50 Bestie's Concerns

~Raindrops keep falling on my head~

~But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turning red~

~Crying's not for me~

~'Cause I'm never gonna stop the rain by complaining~

~Because I'm free...~

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"You're unusually quiet." Steve said to Alex as they flew alongside each other across the biomes that rushed beneath them. "We're going quite far as well it seems. While we're going there, you mind telling me what weighs on you?"

"...You've been gone seven years." Alex said. "It's not like you haven't left before, but this time you've actually gone and gotten yourself a life. Do you tire of our world that quickly?"

"Well bear in mind that I did pre-exist all of you." Steve said. "I've been here longer than anyone else."

"What was it like back then Steve? What did our world look like to you?"

"Huh. Well..." Steve pondered this as he thought back to the days of classical Minecraft. 

Now the truth was that he had not first encountered the game when he was 12. He had actually first played it long before, when he was about 4 or 5 years, during its earliest days. In complete honesty, the game always seemed so eery that he didn't like it. He was reintroduced to it at 12 when the game was purchased from the creator and of course by then, the game had several new and more enjoyable features to it. And that was when he really began diving into this new passion.

But he would never forget the feeling of the classic game, especially when he played it again a couple of years ago to relive a little nostalgia. Even then the classical game was weird and eery. Nowadays Minecraft was fun and interactive and there was no shortage of activities. But in those old days, you'd be playing on simple maps, with few things to work with and yet...at times there was something unsettling about the game, like you were not alone on there even if it was a single player world.

Playing Minecraft in those days was all fine and dandy during daylight hours...but at night in a dark room, headphones on your head and the Minecraft sounds blaring in your head when everybody was asleep? It was a different game altogether. What would be something carefree and fun would quickly transform into something of the horror genre even if you were doing the same things.

It was the reason he'd been scared and had not come back to the game until almost a decade later when the game was popular. 

"...I'd say compared to now, it was empty." Steve said. "The terrain was much smaller, resources were few and far between. And I never really came across another sentient being...especially considering that there was a lot of me."

"What?" Alex raised her brow. "What do you mean?"

"I'm saying that there were a lot 'me'." Steve was referring to the early days where there used to be 'human' mobs in Minecraft but got removed at some point.

"What, like clones or something?"

"Something like that. But yeah, the world was simplistic and dull...and you never really knew what would happen. There were also a lot less mobs."

"Yes, you've told me about that before. You said spiders were brown at some point?"

"Yeah, they were brown. Somewhere along the line, I guess they evolved and became black while their eyes became red. It's one of the few things I didn't really understand. In my opinion though, they looked a lot better when they were brown."

"...And what about...him." 

"Who?"

"You know." Alex tilted her head. "You called him The Hidden One when you don't like calling him by name."

"Oh...right." Steve said as a cold sweat began to form on his back. He seriously had no idea why he reacted like this. It was like that name itself triggered some sort of biological reaction in his body. His mind was still rational but the body itself would start to have its own feelings separate from his brain. "Well, what do you want to know about him?"

"How did you first come about him?" Alex asked. "You never really have told me the story."

"...Well to begin with, there is not really much to tell." Steve said as he began to recall all the lore behind the illusive horror character. "I know he was there from the beginning though. I'd find trees stripped of their branches, tunnels dug into the hills that were only about as high as I was tall. Then I would find sand pyramids in the ocean...just some really weird stuff." 

"And when did you first 'see' him?"

"...Well the first thing I saw of him was his eyes. Back then I would sometimes catch glimpses of...glowing white eyes looking at me from afar, whether it was in a cave or in the forest or outside my window. I had no idea what was causing all those weird things but I realized that it coincided with all the times I used to see those eyes...then I saw him. At first it would be fleeting glimpses, so brief that I would swear that I was seeing things. Then items began to go missing from my chests. My animals died, and I'd find random holes in the ground. Then when I was travelling, I'd hear footsteps and blocks placing when I was completely still." Steve finished.

"And where did you get his name from?" Alex asked.

"I guess...I just somehow always knew it." Steve said. "But the experiences were so disturbing, even though they were so spaced out over the time I participated in this game, that I guess I just never really got over them. I mean how freaked out would you be if you saw your doppelganger but they just did some really weird stuff?"

"...Uhhh, Steve." Alex raised her brow. "You haven't forgotten have you?"

