Disclaimer that was probably disclaimed at an earlier time already: I love Alesa, have nothing against her. She's brilliant, and she'll make a perfect MommyDoesMinecraft. 3 Her OOCness is for the sake of the story, kay? Kay. (See that? I avoided a TFIOS reference by omitting a couple of letters. I'm a pro. :333)

Forget Me

Ch 24: Punchy, Punchy, Ouch! Ouch!

Brice's POV

"I can't honestly say I care!" I shout in aggravation. A little voice in the back of my head says I should be nice, but how can I focus on being polite when my friends are in a life-threatening situation? "Just get it stable!"

"We got it on about ten minutes ago," Seth informs me. "It kept working for a couple of minutes, came back on, and then stayed on until literally six seconds ago."

"Well, that's good, I guess," I admit, because, yeah, Bashur and Bodil are making a bit of progress. We could really use more help, though. "Alright, I'm going to go inside and help them out – this whole 'step back and take it easy' thing would usually be nice, but I don't want anything to do with it right now. Could you break through the maze protection?"

"Sure. You know, my ability to go into creative mode makes the whole key thing we planned out pretty pointless, doesn't it?"

"Pretty much." He breaks a line through the maze to the center of it, where the Respawn Mechanism rests, and I hear Bashur's complaining every step of the way.

"This is hard!"

"Good Notch, Bash, just be patient! You can leave as soon as I get there to take over," I reply, rolling my eyes. Seth carefully breaks through the last block, making sure not to hit any of the redstone next to the Respawn Mechanism. "Thanks, Seth."

"No problem. I'm going to go place bedrock around the maze. Call me if you need me."

"Got it," I respond, giving him a thumbs up as he flies away. I turn to Bashur and Bodil, who are fiddling in confusion with the center of the Machine. See, this is why I wanted to stay in here and help, but Bodil thought I was freaking out too much, so he kicked me out. "Alright, guys- guys! What the heck!? You can't just touch it like that! It's fragile, and we don't have the special potion to keep us from breaking it easily. Geez."

"Sorry, Brice," Bodil giggles. "If it helps at all, we redesigned the redstone to be in the shape of a troll face."

I glance over at the redstone and then quickly facepalm, dragging my hand down my face slowly.

"Come on, guys! Seto and the rest of Team Crafted are in trouble!"

"So is Alesa. And Tiffany and Annie and Ashley."

"See!? Even more lives in our hands! We have to do this properly." I start picking up different parts of the machine, being as patient as I can bear while teaching them how to fix it for good.

Time is of the essence – our friends could die at any moment.

Which is why I'm so upset when a bunch of random people burst into the room and start babbling about Ty. Like, yeah, we get that Team Crafted is in trouble, so shove off, random citizens.

"Brice, are you even listening to me!?"

"Oh my gosh, Seto!?" I screech, causing Bashur to drop a part. Bodil giggles. I glare at them both and then turn back to Seto. All of Team Crafted, plus Tiffany, Annie, and Ashley, are with him.

"Yeah, it's me. But Ty and Alesa didn't respawn with us, and we're worried. When did the Respawn Mechanism come back on?" he asks immediately.

"Uh, about ten minutes ago. It was being really unstable though, and we've been trying to stabilize it."

"Maybe Ty and Alesa weren't in the water when the shock came," Seto wonders aloud, and Jason, who is standing next to him, bites his lip nervously.

"In that case, they're still at the squid base – they could be killed any second. They can't be in good shape, at least not Ty," he worries.

Seto turns his attention back to me. "Is the Respawn Mechanism off at this moment?"

Uh oh. I nod.

"We have to get it back on," he replies. He glances at Bashur and Bodil. "And, oh, Notch, get those two out of here."

"Probably a good idea," I agree, pushing the two toward the exit. "Out, out, out!"

"But we were helping!" Bash protests.

"No, you were not. Out." Grudgingly, they leave. I face the mess of a Respawn Machine again, sucking in a deep breath. Wow, this is going to be stressful. Speaking of stressful... "Where's Sky?"

"He took Ian's sunglasses," Quentin growls, but I notice Ian has somehow retrieved them now. Maybe he respawned with them?

"He locked us in cells," Mitch shoots out immediately after Quentin.

"He sliced Ty open and nearly drowned him," Jerome hisses.

"He almost killed Alesa," Ian adds furiously.

"S-So Ty killed him," Jason whispers, and I think he wants it to sound like he's totally behind the action, but really he only sounds sad and regretful.

"O-Oh," I say quietly, looking down. "I'm sorry I asked."

Sky's POV

You know, I have to wonder why my old house is surrounded in obsidian.

And why I respawned here instead of being lost to the darkness of death for all of eternity.

