Growing up, I was many things. Not too talented, not too smart, not too much of anything extraordinary. That is until I joined gifted classes and met her: Christine Sylvestre. She was everything I wasn’t: smart, charismatic, physically active, and a total nerd when it came to games and Japan. She was my polar opposite, and yet we got along like peas in a pod. Female: Male, short: tall, fast: slow, motivated:(gets by through sheer luck). This led to us being best friends. Now, I wasn’t all too...kind at first, since I was a raging hypocrite. That being said, that was also one of our differences. However...this time, I wasn’t the one being sad or overall in a negative mood...it was the starry-eyed weeaboo that was my best friend. How did I change that? It starts with a day, a game, and the one impractical skill I have: building in Minecraft.
The tale begins around May first, 2020, around noon. I was enjoying my relaxing midday nap, having stayed up until the crack of dawn on my phone. I was resting peacefully…*ring ring* it’ll go away eventually…*ring ring* maybe it’ll go to voicemail…*ring rin-* “WHAT IN THE EVER LOVING CHRIST DO YOU WANT!?”
Christine spoke, “Oh, hi Cassata~! I wanted to talk to you!” She tended to do this, and even begin with the same words. Wake me up from a nap by calling, wanting to talk, we inevitably play games together.
“Kid, state your purpose for this call before I hang up, go back to sleep, and don’t answer for the rest of my nap,” I said sternly. I hate being woken up from naps, no matter who you are. Mother, sister, best friend, best know, if you woke me, you single-handedly unleashed what can easily be described as the Devil himself being dragged out of hell.
“Don’t be a bully-! I wanted to tell you something,” Christine said, knowing full well that I’d hang up without hesitation since I’ve done it in the past.
“Hurry up.”
“I woke you up from a nap didn’t I?”
“Yes, now hurry up before my empty threat becomes a promise.”
“Fine fine. A birthday is coming up. You know who’s birthday it is~?”
“Say it, kid. You’re pissing me off.”
“Fine, bully. It’s Korina’s...which also means...it’s my birthday too.”
“I know, kid. You and I have the same birthday, just four exact months apart.”
“Oh. Well, anyways, I wanted to have a birthday party, but Corona has my dad skeptical...actually, not skeptical, he just flat out won’t allow anyone in or out of the house. So I can’t have a birthday party.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
“I wanted to do something in Minecraft. We have virtual classes, why not a virtual party?”
“Alright. I assume you want me to help build something for said party. You’re making the world I presume,” I said, having already had my phone on speaker and with the screen flashing a bright white light saying “Minecraft”.
“Cassata can read minds~! Yeah!”
“Well, I’m ready when you are. Tell me when you’re in the world.”
“Okie dokie~!”
As we hopped onto the world, there was already a partially built castle and a modern/rustic seeming house. Neither of which were finished, neither of which held actual purpose to the purpose of the world. I stared at the emptiness that was the world and asked, “So what did you need me to help you build?” I knew that was one of the reasons she called to me for assistance because, surprisingly enough, I can build better than an actual artist.
She replied, “That’s the thing we don’t know.” We built random things to try and get entertainment ideas flowing. Nothing. By the time she had finished the previously mentioned castle, called Castle Fhirdiad, her brother David had joined.
“Hi Dave,” I said as I saw him enter the world. He too, replied with a hi, but you could only just hear it through the call, seeing as he was some distance away from Christine, but close enough to hear me through the speaker on her phone.
As I finished a small tavern I was building while we brainstormed a plan, David had chimed in, “Why not do an arena?”...we didn’t think of one of the core aspects of multiplayer...PvP. In hindsight, that should’ve been our first, initial thought, but regardless, Christine and I happily said yes, knowing full well that the time we spent doing everything but the prep was going to bite us if we didn’t get something.
“So how are we going to do this?” I had asked, knowing we could have approached this many different ways.
“I was thinking of a large free-for-all,” David had replied.
“Let’s get an entrance going then. After that, we’ll get the outline going.” After that, David and I began construction. I had begun to make haste on a detailed dual, stone brick stairway, with a fountain in the center of it all. As for David, atop the staircase, a Redstone door was being constructed. Detailing, for me anyways, is usually a very fast process, so I began to help David with the door, despite being slightly incompetent in Redstone at times.
