"Ahhhhh," the girl at the computer grumbled, "why did I decide to transfer all of the chapters to four other websites after writing 83 chapters out?"
This girl had short black hair that teetered precariously over her thin, pale face, one purple and one red streak interrupting the thick black that tapered into a curl at the end. Her lime-green eyes, reminiscent of a lollipop, were hooded over with irritation as she leaned back, adjusting the solid flannel that she was wearing over her violet t-shirt. Her jean-covered legs were lifted up and plopped on a cushion on a seat nearby, her dark brown leather combat boots resting on the floor next to the desk.
"Stupid me..." she grumbled again, before simply sending her computer to sleep and shutting the lid. "Ah, I'll transfer the rest later."
Grabbing her bag with the notebooks in it, snagging a sandwich from the fridge without checking what kind it was, and tucking her lucky pen behind her ear automatically, she pulled on her boots and made her way out the door, plugging her earbuds into her ears and slipping the phone into its holster, where it locked in with a soft click.
Ariza Luca took a deep breath before tossing her thick black hair (the curly, tapered end dripping back into her eyes not a full second later) and continuing her way out of doors, grinning as her hair grazed the inside of the doorframe- her growth spurt had knocked her height up to nearly 6 feet now.
She'd walked a good way- in fact, she was in the middle of the forest behind her house, where nobody ever went, except for her- when her phone suddenly buzzed, indicating that she'd gotten a notification. Carefully, she flipped her phone out of the holster, glancing at the screen only casually, already preparing to put it back.
She froze, green eyes widening.
A notification from Minecraft: Story Mode.
Her favorite game of all time.
But she hadn't gotten any notifications since the last episode had come out last year in September or October...
Slowly, she raised the phone to eye-level and swiped it open. Placing her thumb on the Home button, the phone clicked open, showing the title screen. The Wi-Fi wasn't existent in the forest, but the phone signal was pretty good right now. Which was good.
Hopefully her data didn't run out...
Ariza checked the 'Episodes' button, but there was no telltale blue arrow pointing at it that meant a new episode, although there was one next to the 'play' button.
Sighing, she pressed the play button and opened straight into the first episode, although on her current save file, she should've been on Episode 5... she was replaying the game (again) for the... 13th time...?
(Or no, was it the 14th...?)
The first episode's title screen was the same as always-
Ariza double-checked and corrected herself. No, it wasn't the same as always, there was something else lurking behind the people in the title screen picture. No, someone else.
She squinted carefully at the screen to make sure she wasn't imagining this.
... no, there was definitely something there.
Thinking that this was probably just some sort of ruse to get her to replay the game yet again, she tapped on the 'Begin Episode 1' button.
The next thing she knew, she was falling.
"What in-?!"
Her phone was still in her hand, but she was no longer surrounded by trees and dirt and sunlight, but instead squares that looked like stained glass, bars of green and blue, and flickering pixels. They seemed to be shifting, rearranging themselves...
She slammed into something that felt remarkably like a wall, and felt the pixels and things lock into place around her.
And then a bright, white light eclipsed everything.
Ariza was back in the forest.
She knew this because she could hear the rustling of trees in wind, although the birdsongs that had been twittering away madly in her ears were gone. She also lay flat on her back in some grass. (Which was weird, because in the forest she was in, there wasn't any grass- just dead leaves, poison ivy, and dirt. Lots of it, too.) Had she just fainted and hallucinated or something?
Sitting up, she casually examined her hands.
No, nothing looked weird, except-
Ariza blinked and took a closer look.
Yep. She apparently now had a tattoo on the back of her hand.
It wasn't just a scar, which she had a lot of on her hands from various little incidents. It was an honest-to-goodness tattoo, a glowing purple music note entwined with a book.
Ooookay. She didn't remember this tattoo, but maybe she'd doodled it on the back of her hand when she wasn't paying attention.
Getting to her feet, she looked around.
An uneasy feeling spread through her as she realized that she wasn't back in the forest after all. But she certainly wasn't dreaming either.
For the first thing, the spider that was about the size of her math textbook was a bit too real to simply consider a hallucination or a dream.
It hissed, red eyes flaring as it regarded her, although it didn't attack yet.
Ariza put her hands up in surrender. "H-hey... I-I'm not here to hurt you," she said, cursing the way she stuttered over her words. It wasn't that she wasn't scared of spiders- writing about twelve fanfictions about them had ended up getting rid of that fear for the most part.
It was just that this one was so big...
Compared to the Minecraft ones, though, it was downright tiny.
Ariza was about to step back, before she paused, spotting the way one of its back legs was a little crooked. "Ah... did you hurt yourself?" she asked, before rolling her eyes. Yes, of course, she was talking to a spider.
Better than talking to herself, she supposed.
She took a careful step towards the spider, and it skittered backwards a step.
"Ah- I'm not here to hurt you," she called out, still in a gentle way, and the spider stopped.
