The little 'pop' sound of another person popping into the room sounded, and Jesse turned around to see–

Her eyes widened.

Gabriel the Warrior was staggering a little, looking taken aback by the sudden teleportation or... whatever that was. He blinked in surprise, eyes scanning the room as one hand (Jesse vaguely noticed that he was wearing what seemed to be a cyan-colored wristband, in contrast to her gold)– before his shoulders tensed and his eyes widened. "Ivor?"

The couch creaked as Ivor jerked to his feet, eyes narrowing angrily at the man. "Gabriel?!" he almost growled, making Jesse shrink back away from him in surprise. His expression was suddenly extremely frightening compared to what it had been before. If he'd been intimidating before, he'd suddenly graduated to extremely scary. "What are you doing here?!"

The warrior stammered a moment, looking taken aback, before he strode forward, lit by the glowstone embedded in the floor, eyes narrowing slightly as he walked towards Ivor, "I– I could ask you the same question–!"

Pop.

A woman wearing a golden robe over a black dress appeared just behind Gabriel, looking slightly alarmed as she steadied herself. Jesse's eyes automatically gravitated to the wristband, which was a nice red in comparison to her gold-and-red outfit. Her black hair and green eyes bore an almost striking resemblance to Jesse's– in fact, the only reason this woman didn't look remarkably like Jesse was the long bridge of her nose and the green eyeshadow she wore. "Oh, my..."

Mevia blinked, standing up as well. "Isa?"

'Isa' blinked at Mevia, moving forward to get a better look at Mevia. When she was close enough to Mevia that even the dimness in the room left Mevia's appearance unmistakably, well, Mevia's, she came to a stop, blinking in bewilderment. "Mevia...?"

Pop.

Now there was a teenage girl with long red hair standing in the room, adjusting her glasses as she glanced around. Her clear green eyes glinted in the dim light in the room, and her dark sweatshirt, dark blue beanie, and shorts almost made her blend into the black walls. Actually, if her hair hadn't been such a vibrant red and her socks been such a bright blue and her wristband been such a deep shade of blue, Jesse would've had trouble spotting her.

Mevia and Isa, who'd both turned to see where the pop had come from, both blinked again. "Cassie?"

'Cassie' tensed, green eyes widening behind the lenses– before her expression turned almost cold, and she straightened up again. "Mevia." She nodded at the gold-robed woman. "Isa."

Both women winced a little bit at the greeting.

Jesse barely had time to wonder why the reaction had been like that when another pop sounded, and a woman with dark skin and brown robes that were a little like Ivor's appeared. Her hair was a shock of white, and her slightly darker hood had a set of black goggles with orange lenses. She appeared, stumbled, and bumped right into Cassie, who spun around and steadied the woman instinctively– and upon realizing who it was, released her again.

Jesse glanced at the wristband automatically– spotting a glint of gold on her wrist.

Ivor blinked at her.

"Harper?" Cassie, Isa, and Mevia asked, at almost exactly the same time.

Harper stared at them in surprise, her gray eyes widening. "What are you three doing here?"

"I'm... not entirely sure about that myself," Isa sighed with a wince, reaching up and rubbing her head. "I went to sleep and woke up... here." And she gestured with her arm in an almost regal fashion, making Jesse want to straighten up.

Harper moved out of the area, eyes roaming the area in slight bewilderment. "Well... that's–"

Pop pop pop.

In very rapid succession, a girl with shoulder-length, slightly choppy blonde hair with beads twisted into them and wearing a sort of green and gray jumpsuit appeared– the jumpsuit's legs were rolled up slightly, a beaded bracelet on her ankle– and she barely had time to straighten up when a short young man with darker skin, black hair that was slicked up, a large pair of glasses, and wearing a green suit jacket over a yellow vest with a white shirt and blue tie and dark pants appeared practically on top of her, knocking her forward. Before either of them could recover, a man with a completely bald head, a black-and-purple suit with a purple tie, and this weird gold... thing on top of one of his eyes appeared, again practically on top of them, and proceeded to knock the three of them to the floor.

Jesse winced and hopped to her feet, running over to the heap of people on the floor. "Ouch, that looked like it hurt– you alright?" she asked, reaching down to help them up.

The first to regain his feet was the man with the weird gold thing on his eyes, reaching up with a purple-wristband-clad hand to pull himself to his feet using Jesse's extended hand. "Thank you." When he'd straightened up, he fairly towered over her, as most people did. Jesse had to crane her neck back to make eye contact with him.

