—-Pumpkin Head base, mountain range (Rick POV)—-

As I walked across the vacant hallways of the base, I was making my way towards the storage room with Kat beside me, our hands interlocked. I still could tell that she was hesitant being near me.

"Why are you so tense?" I asked.

"I'm in a terrorist base, and you expect me to act like this is normal…" Kat replied sarcastically.

"Well, glad your sense of humor is still intact." I said, letting out a chuckle as I approached the storage room.

"Why do you need me to come with you here anyways?" Kat asked as I unlocked the door.

"You could've just left me in that room."

"How am I supposed to know you–"

"Won't make a run for it?" Kat interrupted me, letting go of my hand. "Don't get me wrong Rick, I absolutely despise being here, and posing as your fake "girlfriend", but I'm not stupid enough to try and escape."

"Oh come on…" I said as we stepped into the storage room and I flipped the switch. "Once you get to know me better, you'll find I'm ironically a decent guy."

"Pfft." Kat said. "Anyways, what are you looking for? I'll help you find it so we can get out of this claustrophobic hell faster."

"We're looking for a stack's worth of redstone repeaters." I replied.

"Why so many?" Kat replied, starting to sift through the chests.

"Technically it's classified information, but I can tell you if you keep it a secret."

"Why would you trust me with a secret?" Kat asked me. "Out of all the people in that base, I figured you'd trust me the least."

"Why do you gotta assume that?" I asked, looking through more chests.

"Look, are you gonna tell me the damn secret or what?" Kat asked.

I let out a sigh. "It's for a command block project."

"I looked through every chest on this side." Kat said. "Absolutely zero repeaters."
"Alright." I said, looking through the final chest in the room and noticing that it too, had no repeaters in it.

"Did you find anything else?" I asked Kat.

"Just a bunch of books n shit." She replied.

"Well, looks like we'll have to go mining." I said.

"We?" Kat asked.

"I figured you would want some breathing room after being stuck in that tiny ass room for a little bit." I replied. "If you're worried about mobs, I go–"

"Ugh." Kat said, rolling her eyes. "Fine, whatever. Let's go."

Looking through the chests, I grabbed some mining equipment and passed it to Kat, opening the door and heading back out into the hallway with her.

Just then, some people passed by us.

"Morning you two…" they said, passing by.

"Hey hey…" I replied.

"Say, just curious, how long have you two been a thing for?" The player asked, as we both turned around.

"We've been together for a decent while…" I said, putting my arm around Kat. "In fact, today marks the first month!"

"Oh, congrats!" The player replied. "Well, if you two have been together for so long, why did you wait so long to bring her to base?"

"Wanted to make sure she was a loyal one, ain't that right?" I said, turning to her. She nodded silently.

"Welp, that's understandable. Have a great anniversary you two!" The guy said, going on with his day.

"You're so good at lying…" Kat muttered as we walked towards the exit, Kat grabbing my hand.

"Thank you." I replied.

"Wasn't a compliment."

"Why are you in such a pissy mood today?" I asked. "I literally brought you breakfast from the kitchen, and by the way, we make the best food here, I offered to repair your broken tools, which you declined, and I also offered you the chance to come outside…"

"You know Rick, I don't think this "fake relationship" shit is going to work out for too long." Kat replied.

"What? Why?" I asked.

"You're just doing all this nice stuff for me so I won't leave." Kat said.

"Have you even considered the possibility that I may actually want a relationship with you?" I asked.

"No." Kat replied.

Come on… I thought to myself. I know there's some way to reach your soft side…

As we reached the entrance of the base, I opened the door and we walked through the opening, as the door closed behind us, Kat immediately let go of my hand.

"Where is the mine?" She asked.

"Just a little bit up this way." I replied.

We walked a little bit up the hill in complete silence, neither of us knowing what to say.

"If your main issue with me is who I'm affiliated with, we aren't all too bad." I said.

"Oh, I'd like to hear this one…" Kat replied sarcastically.

"We are just trying to take order of the server." I replied. "Once we do, we'll make it a better place for everybody. Just imagine, with the command blocks and all, we'll be able to provide the player base with everything they could have possibly wanted here. This server would be a safe haven."

"And your way of doing that is… killing people?" Kat asked. "Sounds very humane."

"We try and reason with people first." I replied. "How else do you think the pumpkin heads have so many members?"

"I still don't see a valid reason behind all the shit you guys have done."

"Trust me Kat. It will all pay off in the end." I said, as we approached the entrance of the mine.

"I'll go in first." I offered, stepping into the dark cave, pulling a torch out.

