Once back at their dorm Zack walked over to Josh, "I have a suspicion that I want to get your opinion on."
"Shoot. What is it? Maybe I can help," Josh was always willing to help a friend if he could.
"You remember the conversation we had with Coco not long ago. When it was just you and me online?" Zack asked.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Think about that conversation... The problem she had and the solution I gave her," Zack said. He didn't say more because he wanted to see if his friends thought the process would be the same as his.
Josh stood there staring off into space for a few minutes thinking about the conversation Zack was talking about. "Wait a minute... you don't mean that you think...?"
"Yeah I do think that. Especially when you look at all of the other details."
"Surely we can't be right. Right?" Josh asked.
Fred had heard only a part of what they were talking about, but he heard enough to be curious. "What on earth are you two talking about?"
They both looked at Fred and Zack said, "So that day that Josh and I got on and played with Coco before you and Nik got on we had a conversation with her that seems rather similar to today's events."
"What do you mean? I don't remember what you told us about the conversation you had with her."
Josh asked Fred, "Give a brief description of what happened at the basketball court today."
Fred thought for a minute, "Cora competed with a guy to get guys to quit asking her out."
"Yes, exactly. That day before you and Nik got online I gave that same advice to Coco as a solution to the problem she was having. And if you think about her gamer id and the few things we know about her..." Zack stopped talking.
"Holy shit. You're not saying that Cora is.... No way. That is too big a coincidence."
"I don't think it's a coincidence either." After saying that Zack looked at Nikola and so did the other two.
"Hey Nik, is there something that you want to tell us?" Josh asked Nik.
Nikola looked at them and smiled, "I don't know what you are talking about."
"Wait... you aren't saying that he knew all this time who we had been playing with are you?" Fred asked
"I think that he did know, and never bothered to tell us." Zack looked at Nikola and said, "Are we even your friends? You didn't even bother to tell us that you knew who she was."
Nikola laughed at his friends, "Fine I will tell you guys. The first time I saw her she was at the library studying. I saw her sign into the game and duel someone. Believe me, she's even better than you realize. She is quick. It's no wonder that she beat me when I challenged her." He paused for a second. "Even though I saw her, I only saw the back of her. So all I really saw was her gamer id and the fact that she has red hair."
"So when did you find out who she is?" Josh asked him impatiently.
"I realized that Coco was Cora when we found out that she was the top girl for our department in the beauty contest. That's when we found out her name."
"Seriously... That's when you found out they were the same person?" Josh asked.
"Yeah, think about it. I saw her gamer id and knew she had red hair. Then a girl with her name who also has red hair. How could I not figure it out then?"
Zack laughed and said, "He does have a point. If we had known that Coco had red hair then we would have realized then that they were the same person."
When the girls first entered their dorm they were in a state of shock after the events of the day, so they didn't say anything at first. They all just stood there for a few minutes thinking. Finally it was Nicole who spoke, "So apparently Cora has a boyfriend now huh?"
"I did not agree to that. You shut your mouth," Cora chastised her friend.
"Ok maybe not yet, but it looks to me like it's going to happen at some point." After a minute Nicole said, "Oh and after what he said I'm pretty sure you won't have to worry about being asked out again. I get the feeling that anyone who tries, will be stopped by your future boyfriend." Nicole laughed at the image of Nikola stopping guys from asking Cora out.
"Yeah it sounded like he was already possessive of you. Sounds to me like he already considers you his," Hannah interjected.
"I don't care if that's what it sounds like. That isn't the case. I didn't agree to anything. And if he thinks that I'm just going to give in then he's delusional. That is sooo not going to happen."
"He's smart enough to have already figured out that he's going to have a hard time convincing you," Sarah told Cora.
"To be honest if he hasn't already figured it out for himself I can see Cody giving him a heads up," Nicole stated.
"I hadn't thought about that but you could be right. Since he didn't protest what Nikola said to me or try to act all protective that means he approves of Nikola. In the past when he didn't like someone that was interested in me he would step in and say something to me," Cora explained to her friends.
