"This thing just won't die, will it?" Jesse sighed as she clambered to her feet, neck craned back so that she could look at the upside-down Command Block. She paused for a moment, before looking down at Reuben, who was waiting at her feet. "Okay, new plan," she told him.
"Is it a good plan?" Lukas asked weakly.
"I'm going to climb up there," and she looked up at one of the walls, "and use one of those tentacle thingies to swing towards the Command Block."
"That is not a good plan!" Lukas exclaimed.
The spider hybrid knelt down and touched Reuben on the top of the head, eyes softening. "Stay here, Reuben. I mean it this time," she told the pig gently.
That being said, she ran full-tilt at one of the walls, before tensing her knees at the base and launching herself into the air. All six of her palms slammed into the surface, her feet balancing precariously on some crack that was too small for the audience to see. She took a deep breath and began to climb up the wall rapidly, feet propelling her and keeping the spider hybrid moving while her hands found handholds too subtle or too small for the human eye to see.
Olivia was chanting something at lightspeed under her breath with her face buried in her hands- something that sounded suspiciously like "Don't fall don't fall don't fall don't fall". This wasn't really making Real-Jesse feel any better, her arms tightening around Reuben anxiously.
The spider hybrid clambered onto a high ledge, this one completely black rather than the purple-pink tint, like the rest of the Witherstorm's insides. She slipped a bit, but her lower arms helped propel her onto the surface. The Witherstorm gave another a roar, everything starting to shake again, Jesse swinging her arms wildly as she tried to keep her balance on the surface she was standing on.
Which suddenly started moving.
The ledge she was standing on came to life, blinking open a single, glowing indigo eye and letting out a growl. Jesse let out a shriek and toppled from the new Witherstorm head.
"Oh that's just not fair!" Maya complained. Olivia lifted her head to see what Maya meant and let out an alarmed squeak.
"What in-?! How's that even possible?!" Jesse gaped at the new head, before whipping around at the sound of another roar emitting from the other side of the room, tractor beams from both heads switching on and roving through the room.
Jesse dove out of the way of one of them, Reuben galloping up to the spider hybrid. "Reuben! I-" Jesse flung herself to the floor as one of the tractor beams barely missed her. "- told you to stay put!" she finished her statement, before her eyes flicked sideways and she scooped up the pig and barreled out of the way as both tractor beams narrowly missed her.
She skidded out of the way and nearly fell through the hole again, barely managing to come to a stop in time. She looked over the edge and let out a gasp, the screen zooming out to show that the Witherstorm was practically in the stratosphere by now.
"Oh, that- that just gave me vertigo," Soren groaned, putting his head in his hands.
Jesse swallowed nervously before turning back to stare at the inside of the Witherstorm again, watching as a tractor beam accidentally lifted a severed tentacle into the air and then glancing at the Command Block. Deep cracks ran over the entire block, and it was pretty obvious that one last, good hit would smash the thing for good.
Her eyes suddenly lit up, widening in realization. "I think I know exactly how I'm going to get up there," she said, thoughtfully. Real-Jesse's eyes widened as she realized what her onscreen-self was thinking.
"I don't think I like the way this thing is going," Lukas said slowly.
"Jesse, what are you even planning on doing?" Gill asked, leaning around Maya to get a good look at the black-haired girl. Olivia had emerged from hiding in Axel's back to look around at Jesse.
Soren's eyes widened in shock as he realized what Jesse had to be referring to. "I think she's- no, you wouldn't! You can't-!" He whipped around to Jesse, stuttering as he tried to force out the appropriate words.
"What?" Petra asked, accidentally dragging Jace with her as she whipped around to stare at the architect, "what can't she do? What's she about to do?"
"She's- she's-"
Jesse casually reached up and plugged her ears.
Onscreen, Jesse slowly stared at one of the Witherstorm's huge, thrashing heads. "The tractor beam."
"WHAT?!" The room practically exploded with the shout, Jesse flinching slightly but still having the 'volume' muted due to her covering her ears.
