The "Real" World (A Gameknight999 Fanfiction)

more than lines of code

tw/cw: Minor body horror (the main character is a Minecraft zombie), background mentions of death, stress of growing up (though with a fictional take), a cow is killed.

Basic summary: pretty much just building background information on the zombie society with a little bit of delving into plot at the end.

Ba-Jin had been staring at the cave wall for what felt like years, and it may as well have been with the amount of people who walked by her. (It was nearly zero, just an older zombie coming by to remind her to be careful because players could really come by at any moment and a skeleton who chattered to her about the importance of looking brave in case players came by.) Why did everyone care so much about the players?

It was always players this, users that, NPCs and monsters have to keep their guard up and obey the code. But why couldn't they just do what they pleased?

Her heel kicked against the andesite as she shifted her gaze to the blocky ceiling, needing a change of atmosphere but too tired to get up from where she laid on the ground. She sighed, the puff of slightly rotted smelling air drifting off into the musty, smothering smell of the cave.

There was an abandoned mineshaft somewhere around here, though she hadn't gone in there herself. Even for her, someone who wished desperately for peace with the players (peace that wouldn't come), she knew that going into such a 'generated' structure was dangerous. Users when looking for that sort of thing, searching every nook and cranny for loot and spawners, hoping to grab some XP or a saddle for their horse. She trusted some users not to go out of their way to kill her kind or the others like her kind but when the so often fought back it was pretty much in the player's nature to murder on sight.

It wasn't like they knew they were alive though.

It wasn't like she could find it in herself to hate people who just killed for their own safety, not knowing that the people they erased had lives behind the scenes. That the mobs were something a little more than lines of code, more than ones and zeros, more than the numbers and letters shoved down their throats to dictate how they acted.

She was more than that.

Her friends were more than that.

Her family was more than that.

Heck, even the villagers who she wanted to speak to but never could were more than that!

She closed her undead eyes, the solid white of them rolled over by the rotting green of her flesh and the off-hay color of the one eyebrow she had. Furrowing her brow she tried to think of something positive, something that wasn't just repetition of the same hopeless phrases, something to get her mind of the things she couldn't do.

Of course the first thing that came to her mind was to think about the mineshaft again, but she refused that knowing that it would only lead her to begin the cycle once more. So, knowing that some fresh air could help, she forced herself off the ground and stood up- reaching her arms above her head and yawning. The delightful cracking noises which her body made as her spine messily set itself back into place made her smile, content with the stretch.

So her stumbled off into the depths of the cave, hoping to get away from the faint smell of old oak planks (which only overpowered the smell of her own rotting body because she was used to the latter). If she could get away from the smell maybe it would be easier to get her mind off the villagers and even off the players who also invaded her thoughts.

Her steps were slow, as they always were, but not so slow that the blocky walls passed by her slower than the bats that flitted around in the corner of her 'night-vision' sight. Her arms swung gently at her sides, the fabric of her shirt catching on some of the flakey bits of her skin, but she didn't notice. It wasn't uncommon of the rough threads of her clothing to tear of bits of her arms but it wasn't painful either so when it did come to her attention it didn't bother her.