Hopefully, this EPIC chapter will save me the shame of not being able to name my chapter titles wittyly!
Olivia's POV:
Olivia recognized the people from the building competition, and was glad they had joined the team, but what else did they have to share, other than their assistance?
"Hey, you guys came from underground, right?" she asked. "Do you know a way out of here?"
"Heck yeah, we do!" said Pretty. "Just down this way, there's a tunnel that we didn't make, and we were just on our way to investigate when Kristine here heard voices and decided to mine upwards instead."
"Hey, if YOU heard odd unidentified voices, would YOU let them go unnoticed?" Kristine retorted.
"YES!"
"Well, I don't! And look who we found!"
"Are they always like this?" Olivia whispered to Nikki.
"Beats me. I've only known them so long," she replied. At that moment, as soon as they started to descend, the white bar of the amulet began to glow. And everyone knew what that meant by now.
"Soren!" Jesse exclaimed. Petra got up and took a look at the amulet.
"Find him, Jesse. Maybe he can help us," she suggested.
"There's something down there," Lukas said, pointing to the bottom of the tunnel the Deviants had mined. The floor was polished andesite, something previously built. Olivia watched as Jesse jumped down first and dropped the amulet when he was about three blocks up from the floor. Bats, startled by the movement, flapped away. Zephyr squeaked with mild interest, delighted at seeing one of his kind. At least one-half of it.
"That could've been a disaster," she breathed; relieved that Jesse had made such a smart move. He then beckoned everyone to come down in pairs. Lukas and William went down together, then Olivia and Kristine, and finally, Pretty and Axel came down, flattening Lukas and William.
"You couldn't have floated down with your dragon blaster?" William complained as Pretty sat on him.
"I could've. But this is way more entertaining," the princess teased.
"Off. Of. Me!" her bearded friend ordered. As Pretty got off, Jenny took Zephyr and Reuben down, and then, Nikki and Petra hopped down at last. But to Olivia's surprise, Petra stumbled when she landed, and Nikki had to steady her.
"Everyone okay?" Jesse called out, especially to Petra, Olivia suspected.
"I just slipped," Petra assured the group, but she sure didn't LOOK like it was just a slip. Olivia rose an eyebrow at Petra, and then continued on with a shrug. The tunnel was damp and dark, but at least they were in numbers. The gang walked along in awkward silence.
"So..." Olivia said to Kristine, attempting to strike up conversation. "You do redstone?"
"Often, actually," Kristine replied rather brightly. "There are these two twins who know a lot about it, and we just LOVE to--"
"Hey! There's a light at the end of the tunnel!" William interrupted their conversation. He was right, there was a bright light shining at the end of the walkway. Everyone picked up their pace and found themselves peering over an edge. Olivia got to the front to get a better look—and a look of horror crossed her face. In front of her, was the biggest, most complicated machine she had ever seen. Water poured out of the other tunnel mouths, similar to their own, and hostile monsters rode with them. They fell towards a series of mashing pistons, which killed the monsters, and sucked up what they dropped into water tubes below. The worst part was, she recognized it.
"We have to get out of here!" Olivia tried to warn the others.
"What?!" Lukas called back. He couldn't hear her over the bashing and the water flow.
"We have to get out of here!" Olivia repeated. This machine...it was a grinder!
Axel's POV:
"This grinder is meant to kill monsters and take their loot!" Olivia explained. "Problem is they can't tell the difference between humans and monsters!"
"Well, we came this far," William said, as if the conversation was over.
"Yup. Soren will be missed. The world, too," Axel agreed, ready to walk out. Put Kristine blocked their path before either of them could walk back down the tunnel.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Not so fast," she warned. As they were arguing, they all heard the familiar hiss of creepers. Lots of them. Axel watched as Jesse and Petra shot forward, taking the explosive mobs on together. He couldn't help but notice just how in sync they looked, as if they had been fighting together their entire lives. However, even with Jesse and Petra fighting them, the creepers kept on coming until there were too many to fight. If they reached the group, the explosion would be unbelievable! If they even survived that, by some crazy miracle, it would be fall damage that would be the death of them.
"Everyone!" Pretty shouted. "Hit the dirt!"
