Hello, this is Pastrinator64 with another much shorter chapter for Hourglass! As I promised, I'm not going to be making a bunch of super-long chapters. I won't put you guys through that much bulk. XD As I've learned from writing The Glitch, a lot of people prefer to have a multitude of short chapters rather than a small group of really long ones.
Anyhow, replies to reviews! ^^
Replies to Reviews...
Badgerman: Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun having them in it again! HOWEVER, I'm not going to focusing on them too much. This is just so that if they appear in one of the final scenes, it isn't so random and out of place; people will have known already that they'd show up at some point.
Also, where'd you get that phrase from? "Keep on blocking!" I like it! :D
Marshman101: I had an unnecessary amount of fun writing it. XD
Pixelized Pikale and Company: OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODYOU'REBACK! DUDE! Is this real life? I'd ask where you've been, but you just explained. XD How are you doing, bud? Has school been pretty brutal? Are FINALS getting you down? Has Pikale been kidnapped again? XD
But really, I'm glad you found your way back to the story! You're in luck, too, because the final confrontation is coming up pretty soon, it looks like! The story will finally, officially, SERIOUSLY come to a close this time. It's going to be epic. And sad for me, I'll be honest. :/
Airas Slayer: Top-tier buttslicer...wow. Amazing word choice, Slayer. XD
I still can't believe Pixelized Pikale and Company is back...dude, if you're reading this, just remember that you were one of the legends back in the good ol' FanFiction of 2013. :D I encourage EVERYONE to leave reviews, by the way! I don't believe I've asked for reviews in a while, but they really do help me get inspired to write.
Now, let the story commence!
Chapter 34: The Hunt Begins
Norman and the gang promptly began their walk towards the city of pink. None of them spoke, all absolutely thunderstruck at the sight of hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of pigs stacked atop each other to create buildings of all shapes and sizes. As the city of New Pork only stood about fifty blocks away, they reached its edge in virtually no time at all. Norman stopped at the edge, staring down at one of the pigs that made up the road in front of him. It stared up at him, looking oddly distressed with its quivering head, and oinked once.
"Ehhhh…" he groaned, recoiling slightly. "Is there another way into the city or is…is this it?"
Two bodies to his right, Kelsey was on her knees and rubbing the flushed scalp of one of the swine below. As a lover of animals, she was extremely distraught at the sight of all these pigs being used as building blocks for…for what reason, exactly? Why did this have to be a thing?
"I can't believe this is real." she said bluntly, clear disappointment in her voice. "What kind of sick, twisted, immoral monster would make a city out of mobs? Isn't there a such thing as entity activism in this dimension?!"
Next to her, Astrid nudged her with her foot and gave her a big grin, replying,
"Kelsey, new survivalists kill mobs for meat all the time! I know you said you didn't play too much Minecraft back home, but c'mon! What did you eat in your first file? Spider eyes? Rotten flesh?"
The pig below them was feverishly nuzzling Kelsey's palm, trying as hard as he could to hoist himself out of the hole. And yet, for some odd reason, it seemed like it was too scared to actually go through with it. Kelsey patted it on the head one more time and then stood up straight, scowling at the sea of hogs in front of them.
"I wasn't paying a lot of attention, so I actually starved…almost, I was down to a half heart and then fell off a four-block ledge."
Without warning, a pained shriek came from a piece of the floor as Darcy appeared on top of it, landing with no regard for the comfort of the mobs beneath his feet. Several of the tightly-packed heads quivered and grunted in discomfort as he squished about, waltzing on down the street like it was a normal, everyday city road. Everyone else merely watched him with a mixture of uneased and alerted expressions. After a few seconds, Darcy noticed the silence and glanced over his shoulder to look at them all.
"What?" he said, raising Jasmine over his shoulder. "We're finally within cooie of that next Spirit and you're all just standing around? Let's get moving!"
After giving them a brief reminder of their mission, he continued on his walk.
"Besides," he called out, not bothering to turn around a second time. "we're back at the city limits, mates! The real buzz is in the main streets!"
One by one, the rest of the group walked on across the living floor. Even Alexander was a bit uncomfortable, sneering nastily as he stepped from one sardine-tight pig to the next. All ten of them slowly made their way down the middle of the street, gazing up at the many buildings of similar foundation that stood around them. These were much smaller than the ones they'd seen when they were further from the city, so it was likely they'd be getting to the real excitement as they got closer to the center, just as Darcy suggested.
