Minebuscus

by EpicQueenie

Nameless character (Implied to be the reader) discovers she is in the world of Minecraft. After a few months of being alone she discovers a new person . . .

It was morning, finally. I couldn't get any sleep last night because I had lost my bed in an unfortunate mining expedition in which I had found diamonds - over lava. I thought I could get in and out in time to reach the water I found in the cave but I was wrong. I was horribly, horribly wrong. I caught on fire and lost everything from my coal to my diamond sword. Luckily, for some reason in this crazy world I found myself in a few months ago, people "respawn" as you'd say.

Respawning is a miserable process in which one must reassemble themselves - which believe me, is not an easy process without arms - then return to the last place he or she slept. Which is hopefully his or her house.

Anyways, lucky for me I had some supplies at my home in a chest. Granted they weren't the best, they'd suffice until I had found more diamonds and such.

I walked over to my chest labeled "FOOD" and opened it. I wasn't too hungry or injured, so I pulled out a bowl of mushroom stew and ate it. Then I grabbed my fishing rod, shears, and sword and set out on my way. As I walked away from my house I turned and looked at my architectural accomplishment. It was a four-story stone and wood pyramid with torches on the corners of the tops of all the levels. I nodded, pleased with myself, and continued on my way to find some sheep to construct a new bed.

I had my sword out, incase I ran into any leftover mobs from last night that would try to hurt me. I managed to reach where there were a few sheep so I reached into my bag and got out my shears. I sheared a few sheep and got some wool. I then wandered down to the river to fish for some more food because my stash was running low.

Beneath me I could hear zombies groaning. There must have been a spawner there. I'd check it out later. I had more important things to attend to like fishing and building a bed.

Then I heard something else.

"GOD DANG IT!" Then silence.

I looked around trying to find the source of the exclamation but couldn't figure out what - or who - had created it. I dug a hole in the ground using my sword. Yeah great use of a sword, I know. But it's what I had to work with, so stop judging me. I looked down and saw a bunch of stuff lying around. I jumped down, taking only minor fall damage, and picked it all up - save for the minor stuff like dirt and saplings. I climbed out of the hole before anything down there would notice me and stood there waiting for the owner of this stuff to return so I could give it to them and tell them to be more careful next time.

A few minutes later I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around to see a man walking towards me. He was skinny and tall and had windblown brown hair and was wearing a green shirt.

"Hello!" he called out to me. "Have you seen a bunch of stuff lying around in the ground beneath you?"

I nodded and opened my bag and handed him everything that was his.

"You really ought to be more careful next time." I chided. "Zombies and skeletons are really nothing to play with. Just be happy it wasn't a cave spider or a creeper." I nodded putting my bag back on my back.

He smiled at me. "Thanks a lot, lady!" he waved as I turned to leave.

Later that day, while I was back at my house, I crafted myself two new beds. One for traveling and another for home. I went back outside to put some more torches in front of my house to reduce the chance of a creeper appearing there and ruining everything I had worked so hard on.

I couldn't stop thinking about my encounter with that guy earlier though. He looked so familiar, but I knew I had never seen him before in my entire life. I looked outside, it was dark and the moon was high in the sky. I walked over to my food chest and got out a few loaves of bread and ate them. I felt a lot better so I laid down on my bed and eventually fell asleep.

As I slept, I dreamt about him. He was just acting strange, but he seemed a little weird when he talked to me earlier so I didn't think anything of it.

The next morning I woke up and sat on my bed for a moment. I looked around my house then wandered upstairs to the next level of my house that held an enchanting table and potion maker. I looked through my stuff then flipped through the book on the enchanting table to see if I had what it took to enchant my sword even if it was just a little bit. I figured it wasn't worth it so I walked back outside.

I moseyed on over to my farm where I had wheat and pumpkins growing. I hadn't been fortunate enough to stumble upon melon seeds which were extremely rare here. I pulled my hoe out of my bag and began to till the ground I had accidentally walked on which for some reason went back to being unusable after someone stepped on it. Then I threw some seeds on the ground. I noticed my pumpkins had grown more so I harvested some of them. Then I walked over to where my animals were. I had a cow and two chickens and three pigs. I picked up the eggs that the chickens had dropped and put them in my bag.

I went back inside and put everything I had collected away and grabbed two pickaxes and my sword and two stacks, that means groups of sixty-four, torches. I also took my bed. I didn't know when I'd be back. It could be days.