—Kat POV—

As we were walking into the darkness of the mine, I pulled my pickaxe out. I couldn't help but drift off into thought about this morning.

"Want something to eat?"

I didn't even answer his question, but it was as if he could tell what I wanted to say. When he left, I was minding my own business in his room, but he threw me off guard entirely when he actually came back with a bunch of bread and some beetroot soup.

"..."

"I haven't seen you eat since I brought you here." I remember the concern in his voice. It sounded genuine.

"Th-thanks…" I remember replying.

"..."

That same morning, Rick gave me my inventory back, even offering to repair my tools.

Even though I said no, he even showed me to the armory so I could "do it myself if I wanted to."

It was as if a switch flipped in him this morning.

"Hello, earth to Kat?" Rick said, snapping me back to reality.

"Oh shit… my bad, I was just uh… thinking about something." I replied. "What is it?"

"You good?" He asked me. "You've been blankly staring into space this whole time."

I just realized how long I've been indulging in my own thoughts.

"Uh, yeah." I replied, spotting some glowing red chunks in the wall ahead. "Oh hey… Here's some redstone!"

"Oh, great find!" Rick said, walking over to the chunk, but making sure I didn't fall too far behind.

Reaching the chunk of redstone, we both began to mine it out, when I heard some zombies and spiders groaning from further down the tunnel.

"Just what we need…" I said, swapping my pickaxe for a sword.

"Nah, you continue mining, I'll take care of the mobs." Rick offered.

"Whatever." I replied, switching back to my pickaxe and continuing to mine the redstone. As I mined deeper into the wall, Rick disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel.

"So much for staying close…" I muttered to myself. As I was mining, I noticed that I had mined into another section of the mine. Pulling out a torch of my own, I placed it on the wall to reveal that this section was full of coal and iron.

"I know he said we're here just for redstone…" I muttered, approaching the ore. "But I suppose my miles will stock up on this stuff too…"

As I was approaching the coal near the ceiling of the small cavern, a bat flew past me, startling me a bit.

Descending back into thought, I couldn't help but to recall what Rick said as we were leaving the base.

"Have you even considered the possibility that I may actually want a relationship with you?"

The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that he was serious.

Just then, I heard a spider in the corner of the cave. As I pulled my sword out, an arrow flew past me and hit the wall behind me, snapping in half and falling to the floor of the cave. Emerging from the darkness was…

"A skeleton jockey.." I muttered under my breath. "Out of all the fucking mobs I could encounter…"

Just then, the skeleton fired another arrow at me, this one hitting me right in the torso. As I clenched it in pain, trying to rip the arrow out, the spider quickly approached me, and I started stepping back.

"RICK!" I yelled hopelessly, as the skeleton was already prepared to fire another shot.

I got no response. As the skeleton fired another shot, I turned around and began running into the darkness of the cave, scared for my life. I managed to trip over a fence post coming from a mineshaft and fell to the ground, dropping my sword in front of me. I could still hear the rattling bones of the skeleton, as well as the spider's legs, as the skeleton jockey was still pursuing me. Up ahead, I could see a light source, and began to run towards it.

"RICK! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?" I yelled, as if I'd end up getting a response. He probably left me here intentionally so that I'd be killed by the mobs.

As I approached the light source, I quickly realized my mistake. The light source was coming from a lava river inside a ravine, which I was about to jump right into.

"OH SHIT!" I screamed, trying to stop, but sure enough, I trampled over the edge, and felt myself losing balance.

As I was about to fall, something grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me back. Turning around, it was Rick, suited in iron armor.

"Get behind me." He said, pulling out a bow and arrow, drawing it and preparing to fire a shot at the skeleton jockey in the distance. As he fired his shot, I could hear the bones in the distance snapping. I clinged onto Rick in fear as the skeleton jockey emerged from the depths of the corridor, as Rick fired at it, completely unphased.

"You know... I'm not sure if I should be glad or pissed you're here." I said to Rick in a shaky voice.

Rick chuckled a bit before firing another shot at the skeleton jockey.

I watched as Rick fired his arrow once again, this time nailing it in the head, sending it crashing to the ground, leaving the spider for us to contend with. Immediately, the spider lashed towards us, sending me into a panic. Rick switched to his sword and dug into the spider just as it was springing in the air, preparing to attack us and very possibly push us both into the ravine. As the spider fell back, I saw it turn to ash, with nothing left of it but a few black particles. I finally felt safe enough to move away from behind Rick. Turning around, he took a look at me.

"I've never seen you so terrified before." Rick said to me. "You even looked like you were about to cry. You're usually so calm. What's your deal?"

