Pul Wat Aa

"The Hacker" redirects here. For other uses, see Hacker.

Pul Wat Aa
Hackergeddon character
I will colorize! THE MOON!
First appearance	DRAW Your Own Story 10
Last appearance	DRAW Your Own Story 11 Cameos in At Plot's End
No. appearances	_hacker exec "duplicate.py"
Created by	CivGeneral
Profile
Nickname(s)	The Hacker, Scourge of the Interwebz, Big H, "Hacker sappin' mah internets", and a few obscene swear words
Species	Human
Gender	Male
Date of birth	Unknown
Date of death	5 June 2013
Age	Unknown
Address	Any computer terminal, and a Narratorspace timeshare
Occupation	Hacker & mischief maker Ice cream man (former)
Significant other(s)	Haruhi Suzumiya (girlfriend)
Nationality	American (revoked?)

Pul Wat Aa, the Great Hacker (commonly known simply as the Hacker) is the main villain of DRAW Your Own Story 11. He rose to international prominence after forcing the closure of CFC Off-Topic that prompted the One Hour War, leading Coruscant to issue a warrant for his arrest. During the course of the story, the Hacker affiliates with different villainous factions, including the Space Pirates, Umbrella, Inc., and Mariko's Empire. He is also revealed to have assumed at least partial control of the Clone Guild from DRAW Your Own Story 10.5, and Wetickra serves as his base of operations after falling out with Albert Wesker. His random acts of mayhem are initially presented as sating a personal thirst for chaos, but toward the story's end they are revealed to be a front for his true plan to create his own universe.

Background

The Hacker at MIT ca. 1984. Left to right: Bernard Froggy, Pul Wat Aa, Unnamed Researcher #2, Gordon Freeman

According to information provided by the Laughing Man and former colleague Bernard Froggy, Pul Wat Aa was part of a research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology circa 1984. The group was originally developing a home computer system dubbed the Pear, but the project was scuttled by the rise of Microsoft. They attempted to retaliate via software-based attacks against Microsoft, but conceded defeat and disbanded shortly thereafter.

Inexplicably unable to find employment, Pul Wat Aa became an ice cream truck driver, the experience of which prodded him toward the path to malice.

Prelude to HAX

The Hacker first appeared in DRAW Your Own Story 10 as a gag character blamed for the purging of Forum Games (then the host board for DYOS) in 2009. He was revealed to be in sole possession of the pre-Consulate archives, which gave him godlike power over the narrative as demonstrated by his banishment of choxorn & Co. to the Unexisted Dimension. Later debacles on- and off-site would be ascribed to him, such as the hack on ImageShack, the attack on the downloads database, and server downtime on both CivFanatics and the DYOS Wiki.

The Hacker first revealed himself publicly as the heroes were exiting the Gem Chamber. Having killed FDR, he declared what amounted to open war on the world. Notable in the scene, he is presented (at least ostensibly) as much more confident and prepared than his later characterization in DRAW Your Own Story 11.

DYOS 11

DRAW Your Own Story 11 begins with the Hacker having shut down CFC Off-Topic, leading to a massive flame war. This escaped the attention of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who, frustrated that he couldn't get a fix, nuked Spamingrad. As a result, the Web was clogged with spam for months, and Coruscant virtually shut down. The OT crowd attempted to evacuate, but the Gogf was sabotaged and forced to make an emergency landing.

P.W.A. phone home!

At the same time, the Hacker, under the alias of his real name, recruited the Styles Brothers as Hackspace Defenders. He then sabotaged the operation, convincing Stylesrj to defend the Galava forums while betraying Stylesjl's defence of CivFanatics. choxorn, returning from Dune, attempted to intercept the Hacker's fleet, but was shot out of orbit and crash-landed in Poland at the same time as the Gogf. Nonetheless, CivFanatics was narrowly saved, and following the defeat of his lieutenant Brother Hackvh, "Pul Wat Aa" disappeared, later revealing himself to be the very Hacker the Styleses were defending against.

