Chapter One

Mr. Reality smiles as he leaves his house. His home is large. Being the founder of and person currently in charge of Reality Industries, he has no problems getting large, luxurious things that would be too expensive for most of the population of the city. There are a good deal of large building in the city that he has to pass on his way to his work, but he hardly bats an eye at them. His is the biggest, and the best. He would tolerate no less.

The pad on his wrist beeps to gain his attention, flashing and repeating "Incoming call," up at him. Finally, he caves and answers it, offering a calm, "Hello?"

"Apparently, Herobrine isn't happy," the quiet, hesitant voice on the other line whispers. His secretary – and so many others whom he knows – is always so nervous, as if Herobrine is listening in on their call. Mr. Reality feels no such resignation, and throws his head back as he laughs.

"Tell him," he snickers, "tell him 'up yours.'"

"That's not smart," his secretary warns. "If he's not happy, bad things tend to happen to people. The last bunch of people to make him… upset wound up disappearing. Do you not pay attention to the news?"

He snickers again. "Tell him I said 'up yours,' or else you're fired," he states before ending the call.

Yes, he has heard the news. The last group of people – a business, smaller than Mr. Reality's – had in fact gone missing. The rumor is that the group had upset Herobrine and his business, and they had simply vanished into thin air one night. No one has heard from them for weeks now. Mr. Reality does not believe in the rumors, though. Herobrine is just trying to bully competition. He probably paid the last business owner and their employees to go shut down and never mention anything to anyone. Herobrine does not scare him.

He arrives at the foot of his massive skyscraper, swinging open the revolving doors. A satisfied smile crosses his face as he overhears the woman at the front desk repeating his words before hanging up the call. She sends him a frantic look, but he pays her little mind, heading to the elevator and up to his office. The top floor is large enough to be a penthouse, but he prefers his home outside of the building. His home is much more lavish.

Mr. Reality sifts through the papers on his desk for anything deserving of his immediate attention. Many of them are memos or notices left by his workers, notifying him of meetings or other various business-related topics. He singles out a letter when he sees the greeting at the top of it:

To Jay Reality, of Reality Industries.

How intriguing, and mildly frightening. No one knows his first name. Everyone addresses him as 'Mr. Reality' or as 'Reality' – no more; no less.

He shakes his head, deciding to ignore it. It is obviously a scare-tactic. It seems Herobrine is not opposed to committing illegal acts to try to intimidate his competition.

He presses a button on his phone when it rings. "Hello?"

"You have a visitor by the name of Harmony?"

He frowns. He cannot remember anyone by that name, or having a meeting until later in the day. Perhaps the letter has left his mind scrambled. "Yeah, yeah, send 'em up," he tells his receptionist, closing the call.

After a moment – one he thinks is extremely short in comparison to how it should be – someone knocks on and then opens his door. He glances over at the intruder. Standing in his doorway is a young woman with brown hair and blue eyes, dressed in a blue cloak. The cloak has gold trimming, and underneath is a black dress. She pulls down the hood of her cloak and offers a polite smile.

"Hello, Mr. Reality," she greets, walking into the room and closing the door behind herself. "I hope you don't mind me letting myself in. You did say I could come up."

He shrugs nonchalantly. "Sure, it's fine. If you don't mind me asking, what were we meeting about? I've been scatter-brained lately." He tells her, a bit upset he had not been able to swivel his chair around and tell her he had been expecting her.

"Actually, my boss sent me over," she tells him. "He's rather... disappointed in you. Your company's been giving him more of a hassle than he needs to deal with, and it's getting ridiculous." She walks over and sits on the edge of his desk, looking down at him. "You see, my boss doesn't usually call me in. Not unless it's something he considers an annoyance."

He frowns, "I'm going to make an assumption here. You're with Herobrine, aren't you?" He asks, although it is more of a statement, as he stands. "You see, I'm pretty sure I made my point clear, not a few minutes ago. It's nothing personal. It's just business."

She smiles, something devious in her eyes. "You shouldn't make enemies with him," she points out. "When your business interferes with his, then it's personal to him. And when he calls me in on one of my days off, when I'm busy with other clients, it's personal to me. I had to take time out of my busy schedule to be here and deal with some pesky little business man."

"Pesky. I'd advise you to leave, Harmony. You see, unlike you, I don't get days off. So I'd rather not spend the time I do work, being annoyed." He snaps, before shooing her away.

"I'd leave if I could, but—" She snaps her fingers and the door vanishes. "—your door seems to be missing."

He steps backward, "how did you? How did you do that?" He asks, glaring. "Return my door, now!"

She laughs a bit and shrugs, giving him a falsely innocent glance. "Now, now, Jay, is that any way to talk to a lady? Especially one sent to do business with you. I'm just another client here." She clicks her tongue. "Do you speak to all of your clients in such a negative manner, or am I just special?"

He growls, "you're special, alright. Especially annoying, that is." He retorts, "besides that, how'd you know my name?" He asks, taking a seat in his chair.

"My boss knows many things. In fact, you recently received a letter from him, didn't you?" She peeks at the letters. "Ah, yes. Right there. That one. I believe it's a warning. You should've read it earlier. Instead, you foolishly decided to persist."

He snickers, "I hardly ever pay attention to his letters, besides, I do put them to good use. Sometimes, I realize I'm out of toilet paper." He taunts, putting his feet up on the desk.

