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Janus claimed he wasn't the one who ate all Roman's carrots, and that if he had to pull a prank, he'd do one with more class.
Which was probably true, honestly.
That meant everyone had an alibi, and Roman's carrot thief was nowhere to be found.
Anarchy had reigned in the household for the past two weeks, ever since Roman and Virgil had bonded aggressively over their mutual love of Minecraft, and had dragged all the other sides into playing with them. Logan himself had never played, barely knew what the game was the day Virgil dragged him out of his room and gave a PowerPoint presentation on Minecraft and why they should all join the realm he and Roman had created.
The PowerPoint had little animated effects that Roman made a show of gasping at and applauding every few minutes.
Anyway.
He had succeeded in piquing Logan’s interest though, he had to give him that. Logan didn't have much interest in surviving and building, but Virgil talked about redstone and command blocks, both of which seemed intriguing.
Patton had also never played before, but eagerly took to the challenge.
Janus had played before with Virgil, so he'd managed to avoid Virgil's lecture.
Throwing himself under a couch and out of Virgil’s sight when the latter had hunted through the house for him while he was rounding up everyone to attend the presentation had also helped.
He seemed to prefer the thrill of survival, and could get by with moderately complex redstone.
Roman and Virgil were masters of the game.
"I fucking hate witches, how do you even fight them? I get close and they potion me and I gotta leave and chug milk, fight me with a sword instead of throwing fancy water you cowards!"
"Roman, calm down."
Well, they were masters of their respective crafts, of course. Creative and Survival. They were still adjusting to the other.
Remus, surprisingly, managed to reign in his chaos.
The same could not be said for everyone else.
Things started out pretty peacefully. The first few days were used to teach Logan and the other newbies how to move around and giving a basic review of what Virgil had told them in the PowerPoint. The world was new to all of them, so they all spent time gathering resources and building houses. They’d settled down on the edge of a plain, near a mountain and not too far from the sea. A river cut through the grass towards the base of the mountain, passing through their setup. There was a cave opening a little way up the mountain, and Roman had already connected the rocky passage up to it to the main road that lay between their houses.
Logan's first makeshift house ended up being his permanent one, a simple dirt structure. He didn't really care for it, as all he needed were a bed to sleep in and a handful of chests to store his stuff.
Roman had insisted on building him a proper house and had come up with a lovely two-story cabin made of wood, stone, and deep blue wool. He’d told Logan he’d hidden a sign that said “Roman is the best” somewhere in the structure, though Logan hadn’t found it yet. He’d inspected every corner of his storage room, kitchen, and bedroom before deciding that he didn’t actually care where the sign was. He’d find it eventually, and if he didn’t, well it might as well not be there.
All their houses were quite simple, having just started out in a survival world. The resources they had at hand were limited, though Roman wanted to get quartz as soon as they built a portal to the nether.
Whatever that meant.
There were so many aspects of Minecraft Logan hadn't quite learned yet.
His redstone knowledge was progressing nicely though.
Janus spent most of his time underground doing who knows what. He kept Logan regularly supplied with redstone though, so at least a part of it had to be mining.
They'd given Remus very strict rules about what he could and could not do. No explosions, no destruction, no "griefing". Logan added that last one to the list of words to look up at a later time. He didn't seem perturbed by the rules, which was a good sign. According to Janus, Remus had whole other Minecraft worlds to wreak havoc in and could afford to be tame in this one. He’d been breeding cows? Lots of them, mooing confusedly in a pit in the ground. At least he wasn’t destroying stuff, and it meant they never ran out of food.
Patton had built an extensive garden around his house and was working on a windmill, with design tips from Roman.
It was frankly hilarious to watch. Patton hadn't quite gotten a grasp on crouching yet. Logan had watched him fall off the scaffolding and plummet to his death four times this morning alone.
He was also terrified of mobs. Three nights after they started playing, Patton screamed loud enough to wake up everyone in the house when a creeper had startled him. He absolutely refused to go out at night, and despite Virgil’s efforts to teach him, could not hold his own against a single zombie without losing three-quarters of his health bar.