She was able to move her way to the spider without it attacking her, although she was keeping a close eye on it and it was doing the same for her. Kneeling down, she reached into her bag- and blinked.
Okay, this was definitely getting weird; her bag was bigger on the inside and definitely contained more than just her notebooks and a couple of bandages. If she had to compare it to anything, she would've compared it to Hermione's bag after casting an Undetectable Expansion Charm on it (or whatever the charm was).
She decided to worry about it later and reached in, carefully pulling out a set of bandages and raising them. The spider was still watching her, and she carefully wrapped the bandage around the spider's back leg. Besides an initial hiss when she touched it, the spider remained quiet for the most part.
"And... there! You should be fine now," Ariza sighed a bit, feeling a smile spread over her face.
The spider stared at her.
"Um... I'm going to get going now. See ya!" She gently patted the spider on the back, feeling it hum beneath her hand as it... 'purred', before pushing herself to her feet and walking off in a different direction, trying to identify where she was.
She hadn't gone twenty feet when suddenly realizing that she wasn't alone. She turned around to see, with a slight jolt of surprise, that the spider was following her, although at a safe distance, staring at her with those luminous red eyes.
"... you can tag along, if you'd like..."
Ariza was even more surprised when the spider skittered over and crawled so that it was perched on her shoulder, making a series of clicking sounds that sounded a bit like purring or something. It was almost as though the spider had understood what she'd meant.
She corrected herself a moment later. It had understood what she meant. She shouldn't assume that a spider didn't know what she was saying just because she was used to them being stupid back where she lived. She was in unfamiliar territory here. And that meant that she couldn't make any assumptions- not until she knew exactly where she was.
She realized she'd just been literally standing in place for a whole three minutes without moving a muscle, so she now started walking off again. "Alright, let's see what we have here..."
Ariza had been wandering around for another twenty minutes before she heard a sound that wasn't the spider purring happily from where it was perched on her shoulder. She looked around before spotting the tiny ocelot sitting on a rock nearby, a little ways behind her. It had to be a fairly young one, because it was tiny.
"... hi?"
The ocelot meowed back.
Okay, so now there was an ocelot following her.
Why was there an ocelot following her? This was bothering her a bit. It shouldn't be following her. She didn't have...
Any...
Thing...
Ariza felt her face literally drop into a pure, deadpan look as she remembered exactly what else she'd brought with her.
Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the fried fish sandwich she'd brought with her.
(Both the spider on her shoulder and the ocelot sitting a little ways away perked up at the sight of the sandwich.)
"Is this what you're after, kitty?" she asked the cat, holding the sandwich up so that both the spider and the cat couldn't just lunge at it.
The ocelot meowed again, hazel eyes locked firmly on the sandwich.
Sighing, Ariza pulled the sandwich apart, leaving most of the fish on the ground for the cat to eat before slipping the rest of it to the spider on her shoulder, being very careful about getting her fingers too close to the pincers. Not that she needed to worry about it too much; the spider got the fish into its mouth and swallowed it without cutting off any important body parts. She ate the bread while she watched, vaguely noticing the way it smelled of fried fish as the ocelot happily ate away at the fish.
"Alright," she said at last, when she'd finished the fish, "I'll be on my way now."
She'd made it twenty feet when she felt a fluffy thing nuzzle up to her leg. Not entirely surprised this time, she looked down to see the little ball of golden fluff curling around her legs, meowing happily.
"I don't have any more fish with me," Ariza told it.
It kept meowing anyway.
Sighing, she leaned down and tickled its tummy, feeling the cat worm into her hands, and lifted it off the ground, staring at the hazel-eyed ball of fluff that was currently staring back at her hopefully, tail wiggling around happily with its tiny paws poking her hands. A quick glance showed her that it was a boy that she was holding at arms' length.
Cats should not be able to make puppy-dog eyes.
"Ahhh, fine, I'll bring you with me," Ariza sighed at last, giving up on the mental struggle that was convincing herself that she did not want this cat.
Part of the reason was because she'd never had a pet before. Like, ever. Never once in her life had she owned a pet, except for some fish that had died after a week when she was seven.
She'd barely completed the thought when the ocelot mewed happily and perched himself on her other shoulder, making himself at home almost immediately.
The spider hissed protectively at him, eyes flaring from where it was perched on her shoulder.
The ocelot hissed protectively back at the spider, as if protecting his own territory.
Ariza repressed an amused roll of her eyes and went along with her walking as the spider and the ocelot quietly 'bickered' from their positions on her shoulder.
"... I should probably give you guys a name."
A/N: Writing an OC story for when I either:
A) Have writers block on anything.
B) Am procrastinating uploading all of the current chapters of Hybrid: Cinematic Mode to Wattpad, Deviantart, and AO3.
C) Don't want to write a chapter of Hybrid: Cinematic Mode due to (B).
Hope you guys liked!
x.X. A.L. X.x