Chapter 3

Fyre!

Chapter 3

Everyone looked at Deacon dumbstruck. “Most of the Admins have been taken away, and the site is under attack!” No one said anything for a short moment but then Rawr stood up, his wild hair and beard fuzzed from sleeping and a knife in his hand. “Who is attacking?” He said in his animalistic voice. Even with his face shielded by his robotic mask, we could all sense Deacon looked worried. He then spoke in a grim voice “The lolcats.”

We all soon headed towards the main server room with Deacon explaining on the way. “The lolcats have always stayed on their part of the interwebs, always just stuck to their place, but recently a branch of them, the ‘Ceiling Cat Catnatics’, or CCC have begun invading other sites. Their first point of entry was through the door, out in the lobby room, but they caught our admins off guard and took them with them to the servers. We’ve got to rescue them!” When we arrived at the door leading to the room, it was already half ajar. Pawmarks lead from the lobby where we first arrived and into the room. “I need a small team to follow me with the rest staying behind to protect from their backup. Who will come?” A relatively small number of people, including me, volunteered. With that, Me, Defnop, Rawr, Sketch, Sangheili God, Tehviruss, Dualfinger and Deacon headed down the dark stairs with Qbix staying behind to lead the others. The last we heard was him telling people to follow him to the lobby.

The light seemed to have broken so I walked in front as my hair was spreading a red glow. The bloodlust Rawr walked right behind me, knife balancing in his hand, then Sangheili, with one of his many miniatures leaning on his shoulder, then Deacon barely able to walk without scraping the ceiling, Tehviruss, little but with a vicious look, Dualfinger as a robotic angel, then Sketch, floating a few centimeters above the stairs with glowing eyes and then Defnop silently following behind, a hand on his top hat. We soon reached the end of the stairs to arrive at a large, but dark room. From the dark we could hear the silly voices of hundreds of lolcats, most of them going ROFL ROFL ROFL.

A glowing pad hung on the wall, its headline saying ‘Server Status’. On it stood:

12:30 //Server status normal

12:56 //Requesting COM-link ‘Pelennor V’

13:00 //COM initiated

13:30 //Server status normal

13:50 //Unauthorized personnel in Main Server Room

14:00 //Server crash, COM terminated, server status in operational

I formed a fyreball in my hands, the kind of Fyre my uploader wrote about, and send it floating into the center of the room. Now that we could see, it could not be unseen. Hundreds of cats were tearing up the machinery of the servers, but all stopped and looked at us with their vicious eyes. I could hear Rawr growl next to me. One of the cats pointed and said “Is the hoomans! Is pahbak tiem!” Now a horde of cats decent upon us, I could just hear Deacon yell “Spread out” when I dodged the first cats, and burned the fur of the next. I kept fighting the cats, while I could hear the cries of the others over the noise of the horde of lolcats. Rawr was going “STFU n00b!” just as he stabbed the throat of a cat, but then another one jumped on his neck and screamed “Ur dayz r numbrd hooman! An I dunno many numbrs!”

Sangheili was sending off miniature after miniature to fight for him, Dualfinger had transformed into a combat cyborg, Tehviruss was using some kind of martial arts to dodge every cat, just to strike back with deadly speed, Deacon was gunning cats down with a gun built into his arm, Sketch simply looked with his glowing eyes which made the cats stop and then spontaneously ignite and Defnop had pulled out a large flamethrower out of his hat and yelled “Say hello to me, your little friend!” whilst he incinerated a bunch of cats. In the midst of all the battle noises and the meows, I heard a bark. And then, down the stairs came Minnie running. She ran into the horde of cats, barking and they parted. She ran towards the corner, and now we were able to see past the cats. There stood the Admin team, tied up, knocked unconscious and on their way through a portal. Minnie leaped to follow them but banged her head against the wall as the portal closed. The rest of the lolcats made strange smiles, took the ‘Invisibl biek’ pose and then disappeared. A strange silence filled the destroyed server room, only disrupted by the noises of the broken wiring.

Sangheili collected what remained of his miniatures, Rawr picked up his knife and Defnop stashed his flamethrower in his hat again. Deacon walked over and picked up Minnie, and slid a hand over the wall. “We’ve got to see how the others are doing” he said. We then walked up the stairs and met with the others. They all looked battered, scratched and de-grammarfied but Qbix stood forward. “How did it go?” Deacon asked. “They came through the lobby door” he said “But we were able to hold them off without casualties. What happened down there?” Deacon didn’t say anything for a moment. “They kidnapped the admins and crashed the server. The server will fix itself within a couple of hours, but we need to get the admins back ourselves. Let’s discuss this in the Awesome Room.”