"Forgotten wha- Oh...yeah." Steve said sheepishly. "Anyway, by the time you came along, I'd stopped seeing him entirely and I have not seen him since. But I'm quite sure more than anything that he's still out there somewhere."

"Right." Alex said. "Well, whatever or whoever he was, he would have been the originator of his kind."

"Yeah." Steve agreed. "I have always wondered what they really are. Because he looked like me yet he acted as anything but me. And he certainly wasn't friendly but...he wasn't hostile either. It was like he was deliberately there to toy with me, and mess with my head."

"We'll never know unless we get to ask them ourselves." Alex said.

"Why did you ask me about this anyway?" Steve said. "Don't tell me...where we're going has something to do with it."

"On the contrary, it has everything to do with it." Alex began descending to a plains biome. "Here."

Steve followed after her and they both disengaged their Elytras as Alex began walking up a hill, with Steve following closely behind as he grew more and more uncomfortable by the second. They reached the top of the hill, just as the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon and the darkness was setting in. Alex pointed below them.

"Look there." She said.

She didn't need to say it though as Steve had already caught sight. The hill was just beside a dark forest, on the edge of the treeline with only a few metres of space between the two. But it was plenty of room for the bizarre scene he was confronted with.

There were four large imprints in the grass. Giant, massive ones that looked to be created by something so heavy that it had sunk the ground in about two metres deep, the bottom of the holes still lined with grass. Footprints. Giant footprint of something that looked like it took just two steps with each foot before just vanishing into thin-air. The hairs on his back stood upright as he recognised this scene, but at the same time his mind was befuddled by this.

"You know what that means right?" Alex eyed him.

"Of course I know what it means!" Steve said. 'But I don't understand! I never added her, nor was she even real!' 

"This is serious Steve." Alex said. "And earlier on today when I was monster hunting with Efe, she said that she felt something was watching us. We split up momentarily and that's when I found this. Sunny went out to collect jungle wood a couple of weeks ago. But when he went there, he said that he'd found the whole place wrecked. Not a single branch or leaf, clear explosion craters everywhere and the trees were torched. And some full moons ago, Noor went outside for a bit of fresh air and she swore she saw a shadow of some sort walking on top of the walls of our fortress. When she asked about it later, nobody owned up to being there."

"Truly?" Steve asked as a horrible feeling of irrational dread started to fill him. It frustrated him to no end where he was getting these emotions from. He was a level 9 for heaven's sake! So why was he so afraid. "What was the earliest incident?"

"...Well, about 9 and a half months ago, Zuri went to the Edge where the world border was, to see if he could get past it somehow. The kids had been quite glamoured with the idea of going to the Far Lands, but ever since that barrier showed up, it's become impossible to pass it." 

"True. Yet another thing that is unexplainable." Steve said although he scowled. That particular development had actually pissed him off to a whole other level. The Far Lands had been a legendary icon of the game. They represented the edge of reality itself and were about the most fantastical thing of the game even if they were caused by a glitch. Having them removed and replaced by a stupid world border had got him seething and writing to the developers.

Of course what did they do except just ignore him as they did all the fans of the game. Their heads were stuck so far up where the sun didn't shine, they'd add a feature to the game even if they knew it would make all the people stop playing it because that was how lazy and self centred they were.

"Well anyway, as Zuri was trying to get past it, he said he looked over at a village that was beyond the border and swore he saw some black figure with glowing red eyes and a smile staring at him through a window." Alex said. "He came rushing back home immediately and stayed in bed for a week until I convinced him that maybe it was a hallucination. Steve, they only know about Hero-...'that' guy. But we haven't told them about the rest and now they're obviously active."

"All the more reason we move out then." Steve said as he stood up immediately and assumed authority. "Get everybody to gather their personal belongings. We're leaving...NOW!"

Steve turned to take to the air again but Alex grabbed his arm. 

"You're not going to hunt them down?" Alex asked.

"Why would I do that?" Steve asked.

"Why would you not?" Alex asked before she raised a brow. "The Steve I know would have immediately set a manhunt up."

"Well this Steve is much wiser and knows when he is dealing with too many big fish for him to fry just yet." Steve answered. "And besides, you know as well as I do that they cannot be found if you go looking for them. It's simply in their nature to not be seen except through a passing glance, no matter what form they take and what place they appear in. If that many of these freaks are acting up at once, what's the chance that the rest of them aren't too?" 

