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  “Good boy, Rex!” Kat shouted out from her cell as Cassandrix picked up the soldier’s dropped items. Rex pounced over to the door of Kat’s cell and began pawing at the steel barrier, whimpering. Cassandrix walked over to a second lever on the wall and pulled it down, allowing the door to swing open. Rex tackled Kat to the ground, licking her face.

  “It’s good to see you, too, boy!” Kat laughed, as she scratched the dog under his red collar, causing his tail to wag harder than ever. Cassandrix walked over to them.

  “If you two are done,” Cassandrix said in a determined voice, “we’ve still got to find Charlie and Crunch. And I’m sure the guards will be sending some reinforcements up soon. That attack wasn’t exactly silent, you know.”

  Kat opened her mouth, ready to acknowledge in the most sarcastic way possible that Cassandrix hadn’t even thanked her for saving her life, but she realized that Cassandrix was right. They had a mission to finish.

  “You’re right,” Kat replied, nodding. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 7 THE BLACK HOOD

  Sally!” cried Stan as the two players ran toward each other, and met in a tight embrace. “Oh, it’s so good to see you again! In person, I mean.”

  Sally chuckled as she let him go. “Haha, yeah, I missed you, too, noob. I mean, being your omnipresent spirit mentor is nice and fun and all, but it’s so much more hilarious when I can mess with ya in person.”

  Stan smiled. “Man, you just don’t change, do you? Even after all this craziness, you’re still exactly the same person that I met in the Adorian Village all those months ago . . .”

  “Oh, don’t go getting sentimental on me, noob,” Sally scoffed, crossing her arms. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, and not nearly enough time to do it, so we can’t waste any more words.”

  “Oh . . . okay,” said Stan, feeling slightly awkward. Yep, he thought to himself. Nothing’s changed at all . . .

  “Anyway, I’m guessing that you want to know why you’re here, noob.”

  “Well,” replied Stan, slightly taken aback, “I, uh . . . assumed it was because you just wanted to see me again.”

  “Oh, Stan, Stan, Stan,” Sally chuckled, closing her eyes and shaking her head in amusement. “You know what they say, noob . . . When you assume, you make an . . .”

  “Hey!” exclaimed Stan, cutting her off. “If assuming things is so bad, then why did you assume that I wanted to know what I’m doing here?”

  Sally opened her mouth, then closed it again. She scratched her head for a second, looking confused, and then nodded reasonably.

  “Good point, noob,” Sally replied agreeably. “Well, regardless, the important thing is that we both ended up looking stupid.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” Stan replied. “So, why do you want me here, anyway?”

  “Well, there are actually two reasons,” Sally said. “The first reason is that I wanted us to be able to establish a place where we can meet up and talk without any problems. As of now, I’ve been spending only half my time spying on the Noctem Alliance, and the other half has been spent trying to contact you to tell you about it. Now that I have this server up and running, we can meet here if I have anything to tell you. It’ll be much easier to find you for a minute and tell you to meet me here rather than to try to tell you the entire report in Elementia.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” Stan replied, nodding his head. “So I’ll still hear your voice in Elementia, and when I do, it means come onto this server?”

  “Yes,” Sally answered.

  “Okay, good thinking,” said Stan. “So, do you have any news to report to me?”

  “Nothing yet,” Sally replied. “I don’t know who the Noctems have got doing their tech work, but they’re clearly doing their job exceptionally well. I’ve never seen anything as difficult to hack in my life as Elementia is right now. And the worst part is, even if they’re killed in Elementia, they’ll still be able to keep working from beyond the server, like I am.”

  “Well, that’s unfortunate,” Stan said bitterly. “But I guess that it’s a given, and we have to work with it. Anyway, you said you had two reasons for getting me to come over here.”

  “That I do, noob,” Sally said nodding her head, a wild gleam of excitement shining in her eyes. “I’m gonna cut straight to the chase with you, Stan: I’m gonna try to get you operating powers in Elementia.”

