"Click."
Shio sighed out loud as the door to his room locked with a satisfying click. He dragged his feet like dead weight through the messy room to his one-door closet before turning on its light and walking inside.
Practically blending into the wall, the closet door wasn't anything special with the odd exception of being clean compared to the rest of his room.
"Now where was it?" Shio mumbled as he fumbled around until he found a small lever in between two of his favorite hoodies. Shio pulled the strange contraction and the floor began to sink and pulled the male down along with it until Shio was surrounded by a completely new room; SCR, or better known as System's Computer Room.
Though the name was basic, the room was everything but.
Heading towards his computer, various lights started to glow a familiar blue before he sat down with the main computer.
"Akito, where is Akihito Hide currently?" Shio seemed to ask no one. Almost instantly, a male's voice responded from what seemed to be the computer.
"Akihito Hide is currently in his car with the destination of TAOH."
"Akito, set all lights on his route to turn green."
"Yes sir."
Adjusting his seat, Shio logged into his computer and instantly met with a scene that caused his restless expression to a light smile.
"Akito, log footage between 5:38-5:49."
"The footage with Hero Eclipto glaring at camera 4, sir?"
"Yes, also add section 2:10-2:27."
"The footage with his reaction to your words?"
"Exactly," Shio murmured with a pen in his mouth as he flipped through the photos and portions of videos that he caught of the previous night.
Some videos weren't as clear as Shio wished, but what could he do? The only way he was able to see Eclipto was through a digital screen.
"Akito, calculate the chances of Eclipto discovering my identity and arresting me?"
There was a slight amount of gears shifting as Shio leaned back against his chair.
"Chances of your true identity being exposed are quite low, sir as you aren't directly engaging with Hero Eclipto."
"What are the chances if I go in person to fight with Eclipto?"
"Although it is difficult to calculate such outcome without data, it is quite well known that Eclipto is known for being one of the best heroes and has arrested multiple villains on various occasions, therefore leading to identity reveal to be highly likely." Shio's expression didn't change and instead, he silently went back to work.
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It had been over 6 hours since Shio had started working on his computer with the varying tasks of adding clips to his favorites, designing merch for Eclipto, and doodling outfits he'd wish Eclipto wore.
"If only he didn't have that undershirt on I could see his build…" Shio muttered as he tried imagining Ecliptos outfit…differently..?
"Ring! Ring!"
Shio jumped out of his seat at the sudden sound creating a giant pencil mark in the middle of his design.
"Son of a-"
"Sir, Monarch is on the phone-"
"Yes, yes. I know. Just answer it." Shio interrupted while he pinched his nose out of embarrassment trying to regain his composure.
"Right away sir." With a quick little beep, a feminine voice came from the monitor along with her appearance on Shio's main screen. She looked to be about 20 something and had white hair and blue highlights. She had a small frame alike to the rest of her body with a black cropped jacket and colors similiar to her hair.
"Heeeyyyy System! Watcha up to? Making googly eyes at Eclipto again?" She said while unwrapping a lolipop and put it in her mouth.
"Hello to you too, Monarch." Shio said, trying to ignore the taunts of his co worker.
"C'mon! You know you were~ Like that time I caught you doing-"
"I think-" Shio stood up fast to stop the others next words. "We should start planning rather than talk about my life." Monarch pouted.
"Fine, but you have to show Eclipto your face at least once this week!" Monarch exclaimed.
"That's the point of this plan- wait this week!? We planned for this month, not this week!" Shio looked at Monarch who was fiddling something with her fingers on screen.
"Buuuut c'moooonnnn! You alwaaaays say you wish Eclipto knew what you looked like!"
"That's true I guess...but still, a week is too soon! I haven't even decided on my outfit yet!" Shio expressed as he pointed at the various things that weren't ready yet.
"Hey," Monarch put a hand up to the monitor to interrupt the ranting male. "Just get it over with! Either that or I'm going to get rid of our stock of Eclipto body pillows…" As she said the last words, Shio practically froze mid-movement before slowly looking at the person on screen.
"You wouldn't."
"I would and I will because they haven't been shipped to Japan yet meaning you can't get them unless I actually send it over. So you better hold up your end of the deal." She confidently crossed her arms.
"Ugh fine," Shio gave in as Monarch's expression was lightened. "Either way, what did you call me for?"
