Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Alice’s eyes ran back and forth across the brightly lit screen of his Ranger assigned laptop as he scanned the pages of the virtual book Sou had “penned” for him. He read with eyes wide and mouth half agape as he learned that Sou had quite the plan brewing in that beanie covered head of his. A plan that with a bit of coordination and a lot more luck, might once again stop the Main Game before it even starts.

Clever, Alice couldn’t help but think. Ranger and Safalin were watching the group as though they were hawks, so any verbal communication about such plans would get everyone caught before anything could get off the ground. Using the in-game chat function was also a no-go as every message sent was public. This way though, they could ensure only the right ears heard the news. Or, right eyes saw the news, as it turned out to be.

Whatever. At the end of the book were instructions to pass the book off to someone else, so Alice hid it in his hotbar with a subtle tweak of the scroll wheel as he searched briefly outside the house to find someone to pass it to.

Tensions were still running high at the base after what happened to Gin, and he only had himself to blame. His own heart still ached after the matter, and though he tried to put his mind off the events at the village, the diamond sword and crossbow in his hotbar along with the “Hero of the Village” status effect looming ominously in the top right of his screen at all times made it incredibly hard to not think about it. He almost wished he could bring himself to milk one of the few cows Sou and Q-taro managed to wrangle to rid himself of the status, but intentionally removing a purely beneficial status effect would be suboptimal - what horror.

Alice tore his eyes away from the top right of the screen and instead brought them above his laptop entirely to look around the room. Staring at a screen all the time eventually makes you forget that you have a real body and real people around you. Usually Reko yelling at him to go to sleep or the ever present phantom of hunger was what distracted Alice from his late night gaming sessions before he was thrown in the can, but he hadn’t felt particularly hungry throughout this entire final attraction - suppose that meant that the mournful sobs of one Nao Egokoro two seats to his left would have to suffice as a distraction.

She was slowly calming down following the events of the village, and in no small part thanks to the already quite stressed professor to her right whispering words into her ear and giving up his left arm for her to clutch onto as if it were the only thing keeping her rooted in reality itself, though surely this reality wasn’t quite where she wanted to be right now. Whenever she seemed to have finally collected herself, she’d notice something such as the expression on Sara’s face as she attempted to keep her eyes away from the messy pile of Gin’s former belongings piled in front of the chair next to her and start bawling all over again.

Alice mentally noted that if he kept focusing on Nao and her worries he would probably soon wind up brushing tears from his eyes just like her, and forced himself to look back down at his laptop screen, getting somewhat of a fright as he did.

During the time Alice had been looking at everyone’s real bodies, Keiji had apparently moved his fake Minecraft body in front of Alice’s, and was currently making unflinching eye contact with his Minecraft avatar.

Reflexively, Alice tapped the S key to make his own avatar take a step backwards and free up his personal space. Did Keiji want something from him?

Alice’s eyes flitted up just once more to investigate Keiji, who was sitting in the chair closest to Safalin. He and Keiji immediately made eye contact, as Keiji was looking straight at him since before Alice even noticed his Minecraft avatar. Just how long was he watching him? Keiji gave him a strange half-smile and a lazy wave, causing Alice to cock an eyebrow.

Keiji’s composure was a stark contrast to just about everyone else’s in the room. Almost everyone was mourning a little boy’s perceived death, and all he was doing was creeping and giving nonchalant waves? In a way, it made Alice feel a little angry with him. He owed Gin more than this, surely.

Actually, that reminded him. It was hard to tell and didn’t seem important at the time anyway, but Keiji so far hadn’t meaningfully reacted to the incident apart from making a half-assed attempt to stop Safalin when she tried to take Gin away. If he really cared, he, Joe and Q-taro should’ve leapt on her and not let go until the boy properly got away.

Though, shouldn’t Alice have done the same?

His eyes darted back down to the screen in an attempt to ignore the uncomfortable thought, and the book in his hotbar reminded him of the mission Sou had imparted unto him. Upset though he may be with Keiji, he supposed that someone emotionally stable was as good a choice as any to pass this book off to first, and so he tapped the Q key to toss the book at Keiji’s feet.

Noticing movement on his screen, Keiji stopped spying on Alice to instead focus on his Minecraft avatar. He accepted the book into his hotbar and gave it a read.

“DO NOT READ A WORD OF THIS ALOUD” the first line read. Somewhat pushy, but all right.

“Alright, hey.” the next one said after a line break, changing the tone somewhat abruptly. “Someone else might have given you this book, but it was written by me, Sou. I want this book to be passed around to everyone, so once you’re done reading it, sign your name at the end so the next people who get it know not to give it to you, then pass it off to someone who hasn’t read it yet.”

Simple enough, Keiji thought, and it explained why Alice had to play delivery boy.

“I’ve got a plan, and I want everyone in on it. But Ranger and Safalin can’t hear about it, so I have to tell you like t” the page abruptly finished, the rest of the space for the word “this” being taken up by a request to “PTO”. Couldn’t he have just omitted the t?

Regardless, Keiji did as Sou asked and turned the page to where Sou’s plan was properly written. He gave it a once over followed by a twice over, and to say he was impressed would be a bit of an overstatement. Yeah, it wasn’t the worst plan, but it was full of holes and assumptions. If merely one of those assumptions fell through, it could very well spell catastrophe. What he was missing, Keiji thought, was a half decent back-up plan.

Keiji kept flipping through the pages until he reached the bit at the end where names were supposed to go. Alice had put his own down clear as day, so with a short keystroke the name “Keiji” was scrawled in the book as well. The thought of just throwing the book at Q-taro and not thinking about it until later crossed Keiji’s mind, but he hesitated.

Sou hadn’t properly signed the book using the actual “sign” button at the bottom of the screen - if he had, people wouldn’t be able to write their names at the end as it would be uneditable. What this meant was that anyone who got the thing could just change or even delete all of the text within.

Keiji wasn’t looking to cause problems on purpose though, he just wanted to provide some helpful criticism. Plus, maybe he could clue the friendly author in on a plan he made himself.

Keiji clicked the right arrow at the end of the book to add a new page, where he started to write a personal message to Sou and no one else, making sure to jot
his own name down towards the beginning to make sure Sou knew who he was talking to, just in case being handed the book by Keiji himself wouldn’t be enough to clue him in.

It didn’t take all too long for Keiji to finish writing, as he felt it would be best to keep things succinct in case Sou tried to stop him from carrying out his plan if Keiji said any more. He clicked the close button with all the finality of a real human author slamming a real paged book closed, and sauntered straight past Alice’s Minecraft avatar on his way to Sou’s, who was perched on the nearby riverbank.

Sou stared at the blocky Minecraft fish going about their day and running pathfinding scripts as he thought about the book he had just sent out. It was do or die, he dramatically thought. Time to make it count. Other intense lines he would be too embarrassed to say aloud fired through his brain, and he solemnly nodded with determination.

Suddenly, his screen tilted and his health bar flashed to signify his Minecraft avatar had just taken damage, and his eyes shot open as he stumbled over himself and he scrambled to take the USB mouse in his right hand and position his left over the movement keys, catching the attention of Kanna next to him. He whipped his avatar around as soon as possible, ready to fight off whatever horror had somehow snuck up on him in the middle of the day, but was met solely by the expressionless face of Keiji’s Minecraft avatar, and by a book appearing in his hotbar with a satisfying pop. The policeman must’ve given him a friendly tap to get his attention.

“A hello would’ve sufficed…” Sou quietly grumbled to himself as he right clicked to open the unsigned book.

He furrowed his brow in confusion and quickly shut his mouth as he realised that this was just his own book, passed back to him. He flipped through the pages looking for changes, and soon landed on the extra few pages that Keiji had tacked on to the end. Curious about what lied within, Sou read on, and couldn’t help but let out a sharp gasp of surprise at what he found written down.

He quickly snapped his head up to look at Ranger and see if he had noticed, but he was just having a one sided conversation with Safalin, unwilling though she was, about something inane with Gin’s cat hood pulled up over his head.

‘Good.’ he thought, relieved to have gotten away with slipping up. If his own plot got rumbled because of his own silly mistake, he’d never let himself hear the end of it.

So Keiji was trying to help Sou out and tweak his plan a little. Fine. The more heads working on this the better as far as Sou thought, but it was the way that Keiji was planning to help that shook him so much.

Keiji had called Sou’s plan ‘too risky’ as it was, yet his own separate plan was even riskier! It was down right irresponsible, even. Though, as Keiji briefly began to explain why he was doing it, Sou couldn’t help but begin to understand.

