Brian Harrell, a former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at DHS, said in an email that utilities have too many competing agencies to report to, and suggested reporting be streamlined to NERC’s E-ISAC.

“This lack of consistency, by no fault of the utility, suggests that the numbers may not paint a complete picture,” he said.

Grid experts said these data gaps clearly indicate a lack of understanding about which agencies utilities need to report to and when.

Utilities may be using a “loophole” based on definitions of what constitutes “critical infrastructure,” said Jonathon Monken, a grid security expert with the consulting firm Converge Strategies. He was previously senior director of system resilience and strategic coordination for the PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest power market.

There are “lots of ways” to work around DOE requirements, Monken added, but as he reads the regulation, utilities are required to report any operational disruptions caused by a physical attack.

“[I]t appears the information you collected shows that companies are still missing the boat when it comes to mandatory reporting,” he said. “Not good.”

One former FERC official who was granted anonymity to speak about a sensitive security issue said the commission also received no alerts from law enforcement officials about the planned and actual attacks that took place last year. That omission hinders agencies’ ability to respond to these kinds of events, the person said.

A spokesperson for FERC declined to comment on the commission’s communications with law enforcement.

But Cancel defended government agencies’ response to these incidents, and said federal investigators may have had specific intelligence reasons for keeping FERC and state utility agencies out of the loop.

“I’m not a lawyer or a law enforcement professional, but you had an active criminal investigation going on,” he said. “I don’t think they wanted to sort of blow the horn on that and compromise the integrity of the investigation.”

An FBI spokesperson offered no direct response to these criticisms in an email, but said the agency “views cybersecurity as a team sport.” The person commented on the condition that the remark be attributed to the bureau.

The FBI urged utility executives last month to attend security training hosted by intelligence agents in order to ensure they are up to speed on the threats posed by bad actors.

“We can’t do it without you,” Matthew Fodor, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said during an all-day FERC technical conference on Aug. 10. “The challenges that we have — and DOE can probably speak to this better than anybody — is limited resources.”

People attacking the electricity supply have thousands of potential targets, including power substations and smaller but critical pieces of utility infrastructure. The smaller pieces often go unprotected because federal standards do not require utilities to secure them.

Nearly half of the 4,493 attacks from 2020 to 2022 targeted substations, according to the NERC briefing from February, making them the most frequent targets for perpetrators over that period.

Details on how to carry out these kinds of attacks are available from extremist messaging boards and other online content, researchers and federal security officials say. These include maps of critical entry points to the grid, along with advice that extremists have gleaned from incidents like the assault in North Carolina.

Stanek, the Maryland electricity regulator, said he was “disappointed with the level of coordination and communication” that federal and state law enforcement displayed in handling the alleged plot in Baltimore. No trial date has been announced for the case, which is in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

Maryland’s Public Service Commission is in charge of ensuring that the state’s power system keeps the lights on. Regulators need to be kept informed of threats to the system so they can coordinate with other agencies in case an attack succeeds, Stanek said.

At the same time, he quipped, maybe he was better off in the dark after all.

“There’s a lot of colorful details in [the FBI report],” Stanek said. He paused, thinking. “And honestly, as a regulator, had I received these details in advance and shared the information with trusted sources within state government, I would have had sleepless nights.”

“So perhaps the feds did a favor by only sharing this information after everything was all said and done,” he added.

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raaorqtpbpdy · 2 months

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Respect or Privacy (2)

Tucker is excited for everything about college, even having a roommate for the first time. At least, he is until his roommate Danny turns out to be standoffish and a little bit of a dick. Whatever. It's a disappointment, but he'll survive. The same might not be said of Danny.

My first fic for Phic Phight '24 (part 2)! Prompts used were:

College AU where the characters don't meet until college and Danny has to hide his halfa status from his dorm roommate (your choice which character that is) [from @shadowfaerieammy], and Tucker fucked up. Hard. But it’s like, how the hell was he supposed to know that hacking the federal government was a bad idea? [from @lexosaurus]

You can also read it on AO3

Chapter 2: Find Out (Chapter 1)

[No warnings apply (I think)]

Tucker applied to switch roommates right away, but apparently that whole process took a lot longer than he would have hoped. Or else his request had gotten lost. He brought it up to the dorm supervisor a couple of times, only to get vague, unhelpful answers and bid for him to be patient and wait his turn. In the meanwhile, the two of them largely ignored each other. Tucker, a little bitterly, and Danny a little guiltily.

By the end of the semester, the roommate switch still hadn't gone through, and Danny and Tucker still had hardly said a full sentence to each other since that fight. They both thought about it every time they saw each other, but it felt far too awkward to bring it up again now.