"Then why didn't he say anything to that jerk," Hannah said, sounding confused.
"He will probably wait until he catches that jerk alone. He knows that I don't like that kind of spectacle, so he doesn't do that with me around. He's only done that once and I gave him an earful."
"I see. He really does treat you like his sister. I find that so funny. Every guy on campus wants to date you except him," Hannah laughed at that.
"You forget that we have known each other basically since birth."
"Oh yeah. That's true," Hannah said.
"Anyway I'm going to get ready for class," she walked over to her closet to get clothes to change into.
Once they were ready all of them headed to class. The rest of their day was pretty ordinary at least until dinner time. Cora and her friends went to eat dinner at the cafeteria like normal except Nikola and his friends showed up and decided to sit with them and eat.
Nikola even made sure to sit next to Cora. In the days after Thanksgiving Nikola made sure to show up at the cafeteria whenever her and her friends went to eat. At first it was just the cafeteria that he would show up at. Later he started to show up at the library whenever she would go there.
Ever since the day of the competition with the jerk everything had seemed to go back to normal. Someone had recorded the competition with that jerk, the 1v1 with Nikola and the conversation with him after. The entire thing was posted on the forum. So everyone learned what a jerk he is and they also heard Nikola's declaration. So naturally no one asked her out anymore.
They all treated her like she already belonged to him. Normally that would bother her but she let it go since it got everyone to leave her alone. If only she could get him to leave her alone, but she already knew that probably wasn't anything that could make him give up. He seemed to be a very determined person.
Besides that he wasn't doing anything wrong. When he ate with her and her friends it wasn't just him. He always brought his friends too. They were all becoming really good friends.
However it was different when he came to the library. He came by himself then but he never spoke to her unless she spoke to him first. Anytime she needed help with something he was always happy to help. He always studied when he came. When he first started to show up it felt a little weird to her, but eventually his presence became comforting.
Cora didn't know it but something big was about to happen. She woke up and started her day like any other, with a run. In fact it was the only time other than class that Nikola hadn't ever shown up. She didn't mind him eating with her all the time and studying at the same time she did. But she was glad that she got to go for her run by herself. She still wore her disguise when she went running, so people didn't know it was her.
When she got back to her dorm she noticed something seemed off with her roommates. "Is there something wrong?"
They didn't say anything for a few minutes. She could tell that they were debating with themselves if they wanted to tell her whatever it was. Finally Nicole pulled out her phone and clicked on something then she handed the phone to Cora.
Cora stared at her friend for a minute before looking at whatever her friend seemed worried about that was on the phone. She finally looked at Nicole's phone and started to read.
She couldn't believe what she was seeing. Someone had posted on the school forum claiming that the photo that was used for the beauty contest was altered and that she didn't deserve to win the beauty contest. She noticed that several people were already commenting on it.
"I can't believe this. It is nuts that someone would post something like this," Cora said to her friends with anger in her voice.
"You know that someone had to have done it out of jealousy. I wonder who did it," Sarah said and walked over to sit down at her laptop. Cora also went to hers as well. Nicole followed her because she knew what Cora was about to do.
Cora sat down and booted up her laptop. Next she pulled up the forum so that she could find out who had made the post. Hannah and Sarah noticed what she was doing and walked over to Cora to watch. They also wanted to know who had made this disgusting post about their friend.
When she finally traced the post back to the person Nicole said, "So that's who it is."
"Wait, you know this person? Who is it?" Sarah asked Nicole with a quizzical look on her face.
"She is also a computer science major. She is the same year as Nikola and his friends. Her name is Amber Smith. She also entered the beauty contest."
"Ok thanks girl." Cora paused for a minute before telling Sarah and Hannah, "You guys are about to find out something about me please don't mention it to anyone." Except Cora knew that Nicole knew already. She had known since a little while after they first met.