After he finished reading Keiji’s appendment, Sou sighed and held backspace to delete it as instructed at the end. Though he planned to pass off the original book to someone else soon, he first leaned back in his chair to allow himself time to stew on what he had just been told. As he did, his field of vision widened, and a lump leapt straight into his throat as he finally noticed something.

Kanna was staring directly at his laptop screen.

His body shot forward, causing Kanna to recoil and look up at him. Sou’s eyes met with hers, and he noticed the terrified expression she wore. He wasn’t really sure if it was because she’d been caught snooping, or because of what she had seen.

“You weren’t supposed to read that.” Sou quietly hissed, making Kanna recoil further. Oops. That sounded less mean in his head.

“S-sorry…” she meekly stuttered.

“...Nevermind.” Sou muttered. “Forget about it.”

Kanna shook her head. Apparently that was off the table.

“Is Keiji really-” Kanna started, but Sou hushed her.

“Shh. Whatever that was gonna be, yeah.” he whispered. “But keep your voice down.”

They were as far away from Ranger and Safalin as possible due to being on the far end of the table, but he was still concerned about Alice overhearing since he was right next to Kanna. He trusted him with the original plan, but Keiji had explicitly asked that no one else heard about his addition. Good thing Sou immediately messed that up anyway.

He could understand how she felt, considering he just unknowingly went through that weird trip alongside her, but he couldn’t afford to talk to her about it right now.

“Just… be quiet. We can try and talk about it later.” he snapped, though he didn’t know when ‘later’ was supposed to be, or how they were supposed to talk.

Kanna reluctantly nodded and turned her attention back to her own game, but it was of course still visibly weighing on her mind. How couldn’t it?

Sou decided that he just needed to get this book out of his hands before he did anything worse with it, but first he typed Kanna’s name at the end so that the person he gave it to next didn’t try and pass it to her. She’d seen more of this book than she’d ever have to already.

Sou’s eyes scanned the homestead in search of his next target, and noticed Kai loitering around Sara’s avatar. He’d do fine, Sou supposed, and he’d surely pass the book straight to Sara when he was done.

Sou approached the pair and flopped the book down on the ground in front of them, immediately retreating as if he had just dropped a grenade. Kai reacted as if he had too, as he ran to shield Sara from the mysterious object before he picked it up himself and gave it a read.

As Sou was returning to the riverbank, a voice suddenly pierced the cold air of the room and nearly made him jump out of his skin - and it was not a voice he wanted to hear.

“Hey.” Ranger coldly started, making Sou feel petrified. “What do you bastards think you’re doing?”

Sou’s teeth clenched and his arms turned stiff. He must’ve made one too many mistakes, and now the entire operation was ruined.

“I mean, Gin got whacked. Big whoop. Doesn’t mean you have to hang around this place like a bad smell.”

Sou emptied the entire contents of his lungs into the air in one long sigh. Just a coincidence.

“I’m getting bored!” Ranger whined. “Talking to Safalin isn’t as fun as I thought it would be! Do something interesting! Entertain me! Go to the Nether! You have the obsidian for it, what are you waiting for!?”

“Surely you can’t possibly expect us to resume playing Minecraft so soon after what happened.” Kai uttered as he secretly passed the book to Sara.

“Eh?” Ranger exclaimed. “And why can’t I? This is a life or death situation for you too, you know.”

He filed through his expression flags in search of one that properly represented how he should be feeling right now, but came up empty. He should really make Safalin make more of those for him. Guess the one that went over his eyes would have to do.

“Are you gonna mope around here feeling sorry for yourselves until night falls and you get torn limb from limb by a passing horde of zombies, or are you gonna make real progress?” he asked, one leg folded over the other beneath the table. Thank goodness they weren’t folded on it.

“Hate to say it, but he’s right.” Keiji chimed in.

“W-what? Keiji!?” Joe blurted out, feeling betrayed at someone daring to agree with anything Ranger said.

“What? I did say I hate to say it, right? ‘Cause I do. I hate to think about anything this guy spews, let alone agree with it.”

“Hey!” Ranger butted in. “That was unnecessary!”

Keiji chuckled. “Yeah, it was. Anyway, point is, time’s not on our side here. What’s that place we have to go to next again?” Keiji looked at Sou for answers.

Sou frowned, knowing too well that Keiji knew exactly where they were going. He almost didn’t want to answer him.

“...The Nether.” he said regardless. “But it’s dangerous there. Newcomers shouldn’t go.” he finished, shooting Keiji a sharp glare.

“Now where’s the fun in that?” Keiji asked with a low laugh. “It’s good to try new things.”

“Hey, hey, Sou’s not kidding, Keiji.” Joe spoke up with a grave tone. “The Nether’s bad news.”

“Oh yeah?” Keiji asked. “Just how bad is it?”

“There’s… there’s lava everywhere! And there’s big floating white things that shoot fire at you!”

“Spooky.”

“Exactly! And there’s these pigs and they used to not hurt you unless you hurt them but then there was an update and now they’re like, the most dangerous mob in the game!”

“Just our luck, huh?” Keiji commented.

“Uh-huh.” Joe spilled out, his speech slurred by the aggressive nodding he was doing as he spoke. “Though uh, that’s only if you’re not wearing gold armour. If you wear some gold they think that you’re one of them, so they’re cool with you.”

Alice listened to this conversation with a bit of a confused look on his face. It sounded like the Nether had changed a lot since he last played.

“I see.” Keiji said, nodding along. “So you’re saying that if I walk in there with some gold on, I’ll be a-okay?”

“Uh?” Joe seemed confused. “Well, I guess kind of. But you’d still be in trouble with ghasts and blazes.” He pursed his lips and tilted his head before talking again. “But ghasts aren’t a threat so long as you put up a cobblestone wall. And blazes only spawn at specific points in fortresses, so…” he trailed off.

“Sounds great.” Keiji said, giving Joe a thumbs up. “Seems like it’d be fine if I come with.”

Joe and Keiji went back and forth for a bit, the former still trying to insist that the Nether would be too dangerous for the latter. Though, as Joe kept describing the Nether, he also kept accidentally mentioning ways to nullify each of the threats it posed. Since they were most likely going to take these precautions anyway, most of the players around the table decided that taking Keiji might not be too dangerous after all if he was so set on it.

Joe comedically verbally tripping himself over so much and destroying his own arguments without Keiji having to so much as offer a rebuttal actually inadvertently raised the table’s spirits somewhat. At the very least, Nao had stopped crying her eyes out by now. Suppose you can always leave it to Joe to play comic relief, even when he doesn’t mean to.

Though, the meek pair sitting at one of the far ends of the table didn’t find things so funny, and had kept quiet throughout the discussion. Sou shifted uncomfortably in his seat as Keiji mentioned that he would’ve just invited himself along even if everyone else said he couldn’t go. This didn’t sit right with him.

Everyone else began to discuss preparations for going to the Nether at the behest of Ranger. Though, the only person truly leading the conversation was Joe, as he was the only real Minecraft expert left who could talk about this topic. Sou was too uneasy and irritated to speak up, Alice had no idea what was ahead of him anymore, and Gin’s situation spoke for itself. If knowledge was half the battle, then the game had a solid leg up on the group already.

“Well, first thing first, we should know who’s going.” Joe started. “So… if you wanna come, raise your hand!”

Joe raised his own hand and looked around the table for everyone else. Keiji’s arm lazily raised up, and Alice sheepishly raised one of his as well.

“Well? Anyone else?” Joe asked.

“Are you crazy?” Reko griped. “Who in their right mind would go somewhere like that?”

“Myself, Keiji and Alice, apparently…” Joe grumbled. “It’s not like we wanna, just… more hands make quicker work or whatever.”

“Yeah, count me out.” Q-taro chimed in for once. “It was hard enough wranglin’ that cow with Sou earlier.”

Sou bit back a comment about how it wouldn’t have been so tough if Q-taro had listened when Sou said that ‘bashing the cow to make it listen’ wasn’t a valid strategy.

“...Hrm… Oh!” Joe exclaimed. “Speaking of which, why don’t you come, Sou?”

“Nhuh?” Sou grunted with a deer-in-the-headlights expression. It wasn’t a great look on him, though it was a common one.

“You said when we started that you have like a million hours in this game or something. You’re more qualified than me!”

“Well, I definitely didn’t say ‘a million’...” Sou meekly replied, though it wasn’t exactly much of a rebuttal. He was kind of having trouble thinking of a reason not to come other than a simple ‘don’t feel like it’.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a lock of green hair move through empty space and twisted his neck around slightly to get a better look. Kanna was looking at him with a concerned and complex expression, and all Sou could think was “yeah, I feel you there”.

He looked back to Joe and shuffled his lips around for a second before sighing. “What the heck, sure. More hands make quicker work or whatever, right?” he said with resignation.

