The Demon Slayer Corps Initiative

Lunch Break

Lunchtime eventually rolled around- the closest that the students would get to a break. It was amusing how hunger could effortlessly throw all human reasoning out the window and turn even the most cheerful and patient of personalities into starved monsters.

With a wistful look in his eyes, Tanjiro glanced to the potato and beef korrokes wrapped in fresh lettuce leaves, nestled neatly inside his bento- a classic that Tanjiro's mother, Kie Kamado, always packed for him towards the end of the school week. Winter was beginning to roll around the corner, and it wouldn't be long before he would begin to find tofu in somehow still-piping hot miso soup, intermixed with soft carrots and natto beans that would break upon merely poking them with his chopsticks.

Tanjiro then turned to Nezuko, who was beaming from ear to ear, her glittering pink eyes shining like precious, freshly polished gemstones. Her mouth was practically flooding at the appetizing sight of rice served with perfectly sliced and fried chicken, the assortment of ingredients all doused in tonkatsu sauce and sesame seeds.

The beasts deep within their stomachs were demanding a sacrifice, and they chose to feed it.

Zenitsu had brought a rather simple meal of salmon daikon, which he was quite disappointed in, while Inosuke was already gobbling down even the last crumbs of his tempura shrimp. Kanao was the only one with table manners at the moment, drinking her ramune normally at the circular black patio they were sitting at. A cool breeze was overhead, the clear sky bringing forth unobscured, warm rays of sun.

A gentle afternoon to enjoy with those he loved- just how he liked it.

Merely just moments later, Nezuko had practically inhaled the meal that their mother packed for her and was soon seated crisscross on the ground, her unzipped pale pink duffel bag sprawled out on the ground in front of her. Scattered out on the ground and flooding from the practically bulging school bag were a plethora of folders, notebooks and loose, crumpled papers with illegible notes and writing on them, as well as a couple of pens and scattered sticky notes. Students began to gasp and stare in awe as she brought out the laptop she had ,somehow, miraculously won in a bet a year ago, the silver case covered in miniature colorful scented stickers that Takeo, Shigeru and Hanako had designed for her.

A signature act of kindness from younger siblings- hackers always had stickers on their computer. It was a quintessential rule of the creed, after all.

Almost instantly after she installed multiple wires entwining around the legs of the tables to the multiple outlets surrounding her, small holographic interfaces began to formulate themselves into existence, their mystical green and blue glows depicting multiple images and lines of hexadecimal code next to scripted commands and countless lines of input code. Her fingers practically danced across the keyboard, each movement flawless, flaunting the grace and experience of a knowledgable schoolgirl stepping into her primary domain.

"At the rate you're typing, you might just get carpal tunnel," Zenitsu remarked under his breath.

Nezuko merely hummed in reply as students, awestruck, began to surround her as she lifted her hand to scroll across the many interfaces surrounding her. "Quantum interface prototype," she explained, unfazed. "It's nothing to be proud of- it's a work in progress. Different from a Quantum computer- more practical, less expensive. Don't tell Professor Obanai I stole the leftovers from his lab."

Kanao tilted her head. "How do you plan on dissecting the program to pieces this time?"

"I'm planning on planting a backdoor to confirm and repair the syncing issue between the two Q-Son web consoles required to properly input our grades using the school network," Nezuko replied. "This will save the teachers a metric crap ton of both time and energy in the long run. First, I have to breach the multiple firewalls without being recognized as an intruder in their security, which will  be a challenge that proves increasingly difficult if they possess higher levels of security such as biometrics or two factor text-code authentication. Not even an SQL injection chain will be able to bring down that specific database once the external presence is identified."

"Wouldn't that get us in trouble-" Zenitsu began before he was rather rudely cut off.

"I don't care, stop talking," Nezuko replied rather bluntly. "The teachers refused my help, so I'm taking matters into our own hands. Our grades aren't going to input themselves, and this issue isn't going to fix itself."

"Couldn't you just hack straight into the thing or whatever?" Inosuke asked, to which Nezuko sighed in exasperation.

"Yeah, it's not that simple. Like I said, I can't let them discover any external presence while I'm rummaging around and about in their network, lest I want to trigger every alarm and send law enforcement wailing in my direction for a minor cybersecurity offense," she grumbled before biting her lip. "I could consider obfuscating a smokescreen first to buy me more time to fix the errors via the copy paste method... before installing a Unix shred command directed at the corrupted files... but I highly doubt that command would be properly issued on their engine."

As she continued to make strange swiping and scrolling motions across the interfaces while simultaneously typing on the keyboard with one hand, a robotic female voice piped up from seemingly around the entire school and the computer simultaneously: "Perhaps the best course of action is that you revert back to the main console and install a R.A.T. into their server to breach the more discreet firewalls- that way, you can implement a backdoor without their knowledge and issue a C2 command instead to de-poison the code."

Many of the students jumped out of their seats, and almost instantly, murmuring and whimpering could be heard.

"Ghost!" one student cried.

"Excuse me, how dare you. I am most certainly not an urban legend, nor am I a supernatural unidentified entity whose properties are unexplainable via known scientific accounts, and therefore I shall take personal offense to that insult until you apologize," the disembodied, robotic voice replied flatly. Nezuko shrugged and giggled sheepishly. "Atsuko is an AI system implemented into my personal device. Her basic functions include a hacking kit to exploit and gain access to basic functions in basic lines of code- at the basic level, she can gain access to electricity and water systems, turning on and off the lights, appliances and faucet at will- she can even play personal selections of music. I've given her root privileges of all the appliances in the Kamado household... and I may or may not have done the same with the school campus."

Tanjiro gave another groan internally.

They were going to be in so much trouble by the time the faculty finds out there's a talking "ghost" installed into the school... by his little sister, no less.