It's the day everyone has been waiting for: The release of MCO: MineCraft Online. When Microsoft bought Mojang, original creators of the pixel-savvy game, they stunned the world when they said that they had come out with something spectacular. They had created a helmet that could create a virtual reality around you, much like the Oculus Rift, which was basically a screen that you wrapped to your head.

Yet this one was better. The helmet, known as the Omniscient, connects several wires to your head and maps your brain. This is similar to the technology that is used to tell if people are experiencing seizures, dreaming, or just to see if their brain is functioning at all. This helmet can project the images right into your brain, behind your eyes, and activate parts of it that move your arms and legs so you can move freely in the game.

To keep it simple, Microsoft decided to try their invention with a game that needed little to no high-res graphics: Minecraft. This game was somewhat different than the one you know. They made it a single world realm that all players can talk and walk about. They added CPU's and more mobs to make the game more like the traditional MMORPG. The world has no limits, it can be expanded and created indefinitely even with the large amount of people in it. And the best part: the game and Omniscient were cheaper than expected. Over 35 million players were registered on the first day it came out.

I was one of them.

My name is Maria. I never liked my real name, so I always went by the username Marshmallow Unicorn. When I first received the Omniscient, I thought it would be too big for my tiny head. When I placed it on my head at home, hoever, it tightened around my cranium like an adjustable robotic glove. It fit snugly, but my long red hair had to be yanked out uncomfortably from the back. When I pulled the goggles over my face, the freckles on my cheeks began to glow from the light blue light that the inside of the gaming gear emitted. It warmed my face dully.

I reached over and texted my friend via a group chat.

"I'm getting on," I typed.

"Me, too."

"Same."

"Getting ready."

"Give me a few minutes."

"Already on it."

They were all accounted for. "Meet at the usual coordinates," I reminded. Every game we ever entered, we gathered at the same set location so we didn't ever lose each other. We would wait at max a MineCraft week for everyone to gather. While waiting, we would gather the resources we needed and move out into one of the more abandoned biomes: Desert, ice spike, ocean, and try to make a living there. We were profession MineCraft gamers. We even had a stream going on every few days. We only topped about five hundred views each, but it was a start. When MCO took off and expanded, we might be able to stream from it as well.

I closed my eyes and almost right away the Omniscient posted a picture of the countdown to the start of MCO. Ten minutes. My friends were excitedly texting each other about how awesome it would be, how much better Microsoft had made it, and the like. I just hoped it wasn't laggy and it didn't start out with a crash when all the players signed on. Granted, since the year 2020, they have gotten their stuff together for the sake of making better games.

I just hoped they didn't muck this up like they did with the ancient Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Five minutes till it started. The pre-game was starting, allowing us to customize our characters. My five friends were in chat with me as I made the pixelated character to my liking.

"I think we should all have matching skins," my friend Ham said. He was the crazy one of the group. He even named himself, pardon my French, Hard Ass MoFo. He was impulsive, wild, loud, and somewhat insane. He took the biggest risks for the smallest prizes in MineCraft. Yet, somehow, he had died the least amount of times out of all of us. He was crazy good with a sword and even better with enchantments. He was the brawler of the group.

"Matching skins sound good," I agreed, erasing my current work. "What should we go as?"

"Assassins. Or Demons." Scarlet was the gothic princess of her time. She loved to collect trolls, dragons, and anything demonic. She focuses a lot of her conversations on death, but more often than that she has a dry sense of humor that we all know and love. She was the assassin of the group. She could take any enemy by surprise with the bow and arrow she always had to make by herself. Her username: Sacred Goddess. "Maybe we should be the minions of Herobrine. That'd be pretty cool."

"How about something geeky," York put in. You could hear him adjusting his glasses under the helmet. "I hope they have a way for visually impaired people. If not, I'll be walking through mist the entire game." York, also know as Yoshi Tamer. He was the brains of the group. He spent his time with redstone machines, getting us ready for big invasions to the Nether or the End. He was usually on the sidelines throwing us the potions we needed. He was your typical math club attending, video game loving, computer nerd. He wasn't a fighter. Couldn't keep up with us for the life of him. We had to protect him whenever it came to fighting. We usually gave him the best armor and the best enchantments in case things got sticky. "I think we should pick a character from Super Smash Bros."