While Tucker was Packing up to go home for winter vacation, he noticed that Danny wasn't doing the same, but he didn't bother to ask why. When he returned from winter break for the new semester—still rooming with Danny, despite sending numerous emails over the break to ensure his roommate change application was actually being processed—it didn't look like Danny had ever left.

Whatever. That wasn't Tucker's problem. He had more important things to worry about than his lame roommate's pathetic social life.

The end of winter break meant the start of the spring semester, and Tucker was signed up for a cyber-security class that he was really looking forward to. Normally, freshman didn't have the prerequisites to take it, but he'd filled his first semester with all the necessary credits so that he could sign up.

On the first day of class, Tucker walked in to see a list written on the whiteboard. Curious, he took out his laptop and looked up some of the items on it. It looked like a list of databases. Some of them, Tucker had heard of, and some he hadn't. He wasn't sure what they all had in common, or why the professor had written them up on the board, but he assumed that question would be answered once the class actually started, and he assumed correctly.

After the Professor had gone over the syllabus for half an hour, asking that they hold all questions until he was done with his explanation, he pointed to the list on the board.

"Some of you may have noticed this list of databases on the whiteboard, and you're probably wondering why it's there," the professor said. "These are all high-security databases, some of them are privately owned, some are federally owned, or state-owned, or various combinations of all three. All of them are so confident in their security that they offer substantial monetary compensation to anyone able to hack into them and point out the holes in their security.

"As an optional extra-credit assignment, you may choose a database to attempt to hack into," he continued. "If you succeed, in addition to being able to pay for your entire college career, you will automatically pass this class. Your actual letter grade will be determined by the quality and quantity of work you turn in, but you will be guaranteed at least a C as long as you succeed before the end of the semester.

"Again, this is optional. You don't have to do it. There will be no academic consequences for failure, but depending on which database you choose, there may be legal consequences, so choose wisely and don't bite off more than you can chew."

Oh, yeah. Not only would Tucker be taking this extra-credit opportunity, but he would be going big. He was gonna find out which of these databases offered the biggest reward and he was going to tear it to shreds. This was gonna be fun.

"I'll tell you now," the professor warned, "that in my entire twenty-year career teaching this course, only three students have ever managed to cash in on this offer, so don't feel too bad if you... can't hack it."

A round of groans and laughter circulated the classroom. Tucker was among those laughing, though he could understand the groans, as well. He enjoyed a good bad pun, but it was still pretty bad.

After his classes were over, Tucker looked up every database on the list, putting in the time, and doing to research, to figure out how to get the most bang for his buck, and it turned out the one that offered the biggest payout for a successful hack was a privately-run federal government database for an organization called the G.I.W., which was so secretive that Tucker didn't even know what G.I.W. stood for. But he was gonna find out—just like he was gonna find a way right through their digital security system.

Hacking was what Tucker was good at. It was why he'd been so intent on taking this cyber-security class in the first place. However tough the G.I.W.'s security was, FryerTuck was tougher.

A pleasant side-effect of Tucker's extra-credit project, since he worked on it in basically every spare moment between classes and homework, he pretty much always had an excuse to ignore Danny. Danny would take one look at all the code and computer jargon on Tucker's screen and not even say hello. He didn't ask what it was, or what Tucker was trying to do, just left him alone, probably grateful that Tucker was leaving him alone, too.

The G.I.W. security was strong, but Tucker wasn't the type to give up, not on something like this. He just kept hacking away at it. He stayed up late, woke up early, skipped lunch, or ate one-handed. He worked on it for over a month, then two months, until finally, at 3am on a Saturday, in a Mountain Dew-fueled haze, with red-rimmed eyes and aching fingers, he finally found it—the flaw in the armor.

Once he had that, it was only a matter of time before he full broke through, and two days later, he was in.

G.I.W. stood for Ghost Investigation Ward, and the first thing that popped up when Tucker was through the final firewall was the organization's most wanted list. A list of ghosts. Number one was a ghost called Danny Phantom who looked strangely familiar in a way Tucker couldn't quite place and ultimately shook off. After Phantom was a ghost called Vortex, then The Wisconsin Ghost, which was a stupid name. Tucker didn't bother to read the whole list. He didn't actually care about ghosts, he just wanted his reward money.

He used the information on the database to find the contact information for the head of the organization, someone code-named 'Operative Alpha', another stupid name, and sent him an email which explained who he was, detailed exactly how he'd broken into their secure database, and explained why he'd done it. That done, he finally went to bed, expecting a response from Operative Alpha when he awoke.

What he did not expect was to be woken up at seven in the morning after such a late night by a pounding on the door of his room.

"Danny, can you get that?" he moaned, covering his head with a pillow.