"Well since you were talking about needing an outfit, I took the liberty of making a sketch of it. I have two options that may work. Imma send it to Akito right now." As she spoke, a ping popped up on Shio's screen. The first option was quite simple; A clean white suit with a blue tie and undershirt. The second option was a little like Eclipto's costume which had a long coat that was tied tightly around the waist and the top half was completely off. Instead there was a tight long sleeve undershirt. For the bottom portion, there were black pants with glowing boots.
"Hmm…I think the first option is good if I'm not fighting, but I feel like it's kinda missing something…"
"Yeah I was thinking the same thing but I don't know what to add."
"How about we add long v neck on the suit and make it dark blue. Then add a darker blue collared undershirt and only button the middle buttons so that the suits not too tight. Also we should probably add a light coat on top to replace a cape." As Shio said this, he pointed at each portion of the outfit in great detail until he was done.
"Sounds like a plan!" Monarch said while clapping her hands together in excitement. "Now all we have to do is kick your ass out of that poor excuse of a bedroom and give it to Eclipto!"
"...That sentence by itself should be considered a hate crime." Shio's expression appeared to be saying 'I'm not that gay for Eclipto' as he looked at the female on screen who would argue otherwise.
"I'm quite sure owning a whole online store that sells merch for heroes and villains that specifically is run by a villain that specifically keeps a certain heroes merch for himself is quite incriminating by itself."
"Oh shut up Monarch. You keep merch for yourself when you spot something in our stock." Shio weakly refuted her argument but was shut down immediatily when Monarch reminded him of the (many) body pillows Shio slept with.
"Okay, okay I get it. I'm a bit of a fan of Eclipto's-"
"A very gay fan indeed." Monarch interrupted Shio who only looked done with her bullshit.
"BUT! I still need an impressive outfit for my in person villain debut." Shio said in attempt to put their productiveness into effect.
"Ooooooo! You know what I need to do! I need to create a new weapon to try against his little friend!"
"What friend?" Shio asked as excitement flared in Monarch's eyes.
"I'll tell you about it later! I gotta start working on it now! How about we discuss our plans one more time on Wednesday and execute our plans Friday? Either way be ready by then and talk to you later!" Monarch said as she hung up, leaving Shio unable to respond and left to his own thoughts. Being left in silence isn't always bad, but it does feel lonely as hell. But this was typical for Yuzuru Shio who cursed lightly at the girl for her hasty planning and went right back to doodling in his sketchbook of who knows what.
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Unbeknownst to the designer, someone did know the contents of his little sketchbook and that person was currently rolling their eyes as they stared at what seemed to be the longest loading screen to ever exist.
"I don't know what I was expecting..." The person mummbled into their fingers while observing the various protection codes on the data. Despite the nickname, this online (Eclipto hates using actual pencil and paper and just used a digital pen) sketchbook was actually filled with what looked like endless protection codes.
The little hacker swiped and swiped, but the endless codes protecting the various sketches were too long and would take ages to decode. Even if she did decode one page of the sketchbook, her doodling co-worker would notice before she even got through half of it.
She swiped and swiped and yet her efforts felt meaningless as the never ending strong protection codes were yet to finish. At this point, she had stopped looking at the codes and just wanted to get to his most recent. Fortunately, there was an option to change the year of where she was searching so she didn't have to go through the tiring process.
"Aha! Finally!" She said as she finally reached the most recent image that her co-worker had been working on prior to their conversation.
Unlike the rest of the sketchbook, this one was yet to be covered in protection since Shio must have just finished his little drawings.
"Thank god he procrastinates all the time. Now let's see what blackmail I can get on him!"The hacker said as she cracked the codes within a few seconds to reveal the image that stole Shio's attention so much during their call.
"I seriously don't understand this idiot," Monarch said as pinched her nose. "Why is he so scared of showing his face when all he draws is Eclipto?"
Despite her wish for blackmail, Monarch was just met with Eclipto's (stupid in her opinion) face and various outfits on him. Only one outfit stuck out to her and it was a long coat that was tied tightly around the waist and the top half was completely off. There was a tight long sleeve undershirt and the bottom portion, there were black pants with glowing boots. Next to him was a image of System wearing the opposite color scheme which looked to be matching with the heroes outfit. Monarch laughed a bit into her hand while viewing the drawing.
"So he did like the 2nd design. He should've just said so. That idiot." With that Monarch deleted her prints and turned off her computer for the night.