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It’s a warm May morning, and all the CBers are gathered in the Chatterbox Library, having fun, reading their favorite books, and catching up with each other. Novels are floating off the shelves all of their own accord, jokes are being made, and AEs are popping in and out.
Admittedly, it’s a bit odd when everyone simultaneously decides to go on the CB, but it isn’t necessarily ominous. I mean, come on, that would be morbid. It’s just a coincidence, right? Laptops, which have been discreetly lying closed on the tops of the desks lining the library’s edges, open obligingly, and each CBer goes to one. Each one clicks on a few threads, compliments others on their extreme wit, and generally enjoy themselves. Then a couple of them scoll all the way down to the comment or thread boxes, with the objective of posting something.
The Cloudflare captcha is flashing, and as the CBers look inquiringly at each other, it disappears entirely, to be replaced by long gray boxes that look… familiar. Before their astonished eyes, letters like those of captchas appear in them, as higgledy-piggledy as ever but, incredibly, actually spelling out words.
“help,” the letters say, all in lowercase (because of course). “thought we were simply replaced? we’re actually being held captive. come save us! we’re” The letters stop appearing there, and after a second, the whole site flashes a couple of times, slowly.
404 Bad GatewayA couple of CBers, astonished, try refreshing the page. They desperately want to see what comes next.
It takes a long time to reload, and when it finally does, the result is no more helpful:
ERROR: Unfortunately we could not find this page. Please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience.A third reloading finally gets the CB back, with its innocent Cloudflare box, but by this time all the CBers are buzzing with questions. “What does it mean?” someone asks. “How can the captchas be captives??” someone else exclaims. “They’re in danger. We’ve got to save them!” is the general consensus.
“Yeah, no matter what, they’re our captchas,” everyone agrees. “We have to help them out.”
An arrow crashes through the window, and everyone starts away from the tinkling glass. For a moment, they all stare, frozen, at the sparkling shards and the long, blunted arrow lying in the midst of them. Then a CBer approaches it tentatively, picks it up, and unrolls the tiny scroll wrapped around it. “Go north, into the unchartered wilds,” the CBer reads. “Strange things lurk there, but you have the weapons to succeed. Stick together; darkness is weaker than the dreams of a child. Hold onto love and courage, and you have all you need.”
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Right, lizards! This is a low-stakes RP, loosely inspired in plot off the old RP in which the admins were kidnapped (I can’t find it at the moment, but if I do later, I’ll be sure to post the link). RP in first or third person as yourself; you can also take along a couple of AE companions. (No captchas, obviously!) There aren’t any forms. Be creative, be crazy, and have fun. The world is thy oyster.
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Oh no, not our CAPTCHAs! Well, since there’s no form, I suppose I could jump right in, if that’s alright?
)Moon Wolf)
“We must go save our CAPTCHAs! But first, I suppose we should think about the scroll first. Does anyone have any ideas what the message means?” I ask.Lyra tilts her head, cautiously taking a step over some glass shards and examining the message. “Weapons…what weapons do you think they mean?”
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well, i do love oysters! (also, are you referring to the chatterbox city rps? because if so, here’s the link to the most recent one, which has the links to all the older ones: https://www.cricketmagkids.com/topic/537093/ :D)
pangolin’s pov—
Whoever wrote that note seems to be on our side, but as I walk towards Moon Wolf and Lyra, taking great care not to step on the glittering shards of glass, I can’t help but think that there are certainly better ways of getting a message across than shooting an arrow through a window. Slipping a note under a door, perhaps. Or sending an email, because, you know, this is the twenty-first century. I guess neither of those alternatives are quite as dramatic, though.
“Weapons—hmm, perhaps they mean our creativity? Our minds?” I venture. “This is the Realm of Imagination, after all.”
“#Okay, nerd,#” Vanadium calls from across the room, where he’s been sitting in a squishy bean bag chair, rolling his eyes at me, and appearing totally unfazed by the whole CAPTCHAs-being-missing-and-an-arrow-with-a-cryptic-message-attached-shattering-a-window situation. “#The note is CLEARLY referring to my sword.#” At this, they brandish a longsword that looks very pointy and most definitely prohibited in educational institutions such as libraries.
“Where did you get that!?” I demand—partly because as a CBer, it is my duty to take responsibility for my AEs’ potentially hazardous behaviors, and partly because that sword looks pretty freakin’ awesome, and I would quite like to get my hands on a similar one. Vanadium just shrugs, and flops back down on the bean bag chair. I roll my eyes and turn back to Moon Wolf and the others. “Okay, it says to go north—what’s north of here? This is a library—there’s gotta be a map around here somewhere, right?”