AN: Okay, my note last time was probably a little confusing, so allow me to explain. Last Saturday, a teacher at my high school was killed in a car crash. I didn't know him well, but it affected me anyway. I took Sunday to prepare myself for Monday, which really didn't exist in the way a school day should. It's been affecting my ability to write, so this chapter is brief and probably rough. Also, I haven't slept properly in a couple days because I'm on a trip right and not on my nice soft mattress at home.
I apologize for the delay, and for the brevity of this chapter.
Chapter 43: Strange Intentions
"Chemicals have nearly normalized again. The elevated normal I mean, not his pre-reset normal."
"That's good. Progress is still being made."
"And judging by his movements it's a small miracle. He was in the town that got destroyed."
"Are they still pushing for…whatever they want?"
"A reset? Some kind of disciplinary action? Yes they are."
"And the system?"
"It, uh, he, is taunting them with all kinds of error messages. They can't push anything through."
"Maybe it's for the better. They need to be shaken up a little, to get them on the right track."
Player paused in his hiking only long enough to strip the sheet off when the skin on his side had regrown. Whatever it was Herobrine was giving him, it did wonders. He left the fabric in a pile on the ground, sure that some mob would find a use for it, but when he glanced back a minute later, the demon was holding the thing. He folded it up, then let it dissolve.
Player faced forward again. He was fuming, but he held his tongue and didn't lash out. Herobrine could end his life in a moment, and he had really only been lucky to get this far without dying once. He could almost feel the weight of the book in his inventory. He had things to do.
After a while he calmed down enough to look back, but Herobrine wasn't. He turned in a slow circle, but the demon was gone without a trace. Player faced forward again, disappointed. The anger was starting to fade again, faster than it had before.
He reached the crack in the rocks and found that others had come this way. There were smears of blood on the stone framing the opening, and they went into the crack and continued for a long way. Then he noticed that the deeper the marks were, the drier they were. These were the marks of someone coming towards him out of the crack, not someone going away from him into it. It was his own blood, he realized, and sighed. He turned sideways and slid into the crack, by now a familiar state.
Herobrine was in the process of punching a tree. He wasn't trying to harvest the wood. He had never been so angry with himself or so ashamed. He wanted to crawl back into the Nether and never leave his living quarters again.
His fist his the wood and the tree creaked and then went over, crashing onto the ground. He turned and sat on the new stump and curled over. It was all so obvious to him, he could not believe that he had not seen it before.
Player was mad at him. He had destroyed a village, attacked all of its inhabitants, and nearly killed the human in the space of an hour; it was no wonder the man had lashed out. Herobrine wouldn't have had a problem with it and this is where his logic broke down. He did not understand why he kept going over and over the details of their encounter, why the expression on Player's face made him feel so sick. He did not understand what he was feeling.
"This must be one of those human things," Herobrine said aloud, "that no one explains because they assume you know about it already, but I am not human and I have never been human, so I don't know what it is." That wasn't new. He had a list of things no one had ever explained to him. Once he had written them down, as many as he could remember, and it had filled two pages.
Herobrine stood and paced, his fists clenching and unclenching in agitation. His thoughts snapped back to Player. Was it because he had responded with disgust that the human had reacted the way he did? He must have done something wrong, because Player had never attacked him verbally before. In fact, as far as he knew, Player had never attacked anyone without provocation.
Herobrine kicked at the downed tree, the trunk rolled back and forth a little. He stomped on it, and the block dropped off and landed on the grass with a thump. He stared at it hard, squinted. Then he said a word, and the wood burst into flame. The fire warmed his palms, then almost burned as he touched the wood inside the flame. He ran his hand over its surface, then picked up a handful of the fire and wiped it over the rest of the tree trunk. In minutes, the whole surrounding circle of trees was alight. Herobrine sat in the middle of it, eyes bright, letting the flames feed on his anger. There had to be a way to remedy the situation.
By then, Player was emerging from the crack in the mountain. He walked out onto the little ledge and gazed across the valley. It was beautiful, as it had been the first time he saw it, but now it didn't appeal to him as much. Colors were darker, the greens of the trees looked like mold, the blue of the lakes cloudy with algae.
