Hi everyone, I'm back! Sorry for being late but it took me a while to finish this chapter, I wish I was like Lewa# and could write a chapter in a few hours but, unfortunately, I'm not. So, sorry for messing up the schedule (though Lewa, you've let the schedule slip plenty of times before too remember...) Plus, the forums suddenly going down didn't help matters either. Oh well. New chapter, finally!The BZ-Nui Hack WarsA BIONICLE comedy by Lewa0111!Gabriella Chapter 4: Escalation OR The Protest"So, remind me what we're doing here again?" asked Takuma, as Gabriella's group of Randomness Warriors walked briskly through the streets of BZ-Nui.Gabriella sighed. "Did you forget already? We're going to start an island-wide protest of the FiB and Lewa0111's banning, of course! With enough BZPower members on our side, and enough awareness of the situation, Gold 14 will have to listen to us no matter what the banned member policy says!""Well, yeah, I knew that already. Thanks.""But if you knew that already, Takuma," Mesonak asked, "then why did you ask her to remind you?""Because it's been a while since the last time the comedy focused on our group, and readers might have forgotten, so I figured it would make a nice recap."" " emoticonned Mesonak, Gabriella, and Gerlicky.Takuma just shrugged. "What? Breaking the fourth wall is fun!""But this comedy itself already breaks the fourth wall...and didn't we already have this discussion several chapters ago?"Luckily, they were interrupted from breaking the fourth wall any more times by their arrival in New Member Q&A. "Quiet," whispered Gabriella. "We're here."All around them, the forum was a flurry of activity. Newbs and noobs ran everywhere, the former asking many legitimate questions of the other helpful members and the latter just asking dumb things such as "how do u use emetionz???//" or "what is hapree tofu? is he a tofu?" A scattering of more experienced members and staff tried to answer these questions as best they could and keep order, but the forum was rapidly degenerating into something that would almost put the dreaded Lego Message Boards to shame. "What's going on here?" asked Takuma. "This is bad even by Q&A standards, and that's saying a lot."Immediately a noob came up to the Randomness Warriors. "hi yuou look exprineced so tell me wats a blog? it is like a log but wif a b??/""No," answered Takuma, "a blog is a feature for Premier Members that allows them to make blog entries about any appropriate subject, comment, share images, and other things. Anyone can comment on someone's blog, but only Premier Members can make their own.""k thanks, so wats premir mean?""You have to pay money to become a Premier Member, which gives you certain perks like blogs or rank images.""can i pay wif wigdts?""No, you need to pay with real money.""ok i don't have any monee i m a hobo on the stert bye!"The noob scampered off somewhere. "Nice job, Takuma," Mesonak said. "I don't know if I could have stayed rational having to deal with him. I probably would have just ended up chucking a Report Button at him in frustration.""If you answer their questions, they go away eventually," Takuma said. "But now what? The forum is still horribly over-infested with questions. Where are all the members who used to frequent here? They should be helping out...""Beats me."Then, a much more rational-seeming member walked up to them. "Takuma!" he called out. "I am so glad to see you! We're horribly understaffed, help us answer some of these questions! The noobs and newbs are everywhere!""Sorry, but we don't really have a lot of time," Gabriella said. "We're here to ask questions, not answer them.""But why is this place so overcrowded? Where are all the experienced members?" asked Takuma. "This place wasn't nearly as bad last time I was here..."The BZP member sighed. "Well," he explained, "surely you've heard about the hackings going on lately. Lots of members are being hacked and sent weird PM's, apparently from some organization calling themselves the Ferrets in Beige. Have you heard of them?"The four Randomness Warriors looked at each other. "Yeah, we kinda noticed...""What does that have to do with NM Q&A, though?""Well," he explained, "Gold 14 and the other Moderators tried to stop the hackings the only way they knew how: by banning everyone who's been hacked, most of whom were important, prominent members. So now there's a huge influx of newbies and too few experienced members to control them. Even worse, it doesn't seem to be helping, since about half of the new members are actually more hacked FiB members in disguise. BZ-Nui is dissolving into chaos."Mesonak shrugged. "So?""Even more chaos than usual," the member clarified." " the Randomness Warriors emoticonned."Yep. Well, I can't stay, I need to help attempt to keep this forum