> dir
>>> Directory of N:/LoreProjects/Christmas2024
<DIR> ..
<INF> Description
>>> In December of 2024, Kirb held a small ARG to move his channel into 2025. As of writing, it's February of 2025, so the ARG is since over with. We've reviewed and detailed the steps it went through to look back on.
<DSC> [STEP 01] A post was sent to Twitter to close out the year. An ID of a YouTube video was hidden in the background: "blfnZlQ6alM".
<DSC> [STEP 02] The ID led to "[SceneEnd.mp4] // The Year of SonicKade". In the bottom-left corner, there is text reading "Bane spit Xp438bEf".
<DSC> [STEP 03] "Bane spit" is an anagram for "Pastebin", leading to a Pastebin post using the given ID. It's a long mess of a repeated phrase but has dialogue at the end. Decrypting the text after gives "sonickade2048 neo find_her".
<DSC> [STEP 04] This hints at Kirb's Neocities site under the page "find_her.html". The page references deltarune by Toby Fox, of which it hints to look at the page's source code. This gives "calendar.png".
<DSC> [STEP 05] The image is an edited graphic from Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. It's a calendar showing the month of September, highlighting the 28th day and having "/_____day.html" at the bottom. Specifically, this is the day Kirb was born, making it "birthday.html".
<DSC> [STEP 06] It's a webpage designed after a different version of Kirb, one he saw in a dream. All the links refresh the page except the one leading to Google Drive, which expectedly is a Google Drive folder named "KirbArtArchive".
<DSC> [STEP 07] The folder has 5 subfolders with 5 images each, making 25 total. One image in each has part of a YouTube ID. The trick is to order them alphabetically using the filenames. The order would be "A# B# C# D# E#", disregarding the numbers, the ID being "8qvFZ1H9wVs".
<DSC> [STEP 08] The ID led to "Time to Solve! - Kirby: Adventure in Dream Land", another Funland mutation/spoof. The description is changed, having the text "yufbwiqx.ckm/JD264h3y" and saying "Please key the author". This implies a Vigenére cipher using the composer name as the key. This gives another Pastebin link with the ID "AJ264u3q".
<DSC> [STEP 09] It's another bunch of repeated words with decodable text at the bottom, using a ROT13 cipher. After the dialogue it reads "imgur undo UvZOMLT". The "undo" tells to undo the cipher, meaning "HiMBZYG" is the correct Imgur ID.
<DSC> [STEP 10] This led to another reference to deltarune. It's a red-pink tree with text around it in Wingdings. The text reads "Q: WHAT COLOR AM I?" "_______.html". With knowledge of deltarune, the tree is from the area "Scarlet Forest", making the answer "scarlet.html".
<DSC> [STEP 11] There are actually two answers to the question: the question being in capitals implies the answer using it too, but using lowercase gives a different webpage. Both hint to each other, the word "case" being the only opposite. In the source code it mentions mirrors and reflection, asking to reverse the page names to get "telracs".
<DSC> [STEP 12] The 2nd pair of pages have another YouTube ID embedded as an image, as well as flavor text in Hexadecimal. The way to solve it is taking both images and layering them together in an editor, letting you see the full ID: "1YEbu29Z14g".
<DSC> [STEP 13] The ID goes to "Back Through the Plains (Demo Disk) - Kade's Return to Funland". There's a new tagline and a comment, saying to "switch yourself up again" with a Pastebin ID. This calls to the uppercase and lowercase trick, switching the case of all letters in the comment. It should then read "pastebin atCd8z83".
<DSC> [STEP 14] The final Pastebin follows the same style again. The text is encoded with a Railfence cipher, hinted by the unencoded sentences. Removing the brackets and running the cipher isn't enough though; there's an 8 and a 5 hidden in the corners and an extra line to show capitalization. All together it reads "shortened 34yw5van".
<DSC> [STEP 15] "shortened" implies another TinyURL link, leading to a BeepBox project. The "song" is actually Morse Code. It translates to "aw1ndxiuy29tl1jfr21mady=" and lines up with the Pastebin post. Fixing the required letters gets us "aW1ndXIuY29tL1JFR21MaDY=".
<DSC> [STEP 16] This is another Imgur, link encoded in Base64. Decoding it and following the link shows a Minecraft screenshot with a Kade avatar. Text at the top reads "I'm repeating myself, aren't I?" implying prior clues need to be used. Flipping the image helps read the two signs: "y = mx + b" and another YouTube ID. The math equation is also known as "Slope-Intercept Form", in which the Affine cipher is needed. Running the cipher and reversing the string gives "SJpZFMu11TA".
<DSC> [STEP 17] This leads to "Sepulcrum - The Binding of Isaac: Repentance". The video is over an hour long but only certain timestamps are needed. On every room transition (and at the end of the video) a letter or number pops up. This is the final YouTube ID, giving "eHCmuxyPmWM".
<INF> Description
>>> With this, the video "To Uphold a New Order - SonicKade2048" was found. It shows a character from the [SiIvaGunner] multiverse being intercepted by Nightscar and bribed into taking over Kirb's channel. The takeover went into effect February 1st and The Voice Inside Your Head has since had full control over Kirb's YouTube. It's unknown when Kirb will return and/or when the takeover will end.
<INF> File & Site Links
<LNK> [Starting Tweet]
<LNK> ["[SceneEnd.mp4] // The Year of SonicKade"]
<LNK> [Emergency Log 1]
<LNK> [find_her.html]
<LNK> [calendar.png]
<LNK> [birthday.html]
<LNK> ["KirbArtArchive" Google Drive]
<LNK> ["Time to Solve! - Kirby: Adventure in Dream Land"]
<LNK> [Emergency Log 2]
<LNK> [Scarlet Imgur page]
<LNK> [scarlet.html]
<LNK> [SCARLET.html]
<LNK> [telracs.html]
<LNK> [TELRACS.html]
<LNK> ["Back Through the Plains (Demo Disk) - Kade's Return to Funland"]
<LNK> [Emergency Log 3]
<LNK> [TinyURL link]
<LNK> [Direct BeepBox link]
<LNK> [Minecraft Imgur page]
<LNK> ["Sepulcrum - The Binding of Isaac: Repentance"]
<LNK> ["To Uphold a New Order - SonicKade2048"]
>>> WRITTEN BY
>>> [ Jumber ]