I wandered to a cave I had discovered a few days ago and walked inside. I looked around for something. Coal, so I could craft some more torches if I were to run out. I always carried sticks with me.

As I went on my way inside placing torches as I went, I mined coal until I had two stacks and iron until I couldn't find it anymore. Then I started getting serious looking for diamonds, redstone, and lapis lazuli. I wasn't sure why I was looking for that stupid blue stuff, but I figured it'd come in handy sometime.

I walked a bit farther into the cave when I saw a light. Thinking it was just lava, I continued walking a bit more until I realized I wasn't feeling the familiar, and horrifying, heat that lava gives off. I hid in a natural crevice in a wall to see what was going on. I heard noises of struggle as I stood there in complete silence. I peeked around and saw the guy from yesterday fighting a skeleton and a zombie. He seemed to be losing health quickly so I pulled out my iron sword and helped him. I took the Zombie and he took the Skeleton. The fight was short and I had brought food with me so I gave him some so he could heal himself.

I looked at him. "You can't stay out of trouble, can you?" I asked. "I feel like I've saved you quite a bit."

"Only twice, thanks." he said crossing his arms and pushing his nose up in the air. Then he looked down embarrassed. "Thanks for saving me . . ."

I nodded and turned to leave. I realized his bag looked a bit light so I offered to take him back to my place. He followed me out of the cave and came back with me.

"So, what's your name?" I asked

"Toby!" he smiled wide at me. "Toby Turner!"

I nodded and told him my name. "So, Toby, how long have you been out here? I've only been here a couple of months." I said placing the bed next to my bed so as we laid in bed we could talk. I laid down in bed and rolled onto my side. He laid down in the bed next to mine and looked at me.

"Oh, ah. . . probably about the same time as you." he said covering up and snuggling under his blankets. "Goodness it feels nice to be in a bed again." he said.

I giggled at him. He was a bit silly, but it was late. I rolled onto my back and looked at him. He was already asleep. I smiled. He seemed happy here.

I couldn't sleep that night. I had this nagging feeling that something was wrong with Toby. If not with him, then with his life. Something had happened recently. I looked out the window and observed the monsters outside my window. They horrified me, but I couldn't let anyone know. Especially my new guest. After I saved him, what would he think of me if he knew how I really felt about these creatures. I shook my head and shut my eyes and rolled onto my side facing him and fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning early and Toby was nowhere to be found. I sat up and made my bed and scrambled around to find him. I ran upstairs and found him at the crafting table on the third floor. I relaxed a little. He hadn't gone out and gotten himself killed - again.

"Oh, good morning, beautiful!" he smiled at me and handed me a bowl of mushroom stew he must've made.

I looked at it and blushed. "Good morning." I responded and watched as he went back to working on whatever it was he was building. He pulled three diamonds out of his bag. I furrowed my eyebrows. How did I not see those before when I picked up his stuff. Maybe he had to respawn and found them. I'm not sure how he managed to do that in a day, but I wasn't going to question it. Maybe he was really super successful and was just having a streak of bad luck.

"Diamond sword!" he beamed holding it up to the sky almost hitting me.

"Watch where you swing that thing, darn it." I said ducking. "You almost hit me."

"Aww I'm sorry, baby." he smiled at me and gave me a hug.

I blushed again. "What?"

"Ahhh, sorry. That's just a force of habit." he looked down, embarrassed. "Oh you'll have to forgive me."

I nodded and looked at him. "So how did you manage to find those diamonds?"

"Oh, these? Remember when you found me struggling with those monsters? That's what I was trying to protect and I thought I'd never make it out of there alive!" he jumped up and put his sword in its sheath.

"Ah," I smiled up at him. "Do you need anything else? Help building your house, finding food, anything?"

He shook his head and walked down stairs. "Thanks for helping me get back on my feet. I hope I'll see you again soon." Toby waved as he walked out the front door.

I watched him walk away and almost fall into a hole. I rolled my eyes and went back inside. It was about noon now, so I didn't have much time to do much today. I grabbed my bed and my sword. It was breaking and almost at the end of its rope. I walked back upstairs and found my iron and made a new sword. I walked outside and looked around.

"Alright time to find that cave." I muttered to myself. I looked up at the sky. "Darn it's starting to get dark. Is it really worth it to go and get myself killed?" I frowned and went back inside to grab a few more stacks of torches then walked outside again wielding my sword.