"So...we're just leaving it?"

"Yes." Steve affirmed. "Once we're on the other side of the gate, I'm locking this realm up. Hopefully that will hold the bastards off for some time, and at best encourage them to crawl back into their holes. Get your personal stuff and put them in your Ender Chests. Once we've done that, we'll be making our way to the Gate to meet Ptah. Understood...Vice-Captain?"

"Aye Captain." She said. Steve in her experience always knew better than her, so she was willing to listen even if her own gut was telling her otherwise. "What about all our valuables and resources?"

"I'll come back in and retrieve them myself when it's appropriate." Steve said. "Or if you want, you lot can put them in shulker boxes and then put them in the Ender Chest. Leave the animals behind."

"Right." She said as they both blasted off. "So...this Ptah. What's he like?" She asked in an effort to change the topic. 

"Well to begin with, he's a complete pig. He's very annoying. And he has an obsession with creating statues that look like...they're just so abominable, even the Hidden One would probably be sent running at the sight of them. They're just so ugly, I bet you that if it was the first thing you saw if you woke up in the middle of the night, you'd just die from shock right then and there."

"...You do realise that you're trying to GET us to join right?"

"I'm getting to that part girl. He's definitely a whole lot better than some of the other patrons we could have had since he's quite lax and he's not restrictive. We're free to pursue our objectives and business models as long as he gets to do sculptures. He's so adamant on that front, I bet he wouldn't even care if we were selling drugs. I'm sure we could find some morbid fanatics somewhere that will appreciate his 'art', so we can just foist them off onto them. I've already drawn up some plans to expand the grotto and convert it into a manor."

"You got any plans drawn out?" Alex asked.

"Sure do." Steve said. "I'll show you when we've settled in properly."

"Good." Alex said. "So...girlfriends?"

"Yup. Can you believe it?" Steve grinned. "We only got together officially early this morning."

"Seriously? You're that new?"

"Yeah. And what's better is that they both agreed to this arrangement and they pushed it onto me. I graciously accepted."

"And which part of you did they find attractive?" Alex gave him a side-eye. "Power? Influence? Your wealth? Because you have no shame in showing it off, I know that for sure."

"Nothing like that." Steve rolled his eyes. "Yes, I hesitated not in displaying all of those but I approached those two girls first...well actually, I actively approached only one of them. But to them both, I expressed my sincere attraction to them. One was instantly taken by me on that, and the other fell for me when I thrashed her in battle...which is strange because that should have happened the other way round when you consider what races they're both from."

"Races?"

"One is an Amazon, the other is...a human."

"Why that hesitation?"

"She's too beautiful to be called a normal human." Steve said quickly to dispel any suspicion on Alex's end. Not even Ais knew that he was aware of the other half of her lineage...it didn't mean he didn't believe in the statement though.

"Uh-huh. So what did they say they liked about you?" Alex probed even more.

"My power is a point of attraction for them both. For one, it is simply a default given her race and the other values power very highly. I'd say her feelings stemmed from a sort of quick admiration of me. Within four weeks of meeting one another, we fell into a love triangle. I was hesitant to accept any of their feelings when they made them apparent. I didn't want to hurt anyone of them by accepting the feelings of just one. I had half a mind to just drop the whole thing. But somehow, the two came together in an agreement to share me on some certain arrangements and conditions I'm not fully privy to. Girl things I guess. But yeah, I'm one lucky guy."

"I have serious doubts that two girls could come to such a compromise." Alex said sceptically.

"Well they are both part of the same Familia, and therefore they are practically sisters. So they know each other quite well and they get along really well too. I suppose that helped a lot." Steve said before he looked at her. "Why are you so interested in this topic huh? I can understand Efe's possessiveness but you? What's up with that?"

"Is it wrong to look out for my best friend who's picking up girls in a dungeon?"

Steve actually got stumped by that question and almost fell out of the air as his Elytra wings faltered.

"The hell is wrong with you?" Alex chided. "Did my sincerity really surprise you that much? You think I'm just some cold bird that isn't capable of showing a little care and concern?"

"No, it's just...nevermind. But I do appreciate the concern, I really do. You know, they're coming to visit me tomorrow, so you'll get to see them for yourself. I assure you, they're absolute angels...well, one is really mischievous and the other is a bit simple but I adore them."

