I'm back with another chapter! I usually don't put notes at the beginnings chapters, but there's a first for everything. But this isn't that related to the story, so you can skip if you want.

Some of you seem to be frustrated with the screwy update deadline. The fanfic updates every Friday, which gives me a deadline while also giving me time to write, unlike last time, when I uploaded whenever I wanted.

But sometimes I don't manage to make that deadline, and I completely understand if that frustrates you. For that, I'm sorry. As someone in high school, I could just excuse myself by saying I'm busy with school work or whatever, but the truth is I'm just really bad with procrastinating. So, I'll try a bit harder to meet deadlines.

Sorry again!

Krios

Jax Goes Super Saiyan

I stared at the destruction, thunderstruck. The sky, which was once blue, was now a light shade of orange. Off in the distance, screams could be heard.

It was my village all over again.

I was broken from my stupor when a fireball blew apart the glass near me, showering me with shards of glass, which I blocked with my arm. I hissed as a few cuts appeared on my arm and ran over to Sam and Jax, dodging fireballs as I ran.

"WE NEED TO GO!" I yelled, and Jax turned to me, nodding. Jax pulled Sam towards another hole in the glass, and they escaped.

I soon caught up to them, and shouted as we ran, "So what's the plan?"

"We find some horses and ride out of here!" Jax yelled. "I can't teleport three people!"

"What about Trevor? And my tent?" Sam yelled back.

"Does that matter!?" Jax screamed.

There was a deep BOOM, and I was blown head over heels, slamming to the ground and nearly impaling myself with my own sword as debris rained down around me. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see Sam and Jax slam into the ground as well.

I rolled onto my back and saw a pigman charging towards Sam. I scrambled to my feet and ran towards the pigman. As the pigman turned, I swung my sword as hard as I could, and it cut through him like a knife through butter. With a cry, he dissolved.

I pulled Sam to her feet and was about to help Jax up as well when a fireball sailed over my head, making me duck.

I turned to see the man we'd seen earlier standing there, laughing.

"You sicko!" Sam screamed.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never hurt me," the man quoted as he drank a bottle of milk.

He became large and muscular, his shirt tearing at the seams. His skin went from light to heavily tanned. His eyes turned a shade of red, and he laughed, his voice deepening, as he put on some charcoal black armor.

"Netherite? Damn," Jax cursed.

"Surprised?" the man growled. "This is my true form. That other body was nothing but a disguise."

"Well, I'm a lot more surprised than when you tried to surprise me earlier." Jax retorted. "But it doesn't matter. This fight will turn out just like the last."

The man laughed again—a harsh, booming laugh. "You're confident. I like that. But the last fight was too unfair, don't you think? This time, the fight is in my favor. I am Klith's most favored general…Bolo!"

He drew a large black sword. Runes glowed red hot on the side of the blade, and he charged with a scream.

Sam fired a mountain of arrows, but Bolo simply spun his sword, slicing all of them out of the air. Some hit, but Bolo simply grunted, shrugging off the injuries like they were mosquito bites.

Sam cursed. "I don't have my fatal arrows on me. This fight would be so much easier if I did."

Bolo finally reached Jax, and their swords clashed. Sparks showered the ground as the swords scraped against each other.

Jax screamed, and the ground cracked open as shards of obsidian slammed into Bolo's back, cracking his chestplate.

I charged as Bolo wailed in fury and pain, swinging my sword towards Bolo's calf.

Bolo grabbed my sword and swung me towards Sam like a ragdoll. Bolo let go, and I smashed into Sam, who was trying to shoot Bolo to no avail. We both toppled to the ground, and Jax groaned in effort as Bolo stepped closer towards Jax.

Bolo kicked Jax, sending him flying into a house. He smashed through the wall and the roof collapsed on Jax, sending up a cloud of ash and dust.

Bolo turned to us and lifted his sword, a look of glee on his face.

"SAM! CATCH!"

An arrow spun through the air and landed in Sam's outstretched hand. She pushed me aside, nocked the arrow, and fired in just a second.