"Are you insane?!" Dan yelled at Jesse. Stampy was spluttering incoherently, while Stacy and Lizzie were just gaping at Jesse in shock and Sparklez was looking from her to the screen, from her to the screen, over and over again. Em was gaping soundlessly at Jesse, pointing at the screen and then at Jesse, trying to make sense of the situation. Nell had fallen off the couch at the shout, the gladiators were all talking simultaneously and trying to have each of their voices heard over the others', Hadrian and Mevia were shouting to be heard, Otto was just staring at Jesse in surprise, and Isa, Reginald, and Milo were all staring at Jesse in perfect silence, eyes wide.
Harper and Ivor had both turned in perfect unison to stare at the black-haired girl, her hands clamped over her ears securely. Magnus was spluttering, Ellegaard and Soren were listing all of the reasons to not do this, and Gabriel was just shaking his head and sitting back into the seat, looking alarmed. Petra was yelling something incoherently at Jesse, Jace also covering his ears, Lukas and Olivia were simply shaking their heads, and Axel was staring at Jesse in shock. Maya and Gill were both trying to talk over the other, trying to have Jesse hear them, and Aiden and Cassie were exchanging startled looks. Even the animals were getting into the act, Winslow hissing loudly, Benedict clucking loudly and flapping wildly, sending feathers flying everywhere, while Reuben was squealing angrily at Jesse.
To be honest, both Jesse and Jace were fairly certain that Reuben was giving them the pig equivalent of a lecture.
Onscreen, Reuben let out an alarmed squeal upon hearing this, making the audience all quiet down and turn back to the screen to make sure they didn't miss anything. Jesse, sensing all of the yelling was over (for now, at least), carefully unplugged her ears. Onscreen-Jesse carefully set the pig down, giving his ears one last quick fondle, before flailing her arms at the Witherstorm's heads. "Hey, you!" she yelled to the Witherstorm, before giving Reuben one last, comforting look. "Just watch my back, okay Reuben? If anything goes wrong, I'll be counting on you."
"Oh yeah!" Aiden snapped, although it seemed to be more out of nerves than anything else, "put the fate of the world in the hands of a pig!"
Jesse, Jace, Lukas, and Petra all swivelled to give Aiden the exact same death glare.
Jesse whipped back to the Witherstorm, flailing her arms again. "Bet you can't catch me!"
"She's actually gonna do it-? She's actually going to do it!" Lukas exclaimed, shaking his head and staring at the screen.
Petra reached over Jace and started hitting Jesse on the back of the head, the black-haired girl flinching away and throwing up her arms protectively. "How- can- you- be- so- stupid?!" she yelled at the black-haired girl, each word coinciding with a hit.
The tractor beam landed right on Jesse, the spider hybrid letting out a surprised yell as she flew into the air, hand tightening on the sword, soaring straight at one of the Witherstorm's heads' mouths. The moment she was in reach, she slashed downwards as hard as she could, scoring a direct hit on the eye and cutting off the tractor beam. Nearly falling, she managed to catch hold of the edge and crawl onto the ledge hastily, the head beginning to shake from side to side weakly, as if trying to shake her off, the tentacles on the ceiling flailing wildly.
She swallowed, making an audible gulping sound as she backed up one step. Two steps. Three steps-!
She started running, staring straight ahead, as if she didn't dare look down, before kicking off of the edge and sailing into thin air. A tentacle thrashed into reach, and Jesse seized ahold of it. The moment she did, the tentacle started to thrash even more furiously, nearly shaking her off as she tightened her grip, lower arms strangling the sword's hilt so much that some members of the audience were faintly worried that it would break.
"She's alive!" Axel yelled, as if this was not obvious.
The tentacle momentarily stopped thrashing, and Jesse's grip loosened slightly as she stared at the still-too-far-away Command Block, still being thrashed around- and then, suddenly, another black tentacle that had been shooting at Jesse in her moment of direction slammed into her side as it seized ahold of her, the spider hybrid letting out a shout of alarm and pain as the force knocked the sword from her hand, sending it flying.
Cassie said a twenty-word-long string of words that no one bothered to reprimand her for.
The sword bounced once, twice, before clattering to a stop, half of it over the hole in the Witherstorm. Jesse gasped, wincing as the tentacle tightened around her. Several members of the audience got the impression that if she hadn't been wearing the armor Ivor had given her, the tentacle would already have crushed her to a pulp.