He didn’t want to come. Of course he didn’t. But if he didn’t go, another person might bite it due to his inaction.

“Alright, so that’s me, Alice, Keiji, and you, Sou. That means we need four pieces of golden armour. Four pairs of boots is sixteen ingots… did you find that much while mining, Alice?” Joe asked, and Sou wasn’t sure if the way Joe glanced down at his own legs was because he was counting on his fingers or not.

“Erm… well, I- we found three or four veins I think. Should be roughly twenty-odd ingots smelted in the furnace by now.” Alice replied.

Joe happened to be in the house already, so he poked around the burned out furnaces to find the gold bounty.

“Ah, here they are. Twenty three gold ingots are plenty!”

Joe pulled the still scorching hot gold bars out of the furnace, multiple small green orbs of experience popping out and seeping into him as he did. He took the armful of metal over to the crafting table, where he crafted four sets of golden boots with no smithing tools to speak of to assist him. Video game logic sure was interesting.

“Rendezvous at the house you three and we’ll prepare. Sounds good?” he asked, being met to varying degrees of agreement from the people he was addressing. He was trying his best to stay enthusiastic in the face of adversity for everyone, but clearly everyone else was finding it harder to be chipper.

Joe rooted around in the chests and other furnace as he waited for the three other Nether explorers, pulling out obsidian and as many iron ingots as he could find just in time for the door to swing open and the three of them to pour in. Joe tossed a pair of boots to each, and they slipped into them easily, Alice having to replace his existing battered iron boots with the new shiny golden ones. Though they reduced his armor rating, he was technically safer in them, at least according to Joe.

“Just the boots won’t cut it for the rest of us, surely.” Sou noticed while looking at Alice’s avatar kitted out in otherwise full iron.

“Right, that’s why I got the rest of the iron to cover us.” Joe tapped the E key to glance at this inventory, and frowned. “Uh… remind me. How much is a full set?”

“Twenty four.” Alice instantly replied, before anyone else could so much as open their mouths. Clearly he memorized that number a long time ago. “But we don’t need boots, so sixty ingots covers it.”

“Darn, not enough.” Joe said with a sigh. “I’ve got forty nine here. We’ll just have to split pieces between us.”

“Hey, wait a minute.” Sou cut in. “That should be plenty.”

“What?” Joe exclaimed. “We just said it isn’t.”

“Well yeah, it wouldn’t be enough if we had to craft three new sets. But we don’t.”

“E-explain yourself, Sou Hiyori…” Alice demanded, but he had a feeling that he knew where the tiny man was going.

“...I overheard your conversation when you and Gin went mining, Alice, when you said that it would be safer if you made armor. Gin said he felt bad because he was spending the iron on himself, but he made a set for himself as well anyway. If you have the rest of his belongings, you should have his old armor as well.”

Alice flinched and shot Sou a glare in real life, as the two were sitting right near each other. Sou held fast, though.

“Hey- hey! You can’t do that!” Reko spoke up, looking across the room at the hunched over beanie creature. “That’s Gin’s, dammit!”

“I... don’t see the problem. We need the extra protection, and Gin’s not using it anymore.” He was getting a little frustrated. It was just lines of data - he wasn’t desecrating his grave or anything.

“Hey, let’s not fight about this…” Joe muttered in an attempt to mediate.
“If we don’t wear this armor, more of us might die down there. Is that what you want, miss Reko?” Sou snapped.

“H-hell no! What are you accusing me of!?” she bit back, fists beginning to clench.

“Guys…!” Joe tried to speak up again.

“If you don’t want us to use Gin’s stuff, then get us a replacement. But considering you haven’t done anything useful since we spawned, I doubt you’d be able to.” Sou glared at Reko from across the room, and she was nearing a limit.

“It’s not my fault I don’t know what the hell’s going on! You’re the one who wasted thousands of hours of your life playin’ a children’s video game! Shouldn’t you be more helpful yourself!?”

”GUYS!” Joe shouted, desperate to break the argument up. “This-this isn’t the time to argue! I get both of your points!” he claimed, and both Sou and Reko looked at him expectantly. “Sou.” Joe began, gesturing at him. “We need all the protection we can get, and I also think that if we don’t have enough iron, we need to use anything else we can.”

Reko opened her mouth to resume arguing, but Joe was too fast. “But! You should consider how Reko feels as well! We all miss Gin, so… you should be careful about stuff like this. Okay?”

Sou grumbled to himself but didn’t seem like he was about to fight back. He just wasn’t very keen on getting scolded by children, let alone in front of everyone.

“And, uh, and Reko!” Joe continued, looking past a concerned looking Sara to make eye contact with Reko. He was significantly more nervous about reprimanding her than he was about reprimanding Sou. “I totally understand how you feel, but our lives are still on the line here. If we’re going to the Nether, we need full sets of armor, and there’s no other way to get them right now. And-and yeah, Sou was out of line, but there was no need to personally attack him.”

Reko grunted, looking away from Joe and screwing up her eyes. The gaudy kid had a point, dammit. She definitely lost her cool there, but it was way too soon for Sou to casually be talking about Gin. Though, if the kid was still here right now, there was no way in hell he’d want people to be screaming at each other over him.

“Ugh. Fine.” Reko said as her eyes shot open again and she sighed. “But he’s not havin’ it! You take it, you hear!?” Reko said, pointing a finger right at Joe.

“A-alright, alright, that’s fine! I’ll make a new set for Sou!” Joe said with both hands up in a defensive position.

“Pffahhh…” Ranger sighed from the far end of the table. “Come on, it was just getting interesting! Why’d you have to go and interfere, bastard?”

Joe huffed in frustration, but didn’t let Ranger’s jab get to him. Instead, he busied himself with making two new helmets, two new chest pieces, and two new pairs of leggings while Alice transferred Gin’s old equipment from his own inventory to Joe’s.

Noticing that Joe was somewhat slighted by Ranger’s comment, Mishima decided he would try to cheer him up a little. “That was an excellent show of mediation. A gold star to you.” he said with a smile and a thumbs up that didn’t go unnoticed.

“...Uhh, thanks.” Joe mumbled.

Sara passed Sou’s book to Reko. She probably could’ve given it to someone better considering the argument that just happened, but Reko was the only one in her line of sight that hadn’t already either read the book or was about to go to the Nether.

Reko instinctively right clicked the book to open it up and was a little miffed upon seeing it was from Sou, but read on anyway.

It wasn’t long before all four of the Nether explorers were suited up, iron armor from their legs up and sparkling golden boots on their feet. They made sure they had enough food between them to last, and headed out of the house with obsidian and a flint and steel in hand to construct the portal.

“Hold on.” Kai spoke up. “May I ask what the rest of us are expected to do?”

“Huh?” Joe muttered, staring at Kai blankly. “...Oh. Well, whatever you wanna do, I guess. We’re almost out of iron now, but we’ll need more later, so if someone could go mining, that’d be nice.”

“Hmm… mining…” Kai uttered, in deep thought. “I’m sure it can’t be too hard, though I don’t wish to let Miss Sara leave my sight.”

“Why don’t we just go together, then?” Sara asked Kai, who was sitting just two seats away from her.

“Won’t you be in danger, Miss Sara? That would be unacceptable.”
“Nahhh, mining ain’t so dangerous.” Joe cut in. “If you strip mine on the right level, it’s basically impossible to get hurt.”

“S-strip… mining…?” Kai asked, seeming genuinely taken aback for once.

“Yeah!” Joe replied.

“T-that’s… also highly unacceptable. I am deeply ashamed of you.” Kai said gravely.

“W-what?” Now it was Joe’s turn to be taken aback, and maybe a little hurt. What had Kai in a twist?

“Um!” Sara cut in. “I think you’re mistaken. I’ll explain it to you later.” she put forward, and Kai seemed slightly more at ease.

“...Very well.” Kai muttered, though his cold stare kept cutting through Joe just a little longer. A lot about this guy made Joe’s skin crawl, intentional or not.

“Kanna will just keep farming…” the small girl interjected, and it seemed like a good enough idea.

“Leave the animals to me!” Q-taro said triumphantly.

“I can work on… a house extension?” Nao suggested. She was still sniffling a little bit, but she was eager to be useful.

“Ah. Then I shall fetch you building supplies, miss Nao.” Mishima helpfully chimed in. Nao seemed to appreciate it.

“I’ll, uh… give you a hand too, Nao.” Reko decided, also noticing that she was still in distress. “Music’s more my art-form, but hey, it’s just blocks right? Can’t be too hard! Haha…” Reko approached Q-taro’s avatar stealthily after she finished speaking. Had to get this book away.