"I'm sure you do." Alex muttered. "Can't believe it. After a thousand years, you finally grow a pair...but then choose girls in another world."

"Since when was that so much of a concern to you?"

"I'm just looking out for you, asshole." Alex said. "Who knows what would happen if you were just left to your own devices?"

"Well looking at things so far, I'd say I've done quite well on my own." Steve grinned before his expression became more serious once again. "How long ago did you say Zuri saw that apparition?"

"About 9 and a half months."

Steve quickly did the mental calculations, converting those Minecraft days into normal days. Upon arriving on the answer, he quickly noticed a correlation. That time would amount to four days in Gekai. And about four days ago was the day he got that special hidden mission...regarding a specific certain someone.

Was it all linked? That at the same time of the re-emergence and that revelation of the hidden mission, all these freaks suddenly started showing up?

He had to concede, as far fetched as it could be, it made the most logical sense. The Hidden One was practically the first menace to appear on the Minecraft scene with plenty of speculation around him, feared by many players, yet disregarded as a mere myth by the majority. But the moment there was even a plausible chance that he was active and he had showed up again, these other guys who definitely weren't supposed to exist, whom he recognised only by their description suddenly reared their ugly heads.

Something was looming on the horizon. He'd made up his mind. He was closing this server once they were on the other side of the Gate, and he would not open it up again anytime soon.

---

"You lot ready?" Steve asked his crew as they all stood before him in their gear. They stood on the top of the fortress walls between the mountains and they were looking down on the basin where their houses were from about a couple of miles away.

""Yep!"" They all collectively answered.

"Alright Ari. Do the honours." Steve nodded.

The brunette giggled evilly as she rubbed her hands together and pulled out a detonator. Without hesitation, she pressed the red button and their entire camp went up in an explosion as the houses blew apart and fires consumed the camp. They all stood still for a moment, silently mourning the end of their HQ. But it was one amongst many, and there would no doubt be more for them to make.

"Why are we doing this again Onii-chan?" Efe asked.

"So the Pillager bastards don't go in there and loot our equipment by which they'll attack the village nearby." Steve said. "And besides, we've removed all that is valuable from there so there was nothing left of value."

"Plenty of sentimental value though." Zuri said as he wiped away a tear with a handkerchief. "We did live there for a good few years."

"But now it is time to move on to a new future and build a new home in a greater city." Steve said as he turned his back on the spectacle. "Get used to our new title now. Ptah Familia, Onwards!"

""Aye."" They all said as they began blasting off with their Elytras in the direction of the Gate, the small structure already appearing in Steve's vision as they passed over the land quite quickly.

"Ari, did you disable the monster farms?" He asked.

"Yes." Ari said. "And the gold farms, as well as the iron farms and every other farm you can think of. I turned everything off. And as for the Enderman farm we built in the End, I've set a nuke to head straight towards there, so we're good."

"A bit excessive." Steve raised a brow. "The End is supposed to be full of Enderman and your vaporising them like that."

"You said to clean everything up Captain. I did exactly as you asked."

"Fair enough." Steve said as they drew nearer to the Gate. He immediately nose-dived and landed right by the swirling green portal. "Everyone ready?" He asked as they landed behind him. They answered collectively once more, affirming to him their unity. "Then let's go off to a brighter future!"

After Steve entered, they followed him with Sunny being the last to go through. As a man, he saw it upon himself to be the last and make sure all the women made it through first. He paused for a moment and looked at the world around him, sighing sadly as he reminisced all the good times they had. He looked at the portal briefly before stepping out of it.

He quickly stuck his prosthetic finger into the soil and made a small hole. Into it, he dropped a large seed and then quickly covered it up. Out of his inventory, he took out a water bucket and splashed some water on it before standing up straight and smiling down fondly at what he had planted.

"May you grow big and strong little one." He said as he put the water bucket back in his inventory. He looked around at the world again, a sense of sadness filling him at leaving their home behind in favour of newer opportunity and happier lives. He then remembered his duty towards his captain and the unwavering loyalty he had to Steve. So he forcibly squeezed his eyes shut, turned around and walked through the Gate.

A second later, the green portal disappeared and the stone archway crumbled as the last player left it, returning it to an independent world once more. 

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