Foreword

And that's the third deadline kept! *stamps something triumphantly* Week four is here and gone, and I'm ready for week six! Let's do this!

Oy, I wanted to finish this one last week, but I just got around to finishing it a few days ago because I had stupid writers block. :/ I sat down to finish this thing every day and it vehemently refused to be finished! :[

No excuses here! Just sharing the story. :) (I'm telling you this now so I can be more accountable in the future. ;] ) My ultimate goal here is to get very disciplined about getting stuff done, and I figure it might help if I put it all out in words.

So here I am! Streak of three, week four, last Friday of May! I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you in a couple weeks! :D

God bless!
—Lucinda Cottontale

Chapter VII

Running Wild

««««« … »»»»»

Petra braced for impact, hurling herself through the portal and landing in a roll. As she passed into the Overworld, the burning atmosphere all around her instantly changed. She took a deep breath, never before being so grateful for the cold night air.

Wow, Petra, she complimented herself. That was cool.

Cool, but hardly a joyride.

After just getting chased by an angry fleet of zombie pigmen and two ghasts—though she might have imagined the ghasts—she wasn't sure all this was worth it for just a diamond. She'd almost died for Steve's sake. With how useless these Wither skulls were, she wondered for the first time why Ivor would even want such a thing.

Not like it mattered. It wasn't any of her business. Some people liked weird things, and they paid what they paid.

After taking a minute to let her heart slow down, she started walking when she tripped and met the stone floor with a thud. She dropped her pickaxe in the process, which clattered away and fell off the edge of the small cliff to her cave.

Okay, she thought. That was less cool.

She sighed, pushed herself up, and climbed down to get it. Once she reached down to pick it up, she heard a terrified scream.

Petra froze.

She'd know that girly scream anywhere.

Without a second thought, she had snatched up her pickaxe and flew off into the night.

« … »

A spider made a disgusting rasping noise before it leaped into action, and Jesse screamed as he was knocked to ground. He kicked at the ground to get away, however, the spider was fast and jumped him again. He kicked it off, but he only had a moment to think before it would strike again. Turned out, that was all he needed.

My sword! he remembered, not a moment too soon. The monster leaped at the first chance to attack again, but instead of biting into him, it ended up impaling itself on Jesse's wooden sword.

That was TOO close… and WAY cooler than he intended it to be.

The spider vanished into a small plume of smoke, and behind it left two pieces of string. In spite of himself, Jesse smiled and yoinked it off the ground.

"I got it! I actually got it! Reuben, did you see that?!"

The low growls called his attention back, a not so friendly reminder that he wasn't out of the woods yet.

Thank the Creator the skeleton from before had lost interest, and now all that was left was the horde of zombies. Still, that horde was growing in size with every minute they were out here.

It was a pretty open area for a natural cage, but that advantage dwindled the longer he stalled.

As they advanced, Jesse steeled his nerves and scowled in determination. Reuben gave a fearful squeal. Jesse glanced back at him.

"Stay behind me, Reuben. I've got you."

Jesse didn't want to give himself more time to think about what he was charging into, should he think twice and regret not making the decision. So before he could think, he just charged.

He slashed at the closest zombie, once, twice, three times until it went down. After it fell and poofed into smoke like the spider, three more emerged from behind it. Well, nice thing about zombies was they were much slower than spiders or skeletons.

As he hacked away at them, Jesse actually found himself enjoying it… as much as one could enjoy a life or death situation. The zombies weren't too hard to fight, and he had to admit, he felt kinda cool doing it.

Three more dead zombies later, Jesse was forced to remember his terror when a final blow to one snapped his weapon in half.

Jesse gasped. "Stupid wooden swords!"

Now the tables had turned on him, and the zombies held the advantage.

« … »

Petra instinctively skidded to a stop behind cover, then peeked out to see what was going on.

She looked down from the edge of the small cliff and saw Jesse. He stood, battle ready, the object of attention to a mob of zombies that crept in all around him. He only had a wooden sword, but he looked as confident as someone else more experienced might look with a higher tier weapon wearing a full set of armor. For some reason, she expected to find him shivering in a corner somewhere, or stuck in a tree. Her imagination had been wrong. Jesse was not only holding his own, but he looked… awesome.

