Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was sunny on the day the king exploded.

This (the weather) was a rather unusual occurrence for the middle of the winter, so most people in the kingdom of Crofters took advantage of the weather and spent the day outside, taking a few extra moments to bask in the light and warmth of the sun. Even King Thomas of the house Sanders was out and about, enjoying the pleasant weather before paying a visit to his most trusted adviser, Joan.

Joan Jenesaisquoi was a close friend of the king's as well as a well-known wizard, so when they'd invited Thomas over to witness a brand-new magical ritual they'd been perfecting for months, the king couldn't clear out his schedule fast enough.

As he strode up to Joan's estate, Thomas paused when the Captain of the Guard, Valerie, tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey Thomas," she greeted. "I'm all about friendship, and hanging out with people you love, but are you sure this is really the best time to be visiting Joan? I mean, it's been a month, and we still haven't been able to find that Dragon Witch that swore revenge on them after cussing them out in the street."

"Ok, yeah, that's a valid point," replied Thomas. "And that Dragon Witch was really scary. But on the other hand, c'mon, its Joan!! They're my best friend, Valerie, you know that. And they'd never let anything bad happen to us, not on their watch."

Valerie seemed to accept this, since she just shrugged and said "Okay!" And without further delay, the pair walked into the manor, where Joan was waiting for them in the parlor.

"Thomas, Valerie!!" Joan got up from their chair to greet them. "You guys made it, and right on time too." They ushered them into the next room. "Oh yeah, and of course; Thomas, did you bring your sword?"

Thomas nodded, then unbuckled his scabbard from his belt. "Yeah, of course. You were super clear about bringing it in your message. Umm, could I ask why, though?" He passed the scabbard to Joan.

"Hold on a second...." Joan unsheathed the sword sword as they walked into another room, then placed a rainbow prism on top of the glowing gem in the sword's hilt after laying it on a table, surrounded by all sorts of runes and mystical herbs. They then motioned for Valerie and Thomas to move behind a line painted on the floor labeled "SAFETY" in blocky letters before finally placing a sickly-looking potted plant in the center of the room and rushing to their friends.

"Alright," they said. "So! I've been working on this new healing ritual for months, right? But the main problem was always getting the subject to stay stable while they were undergoing the healing process. It took me a while to find a solution, but then it hit me: the Galganofi!!" Everyone turned to glance at the sword. "Stick with me for a minute. The Galganofi glows in the presence of the true king, and that light strengthens Thomas in battle and all sorts of sweet stuff, right? Well, I figured that, with this enchanted prism, we could reapply its strengthening properties to the test subject temporarily and use it to heal massive injuries."

The king squealed. "Oh my gosh, so you could save countless lives with this spell?!" He hugged his friends. "Joan, you're a genius!!"

"Yeah, well only if the spell actually works," they replied after a quick embrace.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Valerie chirped in. "The sooner we heal Planty over there, the sooner we save lives!"

The trio cheered, and then Thomas and Valerie huddled behind the safety line while Joan put on their Wizard Goggles (TM) and began chanting.

"Rogamus sapientum tuam," they droned. "Aduvia nos, split regiis mandat. Defendat, tune cautum illud aranea. Placant cum serpens rana et patrem. Et...." And on and on.

Eventually the runes started glowing bright white, and Joan stopped chanting and stepped behind the line. There was a slight humming sound, and the potted plant began to perk up and unwilt. Everything was going well.

Then all of a sudden there was a clicking sound, and the runes all made a sound like they were moaning in pain. As Thomas opened his mouth to ask Joan if this was supposed to be happening, things went from bad to worse. Everything turned black and white, as if someone had made a sketch of the scene and inversed it. The groaning was replaced with a deathly silence, and then suddenly everything in the room started getting sucked towards the prism.

Thomas tried to scream, but no sound came out of his mouth. He stood still, paralyzed my fear, until Joan grabbed his hand and started tugging him towards the door. Get out, they mouthed. Together, step by step, Thomas and Joan made their way to the door.

The two of them had nearly made it to the exit, where Valerie stood, desperately trying to reach out to them with her outstretched hand from the hallway.

Joan and Valerie had made it to safety, but just as he was almost out of the room, the king was smacked in the faced by the door as it was ripped out of its hinges.

Thomas was so distracted by the pain, he let go of Joan's hans and lost his footing. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late. Someone far away screamed, Thomas fell backwards, and then there was only blinding light.

Chapter Text

The room was a mess. Tiles had been ripped out of the floor and hurled back into the walls, which were now badly stained with herbs as well as being on the verge of collapse. Shattered runes were scattered everywhere, making walking a hazard. The splintered fragments of a door also littered the room, ugly but mostly harmless. The only things that could still be considered truly intact were the prism, still glowing softly, and the sword, dull and lifeless as any normal hunk of metal. Not to mention the six identical men passed out on the floor.

Outside in the hallway, things remained relatively peaceful. The ritual had only affected the inside of tbe room, so the people wandering the rest of the manor had only heard yelling and an explosion coming from the laboratory. While this wasn't an unusual occurrence, it was certainly enough to get a servant to run out into the streets to fetch some guards, especially since the entire house staff was aware of the king's visit that day.

Meanwhile, Joan and Valerie nervously peered back into the room. The extreme mess was cause enough for a minor panic, but when they saw the unconscious bodies their eyes widened.

"Thomas!" Valerie cried as she started to leap into the ruined lab. But before she could make it too far, Joan grabbed her arm. Look at the sword, they mouthed.

When she looked at the King's Blade, realization hit Valerie like a shock. The Galganofi wasn't glowing brightly as it should in the presence of the king. The jewel in the hilt flickered slightly for a bit, then its mystic light went out and the jewel looked like any normal precious stone.

"What the....?" Valerie whispered as she carefully tiptoed around the sleeping men. She made her way to the sword, then picked it up and tapped it. "Is this thing broken?"

"Lemme see that," said Joan, who had followed closely behind. She passed them the sword, which they examined with their Wizard Goggles (TM). "This doesn't make any sense. The sword looks fine, but if it's not glowing, then either there's something broken that I can't see, or...." The wizard's eyes drifted to the floor. "Or none of these guys are Thomas."

"If none of them are Thomas," Valerie asked, "Then who are they? And where'd they come from anyways? Do they have to do with the spell? And speaking of the spell, what went wrong with that? It was crazy!!"

Joan shifted from one foot to the other nervously. "I don't understand. Even if I miscalculated horribly, the worst-case scenario should've been that the plant disintegrated. Maybe caught fire, even, but the only thing that could've disrupted the ritual so badly would be if someone deliberately sabotaged-"

"That's it!!" exclaimed Valerie. "It was the Dragon Witch!! She messed up your experiment on purpose! Somehow that hag snuck in here and- and swapped the herbs or rigged the runes or something. She's the one that did all this."

"Huh?" muttered one of the Thomas clones on the floor. He sat up. "The Dragon Witch? She did this? Well, that seems fairly logical, so I suppose that-"

A second Thomas doppelganger shot up and started screaming. "Oh my gosh, you guys, sorry about that. Is everyone okay, is somebody hurt, does anyone need anything?"

A third one groaned and started to stand up. "Whoa, hold on a second. What the heX just happened?"

"We appear to be the byproduct of some underhanded sabotage to Joan's experiment from the Dragon Witch," the first one calmly replied. "But since the sword appea-"

"SWORD!! DRAGON WITCH!!!! WHERE?!" A fourth clone sprang to his feet. "Which way? I shall slay the foul beast, and rip its guts out and stuff it my face for breakfast." The fourth Thomas made a series of grand sweeping gestures with his arms, one of which bumped into the prime. He immediately began convulsing like he'd been shocked with electricity, then dropped to the floor.

Wide-eyed with caution, Valerie approached the fourth Thomas. "Stay back," she whispered to Joan, then made her way over all the rubble to look at the man. Curiously enough, when she arrives next to the prism, there were two unconscious Thomas-looking people sprawled out next to each other. So now there were seven of them.

"Well, that was a lovely scene to wake up to," said a voice behind her. Valerie grabbed the sword off the table and whipped around, prepared to defend herself. Behind her was a sixth doppelganger, standing in front of the other three Thomases and acting rather aloof. "Ooh, a sword. That'll do me a ton of damage."

"Yes it will," the first one called out.

"Who are you people?" Valerie demanded. "And where's Thomas?"

Clone #2 was visibly disappointed. "Aww, Valerie, don't you recognize your own pal? It's me!"

"Clearly not," #1 said. "And I believe she may be in the right."

"Guys," #3 stared at his hands. "I don't think we're supposed to exist."

"Obviously," said #1. "We don't even register on the Galganofi as Thomas, so there's no way we could possibly be him."

"Oh no!! How do we fix it??" cried out #2.

All of them looked at Joan, who was crouched over next to the seventh Thomas that still hadn't awoken. Joan looked up.

"I don't even know where to begin," they said. "It'd take months to figure out what the Dragon Witch did to the ritual, and even longer to figure out how to reverse it. Besides, how do we even know we can trust you? You could just be an illusion."

"Yeah, answer us," Valerie heaved the King's Blade. "Are You Thomas?"

"No and yes," said #6 unhelpfully.

Suddenly they ask heard the unmistakable sound of armor and weapons clanking down the hallway making their way towards the lab.

"We don't have much time before the guards reach us," #1 interjected, "And this is not going to end very favorably for any of us in the room's current state."

"Come on, you guys, you know us," pled #2. "Please help us." He started helping #4 up, using himself as a crutch to support the identical man. #6 started doing the same for #5.

Joan started at him for a minute, then ran across the room and came back with a small notebook they pressed into #1's hands.

"These are my notes," they said. "If you figure out what the Dragon Witch did to the ritual, you can use them to reverse my spell and fix whatever you guys are."

Just then, the guards burst into the room. The head guard assessed the situation, and the blood drained from her face.

"Soldiers!" she called out. "Some kind of black magic has befallen the king! Arrest everyone in the room!!"

Joan ran over to their desk and slammed a hidden button that revealed a tunnel in the wall. "Go!" they called. "You can escape through my secret passageway. Don't worry about us. We'll be fine, I promise."

#6 grinned as he stepped into the tunnel. He started motioning for everyone to hurry up but then frowned.

"Leave him behind!" he called out to #2, who was trying to carry #4 and #7 at the same time.

"But- but-" he protested.

"You can't save them both," #1 told him. "Hurry up, or else you'll be caught."

Still, #2 seemed hesitant, until #3 opened his mouth."

"Just run." He spoke in a voice that seemed to shake the room. "Get out of here already."

The effect was immediate, not only on #2, who frantically dragged #4 to the tunnel, but on the entire room. Guards started scrambling for the door, tripping over each other to escape. The six Thomases sprinted through the secret passageway, running like their lives were on the line. Only three people managed to stay where they were: Valerie, who yelled at the head guard and ordered her to leave. Joan, who slammed the hidden button once more to close the tunnel. And the seventh Thomas, who finally began to stir from his sleep.

His face was the last thing the others saw as the tunnel sealed itself behind them.

Chapter Text

The six lookalikes ran down the secret passageway as fast as they could. They ran and ran and ran until they were exhausted, and then they ran until they were beyond exhausted. They kept running until finally, the tunnel led them to a dead end, and they all fell over to the floor and started gasping for breath.

After several minutes of panting, one of them spoke up. "Great, now what?" Another one pointes wordlessly to the wall, where a ladder led up to a grate. Light shined through the grate, dimly illuminating the otherwise pitch-black passage. The six Thomases could now see that the secret tunnel had led them into a (mercifully dry) sewer.

"That's not what I meant," huffed the first one. "I'm talking about how we just abandoned our friends and that other guy, how we'll probably never be able to find the Dragon Witch, and even if we do she'll kill us or we'll never be able to fix whatever just happened. Not to mention that the guards will probably catch us right now, and even if they don't, we'll get caught immediately. It's not like we'd be hard to spot."

"While the guards finding us and placing us under arrest at this very moment seems illogical, since Joan probably held off the guards and/or destroyed the button, you do pose several valid problems," said another one as he stood up. "Our top priority at the moment should be to gather knowledge of the current situation so we can better reassess where we stand in all this and decide upon a course of action with the most favorable outcome."

"Well, there are a lotta things that we don't really know yet," chimed in yet another one. "So I'd say you spelled out our current situation pretty well!!"

A few people groaned, others chuckled.

"But we can't stick around here for too long, we have a Dragon Witch to slay!! A kingdom to rescue!! Glory and riches to be won and sagas to be sung in our name!!" cried one of them, who had leapt from faceplanting on the floor to pointing dramatically grateward.

"You're right. Who know what sorts of crimes we could commit as six identical people? We could still find out how the Dragon Witch's guts taste like, after we've shoved them up her a-" another one was saying before the overly dramatic one smacked him in the shoulder.

"Ugh, no," he said. "Why did I want to do that?"

"Ooh, don't hurt me anymore, daddy," said the violent one.

"Ooh, ooh!!!! Can I be the team dad?" the punny one asked. "Please?"

"You're...." One of them started saying something when he drifted off into another train of thought. "That's odd. Ask me something."

"What are we?" asked the pessimistic one as he raised his hand.

"We appear to be the different aspects of Thomas' personality, brought into a human form by the botched magical ritual. I'm Thomas' logic, and you're his anxiety," recited Logic. "Sweet cheese nips, how did I know that?"

"Uh yeah, answer that," said the overly dramatic one. "And also how did Anxiety do that scary voice thing? Is he a sorcerer?"

"If he is a sorcerer," said the overly violent one. "Maybe he can help me out with a little spell. I think I could use a bit of, shall we say, enlarging in certain parts."

"That's enough out of you both, Creativity," Logic said. "The only thing that could use enlarging is clearly your brain, especially since you don't seem to have one. As for your question, none of us are sorcerers. It appears that, since we're at least partially creatures of magic, one of the side effects is magical abilities suited to whatever side of Thomas' personality we represent. One of mine appears to be knowledge about ourselves, and Anxiety clearly has the ability to intimidate others into obeying his will."