I could feel myself starting to break into tears, but I managed to hold them back.

"I'm deathly afraid of spiders…" I explained.

I tried my best not to show any kind of emotion on my face, as I returned back to mining, scanning the nearby area for more redstone ore.

"Well in that case, I'm glad I reached you when I did." Rick replied.

I had almost forgotten he was there, as I focused on mining. As I was digging, I could see a few redstone blocks underneath the ground.

"Bingo." I said, looking at the chunks of shining red crystals in the floor. Wasting no time, I began to mine them out with my pickaxe.

Rick approached me, noticing how out of it I was.

"Why don't you take a breather for a while?" He offered. "I got this one."

"T-Thanks." I replied, sitting down beside the wall.

He knelt down next to me, placing a hand on my shoulder.

"Here, I got you something." He said, placing a glass of water in my hands.

"Thank you." I said, taking a sip of the refreshing drink.

As we sat there, I could see Rick using his pickaxe to mine out a chunk of redstone, as he placed it on the ground beside me.

"Can I ask you something?"

"What is it?" RIck answered, not taking his face off of the chunk of redstone he was mining out.

"Were you being serious about this morning?"

"Huh?"

"Have you even considered the possibility that I may actually want a relationship with you?" I reminded him.

"Well Kat, trust goes both ways." Rick answered. "I can't trust you if you don't let me in. And I won't get hurt if you tell me the truth." He added.

"W-well…" I stammered, unsure of how to respond to such a thing.

I started indulging in my own thoughts again, and how Rick has lightened up to me a little every day since I was taken captive here. I couldn't help but think…

"What if he actually IS being serious?" I asked myself. "Up until now I haven't been buying it, what if I'm just blind to see?"

"You don't have to answer right now if you don't want to." Rick said.

As I continued to ponder those questions, Rick continued mining out more redstone, and I stared at them, lost in thought.

"Still shell-shocked from the spider jockey?" Rick asked me.

"Yeah." I replied, taking another sip of water.

"We're gonna be alright." He reassured me. "I'll stay by your side and protect you. It was my bad leaving you all alone in this cave. I should have known better."

I could tell that he was sincere as I listened to him talk, and I could see in his eyes that he meant everything he was saying. I could see that he cared for me as a human being, and not just as a tool to be used for his benefit.

With a sigh, I shook my head to clear my mind.

"No... I'm sorry for doubting you." I apologized.

Rick smiled a bit and nodded.

"I appreciate it." He said, returning to mining.

I decided to follow suit, as I went back to mining as well.

"We need a stacks worth of repeaters, right?" I asked. "How much have you had so far?"

"Uhhh… let me see…" Rick said, looking through his inventory. "24."

I looked through my inventory as well. "I have 16."

"Sounds good." Rick answered.

"We need 3 pieces of redstone to craft a single repeater, so we can make 13 repeaters with the redstone that we have now."

"Looks like we have a lot of redstone left to mine." Rick responded to me.

"Say, I got a question, if you don't mind me asking."

"Shoot."

"You guys have command blocks, why not just use them to spawn in whatever the hell you want?" I asked.

"We are limited on the command blocks, as well as how many times each one can be used." Rick explained. "Each command block only has 5 uses, then it disables itself permanently."

"The hell?" I reacted. "I don't remember that being a game mechanic."

"That's because it isn't." Rick replied. "A server plugin for command blocks was installed a while back that made them like this because originally, people were using them to spawn in a bunch of tools, or kill people, and other kinds of stuff."

"So… what else does the plugin do?"

"Well, for one, it completely disables the /kill command, you cannot use a command block to give yourself another command block, you cannot spawn in most items, but you can still use the command blocks to enchant shit."

"Hmm, so that's why you needed help the other day." I mentioned.

"Yeah. we had one player in the block trying to input a /give command, it wouldn't execute properly." Rick explained. "Thank you for the help, by the way."

"Eh." I replied. "I knew I was gonna have to either way."

"So…" Rick continued as I got up and started mining some redstone next to rick. "What got you so intrigued into the redstone stuff?"

"Well…" I started. I took a deep breath.

"It all started when I was six years old. My dad was working late, and I was bored, so I decided to get on the family computer and play some games, and that was when I discovered this game in the first place."

"Can we skip to answering my question?" Rick asked.

"Well, fast forward a few months and I was deeply engrossed into the game by now, then I think I wanted to like… learn how to build a piston door or something, and that's when I hopped on YouTube and searched for a plethora of redstone tutorials. By the end of the week, practically everything in my house was hooked to some sort of redstone circuit. Then, my skills just kept evolving from there."