And whether or not Alesa has killed my friends yet.

Wait, Ty! Ty, Ty is hurt and Alesa is pretending to be his friend and he won't stand a chance if she pulls something on him when the others aren't looking, and omigosh, does she still have the will? That was a joke! She must have it though, that's all she wants – control.

Like Dawn.

And the button she had in her hand! Oh, she must have pressed it by now, she must have! But she wouldn't have done it unless all of my friends were in the water – well, maybe all but Ty – and who knows, maybe they've survived this far? Maybe I can break through this obsidian and try to run back to the squid base, and maybe I can convince them that I'm truly on their team. Well, okay, no, that won't happen, they pretty much hate me at this point. They'll need weeks, months, maybe years of convincing to trust me again – and, who knows, maybe it wouldn't have been so hard to regain their trust if I hadn't gotten Ty hurt like that, but I didn't think the sword would hurt him, I didn't even mean to throw the sword, I meant to catch it, but I couldn't focus because the eternal pain and I couldn't think things through because Alesa was going to shock them all and I've never been one to think things through, anyway.

And because of that, I just lost all my friends.

Maybe for good.

No, no more depressing thoughts! I have to get out of here, I have to stop Alesa-

I scream in pain after punching the block of obsidian. Why, World!? Why do you fill my life with painful inconveniences!? Normally, it wouldn't hurt too much to patiently punch through the obsidian, but with the eternal pain and the fact that I'm barely standing as it is, this is a task that would be well-defined by the term 'impossible.'

But because I am strong-willed, I lift my hand for another punch-

Er, try to lift my hand. Maybe I'm not so 'strong-willed' after all.

Oh, oh, great. It's the paralysis thing again, isn't it? This thing happens far too often; I'm surprised it didn't happen in front of the Team earlier. If I concentrate really hard, though, I can sometimes knock some feeling into whatever is paralyzed. Which, currently, is my right arm. I scrunch up my nose and focus on moving it, and slowly, slowly, it begins to inch upwards. After about two minutes of that, it's back to relative normality, so I go about swinging it mercilessly at the obsidian. Which is painful. Ouch.

Well. That's an understatement, actually. At the moment, I'm rolling around on the floor crying. Don't worry, I'll be up and punching again in a few minutes.

For I am... SKYDOESMINECRAFT! NOTHING AND NO ONE CAN EVER CONQUER ME! *overly confident laughter*

*pained screeching*

Ty's POV

"Geez, Ty, could you try to hold that blood in a bit more?" the devil's daughter asks. "You've been leaving a trail of blood for ten blocks now. Like, wow, can you be any more obvious? Hide your pain, idiot. What kind of soldier are you?"

"The kind that is dying from a side wound," I reply through gritted teeth. I grind my teeth together slightly, and she winces.

"Ew, you grind your teeth? Stop that, it's unhealthy."

You have got to be kidding me, I think, but I don't say it – even though I really want to – because I know she's not kidding me and that she could kill me at any moment, really.

And I need to stay alive long enough to get that box with the will in it. That thing has to burn.

"Alright, Ty, try not to bleed all over the city gates, bud," she says, rolling her eyes as she opens the gate for me. "Go on, now. We can find you a doctor somewhere nearby."

I limp inside, cursing myself for looking weak (but, honestly, haven't I looked weak ever since my own sword cut a gash down my side?). "O-Okay, the nearest doctor that I know of is-" I freeze in place as my finger ends up pointing at a huge box of obsidian – the obsidian coats every block of the house. "What the heck..?"

"Hey, man, don't ask me," Alesa says, shrugging. "This city is cra-zay. But don't fret, child, it'll be much better once I'm running it."

"Somehow, I seriously doubt that," I mutter. She pretends not to hear.

"Oh, look, here we go. This is the city council's Meeting House or something, right? This is where I first realized it might be a good idea to try to get the power Sky had. He was showing me how he had enough power to just walk in here and make the council declare the second National Budder Appreciation Day a thing," she explains, taking on a day-dreaming look. "And now I have all that power..."

"Actually, you really don't," I say hesitantly, and she turns to look at me questioningly. "I mean, yeah, Sky liked to joke around about how much 'power' he had over the city council and just the city in general, but really most of that power was just immense respect. The people in this city respected Sky for what he did for them. They put up with his overwhelming stupidity and randomness just because he'd risked his life for theirs time and time again. It was like they owed him. Heck, they still owe him."

"Oh," Alesa whispers, and I wonder if somehow my speech has moved her enough to warrant her switching to the 'good' side. But then she laughs and says, "That means they'll respect his wishes to have me take over the city, right?"

And I sigh because maybe this is hopeless.