"We know what we're building, we've got all the stuff for it," Axel said enthusiastically, dark eyes gleaming, "we are so ready."
Jesse grinned back at Axel. He was right- usually they were a little underprepared. Either they wanted to change what they wanted to build at the last minute, or they had just a little less than the amount of stuff they actually needed, or one of them was sick, or the weather didn't work for what they wanted to build... there was a whole plethora of options there.
Olivia looked enthusiastic for once as well. Jesse said 'for once' because usually, Olivia was pessimistic (as Axel put it, though Olivia put it as 'realistic' and Jesse put it as 'pessimistically realistic') and had low expectations for them winning. (Especially because they'd lost consecutively for the past nine years.) But this time, she actually had a muted enthusiasm in her behavior. "This year, it's going to be different," she spoke up, in agreement with Axel. "I'm not just ready to build- I'm ready to win."
Jesse turned to grin at Olivia, before someone knocked into her shoulder and nearly sent the petite girl crashing to the ground. As it was, she nearly tripped over Reuben. "Nice pig," sneered the person who'd purposefully knocked into her shoulder, judging by the way he was smirking at her, "losers."
Jesse winced at the insult, while Axel and Olivia glared at him in perfect tandem. For two people who argued like an old married couple quite often, they often had very similar mindsets- especially when it came to Jesse.
Axel's glare suddenly darkened even more as he let out a low, complaining groan. "Oh, great. It's the Ocelots," he groaned, "the rivalry continues."
Jesse turned to see that Axel was right- at the gateway to Endercon, a group of four people stood there, wearing matching leather jackets with an ocelot emblazoned on the back.
"Man, they've got matching leather jackets and everything," Olivia said, almost wistfully and unknowingly commenting on the very thing Jesse had just noticed. The jackets were new.
"So cool," Axel agreed, also a little wistfully.
The blonde currently talking to the lady at the booth turned just enough for Jesse to make out his long-bridged nose and clear blue eyes, marking him clearly as Lukas, the leader of the Ocelots. She'd noticed him at a few places she frequented, mainly the tiny coffee shop at the edge of town (which she didn't even really go to often- town meant paved streets, and paved streets meant more chances that dropping her heart would smash it).
And he'd visited her at the hospital after her little, er, accident last year.
Her heart picked up speed at the memory of that, fear making the beat palpitate even more quickly. Only a few seconds of panicked thought had flashed through her head before she'd felt Axel- well, okay, she actually hadn't seen him yank her out, she'd already been losing consciousness at that point, but she could assume due to the fact that the person who pulled her out had done it much more quickly than Olivia could, and Axel had been the only person that wasn't Olivia nearby at the time- yank her out of the fire in the nick of time. Much longer and she was pretty sure she would've gone up in smoke.
Okay, time to stop worrying about that or she'd give herself white hairs and that would make Olivia scold her for being too stressed. What had brought on the- oh, yeah, Lukas visiting her at the hospital. She'd just woken up one time to see him sitting in there with a book. She'd been rather confused, but at the time she'd been on a LOT of painkillers, so she'd just gone back to sleep after a few minutes. She'd woken up again to find him gone, but with a little toy pig sitting on the bedside table with a little card attached that said "Get well soon!"
So that had been nice of him.
She didn't talk to him much- they were on rival teams, after all- but he always seemed polite and very friendly when he talked to her.
Unlike his teammates, she frowned as one of said teammates turned to see who was approaching, a sneer coming over his face. Aiden was... well, to put it nicely, a jerk. He never failed to sneer at their failed builds or their losses (especially since they won almost every year), and he always made fun of Axel because of his size. Axel had a LOT of muscle on him. How was he supposed to help his size?
It was worse when it came to Olivia and Jesse- probably because they were shorter than him (well, of course Jesse was shorter than him, she was only one inch above the legal midget level) and there was less chance of getting beat up from that range. He never seemed to call Olivia anything worse than 'redstone nerd', though.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't Coal and the Order of the Losers," Aiden said, mockingly.
Jesse internally winced at the nickname. Coal. Having gotten wind of the incident where she'd tripped into the campfire last year and nearly got burned to death- heck, Jesse was pretty sure most of the people in town knew about that incident at this point- he'd mockingly made it an insulting nickname.
It wasn't the worst nickname Jesse had earned from Aiden- the worst was something along the lines of 'Porkchop', which always made her flinch because, well, Reuben- but considering the fact that she was now terrified of fire, and the fact that she'd nearly died because of fire, and coal burned easily, the nickname made her wince every time she heard it.
