"So I see you made some friends." Mrs. Murphey smiled wide. "Real, actual friends! I never thought I'd see the day!"
Kevin rolled his eyes from where he sat by his brother on the couch. "Mom..." He groaned.
"Seriously!" Mrs. Murphey exclaimed incredulously. "I remember back when you had those 'Ghost friends' of yours back when you were small."
"Mom..." Kevin said through gritted teeth. Jack and Venom snickered. Jack stood in the corner of the room, while Venom sat cross-legged on the floor, letting Kathy brush her mess of curly hair.
"I honestly never thought you'd grow up and make real live friends."
"Mom!"
Mrs. Murphey laughed. "Oh, Ken, you know I'm just teasing!" She laughed and walked into the next room.
For a moment, none of them spoke. "It's true though..." Aaron muttered under his breath. Kevin whacked him upside the head and he laughed. "Anyways, anyways, what have you been up to exactly?"
"You know, army stuff." Kevin replied. "We're on a mission that required a boat trip and the boat needed supplies, so..."
"Well, I'm glad your home safe!" Mrs. Murphey exclaimed as she happily reentered the room, bouncing slightly with each step just like Kevin did when he roared the base corridors in a good mood.
"Wait, wait!" Kathy said, suddenly interested in the conversation. "You said you were on a ship! Did you see any pirates?"
"Oh yeah, lots." Venom replied, cracking a small smile at Kathy's look of awe. "I was part of their crew for a few days, and even took command of their ship! Acting Captain, I was! She's called the Deceitful Hangman of the Seven Seas, by the way."
"Wait, really?" Thalia asked. "Kind of a long name, isn't it?"
"Yeah, sorta." Venom responded mildly. "Sometimes the crew called her D'hiss sometimes because the abbreviation is DHSS. Actually..." Venom reached into her satchel and pulled out a rolled-up map. "I borrowed a map of there's and it shows like all of Minecraftia, only non of it is labeled."
Aaron smirked. "Ah, so you have to fill it in yourself."
Venom grinned and nodded as she put the map back inside her satchel. "Precisely."
"What do you do exactly?" Mrs. Murphey asked, changing the subject. "All of you?"
Thalia eyed Kevin a bit uncertainly. "Well I'm a uh... Skylord."
Kevin rolled his eyes. "Thalia, I think we're safe here. You can drop the act." He looked to his mother and explained before letting Thalia go on. "We had to go undercover and Thalia's disguise was a Skylord."
"Ah."
"Well then, Thalia - if that is your real name - what do you really do?" Aaron asked teasingly.
"Firstly, yes it is my real name. Thalia Kal." Thalia replied. "I'm an honorary recruit of the Sky Army."
"Jack, rogue." Jack introduced with a slight bow of the head.
"Venom, Dual Legioneer." Venom said.
"Wait what?" Jack asked. "I thought you were in the Sky Army."
"Nope." Venom replied. "The Sky Army focuses on training strength and tactical cleverness. Definitely not me on either characteristic. Not to mention, the weapon of choice is a sword and shield which I'm mediocre with on a good day. The Dual Legion, however, teaches control and aggression. AND they encourage use of either an axe and/or a bow and arrow."
"Wait, what's the Dual Legion and why haven't I heard of it?" Thalia asked.
"Well, it's sort of lesser known than, say, the Sky Army, even though it's bigger than the Dead Army be a lot. That's mostly because A) The Dead Army has like fifty people in it, and B) The Dual Legion is headed by two people, hence the name-"
"Dual Legion." Thalia interrupted. "Who leads it?"
"Jerome Aceti and Mitch Hughes." Venom answered. "They worked so well together they decided to lead one division together after their mentor, Turner Rochelle, died years back in the Battle of Roma."
"Geez, how many factions are there?!" Jack asked a bit incredulously.
"Only five." Kevin replied. He counted on his fingers as he went on. "The Sky Army Recruits, the Dead Army Recruits, the Star Cadets, the Dual Legioneers, and the Meds&Sorcerers."
"Huh." Thalia said.
Aaron smirked at her. "Learn somethin' new every day, dontcha?"