"No problem. My name's Jesse. Yours?" she asked him, a little perkily.

He was silent for a moment, considering her words. "You can call me the Warden," he said at last.

Jesse decided not to point out that that was a title and not a name. "Okay– nice to meet you, Warden," she told him politely, giving him a cheerful grin. He nodded in return and backed away to allow the other two to clamber to their feet.

The young man's eyes lit up upon seeing her. "Oh– hi boss– uh, Jesse– what's going on?" he asked, immediately straightening to his full height as if he was expecting her to scold him if he didn't.

"... huh?" Jesse blinked at him in confusion. "I'm... I'm sorry, I don't think we've met." Maybe he meant a different Jesse. Who happened to look like her...? "I'm... well, I'm Jesse. It's nice to meet you!" And she gave him a cheerful smile.

The young man's eager but expectant expression faded to one of confusion. "... huh...?"

"Just go with it." Ivor shot Gabriel a look that was so utterly venomous that Jesse automatically thought that the warrior was lucky that looks couldn't kill. "Something... extremely strange is going on here."

Gabriel crossed his own arms. "I'll say."

The young man stalled for a moment, eyes flickering from Jesse to Ivor back to Jesse, before he took a deep breath and gave her a shy smile, adjusting his glasses and straightening back up. "Well... hi, Jesse. My name's Radar."

Jesse nodded and returned the smile more cheerfully. "Nice to meetcha, Radar. What color's your wristband? We all seem to have different colors– well, I mean, Stella, Mevia, Ivor and I all currently have gold, Gabriel has cyan, the Warden has purple, Isa's got red, Harper's got gold, Cassie's got blue... and yeah." She gestured at each person in the room as she named them.

Radar lifted his hand to check. "Er... mine's also purple."

The Warden actually leaned forward to check the validity of the statement, and Jesse automatically did the same. Radar was telling the truth, his wristband– ignoring the black stripe through the center, all of them had that– was the same shade of purple's as the Warden.

"Huh... okay, that's interesting." Jesse gave a vague nod, before quickly sidestepping Radar to help the blonde girl, who was currently still sprawled on the floor on top of the area that people teleported into (Radar and the Warden quickly backed away to avoid any more sudden teleportations). "Are you okay, miss?"

"Uhh, got a bit banged up, but otherwise I'm totally radical, dude," the blonde grimaced a little as she clambered to her feet, shifting so she wasn't in the area of the teleportation... assuming that's actually what it was. "So, you're Jesse, huh?"

Jesse took a second to respond– she was still trying to decipher the previous statement. "Um... uh, yeah, that's me. Hi." She offered her hand, and the blonde gave her a toothy grin– wide enough for Jesse to notice the chipped canine tooth she had– and shook the offered hand, revealing that her wristband was the same shade of purple as Radar's and the Warden's.

"Gnarly, dude. I'm Nell. It's, like, totally awesome to meet you."

Jesse wasted another second trying to decipher that before deciding to give up and just focus on the parts that she could understand. "Nice to meet you, Nell. It's very nice to meet you too!" she said cheerfully, before pausing. "... I just repeated myself, didn't I?"

Nell gave a cordial chuckle and clapped Jesse on the back. "Nah, it's totally cool, dude, totally get whatcha mean."

Pop.

Materializing only inches from Jesse and Nell, a person with very... interesting attire appeared in the room. Jesse blinked as a person with a black-painted, tanned face caught her... him... themselves, almost pitching straight into Jesse. That wasn't the weirdest part of their attire, nor was their tattered deep blue-green robe, and it definitely wasn't the pastel-pink wristband on their right wrist.

No, it was the giant pig... skin that they were wearing. The way the glassy, dead eyes at the pig stared at Jesse made the poor black-haired girl want to hide behind Nell.

The person's head tilted back so that they made eye contact with Jesse, and Jesse felt her shoulders tense at the sight of a pair of bloodred irises meeting her own green ones. This person was...

Okay, not to be rude or anything, but this person was weird.

"Uh... hi," Jesse said, just to break the silence and giving the person (she really couldn't tell their gender. They looked female, but they honestly could've been a guy as well) a bright smile. "I'm Jesse."

The person with the pig head blinked at Jesse (no, the pig head didn't blink, thankfully. Just the actual person.) for a moment. Their expression was perfectly blank.

And then they threw their head back and laughed.