It didn't help that the way Aiden said it, he somehow managed to make it sound like the worst of epithets.
Maya- the girl with nut-brown hair and gray-blue eyes that usually tended to go along with whatever Aiden did- smirked as she turned to see the approaching group. "Great. The fail squad's here."
Gill, the bearded guy who was actually kind of nice whenever Aiden and Maya weren't around- once, Jesse had tripped and dropped her heart right in front of him, and without asking any questions about it he'd scooped it up and handed it back to her with a mild "That looks like it'd make a nice gift, be more careful with it"- but was absolutely insufferable with the other two present, smirked as well. "Lukas, get a load of these losers!" he chortled.
Lukas glanced over at Jesse, blue eyes flashing uncomfortably as he met her eyes for an instant, before lowering his eyes to the floor. His hand automatically went into his left pocket, as it usually did nowadays for some reason whenever he seemed uncomfortable or when he met Jesse's eyes.
He usually seemed to be uncomfortable around her nowadays, actually.
"Let's go, guys," he said quietly, heading through the gate into the building competition. Aiden directed one last sneer at Jesse, before turning around and following the rest of this team through the gate. The woman at the gate, whose curly hair rivaled even Olivia's and whose glasses were balancing precariously on the tip of her nose. Her smile was perky and cheerful, but it also had that forced nature of 'Notch please let this be the last team who wants to enter' of most of the people hosting the competition tended to have.
"Name, please?" she asked pleasantly.
"Uh, Axel, and how do you do?" Axel replied, also pleasantly, giving her a friendly grin.
The woman stared at him for a moment, face falling into an almost suspicious frown, as if he was pulling her leg, before the smile came back over her face. "No, I meant your team name."
Jesse's shoulders tensed. Team name? This was the first year any of the people ever asked for a team name. Usually they just called out the booth of the winners and that was that, but no- apparently, now they had to have a team name. This was new.
"Team name...?" Axel mumbled anxiously, apparently having the same thoughts that Jesse was. "We are so not ready for this."
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Ocelots- mainly Aiden, Maya, and Gill- smirking in their direction. Jesse's mind raced for some type of inspiration, anything to settle upon...
They were building a giant Enderman. And Reuben was dressed as the Ender Dragon.
"We're the-" she blurted, before her brain could catch up and interrupt, "the Dead Enders."
Okay, well, they weren't dead, but the Ender Dragon was dead, right? That counted. Sort of. And it was a better name than, say, uh... 'The Flowers' or whatever.
Axel raised his eyebrows, looking a little surprised. "It sounds like a name for pirates," he said, almost musingly.
Jesse's hands strayed to her chest, touching the spot where the glass heart was thudding away quietly. "If you don't... like the name, I can change it," she offered, being sure to keep her voice low so that the lady at the booth didn't think they were too under-prepared.
"Well, it fits our theme," Olivia replied, also keeping her voice low. "I mean, Reuben's dressed as an Ender Dragon, we're building a giant Enderman... it fits."
The woman wrote something down in her book, before looking back up at them with a bright smile. "Alright, Dead Enders, you guys are in Booth 5!"
Axel moved towards the gate, but halfway through he got stuck in it. He grunted and tried to push himself through, but he was stuck for a moment, and he was left awkwardly squirming and struggling to get himself through the gate for a full ten seconds. Finally, he managed to pop out on the appropriate side, staggering as he popped through and landed, slightly off-balance.
The Ocelots gave one last laugh or snicker- now that Jesse was actually paying the group more attention, she could see that Lukas was simply moving towards Booth... 6. (Oh great, so they were right next to the Ocelots for the building competition. Terrific.) Meanwhile, his other team members remained near the gate, simply to just watch Jesse and the rest of her team squirm.
It apparently worked, as Axel lowered his gaze and walked towards Booth 5 as well. Olivia followed as well, looking a little awkward. Jesse and Reuben brought up the rear, Jesse taking a deep breath to calm herself down, choosing to ignore the way her heart was pounding away in... well, not in her chest, but in the pocket of her overalls that was at her chest.
"Is that a freaking beacon?" Axel whispered the moment she arrived at Booth 5, from where he was craning his neck and peering intently over in the Ocelots' booth's direction, "they've got a freakin' beacon? Freakin'... beacon?!"
His voice had just risen to a nearly hysterical pitch when Olivia groaned, hugging her elbows, "That's stained glass. They're not just building a beacon... they're building a rainbow beacon!"
