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 Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 3:43 pm
"Oh I'm fine..the chair might not be so fortunate though" He replied amiably, even as he continued to sweep his gaze over the computers to try and find one that they might be able to use.
His eyes landed on the absolute relic of a computer about the same time that Xiu pointed it out. The thing looked like it could be an antique! Why would they leave such a monstrosity in the library? Shrugging, and looking somewhat reluctant he replied.
"I'm great with computers...but that one, uh..maybe."
He gave her a very appreciative look as they neared the table, happy that she was kind enough to stay by his side and not move too quickly up ahead. She was very nice ghoul indeed!
Once they got to the computer (if one could even call it that. what were those small, rectangular shaped openings on the front for?) he pulled out the chair to sit. Then just stared. Where the Jack was the power button for this thing?
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 2:19 am
Oh, good! It was a relief to hear that the boil had some skill with computers...though a little less reassuring when he seemed hesitant about this particular one. She definitely couldn't blame him, though--the only computer she had really interacted with herself was her own, nice, sleek laptop. In comparison, this old, boxy thing was...
Shaking her head, she pulled a chair out beside Alex's and sat down on. "So, um, to turn this on..." Xiu stared blankly at the computer, reaching out and hovering her finger over the row of buttons that lined the machine. Uhhh...logically, it should be the biggest button, right? She pushed it.
The machine roared to life, a sudden cacophony of noises that nearly had the ghoul tipping over her chair. There was buzzing, growling, and...well, the computer just didn't sound very healthy. Still, despite all the noise, it booted up okay. On the desktop was the icon for the interwebs browser. Taking a deep breath, Xiu held up the article again. "There's a short url here above the ad. Do you think we should check it out?"For reference! The "Business advertisement" led to a relatively normal looking website, promising to help in all business endeavors to succeed for a small fee. However, there were some students who were not browsing the website because they wanted to set up a business - they were browsing the website because they discovered something within the little advertisement placed so conveniently under the 'LIES ON LIES' article, and were intrigued enough to carry on.
A few mouse clicks later, they would come across a page asking for their Name, 'Password' as well as their Skelephone number; those who had stumbled upon that page on accident might frown and leave, thinking of it as a scam. Those who had discovered the message and password hidden within the advertisement, however, would eagerly punch in the information required of them...
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 9:33 pm
Oh..my, that was quite the large button! He supposed it made sense, but he'd never encountered such an old and bulky machine before. And the noise it made! He gritted his teeth against the sound, his face scrunching up in a look of complete distaste.
Oh well, at least it was working, right?
Alex looked down to the article again, taking in the name of the URL. "I guess it couldn't hurt to check it out." He shrugged, then turned back to the computer screen, grabbing ahold of the mouse to click on the interwebs browser icon.
At first, nothing happened. And then slowly, oh sooooo sloooowly, the browser flashed to life on the screen. Alex didn't waste anytime in typing in the URL, but then it was a long wait again while the page began to load.
He began tapping the fingers of his free hand on the desk in impatience, which was a little sad, considering how slowly the zombie moved, physically. You'd think that he had endless patience.
Finally the page was loaded however, and Alex began to read, clicking on links he felt seemed a little..different, and eventually (after what seemed hours of slow page loading) came to a page that asked for a Name, password, and skelephone number.
"Could this be it?" he turned to ask the ghoul, "Do you think we need to figure out what to enter in here?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:41 am
Even Xiu, who was generally a rather patient ghoul, had been rather unhappy with the slow speed at which the site loaded. She started with leaning her elbows up on the table, and as the computer sloooowly loaded, the baku's arms sloooowly slid forward. By the time the page was done loading, Xiu's upper half was flopped over the desk in impatience. "I should have brought my laptop." She muttered, her voice muffled.
It wasn't until she heard Alex speak did she jerk her head up to look at the screen. Upon seeing the familiar page, an unbidden smile spread over her lips. Alex really was good at following clues. Trying to hide her approving expression, she cleared her throat and nodded. "That's what is looks like. And the password..."
Lowering her voice, she eyed the spam message on the newspaper again. "How should we go about this? I mean, if this is a coded message..." ...Hmm. "Are you any good at math, Alex?" They could probably figure out a formula to decode the whole thing between the two of them.
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 2:58 pm
Ok, awesome! They were finally making a little bit of progress. But now they had to figure out the password, and that was the part that Alex was really not looking forward too. He sighed, and leaned back in his chair, hands reaching up to clasp behind the back of his head.
"Ya, pretty good with Maths, actually, though just not that great with puzzles, so I guess we'll see?" He eyed the table in front of them, noticing a handy looking pad of paper and pen within arms reach and sitting back up straight to snag it.
He had another look at the article, this time noticing just how many numbers there were. He began jotting things down, eye flicking to the article, then back to the pad of paper, then to Xui if she had anything to add.
This might just take a while.
((Feel free to do the time warp))
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:28 pm
It took a while for the two to ponder over the clue...and even longer for them to actually attempt to solve it. The most difficult part was coming up with the mathematical formula, and that was made obvious by the piles of scrunched up paper that littered the desk and the floor around them. If one were to smooth out the sheets of paper, they would find that both sides were filled by long, complicated equations.
