Damn it, had my computer gotten a virus!?
That despicable Nine-Tails—how had he bypassed my Firewall!?
Hiroki's first reaction wasn't fear, much less anger. Instead, his simple, instinctive curiosity as a programmer kicked in!
How exactly was this bug (program) running? .jpg
How could it run!? .jpg
No, was it really running entirely on bugs? .jpg
As everyone knew, Hiroki's mental Firewall was one he had programmed himself. In theory, it blocked all kinds of programs and write operations coming from any other IP address.
So here was the question: how had this strange Nine-Tails icon, this strange application, appeared?
Could it be—
That the Nine-Tails had injected a virus before Hiroki started up the Firewall? But that didn't make sense either. Hiroki clearly remembered that his Firewall had been a passive process.
If he had to say, the only thing he remembered doing was clearing out some junk cache running on his computer—
What was the problem with that?
There was no time to think it over. He had to deal with this immediately!
Who knew whether this unknown virus program might steal his ninjutsu data in the background—or even format his memory drive!
It was the Nine-Tails, after all!
Who knew what Kurama was really up to!
Hiroki gathered his consciousness, turning it into the tool he knew best: a blinking white arrow cursor.
He would delete it manually!
The cursor traced a precise path through the blue void, appearing above the orange-red Nine-Tails icon in an instant, like the Body Flicker Technique.
Right-click!
But just as the command for "menu" was about to go out, the chibi Nine-Tails icon sprang sideways like a startled cat!
"Whoosh—!"
With a nimble movement that completely defied the very concept of an "icon," it dodged Hiroki's cursor lock in an instant.