The screen faded back in to show the doors opening, Jesse walking in and arching her eyebrows with a low, impressed whistle. Stairs made up most of the room for pure decoration, upside down and right-side up to make the room look nearly diamond-shaped, a bridge going from the door to a staircase at the other end.
"Huh. Nice aesthetic decision," Mevia hummed thoughtfully.
"Soren really lives here?" Lukas wondered, looking around the room. "So far from... anyone."
"Enchanting, isn't it," Ellegaard hummed.
Soren arched his eyebrow at the redstone engineer. "Was that sarcasm?"
Ellegaard tilted her head at the screen, before saying in a rather matter-of-fact voice, "You know, I have no idea."
Suddenly, Petra started coughing, covering her mouth with her sleeve, making Jesse turn to look at her with wide eyes. Now that they got a good look at her, she did seem a bit paler than usual.
"I hope she didn't come down with a cold or something..." Jace mumbled, leaning forward with a look of concern.
Petra shrugged and clapped the boy on the back, knocking him forward so that his head literally rebounded off the coffee table. "Oh! Sorry!" she apologized as he sat back up, rubbing his forehead. "I-I was going to say that I was pretty sure it was just going to pass, b-but- are you okay?"
"Not really, no."
Petra winced and rubbed him on the back. "Sorry, sorry," she apologized again.
Now it was Lukas's turn to cough, very quietly under his breath, "Ishipit", making those who heard this smirk or giggle.
"You okay?" Jesse asked onscreen. Petra straightened up and nodded silently, before continuing on after the rest of the group. Jesse watched her for a moment in concern, before silently following her.
They made their way up the stairs to reveal a gaping black abyss, the tops of columns protruding from the utter blackness. A pair of illuminated golden doors were on the other side of the huge room.
Jesse was gaping at the thing, green-and-red eyes wide. "I- how- why?" she asked, finally.
Soren jerked his thumb in Magnus's direction. "That, you can blame him for."
"Why do you three always blame me?" Magnus complained.
"That would- ah-" Gabriel rubbed his head awkwardly, looking at the ceiling. "That would probably be because it's your fault." Magnus glared at the warrior.
"Yeah, I'm not really feeling those columns," Lukas said, rubbing his head sheepishly.
Magnus let out a loud sigh and did a huge leap, landing on a column. "See? It's fine."
Axel took a running start and landed on his feet next to Magnus. The column didn't even shift upon landing.
"Well, if it can support Axel, then it'll support the rest of us," Petra said.
Axel jokingly glared at Petra. "Are you implying that I'm fat?"
"Technically, she could be implying that you're heavily muscled. Muscle weighs more than fat," Jesse pointed out to the burly boy. He opened his mouth, paused, and then shut his mouth again.
Jesse and Petra high-fived.
"Fair enough," and Jesse jumped and landed on the column, Reuben following a step behind her. Olivia just blinked and bleeped out of sight, before the screen cut to show her bleeping back into view on the other side of the room. "I'll just... wait here," she called back to them, sounding faintly amused.
This drew out several giggles from the audience.
Axel made a face at Olivia onscreen and got another running leap in. "Hey, no fair!" he playfully complained.
Lukas leaped over himself, having dropped to all fours, before darting over another huge gap. Petra hovered part of the way, but upon landing she stumbled a bit and nearly tripped, before regaining her balance again and doing another gliding leap. Ellegaard hopped past Jesse before the black-haired girl started moving forwards again.
She'd made it two more columns in, before she heard a loud squeal and whipped around. Reuben was teetering on the edge of the column, about to fall in.
"Reuben!" several of the members shouted.
"Reuben!" Jesse unknowingly echoed said members of the audience as she started running back over, before suddenly her foot landed on the cloak awkwardly. Her eyes flickered downwards as she tipped forward, too far forward to keep herself from falling over the edge.
"JESSE!" Nearly every member of the audience shouted.
The screen slowed down as the black-haired girl pulled Reuben into a tight hug as she did a flip over the pig, toppling into the darkness. Reuben let out a muffled squeal of fear as Jesse fell, before suddenly slamming painfully onto her back on a stone floor, letting out an involuntary cry of pain.
Jesse felt Lukas's arm slide around her shoulders and squeeze slightly, but she didn't question it.
The black-haired girl lay on the ground for a moment, gasping for a few moments, before slowly sitting back up with another gasp. There was a bit of light surrounding the area where she was standing in from a sea lamp resting on the floor. She shakily got to her feet, before suddenly gasping again and averting her gaze hastily.
The screen switched to show an Enderman standing there, holding a stone block in its hands.
Olivia gasped and hastily buried her face in Axel's shoulder.
"Oh no," Axel gasped. None of them could actually look at the screen directly, most of them settling for turning their heads away and watching from the corner of their eyes, to keep an eye on what was happening. Olivia's head remained buried in Axel's shoulder.
Jesse stepped sideways to hide behind a stone column, the single step revealing a huge crowd of the teleporters behind the one she'd spotted, watching them cautiously. "Oh boy... we've got Endermen," the girl mumbled, sucking in a deep breath.
There was a yelp, and Jesse turned just as Lukas landed on the sea lamp. overbalanced, and toppled right off.
The audience winced sympathetically.
Onscreen-Jesse winced as well, going over to the ocelot hybrid. "Lukas?" she asked in a whisper. "You okay there?"
"Yeah," Lukas nodded, "I heard you, so I thought you'd come down to help."
Jesse tilted her head back to look up, the screen switching showing nothing but darkness. "Well, thanks, Lukas," Jesse said, sounding a bit bewildered.