Jesse processed this fact, watching as the Ocelots drew various colored pieces of glass as well as the 'freaking beacon' that Axel had noticed out of their chest that held their materials. Okay, that was pretty impressive, she hated to admit it, but... a beacon? And a rainbow beacon to boot. That was a pretty impressive build.
But... it was also more complicated, and while it was impressive to look at initially, people eventually get tired of watching complicated pieces of machinery doing the same thing over and over again. Besides, looking at a giant Enderman was definitely more impressive.
"We've got this, guys," she concluded.
"Who are we kidding? We've got nothing," Olivia argued in protest, gaze looking almost disappointed, but resigned- like she'd already accepted that they were going to lose, it was a fact, and it wasn't going to change.
Jesse didn't want Olivia to have that expression on her face. It was the look that Jesse had gotten multiple times on late nights doing research on how to break her curse and couldn't find anything. And she would know. She usually locked herself in the bathroom to do the research (just so Axel and Olivia wouldn't wake up and spot her poring over fairytale books in the middle of the night), and she looked in the mirror a good amount of the time when she did that, just so she wasn't staring at words all night.
Seeing that expression on Olivia... well, it was somehow more depressing than when she saw it on her own face.
Jesse paused at the assertion, before pointing at Reuben. "We've... got a mascot," she suggested.
Reuben perked up at that, oinking a little bit.
Olivia glanced over at Booth 6. "We should probably stop staring," she cautioned-
"Hahaha!" Gill laughed. Too late. They'd noticed. "Look! It's Coal and the Order of the Losers. Again."
"Good one, Gill!" Maya snickered as she noticed them as well, Aiden turning from where his back had been facing them to face the newly-named Dead Enders. A nasty smirk came over his face.
Olivia gave them her usual facial expression- a carefully cultivated expression of a tired, slightly annoyed deadpan that screamed, even when she wasn't saying a word, 'I'm way too tired to deal with this right now.' "We're just looking," she replied, flatly.
"There'll be plenty of time for you all to look at it once it wins and gets shown at Endercon!" Aiden boasted, one hand on his hip as he sneered at them.
Axel scowled right back at him. He didn't have patience for Aiden on a good day, and right now was certainly no exception. "You're being unpleasant," he shot back, but Aiden didn't appear to be done.
"Well, maybe not all of you," and now he leered down at Reuben, "Endercon doesn't allow outside food or drink."
Reuben let out an angry squeal at the insult.
"I'm talking about your pig," Aiden added, as if his meaning wasn't already obvious. Perhaps he thought that Jesse was stupid.
Jesse's usual 'ignore them and they'll go away' mentality finally cracked at that insult, and she glared at him, arms crossing protectively over her chest. "Reuben is not food," she snapped back at him. She was pescetarian (she mostly only ate fish and vegetables), and very, VERY anti-pork. She was pretty sure Aiden already knew this.
Aiden smirked back at her. "Oh, really? Could've fooled me. He looks delicious," and he sneered down at the pig.
Jesse paused, before cocking her head at Aiden in slight confusion. "That... sounded like a weird... compliment," she said at last.
Axel interrupted the conversation defensively, speaking up from where he was behind Jesse. "You'll have to eat me, first," he defended the little pig.
Olivia blinked uncertainly at Axel, glancing from Jesse's now slightly amused expression as she inadvertently visualized that comment to Aiden's faded smirk to Axel's stubborn gaze. "Let's, uh... let's hope it doesn't come to that."
This (slightly weird) conversation would've probably just kept going on for a while, but Lukas chose now to interrupt, one hand in his left pocket, and his right hand resting on one hip. "Stop wasting your time, Aiden," he snapped, "we've got work to do."
Grinning victoriously, Jesse and the rest of the team gave the three members of the Ocelots smug looks. Aiden looked taken aback at the rebuke, before scowling back at the Dead Enders. "You're lucky I'm busy," he seethed.
Before any of them could say anything else- judging by the way Axel had actually opened his mouth, he'd been about to make another remark that would just start a whole 'nother argument, a familiar redhead with a blue-striped bandana came in, pickaxe resting on her shoulder. "Hey, Jesse. Guys," she greeted, casually.
Jesse's expression relaxed into a smile. "Hey, Petra," she replied.
Jesse liked Petra. Despite the way Petra often acted like she was a little embarrassed by Jesse's presence (admittedly, a tiny girl who acts nice and cheery all the time is not exactly the kind of friend someone as badass as Petra probably wanted to have), she always was pretty nice to the girl.
