Hello, this is Pastrinator64 with another chapter for the fanfic that is Hourglass!

I came upon the realization last weekend that not everyone in the story has been getting enough attention for their stories. Some of you may have forgotten things, even! THIS chapter here is meant to be a remedy to that! So, if the title didn't already give it away, then...ah, whatever. Just go on and read for yourself! XD BUT FIRST! Reviews!

Replies to Reviews...

Marshman101: My YouTube channel is called Pasty's Bakery. Just search it using the Channel filter on the YouTube search bar! It might ask you if you wanted search results for "Patsy's Bakery" instead, but if it does that just click on "Show results for Pasty's Bakery." Let me know how it works! :D

Badgerman: Eh, it was probably just me. I've written so many fight scenes before now, you have no IDEA. Even before I was on FanFiction, I got in a lot of practice with writing out combat! It's not an easy thing to pull off sometimes when you really want your audience to picture exactly what you personally envision. And yeah, I also like adding a bit of history to Minecraftia besides "It's the place where everybody's Minecraft avatars live." XD

I also fixed the typo. Thanks for pointing it out!

ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO LIKE DEATH BATTLE, CARTOON FIGHT CLUB, OR SPRITE FIGHTS IN GENERAL! Got your attention? Good. Because now my channel is officially up and running with its first video! It's just a test animation from a couple months ago when I was learning how to use Flash Animate CC, but I'd really, REALLY appreciate it if you guys went there and checked it out! Since FanFiction blocks links, all you need to do to find me is search Pasty's Bakery with the Channel filter on. It'll probably show you results for "Patsy's Bakery," so click on the message that says, "Search instead for Pasty's Bakery." So, yup! If you see a sloth holding a donut, you've found me! XD

I mean, some of you guys apparently found me already! I only had two subs when I started, which was my girlfriend and Badgerman, but ever since I put out the video I got eight more! So thanks to you guys for that! ;D

Now, let the story commence!

Chapter 32: The Arcs

Somehow, both Jeff and JB had managed to sprint through the entirety of the surrounding forest without being stopped by any of the Mistress's zombie swordsmen or archers. Perhaps they were all still shambling around by the fallen tower. The moment Jeff caught sight of the small pond just past the border of trees, his legs slowed to a near halt and he fell to his knees by the waterside. He folded his blocky fingers underneath the surface and lifted a small bit of water to his lips, restoring his thirst bar a bit. He continued to do this for another minute, regening the blue symbols one by one until he was quenched.

"Jeff," said JB, grabbing the Ironblock's attention. "I've got a spare bottle in my hotbar if you want to take some on the go."

Jeff held out an open hand and caught the bottle as it was thrown to him, scooping up some of the relatively clean pond water and sealing it tight. After setting it in his own hotbar, he turned slightly and fell backwards onto the sand from pure exhaustion.

"Ugh…" he groaned, letting his arms fall feebly to either side. "Despite how much I'm starving at the moment, there's no way I'll ever go back there for my Blockpack. And I'm sorry, but yours fell off when we jumped off the building.

JB's stomach gave a massive jolt, making him feel momentarily nauseous.

"We JUMPED off the tower?!" he cried, suddenly imagining the feeling of falling a hundred blocks to the hard, unforgiving earth. "How did we not get killed, exactly?"

Jeff coughed involuntarily for a few seconds, unable to answer his question in the moment due to his lack of breath. When he'd recovered, he replied,

"I waited until the tower was, um…hmm, I think it was only twenty-ish blocks from hitting the ground when we jumped. You were pretty out of it at the moment, as in not even awake, so I had to give you a piggy-back ride the whole time."

Immediately, JB felt a hot wave of shame and embarrassment wash over him. He could only imagine how useless he was when this was happening. To him, not even a second passed by in between him falling unconscious and waking up in the forest.

"Sorry about that, I just…" he started; he hesitated for a moment too long, allowing Jeff to lift a hand and stop him from going on.

"I saw her too, bud." he said, quiet enough that it was a little unnerving.