I found the cave I was searching for and went inside after making sure I wasn't being followed and that I had enough food. There were some mushrooms and a crafting table that probably belong to Toby at one point in time. I had with me in my bag quite a bit of food so I didn't mess with any of that stuff. I walked inside the cave a little bit and noticed that there were some torches already on the walls. They were new, too.

I rolled my eyes. I was probably going to run into Toby again. So I readied my sword to save him again. But before I knew it I was being attacked by a hoard of things. I built myself a safe house and hid inside, praying to Notch that I wouldn't die. I heard sounds of struggle outside my box and broke a hole in the wall so I could peek out. There he was, fighting off the monsters that would have probably killed me.

After the last of them were dead, Toby fell to the ground in a heap. It was obvious his health was in extremely bad conditions and he needed help right away. I threw him some mushroom stew and finished breaking my box down. He sat up, still fairly weak and smiled at me.

"I saved you this time." He smiled up at me then lay back on the ground looking up at the ceiling. "I'm an idiot for coming out here so late."

I looked at him curiously. "Then why did you?"

"Oh, I had a feeling that a girl might need my help." he explained.

I looked at him funny then helped him stand up. "D-do you wanna come back to my house? We're not too far from there and I don't want you walking back to yours alone. You're not in any condition to."

He nodded and leaned on me for support so he wouldn't fall over. I helped him out of the cave and we ended up back at my house. I put the bed down again next to mine and he got in immediately. It was later than I thought it was already. I curled up in my bed and fell asleep. When I awoke the next morning, Toby was still laying in bed sound asleep. I smiled at him as he slept and looked out the window behind him. I lay back down in my bed because I heard a spider on the roof above me. Even though I knew it couldn't hurt me from up there, I was still scared.

Toby must have noticed me shaking because he reached over and touched my face. Actually, he dropped his hand on my face to make me calm down, but I got what he meant. I curled up under my blanket and laid there waiting for him to wake up. Eventually he sat up and looked over at me.

"Is something wrong?" he asked looking at me. "You're shaking really hard."

I sat up and looked at him, my eyes wide. I could still hear the spider sitting on my roof. I looked up at the ceiling.

"Sp . . . spider." I stuttered and pointed up at the ceiling. "Th-there's a spider on the r-r-r-roof."

"What?" he looked at me confused. "It can't hurt you in here. Besides, you're the bravest lady I know!" he smiled at me and touched my face again, this time it was a soft touch with his fingertips. "You have absolutely nothing to be afraid of."

I shook my head. "I'm a coward." I said curling up and facing away from him. "I hate it here. I want to live somewhere I don't have to deal with almost dying every day. I want friends."

He reached out and rubbed my back gently. "Well I'm your friend." I could hear a smile in his voice. "Hell, until I met you, I thought I was the only person here!"

I relaxed against his gentle touch and nodded agreeing with him. For a long time I had suspected that Notch, our creator, had to have made more than one being. It was strange though, that throughout all of my life I had never met another until a few days ago. I found it amazing how close we had become. He was more than the klutz who I had to save on a regular basis: he was my best friend.

I rolled back over and smiled at him. He smiled his trademark goofy smile at me.

"I live just over this hill. that's how I can get to your house so quickly. Do you want to build a link between our houses that way we can get from one to the other quick incase there's an emergency?" He asked looking at me.

I frowned. I didn't want him to leave. I liked having him and if he left that'd mean I was alone. I shook my head. "We could build a new house, one where we could live together." I suggested.

He smiled slightly at me, thought for a moment, then smiled. "That sounds good." he patted my head. "Shall we begin today?"

I nodded and jumped out of bed. The spider hissed again and I jumped right back in.

He rolled his eyes at me and I crawled under my bed hiding from it. "K-kill it." I whimpered.

He looked at me and grabbed a sword out of his bag and walked outside. He came back a few minutes later carrying a spider eye and some string. "Here, have the string." He tossed it at me and sat down on the edge of my bed.

"I don't mind doing things for you." He said not looking at me, but at the ground, shocked. "I like spending time with you," he bit his lip and looked at me. "I - uhm..."

I raised an eyebrow at him and stood up. "I'm going down to the river to wash up. You're welcome to uh... come with me if you want to. There's some trees separating the river a little bit into two parts. Come on."

We walked a little ways down to the river. As we were bathing, I could feel his eyes on my back. The water barely came up to the small of my back where I was standing, I knew why he was staring. I wasn't unattractive - or at least that's what I thought. I didn't have time to laze around, so I was in shape.

