Disclaimer: I don't own Hikaru no Go. Otherwise, I'd know a little more about Go than I really do.
Story: Hikaru was turned to the hacker world at an early age. Haunted by Sai, she reluctantly integrates Go into her carefully crafted world. Of course, she uses multiple personalities as an excuse to everyone else, seeing as how she has the bad habit of being a con artist.
Set AU.
Spoilers: Probably.
Warnings: Age difference and anyting else that comes up.
Pairings: Eventual Ogata/Hikaru, though plenty of one-sided Others/Hikaru

Split Hack
Chapter One: Shirayuki to Sai

Hikaru blew on the paper bowl of ramen, narrowing her eyes at the screen. Grumbling at the technology, she set aside the bowl and clicked on a few keys before smugly smirking in satisfaction.

"Take that!"

"Any work being done? Any actual work?" her mother called up to her from downstairs.

She winced and hastily closed down the window she'd been working on, bringing up another that was mostly full on the social studies paper she was supposed to be working on.

"Ah, hai! I'm almost done with my schoolwork!"

Guiltily glancing around, she sighed and dragged her textbook over to herself and started to grumpily read and go back and forth between book and laptop. Still, she looked longingly at the minimized program that she'd rather much go back to.

You see, Shindou Hikaru was both a hacker and a cracker. In plain terms, as a hacker she enjoyed making freeware software from scratch or improving and innovating existing programs. Anything to do with software and hardware and she wanted to see what more she could do with it, part as both the hobbyist and the programmer subculture.

As for being a cracker…well, while somewhat illegal, she could profess to being at least a Grey Hat. She didn't go out of her way destroying people's systems or anything, but breaking into anyone's system at all was illegal. Even if she was doing it for good purposes.

She was just showing them weaknesses in their security. Really. And because it was fun and she liked to challenge herself.

"Hikaru! Work!"

Like her mother had six-sense when it came to these things, Hikaru was a brilliant mind as a whole and enjoyed whatever challenge was thrown her way. And right now, her brilliant mind was telling her to finish up the dumb paper before her mother came up to lecture her.

She may be only 12, but she knew what she was doing.

That was speedily done before she finally got back to her project, and then was forced to go to sleep. The next day, after a boring pop social studies quiz, she headed over to her gramps. At least her grandfather let her work in peace, and it was nice and peaceful. Great working environment, unless she was in the mood to work in something loud and obnoxious. She had those times…

"Hikaru! It's great to see you. Come in! Did you want some tea, or are you just going to work in the backyard?" Shindou Heihachi enthusiastically greeted his granddaughter.

"Nah, Gramps. I'm good on tea. Maybe later. I think I'll just work a bit –I almost got the patch I'm working on to the finish," Hikaru grinned widely.

"Okay, okay. Get to work then, Hika."

Giving him one last grin, she headed out back and slipped her laptop open. It was sometime later her grandfather called her in and asked her to go looking for the go board in his attic that he had wanted to clean up.

The attic was a bit dusty, but not too much that she couldn't see or kept sneezing. She'd immediately spotted the goban her grandfather had been talking about. Heading over to it, she frowned when she saw the dark red stains on the corner of the board. Huffing, she tried to use the hem of her shirt to try to clean it off.

"Why the hell won't you come off?" Hikaru growled.

"Can you see the stains? Can you really?"

Hikaru blinked, feeling uneasy and wondering who had said that.

"Who…who said that?"

"You can hear me? Oh Kami-sama, thank you for another chance!"

A glowing being appeared above the goban, dressed in the traditional clothing of historical Japan. What era, Hikaru didn't know –but she could hardly care. She was too busy freaking out.

"G-ghost!" she screeched, tumbling back. "Kami-sama, don't eat my soul!"

She promptly fainted, falling harshly onto the wooden floor of the attic, and even managed to hit her head hard against it.

The supernatural being blinked in astonishment at the reaction and winced at the fall.

"I do not eat souls, young one. I just want to play Go~" he told her, even though he knew she was unconscious and couldn't hear him, though his tone turned pouty and childish near the end.

Ah well. Looks like he would have to settle down for a wait until the girl woke up.

That's what he'd thought, but instead the girl's grandfather had heard the commotion and had hurried to see what was wrong. And upon seeing his precious granddaughter lying prone on the floor, the old man panicked and had called for the ambulance, bringing her to the hospital.

The ghost curiously and cheerily (though he was really worried for the girl) went along for the ride.

When the girl next woke up, there was no one else in the room but him. The healers (doctors and nurses, he thinks they were called?) were all gone, and the grandfather had left to inform the rest of the girl's family. So no one, thankfully, was there to see her freak out once again at his appearance.

"Ghost, ghost, ghost!" she kept panicking, scrambling back on the hospital bed and pointing at him.

The EKG machine's beeping skyrocketed.

"Please calm down!" he tried to placate the girl, holding up his hands helplessly. "I mean you no harm!"

"Lies! All lies!" the girl screamed hysterically. "I mean, have you seen The Ring? Or The Grudge? I won't let you kill me with terror or suffocate me with your hair! And you so have the hair for it!"

He sweatdropped, and wondered what in the world was she talking about. It did sound rather scary though, so he could understand her fright…

"Anou, I am Fujiwara no Sai. I was in the goban that you found," Sai explained to her.

She calmed down, though she looked nervously at the door. Whether it was because she was worried that someone might come in because of her racket and her EKG reading, or if she was hoping someone would come in to save her from him, he wasn't sure.

"So, uh, what do you want? Why are you here?" she asked him anxiously.

He smiled happily and floated closer. He started to tell his story, starting with his life in the Heian era. And then he talked about Torajiro and then of his return to the goban, and how she was now his new host.