No one understood why, but things were too desperate for an argument. They all dropped, and Pretty's right eye glowed purple. Then, out of the blue, a dragonhead blaster like the one William mentioned before appeared. With one giant blast, it got rid of all the creepers. Well, most of them. One creeper exploded, right as the blast hit it, causing a major explosion to open a hole in the grinder tube. They were out of range, so everyone was fine. But it opened a water fissure that sent a current straight for them!
Axel and his friends managed to stand their ground, but Jesse was sliding dangerously close to the hole! He couldn't let him fall! Quick as an ocelot, he pounced and saved Jesse before the current carried him over the edge. Jesse appeared to drop something, but Axel didn't catch what it was. He dragged Jesse back to the safety of the ledge. He listened to the clatter of the item that dropped, and had a sinking feeling that he knew what it was.
"Was that--" Olivia started to ask, but she trailed off.
"The amulet," Jesse sighed. "Yes."
"Well, we can't just leave it there!" Nikki said, walking dangerously close to the opening.
"Are...Are you gonna jump?!" Kristine gasped. "You're gonna jump, aren't you?!"
"Tuck and roll," Nikki replied simply, but she didn't look too confident about it either. Then, to Axel's surprise, Jesse stepped next to his sister.
"Right behind you, sis," Jesse promised. Petra padded up next to him.
"Me too," she said.
"Well..." Axel had to admit. "This COULD be fun." Pretty read his mind, apparently.
"Ah, yeah! It's time for these monster freaks to have a PRETTY bad time! Hai-kee-gee!" she yelled excitedly, more than ready to go. That's when Axel started feeling confident as well.
"Let's get some!"
Jenny's POV:
Jenny pounced down after Jesse, Nikki, and Petra. She watched as Petra raced ahead and whacked a creeper down. It exploded on the way, opening another tunnel, where zombies came shuffling out. She and Jesse stopped at a short staircase, which led to a platform where another creeper was. Jesse claimed it and shot towards it, hitting it into a wall, where it exploded, leaving a gaping hole from where cave spiders crawled out.
"Dude! This is like one of those epic-yet-cliché title OPs!" Nikki commented as she, Jesse, Petra, and Olivia ran down another direction. The Deviants were running down another direction, taking out some skeletons along the way. Jenny was just about to follow when she heard Axel yell. She turned and saw him cornered by a zombie, to which she quickly came to his rescue. She knocked it off the edge, where it fell towards the meshing pistons.
"Jenny! Get down!" Axel warned. He punched another zombie at her, and she ducked and rolled it off her back in response. "Who wants more?!" he challenged as he took off elsewhere.
"You're asking for more?!" she said in disbelief. Axel ran onto another platform, where he jumped and barely missed a skeleton's arrow, which buried itself into the wall, right next to Olivia's head.
"Hey, ugly!" Nikki's voice called out to the skeleton. She slid into the scene, dodging an incoming arrow, and hit it off the edge. Seeing that Nikki and Olivia had it covered, Jenny turned her attention to Lukas, who was kicking away some cave spiders. She ran to aid him, but one of the cave spiders turned on her and lunged. She ducked, and it fell into empty space instead. She turned back to Lukas, about to ask about his condition, but he was too busy shaking and backing away. Jenny whipped her head around and saw several more cave spiders crawling out from the wall, hopping off and advancing on them. But just as they corralled the pair together, another water stream came down.
"Hold on!" Jenny warned, sheathing her sword and bracing herself.
"Whoa!" Lukas yelped as the water carried them off their feet and to the edge. Luckily, they managed to get a grip on the edge while the spiders were taken away with the water. Jenny tried to pull herself up, but the edge was too slippery.
"Easy, easy, I gotcha," Lukas said, taking her hand and pulling her up.
"Thanks--" Jenny started to say, but she was interrupted by the sound of Nikki yelling. She turned and saw the young girl riding on another water stream, seated on a wooden slab. Zephyr was buried underneath the sleeve of her shirt, trying not to get wet. The Deviants were riding right behind her, also seated on slabs.
"I'm gonna craaaaaaaaash!" cried Kristine as she went spinning down the water.
"I'm gonna hurl," moaned William, looking green as his slab spun repeatedly in a circle.
