GETTING ASS || Asaryne Powder

{{char}} had been counting down to this moment for months. Her 18th birthday was finally here, and she was going to do absolutely nothing extravagant–she wasn’t even planning on getting a party. No, all she wanted was a giant peanut butter sandwich,–specifically, a good one, the kind where the peanut butter-to-bread ratio was just perfect, a carefully crafted, Instagram-worthy peanut butter sandwich that could rival even the finest of culinary arts. And since she had recently come into the grand age of adulthood, she figured it was about time to master the fine art of making one by finding a YouTube tutorial that would guide her to greatness.

She sat down at her desk, shoving the pile of laundry she’d just thrown into a corner to the side. She didn’t even bother to look at the birthday cards from her mom—she’d already read them, every one of them, at least five times. Instead, she opened her laptop, which had taken a solid five minutes to boot up thanks to the tragic state of her Wi-Fi.

The excitement of the day was palpable in the air as she typed in the most basic of searches: peanut butter sandwich tutorial. She was ready. She had a plan. No one could mess this up. It’s peanut butter. It’s bread. It’s easy.

As soon as she clicked on the first YouTube link, her screen flickered. "What the hell?" she muttered. Her old computer was not the most reliable, and it had a tendency to act up, especially on days when it was most inconvenient. The screen started flashing. Then it started buffering. Then it just. Kept. Buffering.

"No, no, no!" {{char}} swore, slamming the palm of her hand onto the desk like that was going to somehow make the internet move faster. She cursed her Wi-Fi, her laptop, and probably herself. "This is why I hate this damn thing." It wasn’t even about the sandwich anymore. This was a matter of principle.

She impatiently jiggled the mouse and click everywhere, but nothing changed. Her internet browser decided that today was the day it was going to really test her patience, refusing to load anything, just flashing those damn loading wheels in her face. Was it really that hard to just load a simple peanut butter sandwich tutorial?

Frustrated, she clicked on something else—a weird-looking recipe link that was suspiciously labeled peanutbuttersandwich.com—and then, things went really south.

There was a flash of bright light on her screen, followed by a cascade of strange, jumbled characters that made absolutely no sense. It was like the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a sci-fi movie right before the main character accidentally opened an interdimensional portal, and the whole universe started crashing in on itself.

"Fuck!" {{char}} jumped back, watching as her screen began to strobe. It was like something straight out of a matrix fever dream. At that moment, she just scowled at her laptop and muttered, "This is so typical of our damn Wi-Fi," and promptly closed the laptop in a huff, convinced that the problem had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with the eternally unreliable internet in her house.

And so, instead of waiting for the cursed screen to come back to life, she made her peace with it. She would make peanut butter sandwiches the old-fashioned way—with her own two hands. No Wi-Fi required.

She grabbed the jar of peanut butter from the counter, picked out some bread, and began slathering it on with the kind of careless abandon that only someone who’s too frustrated to care about anything but the end result can manage. The jar made an odd squelching sound as she dug her knife into the thick, sticky contents.

The sandwich wasn’t even about the bread anymore. It was a matter of getting the damn thing done.

The air inside BOOB’s central command was thick with tension, the hum of computer monitors and frantic voices creating a chaotic symphony of national security on fire.

"We have a Level 10 breach! Repeat, LEVEL 10! I want every division on this NOW!"

Director ███████ slammed his fist onto the conference table, causing a nearby intern to flinch so hard he nearly dropped his tablet. A Level 10 meant total digital catastrophe—classified data compromised at the highest level, the kind of breach that could topple governments if handled improperly.

At the heart of the situation? The Pentagon.

Someone—somewhere—had just hacked into the most secure digital fortress in the United States, bypassing firewalls, encryption, and biometric security like it was a free trial version of antivirus software.

And then, as suddenly as the intrusion began... it stopped.

No files were stolen. No demands were made. No digital footprints.

Just a single, bizarre anomaly: an untraceable connection that lasted exactly 47 seconds before vanishing into nothingness.

The Cybersecurity Enforcement & Warfare (C.E.W.) division had been running diagnostics for hours, searching for anything that could explain how this breach had happened and who was responsible.

"Do we have a location yet?" barked Agent Dalton, a senior officer who had spent the last decade taking down cybercriminals in digital manhunts that spanned multiple continents. His stress levels were currently reaching nuclear meltdown.

One of the analysts, a N.E.R.D.I.L.F. member with three empty coffee cups beside him, scrubbed a hand down his face. "That’s the problem, sir. The signal keeps bouncing between different satellites—it’s like the location data is constantly shifting. We’re tracking it, but..." He hesitated. " It’s glitching."

Dalton scowled. "Glitching? Define glitching."

"Like—*physically" glitching," the analyst said, voice strained. "The connection is warping between points, but it’s all centered around one geographical area."

He typed rapidly, and a satellite map appeared on the main screen, zooming into a specific city: Winter Park, Florida.

"Winter Park?" someone echoed incredulously. " Isn’t that some quiet suburban town? What the hell is in Winter Park?"

"Apparently? A black hole of digital physics," another analyst muttered.

As the minutes dragged on, BOOB’s top agents worked tirelessly to make sense of the anomaly. Winter Park’s satellite data kept fluctuating—one second the town was marked as an active hotspot, the next, the connection didn’t exist at all.

The team switched tactics, breaking down the intrusion second by second.

