Jesse was in the middle of a really good book- The Petals of a Bloody Rose, despite the slightly depressing title, was actually a superb book- and Olivia was tinkering with a new redstone invention when Axel came up the ladder, holding three envelopes that were presumably the mail.
Which, in itself, was new. Jesse and the others rarely ever received mail, being the three weirdos who lived out in the middle of the forest and nowhere near town. So the fact that Axel had any mail at all for them was a surprise in itself.
Jesse sincerely hoped it wasn't a prank like last time, when the Ocelots had stuck a stink bomb in an envelope and then mailed to them. They'd had to air out the treehouse for a solid week.
"I see we have mail," Olivia spoke up as Axel passed out the envelopes to the other two, finally tearing her eyes from her redstone invention. It wasn't anything particularly big- it was more like a smaller version of a daylight sensor or something- but she'd been working on it all day without even looking up from it. The arrival of mail seemed to startle her out of her intense concentration.
"Yep. No return address or sender, either."
Jesse scrutinized the envelope more warily. The lack of a return address or a sender practically screamed that it was a prank waiting to happen...
But Jesse was naturally curious, so she was opening this envelope whether it was a prank or not.
Besides, with the extremely fancy-quality paper that the envelope was made out of, she was highly doubting it was a prank- even the Ocelots wouldn't go so far with the fancy envelope to prank them. Especially not the month before the Endercon Building Competition- knowing them, they were actually in the middle of planning for their newest build.
She could see that her other two friends were having the same thought process. Axel had brought the envelope up to his nose and was cautiously sniffing it, while Olivia was holding the envelope to the sunlight and tilting it from side to side, squinting at it.
Reuben gave Jesse a cheerful squeal, which confirmed to Jesse that it at least wasn't anything like last time's prank, and carefully began to tear open the envelope. Once upon a time, she would've used the letter opener, but then Axel had thrown it out of the window one time in an effort to get rid of a creeper that had been steadily approaching the treehouse.
It had worked, but it had also destroyed the letter opener to the point where it would've been easier to use a blunt stick to open their letters.
Finally, the envelope was open, and Jesse cautiously waited for a second. Nothing much happened. No weird explosion, no sudden smell being released- well, there was the faint scent of vanilla, but that had been in the room ever since Axel had actually brought the envelope in, so she assumed that it was just a scented paper or something- nothing weird at all.
Cautiously, Jesse reached in and carefully shook out the contents of the envelope. Nothing big or heavy was knocked out... just a single, folded sheet of paper.
Jesse looked up at her friends to confirm that they'd gotten the same thing, before unfolding the paper.
"You are cordially invited to the first ever annual Game Tournament!
This event lasts for two weeks and invites people of all statuses and areas of expertise, but collaboration and cooperation are a definite needed skill for these games.
Details will be provided in full at the event, should you choose to attend.
Please mark 'Yes' if you are coming and 'No' if you do not wish to attend."
Jesse flipped over the paper, but there was nothing on the back.
She wasn't sure how to feel about this. On one hand, a game tournament sounded like a lot of fun, and two weeks of playing games was definitely preferable to stressing out over their build for that amount of time...
... but on the other hand, who on earth would ever invite THEM to an event? They were nobodies. Literally, the only reason anybody knew of them was because of the fact that they entered the building competition and lost. Every year. Consecutively, for the past nine years.
"... this is weird," Olivia said at last. "No return address... this seems a lot like a prank to me."
"Yeah, but the paper's really nice," Axel said, waving the paper to emphasize his point, "I don't think anyone would waste that much fancy paper just to play a prank on us."
"Yeah, but," Olivia argued, "if this was legit, it would have a return address or something so we could send it to them and let them know. There's no way for us to do that."
Which was true, of course.
After another ten minutes of arguing back and forth- with Axel stubbornly sticking by "maybe they forgot to put on the return address" and "the paper is way too fancy to be a prank", and Olivia arguing that a rich person would easily have the funds to play a prank like that on them and "who forgets to put on the return address?"- Jesse finally decided that they should go and see if anybody else had received the invitation. If they were the only ones who received one, then it probably was a prank, but if they weren't... it was less likely to be a prank.
Maybe it was some sort of scam.
Whatever the case was, this was more interesting than the stuff they'd been doing before the mail had come in.
"Oh, hey, Petra!"
Jesse was surprised to see Petra at the small coffee shop at the edge of town that she sometimes went to. Usually Petra would disappear without a word and then pop back up in town sometime a month or two later. But here she was, drinking a cup of coffee and having a close look at a piece of paper.
Petra looked up at the sound of her name, lifting her hand in a little wave at Jesse. "Hey, Jesse," she greeted the girl casually. "What's up?"