JB tried to keep his mind off of Morgan as long as he possibly could, but he still got individual flashes of her horrified face and puffy eyes. He was absolutely sure that her pleads to die would haunt him for the remainder of his life in Minecraftia. Or wherever he ended up if the Glitch took over and sucked up everything. He'd only just begun to think of what the Glitch's perfect lack of worlds would look like when he heard a loud rustling behind him. Both he and Jeff whirled around where they stood and sat, respectively, so they could see who'd been listening in on them. To their relief, neither the Amalgamob nor the Mistress was leaning up against the closest oak. Instead, they were greeted with a pair of soft marmalade eyes and a great big smile.

"Hey, you two!"

Both JB and Jeff let out a reassured sigh once they realized it was just Amya. As Jeff was pretty much unable to move at the moment, JB took a couple slow steps towards Amya in disbelief.

"How did you get off of the tower? I watched you get knocked out cold!" he said, then glanced down slightly to notice that she had both hands held over her chest. "And…what are you doing?"

Amya went a little bit red in the face and turned away from him, shielding her torso with her tiny arms.

"That Guardian shot me in the chest with a laser! A laser! Don't you think a laser could probably burn through a person's shirt pretty easy?"

As what she was implying dawned on him, he went red in the face for the second time in the last minute. Even more ashamed than he was earlier, he looked away from her hastily and cleared his throat, replying,

"Sorry! I wasn't staring, I swear!"

He heard Amya laugh after he said that, making him tempted to turn and face her again.

"Forget about it, dude! I'm not really offended!" she assured him, though he still wouldn't look at her. "Anyway, I woke up on top of that giant monster, which is all gross and fleshy, so I didn't take a whole lot of damage. It must've gotten knocked for a bit after the tower hit the ground, because it didn't try and eat me, thank Notch! So…now I'm here! And I need a new T-shirt!"

Just as she had finished her little explanation, yet another rustling noise sounded in the area, only this time from the jungle just past the pond. Before JB had even turned all the way around, he heard Jeff say,

"Hey, Evan! You made it out, too?"

The lovable green dork poked his head out from behind one of the coarse tree trunks, his expression rather wary.

"Oh, phew! It's just you guys!" he breathed, coming out the rest of the way and leaning up against the aforementioned tree. "Glad I was at full health, pretty much, because otherwise that fall would've killed me! …at least, if that, uh, monster didn't…I mean, what in the name of Notch was that thing?!"

All three of them stared at him curiously as he continued; they had all imagined that, as a member of the Mistress's army, he would know about the Amalgamob.

"I mean, I knew that Ms. Maria had made a girl who was a universal Mobwhisperer, but I never knew she would make something like that! It scared me to death!"

Amya chuckled lightly and jabbed a finger at him, adding,

"Hey, I get it! 'Cos you're a zombie! Hahahahahaheheheh! Heh…ah, I'm here all week!"

Norman sat cross-legged in his seat, his right foot bouncing in time with the rumble of the minecart. When he looked around him, he recognized the looks of equal boredom on everyone's faces. Well, at least everyone who wasn't asleep by now. They'd not gotten long into their daytrip to New Pork City before the effects of monotony had whittled them down. While Alexander, Darcy, and the girls Nikki and Jax were snoozing in their seats, the rest of them had resorted to nervously tapping and rubbing together their fingers, feet, teeth, and whatever else they could think of to occupy themselves. After having been informed that they would be driving for another ten and a half hours before reaching New Pork City, there was a blanket of disappointment that settled thickly on top of everyone. Despite how tired they all were, it was ideal to them that they could get this quest finished as quickly as possible.

And so he just sat there, planning on bouncing that foot 'til seven o'clock rolled around. As he surveyed the rest of the group members, however, he recognized that they were missing somebody. It was an unnerving feeling considering how impossible it would be to hide inside such an open space. He stood up and stared, for the spot where Kenneth had seated himself for the entirety of the trip was now empty. He glanced around the compartment; no Kenneth was to be found, just a whole lot of lethargic teenagers…excluding Bailey, obviously.