When we finished, we got dressed then began looking for materials for our new house.

"Why don't we just use our materials from our houses? That makes the most sense." he suggested.

"Oh, but what happens when it gets dark? There's monsters. And spiders." I hid behind him.

"Hush." he looked down at me. "You're going to be fine. If we work together we can work twice as fast and have a small part done today. Then we can cover that and sleep for the night."

I nodded and walked back to my house. He continued walking over the hill. I felt strangely alone. I knew he'd be back soon after he finished breaking down his house, but it hurt that he was gone for some reason.

It was dark before he returned. I had built a little box to hide in for the night and put our beds down. I was in bed before he walked in the room. I heard the bed creak as he got in and rolled over to look at him.

"Hey there." he said quietly, poking my nose. "Sorry I was gone so long."

I pouted at him and then smiled. "It's okay." I responded and stretched out then curled up in a ball.

He smiled and closed his eyes. "Goodnight." he mumbled as he fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke up before he did so I made a few more wooden planks and waited for him to wake up before I tore down our little safe house. A few minutes later he woke up and sleepily wandered over to me. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me for a few seconds before walking outside and began tearing down the house.

As the day went on, I thought I heard creepers hissing at us. Usually I would be jumping and digging a hole in the ground to hide in until the scary noises went away, but it was different today. With Toby there, I didn't feel threatened by anything.

Eventually it got dark and we had one level of our new house finished. It was ten blocks squared and eight blocks tall made entirely out of smooth stone. There were, however, a few places where we had messed up and didn't have the resources to make anymore so there were a few blocks of cobblestone. I sat down on the ground, tired and looked up at what we had accomplished today.

"I think we did a pretty good job." He smiled down at me and then up at our house.

I nodded in agreement then yawned. I was more than tired. I was exhausted. I sleepily moved into the house and placed my bed on the ground in a corner. Toby followed quickly behind and smiled at me as I placed his bed next to mine. I flopped face first into my bed and snuggled with my pillow.

I could hear Toby working on something, but I didn't really pay attention. I was too busy looking out the window that was near my bed. Even though it scared me, I couldn't sleep anywhere besides next to the window. I think it was because if I didn't sleep near a window, I wouldn't wake up in the morning.

I think I was asleep when he finally laid down in his bed because I don't remember him ever announcing to me that he was going to sleep.

The next morning I woke up and rolled onto my side facing him. I opened my eyes to see that we were nose to nose. He was still asleep. He looked so happy sleeping there. Suddenly, he started to stir as he was waking up. I tried to push myself back from him, but I was tangled up so badly in my sheet and blanket that I couldn't move. So to save myself from having to explain what I was doing staring at him, I shut my eyes to pretend I was sleeping.

He smiled at me and brushed my hair away from my face. He rubbed my cheek with his thumb as a sign that I should wake up. I opened my eyes with a false sense of grogginess and blinked a few times to regain my vision.

"Good morning." he smiled at me. "There's no spiders near today."

I smiled wide. "Good!"

With that, we both went outside to get to work. About halfway through the top level before we were going to put our towers, we ran out of coal to create smooth stone. I rubbed my head and looked around desperately.

"Are you sure you don't have any?" I asked, opening his bag.

"No." he looked over at me. His eyes widened. "No! NO! Ah, I promise. There's none in there." He snatched his bag away from me and zipped it up tight, then hugged it to his chest.

I gave him a sceptical look then began the trek to the cave. We'd need more coal if we were going to build the entire thing out of smooth stone and standing around wasn't going to do us any good. I grabbed a bunch of loaves of bread, a few cooked fish and two bowls of mushroom stew.

"We're going to use your bag for the coal since you have the least chance of dying of the two of us." I said handing him two pickaxes and two swords. "I hope you don't mind."

He blushed and looked at me. "Of course not, my lady!" he giggled and walked ahead of me towards the cave.

We made it to the cave without injuring ourselves too seriously from falling off of things, thankfully. We spelunked into the cave a ways, collecting coal, but we got sidetracked. Let me rephrase that: Toby got sidetracked. He said that he'd seen diamonds in this part of the cave, so we went looking for diamonds so I could make myself a diamond sword.

We wandered a bit farther into the cave until we heard monster noises. We heard zombies growling, creepers hissing, spiders . . . making whatever noise spiders make. I froze where I was standing. They were close I could tell.

"Look, if you want to go back I'd totally be okay with that." Toby said pushing me behind him.

