//------------------------------//
// Chapter One (Edited) 
// Story: Admin Abuse 
// by blackhotmetal 
//------------------------------//

"Ahhh…" Dante sighed as he sat down after a long day at work. "I wonder if Sarah ever got around to updating my privileges on the server," he thought out loud. He flicked his hand across both of his monitors and his PC case, hitting all of the power buttons, and leaned back in his desk chair, watching the lights come on as the electronics came to life. After entering his password, he quickly checked his phone to see if he had any notifications going off. Satisfied that he had no new messages, he set it to 'Do Not Disturb' and put his headphones on. He opened his Minecraft launcher and started up the game.

"OK…" Dante mumbled to himself while scrolling through his long list of saved server IPs. "There you are! Natura, found ya." Upon logging in, he checked the list of online players in the Tab key menu, only to see nobody online but him. "Oh come on, Sarah, you said you would be on after five," Dante grumbled.

A few seconds later:



Silverxs153 joined the game

<NotDustYet> SARAH WHY YOU LATE??????

<Silverxs153> Oh you are already online!

<Silverxs153> I was getting ready to message you.

<Silverxs153> Sorry.

<NotDustYet> It's OK.

<NotDustYet> Did you add my perms yet?

<Silverxs153> No, I was gonna do that today…



"Ugh, why do you take so long to do these things, Sarah?" Dante complained to no one in particular. He walked his character up to Silverxs153 and started running in circles, jumping, and punching the air out of boredom.



[Server: Opped NotDustYet]

<NotDustYet> Uh did you mean to do that????

<Silverxs153> What?

<NotDustYet> OP me????

<Silverxs153> Yeah, I'm giving you Admin so you can do all the boring stuff like making roles. I trust you anyways.

<Silverxs153> Oh and here's the new rulebook. Feel free to copy it and distribute to anyone who joins, OK?



Silverxs153 tossed a written book on the ground for Dante to pick up. He skimmed the book. 'Do not grief/hack/exploit the server. All large builds must be zoned and approved by the Owner BEFORE BUILDING. Do not just dig random holes in the ground, it is ugly and ruins the landscape. Building a large build without proper zoning or approval may lead to it being removed. Do not disrespect staff. Admin abuse can be reported to the Owner on the server’s Discord. Have fun! Link to Discord - https://discord.gg/ejXtg9s'



<NotDustYet> Aight cool. Is anything already zoned?

<Silverxs153> Nah.

<Silverxs153> I just started the server two days ago remember?

<Silverxs153> I gotta go. Dinner.

<NotDustYet> :P OK bye.

Silverxs153 left the game.



"Huh," Dante said, mildly surprised. "Never been opped so easily on a server before. The rules are kinda strict but understandable; guess that's how she wants to run it." Dante put himself into Creative mode before copying a stack of the book and placing it in the top of his inventory. "What to do now?” he said to hopefully get his brain churning. I should probably get on those roles, but I also want to build a pretty spawn. I probably need to get the spawn zoned, though, Dante reasoned with himself for a few moments. I wonder what kind of plugins we have for the Admins. I need to know that before I can properly make roles with perms. He typed /plugins and was not disappointed with the results.



AdminEssentials, Essentials, Coloredtexts, Powertools, WorldEdit, Ę̸̵̖̭̯͔͍̼͖̝Ŗ҉̛̯̺̮͕̝̘̺̱̬̀R҉͏̫͉̥̫̝̬̹̮̤̤̞̗͔̭̙̣͠



"Odd," Dante questioned as he saw the last plugin on the list. "Maybe it’s just not loaded right. I'll tell Sarah to restart the server when she gets back and see if that fixes it," he thought out loud. Well, better to get to it sooner rather than later, Dante thought as he opened up Notepad++. He started with the owner role because it was the easiest. He didn't have to add any perms because the owner would obviously always be opped or have access to the server console, so he started off by making the little pretty colored prefix tags for all of the roles.

After a solid two hours of JavaScript aided by a bit of YouTube to fix little mistakes, he had all of the roles set up. Dante sent the file to Sarah with instructions on where to put it in the server folders. He stood up from his desk, yawned, and stretched, making several satisfying pops. He then walked downstairs to his kitchen, grabbed a glass of ice water, and made his way back up to his bedroom. After putting the glass of water on his nightstand, the mentally exhausted Dante flopped onto his bed.