With CivFanatics' defenses now gauged, Hackergeddon began in earnest. In addition to petty diversions, most memorably the mass-teleportation of muffies, Aa began direct attacks against reality itself, culminating in the displacement of Sydney, Australia from the time-space continuum.

Space Pirate partnership

Shortly thereafter, Pul Wat Aa was revealed to be in a symbiotic relationship with the Space Pirates, with Mother Brain 2.0 providing interplanetary network access and troops to back up his operations, although neither party appeared to trust the other, seeking to use the alliance for their own purposes. Especially valuable was Mother Brain's connection to a Combine portal device based on Nar Kreeta, which the Hacker used for bulk matter transmission; specifically, deathclaws. A police raid on the Manzen temple brought to light experiments in hand-portable portal technology that would eliminate the Hacker's dependence on the Nar Kreeta base, and thereby Mother Brain.

Confident in his position and accumulating powers, Aa made a mass public address in which his face was revealed for the first time. He demonstrated his reality-warping abilities by colouring the moon purple. Major Kusanagi, surmising Mother Brain to be a key weak point in his power channels, tasked CivGeneral and Samus Aran with disabling the rogue A.I. and thereby breaking the network at its hub. Stylesjl meanwhile launched a full military assault against Aa that ended in crushing defeat. Kusanagi met with Froggy who confirmed Aa's identity, but was killed by HAX before he could disclose his former colleague's location. The Major hacked the compromised security bot and confronted Aa in a virtual reality interface, but received mere taunts and a string of (mainly inconvenient) HAX.

In an unrelated incident for reasons never made clear, the Hacker warped Doctor Eggman to our universe, proceeding to conscript him as a mole into Coruscant. This scheme came to naught as the Coruscantis were immediately suspicious, and Eggman was eventually forced to flee New Port.

Nar Kreeta

Main article: Battle of Nar Kreeta (DYOS 11)

Having received word that Samus and CivGeneral were en route to Zebes, the Hacker dispatched Ridley to intercept them before they could threaten Mother Brain. In the wake of the loss both of the AI and the Space Pirates' mothership, Aa launched an assault on the Nar Kreeta complex shortly after CivGeneral arrived to oversee the decommissioning of the portal device. Arriving in person, he confronted CG, Samus, and Marsha Conrad, and in a strategic move to cripple CG's confidence, tried to assassinate Samus. Space Pirate forces distracted the Coruscanti garrison to booby-trap the complex, but CG and Co. were able to escape without further tragedy. Aa, finding the loss of Samus thwarted by the introduction of Jill Valentine, swore revenge.

When Stylesrj's company joined the fight against the Space Pirate fleet, the Hacker turned his attention to a repeat widower-making, this time starring Rhiza Kalanin. Rhiza proved herself a formidable rival, however, and Aa was ultimately delivered an embarrassing defeat.

Umbrella and the Robotifier

Further information: Hyrule Insurgency

The Nar Kreeta campaign heralded the end of the Space Pirates as an effective buffer against the Coruscantis, and the Hacker joined forces with Albert Wesker, who was attempting to resurrect the Umbrella Corporation in pursuit of his own vendetta against CivGeneral. Data recovered by Aa's assistant "Voltaire" enlightened him as to Eggman's robotification technology, which he immediately set upon obtaining for himself. While this stood at odds with Wesker's fetish for biological warfare, he nonetheless received support from Umbrella for an expedition to Thear, recovering ancient robotification technology that Umbrella then assisted in retooling to his purposes.

Around this time, Aa stumbled into the G-man's Realm and discovered that Samus had not been killed. He requested temporary custody to stage a fight between her and Jill to which, for some unfathomable reason, G-man agreed. During Edward Richtofen's exfiltration from the New Port Citadel, Aa confronted Jill and CG, threatening to kill them both unless she agreed to fight Samus. What followed was a massive public spectacle aired nationwide; the fight was no-holds-barred and used live ammunition, although strangely enough it was not to the death. Intervention by Coach saved Jill from certain defeat, and Samus ultimately gave in, annulling her marriage to CivGeneral and returning to hiatus with the G-man.

