Eternal's Hack (A Story)

The bitter wind whipped the young girl’s hair as she trudged down the narrow cement pathway to her bus stop. The sky was gray and overcast, and wisps of clouds had started to dart across it like frantic grey sparrows. Somewhere near her, a bird chirped sweetly, soon becoming accompanied by the whole flock. She could just make out their blurred silhouettes as they glided through the sky in an elegant V-shaped formation. 

Other girls were standing in the dusk, their fingers flying as they texted fixedly on their smartphones. Giggling behind cupped hands, they plugged in their neon-color earphones, not minding her- though she was just a year younger than them. 

Her name was… well, let’s just refer to her as Girl.

She peeked at the phone screens of the two older girls, her eyes squinting subtly to see what they were looking at. The phones were much too bright to read in the early dusk, so she gave up and adjusted her frayed backpack strap. The awkward silence was heavy on her shoulders.

Finally, Girl spotted the bright headlights of her school bus piercing the dimness. It pulled up in a cloud of rubble and dust, cloaked in the thick, unpleasant odor of rubber, and… she sniffed. Was that vegetable oil? 
Girl crinkled her nose in disgust, and climbed quickly aboard. 
A few quick stops later, her friend boarded the bus in a blast of freezing air.

"Hey!" Friend chirped, plopping down on the faded blue bus seat. After a moment of easy silence, Girl whipped out her phone so that Friend could play AJ Jump on it. 
Without a warning, the cheery music blasted across the bus. Girl blushed and quickly snatched the phone out of Friend's hand, switching the volume onto mute with the tap of a finger. Sighing in relief at the quick save, she handed the phone back.
"Phew, that was close," Friend muttered under her breath. She clicked 'START' with a deft tap of her finger. 
Girl watched as Friend started tilted the phone slightly so that the pixelated kangaroo could jump from platform to platform. A few of the them crumbled away beneath the kangaroo as it climbed easily through the sky. 
If only life were that simple. 
The bus ground to a halt again and the rumble of chatter drifted through the door like a wave.

Girl’s eyes widened as she watched the “popular” kids strut up the bus staircase, each with a stylish leather backpack slung over one shoulder. They were all cupping iPhones to their ears and discussing things that bored Girl to tears.

“Hey, girl! I started using this amazing new hair product!”

“OMG, really? What’s it called?”

Girl shuddered, leaning against the seat in boredom and folding her heads behind her head to form a cushion.

Suddenly, Friend looked up from her game and dropped the phone as if it were aflame, her jaw hanging wide open. Girl picked it up and brushed specks of dust off of the cloth case in a few deft strokes, shooting Friend a questioning look. Friend's mouth hung agape as she pointed a shaky finger at Girl. She leaned forward, still unbelieving, and whispered," Look! You're... glowing!"
Girl set her phone down on her lap and peered down at her arm, afraid of what she would see. Her skin was dissolving into a a cluster of tiny, intricate dots! They dots seemed to pull apart then come back together again in a flash of convulsing turquoise light to form something solid again. It felt more like soft fur but Girl couldn't see through her tightly closed eyes, for she was terrified to look down again.

“AHHHH!” Girl shrieked as she felt herself begin to drift apart again, veiled in pure blue light. Friend, squinting, reached through the haze, but to no avail. 

Girl felt herself being whisked away, and blackness overcame any thought. Then, the solid reality that Girl had always known turned pitch black and faded away before her eyes.

---

When she awoke, Girl was aware of something floating beneath her. As she cautiously glanced down, she realized with a start that "the thing" was a blood-red nametag with a paw icon. 
Girl shakily climbed to her paws, a lump rising in her throat. Peering at her reflection in the frozen stream winding along the rambling stone path, she realized with a shock that she was a fox! 
She was wearing a delicate brown hat decorated with a wispy feather. Over her back was draped a fuzzy clover blanket, and a blue friendship bracelet was tied neatly around one paw. But the most beautiful item of all was a small, intricate pendant with a black raven engraved on it dangling from her neck. 
Her player card read ‘Eternal Fieryspirit.’ 
Eternal felt as if her brain was going to drift away at any moment like a feather on the wind, and her stomach was filled with a dozen buzzing wasps.
Where am I? she wondered, panic rising in her chest. Am I hallucinating this or something?

Out of nowhere, a spooky-looking wolf with narrowed red slits for eyes and red-and-black patterning appeared behind Eternal. Even though they were the same size, he seemed to loom over her menacingly. 
His namecard read 'Awesome Sunnybrave.'

