The screen came back in to the whole group riding over a huge ocean of lava, passing several lava falls. It was oddly beautiful... in a really, REALLY dangerous way.
"Wow," Lukas breathed, looking around with his hands perched on the edges of the minecart. "The Nether."
"Yeah," Olivia agreed, looking around a bit herself. "That's a lot of lava. And fire. And other things that could burn you to death."
Lizzie made this odd little choking sound that sounded a bit like a laugh.
Suddenly, Reuben let out this terrified squeal and crouched into his minecart. Jesse's face went pale as well. "Oh gosh," she said, quietly.
"What? What's wrong?" Dan asked, practically bouncing in his seat and making the other YouTubers bounce as well inadvertently.
The screen zoomed out to reveal this very long, very steep drop.
"Oh." Soren winced and rubbed his head. "I remember that part."
"Oh, that is a drop," Lukas said, eyes widening and his ears flattening against his head again, "that is very, very much a drop."
"What are you talking about, new guys? What droooOH crap! You weren't kidding," Axel exclaimed, his own eyes widening. Reuben let out an oink of agreement at this.
"Get ready!" Jesse warned them, before the carts suddenly dropped forward at an alarmingly fast speed. The screen slowed down and gave them a good look at their faces, almost like the rides at amusement parts. Axel had his hands in the air, Lukas's knuckles had turned white and his ears were flattened against his head, Olivia had slapped her hands over her eyes, Jesse's eyes were wide, and Reuben looked utterly terrified.
"Oh man, look at their faces!" Maya laughed, although she didn't look like she was making fun of any of them.
"I would like a picture of that," Stampy agreed, grinning.
They slammed into the bottom and barreled forward, still rushing along at high speeds. Rocketing into a tunnel, there was a low wall blocking space for their heads. "Oh no," Jesse groaned, "who puts this stuff in?!"
"Yeah, why did you put that stuff in?" Jace asked, twisting around to look at the Order.
Ellegaard shrugged sheepishly. "We didn't use that track all that often. Besides, we all knew it was there, and none of us bothered to go out and fix it."
Onscreen, the whole group ducked down with a yelp or yell. When the wall passed, Jesse sat back up and turned to look at her friends, but another wall was rushing up.
"Watch out!" Olivia screamed, and Jesse ducked down just in time.
They shot out of the tunnel and were rushing over the sea of lava again, but this time they were headed straight for a lava fall. "Okay," Axel squeaked in an unnaturally high-pitched voice, "so, I'm not the only one who sees that we're running out of track, right?"
"No," Lukas replied.
"Good!"
"Okay, why'd you put THAT in?!" Jesse exclaimed, turning to look at the Order of the Stone.
"To keep out intruders," Gabriel replied.
"Yeah, well you could try not to kill the intruders in the process!" Jesse yelped, flailing her arms and nearly smacking Axel in the face.
Onscreen, Jesse shifted and leaned out as far to one side as she could upon spotting a lever. "Ohh, boy..."
"Jesse!" Olivia shouted, "that switch! Flip it! Now!"
Jesse bit her lip, and then leaned out as far as she seemed to dare, her fingers barely whizzing over it as she missed- the audience gasped.
One of her lower arms flailed out and slammed right into the lever, making the minecarts screech to a violent stop, making all of the passengers jolt slightly from the impact. The screen zoomed out to show hundreds of thousands of pistons beginning to retract, dropping the minecart lower and lower.
Jesse giggled nervously, still shivering from just a moment before. "Haha, wow! I thought we were going to die there, but, I guess everything's WHOA!" The last part came from the carts starting to move forward again, but splitting up and taking unexpected turns, the passengers all letting out surprised yells.
"She jinxed it," Petra called out.
Jesse found herself alone on the track with one empty cart. She looked around anxiously. "Um... Axel? Olivia? Lukas? Reuben? Hello?" she called into the emptiness, her voice echoing back slightly.