The Hacker is Da Derp Dee Derp Da Teetley Derpee Derpee Dumb

Upon returning from the show, Aa was informed that Umbrella's attempts to adapt the Thear device were imperfect, as unwilling subjects would be rendered statues rather than usable soldiers. A workaround was devised by applying the same mind control drug used for Sylux before robotification. As the Space Pirates grew weary of playing guinea pigs to Umbrella, an expedition was dispatched to Hyrule under the command of Bernard Maxium to secure new test subjects. While the Hyrule lab's research was ultimately to serve the Hacker's interests, Aa had little hand in the operation itself.

Witnessing CivGeneral's propensity to rage, Aa devised a second attempt at breaking his psyche. He returned to the Hyrule Facility and commandeered equipment to hack into CivGeneral's CODEC, releasing the anthropomorphism of his inner anger, "ReichsGeneral". However, Marsha was able to track the attack back to its source; she confronted Aa and managed to overpower him using the "toolgun" recovered from Nar Kreeta, physically brutalizing him but opting not to finish him off.

Although the Hyrule Facility was subsequently destroyed as The Heroes evacuated, the test data was deemed sufficient for Umbrella to approve the activation of a massive robotification beam mounted on Wesker's flagship, and the ship set course for Earth. Concurrently, one of the Hacker's sleeper agents, Phillip Grimsby, instigated a coup of the Free Western Army that gave him a potential base of operations on Earth.

Split from Wesker and decline

While Umbrella had provided valuable technical assistance, it was also steadily encroaching on the Hacker's control of his own project; as a result, his inner staff grew discontent to the point that some deserted outright. Aa's growing contempt for Wesker, combined with a citation for Villain Decay on TV Tropes led him to sever ties with the company shortly after his introduction of weaponized carp; Wesker retaliated by dispatching a special operative to kill him. Meanwhile, Aa broke the goodwill peace with the Narratorspace Crew and kidnapped General Leang, sparking a convoluted tangential subplot involving Stylesrj's Galava characters. He also succeeded in luring Gruekiller into a trap, but fled at the first threat of injury.

Aa made one last attempt to neutralize CivGeneral. During the FWA liberation of London, he used an avatar to confront CG's party. He failed to kill Jill, but gave them the Pre-Release DYOS X Saga in a ploy to provoke the 2011 time travel arc. He also secured a tentative truce so as to combat Lucifer; unknown to anyone else, the Hacker was in loose allegiance with the Composer. He attempted to secure Giant Death Robots from Perfection on the promise of providing access to the CFC staff forum, but this did not come to pass.

Shortly following the Alternate 2011 arc, Aa formed a strategic alliance with the Grox to capture Stylesjl and Mikuru Asahina. Haruhi Suzumiya, the Hacker's co-host on The Reality Warpers' Club and later girlfriend, intervened on Stylesrj's behalf both as a friend and due to personal opposition to the time travel scheme. Stylesjl and Mikuru escaped, but by the end of the fight Haruhi and the Hacker had reconciled.

Wetickra Bound

Main article: Invasion of Wetickra

choxorn and his zombies, recently-emerged from a second bout of temporal-spatial displacement, traced the Hacker's main base to Wetickra and immediately set course with the purpose of recovering the DYOS Tome to repair the damage from their first brush with non-existence. The Narratorspace Crew, realizing Leang must be held there, made haste, while the SCP Foundation recruited the United States Marine Corps to launch its own operation to bring in the Hacker. Aa responded by dispatching Itsuki Koizumi's Communist forces to intercept Stylesjl while he and Haruhi prepared "the ultimate weapon of haaax".