“There we go! All sorted, everyone’s got a job now!” Joe said happily as he finished placing the last block of obsidian on his portal. “Welp, we’re off!” he exclaimed as he struck flint against steel, igniting the portal with an eerie purple glow.

Reko tossed the book at Q-taro’s feet, prompting great curiosity from the burly man. He looked over his laptop inquisitively and was about to open his mouth to speak, but got the message when Reko quickly pressed a sharp finger to her lips and gave Q-taro a death glare.

Maybe she threw it to him by accident? Q-taro opened his inventory and dragged the book outside the window to throw it back at Reko - that was a cool trick he learned by himself earlier. She scowled after picking it up and pressed Q to throw it back again.

Man, Reko was real clumsy. Q-taro threw the book back.

Reko hit Q-taro with the book twice and threw it at him again.

Q-taro looked up at Reko again and silently shrugged, cocking an eyebrow.

Reko held up both of her hands and mimicked clicking a mouse with the right hand, figuring that Q-taro didn’t know what to do with it.

Q-taro clicked the left mouse button, striking Reko’s Minecraft avatar.

Reko buried her face in her hands.

Thankfully, Q-taro correctly figured he pressed the wrong button and managed to finally open the book after pressing the right mouse button instead.

Reko stormed away as soon as she noticed Q-taro had successfully started reading a book, stomping over to Nao and Mishima’s avatars instead.

“Here we go.” Keiji grumbled, looking at the gurgling portal in front of him and the three others. “Do or die, huh?”

Sou scowled.

“Indeed…” Alice muttered. He was determined to get everyone through this alive this time.

“Everyone got their food and tools?” Joe asked, met with affirmation from the other three. “Nothing else to it, then! Let’s go!”

The four of them entered the portal with varying degrees of enthusiasm, though the threat of death was very real for all four of them. Do or die, indeed. Their screens morphed and swirled around and around, slowly becoming darker and darker until suddenly, a loading screen appeared. Just as quickly as it appeared though, it disappeared.
News of all four of them achieving the advancement “We Need to Go Deeper” rang out in the in-game chat as they all blipped into an entirely new dimension.

“...Phew.” Keiji exhaled as he looked around his immediate surroundings. Fire and brimstone, rotted creatures shambling about the place, and difficult terrain as far as the eye could see.

Alice noticed a few blocks he hadn’t seen before, such as a chunk of netherrack with what seemed to be golden nuggets embedded within, but otherwise things seemed pretty familiar so far.

“Alright, we’re looking for a large red fortress, Keiji. Let’s pick a direction and keep moving.” Joe suggested, but Sou quickly halted him.

“Wait, wait, wait. Before we go, we should mark down the coordinates of the portal.” he recommended, and Joe nodded along.

“Ah, good thinking, Sou!” Joe said as he tapped the F3 key and rattled down the coordinates of the nearby portal into the in-game chat, where it could be reviewed later. ”Now we can get moving.”

The four of them set off in one of two directions that didn’t instantly lead to a sheer cliff above lava, casually strolling past abominations and lava falls. Were this reality, they’d at the very least be enduring unbearable heat thanks to their metallic armor completely covering their bodies, but thankfully the only heat to speak of was being produced by their laptops.

“Hmm… What in the…” Alice muttered as they crossed the border from the regular bog standard part of the Nether into a brown landscape scorched by blue flame and with large bones rising out of the ground. “B-blue fire? Bones? What is the world coming to…?” he grumbled as he and his adventuring party set off across soul soil. Nether biomes were certainly something Alice would have to get used to.

“O-ow!” Sou suddenly exclaimed, the sound of a Minecraft avatar taking damage ringing through the air.

The other three’s Minecraft heads suddenly swivelled to look to Sou, seeing an arrow sticking out of his shoulder and a skeleton in the distance.

“A-aww man, I didn’t account for this… Forgot they spawned here now...” Joe warbled.

“Fear not! It’s merely a skeleton! The four of us can dispatch it easily!” Alice cried out, setting off in a sprint towards the skeleton, though his acceleration soon slowed until he was moving at a snail’s pace. “H-huh?” he grunted in confusion.

“The soul sand!” Sou hissed, looking at the grainy brown blocks under Alice’s feet. “Look where you’re going!”

“O-oh, right…” Alice muttered, trying to backtrack to escape the sand and getting pelted a couple times in the back in the process.

Joe walked around the large patch of sand Alice was stuck in, careful to hop over little patches as if playing hopscotch on the soil. “Hold tight, Alice! I’m coming!” he announced as he cleared the majority of the sand, sprinting across the soil towards the skeleton and leaping to strike the foe critically. Merely a few strikes and it went down, disappearing into bones and experience.

“Phew…” Joe breathed out as Alice shoved bread into his maw. “Let’s be a little more careful next time.”

Alice sheepishly nodded in shameful agreement, and the four of them continued their journey, more mindful of lurking threats.

“I see…” Kai uttered thoughtfully as he watched Sara’s blocky doppelganger hack away at the stone blocks directly in front of her in a completely straight line. “So this is ‘strip mining’. I had the completely wrong idea.” he admitted as he began breaking the blocks in the row next to Sara’s.

“Is-is that right…?” Sara muttered.

“Yes.” Kai simply spoke before quickly changing the topic. “Miss Sara, what exactly makes this particular method of mining so effective? Surely one would find valuable resources much quicker by exploring vast caverns.”

“Well, that might be true…” Sara admitted as she broke some iron ore. “But in caves, monsters spawn as well. So long as we don’t backtrack here, we won’t get caught by them.”

“...Ah…” Kai muttered inquisitively, nodding along politely to Sara’s explanation.

“Plus, while we’re mining at this particular level, we’re at the perfect point where all ores can generate, but also we’re above all the points where lava can generate. So as long we don’t space out too hard, we can’t be hurt by anything.” she finished up.

“How fascinating. You truly know a lot about this video game, Miss Sara.” Kai said, attempting to give her a compliment.

“Haha… well, it’s just because Joe’s given me a couple lectures here and there.” she admitted. “Really, I just have a good memory for the stuff Joe tells me.”

Kai’s eyes narrowed. He had tried his best to give her a compliment, yet she had essentially passed the credit for the very thing he was complimenting to Joe instead. Not having enough time to come up with a proper bona fide Sara compliment, Kai simply spilled his thoughts on the matter.

“...Ah. I hadn’t considered that.”

“...Gah! Why’s this so hard!? No matter what I do, it just keeps lookin’ flat!” Reko said in distress, heaping block after block onto the side of the house.

“Um, well… non-cube shaped blocks like stairs and fences help a lot to add depth…” Nao commented as Mishima dropped more of his supplies into a chest nearby the two girls.

“Quite right, miss Nao.” Mishima chimed in. “Miss Reko, consider using slabs or even buttons as decorative pieces.” he suggested, but it didn’t seem to help Reko much.

“That’s a bit easier said than done…” she moaned as she broke another one of her misplaced blocks, her stone axe snapping in half as the block popped onto the ground. “Ugh...! Hey, old guy! Go fetch me some new tools!” she demanded.

“As you wish…” Mishima said with a frown, slinking back into the woods from whence he came to go forage some more.

“Here, look over here.” Nao said to Reko, walking back over to the front of the house. Reko trailed behind, looking up at the structure. Kai and Nao’s handiwork certainly was something to behold. No way Reko could build something like this. “This part here that Kai did…” Nao began, gesturing to a sizable portion on the right side. “Kai used everything at his disposal to add different layers here, from stairs to pressure plates. Focus really hard on what he did, okay, and try to do something like it!”

Reko scrunched up her eyes and leaned forward, staring intently at Kai’s architecture. She supposed it helped to have a physical example to look at, and it gave her a little bit of inspiration.

Her Minecraft avatar walked sideways towards the part of the building that was under construction, not letting Kai’s section leave her sight until she disappeared completely around the corner. Let’s get to work.

She popped open the chest Mishima was filling, snatching out wooden planks and smoothed andesite before she practically leapt onto the nearby crafting table to make slabs, stairs and fences. She started putting her ideas into ‘reality’, placing blocks down with focus without letting Kai’s architecture leave her mind.

Nao watched Reko build intently, interested in her creative process. She second guessed herself a lot, placing a slab here and breaking it, replacing it with a stair block, accidentally placing it the wrong way and breaking it again, etcetera. As she built, she narrowed her eyes and bit her lower lip in contemplation. This clearly required a lot of mental load for her.

By now, Mishima had returned to the two girls, a couple stone axes and stone pickaxes in hand. “Miss Reko, your tools-”

“Shh! I’m working here!” she snapped without so much as looking at either Mishima or his Minecraft avatar.

