Damn, this is boring. Watching the birds build a nest in the tree. One goes, the other comes back. One goes, aaand the other comes back. So dull. Anyways, I thought I'd get up and head on over to my computer, my new Mac to be exact. I take a seat and turn it on. No reaction. I press the power button a couple of more times. Still no dice. I hunch down and check out all the wires, all intact. What could be the problem, I ask. Its a Mac, duh.

Anyways, I don't have much patience with the Mac, so I go down to the basement and turn on the good old PC. It makes that "warm" start up noise and the monitor flickers to life. I dust off the keyboard and start browsing the web. Clicky here, clicky there. After a few minutes, I notice a small little "scratch" on the monitor. Just to be sure, I try smudging it off with my thumb.

Instead of the expected "screen-to-thumb" contact, I get this weird feeling as half my thumb is submerged in the screen. Wait, what? Let me try that again. So I take out my thumb and try to touch the screen. Woah, thats weird. Just out of curiosity, I stick my hand deeper and deeper in the monitor. I'm so high, this can't be happening, right? Little by little, I have almost half my body sumbereged in the screen and just like that, I tumble right into the WBO.

I land with a thud right on the report button. Uhh, feeling dizzy I gather myself up and stand up. Not knowing what else to do, I wander around the post. I walk over to the PM button and then right on past to the time and date under this user's avatar. I jump up and grip onto one of the faces. I pull myself up and climb right up the user's avatar and sit on the username. Wondering who's username has now become my seat, I tilt my head rather awkwardly and read the upside down word; ɔɐıuɯosuI. In-so-mn-iac. Insomniac! Jesus Christ that's me.

Oh what the hell. What am I going to do? Stuck on the WBO. Wait, no. Stuck in the WBO. I sat on my username, feet dangling. Pondering over my options. What would I do next? This situation was way too bizarre. Maybe I was just dreaming, haha. I decided to slump down and take a nap.

All of a sudden I hear this "siren-like" noise. It was definitely signaling that something bad was on the way. Because, seriously, whens the last time a siren brought good news? I bolt right up and looked down. Heck, someone was rage posting. The noise got louder and stopped when it reached the post. This was going to be good. I leaned over and tried to get in the best position to catch all the action.

Hazel raised his almighty hammer, and bam. Just like that, someone got slapped with a warning. So that's how its done, huh? Cool, looks like there's a lot I can do while being stuck in the WBO. And I should profit from this exclusive experience. Heck, I should be exploring, not sitting around whining. So with that, I climbed all the posts and got to the top of the thread. By linking, I made my way right to the main page. I was standing on the Plastics+HMS remembrance day banner. I peered down and then jumped. I couldn't get hurt, right? After all, I was just another computer program. Or was I not?

I guess the bruise I got after falling into the Bey Marketplace was an indicator.

Smack, dead center into dimsum2u's thread. So many replies, I had to swim through them. Then finally, I came across a familiar name; "Ginga Blader #1". Hm, I remember this dude, maybe he can help me out! The question remained though, how do I get his attention? I tried smacking his username, but no reaction. Oh well, forget this, I'm moving on.

Climbed right out of that mess and into my User CP. From there, I could at least send a PM to my friend. Hopped right down the list to ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)'s name. Pressed on the username and then proceeded to send a PM.

"Help me, I'm stuck in the WBO." And then with a simple press, poof. It was sent. I soon got a reply.

"lulz, wtf r u talkin 'bout? u r addicted to wbo. just log off."

Hm, so, this isn't going to work. I guess I'll have to prove that I'm stuck, haha. Wonder how this will work out. For a brief moment there, I thought of all the awful things I could do. Nah, I wouldn't do it. Besides, I was getting hungry.

I soon realized that sitting around, rather - derping around, was not going to get me anywhere. So I decided to get moving. I made my way right into the user CP and from there, I accessed the Buddy list. I went down the list once more and found Tech’s username. She’d know how to help me!

“Hey Tech, I’m stuck in the WBO! Can you help me?”

While tapping my foot, I got a reply.

“Um … just go to sleep. You’re going insane.”

Ugh, this isn’t going to work. I’d need someone to help me from the outside and so far, no body believed my story. I then got an idea, why not ask the legendary Kai-V? She always seemed to have an answer! I went to the thread she was looking at and then started tapping on the glass. I saw her face lean in and squint. Then I started to wave my arms and jump up and down so that she would notice me.

