Some Tweaking

The problem with forbidden knowledge is once you know it exists, it becomes impossible to ignore. For Izzy, the fact that his computer recorded and seemed to be able to edit the living breathing information of his friends was quite a tempting proposition. It was inevitable he would start experimenting with it.

He wouldn’t use it for anything nasty, just a little experiment to see if he could do it, something small but useful. A 5% boost to intelligence wasn’t going to break anyone’s minds. He wasn’t adding knowledge or anything, just making everyone smarter. At the very least, Davis would have less of an excuse for his constant failing exams.

And once he had determined that everyone was still in good health, well, Izzy couldn’t help but keep up the initiative. His office was one of the hubs for digital travel, and the group transited to and from the digital world quite regularly. When you were cleaning up messes and acting as the keepers of digital peace, you went through a lot. Every time they passed through the portals, Izzy would help out a person in need.

When Mimi was worried about gaining weight, Izzy tweaked her BMI a little and might have given her boobs a boost as well. Yolei was feeling a little depressed, so Izzy tweaked a dopamine receptor, Kari and TK were having a little relationship trouble.

Izzy blushed a little bit but tweaking the blonde's libido had seemed to do wonders for them.

It wasn’t something that he was doing seriously. He was just helping his friends.

A little tweak here and there, just to make things a little easier, it’s not like he was trying to impress Mimi. He was always careful, and it's not like anyone noticed. A victimless crime.

Then came the hike, Izzy normally wasn’t one for exercise, but Mimi had drafted him.

Izzy found his mind wandering in the gutter as he watched Mimi saunter in front of him. The hike had been Sora’s idea, but the whole group had enjoyed it. Well, the ones who had shown up anyway.

Sora, Mimi, Izzy and Tai were climbing Infinity Mountain together just like the old days. Mimi led the procession, her boundless charm and energy only matched by her relentless teenage teasing.

Mimi had not left much to the imagination, this weird quirk of her new diet allowed her to wear the low-cut top she had bought in New York. And being Mimi, she'd paired it with a skirt so short you could see her panties. Whenever a slight breeze fluttered down the mountain, that skirt went up like a kite. She made no effort to hide the pineapple prints from her audience.

Her audience of three were all reacting in different ways. As second from the front, it looked like Tai was about to reach out and give those fine cheeks a squeeze, while Izzy was slowly melting down despite bringing up the rear with Sora staying behind to keep him company.

“I hope I’m not giving you too much of a view,” said Mimi coquettishly, placing her hand on her chin and fluttering her eyebrows.

“It’s not a bad view,” replied Tai playfully.

“Careful Tai, I don’t think Meimei would appreciate you flirting with me so openly,” replied Mimi, clearly enjoying the male attention as she spread her gleaming grin of her friends.

“What about you, Izzy dear, I’m not causing you any problems, am I?”

“Hrrhrhmmm,” huffed Izzy, trying to hide his tongue-tied state behind palpable exhaustion. Mimi set a rather strenuous pace for anyone following her.

“I guess you’re enjoying the view more than he is,” teased Mimi, moving closer as she leaned forward, placing her hand on the gentle geniuses’ cheek and pinching it.

Izzy blushed, trying to avert his gaze from the ocean of cleavage inches from his face, a different sort of man would have wanted to bury his face in that. Izzy was trying very hard not to be that sort of guy.

“Mimi, why aren’t you wearing a bra?” Scolded Sora, the diligent den mother of the group, took the chance to roll her eyes.

"Because I didn't want to," replied Mimi while shrugging her shoulders, letting the fabric of her loose-fitting top give Izzy a hint of forbidden fruit.

“Nothing wrong with that, if Mimi wants to let her girls run free, who are we to stop her?” Added Tai, angling his vision just enough to see over Izzy’s head.

"Thanks, Tai, I bet you'd do more than just let them run free if you got the chance," teased Mimi, gently placing a finger on Tai's chin.

“You have no idea,” replied Tai, thrusting his hips ever so slightly.

Sora rolled her eyes.

“If you two are done with the double entendres, let's get this mountain climbed," she remarked, swatting Tai firmly on the rear to get him moving into the lead position.

“This isn’t a bad view either,” replied Mimi before Sora whacked her too.

Izzy gripped his hands tightly, wishing that he could be as free and confident as his two friends, wishing he could replicate Tai and Mimi’s lecherous chemistry.

Sora moved in close and slapped Izzy on his back. Mimi and Tai were keeping a faster pace now, eager to stay out of Sora’s swatting range. The older girl leaned lightly on the short boy’s shoulder. It was obvious she could read Izzy’s somewhat basic emotions.

“You know Izzy, Mimi would definitely say yes if you asked her out,” said the earnest tomboy, trying not to ruffle the younger boy's scarlet hair.

The younger boy looked a little despondent, his shoulders slumped forward as he watched Tai and Mimi turn their innovation into a flirty game of tag.

