Chapter 10 – Romeoburg
(Minecraft: Story Mode and its characters belong to Telltale Games, not me.)
Jesse and Romeo reached Romeoburg, where they immediately noticed a sound of what appeared to be hundreds of people fighting.
"That's odd." Romeo remarked.
"HALT! You there! What business have you?" A female voice called out. Looking up, Jesse saw two figures. They had white mohawks, shabby looking armor and had black paint under their eyes. The figure on the left was light skinned while the figure on the right was dark skinned.
"Let me handle this." Romeo whispered. "Val, Soup. It's me, Romeo. Let us in."
"Romeo?" Dark-skin gasped.
"Yes, it's me." Romeo answered. "I may not be an Admin anymore, but it's still one hundred percent me. Now let us in."
"Sorry, but I'm afraid we can't do that." Light-skin apologized.
"What?"
"Yeah, Soup is right." Dark-skin agreed. "Do you even realize how deadly you've made your challenge? We've lost almost all of our population attempting to get through it."
"Well… I-"
"Exactly, and right now, we're doing you two a favor by keeping you out. Really, it's for your own good." Val said.
"Yeah, it's nothin' more than a death trap. The worst kind of trap." Soup agreed.
"Which is why we vowed to keep everyone out. Even our own leader who we can see is no longer an Admin." Val said.
"Fine. Yes, it's near impossible. It contains six hundred stages." Romeo said.
"What!?" Val, Soup and Jesse gasped together.
"Don't panic, I know a way that will skip us to the six hundredth stage." Romeo explained.
Jesse sighed in relief.
"Okay. I've been super patient with you two, but I am done. If you don't open this gate, we'll scoop up some of that dirt and use it to climb over that wall!" Romeo snapped.
Val widened her eyes, before conceding.
"Open the gate!" Val ordered.
"On it!" Soup said, running out of sight.
"No, Soup! The gate! Yeah, the real gate!" Val corrected.
"Right, on it!" responded Soup, switching directions.
The gate in-front of Jesse and Romeo opened up. They walked in, and saw a llama rolling on its back. It stepped up and sniffed Jesse out.
"I don't remember this place being a wasteland." Romeo commented.
"Yeah, uh, having a town where everyone enters a mysterious challenge room then never comes out will do that." Soup responded.
"Suppose that might affect population levels a little bit." Romeo agreed.
"We still don't feel good about permitting you into the challenge room, especially unarmed and without your powers. BUT, we'll trade you some gear if you can build something to scare off FUTURE unwanted visitors." Val said.
"You know, like a snowman! Or a huge flower!" Soup suggested.
Romeo sighed.
"Okay, if it'll get you two to let us in there, I'll build something scary." Romeo conceded, taking the material from Val.
"Just, make something that will help us strike fear into the hearts of all who would see it. Keep people off our backs."
"Something to give us a little me-time." Soup added.
When Romeo finished building, Jesse could agree that it looked scary, but he didn't know exactly what it was supposed to look like.
"Oh, wow. That will give me nightmares. Haha. Well done." Val remarked.
"Yes, wonderfully horrifying." Soup agreed.
Val and Soup led Jesse and Romeo towards a few stands, each of which contained shabby looking armor.
"This is what we managed to salvage from the goofballs…uh, I mean… residents, who tried entering." Soup explained.
"Well, a little protection is better than none." Romeo said, taking off his prison jacket, revealing a white tank top underneath.
Jesse and Romeo eventually chose their choices for the armor. Val held out a bunch of items. Jesse picked up an iron pickaxe, while Romeo decided not to take anything, holding out his diamond sword that he stole from the Ironguard Detention Facility. They walked towards the challenge room.
"Aww, good luck." Soup said.
"Oh, you poor doomed souls." Val pitied.
Jesse and Romeo descended some stairs into what appeared to be arena.
"Okay, the cabin is past that door there. To open it, we just need to beat stage six hundred." Romeo said. "First, let me walk you through on how to get the challenge started."