"I'm super, mega, ultra uncomfortable with this…" Kelsey half-whispered, taking extreme caution with each and every step.
Norman took a few more steps down the path until he stopped midway through his next step, paused for a moment, and then lowered his gaze to the weapon held in his right hand. He lifted Shatter to chest level and eyed it for a moment; an idea quickly hatched in his brain—where else would it hatch, I mean?
"If you're really not comfortable with this, I can just levitate us all over the road with Shatter's magnetism." he spoke aloud, turning his head towards Kelsey.
She too stopped with her foot still raised above the ground, returning the glance. She blinked once, then lowered her other foot to keep her balance on the wiggling, jiggling ground.
"You can do that?"
The rest of the group hadn't really been paying attention to them, so they continued to walk on awkwardly; it was almost as though they were stepping over a minefield judging by how they had to walk. The two of them only needed to observe their party's struggle for a few seconds before turning back to each other and simply nodding in agreement.
Meanwhile, at the front of the Minecraftian cluster,
"Ugh…it's like stepping in puddles of living fudge!" Nikki groaned, her stilettos causing the pigs beneath her immense amounts of discomfort.
Just behind her, Alexander was giving Jax a piggy-back ride over it all so she wouldn't have to walk. She grinned and set her chin in Alexander's mop of black hair.
"It's not so bad, Nikki." she murmured, quiet as a mouse.
Nikki rolled her eyes and glared back at her, snapping,
"Well, you…HEY! You're not even walking! C'mon, Jax, you're not a little kid anymore, so quit acting like you get special treatment!"
Jax shrugged on top of Al's back.
"Your legs are a lot longer than mine, though…" she replied, ignoring the comment about acting her age.
Just as Nikki was about to respond, her mouth stuck open when a shadow fell over her and she glanced up to see what had blocked the sun out. She saw their leader, that kid who had the same block powers as her, floating overhead with the blond girl, both of them vibrating and shifting in their frozen poses. As they passed, everyone else started staring as well.
"Wait, lemme get in on that action!" Astrid shouted suddenly, raising a hand.
"Yeah, me too!"
"ME THRICE!"
In a matter of seconds, all ten friends, enemies, and acquaintances alike were floating down the street inside the power of the Magnomatic buried in Shatter's spade. With all the people he was holding up, Norman had to grip his weapon's wooden handle extra tight so he wouldn't let anyone fall and become a part of the road now below them; as they started seeing other Minecraftians appear, everything became even weirder for the lot of them. They had gone from complete silence and emptiness to the hustle and bustle of a big city, with people streaming in and out of shops and skyscrapers and massive crowds directing the flow of bodies throughout the streets of Hamhattan.
Astrid caught the eye of one Minecraftian boy in particular who was walking in between his parents. He was already staring in total awe at the floating mass of people passing him by, so she made things even weirder by twisted her face into a jokingly contorted expression. Across the street, she saw the boy laugh at the funny face and point, but his parents only picked up the pace, shielding him from Astrid's sight entirely. She rolled her eyes and looked forward again, saying,
"Paranoid parents. They clearly don't know how amazing this is, they should try it for themselves!"
Bailey shushed her and then whispered,
"Astrid, we're attracting enough attention already. I mean, I wasn't exactly on board with the whole floating thing, to be honest, but since everyone else was doing it I had to too."
"You don't know what you're talking about!" Darcy shouted next to her—normally, she'd have jumped, but the magnetic aura around her prevented her from moving at all. "This is one of the most ripper feelings ever! I'd do this for hours."
Norman was able to move relatively freely as he was the one in control, and so he glanced every which way for a hint at the correct building.
"Now, if I were a Spirit, where would I hide?"
Bailey gazed down at him using just her eyes and said,
"Well, how did we find Froace the Fourth?"
Norman scowled as he racked his brain for an answer. He couldn't remember Farixz ever telling them that they had to go to the MGM Grand building back in Blocks Vegas, but something told him that he really had told them…gee, he just wasn't sure. They'd only been out in the field for four and a half days since they'd left the Palace of 0 and yet he was still drawing a blank. And again, he thought of their remaining eight days and focused his attention on the quest again.
"It doesn't matter, we just need to hurry up and find it…even if we have to search the entire city!"
