The Youtube Games
Chapter 1: A New Server
Rage was sitting in his chair, reading the comments on his latest Mapstravaganza episode, on what seemed to be a normal Monday night. He scrolled through the comments, stopping when he saw one from Evanz. Rage sighed, already knowing what it said before he even read it. They had needed another player for the competitive map this week, and for some unknown reason, Hollow had decided to bring in Evanz. Near the end of the map, Evanz had somehow managed to break the redstone, forcing them to restart. He was about to reply to him, when he got a text from Hollow saying that he had found a new Hunger Games map, and he wanted the crew to play a quick game. He had already texted Evanz and Fluke, and they were waiting for him on the server. Soon another text popped up on his phone, this time with a Minecraft IP. Rage sighed, having planned on going to sleep after checking the comments, but he still logged into Minecraft and typed in the IP that Hollow had sent him.
While his game was loading, his Skype beeped, letting him know that Hollow, Fluke, and Evanz were in a call. He opened Skype and joined their call to hear Evanz and Fluke arguing about something.
"It could happen! You never know!" Fluke said.
"What could happen?" Rage asked, curious about what his friends were arguing over.
"Don't encourage them Rage, they do enough of that on their own" Hollow said, speaking for the first time.
"You say it like we're children!" Evanz said indignantly.
"You act like children! Why shouldn't I treat you like them? Oh wait, that would be an insult to children everywhere" Hollow responded. During this, Rage's game had finally loaded, spawning him in an empty field with his friends.
"Why are we in a flatland?" he questioned, looking around.
"The person who made the map must not have had time to make a proper spawn. The sign to get into the Games is over here though" Hollow said, his character walking over to a single out of place sign. As Rage got closer, he could see that the player count on the sign read 20/24.
"Wow, it looks like we're just in time. We had better join before anyone else does" Fluke said, his character pressing the sign and disappearing. The rest of the group quickly pressed the sign as well, not wanting to be left behind and have to wait for the first game to end before they could play. They disappeared as well, leaving behind an empty field. Unknown to them, as soon as the last person had vanished, the sign disappeared with them.
"Is it taking this long for you guys too?" Evanz asked, confused. They all responded yes, sounding as confused as he felt. They had been waiting at the loading screen for what seemed like hours, watching as their games slowly loaded. They all had very fast computers though, it usually it only took a few seconds for their games to load, even the larger maps, like the Sunfury creation maps they sometimes had on Mapstavaganza. So it was weird that it was taking so long for this one to load.
"It looked like a really big map on the website where I found it, maybe that's why it's taking so long to load. It was really detailed too, and it had a lot of redstone. You know how long redstone takes to load" Hollow said. As he said this though, Rage's game suddenly loaded, the screen flashing white.
"Hey, it's loaded!" he said, glad that they could finally play, and then he could sleep. But the game stayed white, the game not loading in, even after a few seconds. His friends didn't answer him either, and when he looked at his other monitor, he saw that their call had ended. Suddenly, his screen began flashing different colors, and what looked like commands ran across the screen, horizontally and vertically. Rage realized these weren't normal commands, as he didn't recognize a single one. His screen began to get brighter and brighter. Rage tried to look away but found he couldn't move. The screen flashed pure white, then faded to black. Then one word appeared, written in large white font across his screen: Error. Then Rage didn't hear or see anything else.