Not to mention, she was also one of the only people who'd visited Jesse during her stay in the hospital after the whole accident, the other few being Olivia and Axel (every day), Lukas (once or twice), and Reuben (also every day).
Ever since then, the two of them had developed a sort of friendship where Petra didn't seem to be embarrassed to be seen with Jesse in public, and Jesse wordlessly agreed to act less like a small child on Christmas morning whenever she hung out with Petra.
"How's the build going?" Petra asked casually. This was perhaps not the best question to ask, because the competition hadn't even started yet, but Jesse appreciated the sentiment.
"Only time will tell. But... we're optimistic," Axel responded.
He didn't sound very optimistic.
"Oh, hey Petra," Lukas suddenly spoke up, walking forward with one hand still in his left pocket and reaching up with his free right hand to awkwardly rub the back of his head, "I forgot to thank you for that Nether Star the other day."
Petra smiled back at Lukas, her casual expression softening a little as her eyes crinkled up into a warm sort of smile. "Hey, Lukas," she greeted him in a friendly way. "Not a problem-"
She was almost cut off by Axel, who was scowling slightly. "You helped these tools?" he asked, sounding a little irritated.
Petra's smile went back into the casual expression as her eyes flickered over to him, and she raised her shoulders in a little shrug. "For the right price, I'll help anyone." With that, she started strolling off towards the woods. "If you need anything, you know where to find me."
There was a short pause as the Dead Enders momentarily forgot their enmity with the Ocelots and vice versa and the two groups stared at one another in slight confusion at the remark, before Olivia turned away from where she'd been having a confused staring contest with Maya and called after Petra, "None of us know where to find you!"
"Exactly."
As Petra disappeared into the trees, Lukas turned to face the Dead Enders, rubbing the back of his head with his right hand slightly sheepishly. "No hard feelings, guys," he spoke up, the expressions of the other Ocelots returning to somewhat hostile as they remembered that they were practically archenemies at this point, "if you're cool with Petra, you're cool with us."
Jesse frowned at Lukas a little bit. She had the uncontrollable urge that something was a little... off about him.
... it was probably just her wariness with him ever since that incident with the witch and ever since she'd gotten her curse. When you get cursed because a witch mistakenly thinks that you're romantically involved with someone you don't even talk to on a regular basis, you tend to be a little wary around that person. Let's just put it that way.
"So... why don't we forget about all this, and, y'know- make this about how cool our builds are?" Lukas was saying when Jesse decided that the thing that was 'off' was nothing except her own instincts going haywire.
Jesse paused for a moment- before nodding, taking the offered olive branch smoothly. "May the best team win," she told him, lightly.
Lukas perked up, relief and... some other emotion that Jesse couldn't identify evident in the grin he proceeded to give her. "Careful what you wish for," he warned her playfully.
"We'll see about that," Jesse said after a moment, surprised at the way he was acting so... cheerful all of a sudden.
Maybe her thought that something was off with Lukas wasn't too far off the mark, after all.
A/N: Huh. Looks like something might be up with Lukas...
Sorry for the late update! Fanfiction wouldn't let me submit the document yesterday, so I had to wait until today to submit it and post. Sorry!
I've actually got another MCSM story coming out soon (which brings the number of stories that I'm working on up to 6, but that's fine since not all of them are that far in, so I can wait), so keep an eye out for that!
Also, Merry (late) Christmas to those of you who celebrate it! I hope you guys had a good one!
Replies to reviews!
Mooncake: Aww, sorry to hear that, Moon.
ShiningHopeBeast: (grins) / I played through the entire thing, I'm posting my playthrough as soon as I possibly can! / Well, the build probably won't catch on fire, but it depends on what I decide there.
TheAmberShadow: All of the curses can be broken- it's mostly just a way of figuring out how to break it. / Haha, indeed. / Yeah, it was fun to write!
Toni42: (laughs) That's a fairly accurate statement, Toni. / Yep!
homeworkoverload: Aww, sorry to hear that you didn't have a great day. :/ I hope you're doing better now, though!
Princess of Muffins: (laughs) Aww, Fluffy sounds cute. / I'm glad you like the story so far! I'm really having fun writing it, myself. / Ah, all I'm gonna say, is that scene is going to have some changes to it when it comes around. (grins)
MooncakeT: (laughs) Literally, how so?
Welp, that's all for now! See ya, so long, and g'bye!
x.X. A.L. X.x