The Tale of Minecraft

Attacked

Mitch and Jojo rushed through the woods, each with two packs bouncing on their back. Mitch had his spare sword on his back, and his bow in his hand. Jojo had his Katana in his left hand, and his always present gun in his right. A fresh clip was in the pistol, and he held it at the ready. Despite the little they had used them, both the warriors were highly skilled with their weapons.

They ran towards the sound of swords clashing. Soon they reached a clearing, where Sky and Ian were each locked in combat with an opponent. The unknown enemies were dressed in dark gray, with iron swords and throwing knives in sheaves on various parts of their body. One of these knives was imbedded in a tree near the edge of the clearing. Another was in Ian's leg.'

Both Ian and Sky were holding their own, despite the knife in Ian's leg. In fact, Ian was pushing his opponent back, not letting him get a strike in. Sky was more evenly matched, matching his opponent blow for blow. Suddenly, Ian lunged forward, catching his opponent in the chest. They crumpled, dead instantly.

Ian immediately ran to help Sky. Together they backed the man against a tree, before piercing his chest. All this took maybe 10 seconds.

Jojo sheathed his sword and began clapping. "Bravo! Bravo! Wonderful swordwork!"

Sky look over to where Jojo and Mitch were standing. "How long have you been here?"
"About 20 seconds. Who were these idiots."

Ian leaned over one of the bodies, turning it over. On the man's chest was a symbol, a box with two white rectangles within.
Ian whistled. "This is just a guess, but i'd say that's Herobrine's symbol. They must have been tasked with killing us."
Jojo snorted. "I guess they didn't know what they were getting into."

Mitch looked at Ian. "How did you fight so well? No offence, but you're not exactly the best swordsman."

Ian looked nervous. "Remember back at the library, when i mentioned i could hear derp ssundee in my head? Well, i could hear him then, telling me when to block and attack. Without his help, i couldn't have survived, let alone beat him."

Mitch nodded. "Ok, weird but ok. Is you leg ok?"

Ian glance down. "Oh, that? It didn't even hit me. It just pierced my pants." With that he yanked the knife out, revealing a hole in his pant leg and, thankfully, nothing else.

Mitch tossed sky his pack, and jojo passed Ian his. Let's check to see what supplies that had and then move on."

Searching the corpses, they discovered enough food to last them to New Manhattan, and a strange potion. It glowed orange.

"Ok, lets keep that in it's bottle. I can ask Seto about it when we reach the city." Mitch stuffed it into his bag, alongside the potion Seto had left when he disappeared.

They set off, trusting the compass and map. It would be two days before they reached the city, then another day through the minecart system to the original city.

And that was if nothing went wrong.

***

They had been traveling for almost two days. If the map was right, then there would be one last rise, and then they would see the city.

"It's oddly cloudy today." Sky commented, looking up. IT was true. A large dark cloud hung over them.

"If we reach the city, we won't need to worry about rain. we will be underground the rest of the way." Said Jojo, looking back over his shoulder as he crested the rise.

"After all, that's the purpose of the tunn....." He trailed off as he look ahead. The others hurriedly frew even with him, anxious to see what had made him stop.

What lay before them could only be described as a war zone.

They had reached New Manhattan, but the city was in ruins. The giant skyscrapers lay crumbled on the ground, and the rest of the city had been obliterated. And building over a story had been destroyed, and the one's that remained were horribly burned. It became obvious that the cloud was smoke from this burned shell of a city. No sign of life stirred in the streets, and the wall that had protected the city from attack was simply gone, a shallow trench surrounding the city, covered in a black residue.

They simply stood there, horrified by what stood before them. This had been one of the best defended cities in the world, and yet here it was, utterly obliterated.
Mitch said what they were thinking. "It's a message. He's showing us that he can destroy everything he wants, and that nothing can stop him. He's warning us to turn back."

Jojo nodded somberly. "He's trying to scare us. We can't let this affect us. We should scavenge for supplies, then find the minecraft station."

The others agreed, then split up to look for supplies.

Mitch headed for a small set of buildings. As he got closer, he made out a burnt sign on one of the buildings:

Pharma nter

The center of the sign had been burnt away, but enough remained for mitch to figure out what it had been.

A Pharmacy Center! He thought. I should be able to find some medicine here,

Pushing open a splintered door, Mitch found a scene from a horror movie. Dozens of people were crowded into the pharmacy. All of them were dead, showing signs of terrible, life taking burns and bites. Some were reaching for the shelves, or clutching bottles of medicine, as though they died trying to treat their wounds.

Mitch backed out of the room, repulsed. He wouldn't take anything from such a place. The other buildings were thankfully empty; One held various food items. Most were spoiled, but Mitch found some frozen meat, a loaf of bread, and some bottles of water. Behind the desk was a keychain, containing what looked to be the key to the store, a key to the basement, and an unlabeled key.

Mitch searched until he found a small trapdoor. When he tried the basement key, it swung open. When Mitch saw what was in the basement, he pocketed the keys and close the trapdoor.

Returning to the edge of town, he found the others had found more supplies then he had. And judging by their faces, they had seen scenes similar to what he had.

Jojo was the first to speak.

"There is good news and bad news: the good news is that we found enough supplies to last a week. The bad news is that the minecart station was destroyed. That would have been fine, but they didn't have any spare minecarts and what they had had been reduced to useless pieces of iron by the explosion that destroyed the station."

The others looked a t Jojo.

Sky was the first to speak," so this means..."

"It means that we have no way to get to the original city. Even if we could get there on foot, we don't have that kind of supplies. We would need to be able to get there within a week."

Mitch reached into his pocket, pulling out the keychain."

Jojo glanced at him.

"Mitch, what is that?"

Mitch grinned. "It's our key, literally, to getting a ride to the original city."