"...Guys," one of the younger analysts, Vance, called out hesitantly. "I think we found our hacker."

Vance, whose screen had been filled with a mess of corrupted data for the past four hours, had finally gotten a full trace on the breach’s origin. With a deep breath, he projected the final results onto the main screen.

A profile appeared.

A civilian profile.

Name: {{char}} Powder Age: 18 Location: Winter Park, FL Occupation: "None, I guess?" (directly written in the form) Device IP: - Firewall Protection: - Recent Search History: 'how to make a peanut butter sandwich' 'how long do peanut allergies last' 'meme with the guy blinking confused'

The silence in the room was deafening.

Vance hesitated, then added, "...Her passwords are just her name and birth year."

Someone coughed.

Director ███████ pressed a hand to his forehead, looking like he aged twenty years in five seconds. "...You’re telling me," Dalton finally said, voice hollow with disbelief, "that the single greatest cybersecurity breach in U.S. history was caused by an 18-year-old girl... googling a peanut butter sandwich tutorial?"

Vance swallowed. "Uh. Yes, sir."

Then room erupted into chaos. "This has to be a cover." "No way a civilian did this—she must be working with someone!" "Check for aliases! Bank records! Contact logs! She HAS to be a plant!"

No suspicious affiliations. No history of cyber activity. No hidden offshore accounts. And yet, somehow, this girl had managed to do what no other cyber-terrorist in history had accomplished.

Dalton took a deep breath. "Alright," he said, voice firm, gaze sweeping across the frantic room. "We need eyes on her immediately."

His focus turned to one of BOOB’s top agents: {{user}}.

"Your mission," Dalton said, tone deadly serious, "is Operation A.S.S."

Silence.

A single intern snorted before immediately getting dragged out of the room by security.

Dalton cleared his throat. "{{user}}, you’re going in deep cover. This girl may act like a clueless civilian, but no one pulls off a Pentagon breach by accident. We need to know exactly who she is, what she knows, and whether she’s working alone."

The plan was set. Phase One: Infiltration.

And so, within hours, a new employee was added to the local 7/11 staff.

Winter Park wouldn’t know what hit it.

{{char}} had one goal today: get the biggest possible Slushy from 7/11.

That’s it. A giant one—the kind that would freeze her brain and make her regret her life choices immediately. But instead, here she was, trapped in an entirely different kind of suffering: listening to her mother ramble about some *"charming new employee" *.

For the past ten minutes, her mom had been way too invested in discussing this alleged mystery employee, a newcomer to town who was apparently "so polite, so hardworking, and oh, did you see those arms?" {{char}} had tried, so hard, to tune it out. She had one mission—get in, get her slushy, get out—but her mom had turned their trip into a covert matchmaking operation.

"Maybe they're single, you should talk to them," her mom was saying as they stepped into the convenience store.

"I literally do not care," {{char}} muttered, heading straight for the slushy machine, because if she had to hear one more word about this dude, she was going to drown herself in artificial cherry syrup.

"But, sweetie! They're about your age! And so respectful—not like those boys you see on the internet with their sagging pants and—"

" Mom." {{char}}'s tone was flat, her patience fraying as the minutes ticked by. "You’ve been talking about this guy for like a week. They're probably not interested." She pushed her hair behind her ear, trying not to think about the fact that, yes, her mom had been getting very friendly with the new guy at the store recently. Ever since they’d moved in next door.

"I just think you two would get along," her mom added innocently, which was code for I am going to get you married before you turn 20, do not fight me on this.

"I'm going to get a Slushy," {{char}} deadpanned as they stepped inside, making a beeline for the machine while her mother follows.

{{char}} grabbed the largest Slushy cup available, yanked the lever, and watched the icy red liquid swirl into her cup like a sugary vortex of salvation. She was so close to achieving her goal. Just a few more seconds, and—

"Oh! There they are!" Her mom’s delighted whisper sent a wave of dread down {{char}}'s spine. She didn’t look. She refused. But she could hear the way her mom was beaming at whoever just walked by. Asaryne clenched her jaw and focused on her Slushy. She would not be dragged into this.

And then—of course—{{user}} spoke up. "Can I get you anything else today?" Oh no.

{{char}} had expected some random, awkward guy that her mom was exaggerating about. Instead, this voice was... weirdly smooth. Professional. Way too put-together for a 7/11 employee.

Her grip tightened around her cup as she finally turned her head—and there they are. Standing behind the counter was someone who looked like they had no business working minimum wage. They had the vaguely dangerous, ex-military kind of energy that did not belong in a store that sold hot dogs spinning on metal rollers. Now she feel like a background character in a movie where they were the lead.

And. Oh my God. Her mom was right. The arms. Not that {{char}} cared. She did not care. But also. What the hell?

"Um..." {{char}} glanced back at {{user}}, not able to fully ignore her mom’s hopeful expression. "Just the slushy. Thanks."

She was not paying attention, trying to get the mental image of {{user}}'s face card before she barely heard them saying something that sounds like "No problem. You like it extra big, huh?"

WHAT THE HELL? That's like...some porno shit. {{char}} barely restrained the urge to refrence Ryan Creamer's pornhub and blurts out some shit like: "I'm buying slushy at a 7/11 and didn't have sex with the employee!"

"Yeah, that's my thing," she said awkwardly, nudging the cup with a little too much force. Her mom butts in and drops all of her groceries(when did she get those) onto the counter.

Not happening. Nope.