"What do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?!" Shara yelled as the cart continued to tear off at its usual terrifying velocity.
"Relax, even if can't fix the brakes there are other ways of slowing down." said Vanessa calmly.
"(cough)-crashing-(cough)" mocked Stephanie.
"Shut up. But, dear sister, you may have a point. We can decelerate through a series of impacts, but they can't be hard enough to wreck another part of the cart, or we'll lose control."
"Wait, what about a ramp? That should stop us!" Paula said to Vanessa.
"There's a huge ramp in the Ender Kingdom's main park, it's a sculpture but it should work just the same." said Andr.
"In that case, TO THE ENDER KINGDOM!" Vanessa yelled, and sped up the cart.
"Wait, I didn't say we should go faster!"
"Yeah, well, the bet's still on and Sera ain't getting my crown!"
"How's the lava engine holding up, guys?" Sera asked her friends, shouting over the roar of the drill and the bubbling hum of the thermal generators, fuelled by the molten magma her cart had collected. It was better than commercial fuel, and unlimited.
"Pretty good, though we may want to slow down just in case they overheat, and since we're dealing with fresh, straight out of the planets mantle magma, that's a real possibility." Rat said, studying gauges and thermometers.
"We're not slowing down for anything. It may overheat, but it should get us where we need to go nice and fast." Sera replied.
Just then, a radio came to life. Rat tuned it, and Andrs panicked voice called out.
"Help! We lost our carts brakes and Vanessa is taking this race more seriously than all our lives!" Andr told Rat of their plan with the ramp in the city's park."We're almost at Helix City, the capital of the Ender Kingdom, we can see Vanessa's cart up ahead. I personally trust you, if you were trying to trick us it would be if you were behind us. I'll see what I can do. There's some train track junctions ahead, you're running on tracks so maybe we can direct you into the centre of the city, where the ramp should be." Rat replied.
"Roger that."
They waited a few minutes until they were close enough, then Rat grabbed a large piece of metal from the floor of Sera's cart and threw it at the lever near the switch tracks. It hit dead on, and Vanessa's and Sera's carts were riding side by side directly into the heart of Helix City. They drove off the tracks, through the park, and hit the ramp sculpture on an angle that caused the wheels to bend out of shape, further slowing them down. The two carts ran all the way up like a half pipe, and then skidded back down, both badly damaged. Everyone was safe, but the leaking tank of lava on Sera's cart set fire to some of the grass, which spread until it was only just contained a few minutes later. Steve and the others decided they should get out of here before the cops came, so Andr took them to her apartment. "Well, here it is, I know it's not very big but it was meant for just me, not twenty."
An irritated sounding "Meow." came from nearby. A slinky, ginger cat jumped up on Andr's table, which we had all gathered around. "Okay, okay, the two of us." Andr smiled and introduced the cat. "This is Miss Prettywhiskers, I leave her here when I'm gone for long periods of time, she likes it here and apparently she knows how open cans of cat food." Everyone smiled at the cat, everybody except Cupa. Steve looked over and saw she was digging her fingernails so deep into the table from stress, she was close to breaking off a piece of it. He asked whether she was okay. "I'm…fine. Absolutely fine. No problems here. Everything's peachy." Her voice was panicked and small. "Excuse me everyone, I have to get the hell out of here before that thing kills me!" She got up, and quickly walked out. Everyone else followed.
"Oh, that's right, I forgot. You and Miss Prettywhiskers never really got along. It's because of your felephobia, right?"
"What's felephobia?" Yaebi asked.
"A spontaneous and crippling fear of cats."
"Shut up! You said you weren't going to tell anyone ever!" Cupa shouted angrily. Steve gulped, he didn't like seeing Cupa like this. Yaebi walked up to her, and tried to comfort her.
"You know, I have an irrational fear too. I'm scared of bricks."
Cupa looked up, a slight smile on her face. "Bricks?"
"Yeah, it's…how my father died. He got…crushed by a ton of falling brick blocks. Since then, I don't want to go anywhere near them, partly because I'm scared I'll meet the same fate, partly because I don't want to think about him. Item bricks, brick blocks, all the kinds of stone brick, they all make me really uneasy."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Cupa spoke to him.
"So do I." piped up Stephanie. "I'm scared of outer space."
"Now that I can believe. No wonder you didn't just pack up and leave the planet instead of building that mesa base, space is so cold, and dark, and there's no air, so you can't breathe…or scream…and then there's the pressure, in seconds you'll explode…" Cupa cheered herself up by messing with her.
"Okay! Shut up! Please!" Stephanie yelled at her.
"Everybody! Get down!" Steve called to everyone quickly. They all hid, but didn't see the reason why. Until she walked by. Cindy had been quiet for the last while, but she was the first to recognise the girl walking down the street. There was no mistaking the dark grey hair and clothes, those soulless dark eyes, that gloomy yet fairly attractive personality.
"Willow?" Steve whispered. "How? What's she doing here? Do you guys see Valerie anywhere? This is bad."
"No sign of Valerie, I think she's just…by herself. Doing what, we have no idea.
Looks like they weren't going to the Creeper Kingdom after all." Stephanie told them.
Willow peered over to some TVs in a shop window, on which the news was playing. She froze when the incident in the park came on.
"They're here? How did they get here so fast? Notch, their cart building skills are impressive." she said to herself, before running to the nearby library. Rat started after her.
"What are you doing? We can't fight her here!"
"That's why I'm not fighting her. She knows something about Nova, and I intend to find out exactly what!"
"Oh, dear Notch, he's going to get himself killed… In the meantime, we need to get into the Archives, to find out weaknesses about Herobrine and his girls so that we may have a chance against them…