Petra smiled, suddenly not as worried, and watched as Farmer Boy took to the battlefield. It wasn't quite with the grace and poise of a trained warrior—more that of a clumsy skeleton—but he seemed to be handling it just—

Jesse's sword broke, and for the first time, he showed his true colors of 'wet behind the ears noob' as he gasped in fear.

Petra almost ran in, but… she stopped.

She'd never seen Jesse fight before. It was just a few zombies, and…

She was… curious…

« … »

Jesse stood between the army of undead monsters, and his best friend, ready to defend, but with nothing to defend with.

They were cornered again.

"Oink?" Reuben asked in desperation.

"I know it's bad, I'll think of something." He said this as much to assure himself as his friend. Truthfully, things looked pretty hopeless, but… there had to be a way.

Reuben yipped, and Jesse heard a loud growl—from directly behind him.

He spun around and there it was, a zombie, right there, and it had Reuben in its' sight. It must have snuck up behind him when he wasn't looking.

"Hey! Get away from him!" Jesse blasted, any fear he felt a moment ago vaporizing in an instant.

It drew back its arm and thrust it forward to strike, but Jesse was already upon it. He punched the thing so hard that it looked stunned for a minute, and Jesse didn't wait for it to regain its' balance before he punched it again, even harder. It disappeared with that second punch.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Reuben whined and shied back behind him, trembling, clearly shaken up, but clearly okay.

Jesse sighed, and looked again to the horde before them. They were still surrounded.

Reuben grunted nervously. He was right. There were just too many of them. The horde of zombies was slowly encroaching in on them, like a visible plague. He had to think fast.

He had an idea… but he didn't like it.

Zombies were completely one-track-minded. Once one had a target, it didn't stop chasing that target until one of them was dead… or more dead, in the zombie's case. Jesse didn't know a lot about monsters, but this was common knowledge, and right now, they were focused on him. That meant if Reuben could make it past them, he would be safe. They were closer to town now, he could make it back, and—if he was lucky—Reuben might find someone to come help him… before he was eaten by zombies.

It was a long shot, but if it didn't work… at least Reuben would be safe.

Not taking his eyes off the zombies, Jesse knelt down on the ground beside Reuben and held him close as reassurance for both of them.

"You're going to have to make a run for it, okay?"

Reuben started shaking, squealing in protest, and Jesse finally met his terrified eyes.

"I'll meet you back in town, I promise!"

Jesse only hoped he could fulfill what he was promising. The odds weren't very promising themselves.

He released Reuben reluctantly and pointed towards the only open area, and the only escape. "Get outta here! NOW!"

Reuben cried out and scampered off in a panic, just barely making it out of sight.

As if on cue, right when Reuben disappeared, two skeletons manifested from seemingly nowhere and prepared to join the already incredibly unfair fight.

Okay… this is officially getting cr—

As if the darkness couldn't get any scarier, Jesse heard a higher pitched gargled growl. It sounded like zombie, but much more deliberate. Out of nowhere, a zombie roughly the size of a chicken flew screeching out of the cave behind it and toward Jesse as his eyes flew open. He didn't even have time to gasp before the creature barreled into his stomach, knocking him onto his back. Jesse tried his best to keep it away as it mercilessly clawed at his face. After it bit onto his arm, Jesse yelped in pain and somehow managed to kick it off of him. Jesse scooted back desperately as it once again jumped back up to its feet and shot off again, landing itself back on his chest.

What he wouldn't give for a shovel right now.

« … »

Petra watched, tense with anticipation.

As Jesse stalled, Petra found herself enthralled by his heroics and amazed at his bravery despite his apparent lack of actual experience. He didn't know how to fight, but he knew how to use a sword.

He was a natural, there was no denying that. She didn't see the zombie coming from behind him, but before it had a chance to attack, Jesse took the thing out with his bare hands. He was lacking in skill, but his instinct and reaction speed made up for it.

There was even a time when he nailed one of the suckers in the face with a flying kick! But… she couldn't tell if she imagined that.

She was probably imagining it.

The Nether did strange things to the mind. Still…

Wow…

She was enraptured. She couldn't take her eyes off him.