“I must be losing my marbles, that can’t be a real person that I’m seeing.”

I saw her mouse make it up to the log off button.

“I’m going to log off; it’s been a long day anyways.”

The little yellow circle at the bottom of her reply turned grey. A very cold grey.

So my chances of getting out were no close to none. Angry Face and Tech had both denied my messages and even Kai-V couldn’t help. I started to reflect upon my options … there were none. It occurred to me that maybe I could get out from the inside! But then if I would get out, no one would believe my story of getting stuck here in the first place, so I decided to drag Angry Face in here with me. How? Simple, the same way I did it. I sent him a PM again asking him to stare really closely at the “O” in the WBO banner at the top of the page. I was standing there with my arms waving. I soon got a reply.

“I saw a person there. Iz dat u?”

It sure was. Now that I had got his attention, I told him to come over to my house.

It was raining as I stood outside Insomniac’s door. I rang the doorbell and her mom opened it.

“What do you want?”

“Umm…I came to fix your computer!” (It was the only thing I could think of).

She eyed me carefully. Then she nodded in approval.

“It’s down in the basement. And remember, break anything and you’ll have to pay for it.”

I made my way straight down and found the big old computer in the back. I sat down and turned on the monitor. Insomniac’s account was logged in already. I logged off and from my account, I sent a PM.

“Hey, I’m at your house. More specifically, on that old dinosaur you call a computer. What do I do now?”

I got an answer really quick.

“Okay, all you have to do is get in the screen.”

“Um, what? Get in the screen?”

“Yeah, that’s right, just put your body through the screen.”

“She’s carping insane.”

I looked around one last time. I could hear the TV from down here. I took a deep breath and stuck my hand right through the screen slowly. As I imagined, it went right through. It was sort of a cool thing, y’know? I then pulled myself all the way in and landed right on the “B” of the banner. I got to my feet and rubbed the back of my head as I looked up. Where had I fallen from? It didn’t matter. I WAS INSIDE THE CARPING WBO!

Someone grabbed my arm from the back.

“Stop screaming you idiot, and follow me.”

She dragged me through the threads right down to the Advanced Forum.

“I think we’ll be able to get some help here, besides, this is where all the smart people are.” I told him.

He nodded in approval. Actually, what else could he do? I dragged him right into the LAD thread.

Getting into the forum was a bad choice. The lengthy replies were coming in faster and faster than you could imagine. Angry Face was looking in awe as the page lengthened out before our feet.

“C’mon, let’s get out of here before we get buried in the 20+ pages that this thread is going to get.”

We hopped right out and proceeded to a calmer spot in the WBO; the Spanish forum. There was pretty much no action here so we could at least sit down and re-think this whole thing again. I could smell the pasta from the Italian forum. Kidding, but still – I was hungry!

“OK, so I’ve tried getting people’s attention. They don’t believe me though. So getting out that way is no help. Any ideas, Angry Face?”

“Um, I don’t know.”

Frustrated I got up and went to the Closed Thread section. Angry Face quickly caught up.

I threw my hands in the air and let out an exasperated sigh. So now, it had been two hours since I was stuck in the WBO. None of my attempts to get out were successful. Then an idea flashed in my mind. Hey! I could get out via PayPal! That’s right; I can hitch a ride on someone’s PayPal money transfer. After all, I was a computer program now! I jumped up in joy and ran turned to Angry Face.

“You look excited, so what’s your plan of getting us out of here?” He looked un-amused and had his hands folded across his chest.

“We can wait for someone to order something via PayPal. Then we could embed ourselves in the money transfer and get transferred out!”

“That seems hysterical, but it’s worth a try …”

I grabbed his arm once more and started making my way up the closed thread section. After a while of climbing, it seemed as though we were right where we started. The top seemed distant.

“Hey, look!” He shouted as he motioned up wards.

I could see what he was seeing. The threads kept on coming in. No wonder it felt like we were stuck here. Darn, so many people were posting insipid threads. Until either no more threads were closed or someone stopped closing them, it’d be too hard to climb up.

So we waited.

We waited a long time.

A very long time.

