Chapter 10

THANK YOU FOR ANSWERING THE POLL, RESULTS ARE BEING ADDED TO THIS FAN FICTION RIGHT AWAY.

York tossed a gold coin over in his hand and slapped it onto his palm. When he saw the result, he grunted and tried again. After he received the same result the next time around, he repeated his previous actions. Annabelle, walking by his side, watched with curious eyes.

"You keep getting heads," she pointed out after the tenth or so attempt.

"I know," he mumbled. "These coins either are programmed to land on heads one-hundred percent of the time, or the Legion can screw with the probability of everything. I'm pretty sure it's the second one."

"At least be grateful we got some money from selling all our junk…" Scarlet said softly. She opened her inventory and quickly picked out a stack of muffins. She downed one in a gulp. "The Legion may have trapped us here, but giving us the ability to taste their modded items makes up for it… slightly…."

York made a noise of annoyance and handed the coin to Annabelle. I glanced at him as he returned his hands to his jean pockets and looked to the side. I'm not going to lie, it had been quite the eye opener to see what my group of friends had really looked like. Ruben and Scarlet had dressed just as I had guessed, minus his height difference and the overly amount of cleavage on Scarlet. Ham was no surprise. But York, why had I expected so much different from him?

The six of us had been friends for years. We met each other all in the same Town of Salem game. One laugh led to the next, and boom, soon all six of us were in the same skype group. Years of gaming, laughing, video calls, and emotional bonding led me to believe that I knew these five more than I knew anyone else. But… I'd never think in a thousand years that I'd be standing in front of them, all of them at once, even if it was virtual reality.

I never thought the people I'd met online would still stay loyal when trapped in a situation like this.

"Marshy." York's voice brought me back to reality. He was leaning down, bright blue eyes inches from mine. I hadn't realized it, but I had stopped walking. We were stuck standing in the middle of a busy square, several gamers sending confused glances our way. I blinked at him. "Ah, so you're there."

"Yeah, just zoned out."

"Hm." He raised an eyebrow, questioning. Yet he didn't ask. He led the five of us over to a table where we all sat down. Scarlet handed out the muffins we had bought earlier, and as we munched down on them, York pulled up his map and started mumbling to himself, scribbing across it with his finger.

"These'll come in handy," Ruben said, dropping three magazine-looking books down on the picnic table. "They cost a pretty penny, but it's worth it. The Legion made only a few of these guides to help us with the mods they added, and we're going to need as much information as possible if we want to survive." Annabelle picked up the books one at a time.

"Each and Every Use of Plastic? Helpful Hints about the Ocean? Oh this one will come in handy, The Greatest Guide to the Underground."

"That one cost everything we had," I reminded. Scarlet took the book from Annabelle and thumbed through it. "If we keep gathering each and every mineral we come across and selling what we think we won't need, then we'll be fine on cash."

"What about jobs?" Ham questioned. "I wouldn't mind bakin' some pies." He sniffed the air and jabbed a thumb over to a bakery that set red velvet cakes and blueberry pastries in the window.

"We don't have time for jobs," York said, swiveling his map to us. "We're leaving and heading here." The map zoomed in automatically and focused on a particular swampland. Scattered across it in a nearly uniform pattern were tens of X's with different usernames on them.

"Why did so many people die there?" Annabelle asked, a shiver running through her.

"We're going to find out," York insisted. "All those people died on the surface which can only mean there's something valuable below it. The six of us have been playing MineCraft since the alpha release, we are professionals. We're going to figure it out." He narrowed his voice and leaned in. "It's stuff like this that'll lead us right to the Over Dragon, at least I hope."

"Remind me why we're going after that?" Annabelle asked, tracing the lines of the picnic table with her finger.

"Someone has to." The group looked to me. "We promised Oblivion. And like York said, we're professional Minecraft players. If anyone has the tiniest shot of doing anything useful, it's us."

No one said anything to that. Only because we knew it was true.