“...It seems I cannot win here.” Mishima noted with a frown, and Nao giggled quietly at his misfortune. He immediately supposed that if it cheered Nao up even a little, he would be happy to be ridiculed in such a way.

Reko stood back after a little while more of building, panting for air. Was she holding her breath the entire time? “How… how’s this…?”

It wasn’t a masterpiece - it certainly wasn't as good as Kai or Nao’s architecture - but it was pretty damn good for a beginner. Nao cooed at Reko’s work. “Not bad! Great job, Reko!” Nao said, giving her a warm smile from directly across the table.

“Heh… Thanks, Nao.” Reko replied. She could get used to this feeling.

“There it is!” Joe cried out. Dead ahead of them was a massive, towering structure made of scarlet red bricks. Pillars were formed with the blood coloured building material, holding the main structure of the fortress up in the air. Surrounding the lava lake that the fortress rose from were large, floating white creatures that most of them did not like the look of.

“Well, at least these don’t seem to have changed much…” Alice muttered, glad to have some kind of normalcy in this literal hellscape.

“Pretty high up.” Keiji remarked. “We supposed to just tower up there?”

“Pretty much, bu-” Joe began, but couldn’t get much more out before Keiji leapt into action.

“Well, here I go.” Keiji casually said as he quickly and recklessly began making a staircase up to the fortress out of netherrack he had collected prior.

“W-wait, Keiji! It’s not safe to just go up like that!” Joe exclaimed, trying to make cobblestone walls around Keiji’s staircase to protect from the nearby ghasts.

Keiji merely went faster to outpace Joe, sparing only brief glances at the ghasts. He smiled a little bit.

“K-Keiji Shinogi! This is irresponsible! Please, come down!” Alice pleaded, but Keiji wasn’t dissuaded. Alice started to help Joe with the walls, covering the side that Joe wasn’t.

On the other hand, Sou stood at the bottom of the staircase, neither lifting a finger to help, nor saying a single word. He merely adjusted his scarf uncomfortably.

A ghast floated nearby, so Keiji stopped on the precipice of the staircase to regard the fortress. “Looks like I’m about halfway there, now.” he said with a chuckle.

A strange wail rang out through the empty air of the Nether, making Alice and Joe’s hearts drop. ”KEIJI!” Joe cried in desperation. “Look out!”

“Hm?” Keiji grunted moments before the tip of the staircase was obliterated by a fireball launched by the nearby ghast, dealing serious damage to Keiji and, more worryingly, sending him hurtling towards the lava below, and towards certain doom.

“KEIJI SHINOGI!!” Alice screamed in abject despair. “W-why!? Why would you…!?”

Unfortunately, it was far too late. Keiji’s body plunged into the lava below, and not even a second later, news of Keiji’s death rang out in the in-game chat for everyone to see.

“...Whoops.” Keiji casually said with a chuckle. It made Sou feel sick.

“Wow!” Ranger chimed in. “That was such a stupid move, even I couldn’t see it coming!”

“D-dammit…” Joe uttered, protected behind his cobblestone walls. “We… we tried to warn you, Keiji! We-we did everything we could! You didn’t listen!”

“Guess I didn’t.” Keiji replied. “Sorry, guys.”

“S-sorry doesn’t begin to cut it!” Alice cut in. “You- now- just because- now you shall-” Alice gave up on forming a sentence, instead grasping his head with his hands and shouting in confusion and frustration.

“...Keiji…” Sara muttered darkly, gritting her teeth soon after uttering his name.

“Sorry, Sara. Looks like I’m heading out.” Keiji noted casually. Why was he… so calm?

Everyone was trying to talk at once, be it reprimanding Keiji, showing concern for his immediate fate, or even just merely expressing confusion. The noise was deafening, but it was somehow silenced merely by Safalin rising from her chair.

“...Keiji Shinogi has failed the final attraction.” she announced, as she had for Gin before. “Please, come with me…” she pleaded as she approached Keiji, already being very close to him.

“Remember!” Ranger piped up. “Try to stop Safalin and I’ll pop your gross heads right off, so don’t even think about it!”

“You don’t need to worry about that. I’ll come quietly.” Keiji announced as he stood up as well, to Safalin’s surprise.

“Oh… well, um… right this way…” she muttered as she walked around the side of the table, leading him to the door of the final attraction room. A lot of things about this didn’t feel right, yet somehow it wasn’t because a man was being led to his execution.

Sara watched Keiji’s gait carefully as he walked to the door and finally gave a casual wave to the group before disappearing beyond it unceremoniously with Safalin.

She could tell. He had a plan.

Keiji marched alongside Safalin through the lobby and down a corridor as if he was the prisoner bound in cuffs, for once. She was getting notably disturbed by his calm behaviour, constantly taking neurotic glances to make sure he was still following and wasn’t about to wring her neck or make a break for it.

“Relax.” Keiji said with a smirk. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Safalin swallowed the lump in her throat, uncomfortable with how he read her thoughts just based on her body language. Whatever. Don’t let it get to you.

The two of them arrived in the medical office, where Safalin dug her fingers into the side of one of the monitor panels on the wall and pulled it out, revealing a dark passageway that led further within.

“Ah…” Keiji exclaimed. “So this is where it was.”

“...Go in first.” Safalin demanded, not wanting Keiji to break away when she was halfway through the corridor.

“Sure thing.” Keiji casually said, setting off down the corridor. It was almost pitch black in there, merely backlit by the white light of the medical office dimly and frontlit by the blue light of whatever room was ahead dimly.

The corridor wasn’t too long, so Keiji soon arrived in the strange room, and couldn’t completely stifle his reaction.

“...fah…” he exhaled, looking upon the surreal, almost unbelievable sight in front of him. Even someone like him couldn’t fully contain himself.

An uncountable number of people stood here, completely frozen like statues, not blinking, and not breathing. Seeing the ways they were bunched together, or the ways they unevenly were spaced apart made Keiji feel deeply uncomfortable, but what was even worse is that they looked like people he knew.

Sara was standing over there for example, slightly tilted at such an angle that she was barely not looking at Reko. Two Alices stood near a statue that looked exactly like himself, casually posed between the striped men. A posse of Q-taros stood in a corner, facing towards each other as if having some kind of silent strategy meeting. Nao and Mishima were completely surrounded by Kannas. Creepy didn’t begin to describe it.

Suddenly, his shirt was lifted up by someone behind him. Right, Safalin was here, he almost forgot. Two fingers pressed against his spine, but were quickly retracted as Safalin gasped behind him.

“Whoa there.” Keiji casually said, looking over his shoulder. “I think this is moving a little too fast.”

“Y-your…” Safalin began while shuddering, but she couldn’t manage to finish her sentence.

“Yeah... sorry.” Keiji said, disingenuously. “It got a bit itchy, so I had someone scratch it out. Hope it won’t be a problem.” he said with a chuckle, and felt his shirt drop back down. Knowing that Safalin didn’t have much power over him even here, Keiji felt secure enough to snoop around the place.

He tried not to look at Megumi as he walked towards someone who he didn’t recognize. Seemed like some kid, maybe around Sara’s age. He had bushy, unruly white hair, and was wrapped up in a ton of bandages like he’d suffered severe burns or skidded across a highway. He stared forward with a stone cold blank stare which kind of reminded him of how Joe looked when he thought too hard.

“Let’s see…” Keiji grumbled as he reached under the kid’s jacket and began running his fingers up and down his bandaged back.

Ah, here it was. Keiji’s fingers pressed a rectangular button well-hidden in the kid’s spine, and he suddenly leapt to life, breathing rhythmically and blinking at Keiji - though he kept that same blank stare.

“Heya. How’s it going?” Keiji casually asked the boy, but he said nothing. Hmm. Keiji tried waving a hand in front of his face to see if he’d react, but still no dice.

”Attack!” Safalin cried, and suddenly the boy’s expression twisted to something malicious as he charged at the detective, hands outstretched.

“Hey now-” Keiji reacted with merely an ounce of concern, placing his right hand firmly on the boy’s face and easily keeping him at bay. “Hmm… must be programmed to blindly obey for now. No personality, huh? Guess I don’t need you awake, then.” Keiji muttered, reaching around the boy with his left hand and pressing the switch one more. The boy froze in the pose he was in, mid-run and with arms spread wide. This non-standing position proved too unstable to remain in, and the frozen boy clattered to the ground, falling on his side.

...Oh well. He had it coming.

Keiji resumed snooping around the room, trying to find the thing he came looking for. Meanwhile, Safalin quietly snatched a monkey wrench off a nearby worktop.

Keiji looked behind himself and the Alices. “Not here, huh?” he remarked, hands on hips. There were some more people here he didn’t recognize, like that lanky office worker over there, but after his scrap with the monochrome boy he decided he probably shouldn’t turn on any more of these things than he had to.

