Chapter Text
It wasn’t unusual for the head girl to be called into the office on the fourth day of term, though it was a little unexpected as Kelly had been in the middle of sorting out the line-up for the following night’s ‘entrepreneur’ meeting with Flash Harry. She’d already had to break up three separate fights between the chavs and the emos, and placate a Russian mafia princess into being a guinea pig for the twin’s latest concoction, in an effort to reassure Flash that the problems with the last batch of Trinski had been sorted.
“You wanted to see me Miss?” Kelly spoke from the doorway,
“Ah Miss Jones, do come in I’ve got some exciting news I just couldn’t wait to share, whiskey?”
Camilla Fritton was the proud matriarch of the school, a St. Trinian herself and proud to say the least of the colourful history the school flaunted for all to see. She currently stood near the small collection of alcoholic drinks with two glasses in hand already prepared; Kelly smiled as she strode into the office and took a seat on a sofa. Camilla wandered over and handed a glass over before taking a seat opposite.
“I’ve just been informed that my little shit of a brother intends to transfer his daughters to this school. Now I’ve never met them personally and frankly I wasn’t even given the younger girls name, but they should be arriving here tomorrow.”
Camilla took a drink from her glass allowing Kelly to process that information, it did sound interesting they hadn’t had a transfer student in a while so two at once was highly unusual.
“Thanks for the tip; I’ll let the girls know to expect them. Are we delivering the standard welcome or do you want us to hold off?”
Kelly took a drink from her own glass appreciating the taste of well-aged whiskey while waiting for Camilla to answer.
“Well that’s the thing; I’m not entirely sure why Carnaby is transferring them after the start of term. Knowing him there has to be a reason as he swore never to allow Annabelle to attend, but I get the feeling there is more going on here then it appears.”
Kelly felt her eyebrows raise in surprise at Camilla’s candid thinking but stayed quiet when she continued.
“I have seen a picture of Annabelle, she was just an infant at the time but I haven’t seen or spoken to Carnaby for fifteen years. The younger girl… well Carnaby’s PA failed to even mention her name so I’m left wondering, what could possibly be the little shits game plan.”
“Where exactly are they transferring from? Should be easy enough for the geeks to get access to their records, you can have everything you need to know by the time they arrive tomorrow.”
Kelly suggested hoping to offer some kind of solution.
“Ah that’s the twist dear girl, my esteemed nieces will be joining us from Cheltenham Ladies I’m afraid.”
Camilla finished her drink off and stood, moving around the office to place the glass on a nearby table.
“You’re joking, the girls are going to eat them alive Miss. I might point out that after last term some of them will literally want to eat them.”
Kelly took another sip of her drink, leaning back casually on the sofa as Camilla paced nearby.
“Quite right, and though I don’t usually interfere in these matters they are my nieces and they do deserve the change to get out from under Carnaby’s thumb. So while I’m not suggesting you stop all character building exercises, I would appreciate it if you could rein the girls in a little and use your judgment.”
Kelly finished off the last of the drink and stood before placing the glass down next Camilla’s, she met the headmistress’ gaze full on and smiled with practised ease.
“Consider it done,”
“Jolly good, let me know what you find if you will girlie.”
Kelly recognised the dismissal for what it was and headed out of the room, her high heels clicking in staccato across the tiled floor. A few minutes later found her in the dorm, heading straight towards the geek nerve centre and Polly the ring master giving orders to her subordinates.
“I take it you heard then?”
Kelly lent casually against a nearby support and Polly made her way over.
“I’ve already got girls hacking into Cheltenham’s files, I’m just about to run a search algorithm myself, shouldn’t take too long for me to start getting results.”
Kelly nodded in agreement, her smiling in thanks before speaking again.
“Looks like there is finally going to be a Fritton in St. Trinian’s”
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The rest of the afternoon had Kelly busy; a group of first years had managed to commandeer the C4 supply and after a tense hand over half a block of the explosive was missing. The crying and accusations had Kelly ready to pull her hair out, but she managed to maintain her calm and commanding persona. Organising the second years into teams took little effort and the reward for the safe return of the high explosive was high enough to actually get the girls looking.
Kelly wasn’t too worried, but the twins were ready to string up the culprit and already had plans to use those responsible as a piñata. After that minor incident, the posh totty’s came in crying over a laundry mix-up that had damaged some of their clothing, Kelly rolled her eyes so often at the over dramatics she’d given herself a minor headache. Walking into the dorm room to find two hysterically crying geeks and Polly on the warpath left her yearning for a stiff drink.
“What on earth is going on?”
Polly looked up from the pile of smoking remains, what once had been a laptop sat in scattered pieces over a work table. The frazzled redhead had soot streaking over her brow and was pushing her glasses up her nose in a sure sign of agitation.
“We ran into a little problem,”
“If you call this little Polly I think I’ll have to start questioning your sanity,”
Kelly gestured to the destruction and sobbing fifth and sixth year who were being rocked back and forth in a combined effort between Chelsea and Andrea that the leaders of the posh totty’s and the emos had been drawn in to affect damage control was worrying enough. That both leaders had done so without complaints was a sign of how serious the crisis had been.
“Yes well, no one was injured, the school hasn’t been set on fire, and the twins don’t have their hands on any explosives. The only casualties were Jennifer and Patricia’s laptops so overall only a relatively small problem.”
Kelly wandered over towards the table Polly was still sitting at, she perched herself on the edge her expression neutral as Polly pushed the remains of one laptop away.
“So, what was your minor problem then?”
