Lukas gave a small chuckle as he recognized the question from the beginning.

Onscreen, Lukas gave a similar chuckle. "That's a good one. Let me think..."

"How can you guys joke around at a time like this?!" Axel suddenly burst out, snapping at them. "Petra's still out there. She's all by herself. There's nothing funny about that."

Petra's grin faded. "You know, it's always good to keep your spirits up in bad situations..."

"I don't think he's actually angry," Dan said slightly dismissively. "He's probably just worried about you."

Jesse shrugged at Axel onscreen, her own faint smile fading away. "Axel, Petra can handle herself. If she can handle the Nether as casually as she does and still come out completely unharmed, she can survive. She wouldn't mind at all. She'd want us to keep our spirits up."

"See? Jesse agreed with me," Petra said, pointing at the black-haired girl, who blinked at her innocently. "And I'm pretty sure Jace agrees, too."

Jace hesitated. "Well, I mean, I am worried about you... but if you can handle the Nether as though you're going for a walk down the street, then I'm pretty sure you're fine, too," the boy said at last. The redhead smiled back at him, making him return it carefully.

Axel's sharp expression softened a bit. "If I were her, I'd... I dunno. It just feels wrong."

"Fine then," Lukas conceded, standing up. "We should probably get some rest. We gotta start looking for this temple as early as we can. Now, my guess is, if we start at the portal, and... kind of split up-"

Axel's expression sharpened again as he glared at Lukas. "Whoa, what are you doing?" he snapped at the blonde.

Real Lukas looked startled at this. "I- I was helping, wasn't I?" he asked, looking around at everyone with this bewildered look.

"Did I do something to you?" Lukas asked sharply, his own blue-green eyes hardening. His tail flicked a bit, and his ears, showing that he was getting irritated. "I'd really like to know. You keep getting on my case for what seems like no reason."

"He's just trying to help, Axel," Jesse said, getting to her feet and raising her arms placatingly.

Axel crossed his arms and glared at Lukas. "I'm sorry, Jesse, but I'm not going to just sit here and listen to this guy telling us what's what."

"But- but I wasn't!" Real-Lukas protested. "I was just trying to help!"

"We know that, and I know that," Axel spoke up, before gesturing at onscreen him. "But that me doesn't."

Lukas glared back at Axel, obviously having reached the end of his tether. "I'm just trying to get ready for tomorrow," he said, sounding frustrated.

"You're the only one wearing that stupid jacket," Axel shot back, "don't tell us what to do."

Lukas's eyes widened in anger, the reflective blue-green irises appearing to glow as his pupils narrowed into slits. His hair was starting to stand on end, his tail going ramrod straight. "Take. That. Back," he hissed angrily. It didn't take a biological genius to tell that he was pissed off.

"Can't. Wouldn't," Axel responded, his arms crossed firmly.

"You know what?" Lukas stepped towards Axel, even though he was a full head shorter, his tail flicking angrily. "I get to where this jacket because I know how to build. But that doesn't mean I don't know how to break things."

"Oh Notch, this is getting out of hand," Olivia groaned.

Axel hissed and backed away a step, although it seemed more reluctant than he would've liked. "Your threats don't scare me, now that we know how you really are."

"Jesse, your friend is way out of line!" Lukas whipped around to Jesse, eyes narrowed.

"And yours never were?" Cassie asked drily.

Jace nodded and patted Jesse on the shoulder as Lukas rubbed his head awkwardly. "Honestly, I don't mean to rub it in, Lukas, but at this point all of us would have the right to say 'he's just trying to mess with you' and get away with it."

"I wasn't going to bring it up, but I can only take so much."

Jesse crossed all of her arms, sending both boys a sharp look. "Let's just drop it," she said, lightly but firmly at the same time.

"Don't be like that, Jesse," Axel said.

Jesse repeated herself slowly and much more insistently. "Just. Drop. It."

Instead, Axel turned around to face Lukas again, his eyes having dilated to huge extents. "Haven't you done enough damage for one day?" And he shoved Lukas backwards, making the blonde stagger backwards. "Petra might be dead because of you."

"Whoa!" Petra exclaimed.

Jesse winced and shook her head. "That- that was not okay, Axel."

"Axel, what the heck?!" Olivia exclaimed onscreen, throwing her arms into the air.

