Petra rolled her eyes, a huge grin spreading across her face as she raised the iron blade, the tip pointing aimlessly at the zombies. Flames shot up the blade, dancing and throwing spooky, beautiful shadows and light through the darkness of the mineshaft. Jesse unsheathed her iron sword again (although it did not light up like Petra's), Jace doing the same from where he was perched behind her, while Cassie flicked out her axe.
Reuben just tensed his knees slightly, brown eyes squinting at the zombies intently.
"Ready for more?" Before anybody could either respond to Petra's easy comment, or ask her what she'd meant- had she been asking the zombies if they were ready for more, or the others- the Blaze hybrid had practically flown forward, and one zombie was already disintegrating into a tiny pile of dust.
She dodged a clumsy swipe and almost casually flicked the blade upwards, scratching this zombie's nose and promptly making the monster erupt into flames. "Haha, too slow, zombies! Typical."
"I value my breath, so it'd be really nice if you didn't take it away every time you walked by, Petra," Jace said mildly, doing a neat jump over the zombie that Petra had just set on fire while using his sword to tip it like a domino into the one right behind it, which then immediately also caught fire a second later. He instantly pivoted and jabbed his sword into it, making it vaporize into a cloud of smoke and dust particles.
Cassie let out a slightly annoyed huff as she charged a cluster of three zombies, one of them lurching towards her at a faster speed than the other two. "Really? Is-"
She twirled the axe before taking ahold of it with both hands and swinging it like a baseball bat, making the first zombie flicker red as she sent it flying backwards into the other two, knocking all three to the ground like bowling pins.
"- now really the time to try to score more points against each other?"
She raised her axe into the air, the handle snapping smoothly into her palm, before down the axe came and it pulverized through all three zombies in a single blow.
"Cassie, they flirt with each other all the time; I think they could be hanging over an active volcano and they'd still try to score a point against each other," Reuben replied to Cassie's question as his big brown eyes darted over one zombie, evaluating it quickly, before he sprinted forward and sent a side kick at the zombie's knee.
With the kick, the zombie's knee bent backwards, making it stagger- and then Reuben grabbed ahold of the zombie's hand and drove its clawed fingers through its own head, making it explode into a column of dust.
"... that was really gross."
Jesse stifled a snort at that, turning back to her own zombies (there were two of them) and driving her sword into the nearest one without skipping a beat.
The moment the zombie's decaying vocal cords let out a groan in complaint, Jesse spun around and slammed her lower arms into the zombie's chest, knocking it off of her sword and straight into the other zombie, which unsteadily caught itself. Before either could regain what little balance they had, Jesse's sword had darted in a straight horizontal line.
Both zombies now found it rather difficult to regain any balance that they might've had, as they no longer had heads.
"Haven't lost my step yet!" the spider hybrid said cheerfully, shaking some of the dust off of her blade before re-sheathing it, both zombies crumbling to dust silently behind her.
Petra let out a light chuckle, turning to face Jesse as she put away her own iron sword. "Well, you sure showed me." The Blaze hybrid adjusted her gleaming gold arm so that it rested on her hip. "Gotta say, I really appreciate you making it on time. Means a lot to me."
"Well, of course I'd make it on time. Why wouldn't I?" Jesse asked, as Reuben cheerfully stretched in his iron chestplate. The pig hybrid's ears bounced a little as he relaxed from the stretch.
Petra's glowing gold eyes dimmed slightly, and the Blaze hybrid reached up and scratched her head somewhat awkwardly. "I... sometimes worry that you don't have time for your friends anymore. I know you enjoy your job, or whatever."
Jesse's expression promptly became more solemn, her red eye gleaming in the darkness. Petra spotted the expression and hastily put her hands up in a position that indicated surrender. "Not- not that I'm trying to make you feel guilty or anything."
"Petra, come on. You know you guys are more important to me than anything else in all the worlds," Jesse said, spreading her arms out to emphasize her point.
The redhead rolled her eyes, although she couldn't help the pleased smirk that snuck over her face. "Okay, well, now you're just trying to flatter me."