Cora started to search the college's website for information about Amber Smith. She was able to find her schedule, that way she could go and confront this girl. "For what I am planning we need to go to one of her classes that will have a computer that is also hooked up to a big screen for all to see."
Nicole was curious so she asked, "What are you planning?"
Cora got an evil looking grin on her face that Nicole rarely saw and she knew that whatever Cora was going to do was going to be a show.
Next Cora used the post that was made about her to trace it back to Amber and she found that she had posted it from her own personal laptop. That was perfect. She hacked into Amber's laptop and pulled up Amber's pictures. She opened another window and pulled up the post about the school beauty contest and went to Amber's picture. She went back to searching Amber's pictures on her laptop looking for the original photo.
It didn't take her long to find it and sure enough what she had suspected was right. She made the two pictures side by side, the original and the one from the contest.
"Holy shit. So she altered her picture but claimed you altered yours. And it's obvious that she didn't bother to check her facts first.," Nicole said with a smile in her voice. "She must not be very smart."
"Next I go to one of her classes and confront her about it. Hopefully I will get lucky and there will be a room full. Let's see..." Cora pulled up Amber's schedule again and noticed the class that she would need to go to. "Here how about this one. I know it has the set up I'm looking for. And I won't have to wait long. It starts in half an hour. Let's go."
With that all four of them got ready to leave. Cora had to change out of her workout clothes quickly. She threw on a pair of tight jeans with a plain t-shirt and out the door they went.
When they got close enough to be able to see the door to the classroom they saw Amber Smith walk in the classroom. It was about 15 minutes before the class was supposed to start. "Perfect, I don't have to wait for her to get here. And there is enough time to do what I need to. When we walk in, can y'all stay by the door?"
They agreed to do that and they walked in. Cora stood there for a moment to look around the room. She noticed Nikola and his friends in there too. When he saw her he started to stand up. She locked eyes and shook her head at him. He sat back down with a quizzical look on his face.
Cora walked over to stand in front of Amber, luckily she was at the front. "Hi Amber. I am sure you already know who I am."
Cora could already see the attitude rolling off of her. Amber said with an enormous amount of attitude, "Is there anyone who doesn't know who you are?"
"That's a good point." She paused for dramatic effect then walked over to the computer that was situated at the front of the room. It was hooked up to the huge tv screen on the wall. All of the people in the seats could see it from where they were.
She started to pull up the school forum and she went to the post that Amber had made about her. Once it was pulled up she said, "I have to say this post that you made late last night is rather interesting to me."
Amber responded to Cora, "I find it interesting too. But I didn't post that."
Cora laughed, "You know before you lie you might want to make sure the person you are lying to can't verify what is being said." While she said that last statement she had started to trace the post back to Amber's laptop. "Well looky here. It was posted from your laptop. Would you like to retract your last statement?"
"Ok, so I did post it. What of it? What can you do?"
"I will show you what I can do. You said that I retouched the picture that I used to enter the beauty contest, right?" Cora pulled up the original entry of her in the beauty contest and started to trace where it came from. "So if we look at the original entry that was made to enter me in the contest and we trace where it came from. It shows here that it was made from Nicole's laptop. So according to this I am not the one who entered myself in the contest to begin with." Next Cora turned to Nicole and said, "If you don't mind I am going to take a look at the pictures on your laptop."
"Go for it. I don't mind, Nicole told her.
It only took Cora about a minute and she was in Nicole's laptop. She pulled up Nicole's pictures. And found the one Nicole used. "So as you can see the two photos are exactly the same. But just in case you still don't believe what you're seeing. Let's look at something else too." Next she pulled up her high school's website. She did a quick search and found all of the pictures that were taken at her high school graduation. "The picture that was used was taken the day Nicole and I graduated high school so we are going to take a look at the pictures the school took that day."
She started to scroll through all the pictures from that day and found one of herself when she gave her valedictorian speech. "Here we go. If you compare the picture from the school's site, which was taken while I was giving the valedictorian speech, with the picture from the beauty contest. You can see they look exactly the same. Looks like it wasn't retouched huh?"
