A/N: A tick is 1/20 of a second. Blocks is close to a meter, and chunks is close to half a kilometer.

The bright lights of a Budder City, the capitol of the Team Crafted Territory, shone into the night sky above and blocked out all of the stars, leaving the moon hanging alone in the sky. The Zeus tower stood above the skyline, screen flashing between scene and scene until it focused on one - various angles of Sky and Deadlox, readying up and having small talk.

A crowd surrounded the screens, eagerly awaiting the competition to heat up. A few banners, ranging from simple words like "Go Deadlox" to "The King never loses" were raised above their heads and waving around in the faint wind. Lights were placed everywhere to highlight everything, from the small nooks and crannies in between the buildings to showing off the scenes etched into the columns. Budder was in everything, from the intricate designs on the walls to making up the statues of the founders.

The whole city had an air of high-life in it, even in the medium wealth areas where it wasn't so ornately decorated. The spiralling tower was visible from all parts of the city, whether you lived in an apartment or a in a luxurious condo, sitting in your balcony pool.

A countdown ticked down to the starting time, sending out a beep that echoed throughout the city.

300 ticks remaining.

Just another ordinary day in the nicknamed, "Golden Lights City".

Entertainment central of Team Crafted Territory - no, probably all of Minecraftia.

Sky cracked his knuckles, looking at the new parkour course that was specially built by Bodil for another Sky vs Deadlox race. It looked quite challenging, but that wasn't what bothered him - a pool of water was below most, but not all, of the track. Sky was pretty sure what lay in the murky depths.

To be honest, he never really put much thought about where the squids came from in the first place.

His sunglasses let out a small ping as the interface showed up, showing him his hunger, healthbar, his current toolbar (which was filled with nothing to prevent cheating), some white floating names above others who had the interface, and the recording status.

0 ticks remaining.

Begin.

Sky went first, launching himself feet forwards towards the first platform. His gauntlets and knee-pads began to flicker and finally stabilised to a constant glow as he sprinted across the floating mechanism, lights moving around erratically.

He dared not look back - ticks wasted that he could have been running the parkour course. Breath in. Breath out. Jump, dive, run. Repeat. Don't look back. Don't look at the glaring lights.

Sure, everyone in the territory knew that the evil ones came from some kind of squid dimension, but how did a rip to a completely different dimension get cut into the fabric of space-time in the first place? No one here could have been able to, and even if they could, Sky could have easily picked them out from the ranks of squids that assaulted the territory every once in a while. That left the possibility of a traitor, but he didn't really want to believe that.

He could hear Deadlox's feet pounding against the platform. The timer was there in the corner of his eye, it's irritating red light counting down to the end of the record time. Beat your score. Jump, dive, run. Repeat. Don't look down into the water. Don't look down at the squids.

The only people that could have did it were one of the neighbouring territories.

Sky let out a small puff before hopping onto the next block, a small trail of yellow light emanating from his gauntlets to show how he moved. This whole thing was being recorded for the whole city to watch on the screens, and one slip-up meant possible public humiliation.

Not the best for the king and founder of the territory.

He forced his breaths to become longer, to slow his heartbeat. Jump, dive, run. Repeat. The island doesn't matter now.

More like the only people that could have did it were people from the neighbouring territory, singular. The island fell into disrepair after connections were cut ages ago by the sand bridge falling into the ocean's depths (totally squids), not to mention rumours that every human died out, leaving vast amounts of horrifying creatures in it's wake. This led to some lame re-naming of the island from "Asgard" to "The Creature's Island" by the Council of the Territories, and earning a big fat "do not enter" mark on new maps.

Not that anyone could get near in the first place, that island was always surrounded by whirlpools for some indiscernible reason.

Deadlox barely made the jump behind him, almost slipping off at the last ticks. They both knew that there was water to catch their fall (and a respawning system just in case they ended up as a blood splatter on the ground), but they also knew that there were a big flock of squids, tentacles ready to grab them.

It was a common fact that Sky was absolutely terrified of squids, even before the squid dimension opened, for some reason. He was barely able to keep himself together in a puddle of squids with three people, and it mostly ended up with him as a screaming mess.

With an army beside him though, it had gotten a bit better.

With a grunt, he threw himself at the wall and clenched his fists around a ladder rung, his legs dangling below him. He could almost feel the gaze of thousands of people at the back of his neck, and the nervousness almost made him miss the next rung. Heaving himself up and placing both of his legs on a solid surface, he turned, back faced to the wall, and started inching towards the end of the horizontally placed ladders. A few budder blocks were placed on the end and he stared at it, mouth almost watering. Yes. He needed that. He tried not to think about the horrors that lay below him, but he snuck a glance at the heights and -

The next thing he knew he was falling and spinning and falling and tumbling and falling and his ponytail was slapping him right in the face and oh Notch the ground is coming up to say hi-

Welcome to Yoglabs.

A familiar voice. The bearded dude who showed him around the facility. Research is there. Testing is there. There are our employees. Don't go there , he says.

But what's in there? He blinks slowly, his eyelids feeling heavy. He can barely do anything but stand, stand on the sand. Jump, dive, run . Breath in , breath out . You hit the water too hard . You drowned . You are dead . You are not . You are respawning .

Screams can be heard, echoed throughout the walls and bouncing inside his head. Sound too loud. Lights too bright . Where are my sunglasses .

The goateed man only smiles as he disappears into a pile of sand. Sunk into the ocean. The Creature's Island, The Creatures Island, The Creatures , Island, stands in front of him, the white walls of Yoglabs dissolving into the same grainy substance.

