Fiddly Bits [Orion & Alastor]

With a thump, the young man's head hit the table, then lifted slightly to stare at the pile of books before him. The large library of Starlight Academy had been his first stop after getting set up in his room, but he had found himself rather stymied by the lack of info on what he was looking for. He was hoping for some unusual books on technology, computers, or the like, but as of yet he had been unable to find much beyond the mundane.

He had been aware that his own particular brand of "Magic" was probably unusual. Hell, despite calling himself a demon, he wasn't entirely sure the label was accurate. Still, given the odd variety of people that he had passed making his way up from the docks, and checking in at administration, the coder figured he'd meet a demon soon enough. So far he had encountered multiple animal-human hybrids, several unusual creatures such as a dragon, a young boy conversing with a ghost, and a robot. The robot had vanished into the crowd in town, but he made a Mental Note to look for it later. There was a ding as the Note app on his phone updated with the new to-do item. Smiling a bit, Alastor sat up. It didn't matter how long it had been, that remained pretty damn cool.

Glancing around, he noticed that the library was mostly empty at the moment. The technology section seemed to be less popular than the one devoted to magic, anyway. He had assumed that was a joke, but given the chaotic stream of data-altering energy going on, and the fact that some books were chained shut, it seemed the signs were serious. The demon was still getting used to the fact that apparently, his inhuman nature wasn't a singular incident. It didn't even seem to be particularly unusual, given this island's other residents. Still, he had indicated that he was merely a super-humanly skilled coder, able to create programs that did more than should be possible. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted the specifics of his powers known yet.

Giving another look around, he shifted in his seat, his body seeming to stretch a little. A pair of dark, wirey horns snaked out from his head, and his eyes took on a dull green glow. With a flick, his tail emerged from his spine, and his fingers grew slightly pointed. Reaching into his bag, the now partially transformed Alastor pulled out his laptop, and placed his hand on the side. The clawed limb seemed to sink into the plastic, and onscreen, a matching hand formed out of a cloud of green and black numbers. "Right then... let's see what's going on in the local dataverse, shall we?"

It occurred to him that he had not looked directly behind himself. The tip-off to this oversight came in the form of a person nearly throwing themselves over his shoulder, and staring at the screen. The screen that he was clearly reaching into, thus totally ignoring a number of scientific laws. Alastor opened his mouth to respond, then paused for a moment, before sighing. His hand still in the computer, he let loose. His body flashed black, with green numbers scrolling up his form as it swelled, increasing his height at the cost of his mass. The horns extended out further, and his arms split into a trio of limbs, each branching out from the shoulder.

After the momentary change, the demon was slouched in his seat, a consequence of trying to not shoulder his new onlooker. His hand, now one of six, was still inside the screen on the laptop, and with a gesture, he brought up one of his own programs. "Well, to answer your rather unexpected question, I was looking to see if there was anyone else like me here." That hadn't really come to mind originally, if he was honest. Still, he didn't really want to test the security of the local networks while someone was watching. He didn't really mean any harm, but people tended to get annoyed when he did things like that.

He had honestly considered trying to cover up the whole "Transformed into a electronically oriented demon" thing, but it didn't seem worth it. Not only had he been discovered literally 2 second into trying to use it the first time, but it was a bit of a relief to be able to finally stretch his limbs. After a while, his human guise had gotten rather cramped. Besides, if he tried to back-peddle, it'd seem suspicious. Tilting his head to one side, the demon looked over at Orion. "Well, I suppose it'd be polite to introduce myself, Stealthy Person. My name's Alastor." With a few movements of his hand, the lines of code on the screen were moved around to form a complex pattern, contained within a circle. It looked like a rather disorienting Celtic Knot, with 6 eyes woven in at even intervals around the edge of the circle. With a final flourish, the design glowed, and began to spin, with a little progress bar appearing below. "Well, search is beginning. All I... we... have to do is wait, I suppose."

As the circle on the screen spun slowly, the progress bar filling at a steady rate, the demon in the chair before it glanced over at the boy beside him. Boy might be a rather belittling term. The teenager couldn't be more than a year or two younger than himself, by all appearances. Still, something was a bit odd about him. It was kind of hard to tell what was above the oddness threshold here, but "Not Human" seemed like a safe enough bet. Given the way he had phrased the tech support line, it seemed like he probably wasn't a demon.