Jesse pulled out her invitation and held it up, feeling a little self-conscious. She and the others had already asked a couple of other people, and the answers they received were usually blank stares or slight smirks. "Uh, so, today we received an invitation in the mail for a 'Game Tournament', and we've been-"
She didn't get any further than that at the sight of Petra's face, which had suddenly turned slightly pale, the redhead's eyes widening. "You got one too?!" Petra blurted, a little loudly. Half of the coffee shop was now looking at them, but Jesse wasn't paying attention as Petra picked up the piece of paper she'd been scrutinizing earlier. What do you know, surprise surprise, it was the invitation.
"Oh, so Axel, Olivia, and I weren't the only ones to get an invitation," Jesse said, feeling a small rush of relief run through her. She'd honestly been expecting it to be a prank at this point.
"Yeah, I got it this morning..." Petra frowned at the paper, then back up at Jesse. "Do you think it's legit?"
Jesse was extremely pleased that Petra was asking her opinion, of all people, to say the least. "I'm... I dunno. I mean, I can't imagine someone going to the point of getting paper this fancy just to play a prank or scam people..."
"Yeah, this is definitely not cheap paper." Petra gave the paper another quick glance, before glancing back over at Jesse. "I see your point, I don't think even a rich person would go to these lengths... or stoop to the level of scamming people or playing a prank."
Now that Petra said that, she had a point.
Petra checked a nearby clock, and her eyes widened. "Oh boy. I've actually got a meeting with a possible client in a couple minutes, so I'd better run." She scooped up her invitation and put it away, giving Jesse a small smile that was... actually quite friendly. "Well, I'm glad you showed me it. Try to discuss it with you later."
"Oh- sure, okay," Jesse said agreeably, watching the redhead pick up her pickaxe and swing it onto her shoulder in a hurry. "See you later."
"See you."
Petra gave Jesse another quick smile before dashing out the door to the shop, leaving it swinging in her wake.
Olivia was starting to think she was right.
Whenever she asked anybody who seemed nice enough about it, their face would either turn blank and they'd shrug, or they'd snicker at her and leave. She was about to turn around and head back to the rendezvous point when she spotted Lukas, the leader of the Ocelots, coming out of a nearby building with a slushy.
She debated asking him about the invitation. Whenever the Ocelots and Jesse's team clashed, he never really joined in on bullying Jesse or the others- he just sort of stood there and watched.
I mean, being a bystander wasn't great either, but at least he wasn't actively trying to bully them.
Finally, she decided and walked over to where Lukas was standing with his slushy. "Hey, Lukas!" she called out, instincts screaming at her that she was going to regret this.
Lukas glanced up from where he'd been standing with his slushy. "Oh... hey." He looked a bit startled that she was approaching him, which she honestly couldn't blame him for- their teams got along like a cat and a dog in a rainstorm. "Olivia, right?"
"Yep. Uh, hey, I was wondering, Jesse and Axel and I got this weird invitation today..." Even though Olivia was being quite self-conscious right now (people were starting to stare), she could see the way Lukas's eyes widened. "It was for-"
"A two-week long game tournament?"
Olivia paused, blinking at Lukas. "Well... yeah. Did you get the invitation, too?"
In answer, the blonde reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, letting it open to reveal, word for word, the exact same invitation that Olivia and the others had received.
Now Olivia was a little more dubious about it being a prank.
A scam, maybe, but not a prank.
If it had been any of the other members of the Ocelots, she might've still been suspicious... but Lukas rarely participated in those pranks. He either stood by and watched it happen, or outright scolded his teammates for pranking the other team. If he'd gotten the invitation, too...
"Well... are you guys thinking about going?"
Olivia blinked, realizing she'd been thinking and just standing there. "Oh... I dunno." She decided to keep the response vague- she wasn't sure why. Her common sense was screaming at her 'no, we're not saying yes, it's dangerous, it could be a scam'... but her curiosity was saying something completely different.
'Maybe it's not a scam.'
'Maybe it wouldn't hurt just to see what might happen.'
Lukas hummed absentmindedly, looking down at the invitation in his hand. "Hmm." He didn't say anything else- just a thoughtful sort of hum.
Olivia didn't know if that was good or not.
"So... are we just going to mark yes and then... what? Hope that the post office knows where it came from?" Olivia asked, dubiously, later that night. Jesse had decided simply marking 'yes' wasn't too risky- after all, the letters had been mailed directly to them, so the potential scammer knew where they lived. They were planning on taking the letters to the post office tomorrow and then just checking if the post office knew where the original invitations had come from.
Not the most foolproof plan, but Jesse wasn't expecting it to go much farther than finding out no one knew where the invitations originated from and then just tossing the invitations into the trash.
"Yeah, pretty much. Weren't you listening?" Axel gently teased the redstone engineer. She rolled her eyes and smacked his arm in reply.
Reuben snuffled, butting his head against her arm. Jesse looked at her pig, giving him a smile. "Even Reuben agrees that we should try. After all, nothing tried, nothing gained, right?"