The simple fact was, the room was not so awesome now when everything seemed to have frozen. A unicorn had frozen in mid leap, smurfs, gays and emos in a battle stood still like statues and (To Rightfalls horror) the fountain of Pepsi had frozen. Two huge fyreballs sat still below the ceiling, the biggest one which I knew to be Corrupt a Wish, and some new one that had apparently grown at an explosive rate. We all gathered around Deacon. “This is what you were brought here for. This is where Fyreball need you. This is FYREBALL! But no community, however great can defeat such bad grammar. No, we must to use the lolcats own methods against them, but for that, we’d need to venture into… There.” He pointed at the room with the ‘Danger’ sign. "And for this, I need one person who can get it for us."

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Original post: http://www.fyreball.com/d/BGZh2x

Chapter 2

Fyre!

Chapter 2

When I woke, half of the others were already up. Defnop was sitting on the side of the bed next to me sipping tea; MuffledMuffin was eating a so called breakfast consisting of muffins, crumbs spilling all over his bed sheet and Jeffers still snoring big time. I got ready with a quick breakfast I conjured with some coding while Qbix and that little penguin ACMoxon walked around and made sure people were ready. After a while we even got Jeffers up and Qbix walked to the middle of the dorm and pulled a little note out of his heart-branded briefcase.

“Listen up” He yelled in his Norwegian accent “This note was left for us at the door! Let me read it aloud.

‘Dear Fyreballers. I am glad to see you all made it safely here to Beta. Deacon will tell you later what you need to know of why you are here, when you are all ready, go to the room labeled ‘Awesome stuff’ where I will start your tour.
- XOXO Cookiecups’

So come on guys, let’s go!”

As usual when the moderators talked, no one dared to talk back so we all followed him through the door. A bit down the hall we found a door with a golden plate on it reading “Awesome Stuff”. We went in and entered a massive room, so large it felt like being outside. Too many things were in motion in this room to notice them all. There was unicorns were running freely with a group of pandas looking their way grimly, a small helicopter flying around going SOI SOI SOI, a guy who kept falling of the balcony of a house only to get up and do it again, some ginger guy in a long coat was singing to random by passers and a smiley face made out of lines kept appearing on the sky over and over. And amongst all this awesome stuff, fyreballs flew in and out of these holes in the wall, all picking up or dropping off awesomeness.

Kathleen came to greet up with the little dog Minnie right behind her. “Good to see you all here” she said. “This is the room of Awesome Stuff. Here fyreballers gather the essence of awesome to send out to others and where new awesome stuff gets dropped off for others to enjoy. Go ahead and take a look around and then meet me back here in a moment.” And then we all went out to check this room out. I had a feeling that there was too much to be seen in only a moment, but we’d have more time later probably. Cloudcow, here a complete nutter in a cow costume, was happily dancing on the grass with the unicorns; Rightfall had found a fountain of Pepsi and Nile was going around investigating stuff as usual. Since I was in close to them, I could hear Nile ask Kathleen what was behind a door in the wall to the right of the entrance with a sign saying ‘Danger! Access denied!’ on it. Kathleen simply said “You don’t want to know.”

We continued the tour a moment later. We went a bit longer down the hall till we came to a door labeled ‘Genius suite’. Kathleen turned towards us “This is where the Admins are. This is our lounge, private quarters and where all the awesome stuff for Fyreball is thought out. You may contact an admin if you think you have a worthy request, but otherwise, don’t. Behind most of all the other doors is the sub-machine of Fyreball, the machine that keep it running. Now, that was the tour. You’ll be asked to help out with maintaining Fyreball, but otherwise have fun and stay out of restricted areas!”

Now people began going their own ways. Some went back to the Awesome Stuff room, I heard Delta0Medusa say something about trying to improve that smiley in the sky, and some went back to the dorm. Defnop and I went to the Awesome Stuff room to check some stuff out. As much as I had seen his avatar before, it was still strange having this Top Hat bob up and down beside you in the height of your hip. We went into the room and it was still as lively as ever. I followed a plasma grenade tossed by this Spartan and saw the Delta had screwed the smiley up so it was now a frown. With his deep voice Defnop exclaimed “Lolwecs” at this.

After a while, most people were back at the dorm, it had gotten late fooling around in the AS room. As usual, Jeffers snore was already filling the room, even though I could have sworn to have seen him nap several times during the day. As people were getting into their beds, Sketch was still sitting up on his bed across from me. The shiny eyes of the z0mb13 qu33n avatar he possessed here haunted me as I tried to sleep.

It felt like I had only slept a few moments before the door to the room crashed open and the light flickered on. The first thing I saw was Sketch still awake and looking towards the door, so I followed his gaze and saw a 2 meters high robotic looking figure standing in the doorway. Everyone quickly spotted him, even Jeffers. “I am Deacon” he said in a loud voice “and Fyreball is in need of your help!”

