Akiko's HUD glowed faintly as she floated toward the marketplace. She was after knowledge. Network architecture, exploit paths, control layers. The scaffolding beneath the Yard's systems.

The market was alive with motion. Traders floated between stalls. Voices rose and fell. And somewhere in the noise, someone had what she needed.

She just had to find them.

Takuto stirred, warmth blooming at the base of her neck. Her HUD shimmered as a constellation of connection nodes bloomed across her vision, Yard traffic pulsing like stars across a digital sky.

Too much. Her breath caught. She gripped a handhold and hissed through her teeth, "Easy there."

The flood of data narrowed. Inventory logs, comms traffic, maintenance loops. All filtered down until only the anomalies remained.

One stood out.

A café on the edge of the market. A man in a cap, face shaded. A sleek datapad in his hands, pulsing with encrypted streams thick enough to choke her feed.

Her HUD highlighted the activity.

"Encryption detected. Decryption attempt would risk local alert."

Akiko frowned. Whoever he was, he had access. And defenses. Not the kind of man who handed out secrets.

But maybe not the kind who noticed someone watching either.

She scanned the flow of the crowd. How the man disappeared into it without trying. A ghost. Interesting.

With a soft breath, she let her magic shift her form. Her ears and tail vanished. Her suit shimmered, folding into neutral tones and a skintight civilian look. Clean, practical, forgettable.

She moved with the current until she reached the café, slipping into a nearby seat with practiced ease.

Plain clothes. Plain posture. Nothing that drew eyes.

A server drifted over, and Akiko ordered something light, a drink and snack. Enough to justify the seat. Not enough to slow her down.

She leaned back slightly, eyes half-lidded but alert. The man's fingers moved in smooth, practiced gestures over his datapad. His rhythm never faltered. Occasionally, his gaze flicked to something only he could see. HUD overlay, maybe.

"I can duplicate the technique," Takuto offered. "If you'd like me to process the access routines directly."

"No," she said immediately. "That's not the point."

She crossed her arms, jaw tight. The easy path was to let Takuto do it. To become a puppet hand guided by a better machine. Or worse, to let him overwrite her neural structure with a skillset she hadn't earned.

Akiko had spent enough of her life being bent into shapes someone else wanted. She wasn't going to trade one leash for another just because it had sleek UI.

"There has to be another way," she murmured. "Something between... memorization and mind control."

A pause. Then:

Proposal: Construct an intermediary layer.

An adaptive framework for progressive skill acquisition, interfaced with your neural strata. Not direct overwrite just assisted learning.

Milestone tracking. Pattern reinforcement. Real-time analysis.

"I would handle recall and load balancing. You do the learning."

Akiko blinked.

"A skill system."

"Yes. A system. I can even assign numerical feedback metrics. You seem... responsive to that kind of structure."

Akiko snorted. "You mean I'm a sucker for numbers."

"Accurate."

She smiled despite herself. The tension didn't leave, but it shifted, coiling into something tighter. Focused.

"Alright," she said. "Build it. But it's mine. I don't want shortcuts. I want a path."

"Understood. Syncing interface modules now."

A flicker passed through her vision. A sensation, faint and skeletal, threaded through the edges of her awareness.

Initializing cognitive scaffold...

Lines traced themselves in her peripheral thought. Not visuals exactly, but impressions, like the memory of a HUD from a dream she hadn't had. Minimal. Clean. Four nodes, dim and gray, nested in a circular array. One blinked faintly, a pulse syncing with her breath.

Skill Layer Initialized.

Category: Digital Systems Intrusion.

Status: Novice (0.03% milestone achieved).

The words weren't spoken. They just were, slotted into the architecture of her mind like they'd always belonged there. Not invasive, but present. A scaffold, waiting for use.

She rotated her head slightly, and the array followed. Not in front of her eyes, but anchored to her sense of orientation. Part of her spatial memory now. Not external.

Feedback loop is now active. Task-based reinforcement enabled.

Note: You may assign aesthetic preferences later. Default mode is "Function First."

Akiko exhaled. Her heartbeat felt slower, or maybe just steadier.

Her attention returned to the man in the café. Encrypted activity, dense and layered, routed through narrow local spikes. This wasn't passive observation. He was doing something active. Controlled.