"Ok so it wasn't. So what?" Amber asked. She still had so much attitude and Cora could tell that she would not admit she was wrong.
Since she still wouldn't admit that she was wrong she decided to expose Amber. She got rid of all of the windows except the one of the school forum. "I do have one other thing to show you," Cora said and pulled up the original entry of Amber into the beauty contest. She traced the post back to Amber's laptop. "As you can see here you were indeed the one who entered yourself in the contest. But what I want to show you is this." Cora hacked into Amber's laptop and pulled up her pictures. She searched through them until she found two of the same picture, except there were a few differences. "I hope you don't mind me looking at your pictures. Here are the ones I am looking for. Looks like this one is the one you used for the contest, but what about this one?"
Everyone was looking at the two photos and you could tell one was the original and one was the results of it being retouched. "As we can all see here the photo you used was retouched before it was uploaded to the contest."
"It's not against the rules," Amber tried to defend herself.
"You're right. It's not. And normally I couldn't care less. However if someone is going to spread lies about me I will defend myself. I don't really care what people think of me. I also don't care if people talk bad about me. However if you are going to talk shit about me I will at least make sure what is being said is accurate. Next time you post stuff about people make sure it is factual and also make sure that it isn't someone who can prove their innocence."
Cora made a few clicks and the post Amber had made about her disappeared. "You don't have to worry about removing the post. I did it for you." She paused for a second then added, "Oh and you might think before you post anything about me again. If it happens again you won't like what happens. As you can tell I am very good with computers. There isn't anything that I can't do with one." Cora looked around the room and said to everyone else. "Sorry guys for taking up your time. I appreciate your patience with me. I will get out of your hair now."
With that she got rid of everything she had done in the computer and removed the traces of everything she had done and shut down the computer. After she and her friends walked out of the classroom they could hear voices in the classroom erupt. Everyone seemed to be talking at once so she couldn't tell what everyone was saying.
"Oh my. Remind me to never get on your bad side," Hannah said to Cora.
Cora laughed and said, "Normally I wouldn't care what people say about me, but the fact that everything in her post was a lie. She never even bothered to fact check. That just shows how clueless she is."
"To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the last that you hear from her," Nicole said as they started to walk back toward their dorms.
Just then Nikola came out of the class room and said, "Hey Cora. Hang on a second please."
She motioned for her friends to go on without her if they wanted, "Hey. What's up?"
Cora was calm and collected now. If he hadn't witnessed it, then he wouldn't have known that something big had happened. "I wanted to make sure you are ok. To be honest I didn't even know about the post until you came to confront her."
She thought it was sweet that he was worried about her. "Yeah I am ok now. I was mad that she lied about me but now that I said what I had to say I'm good now."
He smiled at her and said, "I'm glad. It makes me feel better knowing you are ok. I hope you know that if there is anything that I can help with you can ask."
"I do know that. I appreciate that. If there is anything that you can help me with I will let you know," Cora told him with a smile that lit up his heart.
"How about I give you my number in case you need it. You can get a hold of me at any time for anything," Nikola told her.
Cora pulled out her phone and unlocked it then handed it to him. "Here, you can save your number in my phone."
He took the phone from her and saved his information in her phone. He saved all of his information, birthday, home address. He even added a picture of himself. She smiled when she saw him take a picture of himself to add to his contact information. He called himself so that he would have her number too.
He handed back her phone. "Now you can get a hold of me any time."
"Thank you. Any time huh? What happens if I call in the middle of the night?"
"Then I answer the phone. That would actually be awesome too, because it would probably wake everyone up and although I love them. I still love to torment them too." He paused for a minute staring at her beauty. "I meant what I said. You can get a hold of me any time for any reason."
"Thank you. I will do that. I'm going to go catch up with my roommates now. I will see you later." It didn't take long for her to catch up with her friends. Luckily her friends knew her very well. They knew that she wouldn't want to talk about what had happened until they got back to their dorm.
