From this chapter forward I am making longer, more worthwhile chapters.

EDIT: This is WAY longer than my other chapters. Enjoy, because I'm not sure how long I can keep this up with school getting harder!

Okay, so all points considered I really didn't take long to come to my new resolve. But Jules really will have already scoured a biome in all earnesty. It was on my second night that I decided to pursue a better ending to my story and not wait for my friends to pursue it for me.

It has been thirty-two days since I made my resolve. I am still in my bunker, even though my hasty packing up on the second night. I had made a promise to think things through, and after some consideration I realized I was not equipped to go on an adventure just yet. So when the Drowned burned up when the first rays of daylight hit I strode out from my house and jogged to the farthest island, which wasn't that far, and started a second bunker.

I made this one from sturdy logs and made the actual floor two blocks below ground, with stairs leading up to the front door. The floor was sturdy planks, and the walls were well-lit. On the second day of my bunker I made the three by three furnace complex for fast smelting and began Mineshaft Number Two.

For ten days and nights straight (I think, I don't keep track of time well underground) I mined away. The first tunnel went directly down (or as directly as possible) in a staircase pattern. It was two blocks by two blocks and it continued down until I hit bedrock. From there I branched out tunnels left and right in the bottom layers of the world. I haven't hit diamond yet - I'm not sure how. Is it unlucky or are diamonds just SUPER evasive in this world?

But I got a TON of iron and I'm fully armored with a spare set and a large chest filled with ingots to spare! After the tenth day I came back up and put all my iron with all my coal and smelted while I went back down and mined some more. I'm estimating about two days and one night. Then once I came back up I collected my iron and made armor and buckets and other necessities.

I put my twelve ingots of gold into the oven complex and sorted through my rare redstone dust and somehow I made a clock. Looking back all those years at my three-year-old self made me realize how much I've grown. Little S hid in a humble hollowed-out stone bunker for at least fifteen moon-cycles and barely mined. But I don't like to think about those times. If I ignore them I don't have to feel the grief and pain.

Now that I'm alone, though, it's a lot easier to think about and I find my mind often slipping onto dark tangent. So anyway here I am today after quite a few more mining trips with some gold and iron and handfuls of redstone and great barrels of coal. And I'm getting ready to face the mobs from my first mine. With some good luck while I was mining in the deeps some of the mobs will have despawned, but otherwise I'm too close for them to despawn.

What happens to mobs when they despawn. A lot of my deepest questions and fears lay in spawning. Because maybe. Maybe it can answer my darkest question. What happened to my mother?

I grab my iron sword and suit up. If I'm right there should be at least two witches in the hoard and at least one enchanted skeleton and a few armor-clad zombies. Darn, I mumble, grabbing off the top of my torch pile. With some satisfaction I jam the darned chest shut and kick it for sure measure. I don't know why I did that, but for some reason I'm mad right now. I kick open the door and walk through. It's a crisp late morning and with any luck the zombies won't know what hit them.

Yet I feel my stomach flutter and I try to scarf down a chicken to calm it and consequently find myself vomiting it back up when I reach the island. Calm down, they're just some stupid mobs. Even Arjay could handle them. Hmm, no wait, maybe she couldn't. But Jules would have just strode in there the second she got back from the drowned and whacked them all until she was nearly dead and somehow won. S had to admit it, Jules had her own think-I-can-do-everything attitude yet she somehow got more lucky than S. Unfair.

I creak the door open and slowly, steadying myself, I creep towards the door. The mobs sense me and begin their terrifying, moaning, groaning approach. I close the front door behind me and, mustering all my courage, I throw open the door to the mineshaft and flee to a corner of my bunker, getting ready to kill them one by one while they struggle to all get out of the small opening. The first zombie trickles through.

"YAAAARGH!" I charge, hollering my embarrassing battle cry and raising my sword and shield above my head. Critical hit! I slash the zombie right through the face, and, not wasting a moment, redraw my sword from his rotting flesh and impale him through the stomach. Ah, how I've missed this. The safety of Mineshaft Number Two is most boring.

"Zombie one - you're out!" I hoot. "Zombie two - I'll call you Zombean because I'm gonna' stomp on you like you're a bean - BINGO!" Die, die, die! My most embarrassing thoughts and cries rant as I sideswipe Zombean to his death. "One, two, three, four, I'm gonna' get you bwahaha!" Then the flashback hits. And those five seconds staring into space relay a memory I didn't even know I had.

I'm three years old again, but it's the day before the raid. I'm holding my mother's hand and looking down at the ground sulkily. "But mommy," I'm whining, "I don't want to be a cheerleader!" I say. "Of course you do, Esse," Mom laughs, "when I was your age I was dying to enroll! Don't you want to help cheer for the boys mining team?" Mom smiled as though I was making an odd joke. "No! I wanna' be on the mining team!" Mom's smile faltered. "Sweetie, girls cheer, boys mine. Boys trade, girls... clean and decorate houses. It's funner, trust me." Mom laughs. "Now we're nearly at the enrollment building, let's try that chant again. One, two, three, four..."

Mom's voice fades away as I feel a sharp thud and my body involuntarily falls to the ground. I open my eyes. Above me stand five zombies fighting over who got to deal the finishing blow. What happened... this isn't going according to plan! Argh, stupid cheerleading! I roll quickly, an arrow skimming my shoulder where my head just lay. The zombies seemed to have decided and now they all came at me with raised arms. I leap to my feet and slash with my iron sword.

Then the witch comes. I see her out of the corner of my eye. She wears purple and black robes all I can see of her face is her long, pointy nose. I'm finished. I'm really, truly finished. I moan inwardly as I finish all four zombies in a very long sideswipe. Arrows whiz past me and embed themselves in my shield. Some of them reflect off my shield and embed themselves in the skeleton. If only I could shoot arrows and defend myself from the skeletons and witch at once.

That's when it hits me. My most genious, awesome, amazing plan ever. It's a long shot, but it might just save my life here. Making sure I position myself far enough away from the witch who is suspiciously rummaging through her potions, I adjust myself just right so my shield is at an angle that doesn't rebound on the skeletons. Why? Why don't you want to kill the skeletons? I'll get to that when I'm done slaying the witch, but by then it will be obvious.

The next arrow hits my shield square in the center - and bounces off and whizzes through the air - and hits the witch. The witch reaches for her first healing potion, but she's finished. The three skeletons have enough arrows to kill any mob of witches, and with all three shooting at once the speed at which they hit the witch is way faster than me anyday. It's a small victory, but I'll take it, I think as the witch disappears with a pop and I turn to face the skeletons. Soon friends... soon I'm going to join you.

Author's Note:

I wrote this not before I wrote the chapter so I wouldn't forget it.

Should I include minecraft classes? Or jobs/ranks I guess. Builder, Warrior, Redstonist (not me), Griefer, Mage/Potionologist.

Should I include Mineshaft Books. or Looting Books They are a popular minecraft fanfictionists way to teach their characters about mobs or techniques they can't ask about like we can in real life. Like youtube tutorials that they can't watch, so they learn it from looting a village or mineshaft? What do you think?

Also, should I continue with bite-size chapters or make bigger ones. There will be more frequent chapters and less wait until climax, but a little less... well, build-uppy. 

EDIT: I am making the chapters longer