"Well then that's great!!" said the punny one. "You can just tell us where the Dragon Witch is!!"

Logan frowned after a moment of concentration. "I'm sorry, Morality, but it appears that my powers don't work that way. Or perhaps the Dragon Witch is using magic to hide herself. Either way, the best I can do is this." Logic pulled a map and quill out of thin air, then marked an X on the map. "This is the location of the Dragon Witch's home, and where we have the best the best chance of finding and confronting her."

"You can conjure stuff?!" exclaimed dramatic Creativity. "That's awesome!! Let me try." He concentrated hard, but nothing happened.

"Ooh!!!!" violent Creativity jumped in the air and raised a hand. "Conjure me a-"

"Shut up," growled the one who had barely spoken at all yet. He made a motion like he was about to slap violent Creativity, when to everyone's surprise, violent Creativity's hand jerked up like someone had pulled a string on it, and clamped itself over his mouth, silencing him.

Logic blinked. "Thank you, Deceit."

Deceit rolled his eyes. "Well, I say that before we go on traipsing around up there, we should at least disguise ourselves."

"Yes, I was about to get to that," Logic said. "The royal outfit is far too conspicuous for us, especially since we're trying to avoid being detected by the guards. We should all come up with false identities and pseudonyms, and I can conjure outfits for all of us."

It was certainly true that the royal outfit stood out it a crowd. The distinctive gold star on a fine red-pink fabric was nothing short of iconic, having been worn by members of the royal family for countless generations, albeit with some occasional slight modifications. Even a peasant hobo toddler could have identified the king by his wardrobe.

"Alrighty, then I wanna be a priest," said Morality. "Everybody loves priests! From now on you'll just have to call me Father Patton!!"

Logic pointed and Patton and his clothes were replaced with a priest's robes, which were sky blue, and a tannish cloak.

"Ooh, they're such a pretty color," gushed Patton.

"That's rather unusual," said Logic, tilting his head. "I didn't mean for your robes to turn out so colorful. The whole point of conjuring them was to blend in, not stand out."

"Well, I guess that your powers are still kinda patchy then," Patton said. "You could even say that they're still holy."

More groans and chuckles from around the room.

"Do me next!!" demanded dramatic Creativity, raising his hand in the air. Next to him, violent Creativity gave a muffled yell and raised his hand that wasn't clamped over his mouth. "Hey, I wanted to go before you, you have to wait your turn!!" The two Creativities began shoving at each other and shuffling.

Deceit cleared his throat and stepped forward. "While those two brave, handsome boys are at it, I would like to present my own fake identity. Please, call me Dr. Janus."

Logic pointed at Janus and conjured a doctor's outfit, minus the bird mask, over his clothes. However, Janus also had a pair of bright yellow gloves, clearly another failure on account of Logic's powers. He lifted his hands into the air and examined them.

"Not bad," was all he said after a moment.

"They look stupid," Anxiety scoffed. "Besides, I thought the point of these was to blend into a crowd, not stand out even more."

"That is true," stated Logic. "However, we also want to draw away from the fact that we all have the same face, and a distinctive, distracting signature item of clothing may be just the way to accomplish that."

"Or you're just making up excuses so people think the mistake you made was on purpose," snarked Anxiety.

"FALSEHOOD!!!!' Logic screeched. "I mean, why don't you take a turn then?"

"Ugh, fine," he said. "Whatever. I'll be a hobo or something, I don't really care. My name can be Virgil or somethi- wait no, that's stupid. I wanna be-"

"Done." Logic pointed at Virgil. An oversized cloak covering his entire body appeared over a black tunic. The cloak was black and purple, and it like it had been ripped up and sewn together several times. There was also a tiny bit of dark face paint smeared under his eyes, making him look tired.

"Grah!!!!" he snarled. "What was that?? Now I look dumb in front of everyone.

"Aww, I think you look just great, kiddo," said Patton.

"Yeah, great like a trash fire," snickered dramatic Creativity. Patton and Virgil both shot him dirty looks. "Oh, come on! I could do much better than that!! Let me have a turn at the name game already." Violent Creativity said something muffled and jumped up and down.

"Very well, I suppose you two do need some false identities after all," said Logic. "Janus, would you mind?...." He made a hand gesture.

"Gladly," replied Janus. He raised a gloved hand in the air and moved it around, experimenting and dragging around violent Creativity's hand like a puppet master pulling strings on a puppet, until he seemed satisfied and let go.

"I wanna be a duke!" announced rhe newly freed Creativity at the same his twin yelled "I wanna be a prince!" The two glared at each other and seemed like they were about to start fighting again when they were interrupted.

"You can't be royalty," Logic sighed. "As Virgil has so often pointed out, we need to remain inconspicuous. Royalty is the opposite on inconspicuous, especially in a potential crisis involving missing royalty. Do I have to spell everything out for you two buffoons?"

"But the guards are more likely to trust a member of the royal household," whined the dramatic one. "People will treat us with more respect and bravado. Besides, I really wanna look better than street rat over there." He waved a hand at grumpy-looking Virgil.

"Cheer up, brother," said the violent one. "Perhaps instead we can be entertainers from a brothel. A two-for-one sort of package, if you know what I mean." He put his arm around him and winked suggestively. His twin shoved him away and shuddered.

"Aristocracy it is!" said Logic, clearly disturbed. He pointed at the twins and conjured them each an elaborate outfit, clearly meant for someone who lived in the upper crust but was not quite royalty. The dramatic twin wore a creamy white suit laced with gold that included a red sash and coat of arms. The violent twin's suite was extremely similar, except for the fact that it was mainly black, maybe a bit frillier, and had a green sash and different coat of arms.

"Haha, yes!!!!" The dramatic twin leapt and pumped his fist into the air. "Prince Roman is ready for action at last!!"

"Duke Remus is ready for 'action' as well," drawled his twin, putting a bit too much emphasis on the word "action".

"You're not royalty, you're just rich," said an exasperated Logic. "And last but not least, of course, myself." He pointed at himself and the royal outfit was replaced by a scholar's black robes and an indigo tie. "Professor Logan is ready for action as well," he said as he put on a pair of glasses.

"Ooh, you have glasses!!" squealed Patton. "Could I have a pair too?"

Logan sighed and suddenly there was a pair of glasses on Patton's face as well, far rounder than his own squarish set.

"Now," Logan said, clearly already tired of his companions. "Is everybody ready?"

Chapter Text

The sewer grate led into an empty alleyway, abandoned except for some scattered garbage and a few rats. However, if any of the rodents had to give an eyewitness account, it would be of six identical men lifting up the grate and quickly pulling themselves up above ground before covering up the hole and hastily scattering trash over it to avoid suspicion.

"In order to cover more ground, we should split up and each head to a different section of town," said Logan. "Everybody should avoid looking overly suspicious and be back here within two hours, understood?"

"And just to be safe, everyone should pick a buddy and stick with him at all times!" declared Patton excitedly as he grabbed Logan's arm. "You and me are a team now, buddy!!" The fake professor rolled his eyes but didn't indicate any signs of disapproval at his partner's suggestion.

"Well, in that case," Janus stood next to a certain raggedy-looking, hunched-over emo. "I'll partner with Virgil. We can tackle the restaurant district downtown."

Roman groaned as Remus elbowed him in the ribs. "Looks like we're in this together, bro-bro!"

"Fiiiiiiiine," he grumbled. "We'll go to the market and be rich fancy tourists watching the common folk buy groceries."

Logan suddenly seemed a lot wilder and angrier. "But I wanted to go get the groceries!!" he whined.

"Well, too bad! If I'm stuck with him, then you don't get to go shopping."

"Hey, don't worry about it," said Patton as he gave Logan a giant bear hug. "I'm sure we can pick something up at the plaza. Right, buddy?"

Logan frowned and was clearly uncomfortable with the hug, but muttered something that seemed to indicate some form of consent to the plan.

And so the three groups split off from each other, each headed their own separate ways, ready to tackle the world and begin their quest.

The first duo to reach their destination were Virgil and Janus. As it turned out, Joan's secret passageway had led them only a few blocks away from the restaurant district, so the two walked together for a relatively short amount of time before Janus opened his mouth to talk.

"So, tell me what you think of our current situation," he asked politely.

Virgil sneered after chuckling a bit. "Honestly, dude? I think we're all screwed. The only thing on our side are some kinda vague powers that we can't even properly control. Otherwise literally the entire world is against us. And we've barely even started, but we already failed big time back in Joan's lab. Clearly we weren't cut out for this. In fact, I don't think we should even exist."

"Well, what do you think of the others, then?" said the fake doctor. "They are currently our only allies."

"Don't even get me started on them," he said. "Patton is alright, I guess, but the others? Logan's condescending and bossy, Remus is annoying and dirty, and Roman's a straight up bish. Maybe we worked together fine when we were a part of Thomas' mind, but as separate people? We're gonna crash and burn. And as for you...." Virgil eyed Janus suspiciously.

"Oh, what's the matter? Scared of a little light conversation?"

"You're trying something on me. Whatever it is, it won't work."

"What? Never!"

"Don't act like you weren't just trying to manipulate me into turning on the others for you."

"Oh Virgil, why would I try to manipulate you into hating the others when you clearly already have a growing dislike of them yourself? Besides, they obviously feel the same about you. I, on the other hand, am merely making conversation with you about our current situation. You're being paranoid and spouting wild accusations at me. Who's turning on who now?"

"You're literally Thomas' deceit," Virgil scowled. "Why should I trust you?" He backed away into the street, looking like he was about to take off running to find one of the others.

Janus sighed and made a flicking motion with his wrist, seemingly yanking Virgil's arm on an unseen string. The emo was dragged across the street and back next to Janus on the sidewalk, narrowly missing being crushed by an out-of-control cart that careened through where he had been moments earlier.

"Because," said Janus. "I just saved you. I do hope we can come to a mutual understanding of one another, but feel free to take all the time you need.' He made a sweeping gesture towards the door of a bar they'd arrived ar, taking his hat off and bowing.

Virgil glared at him, but entered the bar nervously.

Meanwhile, Patton and Logan were haggling with a jam merchant in the town plaza.

"Sure, maybe you'd find a cheaper deal for some sorta wannabe jelly elsewhere in town," the merchant argued. "But nowhere else could you find hand-crafted preserves so fine that the king himself uses them on his breakfast toast!!'

"Yeah, I've gotta say, you've go quite the spread there, palzo!!" joked Patton.

"Patton, this is no laughing matter," said Logan sharply. "This isn't any normal condiment we're talking about. This is Crofters jam, the finest and most delicious marmalade in all the lands! If you think for one second that this is something to laugh at and make jokes about, then you are more deluded than I can put into words!!!!"

"Hey, calm down there, search buddy," Patton soothed. "You're practically seeding with anger." Logan shot him the stink eye. "Any chance we could get a discount for being a priest?"

The merchant shrugged and they traded some coins they'd conjured up earlier for some choice jellies. Logan snatched all the jars up like that were made of solid gold and held diamonds instead of jam, cradling them fondly while Patton walked over to a guard and started chatting.

"What's up, my fellow commoner?" he greeted excitedly. "You heard anything interesting on the news lately?"

"Uhh, hello," the guard frowned. "It's a nice day today. Unusually good weather, innit?"

"Oh yeah yeah, it sure is real sunny today. Really makes you think about how nice amd beautiful the world is, especially when there aren't any major disasters happening in the kingdom, just like right now!!"

"Err, I dunno about that, actually. Boss seemed worried when she stopped by a minute ago. Said something about a disaster and staying on high alert for...." The guard tilted his head. "Hey, something about you looks kinda familiar. I's seen you somewhere before, 'aven't I?"

"Haha, what? No," said Patton, clearly panicking. "Though people have told me that my face is royally familiar."

Logan stood several feet away, havin been preoccupied with packing his precious jams into a sack until he sae his search buddy about to get his cover blown. He frantically waved at him and made several gestures for him to cut the conversation and leave, but alas, his priestly partner was too oblivious to catch any of it.

Exasperated, Logan began quickly rifling through his mental options after calling out to Patton one last time. The guard didn't seem willing to let him out of his sight anytime soon , and he was clearly incapable of formulating a method of escape on his own. Logan needed to hide his face, get him away from the guard, and draw the guard's attention away from his extremely suspicious behavior, all without causing a scene. He considered a few ideas, shot them all down, then pushed his hair back and marched over to the guard determinedly, jam bag in hand.

Logan reached Patton, grabbed him by the wrist, pulled him away, and before the guard could raise any objection, kissed him. On the lips. For as long as he could. Making sure to ruffle Patton's hair, of course, in order to differentiate their hairstyles, to draw attention to the differences between them, as well as to add to the illusion of romantic passion. It worked wonders, and the guard immediately lost interest, although Logan dragged Patton out of the plaza before he pulled away from him.

"My apologies, Patton," he said as he readjusted his glasses coolly. "While I hope you understand the urgency of the situation required to break some otherwise unacceptable social limits, I also hope you understand that I do not wish to repeat that scenario back there, especially not without your consent. It was simply the most effective plan I could come up with that didn't involve attracting a large crowd. Also I applaud your initiative at trying to complete our original mission from which even I was distracted, though bungled your attempt may be."

Blushing so hard he was as red-faced as raspberry jam, Patton could only nod in response.

Not too far away, Remus and Roams were hauled out of their eighth market by guards for vandalizing public property and being a nuisance. While their disguise as tourists had averted any suspicions from witnesses, so far they had failed spectacularly in gathering any useful information besides how many creative new ways Remus could murder people.

"Twenty-three attempts at stabbing innocent bystanders," fumed Roman. "Are you kidding me? Have you no shame, brother?"

"Nope!!" Said his twin, grinning gleefully. "Besides, it was maybe nineteen at best. Those last few were near-bludgeonings, not stabbings. You'd think a true blooded royal would be able to tell the difference.... Oopsie!! I just remembered you're not!"