A squeal cut through the air, and she twisted to see Reuben squealing in fear as a skeleton towered above him in the cart, arrow pointed at the pig.
"What in- okay," and Jesse stood up quickly as the cart turned so that she was only feet away from the skeleton, her cart right alongside Reuben's. "Hang in there, Reuben!"
She whipped out the gold sword Petra had given her, eyes hardening, firelight glinting off the blade, before lashing out and smacking the sword straight into the skeleton, which turned to her, bow drawn and aimed right at her face. She sliced through the string, making the bow's limbs straighten out violently and twang uselessly out of the skeleton's hands, before slamming the blade right into its ribs and knocking it out of the cart and into the lava below.
"Nice one, Jesse!" and Axel high-fived the girl over Jace's head.
"Reuben!" Jesse called out, sounding relieved, sword still out. Reuben let out his own pleased squeal and hopped into the empty cart behind her. Well, now it wasn't empty, because it was full of little pink pig, but- you get the point!
"Okay, so, I know I said- well, I was trying to say- that everything would be okay?"
Petra groaned, jumped out of her seat, and punched Jesse on the shoulder, making the black-haired girl flinch with a yelp. "Stop jinxing it!"
"I can't help it! I'm an optimistic person!"
"Well, I was wrong then, but I have a good feeling about oh ships of the ocean," Jesse transferred straight into a groan as a ghast went flying straight over her head before turning to face the two of them, two other ghasts blocking it.
"Wow, you've got to have the worst luck ever, Jesse," Lukas said, wincing.
"That's... incredibly inconvenient," Otto agreed.
The short girl threw her hands into the air with this frustrated grunt. "Notchdammit!" she snapped.
The middle ghast shot a fireball at her, and Jesse automatically ducked down, one hand bracing herself on the minecart rim and the other one holding her sword. The fireball rebounded off her sword and hit the ghast, injuring it.
"Or... maybe not."
"Right!" Jesse said, eyes hardening, and she stood back up, swinging her sword to block the next fireball and sending it flying back at the ghast, killing it. "Now that I think about it, it's like a game of baseball." A short pause as she smacked away another fireball. "Albeit a rather deadly game of baseball."
This prompted several laughs from the audience.
As the last ghast rose up to shoot another fireball, Jesse smacked it back, but her sword slipped out of her hands, making her gasp. Olivia squeaked and tightened her grip on Axel's arm, making the burly boy wince in pain. Her lower arm grabbed the sword, and tossed it back up to the upper set just in time for Jesse to send one last fireball flying and kill the last ghast.
"Way to go, Jesse!" Olivia cheered, her hands relaxing.
"Who knew you had it in ya? You look like you couldn't hurt a living creature," Petra said, grinning.
Honestly, she probably deserved that pillow that got chucked at her head for some reason or another.
"Oh, come on," Aiden scoffed, "I could beat five of those things with one arm tied behind my back."
"You wanna try? We can spawn some in here and-" Isa asked sharply, obviously tired of hearing his bragging. Aiden's eyes widened and he shook his head and hands quickly.
"No! No. I'm good."
"Thought so."
Jesse let out a relieved sigh onscreen and sheathed her sword. "Whew- okay- not dead. That's pretty good," she gasped, before turning around to see her pig, who popped out of the minecart he'd been hiding in. "Well, Ghasts are officially off my to-see list."
Petra let out a groan. Jesse gave her a sheepish grin.
"Done with 'em. Never need to see them again ahhhh crap." The last two words came from her spotting a ghast watching her through a hole in the wall, before turning a corner to see the ghast hovering near the track, which went up... and up...
And then ran out entirely.
"Oh come on!" Lizzie exclaimed, "why is that in there?!"
Magnus cleared his throat. "That- ah- that was an accident."
Jesse stared at him, before turning back to the screen. "Magnus, if I die because of this, I'm expecting you to pay for my tombstone."