“I don’t know Sora, I get the feeling sometimes that Mimi likes me, but then she goes and flirts with Tai like that… I feel like maybe I see things that aren't there," replied the redhead, placing his hands in his pockets. He kind of felt disappointed, he'd managed to survive this wretched hike, but now he was watching Tai put a hand on his crush's side and feeling a strange heat in the back of his neck.

”She’s just used to using her body to get attention,” replied Sora, almost wanting to walk over there and slug Tai a new one.

“You go on ahead, there is something I need to check quickly,” said Izzy, motioning at the two at the front looking a little hurt.

Sora gave a helpless look. It kind of incensed him. He didn’t like being pitied, well he had a little bit of power now.

If Mimi already liked him, then maybe he would just even the playing field a little. He opened the statistics menu on his D3. In a flurry of taps, the clever computer whiz pulled at Mimi's file, examining what he had provisionally labelled "attraction A" and "attraction B”.

Mimi's statistics were pretty close. 55 for him and 50 for Tai on A, but only 45 on "Attraction B" for him while Tai's statistics sat at 69. It actually made Izzy feel a little like the green-eyed monster to see the stats so much higher for Tai. While the gallant gogglehead had been Izzy’s best friend for about five years now, he did feel a little bit of jealousy with how easily his spiky-haired senpai seemed to attract women. Whether it was Mimi, Meiko, or even Sora, when the girl wasn’t moving around Matt like a nervous satellite, Izzy seemed to have far less luck attracting a mate than Tai did.

He felt a little guilty, but it's not like he was mind-controlling her into being his girlfriend or something, just making him a little more attractive to her than Tai was. It's not like he was doing harm, Tai had a girlfriend, after all, sort of.

“Let’s just make that 45 into something a little higher like…” Izzy put his finger to his mouth, maybe 75? Not too ****, at least giving him a chance.

Izzy swallowed hard. He knew he was crossing a line, that this was moving from benignly helping to doing something selfish. Well, he could feel guilty about it later. The wrongheaded redhead shut his eyes and tapped the value; the die was cast after all.

He looked over at Tai and Mimi, almost expecting the change to be instantaneous before realising it wouldn’t be applied until they got back to the real world.

Sora wiped the sweat off her brow and glared at Tai irritably, she’d organised this excursion so that Mimi and Izzy could be together without any distractions and now here he was, flirting like some kind of amorous coyote.

“Come on Tai, I want to climb to that little cliff over there,” she said, motioning to a craggy cliff about 30 meters away.

“Why are you...?” started Tai before Sora grasped his hand, almost dragging him away from Mimi so that she and Izzy could be alone for a moment.

“Hey Izzy," said Mimi with a soft blush, moving closer to the sulking nerd. "I just wanted to say sorry for teasing you earlier, I didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable," she added, placing a hand on top of his.

“It’s okay Mimi… I mean it’s not like you haven’t had fun with me before like that,” said Izzy, trying to downplay the awkwardness of the situation.

“Still, sometimes I forget to take other people’s feelings into account when dealing with them, you’re a very special friend to me, you know that?” remarked Mimi, gently stroking a strand of strawberry hair out of her eyes.

“Thanks,” replied Izzy, not quite sure how to deal with his own awkwardness.

“I mean it, Izzy I… I like you okay!” said Mimi, biting her lip and swallowing hard.

Izzy blinked. It was like somebody had turned him off from the inside, he stared blankly into space, his usually hyperactive brain going through a hard shutdown.

“You… You…” The words tripped over each other in his mouth, his brain chugging along like a train that derailed.

"I like you, I really do," said Mimi, her voice low as she took his hand in hers.

“But you and Tai…”

“Oh Izzy, Tai is a cutie. If I were a woman of lesser virtue I’d happily roll in the hay with him, but he’s not you. You and me, we fit, I want to be your girlfriend…”

Izzy was still locked up, all those brains and he couldn't even respond properly to Mimi's confession. The princess of pink leaned in closely, her trembling lips not inches from his face before gently wrapping an arm around his neck and kissing him gently on the forehead.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner, I was hoping I could get you to confess if I made you jealous enough, that was pretty stupid, but I’m not going to hide what I want,” said Mimi, her confidence now fully restored as Izzy babbled as a man struck in the face with a baseball bat.

Eventually, he nodded, a sense of shame and adoration combining in the pit of his stomach.

“Mimi I…” he stammered.

Mimi put her finger on the nerd's nose, pressing it like a button.

“I like you too,” he stammered, the sudden touch releasing the words from his locked up brain.

“Good boy!” crooned the strawberry haired songstress.

The couple returned, hand-in-hand to the old beaten CRT television, Izzy still scarlet as Mimi beamed like a hunter showing off her prize.

“Congrats Izzy,” said the gogglehead sheepishly, “sorry if I messed things up today, Sora just filled me in on all the details.”

Izzy raised an eyebrow.

“Mimi wanted me to find a way to get the two of you alone, I wasn’t expecting Tai to gatecrash,” supplemented Sora, making the chosen of knowledge feel more than a little bit embarrassed.

“Well let’s get on our way now, I’m sure you want us out of your hair," said Tai, flicking open his new digivice and opening a portal back to the real world.