Hello! Storm here again! Thank you everyone who reviewed, it really means a lot and your kind words really keep me going. Of course, I'll respond to them.

Hib-owl: Haha, oui. Incroyable ce qu'un éditeur et beaucoup de temps libre sur vos mains feront à un morceau d'histoire de merde. J'espère que vous aimez le reste! Vous pourriez avoir un indice de ce qui est arrivé à Brine ce chapitre ... (btw si quelque chose que je viens de dire semble bizarre, c'est parce que j'ai utilisé une application de traduction bon marché pour vous faciliter la vie. Votre bienvenue!)

aymenadee81: That is… a lot of excitement. I don't think ever seen that much excitement for one of my stories before in my entire life. As for changing the rating, I'm sorry. I'm actually not writing this story as I go, I have it saved on my computer and I'm giving you one chapter a week. Besides, if I ever do write an M rated story, it will be because someone's internal organs are no longer internal and I felt like describing it. I'm not a smut writer. If you really want Steve + Alex, you're probably going to be the most mad at me for the last chapter… *bites thumb nail*

Don't forget, everyone else, to leave those reviews!

Storm out!

CHAPTER 1: SOMETHING'S OFF…

Steve

A few earth years later…

Alex was curled up in the blankets, sound asleep. I figured it would be nice if I could sleep in for a change, but I always wake up at dawn. No matter what. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. The sunrise light poured into our room, illuminating everything in golden light. I yawned and rubbed my face. After stretching, I stood up and changed into my regular outfit. I always wore a light blue shirt, blue jeans, and gray shoes. I ran my fingers through my brown hair, and deemed that satisfactory.

Our house was a small two-story oak cabin, complete with animals and crops. Alex and I built it together shortly after we met, mostly because I was living in a three by three shack. We had furnaces, a brewing stand, several chests for storage, and a few other basic necessities.

I walked downstairs and grabbed a handful of cookies for breakfast. I was about to sit down at our table when I noticed Notch hanging around the perimeter of our house.

Notch was the creator of Minecraft, the video game Alex and I live in. He often visited us about once a week, just to check in on us to see how we were doing. He has, in the past, mentioned how it wasn't normal for video game characters to be capable of sentient thought. I don't know why me and Alex are different.

"Hey, Notch! Whatcha up to?" I walked outside to find him thoroughly inspecting our fence and shaking his head. He looked up and saw me come outside.

"Hello, Steve. I was just inspecting your security."

"Why?"

"Oh, you know. I don't want a hoard of zombies eating you two."

I gave him a puzzled look. "This fence has kept out the mobs for years now. Granted, it's no match for a creeper, but that's why we shoot them from a distance." I remembered the day we learned the hard way what creepers do to fences. Long story short, Alex almost died and I actually did.

"I know," Notch responded, "but maybe you should upgrade to something more durable. Something that could, I don't know, keep out an admin?"

"An admin?" Something was going on in Notch's world. "What's going on? Is there something we should be aware of?"

"No!" Notch exclaimed. "Everything is fine. Don't worry."

Too late.

"I think Dinnerbone is calling me. I got to go."

Notch left the game

Hmm. Why was Notch acting so weird? I decided to ignore it and head back inside. Alex wasn't up yet, so if we wanted to have enough time to mine, I'd have to wake her up.

"Alex?" I whispered. When she didn't respond, I gently poked her in the side. "Are you awake?"

Alex groaned and swatted my hand away.

"You gotta get up. We need to go mining."

"I don't want to go mining. I want to sleeeeeeeep…" Alex whined.

"Notch was also acting really weird. I don't want to leave you home alone."

"Notch?" Alex opened an eye to peer at me curiously. "What do you mean, he was acting weird?"

"I'll tell you if you get out of bed."

Alex groaned again. After a minute or two of debating it, she finally rolled out of bed. "Fine, fine. I'm up."

I walked downstairs so she could get ready and I could make breakfast.

Notch

I bit my nails as I looked at my screen. "Any luck?" I asked.

"No." Jeb's keys clicked. "He's done an excellent job covering his tracks. We might not know where he is until he enters the world."

I sighed and buried my head in my hands.

"Do they know?" Jeb asked.

"No. And they're not going to, because we're going to stop him before he gets there, right?"

Steve

"Then he said, 'maybe you should upgrade to something that could keep out an admin."

"An admin?" Alex echoed.

"Yeah. Weird, right?"

"Something must be going on in his world. Maybe one of his admins went rouge."

"Maybe."

Alex and I were walking through the forest so we could get to one of our favorite mine shafts. We've almost found enough diamonds for a full set of armor, but a fight may ensue over who the suit actually belongs to.

We went down the shaft, following the trail of torches we left ourselves. I mined out some iron ore I found as we descended deeper into the cave.

"Alright, I'll go left, you go right, ok?" Alex said at a fork in the caves. I nodded, and we parted ways.

I was mining for about ten minutes when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around, expecting to see Alex, but no one was there. "Alex?"

I thought I saw something white out of the corner of my eye, but there was nothing there. "Ha ha. Really funny, Alex. You can come out now."

A deep, menacing chuckle came from my left. I whirled around, but I was still alone. "Alex? This isn't funny anymore. Cut it out."

I ventured on with my sword drawn in case this wasn't Alex pulling a prank on me. "Alex?"

A dim red glow came from a cave branch off that led to a dead end. I rounded the corner to see the cave no longer was a dead end. A two-by-two mineshaft had been drilled straight into the stone, lit every few blocks by redstone torches.

Alex really was going all out with this prank. Assuming, of course, that this was her.

The tunnel lead to a labyrinth of tunnels, all lit with redstone torches. The dim red glow cast an eerie glow on everything and left strange-looking shadows on the walls. If Alex did take the time to do all this, she didn't mine out any of the ore she found at all. I found at least a half stack of iron. I was beginning to think this wasn't Alex. The only reason I could think of for her to do this would be to strip mine for diamonds, but these tunnels aren't deep enough to hit any diamond ore.

After a while of wandering the labyrinth, I saw the glow of a regular torch up ahead. Alex was inspecting the walls of the tunnel, brow furrowed.

"Alex?"

"Steve? Is that you?" She glanced up at me.

I walked towards her. "Nice prank, by the way, it must have taken a lot of effort."

"What?" Puzzlement crossed her face. "I thought you did this."

A shiver of fear went down my back. "I didn't."

"Who did do this?"

"I don't know." I replied. Alex went back to inspecting the walls.

"Whoever did this… they didn't do this with a pickaxe. The walls are smooth, like natural cave walls."

"But this isn't a natural cave," I pointed out. "This wasn't here before."

"I know." Alex stood up and brushed some coal dust off her pants. "Maybe that rouge admin Notch didn't tell us about did this. Or maybe it's his idea of a joke."

"Today has just been the weirdest day," I muttered.

"Yeah. Let's head up to the surface before anything else can happen," Alex suggested. I agreed, and we headed back home. Maybe this was just a big joke,, and tomorrow Notch would come foreward and ask us if we liked his prank.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Notch

This has probably been the most stressful night of my entire life. I took a large gulp of coffee and rubbed my exhausted eyes. I've been staring at this screen for hours. I typed the last few lines down, then double checked my work. I think this would do the trick.

"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" Dinnerbone asked. "I mean, after all, he is your—"

"No he isn't," I cut him off. "He's a Glitch in the game, nothing more." The face of someone I once knew flashed through my mind. He had short brown hair, forest green eyes, and tanned skin. He always had a dorky grin on his face and ran his tongue over his teeth when he was thinking. I shook my head, as if that would expel this face from my mind. "Brine is dead. Remember that."