Petra imagined the devilish outcry of a chicken jockey ripping through the—wait, she didn't imagine that!

Not a second later, the little monster tore out into the open and catapulted itself into Jesse.

In a heartbeat, Petra came back to herself. She jolted, shaking her head.

What am I doing?!

« … »

Jesse squeezed his eyes closed for fear that the little maniac would pull them out when suddenly he heard a battle cry.

He opened his eyes again on instinct, and like an angel, his saving grace seemed to descend from above, just in time to whack the little tiny little zombie off of him. The attacker slammed it to the ground, yanked the weaponized pickaxe out, and finished it off with three more blows to the chest.

Without skipping a beat, his heroine dashed out into the fray and pulled off one of the most insane stunts he'd ever seen. She grabbed a zombie—grabbed a zombie, and used it the way one might use a shield. Jesse wasn't sure what she was doing until the zombie was pegged in the head with an arrow.

She let the zombie go, and instead of turning on her, it immediately went after the skeleton, and the two monsters started fighting.

I've never seen two monsters fight each other… he thought, as she repeated the same trick with two skeletons.

With the two skeletons now targeting each other, the arrows started flying, and suddenly, everything spun out of control. More zombies were hit in the crossfire, and more skeletons joined the battle. Then a spider was accidentally hit by one of these zombies, and it too raged at what were moments ago its comrades. Jesse thought he might have heard a creeper explode, too. All of this happened while Petra just watched.

Wow, she is awesome!

Petra laughed.

"Ha! That oughta keep 'em busy!" she exclaimed.

Petra turned to him and quickly reached out a hand to him. As soon as he grabbed her hand, she pulled him to his feet. It was harder to stand than it should have been, but as astonished as he was at her brilliant display, he was still a little shaken up.

"Come on," she said, "Let's get out of the open."

She waved for him to follow her as she took off.

Chickens… he thought to himself as he chased after Petra, desperately hoping she knew where she was going. I would definitelyrather fight the chickens…

« … »

"Woo…" Jesse gasped, still sounding short of breath. "Thanks, Petra. I would've been a zombie dinner if you hadn't found me."

Petra looked back at him, smiling casually. She walked on as Jesse followed her down a ladder and through the old abandoned mineshaft that led to her 'house', if you could call it that.

"Hey," she said, to give him credit, "you did pretty well for a total noob."

"How would you know?"

Petra couldn't tell if he was genuinely skeptical, or if he was just belittling himself.

"You survived long enough for me to find you. That's pretty impressive."

It wasn't completely untrue, though she did feel a little guilty after leaving him to fend for himself for so long.

Ehh… he was doing fine.

She'd faced much worse before, and Jesse was pretty fearless—

Suddenly Jesse squealed and Petra turned to see him spastically flailing his hands around his head. The bat that had apparently surprised him squeaked and flew away, leaving a startled Jesse looking frazzled.

He's scared of bats? Petra thought. Who's scared of bats?

She didn't say anything, but raised a quizzical eyebrow.

They were probably about the most harmless—and useless—mobs in existence.

She gave an impulsive chuckle. Jesse frowned.

"What? They're gross!"

Petra decided to ignore that comment for his sake. "What were you doing out in the forest all alone at night, anyway?"

"Long story short," Jesse sighed, "Reuben ran off and I went to find him."

Oh. Of course that was why. It was almost as though she liked him for a reason.

That reminder made her wonder…

I wonder if… he might want to… come with me…

Weirdly, she couldn't imagine him saying yes, or no to such a bizarre request, but… there would never be a better time. After all, she'd just helped him out, so surely he might trust her more now, right? If she were going to ask him, she would need to tell him about it for starters. She wouldn't mind doing so anyway, if only to strike up conversation.

She started to pull out her new Wither skull, but hesitated.

Would he be impressed by this?

Not that she cared so much about what other people thought of her, but she did care about her image. She wanted to make sure she was seen as a fighter. Jesse just was a fighter, whether he looked like one or not. The amazing thing was… he was cool with that, and… she thought that was cool.

Nine years and still going strong. Even though he'd never won, that simple fact almost made him more admirable in her eyes.

But would he care about something like this? Her gut told her he wouldn't. He wasn't the type to value that kind of thing.