They reached the bottom of the stairs, and saw three levers, each accompanied with either blue, red or purple wool behind it.
"To switch it on, we need to flip these three levers in a window of three seconds." Romeo explained. "I'll take Xara's lever. Jesse, you take Fred and my lever."
Romeo flipped Xara's switch. Jesse responded by flipping Romeo's switch before racing to Fred's switch and flipping it.
"Here we go." Jesse said.
"Welcome challengers; Xara, Fred, and… me! Romeo!" Romeo's voice echoed around the arena, coming from a placement of jukeboxes. It had the same hint of arrogance, pompousness and confidence that Xara's voice had.
"I originally built this for myself, Fred and Xara." Romeo explained.
"Are you ready for the most thrilling, death-defying, heart-pounding challenge, you've ever experienced?" Romeo's voice asked, with a chuckle. "Stage One; Begin!"
A machine popped up out of the ground, creating a set of magma golems and magma cubes using pistons.
"Okay, I'm going to climb up there, activate the manual override, and skip us to stage six hundred." Romeo said. "What you need to do, is just to use the pressure plates to turn those things into cobblestone."
"Got it!" Jesse responded, nodding.
"Then let's go!"
Jesse engaged the mobs while Romeo maneuvered himself on top of the machine, being careful to not burn his feet by the magma blocks on it.
"Ooh, wow. What a showdown, folks!" Romeo's pre-recorded voice commented as Jesse used the pressure plates to cover the mobs in water, turning them into cobblestone. "We're having the time of our lives, aren't we?"
Jesse managed to defeat the golem, using the pickaxe to mine it up.
"Congratulations, challengers! Stage one, of six hundred! Haha, complete!" Romeo's voice congratulated, with a laugh very similar to Xara's.
Eventually, Romeo reached the three levers on top of the machine. He started flipping the levers in a certain pattern.
"Got it!" Romeo called out.
"STAGE TWO, ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN-" Romeo's voice shortened out.
"Get ready, Jesse." Romeo said, jumping down and rejoining Jesse. "This is going to get super dangerous."
"Now, prepare yourselves for, ahem. STAGE SIX HUNDRED!" Romeo's voice announced as a giant flaming hand reached out of the opening pit in-front of them. A giant magma golem pulled itself out of the pit. Jesse and Romeo backed away.
"Okay, these challenges are far more dangerous than they appeared to be when I still had my powers." Romeo admitted.
"I see your smiles." Romeo's voice said. "Now, now, I'm not a monster. There is a crafting table nearby."
Romeo's pre-recorded voice burst into maniacal laughter.
"Ignore my egotistical past self and focus on removing the arms of that golem." Romeo instructed. "Once you do that. I'll use the TNT I picked up from the Warden."
Jesse spent the next two minutes luring the golem near the pressure plates, where Jesse turned its arms into stone and mined them down with his pickaxe. Once Jesse did that to both arms, his pickaxe broke. Romeo stepped in, holding TNT.
"HEY, IDIOT! GOT A PRESENT FOR YOU!" Romeo bellowed, placing the TNT down and igniting it. While the TNT was flashing, Romeo picked it up and tossed it at the golem. "CATCH!"
Romeo turned around, grabbed Jesse and dived as the TNT exploded, causing the entire floor around the golem to cave in, which sank into a bed of water.
"Oh! You've done it! Oh, yes! The power of our friendship prevails!" Romeo's voice celebrated as the golem slowly sank underneath the water, the glow in its eyes flicking off. Fireworks shot up around the arena.
"Now, let's get to that cabin." Romeo said, gesturing for Jesse to follow.
They descended some stairs, before finding themselves in another giant room, with a cottage in the middle of it. Looking up, Jesse saw that it was covered in its own layer of bedrock. There were lamps shining everywhere, keeping the place alive.
"Wow, this is the first place down here that looks… alive." Jesse commented.
