And I am back! Welcome to the sequel to Hardly Human. If you haven't read that, I suggest you do. I hope you all will keep supporting me in this story!
This first chapter isn't the best. Finding a starting point for this was difficult for me. And it doesn't help that I'm really bad at writing about "normal" lives (always have been better at writing actiony stuff).
Quick notes: This story takes place a month or so after the end of Hardly Human. This chapter will have some recap from Hardly Human. This story will involve the gods of Minecraft, so if it seems awkward at any time, please know that I'm agnostic (not religious) and very scientifically-minded, so I know very little about religion. This story includes intact TeamCrafted, as well as Enderlox. I am still using the same cover picture since I don't have another. If anyone want to draw one, I'd probably use that. So please, if you'd like, I'd like a new picture for this story.
"...I told you we would have our revenge..."
I shot straight upright in my bed, eyes darting around the room in search of any danger.
But no, the voice from my dream was just that. A dream.
I sighed, and relaxed. Why couldn't I get it in my mind that the compound wasn't a danger anymore? Ever since we'd returned to Budder City, I'd been having these constant nightmares about the compound whenever I fell asleep.
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I stood and walked out to my balcony, lifting my wings to warm them in the sunlight.
Yeah, I said wings. My brother and I are enderdragon hybrids. The compound was the laboratory that had created us, from the DNA of an enderdragon egg. The compound that we'd destroyed a month ago.
Yeah, my life is a bit complicated.
Reaching out with my telepathic powers, I determined that my brother was still asleep, and decided not to bother him.
My balcony was barely isolated, seeing as other people's rooms were right on each side of mine, with their own balconies. But the building was on the outskirts of the city, near the grand entrance, and my room had the most beautiful view of the skies and fields surrounding the city, and a convenient view of the river flowing nearby.
I headed back in after a short while, changing out of the light gray tank top and shorts I wore for sleeping.
I still usually wore black. Jeans and v-neck t-shirts, with glossy polished combat boots. I had completely abandoned hiding my Ender features, and therefor the cloak and sunglasses I'd worn back when I was hiding.
By the time I was ready, a few minutes after I'd started, my brother was still asleep in his room, adjacent to mine. So I headed out without him.
The first thing on my agenda was to visit Hector.
The little boy who we'd decided on calling my younger cousin of sorts was being taken care of with other kids his age.
But before I got to the building, I was distracted.
A few army recruits were arguing, one of them yelled, "I don't see why I have to call it 'budder' it's freaking gold, for Notch's sake!"
"C'mon man, that's not how we do it around here..." The other guy was trying to explain passively, his eyes wide in surprise at the fact that someone could be so ignorant.
If it wasn't a great offense to my friend Sky, I wouldn't have cared whether people called it gold or budder. I personally called it gold unless I was around Sky or the army.
So in other words, I stepped in.
"Excuse me, but as long as you are a part of the Sky Army it is requirement that you call it budder in front of the other recruits. We can't control you when you're alone or with your family, but if it offends others, such as this recruit here, then you must cease calling it gold" I said, commandingly.
To my annoyance, he simply sneered at me, not even seeming to notice that I wasn't fully human, and proud of it. "So? Who are you to order me around, girl? Who are you to tell me what to do"
However, to my upmost delight, the other recruit gasped, as though his companion had just been extremely sacrilegious, as though he was begging for his ultimate doom. "Oh, Notch. Oh, Notch! You're in for it now"
"Why? She's just some freak girl"
He must've noticed my wings then.
"This just goes to show how ignorant you are, Bruce!"
"What's up with you?"
"This is Krystal Ellis (that seems to be Ty's last name, according to Wikitubia). She's a general of the Sky Army, and the sister of General Deadlox. And you Will treat her with respect"
A third voice had entered the fray, one that I thankfully recognized.
I nodded to the newcomer, "Thank you, Corporal Eli, but I was perfectly fine on my own"
"I know, Krystal" He said, amusement in my friend's dark eyes.
Eli had been promoted to a corporal as well when we had returned.
"You go on and see Hector. I'll deal with this. Wouldn't want to be wasting our general's valuable time, now would we?" Eli said, still grinning.
I nodded, gave the recruit one last glance that was probably more instructive to him than anything Eli told him, and continued on my way.
"Here to see Hector?" The lady in the front room of the building asked.
I smiled, "Of course, Giselle. How's everyone doing?"
"Just wonderful, thank you for asking, Krystal"
Probably the most important thing to me that had happened when we returned to the city was that Sky, on my request, had started a new program for the Sky Army, an open policy of sorts.
He announced to the army that after he'd found out about Mist and Shade, he'd decided to ask the rest of the army.
Sky asked those to come forward who were outcasts, who were different. Who'd come to Sky Army looking for acceptance, but had still hidden their secrets.
And they did.
Many were simply underage, who had lied about their age in order to join the army. Others had siblings who were much too young to even think about doing that, but had still brought them in order to care for them. A few had prosthetics they had never told anyone about. Yet others spoke of minor mutations like extra toes they hadn't shown before. But quite a few revealed they were magic users.
Ever since Seto had practically been exiled, any other user of magic had been terrified of being doomed to the same fate. But now that peace had been made with the sorcerer, they no longer feared being chased away.