“I set Jennifer and Patricia to hacking into Cheltenham’s registry, looking for the records you were after. Everything was going completely fine until they tried accessing the Fritton’s records, they did manage to get vital statistics but the second they attempted to break through from the academic to the medical records they must have triggered some sort of attack. I’ve never seen anything like it Kelly, the girls laptops just seemed to lose control; thousands of popups and spam windows blasted them from all sides. We tried yanking the wireless cards, but the attack was already self-sustaining, Jennifer even pulled the power but all that did was start a chain reaction in her hard drive. Patricia’s keyboard started melting from the power surge and then this…”
Polly motioned towards to still slightly smouldering pile of melted plastic and cracked twisted motherboards.
“Are you saying your girls were beaten by Cheltenham security? That seems unlikely Polly,”
Kelly asked, hiding her sense of unease. It hadn’t been the first time the geeks had hacked Cheltenham; this should have been little more than a cake walk for the experienced geeks.
“That’s just it; the attack while centred on the Cheltenham’s records didn’t actually originate from there. I managed to track the hack remotely, but all I was able to get was a small trigger imbedded in their database. The attack was activated by the trigger but the attack itself came from numerous virtual instances, as though it triggered a command code hidden all over the net to assemble and launch the attack simultaneously from multiple locations.”
Kelly felt her eye brow rise in surprise, Polly while still agitated and frustrated was almost radiating her approval of this attack. It must be some kind of geek reaction at being impressed by a superior opponent.
“You almost sound proud there Polly, should I be worried?”
Kelly smirked as the affronted look on the head geeks face as the girl got up and started moving around, grabbing her own laptop and placing it down on the table before retaking her seat.
“I’m furious actually, livid even but you are right I’m also very impressed. The kind of skill needed to encode something like this; I didn’t think anyone could do that Kelly… well not anyone else. It doesn’t just take skill it takes imagination, creativity and a ruthlessness that honestly leaves me feeling a little in awe.”
Polly’s honest assessment and declaration shocked Kelly to the core she stood up and moved to stand behind the geek as she logged into her own laptop and started typing away at her amazing speed.
“So whoever did this is what, better then you?”
The faint crying and murmurs went silent, all eyes and ears focusing on Polly and Kelly. Polly pushed her glasses up again before answering.
“Better no, but I’d be willing to say equally good in different areas.”
Kelly nodded in understanding, recognising just how important Polly’s admission really was.
“So what were you able to find, before all this…”
“Well our new students are Annabelle Lealla Fritton; aged sixteen. Date of birth January 17th, five foot nine, brown hair, brown eyes, and fifty two kilograms. Good student; received nine A’s and two B’s for her GCSE’s, and Amelia Laura Fritton; ages fourteen…just, her birthday was August 31st, five foot four, brown hair, brown eyes, and forty five kilograms. She has a bit of a chequered history, she’s seems to be barely passing her academic courses while acing the arts. They both started at Cheltenham as first years, and that’s it.”
Polly rattled off the short list for each girl, before turning slightly in her seat to meet Kelly’s questioning gaze.
“What do you mean that’s it?”
“I mean that was as far as Jennifer and Patricia got before they triggered whatever alert was built into Cheltenham’s systems.”
“And what about you, did your search algorithm turn up anything else?”
“Oh yes, I found lots of records. Medical files, admission forms, everything that gives a person an identity on the net all there for the both of them.”
Polly’s tone has a slight hint of exasperation and Kelly found herself frowning not quiet understanding what the problem could be, she didn’t voice her question but knew that
Polly got the message when the geek took off her glasses and began rubbing the bridge of her nose.
“The thing is that while all the records are out there, everything in them is scattered all over the web.”
Polly clicked on something with her laptop before turning the screen slightly in Kelly’s direction; her glasses went back on as she launched into an explanation.
“The information in each record is still there, but whatever trigger was used to launch the attack on Jennifer and Patricia also scrambled and encoded the data in every record. I could crack the code but it’s going to take some time.”
“How much time are we talking about Polly, there isn’t any point in doing this unnecessarily.”
“A week, if I don’t have to eat or sleep, two if I do at the least. There seems to be a cipher system at work that I am sure of. Each record if keyed to respond to a cipher hidden in another record, the only problem is that there is no indication of what order they may be in or even what the initial cipher would be. It’ll take me less time once I get that first cipher cracked but without it we’re stuck, sorry Kel.”
Kelly mused silently for a minute trying to place pieces of a puzzle together,
“You think one of these Fritton girls is responsible for this?”
“I doubt it, I checked throughout the Cheltenham register and the trigger would have gone off regardless of whose record we tried to access. I cross referenced online other known Cheltenham students and came up with the same results, I can’t even tell you whether this was done by anyone at Cheltenham or if an outsider was just testing out a new security system.”
“Ok, shelve the research for now; we’ll have to get creative. I’ll let Miss Fritton know what we’ve found, but keep working on this no rush obviously. But someone, somewhere went to a lot of trouble to hide what’s been going over at Cheltenham I want to know who and why, so feel free to work on it in your free time. I can see your looking forward to the challenge yeah?”
Polly grinned and nodded, before handing a print out about the two Fritton girls over for Kelly to give to Miss Fritton. Kelly stood up and moved over to the where the two younger geeks sat having finally started to calm down.
“No worries girls get me a list and I’ll have Flash arrange to pick up some new equipment for you, yeah.”
The soft nod from Jennifer who still sat curled up into Chelsea’s lap and the tiny quiet ‘thanks Kel’ from Patricia was enough of an acknowledgement and Kelly turned and left the dorm.
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