For now, she didn't need to engage. Just observe.

Pattern. Posture. Timing. Weak points.

Let's see how careful you really are, she thought, lifting her drink with one hand while keeping the other ready to act.

No tail. No ears. No attention. Just another face in the crowd. But watching, always watching.

Akiko spent most of the first day simply watching.

Takuto handled the heavy lifting at first. Summarizing encryption basics, displaying quick-skim guides on public and private key systems, and trailing the man's path through the Yard's network. The crash course wasn't enough to make her a master, but it was enough to see patterns.

The man worked clean. Every connection encrypted. Every movement deliberate. But even the most careful left traces, and Takuto was designed to follow them.

Subskill Acquisition (Digital Systems Intrusion): Passive Forensic Mapping – 8.4% milestone achieved.

Cognitive tagging efficiency increased by 0.2%.

The System didn't praise. It just recorded. Quiet, relentless, honest. She liked that.

Through his wake, she mapped systems he accessed: a requisitions subserver here, a low-security inventory node there. Nothing critical, but revealing all the same. The breadth of his reach suggested something more than casual use. A data stash, maybe. Or a toolkit cache.

If I can find it, she thought, I might actually stand a chance of building something of my own.

Not yet. But one day. For now, she'd settle for borrowing someone else's lockpicks.

That meant getting closer.

Charm. Guile. A hint of calculated ignorance. She needed just enough mystery to spark interest without flashing her real intent.

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She smirked into her drink. Time to see how good she really was.

With a light push off the table, she drifted toward him, posture relaxed.

The persona she'd built was incomplete, based on hours of quiet observation and AI-fed insights. But it didn't need to be perfect. The rest, she could smooth out on the fly.

Her magic stirred as she neared, a gentle warmth settling in her chest. Not a spell, nothing overt, but a subtle charm laced into her movements and tone. Just enough to ease suspicion.

It was risky here. The Yard's systems weren't built for the odd harmonics magic could trigger. One ripple, and her presence could set off more than suspicion.

Let's hope you're not the jumpy type, she thought, stifling a grin.

She slid into the seat across from him, anchoring herself with one hand.

"Busy day?" she asked, voice casual, just a touch familiar.

He didn't look up. Fingers tapped the datapad with silent precision. When he finally glanced her way, his eyes were sharp, unreadable.

Akiko smiled faintly, not too friendly. "Looks like you're juggling quite a bit. Impressive setup."

His hands didn't stop. But something in his gaze narrowed.

Her HUD pulsed, a stream of encrypted data still flowing from his device, dense and complex. Takuto filtered noise from signal, feeding her subtle cues. Too dangerous to attempt a direct probe. But watching was safe. For now.

Subskill Acquisition (Digital Systems Intrusion): Passive Decryption Analysis – 12.1% milestone achieved.

"Just thought I'd say hi," she added, letting the tension breathe. "Not every day you see someone with that level of finesse."

He finally spoke, his tone measured. "And you are?"

She let the question linger in the air for a beat. Then: "Just an admirer of good work," she said smoothly. "And maybe someone who could benefit from a little insight."

He leaned back slightly, studying her more directly now.

Akiko met his eyes, calm and unreadable.

Her charm magic worked at the edges, softening the space between them without dulling his instincts. He was still calculating. Good. She didn't want him pliable. Just open.

She let the silence stretch, tension coiling just enough to spark curiosity.

Let him make the next move.

Once she had his attention, Akiko leaned into the rhythm.

Her gaze held his, voice steady and threaded with quiet intrigue. One hand gestured lightly to punctuate her words, drawing focus, creating comfort. It was a trick she'd honed on the streets: give them something to watch, and they'd never see what mattered.

Her other hand moved with practiced ease, fingertips brushing the edge of his datapad. A whisper of contact. Nothing obvious. Her charm magic worked in the background, lacing the moment with ease and trust.

He wouldn't flinch. Wouldn't even think to lock it down.

Takuto stirred at once.

"Connection established."

For all its encryption, the device was vulnerable now. Physical access was everything. Just as the Takuto's rapid-fire lessons had taught her, digital locks were irrelevant if the thief was already inside.

