'DiamondzAllD4y joined the server.'
It took almost an entire hour to set up this server and get it to a point where it would load, let alone function. Diamond Tiara sighed in relief as the world loaded around her, chunk by chunk. Blocks of grass and sand loaded into the terrain, and everything seemed to be working, but she was still afraid to move. Silver Spoon owned the server, and she didn't have the best server connection. The last time Diamond Tiara even dared to move her mouse, the game froze, and she had to open her task manager to close it.
Hesitantly, she moved the mouse to open Discord. She flipped between both monitors on her dual monitor set up. Chunks continued to fade into the background of her Minecraft launcher, while the logo of Discord spun in circles in a small rectangular window. When the icon disappeared, the first thing Diamond Tiara was brought to was the Discord server Ms. Cheerilee had made for her class at school.
She wasn't interested in that right now. Her mouse glided across the screen to her direct messages with Silver Spoon, who she had affectionately nicknamed 'Silvy' in her personal settings. The images they constantly sent eachother weren't loading in their direct messages, a sign that something had the potential to be wrong. Diamond Tiara chose to ignore this for now, and slid the mouse cursor on top of the telephone icon. She clicked on it, and waited patiently as the call sound reverberated through her pink cat-ear headphones.
She tapped one hoof impatiently on her desk, and lifted the other to slide her microphone down in front of her mouth. She whistled a familiar tune to herself as she waited for Silver Spoon to pick up the call. She jumped when the call sound ended and the sound of rustling echoed in her headphones.
"Silver Spoon?" she questioned, adjusting her microphone.
"I'm here!" Silver Spoon's voice rang out through her headphones, though it was muffled.
Clearly, Silver Spoon had picked up the call from her phone and not her computer. Her microphone quality was awful. Diamond Tiara was lucky she could understand her.
"Are you on your phone again?" Diamond Tiara grumbled irritably.
"Yeah, sorry..." Silver Spoon said with a sigh. "My Discord crashed on my computer, so I ha--- to pick it up --ere."
"Silver Spoon, you're cutting out," Diamond Tiara said as she rolled her eyes.
"It's okay!" Silver Spoon reassured her friend as she adjusted her mic. "Is the server working? Were you able to get in?"
"Well, it loaded anyways," Diamond Tiara answered. "No thanks to your awful connection."
A little fearfully, Diamond Tiara gripped the mouse again and moved her cursor back to her first monitor. When it slid back into the Minecraft launcher, it disappeared and was firmly stuck to the crosshair in the center of the screen. She would only be able to move it outside the window if she opened her inventory or the escape menu.
She opened her inventory and moved her mouse in circles. Her avatar at the top left of the inventory bobbed up and down and spun as she moved her cursor around. She wasn't losing any frames, it seemed. She exited the inventory and moved her camera around, and was able to see everything this tiny, L-shaped island had to offer.
In one corner was a small tree, most likely only five blocks tall. On the shorter side of the L, there was a chest. She flinched as she pressed the W button to move forward, expecting the game to crash. Thankfully, when she looked back at the screen, her game hadn't stopped responding. She blinked in surprise as she opened the chest, and quickly closed out of it. She couldn't be snooping around while Silver Spoon wasn't here.
"Everything is working," she said to her companion in the call. "I can move, open my inventory, and I even took a peek in the chest. Nothing seems to be breaking so far."
"Perfect!" Silver Spoon exclaimed, clapping her hooves. "Okay, let me join before you do anything. Can you look at the rules while I'm joining? Your connection is better than mind."
"Remind me to tell daddy to pay for you to get better internet," Diamond Tiara grumbled.
She opened her inventory and slid her cursor onto her second monitor to open her browser. The browser opened on top of Discord, and she began searching for the rules to this 'Skyblock'. Unfortunately, it wasn't very clear what rules they were supposed to follow. Several different forums existed that listed off the rules they had to follow. Some were only four rules, other contained as many as ten. She didn't know which option to click on.
With a sigh, she randomly decided a forum to open, and ended up on a website for what looked to be a Minecraft server dedicated solely to Skyblock. Only four rules were listed on the screen.
"I found some rules," Diamond Tiara said. "I couldn't find any one site dedicated to them, so I just picked a random one."
"That's fine," Silver Spoon hummed. Something, most likely her chair, squeaked through Diamond Tiara's headphones. "What are they?"