Real-Jesse looked over at Lukas. The blonde smiled at her a little bit, which the black-haired girl returned a moment later.
Lukas glanced over Jesse's shoulder, his hair beginning to rise on end. "Endermen," he breathed nervously.
Jesse nodded, looking back over her shoulder at them as well. "Yeah, there's... a ton of them. I never knew they came in groups that big." She turned back to look at Lukas again. "Thanks for coming back for me, Lukas- you didn't have to."
"You didn't have to come after me with that iron golem, or give me that cookie," Lukas pointed out to her with a warm smile. "I did say I owed you."
Jesse smiled back at Lukas, a little smile of her own coming over her face, but before she could say anything else, Reuben squealed. "Ah, I think Reuben's trying to get my attention." She turned- and then came face-to-face, eye-to-eye with an Enderman that had been leaning down to look at her. "GAH!" she recoiled.
The audience jumped, some letting out shrieks of their own.
"Oh, they're gonna die, they're gonna die!" Olivia squeaked.
"Please do NOT refer to my imminent death!" Jesse squeaked back, doing her best to backpedal away from the screen.
Jesse's recoil sent her right into Lukas as the Enderman started screeching and knocked the both of them to the floor. Lukas's hair had gone on end, hissing with fear. Jesse was hissing as well, flopping off of Lukas and scrambling backwards in a hot panic. "Run! Run run run!" she yelled out, before lunging to her feet and scooping Reuben up in her lower arms, grabbing Lukas's wrist, and hauling the boy to his feet before bolting away blindly.
The two of them dodged around the Endermen that teleported into their path, before the screen switched to show Jesse's feet, one foot stepping into thin air. Jesse's eyes widened, before the two of them splashed down into a rushing river.
"Oh! They're going to be okay! As long as they're in the water, they'll be fine!" Soren shouted.
The three of them resurfaced, the Endermen no longer pursuing but screeching angrily at the banks of the river, rendering them unable to climb out of the river. The screen switched a moment later to reveal a waterfall someplace else, and the three of them shrieked as they fell into a larger body of water.
Jesse resurfaced, eyes widening in surprise as she took in the room around them. Beyond the water was a huge statue of the amulet, an even more impressive one than the one back at the Order's temple. To the right were two statues decorated with light blue and red, and on the left were a pair of green and white statues.
"That," Gabriel goggled at the screen, "is fantastic. It's better than the one we had at the temple!"
"Right?" Soren grinned at his old friend. "Much better than that crappy glass one.
Jesse paddled after Lukas and Reuben, Magnus's voice coming into focus. "Oh, be quiet, it's just some pointless building. That's all I'm saying. I mean, just look at-"
"That's it!" Ellegaard snapped, "I'm going!" She whirled around and started marching through the red doorway on the left, as Jesse climbed silently out of the water and wrung out her soaking wet hair and the cloak, a stream of water pouring onto the floor from both.
"Oh, no no no!" Magnus growled back, "you do not get to be the one who walks away. See? I'm going. Super TNT, here I come!" and he marched through the green doorway on the other side, disappearing.
Gabriel sighed and facepalmed quietly.
Olivia gave Jesse a tired look. "It's hard to pick 'glass half-full' when they keep kicking the glass over."
Jesse sighed and raked a hand through her tangled, wet hair. "Well, I guess we should get going, then," she said, before shaking herself off to get some of the water out. Lukas wrung out his Ocelot jacket, before doing a shake like a dog and making Axel recoil.
Several audience members grinned at this.
Jesse looked between the two doorways, still absentmindedly wringing her hair out, before trotting over towards the red one.
"Ha! They chose the one I went through!" Ellegaard gloated.
Magnus grumbled.
Before Jesse could lead them inside, Petra came up to the girl, eyes fixed on the floor. "Uhh... hey, Jesse."
"Petra? Are you okay?" Jesse asked immediately, turning back to the redhead.
Petra gave a little shrug, shoulders rising and falling, before saying, quietly, "I'm sorry, I don't... I don't mean to worry you. I have something I need to discuss with you in private."
Lukas, Olivia, and Axel looked at Petra with this look of hurt confusion. "Why can't you tell us?" Lukas asked finally.
Petra shook her head, frowning at the screen. "I'm sorry, Lukas- it must be really important if I'm not telling all of you- something big."
"Do you think it has something to do with Petra not looking so good?" Maya wondered.
Gill shrugged after a moment of thought. "Maybe. I don't know. Let's wait and find out."
Jesse looked back onscreen as the others came up to her, before saying, faintly apologetically, "Um, let's split up- we don't know which way is quicker."
They all nodded after a moment of hesitation, before sending Petra a worried look and turning back around to head through the green doorway.
Reuben looked up at Jesse, nudging the spider hybrid's hand, making real-Jesse reach over and fondle the little pink pig's ears, before the two girls and the small pink pig went through the red doorway.
The screen faded to black.
"I hope it's nothing too bad," Lizzie said, leaning forward. "Notch knows you guys need a break."
Jesse simply shook her head, making all of them look at her. "Hopefully not... but I still have a bad feeling about this."
A/N: Wow, we're getting pretty close to the end of the second Episode. That's... wow. 0-0
RQTC: Cookies or MCSM?
DynamiteHunter6: Aww, man xD
EthanDaCabbage: I... don't like football xD I'm not planning on watching the Super Bowl tonight.
RapidSammi: (laughs)
LunarStarsMoon: Ahh. And, um... they read the comments, so...
AquaK13: Continuing with the updates xD
x.X. A.L. X.x