Then again… Jesse had simple tastes.

Here she was, a kick-butt-awesome, adventurer hunter, and she was nervously trying to impress a socially doomed country bumpkin who screamed like a girl and carried around farm tools in his pocket.

What is wrong with me?

She didn't need to overthink this. It was a skull. He was a boy. What was not to be impressed by?

"Um," Jesse broke the long silence. "Where are we going?"

Petra just looked back at him and grinned. "I want to show you something."

Jesse was quiet for a moment as he looked around the shaft.

"Not that this isn't a really cool, dimly-lit tunnel," Jesse sounded nervous as he said, "but... how far away is this thing you wanna show me?"

Petra stopped and turned around to face him, crossing her arms with a wry smile. "Why? This isn't your first time in a cave, is it, Farmer Boy?"

"Pff, no," said Jesse, only a hint of uncertainty in his tone. "I go in caves all the time! You know, usually… during the daytime… staying close to the entrance—but you've seen one cave, you've seen 'em all, right?"

"Heh, sure," Petra chuckled, reaching into her pocket "but have you ever seen… a Wither skull?"

She pulled out her prize.

"Woah!" he gasped.

"Fresh from the Nether," she bragged. "You're the first person I've showed it to. So, you'd better appreciate this."

"You risked your life for a dusty old skull?"

Petra's smile fell.

"No—I mean—not—" he stammered, "—it's awesome, but—that's—insane, Petra! You could've gotten yourself killed!"

Aww, he's… worried about me.

Then she found herself smiling again and chuckled. "Don't worry so much. I can handle myself."

Jesse looked kind of embarrassed, but still sounded worried as he apparently tried to dismiss his own concern, per her request. "R-Right, of course you can. I guess… going to the scariest place in the world is just another day at work for you, huh?"

She pocketed the skull again and found herself smiling as she walked on and explained further.

"There's this guy I'm meeting up with at EnderCon—he's gonna trade me a diamond for it."

"That's worth a diamond?"

Jesse seemed amazed. You'd think he'd never laid eyes on one.

"Oh, it's worth at least three," she said, "but good luck finding someone who will pay that for it. For all the trouble I had to go to get it, I should be asking for much more, but the idea of paying more than a whole diamond for anything is just crazy to most people."

Jesse stopped. "Wow."

Petra stopped herself and turned to look back at him again. "Wow... what?"

"In a single day, you went to the Nether, you killed a Wither skeleton..."

Petra thought about mentioning the fact that she had actually killed sixteen Wither skeletons, and that was getting incredibly lucky. Still, he seemed impressed enough—and worried enough—with just the one, so she decided not to.

"I mean, I did build a super-cool statue, but still. It's pretty sweet being you, huh?"

Ask him, her own thoughts commanded her. Ask him now.

"Not that almost dying in the Nether is all that… sweet, but you know, it's awesome of course…"

There will never be a better opportunity.

"It's just dangerous and scary and… aaand, you don't care. Never mind."

"You know…" Petra found herself blurting out. "You could… come with me."

She turned around and continued walking, steeling her nerves to retain her composure. She'd done it. She'd asked him to back her up.

"Huh?" Jesse sounded shocked. "You want ME? To come with YOU."

"I mean, if you're too nervous, I totally get it. But I wouldn't mind a little backup."

"I'd be honored to be your backup!" she thought she heard him say.

"You don't have to make such a big deal out of it. I just said—"

"What? I didn't say anything."

Petra blinked herself back into the moment.

"Right. Of course you didn't," she said, trying to sound tough. "I was—joking. It was a joke."

"Oh." Jesse rubbed the back of his head.

She felt a little bad for making him feel stupid in her effort to maintain her dignity, and quickly broke the silence before it could get awkward.

"Well, you're not saying no—so I'll take that as a yes?"

She hoped she didn't sound too nervous, and silently prayed that Jesse was as clueless as he looked sometimes.

Jesse smiled and somewhat hesitantly said, "Oh, sure. Okay."

After that was over, they lapsed into silence. Petra was just kind of amazed.

Wow… that… wasn't hard.

She wasn't sure why she had been expecting it to be. Normally, if she wanted something, she'd go out and get it, no hesitation. She didn't hesitate to talk to people. She didn't hesitate to buy something if she needed it. Even in the heat of battle, she didn't hesitate to strike.