She cringed. "I don't have a choice, do I?" she muttered. "Well, I don't exactly feel like people thinking I'm crazy because I say I'm talking to a ghost, and get chucked into a loony bin. I might as well claim an actual mental disorder."

She frowned at that and turned the idea in her head. She could, in essence, allow Sai to live on his own –through her. It would be tricky and in the end put her with a stigma…but looking at his puppy dog eyes (where in the world did he learn that?) and his happy expression, she couldn't possibly deny him his existence. She always had a weakness for cute things…

"Dammit, where the heck did this sudden trip of altruism come from?" she huffed irritably.

Sai only tilted his head and stared at her with an adorable curious expression.

However, now she had to decide between whether she wanted to be schizophrenic or have dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personalities). Being schizophrenic, she could talk to Sai freely and interact with him as she willed. And it was more known (she would think) after that movie A Beautiful Mind. She could even fake not wanting to take meds, instead of throwing it away. But Sai would only be seen as a hallucination, a product of her mind. He wouldn't be truly real to others.

On the other hand, if she were to pretend she had multiple personality disorder, she would have to work harder to maintain Sai's existence and act like him without breaking the illusion if she messed up. But he would be seen as a real entity, someone that was a real person, if only it meant he was sharing her body (which wasn't off the mark). She wouldn't even have to be pressured to take medication, as MPD cases generally didn't take them if they weren't co-morbid. Of course, there would have to be therapy, but she could fake that enough –and she knew her dad's insurance in depth, and knew psychiatry was part of the deal. It was also a controversial disorder, so people wouldn't get all in her case if she did something that wasn't a MPD trait or something. In fact, it could even go away (though rarely if it's without treatment), or the symptoms could wax or wane spontaneously or just be resolved from time to time. That way, if Sai did disappear sometime later, she wouldn't have to keep up the charade and had a way out.

"Eh, Hikaru-chan, what are you thinking so hard about?" Sai asked, floating to stick his face right in front of hers.

She reeled back and twitched, startled from the sudden confrontation and being dragged from her thoughts.

"How do you know my name?" she frowned at him.

"Your grandfather called you that," Sai just continued smiling cheerfully.

Hikaru just grunted and then prepared herself to get started on her act.

"Sai, it's time to get started," she said in determination.

She then began to instruct Sai in showing her how he usually talked, acted, walked, etc. She studied him closely, intensely committing him to memory. When a nurse finally came into her room, Hikaru immediately transformed, astonishing Sai.

She smiled a soft smile, worthy of Sai, and he was also amazed by her suddenly perfect posture and gentile and noble carriage and attitude.

"Hello, Healer-san, but may I ask as to where I am?" she spoke just as softly as her smile.

The nurse gaped, but recovered quickly even as she still had an underlining of hesitance.

"The hospital, Shindou-san. You were found unconscious in your grandfather's attic, and had also apparently hit your head."

Hikaru looked puzzled. "A hospital? I don't understand. And why did you address me as 'Shindou-san?'"

The nurse blinked in confusion. "Aren't…aren't you Shindou?"

Sai watched stunned and in amazement.

Hikaru merely continued to act bemused.

"I apologize, Healer-san. But I am Fujiwara no Sai."

Both ghost and nurse stared at the girl in equal amounts of wonder and shock.

Hikaru thought she did a damn well good job as a replica of Sai. Sai, after he got over his shock, vehemently agreed and praised her act with various compliments and enthusiastic acclaim. Of course, the nurse had to report it to the doctor, and she knew quite well that they were subtly assessing her. And they'd probably had informed her grandfather, if his worried looks directed at her said anything. But she kept up the charade, switching to her 'Sai' persona every once and awhile, and hoping desperately that it wouldn't backfire on her, or that her odd desire to help this ghost wasn't going to get her into some kind of trouble.

Soon, after she'd gotten an MRI to check that there wasn't something seriously wrong in her head (she was kind of hoping there was, so that she could explain Sai away as something other than a haunting), she was almost home free. Then her other persona crisis was brought up, and the talk about a possible MPD diagnosis (that she had been anxiously waiting for) was finally brought up. Her grandfather stood by her side as it was explained to them, and she had a check-up appointment to make sure her head and herself was okay, along with having to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist for a positive or negative diagnosis on MPD.

And then she was taken home, reassuring her grandfather that she would tell her parents about the 'MPD thing'. Not that she would. They knew about the accident, but she was definitely not going to tell them about "having" MPD.

"Tadaima," she called out softly, entering her house with Sai trailing behind her.

S'not like anyone was home anyways.

She hmphed to herself and took off her shoes, before closing the door behind her and locking it securely. Then she jogged up the stairs and to her room, where she grabbed her computer and immediately logged on.

"What's that, Hikaru?" Sai asked, extremely curious.

He bent over her shoulder and his face was close to hers as he stared at the screen. She took the time to try to explain it to him, and he looked like he got some of what she was explaining at least.

"Shira…yuki," Sai murmured, looking at her screen name as she hacked into some system in boredom.

The people were too cocky, claiming their system was unhackable, in Hikaru's opinion. She'd bring them down to size.

"That's my hacker name," she told him distractedly. She offered a brief explanation, before returning her focus to her laptop and then smirking in triumph when she succeeded in her goal. "Ha! Bingo."

Sai watched, enraptured. And then she was pressing some more buttons on her odd 'laptop' and there was something like an illusion of softly falling white snow that overtook the entire screen, before she pressed something and exited out.

"White snow," he murmured.

It was fitting, for this pale fey-like child that was his new host.

Started 7/15/12 – Completed 12/30/12