After she walked away he went back into his classroom and sat with his friends. As soon as he sat down they started asking questions. Josh was the first one that asked, "Is she ok? She seemed really pissed."
"Yeah she is ok. By the time I got out there and stopped her she was a lot calmer. She also has her friends with her so I am not worried."
"Is there anything we can do to help her?" Fred asked.
"When I asked her that she said no. But I gave her my number and told her that she could get a hold of me anytime."
"We could give her our number too just in case she needs it," Fred told Nikola.
"If you guys want to do that another time, that's fine." It was at this time that their teacher finally came into the classroom. He actually was a little late, which had been to Nikola's advantage. It had given him time to go speak with Cora.
Zack whispered so the professor wouldn't get onto him, "Seeing what she did here today, I didn't realize just how good she is with computers. To be honest she is definitely better than I am. She did all that so much quicker than I could have. It's no wonder she is studying computer science. Although I would bet that there isn't much that she doesn't already know." Of their group of friends the best with computers is Zack. Whenever they needed something removed from a website, he was who they went to.
"Better than you huh? That's so awesome. I would not have even guessed that she had that skill. Remind me not to piss her off. That would be totally scary." Josh shivered thinking about Cora being pissed at him. He was never getting on her bad side.
"I am pretty sure when it gets around what she did here today that no one will piss her off. They will fear what she can do to them," Zack said with a laugh. The professor started their lesson so they all quit talking.
Back in the girls dorm the girls were curious about what Nikola had said to Cora. "So what did you two talk about?" Nicole was the one to ask.
"He wanted to make sure I was ok. He also gave me his number and said that I could get a hold of him for anything. He told me to let him know if there was anything he could do for me." After she finished the all oohed and awed over what Nikola had said.
"Sooo...You got quite the skill with computers. Skills that we didn't even know about." After a short pause for dramatic effect Sarah continued, "When had you planned to tell us that?"
"To be honest I don't like to let people know that I can do that, but after what she posted I was pissed. I also wanted to take her down a peg."
"Yeah we could tell how mad you were. We all know not to get on your bad side now," Sarah laughed.
"You guys are my friends. I wouldn't do that to you guys. Actually that is how I make extra money. With my talent for computers, different internet security companies hire me to try their systems so they know what they need to improve on." After pausing to think, Cora said, "Actually I need to make some more money. My extra funds are depleted."
Cora made some calls to find out if anyone had any work for her. There were a couple companies that had been waiting for her to call. They had made some improvements to their security software and needed her to test it. It only took a couple hours to complete each job. After testing their software she had to write a report of her findings and email it to them.
The companies would send her the payment for her work after they went over the report she wrote so in a week or less she should have the money. They paid her well enough that it would replenish her extra funds and she wouldn't have to worry about it for quite some time.
She decided to wait until after class to do the work. After class it took her about four hours to complete everything. "Well that's done," she said out loud.
"You finally done huh? That took a while," Hannah said to Cora.
"It may seem like it took quite a while but if you consider that the money I will get from the work I just completed will probably last at least 3 months. That is only 4 hours of work that will last three months. That really isn't that bad," explained Cora.
"I hadn't thought of it that way. You are right." Hannah looked thoughtful.
"I'm going to go play my game now. I won't have much time online before I have to go to bed but I haven't been online in a couple days. I better let my friends know that I'm ok and that I have been busy lately."
Once she was logged in she pulled up her friends list to see who all was online. At the moment no one was online so she just started some daily tasks. She also went and collected ingredients. After about a half an hour Nevans and the others all signed on.
As soon as they signed on they all appeared where she was.
CocoLee: Hey guys how are you all doing?
Nevans: We have been good. We missed you. You haven't been on as much.
CocoLee: Yeah I am sorry about that. I have been busy lately. Lots of stuff going on of late.