He had bashed Janus to death with a potato when the latter had popped out of the floor into his house the other day, so clearly, he must’ve retained something from Virgil’s classes.
The blissful tranquility of their world was soon interrupted by The Incidents.
The boat incident was the first one. Then the sheep incident. Then the water incident.
Each of these incidents involves Logan's house being filled with the respective item that named the incident.
Logan didn't actually care that much, to be honest, it was almost exciting to see what new thing would appear.
Everyone was confused, Roman was offended people would ruin his handiwork like that (they'd had to replace carpets after the water incident) but no one stepped forward and took the blame.
Then it escalated.
Doors disappeared from people's houses. Someone replaced the bottom block of every tree in sight with fences. Every grass block in a 10 block radius from Janus' house was turned to glass. Someone left a suspicious chest on everyone’s front door. And the most recent disappearance of Roman's precious carrots.
(The chest turned out to be from Patton, filled with flowers and a cake, but Virgil had been suspicious of it, thinking it was a trap, and a big deal had been made)
Roman had suspected Remus, and Virgil was convinced it had been Janus, but they were being hit with the pranks as much as the others, so the two eventually let their suspicions slide.
The pranks were pretty harmless, and no one was genuinely bothered by them.
But no one was going to miss an opportunity to wreak some havoc, and the game was on .
Only a few hours after Janus’s passionate and frankly over the top defense over some carrots, Patton walked into Logan’s room looking like he’d murdered somebody.
"I ate Roman's carrots."
Logan blinked. "What?"
Patton looked so damn remorseful for someone who's only crime was eating someone's digital carrots and then lying about it.
"I thought it was a community garden or something! So I ate them. Will you help me replant them?"
"Uh, okay, sure?"
That was how Logan ended up distracting Roman for an afternoon while Patton replenished his carrot garden. The mission was a success, one prank was resolved. All the others were still shroud in mystery.
Apart from the ones Logan himself had pulled, of course. He wasn’t going to miss out on the fun, and there was no better way to test out his redstone machines than on another unsuspecting side.
Patton later asked Logan if he wanted to go exploring with him. Logan politely declined, having some work to do. He did remember Patton's offer one afternoon as they were in the kitchen together and asked him if he wanted to go on the realm and explore after they finished cooking dinner.
"That's okay, I went with Janus."
Patton’s voice was uncharacteristically glum.
"How'd it go?"
"Uh. Janus swore me to secrecy."
Now that got his attention. Logan set down the knife he'd been chopping potatoes with and turned towards Patton, giving him his full attention. "What happened?"
Patton hesitated. "You have to promise not to tell Janus I told you."
The short version of the story was that they'd gotten separated and lost, Janus had found a village, hit an iron golem, and died on the spot. Patton had had to trek back on his own for two hours.
Logan didn't tell anyone, but Janus had his ways of knowing. He showed up in Logan's room with a glance that would've been more threatening if Logan hadn't seen Janus fast asleep on the couch with Roman putting increasingly ridiculous objects on his face before.
"I don't know what Patton told you but you will tell no one about this." Janus hissed at him.
Logan observed him blandly. "Did you really think you could outrun an iron golem? Seriously? Have you seen their arms? What was your plan?"
Janus flushed red.
By now, their little village had grown, through the combined efforts of everyone. They had a square, a fountain, a communal storage room, and cobblestone paths that winded from building to building. Janus had even pulled himself out of the depths of the underground long enough to build himself a house. They’d all completely coincidentally built houses corresponding to their respective colors. Roman had been delighted when he’d realized and had added colorful blocks to all the roads and buildings, effectively turning their whole village into a rainbow.
Janus’s house was made of yellow wool and dark oak wood and armed with enough booby traps to take out an army. He’d also helped Logan with his fish farm, which was nice.
