Dinner was a tense affair. Jesse didn't look up at anyone for the entirety of dinner, nor did she say anything except for "Could you pass the salt, please?" to Cassie, who happened to be sitting next to her.

The brooding mood she was in settled over the entire table, and people spoke to one another in whispers, if they spoke at all.

So, dinner was composed of picking at their food, silence except for whispering, and awkward looks among each other. Lukas was sitting next to Jesse on her other side, but she didn't look at him.

Not because she was mad at him or anything- he'd apologized to both Jace and Jesse at least seven times while the three of them were trying to cook (well, Jace and Lukas were trying to cook; Jesse was just cutting vegetables and things) and Ivor was setting the table.

(The actual total number was something more like thirty, but Ivor had lost count at seven.)

Jace had shrugged it off the second time, and Jesse had patted him on the back with a faint smile before resuming that moody look and going back to preparing dinner. Not that Ivor was extremely surprised- after a day like today, she was bound to be in a strange mood.

He'd gone ahead and mentioned this to Harper when she walked in, sans Olivia and Ellegaard (they were still getting cleaned up, apparently), and she'd nodded. "Yes, she's had a very stressful day. Getting punched in the face by Aiden in the morning, having some very... nasty memories dragged up, watching Reuben die... the best thing to do would just be to leave her alone."

So they had. Just letting Jesse pick at her food and stare at her plate as if it was a plateful of rocks.

After dinner, they assigned Magnus and Axel to dish duty (and then appointed Gabriel to keep an eye on the two), before all of them trickled off in their respective groups towards their rooms.

And Ivor couldn't sleep.

Insomnia was annoying at the best of times. Not to mention, Ivor had the worst nightmares when he didn't have a calming potion before bed.

Also, sleep paralysis was a bastard.

Actually, no wonder he had insomnia.

Ivor usually brewed himself a calming potion before dinner, but he'd forgotten today (as he had yesterday), and he tossed and turned for half an hour after he went to his room before giving up and heading back to the kitchen.

So far, no one had bothered moving the brewing stand (which was good, because it was a heavy duty one and annoying to lug up the stairs. Actually, it was a bit of a wonder that the person who owned this house even had a heavy-duty potion stand. They must really like brewing potions. That's the only reason anyone would have one of these. They were hard to get, too.).

Once again, he found that he wasn't the only one still up.

Jesse had come back to the dining room, sitting in one of the chairs in that set of gray pajamas and staring off into space. Her back was to Ivor, so he cleared his throat gently to signal to her that he was there.

Apparently too gently, because she didn't even notice.

"Jesse?"

The black-haired girl jumped a bit again, spinning around and nearly knocking the chair over. "Oh-!"

Ivor leaped forward and grabbed the back of the chair, quickly settling it back into place so that the front legs clunked loudly into place on the ground. She sighed and leaned back a bit. "Ahh, that was a near miss. Thanks, D-" she paused, her cheeks turning faintly pink in the dim light. "- Ivor."

"You can call me that when no one else is around," Ivor replied, giving her a slight smile before going back to pull the potion stand onto the table. "Did you need one of these again?"

"Yeah, if you don't mind... Dad," Jesse said slowly, as if testing out the last word on her tongue.

Ivor gave her another faint smile and went about making the potion. "Same flavoring as last night?"

"Yes please, if you don't mind," Jesse replied, smiling faintly again.

He nodded and added the sugar and golden apple to Jesse's, before going ahead and adding some to his. He hadn't eaten candy apples in a while. Sticking both potions on the brewing stand, he leaned back and slumped into the chair with a sigh. "So... how are you doing?"

Jesse had gotten distracted, so jumped a bit when he addressed her again. "Wh-? Oh. Um, alright, I guess."

Ivor stared at her for a moment, eyes half-lidded, before one of his eyebrows arched.

Jesse blushed again, looking embarrassed. "I-I am! I know I was a bit, er, moody during dinner, but I was just kind of deep in thought."

He kept staring for a moment before simply grunting a bit and dropping his gaze. She was telling the truth- he could tell by the way she'd been making perfect eye contact with. Besides, her voice had a ring of truth to it.

The gentle clinking of potion bottles drew his attention again, and he turned around to check on the potion.

What he saw next made him bolt upright, eyes widening. He chanced a glance at Jesse to make sure he wasn't hallucinating, but her mouth was hanging open as well and her green eyes were reflecting the ghostly blue light.

Almost right next to where the brewing stand was another one that was ghostly blue. The same girl who'd been in the earlier... whatever it was... was the one playing with the potion stand, scratching a note into a notebook that happened to be sitting next to her as she played around with it. (Her name was Arima...? No, Ariza, that was her name.) She was wearing glasses this time, presumably to see the potion stand and the ingredients more clearly.

"Ariza? You're still up?" A boy walked into the room this time, one wearing glasses and with brown hair that had blue frosted tips. He had a creeper hoodie haphazardly pulled on.

The girl glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, although most of her attention was still focused on the potion stand. "Oh, hey Toni. What's up?" she asked, in a faintly distracted voice.

