Alright. It's been a while since I left a message ahead of the chapter. I am expecting a lot of questions so for those who are wondering why the change, wait for further chapters.
I will do a double chapter tomorrow because my patreon frankly has one more chapter extra than it should be.
Anyway.
___
For months, Everblue's servers had been holding their breath.
Traffic spikes. Overnight surges. Long weekends where Aya stayed in the office, watching download graphs climb like stock charts. Avatar: The Legend of Aang wasn't just a hit anymore—it was the backbone of their entire business model.
The company had doubled its staff. New interns filled the hallways, the IT department migrated everything to a hybrid cloud system, and Aya had learned to smile through exhaustion. Success had momentum. And momentum didn't stop for maintenance.
So when a quiet ping landed on the security team's Slack channel at 1:27 a.m., no one notice at first. Just another background process flagging something minor at first, expanding into a much bigger problem by dawn.
---
The night at Everblue's regional office had the polite insomnia of a place that had just been handed a problem too large for normal business hours.
The lights were dimmed in clusters to save electricity; one conference room still smelled faintly of cold pizza.
Monitors glowed in small constellations—tiny islands of work in a sea of carpeted quiet.
Somewhere, a printer clicked as if remembering an unfinished job.
Outside, the city hummed low and blue.
At 01:12, Miura, the night guard, made his slow rounds. Fire doors, stairwells, cameras.
He hummed along to the radio in the break room, the same pop song that had played every night this week.
Routine was its own security—until it wasn't.
Two floors up, Yuuki sat hunched over a pair of monitors. His headphones had slipped to his neck; a can of cold coffee balanced beside his keyboard.
Hana's art prototypes were scattered across the desk behind him—half-painted cover mockups shimmering under desk-lamp light.
Aya Hoshino had finally left for home an hour ago, promising herself she'd sleep for once.
At 01:26, the first probe arrived—a soft ping from an unfamiliar address.
The intrusion-detection console blinked once, politely, and turned green again.
Yuuki frowned, logged the event, and told himself it was nothing. Night-time crawlers hit their network all the time. He made a note: odd IP range—monitor next shift.
At 01:27, the probe returned, same origin, slightly different header.
Yuuki's instinct prickled. He typed a message into Slack:
> probes from weird range. will patch if persistent. no action yet.
It was swallowed by the thread of unread messages.
At 01:28, the scanner changed strategy.
A privilege-escalation attempt. Fail. Logged, tagged low priority.
Then another request—subtler, older syntax—slid sideways through a forgotten door:
everblue.local/legacy-upload.
A compatibility endpoint no one had touched since the cloud migration.
It wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
It did.
At 01:29, a new connection opened.
Credentials matched: [email protected]—a freelance localization contractor offboarded months ago.
No brute-force, no guessing. Just a key that fit.
Inside the network, the connection moved precisely. Straight to the content-management archive. A command executed:
> EXPORT_AUTHOR_ARCHIVE — KTRT_CONTRACTS.ZIP — 01:29:13.
A sliver of data began to flow out into the dark.
Yuuki saw the traffic spike ten seconds later.
He blinked, muttered a curse, and reached for the phone.
"Hana. Wake Aya," he said urgently. "Something's pulling from the author archive."
Hana woke up to the third call.
Her phone buzzed across the nightstand, lighting her ceiling in strobing blue.
"Yuuki?" she croaked, voice still full of sleep.
"There's an active pull from the author contracts folder," Yuuki said. His voice was clipped, the kind of calm that meant bad. "Authenticated vendor credentials. I'm terminating the session, but I think it already completed an export."
Hana sat up. "Wait—vendor credentials? Which vendor?"
"Localization. Account was supposed to be offboarded last quarter."
Her bare feet hit the floor. "Patch the endpoint, disable the key, lock down all external ports. I'm calling Aya."
Yuuki was already typing when the line went dead.
---
By 01:30 a.m., the export finished.
Total duration: forty-seven seconds.
Transferred: 142 megabytes.
Silent. Complete.
---
By 01:36, the office no longer felt like night.