  “Wait, what?” Stan asked, bewildered. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting her to say, but it certainly wasn’t that.

  “You heard me,” Sally replied.

  “But . . . how . . .”

  “Because I think I’ve figured out how,” Sally said. “I was trying to work out how I could rejoin Elementia, but I found out that it wasn’t possible. I did figure out that I should be able to give you operating powers, though. And if you had operating powers, then defeating the Noctem Alliance would be cake.”

  “So . . . hold on . . . questions . . . ,” Stan sputtered as he tried to put together what Sally was saying. “Let me ask you this first . . . I’ve heard a lot about operating powers since I’ve been in Elementia . . . I know that King Kev and Avery used to have them, but then King Kev gave them up, and now nobody has them . . . but I’m still not entirely sure what operating powers are. I mean, what can you do with them, exactly?”

  A devious grin crossed Sally’s face. “Weeeellll . . . ,” she said.

  Then, without warning, Sally jumped off the ground, propelling herself into the air . . . and didn’t come back down. She rocketed higher and higher into the sky, and then dipped downward. She bolted around the air like a superhero, performing loops and U-turns, all before returning. She flew suspended in the air directly above Stan, who stood motionless, and entranced.

  “Well, you can fly, for one,” she shouted from the air, her voice giddy.

  Sally closed her eyes for a moment and then, without warning, a diamond sword popped out of midair and landed in her left hand. She stretched out her left hand toward the ground a distance away, took a deep breath and, with a rumbling sound, a tower of brick blocks began to construct itself, reaching high into the sky in a matter of seconds.

  “You can also create items and blocks using your mind.”

  Sally rocketed off directly toward the brick tower, her fist outstretched. Stan watched in awe as she barreled directly through the center of the tower, leaving a gaping hole behind her. She circled backward and cut through the tower at six other points of various heights before finally flying back. Sally punched her fist through the air toward the tower, and immediately, an explosion rang out, taking a chunk of the tower with it. Sally aimed a blitz of quick jabs from the ground to the sky, destroying the tower from the bottom to the top.

  “And you can also destroy blocks, either by hitting them with one punch or by creating explosions.”

  After the explosions had ceased, Sally flew back down to the ground, stopping just above Stan.

  “So, yeah, those are a few things you can do with operating powers. There are a bunch more, too, but for now, there’s really only one more that I want to show you.”

  Sally tossed her sword into the air, and stretched out her left hand toward it. The sword stood still in midair. As Sally moved her hand from side to side, the sword moved along with it, slicing through the open space. Sally clenched her fist, and the sword began to spin around in circles, like a midair top. As Sally released her fist and the sword hovered still once more, she directed her right hand down at the ground, toward Stan.

  Instantly, Stan found himself unable to move. His arms and legs stiffened, as did his neck, and he began to levitate into the sky. All at once, Stan wasn’t feeling blown away by these wonderful powers; quite the contrary, he felt terrified. He wasn’t prepared to totally lose control of his body, especially when he was off the ground.

  “Okay, Sally, you’ve made your point,” Stan said firmly, trying not to hide the fear that was welling up in his body. “You can stop now.”

  But Sally
didn’t stop. Rather, at his request, a psychotic grin crossed Sally’s face as she jerked her right hand upward. Stan let out a squeak of terror as he felt himself rocket into the air, jerking to a stop high above the grassy ground below. Sally’s left hand moved a little, and the sword spun to face Stan.

  “Sally . . . what’re you doing?” asked Stan in horror.

  “Teaching!” Sally replied, her eyes flashing with madness as she clapped her hands together in front of her. All at once, Stan felt himself fly forward at breakneck speeds, right toward the flying diamond sword.

  Stan barely had time to comprehend what was happening before the sword had pierced him through the stomach and shot out his back. Stan felt an instant of pain, followed by a vacuum of light and sound until everything went black and silent.