And probably Nikki and Jax, who looked to be in their early twenties.

"Bailey?" he said, getting the woman's nodding head to snap back to attention.

"Nghyes?!" she grunted, her eyelids heavy over dry whites.

But before he could even ask her a single question, Bailey blinked hard and looked around at everyone as well. Her eyes widened slightly and she jerked her head back to Norman.

"Did you see where Kenneth went?"

Norman sighed through his nose and crossed both arms, proceeding to shake his head in response.

"No, I don't. I was just about to ask you, but obviously you have no clue, either."

To their right, Ben kept his host's ears open to listen in on their little chat. He was starting to regret chasing down the hacker before getting to New Pork City; if he'd waited just a bit, this wouldn't all turn so suspicious-looking. But he could tell it was already chalking up to be just by the way the two leaders were conversing. And in the early stages of the conversation, too!

"Kenneth?" Norman said aloud, slowly turning his head to get a good look at every pixel of the minecart. "You're not, erm, using an invisibility code for whatever reason, are you? Kenneth? …KENNETH?"

Darcy, who was lying down with both eyes closed, gritted his teeth and grumbled,

"Would you keep your flappin' lips shut, mate? Crikey, I've got enough of a headache from that last fight we were in!"

Norman did shut his mouth after that, but not exactly because of the Australian's retort. It was because he recognized the ludicrous nature of the situation. Considering how big of a fan Kenneth expressed he was, he definitely wouldn't miss out on an opportunity to talk. He was gone from the cart.

"I think…he jumped." Norman muttered, gazing over at the open doorway and the blurred landscape they sped by.

Bailey jogged across the carpeted space to the entrance and held onto the side, poking her head out to stare down the seemingly endless number of rails that they were leaving behind. She didn't know why she expected for even a moment that she'd see Kenneth running after them, panting and yelling at them to slow the cart down for him. If he really had hopped off the ride, he'd be long, long gone by now. She looked back at Norman, who returned the look of shock.

"But…" he muttered, a solid wall of confusion hitting him head on. "…why would he just leave? It…it doesn't make any sense!"

He peeked over his shoulder at their totem pole of assorted cubes, which had just been put together the previous night. His single command block still sat in place, second from the bottom above Astrid's fake stone. All of a sudden, he recalled the face Kenneth made at the end of his explanation about the entire group's code. He looked utterly horrified out of nowhere, but Norman hadn't been paying all that much attention beforehand to have a guess what he was thinking about.

"Bailey?" he said, not actually looking at her when he spoke. "Do you have any idea why Kenneth got extremely paranoid last night?"

The whites of her eyes grew in size as she remembered. She seemed to remember Norman was taking a few seconds to polish Shatter's spade at the time, but she'd been looking directly at Kenneth.

Without answering him, she turned her own head and stared at Adrian.

The Mastermind stood before Vanessa with his checkered arms folded tight, a wide smirk spread across his cheeks. The two of them stood in a decent clearing in the center of the jungle, far, far away from the Temple of Day and Night. While the Mastermind stuck to his classic, Vanessa had fitted herself into a set of translucent, flowing red mage robes that she'd summoned herself.

"I have to warn you," half-giggled the jester, "you may or may not survive this training session. Rexum only barely managed to keep himself sane after I put him through it. Are you, Vanessa Bookshelf, positively sure that you want to go on with this? Once you give me a yes, there's no going back!"

Vanessa's lip quivered slightly as the small bit of fear instilled inside of her began to grow. Now that she was a user of magic as well, she could sense just how powerful the Mastermind truly was. She had never seen his true potential, but that was no excuse to take him lightly. Especially after that time she saw him dueling Rexum! Nevertheless, she reminded herself that there was no one else in the entire 64th Dimension who would be able to take her old master's place.

She slapped her hands together and declared,

"I'm doing it!"