Speaking of farms, Remus' cow farm had grown immensely since they'd begun. Too immense. Seriously, it was as if all he'd done since getting into the realm was breed cows. The bovine sea, as Roman had put it, was best viewed in all its glory from the top of the hill that overlooked the plains below, though not many people were willing to brave the lag for long enough to actually go see it. Patton had fallen into it at one point and they’d had to organize a fucking rescue mission.
They'd begged Remus to kill at least some, but he'd refused, threatening to set their houses on fire if they came near them.
It was safe to say everyone stayed clear of The Cow Zone.
However, the village had grown, and while Virgil served dinner that night, Roman announced to everyone his grand plan to build a town hall.
"I'll be the president, ruling over the town," he announced. "We can have a map room and a treasury and offices."
"Why do you get to be president?" Janus asked. "What if I want to be president.”
"We can't both be president!"
Janus arched a brow. "Fine, then I'm running against you."
"Wait, I want to be president too then." Virgil spoke up.
Roman sputtered. "We can't all be president."
"Triumvirate?" Logan proposed.
"Pretty sure those always end with murder." Janus muttered.
Point.
"There is already murder going around." Roman complained. "Virgil killed me the other day. And the day before. I know you pushed me off Virge, I didn't just fall."
He lay down dramatically on the floor. "All my friends are traitors."
"Let's build the town hall, and we all have offices," Patton said. "We can all be ministers or something. Like Roman you can be the minister of construction, just as a fancy title. And so on."
Everyone was on board with that.
"I don't particularly want to be a minister, I'm good," Janus said.
Roman squinted at him. "You're the one who wanted to be president."
"Just to stir some shit, Ro. I could care less about some stuffy desk job in an imaginary world."
"You don't have to be a minister!" Patton said brightly. "You could be like, the Pope!"
There was a beat of silence.
"The what."
Roman’s argument was that Janus was the only one who had a hat, so obviously he was the pope, backed up by Patton’s energetic nodding.
Janus was baffled.
Virgil had lost interest in the conversation ten minutes ago and was making himself a bowl of cereal.
Logan was fascinated at how long they’d managed to focus on this one topic without getting derailed. It was truly a record.
“How can you even appoint me? You’re not cardinals last I checked!”
Ah, Janus had found a new argument. Sadly for him, he had yet to learn a lesson Logan had been taught countless times. Debate only works when the other person cares about facts as much as you do. And Roman and Patton decidedly did not.
Roman looked at Patton. Patton looked at Virgil.
“All right,” Virgil shrugged, proving he had been following the conversation after all. “We’re all cardinals now too.”
“I hereby elect you as the pope of our town.” Roman proclaimed gleefully.
The newly elected pope angrily grabbed a muffin and stormed out of the room.
"Wait what about me," Remus asked. "What am I the minister of?"
Everyone looked at each other. Don't say it. They were all thinking it but don't say it-
"Cows?" Patton said tentatively.
Goddamn it.
Roman had started designing the town hall, and planned on making the floor out of quartz, so multiple trips to the Nether were needed. Logan volunteered to go with him. He'd never been to the Nether and was curious about what it was like. It was a completely different world from what he'd heard.
Oh fuck that.
Fucking. Fuck.
Jesus Christ.
Logan was never setting foot in the Nether again if his life depended on it. It was literal hell-
"It actually is, you know. The Nether is Minecraft's hell.”
-and there were big flying ghosts that made horrible sounds and shot fireballs -
"Ghasts! Fun fact, the horrible sounds are actually noises from a cat"
That was not helping thank you Roman, and there was fire everywhere and fire cubes that bounced-
"Oh, Magma Cubes. Those have an overworld counterpart by the way"
They. What.
Roman clapped his back sympathetically. "Avoid plains and flat biomes."
"Hold on. What??”
Roman started inching away from him.
“Roman where are you going, explain??"
"Wait till you get to the End," Virgil said cheerfully as he walked by.
"The what," Logan called after him. "Virgil come back here. The what??"