Monitors glowed with movement. Error logs cascaded. The network map pulsed with red nodes blinking in slow panic.
Hana ran a local trace—there was no sign of an internal breach. The upload had exited cleanly, routed through a proxy chain that split halfway across the Pacific.
02:10 a.m.
Aya arrived back at the office with her coat half-on and hair damp from a shower cut short
The server room smelled faintly of ozone and burnt dust.
"Tell me what we lost," she said.
"Vendor credential reuse," Yuuki answered. "They found a legacy endpoint we missed after migration. They exported a handful of files."
"Which files?"
He didn't meet her eyes.
"The author contracts. Including that one."
For a moment the room seemed to tilt. Aya gripped the table's edge.
"Is it encrypted?"
"The original files? Yes. The backups? Not so much."
"Can we trace it?"
"Already tried. VPN chain, Tor exit nodes, mirror host in Sweden. They bounced the signal through servers in Singapore, Russia, and Brazil before hitting us from what looks like a café in Osaka. By the time we trace the café's IP, they'll be long gone. And that's assuming the café isn't just another proxy. They knew what they were doing."
Hana swallowed. "It's not ransomware. They didn't touch anything else. Just copied and vanished."
Aya exhaled slowly. "Then it's personal—or political."
___
By 03:00, Everblue's emergency protocol was in full swing.
The CEO was patched in remotely. The legal department joined from Tokyo HQ. IT had isolated the subnet, initiated forensic capture, and shut down all vendor connections.
The words data exfiltration and intellectual property compromise echoed through the air like cold rain.
"How could this happen?"
"We pay for enterprise-grade security!"
"Wasn't this supposed to be encrypted?"
"It was," the lead engineer muttered. "But the backup wasn't."
Aya sat at the head of the conference table, surrounded by tired faces on screens and in person. The legal head, Watanabe, was already mid-sentence when she tuned back in.
"—contractual obligation to protect client data. If this gets out, we're looking at breach of privacy lawsuits, potential regulatory fines—"
"If it gets out?" Aya interrupted. "Someone stole author contracts in the middle of the night. They didn't do that for fun. They're going to leak it."
"We don't know that yet," said the CEO, his face pixelated on the main screen. "Maybe it's corporate espionage. Competitor trying to poach our talent."
"By stealing a seventeen-year-old's personal information?" Aya's voice was sharp. "No. This is about exposure. Someone wants the world to know who K.T.R.T is."
Watanabe adjusted his glasses. "Then we need to prepare a statement. Something that acknowledges the breach without confirming details—"
"Do we have any suspects?"
"Half of Japan wanted to know who K.T.R.T was. That's not exactly a short list."
"And how long do we have before this goes public?" Aya asked, turning to Yuuki.
He'd been silent, still typing, still searching.
"Hard to say. If they're smart, they'll wait for maximum impact. Morning rush hour, maybe. When everyone's checking their phones on the commute."
"That gives us..." Aya checked her watch. "Four hours. Maybe five."
"What about contacting the author's family?" someone asked.
"At three in the morning?" Aya shook her head. "I'm not waking them up with this until we know for sure it's been leaked. No point causing panic if we can contain it."
"Can we contain it?" The CEO's voice carried doubt.
Silence answered him.
"Alright," he said finally. "IT, continue the forensic analysis. Legal, draft three versions of a press release—one denying everything, one confirming a breach but not the specifics, and one full acknowledgment. Marketing, prepare for crisis management. And someone get coffee. It's going to be a long morning."
The meeting dissolved into smaller conversations. Aya stayed in her chair, staring at nothing.
Hana touched her shoulder gently. "You okay?"
"I promised him anonymity," Aya said quietly. "That was the one thing I guaranteed. Complete protection."
"You couldn't have known someone would breach our security."
"Couldn't I?" Aya looked up. "We've had attempted hacks for months. Everyone wants to know who wrote Avatar. We should've been more careful. Should've isolated that data, encrypted everything, moved it offline—"
"Hindsight doesn't help us now."
"No," Aya agreed. "But it's going to destroy that kid's life when it does."