He heard Danny grumble something unintelligible and roll over in bed. He could hardly blame the guy. There was a reason Tucker didn't sign up for any classes earlier than 10am. He'd made that mistake last semester and had no plans to repeat it.

Whoever was knocking banged on the door again. "Mr. Foley!"

"Ha!" Danny barked, as triumphantly as he could do so when he was still half-asleep.

Tucker groaned again, but dragged himself out of bed to open the door.

Standing there was a pair of large, burly men in white suits and dark sunglasses. Tucker felt very under dressed in his cheeto-dusted pajama pants and cheesy slogan t-shirt, but that feeling quickly passed, since he was really way too tired to care.

"Mr. Foley?"

"Yup."

"I am Operative L, and this is my partner, Operative U," said the man on the left. "We're with the G.I.W., and we're here to ask a few questions and verify some things you communicated to our superior, Operative Alpha. May we enter?"

"Uh... may you come back at a more reasonable hour?" Tucker asked, trying and failing to blink away the sleep in his eyes. "Maybe in the afternoon? Sorry, but I'm way too tired to answer questions or verify shit right now. I'm not gonna be any good to you until I put in a few more hours between the sheets—sleeping, I mean. I'm not blowing you guys off to fuck."

The two guys looked at each other for a moment before nodding.

"Very well, your terms are acceptable," Operative U stated, very formally. "We will return at exactly 1300 hours."

"That's 1pm," Operative L clarified. "If you're not here at that time, we will hunt you down and show no mercy."

"Uh... understood?"

"Good."

With that, the two operatives turned and left, leaving Tucker standing confused in the doorway behind them. He yawned and shrugged and closed the door.

The instant the latch closed, Danny shot up out of bed, standing in a defensive position in the center of the room and glaring furiously at Tucker.

"Woah, what—"

"What's your association to the Guys in White?" he demanded.

"What, those guys?" Tucker asked.

"Are you working for them?" Danny kept going, sounding halfway desperate and halfway furious. "What do you know?"

"What are you talking about? 'Am I working with them?' Why would I be working with them? What for?"

"Why is the Ghost Investigation Ward knocking on our door asking for you then?"

"Because I hack their database, and now they owe me reward money?"

"What?"

"That's the extra-credit I've been working on the last couple months," Tucker explained. "The professor put a list of databases that offered reward money to anyone who could hack them and show them the flaws in their security. If we manage to collect on any of 'em, he said we'd automatically pass his class. I hacked the G.I.W., so they came to verify shit before they pay me off."

"That's all?"

"Yeah, that's it," Tucker affirmed. No matter how tired he was, though, something still struck him as distinctly odd about this conversation. "Hey, Danny... how do you know about the Ghost Investigation Ward?"

Danny froze like a deer caught in headlights. Tucker could almost see the hundreds of panicked thoughts and potential excuses racing through his head, but what finally came out was:

"I... don't?"

"Oh, you can't play dumb anymore," Tucker denied. "I couldn't even figure out what G.I.W. stood for until I was already into their secure database, and you just casual name-dropped them during your random accusation. Spill."

Again, Danny froze. He looked like he was seriously considering whether he could run. He even glanced to the window like they weren't on the fourth floor with no fire escape on their window. In the end, he swallowed anxiously, squirmed under Tucker's scrutinizing gaze, and bullshitted.

"They uh... they came to Amity Park a lot," he said. "You know, to hunt ghosts. So it's not the first time I've run into them."

But Tucker wasn't interested in a half-truth. He was done with Danny's bullshit and he was going to get to the bottom of this, right now.

"Uh-huh. And why are you so scared of 'em, then?" he asked. "I saw all the ghost hunting shit you keep in that drawer" — Danny started to protest, but Tucker just raised his volume and kept talking over him — "I know you told me to butt out, but fuck that. You hunt ghosts too, or you did, so why are you so freaked about other ghost hunters."

"They're... really bad at it?"

"They're dedicated enough that it took me—me, over two months to break through their security," Tucker said. "Somehow I doubt that a group that serious about what they do is 'really bad' at their main objective. Quit trying to bluff me. Quit beating around the bush. Enough is enough, man. Just tell me the truth."

"I... I can't."

"Oh, then I can just call those guys back and have them tell me—"

"NO!"

Tucker was taken aback by the intensity of Danny's shout.

"So fess up, then," he insisted.

"Fine!"

Danny squeezed his eyes shut, gritted his teeth, and took a deep breath.

"Fine," he repeated, softer. "The truth is, I'm... I'm...."

"Yeah?" Tucker encouraged.

"I'm a ghost," he finished finally, his voice softer than Tucker had ever heard it, but still audible.