“I want to make a three by three-piston door that doesn’t have the Redstone sticking out the back or the sides, but I’ve never built one like that. Only a three by two.” David, despite having said this, is generally great at Redstone. So at this point, I figured I would help, but from afar...with YouTube pulled up, knowing I’d cheat and sue the video to help him.
“Place a Redstone torch there...repeater there,” I said all of this as if I knew what I was doing, but it was audibly clear I was watching a video. This can be proven, they heard the audio through the phone.
Now at this point, it was nearing 7:30 PM, the time they regularly eat dinner, do whatever, and either stay up longer or go to sleep. In this tale, they did the latter. I began the outline of the arena, seeing as it was the slowest part of all of the projects. You may ask why that would be the case. The answer being, the game is about cubes...I was building a circle...from geometric memory. I was going off on a limb on how to build it. In the end, it wasn’t even a circle, it was a rounded square. But regardless, I spent time on it, and despite still having days ahead of us for more prep, I still kept it.
As I began filling in the floor of the poorly made outline of the arena, David had finished the door, which was a three by two since he had given up for the most part. Christine had dropped the continuation of the construction of Fhirdiad to help, seeing as we were guilt-tripping her into helping after having done a good majority of the work for her.
While filling in the floor, I pitched the idea that we should get our own quarter of the arena. The other two liked the idea, and replaced the grass blocks they filled in with their own choice of flooring so that it showed we all worked on it (some more than others, but a contribution nonetheless). I had gone for a large tree, David a desert, and Christine a snowy area. The last quarter would be a cumulative effort. I’ll spare the backstory and details of this one; it was boring. Galaxy, black concrete floors, absolutely great in concept, horrid in execution.
At this point, it was 8 and the other two had to go and eat dinner. By then, I was generally done detailing before I built the main attraction, and so off they went to eat, to never return...for the rest of the day...but not before I told them goodnight (need to make sure my insomniac of a friend gets good sleep).
Blah blah, the story ends there, we finished the day after, party, yay, woohoo, right? Nope~! We procrastinated for all 4 days, bringing us to 2 PM, May 5th, 2020. I was enjoying my midday nap…*Ring ring* it’ll go away- you know how this scenario goes down already.
“So, Cassata, my birthday is tomorrow...and we haven’t finished the arena yet,” Christine said.
“...Oh crud...is that a bad thing? Should we get to finishing that?” I was still in my cranky, unintelligent state after waking up, minus the cranky after being talked into the reasoning of the call is important.
“Yeah, we probably should get to that.”
“Okay, tell me when you’re in the world.”
“Oh, David and I are already in the world.”
“Say less, joining right now.”
As I was loading into the world, the frame and partially filled in the arena was looking sad for the amount of time we had to work on it. Though, it's not something Christine and I haven’t fixed at the very last second. She began terraforming a mountain and snow layers while I quickly began to build a large, hollow tree to build a trial-of-ascension-like build you could reap rewards from.
Now, I need to mention, weathered stone, old-timey houses, interiors, and organic life are the main things I can build well. That changes when it becomes a matter of scale. Building a large tree was meant to be practice for such. It shows that it was the practice when looking back at it. I had the stump shape down. The building up of the trunk was difficult. In the end, I gave up, made it a short, stubby, sad-looking tree. Think of the Deku nut tree from The Legend of Zelda, but make it dying and holding on by a single thread of life. It was pitiful.
As I was getting the canopy of the tree finished, the other two were finished and had just begun doing whatever. David was doing something more or less important, being making armor sets for everyone, seeing as we would’ve had to fight with our bare hands. Christine, to Fhirdiad. Me...I had just begun on my build. I built four total tiers, each with a mob scaling in difficulty to beat. Witches, to evokers, to vindicators, and finally to a ravager, all summoned using Redstone and spawn eggs. The pressure plate wasn’t barricaded or protected, but I trusted that the person fighting them would kill them before moving on. Keep a mental note of this for later. I got one of each drop from each mob and began making a currency to reward the area. This was a simple item filter with a comparator sending an output to a dropper if the right item was in the chest.