Thalia just smiled back. Kathy looked up at her curiously. "What about that ginger friend of yours? What's he do?"
Thalia blinked, smile fading ever so slightly as she looked around and realized Logan was nowhere to be seen. "Uh... Well he's... Not here..."
Mrs. Murphey smiled. "I think he's on the roof, dear."
"Right, right. Um..." Thalia rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. "How exactly do I get there?"
"The ladder in the kitchen." Aaron said.
"Thanks." Thalia turned and headed over to the ladder.
As soon as she'd disappeared up it, Aaron pointed leisurely after her and looked at Kevin in confusion. "Are they together, or...?"
Kevin just shrugged in response.

Logan sat on the roof of the Murphey house. In his hands, he held a small contraption, riddled with bits of redstone and forming a shape like a pocket-sized mars rover. His tongue stuck out of his tightly closed lips ever-so-slightly as he concentrated hard on tweaking little parts in the contraption.
He was so focused on his work that he didn't realize Thalia had joined him until she spoke.
"Whatcha got there?" Logan yelped as he jumped in alarm. Thalia burst out laughing. "Oh my god, your face! Your fa-ha-haaaace!"
Logan rolled his eyes as he resettled himself. "Yeah, yeah, whatever, TK." He replied. "What's going on down there, anyways?"
Thalia shrugged. "Just a family reunion." She replied. "And apparently Venom has been here before."
"Yeah about a year ago, I think. Kevin went to visit this place by horseback and Venom wanted to go too."
"So she did?"
"So she did."
"Sounds like something she would do." Thalia said.
"Agreed." Logan replied.
Thalia eyed the little robots in the ginger's hands. "So what's that?"
"This?" Logan asked, holding it up. "To be honest, I don't know yet. Sometimes I just start to sculpt things without any real goal. I've been working on this when I have spare time on my hands since the mission started." Logan smiled to himself and looked at Thalia. "Wanna hear a funny story?"
Thalia grinned. "Okay?"
Logan's eyes flashed mischievously. "Okay." He replied. He looked down at his contraption again. "When I was in fourth grade, my robotics teacher told me to make a robot for the science fair. I did it in four hours and named it Optimus Prime."
Thalia laughed. "You so would."
"I so did." Logan smirked. "I wanted to be engineer when I grew up... Now, I wanna be an artist." He looked at Thalia. "What about you?"
Thalia blinked in surprise. "I don't really know." She replied. "I never really thought about it..."
"Y'know... You could always stay at the base. I mean, Toby seems to like it there and I'm sure the Commander certainly wouldn't mind."
Thalia smiled a bit sadly, her gaze locked on the sunset. "I can't, Ginger." She answered rather quietly. "I have things to do; places to go. I'm not one for settling down."
"Where will you go then?" Logan asked.
Thalia looked at him. "I'm not sure yet." She replied. "I used to want to go to Earth when I was little but now I don't really know."
"How long are you planning on staying then?"
Thalia shrugged. "I don't know, really..." She sighed. "I guess until I finish training or something."
Logan stared at her for a moment, his eyes concern as though he were debating something. Then he let out a rather frustrated, short huff and looked away.

"But the thing is, the pirate captain told me to use Kevin's knife, instead of my own. He tried to give me his real dagger, but I made him give me the trick knife."
"And that's about when I realized somebody was gonna pretend to die and when I saw the look on Venom's face I knew it would be me."
"Sure you did."
"I did!"
"Right, well..." Kevin blinked several times - why was everything going fuzzy? "Then I became part... Eventually managed to kill the captain and take... There it wasn't hard to take control of the crew and make a detour..." Kevin lowered his head and rubbed his eyes, but it didn't make much of a difference. His vision was still going bad and now the voices he heard were fading in and out. "From there, we... For supplies... Leave in the morning I guess..."
All at once, Venom's voice faded out entirely, only to be replaced by a horribly familiar voice. "Embrace it, Murphey..."
"No!" Kevin hissed in alarm. He looked around as sight and sound replenished themselves around them. He realized no one had noticed him and slowly climbed to his feet. Remaining as silent as possible, he crept out the back door and into the dark woods behind the house.