Finally, after what had felt like an eternity, the closing had ceased. And we scrambled to the top. After climbing out, I rolled over on the floor and breathed deeply. Breathed clean air. The closed thread section felt so oppressing and big. It felt so enclosed . Heh, obviously; it was the closed thread section after all! After dusting himself off, he turned to me.

“Alrighty then, now what?”

I had two options; go to dimsum2u’s inbox or go to the Passport buying section. I figured people would be buying passports frequently. Besides, I didn’t want to infiltrate his inbox.

“To the passport section!”

I was so tired of climbing forums. And so was Angry Face. So I came up with an idea; we could go to my inbox and go directly to the first private message. From there, we could link ourselves to the Passport section.
Getting to my inbox took us little time. I found the first PM from Kai-V. I ran to the link and held my hand over it.

“Ready?”

“Wait!”

“What’s the matter dude?”

“Um, don’t you want to mess around a bit?”

“What did you say …?”

“Uh, no, not like that. I meant mess around with the forum.”

“Mess around with the forum?”

“Yeah, like mess around with the settings and stuff.”

An evil grin stretched my face as I wringed my hands together. Some people were going to get their username changed; changed to something
spectacular.

“Oh, well I guess it couldn’t hurt …”

“Haha, I knew you’d agree. First stop: Luck!”

We soon reached Luck’s profile. Now to get to the username change option via the user control panel. Angry dashed ahead and punched in a username. I read it out loud.

“ILOVEANGRYFACE. Why the hell would you put that?”

“Dunno. Only thing I could think of.”

He shrugged his shoulders in indifference.

After reading it a couple of more times, it seemed quite funny. I imagined the reaction on Luck’s face when they’d see it. Bah, it couldn’t hurt after all. So I went ahead and gave my nod of approval.

“Huh?”

“Whats the matter Angry?”

“It needs a password to change!”

“Oh, derp. Forgot about that.”

“Guess we can’t change it then. Same goes for FlamingFury, Peridot,
GravityPerseus, DarkBull2296,Beychamp76 and The Prodigy”.

“Now that these fortunate people’s usernames are spared, I suggest we keep moving.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right …”

Angry looked a bit disappointed. Hm, what was his obsession with changing usernames? I really didn’t know and if we hadn’t been stuck inside the WBO, maybe I’d ask him. But now was not the time – we really needed to get going.

“Well then, how about we continue to the passport section?”

I didn’t wait for Angry’s response. He couldn’t reject my suggestion anyways. Where would he go? I exited Luck's user CP and proceeded to the main page.

It was quite peaceful, you know? The main page. Not as much activity as inside the threads. The only thing that seemed to change is the number of users and the latest posts. Those two were conveniently placed on the left hand side of the page. So I decided to avoid that busy side and continue our journey up the right side.

We had just gotten to the customization forum when we heard a loud siren. Carp, what was that? Angry’s face looked just as confused. I desperately looked around to locate the source of this noise but to no avail. Being quite high up, my instinct was to look down. As I did, I saw some small things at the bottom that had recently appeared. There were two of them. I squinted and saw that they resembled small robots. Quite cute actually. I tugged on Angry’s sleeve.

“Hey, look down there!”

“Those look like viruses!”

I kinda chuckled at Angry’s weird remark. A virus? No, viruses didn’t look like this. He’d been playing way too many video games. But then again, how would I know how viruses looked like? I had only seen one from the outside. Heh, these could be viruses. I didn’t want to take any chances. You know, being in the same “room” with viruses made me kinda uneasy. But to ease any remaining doubt, I decided to contact the expert. That’s right, the expert . Who is this “expert” you say? Obviously, the one and only … computer genius … TAKASU!

“C’mon, back to the private messaging system!”

I dragged Angry Face right there, not stopping even for a single second.

“Huh, where are you taking me?”

“We’re going to ask Takasu to verify the identity of these bots.”

“Beats me.”

Angry, once again, showed no signs of protest. So we went right into the messaging system and I quickly contacted Takasu via PM. My message was short and simple.

“Hey, could you run a quick scan of the WBO? There apparently some virus. Could you confirm this?”

The response came as soon as the message was sent.

“I ran a quick scan and yes, there seems to be some malicious software infiltrating the WBO!”

“Software?” I asked myself.

Angry chuckled and replied,

“Those bots don’t look too soft to me.”