"If I- mmph," and Jesse's face turned a bit pale as the tentacle gave another squeeze, "if I try to shoot a web at it-" Another grunt as the tentacle squeezed even more tightly. "And I hit it the wrong way-" Now Jesse was gasping for breath, the tentacle still ensnared tightly around her. "Or miss, then-" Her next grunt rose into a squeak. "- I think I'll knock it through the hole!" Her last word turned into a squeak, face beginning to turn a faint shade of purple from being squeezed without a single pause.
Lukas's arm tightened around Jesse protectively.
Jesse gasped, before looking down at the tentacle and then shaking her head before throwing her head forward. "C'mon, c'mon, please-" Another squeak. "Work!" Her teeth sharpened into canines, and she sank her teeth into the Witherstorm's tentacle.
"That's..." Hadrian paused, arching his eyebrow, an odd look coming over his face.
Mevia finished, looking rather uncomfortable herself. "Disgusting."
Disgusting it might've been, but it definitely did the trick, the Witherstorm automatically releasing the spider hybrid and loosening its grip. Jesse took a deep breath of air and yelled down to Reuben as she started using her lower arms to try to keep the Witherstorm from crushing her again. "Reuben, I need your help!" she yelled down to the little pink pig, "remember how we used to play fetch?!"
Real-Reuben's ears perked up at the sound of the word.
Onscreen, Reuben perked up as well, and he ran over to the hole, carefully taking hold of the super-sword in his mouth, and then beginning to run for the walls, sword in his mouth. "That's it! I believe in you!" Jesse shouted to him.
"Go Reuben!" Ivor said, a faint smile coming over his face. This made several members of the audience look round at him, but his eyes were fixated on the screen resolutely.
Most of the audience started clapping and cheering, shouting encouragement to the little pig. Most of them were never going to admit it, but they'd gotten rather attached to the little pink pig. He was just that cute.
The tentacle swung Jesse towards the Witherstorm head, getting a bit too close for comfort. Jesse sucked in a deep breath in a gasp as she kept an eye on the little pig as he managed to get up onto a higher tentacle, galloping towards Jesse below him, eyes narrowed in determination. "Hey, jump! I'll catch you!" she shouted to the pig.
The pig did so without any hesitation, jumping from the tentacle. Jesse's eyes narrowed, and she lashed out with one arm and barely managed to catch Reuben by the hoof, both of them dangling over the abyss.
Jace and Jesse both simultaneously let out relieved sighs, having not even realized they were holding their breaths.
Lots of cheering erupted from around the room, Jesse and Jace both reaching out to fondle the pig's ears as Gabriel, Ellegaard, and a few others got up to pat the pig, the people on the floor all doing so as well.
Jesse carefully reached out and took the sword out of his mouth with her free hand. "Okay, it's time to put an end to this thing, once and for-" She was cut off as the Witherstorm head she'd attacked lurched up with its last bit of life, massive teeth clamping down on Reuben's back leg, causing the pig to squeal in alarm.
"No!" Jace yelled, bolting upright, eyes widening. Jesse's eyes widened as well, abject fear coming into her expression. The only thought going through both of their heads was:
That thing's got our Reuben!
"Reuben!" Jesse screamed, whipping around to Reuben, panic filling her expression.
The Witherstorm head engaged in a deadly game of tug-of-war, Jesse keeping an iron grip on Reuben's hoof and the Witherstorm hanging on just as tightly. It was almost as though the monster was determined to get its revenge on the girl who was about to destroy it.
"No, no, no, Reuben, Reuben, hang-hang on, hold on, okay," Jesse alternatively pleaded and ranted, babbling a million things incoherently as she desperately tried to keep ahold of the pig, when suddenly the head she'd just slashed dropped, its teeth slipping from Reuben's leg numbly. However, the downward force of its head dropping was enough to knock the pig out of Jesse's hands.
Time seemed to freeze, the pig seeming to float in midair for a second, before starting to fall.
The screen went perfectly silent as the pig fell out of sight, Jesse's mouth hanging open as she drew an arm back and fired a web.
Except, at the last second, the tentacle thrashed sideways, and the web flew askew. It was like Gabriel all over again.