“Just where could he be?” Keiji muttered, intentionally speaking his thoughts aloud to mess with Safalin a little. Keiji’s eyes shifted over to the gathering of Q-taro’s in the corner. ...Maybe…

As he was contemplating going over there to muscle some Q-taros out of the way, Safalin rose the wrench over her head, took a deep breath, steeled herself and clenched her eyes shut as she stood behind the detective.

Next thing either of them knew, a solid and incredibly loud ‘whunk’ of metal against metal echoed throughout the storage room. Safalin released the breath she was holding and began panting, opening her eyes to look at the damage she inflicted.

To her horror, Keiji immediately gripped both of her wrists, wrestling control of her own hands away from her. He looked over his shoulder, seeming entirely unphased by her sneak attack despite the sizable dent there now was in the back of his head.

“Hey now. There’s no need for that.” Keiji growled before snatching the wrench from her grasp entirely, tossing it aside and out of her reach. “Just give me five minutes to look around, ‘kay?” he asked with a cocky smile.

Safalin wrestled her arms away from Keiji and sprinted over to another person he didn’t recognize. This one was tall and pretty damn beefy, with bandages wrapped around his hands and with striking blue hair. Keiji casually followed Safalin over to the man, not wanting her to get up to any funny business.

Immediately, Safalin attempted to engage in funny business, slamming a practiced finger onto the button on the tall man’s back, causing him to spring to life.

“Att- mmmpphh!” Safalin weakly groaned, her mouth suddenly covered by Keiji’s left hand.

“Sorry, buddy.” Keiji apologized, addressing the tall person she had just woken up. “You aren’t needed right now.” Keiji re-pressed the button on his back and the man froze all over again. That could’ve ended badly.

“Guess if you’re not gonna behave, I just have to take you with me.” Keiji noted as he dragged Safalin by the neck kicking and screaming over to the cluster of Q-taros in the corner.

“Stop… it…!” Safalin pleaded, but Keiji merely shook his head.

“Nah.”

Using his free arm and one of his legs, Keiji managed to tilt a Q-taro in such a way that he provided an opening into what they were hiding behind their massive bodies. And lo and behold, what they were hiding was exactly what Keiji wanted to see.

Gin was standing perfectly still, terrified and without his hood, pillow, or gloves that he adored so much. His face mask was also pulled down to his chin, giving Keiji a full look at the boy’s horrified expression. Safalin must not have made his deactivation pleasant.

“...Yup. Figures.” Keiji muttered as he let go of Safalin to approach the boy and explore his back with both hands. Here it was.

With a click of a button, Gin returned to life, finishing off the latter half of an ear-piercing scream that he apparently didn’t get to finish when Safalin had her way earlier. It actually managed to make Keiji flinch.

As soon as he finished screaming though, Gin’s terror was partially replaced by confusion. “...Mr. Policeman, meow!? W-what are you doing here, woof!?” Clearly, Safalin hadn’t the time to wipe this particular one before she had to return to Ranger.

“Long story there, Gin. But Mr. Policeman’s here to help, okay?” he said with a smile, and Gin nodded with some amount of relief.

Gin’s relief turned right back into fear though as he looked right past Keiji and they heard the clicking of three buttons behind Keiji. Uh oh.

Keiji whirled back around to see the three Q-taros surrounding them blinking and breathing blankly as the boy had done before. Behind the tilted one he could see Safalin, finger outstretched towards the unfortunate duo.

“D-destroy them!” she commanded, causing one of the Q-taros to suddenly roll his neck, another to punch an outstretched palm with his free hand, and the third to get into a battle stance.

Keiji stanced up as best as he could as well, but Gin retreated completely behind the tall policeman.

“...Hope you’re ready, Gin.” Keiji grumbled. “We’re in for it now.”

Joe sighed in exasperation as he touched down on one of the fortress walkways, news of his accomplishment being broadcast to the others in the form of an advancement called “A Terrible Fortress”. Sou and Alice were right behind him, both glad to be out of such a vulnerable position after what happened to Keiji.

“Let’s keep moving.” Sou quickly suggested, heading off down the walkway.

“Y-yeah…” Joe breathed out, following closely after him.

All three of them knew exactly what they were looking for here, so there was no need to say it aloud. They had to find blaze spawners, so that they could get blaze rods and craft eyes of ender with them. And, preferably, they would do it as soon as possible.

Honestly, the place was almost labyrinthian in design. Sometimes the fortress would burrow through a nearby outcrop of netherrack, sometimes it would suddenly be a dead end, and sometimes it would dip down into lower sections.

Actually, it was in one of these lower sections that Sou noticed something.

“Hold up. There’s some nether wart here.” he pointed out, gesturing at some warts sprouting out of some nearby soul sand. “We should gather it.” he suggested, though he was already scooping it into his waiting arms.

“Hm?” Alice grunted. “Whatever could we need nether wart for?”

“...Uh, brewing?” Sou said, cocking an eyebrow.

“Sou’s right, Alice!” Joe chimed in. “Potions can be really useful! A well timed strength or regen could work wonders.”

“W-well, I suppose, but they’re so cumbersome…” Alice complained.

“Yeah, yeah.” Sou muttered as he finished gathering all the warts.

After that slight diversion, the group continued walking, eventually finding a staircase up and arriving back at ‘surface’ level, where some wither skeletons walked the bridges.

The three approached each skeleton cautiously, making sure no one got too close. They had enough coordination to whittle down and eventually destroy the skeletons, and they seemed to be making quick and easy work of the Nether. ...You know, so long as you ignore the fact that they let one of their teammates fall into lava.

“Blaze spawner over here.” Sou commented as Alice and Joe were about to take a wrong turn. Seems like they’d finally made it to one.

The three of them approached carefully, and before any of them could get too close, Alice constructed a one block thin netherrack barrier at eye-level. This way, blazes wouldn’t be able to pass through, and their fire would be blocked by the netherrack. All the while, the boys could slash at the unfortunate blazes without incurring any of their wrath.

This strategy worked perfectly, and there was soon a large collection of blaze rods scattered on the floor.

“This should be plenty.” Alice commented - they’d killed a lot of blazes by now.

“Yeah, but if we go to get the rods, more blazes’ll spawn on us…” Sou muttered.

“No matter.” Alice said, gripping his diamond pickaxe and decimating the blaze spawner without hesitation.

“...Uh, well, problem solved I guess.” Sou commented, breaking past the barrier and moving to collect the rods.

“Twelve all told. Let’s get out of here already.”

“M-muscle gorillas!” Gin stuttered. “Why are you doing this, meow!?”

“They won’t listen, Gin. They’re just robots following orders.” Keiji briefly explained, barely having enough time after speaking to avoid a fist flung at his head. The wall behind him cracked against the blunt force impact. Phew.

“T-then what do we do, woof!?”

“We turn them off. Gin, there’s a button in each of their backs. If we want to get out of this-” Another fist was thrown, which Keiji ducked under. “-alive, we’ll have to press them.”

“...Got it, meow!” Gin affirmed, nodding up at Keiji, who couldn’t help but note how fast Gin grasped that concept. Guess he was already familiar with Safalin pressing his button.

Gin ducked down close to the ground, fingertips touching the floor as he got in position to run. “...Myaaaa…” he mewled with determination, as if to power himself up.

“Mya!” he cried out, darting between the center Q-taro’s legs faster than he could react and whirling around quickly once behind the big robot’s back. He poked all up and around Q-taro’s back, but failed to locate Q-taro’s button before he was grappled from behind by Safalin.

“Hey! Let go of me, woof! I’ll stomp on your foot again, meow!” he threatened, thrashing and struggling against her nigh-helplessly.

The Q-taro Gin had poked slowly turned around to face the boy, and began to wind up a strong punch. Considering what it had done to the wall behind Keiji, Gin didn’t want to even imagine what would happen if he got directly hit by one of these monsters.

Suddenly, Gin heard a click sound, and watched as the Q-taro who was about to hit him leaned forward rigidly and clattered to the ground. Keiji leapt forward and rolled across the petrified Q-taro’s body just in time to avoid a double-kick from the two Q-taros to his sides, and wiped some artificial sweat from his brow.

“Phew. Close one.”

Safalin stared at the acrobatic display for a moment, both frustrated and amazed. It distracted her enough to make her loosen her grip on Gin, and the boy decided he would make good on his promise.

His right foot came down harshly onto hers, making a nasty sound as she yelped in pain and he managed to push her away with his elbow, scurrying away further into the storage room.

The right Q-taro swung at Keiji once more, and he barely managed to avoid it by stepping backwards, feeling the air in front of his face distort as a beefy fist flew through it.