The fake prince growled and dramatically assumed a fighting stance, then reached out his right hand to the side as if he were expecting someone to pass him something. After a few seconds of Remus blankly staring at him, he yelled "I'm trying to summon a weapon like Logan!!

"Like Logan?" Remus giggled. "Oh brother, if there's anything you're not, it's like that bossy old fun-sucker. Thought you do both seem to have a stick up your @$2 about a little bit of violence here and there."

"Shut up, you vaudevillian villain. How do you even know what he's like? We've barely existed for a day."

"Oh, he seemed like the party-pooper kind. Just like you look like you're pooping your pants in the middle of the street!! Ha ha ha, we already have a dookie here!!'

"That's it, I've had enough of you and your unchivalrous dirty jokes that only you find funny. I mean, toilet humor? Really?" Roman charged at his brother, prepared to fight him with his bare hands, only for Remus to whip a spiked mace out of thin air and club him over the head. He fell over into a gutter and immediately used his hand to cover the gash on his head.

"What the heX man?!" he cried. "You could've killed me!!"

"It seemed fun," Remus shrugged. "Now we know my powers!! And we get to see all this lovely blood everywhere!! Besides, it's not like you're dead yet. We can do this a ton more since you're suddenly mysteriously healed."

"Mysteriously what?" Roman took his hand off his head and examined his reflection in the gutter, then saw that he was perfectly fine despite the blood all over his hand. "Hey, I'm invincible!!"

In response, Remus swung his mace at his own leg, where it landed with a sickening crunch, and he keeled over in pain. A few seconds later, though, he stood up, perfectly fine.

"Nope, must be an all-of-us thing!!" he said with too much excitement for someone who literally just clubbed himself in the leg.

"Curses," swore Roman. "I guess that just mean my power is just something even cooler than you could comprehend!!" He picked himself up out of the gutter, and the brothers made their way back to the alleyway, much to the confusion of the few bystanders who had witnessed their fight.

Chapter Text

The six men gathered in an alleyway, trying to look like a group of friends that had just casually run into one another and failing miserably. While their diverse sets of false identities worked well to disguise them and make them look distinct from one another, even the least observant of passerbys would wonder what a pair of aristocrats were doing with a ragamuffin hobo and a scary doctor in a dirty alley. The answer(being relieved the priest and professor had successfully gathered intel on a government crisis) would have only confused them further.

"News of our little.... incident seems to be kept under wraps by the guards," reported Janus. "The only person who seemed to be even remotely aware they should be distressed was one guard that was slobbering drunk and kept talking about how his friend came in a few minutes ago with an 'impossible story' he couldn't disclose to the public."

"That does match up with what Patton and I were able to discern," said Logan. "Roman, Remus, what about you?"

"Well, whaddya know? Looks like we found out exactly the same thing as you two, and definitely did so without any kind of distractions or calling attention to ourselves, nope!!!!" babbled Roman desperately.

"I have a mace!!" announced Remus, brandishing his weapon proudly. Everyone looked at the brothers skeptically.

"Alright then,' said Logan. "Well, in any case, this is good news for us. I was thinking-"

"Shocker," muttered Roman.

"-that we could use this to advantage. If nobody know of our existence yet, then we can avoid plenty of trouble by simply turning ourselves in."

There was a brief moment of silence, then suddenly everyone burst out yelling and arguing.

"WHAT?!"

"Why should we-"

"Are you insane??"

"We're supposed to be killing a dragon witch."

"Will it even do anything?"

"Nobody will even trust us."

"Everybody's just gonna-"

"You're being-"

"Why are we even considering this?"

"We never should've-"

"Thomas will never-"

"If you'd just-"

"How do we even-"

"EVERYBODY QUIET!!" Logan screeched. There wasn't any kind of magical force behind his words, or any kind of consequences following them. But it was certainly enough to grab everyone's attention and get them to shut up long enough for Logan to continue talking.

"As I was saying," he continued as he readjusted his glasses. "Our best course of action would be to turn ourselves over to the authorities, explain our situation, and then apprehend the Dragon Witch with the full backing and resources of the kingdom at out disposal."

"Absolutely not," said Virgil, who was sitting in a corner with his knees bunched up to his chest. "Assuming that we don't get tossed in a dungeon for being some kind if messed up dark magic creatures, we don't even know how long it'd take to raise an army and get them to the Dragon Witch's hideout. Plus, even if that went perfectly, it's not like armies are the sneakiest things in the world. Who's to say that the witch won't just fly away while we're trudging through the mud with a dozen cranky troops."

"Yes!! We should face her head on and defeat her nobly in combat, like the ancient heroes of yore!!" declared Roman.

"I dunno kiddos, I'm kinda with Logan on this one," said Patton. "We left Joan and Valerie back there to get arrested. They're our friends, and maybe if we turn ourselves in then they'll be let go. We should be focusing on helping them as well, not just ourselves."

"You raise an excellent point, Patton," Logan said. "Turning ourselves in provides a far greater net gain than going on some mission to single-handedly discover a cure ourselves. Entertaining as it may be to read about it in literature, it's a ludicrous possibility to consider in real life. To summarize: as if that would ever happen."

"But eternal fame and glory...." whined Roman.

"Think of it this way, kiddo," Patton soothed. "Wouldn't it be even more cool and awesome to lead an army of warriors into victory than just a bunch of your friends into danger?"

"And watch innocent soldiers be crushed and die horrible deaths at the witch's hands!!" said Remus. "Ooh, yeah, that's something I can get behind.

"No!!" said Virgil and Patton.

"We're not leading anyone to their deaths," said the purple emo heatedly.

"Yeah, no one's getting hurt in the ambush, right Logan?"

"Actually," the fake professor adjusted his glasses again. "Best case scenario, we do hurt at least one person: the Dragon Witch. While it would be optimal that we sustain minimal damage in an ambush that works cleanly and efficiently, there are many factors beyond our control that could easily result in soldier casualties and collateral damage. We are talking about a literal battle here, of course."

"And you'd have that blood on our hands?" asked Janus. "And you all look at me like I'm the evil one."

"You certainly look the part," muttered Roman.

"Guys, nobody's getting hurt because of us," Virgil said. "This is a stupid plan."

"Oh yeah?" asked the prince. "Then what do you suggest, you wimpled woodcock?"

"I don't know!!" he cried. "I don't know anything except that this is a stupid plan, and if your brain was as big as your ego then maybe you'd come up with a better one."

"You guys, let's take a break from insulting each other, said Patton. "If people don't like Logan's idea, then let's hear what they've got to say. That way we can just work out the best option together!"

"Of course!! How could we forget our ultimate ally: the power of friendship!!" Roman declared fabulously.

"Forget friendship. What we need is to hit the road," Janus said. 'We already have a map that to the Dragon Witch's home, and unknown supernatural abilities on our side. If we move as quickly as possible, we could crush her before she knew what was happening."

"Yes! That!!" said Remus as he shoved random alleyway trash into his mouth. "All this standing and talking is soooo boring, we should wring the answers out of the witch, and a few other things as well, if ya know what I mean." Everyone groaned.

"This is insanity. I'm not allowing us to entertain this train of thought any longer," Logan said.

"You're not- hold on a second, teach," Roman exclaimed. "Who made you the leader??"

"I am the literal voice of reason among us," he said. "It is merely common sense that I lead."

"What the- you've done nothing but boss us around this entire time, and where hace we gotten? Nowhere!! We're stuck in an alleyway arguing with each other while Remus is eating gravel instead of having accomplished literally anything."

"We've barely existed for a few hours. What do you expect us to have done by now besides gather the valuable intelligence we already have?"

"I don't know, anything!! Raise an army, or follow your map, or master our powers, or even just decide on a plan already," fumed the prince.

"I've already proposed a plan. The only problem is that you and various others are not supporting it. If you'd just listen to me and start taking my orders-"

"Once again: who made you leader? Why should we listen to you?"

"A most curious question indeed," interrupted Janus. "And one we should certainly address, but perhaps after a full night's sleep? It's certainly getting late, after all."

That was an undeniable fact. The sun was dipping low over the horizon, and very few people wandering the streets at this hour.

"Yes, please!" said Roman, yawning. "It's been very tiring today, and I could use a break."

"Can't go too long without your beauty sleep, eh Princey?" scoffed Virgil.

"That sounds like a great idea!!" Patton said, clearly desperate to keep another argument from breaking out. "I'm sure we'll be able to agree on something in the morning, when we're all rested up."

"I hesitate to agree since there are several time-sensitive factors at play here," Logan said. "However, several studies show that a good night's sleep can significantly increase brainpower and productivity so this seems reasonable. Also, Janus?"

"Hmm?" Janus hummed.

"DON'T THINK I DON'T SEE WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO DO," screeched the professor.

"Alright Lo, time to calm down," Patton soothed.

And so the six men finished off a very long a stressful day by crowding into a tiny room at the first inn they could find, paid for with conjured coins. In almost no time at all, each and every one of them squeezed into the tiny flea-ridden straw bed and fell into a dreamless slumber....

Chapter Text

Early the next morning, Patton slowly drifted awake. Despite the scratchy, overcrowded bed, he was warm and comfortable and felt safe and happy to exist. Contentedly, he gave a sigh and turned over to find that Logan was snuggled up next to him. Butterflies formed in his stomach as he felt the blood rush to his face, and suddenly he wanted to get out of the bed. Not because he felt bad exactly, just excited, and perhaps a bit nervous.

Slowly, he slid out of bed, careful not to disturb the others, then stretched a bit before making his way to the inn's front desk. Last night had been too rushed to get a proper look around, so now he eagerly examined his surroundings. There was a desk with a little bell of course, and behind it, a passed-out receptionist still snoring loudly despite the unusual clamor in the street outside. Patton briefly wondered what that was about, then suddenly noticed a table full of pastries in the back of the room. He squealed and rushed over, snarfing down a few before grabbing several for his friends and returning to examine the room.

There were a couple of old chairs next to the pastry table, and an ugly stained rug between them and the desk. There were also several posters on the wall, most of which were clearly outdated but one that looked brand-new, like it'd been printed and put on the wall mere hours ago. Patton looked at it curiously, then suddenly ripped it off the after seeing what it read and leaving an apology note written on a napkin for defacing hotel property.

WANTED, it read in bold caps. Six men of unknown magical nature bearing an uncanny resemblance to the king. Believed to be highly dangerous. Wanted for assaulting official guards, destroying cutting edge research equipment, questioning in the disappearance of the king, and bearing a public nuisance in several marketplaces.

Patton raced to him room, poster in hand, and threw open the door only to scream in horror at the scene he beheld. While he was gone, Remus had woken up and was running around the room naked while the others chased him around and tried to put his clothes back on him like he was a toddler. At his unexpected entrance, a few people briefly paused to look at him but then resumed the Remus Rodeo.

Slightly shaken, Patton went over to Logan and tried to get his attention.

"Lo, Lo," he whispered, shaking the other's shoulder.

"Not now, Patton," said Logan. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

Disappointed, Patton went to the person that seemed the least invested in getting Remus out of the nude.

"Virgil," he said. "Kiddo, look at this."

"Great, what now?" Virgil glanced down at the poster, and his eyes widened. "Hold on a sec, is this.... what the heX. Janus, you guys, take a look at this."

Everyone (minus Remus) gathered around the two and saw the news. The atmosphere in the room immediately turned tense.

"Did anyone see you at the front desk?" Logan asked frantically.

"Nah, the manager was asleep," said Patton. "Though now thatcha mention it, it sure was busy outside."

"They could be anywhere," panicked Virgil. "They could be waiting downstairs, ready to arrest us. They could be hiding in this room, and when they catch us they're gonna throw us in the dungeon and torture us till we die of old age!!"

"Never!!" declared Princey. "We shall battle tooth and claw before we let anything hinder us from completing our quest."

"This is bad," said Logan.

"Ya don't say," Virgil replied sarcastically.

"If the government believes us to be dangerous criminals of an unknown criminal nature, they'll be far less likely to believe any kind of alibi or testimony we give," he continued. "This completely derails any hope of our earlier plan which means...." He trailed off.

"Well?" drawled Janus. "What would you have us do, o wise and wondrous leader."

"Please say quest please say quest please say quest please say quest please say quest," Roman pleaded excitedly.

"Absolutely not. Are you even fully aware of the full ramifications of our current situation?" the professor sighed frustratedly. "Back me up here, Patton."

"....umm, actually, Logan," said Patton nervously. "I dunno. I wanna help Valerie and Joan as much as anyone, but now I'm not sure that your way would be the best for them."

"Gah!" the professor yelled. "Virgil, surely you have some doubts on this preposterous idea they're proposing."

"Well duh," Virgil said. "There's, like, a million ways that this could go wrong." Logan opened his mouth to thank him, but before he said anything, the emo pressed on. "But, as much as I hate all this questing stuff and not knowing half the things that could get us killed while we're going through some evil bandit-infested terrain, I know that if we get arrested, it's game over."

Logan looked extremely angry, and his face turned red as be twitched several times. He seemed on the verge of throwing a tantrum before readjusting his glasses and taking several deep breaths.

"I suppose we all know what the Duke's response will be," he said slowly, indicating over to Remus as he formed the pillows into something lewd. "Are you really all for this utterly inconceivable and improbable plan fueled mostly by Roman's inaccurate preconceived notions of adventure and glory?" One by one, everybody nodded. "Then, being clearly outvoted, I suppose I have no choice but to assist you. You will all need someone to act like an adult after all on this so-called quest. However, please be aware that the stakes here go beyond merely 'honor' and 'heroics'. We are dealing with Thomas' literal life, after all."

"Oh, I'm certainly more than aware," smirked Janus.

"We leap from the simmering frying pan and into the roaring fire!!" said Roman, loud and proud.

"This is great!" Patton squealed. "Now we're all inn this together."

Logan broke the fourth wall to look at the camera like he was on The Office.