Cassie rolled her eyes slightly, a small smile forming on her face. "Are you saying you don't like it?" she teased gently.
Petra's expression grew a little colder, the gold light in her eyes dimming slightly when Cassie said that. "What do you care?" she muttered, making Cassie's small smile fall instantly into a more awkward expression.
"Anyway, I can't help but notice that we're missing one, two, three...?"
Petra's quizzical comment had barely started trailing off when Jesse had started speaking up, "Axel has Boom Town duties-"
"Olivia's grading something or other in Redstonia," Cassie chimed in.
"And Lukas-"
"Is writing, I figured," Petra sighed, crossing her arms and interrupting Jace before letting out an irritated sigh. "Man, our friends have gotten lame."
Reuben instantly frowned at that. Jesse winced awkwardly at the way Petra had just put it, while Jace and Cassie exchanged an awkward look. That had been a rather... harsh way of putting it.
"I swear, if our old fans could see us now..." Petra trailed off upon noticing the looks they were inadvertently shooting her, and let out another sigh. "I'm just saying, I don't care how good Lukas's next book is... it's not exactly slaying a Witherstorm, you know?"
"Well, don't get bummed," Jesse said, giving Petra a light pat on the back with her uppermost set of arms. "Even without them, we're still having fun, right?" And she offered a careful smile. Sure, it was a bit harsh, but it was a lot better than the way Petra used to outright snap at people or snarl at them or just get pissed off beyond belief at them.
Petra's dimmed eyes slowly lit up a little bit again, her arms uncrossing. "Yeah, that's a good point." She marched forward a couple of steps and gently punched Jesse on the shoulder, making a solid clunking sound as her knuckles made contact with the iron. "At least we've got the cool people here." She shot a teasing grin at Jace. "Did it hurt when you fell from heaven, by the way?"
Jace didn't blush at all, but he arched one eyebrow. "Did you just call me a devil?"
Petra casually shrugged, sweeping back some of her short red hair. "Well, yeah. You can't be ice cream because you're so hot."
"I can give you a kiss if you'd like. If you don't like it, you can return it," Jace said, his voice lowering to a very enticing sort of purr.
"My body has 206 bones. Want to give me another one?" Petra asked, her own voice slowly shifting into a very... seductive tone of voice.
Cassie clapped her hands over Reuben's ears, making the pig hybrid yelp in protest.
"If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, that's not a bone, that's a muscle. And the only muscle I'm willing to give you is my heart," Jace purred back, stepping closer to Petra and ignoring his now grinning-like-a-maniac sister.
"On a scale of 1 to 10, you're a 9." Petra slipped one hand onto his shoulder, running it down his arm lightly while shooting him a look that would've made any other person's face start flushing a dark red- though it was hard to tell whether it was out of embarrassment or attraction. "'Cause I'm the one you need."
"Notch, you two, stop flirting," Jesse said lazily, poking Petra and Jace in the ribs simultaneously with her middle set of arms and making both of them yelp and jump away. "Mind you, I'm proud of your flirting skills, but I assume Petra didn't ask us to meet in the mines because she wanted to score points against Jace."
Petra's expression became more serious in the span of a blink. "You're right. We'll worry about it later; we've gotta hurry."
Cassie blinked, hands slipping from Reuben's ears to rest on his shoulders instead. "What exactly are we looking for down here that's got you in such a hurry?" she asked, looking very bemused as Petra started walking deeper into the mines at a brisk pace.
"I'll... tell you guys when we find it," Petra said, vaguely, "just trust me, it's important."
Literally a half-second later, a strange, 'bleating' sound echoed through the tunnel, making everyone's head snap around to stare through the tunnel that the miners were currently working in.
"... what was that?" Jace asked, with a slow quality to his voice that sort of screamed that he really didn't want to know.
Petra stared after the sound for a moment, before her gold eyes flashed to life, the glow cutting through the darkness. "C'mon! Let's race!" And she was off, already sprinting through the tunnel.
"Wait- what?!"
