Wow! Here's a blast from the past!
I wrote this story (and a few others) as JDG. There weren't any gifs in it, so I'm puzzled by the mention of them. I tried to find the story here on the boards, but all of my searches came back null. I did put all the quotes from the Magic 8-Ball in <>, so maybe that caused issues when the boards got updated.
At any rate, thank you, Shallowford, for resurrecting the story. I'm glad you enjoyed it!