Her HUD lit up.

Windows opened in bursts. Command lines scrolled faster than her eyes could follow. Takuto surged forward, mapping architecture, probing access points, slipping through the defenses like silk through fingers.

Subskill Acquisition (Digital Systems Intrusion): Network Infiltration – 24.4% milestone achieved.

Neural memory cache expanded.

And Akiko smiled. Soft, engaged, and unbothered. Her voice never wavered. She told a story, light on details but rich with suggestion.

He leaned in slightly. Not suspicious, just intrigued. Weighing her, parsing intent.

Perfect.

"Data pathways mapped. Core storage access established. Decrypting auxiliary files."

Her neck burned. The device at her neck buzzed with heat, and sweat beaded faintly at her hairline. Too much load. Too fast.

Warning: Cognitive assist overload. Reducing throughput.

Hurry up, she thought, her tone inside far tenser than the words she continued to speak aloud.

Takuto kept going, relentless.

The edges of her suit near her spine shimmered faintly where the computation load concentrated. Barely visible in the café's lighting, but still a risk.

If he noticed, if his attention shifted even slightly, the whole play collapsed.

But Akiko didn't blink. She laughed lightly at his question, offering a half-answer that sounded more revealing than it was. Her fingers stayed still. Her gaze never wavered.

Keep him hooked. Keep him here. Just a little longer.

The warmth at her neck faded.

"Analysis complete. Server location identified. Compiled data accessible."

Takuto's final whisper barely left her thoughts before the café lights flickered—once, twice—and went dark.

A low murmur rose around her. Confused voices. Shifting shapes in the dark.

Akiko took her chance.

"Well, that's my cue," she said lightly, pushing off the table. She offered a polite nod toward the man, one he probably couldn't see, then drifted toward the exit.

Outside, the corridor lights steadied. Her pulse didn't.

The thrill buzzed beneath her skin. Half adrenaline, half the hum of victory. She had what she needed. The man's digital trail had led to a quiet corner of the Yard, a low-profile server node buried behind unmarked access.

And now she had the key.

A smirk tugged at her lips as she merged into the crowd.

Time for some old-fashioned sneaking.

Akiko moved with the flow through the marketplace, unhurried.

The station's lights dimmed gradually, an artificial dusk signaling shift change. It wasn't true night. Perhaps the Yard never slept. But rhythms softened. Conversations lowered. Footsteps slowed.

Her body knew this already. How to read a crowd's momentum, how to match it just enough to disappear. How to vanish between sightlines and let the world flow around her without resistance.

Note: Existing baseline mastery detected. No subskill tracking initiated.

The text ghosted across her vision as she turned down a narrower path.

That felt right. The System didn't waste energy reinforcing what she already was. It only scaffolded what she was still learning. What she hadn't mastered. An internal teacher, not a checklist.

She peeled away from the main lanes as the bustle thinned, slipping into the shadowed arteries of the Yard. Noise faded behind her, traders and salvagers replaced by the hiss of faulty lights and the distant clang of unseen machinery.

This part of her life didn't need augmentation.

Her HUD pulsed, arrow-point navigation glowing faintly in her periphery.

She found the alley.

Narrow. Grimy. The bulkheads stained with years of grease and wear. Neon signs flickered overhead, casting pale colors on metal walls. The air was dense with the scent of coolant and dust.

Takuto murmured in her thoughts.

"Destination confirmed. No significant activity detected in proximity."

She spotted the door. Unmarked, plain, deliberate. No signage. Just a manual handle and a faintly glowing access panel.

She paused, eyes scanning the shadows.

Nothing. No movement. No watchers.

Akiko pressed her palm to the panel. Takuto, already armed with the codes lifted earlier, slid through the system like silk through gears.

A soft chime. The light turned green. The hatch hissed open.

Akiko stepped through without hesitation, vanishing into the dim corridor beyond.

Inside, the lighting was sparse. Walls ribbed with exposed cables. Dust clung to everything. The air smelled of metal and warm circuitry. She moved silently, tail absent in her disguise but flicking in her thoughts.

Doors lined the hall. They looked heavy. Locked and definitely sealed. She passed them without pause.

Ahead, faint light spilled from a room.