His pun, as stupid as it might have seemed, brightened up the atmosphere a bit. Ignoring the little fit of laughter he was having while repeating his joke to himself, I replied to Takasu.

“Okay, so can you give me a rundown of the situation? I mean, how bad is it?”

As usual, the response was fast.

“The bots are trying to hack the WBO! It seems as though the anti-virus will defend the content and shut down internally. You’re going to lose access to the main page but the threads will be fine. The site will be inaccessible via URL. So basically, we’re going into an internal lockdown! This will help prevent any content from being deleted while keeping the bots out at the same time. So rest assured, everything will be fine after the 24 hour clean up.”

24 hour clean up? What the hell was that? As if in response to my question, another PM came in.

“Okay good news; the antivirus has detected the threat. The WBO is going in internal lockdown. The main page is inaccessible for the next 24 hours. After that time, the WBO will do a cleanup and erase any suspicious programming. The system will then boot itself and everything will be normal again.”

Oh carp, any suspicious programming? Could that mean us? Would we be erased in the next 24 hours if we didn’t escape? The thoughts whirled around in my head. A speaker interrupted my thoughts.

“WBO INTERNAL SHUTDOWN IN 10 SECONDS. THIS IS A REPEAT: INTERNAL SHUTDOWN IN 10 SECONDS.”

Angry and I exchanged worried looks. I remembered what Takasu had said: “The main page will be inaccessible.” That meant we needed to take cover in one of the threads. And we needed to do so fast! In almost no time, we both were clambering up the page. We reached the nearest section, the customization forum and we dove in. As soon as we had landed, the speaker spoke again.

“10 SECONDS TIME OUT. LOCKDOWN ACKNOWLEDGED. NOW COMMENCING.”

We heard quite a loud sound. It almost sounded like a gate closing. Just to be extra sure, we waited a couple of minutes before peeking out again. When we did, we saw nothing. That’s right, instead of the familiar blue and grey schemed main page, there was nothing. The banner and the icons under it were intact though. But the main page was completely empty. Well actually, in the dead center, there were three numbers, “909”. I repeated the numbers in my head, but nothing made sense. What were these numbers supposed to mean? I turned to Angry who seemed unsurprised to say the least. His face was rather smug.

“Hey, do you know what these mean?”

His face didn’t change and he sighed as he responded.

“You don’t know what those are?”

“No …”

His face changed a bit. A smirk took over.

“Bahaha, you’re kidding me, right?”

“Can you just cut the carp and tell me already? What is it with boys?”

“Okay okay, I’ll tell you. Well, have you ever heard of “404 NOT FOUND”?”

“Of course! I’m not dumb!”

“Well, that’s the same thing. It seems to be another code. A code
indicating a lockdown.”

It made sense; after all, we were in the middle of a lockdown. So the
code appearing should be a normal thing, according to Angry. Now that we had gotten the mysterious numbers figured out, we retreated to the interior of the forum.

“So now that we can’t get to the passport section via the main page, what should we do?”

“Pfft, easy. We can just forum link.”

“Forum link?”

“Yeah, we can get to the passport section by going through the forums. Instead of climbing them.”

The idea seemed simple in a way. But way too simple. Something bugged me about the simplicity. It was then when Angry interrupted my line of thought.

“Okay, so above this forum is the Beyblade General forum if memory serves correctly”.

I nodded in approval. So we would have to go through the stickied threads at the top most of the forum. From there, off in a little corner, there would be a forum link button which leads you to the next forum above it. Seemed simple enough, so we set off climbing. We found the button in no time. I ran up to it and joyfully pressed the button and waited for a reaction. Nothing happened. I pressed it a few times more. By the time my frustration gave in, I was literally pounding the button.

“Hey hey! Calm down will ya? Now step away from the poor button.”

I stepped away and folded my arms. Now what were we going to do with a broken button? I saw Angry examining it.

“Hey, come over here and take a look!”

I walked over and followed the direction of Angry’s finger. I soon saw what he was pointing at. It was a little key pad beside the button. It had 10 buttons on it. The buttons on top were from 1-9 and the button on the bottom was the biggest. It said “Enter”. The LCD display was lit at the very top though.

“Hm, I see.”

Angry was nodding as he pressed the buttons.