"That was my doing, Jesse." Romeo said. "I was here briefly after Fred's death before fighting Xara, and I wanted this place to be preserved, so when I left, I sealed it off with my own layer of bedrock, alongside some lamps so that nothing down here dies from it."
Romeo saw a tree made out of birch, and slowly approached it. There was a sign next to it that said For Fred.
"Hello, Fred." Romeo said. "If you're listening, I want you to know that I am so sorry for everything that happened. But, I just want you to know that I am going to do whatever it takes to make things right again. And when I find her, I will make Xara pay. Oh yes, she will definitely pay."
Romeo stood up and approached Jesse.
"Come on, let's not waste any more time. Time to search the cabin."
Romeo and Jesse stepped inside the cabin. Looking around, Jesse saw banners to the right, representing Red for Romeo, Blue for Fred and Purple for Xara. Towards the other end of the cabin, Jesse saw three beds, colored Red, Blue and Purple. To the right, next to the window, Jesse saw a portrait of Fred. The rest of the house had items strewn about, and it looked pretty messy. Jesse picked up a book that was on the ground next to him.
"Remember, I used to read all the time? Now I barely do." Jesse said, thinking back to before the Endercon Building Competition and the Wither-Storm. He replaced the book back into the bookshelf.
"Things change." Romeo said.
"Yeah." Jesse agreed.
Jesse saw a practice dummy.
"It's like the one we used to have, back at the treehouse. Until someone, Petra, broke it."
Romeo chuckled.
"The place is a mess. What happened here?" Jesse asked.
"Oh, yeah. When Fred died, I was in a rush to find something I had left here. Now, just like with Fred's house, the gauntlet that will help us defeat Xara isn't going to be out in the open. If I know Fred, he would have hidden it too well. Far too well. Try looking in places that a regular burglar wouldn't even consider digging through." Romeo said.
"Got it." Jesse nodded.
Jesse spent the next five minutes going through the mess within the cabin, tidying the place up, until the place looked practically spotless. But he didn't find any trace of the gauntlet. Jesse tried almost every place he could think of. That was, until he saw a hole in the floor in one corner of the cabin. Inside it, was an unmarked book. Jesse picked it up and opened it. What he saw, made him call for Romeo's attention immediately.
"Romeo, you're going to want to read this." Jesse said, handing the book to Romeo. Romeo took it and read it aloud.
"Dear Xara, if you're reading this, I'm already gone. I hid this in the one place I knew you would look for it. Fitting the key to ending all this would be here, where it all started." Romeo read. "This is the key to defeating Romeo."
Jesse took a look and saw that it next said #POTATO451.
"#POTATO451" Romeo read.
"That's it?" Jesse asked, confused.
"Take this word of passage and use it at the primary terminal. You can take away his power and end this." Romeo continued reading. "I still have hope for Romeo. He just wanted to stay together, more than anything. I know that's why he's doing this. Maybe I'm being foolish, but I need to know for sure before taking this step. Though I guess if you're here, I got my answer. Maybe someday we'll be together again. Your friend, always… Fred."
Romeo snapped the book shut, before throwing the book across the cabin in rage. It bounced off the glass window on the entrance side and fell open onto the floor. Romeo started full on crying.
"Look, at, this!" Romeo sobbed. "Our lives, gone!"
If Jesse thought Xara was terrible when she sent him down to her prison, it was nothing to the hatred he felt for her now. That she would actually betray her friends out of the blue without any shred of remorse at all? That she would actually bedrock over the world and leave everyone in darkness? That she would actually rebuild PAMA to enslave everyone in her new world? This was one twisted woman. Jesse made up his mind then and there. No matter what it took, he was going to help Romeo stop Xara. They, now were the world's last hope.
"Mark my words, Jesse. When I find Xara, I'm going to reduce her to absolute nothing. She deserves it, for what she did to me and Fred." Romeo said, his voice dangerously quiet. "She ruined our lives."