"Alright," he said. "Patton mentioned it seemed unusually busy outside for this time of day, which means that the guards might have a hint as to our general location. This means that if we are caught, we'll need a major distraction...."

Chapter Text

Outside on the streets, a small squadron of guards trundled around, wishing they hadn't been assigned to search Hotel Avenue. So far they'd made seventeen unsuccessful searches, and their head guard, Terrence, was extremely grump about it. While normally the more easygoing type, he was not only a personal friend of King Thomas but also Valerie and Joan, and was unhappy about his friends' respective disappearances and arrests, to say the least.

As he led his troops down the street, Terrence noticed a group of five shady figures, unusually alike in height and build, scurrying away from the guards. While they were too far away to get a proper look at their faces, they seemed too similar to be a coincidence, so he began to approach them. Just when he was about twenty feet away, however, a new person shoved his way through the ranks of the soldiers and grabbed the lead guard by the hand.

"Not right now...." Terrence trailed off as he turned his head and was surprised by a familiar face. "Thomas?"

"Wrong!!" said Remus as he pulled a mace out of thin air ans used it to smack Terrence upside his face, instantly knocking him out cold.

"It's one of them!!" cried out a guard. "Git 'im!!!!"

"And I thought this day couldn't get any better after waking up in a bed with five men!!" The Duke made a rude gesture. "Let's dance, big boy!!"

Remus immediately took out several guards with his mace, swinging it like a maniac and yelling out rude, distracting things. But the guards quickly wised up, and it soon it became apparent that no matter how well he fought, Remus was outnumbered. He tried to slip away and run, but the guards surrounded him with their spears.

"Put your weapon down," commanded a guard, and the Duke obliged. "I don't want any tricks from ya, you hear me?"

"Ooh, tricks, good idea!!!!" Remus squealed. He scrunched up his face in concentration. "You're right, I should just do my job and be creative!! Gimme a hot steamy minute...."

For a few seconds nothing happened, and then one guard stopped forward to tell him to knock it off and poke him with his spear. Then suddenly the guard fell onto the street, clawing at his face and screaming. A brief moment of realization dawned on the other guards' faces as they saw their companion's state of horror before they fell over as well, wailing and scratching. The few bystanders in the streets widened their eyes and wisely sprinted away, leaving the street empty except for the Duke himself and the guards on the floor.

Bending over, Remus got close to the nearest guard and grabbed a fistful of his hair, lifting his head so they could be face-to-face. The guard screamed even louder. The duke smiled.

"You're just so totally helpless. This could really get very dark if I decided to, say, snack on a little sausage right now," he said. "But!! You've given me such positive feedback!! Honestly, I'm very touched. And you're such a paragon of despair and pain, it'd be just tempting fate to see if I could think of an even better way to torture you." There was a brief moment where he paused, then seemed like he was about to live. Then he kicked the guard in the crotch, giggled, and smeared mud on the guard's face to make a rude symbol. "Screw fate!! Bye!!"

Remus flipped the bird at one in particular, then dashed out of the street. He weaved his way through several alleyways, staying out of sight and away from people as he made his way to the outskirts of town.

Meanwhile, the other five were waiting at a rendezvous point on the side of a highway marked on Logan's map. They'd arrived there minutes ago and were growing nervous, not only since Remus should be arriving at any minute, but because of the screams they'd beard while they escaped as their companion tried to distract the guards.

They stood around for a bit, fidgeting in awkward silence until Virgil spoke up.

"Are we gonna address the elephant in the room, or....?"

"What was that screaming??" Patton panicked.

"Perhaps the Duke has unlocked a new ability," mused Janus.

"Or my brother has gotten even more batspit crazy and channeled his manic toddler-on-a-sugar-rush energy levels into unspeakable things and we've unleashed a great evil upon the world," said Remus.

"I admit was a mistake having Remus be the one following us from a distance in order to distract any guards that might attempt to arrest us," said Logan slowly. "Clearly he was far too unstable for that kind of work. However, I would like to remind everyone that we have, mostly, escaped the city and the greatest threat of arrest, meaning MY PLAN WORKED SO EVERYONE SHUT UP AND DON'T CRITICIZE ME."

Then, suddenly, they all heard a rustling coming from the forest surrounding the highway, and everyone leapt to attention. They all seemed ready for a fight, until Remus fell anticlimactically out of the foliage. There was a brief moment of relief as he gave the others a thumbs up, and then:

"What the heX, man?" Virgil demanded. "You were supposed to lose them in a chase, not melt their brains or whatever."

"Ooh, that would've been a great idea!!" Remus replied. "I'll keep in mind for next time. But no, everyone's brains are still intact. Can't say the same for their sanity, though."

Logan faceplates. Janus straightened up. Patton seemed uncomfortable. Virgil tool a few steps back. Roman went straight up to his twin and grabbed him forcefully by the wrist.

"Did you do anything embarrassing or obviously evil??" he demanded.

"Did anyone get hurt?" asked Patton.

"Well, you're certainly acting direct," chided the green twin. "Are you sure you're wanna start a fight again, though? I mean, I'm all for a little body-on-body action, but you'd really only get your butt kicked like last time."

"Eww!!" said Roman, immediately, letting go and shaking his hand like he was trying to clean it. "Why would you say that??"

"Yeah, that's gross, man," Virgil said. "Just answer the questions and leave him alone."

"Oh, does the big bad anxiety wanna play too?" Roman teased. "I'm sure we could have such fun, the three of us at once, playing polecat-"

"REMUS," yelled Janus and Patton at once, like angry parents. Janus thrusted upwards with his right hands, and once again, the duke was silenced. Virgil himself sputtered angrily for a bit, but couldn't seem to find anything to say so he settled on "Shut up."

"Why do you have to be like this?" sighed the doctor, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

"Don't talk like that to my newly adopted child ever again!" scolded Patton.

"Yeah!" echoed Janus. Virgil looked at them both like they'd gone crazy.

"Ahem," Logan cleared his throat. "Could you put whatever strange dynamic you've been developing aside for a moment and...." He made a vague hand gesture. "I'm rather curious about that screaming we heard."

Janus obliged and waved his hand again, releasing Remus' hand from his face. Immediately, he began jumping and yelling angrily.

"Haha, idiot!!! You thought you could silence me and just ignore me for the rest of the trip again, but no!! Now eat illusion magic, suckers!!!!"

Remus pointed dramatically at Janus, whose eyes widened as he started shaking. Then the duke unexpectedly passed out, slumping over on the dirt path as Janus stopped shuddering.

"Eugh," he groaned, and then prodded Remus with his foot, trying to turn him over and eventually flipping onto his back with a walking stick he picked up off the side of the road.

"Curious," said Logan. "Illusion magic. Perhaps the strain. If wielding it after using it to dispose of an entire squadron of guards is the reason he seems to have fallen asleep. Exhaustion from pushing himself beyond some sorcerous stamina limit."

"Whatever happened to your magical deus ex machina I-know-everything-about-what-we-are power, Mr. Know-It-All?" grumbled Roman. "Or are you just pretending not to know so we feel stupid?"

"First of all, I only know what we are in the present, not what we'll become," Logan explained. "And in case you haven't noticed, we've all been rather preoccupied since Remus unlocked his illusion abilities to try any kind of divining information. Second, why do you think that my own lack of knowledge makes your own intellect seen even more comparatively inferior than it already is?"

"That's- I-" Roman couldn't see to form words. "Never mind!"

"Very smooth, Princey," Virgil snarked. "In the meantime, shouldn't we be on the move, actually heading towards our goal, or maybe, I don't know, getting away from the city where, thanks to your brother, we're probably the number one most wanted criminals?"

"Virgil raises a valid point," Logan said. "The use of powerful magic on an official guard with malicious intent is criminal offense, punishable by five to ten years in prison. Now more than ever, we need to find the Dragon Witch and discover how to reverse-engineer the sleep to reform Thomas and clear our names, as well as restore order to the kingdom."

"How are we supposed to clear Thomas' name if he's technically guilty?" asked the emo.

"We'll cross that bridge we come to it," Janus said.

"C'mon you guys, we should get a move on," said Patton as he tried to pick up Remus from the floor and carry him. "After all, we don't wanna get caught off guard, ehh?"

The professor and doctor groaned, while the technically-now-a-real-hobo and the fake prince let a soft chuckle escape from their lips.

"Never change, Patton," Roman grinned. "Now, onwards, noble companions, to a glorious quest!!!!"

Chapter Text

Trekking through mud and horse poop all day was one of the most inglorious things Roman could imagine. It was smelly, squelchy, and left a disgusting stain on his boots that was probably permanent. Although he'd never admit it out loud, he was starting to get what Logan had mentioned about about his favorite sagas and ballads of mighty heroes on noble quests being a bit iffy on their facts sometimes. At the very least, he was happy that his twin wasn't awake to torture everyone by constantly talking about the literal crap they were walking through, or try to eat it or something.

Roman shuddered whenever he thought about the brief time he and Remus had been one person. He was glad they'd accidentally split almost immediately, because so far the Duke had been nothing but a burden to the group. For a while, Patton had had to awkwardly drag around his unconscious body around, huffing and panting with the weight of carrying a human person and the only supplies any one had on top of having to make the same insufferable hike as everyone else. But after an hour or two, Logan took the supplies from his friend, and Janus and Virgil picked up Remus and carried him together. Patton seemed to find walking a lot easier after that.

Meanwhile, Roman himself bravely heralded the party, walking in front of everyone and occasionally pausing to loudly declare something about the view, therefore annoying literally everybody else who just wanted to keep travelling and didn't see any difference between the miles and miles of forest they'd been trudging through all day. Luckily for them, the prince's enthusiasm seemed to wane by midmorning, and by noon he was falling behind the others. By the time they'd taken a quick break to drink from a creek they'd found and relieve themselves, Roman was dead last, walking behind everyone and groaning loudly, at which point Virgil put on his hood and hunched over as much as he could while still carrying the unconscious duke.

Eventually, a bit after sunset, Logan found a campsite that seemed to have been abandoned for a few days and declared that they should stay there for the night. Everyone cried out in relief and flopped over onto the ground, "accidentally" letting Remus faceplant as well.

The campsite was simple; a small hole in the ground clearly meant for a fire, a spit with a rusty revolving handle over the fireplace in in case any campers were in the mood for a roast, and several ild wooden benches surrounding the fireplace in a circular formation. All of this was in a small open clearing attached to the main road by a tiny dirt path.

Patton managed to set a still-snoozing Remus on one of the benches, then started distributing the table pastries he'd snatched that morning to everyone, as well as a few waterskins Logan had conjured up earlier at the creek. Logan himself worked on conjuring some blankets and a matchbox, while Virgil got to work on gathering firewood since Logan said:

"I don't think it would be a particularly good idea to rely on on my summoning abilities now that we've established overuse of our powers can lead to an indefinite period of unconsciousness."

The next half hour was relatively peaceful, with the only sounds being the crackling fire, the singing of birds in the forest, and the snores of Remus. Everyone eagerly devoured their pastries, and once they finished the didn't say anything instead choosing to sit back and relax. It was a rare moment of quiet, and it felt nice.

Of course the silence was eventually broken by Patton commenting "I gotta say you guys, the six of us probably make quite a side right now. Ehh, get it? Because we're the different sides of Thomas' personality."

"Patton, you shouldn't have to explain a good pun," said Virgil.

"Whatever you say, kiddo," smiled Patton, clearly not understanding.

"Roman, what are you doing?" asked Logan.

Everyone turned to look at Roman, who was squinting in concentration on his bench, hand held out.

"Shush, you, I'm TRYING to focus!!" he hissed at everyone.

"You're trying to see if you summon something, aren't you?" Virgil rolled his eyes.

"Ooh, ooh, lemme try!!" Patton scrunched up his face excitedly. After a moment, nothing happened and he said, "Nope, I got nothing!!"

"You barely even tried for a minute," pointed out an exasperated Logan.

"We should all try together!!!" squealed Patton. "Virgil, Janus, you guys join in, and we can see what powers you guys have!!"

"No, this sounds like a terrible idea," said Virgil. "We should be, like, sleeping or on guard duty. Plus we already know I can do the scary voice thing, so leave me alone."

"Well I, for one, think it sounds like a fascinating little experiment," said Janus. "It would be very.... interesting to see what everyone here is capable is of."

"Besides, it is possible to have more than one ability, as proven by myself and the duke," Logan said. "However, we should all be attempting to sleep at this moment in order to attain optimal efficiency for tomorrow."

"sWORD!!" shrieked Roman, jumping around erratically and waving a newly conjured katana around. "I CAN MAKE A SWORD!!! HAHA, I HAVE POW-"

Roman passed out mid-sentence, dropping like a stone onto the campsite ground, luckily avoiding being impaled by his katana on the way down.

"Great, now we'll have to carry him around tomorrow too," grumbled Virgil. "More dead weight. At this rate, we'll be arrested for kidnapping three nobles instead of just one."

"Actually, Virgil, you need not fear," said Logan. "Despite that being your primary function. Roman has overexerted himself by conjuring a sword, not repeatedly attempting to break the minds of others with powerful illusions like his brother. He'll probably be awake much sooner."

"Yeah, but we don't know how soon that'll be. We don't even know how soon the Duke'll wake up." responded Virgil.

"Did somebody say dookie?!" Remus popped up like an evil jack in the box.

Patton let out a high-pitched shriek. "Kill it!! Kill it with fire!!!!"

Logan was the closest one to the twins. Acting unusually rash, he snatched up Roman's sword and smacked the hilt on the back of Remus' head, knocking him out instantly. As he watched the duke crumple to the floor, Logan realized he had no idea why he'd just done that. The adrenaline rush Patton's cry had given him had overridden all reason, which rather bothered him giving that he was the literal voice of reason.

"My apologies everyone," he said. "I don't know what came over me."

"Thanks for the save, buddy!!" said Patton. "I know I might a overreacted a bit, but you sword did come through!"