"It's no use!" I shouted crouching down on the ground trying to hide. "We're surrounded. They're everywhere. We're screwed." I could feel my breathing becoming uneven.

He whipped around and looked at me. "You're going to have to toughen up if we're going to get out of here alive." He crouched down next to me and made me look up at him. "You're going to be okay. You're the bravest person I know. If you can't help me, we're both going to die."

I looked at him with wide eyes. I was scared. I couldn't hide it anymore. I started shaking with sobs. "T-toby, I'm scared."

"I know that, but you can't cry right now." He looked at me with sympathetic eyes. "Please, do this for me?" He wiped the tears from my face.

I wiped my nose and then my eyes. I had to look so stupid right now. Here I was, the person who saved his butt before, crying right in front of him. I was about to stand up when Toby fell on top of me.

"Ah," he looked behind him. He was face to face with a skeleton. "There's a god dang arrow in my back."

I reached into my bag and pulled out my sword. "You stay here. I'm going to take care of these guys."

"Wait!" he called out after pulling the arrow out of his shoulder. "You can't take them on alone." He stood up, a little shaky at first, and grabbed his sword. "I'm going to help."

"N-no. You stay there. I have to do this." I said taking a swing at the skeleton before he could shoot at me.

About an hour passed and the monsters were still coming at me. Toby seemed too hurt to move. I was running out of breath and could barely fight anymore. I looked back at him. Seeing him like that hurt me more than I was willing to admit.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, taking a minute to regain some of my strength. I could feel a zombie scratching at me. It hurt, a lot. I took my sword and without even looking at it, stabbed it through the brain and pulled away as quickly as I could to take a swing at a creeper that would not leave me alone and was threatening to explode any second if I made the wrong move. I looked behind me.

Toby was being attacked, he was defenseless against the spiders and skeletons that were attacking him. I shook my head. We couldn't do this anymore; neither of us had the strength to carry on this fight anymore. I put my sword in its sheath and pulled Toby up and we ran . . . I ran dragging him with me as far away as I could get from the monsters.

We got pretty close to the mouth of the cave and into enough light that we were safe. The sun was rising. Had we really been in there all night?

I could hardly breathe when we got back. I looked down at the broken man in my arms as I sat on the floor.

"Toby?" I stuttered looking at him. "Are you okay?"

He shook his head weakly and coughed. All of our food was gone and for some reason he kept getting worse and worse.

Cave spiders. Those stupid small, blue spiders. I hated them with a passion and were the reason I was so afraid of normal spiders. I looked at him, scared.

"I can't help you." I was afraid. "What can I do?"

"Let me die." he said weakly. "Pick up my stuff and meet me at the house."

I shook my head. "I can't let you do that!" I hugged him tight. Finally I had met someone like me and I wasn't about to lose him. "You can't die on me."

He laughed, made a pained expression, then lay back down on my lap. "I'm going to die next to you, not on you. That'd be gross."

I looked at him. I could see the life leaving his eyes. What was I going to do? Respawning took a long time sometimes. I didn't know how long I could go without Toby by my side.

I helped him sit up a little bit and cradled his head in my arms. For the first time in a long time, I took time to look at him.

"H-hey," he looked up at me with those brown eyes I'd grown so fond of.

"Yes?" I responded, eagerly awaiting a response. "What is it?"

"I luh -" he coughed and wheezed. "Love you."

I was speechless. Love? We'd met about a week ago and he loved me? I couldn't comprehend it. I wasn't even sure what it was to love someone. I'd never felt it before, but before I could say anything else I said it.

"I love you too." I bit off the last word. I could feel him beginning to slip away from me. "Toby it's okay to go now."

He shook his head and used up whatever strength he had left to stretch up so his nose was touching mine. I laid him back down so he didn't have to strain himself much longer, but kept us in pretty much the same position.

Hesitantly I touched my lips to his. He was warm, the chill of death hadn't overcome him yet, but it was coming. The delayed response he gave was a dead give away. He reached up and caressed my face gently as I pulled away from the kiss. When his hand dropped, I knew he was gone.

I stayed there until his body faded away and his stuff dropped. I picked it all up and made my way, alone, back to my house. I put all of his stuff into a chest and sat on the edge of his bed. If I had just let him help me this wouldn't have happened and we'd have been finished with the house by now. I shook my head and put the coal in the furnace with the cobblestone and waited for it to be finished turning into smooth stone.