Something slithers in the grass.

  A grub, a parasite in its weakest form.

  It instinctually follows a small scent trail, hunting after a potential host.

  The scent trail gets clearer, so the parasite straightens its path.

  Through its sensors, it notices a chain link fence in front of it, nothing it can't squeeze past.

  Getting closer, it prepares to squeeze through the gaps in the fence.

  SCRREEEEEEECH!

  It screams, its body burning despite no fmes being around it. Filing against the unknown but overpowering threat, it eventually loses its strength and fades to ash.

  The wooden cross on the fence's top rail, noticing the ck of a threat, noticeably dims.

  Panning out, several crosses are fastened along the fences top rail, as well as pnted into the ground along the ground.

  …

  Joshua looks upon the foundation of his base.

  He feels calmer, knowing of the defenses he set up. Grabbing a bunch of the fences from the hospital he set them up in a radius around his base, shielding one half while the ocean should protect the other half.

  The crosses have their uses, ying them along the fence and ying any extra on the ground and along the shore.

  Seems good.

  Yeah!

  “Pony?”

  “We're building a house”

  The foundation is actually built along the shoreline, which as a former city dweller he feels might not be the best thing to do, it's all half-baked info but considering he can throw 1x1 meter stone pilrs around like it's nothing it should be fine.

  He's not tempting fate today, no sir.

  What's actually neat is that stone, not to be confused with cobblestone, is actually much more durable and secure than its cobbled variant. Cobblestone has been extremely useful thus far, and it can fend off threats and be stupid cheap and easy to get. But stone is just better.

  Suppose that makes sense, cobblestone is supposed to be a bunch of loose rocks jumbled together.

  Joshua thought to make the foundation and ‘holy-shit-get-me-the-fuck-out-of-here’ box, the bunker, out of it. But then he remembered a recipe made out of four stone, stone bricks.

  The paragon of making cool castles in Minecraft… yippie!!!

  They are… actually kind of disappointing. Sure they look neat and have the same durability as normal stone but… honestly it seems like a decorative block.

  Stone just seems sturdier, one giant wall of geological defense instead of yered bricks, at least he thinks it's better, he doesn't know.

  So. Joshua starts smelting some cobblestone. His coal supply is fine so he can spare a few. Turns out that minmaxing coal also works here, as amusing as that was to discover, he's allowed to be cheap, okay?

  While waiting, he begins setting up a tree farm to the left of his base. Nothing special, just pnting a sapling every over meter.

  As he looks at his inventory, now devoid of saplings, be spots a few bones he collected from skeletons earlier (he still fucking hates them).

  “Does bonemeal work?...”

  Joshua drags a bone into his crafting grid and, just as he expected, a strange white… substance(?) appears in his inventory.

  Hovering over it in his hotbar, he crouches down and reaches out.

  “Do I just… pce it?”

  He tries ‘pcing’ the bonemeal on the sapling.

  Green flickers of light briefly shed off it.

  Okay good sign.

  He uses another.

  And another.

  An- ”HI MR. JOSHUA!!!”

  “FUCK”

  Joshua jumps out of his skin as a familiar yellow suit appears in his sight.

  His heart is pounding, he pces a hand over it and yep, still beating.

  Gabriel just watches with a smile and a confused head tilt.

  “Hi Gabriel…”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Pnting trees” Joshua feels his adrenaline start to lower. “Aren't you supposed to be pnting torches with Jophiel?”

  “Hm? Oh! I finished all of mine!” She looks proud.

  “She was so slow so I was like ‘Hey! Why don't I just go really fast!’ and then I did!”

  oh ok

  Joshua stands up and looks around the base.

  He sees Jophiel in the field, repeatedly counting her steps before pnting a torch with her Magic Pony Powers.

  Looking at the other part of the base, the torches are…

  Well they're certainly pced.

  Joshua can't even be all that mad, she did exactly what he asked.

  Weird, he thought Jophiel was the impatient one. But I guess White Horse is outmatched in impatience when it comes to the brain of a hyperactive child.

  “Oooooo what's that stuff?”

  Joshua turns back to Horse (Hazmat Horse… wait a second).

  “It's uh… bonemeal. It helps pnts and stuff”

  “Cool! It's like a magic spell!”

  “Not really”

  “Then what were those pretty green things that came out of it?”

  She points a hoof at the sapling.

  “Uh…”

  To be honest Gabe. He has no fuckin idea.

  “It just does that I guess” He shrugs.

  “Okay!” She bounces.

  Wow just like that huh?

  Joshua shakes his head and reaches down again.

  “Wooooooow” Gabriel is also there, leaning over the sapling and staring at it.

  “What?”

  “Mr. Suit is telling me this is growing really f-”

  CRACK!

  FWOOOOSH!

  The tree instantly shoots up into an adult tree, unching the mare into the air with a violent impact.

  Joshua is stunned, not sure what just happened, and only comes to his senses when the thud of a hazmat suit hitting the ground knocks him out of it.

  “Gabriel!”

  He runs over, but stops when he hears… something.

  A hiss.

  Then, a gas.

  A purple gas pours out of the broken hole of the gss head dome, clouding the air around the lifeless hazmat suit.

  Joshua backs up, he has a really bad feeling.

  And it's not unwarranted. As the gas pours out, it begins to linger into the grass, mercilessly killing the petals and rendering them into small piles of organic slop.

  Reminding Joshua of shit you'd see in sci-fi horror, the swirling, sparkling purple gas killed everything it could find its way.

  It never seems to slow down or disapate, until a glow comes from the suit and, somehow, the gas is sucked back inside the suit and the gss miraculously repairs itself.

  Gabriel stands up, seemingly unfazed at the pile of biogoop surrounding here.

  “Woah! How did I get over here?”

  Joshua just stares.

  You scare me, Pink Horse.