"You're...." Tucker frowned, not really sure what to say. "Okay, you seem super serious about this, so I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I've been living with you for like, six months now, and I think I would have noticed if you were a ghost, so what's goin' on here?"

Danny sighed, went to the window to look out and then make sure the curtain was closed all the way. Then, he looked Tucker dead in the eye... and changed.

Thin, white rings traveled up and down his body, wrapping around his limbs and torso like threads of pure light, and when they disappeared, the person standing there wasn't Tucker's lame, human roommate, Danny Fenton. It was the Ghost Investigation's number one most Wanted, Danny Phantom.

"The reason I know the Guys in White is because they've been trying to destroy me since I was fourteen," Danny said, his voice steady and surprisingly cool. "They refuse to acknowledge that ghost are sapient beings, and unique individuals, and not all of us are evil, so they've been trying to wipe me off the face of the earth. All I want is to just exist... peacefully. But if they find me here, it's game over—and you just brought them right to our door.

Ohhh shit. Tucker had fucked up. Hard. But how the hell was he supposed to know that hacking the federal government was a bad idea? It had seemed like a perfectly good idea when he learned he could get four million dollars out of it. Now, learning that they might kill (re-kill?) his roommate, not so much.

But how on Earth was he supposed to know it would turn out like this? Danny never talked to him, or told Tucker anything about himself. He never mentioned ghosts, or his opinion of them. He never even bothered to ask what Tucker was hacking the last two months.

"Well, fuck," Tucker said.

"Well, fuck indeed," Danny agreed.

"You know, if you'd just been up-front with me about this shit from the beginning this never would have happened," Tucker insisted. "I gave you every chance, but no! You didn't want to be friends. You'd rather the two of us live together in silence for the whole year. All you had to do was ask me about what I was working on and you could have told me not to mess with it. You had two whole months of opportunities, Danny."

"I thought it was more dangerous for me to tell you!" Danny argued. "The day we met you brought up 'evil ghosts', and I thought there was no way I could ever trust you if that's what you thought! How was I supposed to know you'd back me up, huh? How would I know that?"

"I was joking!" Tucker all but screamed.

"Hey! Shut the fuck up!" shouted someone from the dorm next door. "It's Saturday! Why are you even up this early!?"

"Sorry!" Tucker called back. Then he lowered his volume and hissed, "I was joking! I'm from fucking Elmerton! You think I actually give a single shit about ghosts? No!"

"And I was supposed to know that, how?" Danny hissed right back. "I've been hearing about how all ghosts are evil and cruel my whole life from my fucking ghost hunter parents. When I hear people say ghosts are evil I'm always gonna assume they mean it rather than take a chance and get shot. I have enough bullet wounds."

Tucker couldn't respond to that. He had no idea what to say. He pursed his lips and nodded. Took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Alright, fine," he said at length. "So maybe we both beefed it a little. Enough about how we fucked up, let's try to fix it."

"And how do you plan on doing that?" Danny asked, crossing his arms.

"Well, they don't know yet that my roommate is their most wanted," Tucker pointed out. "And after they talk with me, they'll have no reason to come back here. As long as you're out of the dorm at one o'clock, and stay out until they leave, you're in the clear."

"How will I know when they're gone?"

"You've got a phone, don't you?" Tucker pointed out, rolling his eyes. "Gimme your number and I'll text you."

Danny hesitated, his eyes darting to his desk, where his phone was still charging on the surface.

"Oh, come on man, you can't seriously still be wound up about not wanting friends, can you? I already know your secret, and I'm trying to help you. Just give me your number."

"What if you give it to the Guys in White?"

"Dude, I'm not gonna do that," Tucker said, as seriously as he could manage. "If you'd accepted any of my invitations when we first moved into the dorms, you'd know me well enough to know that I'd never betray a friend."

"We're not friends," Danny mumbled.

"We are now."

Danny's head snapped up to look Tucker in the eye, and Tucker could tell he knew it was the truth.

"Alright," Danny said.

He gave Tucker his phone number, and they both went back to bed and crashed hard for another few hours. Danny made himself scarce at around twelve-thirty, Tucker talked with the G.I.W. and accepted a check for a cool four million that would cover tuition and then some. And when they were gone, he sent Danny a text to let him know.

The plan went off without a hitch, and for the rest of the school year, Tucker had a best friend to hang out with—even if that friend was still pretty standoffish to other people. He found himself thankful that the school never did finish processing his request to switch roommates, and when they left for summer break, both he and Danny requested that they be roommates again for sophomore year. They could only hope that that request would actually be processed sometime in the next two months.

#dp #danny phantom #danny fenton #tucker foley #fic #things i wrote #phic phight 24 #phic phight #angst #guys in white #college #no one knows au #reveal fic #respect or privacy

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