Olivia scrunched her face up a little. "I'm pretty sure the actual phrase is different..."
"Eh, same difference," Axel shrugged, and marked 'Yes' on the sheet without another moment's hesitation.
Jesse took up a quill and neatly scratched a check mark into the 'Yes' box, before looking up at Olivia, who was still scrutinizing the paper. "C'mon, Liv- most likely the post office won't know where it came from, we'll toss the invitations into the trash, and nothing bad happens," Jesse reasoned. "There isn't a return address, after all. And fancy paper isn't that rare."
Olivia finally sighed. "You guys are bad influences," she griped playfully, neatly marking 'Yes' as well.
"You love us anyway," Jesse teased back, making Olivia scrunch up her face playfully as she considered the question.
"Hmmm, do I really?" she cheerfully contemplated, before chuckling and setting the paper aside. "Well, now that we've decided on that... we should get to bed. Maybe we can head to the post office earlier in the morning so it's less embarrassing."
Jesse couldn't help but hide a grin at the idea. It actually wasn't a bad idea- it was honestly a bit embarrassing to just traipse into the post office and announce that they wanted to mail a response to a not-on-the-envelope return address. "That's... probably a good idea."
Axel shrugged, tossing the paper onto the table where Olivia had neatly placed her. Miraculously, it did not knock into Olivia's and disrupt her placement. Jesse decided to imitate Olivia and simply set the paper on the table. "Well, hopefully it's not an actual scam or anything."
"Hopefully. This is the most interesting thing to happen in a while," and Axel grinned toothily at them.
Jesse rolled her eyes slightly at him, a grin still tugging at her lips. He just didn't really care about the risks, did he?
Well, not like there were a lot of risks attached to this. But still.
Jesse rolled to one side and tugged a blanket over her head with a low sigh. The light levels currently streaming into the room made it abundantly clear that it was time to wake up and head out to the post office, like they'd planned... but her bed was so comfortable and she didn't want to get up this early in the morning, not while the sky was mostly down...
Absentmindedly, she reached for Reuben, but her searching hand didn't find the little pig where he'd dozed off to sleep last night.
She rummaged near her feet, eyes still closed as she tried to keep herself in the grasp of sleep.
He wasn't near her feet either.
Now a little concerned- had he fallen off the bed?- Jesse opened her eyes.
She was not greeted with the familiar sight of the treehouse, but instead an almost oppressive black. After a startled moment, Jesse realized that the black was because the room itself was painted black. The light was coming from... well, a light on the ceiling. There was what appeared to be a pair of earbuds on the wall, a gold wristband with a black band running through the center of the gold, and a small sign with words posted on it. The only furniture in the room was the bed she was sitting on and the hooks that the items were hanging on.
There was no sign of Reuben anywhere.
Jesse bolted upright, looking around for the door. "Reuben?" she asked, voice still thick with sleep as she furiously tried to wake herself up. What was going on? Was this a dream?
This is a cliche thing to do, and she pinched herself.
"Ouch!"
Either she'd just pinched herself in her dream, or this was real. She supposed she could punch the wall and see...
Jesse glanced down at the welt forming on her arm and decided- rather wisely- to not punch the wall.
So not a dream then.
So now she had to find the door.
It took a moment for her eyes to acclimate to the strange blackness of the room- Jesse was used to the wooden and stone walls of the treehouse- but she finally managed to find what looked like a doorknob on the opposite end of the room.
Jesse shoved the blanket aside, getting to her feet and vaguely glad that she'd gone to sleep in her overalls and t-shirt instead of changing into a pair of pajamas, before striding over to the door and trying the handle.
It jiggled, but didn't give.
So the door was locked? From the outside?
Great.
"Please take the items hanging on the wall and put them on to proceed to the check-in zone."
Jesse nearly jumped six feet in the air at hearing the detached, almost robotic voice. As it was, she banged her head against the door and got a rather nasty bump on the forehead.
"Uh, hello?" she called out, uncertainly, when there was no response to the flurry of censored swears she proceeded to deliver.
"Please take the items hanging on the wall and put them on to proceed to the check-in zone."
"Excuse me, where am I? What's going on?"
"Please take the items hanging on the wall and put them on to proceed to the check-in zone."
"Okay, good conversation," Jesse mumbled, sarcastically.
"Please take the items hanging on the wall and put them on to proceed to the check-in zone."
... Jesse facepalmed.
A/N: No, this is not a weird version of the Hunger Games, before you ask.
So... I'm starting another fanfiction. This one is kind of a pet project and mostly just for fun, so there's not going to be any angst- instead, there's going to be a lot of fun arguing (FUN arguing) and making friends! Since that's what I write best, haha.
... so yeah.
... any questions? xD
x.X. A.L. X.x