A bright light enveloped me as I was playing Minecraft. I didn't know what to do. The next thing I knew, I was in a forest made of blocks. Wait a second, BLOCKS?! I looked around and everything looked like it was from Minecraft! How could this be possible?
I stood up and walked to a tree. I even had the blocky body shape of a Minecraftian. When I arrived at a tree I began punching it. Cracks appeared in the block of log just like Minecraft. This is going to be really good. I punched down the tree and moved onto others before I felt I had enough logs. I wondered how to check my inventory. I didn't have pockets or a backpack. What was I to do? Maybe... I tried concentrating on checking my inventory and I got a list of what I had, even showing what I looked like and pictures and numbers of what I had. If I could concentrate to open inventory maybe I could do the same to open crafting...
POP
That sound told me that I had turned all of my logs into planks. I had about two hundred blocks of planks now. That should be enough to make a house and give it detail. Now I just need to find a nice area to build.
I wandered for a few minutes trying to find somewhere that looked nice. Just over a hill I spotted a gray tower. Interesting. I climbed over the hill to investigate and saw a very detailed wall. Well the outside was detailed. I had no idea about the insides or how strong it was. It looked like stone bricks so I assumed very strong. As I stared in awe I failed to notice the gentle hissing that every Minecraftian feared when starting the cave...
TWANG!
I ducked just in time to see an arrow wiz by and strike the creeper in the head, killing it just before it detonated. It dropped a floating pile of gunpowder that I quickly picked up. I looked over where the arrow had come from and saw a figure climb down the wall in blue Diamond armor. They ran over to me and said quite loudly, "What's wrong with you?! Didn't you hear the creeper?!" The voice sounded very familiar... Wait... Was it? "I mean seriously! How could yo-" I spoke before she could finish that sentence. "Alexis? Is that you?" I could tell the person was surprised. "Kaleb? How... WHEN DID YOU GET HERE?!" She took off her helmet to reveal her brown hair that looked like it stuck to her head. That tended to happen in Minecraft. "A few minutes ago actually. How about you?" This was the first time I had seen her in a few months. She DID live about six thousand miles away though. She thought for a moment. "About two months." Two months? Why wasn't this on the news? A teenager randomly disappears out of nowhere? Then again we DO live in America. "Wow. That's quite a while. So what's all this then?" She looked at the walls and smiled. "This, Is what we have been working on for the past few months. Come on, Let's go in." I followed. "Exactly what do you mean, WE?" She didn't reply and switched a lever, revealing a well build Redstone gate that blended in with the wall when it closed. Impressive. She continued to walk till we got to a building designated as, The Lonely Creeper Saloon. It was a name I was familiar with as it was something I built before on a Multiplayer server with her and other friends. Inside I saw Brooke, The New Zealand kiwi sitting on a table in the back with a book and quill; Seth, from America like me and Alexis, drinking from a bucket of milk; and Osvifr, the German who was pretty handy when it came to building. Brooke looked up from her book and looked surprised. "Holy crap! It's Kaleb!" The other two looked up and quickly walked over. "About time you got here!" said Seth whilst walking. Osvifr stopped near me. "Welcome to the world. Don't die." He smiled and handed me a bucket of milk. "Hey guys. Anyone else here that failed to be here?" Alexis nodded, "Yes but they are either mining in the caves or in the Nether gathering some Glowstone." Seth spoke again. "We don't have a name for the town we built but I like to call it Boom-Town." Brooke glared at him. "If you blow up my house AND the wall again Seth, I, WILL, kill you." Seth had a face that could only be described as panic and backed away from her. I couldn't help but laugh at that. Of course that smile quickly faded when there was a huge explosion from nearby. We all ran outside to see what had happened. A large portion of a house was missing and slowly being absorbed by fire. Alexis shouted out orders. "Seth, Go get some water buckets and put out that fire! Brooke, Go get some blocks to repair the walls and some to set up a barrier between it and the portal. Osvifr and Kaleb, come with me!" Everyone ran off to do their assigned tasks and I followed Alexis. She ran towards the purple, Obsidian block portal and saw Alex and Matt lying on the ground. Me and Osvifr pulled them away from the portal and behind a wall just in case another thing flew by and hit them. As we returned to the portal five Zombie Pigmen jumped out. NORMALLY they are peaceful unless you hit them but these ones must have been agitated because they ran at us. Alexis quickly hit a lever that brought up a glass wall between us and the portal, trapping the Pigmen. She hit another lever and turrets sprung out of the walls, pushed by pistons, and rapid fired their arrows at the Pigmen, slaughtering all five. She switched both levers and the wall descended and arrows stopped. We moved up to loot the items remaining and we moved back as the glass wall ascended once again. We carried the two to the hospital that had been built and wondered what to do about the incident.