He gave him a giant bear hug, and Logan felt blood rushing to his face. Extremely odd, since it was a chilly night.

"Are you sure he's gonna be alright, though?" asked Patton after letting go of his friend.

"Oh, right," Logan quickly readjusted his glasses. "I believe the duke will recover by tomorrow morning. However, he and the prince may find themselves with some side effects from overexerting their powers."

"'Overexerting their powers." More like pass out after using it one time to wave around a sword," snarked Virgil. "Even I did more than that after existing for, like, a minute."

"The twins were originally a singular being that the residue left over from the spell split in two," said Logan. "It would appear that dividing them has left them rather.... unequal in abilities. Perhaps their original, combined from would be more stable, but as individuals...."

"Yeah, sure, whatever," said Virgil. "Who knows how that guy would've been. Maybe he would've actually been helpful."

"Aww, now I'm sure you don't mean that, kiddo," said Patton. Everyone here's been doing their best to pitch in so we can all fix this mess and reclaim the throne!!"

"Fine," he rolled his eyes but didn't complain anymore. "I'll stay up on guard duty 'till midnight."

"Actually," Janus interrupted. "I was rather hoping I could take the first shift, and maybe wake you up when it's over?"

Virgil shrugged, then turned around, laying down and curling up before tugging a blanket over himself.

And so, one by one, the six sides found a spot they were comfortable with and went to sleep. Patton covered the twins in blanket before snuggling himself up in a blanket of his own on the bench closest to the fire. Logan lay stiffly on a bench and took off his glasses before closing his eyes. Virgil stayed awake a bit, listening to the crickets chirp and the fire crackle until he fell asleep. Even the twins seemed comfortable, finally looking more like people that had happily fallen asleep instead of people who'd accidentally driven themselves to exhaustion.

Finally, the only ones left were Janus and the fire, one staring at the other deep in concentration, another roaring dutifully in its pit, bringing warmth to the camp. When was sure everyone was asleep, the doctor extended a gloved hand and concentrated, testing his power, practicing it to see if he could summon something out of nothing. Slowly, yet steadily and surely, something began to flicker into existence at his fingertips.

Chapter Text

The next morning when he went to wake the others, Virgil was immediately confused.

At a little after midnight, Janus had woken him up so he could take a turn on guard duty. He had stayed awake the rest of the night, eyes fixed on the road, scanning for suspicious travellers that might recognize them or hungry wild animals. He'd stayed diligent all night, of course, only glancing in a different direction if he heard a sudden noise. So of course he was confused when he saw that Remus had somehow grown a mustache overnight.

Patton and Janus were surprised too when Virgil woke them up and showed them the duke's sudden facial hair. Logan, however, was unperturbed, quickly explaining it as he shovelled jam into face for breakfast.

"You see, I told you that would *glomph* experience some side effects as a result of *snarf* overexerting their abilities. This appears to have taken place in the *slurp form of an altered appearance, an outcome that is actually to our advantage, since *nyonch* this means we will be able to be more like separate individuals."

"That's great and all, except for the part where we have to pass out from exhaustion and get dragged around all day to do that," said Virgil. "Honestly, not looking like such a great option."

"Nevertheless, when misfortune comes our way, we must make the best of it," Logan told him.

"Virgil, go wake Remus, will you?" asked Janus. "And his brother as well, I guess."

"His name is Roman," muttered the emo under his breath, and he went to shake them out of their sleep.

Virgil grabbed Roman by the arm and started shaking him. "Hey dumb@$2," he said rather loudly. "Get up. I'm not gonna carry you like a baby. Same goes for you too," he grabbed Remus too.

"Muargh?" asked Roman, who was starting to get up but was still sleepy.

"Murder?" asked Remus, who yawned and rubbed his eyes.

The twins sat up and stretched in unison, looking around rather confusedly. Logan immediately explained to them (mostly Remus) why they'd passed out and where they were before either of them (mostly Remus) could open their mouths.

"With all of us being able to fully mobilize without having to deal with the burden of carrying the others, we should be able to reach the Dragon Witch's lair in approximately a day and a half. One day, if we walk all night," he said.

"Yeah, as if our situation wasn't hairy enough," giggled Patton, clearly eyeing Remus' new mustache.

"Oh, are you looking at this lil' old thing?" asked Remus. "It's unexpected, but I gotta say, as the embodiment of Thomas' pure unbridled chaotic dark imagination, I really like it."

"It sure has its own charm," said Patton. "But I mustache you if you really wanna keep it."

"Hahaha, yeah!! It increases my sexiness by at least 69%" he winked.

"And there it is," groaned Virgil. "If you could just...." He trailed off when the twins stood. "Are you two.... taller?"

"Huh?" Roman looked around, while Remus looked up and down. They had indeed sprouted upwards several inches overnight. Not much, but it was definitely noticeable. "Haha, yes!! I'm bigger and better!!"

"But not where it counts," said Remus, looking down.

"You shut up!!!" yelled the prince. "You, you lewd little-"

Patton cleared his throat. "Language!"

"Interesting," commented Logan. "Anyways, we should be on our way. Time is currently of the essence, especially if we want to avoid creating a political crisis upon our return, which we do. In fact, we should leave right now."

"Easy for you to say, you got a full night's sleep," said Virgil.

"Oh, cheer up, Virgil," Janus told him. "We can do it together."

"With FRIENDSHIP," cheered Patton. "Just gimme a sec to pick up all these blankets first."

And so, a few minutes later, they all strode out of the campsite, all of them fully conscious this time around as well as carrying one jar of breakfast jelly each.

At first they moved rather slowly, walking down the path and slurping jam at the same time. But as soon as the final jar was emptied, Logan started shooing them down the road at breakneck speed. Any time any of them slowed down even a little bit, he would be on their heels, yelling and reciting how much time their delay would cost the rest of the group.

By the afternoon, they had still managed to slow down, with even Logan finding it difficult to keep up such a quick and consistent pace all day long on only a jar of jelly.

Eventually he relented and they all took a break, sitting down on a log at the edge of the road. The forest seemed unchanged despite the distance they'd covered. A rather grating sensation.

The twin seemed more than happy to take a rest. They'd been surprisingly unproblematic all day, only whining about half the time. This was due to how happy they were with their new appearances which made them strut around proudly all day, waiting to run into a traveller that would shower them with compliments. All day long, they ran into absolutely no one.

Virgil hunched over on his section of the log. At least, he thought, he wouldn't have to waste too much of his short mistake of an existence putting up with the problems they caused. Whatever. He didn't care.

Sensing their adopted son's grumpiness, Patton and Janus sat down on either side of him, right and left respectively.

"Hey kiddo, how you doing? Something wrong?" asked the priest. "Anything we can do to turn that frown upside down?"

"I'm fine," he said, at which point he put his hood on and tried to sink deeper into his cloak and disappear.

"Don't LIE to me, Virgil," snarled Janus. "I mean, is somebody here bothering you?" he tried again in a sweeter tone.

"Well, I mean, yeah," Virgil shrugged. "Besides our total lack of resources, the twins are our biggest liability. They're flashy, they're loud, they're extra, and they get on my nerves. Honestly, they do more bad than good, and I can't wait to form Thomas again so that I don't have to deal with them."

"Aww, I'm sure you don't mean that, kiddo," said Patton as Roman gasped dramatically in the background.

"Now, now, Patton. You should let him speak his mind," chastised Janus. "Clearly my adopted child has a lot he wants to say."

"Our adopted child," corrected Patton.

"That was pretty much it," said Virgil. "Those two suck and I hate them."

"Why, you measly meacock malkin!!" Roman semi-cussed. "I pull my weight just as much as anyone else in this group!! Can't say the same for Remus, though."

"You should totally hate us!!" Remus said, looking up from poking at a large blister on his foot with a stick. "Everybody look at all the pus oozing outta this thing!"

Everyone groaned and gagged a bit, almost throwing up but not quite.

"Uh hey, can we have more food now?" asked Roman. "I'm hungry."

"No," said Logan. "I've rationed our jam carefully, and if you consume too much today, we won't have enough for the return journey."

"You can literally pull things our of thin air," protested Roman. "Why not just conjure up some more jellies, or better yet, some actual food?"

"He just wants to eat jelly this whole trip without looking like a weirdo," muttered Virgil.

"FALSEHOOD!!!!" screeched Logan.

"Bro-bro, if you wanted a little extra something to put in your mouth, why didn't you let me club in that food vendor's skull? asked Remus. "Or anyone's skull, really. I'm saaaad I didn't get to crush any skulls. Except yours. Ooh, and my leg too!! How'd I forget that?!"

Everyone turned deathly silent and the air turned tense as the others all turned to look at the twins. Roman suddenly looked extremely sweaty and uncomfortable, while Remus had moved onto another blister.

"You WHAT?!" yelled Virgil so suddenly it made everyone jump a little.

"Calm down," Logan told him before redirecting his attention to the twins. "Did anybody witness any of these attempted murders?"

"No," Roman squirmed some more on his leg. "Well, yes."

"Oh my gosh, this is all your fault," Virgil said furiously. "You two are why the guards are after us and we just couldn't fix everything by talking to them. You're why we're stuck in the middle of nowhere, starving to death before we can finish this suicide mission that was your idea in the first place. HeX, it's probably your fault that Joan and Valerie are locked up in a dungeon, rotting away while we get ourselves killed!!"

"Don't forget putting Terrence in the hospital!!" Remus chimed in. "That was a fun one!!"

"Oh my gosh, Terrence??" gasped Patton. "He was looking for us?"

"You put-" The blood was draining from Virgil's face. "Put Ter- our friend, Terrence, in the hospital?"

"Well, probably," smiled Remus. "I didn't stick around for long, so it's anyone's guess whether the paramedics arrived or not. Maybe he's still bleeding out on the streets!!"

"Terrence....." Patton looked sick all of a sudden. "We have to go back for him!! For all our friends!!"

"How could you two have been so irresponsible in such a short amount of time?" Logan started ranting. "If you were in a public area with plenty of potential eyewitnesses-"

"Why is everybody blaming me?" complained Roman. "Remus was the one doing all the murder, I just tried to stop him."

"Except for the where you tried to strangle me in the streets in front of everyone," added Remus.

"I'd hardly call it strangling. Attacking, maybe-"

The four voices grew louder and louder, overlapping one another and yelling in an impassioned hurricane of sound and pointing. It only grew more and more frantic, when suddenly;

"Everyone shut up," yelled Virgil. "Just be quiet." Everyone stopped talking immediately, partly out of surprise, and partly because they were magically compelled to. There was a long moment of silence, where everyone stared at Virgil, trying to to get a glimpse of his face, hidden under his baggy, ripped-up hood. Then Patton scooched closer to him and started hugging him tightly, mouthing soothing words that no one else could hear. Janus stood and turned to face him, offering up a gloved hand to help him get up from the log. Virgil took a deep, shaky breath and took the doctor's hand, shrugging off Patron as he stood up.

"Go back to talking or whatever," he muttered as quietly as possible with a voice that shook the forest.

Everyone was free to use their voices now. But they didn't.

After a few minutes, the group started walking down the road again. Things were tense and silent, with Logan at the back to make sure nobody fell behind, and the twins walked at the front so they didn't have to look at anyone.

At some point Patton tried to break the mood by asking a still-hooded Virgil if he thought he had any other powers.

"Virgil," Janus interrupted them immediately. He titled his head to the side sharply times, and the emo obliged and walked over to his side.

"What?" he asked miserably.

"Just making sure you feel alright of course," the doctor said. "After all, those others were clearly getting on your nerves."

Virgil didn't say anything, but he took off his hood and continued walking at the other's side, hunched over and grumpy.