The ghast shot another fireball at them, and Reuben hopped out of his cart and into Jesse's lap. Just in time, too, because the fireball blasted the empty minecart behind them into the lava. "This is bad, this is bad, this is very, very, VERY bad," Jesse practically chanted as the cart started gaining speed and going up the track, all six of her hands tightening on the minecart so hard that her knuckles were white.
Olivia covered her eyes again.
Jesse let out a scream as the cart soared right off the tracks, right past the ghast's uncaring face as it slowly turned to watch them, before the cart slowly started to obey the laws of gravity and slammed back down onto some more tracks, connecting to the ones in front of them with a bang.
Lukas, Olivia, and Axel swiveled in the same direction to stare at them.
"We're alive!" Axel cheered.
"Thank Notch for that," Jesse sighed, leaning into Jace with a hand over her thudding heart.
Ellegaard hummed. "Oh, yes, I remember that track. It was the first one we made. Although we stopped using it after Magnus blew it up," and she sent a glare in his direction.
"I said I was sorry!"
Jesse was panting, her eyes wide. "Is... is everyone okay?" she asked, when she seemed to have regained her voice.
There was a short pause.
Everyone slowly turned to face the front again, Axel's face pale. "I mean, I'm not dead. I guess that's pretty good."
"Ditto," Olivia said shakily, "ditto on the 'not dead'."
"I can't believe Petra comes down here all the time," Lukas said faintly, his ears flattened against his head again. "This place is awful."
Petra shrugged noncommittally but didn't say anything.
A second later, Lukas joked, sounding extremely faint, "Your throat's gonna be sore later, Axel."
"Why?"
"I'm just saying, wasn't that you doing all that screaming before? Sounds like you were really shredding your larynx," Lukas said, his ears slowly perking back up.
"Oh yeah," and Olivia turned to look at Lukas again, "I heard that too. Really high-pitched? Sounded like a squeaky piston?"
"What? No. Shut up," Axel said, his cheeks turning faintly pink.
Real Olivia and Lukas laughed a bit, Axel playfully glaring at them both.
"Never mind," Lukas said, although he was definitely smiling faintly now. "Must've been something else."
Jesse regained control of her vocal cords at this point. "You know those experiences that people reminisce on and talk about for the rest of their lives?" she asked, conversationally.
"Where's Jesse going with that?" Maya wondered.
Onscreen, the rest of the group slowly nodded, obviously wondering the same thing.
Jesse's face went perfectly deadpan. "This is not one of those. Let's never speak of this again."
"Oh."
"I think I'd be okay with that," Olivia agreed.
The minecarts rattled on, and the screen blacked out.
Jesse heaved a relieved sigh and flopped down backwards onto the carpet. "Okay... none of us are dead yet. That's pretty good," she said, absentmindedly testing her pulse.
"But what about redhead here? We don't know if she's okay," Magnus said, pointing at Petra.
"Her name is Petra," Cassie said, pointedly gesturing at her own red hair. "Please do not refer to her as 'the redhead'."
"Thank you!" Petra said.
A/N: I has a YouTube channel now! Look up 'Ariza Luca' in the search box and you'll find me :3
RQTC: ... I don't actually have one this chapter xD
Meow Shadow: I'm glad you like it! And I actually just am going off of Hybrid's dialogue and changing it slightly whenever I feel like it's being rushed or it doesn't fit well.
LittleAngelbun: I like Sherbet too xD
RapidSammi: (laughs) I can't wait to keep writing this, honestly. Hopefully that'll answer your questions xD
AquaK13: oh noes, does this chapter fix the insanity?
Kaos Ruin: (laughs) Okay, cool.
Emily The Avenger: (laughs)
S4SH4L4SH4theGaMeR101: Nope xD and neither can I, haha!
sailor. mikuchan: Noice :3
Guest: No spoilers xD
MissyMattingly: Cool :3
x.X. A.L. X.x