Harmony scowls at him and crosses her arms. "You know, you need an attitude adjustment. Being the head of a company doesn't seem to fit you well. Too many people to look after, for someone so wound about himself."

"An attitude adjustment?" He laughs, "you know, I run a very successful and thriving company. Herobrine wouldn't be grasping for straws, if it weren't." He points out, "sending his little guardian to do his dirty work. Tsk, tsk, tsk."

"Oh... no," she murmurs, before laughing at him. "No, no, no. Don't be so confused. I'm not Herobrine's 'little guardian.' I'm his sorceress. I'm the one who makes people like you go 'poof.'"

He looks serious for a moment, before returning her laugh, pointing his finger at her. "You almost had me there! It was funny," he says, wiping away a fake tear. "What kind of boss, calls in his 'sorceress,' on her day off? Sounds like he needs an attitude adjustment."

She smirks at him and vanishes, reappearing behind him. Her hands fall to his shoulders. "One who pays his sorceress very, very generously when he does," she tells him. With just a blink, the windows in the room vanish, causing the light in the room to dim.

He snickers, unfazed. "Oh, a massage, I've been needing one for a while," he teases, leaning back further into her touch.

She lifts her hands and circles around him, shoving his feet off of the desk to sit where they'd been. "I wonder what would be appropriate for you," she says, tapping a finger against her lips. "Hm... I could leave you locked in here. No, you'd only find a way to escape. I could... shove you off of the roof? No, that's too painful. And if Herobrine wanted you dead, well, he wouldn't have sent me."

He sighs, "Listen, can we get this over with? I have meetings, unlike your errands. So it'd be best to wrap this up." He mutters, putting his forearms behind his head, to rest on them. "Yada, yada, it's going to be painful, cue evil laugh, bum, bum, bum, am I right?"

She hums and then claps her hands together. "I know just the thing," she cheers, raising a hand palm-up into the air. A potion appears in it and she offers it to him. "Drink this."

He sighs, "I'm hoping it'll make you vanish," he shrugs and takes it, downing it quickly. "Hocus pocus, you're gone." He tells her, handing the empty glass back. The potion had tasted oddly sweet, but the flavor is fleeting and slips from his mouth before he can really begin to savor it.

She laughs and the potion bottle vanishes. She grins for some reason. "Oh, it'll do more than that. Enjoy your day, Jay Reality." She sets a card on his desk – one with Herobrine's number on it – and vanishes.

He shrugs and pushes the card off his desk. He will have nothing to do with Herobrine, or his 'sorceress.' As if those even exist anymore. He has only ever heard stories of them. But people practicing magical crafts are extinct now, or bordering it. Magic is being replaced with technology. Enchantments and potions are being replaced with more useful, modern alternatives.

He frowns. "Dammit. My door and windows." He mutters, "well, best to take a nap."

He closes his eyes and leans back, falling asleep after a moment.


Harmony appears in the Nether and walks to one of the fortresses. The mobs ignore her as she walks past, regarding her neither positively or negatively. When she enters the main room of the fortress and finds Herobrine sitting at a throne, she playfully bows. She has known him all her conscious life, and after so long spent in his favor, she has learned how to respectfully allow for a moment of fun around him. So long as a job is done well, he is rarely ever in a poor enough mood to mind.

"I did as you asked," she says. "He shouldn't bother you anymore. It will be incredibly... difficult for him to get business."

Herobrine smiles, "another job well done, Harmony. You never disappoint," he chuckles. "Change of plans, you'll get paid at a later date. I have some... loose ends to tie up. I do hope you don't mind."

"What? No," she protests. "It's my day off. I'm supposed to be brewing potions for a private seller, and you asked me to come in. You always pay me right away. What could possibly be so important?"

He frowns. "I could pay you. However, those loose ends are very important. People who've worked for me, and questioned what I do. Tell me, Harmony. Do you question what I do?"

She crosses her arms and huffs. Perhaps his mood is sourer than she has expected. "No. Of course I don't. It was simply misspeak on my part. My apologies," she offers. "You've simply spoiled me too much by making certain I've been paid immediately. I trust your judgment and know you'll do what's proper, when you choose to do it."

He smirks. "It's good to know I don't have any more loose ends to tie up, thus far. You may leave," he tells her.

She vanishes and reappears at her home. It's hardly anything fancy - a simple cabin hiding in the forest, kept away from destructive creepers through the use of a cat. She's not sure why creepers despise cats, as she finds them cute, but it works and leaves her few problems to deal with. She sits down on the floor of her brewing room and flips through a book of recently ordered potions.

"Good. Twelve more to go. I'm behind schedule already," she mutters to herself. "That transformation potion better work. I'd rather not have to return to visit a snarky businessman."


A/N: Remember that 'super-secret Minecraft project' I've had on my page since forever? Yeah. This is it. No, the Jay in this is not identical to the Jay in the GoM series. This Jay is independent of that Jay. He's not secretly a Guardian or anything. He's literally different. That being said, let me give you a bit of background about how all this came about.

My co-author and I started to play Minecraft together so we could take a break from writing the GoM stuff (and related AUs). After a while on our server, he and I joked about how fun it would be to create a backstory for our skins. We spent probably a good hour teasing one another about how it would probably be something like... well, what you're about to read. Since I enjoy magical mods and have an affinity toward writing magically-inclined characters, I joked that my skin was a sorceress. His was an enderman in a suit, so... Originally, it started off as him pretending to order me around about something while we were playing and I said something like "I don't work for you. You're not Herobrine."