Too Forsythe

Too never really did have any friends. He lived a fairly solitary life, his constant need to know what others were doing and ginger hair earning him the ire of his peers and resulting in a lot of bullying when he was young. His only real respite was home, with two parents who loved him but didn't really understand him. For his seventh birthday they had bought him a computer for his own use, and Too had taken to it like a fish to water. At first only really using it for games, he'd heard talk about a group of elite users in an MMO, and an IRC link was shared to him when he had asked about it. He'd had to search up IRC to even know what it was, but once he'd downloaded a client and joined the room, he'd found himself among a very strange community of  extremely diverse people, the only common factor being how ridiculously good they all were at the game they played.

They accepted him despite his age, because even back then Too had been a very quick thinker with extremely dexterous fingers, and was an invaluable member of the group during PVP. The only problem was that Too practically refused to help the group with PVE content, having only done the bare minimum required to get to max level and then never touching the content again.

As time passed, Too grew older and the group of players slowly drifted apart. When the servers had shut down, Too felt like a hole had been ripped in his heart. The only friends he'd really had no longer had anything tying them together, and the IRC that for some ungodly reason was still in use had slowly died.

The guild leader had invited Too to a different IRC, however, due to enjoying talking to him. And this community was much, much shadier. Filled with hackers both white hat and black hat, it was a chat dedicated to improving skills in digital infiltration, virus coding, and general illegal activities. The community at large had been hostile to Too at first, but his genuine curiosity at how to start and his age had quickly endeared him to the room, and they began to teach him the skills that would shape his life.

Fast-forward 6 more years to Too finally graduating from mandatory education, and declining his parent's offer to pay for the entirety of his college education, instead opting to move out by himself. His parents had fussed over his job options, but Too had smiled and waved them off. Unbeknownst to them, he'd scammed several hundred thousand from another user in the IRC, and pinned the blame on the newest member to it. Of course, he felt almost zero remorse about it, knowing that the member he had stolen from was rich beyond belief and that the member he had scapegoated was actually a cop masquerading as a hacker in order to out some of the more brazen users.

After moving out, Too, who had previously been unsullied by cybernetics, grew a fascination with them. He got his first implant at 17, being a small data storage unit inside his arm that allowed him to save data onto it and upload data from it as he wished. He never actually got a job, preferring instead to skim money from large corporation's profits or clean out some poor bloke's bank account that had fallen victim to one of his keyloggers. With the easy cash that came with hacking came even more implants, slowly allowing him to pull off more and more ridiculous acts of "digital terrorism," as called by the police.

By 22 Too had set his eyes on an implant to allow him to hack without even needing access to a computer or phone. The cost was daunting, however, and had initially discouraged him from  trying for it. But the idea of hacking becoming a literal part of him, as natural as breathing, enticed Too like nothing else had in his life. There was nothing the man couldn't hack (which he HIGHLY prided himself on), but sometimes it was just too risky to bother trying because of need for proximity or because he didn't have his laptop on him at the time. This would solve all those problems, though. And so, Too formulated a plan.

Sneaking into a bank was not an easy task. Getting access to it's systems via the local network was even harder. But once Too was in, it was smooth sailing from thereon out. He'd stolen enough money to live like a king for several lifetimes, and transferred it into a multitude of nameless accounts that would transfer into more and transfer into more, leaving behind a confusing mess of a trail that would never manage to be sorted out. And he done it in style, too - the heist had been borderline flawless, the facemask painted with a hash symbol being the only distinctive mark he'd revealed to the security cameras before shutting them down before they could sound the auto alarm.

The implant had cut into his funds largely, but Too was now enjoying his newfound infamy online. Rumours of a godlike hacker who had been behind the recent bank robbery that had been all over the news sprung up across the internet. The police had done their damnedest to find him out, even releasing still images of Too, but the hoodie, facemask and goggles obscured even the smallest hint as to his identity. He'd gotten away with it! And it felt amazing. To steal so much money and force it to be repaid by the rich that only profited off the misery of others - Too felt like a modern day Robin Hood. For the first time in his life, he actually had enjoyed something that hadn't been a miserable experience for everyone not on his side.

Too started pulling more and more stunts like this despite no longer needing the money at all. He'd transferred almost all the stolen funds into charities around the world, keeping only enough to pay that month's rent after having bought the augment. He returned to his former pattern of stealing just enough to get by and live comfortably, except now he had started exclusively stealing from the rich that he felt had not worked for their money. He saw the hypocrisy inherent in being upset at those who didn't "earn" what they had while being a hacker, but he chose to justify what he was doing as a reshuffling of wealth to the lower classes, those who deserved better. And because he loved the attention, Too started to claim credit for his serious deeds.

Once, he'd replaced a news broadcast with a simple white hash symbol on a black background for thirty straight seconds, interrupting it worldwide. Another time, Too had digitally defaced the front page of an insurance organisation that almost exclusively catered to celebrities by replacing all the text on it's webpage with #s, as well as physically defacing it by spraypainting a giant "# WAS HERE" on the front of their flagship building and stealing a small fortune out of the "secure" vault in the main office of the building.

The latter deed had gotten him the internet nickname of Tag. Too had actually quite enjoyed this nickname, and began carrying around a can of spray paint just to leave a calling card anywhere that he physically had to be in order to fuck with. Disappointingly, the media refused to report on the wackier aspects of his shenanigans, instead simply reporting that an anonymous hacker had stolen from x company or broken into y's mainframe.

The money from his misdeeds over the years had earned other augs, too, mostly focussing on helping him get into and out of places without getting caught. Viruses, etc sent by wi-fi were all well and good, but quite often the only way to really destroy a system was from the inside out, with a physical upload onto one of the computers. Too had been caught in the act a few times, but had never actually been subdued, always managing to get to safety in time through sheer luck of the devil.

And this brought him to today. Living comfortably in a quite upscale flat, never really doing anything or venturing outside during the day. Too's neuroses had worsened the more augments he'd put in, but they didn't affect his higher mental functions, so he didn't really mind. The paranoia only served to help him, in his mind, and his need to know everything was easily fed considering he had the world at his fingertips in just a few keystrokes or the right thought.