So… why had she been so hesitant about pursuing her relationships?

Jesse wasn't the only one she cared about, after all. Farmer Boy aside, she still needed some stable support she could fall back on. The only thing still standing in the way of that was the fact that her current friends were still at odds, and up until now, she'd just been sitting by, watching. Idly. She hated being idle. It wasn't her way. She wanted to bring them together, she just hadn't been sure how. She was a lone wolf hunter, not the neighborhood peacemaker. She had no experience in this kind of thing.

No. This wasn't her. She wasn't 'Petra, the hopeless romantic', or 'Petra, the loner with no friends', or even 'Petra, the courageous treasure hunter'. She was 'Petra, whoever she dang well wants to be', and if she wanted to be a pacifistic, peacemaking, block of fluff, then she was gonna do it.

Jesse would do it.

If there was an argument between Olivia and Axel, Jesse wouldn't just stand by and watch, he would do something about it.

And this was her chance.

Above all, Petra was a fighter, and she decided long ago that this was something worth fighting for. She couldn't just keep hoping that they would eventually settle their differences. Just waiting for things to happen never made things happen. She of all people knew that. She had to take action. It was time she stopped moping about how sucky her ironic choice of friends was and actually did something.

It was time to strike.

« … »

If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

— John 13:17

Author's Notes

Hoo wee! For a chapter where most of the events were actually just taken straight from the game, and probably has the most canon elements of all the chapters put together so far, it sure accumulated a lot of author's notes! Don't feel like you have to read them. ;P
First, I do realize that I forgot to mention Jesse packing his sword when he was grabbing things for the competition, so he just kinda has it here. I'm going to fix that later, but sorry about that. XD

Also, something I've noticed is particularly hard about the novelization process, or—not 'hard' per se, but rather—just tricky, is description. Particularly description of the environment. When I'm writing original prose for an original story, or at least an original scene, I naturally fall into 'no one knows what this looks like, so I need to describe it', mode, however it's like when I'm rewriting a scene that already exists, that part of my brain just completely turns off. I know, because during the first write-through of this chapter, I 100% neglected to write ANY description. Looking over it, even I had trouble understanding what was going on and what/who was where. X'D

Tip: Whenever you don't want the characters to have to explain what you already spent three chapters explaining, just have them "Long story short" it. ;'P

Since nobody knows where 'Pete's sake' came from anyway, I just made it Steve. :P

- Petra's a Dork — I've mentioned before how I've had to change her character to make her make more sense and whatnot, so yeah, you may have noticed Petra acting more… well, dorky than usual. :P I have an explanation for this that isn't necessary if you're not bothered by it, but if you're wondering why, here it is.
Don't get me wrong, Petra has always been awesome, but she's not good at being honest with herself, or other people. Externally she puts forth a persona of fearless kick-butt awesomeness, but internally she struggles with things just like everyone else, and doesn't show people her less cool qualities.
You get to see these qualities of hers later on several occasions. (If you're interested in specifics, message me, 'cause I don't want to put them here.) She didn't develop that later. It's always been there, but she's just very good at covering it up and pretending it's not.

- "You know, you could come with me." — Petra asking Jesse to come with her is never explained aside from 'I wouldn't mind having a little back up' which doesn't sound valid anyway because she just saved his life, and to me has always felt like a badly motivated excuse to move the plot along. They seem to imply that Petra is a loner who's mysterious and kind of distant from everyone else, so you can't really reasonably just assume that they're actually close besides that. I don't think I really need to explain that Petra liking Jesse gives reason to her 1) showing him the Wither skull to begin with, and 2) inviting him to come with her. (Like, Petra, do you rescue random people in the forest only to randomly flex your super-pro-Nether-warrior skills and randomly invite them to come with you to a random job of yours often? AnotherreasonitmakesmoresenseforJessetobemalejustsaying…)

- Petra the Stalker Chick — Aaagaaain, was not just an excuse to do more shipping… :P So, here's the thing. IN the GAME, she knows that Jesse's sword broke, but if you play it, there's on average a whole minute between when his sword breaks and when she shows up. My thought was, seriously, there's no way she could know that—UNLESS she was actually watching him all that time! :O SOLD. FIXED. (Petra does so many weird things that only make sense if she likes him…)

- Wither Skull Drop Chance — I just want to note that Petra getting THAT lucky with getting the Wither skull is SOOOO improbable it's not even funny. XD On average, you'd have to kill forty Wither skeletons to get a single skull. And further still, her being able to kill that many in such a short period of time is also very not funny ridiculous, but I had to explain why she'd be able to, so sorry about that. XD Another thing I might come back and fix later.