Suddenly, Norman loosened his grip around Shatter and let everyone descend to the pink, fleshy sidewalk. The eleven of them parted the stream of Minecraftians that flowed down the strip, getting quite a few grumbles from an impatient couple of businesspersons brushing them by. Alexander landed with both feet on the ground and held his stomach for a moment, looking a bit uneasy.
"Y'know what, to hell with flying, I'm gonna throw up bricks if I get lifted up one more time!" he growled, glaring over at Norman.
Once they'd all balanced themselves, Norman stepped out in front of them and turned around swiftly, his heel making a loud squeak in the smooth skin of the animal beneath him.
"Alright, if we're going to find the right building, there are a few things we have to look out for. If we're going by last time's rules, I want all of you to keep your eyes peeled for anyone wearing an excessive amount of silver. In addition, I'm pretty confident that this Spirit will also be hiding out in a high-traffic, popular, busy area since Farixz has described them all as, um…outgoing? Yeah, outgoing."
Twenty years later and Norman still sucked at giving speeches. Just wow.
"I'm going to send everyone out in a different direction so we can actually find Firzon the Fifth before the night is over…hopefully. Bailey and Astrid will search uptown, Darcy and Auconi, you two will search downtown," Auconi groaned audibly, "Al, you can take Nikki and Jax east—"
Alexander threw up his hands and snapped,
"Look, would everyone stop calling me Al?!"
"— and Adrian and Kelsey, you two can go west! I'll use Shatter to take to the air and get a good look at some of the taller buildings. We can't waste ANY time, people! Got that, Farmland?" he said, glancing suspiciously over at the seedy teen. "I'm trusting you to not run off like you did in Blocks Vegas."
Nikki rolled her eyes and waved her spidery fingers at him in a dismissive sort of way.
"Don't worry, Mr. Cobweb, we'll keep him in line!"
Jax nodded next to her, not bothering to look up when saying,
"Yeah…in line."
Norman pursed his lips for a moment, exchanging a look with Bailey. She also nodded, as if she was reminding him that they didn't have a lot of choices at the moment. They needed as large of numbers as possible at this point, especially considering that Kenneth was MIA; killing the next Unforgiven Spawn would be intensely difficult without him, whatever it turned out to be. As if on cue, the next statement anyone made was on exactly that!
"So, um," Kelsey began, unintentionally stealing the attention of her whole group. "I was just thinking about what we'll have to do once we get to Firzon the Fifth. That Unforgiven Spawn…do we have a chance of beating it if Kenneth is missing?"
A silence fell on them after hearing that one question. Excluding Alexander and his girls, they'd all been present at the fight with Revelation's Horse. The most damage had been done by Kenneth, obviously, who had the powers of a true hacker to use in the battle. As they all were starting to think of the worst possible outcomes, Auconi stepped forward out of the center of the group and stomped his foot on the ground, snapping them out of their pathetic daze.
"C'mon, guys! Can we just forget about Kenneth?! For the record, I took out at least 20 HP without the help of hacks or Holy Swords or any of that! I know I may not be the most engaging person in this group, but I can tell you that when I find myself with the challenge of slaying the impossible, whether it's a million smaller mobs or one giant one, I get in the zone! As my grandpa said once, every Minecraftian has access to their own little zone! Whether this means you become calm, or serious, or crazy like me, it doesn't matter…the point is, we don't need to—sorry, wait—NONE of us have to piggyback off of another person's abilities to make a hard task easier. We're going to find the Spirit, kick the hellspawn's ass, and LIVE THE REST OF OUR LIVES WITH SOME REAL CONFIDENCE!" he cried, raising his sword up high.
All of a sudden, everyone jumped as a hundred hands erupted in applause around them. When they looked around, Minecraftians of all skins had gathered around them somewhere in the middle of Auconi's unexpected pep talk. Norman grinned nervously at Bailey, who returned the look. All that stuff about trying not to catch a lot of attention and here they were, being clapped at because Auconi had managed to just spill their current mission in the most inspiring way imaginable.
"NICE one, mate!" Darcy declared, slapping Auconi roughly on the back. "Didn't know you had it in you!"
Auconi blushed lightly, more from embarrassment at his realization than any compliments he was being given.
"Whatever…"
In a matter of seconds, the crowd that had appeared around them moments ago filtered out into the hustle and bustle of the street once more, vanishing just as quickly as they had come. Sheesh, was the Glitch accidently giving the whole population speed boosts with all these random glitches rippling through the dimension?