Lukas hissed again, glowering at Axel. "I don't have to take this. Listen, why don't I just leave, and let you guys hash this out-"

"You are not going anywhere," Jesse snapped back immediately, making everyone look at her with this slightly taken aback look onscreen.

Petra let out a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Jesse."

The black-haired girl simply shrugged. "That was all Axel right there, Lukas did nothing wrong."

Aiden and Gill exchanged startled looks.

"Axel, stop antagonizing Lukas."

"But, Jesse-"

Jesse cut him off while making a short, violent chopping motion with her hand. "No. That's enough. We are all on the same team right now. He- is- staying," she snapped at him again.

"Wow... thanks, Jesse," and Lukas looked over at the black-haired girl. "First the golem, then the cookie, now this... you're really selfless, you know that?"

Jesse simply shook her head with a small smile. "No need to thank me. You did let me have your slime ball so we could track Ivor down."

"That doesn't even it out," Lukas pointed out, a faint smile twitching on his face.

"Oh, yeah." A short pause. "No need to thank me, anyway."

There was a short silence, before onscreen-Lukas slowly sat back down, Jesse joining while staring at Axel with this look that basically dared him to snap back again. He didn't, but he glared at the fire as if it had personally offended him.

A long silence stretched out, before the sound of thunder, and then a heavy rain interrupted it. Finally, Jesse let out a sharp sigh and made them all look at her. "Since we're all going to just sit here in silence forever unless someone says something," she pulled out the red leatherbound book from Ivor's library, but made no move to open it, "perhaps we can all talk about our being hybrids?"

Another awkward silence, before Jesse held up the book, pointing at the symbol scratched into the cover. "Does anyone here recognize the symbol?" And she poked it with her finger.

Axel walked over to get a good look at it and leaned forward, squinting at it, before he stiffened and stepped back automatically, the glare fading to a wide-eyed look. Lukas winced as Axel stepped on his tail, but didn't say anything. Olivia's eyes widened once she'd gotten a good look at it, and Lukas gave a faint nod, tail tucked between his legs to protect it from getting stepped on again.

"Thought so. I found this in Ivor's weird basement. This book must have... well... something to do with us, if we all recognize it. Now, exactly what, I have no clue..." she looked down at the book for a minute, before looking back up. "But it has something to do with our being 'hybrids'. Does anyone know how, by any chance?"

Axel was the first to shake his head, slowly. "No. I didn't even know until I, uh, 'exploded' earlier. I was just..." He trailed off, before finishing rather lamely, "I didn't even know before that."

Olivia shook her head as well. "No... I never realized my right eye was..." she trailed off, covering her right eye automatically.

Lukas simply shook his head once. "I never knew," he uttered quietly, looking though as he were in a bit of shock.

"Neither did I. I don't know how we're hybrids, or how we never knew." A short silence. "I guess we'll find out in a minute."

Her fingers slowly slipped under the cover and flipped it open to the first page, which was covered in a messy but legible scrawl. It was quite obvious that the writer of the entry was a bit scatterbrained from all the cross-outs and the wandering spacing.

"'The Bureau of Amalgamology contacted us today," Jesse started reading it out loud, squinting as she tried to make sense of the handwriting. "What they do is fascinating, they create hybrids. Mixes of animal and human, and in a few of the cases monsters and humans. They've taken five children- mainly because children are less likely to fight back too much, apparently- and injected monster DNA that was painstakingly extracted from the monsters. The effects have been extraordinary, according to them, and they said they'd be honored if we came to look at them. Ellegaard-'"

Ellegaard's eyes widened.

Olivia interrupted right there, her own eyes widening. "'Ellegaard'? Like, Order of the Stone Ellegaard?"

Jesse shrugged at this. "I don't know any other 'Ellegaard's in existence, do you?" She looked back down at the page and continued, "'Ellegaard and Magnus are all for it. Gabriel thinks it might be interesting, and even Ivor-"

The audience all looked at Ivor automatically.

"Wait, Ivor?"

Jesse gave a jokingly long-suffering sigh at the second interruption, but she was grinning a bit. "Yep. Maybe he worked with the Order before, and that's how he knows them? It would explain why he seemed to have such a grudge with Gabriel," she suggested.

The Order all exchanged glances.

Onscreen, Axel had sat down by now, and Lukas shrugged in response to what Jesse had just said. "I guess that makes sense."

"Even Ivor thinks it would be fascinating to see them. I honestly cannot deny that I'm a little curious, so tomorrow, we'll head to their lab and go have a look at the children. ~Soren.'"