"It's monster-huntin' time!" Petra yelled back over her shoulder with a huge grin, before she tensed her knees and launched herself into the air with Blaze Rods piecing together in midair, blasting her down the tunnel like jet propellers.
Jesse, Jace, Cassie, and Reuben all stared at each other for a moment... before Jesse shook her head slightly with a grin, dropping to all eights and letting Reuben clamber on, Cassie already jogging after Petra with a huff of amusement, Jace leaping onto all fours and practically galloping after the Blaze hybrid.
Same old Petra.
Jesse scuttled past a miner, who actually paused in his work to stare at Jesse with Reuben on her back. A lot of the miners- or the townspeople, really- had never seen Jesse on all eights or in action before, so whenever they did see her they all stared like they'd never seen a girl with six arms before.
Jace grinned at Jesse from where he was bounding along, looking very pleased that he could keep up with Jesse's speed- the spider hybrid moved at a deceptively quick speed. "This is fun," he called over to her, casually. Cassie rolled her eyes from where the two hybrids had quickly caught up to her, but despite the speed they were moving at she was still able to keep up with them.
Jesse simply made an absentminded humming sound, before she tensed her limbs and leaped straight over a miner that was still working (though he stopped and glanced up at Jesse with undisguised interest), landing on the other side and continuing her skittering pace.
"Hey, it's Jesse! What's up?" one of the miners shouted to Jesse with a cordial tone, "good to see ya!"
The spider hybrid glanced over at him, giving him a quick wave before continuing along her path. Cassie tried to increase her speed as a minecart sped out of a nearby tunnel and pulled a neat turn, letting a miner that was eating a large piece of cake ride alongside them. The redhead's glasses were slipping, but she managed to reach up and push them higher up on her face without whacking herself with an immense amount of force.
Reuben grinned at Jace, who ended up having to pull some intensely difficult turns and jumps to avoid smacking straight into other miners. A moment later, another minecart came rushing in from the right, ending up on a direct collision course with the hybrids and Cassie.
Cassie skidded to a halt, heaving in a huge gasp to try to catch her breath- her face now flushing bright red and looking nearly the same as her hair- but Jace just leapt straight over the minecart, while Jesse did the same but did a twist in midair, shooting her hand out and firing a strand of silk at the ceiling. The silk hit the ceiling of the tunnel and yanked her to the ceiling, whereupon all eight of her limbs slammed solidly into the ceiling and she started to continue her scuttling.
"Headrush!" Reuben squeaked, but when Jesse glanced back he was beaming.
"Everyone get down!" a miner screamed, and Jesse glanced down... well, in her current orientation, she glanced up... to see a flashing block of TNT right in Jace and Cassie's path. "It's gonna blow!"
"Well, that is what TNT does," Reuben said, his voice having a vaguely innocent tone (but also half-sarcastic).
Jesse may or may not have started chuckling at that.
Thankfully, the spider hybrid and Reuben were out of the blast zone, but Cassie and Jace were right in the middle of it. The former White Pumpkin, without skipping a beat, began to speed up again, hastily hopping over the TNT and speeding herself up even further. Jace's way of getting out of the TNT blast zone was a little more fancy- he just increased his speed, running towards the TNT before launching himself into the air at the last second, the blast releasing a shockwave that pushed him into the air a little higher than he would've achieved normally, before landing next to Cassie.
The bright-red-haired girl rolled her eyes at him. "Show-off," she teased.
Jesse flipped herself back to the ground right as the redhead said this, and she shot Cassie a small smirk. "That's Jace alright- showoff of the year."
The wolf hybrid stuck his tongue out at his sister, the spacious cavern that they'd just entered allowing them room to get back to their feet without worrying about headbutting someone. The spider hybrid skidded to a halt next to Petra, who was looking around for something, before letting out a breathless laugh. "Haha... woo!" she let out a huff of breath, making Reuben reach out and pat her on the head comfortingly.
"Alright, where'd you go?" Petra muttered, gold eyes flickering back and forth as she tried to find the mysterious source of the sound.
"Where'd what go?" Cassie asked. Or, well, she sort of asked, more like she puffed. She was panting so hard that she looked like she might pass out.