The waves crashing against the land beckons him. Weren't you here? With the sly fox . And the masked wolf. And the fedora guy . Minecraftia Daily, they called it, Minecraft Daily. How many episodes?

Terrifying creatures, dislocated jaws. Claws. Stitched arms. No arms. The sharp tang of blood blossoming into a thousand hearts, red, brown, green, white , grey scarves , ribbons, tentacles that flew up into the sky and became a squid, flying around as if swimming through a think liquid.

He looked down. His skin was grey-blue . White. Black. Angry . Loving. Shifting . How many fingers did he have?

They appeared and disappeared each tick, clueing him in on the dream-like nature of the environment. The language scrawled onto the air was garbled. Scrambled. Scrambling. Humans, scrambling.

Welcome to Yoglabs . Welcome to The Creatures . Welcome. 0 Ticksremaining.

Oh shit, trippy dream again.

What the hell is my brain on-

Begin.

Bright lights leaked through his eyelids, a small yawn coming to his lips as he dimly realised he was in the city's hospital. For like the five thousandth time this week. He arched his back as he squirmed out of the covers and sat up, the dream slowly being pushed back to the edge of his memory. Shit, that was way more weird than normal.

White, cold, scratchy and sterile. It was probably the second most uncomfortable thing for him, the first being the squids.

Beeps interrupted the silence every few ticks. As if he couldn't figure out for himself that he was still breathing, his heart still beating. He looked out the familiar window out at the city - his city - with small budder ornaments and carvings littered around the ledges and parkour areas. The screen displayed on the Zeus, the tallest tower, was currently cycling through the news. Economy, who was the best at parkour (naturally, him), their number 1 company that traded with them for technology possibly being evil, sports, the same old thing.

The click of a door handle turning interrupted him from his thoughts as he squinted his eyes at the headline, his dream immediately clicking back into his brain. What was in the forbidden corridor? "Breaking News: Yoglabs preforming illegal experiments? Find out today at-"

"Respawn successful?"

He yawned again and pulled some of the tubes monitoring his health off of him, causing the machine to flatline with an annoying beep. "Naturally. When hasn't it worked? Besides, I'm here right now, am I?"

Deadlox rolled his eyes, brushing the hair from his ears so his ultra high tech headphones or whatever they were weren't covered with his hair. What was covered with his hair, AKA half of his face, remained the same.

Sometimes Sky wondered if a demonic eye or maybe a robotic one was down there or something, but let's be honest here, that's not exactly at the top of his mind.

"It's new technology, it might bring you back with like," he motioned towards his side, "Tentacles growing out of your back. Or wings."

"First of all, the wings would be cool, and second of all," he made an over-the-top gagging sound and gripped at his neck, "Yuck."

Sky did a fake spasm in his bed, flopping around like a dead fish. It was surprisingly accurate, even as his hair accidentally caught on the bed and he was pulled to an abrupt and painful stop.

The other rolled his eyes, smiling, and threw him a bundle of clothes. "Come on zombie, we need to show the public that you're still alive after yesterday's fiasco."

"You think they'd realise that dying isn't a big problem anymore?"

"Doubt it." he positioned his headphones so that they hung loosely off of his head, allowing him to hear a marginal amount better, and looked at Sky with a 'you know how they are' look. "Yes, of course it's perfectly fine seeing your beloved king," he stretched out the 'king' part and the whole sentence was laced with various amounts of sarcasm, "Knocked out as he hit the water and drown in a big pile of squid. You know, it's only slightly traumatising."

Sky grinned and slipped his normal armour on top of the hospital shirt (which was practically his own from his various visits), careful not to cut any wires or tubing that connected him to the mainframe, or supplied the awesome lights. Time to change the subject. "Anyway, Yoglabs being evil?", he dropped his voice a bit as he looped his amulet around his neck, "Why did no one tell me this?"

Deadlox pointed to a tower of unfinished paperwork that was moved to the hospital from his office. One piece of paper fluttered down onto the white tiles, reminding him that yup, he didn't complete any of his work. Hooray, procrastinating. "Somewhere in there."

Sky groaned in reply, flopping down onto the bed and pulling the covers over his head. "You know what? I don't feel so good. Maybe some horns will grow out of my head. Or a tail."

He let a mock wail of pain and twisted his face, but Deadlox wasn't laughing like normal. "Sky, you know what this means? About Yoglabs, not the whole fake demon mode thing."

A cloud passed over the sun, putting the room into an eerie light as the LED lights flickered on, shining right through the covers. "Oh Notch, get me my sunglasses. This light's killing me-"

"Sky, if Yoglabs turns out bad, the Council will force it to shut down and you to cut off trade routes. We'll end up like the island.", his voice was serious now instead of his playful banter, dropping in a few pitches to turn into a curt growl.

He paused, putting a hand over his strangely sensitive eyes. Notch, the light was so unforgiving in the hospital, he hated it. "What do you mean, 'like the island'? I don't suppose we'll suddenly turn into half-human half-whatever hybrids."

"There aren't any respawns for the cities themselves, Sky. Parkouring platforms will fall from the air, with who knows how many casualties. Not including the death from the standard protests, or people starving out. No replacement tech, no lights, no electricity, energy source will eventually fail. We'll be dead in the squid-infested water." he circled the room, tapping appliances with his finger as he went, mouthing 'dead' to all of them, "We don't have enough research and tech to keep this place running and alive."

A look of realisation and complete horror dawned onto the Budder King's face as the words sunk in.

The whole city was heading towards a technological death.