Chapter 4

Jailbreak Part 1: Into the Outpost

BanjoNote: This Chapter is one of the chapters I changed drastically in order for things to fit into place nicely. One of these changes include the first session, which is kind of a teaser for the next Arc, of which the name will be released at around chapter 7 or 8. Jailbreak is a two parter, and maybe one of the better parts of this Arc. Whilst Road to Pillage is the smallest arc, it's pretty spontaneous also.

Onto the Chapter!

[Sileeno]

"But why?" I muttered to myself. "What was that ripple?"

I stood in a large room, filled with various redstone machinery and dust. It was near impossible not to step on some dust without getting any on your shoes. My lab jacket was practically 75% red by now. I silently cursed whoever chose to make these jackets white.

If an uneducated eye was to look into this room, they would see a work of a mad scientist, although that would only be partially correct. The purpose of this room was to try and find the secrets of Minecraftia in a matter of minutes. Not three days, however. I learned Dinnerbone's power in a matter of seconds! I am a friend of the Crafter Jeb, who even supplies me with an indefinite supply of them. Well, I only needed one, but it's nice to have a friend who can read the code.

What was taking me so long? My newest concern was concerning the Triple Ripple theory. Confused? Let me run you through it.

So, every time an Update rolls around, two ripples are let out. The first signifies the actual update coming to be, and the second signifies the spawning of the Crafter, about a day later. This decade, a third ripple was released, in between the two normal ripples. For the past 3 days, I have been trying to find out where the ripple originated, why it happened, and why now. So far, I've only learned that it originated from somewhere in the Brioxarat sea. Which, of course, is about a third of the landmass.

A pleasant ding! rang out from the note block alarm, signifying that my machine found something. Excited, I bolted up the stairs to my box to find out what was the news. Flipping levers and hitting buttons in a flurry, I managed to not screw up the pattern that opens the far wall. The bricks started to disappear, from the middle out, revealing a large quartz slate. Inputting another command, Black wool started to fill in the slate in the form of words.

Entity:Eldest

Frowning, I looked at the words from my cockpit. I walked outside into the actual machinery, and stood on a particularly high wire.

"Entity... Eldest?" I muttered under my breath. "This makes no sense.

"I'm going to need Jeb for this."

[Alex]

I paced back and forth around Gimero's two llamas. Now back at camp, I decided to come up with a plan, but nothing had come to mind - other than sneaking in, although that was near impossible due to the sheer number of pillagers inside there. I would literally have to be invisible.

Though... with all the crazy things I've learned in the past day, it probably wasn't impossible to do that. Probably involved punching something. Everything involves punching something, apparently.

A Crafter. The more I thought about it, the more correct it felt to say. I'm positive that coincidence on the bridge was more than a coincidence. Gimero had said that Crafters held immense abilities, more then a normal Villager could possibly handle. After all, I had sent out a ripple across the world. Who, truly who, else could I be?

But... what was my ability? Super Strength? Not only did I not feel super strong right now, but I'm pretty sure it's not hard to imagine the strength I had on that bridge. Hit the gym, or something.

I breathed in deep, trying to reach out into anything that felt... divine in me? I certainly didn't feel godly, that's for sure.

Needless to say, nothing happened, I mentally swore to myself, and then sighed. My supreme knowledge seemed to have left me, or else it had nithing to offer. Right now, Brilliant Alex had left the Party.

"Okay, Not-So-Brilliant Alex," I whispered to myself. "Let's get the gears turning."

To be honest, when I promised Gimero I would get him out of there, I fully expected a burst of knowledge.

"Really wish random idea's could pop up anytime," I sighed again.

Ravagers."Like that. Wait-what?" I frowned. "Ravagers?"

I wasn't given any context. Honestly, I didn't expect any.

"Well." I turned to one of the llamas - Tina, I believe. "Don't suppose you know what a Ravager is?"

Tina snorted and gave me a look, though that means it implied something. Hed face was a blank sheet.