"It'll take us a while to get there, I recommend leaving now." York stood up. He held a hand out to me. I paused, confused. Then it made sense, he was offering to help me to my feet. I took it and he helped me up, a soft smile on his face. I really expected him to look so much different. I never thought anything when he laughed in the other games we played.

Why was I suddenly smiling, too?

"Which direction?" Scarlet pulled up her map. "North?"

"Yes." York look away from me. I took a breath inwards. Did… did I forget to breathe? "This city should have a northern gate."

After finishing our muffins and clearing the table, we started straight through the center of Legion City to find our way out. The city was getting more and more packed the further we walked in, so much so that the six of us eventually had to hold hands to keep from being separated. Sure, we could see each other on the map and private message each other if we got lost, but I felt like the six of us care too much about each other to risk it. Too dependant on each other. Thankfully, we didn't need to push through the crowd for too long. We reached the northern gate and released hands. Directly in front of us was an expanse of a white, frozen wasteland.

We came to a stop. "This way...?" Scarlet asked softly.

"Yep." York opened his map, paused, then closed it. "Straight north: Endman's Swamp."

"Can you feel temperatures in this game?" Annabelle was answered when a brisk wind picked up and swept past us. Goosebumps blossomed on my arms and a shiver ran up and down my spine.

"Damn Legion," Ruben swore, adjusting his leather jacket.

"This game sucks!" Ham moaned. "1/10 stars."

"Why one?" Annabelle tilted her head at him.

"That one star goes to Microsoft for trying." I rolled my eyes and walked forward. As soon as we left the safety of the gates, the chill really hit us. The breeze was rougher and colder, our breath plumed in the air in front of us, and the soft tingle of inhaling frigid air lined our lungs. The Legion had really opened our eyes to this world. Whatever they had put in us, that tranquilizer with the long name, it was godlike. We wrapped our arms around ourselves.

"The cold won't kill us, will it?" Annabelle asked.

"There's a meter at the bottom of the screen," York pointed out. Sure enough, a light blue bar with the one percent of it filled with dark blue pixels. As we watched, the meter ticked upwards. "Here." He reached into his inventory and pulled out a torch for each of us. When he took it, the meter stopped rising, but it refused to go down. Ruben grunted.

"We'll have to constantly stop to make a fire," he spat. "Goooo, I'm not stopping if I don't have to." He gave me a small push. We continued into the snowy expanse with our torches close and each other closer. Just as much as you could feel the frigid air, you could feel the warm hands of everyone on you.

We walked for a while. An hour? Maybe two? It was hard to tell with no time display or no real idea if MCO days were just as long as Earth days. But I can tell you that it was long, and even longer with the biting air. The whole while I began to realize that it was only getting colder and colder. Our chill meters were dropping rapidly despite how many torches we lit and kept close. And, to our dismay, there was no sign of another biome in sight. No water, no dirt, no sand, just a flat expanse of ice that wielded no landmarks or animals. Eventually we were digging into our food supply, forcing ourselves to eat the simplest of our food to preserve the rest. All of us were huddled together like penguins now, shivering. When I saw our meters were beginning to get full, I stopped.

"We're setting up camp here." No one protested as I created a campfire and set it down. The Annabelle and Ham were the first to start building as the rest of us huddled around the fire, shivering. When we had been warmed, we switched off. We did this three or four times until our crappy 10x10 house was built. We didn't set any furnaces or chests, just a few crafting tables and our beds. It was only around 6pm, judging from the sky. No one complained as the lot of us put our beds in a circle as we always did and curled up under the covers. We set timers in the bottom right corner of our screens to wake a different one of us up every hour to tend for the fire and fell asleep.

MCO Update! MCO Update!

Thank You For Your Time With The Legion! As A Reward For Good Behavior, All Players Have Been Given A Clock, A Distance Tracker, An Expansion On Their Maps, And Several Hundred Gold!

New Features! New Features!

You May Have Noticed, Players, That You Are Beginning To Taste And Feel More Things In This Game! This Is Natural! It Is Because Your Doses of Hyperthalium Are Starting To Become One With Your System! Enjoy Even More Of MCO With These Updates!