___
Meanwhile,
On the other side of the country, a private chat hummed with muted excitement.
"Got the payload," a user typed. "Old vendor key. No rotation. Classic negligence."
The group called themselves NullChannel—a fluid collective of hackers, activists, and data enthusiasts who operated in the gray spaces between legality and chaos. They weren't Anonymous. They weren't some organized crime syndicate. They were more like... digital archaeologists with flexible ethics.
The chat scrolled with responses:
ShadowCipher: Clean extract?
GhostKey: 142MB. Author contracts, personal info, the works.
NeonVoid: Encryption?
GhostKey: Backups weren't encrypted. We got everything.
The leader—known only as Architect—had been silent, watching the data populate their secured server. Files upon files. Contract scans with signatures visible. Payment records with bank details. Personal information sheets with addresses, birthdates, even passport copies for international rights negotiations.
And there, buried in subfolder C-14, the crown jewel:
KTRT_AuthorProfile_CONFIDENTIAL.pdf
Architect opened it.
Name. Age. School. Guardian information. Photos from the initial contract signing—a teenager in a chair next to a woman who looked like his mother, both smiling awkwardly at the camera.
"Jesus," Architect typed. "Kid's seventeen. Still in high school."
ShadowCipher: U.A. High School. That hero academy. No wonder they kept him anonymous.
NeonVoid: So what's the play? Private sale? There's a market for this kind of intel.
GhostKey: Could get six figures from the right tabloid.
Architect's fingers hovered over the keyboard.
Six figures was tempting. Very tempting. But NullChannel had principles—loose ones, admittedly, but principles nonetheless. They didn't traffic in blackmail. They didn't sell children's information to stalkers or worse.
They did, however, believe in transparency. In exposing the systems that hoarded information and controlled narratives.
And something about this felt... significant.
A teenager wrote one of Japan's most popular novels. A Quirkless story in a Quirk-obsessed world. And some publisher had locked his identity away, probably to protect their investment more than the kid himself.
"We dump it public," Architect typed finally. "No ransom. No blackmail. Just... let it breathe."
NeonVoid: Why? Why not sell it privately?
Architect: Because this isn't about money. It's about the story. Kid writes something that challenges the hero narrative, and the system buries who he is. That's worth exposing.
GhostKey: You sure? That's a lot of cash to leave on the table.
Architect: I'm sure. Besides, once it's public, the value drops to zero anyway. Might as well control the narrative.
ShadowCipher: When?
Architect considered. Morning would be too obvious—everyone would be watching for leaks after a breach was detected. Evening was better. Let Everblue sweat through the day thinking maybe, just maybe, they'd dodged it.
Then hit them when people were getting off work, checking their phones on the commute home. Maximum social media saturation.
Architect: 4:30 PM. Rush hour. We post to NetForum, HeroX, and the usual channels simultaneously. By 5 PM, it'll be everywhere.
NeonVoid: Dramatic. I like it.
GhostKey: Should we sanitize anything? The kid's address is in here.
Architect: Remove addresses and phone numbers. Bank details. Anything that could lead to physical harm. We're exposing identity, not putting a target on his back.
ShadowCipher: So we're ethical hackers now?
Architect: We're assholes with standards. There's a difference.
The group set to work, scrubbing the most sensitive details while preserving the core information. By 03:15, they had a clean package ready to deploy.
All they had to do was wait.
___
06:00 a.m. - Everblue Office
The emergency meeting had finally ended around five, with everyone scattered to their assigned tasks. Aya had gone home briefly to shower and change into fresh clothes, but she was back by six, running on coffee and anxiety.
The office was starting to fill with early arrivals—staff who'd been called in for the crisis, others who'd seen the Slack messages and come in on their own.
Yuuki looked like he hadn't left his desk. Dark circles under his eyes, surrounded by empty energy drink cans.
"Anything?" Aya asked, setting down a fresh coffee beside him.
"Nothing. No posts, no leaks, no activity." He rubbed his face. "Either they're planning something specific, or we got lucky and they just wanted to prove they could do it."