“Hello,” chirped Eternal politely, mustering enough courage to talk to him. “Could you tell me where exactly I am?”

 “Animal Jam, loser,” he cackled, a smirk appearing on his face as he realized that he had found new prey to pick on. "You're the one who made an account!”

Suddenly, Eternal remembered why she recognized the leafy, surrealistic trees and the vast, pebbly pathways. She glanced around, looking for more proof to confirm where she was. 
Her eyes landed on the center of the Jamaa Township. 
Tons of other animals were clustered into the small space, calling,” SPIKE FOR MY TRADE!” "Trade me worns, plz!" and other things of the sort.

“Oh, no,” muttered Eternal. “I’m in Animal Jam… and I am actually my fox!”

Panic stricken and afraid to face the devious-looking Awesome, she fled to her den and collapsed onto her pixelated sectional sofa. Her raccoon, Orangesalot, nibbled at a pineapple sitting in the fruit bowl. 
Eternal watched him nibble away obliviously and a pixelated tear streamed down her furry face. She wanted so badly to be back on that awful bus. 
"Orangesalot, where am I?" she whispered, liquid brimming from her eyes and flowing down her cheeks.
Orangesalot gave no answer but he leapt Eternal's her lap and curled up against her, as if to console her.

Sniffling silently, Eternal curled up in a ball with her paws over her face and fell asleep. 

---

In the morning, Eternal leapt up at the sound of Orangesalot sniffling around as if looking for something that had vanished. When she looked up, she realized that the fruit bowl was gone!
With a gasp, she found that so was her pendant!

Suddenly Awesome Sunnybrave, the jammer who had laughed at her earlier, appeared in her den. 
My den is locked! Eternal realized with a sudden shock. And we aren't even buddies!
She used her paw to tap his username, then his trade list. Her raven pendant was there! And worse, she realized that the glimmering golden ‘RARE’ symbol must have had grabbed his attention. And now her prized pedant- a special gift from her Animal Jam friend, Rosey Quietpaw- was gone!
“Why did you do that?” Eternal asked, her voice raw and furious. Thinly concealed rage boiled inside of her like red-hot magma. 

“Oh, but I had to.” replied Awesome in an equally menacing tone. “It was rare. Very rare. So, I simply hacked you!”

“How dare you?! That was special to me!” Eternal cried, stomping at the ground angrily. Her mini-tantrum raised small puffs of dust.

 “If you continue to be disagreeable, I can just hack you again. True you aren’t rare, but I could make an exception.” Awesome said smoothly, a smirk plastered to his face.

Eternal needed to get away! She dashed across the stringy grass, her lungs burning with the effort to keep in her tears. She glanced back several times, but Awesome didn't seem very determined to tail her. The flustered fox ran straight to her good Animal Jam friend Rosey’s den, glancing around to make sure that Awesome still wasn't on her heels. He apparently hadn't even tried to pursue her. He couldn't care less, as long as she didn't have any rares for him to hack.

Eternal sank down into a beta pillow for a split second before being repelled by it's 'rare-ness.' After wandering around the den for a bit, she decided to sit on a soft orange sectional sofa just like her own. 
To calm herself down, Eternal looked around the familiar room. Rosey's den was nice and peaceful, with Cosmo's herb plants lining the walls. She realized that she wanted to know what they smelled like, especially because she'd never been able to smell pixels before.

Eternal thought a moment, then sniffed one of the delicate salmon-colored petunias. It smelled like perfume, causing Eternal to sneeze at the overwhelming odor. Funny, she'd expected it to smell more... 

More what? Metallic? Pixelated? Eternal let out a small, light laugh at the thought.
In the quiet, sunlit den with the rays of golden light streaming across her face, Eternal felt like everything might be alright after all. 

Soon after, her friend Rosey appeared in the den. She was a friendly bright yellow penguin with a yellow mummy glove, a founder’s hat, and a golden lollipop necklace. She reminded Eternal of sunshine, or a field of golden wheat.

“A hacker took my raven pendant!” Eternal choked out, the mere thought of it tugging her back to horrible reality. She swiped furiously at the tears that had begun to stream down her face.

"Oh, that's awful!" Rosey looked stricken. "I can't believe most jammers these days!" she cried indignantly, kicking at the ground with a flipper and plopping on one of the beta pillows next to Eternal. "So, tell me, how did this come about?"

As Eternal finished telling her tale, Rosey folded her paws and said," The user was fmanizzzback1221, huh?"
She seemed to pause, as if considering something.