"Pretty basic," Diamond Tiara giggled. "Don't bridge to the mainland, don't jump off the edge to regenerate health, no playing on peaceful, and no cheating."
"So there's an island, but we can't go there," Silver Spoon hummed thoughtfully. "Okay noted. Well, those really are basic rules. I guess we'll be okay."
'S1lv3r__Sp00n joined the server.'
"There you are!" Diamond Tiara said as she caught sight of the name in the chat bar. "Were you loading into the game this entire time?"
"Yeah..." Silver Spoon laughed nervously.
Diamond Tiara rolled her eyes as she closed her browser and returned to her initial monitor.
"And you wonder why we don't play together that often," Diamond Tiara hissed. "Can you move around without crashing or freezing?"
"I'll look in a second, my chunks are still loading," Silver Spoon replied.
Diamond Tiara jumped around the island impatiently. She jumped in circles around Silver Spoon's avatar, then jumped on the chest, then bounced back and forth beside the tree... Finally though, Silver Spoon's avatar moved its head, and punched the air to alert her that Silver Spoon could play for now.
"So can we finally get started now?" Diamond Tiara asked.
"I thi-- so," Silver Spoon said, momentarily being cut off. "Okay, so what's in the chest?"
"I didn't pay attention, Diamond Tiara sighed. "You go take a look and tell me."
"Okay, fine..." Silver Spoon mumbled.
Silver Spoon's avatar spun around and approached the chest. The chest flew open, and Diamond Tiara waited in silence as Silver Spoon checked the contents of the chest.
"Our chest has..." Silver Spoon began. "An ice block, a lava bucket, a cactus, some wheat seeds, one piece of sugar cane, some wool, a slime ball, some redstone and coal, some string, six iron ingots, a red and brown mushroom each, a watermelon seed, and a pumpkin seed."
"That's a lot of things to start us off with," Diamond Tiara said. "What version of the map did you download?"
"I don't know, I just picked a random one and converted it to the latest version," Silver Spoon answered.
"That makes sense..." Diamond Tiara hummed. "Because the versions I was looking at only started us with an ice block and a lava bucket."
A pause of silence overtook them. Diamond Tiara moved her avatar to the chest and opened it to look at the contents herself. She squinted her eyes as she looked at Silver Spoon's icon in the Discord call.
"You didn't cheat anything in while I couldn't access the server, did you?" Diamond Tiara asked.
"I didn't!" Silver Spoon said defiantly. "Why would you think I did?!"
"I was just asking!" Diamond Tiara half-yelled.
Silver Spoon mumbled something as she adjusted her position. Diamond Tiara heard her phone slide across her desk, and could faintly hear the clicking of her mouse and keyboard as she exited the chest inventory.
"Okay okay, enough messing around," Silver Spoon said with a sigh. "Let's actually play the g--e. What are we doing?"
"I've got a plan," Diamond Tiara said as she calmed down. "And if your call could stop breaking, maybe you could hear it."
"I'll fill in the blanks," Silver Spoon reassured the mare. "Just tell me."
"Alright alright," Diamond Tiara huffed. "I'm going to cut down the tree and collect some saplings. You make the cobblestone generator. When I can make us a crafting table, you can make us another bucket so we can move the lava when we expand our island."
"Okay, I'll see if I can figure this out..." Silver Spoon mumbled.
As Silver Spoon got to work on figuring out how to make the cobblestone generator, Diamond Tiara turned toward the tree and began her work. Holding shift and sticking as close to the tree as possible, Diamond Tiara was hard at work collecting wood. Even when it seemed like a log was going to drop off the side into the endless pit beneath their floating island, it popped into her inventory. When the two center logs had been broken, she slowly walked to the edge of the platform and stared up at what remained.
Still holding shift, and still holding down the left mouse button... until the sixth log had been broken.
"Ugh, finally!" Diamond Tiara groaned loudly. "I got all of the wood."
"T-that's --ood!" Silver Spoon stuttered.
"Why are you stuttering?" Diamond Tiara asked as she began breaking leaves from the tree.
"N-no reason!" Silver Spoon laughed.
Diamond Tiara squinted her eyes at the screen, and stopped breaking leaves. She spun around and stared at Silver Spoon and the holes she dug in the ground. She walked over to the mare's avatar and stared down... at the mess she had made. Diamond Tiara gasped loudly as she saw the mistake Silver Spoon had made; the water had turned their only lava into obsidian.
