Quest for Justice by Sean Fay Wolfe

the sound of Stan’s yell, and Rex started barking. Archie still stood with his bow in hand, aiming exactly where the monster’s head had been. The body disappeared, leaving a small mess of gray powder beneath it.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” yelled Kat, holding her sword up.
    â€œYeah, what’s with all the noise?” whined G. “I’m trying to sleep here!”
    â€œA Creeper got in,” said Stan.
    â€œWhat?” said Sally, looking disheveled, not at all like her usual self. “How did a Creeper get in . . . hangon. Why is it so dark in here? Where are the torches?”
    She was right. The windows around the edges of the building provided the only source of light. Besides that it was dark.
    â€œYeah, where are the torches?” asked Jayden, who was still breathing heavily. “Did someone steal them?”
    â€œI guess so,” said Charlie, looking around. “But why? Why would somebody break in here just to steal the torches? And the door?” he added, for he had just noticed that the door, too, was missing.
    â€œIt was probably just some random Griefer. You know, a player that likes giving other players crap for no reason,” said Archie, putting his bow back into his inventory. “Felt like having a laugh by making it so that monsters could just come in here in the night.”
    â€œYeah,” said Stan as he remembered how Mr. A had attacked them for no apparent reason. “Yeah, a Griefer would do something like that.”
    â€œWell, it’s good that thing woke us up, actually. I was about to oversleep,” said Jayden. “It’s my turn to make breakfast, so I’ll go get some stuff for that. Sally, you go down to the storehouse and craft us a new door and some torches.” Sally nodded and ran out of the hole where the door used to be, followed closely by Jayden.
    Sally came back shortly, and she put new torches on thewalls and fixed the new door in the frame. Jayden arrived not long after, holding some wheat and a brown powder. He put it on the crafting table, and before long he had created a batch of cookies. Everyone had some—they were chocolate chip, and they tasted delicious.
    â€œOkay,” said Jayden after they had all finished and Kat had calmed the still-barking Rex by feeding him some rotten flesh. “Come with me, you three. We have axe training and farming today.”
    Kat and Charlie filed out of the room with Stan in the rear, feeling sure that he would not be very good at axe fighting. Frankly, he had always been slightly awkward, and he did not imagine that swinging a long stick with a hunk of metal on the end would be his forte. As he realized this, Stan felt suddenly sullen. Charlie had proven to be exceptional with a pickaxe, and the same with Kat and her sword. If he couldn’t master axe fighting, what would he have to fight with? But as Stan left the room, he could have sworn he heard Sally whisper, “Good luck, noob,” in his ear and instantly, he felt more confident.
    They followed Jayden down the road and were surprised when they entered Crazy Steve’s farm.
    â€œWhat are we doing here?” asked Stan.
    â€œWell, what better place to learn about axe use than at a farm?” asked Jayden. “As part of the program, you’ll bedoing some volunteer work here, helping my brother with the farming.”
    This made sense, and the four players walked into an empty yard enclosed by fences. In the adjacent pumpkin field, Crazy Steve was tilling some new land with his hoe. Stan was relieved to see, judging by Steve’s calm and methodic demeanor, that he was not QPOed.
    â€œHey, bro,” the farmer said, and he tipped his straw hat as the teacher and three students entered through the gate. “Ya three gonna help an old farmer with his work today? Dose Mooshrooms are giving me quite a hard time, and I could use da extra hands.”
    â€œYou’ll get your