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Original post: http://www.fyreball.com/d/AmSTQZ

So here is chapter two. If I missed anyone I promised to put in it, let me know. And if you think lolcats are all good, think again - next week.

Remember to read TFCH friday

- Ting

Chapter 1

Fyre!

Chapter 1

It was a day like any other. That guy would come on, log on Fyreball and then keep refreshing his inbox for the rest of the day. From where I am, I’ve seen a lot of stuff on here, although seeing everything on a flat page from a frame in it could be pretty hard. I looked behind me now and then, darkness as usual. It was probably not a good idea to venture out there, and if that guy saw I had left, he’d just upload me back. Above me was the frame of the window I stood in. “Sanmin” it said.

Something new had happened lately, something odd. These new characters had appeared on the site, and one of them, the one who called himself “Neuromancer” had been sending out hidden signals throughout the site. As an Avatar, I had a pretty good understanding of codes but none of these had made any sense. But just now I received something new. The guy was looking at some discussion about Unicorns versus Pandas, where the Unicorns were obviously superior, and this code came past me. It said:

//Initializing operation Trek//

//Avatars located//

//Background vaporization standing by//

//Initializing protocol…//

I didn’t understand what it meant, but it somehow involved us avatars. And before I could ponder it more, I felt a strong suction behind me, and I watched my frame fly away, only to be a small square in the dark, before I was too far away to see it. I screamed, and I could hear other screams as well, but I couldn’t see anyone.
I fell for a long time, and then suddenly light appeared. My eyes didn’t take long to adjust, being accustomed to look at the Fyreball page background and all, and then I saw all the other avatars I knew from Fyreball standing all around me. There was Defnop with his thick mustache and top hat, Sketch with the purple haired z0mb13 qu33n and grim look, Qbix looking like an ordinary 19 year old teenager but with a strange suitcase with a heart on it and many, many others I recognized.

We were in a large hall with all golden walls and roof and a multi colored floor. The roof was a big dome; the floor was tiles laid in a pattern forming the Fyreball logo and the walls curved to form a round room with big windows leading to blackness. On the other side of the room there was a large carved wooden door and in the middle of the room was a single door standing simply in the open with a big red X on the side facing us. That door opened away from us and then closed. A moment passed where we could not see the newcomer, and then a black and white figure walked out from behind the door. He walked towards us and stopped just a few meters from me, I was standing in the middle of the front row.

“Welcome to Beta” He said out aloud in a computerized voice. “This is the background of Fyreball. This is where the site is maintained and built upon. I have called upon you to help protect it from threats that will come soon. This door in the middle is strictly off-limits for your own safety, and do not believe that your uploaders will bring you back. They cannot do such because you are here now. When you walk through the door in the back, you will be greeted by the Admins who will teach you what you need to know. I will be watching you all, and I will talk to you again when you are needed.”

He then turned around and disappeared through the door of which he came. We all looked around at each other for a moment before Qbix tapped into his natural leadership and said “Come on; let us find out what is through that door.” Then we started walking towards the door in the back, everyone taking a big curve to avoid the middle door. I could see a golden plate on the side of the door facing the other door in the wall, but with letters too small for me to read from here.

We reached the other door and walked through. It was big enough for three ordinary persons to go though shoulder to shoulder, but of course some of us were not of normal human size, some smaller and some larger. Even though we were a few hundred, we all came inside pretty quickly. We were now standing in a long straight hall with doors on either side all in a red color and with a dark reddish brown wooden floor. A door on our right a few doors down opened and out walked an unusually youthful and pretty lady carrying a small dog. She turned and looked towards us. “Hello, I am Kathleen or Cookiecups as I’m often called. I will guide you to this place and help you settle. Follow me.”

We all walked down the hall and in through a wide door on our left. “This is your dorm, you may each find a bed and sleep if you must” (Jeffers looked up at this) “and then settle in. I will see you in the morning.” We all scrambled to find a bunk; I got one with Defnop on my right, Qbix on my left and Sketch across. I looked around. This room looked much like the hallway but with various de-motivational posters and lolcat pictures hanging on the walls. Some were looking at these and laughing, some were finding their place and settling in, and Jeffers were already fast asleep, with Delta0Medusa looking at him like Jeffers passed out on his bed. At the end, a large red clock hung which showed, according to what time I last remembered when I was taken away, GMT time.

No one was really talking. We all understood what we were here for, and didn’t really feel angry about it, but we were all a bit perplexed. Those who needed it fell asleep soon, Defnop too. His top hat was still on, a bit askew. I soon passed out too; I guess I had to since we probably had a lot to learn tomorrow.

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Original post: http://www.fyreball.com/d/Bfv08E

So here you have it, my new series. TFCH will still come out on fridays, btw next chapter will be chap 13 revisited. Hope you like this, and if you'd like to be mentioned, just post and I'll see what I can do.

- Ting