orderly. Bye now!" The random BZP member left as randomly as he had come.Gabriella shrugged. "Well," she said, "now what? Things have gotten a lot worse than I thought.""It's more important than ever that we get our cause out there. The FiB must be stopped." Takuma turned and strode over to the "Create New Topic" button and activated it. Inside, he wrote: "Now what?" asked Mesonak.Takuma pointed over to the giant "refresh" button on the ground at the front of the forum. "We jump up and down on that button until we get a reply, of course!"Script-speaking Spongebob Narrator: Five hours later...Of the group of four Randomness Warriors, only the somewhat overly-hyper Gabriella was still jumping up and down. The other three were just sitting down next to it, watching wearily. "This is taking forever!" complained Gerlicky. "Why won't anyone reply?""Maybe because you three aren't trying hard enough! Come on, keep jumping!" shouted Gabriella excitedly."How in Hapori Tohu's name are you still so hyper? It's been five hours according to the Spongebob Narrator!" protested Mesonak."How are you so lazy?""Touche..."Suddenly, much to everyone's surprise, when Gabriella jumped on the button again, a reply materialized beneath them. "Wow, cool, a reply! It's about time..." muttered Takuma."Let's read it!" Together, the four Randomness Warriors walked to the low end of the topic and read the reply. It said: " " emoticonned all of the Randomness Warriors.Takuma shrugged. “Somehow, that wasn’t exactly the response I was expecting. Don’t they get it? The banning is only adding to the problem, not fixing it!”“I guess they’ve never had to deal with a large-scale attack like this before. One spammer here or there is easily dealt with, but a group that can continuously hack existing members’ accounts? BZ-Nui just doesn’t know how to handle this,” Gerlicky explained.“That reminds me of something that’s been bothering me for a while,” put in Gabriella as the four of them moved toward the exit of New Member Q&A. “Yes, we’ve had attacks on the forums before, but all of those times, it typically involved a person or a group making their own accounts and spamming or flaming using those before eventually being banned. Yet, somehow, the Ferrets in Beige are able to take over existing members. How? No one else has ever been able to do that as far as we know.”Gerlicky shrugged. “Good question, I haven’t the slightest idea. I suppose the first thing we ought to do is work on making ourselves, and the other citizens of BZ-Nui, more secure. It’s the best we can do until we figure out a way to discover how exactly they are doing this hacking.”“More secure? How?”“By changing our passwords, obviously.”“ ” the others simply emoticonned.“Well, seeing as that’s how we connect to our profiles in the first place, I’d say it’s a good place to start. I mean, I know most of us don’t really think about it, having our profiles remembered permanently since it doesn’t make a lot of sense not to, but under the circumstances…” The others just stared, looking more confused than ever. Gerlicky sighed, realizing that no one else but him even knew what he was talking about. “You know what? Never mind that. Let’s just focus on our original plan instead.”“Which was…?”The entire group just stared at each other blankly, having gotten so distracted by the events in New Member Q&A and Gerlicky’s bizarre conversation about profiles and passwords that they had all completely forgotten what their original plan even was in the first place. “I don’t know,” Gabriella admitted. “I forgot. Maybe we should PM the leaders of the Randomness Warriors and ask them to remind us.”“ http://www.bzpower.com/board/public/style_emoticons/default/annoyed2.gif ” emoticonned Mesonak, Takuma, and Gerlicky.“What?”Takuma began to use the :facepalm: emoticon before remembering there was no such thing. He settled for actually facepalming instead. “You. ARE. The. Leader.”“What? Oh, right. I kept thinking it was Lewa0111.”“He’s banned! That’s the whole purpose of the organization in the first place, unbanning him! Seriously, did you get bonked on the head recently or something?”“Leave her alone,” Mesonak chimed in. “She’s just confused. My mind is still boggled by that whole dissertation Gerlicky gave about profiles. I bet hers is, too.”“Why are wind chimes randomly chinging above your head?” asked Gerlicky.Mesonak glanced up to see a group of wind chimes. “Huh. Weird. I guess that’s what happens when you ‘chime in,’” he observed.“Whatever. We still don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing, and since even Gabriella can’t remember, that doesn’t exactly help us,” observed Takuma. “However,” he added with a , “I think I may have a solution…”THE ENDToaG Productions, Inc. (In association with Lewa# Studios)~Toa Gabriella~