An explosion of sound filled the room, shouts of "No!" and "Not Reuben!" filling the air, even Aiden, Hadrian, and Mevia sitting there with their eyes wide and mouths hanging open in shock, but neither Jesse nor Jace were a part of the noise. Jesse's arms were in a vice around the pink pig, eyes wide in horror and panic and... something else, something else nobody could identify. Jace was staring at the screen, eyes not even wide, his shock so beyond comprehension that he was just literally sitting there, hand resting in Jesse's lap next to Reuben's snout. Reuben nudged him and whined a bit in concern, staring at his owner, before nuzzling Jesse, trying to get her attention.
The two of them just sat there for a moment, before they both, nearly silently, whispered, as if their vocal cords were being cut off somehow:
"Reuben?"
"REUBEN!" Jesse was screaming when the sound on the screen came back on. "REUBEN!"
There was no answer.
Jesse stared hollowly for a moment, before her eyes began to slowly turn blood red, glittering like rubies. Her expression was contorting into one of pure rage and fury and pain, her fangs sharpening even more as she gritted her teeth, before she whipped around as the tentacle swung towards the Command Block in confusion, letting out an enraged, almost insane scream that no one had expected that the girl was able to make, and drew her arm back and stabbed out with the sword with a strength that could only be described as superhuman.
The sword's blade shattered from the force as it cleaved into the Command Block, sending shards of metal and white-hot sparks spitting everywhere, Jesse's red eyes glowing like coals in the light.
She didn't seem to care one atom.
Sparks sputtered out of the Command Block, said block shaking for a few moments, before exploding in a shower of white sparks. The other Witherstorm head also dropped limp, the tractor beam vanishing, everything beginning to flicker into pure darkness. The tentacle loosened and dropped Jesse, and Jesse plummeted towards the ground, disappearing into the inky blackness that the inside of the Witherstorm was becoming, the screen fading to black.
Flashes of a younger Jesse playing with Reuben appeared, before it came onto show the younger Jesse practically crying her eyes out as she hugged Reuben in a death hug, seeming to be sitting at the bottom of some sort of deep hole. "I'm sorry!" she nearly sobbed, little Reuben nudging her as if to say he was okay, and her older voice speaking in almost perfect unison with the little her, "I'm never fast enough to save you, I didn't mean to let you go, I didn't mean for you to fall, just please..."
The screen started fading to black again.
"Please be okay. Please... I don't want you to be hurt."
The screen faded completely to black.
"You're mine, okay? You're my little pig.
"My little Reuben."
Everything went silent.
The room was perfectly silent, for once.
It was almost ridiculous to think that after watching this girl and her pig beat Magnus at his own game, fend off monsters, walk among the Endermen, risk her life to blow up this Witherstorm when her heroes wouldn't, reunite the Order of the Stone, become friends with an old rival, risk her life to save her friends, find out that she was a hybrid... it was ridiculous to think, that after all that, both of them could be gone.
Just like that.
A/N: Uh, wow. This got way more intense than I expected it to get. Nearly started crying during the writing of this chapter.
RQTC: You guys ready for the surprise I've got prepared for you next chapter? Or, well, maybe not so much of a surprise... but ready for what I've got in store?
S4SH4L4SH4theGaMeR101: (laughs) / Mmm, cool. / (nods significantly)
Emily The Avenger: (laughs) Thank you!
RapidSammi: (laughs) Yeah, that makes me laugh too. Kind of a balancing out for these next two... or three... or... possibly four chapters. Depending on how long the chapters start getting.
AquaK13: (laughs) / Indeed xD / (deep breath) My pulse is literally speeding up from how many emotions I'm feeling about this next part.
Beli0304: Cool :3 / Well, most of the other times, I mean xD
RebekahTPE: Yeah, me too xD / Oh, god, yeah. / (grins) Don't spoil the other peoplez, Bekah. / Nope. xD
sailor . mikuchan: (laughs) / Yeah, she is :3
LunarStarsMoon: Yesh x3 / My heart rate is picking up. Whew. :3
LittleAngelbun: No spoilers :3 / YAAAAAY!
Darkbeast Dend: Indeed x3
NinaNaranja: Nonexistent words are the best words xD / I'm both excited, nervous, and experiencing butterflies.
J.M.M: Go to the comments and just keep going 'Next' until you see the comment...?
Rabbits rule: (grins)
x.X. A.L. X.x