Minutes passed as he slowly drifted off to sleep. In its boredom, his mind wandered to the error in the plugin list. The more he thought about it, the more unusual it seemed. With his curiosity now overpowering his tiredness, he rolled off his bed onto his feet and sat back down in front of his computer. After jiggling his mouse to get rid of the screen saver, he rejoined the server and checked to see if Sarah had added the roles he made yet. He typed a test chat message and saw a bright red Admin prefix and yellow text. Dante smiled, seeing that he got it right the first time and didn't have to go back and re-edit the roles. I’ll also just assume that the name tag prefix is also working since everything else seems to be, he thought. The server had to have been restarted for his roles to now be working, so he assumed the error was now gone. But just to be thorough, he thought to himself as he again typed /plugins.

It was still there. "Odd, I'd thought a restart would fix it." He tried to see if maybe it was supposed to be like that by doing /help err. The result was less than helpful, as all it gave him was the command /err help. "OK, seems about right," Dante joked to himself. He typed /err help. The result was 



Incorrect argument for command
/err help<--[HERE]



"Wow. Very useful," he deadpanned. Following the rabbit trail, he typed /err.

Both of his monitors went black for a second then came back on, as if he had just adjusted the resolution. Dante dismissed this as a graphical glitch. He saw that his character had been teleported to a new location above a forest. Strange, he thought. Well, Admin duty calls! He pushed the Tab key to see if any other players were online. When he pressed it, instead of getting the usual list of names and connection levels, his game froze. He let go of the Tab key and the game unfroze as if nothing had happened at all. Okay? He typed in /spawn and was teleported to the position he was already at, above the forest. Alright, spawn is in the sky now. Guess I'll do it the old fashioned way and see what I can see. I hope Sarah doesn't get mad.

Nearly half an hour had passed, and the sun had just fallen below the horizon in game. He had seen nothing but forest. Suddenly, a chunk loaded in with the end of the forest on it. "Finally, something besides just trees," Dante mumbled. He turned and flew in that direction. Ooh what do we have here? he thought as he spotted a small building.

Nearing it, he typed /vanish to hide himself so as to not disturb whomever may be inside. Neat, a house that is made to look like a tree. Looks like nobody is home. This should be fine since it’s not a large build. He circled around the tree and noticed a path that led away from an entrance. More, perhaps? Dante followed the path to be met by a town across a short bridge. "Oh, neat. Apparently people build entire towns in less than two hours." He laughed incredulously. He peeked at the server Discord and saw that there were no new messages in the zoning channel. "This probably counts as a large build," he said, shaking his head. "Time to find the builder."

Dante walked his character down the dark empty path. When he reached the end of the path, there was a cobble bridge that lead into a plaza and a large, circular building ahead of him. "That looks important. Maybe the builder is in there." He walked up to the doors and opened one to see light shining through another door, probably an office, further in. After walking up to the door and un-vanishing himself, he opened it to find a default-skinned player just standing and staring at a desk. Noticing that the door was open, they jumped back a bit.

He heard a startled squeak through the game sound, and voice say, "H-Hello? Can I help you?"

“Yeah, is this your town?” Dante typed in the chat. The player made no indication that they saw his message in the chat as they did not respond and were inching away slowly. 

"Um, the town hall is closed, so… if you could come back tomorrow morning… maybe I could help you out?" the voice said again.

"Did they add a voice chat feature?" Dante asked himself out loud. "If they can’t see chat, maybe I could use a sign?" Dante gave himself a few signs, placed one, and asked the question again on a sign.

"Y-yes, I suppose it is," the player's voice confirmed. "I am the mayor of this town."

Dante placed another sign asking, ‘Did you zone this build?’

"Um, what do you mean?" she asked.

He destroyed the previous signs and placed new ones saying, ‘Look, I know this town isn't zoned. Just get it zoned and approved by the Owner by tomorrow night and there won’t be any issues. I am giving you a rule book containing all the information you need to get it zoned.’ Dante then tossed one of his copied rule books to the player.

The player picked up the rule book and looked it over. "Thank you… I suppose? Um, could I get your name?" she asked.

He placed a sign and typed, 'ADMIN: NotDustYet. What is yours? I can't seem to see your name tag.’

She nervously answered, "Mayor Mare."

Dante placed one last sign, abruptly ending his chat, saying, ‘I'm going to bed. See you tomorrow.’ He cleared his inventory of signs, left the building, vanished, and then logged off. "That was kind of odd," he said. He turned off his computer, monitors, and flopped down on his bed. His mind drifted back to the strange voice chat conversation with the other player as he fell asleep.