“Grenade!” Wood yelled.

My friends all started to scatter. Except for Teddy. He was still right beside me, and tried to grab hold of me to pull me back. But by then I had already started to run forward, my eye on the grenade as it flew through the air towards us. This was probably a really, really dumb idea, but everything was a dumb idea nowadays.

As the grenade arced down towards me, I jumped up, my little hand reaching out to grab hold of it. The second I caught it, I pulled it into my inventory, popping it into my Things That Go Boom file.

I heard Wood laugh, Teddy cursed, and Ellie just looked at me, shaking her head, looking pretty pissed off.

“I know, I know,” I said. “That was really stupid.”

“Clever too,” the girl up on the hill said, staring down on us, her grin morphing into a full-on smile now. Her teeth looked really white and… sharp?

“That wasn't funny,” I said, glaring back at her.

“No, it kind of was,” she said unapologetically. “You've changed a bit since the last time I saw you.”

Touché. “I can't remember, what's your name again?”

Her smile widened, but she didn’t say anything.

“Her name is Georgina,” Wood said from right beside me. He was staring up at her, with an odd look on his face. Was it hostility, or something else?

“Well, one of the Brothers Grimm remembers my name…” Georgina trailed off. “I guess I'm famous now.”

“You hit me in the head with a croquet mallet sophomore year,” Wood said, a practically dreamy look on his face. “That leaves an impression.”

What the…

“I didn't try very hard,” Georgina said, her smile never seeming to end. “I never tried very hard in PE. You took it really well, though.”

Okay, enough of this… were Wood and this Georgina chick flirting?

“So,” I said, interrupting them, “if you're done trying to kill us with explosives, maybe you'd like to talk or something? You know, pool our knowledge.”

She didn't stop staring at Wood, but her smile did dim.

“I mean,” I continued, “we could always use someone else on our side.

“On your side,” she said in a dreamy voice. And something dark, and kind of squirmy looking reared up from behind her, looking very much like a tentacle, but kind of like a shadow too. The damned thing petted the gray cat on her shoulder. The cat purred loud enough you could hear it down where we stood. It didn’t sound like a cat. More reptilian with its phlegm rattling.

Holy shit-balls, she's a monster too!

Not that I knew what that meant, but the last human in monster form that we ran into tried to kill us, and just last night.

“What the hell are you?” I said.

That got her to stop staring at Wood, and start glaring at me. I could swear her eyes flashed purple for a second.

“I'm Georgina,” she said, contempt in every syllable. My feet wanted to step backwards, away from her. But somehow I stayed rooted to the spot.

She laughed, and it wasn't a friendly laugh. “Stay out of my way, Morty The Gnome. Or you won't live to grow up to be a real boy.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Okay, that was both mean and pretty funny. Obviously she was on another level of villainous verbal repartee.

Before I could come up with anything else to lob back at her, she turned and sashayed away, disappearing completely from view within a couple steps.

Jesus…

“That girl’s a psycho,” Ellie said, walking up to me and then saying, “Good move using your inventory like that.”

I’d panicked, which didn't make a lot of sense. If I had panicked wouldn’t I have tried to run away? But I had panicked, imagining my friends being blown to bits by that thing. That's why I panicked, and that's why I ran right to it. I was going to have to think all this over later, and figure out if it was a liability or not.

It probably was.

“She's not a psycho,” Wood said, turning to glare at Ellie. “She never was.”

I only looked at Wood for a moment and nodded. “Fine, she's not a psycho. But she's definitely going on the threat list.”

Teddy stared at his brother, a bewildered expression on his face.

“Please tell me you don't like her,” he said.

Wood’s expression didn’t change, and he didn't bother looking at his brother. “I don't like her.”

He started to turn and said, “If we're going to start grinding, we better find some monsters to—”

That’s when we heard a strange screech. It was close, and it was loud. We all whirled around and looked about us, our weapons already drawn. But there didn't seem to be anything–and then the big pile of gravel started to rumble, and pieces of it started fall off.

Oh crap.

Something big crawled out from the top of the pile, and I blinked really hard not believing my eyes. Large, eight legged, foxy, kind of pixelated looking, with extremely large red eyes. Shit on toast, it was a Minecraft spider.

I stared for a second. This was just…

“How's this possible?” Teddy says. “You know, copyright?!?!”

Wood passed between me and Teddy, he hasn't pulled anything up weapon-wise yet. “Minecraft is open source, dude. Plus, I'm pretty sure everyone that has copyright is dead already. Remember?”

“Oh,” Teddy said, bringing his bow up, an arrow already notched and ready to go.

“Anybody got a wolf or an iron golem handy?” I asked as the giant spider pulled itself the rest of the way out of the big pile of gravel.

Teddy snickered. “Well, there's that thing in woods inventory.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Wood growled. “I swear if I hear—”

And that's when the spider started showing off its superior speed, jumping off the top of the gravel heap and going straight for Wood.

“Holy shit-balls!” And I was suddenly running toward Wood, my frying pan raised. I'm not the only one. Ellie came running too, her Negan bat raised and ready. Her bat is already glowing.

The spider swiped at Wood, but he dodged it, moving with agility. Guess he remembered that he's been trained in karate and self-defense stuff for years now. He pulled a big stick out of his inventory. I'm tempted to say it's out of his ass, from the way he's been treating me but… priorities, you know. First we’ve got to get rid of this freaking spider. Pixelated or not, I imagine it could kill us. Plus, Minecraft spiders have always been pretty damn scary for me.

I remember the first time I played Minecraft. A spider chased me and I ran. Literally hyperventilating, when I finally turned around after running for what seemed like forever, the damned thing killed me. I immediately got resurrected, and it killed me again, and again, and again. I hated that day.

Movement over at the gravel pile tore me from my reverie. I turned to see not one, not two, but three smaller Minecraft spiders pulling themselves out of the gravel pile.

Ah, shit! Does everything have to have babies?

“Teddy!” Ellie screamed, “Wood! You guys on the mom. Me and Mort will handle the babies!”

Okay, having Ellie as the de facto leader is one thing, but her throwing me into a freaking battle with Minecraft spiders it's just, you know...

“Mort!” She screams at me. “Enough with the inner monologue! Get your damn frying pan over here!” She was already bashing the legs off of one Minecraft spider baby, but the other two were starting to close it on her.

I suddenly got a rush. It couldn’t be adrenaline or anything physical. But there it was, a sudden feeling pushing me to go defend her.

I'm sure whatever that feeling was it wasn't politically correct at all, but I went with it anyways.

Before I knew it I was bashing at one of the other baby spider’s skulls, breaking off weird pixelated bits of chiton from their heads with every swing of my frying pan. But that's when the third spider swung around and whacked me super hard with one of its damn legs.

I flew through the air with the greatest of… well, with the greatest of velocity. I ended up smashing into a tree trunk. I had to admit, that really did daze me for a few seconds. Luckily, tree trunks seemed a little harder than the side of a car, so I wasn't embedded in it like I had been that car door yesterday. After a couple seconds, all the bells that were going off of my head faded off. Maybe, since I'm technically hollow inside, it was just a ricochet of echoes I was hearing.

Whatever!

I needed to kill this sucker, and kill it now.