"Or they're waiting," Hana added from her own workstation. "Building suspense. Choosing the right moment."
"That's a comforting thought," Aya muttered.
Watanabe appeared with a tablet. "Press release is ready. All three versions. We just need to know which one to use."
"The one that acknowledges the breach but doesn't confirm details," Aya decided. "We're not going to lie, but we're also not going to validate stolen data until we absolutely have to."
"And if it leaks anyway?"
"Then we switch to version three and do damage control." She glanced at the clock. "But for now, we wait."
09:00 a.m.
Morning came with agonizing normalcy.
Staff trickled in. Meetings happened. The animators' department sent over new cover concepts. Marketing discussed social media strategies for the upcoming volume release.
Aya had a scheduled meeting at 10 AM with representatives from Sunrise Studios—a major animation house interested in adapting Avatar. The meeting had been on the books for weeks, a key part of keeping momentum behind the property.
She'd considered canceling. But canceling without explanation would raise questions, and explaining would reveal the breach before they knew if anything would come of it.
So she sat in the conference room at 9:55, reviewing talking points and trying to look like someone whose entire world wasn't potentially about to implode.
The Sunrise representatives arrived promptly: Tanaka, the development head, and two producers whose names Aya immediately forgot because her brain was running background processes on when will it leak when will it leak when will it leak—
"Ms. Hoshino, thank you for meeting with us," Tanaka said, settling into his chair. "We've been following Avatar's success with great interest."
"We're thrilled by the response," Aya replied, autopilot professionalism kicking in. "The audience engagement has exceeded all projections."
"That's what we wanted to discuss. Sunrise believes Avatar has significant potential as an animated series..."
The meeting proceeded. Terms were discussed. Production timelines. Creative control. Revenue sharing.
Aya's phone sat face-down on the table beside her notepad. It didn't ring. Didn't buzz.
Every few minutes, her eyes flicked to it anyway.
The meeting stretched to an hour. Then ninety minutes. The Sunrise team wanted detailed information about character designs, world-building documentation, potential episode breakdowns.
Normal business. Productive business.
But all Aya could think was: Why hasn't it leaked yet? Are we safe? Or are they just waiting?
12:30 p.m.
Lunchtime brought no news.
The office buzzed with normal activity—subdued, yes, everyone aware that something was wrong, but no crisis had materialized.
Yuuki had set up monitoring alerts on every major forum, social media platform, and news aggregator. Nothing.
"Maybe they really were just corporate espionage," someone suggested during the lunch break. "Got what they needed and disappeared."
"Or they're selling it privately," another countered. "Could be in some bidding war on the dark web right now."
Aya said nothing. She'd moved beyond hope into a state of numb waiting.
Her phone rang. She nearly dropped it grabbing for it.
Unknown number.
"Hoshino."
"Ms. Hoshino, this is Detective Nakamura from the Cyber Crimes Division. We received your report about the breach."
"Yes, thank you for calling. What can you tell us?"
"Unfortunately, not much at this stage. The routing is sophisticated—VPN chains through multiple countries, final connection point at an internet café in Osaka. We've requested footage from the café, but even if we get it, these groups typically use disguises and burn equipment immediately after."
"So you can't trace them."
"We'll continue investigating, but I want to be realistic about our chances. These kinds of breaches..." He paused delicately. "The technical execution suggests experience. This wasn't someone's first time."
"I see."
"However, we'll be monitoring for any public release of the data. If it surfaces, we'll pursue charges immediately. Theft, violation of privacy laws, potentially more depending on how the information is used."
"Thank you, Detective."
"One more thing, Ms. Hoshino. If the data does go public, I'd recommend contacting the affected individual immediately. They'll need to know before they find out from the internet."
"Of course."
The call ended. Aya set down her phone and stared at nothing.
Hana materialized with another coffee. "Still nothing?"
"Still nothing."
"Maybe that's good."
"Maybe."
But Aya's instincts screamed otherwise. Someone had gone to significant effort to steal specific information. They weren't just going to sit on it.
They were planning something
___
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