"Yeah, she's a monster. Through and through." Jesse agreed.
Jesse picked up the book that Romeo threw and took a look through it's pages. Some of them got crinkled from the impact of the ground, but Jesse didn't find anything of interest. It wasn't until the very last page of the book, that Jesse saw something interesting. It was more of Fred's handwriting.
If the worst happens, I've left something else underneath the slab where you found this book. Do not use it unless absolutely necessary. Good luck Xara.
"Romeo, look at this." Jesse said.
Romeo took the book and looked at the phrase, before immediately turning his attention to the slab inside the hole where they found the book. He pulled out a spare pickaxe from a chest inside the cabin and used it to mine it up. Once the slab was removed, Jesse took a look inside. Inside, lay a white colored gauntlet. Romeo spotted the white gauntlet and gasped in recognition.
"Oh, I don't believe it!" Romeo exclaimed. "WE FOUND IT! This is the gauntlet I was talking about."
Jesse was very hesitant to touch it. A gauntlet was what got him into this mess in the first place.
"How exactly is this going to help us fight PAMA?" Jesse questioned.
"Jesse, I helped you escape the prison. I showed you all the horrible things that Xara did." Romeo said. "Now, it's time for you to uphold your end of the deal and help me out."
"How, exactly?" Jesse questioned.
"Tell me, Jesse? Have you ever heard of the phrase; Fight fire with fire?" Romeo asked.
"What do you mean?"
"This gauntlet, is the source of our Admin powers." Romeo revealed. "This very item is how we got our powers."
"Whoa!" Jesse exclaimed.
Romeo nodded.
"Jesse, I helped you escape that facility." Romeo reminded. "And we had a deal. I get you out of the facility, you help me defeat Xara."
Romeo turned around.
"And to do that, we're going to need to get through two layers of bedrock. And we both know that there is no way to get through bedrock normally. And here is our dilemma. We not only need to get to the surface, but we also need to fight a omnipotent power-mad redstonist. That can be extremely deadly if you aren't well prepared."
Romeo pulled out the gauntlet.
"After careful consideration, I have made my choice. Jesse, not only am I going to put this on and get my powers back, but I also request that you join me in doing so?"
"Wait, wait, wait? You want me to become an Admin too?" Jesse questioned, shaking.
"That's exactly what I'm asking." Romeo said. "That way, if I go down, you can still put things right. What I also need to mention to you, is that when an Admin uses their powers, they leave behind a residue. It doesn't last for long, but it lasts long enough for an Admin to track you. From what I understand, Xara never learned how to track an Admin's residue. Even if she did, she would've most likely forgotten how by now. So I think we should be good using the gauntlet here."
"Well, here goes nothing."
Romeo put the gauntlet on. Nothing happened.
"Is something supposed to ha-" Jesse began, only to be cut off by the gauntlet suddenly glowing white. A burst of bright light caused Jesse to close his eyes. It lasted for about 30 seconds until it finally faded. Jesse opened his eyes, and almost took a step back in shock at what he saw.
Romeo now looked exactly like the form Jesse saw on the poster back in the Oasis. This time, Jesse was able to look at Romeo's Admin Form in person. Romeo's form was vastly different in comparison to Xara. Xara's form included bright colors that made Jesse's eyes want to bleed, Romeo's form was much more pleasant to look at.
His hair was no longer faded, but back to the bright firetruck red that Jesse saw on the poster. His skin was dark grey, and he was wearing a black outfit with glowing red lines outlining the seams. His sclera was now red, with glowing yellow irises. Romeo chuckled, his voice now displaying the same robotic undertone that Xara's voice had.
"I'm going to test something. Get down." Romeo instructed.
He teleported outside, floating around. Xara did not appear, which seemed to be what Romeo was hoping for.
"Exactly what I was hoping for." Romeo said. He pulled the gauntlet back out.