Around the same time he encountered Mariko Antilles and, wise to her plans to usurp Umbrella, formed a strategic alliance with what would become the Second Galactic Empire. When Umbrella attacked New Port, Mariko destroyed Liberty Prime, allowing Aa free reign in the battle. Mariko then retreated to Wetickra with her looted fleet in anticipation of Coruscanti retaliation. Forces began landing three days later; two wayward artillerymen in the company of Gnowel Lawgiver breached the fortress' rear entrance shortly before the combined forces of Coruscant, the FWA, and choxorn, who had linked up with CivGeneral, began a full-scale assault. The Hacker took no action, instead relying on the Communists and Mariko's assurances that she could handle the heroes herself. Predictably, Itsuki's forces collapsed and the heroes confronted Aa and Haruhi in his main office, taking turns beating him up. Before anyone could deliver the killing blow, however, Mariko arrived. The group then split up: choxorn to track down the tome, Ayane and CivGeneral to fight Mariko; Stylesrj's team to keep the Hacker pinned, and everyone else to secure the perimeter. Haruhi responded by activating Super Humongous Mode and swallowing Wetickra whole, prompting Tama Shepard to split off and fight her.

Still confronted with more adversaries than he was willing to handle, the Hacker replicated himself, then beamed Stylesrj & Co. to a monster-filled dungeon. After numerous delays, the SCP crew finally caught up; Mikuru Asahina tried to laser the Hacker, only to learn he had hacked the console and disabled force multipliers. He then turned on the Coruscantis, but only managed a few inconveniences before his hack-gun ran out of power. However, the SCP crew abruptly departed after Manfred von Richtofen found Yuki Nagato, leaving Tama to regroup with the Coruscantis. Having routed Mariko, CivGeneral rejoined the group for a final stand-off with the Hacker. Marsha singled him out, leading to duelling beams; using her own hacking skills, she sapped his power and disarmed him before summoning Dr. Hax, who bombarded him with monitors. Not quite defeated, the Hacker charged CivGeneral after Dr. Hax departed, but was thrown into a planar prison... thing, which Kasumi and Amanda Lockheart carried out for shipment to an off-world prison.

Hacker Prime

Not so harmless.

As the heroes congratulated themselves, the Hacker reappeared from the sidelines. Initially taken for a residual clone, he instead claimed to be the "true" Hacker, hinting that they had only been fighting one of an untold number of androids. Marsha prepared to dispatch him as she had just done his double, but with a mere glance he destroyed the toolgun. He then disabled Project Titan and scattered Ayane and Hanna when they tried to apprehend him. Aa taunted the group with hints at a much grander end goal, suggesting he had already completed it. He shot out the fortress' main computer screen and disappeared into a portal to Xen. CivGeneral gave pursuit, but the portal sealed after him and Marsha's attempt to reopen it failed.

Unbeknownst to the Hacker, the Ming treasure fleet was already at Xen, and CivGeneral was joined by Zheng He. They confronted Aa deeper in, where he demonstrated godlike control over reality, instantly summoning a ménagerie of alien beasts before disappearing. After fighting off the xenos, they continued on, briefly re-encountering Aa before he materialized a squad of heavily-armed and armoured soldiers. Wary of further delays, He took on the troops while CivGeneral gave pursuit, eventually cornering the Hacker in a small cave-like enclosure. CG took a shot at his head, only to watch as the bullet froze in place, Aa casually picking it up before flinging it back with equal velocity, grazing CG's cheek. Aa then used telekinetic powers to fling CG about like a ragdoll, taunting him by sending a Xenbeast while freezing his muscles until the last second. CivGeneral's attempts to psych him out were met with derision as Aa described with uncanny foresight his defence against Marsha's plan to reactivate the Nar Kreeta portal generator, an attack barrier that would open the portal into the heart of the "Green Sun", presumably incinerating the planet.

