Chapter Text
Yellow thought, when she followed the living versions of Blue and herself back through the portal with the villagers, that it would be a good place to make a gameplan.
Instead the village was being attacked. Again.
The livings were quickly ambushed and shoved into a holding room with the rest of the villagers while Yellow watched disappointedly. To be fair, their best asset was the command block, but surely things didn’t have to fall apart that quickly!
Alive Yellow showed said command block to some of the villagers, who looked at it closely and led her away.
So now Alive Blue and Alive Yellow were splitting up, and Yellow had to pick who she was going to prioritize.
Blue was with more of the villagers, and she was already starting to give them some instructions, while Yellow was being led away. Alive Yellow had the command block, which was admittedly always a bit of lure for Yellow, and she was quietly describing the staff The King had.
So given the choice between Blue helping the villagers get more resources, and experimenting to see if the staff could be replicated, Yellow felt like the decision was obvious.
As the blacksmith villager hammered away at shaping the staff, Yellow decided this was a good time to think. She hadn’t had much of a moment to herself for a little bit, and she always liked to have a little bit of time to analyze the moving parts of a new situation.
When they had died, Yellow took plenty of time on her own to learn the ins and outs of what was going on.
She didn’t want to waste any time with freaking out or getting sad about what had already happened. It was just better to accept and understand the logic and reality and deal with it. After all, she still had most of her friends, and it wasn’t like Orange was suffering from their absence. There were virtually no real world consequences of their deaths, so Yellow just decided that as unfortunate as it was for her and her friends, there would be no benefit to anguishing over it.
The blacksmith finished the base of the staff and kept it away from Alive for the time being. The group went through another tunnel to an enchanting area, where Yellow figured they were going to enchant the thing somehow to work as intended.
It was interesting that the villagers seemed to have a more manual understanding of enchantment and magic in the game, and Yellow wondered if it followed the same types of rules redstone did for the villagers as he began to wave his arms around and construct complex looking spells around the staff.
She really wished she knew how this worked, and she could see the wonder on herself’s face mirrored in the Yellow that was physically in the room.
She hadn’t felt that kind of wonder in a long time with a discovery, even when she was experimenting with the rules of the afterlife so soon after joining it.
She messed with the flying, how the motion felt, she considered the philosophical implications of the clones. Blue figured out how to conjure invisible items, but Yellow was the one to figure out how they worked. And with the new information that they all supposedly had ghost powers, Yellow was interested to figure out what hers were. Not that she had a lot of resources to actually start figuring that out, but she would get on that as soon as this whole King fiasco was over.
She just liked a little bit of time to wonder about new factors, and Yellow was interested in what new dynamics were going to come along with Orchid and Gold.
Orchid seemed to be in a weird middle space while Gold practically had an implied group invitation. It wasn’t just because her kid was opposing the living versions of themselves, because Gold’s dad was doing the same, and the group seemed very receptive to her as a whole.
So where did the difference lie? Perhaps it was just the fact that Orchid was an adult and they hadn’t interacted with many of those outside of Alan, who had the added human factor, The Chosen One, (though he might have still been an old teenager or young adult, they had never asked), and The Dark Lord, who had killed them. That was a reasonable conclusion.
Maybe it was because Orchid hadn’t done much reaching out herself, but thinking about it, neither had Gold.
Maybe it was the awkward withholding of information Orchid had going on there at the beginning of all of this? She hadn’t necessarily been hiding anything, but she had certainly danced around the truth for a little bit before being straight up. But after she had done that, she had been very honest in what was about to happen. She didn’t mislead them, she told them the whole truth when prompted as far as they could tell, so Yellow wouldn’t describe her as dishonest.
Yellow would actually describe her as a very kind person, from what she had seen. She had given kind words to Gold when they were needed, she was very respectful to all of them. She just seemed…somehow muted. Blue and Gold had put it well with The King, that he just wasn’t at his best when they met him, but this seemed different.
She acted almost like there was an invisible critic following her every action, like she didn’t say or do much outside of what seemed like “safe” actions. Yellow just felt like there was so much more to her that was hidden, and perhaps that’s what it was.
Yellow didn’t feel like she had truly met Orchid, while she felt more like she was interacting with Gold.
It was probably just a mash up of all the reasons, and none of them actually dissuaded Yellow from wanting to know more about Orchid. Any new person was an excitement, and Orchid was no exception!
The staff was completed, and Alive Yellow placed the command block in the holding slot, excitement glimmering through the determination. Yellow nodded in approval, knowing she was holding back from just going wild with every option available to her, akin to smashing every single button in a combat game.
Alive Yellow was excited, that was for sure.
But Yellow was definitely more excited about Gold. She wished she had invited her to come along with her through the portal, and she wished she had thought of that sooner. She had left Gold with Blue though, and Blue was pretty good about noticing those sorts of things. Surely, they had invited the shy newcomer to come along with her to follow Orange.
First impressions of Gold were that she was a shyer kind of person who had a good understanding of the world around her, which meant she was probably very observant. She seemed like a more anxious person as well, given how she had reacted to the news that they lived with a human. There were also the glitches that signaled her mechanism of death, so that could have something to do with the quietness if she had died in a particularly traumatic way. Maybe beneath her more withdrawn exterior, there was a little more energy? Yellow wanted to find out.
And with those hints that she was into tech! Yellow was very interested in picking her brain on what kinds of things were possible in a world outside of the PC. She wondered how much she actually knew, and what she might be able to learn from one another. Maybe Gold could even help her figure out what her ghost power was!
But again, first, this whole thing with Gold’s dad trying to destroy the world would have to be resolved before that happened.
In the tunnels, Yellow watched herself practice with the staff quietly and with some simple movements as she crept. She scouted around the village to get a lay of the land before returning to the villagers.
After a little more experimenting through the tunnels, Alive Yellow returned to the larger group of villagers and triumphantly held the new staff over her head as they cheered. She flashed a grin over to Blue, who was smiling and standing in front of three villagers who looked far more capable with a sword than they had previously.
She started applied potion effects to the villagers, of course having also seen their increased skills, and the battle begun.
Yellow has seen plenty of fights by now, but this was one of the first ones that was being controlled by someone who wasn’t either Orange of one of their clones. While the villagers handled the raiders, Yellow and one of the villagers she had traveled with sneaked out the back of the village to find the ravager.
So then Yellow got to see more of what that staff could do, and it was fun watching herself do it in time with when Yellow thought she should try. Using the shield, using it as a light, and then using it to hurl food at the young titan ravager, and then used it to explain a proposed allyship against The King.
Yellow felt a flash of jealousy when she watched herself climb atop the ravager and ride it into battle before reminding herself that there was no need for jealousy because “she” was still getting to do it.
She shook it off, and continued to track the battle, even deciding to sit on the ravager’s back so she didn’t have to fly the whole way there.
And right in the nick of time too, because Blue was starting to struggle to fight off some other kinds of villagers Yellow had never seen before.
The battle was won, the day was saved, the villagers were cheering, and Blue and Yellow teamed back up on the same initiative.
Yellow and Blue’s clones charged their own nether battle with their new ally, Yellow just excited for what was going to happen next. Surely, with such a powerful ally and a staff of her own, the King would be stopped with ease.