𝓌𝑒 𝒻𝑒𝓁𝓁 𝒾𝓃 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝒾𝓃 𝑜𝒸𝓉𝑜𝒷𝑒𝓇 ; 𝓈𝒶𝓅𝓃𝑜𝒷𝓁𝒶𝒹𝑒

[iv.] ;; 𝒶𝓅𝓇𝒾𝓁

the first of april - april fool's day - is a holiday nick takes very seriously. playing pranks on people is one of his favourite things to do, whether it be something small or an absolute huge one, he loves doing it. he doesn't know any good pranks to play, though, or anyone to play a prank on, so he opts for staying in bed, googling prank ideas. he comes across a few good ones - nothing really too good, though, so he skips past them, kicking his feet back and forth as he browses google.

a discord notification snaps him out of looking at google - it's from george, and nick belatedly realises he's supposed to be recording a minecraft video with them today.

georgebeenfound
you coming?
or did you forget we were supposed to rec today

sippycup
ohh yeah, i'm on my way. forgot i was supposed to be recording today, that's on me.
i'll be on in a minute.

he shuts his laptop, stumbles over to his monitor, sits down in his chair and boots up his screens. he quickly taps in his password, opens discord and joins the group call as he settles his headphones over his ears.

"yo, what's up?" he says, and george and clay both laugh, their own keyboards tapping away. they don't answer his question, so he simply moves on. "minecraft, right?"

"yeah, go ahead and log on! me 'nd georgie over here'll join in soon, we're just taking care of something really quickly." the tone of clay's voice makes nick think they're going to play a prank on him in minecraft, but he loads into the world and sees nothing visibly wrong, so he goes back to what he was doing the last time they played on the server - building a house. george and clay load in a few moments later, though there's something odd about them. he can't tell what, so he simply just continues to build; he's almost done, just needs to build a roof, when clay hops over to him, offering to help.

strange. clay hardly ever offers to help nick with building his home. that's usually george.

nevertheless, he shrugs, says ok, and gives clay the wooden blocks he needs to help nick with his roof, and they get to work. he keeps an eye on clay - the other seems silent, almost too silent, it's kind of suspicious, but after a while he gets used to it. george is nowhere to be found in their minecraft realm, not until he sees what pops up in the game's chat.

georgenotfound has made the advancement [we need to go deeper.]

"what? dream, why's george going into the nether?" george giggles and clay does his signature wheeze, pointedly ignoring nick's question, and he huffs in confusion, climbing down from the side of his house. "dre-" he starts, then huffs, closes his mouth, runs off to go find george.

dream's keyboard clicks audibly with how forceful he's slamming his fingers on the keys and how fast he's typing, and nick expects to see a message either in game or on discord, but he gets neither. they must be messaging each other, nick thinks to himself, but why? they're all in the same voice call –

oh. oh. he sees what's happening here.

they're probably talking about something they don't want nick hearing, which is fine with him, he didn't wanna hear it anyway. george laughs, muffled in his sleeve. "sapnap, come to the nether with us," he says, and nick huffs.

"why?" clay cackles, george sputters, and nick smiles, sitting back in his chair.

"uh- just come! we're going to free the end, remember?" george finally says, stifling giggles, "dream is coming too,"

"well, if dream's coming, i definitely don't want to go!" he says, invoking another giggle and wheeze from the two, but he eventually gives in, manoeuvring through the biome to find the spot at the cords george dropped in the chat to the nether portal, going through and waiting to load in. when it does finally load, there's.. nothing there. which is good. nick breathes a sigh of relief and taps away at his keyboard, moving the character he controls forward and deeper into the nether. "we gunna go find a fortress or somethin'? get the rods so we c'n get outta here 'nd then find the stronghold?" there's not an immediate answer, the loud clacking of george and clay's keyboards filling the silence. he huffs once more and leaves without them, jumping around the nether in search of a nether fortress, and it takes him almost thirty minutes to find one.