"You and me. Isn't it about time for us to head to bed?" Toni asked, pointedly.

"I'm almost done with this potion experiment," she murmured, returning her gaze to the brewing stand, staring intently at the bubbling pale gray liquid in the flask.

"Ariza, you've been 'almost done' for six hours now."

A long pause, in which Ariza's hand paused above the flask, an eyedropper dripping three drops of liquid into the gray thing.

She moved her hand again a few seconds later and tilted her head back to look Toni in the eye, a faintly surprised look on her face. "What time is it?"

"It's two o'clock in the morning," Toni responded flatly, arching his eyebrow at her.

"... is it really?" Ariza sounded faintly surprised, glancing at the nearby clock on the wall as if to try to prove Toni wrong. "... ah. I see." There was another long pause, before she went back to the potion.

Toni sounded exasperated when he spoke next. "Ariza..."

"I swear, I'm nearly done. Just twenty more minutes."

Toni put his hands on his hips in a faintly feminine manner, although his scowl was definitely more masculine. "Did you even eat?"

"Don't mom me, Toni."

"I'm not momming anyone, that's your job." Toni grinned a bit as he dodged the blob of old magma cream she threw at him, letting it sail harmlessly into the trash can, before dropping the smile to give the girl a more severe look. "I'm making sure you're not starving."

"Well, I'm not starving. I grabbed an apple to eat twenty minutes ago. You can go back to bed now."

Toni slapped a hand to his forehead and then dragged it down his face in irritation. "... what are you even working on that you're so insistent on finishing?"

Ariza tapped the notebook page. Toni trotted over and leaned over to get a look at the page she was on, reading it over. His eyebrows went up. "... not bad."

"See? And I think I'm onto something by using purified milk instead of just regular milk. But I don't wanna have to start the potion over again tomorrow morning, because it'll congeal if I leave it alone for too long." With that, she added another drop of something using the eyedropper. "It should only take another twenty minutes."

"... you have thirty minutes to finish this before I get you some coffee and drug it with one of your Brews of Sleeping." Toni left the room, an amused smirk quirking over Ariza's mouth as another breeze blew through the area, dispersing the particles that made them up.

There was a long silence where Ivor and Jesse were just staring at the spot where the two of them had been, before Ivor got up and went over to the heavy duty brewing stand. The potions were pretty much done by now, so he gave it another twenty seconds before pulling them off of the stand, noticing vaguely the faint breeze that gusted over him.

"That's... did that just happen?" Jesse asked softly, glancing at the dark-blue eyed man curiously, as Ivor handed her her potion and uncorked his, taking a quick sip of his and feeling his shoulders relax almost immediately from the potion.

"Yes, I think it did. It's the second time it's happened, too," Ivor added mildly, the bottle of calming potion resting in his hands.

"Oh." A long pause as Jesse processed this, sipping at her own potion. "When was the first time?"


The morning was considerably calmer than the day before. No yelling, no fighting, no getting punched in the face. The tense atmosphere from dinner had almost completely disappeared, too, Jesse coming into the kitchen where Harper and Otto had woken up early and were making breakfast and greeting them cheerfully.

Jesse had excused herself from breakfast before anyone else had finished, saying that she was going to get a head start on exploring the mansion. Breakfast lasted another twenty minutes after that, before the whole group split up to go exploring some more.

Cassie and Aiden led Soren, Ivor, Otto (who simply looked incredibly interested by this) and Lukas to the library they'd discovered the day before, Harper, Ellegaard, Stampy, and Olivia headed towards the basement towards that 'Redstone Heaven' place, and Jesse went trotting off to go explore the place on his own, Reuben happily accompanying him. Petra and Gabriel headed to the armory to do some sparring.

This left a good deal of the people with nothing to do except pop outside to go explore, or just sit around.

Which is what Hadrian and Mevia were doing.

"Well, so far being here has been... interesting, hasn't it Mevia?" Hadrian mumbled, slipping back into his announcer voice by accident. It was just a habit now, he'd noticed. He just tended to slip into acting very official and sports-announcer-y. So did Mevia, for that matter.

"Indeed, Hadrian, although some of the drama is a little too much," Mevia agreed, sitting on the other end of the couch extremely professionally. "I actually would prefer watching the Games. At least we know why the drama is happening."

Hadrian would've replied with something along the lines of "Actually, I rather like the drama, it keeps things interesting" (but, you know, in an announcer voice), but was interrupted by a glowing, blue... thing bouncing off the floor near his feet. "No..."

The two of them looked up to see a short girl with pale hair that was in a braid that went a few inches past her shoulders, hazel eyes (that was the only part of her that was not a glowing blue shade), a pair of glasses, and wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers chucking books over her shoulder.

Another girl watched from nearby, a girl with an oval face, almond-shaped brown eyes, and thick, shoulder-length brown hair. She wore a knitted sweater that was darker at the shoulders, before fading to white at the bottom. She also had gray sweatpants and leather boots on.

She also happened to be sitting directly between Hadrian and Mevia on the couch.

The two Old Builders exchanged faintly wide-eyed glances before looking back down at the two of them.