He sat down on a rock. His stomach was empty and his limbs were shaking with fatigue. He opened his inventory and found what little food he had, and gulped down the stale bread. He was going to have to gather food as he went from here on. The violence of the day had been swift and unforeseen and had caught him off guard, so he had no supplies whatsoever.
There was a wildfire far to his right down in the bottom of the valley. It was almost circular, but it wasn't very large. Player frowned at it. Even as he watched, it went out like it was a candle and someone had just blown on it. He stood fast and hurried on down the hill. That had looked like Herobrine to him, and he didn't want to come face to face with the angry demon again. His luck and Herobrine's pity were both running low.
Player slid into the treeline and fell against a trunk, breathing hard. His hand went to his side, but there was no blood, not anymore. The wound had closed up, but he was still feeling the fatigue. The stuff he had drunk hadn't helped that.
The shadows beneath the trees were thick and heavy even in mid afternoon. If he was not careful, mobs would spawn here and he could not possibly fight them off in his current state. Player made a bargain with himself. He would find enough food to fill his stomach and secure his survival for a few days, and then he would dig himself a hole and go to sleep. That was fair, and he needed food and water.
He walked on, forcing his back straight under the weight of the back, eyes bleary with fatigue before the sun was halfway through its descent. He found the old bunker, now so much dirt and iron scraps, and turned south. He found the grove of fruit trees the farmers had been picking at for days. The branches of some of the trees were bowed almost to the ground by their burdens. It was a welcome sight.
Player put his pack down and walked to the nearest tree. He stared long and hard at the apples hanging from the branches, but could not bring himself to take any. His hatred for apples had grown from a preference into a prerogative. He chose a peach tree instead and picked fruit until the branches rose back up out of his reach. It wasn't enough to sustain him, so he searched for a few minutes until he found Clarence's walnut tree. He picked the little spheres off the tree until his inventory was nearly full. Only then did he turn from his task and see them.
There was a small pile of strawberries lying on the ground, spilling from the folds of a square of plaid fabric that had been wrapped around them. Player stared at it and was disgusted when he felt saliva fill his mouth. He swallowed it and stepped around the little pile, tucking the walnuts into his pockets as he went.
Herobrine was again irritated by the human's refusal of his assistance. He was sitting in the apple tree Player had bypassed, having guessed that the human would shun the fruit even half-starved and exhausted. He gripped the branch beneath him hard and quelled the urge to force the human to accept his gift. He had realized that force would do nothing except cause the human to resist him more.
He waited until Player was out of sight and then dropped down out of the tree and regathered the strawberries. He ate one, just to make sure that they were still sweet. They were. He are another because he felt like it and walked off in the opposite direction than the human had gone. He should let Player find a place to sleep in peace.
The human hollowed a place for himself in the side of a hill and crawled into it, blocking up the passage behind him with a block of dirt and a wooden slab to keep out the mobs. He lit up the inside with torches and sat down on the floor with a sigh. He settled on the peaches because the walnut shells looked tough and he did not have the energy to crack them open right then. The flesh of the fruit was aromatic and sweet. The ones he had grabbed were a little too soft, and the outer skin had an unpleasant fuzz on it, but he gulped it down anyway. He almost broke his teeth on the first pit, and he was very careful after that.
When his stomach was full and the air warm with smoke from the torches, he fluffed out the sleeping bag as best he could and curled up on his side facing the wall. He blinked twice, slowly, then closed his eyes and slept.
Herobrine found the hole in the hill a few minutes later, but by then the human was dead to the world, and he could not bring himself to wake him. Instead he sat on the top of the hill and ate the shunned strawberries, licking the sticky juice off his fingers. The mobs began spawning, but most turned away from him and went in search of other prey. The few that didn't, zombies too stupid to sense the danger and spiders who believed he could not see them, went straight for the human inside the cave. Player had sealed up the door to keep them out though, so no harm came to him.
He finished the strawberries and balled up the cloth. He put it into his inventory. He would find another use for it eventually. He laid down on his back, looking up at the stars, and thought about what he was going to say to the human.