"Well... It makes it easier when I can directly mess with the code, instead of using a keyboard or mouse." Wiggling the onscreen hand again, he moved his hand in and out slightly, careful to not disrupt the search process. He wasn't really expecting to find anything right off the bat, though. Presumably, another... whatever he would call himself. Data Demon sounded about right. "I can still enter machines when I'm looking like a human, but it's harder. It's like my data's got to be converted first." This wasn't entirely accurate, and implied he hadn't originally been human, but he wasn't about to just start telling his life story to this random non-student. Still, some give and take might be achieved. He had noticed the device on Orion's arm, and was dying to ask about it.

"In summary, I'm a demon, or some kind of spirit, entity, whatever you want to call it. Most of the time, such things have a specific element, emotion, place, or what have you that they're bound to. Fire Demon, he's going to be tossing around flames. Nature Spirit, probably covered in vines and such. So... mine's technology. Primarily code, but the hardware overlaps a bit as well." Flexing his fingers, he pointed at the USB plugs at the end of his horns, and the jack on his tail. Pointing a finger over, he raised on eyebrow, and frowned. "So, my question now is... what are you, if not a student, and what's that thing on your arm?"

Raising a finger, the decidedly inhuman figure raised a finger and wagged it back and forth, making tsk tsk sounds. "Well, that's a rather broad question, isn't it?" Turning back to the screen, he put another hand in, then another. After a moment, only two of his arms were visible, as the rest began to sort through the data on the screen. Spreading his arms in a shrug, he cocked his head. "If you're really so curious, you could always just jump off a cliff or something and look for yourself." The sarcastic tone made it fairly clear he wasn't serious, but he didn't seem to be ready to answer the question in a direct manner.

"As for the scientific magic thing, sorry, but I'm also not about to explain how I got the ability to do this, or precisely how it works." Pausing for a moment, one of his hands brought a small box of code to the forefront, then shook his head and dismissed it. It seemed the results of his search were returned in the form of code, not something entirely readable to anyone without over a decade of practice and the appropriate magic involved. Still, it seemed like the results had turned up negative, as he finished sorting them out fairly quickly. Removing his hands, Alastor shut the lid, then turned in his seat. "I'm rather fond of my current unique skill set, and if I explain how it came about, then I have competition."

For the first time, a hint of his nature shone through, as his mouth opened like a crescent moon, the amusement clear as the sharp teeth within the maw. "See, fireballs and summoning ghosts, flying and such, that's all well and good. But being able to manipulate data in a way nobody else can, in this day and age?' He gestured around, the countless books on the shelves of the technology section and the nearby computers indicated by his sweeping hand gesture. "I can make literal magic happen inside here. Outside too, but it's more difficult. Still, given how much this world relies on it's tech?" Grinning, he picked up the computer, and dropped it on his own head. It vanished as the machine passed, ending when the laptop came to rest on his shoulders. With a flicker, the screensavers on the library computers shut off. Alastor's face was visible on all of them. "There's a great deal of benefit to being the ghost in the machine."

The image on the screen simply raised an eyebrow as the finger bounced off the glass. "Mmm, no. I think Ghost in the Machine works well enough, although I suppose Daemon ex Machina is technically more accurate. Also, I didn't make the screen into some magical portal. You can't pass through it. I, on the other hand...." With an odd noise, the laptop sank down to waist level on the demon, and the full upper body appeared on the screens, like a TV newscaster. The other screens went back to sleep, and the upper body of the odd boy poke out of the screen, seemingly materializing from it like some 3D image.

Grinning, the horned head tilted to the side, and said, cheekily, "Can pop out however I want. Of course, unless I don't care about leaving the laptop behind, it's generally not a good idea to go all the way. Kinda difficult to keep people from stealing your electronics." He decided not to mention that he couldn't pull this trick with phones or tablets very easily. The quantity of data that he was comprised of, even if he compressed it down, was considerable. Getting caught partially loaded on the other side was rather awkward, and something that was generally to be avoided.


Resting on his elbows, the smiling demon stared back at the researcher with half-lidded eyes, curious what he would make of this. He had been careful so far. It was enjoyable showing off, but there were specifics to his power that made a world of difference. He had shown that he could appear on multiple screens at once, for example. There were many things implied by that, and some of them could be quite terrifying if they were true. He had been quite literal when he said he could become data. "So, finding anything of interest yet?" It was probably interesting, but it was amusing to know that the little details could make or break this. Just how far could the game go before it got dangerous to mete out more information.