Their entire group had started giving Auconi pats on the back and encouraging words for his sudden motivational speech, but Norman's mind was still definitely on the task at hand. He jumped up, intending to place a cobweb block beneath him so he could get some height on them, but was greeted with a message from the administrator that he wasn't actually allowed to do that. So instead, he smacked Shatter on the stone floor and bounced the ten of them several pixels off the ground—thank you, Knockback II.
"Alright, everybody!" he yelled, getting them all refocused. "We have a job to do and we've only got eight days left for the quest! The whole quest! So I want you all to move as quickly as possible and then meet back at Rinds Square in the next hour! Minecraftian cities are much, much smaller than the ones on Earth like most of us are likely used to, so this shouldn't be too hard. Let's move!"
The Mistress lifted the corpse of her sister out of the dirt and held her by the neck, her spindly legs swaying above the ground. The wind had picked up around the area, so the sounds of rustling leaves and the rushing air were the only two sounds heard inside that forest. Maria pushed the slick strands black hair from her face to get a better look at her sister. The fool had been wrong, just as she suspected she would be; seeing Matilda meet her justice was her first taste of what it would be like for everyone else in the world to receive it later on, and ooh boy was it was sweet…
Suddenly, she heard the thunderous footsteps of a beast just behind her accompanied by the splintering of tree trunks. She turned around slowly and broke out into an evil grin before she even saw what had followed her. Her beautiful creation, in all its dysfunction and glory, stood a block from her, towering over her and breathing heavily from its many heads.
"Morgan…" she whispered, reaching up and petting one of the bunny heads that bulged from its right hip. "You've grown so big…just as I hoped you'd turn out."
The fifteen block-tall creature fell down on its knees and shook the earth around it, making Maria jump up almost two blocks before landing gracefully back in the whirling, swirling, grass. The Enderdragon head leaned forward to meet her and bopped her on the nose, letting out a smoky puff through its nostrils. She scratched under its chin, getting it to growl affectionately. All the other heads let out their own various twisted noises, though it was probably out of jealousy for their own lack of petting.
"Now, you're not quite complete…not yet." she whispered in the dragon's ear. "You only have the core of a Minecraftian as of late; it's time to give you a new kind of spirit so that you can really, truly last. Once we get a little bit of otherworldly power in you, you'll finally have the ideal…HELLISH design I was hoping for…yes, I think it's about time we summon it, that is for sure…"
A moment later, the massive maw of the Enderdragon head opened wide and revealed Morgan, whose face was now frozen permanently in fear. She appeared to still be conscious, however, for her eyes quivered and blinked in the blowing wind that filled the monster's mouth. Maria folded her arms on the bottom row of dagger-like pearly whites, unaffected by their razor-sharpness, and cocked her head at Morgan.
"Tell me, Morgan Ironbars…how do you feel about becoming the next Unforgiven Spawn?"
Morgan's mouth opened and closed without emitting anything but a small choking sound. She watched in terror as Maria's jagged finger came into view and hovered just above her forehead. A second after, her nail pressed into her shuddering skull and pushed her down, slowly pressing her deeper and deeper into the throat of the beast.
"N-no…" she murmured, gasping for air as the outside world became more and more obstructed from her eyes. "N-no…no…no…"
Suddenly, the Enderdragon gave a massive gulp and Morgan's head vanished down the slimy, purple hole. A piercing shriek was heard inside the belly of the beast moments later as the reptilian head snapped its mouth shut. Maria listened to the sound of Morgan's last screams as long as they went on, slowly letting a bit of her hysteria take over as she stood there in the blowing wind.
"Heeheeheehee…ahehehehehahahahah! NYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!"
Well then...a certain someone in the Reviews section may have possibly predicated this would happen...heheheheheheheheh...aren't I the worst?
ATTENTION! Just a reminder, if you like sprite fights, go to YouTube and search up Pasty's Bakery for my new channel! I only have a test animation up at the moment, but I have another bigger, better, more action-packed animation that it's in the workshop at the moment. It's the side project, however, because I've stuck with my decision to make Hourglass my #1 priority.
Will Norman and the gang ever be able to find the Firzon the Fifth in the expansive pig-crafted city of New Pork? Is Auconi beginning to truly break out of his hard, cold, silent shell? And what kind of demonic spirit is the Mistress planning on letting rise into existence once again?! Find the answers to these questions and more in the next chapter(s?) of Hourglass!
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 [~]