  Then, all at once, Stan found himself on a field of grass. His heart was racing. He glanced around wildly. He was sitting in the middle of the endless expanse of grass, and Sally was still levitating in the air next to her diamond sword. Immediately, Stan’s hand went to his stomach . . . and found no wound. There wasn’t even a rip in his shirt. And as Stan realized this, he also found that he wasn’t in any pain. Confused out of his mind, he glanced up at Sally as she landed next to him.

  “What did . . . how . . . are you insa . . . but I was de . . . WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” Stan demanded in fury.

  Sally chuckled. “Oh, I just thought I’d kill two Creepers with one arrow. You know, demonstrate what my operating powers can do and show you that you can’t die on this server at the same time. You know, you—”

  “Okay, back up,” Stan managed to get out, his head spinning. “First of all . . . why exactly am I not dead?”

  “Oh, you poor sap,” Sally replied, shaking her head and clicking her tongue in mock sympathy. “You’ve played on Elementia your whole life, and you’re so ignorant to the rest of the Minecraft world.”

  “Wha . . . ?”

  “Elementia isn’t like other Minecraft worlds, noob,” Sally said wisely. “On most Minecraft servers, after you die, you just appear back in the last bed you slept in . . . or at the spawnpoint, if your bed was destroyed or you haven’t slept yet. Elementia is different because King Kev locked the server into Hardcore PVP mode. That means that the difficulty of the monsters is permanently on the hardest setting, players can hurt each other, and if you die you’re banished from the server forever.”

  “So . . . ,” Stan said slowly, trying to put things together in his head. “This server . . . SalAcademy . . . isn’t like that?”

  “Nope,” replied Sally. “It’s just a normal PVP server. Which means we can hurt each other, but we can also respawn, and operators like me can change the game mode.”

  “Okay, well, that leads into my other question, actually,” said Stan. “How did you manage to get operating powers on this server?”

  “You automatically get operating powers if you start a server,” Sally answered, as if it were obvious. “Besides that, the only way to get operating powers is if somebody who already has operating powers gives them to you . . . like I’m about to do for you, in fact.”

  “Wait,” exclaimed Stan, jumping to his feet and looking Sally in the eye. “You’re gonna give me operating powers? I’m gonna be able to do all that stuff you just did?”

  “After I train you,” Sally replied, nodding with a smile.

  “And once I get my powers,” Stan said quickly, becoming more excited by the second as he realized the possibilities this development held, “I’ll be able to use them anywhere? Both here and in Elementia?”

  “No,” Sally replied, shaking her head. “You’ll only be able to use operating powers here, in SalAcademy.”

  “Well, then . . . what’s the point?” Stan asked, crestfallen.

  “The point is that, here, I’ll be able to teach you how to use them,” Sally said. “It takes a lot of training and practice to master the use of operating powers. It’s not nearly as easy as I just made it look. I’m going to try to illegally hack the powers onto you in Elementia, but before I do, you need to learn how to use them. Once the Noctem Alliance realizes that I’m going to try this, they’ll try to stop me, so I’ll only have one shot at giving the powers to you without getting blocked. I want to make sure that you know how to use your powers when I take that shot.”

  “Well then, what’re we waiting for?” Stan asked eagerly. “Give me my powers, and let’s get training!”

  “Haha, okay, noob,” Sally replied as Stan bounced around like a puppy about to get a treat. “Stand still and calm down. And close your eyes.”

  Stan took a deep breath and stood still. He let the breath out and closed his eyes. After a moment, he felt a hand touch his forehead. An instant later, he felt like his entire body was going numb from an electric current. The sensation lasted for an instant . . . and then it stopped. Stan opened his eyes, and saw Sally drawing her right hand back.

  “How do you feel?” Sally asked quizzically.

  “Well, I felt something for a second . . . I don’t feel much different now, though,” Stan replied, confused.

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out for sure if it worked,” replied Sally, stepping back and cracking her knuckles. Then she paused.

  “Well,” she continued, “actually, there are a few other ways we could check—we could check the file systems and such—but this way is a lot more fun!”