"I like it," Annabelle said. "But I get to be Zelda. Called it right from the start." Anabelle was a nerd just like York, but loved anime instead of math and other things. Her username was Anime Eyes. Knowing her, she'd take a Zelda skin and make the eyes on it just to her liking. You can guess the rest. She was a builder. She made everything from dirt houses to skyscrapers. She can farm and breed animals and know precisely how long it would take to get the exact amount she wanted. She loved gathering materials above the surface. In her meantime she was either watching anime, reading manga, cosplaying, or fangirling over a virtual boyfriend she had made in GaiaOnline.

"I'll take Ike," Ruben said. "He's overpowered. I can take on anything with that." Ruben: also known as the Righteous God. He was the miner, adventurer, and gatherer of the group. He was usually the first one to find the End portal, the first to make it to the Nether, and the supplier of the majority of our underground goods. In real life, he was the cool kid. The one who smokes only when it was time to break out the leather jacket and studded boots. He even rode a motorcycle. It was up to us to make sure that no one else knew he played MineCraft, especially MCO.

"I'll take Samus," Scarlet called in her dark, emotionless voice.

"I got Yoshi," York called predictably.

"King Dedede FTW!" Ham called.

"And I'll take Pikachu." You must be wondering what I do. I'm the leader of the group. I'm good at Minecraft all around. My favorite aspect was using dynamite. If there was something in the way, I'd be there to blow that shit into another dimension. I was ready to lead these five onto victory.

Right when we keyed in our skins, our Omniscients started humming. All six of us leaned back in our beds, closed our eyes, and watched the starting menu open. After a while of scrambling to figure out how to work this thing, we managed to open up the game on the only server appropriately named MCO WORLD. We clicked it and almost instantly the world loaded. I was about ready to type in the coordinates, but every single one of my friends spawned next to me. They must've detected us being in the same part and put us together. It was a nice feature. We spawned in the middle of a swamp. Across our field of vision, colorful words started appearing across our screen.

Welcome To MCO

Microsoft Welcomes You, Marshmallow Unicorn!

There Will Be No Cheating, No Creative Mode, Or Mods Allowed.

PVP Is Allowed In Certain Areas, Such As The Wild.

Cities Can Be Displayed On Your Map, Provided In Your Inventory.

When You Die, You Will Be Respawned Where You Stand Now, Or From A Bed.

Game Mode Is Set To Medium.

Enjoy MCO!

The screen cleared and my friends came into view in their custom skins. Annabelle blinked in her Zelda skin then looked down at herself. She did a quick twirl before shaking her fists near her face, squealing in delight.

"The dress moves with me!" Her voice was high pitched. "Talk about high res!" Ruben had already opened up his map and was scanning it in his overly large hands. The skin we wore could even make out our facial expressions, because I could look of discontent in his face.

"It doesn't say where the mines are," he mumbled. "Damn, thought I could get a head start. But I guess our spawnpoint is pretty desolate. We won't be competing with anyone."

"They even allow you to pull up the coordinates and light levels," York announced. "Our ping looks good, frames per second marvelous, and our connection is strong. There is no crashes or lag in the foreseeable future, ladies and gents."

"Good," Scarlet had the zero-suit samus skin on. She toyed with her hair as she studied the landscape. "The sunrise is pretty. The pixels make it look nice." Then she looked around. "Ham...?" He was currently in front of the nearest tree, using unnecessary combat skills to punch, kick, and whittle away at the bark.

"Evereh buddeh was kung fu fightin'!" he shouted. "Hyuh!" The first block of wood came out and he picked it up in its' petite form. He held it to the sky and then placed it back down, where he stood on top, announcing, "I claim this world as mine!"

"Huddle up, folks." The five of them stopped what they were doing and approached at my call. "First thing's first. We have to get to one of these cities they were talking about. On the way there, we'll get the trees, the food, the materials we need. Yosh, get us to the nearest city."

"About a thousand and three hundred blocks north," he reported. "There are players displayed on this map, each arrow representing us, each star representing a group of a million people. We are lucky. We spawned closer than most groups. Some are hundreds of thousands blocks away. They'll have to aim for another city."

"Good, the less there, the easier." I turned to the rest of the group. "Are you guys ready?" They nodded in unison, holding up a fist in anticipation. "Alright. Let's get going."

Welcome To MCO!

Character Analysis: Maria.

Username: Marshmallow Unicorn.

Special Skill: Explosive Expert.

Skin: Pikachu.

In Party With Five Others.

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