"So my power isn't speaking with animals," I noted to myself and nodded. "Good to know." I tossed a steak into her pen and said "Eat up, Tina."

She spit on the ground, although that was also hard to interpret. I watched as the steak floated into my belt. "You are one confusing enigma, Tina."

I pulled out my sword and twirled it dramatically in my hand, which made me drop it. Picking it up, I made my way to the outpost. 'Tis but a half hour walk.

[Gimero]

A pillager prodded me in the back with his crossbow and growled " Hey, Pipsqueak! Put your back into it! If this is full hundred percent, then give me a reason not to plant an arrow in your neck!"

"Because he's capable of doing this, unlike you!" The woman working to the right of me retorted. The pillager turned to her and sneered.

"Human, if you try something, I will personally plant an arrow-"

I gave a tiny squeak at the word human. The two gave a look this way, sighed simultaneously, and went back to their 'jobs'. Which was a good idea, because I was two seconds to releasing a shriek.

"Name's Athara, in case you were wondering." The woman told me. She wore a red tunic with various pouches and straps, with a pair of leather gauntlets. Beige pants ended about halfway below the knee where brown boots took up the rest. Her hood was down, revealing short dark red hair with black streaks. Her eyes were a startling orange, like a captive fire, and that nearly made me piss my pants.

Nearly is the key word.

I nodded and muttered my name, but it was so quiet it came out more like "Giminah..."

"Uh... sorry? Jim who?" Athara frowned.

"G-Gimero. Hard G." I explained a bit further.

Why was I acting scared? Maybe it's because I was using the ol' diversion tactic, but the truth was I truly wasn't acting. See, Humans and Villagers have a... violent relationship, prejudices between the two. It's a long story. Maybe I'll tell you later.

I was really starting to hate this innate knowledge thing. Not only do I know things that I really would prefer not to, but we get a tendency to have people believe that we are destined for greater things. That we're special.

And by Notch, I hate being special. It makes people think higher of you.

...

"I also have a very bad case of anxiety." I explained out loud. Athara rolled her eyes and turned away from me.

[Alex]

I found out what a Ravager was. Not only was it useless, but as Gimero would eloquently describe it, they were big, scary, gray, vaguely villager looking, horny bulls.

Horny maybe wasn't the best way to describe them. They had horns. They were twice the size of my arm. It posed a major problem.

Brilliant Alex's idea was to start a stampede, which sounds good on a base level. Except for the fact that they seem to be fairly well tamed, and I only had one arrow. Shoot one, the rest hopefully run around. I grab Gimero, and we fly out of there like Sonic the Hedgehog.

Whoever the hell that is.

I climbed a particularly high tree, then pulled back an arrow in my bow. I aimed it at the closest bull.

It could've flown true.

It probably would've flown true.

Except for the fact that someone decided to take that moment to say in an ominous voice, "That's a very bad idea."

So I did as anyone would do. I jumped for a second, released the arrow, and it shot up, up and away.

I fumbled for the first thing I grabbed - the fishing rod. I whipped around and let the bobber loose, but not only did I miss, but it crumbled in my hand.

What kind of fishing rod breaks like that?

I unsheathed my wooden sword from my tiny belt pouch and looked at the intruder. He looked like a normal pillager, but he had a magnificent goatee.

Which, sorry for you goatee - rockers out there, signified how much he had to die.

I swung a horizontal cut at his gut, but he stepped backwards. I stumbled forward, very unbalanced.

"Now, now." he said coolly. "There's no need to be aggressive. I just want to talk. 'Tis but a friendly meeting."

I managed to still myself, but I didn't swing at him. "And what makes you say that?" My fearsome sword of wood stayed pointed at him.

"I see that you have taken interest in one of our slaves." he noted, pushing the sword tip down. "Sorry, that was getting uncomfortable."

"Well-" I raised the sword up again. "It's not just the one. A little voice tells me that you don't usually take slaves."

