Okay.

Midnight: That's all you have to say?

Yep. Let's go.

Everyone stared at the ground.

Naturally, they were all at a loss for words. TorqueDawg's inventory was scattered on the ground, nothing really of note. Definitely not the flint and steel Cassie was looking for.

"TorqueDawg…?"

Sparklez was frozen in place, trying to process what just happened. It took a minute for the reality to set in.

"TorqueDawg?!" He fell to his knees, clearly distraught.

"So I'm guessing calling dibs on his inventory would be…" One of the Ivors, likely Zenna's, started. My Petra was about to tell him off when she got interrupted.

"Jesse's not just a girl's name…"

Are you serious right now?

Zenna walked over to Sparklez and did her best to console him, but then he suddenly jumped up and started trying to figure out what just happened.

"All those arrows! His inventory… everywhere! How did that…?! Who?!"

No one else really said anything, not knowing what to say.

"One minute he's alive, the next… gone! Poof!"

"Wow. Uh," Jesse struggled to find the right words. "You seem pretty broken up about this. Were you guys close?"

Sparklez was able to calm down just enough to answer the question.

"I mean, not really? He was kind of a tough guy to be close with, but it's still terrible!"

A Jesse (Mine?) noticed the dispenser on the ceiling.

"Everyone, stand back." He said before proceeding to do the exact opposite. The other Jesse did too, and they both stared at TorqueDawg's inventory until it got sucked into the hopper. After a minute, they noticed the tipped arrows and picked one up. Even though there were at least two others sticking out of the ground right next to him, Zenna's Ivor grabbed it out of their hands and walked away from the rest of us to sniff it very… intensely.

"Smells like… yes! Potion of poison?"

Sparklez came back over and tried to explain what it was. He denied seeing them in a trap like that before, but said he remembered seeing a tutorial from someone on how to make them.

"Hello? Everything okay in here?" LDShadowLady, also known as Lizzie, walked into the room. For about ten seconds, no one moved or said anything.

"Woah! What's with the crowd?"

Sparklez tried to get through the door past her, awkwardly shuffling away as he said, "I, uh… I was just about to get everyone together to tell them at once." Lizzie remained oblivious.

"Okay…?" She looked back at us, and her eyes widened. "Hang on a minute! It's you. I recognize you!"

"Recognize us? How?" One of the Jesses asked.

"I'll show you! Follow me!" She didn't wait on us, turning around and heading into the portrait room.

"Um… okay."

Everyone followed her, clumped together because the hallways weren't exactly made for ten people to walk through them at once.

As expected, Cassie was already there, staring in fake disbelief at the paintings. I couldn't tell which one she was staring at.

"Lizzie, hi!" She greeted when she noticed her 'friend'. "Did you see all these new- oh, you've got them with you." She stared at us somewhat oddly, like she was just noticing there were duplicates of four of us, even though she would've seen that outside.

The portrait room itself was also unsettling. Either Cassie was a really fast painter, managing to make ten full size portraits in about five minutes, or there was some other explanation for it that I wasn't thinking of. Aside from the five Youtubers, TorqueDawg's crossed out portrait, and Cassie's normal portrait (I had to double check to see if she actually had one, and it's never actually on screen for more than a few seconds, but she does have a normal one, just no crossed out portrait), there were also both Jesses, Ivors, Lukases, and Petras.

And hanging right on the wall that held the door to the dining room was Zenna and I. The fact that it was close enough to Ivor's portrait worried me a little. With so many new people, that just gave more opportunities for something to go horribly wrong, especially if Cassie decided to skip Ivor this time around.

For a moment, I swear I saw something about my painting change.

From pale to gray skin.

From mostly brown to fully purple hair.

Something looked familiar.

But in the blink of an eye, it was just a regular painting, nothing off about it.

I also realized I was hungry.

The last time I ate something was before we went to Sky City, which felt like years ago by now. It was an odd thing to notice at a time like that, but the sight of all those furnaces smelting or cooking who knows what just sparked something. I told myself that when we went back into the kitchen to investigate later, I'd find something to eat.

"Well, first it was just portraits of the people already here, then poof… you guys." Cassie kind of lied. She was actually mostly telling the truth, just leaving things out so no one would suspect her.

"Woah, that's… unexpected." A Jesse said.

"Yeah, no kidding…" Petra muttered. It was hard to tell the clones apart from each other, since they looked, acted, and sounded the exact same, apart from the Jesses sometimes.

"They're absolutely exquisite! Perfect!" Ivor said with glee as he looked up at his painting.

And then there was Lukas.

"Well, not perfect…" Cassie had made the same mistake twice, apparently, with both of Lukas' portraits. The noses were larger than they should've been.

"Absolutely perfect!"

I walked over to my Lukas, knowing exactly which one he was, because Cassie had at least been courteous enough to put his near mine, and hugged him, trying not to laugh when I looked back up.

I was planning for a mini flashback or a different vision for your portrait, Midnight, but decided against it.

Midnight: Different vision? What would that have been?

Uh, foreshadowing.

Midnight: For...?

Something that may or may not happen.

Midnight: What are you planning?

Remember how I said you weren't dying this episode?

Midnight: Putting extra emphasis on this episode? Yeah, what the heck?

Well obviously something has to change in episode eight to be down to one of the last teammates, but that's not the point. The point is that Cassie was going to do something near the end of the episode when everyone is fighting and racing for the flint and steel, but then I realized I didn't really have a thought out plan for it. So it really depends on where this goes.

Midnight: You never think to plan ahead, do you?

Not at all. Anyways, I'll see you next time!

-LegendEmpress