"This hasn't happened before. What should we do?" Brooked asked. Osvifr spoke up. "Perhaps we should destroy the portal. We don't need glowstone anyways. We can use torches." Alexis just shrugged and slumped down in a chair. I thought for a second. "Wait a minute. Alexis do you remember our trip to the nether on SkyJohn's server? We nicknamed it, Nether Expedition Alpha? We build a fort in the nether to protect our portal from undesirables. Maybe we could do that! Go into the nether and build something around the portal so we wouldn't have to deal with this!" Alexis considered the idea for a moment. "I suppose that could work. Are you going to build another wool panic room?" I nodded. "Yep." She laughed at me. "All right then. Why not. We just need to wait for the others and we can get this done.
Most of us were back from doing whatever we were doing. Most people out mining came back, the others wanted to get more materials for building. Not that we really needed it. I had a look-see in the storage room and found that we had EASILY over ten thousand blocks of cobblestone, stone bricks, stone itself and more to build with. Our party to the nether, aptly named, "Nether Expedition Charlie"(we had a Beta before. Would have been WAY to confusing for us) consisted of the original four of us, Mixy, our crazy Serb friend wearing his Gay Construction Worker skin, Alex, In his Australian skin, James, the Irishman wearing his Irish Army skin with the Irish insignia on his arm(one can never TRULY have an adventure without an Irishman.) and Matt, wearing... Not exactly sure. It looked like a skin of someone wearing a dark blue shirt. We all approached the portal. No one moved as Alexis flicked the switch, lowered the glass wall. With that I charged the portal and yelled, "LEEEEERRRROOOOYYY JEEEEEENNNNNKIIIIINNNNSSS" Practically everyone face palmed as I flew into the portal. "That boy is going to get himself killed..." Alexis said with a laugh and promptly followed me through the portal.
I emerged through the purple portal, leaving the beautiful world of grass and trees, to emerge in the nether, a hellish place with a red stone we called Netherrack, or sometimes Bloodstone. It had cliffs here and there and an ocean of lava at the bottom. The whole world was enclosed in the Netherrack. There was no sky or clouds. Compasses and Clocks refused to function properly in this world, spinning about madly. I immediately threw up a basic wall in front of the portal to protect from Ghasts, floating white creatures that had eight tentacles, placed seemingly randomly along the bottom of its bodies. They were on par with creepers in their irritatyness. They launched fireballs that detonated and blew up everything within a three block radius, except blocks invincible to explosions, and spewed fire in each direction. The fire normally wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that Netherrack kept fires burning. After all eight of us arrived we quickly got to work building the skeleton of our soon to be fort, that I had dubbed, Fort Inferno. Nobody argued with me.
After an hour later we were finished constructing the first two floors. We wanted to make it much larger so that it wouldn't be so ugly on the outside. Well Alexis and Seth did... to a lesser extent me. It ended up resembling an old castle that you might find in Europe. Ditches were dug around the fort to prevent the ground mobs from getting in. We made a simple bridge made of Stone Bricks and added a portcullis for looks. If only it really worked... We added in arrow turrets to kill off any unwanted mobs from entering what we designated, Field of Flames, so called because there were many Ghast craters and fire that no one really wanted to take care of. Even included was the aforementioned panic room, RIGHT next to the portal. I stepped outside to admire our handy work when I spotted a shape move behind a wall. It was wearing the default Steve skin. Light blue shirt and dark blue pants. I walked over to investigate, drawing my diamond sword just in case. As I rounded the corner nothing was there. I shrugged and turned around. That's when I saw, Him. He was wearing the default skin, only his eyes were whited out. I yelped in panic and swung my sword wildly. A dark voice sounded in my ears. "You know not what you have done..."I ran back to the fort, shaky and panicked. Apparently the others heard the voice too because after I arrived all the remaining available turrets were placed in front of the door and even wired up in front of the fort, ready to unleash hell upon anyone who got in their way. Seth was even setting up a TnT cannon on one of the upper floors. "Kaleb, What did you do while you were out there?!" Asked Alexis. Well more of a demand. "I was stepping outside to check on the outside of the fort when I noticed something hide behind a wall. You know my curiosity. I had to check it out. When I got there nothing was there. So I decided to head back. That's when I encountered... Him." I kind of froze after that. Not out of fear, but because I always thought it was just a Myth. People had reported seeing Him before in their games but many of us always thought the pictures were photoshopped, or a mod they made. Me personally always thought he existed in a small corner of my mind. "Him? Who's him? What's he look like?" Alexis was starting to look a bit panicked as well. I hesitated for a moment before swallowing.