The arrow slammed into Bolo's sword, which was swinging down towards Sam. The arrow shattered, and an enormous fireball engulfed Bolo, blasting him backwards. I turned to see Trevor jump off a large wooden cart, tossing Sam a black quiver. Sam whistled as she caught it. "That's what I'm talking about. The tent?"

"Got it," Trevor said.

I ran over to the house that had collapsed on Jax, brushing away debris and tossing away chunks of brick.

"Alright, move over." Sam said as she kicked away the rest of the debris.

There Jax laid, a stream of blood running down his forehead.

"Ah, crap." Sam said. "You good, Jack?"

"My name's Jax," Jax mumbled.

"He must be delirious," Sam said. "His name is definitely Jack."

I didn't bother to correct her. Sam hoisted Jax onto her back.

"What's happening?" Jax mumbled.

"There's been a change of plans. We get on that cart." Sam said, jerking her head towards the aforementioned cart. Two brown horses were tied to the cart, whinnying skittishly.

Jax looked at the cart warily. "The one that looks like it was made five hundred years ago?"

Bolo's scream rang out, and Sam said dryly, "I don't think we've got a choice."

Sam hopped onto the cart with Jax, and I also jumped in as Trevor took the role of driver and whipped the horses, yelling "HIYAH!"

The horses bolted, and I could hear Bolo's furious cry from behind us.

"So, uh, anyone else concerned about the psycho chasing after us?" I said as I turned back, watching Bolo slowly but surely catch up to us.

"Don't worry, I got this." Sam assured me, pulling an arrow with a green tip out of her quiver. She nocked the arrow, and I had to appreciate how her body remained perfectly still, even though the cart was running over bumps and jolting in all directions as it drove.

Sam fired, and the arrow burst, showering Bolo's face with some green liquid that steamed on his face.

"AUGH!" Bolo screamed and tripped, rolling across the ground. We quickly lost him, leaving a trail of dust behind us.

I stared at the destruction around us. The once lively town had been completely obliterated, every building in sight burning. Pigmen and wither skeletons captured helpless victims. Either that, or they were caught in a burning building, screaming for help. The sight was a dark dose of reality.

And a reminder that none of them could be saved.

I snarled. I wanted to save them. I wanted to save them all. But how was I to do that? I hadn't even learned to master my powers yet. How was an inexperienced twelve year old supposed to save them all? How?

And then the sound of hooves hitting the ground reached my ears. I looked back, and saw a horde of mobs charging us on skeleton horses.

Sam snarled as she nocked an arrow. She let go, and the arrow blasted a crater into the ground, sending skeleton horses and their riders flying.

She fired more arrows, but it was useless—for every mob that fell, two more took its place, and soon we were completely surrounded.

Pigmen began to try to jump on to the cart, and some of them were succeeding. I jerked back as a pigman nearly slashed my head off as it tried to board the cart. I kicked the pigman in the face, and it fell off the cart, quickly being trampled by the horses. Another pigman began to climb on, only to be shot by Sam, who immediately reloaded and fired into the horde again. Jax was standing and fighting wildly, though he looked pale and was clutching the side of his chest.

One pigman got close, lifting a long spear. The pigman thrust, and Jax grabbed the spear, snapped it, and sent it flying back towards it's owner, slamming into the pigman's chest and sending them flying off the back of the horse.

"OUT OF THE WAY!" someone bellowed, and a few pigmen were smashed aside as Bolo charged at us, his skeleton horse looking like it was on the verge of collapsing.

"I'm going to kill you!" Bolo screamed.

"Nice to meet you too," Sam said as she fired at his chest. Bolo growled, caught the arrow, and tossed it aside. The arrow blew up, collapsing a building onto a few pigmen. That gave me an idea.

"Sam!" I shouted. "Aim an explosive arrow at the building in front of us!"

"That's the worst plan I've ever heard!" Jax yelled.

