Welcome to Pixel City: A TSP/Minecraft Crossover

“Are we all here?” Mathias asked, readjusting his headphones and mic. Arzen grinned from beside him, her own shiny green headphones in place. “Vens is right next to me. How about you guys?”

“I’m here,” Daniel replied smoothly. He glanced at the screen, “I see a Queen Elsa skin. Is that Arzen?”

“Right here!”

“Alright, so it is. Prat, which one are you?”

“Goddamn Link, Watchman.”

“You had to install a ton of things just for that skin,” Arzen noted. Mathias chuckled. “You should have seen him. He was cursing and let out a big cheer when the game let him turn into Link.”

“Legend of Zelda, right?”

“Yeah. Hold on, where’s Elaine and Liam?”

“Liam’s getting online. I think Elaine’s internet connection sucks at the moment,” Daniel grumbled, checking his phone. The three of them were all connected through Skype, video chatting as a group while playing Minecraft. Mathias had been able to set up the layout so that he could see the faces of the others while keeping the Minecraft screen at large. “There he is.”

A Blue Knight appeared, running next to the Watchman. Almost immediately, Liam’s face popped up on the screen as well.

“Yo there!” he greeted, fiddling with his mic. They noted the completely silver headphones and the little-Liam figure stopped moving. “Who else are we waiting for?”

“Elaine,” Arzen replied. “She’ll be here soon.”

As soon as she said that, Elaine’s character (a Queen) appeared. “I’m here,” Elaine’s voice came, her face appearing on the screen. “Will we start?”

“Let’s go ahead,” Liam agreed.

“Alright. Let’s begin.”

 ~ >w< ~

“So this is our world,” Mathias spoke as he led the group to the city, “Arzen and I spent the past twenty hours making this for you guys. We’ve got a clean save if ever you assholes decide to thrash it,” he threw a pointed look towards Liam, which everyone laughed at because it was always Liam who screwed up things.

Such as the GTA V Freeplay mode, but that was another story.

“Hold on – you told me you didn’t have experience with Minecraft,” Elaine interrupted.

Arzen shrugged. “We asked my brother to help out since he’s an expert on the PC version. Anyway, if we all step forward, here’s our city!”

Liam was the first to react.

“Holy shit! This is amazing – did it seriously take you twenty hours?”

“We estimated that much,” Mathias replied, throwing a wink at Arzen. Daniel snorted.

“Gross, online PDA.”

“Technically, it’s real life PDA.” Mathias said smoothly.

“Still gross.”

“Dude, is this my house?” all of their characters went to Liam’s, which was standing in front of an impressive-looking wooden house. “This is sweet! Who made this for me?”

“I did.” Link walked up the stairs and opened the door, all the other characters walking inside. Inside Liam’s house was a nice view by the red bed, the essentials (chest and whatnot) and aside from that, a potted plant containing a red rose. “The rose was Arzen’s idea.”

The girl shrugged, “Liam seemed the type. To the other houses!”

The rest of them left except for the Blue Knight, which was peeking around and exploring.

Mathias then led them to Daniel’s house.

“I was tempted to make it a lump of dirt,” all of them (except for Daniel) laughed, Liam’s character now catching up, “But I decided to be a Kind Soul and made his out of Birch wood. Just for the sake of mentioning it,” he added, “Liam’s is Oak and Blondie’s here is Birch.  Now, for mine, Arzen’s and Elaine’s, we decided not to go with wood and had something different.”

“Stone?”

“Exactly. Before that, here’s Daniel’s place.” Daniel cocked a brow as he looked at the seemingly-normal home, “Birch wood looking nice and fancy, hung up some paintings because I know he’d appreciate it. Other than that, it’s got what he needs.”

“I’d say thank you, but I have to see if this place is safe.”

“You do just that. Now, we’ll see what Arzen did for Elaine.”

“You’ll enjoy it,” she promised Elaine, who looked a little excited yet dubious for what was in store. They left Daniel to investigate his own home and went to the home next to it, which was made out of cobblestone . “Cobblestone house here! If you peek inside, you can see a nice orange wool flooring and glowstone to give the soft light feel. I didn’t make it too complicated – actually, all of the houses aren’t complicated – so that in case you guys want to make your own adjustments, you can do so.”

“With us to watch, of course. I don’t mean to offend, but I don’t want Liam running about with our eyes on him? I fear for the future of this city.”

“Hey, I don’t burn down stuff! Not that much,” he added as an afterthought.

They then showed what they did to their own homes (Arzen’s was made of stone while Mathias was brick) and all of them met in the center, where the pair had built a gazebo where they could meet up. Once the five figures had assembled, they took turns in explaining the other features of the place (such as the stripes on the ground which depicted each’s favorite color) and said that they still had to work on some adjustments here and there.

“Speaking of,” Daniel suddenly interrupted, “What should we name this place?”

All of them pondered on that for a moment.

Arzen quickly did a search and pulled up Google Translate, minimizing the Minecraft world for a moment.

“I got one,” she told them, quickly copying the link of the picture and sending it to the rest of them.

The four others clicked it, a webpage opening.

Querencia (n.): A place from which one’s strength is drawn, where one feels most at home; the place where you are your most authentic self.

“I like it,” Liam grinned. “Good one.”

“So should we name it Querencia?”

The rest nodded, and Mathias patted Arzen on the back.

Elaine coughed to hide her laughter.

“So what exactly is the purpose of Querencia City?” Daniel asked.

“Well, Mathias and I got the idea from Rooster Teeth. The gaming channel on YouTube,” Arzen explained. “Mainly, the guys there play Minecraft and all, so we decided – why the hell not? It’s like a Sims thing except that we’re all in pixel form and the main purpose of the game is to build.”

“And that this won’t go on the internet,” Mathias added.

“So we’ll have contests?” Elaine asked.

“Not really – we can do the quests and stuff that the game usually has. I’ll have to ask my brother about it because he really knows this stuff. But for now, we can work on upgrading the houses.”

“Starting today?”

None of them noticed the Blue Knight slinking away (except for Liam).

“Maybe, if you guys are up for it.)

They were in agreement. When they started talking about which to upgrade and which to not upgrade, Liam’s sudden laughter surprised them all.

“DANIEL, YOUR HOUSE IS BURNING!”

“WHAT?!” Mathias then started to laugh at this point, the other characters racing to Daniel’s house which was burning. Arzen and Mathias high-fived each other at this point, Liam still laughing as Daniel attempted to stomp it out (which was a pathetic attempt) while Elaine watched incredulously as the Blue Knight, Queen Elsa and Link figures merely watched the Watchman glow red and then die. “I died! Damn it, I died!”

“You’ll respawn,” Liam managed, sitting up and wiping tears from his eyes. “Holy crap, what did you guys do? I just pressed the button and left, then there was lava–”

“This asshole put lava,” Arzen explained, punching Mathias’ shoulder as the Watchman respawned God-knows-where. “In Daniel’s house. I don’t know how he did it. I think he and my brother collaborated when I wasn’t there.”

“I’ll kill you, Angelo,” Daniel swore, “When I get back there!”

Elaine rolled her eyes at Daniel, “So are there any more buttons?”

“Yes.” Mathias finally stopped laughing, “So lesson learned: do not press any random buttons or Querencia City will burn.”

“Too late.”

Their eyes widened as Liam bellowed.

“The city’s gonna blow!”

And at once, the massive amount of TNT which lay under the city’s foundation exploded.

“Oh for fuck sake – let’s stop."