 After a few moments she said firmly,"I'm going to see if he's still in your den!" and vanished, going to confront the evil hacker.

A few minutes later, she reappeared, but her patterning was black and red as if she were lit on fire- and what's worse, her eyes had turned to creepy zombie slits just like the hacker's! Awesome had turned sunshine to darkness by hacking friendly Rosey! Eternal recoiled, bubbling with rage.

“You… little…” sputtered Eternal. “You took my friend’s account!” 

“Hehe,” said Awesome dryly, though it sounded nothing like a laugh. “I did, didn’t I? And now her rares… are mine!” Cackling evilly, Awesome attempted to trade the rares over to his account, but Eternal stopped him in his tracks by leaping in front of him. Her friend’s hard-earned items were not going to be taken by this evil slug!

“Hey!” Awesome barked from his main account, scooching his wolf over a few centimeters and out of the place that Eternal was blocking.

Eternal followed, nimbly covering his player card no matter where he went. It was true that she had the advantage of moving for herself instead of using the Animal Jam controls, but she had become very practiced from hours of moving her wolf around Jamaa.

“Fine!” Awesome finally yelped. “I’ll give you back the pendant. I surrender. I’ll also give you all of Rosey’s items and stop hacking your accounts! Just go away!” 

Eternal waited impatiently, tapping her paw on the grass as Awesome sent her a Jam-O-Gram with her precious pendant in it. 
I suppose you know what happened?

Eternal accepted the gift out of instinct, and the moment she clicked 'Yes' she realized that it wasn't her pendant.

It was a default-colored necklace.

 Suddenly, the patch of grass where Eternal had been standing disappeared, instantly replaced by neon green cubes crackling and lighting up like out-of-control-sparklers. Desperately, Eternal tried to escape, pounding her paws against the deranged pixels, but to no avail. 

Eternal Fieryspirit had been hacked. And the worst part was… she had fallen for it.

She felt like a brainless, meaningless particle of dust. Sighing, Eternal curled up into a ball and felt herself fade away into the darkness.

When she awoke, the sky was twinkling with dozens of rainbow-hued particles of light. What looked like silky, purple-leaved poinsettias unfurled their petals as the light shimmered around them. Eternal approached the sight, thinking that it was a mirage, and batted at one of the poinsettia plants with her paw. Yet, instead of breaking through an image, the leaf that she had made contact with pulled back like a spring and hit her in the face!

“Hey!” she laughed, and the poinsettia gently opened to reveal her pendant! It whole and untouched, with a beautiful new rose-colored sheen that it had not had previously. Wide-eyed, Eternal tried to slip it around her neck, but it faded to a fine dust.

“Wh-what?” stuttered Eternal, as a pop behind her alerted her to the fact that another pendant had replaced the old one. 

This time, as she wore it, the pendant gradually grew to a dull grey, then from that to inky black, as it fell apart into a pile of soft black feathers.

“Oh.. kay.” Eternal muttered, backing up.  She got the message: she would never get her necklace back. 

Suddenly, her sadness flared into something stronger. 
Indignity at the situation filled her to the brim! She had to stop the source of the scamming, stop the injustice! A fiery anger spread throughout her. She didn’t even pause to consider the fact that her fox’s last name was ‘Fireyspirit,’ and perhaps it was a weird coincidence that the ground crackled with flames. They danced around her, enveloped her, and the only thing that she could do was stand there, her eyes dancing with them. 
Around her, the black, glitchy ground stopped glittering and started solidifying into a solid sheet of green grass, the individual pixels re-forming. Eternal was whisked back to Rosey’s den, where the hacker stood, trading item by item over to his main account.

"How... did you get back here?" Awesome said behind tightly gritted teeth.

"I just did." Eternal said airily. 

Better to keep him in the dark... she thought.

"Well, that won't stop me from getting every. Single. One of your pitiful possessions. And, if you don't mind, I'm hacking a founder's hat."

"Why don't you already have it? Couldn't you have sent it in a JAG?" Eternal clamped a paw over her mouth.

"I'm nonmember." said Awesome flatly. "Now, will you just go away?"

“Never!” Eternal screeched, unsheathing her claws. 

Though she wasn’t violent, she wanted to protect what was left of Rosey’s belongings.

“You will not… get between me… and that founder’s hat!” he wailed.