And laughed, and laughed, the laughter growing more hysterical and crazy-sounding with each passing second, shoulders shaking and teeth showing as they guffawed. Jesse vaguely noticed that the back molars were slightly rotted.

Nell's expression was still fairly calm, but now it was more guarded as she carefully edged backwards away from the strange person. Radar was backing up so much that he'd actually just backed into one of the chairs, and everyone in the room was just now staring at this weird person.

"The name's Porkchop! Nice ta meetcha, tiny! You're lookin' a little squishy." And Porkchop reached forward and poked Jesse, making the shorter girl shrink back a little in surprise. Porkchop's voice made their gender even less clear, a scratchy, slightly nasally voice issuing from the pig-skin-wearing person. "But that's okay, not much lava here!" And Porkchop started laughing again.

The Warden spoke, his own voice extremely calm. "Sorry, but, ah... are you a female, or a male, or...?"

Porkchop's head suddenly snapped around to face him, the laughter cutting off mid-cackle. The almost insane grin that had been on Porkchop's face had turned into a serious intensity, Porkchop's expression looking so deadly serious that it was actually scarier than the insane laughter. "Who said I had to be either?" Porkchop's voice was still scratchy and nasally, but it now held a menacing undertone.

The Warden just narrowed his eyes at Porkchop. "I never said it had to be either. I was just asking. You know, like normal people do."

Jesse decided it was time to intervene before someone got hit in the face. "Um, so! It's... uh, it's nice to meet you, Porkchop. I, um... your eyes are cool." And she gave Porkchop a nervous smile.

Porkchop's strange smile suddenly returned to their face, and they gave Jesse a huge grin. "Thanks, Squishy!" And they stepped forward, grabbed Jesse and rubbed their hand through her hair energetically.

Well, at least they didn't seem... like a very bad person. Just defensive about being non-binary.

Pop.

Another person appeared in the room, this time looking like a woman. The woman's feet slammed into the floor solidly, and instead of stumbling or falling, she just... landed. Neatly. A wavy, messy nest of dark purple hair hid her face for a moment, an also-purple wristband glinting on her wrist... and then she looked up.

Jesse almost gasped in surprise. It wasn't so much the almost unhealthy skin tone she had, or the sharp angles of her face, or the unnatural thinness to her face, than the woman's intensely staring eyes. They were narrow and sharp, like the rest of her face, and were so dark that Jesse could see herself getting lost in them.

"Who are you people? How did I get here?" The woman's voice was sharp, too. It was almost surprising that she didn't have sharp teeth.

Jesse felt rather than saw everyone's eyes gravitate to her. Even Porkchop. Even Ivor. It was as if everyone was waiting for her to explain the situation. Or at least introduce herself to this kind-of-scary-but-pretty lady.

She managed a pleasant smile. "Uh, hello. I'm Jesse. This is Porkchop–"

Porkchop made a funny little motion that might just have been a salute. Jesse spent about a millisecond wondering if she should ask about it before deciding against it and moving on.

"That's Nell, Radar, the Warden–"

"Oh, trust me," and now the Warden had an angry and yet... almost scared expression on his face as he regarded the purple-haired woman. "We definitely know each other."

If the lady had looked kind of scary before, she had graduated to absolutely terrifying. If Porkchop had looked insane earlier, Xara now looked completely unhinged. And furious. That too. She stepped towards the Warden, gaze practically smoldering with hatred.

Jesse decided to hurry on with it before one of them attacked each other. "Um, so, that's Harper, Cassie, Mevia, Isa, Stella, Ivor, and Gabriel," she rattled off in a single, nervous breath. "We're... not sure how we got here. From what I can tell, so far we all fell asleep in our homes and just... woke up in those little rooms."

Nobody contradicted her, so apparently that was true.

"But, it's... nice to meet you. What's your name?"

The kind-of-scary woman stared at Jesse with a strange look on her face– something of a mix of contempt, sadness, nostalgia (Jesse didn't quite understand why), and confusion. Finally, she gave a gusty sigh. "Xara." She didn't clarify or say anything more– just 'Xara'. From that, Jesse could assume that was her name.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Xara! I... already said that, didn't I."

Pop.

Any response that Xara or any other occupant in the room might've had was cut off by another pop. A young man appeared in the room, staggering as he almost landed flat on his face. He was wearing a gray t-shirt with a v-neck, jeans, and sneakers that matched perfectly with his hair– it was just as red as Cassie Rose's. He had a little goatee, and his face seemed about as sharp and angular as Xara's. (Actually, they were a little softer on him– it was the reason he looked more like a young man than Xara did. He also looked less scary than Xara.)

