Life for Alex settled into a comfortable rhythm. By day, he was the invisible janitor, mopping floors and fixing data ports.
By night, he was the mysterious Oracle, secretly selling his genius one "optimization patch" at a time.
His account on The Node was growing steadily, and he had already ordered the first few components he needed for his [Corrupted Logic Core].
The plan was working perfectly. Life was simple, quiet, and profitable.
One afternoon, this peaceful routine was interrupted by a loud, blaring alarm that echoed through the entire campus.
It wasn't the fire alarm; it was a deeper, more urgent sound. A "Glitch Alert."
Alex was in the middle of a very serious negotiation with a vending machine in the utility sector that had stolen his last credit.
The alarm made the machine vibrate, and his bag of chips finally dropped. "Ha! I win," he muttered, grabbing his prize.
His data pad buzzed with a priority message from Fitz.
< Glitch Alert. Utility Sector, near Grid 7. Stay clear. Strikers on the way. You're on post-incident cleanup. Don't be a hero. Just bring a squeegee. These things always leave slime. >
Alex wasn't worried. Low-level Glitches like this were fairly common near the academy. The massive amount of artifact energy concentrated on the island sometimes caused reality to get a little thin in places, like an old t-shirt wearing through.
These small tears were used as live-fire training exercises for the students. It was a chance for them to fight a real monster in a controlled environment.
For Alex, it was a chance to see the academy's best and brightest in action from the front row.
And by front row, he meant hiding behind a large trash receptacle with his cleaning cart, ready to mop up whatever was left.
He made his way toward Grid 7, a drab area of concrete buildings and power conduits. From a safe distance, he could see the Glitch.
To a normal person, it looked like a shimmering heatwave, a spot in the air that made the world behind it look wobbly and distorted, like looking through a glass of water.
Activating [The Debugger], Alex saw what it really was: a messy, jagged tear in the fabric of the world's code.
It was an open wound, and through it, chaotic, nonsensical data from another dimension was leaking through. As he watched, the tear pulsed, and something pushed its way out.
It was an Aberration. A real one. It was about the size of a large dog, and it looked like a coyote made of broken glass and pure anger.
Its body shimmered and glitched, parts of it fading in and out of view. It let out a snarling hiss that sounded like radio static.
A moment later, a team of three Striker students arrived on the scene. They were C-Ranks, puffed up with pride at being chosen for the mission.
One had spiky red hair and gloves that glowed with heat. Another was a tall girl with a large, tower shield. The third was a skinny guy who had electricity crackling around his hands.
They struck dramatic poses, clearly enjoying the attention of the small crowd of onlookers that had gathered at a safe distance.
"Stand back, citizens!" the red-haired one shouted, pointing a finger at the creature. "We'll handle this beast!"
Alex, munching on his chips behind the trash can, rolled his eyes. "It's a digital dog, dude. Settle down."
What followed was not a display of skill and precision. It was a complete mess.
The fire user started by launching a series of flashy fireballs. He was aiming for the creature, but his control was terrible.
The first fireball sailed over the monster's head and left a big, black scorch mark on a nearby wall. The second one fell short and melted a patch of asphalt.
Alex watched the code behind the attacks. The student was using way too much power, wasting at least eighty percent of his energy on heat that just went into the air.
The monster, annoyed by all the noise, charged. The girl with the shield stepped forward. "I'll hold it!" she yelled.
She slammed her massive shield into the ground. A wall of blue energy flared to life. It was a good shield, but it was three times bigger than it needed to be.
The small, dog-sized creature ran right into it with a thump. It was like stopping a charging hamster with a bank vault door. Alex could see her energy draining rapidly to maintain the oversized barrier.
"Now! Attack it now!" she grunted, clearly straining.
The electricity user started shooting little bolts of lightning. They were fast, but he wasn't aiming for anything specific.
The bolts zipped around, hitting the creature on its back, its side, its tail. They made it yelp and hiss, but they weren't doing any real damage.
Alex sighed and took another chip. From his point of view, with [The Debugger] active, the solution was painfully obvious.
The creature's front right leg was flickering more than the rest of its body. It was a structural weakness in its code, a digital weak pinot.
A single, well-placed, low-power strike there would cause its entire leg to collapse, making it an easy target. These three Strikers could have ended the fight in ten seconds with minimal effort.
Instead, they were running around, shouting attack names, wasting energy, and generally making a circus out of a simple extermination job.
They weren't fighting smart; they were just throwing power at the problem and hoping it would go away. It was like watching someone try to put out a candle with a fire hose.
Eventually, after several more missed fireballs and a lot of wasted electricity, they managed to corner the creature.
They all attacked at once. A fireball, a shield bash, and a lightning bolt all hit the monster at the same time. There was a loud POP, a flash of light, and the creature dissolved into a puddle of black, slimy goo.
The students cheered, high-fiving each other. They had won.
Alex shook his head slowly. They hadn't won. They had just been less incompetent than the monster.
He pushed his cleaning cart out from behind the trash can, the wheels making a sad, rattling sound. The show was over. Now the janitor had to come clean up the mess.
As he started squeegeeing the black slime into a container, a new idea began to form in his mind. He looked at the scorch marks on the wall, the melted asphalt, and the tired, panting students.
All of this chaos, all of this damage, all of this wasted energy... to deal with one little monster.
There was a need here. A gap in the market, so to speak. Everyone was focused on being a "hero," on flashy moves and big explosions. No one seemed to care about being clean, quiet, and efficient.
What if there was someone who could handle these threats without all the drama? Someone who could slip in, analyze the problem, exploit the weakness, and eliminate the threat before anyone even knew what was happening. No wasted energy. No collateral damage. No grandstanding.
Like a surgeon, not a butcher.
The idea solidified in his mind, clear and sharp. The academy had its Strikers. The Node had its Oracle. But the world needed something else. It needed an exterminator for reality's pests.
He finished cleaning the last of the slime, the pavement now spotless. He looked back at the C-Rank heroes who were now signing autographs for a couple of first-years.
They were getting all the glory. But Alex knew he could have done their job in a fraction of the time, with a fraction of the effort.
A small, dangerous smile played on his lips. His quiet life was about to get a little more complicated. He needed a new persona. And a mask.