The hum of machines thickened. Low voices. The staccato clack of keys. Static hanging in the air like tension.

She was close.

Akiko paused at the threshold.

The room beyond was a sprawl of flickering screens, cluttered stations, and repurposed tech. Workbenches overflowed with datapads, cooling rigs, and half-gutted servers. A heavy hum pulsed from the main rack in the corner.

People moved in the low light. Hackers. Brokers. Technicians. Their faces flickered with screen-glow, their focus fractured between chatter and code. The Yard's scavenger ethos seeped through the space. Function over polish, chaos barely restrained.

She drifted forward quietly, skimming the edges of the room, careful to stay unnoticed. Most voices blended into the background, mundane bits of workload and ops cycles.

But near the server rack, a conversation stood out.

"...too clean. Too fast," one murmured. "Doesn't leave a trace like the usual players."

"Corporate?" the other offered, uncertain.

"Doesn't match the patterns. It's freelance. Or something new."

Akiko's pulse ticked faster.

They were talking about her AI.

She kept moving, slow and smooth. No reaction. Just another background face.

"If it's on the Yard's net," the first said grimly, "it's a threat. We need to find it."

Her tail flicked. Not today.

She scanned the server rack. That was her goal, and now she had to move before they connected the dots.

She drifted low, slipping between stacked crates and uncoiled cables.

The hum deepened as she neared the central tower. She crouched, one hand bracing lightly on the server's casing. Takuto pulsed to life with a flicker of warmth.

"Connection established."

Subskill Progress (Digital Systems Intrusion): Network Infiltration – 35.4% milestone achieved.

"Give them something to chase," she whispered, barely audible. "Lead them where they want to go."

A progress bar lit in her HUD: data extraction climbing steadily. A second bar appeared just below it, filling faster.

A false trail. Layered misdirection. A breadcrumb path built to waste their time.

Subskill Acquisition (Digital Systems Intrusion): Tactical Deception – 56.5% milestone achieved.

Behind her, the operatives still talked. Quiet, but not quiet enough. The buzz of their voices pressed against her thoughts, a steady reminder that discovery was inches away.

Her HUD pulsed with a progress bar. Halfway. The infiltration code worked faster now that she had access to deeper protocols, but it still had to weave through unfamiliar systems.

She shifted her weight, flexing her fingers. Heat prickled through her suit as it managed the load. Not painful, but intense, like something distant and vast was thinking through her.

A flicker at the edge of her perception.

Not just pressure. Not just heat. A split-second sense of… elsewhere. Like her awareness had been stretched between here and another point in the system.

More notifications followed. Too many, too fast. Each one landing like a pebble in her chest.

[Uncatalogued event: signal echo exceeds normalized cognitive footprint.]

Skill Advancement (Digital Systems Intrusion): [ERROR: undefined layer]

...sync drift minimal. Integrity intact.

She blinked it away. Probably just feedback. Probably.

The message flickered once in her vision. Warped. Not broken, just out of alignment.

Digital Systems Intrusion – Rank Advanced: Adept

Neural reinforcement layer adjusted. Sync drift contained.

New functions unlocked:

— Predictive Routing Assist

— Adaptive Mask Layering

— Partial Thread Persistence

The cascade slowed. Faded. Silence returned.

Akiko hovered in the low gravity, her gaze still fixed on nothing. The soft glow of the HUD blinked once. Then again.

She frowned, lips tightening. She didn't know what half of that meant. Didn't like what the other half implied.

Another problem. Another mystery. One more thing to worry about later.

She shoved it into the box in her mind marked not now.

Then the first bar hit its final segment. A soft green glow blinked in her HUD.

"Data retrieved."

A breath later, the second bar followed.

"Decoy deployed. Misdirection sequence active."

Subskill Progress (Digital Systems Intrusion, Adept): Tactical Deception – 4.2% milestone.

Akiko exhaled slowly. Her uneasy thoughts settled.

"Good work," she murmured.

She tapped the edge of the server once, barely a gesture, then pushed off and drifted back into the room's periphery.

No alarms. No heads turned. Not yet.

What she'd taken would open new doors. What she'd left behind would buy her time.

And if they chased shadows through their own systems for the next few cycles?

Even better.

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