Meanwhile on Earth, Octavia Deaconescu, who had been attempting a counterhack of Sydney for some time, now had the personnel and equipment to make a proper attempt at reversing the process. The team succeeded in restoring the city, and unwittingly penetrated the Hacker's network backbone, revealing the source of his power while slowly stripping it from him.

With CivGeneral seemingly at his mercy, Aa explained his master plan: seeing the latent power of global communications tragically squandered, he devoted his life to weaving together the processing power of everything he could get his hands on into a supercomputer without peer, intending to use Xen as the foundation to build his own reality through his nigh-Godlike powers. He teased CivGeneral's pursuit as born of personal jealousy, stating "If I'd so thoroughly disgraced myself on the international stage, I'd want a fresh start, too." As the fight progressed, the Hacker's control deteriorated and his attacks grew desperate, until his neural link failed completely. CivGeneral swiftly overpowered him; rather than beg for mercy, Aa challenged CG's moral high ground, claiming he was not culpable for his clones and his death amounted to first-degree murder, lamenting that "Why must you always have the final say?" By this time Zheng He had returned with a full contingent; he attempted to intervene but CivGeneral shot the Hacker. An instant later Marsha opened the portal and Ayane and Hanna escorted CG back to Nar Kreeta.

Before evacuating the planet, the Ming forces collected Pul Wat Aa's body, in time for CFCMAN to finally track him down.

Reception

Despite DYOS XI's strong start, the Hacker's popularity declined as the story progressed. lord_joakim felt his identity was revealed too soon, and as CivGeneral's interpretation gained prominence, the character shifted away from dangerous anarchy to settle into what Thorvald of Lym called CG's army-general stereotype, with his role in the story largely sidelined as CivGeneral emphasized the Umbrella Corporation as his private antagonist. Contributors consider Hackergeddon to have crested midway through the story, by which time the Hacker had been reduced to a clown, and consensus holds that the Wetickra sequence went on for far too long.

Thorvald's Hacker Prime twist, originally conceived early in the story as a favour to lord_joakim, was a self-described last-ditch attempt to redeem Pul Wat Aa as the thread's villain and end the story on a strong note. Complications in the sequence's production drew the arc out for another three years; while the delay was controversial in its own right (ironically Stylesrj and CivGeneral were the most vocal critics), the conclusion was generally lauded as worth the wait.

Behind the scenes

• CivGeneral depicted the Hacker as the hunter from Left 4 Dead, and used a humanized model when revealing his face in his 8th page for DYOS XI.
• When talking with Eggman via videoconference, the Hacker appeared in a yellow, green-eyed hedgehog suit, complete with special effects of generating lightning from his claws. This had the side effect of some subordinates wondering if he was a furry. This suit was subsequently revealed to be a carbon copy of his henchman Voltaire.
• In Alternate 2011, the Hacker receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Pul Wat Aa makes cameo appearances in DRAW Your Own Story: At Plot's End as hallucinations experienced by CivGeneral.

Relationships

• Everyone—Sworn enemy. Most because he likes being the bad guy for the evilulz
• General Leiong Leang, General Ta Hun Kwai, Fate West—While everyone hates the Hacker, his relationship with those in Narratorspace is quite different to those who are in the main story. While they're enemies and won't stop trying to kill him with a new harebrained scheme, the narrator group treats him like a fellow narrator and like to have a friendly chat with him from time to time.
• Albert Wesker—Originally second in command of his Space Pirate forces, until the restoration of Umbrella.
• The Composer—Agreed to support the Composer in his effort to stop Lucifer.
• Haruhi Suzumiya—His girlfriend and sometimes-accomplice.
• Bowie—Now an ally of the Hacker, Bowie offers the power of Transatlasia to the Hacker's forces.
• Voltaire—Furry henchman, who he has a disguise modeled after, complete with lightning effects. The Hacker seems to have promised Voltaire the chance to kill Silho if he agreed to work as one of his agents. Following his defeat and near-death, the Hacker, seeking to cut his losses on Mobius, abandoned him.