Little voice?Shut up. I'm working."See, us pillagers can't interact with the world like you villagers. So, unlike other outposts, we, ah, have you people do it for us."

"Y'know, you could've just said slavery."

"Shut up. The point is, I will offer you a deal. I am... second in command of this outpost. I would attempt to do this myself, but it is so much easier to send you in instead."

"You ain't told me anything so far." I told him.

He sighed. "My name is Pete, and -"

"Pete the Pillager?" I snorted. "What kind if name is that?"

He sighed again. "Let's take this into my house."

Luckily, there were no pillagers around. The plan for when things were to go south was to disguise me as a slave.

He didn't think about what others would think about bringing a woman to your house under the pretense of a slave. Men, honestly.

His house was quite small for one in second in command. It was 4 blocks long, 3 wide, and two floors. A ladder led up to the second floor, where a chest lay. The only furniture in the building was the chest and a single bed.

Not even a chair, and I haven't sat down in a long time, or so it felt.

I followed Pete onto the second floor, where a window took up the middle half of the wall. Pete did the dramatic thing, where he looked out the window with his arms crossed on his back. I did the anti-dramatic thing, and sat cross legged on the floor. Pete looked down on my and just shook his head.

"So," he gestured to the view out of the window, which was basically just the outpost in all of it's glory. "I offer you a job. I require you to eliminate the Captain of the outpost."

"Um... in case you haven't noticed, I'm fairly new to this whole 'combat" thing. What makes you think that I can eliminate a leader of... this?" I gestured to the village. "It's gotta take alot of skill to rise to the top."

"He didn't rise to the top. He just started there."

"...In everything I've learned in the past two days, this makes more sense then normal."

"Yes. Anyways, with the gear you have as of right now, there is no possible way to break in in enough time as to not be caught. Pulos made sure of this, by using obsidian."

Looking at the blackish-purple blocks, I nodded. "So you have a different way in, supposedly?"

Pete nodded. "In the chest are some items that will help you. I have a secret tunnel that connects to under the tower. After that, the rest should be simple."

I turned to the chest and viewed the contents. A set of iron tools, iron armour, a pair of shears, a shield and a crossbow. The last two were glowing a slight purple, but I grabbed them all anyways.

Sliding the armour on, I turned back to Pete.

"Well, point me in that direction. If I'm going to die..." I hefted the shield and iron sword. "Then let's not keep me waiting."

[Gimero]

Good thing we had to sleep.

The pillagers, despite promising us that we'd have to work all night, were disappointed that we had to actually sleep in order to not collapse from exhaustion.

I was in danger of collapsing in fear. It's what we like to call a heart attack.

Instead of immediately going to bed, I decided to hang out outside, sitting by the door. Naturally, Minecraftia can't give me a break, because the human came around.

"Can't sleep?" Athara asked, sitting down on the other side of the door. Trying to keep interaction as low as possible, I merely shrugged.

Athara rolled her eyes. "Seriously, Gimero. There's no point in being afraid. Honestly, it's like you think I crawled out of the Nether."

"I mean... you could have."

She chuckled slightly. "I mean, I have entered the Nether before. A couple of times, actually. Not a fun place."

"I don't think it wou-"

A group of pillagers rushed by us, holding their weapons. I shot up and squeaked. "I, I, uh, think I'll head inside."

Just as I turned to the doorway, a female voice yelled "OH, COME ON!"

Wait... that was Alex.

"On second thought, That's my friend." I gulped audibly. "And, despite not wanting to, I should go see her."

Athara pulled out her only weapon - the pickaxe - and asked "What are we waiting for?"

BanjoNote: Lot of things to unpack in this chapter. I won't go through them, since you've probably found all of them in here. This chapter is a little late, but only by a day or so. I'm getting better at this!

So, next chapter will take a bit longer to write down, but until then, Read, Review, Favourite and Follow. And, Banjo On!