"Well, I gotta say, the progress you have made since then is quite impressive." Rick replied.

"Thank you." I replied, feeling slightly self-conscious.

"Anyways, I would love to hear the rest of it." Rick said.

"Eventually, my redstone work caught the attention of a few of my friends at school, as well as a few others across a minecraft server I visited on occasion, and I eventually started participating in some tournaments to build the most impressive redstone contraptions." I continued explaining.

"You win any of em?" Rick asked, as he mined away at the chunk of redstone ore.

"No, but I got pretty damn close." I answered. "At some point, I started to receive commissions to build redstone contraptions for people, and it paid pretty well too."

"Damn, you were killing it back then!" Rick commented. "Is that part of why you wanted to take part in this virtual reality experiment?"

"Part of it." I replied. "I actually was going to partake in this mainly because my best friend Nathan was going to, but I still have yet to find out where he is, let alone if he is even on this server at all."

"Nathan… hmmm…" Rick said, pausing in thought. "Doesn't ring a bell."

"Yeah. he's really the only reason why I decided to go with this experimental shit. I just hope he's okay."

"Yeah." Rick replied.

"Which reminds me, in the time that I have been on this server, I've come to see that redstone on this virtual reality server works drastically different than the redstone in the regular game." I stated.

"Oh?" Rick said, turning to me.

"On this version of the game, redstone wire lasts double that of the regular game, going up to 30 blocks before the signal dies out." I explained.

"I'm sure that definitely opened the realm of possibilities for you." Rick commented. "Double the signal strength had gotta allow for a lot of more complex creations."

"You bet." I replied. "If not for that, half the shit in my base would not function."

Rick laughed.

"Say... tell me about Nathan." He asked.

"Well..." I started. "He's an old friend of mine, I met him back in middle school. We were really close back then, and we used to spend a lot of time together. Especially in the game."

"Hm... He's a gamer too?" Rick asked.

"Yeah, he plays a lot of RPGs and stuff." I answered. "He was even a beta tester for the game."

"I guess that explains why he wanted to partake in this virtual reality experiment." Rick answered. "All the people I know just wanted in for the hell of it."

"Ah." I replied. "Yeah, that's understandable. It is a pretty cool gimmick… well… without the "dying in real life" shit."

Me and Rick shared a laugh.

"So, uh… what was your story? How did you end up here on this server?" I asked.

"Well…" Rick began, as he started to dig deeper into a chunk of redstone ore.

"My parents were both gamers, and they introduced me to the game when I was five years old. I instantly fell in love with it, and they ended up getting me my own Xbox to play the game on. Eventually when I started getting an allowance, I got a computer and the computer version of the game as well. Before you knew it, I pretty much had every single version of the game, and every console it was made for." Rick explained. "Even the 3DS version."

"They made a 3DS version?" I asked. "What the fuck?"

"Yep, they actually did." Rick replied. "They stopped supporting it a very long while ago though. It's equivalent to the older pocket edition versions."

"Well, that's a shame." I replied. "Did it at least support 3D?"

"Not even." Rick answered. "I think it went down as the worst console Minecraft variation."

"Wow…" I responded.

"Anyways, fast forward to now, I find out about this VR shit from a popular gaming forum I was a well known member of, and managed to snag a reserved spot. It came at a price though." Rick said.

"What?" I asked.

"Someone got the last spot at the last minute. I contacted him while he was in the middle of signing up. I had to wire him a wad of cash to get him to give the position up to me."

"Wow, that's rough." I said.

"I guess it was worth it, because I wasn't informed about the free gifts they were offering this batch of new beta testers." Rick said. "They'd be giving everyone in my batch a free oculus quest 2 once the experiment was completed."

"Welp…" I said. "I don't think this experiment will be complete for a long time."

Just then, We heard an enderman teleport in the distance.

Rick pulled two pumpkin helmets out of his inventory, handing one to me.

"Put this on." He said. "The enderman won't bother us with these."

Putting my mask on, it obscured my vision, significantly restricting my visibility, as I saw Rick put on his.

"Is there any particular reason why you guys always wear these masks?" I asked as we went back to mining. Sure enough, I could see pink mist in the midst of the dark tunnels, as an enderman passed by, not even batting an eye.

"Mainly, we keep these helmets as a way to conceal our identities." Rick explained, as we walked into the corridor to search for more redstone chunks. "But, we also wear them for situations like now."

"The endermen?" I asked.

