(One vote for yes)

my public has spoken

so uh, as it turns out, x reader fanfics are actually illegal on this site. so I had to give reader an actual name. also, I originally wrote this in present tense, but for simplicity's sake I'm changing it to past tense. kindly ignore tense errors I may make.

and finally, if you're one of my regular readers and you're thinking "hmm, should I read this? i'm not really in this fandom", good news! i'm mostly making up my own lore. according to me 2 readers it's good lore.

anyway leave me reviews plz & thanks

"Mortgages." She mumbled under her breath. "Extended mortgages. Extended mortgages can be calculated by taking the portion, multiplying by the rate, and…" Heather trailed off, distracted by voices from below her. "Ugh." With a huff, she made another attempt to absorb the text, but the page's meaning eluded her once more.

"Alright, fine." She snapped the book shut. "I'll read this later." Pushing the $600 textbook away, she flipped over on her back to stare at the ceiling. Easiest math class or not, Business Math was hard.

Especially, she noted mournfully to herself, as a high school student as well. At the young age of 16, as a straight-As student in her local high school, Heather had been given the wonderful opportunity to start taking some college classes early, letting her get a degree sooner.

Unfortunately, this was on top of all her other classes- and she wasn't given a choice in the matter. Her parents, bless their hearts, just wanted her to succeed, and had strongly pressured her to go through with it.

Which was how she ended up here, on the floor of her room, head pillowed on a far-too-expensive binder as she pondered the meaninglessness of long term interest on real estate loans.

With a groan, she picked herself up off the floor and ran a hand through her hair. Needed washed. First, though, she dragged herself over to her desktop, seating herself on the well-worn chair and tapping the mouse to wake it up. Clicking on the browser icon, her eyes strayed to the Minecraft icon before she sat back with a sigh to grab her textbook. Math first, Minecraft after.

57 excruciating minutes later, the lesson was over and done with, and she was pretty sure she hadn't bombed the test. Now time for a bit of well-deserved mining.

"Heather!" A shout from downstairs made her grimace, and she spun around in her chair.

"Yes, mom?"

"Did you eat something?"

"Yep, I ate when I got home." Another white lie, but she didn't have the appetite. All she wanted to do now was unwind.

"Okay. Make sure you turn off the lights soon."

"Okay mom." She turned back to the screen and booted up Mojang's classic. Clicking her way into her single player world, she picked up where she left off - strip mining the area below her base and marking the location of diamonds.

Strip mining, while fairly efficient and simple, was time consuming and dull. Before long, she was back on the surface to check on her crops and animals, just as the sun peeked over the horizon. She took a minute to clear out burning mobs, then harvested her mature wheat and fed the cows and sheep.

The sugarcane was ready to harvest, she noted, but as she turned towards the lake her base sat on she spotted a figure out of the corner of her eye.

Immediately, she turned back - but it was gone. She assumed it must have been a zombie, under the shelter of one of the trees bordering the other side of her base. Probably despawned in the instant she looked away, cheeky thing.

She hurried to harvest the sugarcane and turn it into paper, stacking it in a chest to be turned into books and bookshelves later. That fortune III pickaxe was becoming more and more of a reality every day.

That said, this phase of a playthrough was always the most boring. The initial power build-up out of the way, but too weak to take on the End, she was left waiting for crops to grow so she could level up her enchantment table to get diamonds faster and get a full set of diamond armor. After all, it was just inefficient to get them now, with only one drop per block of ore.

Finally, she decided to farm some blazes. More dust for her brewing station was always handy, and she'd need some for eyes of ender. With this goal in mind, and a couple fire resistance potions safely in her inventory, she ventured through her Nether portal.

Although it wasn't a long walk to her marked Nether Fortress, the journey felt somehow off. She'd walked this path many times before, but something seemed different about it. Maybe that zombie, which she could swear she kept seeing right in the corner of her eye.

She shrugged it off. Technically, zombies COULD spawn in the Nether.

It's not until she caught a glimpse of the "zombie"'s face, however, that she quickly retracted those assumptions. Those were not zombie eyes.

Heart pounding, Heather hightailed it back to the overworld. That was Herobrine. That was most definitely Herobrine. She'd never seen him before, and didn't ever expect to. He was debunked, wasn't he? She paused for a second to check and make sure there's no possibility that another player could have connected. Nope. LAN was off. Herobrine was real.

She'd heard the legends before, but, who hadn't? Notch's dead brother, a glitch in the code, a player sucked into the game, she'd heard those and more. Apparently one of them was true. Or she was being very elaborately pranked, but she didn't really have any friends who would do that.

She mused over this new piece of info over a stack of steak. Herobrine was real, and was apparently watching her. She'd never noticed him before, so either he only just started watching her or he just started deciding to let her see him. The information on what Herobrine actually DID was scattered, there were many stories about his true intentions. From a godlike griefer to the savior of the world, the legend of Herobrine had many, many sides to it.

...or maybe he didn't do anything. Maybe all he did was watch you from afar, add a bit of a creepy factor to the game. Maybe slipped into the latest snapshot. Honestly, Heather, she scolded herself. Getting so worked up over a little blank-eyed block man.

She played a bit more, but still felt uneasy. She was sure Herobrine was somewhere in the overworld, just out of sight. If she remembered correctly, he could teleport, harness lightning, and maybe shapeshift. And he liked redstone torches.

She continued farming for a bit, expanding her wheat fields for convenience, before finally logging off. It was just a bit too much for her right now. But, she noted as she got ready for bed, that uneasiness didn't go away. She still felt like she was being watched. But the computer was off, and minecraft definitely so. Herobrine, while slightly creepy, was nothing but a few lines of code.

She slept with the closet light on that night.

Heather awoke to a soft touch, and let out a confused hum. Was it morning already? A hand cupped her face, and she opened her eyes, only for her heart to stop beating as they met the pair of glowing ones inches above her.

"Good morning… my queen."

yeah it gets better I promise shh

~FFF