They continued hiking, but when he was sure nobody else was looking, Janus turned and flashed Patton a bone-chilling grin.

~~~~~~

After several more hours of hiking well into the night, Logan took one look at the map and declared that they should set up camp. Everyone silently found a spot that was less muddy than average and went to sleep after finishing off the last of the pastries. Patton and Janus took the night watch.

Chapter Text

The next morning, everyone got up in a better mood. Truly the power of getting sleep after a long day of work does wonders for a person's emotions. Except Virgil's.

And alas, the others soon shared in his sentiments when Logan pointed directly at the forest and announced that they would be hiking in that direction off the road.

"What?" groaned Roman. "You can't be serious."

"When have I ever been not serious?" Logan said.

"There's got to be an actual path or something to the lake of the beast for pizza deliverers or something. Why can't we use that?" complained the red prince.

"It sure would be a lot less work on everyone's legs," said Patton. "Walking all the way here's been quite the feet!!"

"Idiots, have you no sense of subterfuge?" said Janus. "This way we can approach the Dragon Witch without her noticing and gain the upper hand through stealth, an admittedly not bad plan."

"We could also gain the upper hans by disguising ourselves as a squadron of noble pizza deliverymen," suggested Roman. "Or better yet, face the foul lizard head-on in combat and defeating her in glorious battle!!"

"Head on," snickered Remus.

"That would literally just get us all killed immediately," Virgil pointed out. "Did you ever stop to consider that this fight is at the witch's home, where she gets to make all the rules? Who even knows how many spells or booby traps or whatever she's already set up for us. We'd be playing straight into her hands any way we do this."

"You said 'booby' and 'straight'," Remus giggled. "Virgil like women, haha what a weirdo!!"

"Remus, shut up!!" spat his twin. "You know none of us are like that!!!! Why do you have to exist??"

"To answer your questions," Logan interrupted. "We cannot take a more conventional path because one simply does not exist." He held out the map so everyone could see the X labeled lair was clearly in the middle of the forest, cut off from the rest of the world. "It would appear that the Dragon Witch gets to and leaves her house by some method of transportation other than walking, perhaps flying or teleportation. She is a literal Dragon Witch, after all."

"Who just puts their house on the edge of a cliff like that?" asked Virgil in disgust.

"Clearly someone who wants an awesome view, you cantankerous Cytheria," said Roman.

"Cytheria isn't an insult," said Logan. "You actually just made a reference to-"

"Shut up!!" snapped Roman. "It was a slip of the tongue. I was trying to say 'cynic'! 'Cantankerous cynic'! Just got a little carried away, that's all."

One by one, they started hacking their way through the forest with Logan telling the twins which direction to use their weapons to cut a path through the foliage. It was slow and arduous, but they kept at it until Virgil finally pointed out that they were being too noisy. They they tried just slipping through the dense plant life, which would have been a lot better since it was quieter and faster, except for the constant scratches and tears in their clothes the woods left them with. It made Roman nostalgic for horse poop.

Meanwhile, Patton was wondering how he could connect with his adopted son. It was starting to worry how much Virgil seemed to relate to Janus and not him. In fact, Janus himself worried him, being literal Deceit, and also not the best influence on their child. Personally, Patton thought that if he could've picked a parental partner instead of that simultaneous adoption thing, he would have picked Logan. He really liked Logan a lot. Actually, he really liked everyone a lot. Well, maybe not Janus. Or Remus. But otherwise who was gonna make sure his friends had enough hope to rescue the kingdom? Being an emotional wreck is a small price to pay so everyone else is alright!!

Patton waz distracted by a particularly colorful butterfly and discontinued that train of thought.

Five hours of humiliation, scratches, and a jam break later, Logan suddenly hissed, "Everybody stop!!" Everybody immediately halted in their tracks, except for Remus, who Janus grabbed by the scruff of his frilly green clothes.

"The Dragon Witch's lair is less than sixty feet away from here," Logan told the group quietly. "We need to be prepared for anything that might come our way."

"Does anyone else hear that, or is it just me?," said Virgil.

Everyone else looked around expectantly, listening carefully and searching for a potential source of noise. Then they all heard it; a long, low, constant rumbling. It was quiet and relatively faint, but steady and thrumming. The closer they inched to the Dragon Witch's lair, however, the louder it seemed to get.

"Be careful, everyone," cautioned Roman. "There's no telling what kind of nefarious traps the Witch has set up. Maybe this is the first one."

"Thank you for finally employing some realism," said Logan. "Now, if we can-"

"PIRANHA PLANT MONSTER," shrieked Patton, jumping back. "IT SPRAYED ME WITH ITS POISON!!" He waved around his arms, covered in bumpy red rashes.

"You were just standing in poison ivy," sighed Logan. "What are you-"

He looked at Roman, who had been screaming and hacking at the ivy with his katana. The prince blushed in embarrassment, the walked a few feet away and developed a sudden interest in his boots.

Logan took a deep breath. "We need to ALSO be quiet, so that the Witch isn't immediately alerted to our presence. You are all painting a metaphorical target on our backs with theses shenanigans."

"If she doesn't already know we're here," said Virgil ominously.

"We'll need a scout to go ahead and see if there's any danger," continued Logan. "Janus, you're clearly the most qualified when it comes to espionage, so you should be the ideal candidate for this mission."

"I dunno, Logan," said Patton, scratching his arms. "How are we gonna know he's telling the truth?"

"Why send in a scout at all? He could just get caught and them we'd all be screwed," said an ever-gloomy Virgil.

"Yeah, just use your extremely convenient powers to tell us what manner of cleverly laid boo- death traps await us," said Roman.

"That's not how my powers work," groaned Logan. "I only know things about our current state and our nature, not everything about everything."

"Use your imagination!!" exclaimed Roman. "Use me!! You can summon small things too, right?" The professor nodded. "Why not summon something like, I don't know, a pamphlet about the Dragon Witch's lair?"

Logan opened his mouth to respond, then processed what Roman had said and closed it again. There were a few rare moments of confusion on his face that were spent in silence, then he frowned and pointed at Roman.

"You...." He looked frustrated. "You.... you raise a good point." Logan waved his hand and a small orange pamphlet appeared, which he promptly unfolded and scanned. "Well, this is rather unexpected, to say the least."

"That you took Princey's idea, or that it actually worked?" sassed Virgil.

"My ideas are perfectly fine, thank you very much," Roman huffed.

"I dunno," grinned Remus. "Personally, I think you could stand to be a little spicier and out there." He winked.

"I've always been of the opinion that you have simply the best ideas," Janus said.

"Thank you, Janus," said Roman. "See you guys, this is how you shower a man with compliments."

"I think that no matter what, as long as you tried your best, then that's what really matters," gushed Patton.

"Thank you too, Patton, you are a gift upon the face of the Earth and I don't know how I could've possibly forgotten you," replied the prince.

"If you're done with all that chatter, I have something actually important to add," Logan cleared his throat. "According to thus, there are almost no defenses surrounding the Dragon Witch's lair."

"That can't be right," Janus frowned.

"Yeah, what kind of an idiot would just leave their cool magic den completely unprotected, especially if it's right next to a cliff where everyone can see it?" asked Virgil.

"It's possible that the Witch believed locating it in the middle of a forest would be security enough," mused Logan. "Or that she herself would be all the defense she would ever need."

"Security enough- we're barely a few days' walk from the capital of Crofters. How have our guards not found this place already, seriously?" said Virgil.

"Ooh, ooh, can I have a turn flipping through that thing?" said Patton excitedly, pointing at the pamphlet.

"Indeed you may," Logan replied, handing it over. "However, please don't tear or stain it. It is, after all, literally the only copy in existence."

"If there aren't any defenses, we should be able to just charge in and take what we want!!" declared Roman.

"B and E time!!" gushed Remus. "Take whatever we want!" He made the ok symbol with his hand and made it into a ruder symbol.

"Why are you like this?" Virgil groaned. "Both of you. We need a real plan, besides show up and get killed."

"The Dragon Witch herself still poses a major threat," said a pensive Logan. "If we could find some way to neutralize and interrogate her, we might just be able to solve this entire situation cleanly and efficiently."

"The witch has a hot tub, you guys!!" exclaimed Patton. "Her cave is stocked with cool potions, and a little garden!! Y'know, like the kind that you grow in a box!"

"Sweet cheese fondue, I wanna use that hot tub," sighed Roman dreamily.

"Me too," said Remus, annoyingly suggestive as ever. "Especially if we're filling it with cheese fondue instead of water."

"We should go for a bit of dramatic irony and set a clever death trap for *her* instead," suggested Janus. "We build it, lure her out, and then...." He made a motion with his hands, putting them together and taking them apart like a creature opening and shutting its mouth.

"Interesting, if we could acquire the materials-" Logan was cut off.

"Screw that, I'll pull out her ribs and use them to gouge her eyes out!!!!" shrieked Remus, who immediately started dashing off towards the source of the mysterious rumbles.

"Brother, no!!" Roman started chasing him.

"Are cussing crazy??" called out Virgil, which had absolutely no effect on anyone.

"You guys, wait!! Don't!!" Patton ran after them, stumbling over the dense forest growth but trying his hardest to catch up.

Meanwhile, Logan face-palmed at all this nonsense before joining in it to try and keep everyone from somehow making an even worse mistake.

"I don't really have much of a choice here, do I?" muttered Janus before joining the pursuit.

And finally, last but not least, the only one left in the forest was Virgil.

"This is stupid, we still don't even know what that noise is," he said in a low voice. Then he looked upward at the sky and let out a long groan before running to find the others.

Chapter Text

Virgil ran through the forest, branches tearing at his clothes and making them even more ripped. He'd lost sight of everyone else, so he headed where they were obviously headed: the source of the noise.

A particularly sharp branch suddenly came out of nowhere, scratching him on the face, so Virgil threw his hands in front of his face. It was hard to see anything, but he kept running and running until all of a sudden everything seemed a lot sunnier, at which point he put his arms down and looked around. To his surprise, he was in a large grassy clearing at the edge of a cliff.

In the middle of the clearing, there was a gaping hole in the ground, the entrance to a cave. From this angle, Virgil couldn't see much, but it did appear surprisingly well-lit from his perspective. But his attention was focused on something a lot more disturbing. Or, more precisely, three things;

First of all, Janus, Patton, and Logan were at the edge of the clearing as well. Somehow they'd ended up at a point almost on the other side of the clearing, where they were waving and mouthing words frantically. Patton looked like he was trying to move closer to the cave, but Logan was grasping his arm firmly as a silent warning not to try anything.

Second, Roman was lying sprawled on the grass, a few feet from the edge. This one was particularly disturbing, partially because of how his ribcage and limbs looked like someone had attacked them with something heavy and spiky, and partially because one of his hands, despite being attached to an arm that was broken and splintered, was clamped over his mouth so that he couldn't make a sound. The latter was mad even worse by the fact that Princey was so obviously in pain, tears in his eyes, and everything. But his sword was lying right next to him, and he was doing the insta-heal thing, so the most pressing thing on Virgil's mind was the third one;

Directly in front of the cave entrance was the Dragon Witch, a giant, red, scaly wyrm the size of an elephant wearing black witch robes. She was lying on her back, eyes closed and bathing in the sun. She was also snoring, which explained the mysterious rumble that had put Virgil even more on the edge than usual. But heavens forbid that the person who'd nearly gotten Thomas killed, their friends arrested, and brought them all into a miserable and unnatural existence be the worst of their problems. No, that particular title was currently being held by Remus, who was standing directly behind the Dragon Witch's head, brandishing his mace and raising it high so he could bring it crashing down right between her eyes.

"Stop it," cried out Virgil, his voice shaking the leaves on the trees. Remus froze and looked at him angrily. The duke shot him a look that could have drilled through granite, but Virgil relaxed. Until the Dragon Witch's emerald eyes shot open.

Everything seemed to happen at once after that. The witch twisted around and shot flames from her mouth at Remus, still frozen in place. He would have been toast (with Crofter's jelly) if Janus hadn't saved him at the last minute with the wrist-yank at the last second. The duke was unceremoniously dragged onto the floor, kicking and cussing until the witch stopped breathing fire.

Meanwhile, Roman had fully recovered, so he picked up his sword and charged at the Dragon Witch, yelling and raising his blade over his head to distract the could beast from his blade over his head to distract the foul beast from his twin and look as cool as possible. This was somewhat effective on both fronts, at least until she swept her tail and knocked him over, landing the red and green twins side-by-side.

"What in the name of Santo Juan Carlos Domingo Martinez Aguilera de la Have de nuestra Reyna is going on here?" she bellowed. "Git off my property, or else I'll turn you into cheese toasties!!"

"We're so, so sorry, Ms. Witch," apologized Patton, who had scrambled out to the twins and was trying to help them up. "You see, we just wanted to ask you a few questions, and my friends were talking about how to trap you when Remy here-"

"I told you GIT OFF," the witch roared and turned, sweeping her tail at Patton and the twins. The priest ducked, but his mobility was severely hindered by his insistent of helping the twins, who were a bit sluggish after being KO'd.

"PATTON," shrieked Logan, who ran ran out to help his friend. His face was white with fear and his hands were trembling, but he knew that if he didn't act his self-appointed priestly pal would suffer a grievous blow soon. It wouldn't be permanent, but it would certainly hurt, and take their most enthusiastic player out of the metaphorical game, a bad hit for team morale. So Logan pinned Patton to the floor, dodging another sweep from the witch's tail before pulling Remus to his feet and hobbling for the forest.

Virgil soon came to the same conclusion, running over and yanking at Princey's arm. Roman was only half-standing, and was taking forever to get up, so Virgil hissed, "Get up."

Suddenly the prince's eyes widened. He pulled back suddenly, jerking at Virgil's wrist so suddenly the emo fell on top of him, narrowly missing another sweep from the witch's tail. They tangled and were both momentarily caught in an awkward position, faces inches apart, before both of them pulled off of each other disgustedly.

Meanwhile, Patton had been helping Logan and Remus, who'd nearly made it to the edge of the clearing. Nearly, but not quite, and two of his friends were still in immediate danger.

He looked over at Janus pleasingly. "A little help here, buddy?" So far the doctor had done jack squat to help, despite the fact that a bit of dragging people to safety was exactly the thing that they were trying to do. Instead, he seemed a lot more content to watch the others do all the work.

He was opening his mouth to respond when the Dragon Witch, who happened to glimpse Patton talking to someone in the woods, turned her head and locked eyes on him. The doctor's face blanched, but before he could make a move the witch roared and knocked a tree onto him, pinning him to the floor.