"Now, I'm not forcing this on you. You can deny if you want, but before you make any decisions, slow down, and think this through." Romeo said, pulling the gauntlet back. "Gaining and removing Admin Powers are not as simple as you think, Jesse. My method of removing an Admin's powers requires the use of a special enchanting book, one which I spent many years working on. Fred's method was a Golden Gauntlet, which #POTATO451 was guarding. Unfortunately, Xara already used that to take my powers away. The catch is, each time you create an item capable of taking an Admin's powers, it can only be used once, and I do not have the patience nor the capability to create another book."
"Well, how did you create it then, if it's that impossible?" Jesse asked. "What happened to the first one you created?"
"I lost it when Xara first took my powers away. It took me many years of dedication to create the enchanting book that allows an Admin's Power to be taken away, and I was studying from ancient books that came with the Admin Gauntlet." Romeo explained. "Books that have since disappeared after Fred took them."
Jesse was lost, what should he do?
"Are you absolutely sure this is what you want, Jesse?" Romeo questioned, his voice down to a whisper. "Remember, you can still back out if you wish, but if you put on that Gauntlet, it'll be a lifetime commitment. There will be no going back."
"I need to protect Beacontown." Jesse reasoned.
"I know, Jesse." Romeo answered. "But is this how you want to go about doing it? I just don't want to see you sink to Xara's level."
Jesse's entire body was shaking. This was the biggest decision of his life. If he followed through with Romeo's offer, the future of his world would lie in his and Romeo's hands. Jesse wasn't sure if he was ready to take that responsibility. What if he did end up in Xara's position?
But if he declined, he could not see any other way to defeat Xara. And he really didn't want to let her win. What should he do? Should he put the Gauntlet on, or should he decline and hand it back to Romeo?
Jesse did not know how long he stood there, pondering, but eventually he closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths.
"Well?" Romeo asked.
Eventually, Jesse came to a decision. He opened his eyes and started directly into Romeo's glowing yellow eyes.
"I'll do it." Jesse decided.
Romeo held out the Admin Gauntlet and Jesse grabbed it. He took another deep breath and put the gauntlet on his right hand before he could have the chance to get cold feet.
Jesse felt the gauntlet stick to his hand, and it began to glow white. Here it goes.
As a burst of white light filled the cabin again, Jesse felt as though something was shocking his body. It began to seize up, and Jesse felt something run up his arm, and all throughout his body. Eventually, the seizing stopped, and Jesse fell to the ground, to see that his body felt a lot stronger than he had ever felt before. A green hue was illuminating the ground. Jesse looked down and saw that his outfit was glowing green. Romeo was looking at him with approval. He clapped his hands, spawning a portrait.
"Here, you should take a look. This is what you look like."
Jesse saw that his skin was now dark grey, very similar to Romeo's except a slight touch lighter. His sclera was an electric green, and his irises were white. His outfit was black, and glowing green. It was similar to Romeo's form, only the gems on his torso seemed to resemble the gems on his Dragonsbane armor, and they were green. The only part of him that remained the same was his hair, which was still dark brown.
As Jesse stared at the portrait, the reality of Romeo's offer, along with his warnings raced through his mind. He was an Admin now, and it looks like his newfound powers were here to stay.
Author's Notes: And, that concludes this chapter.
This part, I was planning right from the very beginning. What I forgot to tell you was that this story was also intended to be a rewrite of sorts of my first MCSM fanfiction, Admin Order, which focused solely on Admin!Jesse. But I wasn't fully satisfied with how it turned out, and when I saw a few images on tumblr of Romeo and Xara swapping roles, that gave me the idea to write this.
I also had a draft of a story very similar to how Fred: Into the Multiverse played out, where some things happened, and Romeo ended up joining Jesse and his group in the adventure through the Portal Hallway, but I scrapped that idea, as it didn't really work how I wanted it to.
If you check out my tumblr, you will see some renders of how my version of Admin Jesse looks.
Like it? Review. Don't like it, look up another chapter.
More to follow.