Keiji had no choice but to keep moving backwards faster than the Q-taro could advance forwards with his huge frame, but soon began to realise a problem - his back was about to be against the wall. He only had a few moments to think of an escape plan, and was coming up empty as Q-taro’s broad wide swings meant that dodging left or right would just end up in getting clotheslined.

Suddenly, a metal object whizzed through the air, spinning every which way until it slammed harshly into the threatening Q-taro’s back, his fist inches from Keiji’s face. Q-taro immediately came to a stop as his button depressed, his face frozen with complete malice. Keiji couldn’t push himself away from him soon enough, really.

“Stay away from Mr. Policeman, meow!” Gin’s voice echoed throughout the room with fervour, causing Keiji to realise what had happened. Gin was standing right around where Keiji had thrown Safalin’s wrench after taking it from her - he must’ve noticed it and scurried over to use it as a weapon after breaking free from Safalin. Nice throw, kid.

“And you!” Gin shouted, finger accusingly outstretched at Safalin who was trying to sneak off to reactivate a Q-taro. Gin launched himself towards her at speeds comparable to a cheetah, unleashing a full blown assault as his tiny fists flew fast and free through the air.

“I hate you, woof! You lied to me!” Safalin narrowly avoided each of Gin’s punches and kicks, but they were making her move further and further backwards. All the while, the final Q-taro was still approaching.

Keiji observed the situation carefully… maybe he could make something out of this. He made a ‘come closer’ gesture to Gin behind Safalin’s back, and hoped that the boy took notice.

Sure enough, Gin subtly changed trajectory so that Safalin was forced to unwittingly back herself towards Keiji if she wanted to keep avoiding Gin’s blows. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me, meow!”

“I-I didn’t say anything like that!” Safalin claimed between gasping breaths, and she wasn’t actually wrong.

“It was totally implied, woof! Why would I go with you if I thought I would still die, meooooooowwww!?” With that final meow, Gin threw a heavy, sweeping punch at Safalin which she easily avoided with a long stride backwards. Perhaps too long of a stride in fact, as it landed her right in Keiji’s strong arms.

“H-huh?” Safalin stammered as Keiji’s arms firmly grappled her. “W-wait… Y-you... you tricked me!”

"...Eye for an eye, woof." Gin said gravely.

“Nice work, Gin. Now get behind me.” Keiji commanded, and the young boy immediately scurried behind the policeman obediently.

All three of their backs were to the wall, and the final Q-taro was still slowly approaching with murderous intent.

“Phew. This could be a tricky situation, huh?” Keiji said directly into Safalin’s ear.

“Y-yes! So you should let me go, so you can get out of the way!” she reasoned, but Keiji shook his head and didn’t loosen his grip.

“Oh, no, I don’t mean for us. I mean, think about it. Our backs are to the wall here… and if your enemy has their back to the wall, you really put the pressure on…”

Safalin hadn’t seemed to have caught on yet, so Keiji kept talking.

“You do a full frontal assault, you know? And I mean, the only thing you’ve told that guy is ‘destroy them’...”

Gin’s eyes shot open as he realised what Keiji was plotting. “...Mr. Policeman… you’re scary, woof.”

“Heh. Maybe.” Keiji replied.

“W-wait… You-you m-mean…” Safalin stuttered, fear beginning to properly overtake her. Q-taro was getting ever closer.

“Yup.” Keiji said with a low chuckle directly into her ear. “Tell me. What’s stopping him from punching directly through you to get to us?”

Safalin began to thrash against Keiji even harder, desperate to get away from him, but his grip merely tightened.

“Sounds like the answer’s ‘nothing’, then.” Keiji recognized.

“L-let me go! Please!” she begged, her limbs beginning to burn from struggling against Keiji’s body.

“...Wonder if Gin said the same thing.” was all Keiji said as Q-taro began to properly loom over them.

Safalin grit her teeth as she watched Q-taro approach, desperately thinking of a way out that wasn’t the option Keiji clearly wanted her to take. But no matter how many thoughts ran through her head, it seemed like there was well and truly only one thing she could say.

“Time’s almost up.” Keiji muttered as Q-taro stopped shambling forward, instead raising an arm in preparation to take all three of them down in one blow.

“Three… two… one...”

The three remaining members of the soon defunct Nether Exploration Squad arrived at their portal, guided here by the coordinates Joe had posted in the in-game chat earlier at Sou’s recommendation. Thank goodness Sou thought to mention that. Joe felt a little twinge of guilt every time he opened the chat window and saw Keiji’s death message, but he just kept telling himself that it wasn’t his fault. Keiji did that all on his own.

“Phew… we’re here. Let’s just head in already.” Sou muttered, eager to get out of this literal hellhole, leaping into the portal first.

“H-hey, wait for us!” Alice bellowed, hopping in right after him. Joe came in right after Alice as well, just as eager to be back in the overworld. As their screens swirled around, once again they sat through a loading screen as they were brought back into the normal world. Thank goodness.

It had gotten pretty late by now, but everyone else had used the daylight highly efficiently. Kanna’s farm seemed quite a bit bigger now, Q-taro’s cows seemed highly uncomfortable, Reko and Nao had managed a decent house expansion together, and Kai and Sara had brought back many more resources.

Immediately, Sou snaked into the house, eager to make himself a brewing stand. He merely had to right click on the crafting table, stick a blaze rod into some cobblestone, and presto. Job done. He set it down on the very crafting table he used to make it, then suddenly remembered that he needed glass bottles to do this.

“Ugh… Alice, can you go get some sand for me?” Sou asked in a slightly whiny tone of voice.

“W-what? Why does it have to be me?” Alice asked incredulously.

Sou just straight up didn’t respond. Alice grumbled about it but did as he asked, going to the riverbed to scoop up sand for Sou’s plot. Everyone else began to move inside, worried about the threat of nocturnal monsters and eager to have a warm roof over their head.

Alice returned to the home, presenting the sand to Sou. “Here. Take your damn sand.”

“Thanks.” Sou quickly said without looking at Alice, shoving the sand he had collected into a vacant furnace and resuming staring at the empty brewing stand. Alice stared at Sou staring at the brewing stand, wondering what was so interesting about it.

“...Hey, if you’re not doing anything, can you craft this glass into bottles and go fill them up?” Sou asked, causing Alice to sigh deeply. Regardless, he started crafting bottles.

Alice set out of the house once more with an armful of empty water bottles, waddling down to the riverbed once more to do his pointlessly assigned task. He scooped water into them one after the another, and was at least glad that he could just hold the right mouse button to fill them up one after the other.

Suddenly, there was a ghastly wail behind Alice that almost made him jump out of his skin. His Minecraft avatar sustained moderate damage and was knocked forward into the river, and Alice quickly whirled around to find out what had attacked him.

A legion of strange, flying blue creatures with bone patterns all over them were swooping down from the sky and towards Alice, and he could hardly believe his eyes.

“W-what in the world!?” Alice exclaimed, withdrawing his diamond sword in an attempt to swat one or two out of the air. It did decent damage, but wasn’t enough to one or even two shot one of them, and they flew back up into the sky as soon as he struck them.

“Urgh… cowards…” Alice grumbled, wading out of the river and onto the bank as he prepared himself for mortal combat, looking up at the glittering night sky.

One of the creatures swooped down in an attempt to rake at him with its bony appendage, but Alice dexterously performed a sword slice that rended it completely in two, causing it to disappear completely.

“Aha!” Alice happily exclaimed. “So three strikes is all it takes, hmm?”

Everyone else watched through the windows of the house without lifting a finger to help as Alice blindly waved his diamond sword at the night sky and talked to himself, sometimes nailing one of the blue creatures and sometimes completely whiffing. Thankfully, he managed to eat some emergency bread part way through the fight, and recovered some health.

With the power of his tenacity, and of basic clicking skills, Alice managed to vanquish all of the creatures, though he noticed something strange.

On the ground underneath where he had slain one of the beasts, a white item rotated around and around, having an appearance similar to… a brain?

...Hmm. Alice held one of the water bottles he fetched for Sou in his hand.

...This gave him an idea.

”F-FORCE SHUTDOWN!” Safalin shouted in desperation, causing the Q-taro who was about to attack to suddenly freeze completely, his eyes fading to black.

“Thanks.” Keiji casually said now that the threat was eliminated before throwing Safalin on the floor, taking Gin’s wrist and hightailing it out of the storage room with him before she could get back up.

“W-where are we going, meow?” Gin asked as the two of them ran into, and immediately out of the medical office.

“To hide.” Keiji vaguely said. It didn’t exactly inspire much confidence in the young boy.