The witch then redirected her attention to Logan, Patton, and Remus, this time successfully knocking them over with a sweep of her foreleg. The trio went flying like rag dolls, their bones making sickening CRUNCH noises as they hit the floor. All of them were out cold.

As for the remaining two, Roman was crawling towards his katana, trying to reach it in the hopes of somehow using it to fight off the beast. Virgil was grabbing him firmly by the ankle, trying to get him to run away for the love of all that's good, didn't he have any brain cells.

Roman frantically inched along the ground until his fingertips brushed against the sword handle. Almost there! He stretched a little further, fingers closing around the handle until suddenly something dragged him backwards far faster and more roughly than Virgil ever could, then it lifted him into the air. As he watched his sword go farther and farther away in horror, the prince panicked and looked around desperately for something anything to help.

His options were depressing; Logan, Patton, and Remus were all out of it, and Janus was pinned. Virgil was nowhere to be seen, so Roman finally looked up as large red talons encircled his chest and gripped him firmly.

Yep, just as he'd feared. The person lifting him into the air and grasping him in her nefarious talons was none other than the Dragon Witch herself, looking royally miffed. In her other hand she was waving around Virgil, who, unlike Roman, had his arms pinned to his sides. For a few seconds he glared daggers at Roman, until the witch started talking. Then he just looked scared.

"I told you to leave," she growled. "But, since ya seem so insistent on stabbing me with that toothpick-"

"Hey!!" Roman complained.

"-I guess I might as well boil you alive in my hot tub and throw your bodies off the cliff so people don't get any more funny ideas about trespassing!!" she finished.

"No no no wait!! I'm sure we can work something out!' pleaded Roman, trying to stall for time so he could summon another sword. "Have you ever considered-"

"On second thought, I'll just throw you off the cliff right now," the Dragon Witch decided. "That way I don't have to deal with your annoying voice or any escape plans!!"

The Dragon Witch tightened her grip on them both and turned towards the cliff. Roman freaked out even more and shut his eyes, desperately trying to gather enough focus to conjure his sword. Over and over he envisioned a scene in his mind; him using his sword to free himself from the witch, defeat her, and have her reform Thomas after she begged for mercy because how could she have ever thought she could defeat such a strong and handsome hero? Returning home to the kingdom in triumph, freeing his friends, fixing everything, and then-

Roman's escape-attempt-turned-daydream was interrupted by a strange humming sound. He opened his eyes to see what was up and nearly peed himself from a combination of remembering the danger he was in and seeing Virgil glowing with a white light.

"Let...." Virgil was finding it hard to talk. "Him.... GO!!!!"

At that last word, the emo's eyes flooded with the same light the rest of his body wad emitting, before all of a sudden lighting burst out of him, electrocuting the Dragon Witch. She screamed and dropped them both, shaking her now badly burnt hand and roaring in fury.

As soon as he hit the ground, Roman scrambles over to Virgil, who unsurprisingly looked like he was about to pass out.

"Hey!!" Roman yelled at him. "Stay awake!! Stay with me, hangman, you hear? Don't pass out!! How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Bluuuuuuuurgh," groaned Virgil as he staggered to his feet.

"Close enough!!" Roman said.

Behind them, the Dragon Witch was still staggering in pain. She didn't have the time to cast a healing spell on herself, nor had that sort of magic ever been something she was good at. What she was good at, however, was being sneaky. So she weighed her options. Six oddly similar men she knew nothing about (though they smelled oddly familiar) had showed up and attacked her. Those two she'd just been holding seemed the most dangerous, with the possible exception of the green one, but he seemed out of commission. The purple one looked rather out of it too, but if the red one had any tricks like that up his sleeve, she couldn't risk brute force. No, what she needed was leverage.

While everyone else was busy being injured, distracted, or both, the Dragon Witch ran over to Janus, perching on the tree pinning him to the ground and using her uninjured forearm to pressure his skull even harder into the dirt, cradling her injured arm carefully.

"Listen up, strangers," she roared. "I have no idea who you are, a redundant statement now that I think about it since I just called you strangers, but if you don't do exactly as I say right now, I'll crush your friend's head like the squishy melon it is!!"

"What the...." Virgil slurred. "Doooon't...."

Janus was in a panic. He couldn't breath, his body was being weighed down by a giant oak tree and an oversized fire lizard, and said lizard was pressing his left face into the ground so hard it would almost certainly leave a mark. Clearly the others weren't going to get him out of this, so the doctor took matters into his own gloved hands and whipped out his ace up his sleeve.

Painfully, he extended his right hand and focused with all his might, desperately trying to recreate the same trick he'd practiced in secret those nights he was on guard duty. His practice paid off now as something small and yellow as his gloves flickered into existence once more.

The Dragon Witch was considering her demands when she felt something small and sharp prick her good paw. It didn't hurt very much, but it surprised her, so she looked down to see if the yellow one had thrown a dagger or something. As it turned out, he did not. It was just a weird yellow snake, barely even bigger than the average garden snake. The witch shrugged it off and looked up, then looked back down when she immediately realized funny-looking snakes don't just show up out of nowhere in the middle of magic battles.

Panicking, she yanked the snake off immediately, flinching at the use of her burnt hand. The Dragon Witch silently prayed its bite wasn't venomous or enchanted or like any proper magic battle snake should be. No such luck for her.

The snake's bite had a rather quick effect, so the witch only had a split second to notice how suddenly and unnaturally cold she felt and think about what that could mean. Then she couldn't think at all, and she blinked, and her eyes were solid yellow.

"Get off, you stupid beast," Janus managed to say. He'd been expecting the witch to fall over dead from the venom, hopefully not on him. He wasn't expecting her to step off of the tree after removing her claws from his head. Interesting. He tried it again.

"Remove this log from my back." No response. "Move the log off of me, witch?" This time she complied, silently picking up the tree and throwing it off the cliff, her burnt hand quivering in pain the entire time.

Meanwhile, Roman and Virgil observed the scene with disgusted fascination.

"Thass, thas messed up," the emo said.

"I mean, yeah!! Mind control?" complained Roman. "Where'd that come from? Why didn't he use it before? Why does he get the most overpowered abilities instead of me?"

"You're messed up too...." Virgil slurred.

The other three, in the meantime, had gotten up, their injuries healed just in time to witness the strange scene. It was somewhat horrifying to watch, and even Remus was focusing on it, his mind spinning with the possibilities of misusing this power. Logan was surprised and desperately trying to find a way to fit this into the vague idea of a plan he'd been forming. Patton would have screamed if he hadn't been too shocked.

"Thank you, I suppose," said Janus weakly as he finally stood up, his left side caked in mud. "Now just.... stay there and wait for me, witch."

And then he passed out.

Chapter Text

The first thing anyone did after that was tempt fate. Remus ran up to the Dragon Witch and started kicking her to see what would happen.

"Oh my gosh, whyyyy....?" Virgil asked as Roman promptly dropped him to restrain his brother.

"DID ANYONE SEE THAT?!" shrieked Patton, who had finally gotten over his shock.

"Yes, yet another ability has manifested itself in one of us," said Logan.

"Would you stop saying obvious things and tell us something we don't know for once?" Roman said. "Like, why some of us have a ton of cool powers that I'm totally not jealous of, and others- ow!! Remus, stop that!!"

The duke had elbowed his way out of his twin's hold, stomping on his foot for good measure before making a beeline for the cave. "Dibs on any cool loot in there!!!!"

"Hey, I want treasure too!!" Roman followed him.

"Could you.... not?" Virgil managed as he dragged himself after them.

Patton and Logan didn't follow them this time. Instead, one looked nervously at Janus, while the other silently observed the Dragon Witch, thoughtfully putting his hand on his chin.

"Hey, Logan?" Patton began cautiously. "D'ya- do you think maybe Janus might possibly be just a little bit eensy weensy kind of evil?"

"You ask a complicated question, Patton," replied the professor. "'Evil' is a completely subjective term, very loosely defined and completely up to whoever is using it. Seeing as how it is a term so closely corresponding with one's sense of morality, I'm somewhat surprised you haven't asked yourself this question instead of pestering me."

Patton seemed a little hurt by that last remark. "Well, yeah, but don't you think he kinda crossed a few lines with the whole mind control thing?"

"While I wish he could've done it as a part of a well-thought-out plan, he did somewhat achieve our intended goal of getting the Dragon Witch in a position where we could interrogate her," Logan shrugged and readjusted his glasses. "Now you, on the other hand, seem a lot more inclined towards believing Janus is inherently evil, or at least that his actions are inherently evil. As Thomas' morality, you're clearly the expert on these things, so why be afraid to voice your opinion?"

".... I dunno."

"Falsehood."

"I, I guess that normally, if we were all just a bunch of people instead of the cool questing kiddos we are, maybe I'd disagree with him a bit more. Heck, maybe he'd even get on my nerves sometimes! But right now, well, Thomas needs us, and we can't waste time arguing when the whole kingdom doesn't even know they're counting on us."

"Yes, well, the others do seem to need a strong sense of order, given their more.... chaotic tendencies. For some reason, they rather look up to you. Therefore, it is your responsibility to provide them with order."

"Yeah, heh heh, couldn't have put it better myself," Patton offered a weak smile that Logan seemed indifferent to. There was an awkward silence between them. It lasted a while, tense and slightly painful, until all of a sudden a shriek from inside the witch's home startled them both.

"What was that?" asked Logan.

"Guess we'd better find out before somebody caves in there!!" The duo ran off until Patton screeched to a halt and looked behind them. "Should we take Janus?"

Chapter Text

At the very back of the Dragon Witch's lair, Roman stood in a room full of scented candles, dim lights, and a boiling tub of water. He let loose a second shriek.

"I can't believe this hot tub has seven different bubble options!!' he squealed excitedly. "No more smelling like horse poop for this good-looking prince!!"

"I dunno, seems kinda excessive," muttered Virgil, looking down suspiciously at the tub. "The fancier it is, the more there is that could go wrong, and there could be an accident and you'd die. Plus, didn't the witch threaten to boil us alive in that thing?"

"Don't ruin this for me, you malapert malkin," said Roman, glaring at his purple companion. "Goodness knows we could all use a bath, especially you. You look like a hot mess."

"Aww, you think I'm hot," Virgil smirked.

"Did someone say boil alive?" Remus poked his head in the room. "I wanna boil Roman alive!! I wanna see how it smells!! With eyeballs in my nostrils!!!!"

"No one's being boiled alive!!" Logan and Patton ran into the room, the latter awkwardly carrying the extremely muddy and unconscious Janus on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"Oh, there you guys are," Roman said casually. "I was starting to think you would stay outside forever and miss all the cool stuff we found in here."

"Cool stuff...." Logan frowned. "I do not understand. A hoy tub, by definition, is the opposite of coo-"

"Shut up and look at this!!" Roman went into another part of the cave, much closer to the entrance, and dramatically threw open a large wooden cupboard" well-stocked with large amounts of delicious-looking food.

Logan's face lit up and he rushed over to the cupboard, shoving Roman aside and greedily snatching up as many jars of jam as he could. After piling a nearly inhuman amount of jars in his arms, he ran over to the wall and sat down, unscrewing jars and shoving their contents in is mouth like a frenzied raccoon.

"Crofters hasn't produced this flavor in over fifteen and a half years!!" he babbled excitedly at no one in particular. Then" caressing the jar tenderly, "I thought we'd never cross paths again, but now we meet in a sweet jelly ecstasy."

"Sounds like you and your jellies sure are jamming together, eh Logan." Patton smiled, the awkwardly indicated at Janus, who was still passed out and hefted over his shoulder. "Hey, is there anywhere we could leave Janus 'till he wakes up? 'Cause I sore am getting tired of carrying him already!"

"We've spent like, ninety percent of this trip carrying around people that knocked themselves out," muttered Virgil. "Seriously, is it gonna be like this on the way back?"

"There's a big pile of blankets and pillows over there," Roman pointed at another section of the cave. "Probably the foul beast's best."

"You say she uses it for sleeping," giggled Remus. "I sat she uses it for-"

"Wow, haha, speaking of passing out, how come Virgil didn't pass out after that whole lightning explosion thingy he did?" Roman quickly interrupted his twin.

"Be back in a sec, kiddos!!" Patton went over to the nest.

"What lighting explosion thingy?" Logan looked up from his jams.

"It was nothing," said Virgil, looking down at his feet sheepishly.

"No, it was annoyingly awesome, that's what it was!" Roman said. "The witch was all 'grr' and you were all 'no' and I was all awesome and then there was a great big lighting ball surrounding you-"

"Lighting ball," said Remus dreamily.

Patton, who'd just arrived a second ago, slapped the duke across his face. "Don't you dare talk about my child!"

"Hit me again, daddy!" said Remus, making the medieval equivalent of a Lenny face at the frustrated paternal priest. "How was it in bed with Janus anyways? Squishy? Or too hard? Maybe both in different parts?"

Behind him, Roman preoccupied himself with making it look like he was crushing his brother's head between his fingers.

"In case you were wondering, we were recently discussing Virgil's newfound ability to generate discharges of electricity," Logan told Patton.

"Whaaaa? Kiddo, you defended yourself? Good for you!!" He hugged his adopted son in a surprise bear tackle. "Figuring it out in the middle of battle must've been pretty shocking! He grinned, then frowned as he got a good look at Virgil. "Wow, you look kinda tired, actually. D'ya need to take some time for a nap?"

"I'm fine," Virgil said, despite looking exhausted. He squirmed out of Patton's hug, but then grinned a little when he thought no one was looking.

"Actually it wasn't entirely surprising at all," Logan said. "In fact, if we observe the patterns displayed so far in power manifestation, it's actually become an expected event that one of us develop an ability when violently confronted. In all encounters we've had where one of us, not counting the duke, resorted to violence or were confronted with violence, one of us has developed an ability that is useful in said situation. Perhaps these encounters all trigger something in us, a psychological reaction in Thomas' mentality that, as human personifications of his mind, resulting in not only our newfound abilities, but our altered appearances, I theorize that-"

"Sorry, what was that?" Roman looked up from the cupboard where he'd been stuffing his face with cheeses and stale muffins. "I turned out somewhere around 'patterns'."

Logan glared and exhaled extremely hard. "Allow me to summarize my main points so that they may fit into your clearly defective attention span. Normally being caught in a violent altercation would be damaging to one's psyche. As a result, one would normally develop mental barriers and self-defense in order to alleviate this damage, but since we're literally figments of Thomas' mind, we develop powers and altered appearances instead, with those of us representing his more defensive sides gaining greater power. However, this could result in extreme damage to Thomas' mind, more than has already been done by literally splitting him into seven individuals. Therefore, repeated abuse of our powers will most likely hurt Thomas."