“Mind cluing me in on what’s happening here?” I demanded.

“Oh, sorry. Well it seems as though the security system has literally

“locked” the forums. So to get through, we need to enter a pass code”.
A passcode? What the actual carp? What kind of black magic carpery was this?

“Why the hell would there be a password?”

My question seemed rather shocking to Angry. He was taken aback.

“Well, why wouldn’t there be? I mean; the forum wants to keep the virus out so it would make sense that it would have locked itself with a pass code.”

“So the forum thinks the virus is dumb and it can’t figure out the pass word?”

“Not exactly, no. You see, antiviruses come in many forms. Even the best ones can’t keep out the cruelest of viruses. So it would make sense that this one decided to analyse the virus and then concluded that this one would not know how to find the pass code. So, that being said, it didn’t have to go to the extreme to protect the forum. And so, it used this mediocre method to keep the virus out.”

His explanation was mind boggling and didn’t make much sense to me. But my questions would have to wait as I had remembered something crucial … “24 hours till the forum erases any suspicious programming.”

24 hours.

1440 minutes.

86400 seconds till erasure.

That was all the time we had. And I sure as hell didn’t want to find out what “being erased” meant.

“Okay, so how exactly do we find the password?”

My question seemed simple enough. Though, as I feared, the answer would not come as easily.

“Um, maybe let’s search around for clues.”

Clues? What kind of movie did he think we were in? Sherlock Holmes? I didn’t want to waste any more time, so I decided to put my questions and attitude aside and help Angry. My best bet was to investigate the lock mechanism beside the button. I looked all around it but there seemed to be nothing suspicious. Hm, maybe I wasn’t looking closely. Or maybe I was looking in the wrong place. I decided to check the mechanism itself. I pressed a couple of buttons. The appeared on the screen one after the other. After both digits appeared, the LCD display went dim and a “buzz” came from the button. I pressed it, but like before, it wasn’t working. Obviously, I had entered the wrong password. But something else appeared on the screen now.

“[CODE 909 ACKNOWLEDGED. SYSTEM NOW ONLINE. FORUMS ABOVE PASS CODE PROTECTED. FORUMS BELOW ACCESSIBLE VIA DEFAULT CODE. ENTER PASS CODE TO CONTINUE UP. DEFAULT DOWN IS 00]”

Up by pass code? Down by default? This was making sense now. If logic served correctly, the above forums would all be locked by a pass code. But the forums below us were all unlocked by a default code. Now, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that default code meant that all codes under us were the same. Only to get to the next forum, we’d have to enter a new code. I wanted to stop and ponder over the reasoning behind this, but that the number “24” still hung heavy in the atmosphere.
As if to interrupt my gloomy thoughts, Angry let out a yell of happiness.

“Hey look! I found the clue! I found the clue!”

“Well, what is it?”

“Um, it’s kinda weird. I don’t get it.”

He thrust the paper into my hand. I unfolded it and read it.

“[THE TRACK OF THE GRIFFON- ZERO GRAVITY]”

I read it over and over again. No matter how many times, it still didn’t make clear sense. What the hell was the “track of the griffon”? I knew that a griffon was a mythological beast that was a combination of a lion and an eagle. But what exactly was the “track of the griffon”? And even more strangely, what did “Zero-Gravity” have to do with all of this.
So many things were being processed in my mind at the same time. I thought it was going to explode. Angry then spoke up.

“Hey, I think I know what the clue might mean.”

“Well, let’s hear it, Sherlock.”

I could see he was far too intent on explaining his theory to reply to my comment. He took a deep breath and started to explain.

“Well, we’re stuck inside the WBO. So it would seem logical that “zero gravity” had to do with the new Beyblade series that just came out; “ZERO-G”.

This part made so much sense. How had I not figured it out myself? Angry continued.

“And so, if it is really in reference to ZERO-G, which means the “Griffon” must be a Beyblade”.

A Beyblade? There were no “Griffon” beyblades. Actually, at the same time that I thought about that creature, an idea came to mind.

“Hey! It’s referring to “Archer Gryph”!

“Correct!”

Satisfied with my findings, we proceeded down into the customization forums. It took little time to locate the [Gryph Discussion Thread]. I halted to a stop right in front of it.

“So this is it, huh?”

“Yeah, lets check it out”.