"Herobrine."
No sooner had I said that then an explosion ripped across the air. A block of TnT flew and impacted in the middle of a large group of Zombie Pigmen and detonated taking out a lot. But they still came. Hordes of them swarmed towards us. Alex and Mixy raced upstairs to help take some out with enchanted bows while me and Alexis hit the switches that activated the arrow turrets. We hoped that they would destroy enough of the horde before the arrows ran out. We took out our bows as well and ran upstairs and helped shoot down as many as we could. All eight of us were shooting our bows as fast as possible. The turrets kept most of the horde away but we took shots at the ones that got to close. The horde was gradually getting smaller but not fast enough. Soon enough there was an audible, CLICK CLICK CLICK, as the turrets ran dry. We left Alex and Brooke up to take shots at the Pigmen and launch TnT into their horde, while the rest of us six ran down to fight back the invaders with our swords. We fought hard. Swords slicing into decaying skin and lopping off a few limbs. We slashed down scores of them but they kept coming. We heard the unmistakable sound of Ghasts approaching. Our fort wasn't yet explosion proofed yet. It was in danger of being destroyed! But the Ghasts provided a benefit comparable to a Double-Edged sword. While their fireballs could injure us, they would also endanger the Pigmen. We could also TRY and swat the fireballs back at the Ghasts with a lucky hit and maybe kill the Ghasts. I could swear I saw Herobrine's blank face staring at us in the distance, but when I blinked, he was gone. I found myself thinking of the song, Have you seen the Herobrine. "Have you seen the Herobrine? Roams your world in the default skin." We continuously hacked down the mobs mercilessly and deflected fireballs. "Oo-oo-oo-oo-ooohhh. Though he was removed he shall rise again." The TnT cannon belched its deadly payload into the horde. "Watching you from a distant shore, He'll come back stronger than before" There were three explosions this time. All coming from above. Brooke and Alex ran down stairs, their bows snapped. The TnT cannon was down. "Oo-oo-oo-oo-ooohhh, When the darkness comes he will strike for sure" The one advantage we had was gone. And without it, the horde had the possibility or overrunning us. "In the fog is where he waits, Even up to these present dates. Oo-oo-oo-oo-ooohhh, If you go against him you will meet your fate." Seth pulled out TnT blocks. Why we weren't sure. But we kept hacking and slashing. He said one word. "Duck" We all hit the floor. "Watch your back you know where he hides, He can come at you from all sides. Oo-oo-oo-oo-ooohhh, Miner beware he will never die." Several blocks of TnT flew overhead, impacting the horde and tearing huge gashes in it. The horde had stopped growing and was now seriously depleted. We charged and finished off the last of the Zombie Pigmen and fired into the Ghasts above us with our bows, killing them as well. I noticed Herobrine about twenty blocks away. I calmly pulled out my bow. "Miner beware" I took aim. "He will never" I fired. "Die." The arrow impacted him and he screamed in pain. We all covered our ears... Except for me. I watched him. He tried to kill us. My friends. No way was he getting a shed of mercy OR regret from me. "YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS KALEB! I WILL BE BACK" He bellowed in rage. "Come at me bro. We'll be waiting for you." With that he shouted again and disappeared. Alexis looked up. "You killed him?" I shook my head. "No. But I have just made one heck of an enemy. From now on we need to keep on guard and alert at all times. He tried to kill us once. There's nothing stopping him from trying again. He could be here or in the overworld. We should get back there and warn the others. For now we should seal off the portal. Put another individual room around it and seal it off with blocks."
We were back in the overworld. We had a guard always watching the portal for Him. If he was spotted, or anything else slipped through, he would press a button that launched a Red, Creeper shaped firework into the air. When that happened, we were all to rush there and fight. The guard shifted regularly. When it was my turn, He slipped through the portal and stared at me. I hit the button and He fled back into the portal. When the others arrived they guessed that He had shown up but that he fled. We haven't seen any other sightings of him but we did find a random Nether Portal in some cave. We destroyed it and flooded the cave with lava. We were certain he was in the overworld now... Watching us. All we could do was watch and wait for him. I knew, deep down inside, that we would meet again. And when that time came, only one of us would be left standing. I made a vow I would be the one left standing. Even if it meant I died soon after, I would protect my friends.