Story #23
"That's good, Octavia! Keep up the beat!" encouraged Vinyl Scratch as the soothing sound of a cello being played filled the air.
The Octavia and Vinyl band was practicing in the rather dingy basement of Lyra's house.
Octavia, Vinyl and Lyra were practicing in Lyra's house for the Annual Pony Band Competition this year. Octavia was beginning to do some chords as a warm-up, and Vinyl was picking out a disk to play.
And Lyra was humming a tune into the microphone with great speed, while Bon Bon supervised and helped adjust the volume on the radio, which was belting out a strange song played on the guitar.
"And that was Crazy Sword's new single, I See It," said the announcer, with a peculiar tone in his voice. Bon Bon put in a CD and played the first song. Bon Bon wasn't in the band, but she liked to help the band out sometimes.
Bon Bon was reading the packet that came with the CD.
"Almost all of these songs are by that big new guitarist, Crazy Sword," she noted, looking with disgust at the CD packet.
Lyra turned around. "But we didn't order Crazy Sword's new-"
The green mare stopped when she saw the cover of the CD, which was lying on the table that the band used to test their instruments on.
The cover clearly stated:
"Crazy Sword's Latest Hits!"
Octavia grabbed the CD and looked at it closely. "Yes, it's a Crazy Sword CD," she said, putting the CD back down on the table. "It's just that..I know I ordered a pack of Vinyl Scratch CDs before. At the time I ordered those CDs, Crazy Sword hadn't even been seen yet. He didn't exist in Equestria then."
Vinyl Scratch walked over, frowning. "I heard that Crazy Sword just moved over from some strange country and that no pony knows what he looks like," sad Vinyl Scratch suspiciously. "He supposedly always wears a black cloak over himself."
Octavia did nothing but stare at the CD cover. Then she looked up and said, "Well, that's very suspicious indeed." Vinyl Scratch picked up the cover with her levitation magic and threw it across the room, landing it perfectly in the very middle of the trash can. "We can't trust someone who can't just show us how he looks like instead of wearing a big black cloak over himself. "
Lyra nodded, taking the Crazy Sword CD out of the radio. And levitating it over to the trash, dropping it in with a clanging sound as the CD hit the metal can.
"I'll have to order a new pack of CDs," said Octavia, heading over to her gray laptop and pushing the power button. After Octavia typed in her password, she went to her usual CD ordering website and immediately saw that it was full of new Crazy Sword CDs. Vinyl Scratch's CDs were entirely gone from the Featured list, and instead, the Featured list was stocked with piles of Crazy Sword CDs.
Octavia scrolled down, slightly annoyed that the Featured list had been taken over by Crazy Sword. She was about to reach the spot where the Vinyl Scratch CDs usually were. But when she got there, all she could see was Crazy Sword products.
Octavia, desperately looking for any sign of the usual batches of Vinyl Scratch CDs that were in the website. After scrolling her mouse for hours, Octaia gave up and told the bad news to her friends:that the whole CD selling industry had probably been taken over by Crazy Sword products.
After hearing this, Vinyl Scratch decided to go to her CD website, where she only sold her own CDs. Octavia eagerly typed in the name of the site and clicked the correct link that popped of on the screen.
After logging in, Octavia saw something that almost made her eyes pop out.
Vinyl Scratch's website was advertising and even selling Crazy Sword CDs.
Frantically Octavia scrolled down the entire page, only to find that Crazy Sword CDs had mysteriously also dominated Vinyl Scratch herself.
"Lyra! Vinyl Scratch!" Octavia called.
"I think that Crazy Sword has dominated our website, too!"
The two ponies rushed over along with Bon Bon, was was completely surprised at the prospect of the band's CD-selling website being dominated. Vinyl Scratch took one look at her website, and uttered a small shriek of terror. "How is Crazy Sword able to do this?"
Lyra shook her head in confusion. "This can't be," she said. "Our website's been completely taken over."
"Try logging in," suggested Octavia. "Then change the website so that nobody can edit it besides you. Then change your password, and afterwards, delete everything to do with Crazy Sword's CDs."
Vinyl Scratch proceeded to log in, only to find that whenever she typed in her password, it would say that her password was incorrect.
"I'm sure I typed it right!" said Vinyl Scratch as she tried to log in repeatedly, only to be turned down with another statement that her password was incorrect.
"Retrieve your password by email," Octavia suggested, but when trying to do this, Vinyl was told again and again that the email wasn't the email of any user on the website.
"Crazy Sword must have hacked into my computer in some way and changed everything in my account," said Vinyl.
"Maybe if we check the Users page we can find some information about how we got hacked," Lyra said.
Octavia clicked the link to the Users page in the navigation bar, and scrolled down, reading the names of each user on the website. "Lyra, administrator. That's you, Lyra. Octavia, administrator. That's me. Time Turner, standard user. Thunderlane, standard user. Rainbow Dash, standard user.."
Three minutes later, Octavia was still reading in hopes of discovering some information on their account hack.
"Colgate, standard user.."
Then something caught their eye.
"Berry Punch, administrator..wait! Why is Berry Punch an administrator?"
The three ponies made a call to Berry Punch's house.
"Berry Punch?" Berry Punch answered in her sweet, but loud voice. "Oh, hi!" she said. "I just wanted to ask you, why are you an administrator on our CD-selling website?" Lyra asked.
Berry Punch sounded confused. "Huh?" she asked. "I don't have a account on your website. Not anymore, at least. My account got hacked yesterday, and I'm trying to retrieve the password."