"I feel the same way about overworld mobs," Patton told him solemnly.
Virgil came back one day triumphantly after an excursion, two cats and one dog trailing after him.
"Awww," Patton cooed. "I didn't know this game had cats and dogs"
Virgil clicked a couple of times and the pets sat down. "Oh yea. You gotta find a wolf or a cat in a village and feed it bones or fish and it becomes a pet."
He glanced at Logan and told him not to think about the wolf to dog part too hard. Which, yea. Logan filed the wolf to dog evolutionary speedrun in the “Minecraft things that make no fucking sense” part of his brain.
"Also," Virgil continued. "They protect you. Watch this."
He walked forward to the edge of the nearby forest by the riverside, where a zombie had been staring at them from the shade of a tree for the past ten minutes. Virgil smacked the zombie, and the dog lurched forward, jumping at it until it disappeared in a puff of white particles.
"And the cats scare off creepers," Virgil explained.
"Oh my god they're perfect" Patton whispered.
Roman was not jealous of Virgil's pets. He was not, and that was to be clear to everyone. In fact, he was so not jealous of them he got himself a pet chicken. The chicken had spawned from one of the eggs he'd pelted Janus with while they were building the town hall.
The chicken had hung around, (mostly because it was stuck on the highest floor with no way out) and Roman had gotten attached to it.
He named it Frank.
Frank got his own room in Roman's house.
Frank also had to inconvenience everyone by having the nerve to die, and Logan and the other sides had to listen to Roman agonize about it for a week. Fuck you, Frank.
God forbid anyone propose he get another chicken. Virgil made that mistake once.
"Literally just spawn another one. They're identical,"
"BUT IT WON'T BE MY FRANKIE."
There was a funeral. Roman asked them all for a few words to send him off. Unfortunately, Logan’s deadpan stare didn’t convey through the screen, he hoped just staring at Roman across the room would do.
Roman recovered enough to build chicken heaven. He’d built upwards till he hit the build limit, and there he’d made a small glass farm with chickens on it. One had the nametag "Frank", while the others were there just to keep Frank company. For no discernable reason, he’d also attached vines on all sides.
Said vines had been growing steadily downwards, creating a weird green mass appearing out of the heavens and stretching towards the ground.
Was it weird? Yes. Did it mean Roman stopped grieving his chicken? Also yes. Was anyone going to complain about it? No.
"WHO THE FUCK PLANTED TREES IN MY HOUSE"
The pranks meanwhile, had continued.
Logan had passed by the town square the other day to find three signs in the middle saying “whoever took my birch wood please give it back, it took me so long to collect it and i need it.”
Logan hadn’t been the one to take it but he added his meager stash of seventeen birch planks to the chest next to the signs out of pity.
Finally, Virgil gathered "the council of ministers plus Janus the pope." because apparently, that was a thing now. (It was just a regular-ass meeting with a fancy name.)
"We need ground rules y'all. No more pranks. They were fun but they’re getting annoying.”
“Yea.”
“Yea.”
Everyone was in agreement, except Janus, who looked a little sour.
That confirmed Logan’s suspicion that he had been planning something, and thank god Virgil had called the meeting in time because whatever required the amount of gunpowder Janus was hoarding was to be feared. Virgil sat back down, looking a little lost. “Okay, I hadn’t expected you guys to agree that quickly. Let’s talk about something else since we’re here. Remus, your cows.”
“Yes?” Remus replied sweetly.
Virgil stared at him with a look of defeat. “Please.”
“No.”
Virgil sighed. “It was worth a shot. Also, the second rule that I just remembered, the no pranks means no killing people."
A beat of silence. Then-
"You're the only one killing us!" Everyone shouted back.
Virgil held his hands up. "Alright alright, my bad."
Now that the prank war was over, Roman proposed a nice bonding activity to do all together.
That seemed like a great idea.
Keyword, seemed.