"Good thing I like terrible plans then," Sam said as she turned, shut one of her eyes, and slipped an arrow onto her bow. She let the arrow fly, and the base of a large building exploded, sending it toppling down.

Trevor whipped the horses again, screaming some unintelligible words, and I screamed as we passed under the building right before it smashed into the ground, spraying us with debris.

The number of buildings surrounding us began to thin, and I said hopefully, "We're going to make it!"

Wrong.

I turned back to see the skeleton horses jumping over the collapsed building, streaking towards us again.

"OH, COME ON!" I screamed.

"Damn…a got any other ideas?" Sam asked me.

"Sorry, but I'm fresh out of ideas!" I shouted back.

"We haven't lost until we've lost." she encouraged us. "At least it can't get any worse."

Off in the distance, the cries of ghasts and the metallic wheezing of blazes could be heard.

"Correction," Sam said. "It can get worse."

A fireball streaked past my head that was so close to hitting me it lit a strand of my hair on fire.

"AHHH! THIS DOES NOT BRING BACK GOOD MEMORIES!" I screamed as the heat spread.

Sam pulled an arrow out of her inventory and broke off the point. A spray of water came out of the arrow and hit me in the face, extinguishing the flames.

"You—cough—have an arrow for everything, don't you?" I spluttered.

"Comes in handy to be prepared," Sam said as she nocked three arrows at the same time. "Jax, Toni, if you have some hidden powers, now would be a nice time to use them."

But that was just it—I didn't have enough juice for a power up. We really were doomed.

"Well," Sam said, "now it really can't get worse."

Almost as if in answer to Sam's statement, a fireball smashed into the back of the cart, lighting it on fire.

"I stand corrected once again," Sam said.

"God damn it!" I cried in exasperation.

Bolo was back, swinging his sword in the air like a lasso. "I'm back!" he bellowed.

"Go back to where you came from!" Jax snarled as he swung his sword. Bolo blocked the blow, and the jolt made him gasp in pain. I glanced at him and saw a shard of stone in his side.

Bolo grinned and grabbed Jax's sword, nearly pulling him from the cart.

Jax pulled out a pink shulker box and dropped it onto the floor, his face white as snow.

"Healing potion," he grunted. "Quick."

Bolo began pulling Jax in, and he struggled. Sam seized the shulker box and rummaged through it as fireballs rained down on us at all directions. A bright green bottle dropped out of the shulker box shattering. Green and yellow mist flowed into Jax's body, but I didn't have time to think about what I'd just seen, as a particularly feisty pigman had jumped onto the cart, which I quickly decapitated.

Jax was barely holding onto the flaming back of the cart and on the verge of being pulled out by Bolo when Sam pulled out a healing potion and a second potion, a potion of regeneration. Sam turned and seized the stone shard, making Jax scream. She wrenched it out and held the two potions up to Jax's side, crushing them both with her bare hands and making the liquids flow into Jax's side. Almost immediately, the wound was sealed.

Jax still looked pale but now looked more determined than ever. "Sam, put out the fire. I'm going in."

"What?"

Before Sam could stop him, Jax jumped from the cart, landing on a very surprised Bolo. Bolo and Jax wrestled on top of the skeleton horse for a moment. The skeleton horse suddenly collapsed, unable to take the weight—and Jax and Bolo were gone.

I screamed.

And then suddenly I saw Jax out of the corner of my eye, fighting a pigman for control of a skeleton horse. Jax won the fight, lifting the pigman and throwing him bodily from the horse.

That's when I noticed the heat getting more and more intense. I turned to see flames consuming our cart. "SAM!"

Sam cursed and aimed an arrow at the fire. She fired, and the arrow doused the cart, spraying the flames with water. The flames shrunk, but didn't completely disappear. Sam fired another arrow, and water extinguished the last of the flames. Our cart was fine. Blackened and battered, but fine.

Jax grabbed the reins of the skeleton horse and began cutting through the swarm of pigmen. At the same time, Sam began firing arrows at the blazes that exploded into water, extinguishing them entirely. Slowly but surely, we were whittling them down.