  Sally stared at the ground in front of Stan. She took a deep breath and pushed her open-palm hand forward. Instantly, a three-block-high pillar appeared in front of Stan. These weren’t blocks that Stan had seen before. They were dark stone blocks, streaked across the surface with the colors gray, black, and white.

  “This is bedrock,” Sally said, her eyebrows knit into a serious face. “It’s the hardest block in Minecraft, it makes up the bottom layer of the world, and it’s impossible to mine through. If you are a true operator, noob, you’ll be able to destroy it in one punch.”

  “Okay,” Stan replied. He stared at the pillar, fists balled up under his chin. He bounced back and forth on the balls of his feet. He started mumbling to himself under his breath.

  “All right . . . come on, Mr. Block . . . you’re going down . . . what, you made outta bedrock? I’ll tell you what else is made of bedrock . . . my fist! Well actually . . . not really . . . but it’s as hard as bedrock . . . well, not really, but metaphorically I mean . . . and metaphorically, it’s just as tough, too . . . and I’ll tell you what else, metaphorically . . .”

  “Just throw the stupid punch!” Sally shouted in irritation, snapping Stan out of it. He shook his head and focused in on the block. Then, in one graceful motion, he pulled back his fist and sunk it as hard as he could into the bedrock block.

  “Daaaugh!” Stan shouted, clenching his teeth as he grabbed his throbbing fist. He shot an irritated look up at the bedrock block, still sitting there, obnoxiously solid.

  “Try again,” sighed Sally in a bored voice.

  “All right,” grunted Stan, “let’s go . . . argh!”

  Once again, he shook his fist in pain. Angry now, he threw punch after punch into the bedrock block, all accompanied by grunts, and all resulting in nothing more than an awful lot of agony in his fists.

  “You’re doing it all wrong, noob,” Sally spoke after a moment. “You’re punching the block with all your strength, which is the totally wrong way of going about it. You know that you have the ability to destroy the block . . . but you’re still going about it as if you didn’t have the powers. You’re punching the outside of the block. Don’t stop at the surface, Stan . . . I want you to punch straight through!”

  And with that, Sally leaped into the air, and threw a punch directly through the highest block in the tower. Stan watched her fist, and saw that she was right: she didn’t stop the punch at the surface of the block. Her first plowed directly through the center, causing the block to disappear in the process.

  Stan took a deep breath and focused on the block
directly in front of him. He looked at the gray-streaked surface and drew back his fist. Then, with all his might, Stan drove his fist into the block. His fist shot through the center of the bedrock block, and it disappeared into thin air. Stan’s aching fist didn’t feel a thing.

  Stan drew back his hand, and looked at his fist in wonder.

  “Congratulations, noob,” said Sally with a smirk, clapping her hands together. “You’re an operator now.”

  Stan grinned and looked back at Sally, overcome with jubilation.

  “And all it took was a little advice from good ol’ Sally,” she continued with a laugh.

  “You know,” Stan said, looking at her in an adoringly accusatory way, “perhaps you could’ve brought up that insignificant little tidbit of advice before I nearly broke all my knuckles.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I could’ve . . . but that wouldn’t have been nearly as funny, would it?” Sally responded with a chuckle. “Now come on, noob!” she continued as Stan glared at her in exasperation. “You’ve got to get back to Elementia soon, but there are a few things I want to show you first!”

  Leonidas was beginning to worry. The search had been going on forever now, and every second that he sat holed up in the cave, the chances increased that Stan would return and find himself in the midst of a quintet of heavily armed Noctem fighters. Leonidas had managed to silently take out one of the soldiers who had wandered down the cave to search. He was able to replenish his supply of arrows from the archer. All the others were still scuttling around the tiny dirt island like ants on an anthill. Leonidas was just pondering how much more there was to search when he heard a shout from above.

  “All troops, fall in!” Spyro’s voice rang out.

  Leonidas heard footfalls on the ground above his head, and he crept his way up the cave to spy on them, careful not to alert any bats in the process. He poked his head out of the side of the cave and saw the four black-clad players circled around Spyro, whose face was illuminated by the moonlight.