They ran through the corridor leading from the medical office into the lavish lobby, immediately looking around for somewhere they could hide. Safalin could be seconds behind, so they had to think fast.

“Oh! This way, woof!” Gin hissed, apparently having an idea. He dragged Keiji along with him down one of the corridors, and Keiji decided he could just trust the young boy.

They ended up in the drab, run down, grey corridor they had first seen when they came to this floor, and Keiji realised what Gin had in mind. The boy let go of Keiji’s hand to scramble around some rocks, soon finding a decently narrow gap between two of them.

“This way, this way, meow!” Gin exclaimed as he darted through the gap nimbly as if it was just completely open space. Keiji had a bit of a tougher time squeezing through, but if Q-taro could do it, anyone could.

The two of them soon found themselves in almost complete darkness, only a slight bit of light peering through from the LEDs on the computer tower. They both waited here for a while with bated breath to see if Safalin would find them, but they couldn’t hear any footsteps.

After a while, a distant slam was heard, and Keiji reasoned that it must’ve been the heavy final attraction room door slamming closed after Safalin entered it, and Gin breathed a sigh of relief.

“We… we did it… woof…”

“Yeah… we did…”
“...”

“...”

Talk about an awkward silence. Keiji wasn’t really sure what to say, so thankfully Gin spoke up first.

“...Hey… can I ask you a question… meow?”

“Don’t see why not. Hit me.”

“What’s… going on, woof?”

“Ah.”

“W-why do we have buttons on us? How did you suddenly show up in that weird room, why was everyone standing around doing nothing, and, and why were there THREE muscle gorillas, meow!?”

Keiji’s frown went unnoticed by Gin in the darkness. Keiji had supposed Gin had figured everything out by now, but in hindsight that was a lot to ask of a kid. Keiji had mentioned the Q-taros being robots back there, but a whole lot was going on so it was only natural a couple details got mixed up.

“...Listen, Gin. I’m gonna need you to stay calm when I say this, okay?”

“...O-okay…” Gin muttered nervously.

Keiji took a deep breath. “You, me, those Q-taros, and almost everyone else in that room are… let’s say robots. And it seems we were created by Safa-”

“R-ROBOTS!?”

“...Yep. Robots. Crazy, huh?” Crazy didn’t even begin to describe it. “...And from the looks of things, we were all created by Safalin back there.”

Gin was silent.

“...I know it’s a lot to take in. And I get it if you don’t believe me, but I’m telling the truth here. Promise.”

“...T-that’s…” Gin feebly spoke up. Keiji frowned - he hoped this revelation didn’t break the poor kid. “That’s so cool, woof!”

Oh.

“...Cool, huh?”

“Yeah! That means I could shoot lasers out of my eyes, or, or have x-ray vision! That’s super cool, meow!”

Keiji stared at the portion of darkness he assumed Gin was standing in with disbelief for a moment, but couldn’t help but chuckle after a while.

“Well, if you put it that way, I guess you’re right. You’re a good kid, Gin.”

“Thanks! You’re a good policeman, woof!”

Some time passed between the two in idle conversation, before Gin suddenly had an uncomfortable realisation.

“W-wait a minute… If Safalin made all of us… does that mean she counts as our mom, meow?”

“...Huh. I guess kind of, yeah.”

Gin’s tone of voice suddenly sounded more uncomfortable. “...Hmm… I don’t know how I feel about that, woof.”

“Well you know, it makes us brothers too, in a weird way.”

“Oh!” He was seeming chipper again. “That’s true, meow!”

Keiji gave a low chuckle. “Just don’t go calling me ‘big bro Keiji’ now. It’d make me feel weird. Plus, that means you’d have to call all those Q-taros back there ‘big bro Q-taro’ as well.”

“Agh!” Gin dramatically reacted to the idea of calling Q-taro that. “Blech! Eugh!”

Keiji let out a hearty laugh. “Guess ‘Mr. Policeman’ will have to do.”

Once again, some time passed in idle conversation before Gin brought up something uncomfortable.

“Um… can we ever go see the others again, woof?”

“...More a matter of ‘when’ really. But it’s not like we can just barge in there while everyone is still playing Minecraft. We’d get caught instantly.

“Right… meow…”

“Don’t worry though. Here, I’ll let you in on something, Gin.”

“Woof?”

“See… Sou and I have this plan…”

“Eat up, children…” Joe exasperatedly said as he sprinkled gold ingots into the pit of ravenous humanoid pigs he had wrangled in the Nether. As of the most recent update, bartering with these pigs was the best way of getting ender pearls, not to mention one of the safest ways. It was just kind of a bit of a slog if you didn’t get any quickly.

“Put some oomph into it!” Alice advised, throwing a gold ingot down with gusto in order to demonstrate. “Hear me, foul pigs! If you shall not relinquish your precious pearls to me, I, Alice Yabusame, shall show you no mercy!”

Three ender pearls popped out of the pit and into Alice’s inventory, prompting him to cackle as if he were a super villain.

“As easy as that.”

“...Damn…” Joe muttered in awe.

Things continued like this for a little while, Joe and Alice fishing for pearls in the pig pen. Meanwhile, people in the overworld suited up for war.

“Man, you can hardly see any of my avatar under all this armor…” Reko complained, looking at herself in her inventory menu.

“Aesthetics aren’t important right now, miss Reko.” Sou lectured, and he could’ve sworn he heard Reko mutter something about being able to tell that’s what he thought ever since she first looked at him.

“Combat is far from my forte, but if I cannot avoid conflict, being suited up very well may save my life.” Mishima remarked, noticing how the iron helmet blended in with his avatar’s hair quite a bit.

“You handled conflict pretty well on the first night, Professor Mishima!” Nao chimed in, but Mishima merely nervously laughed.

“Ah, but that was only because we had our shovel-bearing knight come to our side.” he reminded her.

“...Ha… Hm… Perhaps you… should not come, Miss Sara. This will be incredibly dangerous.” Kai suggested, but Sara seemed resolute.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kai. I’m sticking with this to the end.” she explained. “...Besides, I don’t think Ranger would be happy about one straggler staying behind.”

“...E-even so…” he mumbled.

“Awright, I’m gettin’ pumped up!” Q-taro helpfully informed everyone. “I wrangled them cows real good, I bet I could take a dragon no problem!”

“Um… Kanna will… do her best!” Kanna spoke up.

By now, Sou’s book had been passed around to everyone, as Nao had managed to catch Joe in the space between him exiting the Nether the first time and going back in to trade with pigs, so all that was left to do was wait for Joe and Alice to return.

“We have returned!” Alice triumphantly said, emerging alongside Joe from the gurgling portal. “And with a veritable bounty of pearls, no less!”

Alice hurried into the house, combining pearl with powder to create twelve eyes of ender. While it was likely one or two would shatter on their lengthy journey to the stronghold, needing to use all twelve pearls to ignite the portal was incredibly unlikely. And even if it did happen, they could just craft more while they were there.

As Alice finished crafting the last eye, everyone heard the door creak open, and then slam shut. Eyes glanced up to meet the visage of Tia Safalin, holding a familiar black vest in her arms. She walked around the table and handed the vest to Ranger, who thanked her in his own ‘special’ way and allowed her to sit back down.
Alice simply had to close his eyes and take a deep breath, willing himself not to think about Rio Ranger right now. This was important. He had to call everyone together.

Alice gathered everyone in a circle outside their house, ready to brief them one final time.

“I have said it once before, but I will repeat myself just to make sure we’re all clear. Ahem…”

“Our ultimate goal is to slay the Ender Dragon! She is a foul beast who corrupts the very nature of the End, a dimension different from our own with an endless, consuming void beneath the small islands of end stone that still remain! Falling will spell instant doom, so you must be incredibly careful once we reach the End.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Reko prodded. “Get on with it.”

“...A-ahem… To reach the End, we require these eyes of ender I currently hold! Once I throw this pearl, it shall point north, east, south, or west! We must travel in that direction for however long it takes, until it leads us to the stronghold! Held deep within this stronghold, guarded by pestilent silverfish, is the end portal! Once twelve eyes are placed in the frame, the portal to the End shall open at last, allowing us passage from this world to the next!”

“Find the stronghold, kill the dragon. Yeah, got it.” Reko muttered.

“R-right! That’s all! I’m throwing the eye now!” Alice announced.

He right clicked on the eye, anticipating it to fly up and point in one of the cardinal directions. What he couldn’t have possibly expected…

...is that the eye would fly downwards.

“...Uh…” Reko chimed in. “So… if it goes down…”

“T-that means…” Sou muttered.

“I-it means…” Joe choked out, though Alice was the one to finish their thoughts.

“T-this means the stronghold has been right underneath us the entire time!”