Young Writers Society

Rose should have been incredibly overwhelmed by the combination of the tree being punched and someone befriending the Minecraft spider, but her best friend and roommate was a talking cat with fire powers, she had friends who regularly took care of hedgehogs and flamingos, and one of her other best friends had horns on his head. At this point, she was just used to things being weirder than expected.

She gave the girl and the spider one last, long look, then turned back to the others and the tree that had just been punched.

"So we're in Minecraft," the man she had woken up next to relented. "How do we get out?"

"We could try beating the enderdragon," Rose hesitantly said. Something like that would take a long time to do, and she wasn't even sure it was something she could actually pull off. Maybe if she had her unique magic or her friends. Grim could have set it on fire, Ace could have made the fire worst with a gust of wind, and Deuce could have dropped a cauldron on its head for good measure.

"The what?" the man said.

"It's the final boss of the game," she said. "Or it was the final boss when I played Minecraft in middle school. I haven't played it much recently, but it couldn't have changed too much."

From the look on the man's face, it was clear he had no idea what she was talking about. She couldn't shake the horrible feeling that he was completely new to Minecraft, which would make beating it all the more difficult.

She glanced up at the sun. It was still up in the sky right now. Even though the in-game days went by quickly, it seemed like the ones here could be as long as regular, out-of-game days.

"Maybe we could start with names," Rose said. That was something they could all do. "I'm Rose."

"Skull," the man offered with a smirk.

Noah was having a dream. Or a nightmare to be exact.
Had he been eating something strange before he went to bed? That was the only explanation for what he was seeing right now. Giant spiders and tree punching men that looked like they were from another world?

He pinched his arm. Nothing happened.

Well, as long as he was stuck in this dream, he'd prefer the scary looking guy to be on his side.

"Noah," he offered with as much confidence as he could muster.

Daisy eyed the spider. A dangerous pet to keep. She shifted away from it and closer to the stranger by her side. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Noah," Daisy said, "I'm Daisy."

Chudnofsky thought to himself for a moment as everyone began to introduce themselves. He was very tempted to give his code name instead of an actual name, considering there was no way to fully trust anyone here. And yet everyone had given their real name, or at least it hadn't sounded like anyone had lied. Its not like his identity was that important so far away from home where no one would likely recognize him. He could always order a memory wipe spell from somewhere later.

He smiled and turned towards the others. "I'm Chudnofsky, but I know that's impossible to pronounce so call me Chud."

Pyro felt wary around these people. (Or beings? A few of them looked a little otherworldly.) As they began to introduce themselves, she realized that they were a little more friendly than they seemed. Either way she wasn’t about to let her guard down.
The spider hissed beside her.
Would it be wise to tell them her real name? Not that many people knew her real name, but it might be better to be safe than sorry. Then again, she didn’t recognize anyone here, also they didn’t look like humans from her world.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt.” She thought
“I’m Pyro, it’s nice to meet all of you.”

Pyro, Daisy, Noah, Chud, and Skull. Rose did her best to memorize all of those names. They hopefully weren't going to be here for long, but it would be good to know who was who.

Now that they had all introduced themselves, they needed to figure out what they were going to do next. Rose wanted to immediately start searching for a way back to her dorm. She wanted to be with Grim and the others again.

But this was Minecraft, and the presence of the spider meant that they weren't playing on peaceful. They could even be playing on hard right now.

Which meant they were going to need protection from mobs.

"It's nice to meet you all, too," Rose agreed. It was even nicer actually meeting polite people for once. They weren't all that easy to find in her school, that was for sure.

She looked around the clearing.

"I think we need to build a house," she said. "If there's a spider, other mobs are going to spawn when night falls."

"Mobs?" Skull asked.

"Monsters," Rose clarified. It felt wrong saying the word like that. Grim was a monster, too, but he wasn't anything like the monsters in Minecraft. He was more like the others here—a person with his own goals and dreams and wishes. Her stomach twisted and churned at the thought of him being without her for even a short period of time.

Skull crossed his arms and gave her a look of disbelief. "You want us to build a house in a single day."

Rose nodded. "We can still break trees like we could if this was a game. I've been able to build houses on my own before in a single Minecraft day. There's six of here. If Chud and I make axes for everyone, it should take even less time for us to get enough wood to make the house."

"Oh yeah, we definitely should," began Chudnofsky, "getting a house build on the first day is Minecraft 101, and we can be swamped by monsters well before we get anywhere. We could possibly try to sleep but getting enough wool for six people this early into the game is just not going to work."

"And Rose is quite right, six people working together will need barely any time to gather enough wood, as long as we build a house for function and not design, I mean, we should only need maybe 12 blocks by 12 to fit us sort of comfortably, " he added.

Skull gave an unimpressed look. It reminded her vaguely of the looks Ace might have been giving if he was here instead. "We can sleep on the ground. It's not cold right now—it won't be tonight."

Rose shook her head. "In Minecraft, you need to make a bed to sleep through the night and avoid hostile mobs. Actually being here might be different, but we don't know right now. We need to prepare for the worst."

She wasn't sure if that had convinced Skull, but he didn't say anything else.

"Maybe we could start building the base," Rose said to Chud, "and everyone else could collect the wood and bring it over? Once we have the bottom row done, it should be easy building up."

Rose wasn't entirely sure how they could be a normal, 12x12 house when this version of Minecraft wasn't blocky at all, but she hoped it would be similar enough. House construction, unfortunately, wasn't taught at either her high school on Earth or at Night Raven College.

Pyro looked around the group as everyone just awkwardly stood around. She sighed
“I have no idea how to build a house so I’ll go collect the wood.”

Rose smiled.

"Great," she said. It wasn't great that Pyro didn't know how to build a house, but it was good that she was okay with getting the wood. Rose was used to coercing her friends into doing things. She loved them all very dearly, but Ace and Grim were the worst when it came to being helpful.

Skull stretched.

"I'll come with you," he offered. He didn't mention being clueless about building a house as well, but he was new to Minecraft. He'd be confused, too.

"Building a house in Minecraft is scarily simple if you're not going for anything fancy," said Chud, "I don't think we'd have too much of a problem, although I do think perhaps we should maybe grab ourselves a couple of tools before we spend the whole evening punching trees and things with our hands. That gets old quite fast."

Noah frowned slightly. He didn't want to interrupt, these people all seemed to be very strong personalities and he quite frankly... was not. But talking about building a house in the middle of nowhere with no experience and no materials? Didn't they see how ridiculous this was?

He cleared his throat nervously. "I don't mean to complain, but do any of us have any idea what we're doing to build a house? This isn't a video game."

Rose paused.

She wasn't used to people questioning her ideas in such a hesitant way. The other students at the NRC were more likely to rudely dismiss her ideas or impulsively try their own. It was nice having someone be polite for once.

"I'm not really sure," she admitted. She looked back at the trees around them. "I know that we were able to start breaking a tree like we would when playing Minecraft, so I'm hoping building a house is somehow similar to the game, too."

Things usually worked out for her after some trial and error.

She paused again, this time giving a smile.

"And if it's not," Rose said, "I know a little about fixing places up. I'm always doing repairs around my dorm."

Chud let out a small smile at Noah's comment, remembering the sheer chaos that usually was the start of a Minecraft world, especially when there was more than one person involved.

"Trust me, no one ever has any idea what they're doing when starting out in Minecraft, in fact quite frankly, that is the only way to really get things done."

Noah frowned. Sure, he'd played Minecraft before (not that he was about to admit it), but they seemed incredibly confident that this world, whatever it was, would be governed by the same laws.

He shrugged. "Ok, just tell me what to do."