"Mhm…" Rick replied. "We once performed a raid on one village, where we used a command block to summon a swarm of endermen. It wasn't too successful though."

"The endermen were meant to scare the villagers into obedience, but instead, they made a run for it." Rick explained. "We couldn't apprehend them all in time, so we just effectively turned the village into a ghost town, endermen now ruling over the streets."

"Welp. sounds like a bust." I said.

"Well, it wasn't all that bad." Rick explained. "After all the villagers fled, that place became a new base for us."

"Sounds cool." Kat replied.

"Yeah. Nobody came close there without a pumpkin helmet ready to wear as a precaution. Place was basically treated like Chernobyl."

"Chernobyl?" I asked.

"Remember that catastrophic nuclear accident that went down in history..?" Rick replied.

"Oh… yeah." I replied. "I never paid too much attention in my classes. I still find ways to pass them though."

"Good for you." Rick responded.

"So… what are we doing once we have the redstone for the repeaters?" I asked.

"Well, of course, we'll be heading back to base to craft them all." Rick explained. "Then, the repeaters will be used to complete the rest of the automated farm."

"Oh shit, I specialize in those!" I explained. "I can help you with the other aspects."

"Like what?" Rick asked.

"Well, first off, are you using observers for the automated farm?" I asked.

"Uh… no. everything is just hooked to a giant timer circuit that takes up an entire chunk's worth of space. Everything activates to mine all the crops like once every day." Rick explained.

"Well, there's your first mistake." I explained. "If you implement observers into your farm, especially for stuff like sugar cane, you can save a lot of space, as well as eliminate the number of times the circuit is triggered to prevent the redstone from burning out on you." I explained.

"How much saved space are we talkin?" Rick asked.

"Well, depending on what kind of stuff you have in the automated farm, you could very possibly get rid of the entire timer circuit all together and put that circuitry to use somewhere else." I answered. "What do you got?"

"Right now, just some sugar cane, pretty much every crop that requires seeds, except for pumpkins and melons, because we don't have an automated system for those."

"I can get that set up for you." I replied. "We can put it where the timer circuit was."

"Hang on… I never said we could go crazy on upgrades yet." Rick said. "I gotta clear this with the base coordinator first, as well as the people that run the farm."

"Alright." I replied.

"I also need a rundown of the supply requirements for such upgrades." Rick mentioned.

"We'll need a hell of a lot of stone and nether quartz for the observers." I began explaining. "We'll also need most of the basic redstone stuff like repeaters, comparators, and pistons. We probably won't need any sticky pistons though."

"Okay." Rick replied. "Well, I guess we should head back up now then and get to proposing the idea."

"I thought we still needed more redstone though…" I said.

"Well, once I get the idea approved, which I'm sure I can, we won't need 64 redstone repeaters anymore anyways." Rick said.

Ah, well, what are we waiting for then?" I mentioned. "Let's get going!"

"Say less." Rick said, putting his pickaxe away and starting back in the direction we came, making sure I followed close behind. As we were walking up the mine, I turned around to see the enderman approaching where we once were, pulling a block of stone from the wall before it descended back into the dark cave. As Rick sensed that, he took his pumpkin helmet off, and so did I.

Walking back up the narrow cave, I passed by the area where I had first encountered the spider jockey.

"Well, good thing there were no spiders to accompany that jockey." I said. "That would've been terrible."

Looking at the wall, there were some newly placed torches surrounding the area, which would prevent mobs from spawning. There were also some in the hallway.

"You took care of those zombies up here, right?" I asked.

"Yeah. good thing I did, there was a spawner nearby and we would've gotten overwhelmed easily." Rick answered.

"What was in the loot chest?" I asked. "I'm assuming you got it in a dungeon?"

"Yeah, although strangely, the chest was empty."

"Really…" I said. "Sounds like someone had explored it before us."

As we made our way up to the surface, the sun was already nearing the horizon.

"Well, we better hurry if we want to catch the base coordinator before he heads to dinner with the boys." Rick said.

"Why can't we just join them?" I suggested.

"That doesn't sound like that bad of an idea." Rick replied. "Let's do it."

Just then, I realized the danger of what I had just suggested. I didn't know who anyone in that base was, except for Rick, and as far as I know, they could all be plotting to kill me, since I technically don't pass as a member of their group.

"Don't worry, they won't have a problem with you joining at all." Rick said. "In fact, once you explain the new farming system to them, you'll probably win over the trust of everyone in the group."

I let out a sigh. "O-okay…"

"Splendid." Rick said, grabbing my hand. I could feel my face warming up as we emerged from the entrance of the mine and made our way back towards the base.