The Mastermind closed his crescent moon eye and shrugged, replying,

"Well then! I guess we'd better get started!"

All of a sudden, the Mastermind hunched over where he stood and began to convulse, his entire body vibrating rapidly. Vanessa backed up with one foot and braced herself, startled by this sudden movement.

"What are you doing?!"

The creepy clown smiled brighter beneath all his makeup and then said,

"I'll have to get into shape first!"

Moments later, he bent backwards and threw out his arms with a powerfully loud cry. The upper half of his jester suit shredded around his body, revealing a new, insanely ripped body covered in bulging muscles. Checkered pecs, biceps, and twelve-pack abs…if that made any sense. When he'd finished his cry, he stood back up straight and flexed, his horse face looking extremely out of place all of a sudden.

"Here we go!"

Vanessa was already concerned at the sight of her master's frightening transformation, but it was only when she heard training music begin to play that she knew she was doomed.

"COMMANDBLOOOOOCK!"

Kenneth awoke with a sharp gasp, clutching his shirt. The moment he had come to, he felt a heavy wave of static blow through him, shaking his entire body. He sat up because of this and jerked his head around feverishly, trying to understand his surroundings. He was in an infinite blank space with only a floor of pitch black. Tiny red lamps were suspended here and there, casting very little light across the expanse. For the average Minecraftian, they'd be immediately confused and terrified by waking up in what looked like the dead of outer space. Kenneth only felt the latter.

"The Plasma Realm…" he murmured, eyes wide with alarm. "I can't believe I was right. It exists! Then that means…ohhhhh crap."

He stood up from the ground and pulled down his Creeper tee, feeling slightly unsettled by his missing armor.

"I have to get out of here." he told himself, taking a good look into the distance.

Even with his enhanced render distance, Kenneth saw no edge to this infinite prison of his. Since he couldn't just run out the door, he did the one thing he could do. He closed his eyes.

"/tp [player: Kenneth] to [player: Cobweb]…"

He kept his eyes shut and waited. Hopefully he could hack his way back to the outside world, but that was only hoping; his command seemed to be doing nothing, though he still didn't get the message about not being able to use the—

Kenneth took a sharp intake of breath as he felt himself dissolve into code and reassemble just as he always did when he teleported. His eyelids flew apart and he glanced around. He hadn't expected to go anywhere in the first place, but the fact that he'd spawned back inside another cell was just odd. Perhaps his ability was just half-broken in this dimension in between dimensions.

"RAVEN, JUST LISTEN TO ME!"

Kenneth jumped at the shout and whirled around, his mouth falling open as he laid eyes upon what was occurring not too far from him. Two other Minecraftians were hurling themselves at each other, throwing punches, kicks, and both of them pulsating with red light. He blinked hard and turned on his special vision, his stomach dropping into his shoes as he got a look at their code. Whoever these two were—he no longer knew due to the glitchy effects of the Plasma Realm—they had been absorbing the Glitch's plasma for far too long. He jumped a second time when the taller of the two threw out a hand that shifted into a black spike and nearly stabbed the other through the head.

"How did I get here?!" he thought, shaking his head at the sight and backing away; with his code vision on now, he could see the virus taking its toll on the very air he was breathing. "This can't be right!"

The smaller Minecraftian, a Gothic chick with some seriously scary expression on her face, flipped over a second stab and sprouted black wings from her shoulders, blasting forward at the second and grappling him. She flew him high up into the air, the two struggling briefly before she spun around three times and chucked him straight at the ground. The impact itself shuddered the infinite floor around them.

"Wait a second…" Kenneth muttered, surveying the situation in a mixture of horror and concentration. "Oh my Notch, it's just like I thought…JUST like I thought! If the Glitch isn't killing anyone, just trapping them in here…"

Were there other cells like this one? With one on one brawls between helpless enemies? Where they're being pumped full of plasma every second they fight? Kenneth imagined just how many people the Glitch had taken captive from the dimension. By now, this number could very well be over a million.