This girl's face was extremely amused as she watched the other girl throw books over her shoulder. Finally, she asked, voice tinged with amusement, "Why in the name of Notch are you throwing books everywhere, Becky? You know Ariza's going to be annoyed that you're tossing her books all over the floor."

'Becky' didn't respond, muttering as she kept throwing books over her shoulder. A rather large pile was starting to form on the floor. "No... no... argh, have I read all of these by now?!" she grumbled at length.

The other girl simply shrugged and chuckled a bit. "Well, you do read a lot."

"But, Cho, I can't have read all of these books by now, there's like over a thousand..."

'Cho' arched her eyebrows at Becky. "With your reading 25/8, you've probably already read every book in here, and in your private library- yes, I know about that," she nodded when Becky whipped around to look at Cho, "and Ariza does have better things to do than buy books every other weekend." Cho paused after a moment. "... well, I don't think she minds going to buy those books. But anyway, you've probably already read every book in here about six times over already."

"Seven times."

"And Toni's not even done with his first round. Besides, Ariza's next book run isn't for another week."

"But I need more reading material," Becky grumbled, going back to chucking books over her shoulder. Cho just shook her head in amusement again.

"Have you tried the basement?"

Becky dismissed that. "Yeah, but they're all like potion books or redstone encyclopedias or whatever. I want stuff like The Petals of a Bloody Rose..."

Cho got up from the sofa and went over to the shelf, poking through the books herself, trying to help Becky find a book that may not have been read yet. "Hey, have you seen this one yet? It looks like it's practically untouched-" she began, pulling said book off of the shelf and giving the cover a glance.

"... oh. Never mind. You don't want to. Don't read this one."

Cho was now the one to chuck the book over her shoulder in the direction of the fireplace, which was pretty much right next to the couch Hadrian and Mevia were sitting next to, but missed and hit the mantel instead.

Becky went over to go pick up the book. "Why not? What's so bad about this book? Don't waste a good book-" She leaned down and picked it up, giving both herself and Hadrian and Mevia a good look at the cover.

Which read 'Fifty Shades of Redstone'.

"... oh." Even though the two figures were glowing blue, it was pretty clear to see that Becky was starting to blush rather heavily. There was a long pause as the two of them started to vanish from sight.

"Gommie what the actual f**k-" Becky was cut off as she completely dissolved, along with the huge pile of books and Cho, who was also blushing rather heavily.

"..." The two Old Builders stared at the spot where the two of them had been. Hadrian finally looked at Mevia, more out of the corner of his eye than anything. "Did you see that, Mevia?"

"Yes, Hadrian. Yes, I did."


A/N: Hmm, another two things! Looks like we know what N.I.B. from that little library means now, huh?

Wonder what's going on with these ghosts, though?

Next chapter is also a filler. :3 Basically the 'part two' of this chapter.

RQTC: Are you flattered when you see someone including you or something you've mentioned before in a story, or are you offended? Just wondering.

It depends. If they've asked me for permission or credit me, then I don't mind at all (actually, I'm really flattered). If they pretend that they wrote it (or basically rip off the story without asking and then pretend it's theirs), I get really, really pissed about it.

OH! Also, don't forget that you can start voting for ships in the second part of the story now. Ships that you CANNOT vote for due to their already being in the story:

Lukesse (duh)
Jetra
Magnugaard
Harvor (it just hasn't been incorporated much yet)
Bromance!Luktra (I've been trying to include it but it's difficult xD)
Axelivia (just hints, since I don't know how to write it yet)

S4SH4L4SH4theGaMeR101: (laughs) / Yep x3 / Yay!

Kaos Ruin: (points at Chapter 42 and 43's A/N and comment replies) Yep xD / Yeah, it's a bit difficult to include.

LittleAngelbun: (laughs)

NinaNaranja: (laughs) Yeah, I procrastinate so bad. / True xD / :3

RapidSammi: (grins) Glad to see you like the cookie.

Darkbeast Dend: (laughs) Glad to hear you like it. / Um, I'm okay with school, but it's not my favorite thing. / Aww, well, I'm glad you like my story! / Uh, Enderman hybrid. Endermen are awesome.

Emily The Avenger: (grins) / (laughs) Yeah, I was like "Do I make this chapter super upsetting or super cheerful or what?" xD

LunarStarsMoon: No, that was intended to be amusing xD / No spoilers xD You can tell the future.

RebekahTPE: Yep xD / The feels train is usually just a really strong emotion that's not laughter for me. So I don't know xD / Phoenix. Phoenixes are amaaazing xD / Lol same tbh

sailor . mikuchan: I'm pretty sure you're not the only one there xD

Rabbits rule: (pats her on the back) / (laughs) No, no it wasn't, Kylik.

the indecisive bird: (laughs) I know, right?

CrystalTearsofFaith: (winks) / The headache was just because I was trying to think of ideas and do homework at the same time, to be honest xD Episodes 5 and 6 are now some of the ones I'm most hyped up to write. (bounces around)

J.M.M.: (laughs) Yep.

x.X. A.L. X.x