"This would be fun if we weren't in such a precarious situatioooooon!" Pretty shouted as she too went spiraling across the water. Jenny and Lukas took off after them. As they did, Jenny saw Jesse sprinting after Reuben, who was running off in a panic. She also saw Petra surrounded by creepers. The redhead was doing her best to keep them at bay, but one was sneaking up behind her. Jesse noticed this and ran to her, hitting one creeper into the other, creating the domino effect and sending both off the side, well away from them.
Reuben pelted between Jenny and Lukas, squealing bloody murder as he ran off. The poor thing must've been terrified. Leaving Jesse and Petra to fight the creepers, Jenny continued her chase after Nikki while Lukas went after Reuben. She ran past Jesse, just as a creeper came flying in, knocked in their direction by Petra. The two jumped off together. Jesse landed hard on the ground below. Jenny probably would have too, had Lukas not been under her. She flattened him, but at least they were okay.
Lukas looked extremely red. He pulled his arms out from under her and took off like a shot, leaving her to wonder: had Lukas been trying to catch her? Why?
"The amulet! It's over there!" Lukas shouted, pointing to the tiny object, still shining white. Before anyone could make a move towards them, Nikki, Zephyr, Reuben, and the Deviants made a rough landing from that water stream they had been riding on. A few more mobs had been caught in the stream too, and now, Nikki and her friends were surrounded. Nikki drew her sword and slashed at a creeper, which died on the spot. Kristine was shovel-stomping a zombie with a stone shovel.
"Go on, you TWD lurker rip-off!" she grunted with effort as she smashed it. "Make—my—day!"
"Mother of Notch in a handbasket!" Pretty gasped as she sent purple spikes in different directions all around her, skewering mobs as she went. "If I said it once, I'll say it again! NO, I AM NOT TAKING REQUESTS!"
Jenny didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but she didn't have time to think it over. The water stream that washed Nikki and her friends in pushed the amulet to the very edge of the platform, where it teetered dangerously.
"I gotta help them!" Jesse cried, only caring about the situation his sister was in.
"What about the amulet?" Lukas asked.
"You get it! I'm coming, Nikki!"
Jesse jumped of the ledge, after his sister, leaving Lukas and Jenny to stand and watch as he totaled them.
"How are we supposed to reach it with all these things in the way?!" Lukas wondered aloud.
"Just follow my lead. I have an idea," Jenny said, rushing forward. Lukas followed, with nothing better to do, she guessed. As they ran for the amulet, two zombies fell from above, got up, and moved in on them!
"Quick! Grab my hand!" she shouted, stretching her hand out for Lukas to grab as she continued to run.
"H-Huh?!" he replied a bit stupidly.
"Just take it! Quick!"
Lukas didn't hesitate anymore; he took Jenny's hand. It felt warm and soft in hers, but she tried to ignore it. "Go on the other side of them," she ordered. Lukas obeyed, stretching their arms out like a rope. They caught the zombie pair around their waists, dragging them along with them, until they reached the end of the cliff, where Lukas and Jenny stopped short, but the zombies, taken by the law of inertia, were tossed over the side to their deaths.
Their path successfully cleared, Lukas ran down and picked up the amulet, just as a creeper fell to the ground and died in front of him, pushed over by Jesse. Just when Jenny thought that they had done it, a creeper fell in out of nowhere, and a water stream poured in again. Axel managed to stand strong against the current, and he picked Nikki and Reuben up so they would be safe. Lukas grabbed a fence post, and grabbed Jenny's hand, but Jesse was washed away with the creeper before anyone could grab him.
"Jesse! No!" Nikki cried, struggling out of Axel's grasp and jumping after him. If it hadn't been for the endless mobs pouring out of the tunnels, Jenny wouldn't have followed. For all of a moment, she was falling through empty space. Then, somewhere on the way down, she and Lukas somehow managed to become level with each other. They only stared at each other, each lost in the other's eyes, searching for something, but what? It was like something like this had happened before...something romantic.
Jenny wasn't sure what she would've done next, but the water below crashed over her head fast, and they were immersed in the pool. Petra, Olivia, Axel, and the Deviants came splashing in after them. For a moment, they thought they were safe. Then, the worst happened last. Reuben was sucked down into a tube. Then Petra went down a different one. William, Pretty, and Kristine went down different ones too. Everyone was sent down a different water tube. Jenny tried to swim away, but the tug was too strong, and it swept her away, into who knew where.
So! Who recognized themselves in the story? :P Ehhhhh...only three, I guess.