Welcome to Gaia! ::

As soon as I said "DCU", Yukio realized he'd inadvertently let it slip where he lived. "Uhhhh yeah, DCU, Destiny City University." There was no use hiding it now, he decided; may as well go all in. "I went there for about a semester, left because of stupid s**t, and I've been freelancing ever since. To be honest, I learned more from hacking and working contract programming gigs than I think I would have learned in their CompSci program." He chuffed out a small sharp laugh. "That's what I get for going to what's basically a liberal arts university."

Then it occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, I was also in Destiny City. "So yeah, I DJ around town pretty regularly – like I have places where I usually play. Like I play at Topline, Downtown, Neo but only on Nocturna night cause they're the only goth club in town, That Place, Power… So yeah, I get around as a DJ. Keeps me off the streets at night," he said, knowing that was a lie. As Spei of the Moon, he was out on the streets at night rather a lot.

"Um, don't tell me you live in Destiny City too?" he finally just came out and asked it.

"Oh, I, you know I didn't mean anything calling liberal arts out like I did." Yukio shook his head at the monitor and raised his hands. That was a stupid thing to have said to someone who was supposedly a friend, a peer even. Someone he kind of looked up to as a hacker. "You can tell I was CompSci, I have no sense of how to play nice with others."

So I did live here! That was an amazing coincidence. "I live right downtown, right in the thick of it all. So I get that, like why am I still here. This town is insane." He knew full well why he was still here: the Moon Knight thing. "I could have moved to San Francisco with my parents, but no, I had to stay here. I think it was the full ride at DCU, to be honest…" The full ride he wasted over a girl who decided she wanted an established DJ as a boyfriend, not some n00b. Bitter? No, not any more.

Which reminded him. "You'll have to come sometime when I'm spinning at Nocturna night – we get a really great crowd there, super chill." Quickly he pulled up his calendar on the main monitor. "I'm actually playing there in a couple of weeks, if you felt like coming into the city. I mostly spin old-school goth and industrial, but I throw in some emo too, mostly the more obscure shoegazer stuff. The locals don't seem to mind. Let me know if you want a pass, okay?"

Yukio breathed a sigh of relief; he hadn't pissed off his hacker buddy. One never knew how a liberal-arts major was going to react to what might have been perceived as a disparaging comment about their alma mater. "Living in your boss's basement? That's one hell of a cozy arrangement," he observed. "Working from home has its perks for sure, but I didn't know room and board was one of them, that's pretty rad." He hoped his typically dry, deadpan sense of humor came through over his mic.

The next comment surprised him a little. "Oh, awesome, great! Yeah, I'd love to have you at one of my gigs. Don't worry, you won't stand out – the usual crowd aren't fashion police, there's even a few who come in like street clothes. Hell, I don't even dress goth for these gigs, just a black t-shirt and black leather pants. And a hat. Just wear black and you'll fit in fine."

He'd have to clear it with the club manager, of course, but he never asked for perks apart from free drinks, so getting I comped for Nocturna should be no problem at all. "You'll have to get me a list of songs you dig so I can play them for you," he said with a nod, figuring he already had an impressive catalog of goth and darkwave and shoegazer music he regularly spun at Nocturna; it shouldn't be much of a challenge finding what I liked to dance to.

"Let's see, checking my schedule… Soooooo Thursday in a couple weeks is my next gig there. That work for you?"

"Glad it's gotten better for you," Yukio said, thankful his living situation wasn't as complicated as I's was. He couldn't conceive of having a single roommate, let alone living with an entire extended family. But it seemed to be working for I, so.

He snorted a soft laugh. "I dance, but not at jobs, and not really to goth or industrial – I'm more an EDM kind of DJ," he replied. "But a gig's a gig, and I like making the goth folks happy." Yukio typed the date and address of the Nocturna gig into a DM and sent it. "You won't miss me – tall, blue hair, top hat, MCR Black Parade t-shirt." This should be really interesting; he'd never met any of his hacker friends face-to-face, preferring as most of them did to keep their identities fairly anonymous. But he was looking forward to this meeting.

"The fly on the wall bit, yeah, that's what I do as well. It's easy to do as a DJ, cause you're either up in the booth spinning or you're in a corner with a drink. People-watching is the best spectator sport there is."

Yukio snickered lightly. "I hate pop music. Even though I sample that s**t and use it ironically in my own mixes. But yeah, EDM mostly, house and drum-n-bass too. And dubstep. Anything with a fat bass line and a good beat."

The convo briefly turned to the business at hand, and he quirked an eyebrow, even though I couldn't see it. "Government contractors seem to use the sketchiest security, in my experience. You'll have to tell me what you find, I'm dying of curiosity." It was true, they seemed to go, as most bureaucracies did, with the lowest bidder, the cheapest solution. That made his own work just that much easier.

He was about done for the night, though, at least hacking-wise. He'd cracked another contractor and got into DCU easily. Finding what he was looking for in their system, he adjusted a few grades, then carefully backed out. Now that he knew where everything was, he could easily and at his leisure go in and fake graduation information for himself.

"I love the ones who have hackers do their security, yeah," Yukio nodded at the monitor in agreement. "It really is more of a fun challenge." He'd already done some security work for a freelance client, building and training a system to stop people like him. Of course, they had no idea he was a hacker – he kept that information under his many, many hats.

He nodded at the monitor again. "Okay, I'll be looking forward to hearing from you tomorrow then." Leaning back against the kotatsu, he stretched, arms high over his head. "I should log too. I have stuff that needs to get done before morning." Like go out on patrol as Moon Squire Spei. It was even on his schedule, as 'play magical boy superhero'.

"Catch you later, I," he said, then disconnected the voice chat. Productive evening, and something to look forward to. Couldn't beat that.