"HemmING? HEMMING?!"

"M-Markusss..? Ah... A-ah..."

"Hem! Hem, what happened?!"

"Hemming! Hemming, answer me! Come on, Hemming-!"

Moaning, Hemming tentatively cracks open an eyelid and gropes around for the desk edge. He pulls himself up from his fetal position of terror in his chair to a sitting position of trembling fright. Hemming blinks, rubs his swollen eyes, sniffs, and sighs: his headset's cord had been unplugged from the computer.

A sharp crackling greets Hemming's timpanum as the thin plug connects with and remarries the hole in the box computer. Markus's shrieks of horror, followed closely by sobs, are now audible loudly through the headphones. Hemming blinks again, rolls his eyes, and taps the little mic with a pale finger.

"Markus."

Silence. Then a shrill cry: "HEMMING?!"

"Hey, Markus." the younger brother says quietly, head lowered in grievous shame. Markus's despondent tears and blubbering, rarely-heard sobs finally become harsh reality in Hemming's screen-fatigued brain. He had thought his brother died.

Hemming clicks "respawn". The little time he had spent in his embryonic position was time long enough to grant the hacker escape. He watches as his screen turns white, then light blue; the waiting for the spawn-glitch had begun.

Fortunately, however, no glitch occurred and Herobrine found himself respawned with his maimed tree.

"I'm um... Respawned, Markus." Hemming says awkwardly.

Markus's webcam side crackles with newfound energy that ends up dashing away any tears he might have shed just mere minutes earlier. "Good! Good good good, Hemming! Now go down the tunnel and follow the torches we placed! I'm waiting at the bottom of the ravine with your items!" he laughs.

Hemming's eyes widen. Then his mouth curls into a smile, a small, relieved smile. "O-okay Markus, I'm coming!"

Herobrine sprints into the tunnel entrance, then fades to a walk when the ravine comes into view, square feet softly pattering and shuffing down the smooth stone walkway cutting straight though the mountain.

Hemming's eyes dart from the window - still crackling with electrical energy - to his screen and Minecraft. He finally, slowly, lets off pressure on the top arrow key, resulting in avatar Herobrine to stop a few wary blocks from the ravine's sharp lip. Pursing his lips tightly, he scans the area around the jagged gorge, looking for a safe place to fall without receiving the red screen of death.

"Where do I come down, Markus?" Hemming asks plaintively. Markus makes a pondering, concentrating noise over the webcam audio and furrows his eyebrows. "I mean, should I just-..." A sudden flick stops Hemming cold. A flick, a tiny flick, flittering in the corner of his vision. Heart pounding, breathing becoming quick and hyperventilating, Hemming turns toward the flutter.

"Should you what?"

Oh... Hemming smiles a tiny, weak, relieved smile as a moth flies waywardly to another spot on his worn wall. He laughs a scoff and turns back to his computer. "Should I just jump down?" His heart stops pounding, his breathing slows to an even, calm pattern, and yet his heart won't stop fluttering like the moth on his wall. A bad feeling slowly creeps into Hemming's circulation, making him cold, making him shiver and grab his arms, rubbing them vigorously before glueing his right hand back onto the mouse and his left onto the arrow keys. Yet as much as Hemming was drowning in a stifling, frightening feeling... He couldn't pinpoint it. He couldn't figure it out, nothing specific was screaming bad feeling. It was as if it was almost... Hiding from Hemming.

"No, don't jump! I'll make you stairs."

Hemming wonders if the bad feeling he was experiencing was connected with jumping down the ravine and smashing, breaking, crunching, "UH!"-ing on the cold, hard smooth stone below. But as Notch built crude stairs cobblestone block by cobblestone block up, up to Herobrine, as Herobrine climbed down said stairs, being careful not to fall, the bad feeling remained. In fact, it grew stronger, yet the mysteriousity behind the sensation remained unknown.

Shaking his head hard, Hemming has Herobrine jump down the final block and onto safe ground below. Notch walks deeper into the ravine, following its length to the left of Hemming's avatar, prompting the Salt Hero to follow. He does.

"If there's nothing at the end of this, we'll turn back and head down the right side. Heheh, get it, Hem? The right side?"

Hemming snickers. "Pun."

"That was punny."

"Punny, hehe."

Nerves still flood through him, fueling an insane tumble of laughter spilling from both Hemming and Markus's mouths like a waterfall, enough so tears form. We must both be nervous to laugh like this! It's been years since I've laughed. I've forgotten just how pleasing and relieving of stress it is, Hemming thinks, still sniggering. I should do it more often.

"Hehehe... Come on, Hem, let's get goin'." Markus half-smothers a laugh over the webcam. Hemming smiles widely and, still suppressing a laugh, moves a silent Herobrine forward. Herobrine could almost be brooding for all Hemming knows. He'd almost chastise his avatar if he could. Herobrine was far too dark for just a simple game.