Suddenly, Eternal realized what the personification of rare greed was; who it was. She dashed forwards as quickly as her legs could carry her, then stopped short of Awesome, skidded to a halt. All of the grief and misery of the last two days sunk in, and she began to cry. It was so bizarre, watching Awesome cackled evilly as she sobbed, that Eternal stopped weeping, her tears dissolving into laughter even louder than his own. He was so ridiculous, and probably much too old for Animal Jam!
Stop. she thought. You're being just as bad as him. Nothing matters but getting Rosey's items back.
All that she needed a method to stop him! 
She couldn’t very well hack Awesome back; hacking was difficult and not morally correct. Sooo…just maybe she could outwit him? 

Eternal started sobbing again, hoping that Awesome hadn’t noticed the laughter that had escaped from her mouth moments before. Awesome seemed satisfied, and just as he was about to start trading items over to his account again, Eternal screamed,” DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY ZEBRAS CYCLE UPHILL?!”

As she had planned, the temptation to sneer at her made Awesome pause.

“No,” he smirked. “They don’t, and you’re an insane weirdo.”

“Why, thank you,” she grinned, clicking on his trade list as he continued to berate her for being so odd.

Seizing the moment, Eternal flash traded Awesome a Sectional Sofa for her pendant. Just as she had planned, his instinct kicked in immediately! Awesome accepted so quickly that he didn’t have time to see what the item was. Before he could check, she flash traded him the very necklace that he had hacked her with for Rosey’s Founder’s Hat, and of course, he automatically accepted. 
Revenge! she thought.

 And so on and so forth. Eternal managed to get a good chunk of the items back, including Orangesalot's prized fruit bowl. 

As he accepted the last trade, Eternal said calmly,” Your scamming is evil, Awesome. If you stop it, I promise that I will find you another pendant like mine. Deal?”

Before he could respond, Eternal sped away to the Chamber of Knowledge. She sat down on the ladder and started devouring a chunk of pineapple from her fruit bowl. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was! It tasted delicious and sweet after the many hours without food. If she could only get home!

Suddenly, Eternal got a buddy request from someone with the username ‘Rosey2penguin.’ Could it be merely a coincidence that her friend Rosey’s old username had been ‘Roseythepenguin'?

Hoping that it was her old buddy, Eternal accepted. Rosey2penguin, who was a bright yellow penguin, teleported to her promptly and chirped,” I’m glad he didn’t hack you. It’s you, not him, right?”

Grinning to herself, Eternal traded Rosey back her founder’s hat for a purple mat. As soon as she accepted the trade, Rosey’s face lit up.

“Thank you so much!” she exclaimed as Eternal JAG'd her the remainder of her items. "Oh... I have to get off. I'll see you tomorrow!" she said cheerfully.

"Okay, bye!" Eternal replied with a grin plastered onto her face, feigning cheeriness. 

She sighed the moment that Rosey left. If only she knew how to leave Animal Jam too.

Afterwards Eternal proceeded to place a few of the purple mats that Rosey had given her in her den, far too exhausted to decorate it properly. She curled up snugly on the mats and fell asleep, the sound of Orangesalot gnawing at a grape ringing in her ears.

---

The next day, Eternal- scratch that, Girl- awoke at around 2 AM to the soothing sound of rain pattering against the roof. 

She rolled over and groaned,” Orangesalot, stop it. You can have your kiwi or whatever tomorrow."

Girl blinked open an eye as the noise persisted and the room blurred. But instead of the mats she had fallen asleep on, Girl found that she was in her bed, staring at her chestnut-wood bureau. 

“How….?” Girl gasped, sitting up as straight as a plank. Her blue eyes were saucers in the dim morning light. “I'm home! I’m home! Home where I’m safe from scammers, hacks, and heartbreak over items! The drama is gone! Well, mostly…” her voice trailed off as she remembered.

She got out of bed and padded into the kitchen, sat down in her chair embroidered with flowers, and logged on to Animal Jam. Girl clicked on her buddy list. Scrolling halfway down, she saw the name ‘Rosey2penguin.’

Thoroughly shocked, Girl stumbled back to bed. 

Her mind drifted at school the next day. She was whacked in the head with a ball twice in gym! By the end of the day, Girl was determined to keep her secret close. 
She would always remember the time that she had been a pixelated fox and experienced the distress of a hack, and then overcome it.
---
Hi! Thanks for reading my story, lovely people who took the time to read this. c:
Girl/Eternal is largely based on me and my life, and so is the first setting. Obviously deceit and hacking are both big themes in this story, just as they are (unfortunately) in Animal Jam.
Again, thank you sooo much for reading my story!
Jam On ;D
~Edwingrim2
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