Colin started noticing it as soon as he left the field. As he was chatting with Eve about her interests, her favorite books, her family and especially Snow, his saw out the corner of his eye as one of the electronic roadside signs glitched out, the text within distorting and shifting to display a single word: "Colin."
"Huh." he pondered but didn't pay it any mind.
That got harder as all along the road it began to spread, first the road signs, then advertisements, every monitor he passed shifting to display his name. Even Eve took notice.
"Look Uncle Colin, that's your name! Are you famous?" she asked, eyes shining.
"Eh... no. Must be some weird glitch." He responded.
They arrived at Eve's house and she waved him goodbye. For a split second he thought about taking her all the way, but he didn't want to risk meeting Snow's sister as appealing as the thought was. To take his mind off of things he put on the radio, hoping some nice tunes would distract him.
"Somebody's Watching Me" began playing. Colin wasn't a huge fan of the song, so he switched the channel. The next channel was playing "I See You." Switch. "In My Mind." Switch. "Thinking Of You." Switch. Switch. Switch. "Always on My Mind." "Shape of You." "My Beloved." Whatever channel he listened to, each of them was playing music around similar themes. Even the talk channel had a documentary going on about Cold War espionage and spycraft. Colin tried to switch the channel but the radio wasn't working, switching back to previous channels, even overlapping the signals so he was drowned out in a cacophony of weirdly directed love songs. He was so distracted that he didn't notice his car turning onto the oncoming lane before a truck horn snapped him out of it seconds before collision. Before he could even turn the wheel the car acted by itself, turning him off the oncoming lane as he breathed heavily, panicking over the near-death experience he just had. Something was definitely up.
When he arrived back home, Sam, Lucy and Marinette were up front speaking heatedly with a bunch of deliverymen hauling around packages of different sizes. Colin's jaw dropped as he saw that they contained everything from chocolates and flowers to the latest gaming consoles, comics, coffee makers and even a jacuzzi.
"Colin, thank goodness you're here." Lucy rushed to him. "These guys just started hauling all this crap here!"
"What? Di... did someone order all of this?"
"Not that anyone... HNGH! No one atleast confesses." Sam grunted, pushing her way past the dozens of boxes that were starting to block out their doorway.
"What is all this? We didn't order anything, and especially not... this." Colin said to the deliverymen and gestured out to everything, especially the jacuzzi. The men shrugged.
"Beats us. But all of this was put in order just an hour ago to one Colin Greys. Flagged as "Ultra-Priority Delivery." All paid for. Sign here please." A foreman approached Colin with a tablet.
***
Thirty minutes later the boxes had been shipped, the ones they wanted to keep brought in and the rest were left outside awaiting use, returns or selling. Angela was already working on tracing and handling the packages. The rest were gathered in the living room.
"Clearly Colin has a secret admirer." Jessie stated.
"Gee, thanks, Captain Obvious. But who'd be willing to spend that much on him?" Lucy pondered.
"Whoever it is, they clearly have some problems. We don't have room for all this crap! Who do you think could be behind this. Colin?" Sam asked.
Colin was deep in thought. The day just kept getting weirder and weirder. He stared at Angela working furiously at her laptop, her back facing the others as her other hand was accompanied by a cellphone she was currently talking to.
"Oh yeah. Find anything, Angela?" Sam called out.
The businesswoman turned around and covered the speaker of her phone with the other hand.
"Nothing at all. The order came in out of nowhere, from someone with access to high priority deliveries. Not too many of those, but apparently none of them have made such orders. It's like a ghost delivered those packages to us.
"A ghost, huh..." Colin thought, the mystery nagging at his mind.
***
Unbeknownst to them, a few miles out, in a darkened room, another person was following the conversation, one of their screens illuminating the darkened room with direct webcam footage straight from Angela's computer. The camera which was currently locked and zoomed in on Colin.
"Oh, Colin..." she breathed out.
Nicole had been just a regular middle school girl with social anxiety and an interest in computers. Desperate to make friends but too shy to do so, she sometimes came to spy the football team by stalking their practice from the bushes in some vain hope to get in on the group without ever showing her face.
All of this changed when she got blasted by Colin, his transformative energies and a stray thought accompanying them moulding the nerdy girl into a beautiful, though still awkward, woman, who also happened to be a world-class hacker, her mind expanding along with her breasts as she grew up, the electronic world unraveling before her as her hair grew into a long ponytail that dyed itself green. Wobbling with her changing body onto her home near the football field, her breathing hastened as brand new thoughts began swirling in her mind. The apartment itself changed from a family home into a student apartment, most of which was darkened and overtaken by thousands of dollars' worth of hardware, high-end computers and personal servers casting their eerie glow in the apartment as Nicole danced around the snaking wires and sat her expanding ass upon the plush chair that struggled to fit her burgeoning lower body.
With the push of a button her five monitors lit up, and it didn't even take a minute before her fingers manicured with video game insignias were dancing upon the keyboard, her digital tentacles stretching deep into the web as her influence grew. Corporate data, state secrets, nothing was safe as she busted through all defenses in pursuit of her target: Colin. It was laughably easy to take over his car and send some messages his way, all the while she made a little gift for him by exploiting a backdoor she'd placed on Namazon's servers years ago. While digging, she got an update from one of her daemons that NSA was conducting an investigation on Colin. Without even stopping to look what it was about, she tapped into their network and fried their mainframe, taking down the agency in its entirety for threatening her beloved. Analysts screamed as computers exploded, hard drives were wiped and servers melted down, while the remaining monitors only sported the avatar of a busty, hooded female pressing her fingers to her lips in a shushing gesture.
The fall of NSA's network within 20 minutes caused nationwide panic which Nicole was none the wiser to. The viruses she'd released were eating their way through the systems of all other relevant federal agencies, purging all negative mentions of Colin Greys as they went while Nicole herself was glued to the webcam footage, taking in her crush in all his majesty. The rest of her monitors were also entirely focused on Colin: His entire personal history laid bare on one, one program entirely dedicated to playing the stock market and generating revenue for pleasing Colin running on the other. Her main screen was currently running AI calculations on how to best approach Colin in a way that maximized her chances of getting to him. But none of them were as interesting to her right now as the man himself.
"W-Why is he looking so stressed? Is something bothering him? C.O.L.I.N, run a complete scan of Colin's activities from the past 48 hours and find out what's bothering him!" She commanded, and her voice activate AI companion complied as it began to piece together CCTV and mobile footage to map out Colin's all moves.
Nicole leaned back and rested her tired hands on her E-cups, her plain black T-shirt unwashed and ripped, showing copious amount of underboob. She shifted her seat as her wide hips popped out of the chair, and reached for an energy drink.
"He- Once he realizes what I've done for him, he'll be so thankful!" She stated, taking a large sip. "S-So what if all the gifts weren't to his liking! I saved his life! Oh, what reckless driving, Colin..." she berated her love, caressing his image on her monitor.
"Don't worry, Colin. I'll be watching over you. And I'll make your life perfect. Then you'll be MINE!" She giggled, and got back to work. Images of all of Colin's girlfriends popped up on the screens as the digital goddess began to work her magic...