Roman had them all prep and gear up as if they were going to war, then they trekked for a good twenty minutes away from the village, in a seemingly random direction.
“It’s so we’re far enough that we don’t destroy it,” he explained, which explained nothing.
Even Virgil was looking a little worried. Roman had insisted on keeping the activity a secret, so they were all going in blind, and Roman’s occasional cryptid statements were not reassuring.
They finally reached a plain near a hill, and Roman told them to stop, and to build a small underground bunker with beds.
By now Virgil had finally caught on and was engaged in a furious discussion with Roman. Virgil claimed they weren’t prepared, Roman replied it was fine.
Patton whispers to Logan: Do you have any idea what is going on
Logan whispers to Patton: I do not
Virgil thought they should at least tell the others what they were going to do. Roman reassured him that he was going to do that tomorrow.
Logan whispers to Janus: Hey do you know what Roman is planning
Janus whispers to Logan: Yes and we’re all going to die
Logan whispers to Patton: Janus says we’re going to die
Patton whispers to Logan: That’s nice
Night came and passed, and they all slept in beds in the bunker. Finally, the next morning, they gathered outside, and Roman gave them the long-awaited pep talk. They were going to fight a dangerous mob, that dropped an important item, that Logan got, but he was pretty much lost on everything else. Exploding skulls? Regenerating health bar? Why did they all need so much milk?
Pep talk over, Roman started building a structure a few dozen blocks away from them. He placed four blocks of a material Logan didn’t recognize in a T formation, and then placed two black skulls on it. (Actually, he might have seen the block before but he was erasing the trip to the Nether and everything to do with it from his memory)
He turned back towards them. “Good Luck!”
This didn’t seem too bad?
Roman placed the third head and all hell broke loose.
Roman withered away
"Fuck! Logan you were closest to me, pick up my stuff"
"On it."
Logan sprinted to the place Roman had died, picking up his items before they despawned. The milk had run out fast, and people were dying all over the place, so they’d worked out a semi-functional system to pick up all the items.
"I'm at the beds, meet me at the hill so I can get them back," Roman instructed.
Something exploded in the distance.
"Is this your concept of relaxing??" Janus yelled as he ran for his life. Behind him, Virgil hammered the wither hot on his heels with arrows.
"Bonding! We all help each other defeat the wither, and then we get a nether star we can use to make a nice beacon to commemorate the event!"
"Fuck you!" Janus yelled back.
The Wither switched direction and zoned in on Virgil, who swore and turned to run. Patton, camped out in a tree, tried fruitlessly to hit the wither with his bow, missing every shot.
“When this is over I’m teaching you archery Patton,” Virgil gasped, jumping out of the way of another skull.
Logan had almost reached the hill when he crossed paths with Virgil, sending him right into the wither’s path and running for his life.
“Logan, my stuff!” Roman complained.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something!” Logan yelled back. A skull hit him and his health bar turned black. Uh oh.
Maybe it wouldn’t last that long and he’d be able to survive it-
Logan withered away
“Logan!!” Roman pouted at him.
“Sorry. Virgil, all of our stuff is literally in your hands, good luck.”
Virgil looked up momentarily from his screen to glare at them. “I hate it here.”
Patton: Do you think I can jump onto the wither’s back from my tree and kill it from there?
Janus: That’s not how the game works
Roman: Okay but at this point what do we have to lose
"Does anyone have my pants?" Patton whispered. The jumping onto the wither’s back plan had, to no one’s surprise, failed, and Patton had thrown himself into empty air and died.
They were huddled in the underground bunker they'd put their beds in. Equipment scattered and lost, the landscape ravaged, and wither no closer to being killed since they’d started, everyone was content to chill underground and hope for a miracle.
In the mindscape living room where everyone was sprawled in, each focusing on their respective computers, the tension was thick enough to cut with a knife.
Meanwhile, in their Minecraft realm, the wither prowled, looking for them.
"What," Janus said flatly.
"My pants. I lost them the last time I died. Did anyone pick them up?"