I had begun testing my work: I went up the tree, fought the boss, and traded drops for rewards. I played as intended and it went swimmingly. I had also added a sword shrine behind a password, seeing as I was enjoying making an area tailored to my strengths. That being PvE and archery since my tree also acted as a turret tower. The sword shrine was the icing on the cake, providing me with an enchanted sword that was slightly better than the ones in the kits David made.
I finalized my work and called David and Christine over to help build the fourth half. I already described that boring process earlier, saving you the time.
Anyways, dinner rolled around, but this day, Christine and I stayed up, adding small details here and there while David went off to bed. The time was around 11 PM, we were both getting tired, but continued to play anyway. Then, it dawned on me… “We don’t have a party house with cake-!”
The panic within the two of us was unreal. We were both on the verge of crashing from sleep deprivation from the nights before. We decided to use the unfinished house that was next to Fhirdiad. Christine began on the interior, I was on the exterior. I made a bouncy castle, balloons, and made a chest outside the door with “party hats” that were just leather caps dyed blue, because, and I quote, “Blue lions...and Dimitri...and castle Fhirdiad.” At this time, she was (and still is) obsessed with Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
I went inside and helped her with the interior. She had a table with cake set up and windows made (it sounds like she hadn’t done much, but to be fair, I work fast and glass panes are hard to work with). I began making bookshelves, a gift table, a food table, a DJ booth with a dance floor, and lighting, including a chandelier. It was surreal, how fast it all was. It was midnight now, and I decided to make a basement while we were both running off of fumes. It had a small aquarium, a pool table, and a dartboard and was overall more of a dungeon/unfinished man cave. Regardless, we had finished. And with that, we said our farewells, of course with me forcing her to stay up a couple of minutes until the clock struck midnight. Why? To be the first to say, “Happy birthday.”
The next day rolled around, the party was scheduled for 2 in the afternoon, and I woke up at 9 or 10, a reasonable time for me…(most of the time). I hopped onto the world early, called Christine and I began with a simple happy birthday.
“Thank you, Cassata. Oh~! Meet my friend, Epix!”
“Okay…” I typed in chat, “hello” and got a hello back. “Who is he? I’ve never seen his gamer tag. Is it Nate?”
“No~! You can’t guess his name since he doesn’t go to our school.” To this day, I have no clue what his actual name is. Though she did tell me months later, I forgot his name already (I think it was Kevin or something).
“Alrighty then, last check-ups. Arena, equipment, house, cake...yeah, we’re set, Christine.”
“Alrighty. Now to wait until 2.”
Time skip, bwub bwub bwub. 2 PM rolls around and now we have Epix, Christine, David (her brother), David (Mes-...I can’t spell his last name. If you’re reading this, I’m sorry David, I tried) though only for a few moments, Riley, and yours truly. We received our armor, bows, arrows, swords, water, lava, and shields and rushed inside the arena. We all began in our own chosen spots and waited for a count down.
3…
2…
1…
...GO!
We were off. I had chosen to start in my tree, seeing as it was going to be the first place I go anyways. I pass my own trials and get my rewards: a horse, horse armor, and my not-so-fair sword, and I was off. I ran back up my tree, completing the trials once more so that I don’t mess up my system. I began a storm of arrows from above but never killing. Only assisting in the kill, as to stay out of the immediate fire. That is, of course, until I got shot back at and decided it was time to go and fight for real like a good sword cavalry that I was, luckily, there were no lance users (only real Fire Emblem: Heroes players understand).
I rushed into battle against Riley, triumphantly… “HYA-...my friggin horse is dead...okay then, wow, rude.” Just like that, I became an infantry unit. I ran for cover and just stuck to firing from afar, keeping my eyes on my target, Riley...until I noticed witches slowly seeping out the hole in my tree. I walk over to investigate...the entire tree’s insides are dangerous and a witch has already poisoned me. I ran like the wind out of there, knowing that I’d die if I didn’t. The mobs summoned more, and more, and more of themselves. There were so many, the game was near impossible to play. The game moved at a frame rate almost similar to that of a poorly made claymation film...at .25 speed...while your power is flickering on and off...during a tornado.