"Sorry, did you say abuse? I wasn't listening." Remus had been busy stuffing a string of sausages into his mouth after dunking them into a vat of cream.

"Wow, thanks for the reminder of why I hate you guys so much," Virgil rolled his eyes and put his hood on before sulking in a corner of the cave with some pastries. "Except for you, Patton."

"Thanks, kiddo!! And you know what? You're a pretty great guy too!" Patton gave his dark strange son another bear hug.

After that, everyone just did their own thing for a while. They couldn't interact with the Dragon Witch until Janus awoke, so Logan set himself to busily studying Joan's research notes, surrounded by a rapidly emptying pile of jars and reading late into the night. Patton went around the cave, tidying any messes he found until he found a sewing kit and some scraps of fabric around sunset. The twins discovered some blank sheets of paper and happily set to scribbling on them with charcoal from outside" doodling and chatting together cheekily. Virgil sat on top of a dragon-sized table, hunched over and looking ominously at everyone. Janus drooled in his sleep 

Chapter Text

Janus woke up, startled, around noon the next day. He whipped his head around, looking for the witch or any signs of danger. Instead, all he could see were fuchsia blankets and pillows, which he guessed was a relief. Oh, and his left side was all caked with mud. Eww.

The doctor reached for the nearest blanket and wiped himself off as best as he could. His head throbbed with pain, and he winced a little before sitting up and getting a better look at his surroundings. He saw then that he'd been moved into the cave, and that everyone seemed to be alright. Except for Logan, who looked rather sleep deprived.

Virgil and Patton were chatting with each other when they noticed Janus was awake. For a brief moment their faces lit up, only to twist into a mixture of shock and disgust when they saw their friend's face. Virgil was able to mask his expression somewhat quickly, if not a little thinly. Patton, as usual, couldn't hide his emotions to save his life. (Note: are you sure about that,,)

"Hey, you're finally up," the emo told Janus. "It's about time."

"What do I look like?" Janus asked him bluntly.

"SNAKE!!" Patton pointed at him and shrieked. "You have a snake face!"

Everyone in the cave, who'd been minding their own business, turned to look at all the commotion. They all saw that, on the left side of his face, Janus' eye had turned into a snake eye, and he'd grown several yellow scales all over his left side as well.

"Well, that doesn't scream 'red flag' at all," noted Roman.

"'Red flag', brother, you're a red f-" Remus was abruptly cut off when he was silenced by Janus.

As much as your delightful infinite chatting is helping my pounding headache," the doctor grumpily said. "I'm afraid we have a witch to interrogate."

"Yes, of course," Logan agreed. "Now that you're finally awake, we can get to business."

As Patton and Virgil helped him untangle himself from the incredibly huge pile of pillows and blankets, Janus noticed his adopted son was wearing something new on his wrist.

"What's that?" he asked, sharply tipping his head towards the wrist.

"Nothing!" Virgil quickly hid his hand behind his back. Then, he reluctantly took it out again. ".... Patton made me a friendship bracelet...."

The bracelet was a rainbow braid made out of several pieces of cloth that neatly looped together at both ends, forming a clasp. On it was dangling a tiny little charm that Patton had convinced Logan to conjure, engraved simply with the letters "UR FAM" on one side, and "ILY" on the other. It certainly wasn't the highest quality, but it was a snug fit, and Patton seemed really proud of it, almost as attached as Virgil seemed to it.

"Doesn't really look your style, does it?" said Janus. "Putting your feelings on your sleeve like that, are you really sure you wanna do that?"

"You don't know what my style is," muttered Virgil. He put his hand behind his back again.

Outside the cave, the Dragon Witch stood exactly where she'd been when the six men left her. Since she hadn't budged an inch, everyone gathered in front of her, near the edge of the clearing. It was also sprinkling lightly, but there wasn't really anything they could do about that besides get wet and chilly.

"Are you guys sure we can't un-mind control her and then ask her what she did to Joan's ritual politely after heavily apologizing for an hour?" asked Patton, shivering in the cold.

"Do you really want to just undo all the hard work we did to get the witch in a position where there's no way for her to lie or attack us?" said Janus sardonically. "Maybe you'd prefer to get answers from her after the dangerous spellcaster with fire breath who tried to murder us is released from being forcibly mind controlled. If you really insist, then let me just-"

"No," Virgil interrupted. He seemed even more uncomfortable than one would expect from a rain-soaked emo. "That was a stupid idea. We'd all get killed or badly hurt. What were you even thinking, Patton?"

Patton flinched a little, making puppy-dog eyes of sadness.

"Also, while we put effort into defeating the Dragon Witch, 'hard work' implies we were directing said effort towards a PLAN," corrected Logan.

"It was still a mighty endeavor worthy of a heroic ballad!" Roman said.

"No one's gonna remember youu," sang Remus.

"Okay, you guys, but seriously, what are we gonna ask her?" asked Virgil, putting his hood on.

"I've spent considerable time studying the mechanics of Joan's healing ritual," said Logan. "If we ask the Dragon Witch exactly what she did to sabotage the ritual, then we may be in the metaphorical home stretch." He pulled out Joan's notebook eagerly.

"Alright then," replied Janus coolly. "Dragon Witch, tell us exactly what you did to tamper with the experimental healing ritual that was recently being developed by Joan Jenesaisquoi?"

"I replaced all his dried daisy leaf with dragonsbane," said the witch in a monotone. She didn't even look down at anyone, instead staring blankly ahead with her solid yellow eyes, same as yesterday.

"Oh my gosh, this is freaky and I hate it," grumbled Virgil. "Please tell me that was all so that my mind doesn't explode with all the implications of mind control."

"Yeah, me and Mr. Grave Digger over here might be in agreement for once," said Roman through chattering teeth. "This doesn't feel vary heroic."

"The rain's making you both so wet," Remus said suggestively, raising his eyebrows and wiggling his fingers.

"Thank you!!" exclaimed Patton, ignoring the green twin. "Let's figure this out and then release her and apologize."

Logan flipped through the notes, scanning bullet points and looking up and down diagrams. His face grew steadily more concerned, until finally he stashed the notes away to keep them from getting completely soaked, then he looked up at the others grimly. "Meet me out here in an hour," he announced flatly. "I'll have formulated a plan by then." He strode off into the cave.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Despite their small side adventure, the group made good time, and by nightfall they'd reached a small cheese making village to spend the night at. A few stores were still open, so they split into two smaller groups: Logan, Patton, and Roman went door-to-door looking for someone willing to shelter them for the night, and Janus, Virgil, and Remus would go buy food.

So far, the first group was met with limited success. The village was extremely tiny, and in less than an hour they'd asked around more than half the town. The closest they got to shelter for the night was a middle-aged shepherd that let Roman into his cottage so he could use the chamber pot. It was for those few minutes that Logan and Patton were left alone, leaning on the outside wall of the cottage and picking at dandelions. The professor cleared his throat.

"Patton," he began slowly. "I believe I owe you an apology."

"Aww, you've got nothing to be sorry for, though, buddy," said Patton.

"No, I may have believed that earlier, but after that incident with the bridge troll, it is clear that certain.... assumptions I previously made about your value to us.... and berated you for..... may have been.... innocent." Logan was struggling to get his words out.

"Lo, what are you saying?" Patton asked.

"I'm sorry about yelling at you earlier for your incompetence and how emotional you are!!" blurted out Logan. "It's clear now that you putting in significant effort to help out, efforts I dismissed because.... because I couldn't understand them. But however unfathomable your methods are to me, they're clearly still effective. So.... I'm sorry."

"Logan!" Patton gave him a giant bear hug. "Pal!! It's alright, you were just doing what you thought was best for us, and that's alright."

"I know, but your emotions shouldn't have been collateral damage. So, I've been thinking of a way to make it up to you and decided you looked on the verge of hypothermia earlier." Logan pointed at Patton.

"Oh, it's okay, you didn't have to-" the priest's protests turned into squeals of delight when he saw what his friend had conjured him. On top of his sky-blue priestly robes there was now a fuzzy tan cloak with a hood that looked like a cat head and drawstrings that looked like cat paws.

"There. My apologies that it's not the same color as Chocolate, but-"

"It's perfect, so you shush!!" Patton squeezed his friend in an even tighter hug than before, and Logan blushed. "The only way it could ever get any perfecter...." he trailed off.

"'Perfecter' isn't a word," corrected Logan as he fumbled to readjust his glasses. "And as long as your request is within reason, I would be glad to fulfill it."

"Really?" asked Patton tentatively. "Well, remember our first day existing when we went to the market to buy jams and that guard almost caught us?"

"Yes, that was only a few days ago. What are you.... oh." Logan caught on. "Very well then."

He leaned in, and they kissed. For almost a full minute, the two swayed back and forth, almost stepping on each other's fret several times. But soon enough, Patton pulled back, blushing so hard he looked like a tomato.

"I- I'm so sorry," he stuttered. "You probably didn't want this-"

"Falsehood," said Logan, and then he grabbed Patton's robe, pulling him back in for another kiss. This time the two really got into it, embracing each other passionately. Logan's hands tangled in Patton's hair, and Patton had his arms wrapped around Logan's torso, pulling him as close as possible. They made kissy face until Roman stepped out of the hut, thanking the owner. As the villager slammed the door shut, Roman turned and saw the two men. His eyes widened and he made a very loud, very obviously fake cough. Logan and Patton immediately stopped and stumbled back a few steps, looking embarrassed since neither of them would meet Roman's eyes.

"Um, wow, okay," managed the flustered prince. "How long has that been going on?"

"A bit after you left," said Patton, tilting his head to the head and winking at Logan.

"Technically it began on our first excursion into the marketplace when we were still in the capital city," corrected the professor, trying to cover up his flushing face by cleaning his glasses.

"Wha- how did Logan get in on the dating game before me?" asked the flabbergasted Princey as he pounded his chest. "I'm literally all of Thomas' dreams, his desires and passions. This makes no you!!" He pointed at Logan.

The professor cleared his throat. "Regardless of our current relationship statuses, we should continue searching for a place to shelter for the night before regrouping with the others on the main road."

"Huh, I wonder what the others are doing right now," Patton wondered before moving onto the next house.

Meanwhile, the other three were actually doing alright. Until they weren't. Most of the local stores specialized in cheese or milk or yogurt or goat jerky, but eventually they found a bakery. As they they searched its shelves for some affordable food stuffs, one of them came to a disastrous realization.

"We stink," said Janus.

"Yeah, no spit, Sherlock," Virgil scoffed as he traced the shelves with his hand.

"No, we literally stink," the doctor pointed out. "See how that store clerk is wrinkling her nose? I bet some of that troll's stinking sludge rubbed off us in that sack."

The store clerk was indeed wrinkling her nose in disgust, although she looked away and started whistling inconspicuously when she noticed the others looking at her.

"And we haven't had a bath in a super long time either," Virgil jerked away from the shelves. "Great, we just gave half the town food poisoning probably."

"Let's get started on the other half!!" Remus excitedly licked both his palms and was about to carry as many foods as possible when Janus waved his hand and yanked him several feet over, pretending to have accidentally tripped him.

"Oh no," he deadpanned, and Virgil fought to hold back a snicker. "You know, if the others ever actually did any work, maybe they'd smell like us too."

"Nah, Logan already does all of our planning, and Patton got us out of that bag. Plus, Remus hasn't done spit, and he's probably the stinkiest," Virgil scoffed lightheartedly. "We are still talking about that slimy bag, right?"

"Yes, but think about it though; anyone can chart out a path or solve a riddle, but you know who's always able to come through in every emergency where a guard attacks or the Dragon Witch tries to kill us? We do," Janus gently nudged the emo. "Face it, without us, the others would be rotting away in a jail cell by now."

"Dungeons are all sellouts because you never get to actually see anyone rot alive," said Remus, getting up off the floor with a bloody nose. "I mean, just imagine getting to take a look at all that crumply skin, getting all purple and bubbly. And the smell-"

Janus rolled his eyes and waved a gloved hand again, this time contorting Remus' hand into a fist and forcing it into the duke's face, knocking him to the floor once more. "Well, perhaps we could've done without him. But still, even he provided some help. Nobody else in out little group seems to have quite as much raw power. Except for you."

"Yeah, well you can literally mind control people and yank their arms around like rag dolls," said Virgil. "Oh yeah, umm, speaking of that, maybe we shouldn't really talk about them or use then in public. I mean, isn't just dragging people around like you do also kinda.... unethical?"

"Unethical?" Janus acted shocked. "Interesting accusation" especially coming from the man that controlled an entire room within five minutes of existing."

"That- that wasn't on purpose," stammered the emo

"Oh, but you did it anyways, didn't you? But don't worry about it, it's not like that many people would get hurt in a tiny stampede taking place that taking place in a small room full of heavily armed people. But at least you only used it once on your attackers, right? And not on all your friends at once, on multiple separate occasions. I mean, what kind of a monster would do that? Especially if it was for something incredibly and undeniably selfish, like abandoning your friends to save yourself."

"Ooh, ooh, is that why you're so emo?" asked Remus as he flopped onto his back. "Because you're the embarrassing part of Thomas everyone would rather forget about?"

"Would you two just shut it?" Virgil shoved the doctor away.

"Why?" said Janus, shrugging. "It's not like we'd judge you for it like the others. Wasn't it obvious that they split us up like this so they could talk behind our backs? Oh wait, did you not realize that yet?" The doctor feigned surprise. "Well, the things I've heard them say when they thought I wasn't listening-"

"You gotta stick with us, you're gonna burn with us," chanted Remus in a sing-songy voice from the floor.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!!!!" Virgil covered his ears.

The bakery immediately went from being filled with yelling and fake whistling to dropping dead silent in less than a second. The store clerk had gone from disinterested eavesdropping to suddenly clawing at her mouth, desperately trying to say something. Remus stood up, blood still dripping from his nose, and moved his mouth soundlessly before giving up and resorting to rude gestures. And Janus. He was standing very still, coldly staring at Virgil, who had put his hands down and was looking around in horror.

"S- sorry. You can all talk now," he managed eventually. A few cupboards rattled from the sound of his voice.

"Thank you, Virgil," said Janus politely. "Now, about those croissants-"

"Take whatever you want!!" shrieked the clerk, scooping up large baskets of pastry products and shoving then in Remus' arms. "Everything's on the house!! HeX, take our stupid freaking macramé fish if you want, just leave!! You, weird snake guy and earthquake hobo, get out before my mom shows up and kills me!"

"Look at all these baguettes," said a delighted Remus. "And that cream cheese!"

The clerk flung a macramé fish at his face. "Get out! Go! Leave now!!"

"Don't worry," said Janus as the trio were ushered out of the store. "We'll make sure that your little incident doesn't slip to the others' ears."

Virgil twisted his bracelet nervously.