"Oh, bloody heck, that was actually–" He cut himself off the second he looked up, dark eyes widening in surprise at the occupants in the room.

No, that wasn't quite right... he seemed to be staring right at Xara.

Jesse stole a glance at Xara. To her surprise, Xara was staring back at Romeo.

Her expression was completely blank, although Jesse could see a million emotions racing through her eyes. Hatred, shock, anger, sadness, confusion, another one that might've just been giddiness–

"X-X-X-Xara–?!" the young man blurted, looking completely confused, and more than a little nervous.

Actually, he may have looked vaguely terrified.

"RAAAGH!"

With an enraged scream that made Jesse flinch in surprise, Xara threw herself at him. He made a very odd yelping sound as he tried to back away, only to run straight into the wall–

Xara's fist slammed solidly into his shoulder, making him flinch, although it seemed more like it was out of surprise than actual pain. She hit him again, and again, and again, fists pummeling away at his torso.

Jesse thought about interfering, but it didn't look like she was actually attempting to hurt him, and the young man seemed more surprised than injured, so she decided to wait and see.

Finally, with a strangled sort of cry, Xara threw her arms around the young man's neck– it didn't look that hard, considering she was about an inch taller than he was– and proceeded to slam him into the wall tightly, the two of them sliding down the wall with Xara practically squeezing the life out of him, his arms sort of poised around her with his expression still filled with utter shock.

Slowly, he wrapped his arms around her as well, the gold wristband on his wrist glinting slightly in the light as he did so. His expression was still filled with shock, as if he'd been expecting her to kill him.

Xara muttered something that was muffled from her strangle-hug-move that she was currently pulling– it sounded a bit like "you complete freaking idiot." (The 'freaking' may have been something ruder, but Jesse had trained herself to censor out rude language.)

The young man finally tilted his head back, blinking at them all. A glint of recognition showed in his eyes as they roved over the Warden, and, to Jesse's surprise, Jesse. (Seriously, what was with these people knowing her when she didn't know them?)

Jesse finally gave him a slightly confused little smile and a wave. "Hi, I'm Jesse. What's your name?"

Ivor muttered something indistinct behind her. She resisted the urge to check over her shoulder.

The young man blinked twice at her, still looking slightly shell-shocked.

"I'm Romeo."


A/N: Next chapter, some things are actually explained, including the noticeably missing animals. (Benedict, Winslow, Reuben, Lluna...) Get ready!

I am so sorry about the late chapter, I just procrastinated on this thing for an entire week. I promise I won't do that again for a while.

And no, just to clarify, there is no Eggwars, Skywars, or any other Minecraft mini-game. I've only ever played Hide and Seek, and then it was only one round. This is a... different kind of game tournament.

ItzJaiden: Not a mini-game server, but... I guess? xD

LunarTheMooncake: Indeed xD / Indeed! That is made abundantly clear in the next chapter, actually. No mystery, just fun and giggles.

TheAmberShadow: 'Will the guest kindly follow the orange line to the check in zone. Or else they get the lava.' That's the actual quote x3 / Haha, well, he doesn't know that. He changes his tune soon, though, don't worry. xD / No, you'll see. / Yep. xD / You'll see~

Alice Forshadow: It's not really a battle... more like a tournament. xD

AquaK13: (pats) / (laughs) / Yep, Stella is from her normal time and so is Radar. Jesse is from the beginning. / Waffles will probably not show up, but the next part will be explained in the next chapter. xD / No. xD

homeworkoverload: Ugh, Romeo and Juliet– dumbest teenagers ever. xD / Cool :3

Guest: Glad to hear you're interested! I think you're interested, at least xD

CamronXTheXGamer: That's what I am, my friend... the Queen of Cliffhangers. xD

Steve: I don't even know what those are so...

J.M.M.: ... you haven't played Season 2 yet, have you?

Toni42: Yes, I am actually quite excited. xD

ThePhoenixQueen: Yes, yes she did! (I had to, otherwise Radar would be, like, ten xD) / (grins) / Nope. You'll see. Next chapter is a huuuuuge explanation chapter.

Rabbits rule: Not exactly? / (laughs) I did say it's NOT the Hunger Games.

Welp, that's all for now! See ya, so long, and g'byeeee!

x.X. A.L. X.x