David said for everyone to a truce for a minute and to get somewhere safe while he killed all the mobs with a command. This, though a fast process, took nearly years, since the chat where he had to type commands was also horribly slow. Within this time, Riley had died to a witch's wrath and perished. Though it was during a time of dismay, it was still considered death from intentional game design. Regardless, we got to play after that was said and done, though again, Riley wasn't given a second try due to the witches being viable reasoning for one's death (though, it was a swarm).
I rushed into Christine’s area and hid in an igloo. Meanwhile, Epix and David were brawling it out. David began climbing up while Epix rained fire down onto David, slowly taking him down a block, stopping David from reaching him. I had also begun to target Epix, seeing as it was actually seeming to be a very difficult task for David to do. David and I broke the one common PvP rule and teamed against Epix, surely taking him down. Of course, not before almost dying to fall damage.
Epix was cornered, he was low and we had him at point-blank. He pearled away, but he didn’t aim for the arena. He aimed above the borders. He escaped the arena. I noticed this while David was searching for where he had gone to in the arena. I notified Christine of this, and she had simply said, “He’s disqualified.”
It was now down to David and me. Now, I need to mention, I play deceptively, defensively, and logically (by using features that are often overlooked). I only had access to one of those, being defense, seeing as I had no pearls and couldn’t make anything that would aid me. I shielded attacks, left and right. David rushed in countless times, each failing to hit me. That was...until I fell off a cliff...I was on half a heart. I was clinging onto life and couldn’t run somewhere. That is until I noticed he was low too and couldn’t jump after me. I used this. I dug straight into the mountain, covering my tracks. He hadn’t known. I got away...yay~!
I healed inside the mountain and escaped when I was back at full. I rushed to my tree and shot down at him, knowing it would take him a while to get to me. I fired until he was out of my line of fire, and when he came crawling up to the canopy of my tree to strike me down and kill me...I jumped. You may now ask, “Why? That’s not very smart.” Well, my dear friend, that’s where you are wrong. Remember how I said I play dirty, almost cheating? Well, I stood right where I placed vines on my tree. I clung onto the vines, safely touching the ground. David hadn’t known about the vines and went down the tree once more.
I continued my cycle of running and keeping distance while firing my bow at him. This continued for so long, that the spectating Christine called sudden death. She made both of us rush to the middle and fight it out. The catch being, if you die or even exit the center of the arena, you lost. Now, I still played defensively. Why? Well, there was a mechanic I hadn’t mentioned when it came to shields. When attacked by player melee attacks, they’re thrown back a couple of blocks. David knew this at the time and tried to use lava against me since that bypasses shields and isn’t a melee attack. I dodged in time and narrowly stole his lava, though I failed countless times. When I finally got rid of his lava, the only attack he could use was his sword. My unintentional plan was unfolding.
He struck once, flew to the absolute center. Once more, a little further. Again, further. Again. And again. And again. He struck one final time...he went out of the center. I won by doing nearly nothing. Rankings were made, and I had won.
We carried on to the house and put on the party hats. We stayed in the house, but never actually sang happy birthday or even touched the cake. We all subconsciously knew we hated singing happy birthday, let alone being sung to. So, we just put a music disc into the DJ booth and simply vibed. At this point, it was 5, and Epix, David, Riley, and the other people I likely forgot about left, leaving Christine and me on the call, in the world, alone.
“So, kid, did you enjoy your birthday?”
“Mhm.”
“What do you say~?”
“Thank you.”
“Aw, where’s the loud, ambitious Christine gone? Why do you sound sad?”
“You’ve done a lot for me in this world...thank you.”
“You’re welcome, but no need to nearly cry. That’s my job. You’re optimistic, I’m pessimistic, that’s our dynamic duo roles.”
“I know, but still.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed your birthday.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, hey, and, kid?”
“Yeah?”
“I know I said it last night but…”
“Mhm?”
“Happy birthday, kid.”
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