I felt like a big part of why all those people had decided to reveal themselves was due to our little group of hybrids, who were now perfectly open about who and what we were. This building was a sort of care house for those who were too young to even begin training, like Hector. The youngest training age was ten. Recruitment age was fifteen, which often made me wonder how young Ty had been as a general.
Honestly, Ty was the youngest member of TeamCrafted. The others were between the ages of nineteen and twenty six. And here we were, only sixteen.
Despite the fact that I was a general, I refused to become a member of TeamCrafted, and the others accepted it.
Climbing the stairs to Hector's room, I dodged all the little kids running around.
"Oh. Hi Krystal!" The little wither skeleton hybrid boy called as he ran to me when I entered the playroom he was usually in.
"Hey, Hector. How's it going today?" I asked, sitting down on top of his toy chest.
The seven-year-old sat down beside me, "Okay, I guess. Miss Giselle let me go out and see the farm animals with the others yesterday!"
In my opinion, Hector was the luckiest one of the five of us hybrids. He was the only one with very little physical appearance like the mob, and he was being raised well, in the way we'd all wanted to be. Between myself, my brother Ty, Mist, and Shade, he'd been well taken care of. We were an odd little family, that was for sure.
But there was only one problem with Hector. Because he was part wither skeleton, he couldn't really touch many people or mobs because he would wither them. Only his fellow hybrids seemed immune.
"That's neat, which ones did you see?"
"All of them! Chickens, cows, pigs, and sheep! I got to see someone dying wool too! Miss Giselle said it was for new carpeting after the attack"
The city was still recovering from the damage wreaked by the squids when they'd launched an attack a month ago. That was what most of the time this past month had been spent doing. Repairing and training so that wouldn't happen again.
The cat hybrid, Shade, had even created a new training regime for each of us hybrids, minus Hector. Mine and Ty's mostly involved honing our physical and magical powers, including our tails, as my brother had pointed out. I had to be careful with my tail now, because I had spent several hours sharpening the spines. Didn't want to hurt anyone, now did I?
Now that Ty and I weren't going all over the place, I'd had plenty of time to pay a little more attention to personal grooming. My dark violet scales and white claws had a nice sheen, and my hair was a glossy black. I had to admit that I liked feeling clean all the time.
I spoke to Hector for a while longer, and played with him a bit, then left.
As I entered the halls of the TeamCrafted base, where I lived, I couldn't help but remember.
There was the room I'd spent the first night here in, in front of which my brother and I had been truly reunited.
There was the statue of Sky slaying a squid where we'd met the next morning.
There was the meeting room where the truth about us had been revealed to Ty's friends.
Thinking of all the events of that month, I couldn't help but feel a burning annoyance. For the past three weeks, we'd been searching for any sign of where to look to find the gods. Searching every library and chapel, and coming away with nothing useful.
This was just me, Ty, Mist, and Shade. I had openly expressed to them that I didn't quite trust Sky on this issue. He was too devoted to Notch.
At least we had Mother. The enderdragon queen who had adopted me and Ty as her children had told us an ancient tale that she had learned. Too bad we couldn't even tell our fellow hybrids. We told them the gist of it, but Mother had forbid us to tell anyone but an enderdragon.
The libraries held no useful information. Telling us ways that the early people used to try to contact Notch or Herobrine really didn't help.
The priests only said that the harder an undevoted person searched for the god, the more difficult it would be. They told us that if we prayed and truly devoted our lives to the deity, we would find aspects of Notch within ourselves.
Needless to say, I pretty much ignored both. The early people sacrificed things of great value, and barely ever were they allowed to meet with the god, and there was no way I was going to sink low enough to pray to and devote myself to that man who called himself a god, who none except Herobrine and the enderdragons knew the truth about. Oh, and the fact that both Notch and Herobrine were probably still after us because of our creation.
"Krystal! Wait up!"
I turned to face my brother, "Oh. Hey, Ty"
"What's got you in such a hurry? Stomping down the hall?" He asked, looking puzzled.
'She's thinking about our holy issues' My brother's alternate personality, Enderlox, cut in. No one can hear him except Ty, and me because I can use telepathy, though I'm not the kind of person who listens in to everyone's thoughts. Usually, I just use it to hear Enderlox or see how people are feeling.
"Really? Any breakthroughs yet?" He asked, walking alongside me.
Glaring at him, I stated, "If I had one, you'd be the first to know"
Ty was in his human form at the moment, not needing to fly anywhere. Since my brother has a split personality between his human and ender halves, he is the only one of the hybrids who can switch between forms.
"We haven't heard anything of them since the battle with Herobrine's mob army. Do you think they've given up, and are just observing us?" My brother posed another question.
"No. Even though it is a possibility, I don't believe the gods of Minecraftia would just give up like that. Not after one battle that we ended up getting pulled away from, thankfully, by Mother"
But as we spoke about the possibilities, the sound of running feet from down the hall caught my attention.
I turned the corner in a hurry, and spotted a silver-haired girl knocking on the door to my suite. I had been so deep in thought, I hadn't realized we were so close to the generals' housing.
She looked up when we rounded the corner, relief evident on her face, "Ty, Krystal! I have urgent news!"
"What's up, Mist? Our quest?" I asked, keeping my voice lower than hers had been.
She lowered her voice too, "Yes, Krystal" The wolf hybrid looked nervous as she added, "Guys, Shade's in trouble"