"I can't believe I was right…" he repeated, eyes frozen open to watch the violent struggle between the two corrupted teenagers. "It's building a new army…"

Narcissa had been standing in the same spot for almost a half hour now, just staring, staring, and staring some more at her computer. In her dismay, she hadn't even decided to sit down in her own chair. All she would do now was lean with both palms against the edge of her desk, glaring at the bright screen. The rest of the scientists had left the building by now, as they all had families to return to in the normal world they lived in. Even Professor Explotar, who had to go to the hospital with a sudden fever, was gone from the office. Not having him in the room was unnerving.

But it was none of this that kept Narcissa staring at her computer screen. She'd been unable to take her eyes off of it for, as mentioned, the last thirty minutes. On it was a series of constantly-updated graphs and charts depicting the condition of the portal at the other end of the room. That night, something had happened behind the red, swirling veil separating the 64th Dimension and theirs. The interference levels were off the wazoo at the moment, causing the stats present on the screen to change drastically every second, sometimes switching places with other displays.

"The Glitch…" Narcissa whispered to herself, eyes wide and dry as she gazed in astonishment at the screen. "It's back. It's really, really back."

As one of the heroes of the Divination of Dimensions, it had been extremely difficult for her to stay put in the lab and not go back inside of Minecraftia, even for a little bit. Professor Explotar had been the one to advise against it as he knew very well she'd get carried away and remember the joys of alchemy from her younger days, maybe even find her parents again. Besides, it was a miracle he'd been able to convert her code-driven body into one of flesh and blood, and so he also didn't want her to somehow undo the effects and remain inside the world forever.

"But now," she said, shaking her head at the warping signs in front of her. "I feel like it's just wrong to sit by and watch as the Glitch tears apart the dimension. Norman's in there, too…good ol' Norman. Those sure were the days…"

Suddenly, the portal at the other end of the room let out a burst of crimson light that illuminated the entire room for a brief moment. This snapped Narcissa out of it and she was able to stand straight up, peering across the sea of tables and workspaces at the dimensional gateway. A few seconds later, it pulsed red again, making a deep, bubbling sound. She slowly reached behind her and gripped the center handle of her bottle hybrid from fights past: Swig & Splash. Holding it at her side, she waited for another signal.

Finally, the entire surface of the portal jiggled in place and a person emerged into view. She threw the potion fusion straight at the figure, who lifted an oddly-shaped sort of club and batted it to the side, sending it right out the open window of the laboratory. She gasped and summoned it to her hand again, lifting it for a second throw, but the shadow set his weapon down and raised both hands.

"Wait, Narcissa!"

She stopped in her tracks, arm pulled back for another throw. Besides with her fellow heroes, she'd never shared her name with anyone from Minecraftia. This is the thought that allowed her to lower her hand. The figure stepped forward, becoming more and more clear in white light coming from the laptop screen. Only a few tiles away from her, the mysterious individual stopped. It was a man. A tall, red-haired man with bright blue eyes and an abnormally long nose. Instantly, Narcissa recognized who had just payed her a visit.

"…Joe?"

He took another step forward and put two hands on her, one on either shoulder. Despite how serious he had looked moments ago, a small smile spread across his face.

"I was thinking…do you want to give the hero-business another try? It looks like our world is a bit short on warriors at the moment."

HORY SHET! Can you believe it?! Friggin Joe and Narcissa are still around? And what about Quinn, Calista, and Danny? Calista's in the end, Quinn's in the wild somewhere, and Danny's in his mom's basement in some faraway desert. Think even he'll be up to a return? XD

Where will Jeff, Amya, JB, and Evan go now that they're stuck with each other? Will Norman and Bailey be able to live with letting Kenneth disappear into the night (well, more like let him get killed and slapped inside the Plasma Realm)? And seriously, WHAT THE HELL, MASTERMIND?

This is Pastrinator64, your fellow writer and reader, signing out!

*throws sugar bomb and disappears behind its cloud of fine white sugar*

...Goodbye for now...

~Pastrinator64 [~]