The handwriting changed to a more neat, uniform sort of text, with very minimal cross-outs if any at all. It almost looked like some type of font. "The handwriting changes in this next part. 'We arrived at the lab yesterday. The children are all pretty small, around 5 or 6 years old. The scientists told us that they were all quite dangerous, but really they seem quite armless. They were all rather frightened upon us entering the room, but after only a few minutes they warmed up to his. Ivor took the spider hybrid and the two of them read one of his potion books together for a bit. Her hair was only about chin-length, very short. I guess it's too much trouble to keep it long."

Jesse automatically fingered her own long hair.

"'Anyway, the Enderman hybrid developed a fascination with redstone after a couple of minutes with me. I think I like her! And Magnus had some fun with his creeper hybrid. I think Gabriel liked the Blaze hybrid, and Soren, upon getting over his disappointment over not getting the Enderman hybrid, and his ocelot hybrid had some fun together as well, although none of them will ever admit it. Boys. ~Ellegaard.'"

This prompted a small round of laughter from the audience, where the Order members glared at Ellegaard, a bit playfully. She just grinned back at them.

The next entry had extremely messy handwriting, cross-outs and scribbles and some doodles in the margins making the text barely legible. Jesse squinted at it but kept soldiering on through her reading. "'Today, we couldn't stay that long, but we decided to name our hybrids. And great, we're already considering them 'our' hybrids. We just happen to like spending most of our time with the kid we spend time with. It's too much trouble to just keep pointing and go 'hey you'."

This prompted several snorts from the audience.

"'Soren went first with his ocelot hybrid. He took about ten minutes to name the... kid..." Jesse trailed off, her eyes widening, before slowly picking back up, "'Lukas, with a 'k' and not a 'c' because he thought it sounded cool."

Soren's eyes widened, and he looked over at Lukas, who was returning the look.

"'Then I got to go... my... dad always wanted to name me... Axel and fought with my mom about it before I was born, apparently. So I decided to... use that name. It's a pretty good one..." Jesse trailed off again.

Axel and Magnus turned to glance at one another.

"Um, 'Ellegaard got to go next, and decided on Olivia. I don't know why, it's... kind of a boring name in my opinion." Jesse's eyes were getting wider and wider by the minute.

Ellegaard and Olivia glanced at one another, both engineers looking supremely startled by the turn of events.

"'Gabriel decided to name the Blaze hybrid... Petra..."

Petra and Gabriel glanced at each other, eyes wide and mouths hanging open slightly.

"'Ivor spent about ten minutes before naming the spider hybrid... Jesse. I don't get some of these names, but whatever... ~Magnus.'"

Ivor and Real-Jesse looked at one another, barely catching each other's eyes before Jesse glanced away awkwardly and Ivor returned his gaze to the screen.

Onscreen, the hybrids and Reuben all stared at each other in varying levels of shock, the only sound audible being the rain drumming on the roof of the hut and the crackling of the fire.

Jesse finally shut the book that was sitting in her lap. "I think that's enough reading for tonight."

The screen blacked out.

For once, none of the audience members had any idea what to say.


A/N: I meant to put in a shippy moment last chapter but I didn't have any time to in the thirty minute period I had, so... xD Sorry.

RQTC: How many of you have checked out my YouTube channel yet? C'mon, be honest xD

Guest: I assume you meant 'shippy' moments, not 'snippy' moments xD but sure, I'll try. You did, but I probably didn't see it when I was writing that chapter, lol xD

Meow Shadow: Oh. No, I watched a YouTuber play it and just went with their decisions, except for part of Episode 5 and Episode 8, where I wanted to do something more specific. And waaaaaayyyyy more chapters than that, lol xD something along the lines of 200, I think.

Kaos Ruin: You mean Jesse? ... but now that you mention it, yeah. xD

AquaK13: Haha xD

ahnjoseph87: You bet I am (grins) and here is more!

Guest: ...?

RapidSammi: Uhhh... I'm not sure? xD And haha, glad to see Aiden's excited.

DynamiteHunter6: (laughs)

EthanDaCabbage: Yes. xD and yes, I do like cabbage.

mEEplePeoPLe: (laughs)

S4SH4L4SH4theGaMeR101: Both you and me, child xD

Idon'tlikecheese: (laughs)

x.X. A.L. X.x