- "Come with me if you wanna not die." — They mention several times that Petra is a great fighter, the best they know even, but she doesn't really even fight unless you make certain choices, and even when she fights she isn't that much more impressive than anyone else. Seriously, she saved Jesse by spamming and killing one spider. Hardly spectacular since he just killed multiple zombies. If she's been doing this all her life as they seem to try to get across, she is going to be a very good fighter, and I really wanted to show that.

- Petra's Bad Grammar — Uuuuugh… okay, so in the game, with this scene specifically, Petra makes two horrendous grammar mistakes, and I debated with myself at length whether or not I should purposely leave them in… ^^' Eventually I decided… to heck with it, I'm keeping them, for two reasons. Because I think it adds some character, and also, one thing I've always loved about MCSM is how natural and realistically awkward the dialogue was at times, and I don't lose that in the name of 'fixing everything'.

- Really? Using a zombie as a shield? — Have you played Minecraft? :P This is flipping fun to do! Also, this isn't nearly as stupid to do in Minecraft as it would be in real life because getting a skeleton to shoot a zombie isn't that hard, and it completely distracts them so you don't even have to worry about them.

- Really? Just two punches? — Minecrafters will probably be thinking that it takes WAY more than two hits without a single tool to kill a zombie, and you're right. In Minecraft it does, but in Minecraft: Story Mode there are plenty of times that the characters are able to kill mobs with less power, and I feel I should mention that canonically, Jesse actually kills the zombie in one hit. ;P My canon is that in this world, because it's more like a real world, one can simply 'punch harder' and do more damage. I did raise it to two hits however, because I still thought one hit was a little unbelievable. Just in case anyone else was bothered by that. ;P

- What about the Pocket thing? D: — I know, I know, y'all loved that little detail so dang much, but I thought about it and I think now that capitalizing pocket is unnecessary. It's not an incredibly important element of the story itself, and there are better ways to establish things like this. I'm going to be going over the previous chapters to fix this, but for now, here's the explanation for why it isn't now. :) This is the writing process, people! I like it, I hate it, I love it, delete it.

- Where'd You Come From? — They make it pretty clear that Jesse is totally surrounded, but if that were the case, where did Petra come from? Did she just phase through one of the cliff walls? :P Well, the best I could think of on short notice was to have her sort of watching from above which 1) explains why Jesse can't see her until she jumps out, and 2) why he couldn't just escape to wherever she came from.

Choice Notes
So that dialogue at the end there had quite a few selections of choices that were all combined together, but that wasn't really intentional. I always thought this convo was a bit awkward and clunky, and in my efforts to just make it less so, I ended up using a lot of those snippets. XD

- Fanboy Jesse — Something else they draw attention to in the game a lot (at least at first) is the fact that Jesse clearly sees himself as out of Petra's league, as he can say things like "I know! I was there! It was amazing!" :3 and "We're super close." and such. He does this so exaggeratedly at times that it even comes across as fanboyish. While I don't think that's necessarily very in character, it's still a part of Jesse that shouldn't simply be ignored. XD That being said, with Petra also established later (without specifics) as being a bit of a dork herself, I think it makes sense that this is just the kind of thing she would fantasize about. Petra likes to be admired, though what's funny is that if this actually happened, it probably would make her a bit uncomfortable. :P

Glossary

- Bats — The most harmless and useless mobs in existence. They don't do anything, they just fly in your face, and are annoying.

- Block of Fluff — This isn't a real thing in Minecraft… or is it? :] So my bro was fishing around in OLD Minecraft assets, and he found a texture file simply called 'fluff'. Apparently it was a texture used for clouds that was removed in Minecraft Alpha, so it's kind of mysterious. :J