And scribbles. Lots of scribbles.
"I...I think this might be the one," Xiu said, for what was probably the fifth time that day. However, she really believed it this time. Just multiple that number by the square root of the 23847 over 4662, then divide the whole thing by--
Slowly, something that looked like a sembalance of a password became to form on the paper. After she was done each calculation, Xiu would write the result--the letter--at the bottom of the page. So far, what she had was, "s-h-o-x".
..."Shox? ...Like Headmistress Hellma Shox?" She turned to look at Alex with wide eyes, before sliding the paper to him and urging him to continue. She wanted to see what the rest of the password was, but after writing a page and a half of calculations, her hand was beginning to become a little stiff.
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:13 pm
Alex's brain was literally beginning to feel like it was turning to mush. He blinked at Xui, then stared blankly at the paper in front of him then back at Xui. "I...I never want to do another mathematical equation or puzzle ever again. Ever." he muttered, his face looking long and drawn. This had really been a test for him, whether or not he could find it in him to continue on with this over the hours (at least, it felt like hours) of writing and re-writing formulas.
But Xui said she thought this was the one, and his brain woke up just the tiniest bit, though he had heard her say that before. But now she was writing...and...actual words were forming! His brain finally fired back to life as his eyes widened and he took the paper away from her, tapping the pen on the paper a few times before continuing on "p-a-n-t---" his writing wasn't nearly as elegant as hers, so it looked a little weird put side to side together as it was, but eventually the whole thing was spelt out before them, and he had to laugh.
"Shoxpanties? Seriously?" It had taken them all this time...just for that!
Wow.
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 2:50 pm
............Shoxpanties.
Xiu knew the password for the Seeds members, but she had been in the dark about the first password for those who wanted to sign up. Therefore, it was with both pleasure (they finally solved it!) and vague horror that she regarded the letters printed on the sheet of paper. It was...definitely a unique (and probably unguessable to most) password for sure, to say the least.
"I...I guess that's it! Though umm..." Scribbling the website URL down on the paper, she folded it up and held it out to Alex. "You--er, I mean, we--should probably do all this on our own time, and not somewhere so..." She made a vague gesture towards their surroundings. Then, perking up, she pushed her chair back and stretched. "But that was kind of fun! It took a long time, but I'm kind of impressed that we managed to figure out an equation for--"
She froze. Wait a second...didn't the interwebs have a ton of automatic decoders? If they had just searched something up in Gruegle...
Without announcing what she was doing, Xiu took over the keyboard, going to the Gruegle homepage and clicking on the search bar. Now, what was she trying to search for? A decoder...a spam message decoder? Let's try that.
Sure enough, it was the first link--a message decoder that encoded and decoded messages that were in the same format as the one printed in the school paper.
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 4:29 pm
Great! They had figured it out! He had to agree with Xui though about signing up on their own time. "Ya, sure, I have a lap top in my room I can use, and since nobody has ever actually been in my room but me, I'm sure it's perfectly safe." He grinned, also beginning to rise from his seat, and finding that his skeletal leg had stiffened up completely and refused to straighten until he'd given it a few slaps with his hand.
Finally able to stand up straight, he nodded, about to agree with Xui that it was indeed impressive that they had finally managed to work out such a complicated equation and figure out the puzzle.
But then she was suddenly leaning down towards the keyboard, intent on doing something, and his gaze shifted to stare at the computer screen. Gruegle, spam decod---
AH JACK, seriously??
He let out a very audible groan and slapped a hand to his forehead.
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:03 am
Ridiculous. This was ridiculous. They had spent all that time and effort working on this single puzzle, and they could have just figured out the answer within a minute if they used this site. Xiu was stone-faced as she stared at the website, suddenly aware of the ache in her right hand and her wrist from gripping the pen and writing so much. Without a word, she closed the browser and went to shut off the computer.
".................w-well..." Turning to look at Alex, she rubbed the back of her head sheepishly, "At least...we can feel proud that we figured it out all on our own?" Even if it took many, many trials, as evidenced by all the paper surrounding them. Stooping down, the baku began to gather all the balled up pieces of paper up before they left.
"But I guess that's that! Thanks for your help! I hope that that site proves to be interesting to you." There was a pause, and then she hastily added, "As interesting as the rumours suggest, I mean. A-ANYWAYS, I'll see you around?"
With the task done, the ghoul figured that they could go now. Part of the reason that she wanted to leave was that she was afraid of saying more than she already had.
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 11:17 pm
"Hmm? Oh yes, proud." Alex was still staring flatly at the computer screen, even after she turned the computer off and it had gone dark. Shaking his head in disgust, he bent to help her collect the rumpled pieces of paper littering the floor.
Once finished Alex gave Xui a huge smile. Even if he did feel incredibly stupid for no thinking of the decoder from the start, he had still enjoyed spending time with the pretty demon, and she was absolutely one of the friendliest students he'd met thus far. "Ya sure, I'll see you around!" He held up a hand in a goodbye gesture and turned to shuffle slowly away.
He had plans to go back to his dorm room, get on his laptop, and visit this website.
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