The redhead didn't respond, still scanning the bottom of the cave, before a huge grin spread over her face victoriously. "Ha! Look down there!" she exclaimed, pointing down into the hole that they were standing above.
Everybody automatically looked at what Petra was pointing at- just in time to see a shadowy, hard-to-recognize figure bolt down through another, smaller tunnel.
"So are you actually not going to tell us what this thing is?" Jesse asked, still on all eights and, as a result, forced to crane her head back so that she could make eye contact with Petra.
"Nah, the mystery's what makes it fun!" And with that, Petra leaped straight off of the ledge, Blaze Rods sparking and flaring as they came to life and caught her in mid-jump, letting her hover the rest of the way down.
Cassie let out a little whining gasp for breath, wiping some sweat off her brow with a laugh. "Well, she's energetic." With that, she hopped down onto a ledge that led to more ledges that led to being able to hop off onto the ground without breaking every bone in your body. Jace followed, but Jesse just skittered right over the edge and climbed down the wall that way.
"You two show off way too much," Cassie teased, turning to face Jace and Jesse- before she paused, eyes widening. She stood there for a second before lifting her arm and pointing over their shoulders soundlessly.
The wolf hybrid and the spider hybrid (and the pig hybrid perched on Jesse's back) looked at each other, before turning around to see several zombies lurching towards them.
"... lovely," Jesse muttered, and she rotated on the spot and started skittering at full speed in the other direction. Petra had already landed, but she hopped back into the air and proceeded to jet-propel herself down the same tunnel. Jace did a backwards jump before landing on all fours and continuing the pace he'd been at before, running right past Cassie.
"Getting in some good cardio," Cassie managed through her gasps for air, before she also turned and raced after the others.
"Hey, Jesse! Wall spiders!" Petra yelled, turning around midair to face Jesse and alert her to this development.
Jesse glanced up, seeing the smaller-than-normal spiders appear, clicking angrily and making soft hissing sounds that sounded very ticked off. However, they didn't seem to care about Petra, Jace, or Reuben.
No, almost all of their aggression was focused on the bright-red-haired Cassie.
"... well sh-" Cassie noticed that Petra was shooting her an intense glare. Honestly, sometimes the redhead was more invested in Reuben's not-knowing-swears than Jesse was. "-iver me timbers and hoist the mainsail."
Petra stopped glaring at Cassie as much.
A/N: I am back! And here is a new chapter x3
So, big news! You know how I was AWOL for, like, a month? Toni42 and I worked together to create a Minecraft: Story Mode fangame called 'Trust Fall', and after about a month and 2 weeks of work, the full version has finally been released! I won't tell you much about it- just check out the link below (get rid of the spaces and the link should work!) As long as you've got a computer, the game should work.
arizaluca . itch . io / trust - fall
Responses to reviews!
ItzJaiden: Hehehe xD
Emily the Avenger: (laughs) Don't worry about it, Em.
AquaK13: Hehehe xD / Yeah, I laughed for about twenty minutes when I first saw that pick up line xD / You do realize I get every single pick-up line in my stories from Google, right? xD
TheAmberShadow: ... uhhhh on the plot, because it really has nothing to do with each other...? / Great, now I'm picturing literally fizzy zombies xD / No, I know that, but Jesse's asked Cassie about it and apparently that's not where she got it from. Weird. / Originally it was cheesy... but then they got used to those, so they had to up the ante... / not quite yet xD
Toni42: (winks) / Yes, Lluna the cute llama x3
J.M.M.: It's been so long that I can't remember what we were talking about...
LunarTheMooncake: Honestly, if someone directed those pick-up lines at me, then I would also be extremely embarrassed xD / bananananananana BATMAN
EllieRose27: (thumbs up)
Darkbeast Dend: Hehe
chcinatown: Most people do that because having A/Ns as chapters is technically not allowed; so writing them as a story allows us to write them while worrying less about it. / ... we started dating about two weeks before Valentine's Day this year, so...
Anyway, that's about it! See ya, so long, and g'bye!
x.X. A.L. X.x
Toni42:
