Work Text:
Penny nervously rubbed her right palm with her thumb. The bright League office lights were making it hard for her to focus. She made as much deliberate eye contact as she could take with Rika, who looked too friendly to be believed.
“It’s nice to see you, Penny. I appreciate you coming in.”
“I mean, I didn’t have much of a choice,” Penny replied, shrugging. “I can’t really run from the law. I’m sixteen.”
“That’s true, but I don’t think you need to worry just yet. I want to let you know right away that I’ve been talking to Geeta and we’re not going to lay down any severe punishments unless we feel like you’ve done something that genuinely warrants it. The League isn’t in the habit of ruining lives just because.”
“Okay. Thanks,” Penny replied, not feeling reassured.
“Of course.”
Rika leaned forward on her desk and clasped her hands together. She smiled, which made Penny even more tense.
“Okay, whatever, let’s drop the pretense,” Rika said, “How’d you do it? Tell me everything. I’m really curious ‘cause I helped build the LP system myself.”
Penny laughed a little and looked down at the floor.
“Well, you’re going to be really disappointed. It wasn’t very hacker-y.”
“That just makes me more curious.”
“Okay.”
She took a deep breath and focused back on Rika, hoping she didn’t look too much like a criminal.
“So like, I’d been wondering how the TM Machines across Paldea worked. I figured they were a bit like ATMs because they just transfer the LP right then and there, but there’s no physical cash. It’s not like I went out of my way to hack it, at least not at first.”
“Mhm.”
“But then one day, I was doing some training and I came in to heal my Pokemon at the Montenevera Pokemon Center, and I noticed they had this notepad with what looked like a login and password on it, so I waited until Nurse Joy turned around to help someone else and I took a picture.”
Rika pressed her hands against her face.
“Sweet Arceus. I might have guessed.”
“Uhh… So, there’s more. I wasn’t going to use the account or anything, just send it into the Pokemon League so you guys knew that someone like me could have stolen the password, but then the Team Starfall stuff happened and I realized I needed an incentive to get Juliana to help me take out the bases or it would be a whole lot of busywork for her out of the goodness of her heart, y’know? So I logged in on Paldea’s LP Bank website to see what I could find.”
Rika peeked out at Penny from between her fingers.
“What kind of access did you have?”
“I was an admin. I could make employee accounts, customer accounts, utility stuff, on and on. There were a bunch of troubleshooting tools in there. I probably could have gone through the logs and seen who exchanged materials for LP that day but I didn’t try.”
Rika let out a deep sigh and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“So yeah, like, I think you know where this is going,” Penny continued. “I made a utility account that I could get into just in case you guys regularly switch out the admin password, and then I made a script that logs into it during Montenevera busy hours and transferred small, reasonable amounts of LP into the utility account every so often so it looked like regular transactions made by people exchanging materials. I’m not sure how much it was exactly, but I only shut off that script like two days ago, so I definitely still have access and a lot of LP in my account.”
“I want to see it. Can you show me?”
Rika stood up and pulled a second beat-up rolling chair over so that Penny could sit down at her desk and access her computer.
“Okay…”
Penny sat down and pulled up the LP Banking website. She entered her credentials using Rika’s specialty mechanical keyboard, and just like she suspected, she was still able to get in.
“I’ll go from here, if that’s alright with you,” said Rika, reaching over to take control of the keyboard and mouse.
“No problem.”
Penny watched as Rika navigated the website for a moment in silence, clicking through various troubleshooting tools, scrolling through the logs, and investigating the details of the account.
After a minute or two, Penny couldn’t take it anymore and broke the silence.
“By the way, I just wanted to tell you… I’m really, really sorry about all this. I know it was stupid, it was just the only way I could think of to get rid of Team Star. I could have thought about it more and figured something else out and I just really regret-”
Rika put her hand on Penny’s shoulder.
“Listen. I know this looks bad on you, and this is not a normal situation for a sixteen-year-old to be in, but I really don’t think there’s anything for you to worry about at this point.”
“Really? Why not?”
“For one thing, you should never have been able to access that admin account, even if you used the information you found. Someone should have spotted the utility account when the transfers started. It looks like our system failed you, not the other way around.”
“That doesn’t change what I did.”
“That’s true, but you also didn’t take anything from the people who used the LP machine, just from the central account. It’s still not a good thing, but we can replace that LP. You didn’t share that admin login with anyone else, right?”
“No, definitely not.”
“Good. Is there anyone who could use your phone and see it in your photo library by accident?”
“No, it’s locked to my face and I don’t share my passcode with anyone.”
“Okay. Can you send me an email with the login information you found at the Pokemon Center as well as the login for your utility account? If you have the script you used for the transfers, go ahead and put that in as well.”
“Yeah.”
“Perfect. Let me know once you’ve sent that.”
Rika took her hand off Penny’s shoulder and returned to looking through the account. Penny pulled out her phone and started gathering the information.
“By the way, you’ve probably already guessed, but we’re gonna get rid of this utility account, so that information won’t work anymore. You’ll be getting new credentials though.”
Penny’s eyes widened. She stopped typing and looked up at Rika.
“Uhh, what?”
“It’s for the volunteer work you’re gonna be doing.”
“What volunteer work?”
Rika turned to look at Penny again and smiled.
“Well, it’s mandatory, so now that I think about it, calling it ‘volunteer work’ doesn’t really make sense. Let’s go with… ‘unpaid internship’.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense! I committed a serious crime!”
“Well, I mean, this is going to sound weird, but in this case, what you did actually shows that you could have a future in offensive cybersecurity, and as you can guess, we don’t have nearly enough security people in the League. We need people like you to make sure that the LP system can’t be broken by someone who isn’t willing to come in, confess to everything they did wrong, and give us all their login information like you did. The internship may not be optional, but the career path is. Do you want to give it a shot?”
Penny let out an incredulous laugh.
“Well, yeah, absolutely! I mean like… how…?”
“Believe it or not, this happens a lot in the industry. This is just the first time it’s happened to us.”
“Well, okay then.”
Rika stood up and held out her hand, prompting Penny to stand up as well. She shook it. Rika had a surprisingly firm grasp.
“Welcome to the team, kiddo.”