I even laughed a bit. We were winning!

Crack.

Sam paled. "Was that the linchpin?"

Before I could ask what the heck a linchpin was, the entire cart listed to the side, nearly throwing me out.

"What happened?" I screamed.

"I think one of the wheels broke!" Trevor shouted back.

"That's not good!"

Sam rolled her eyes as she extinguished a few more blazes with an arrow. "Really? Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a master of perception over here. You're going to give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money."

"Sam, shut it!"

"We're slowing down!" Trevor panicked.

Jax rode his skeleton horse over to us and jumped into the cart, landing on some glass shards. "OW! My feet!"

Behind Jax, two pigmen crawled onto the cart, and Jax turned to them, slicing them both off the cart with a single swing. "Status report?"

"Screwed." Sam said.

"Not what I was expecting, but accurate." Jax said. "We need to get them off our backs."

"And how do we do that?" Sam said sarcastically.

Jax's eyes scanned the cart, landing on the glass, the shulker box, and the pigmen.

"I've got an idea," Jax said. "Sam, you see those green potions in the pink shulker box? Throw them at me."

"What?" Sam said.

"JUST DO IT!" Jax yelled as he sliced another pigman in half.

Sam pulled three bottles out of the shulker box and tossed them at Jax. They all shattered, and more green mist flowed into his body.

But nothing happened.

Sam groaned and sat. "Well, it was nice knowing you guys.

But Jax turned to me, and I flinched upon noticing his sclera were completely black, and his pupils were purple. He gave me a grim smile, and turned back to the pigmen.

Energy as dark as night flowed out of his hands. Sam stared, stunned. I could do nothing but watch as he bellowed and clapped his hands together.

There was a low rumbling noise, and enormous walls of obsidian burst from the ground, covering the horde of pigmen in shadow.

And just as fast as they had risen, they smashed together, crushing all of the pigmen and skeletons horses together like an enormous obsidian sandwich.

Obsidian shard burst from the ground like shrapnel, cutting through the blazes in an instant.

Sam fired off one last water arrow, and the last blazes in the air dissolved as the arrow exploded, drenching them with water.

Then, silence.

Sam looked at Jax with an inscrutable expression. Jax sank to his knees, groaning. I noticed his eyes were back to normal again.

"Did he just…?" Sam said, gesturing to Jax.

"Yeah." I said, and we went silent.

"How did you do that?" I asked him.

"I'll explain later." Jax groaned. "I need to rest. I feel faint."

The cart made a groaning noise, and completely collapsed, dumping me, Jax, and Sam out of the cart entirely. I hit the ground and tasted dirt.

I groaned as I stood. "Well…crap."

Trevor hopped off the cart, staring at our disheveled group. "That was something."

"Yeah," Sam said weakly. "You two really know how to hold your own. 'Specially you, John."

"My name's Jax," Jax mumbled.

We all chuckled a little, and then fell silent again.

"So what now?" Trevor said. "We should leave as fast as we can, but considering how long the horses ran dragging that cart behind them, they might need to rest."

I looked over at the horses, and it was true—they looked pretty exhausted.

"I've got a few potions of strength," Jax said.

"And you didn't think of using those!?" Sam said furiously. "God, you're almost making me doubt wanting to come with you guys."

Jax lifted his head. "Eh?"

"Well," Sam said. "I don't really have anything better to do now, do I? And besides, we need to save the world, don't we?"

"So you're coming with us?" Jax said as he sat up, all his exhaustion forgotten.

"I guess, yeah." Sam said with a small smile.

Trevor looked from us to Sam. "Did I miss something? Who are these guys, anyway? You never really explained."

Sam brushed back her hair with a grin. "It's kind of a long story."

Sorry this was an entirely action chapter, and a bit of a short chapter as well, but I didn't have much to go off of the original chapter, so…

But I'm making excuses. I'm just too lazy to extend this chapter a bit.

Anyways, have a great rest of your day!

Krios