Jurban: It was boring without you. Don't leave us again for such a long time.
Cora laughed at what Jurban said. It made her feel good knowing her friends online missed her when she couldn't play the game. Before she started to play with them she had never really made friends online. The only truly consistent person she had played with was Nicole. And Nicole only started to play so that she could play with Cora.
Zowens: I was going to ask you if the advice I gave you helped you but this is the first time you have been on since then.
CocoLee: Oh yeah. It seems to have worked. I haven't been on because I have been busy with classes and studying. Other than earlier today I haven't had any issues.
Fadams: What happened today? Are you ok?
CocoLee: Oh I just confronted someone who was trying to spread false rumors about me. But that is ok. I put the person in their place.
Jurban: You go girl.
Fadams: You have always seemed like a nice person to me. Why would someone try to spread rumors about you?
CocoLee: I didn't ask the person so I can only guess, but my guess is that it is probably due to jealousy. I would say that is the most common motivation behind people doing things that are wrong.
Zowens: You are right. It's usually because of jealousy.
CocoLee: Don't worry though I shouldn't have to worry about her anymore. What I couldn't believe about the whole thing is that she wasn't smart enough to hide who posted it. The lie she made about me is actually what she did. Not to mention that she had no security measures on her laptop. You would think that someone studying computer science would not have made those kinds of mistakes.
Nevans: It is surprising how idiotic people can be.
CocoLee: That is so true. Hopefully she will learn from this.
Jurban: I hope she does but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
CocoLee: LOL. Don't worry I won't do that.
Nevans: How long did you plan on being on tonight? It's getting kind of late.
CocoLee: Truthfully I mainly got on so I could say hi to y'all and see how you guys are doing. I should have free time to actually play soon. I should be able to get on this weekend. I don't think I have much going on. Just some basketball with a friend, so there should be plenty of time to play.
Nevans: That sounds good. I will look forward to it.
CocoLee: Good night guys.
After she said good night. The four guys got off too. They only got online tonight hoping she would be on. They had all been wondering how she was.
"So that confirms it for me. She really is Cora. I still can't believe it. She seems so different in the game than in person. Most of the time she's so quiet," mentioned Josh.
Zack disagreed with Josh, "Actually if you think about it she's the same in both. It may seem like she's shy because she is quiet. I have noticed that she is only quiet in a crowd. When we have been around her in a small group of people, especially people she is comfortable with, she is not shy at all."
Nikola added, "And if you look at things like today when she came to confront Amber, shy people wouldn't have been able to handle talking in front of that many people. But she had no issues with it. I also noticed when she came in the classroom she looked around the room. I could tell she was checking to make sure enough people would witness it. She wanted to make sure she did her best to get people to think twice before messing with her again."
"Yeah from what I can tell she doesn't do things halfway. When dealing with being asked out so much and dealing with Amber both solutions she chose were ones that will make all people think twice before trying it again," Fred explained to them.
"She's the type that will be nice to everyone unless you give her a reason to not be nice." Nikola laughed thinking about the attitude that Cora hid from the world. She only shows her attitude to people she considers her close friends or people who do her wrong.
When it came to her friends she showed her attitude when picking on them, but she does that out of affection. However if it was someone trying to do wrong to her she showed no mercy in getting back at them. She treats people how they treat her.
Before he shut down his computer, Nikola pulled up what he had been working on lately. For extra money Nikola builds and sells internet security software for different companies. He just recently finished one that he built custom for a company. He built the security software to their specific needs. Now he needed someone to test it.
Josh had walked up behind Nikola and asked, "Aren't you done with that? I thought that you said you finished it the other day."
"I did finish it. I need to have someone test it for me. The person that tested them for me in the past isn't available anymore. So I have to find someone new, which is not easy. Anyone that is capable of doing what I need usually doesn't advertise that they can do it." Nikola sighed and said, "That's ok I will figure it out."
"I would do it for you but I know that my skills ain't enough to test your software," Zack explained apologetically.