"What did you do?!" she shouted at her friend.
"I thought this wa-- how it was done!" Silver Spoon yelled back. "I broke the block underneath the water like the guide told me to, I don't know what happened!"
"You didn't build it long enough!" Diamond Tiara yelled as she broke a block leading toward the tree she had been breaking. "You were supposed to put the water here, break the block in front of it, and then the lava over there so the corner would be cobblestone!"
"Well you di--- tell me ho--- -- build i--it!" Silver Spoon hissed through her call breaking.
"UGH!" Diamond Tiara shouted.
She approached the mare's avatar and hit her. Silver Spoon's avatar flashed red and was pushed back. Despite the lag causing her to float in the air, eventually gravity took its toll and sent her falling off the edge of the platform.
"Diamond Tiara I had the bucket!!" Silver Spoon shouted as she fell to her death, flashing red in the pit of blackness.
'S1lv3r__Sp00n fell out of the world.'
"Oh for Celestia's sake!" Diamond Tiara facehoofed. "This is a disaster... all that time and set up, wasted!"
"Diamond Tiara I'm stuck..." Silver Spoon whimpered.
"What do you mean you're stuck?"
'S1lv3r__Sp00n fell out of the world.'
Diamond Tiara looked to the side, just to see Silver Spoon's avatar spawn in the air at the side of the platform. For some reason, the spawn point had broken, and the mare was sent tumbling to her doom in the void yet again.
'S1lv3r__Sp00n fell out of the world.'
"Try teleporting to me," Diamond Tiara instructed her friend. "Maybe we can save you."
"I'll try!" Silver Spoon said.
'S1lv3r__Sp00n fell out of the world.'
Frantic typing came from Silver Spoon's microphone after her fourth time falling into the void. Either she didn't finish, or she didn't type fast enough because...
'S1lv3r__Sp00n fell out of the world.'
"You got this," Diamond Tiara said flatly.
The next time, Silver Spoon finally typed it correctly. She was able to successfully teleport to Diamond Tiara, but...
'S1lv3r__Sp00n hit the ground too hard.'
"What?!" Silver Spoon shouted. "I took fall damage from that?!"
"Just try again," Diamond Tiara grumbled.
The second time was more successful. With the command already typed out, Silver Spoon was able to teleport the second that she spawned. Thankfully, this voided any of the fall damage she would've taken, and she was able to stand on the platform again.
"Alright, good to have you back now," Diamond Tiara sighed. "Well, now we need to figure out what to do about your stupid obsidian generator."
"I'm sorry, okay?" Silver Spoon hissed. "Maybe if you had told me how to build it, I wouldn't have screwed it up!"
"Oh whatever, the damage is already done!" Diamond Tiara said as she slammed a hoof down on her desk in anger.
Both ponies were silent as they took deep breaths and tried to compose themselves. Finally, Diamond Tiara let out a deep exhale that smoothed out her anger and allowed her to focus on remaining calm.
"Let's just look up ways that we can fix this," Diamond Tiara said.
"Good luck to us both..." Silver Spoon laughed nervously.
The two ponies stayed quiet for a time. Diamond Tiara opened her inventory and flipped back to her second monitor to open the browser. She was calm as she began searching for ways to fix a broken cobblestone generator, and the frantic typing from Silver Spoon's microphone was oddly comforting. Occasional clicks echoed from her mic as well as she searched the internet. For the most part, it was silent as they scrolled through articles and posts on Reddit.
"Um, Diamond Tiara..?" Silver Spoon said after some time.
"What is it?" Diamond Tiara asked. "Did you find out what to do?"
"Yes..." Silver Spoon laughed nervously. "But you aren't going to like it."
"As long as we can fix this I don't care how it's done," Diamond Tiara said with a shake of her head. "What do we have to do?"
Nervously, Silver Spoon gulped. Another click echoed from her mic, and various typing noises from her phone's keyboard vibrated through the microphone. She completely typed in a link and sent it to Diamond Tiara through their direct messages, as she couldn't use Discord on her computer. Then, she delivered the solution that Diamond Tiara was really hoping they didn't have to do.
"We have to start over."
...
...
...
'DiamondzAllD4y set own gamemode to Creative.'
"Diamond Tiara!!!"