"I can't find half my armor and I lost my bow," Virgil complained.
Logan walked towards the door, peering through the windows. "Where'd it go? Is it safe to leave?
An explosion blew the door clean off and Logan jumped back.
"Fuck! Logan, you alerted it!"
Another explosion took off half the roof of their bunker.
"Everyone scatter!!"
"So." Logan began at dinner that night. "Was that the End thing?"
Virgil picked at his food absently. "What? Oh no the Ender Dragon is a different thing"
Oh okay.
Wait, had he said Dragon?
High on adrenaline from the wither disaster, Virgil and Janus wanted to do a Hunger Games.
From what Logan had discerned, that consisted of hunting each other for sport, like in the Hunger Game book series.
"I thought we weren't allowed to kill each other,” Patton pointed out.
“Only if the other person didn't want to be killed,” Virgil explained. “This is consensual hunting each other for sport.”
“I’m just putting it out there that I do not consent to this,” Logan called.
“You will,” Roman and Virgil said in unison.
Patton and Logan both managed to skip the Hunger Games as participants, standing in the stands of the arena Roman had built for the occasion to cheer Roman, Janus, Remus, and Virgil on.
The rules were no armor, and basic wooden and stone weaponry, along with stacks of blocks.
After losing to everyone for five rounds straight, Roman used commands to give himself four stacks of fireballs.
The situation went downhill from there.
After three weeks of everyone watching a giant viney blob slowly inch down from the sky, Janus finally snapped.
“Hey Roman, you can consider your fantastic vines as a countdown,” Janus told him one day.
“What do you mean?”
“The moment they touch the ground I destroy a part of your house of my choice,”
The vines disappeared that evening. Frank and his glass chicken heaven remained, however.
The sides had a bulletin board in their living room. They used it to tack notes to each other, reminders, and lists of miscellaneous nature. Soon, many Minecraft related notes started appearing on the board. There was a thank you note from Roman to whoever had left him a cake (the prank war was followed by an aggressive gift giving war), a note from Janus saying that the beacon tower they’d built sucked and that he was going to modify it, and a note that simply said “Golden carrot potatoes, myth? Quest” which Virgil admitted to having written but didn’t know the meaning of either. Finally, there was a list of buildings they were planning to make, a dock, a library, horse stables, and so on.
The current works in progress were the docks and a church, after all, they couldn’t have a pope without a church, as Patton put it.
Janus put his face in his hands.
Janus wanted no part in making the church, which was unsurprising, as he didn’t often work on buildings in the village.
While the two of them were on alone one day, Logan building the docks and Janus underground, talking through the chat, Logan asked Janus if he could see what he was always working on. Janus agreed.
And. Holy shit. Janus had built an underground empire. There was a main underground base that opened corridors burrowing deeper, leading to various rooms and structures. There was a whole library down there.
It was beautiful. But it was also a little sad.
“You know you’re welcome with us, right?” Logan asked him. Logan was the wrong person to be telling him this, but someone had to.
“Yeah, whatever. Besides, I like the underground. What does the overworld have that this doesn’t?”
Logan racked his brain for an answer to that. What would Patton say? “The sunset?”
Janus snorted. “You’re bad at this.”
You’re worse, Logan wanted to reply. Instead, he said. “C’mon. The sun should be setting soon, come see it. Virgil installed shaders for a reason.”
Janus complained but came with him.
They stopped on top of a hill, where Patton had built a picnic bench between two trees, and watched the blocky sun slowly disappear behind the vast forest in front of them.
“Alright,” Janus drawled. “the graphic designers did a good job on that.”
“Patton wants to build a statue of you in the church,” Logan told him.
“What the fuck.”
“That’s his way of telling you you’re welcome.”
“Alright,” Janus smacked Logan. “I get the point.”
They watched the night turn to inky black and the first stars appear, lulled by the sound of Remus’ immeasurable cows mooing from behind the hill next to them.
“God I hate those cows.”