Chapter Text
Logan wakes up to the smell of chocolate chip cookies. Sighing and looking over at his clock, he sees it’s hours before his alarm is due to go off. Sighing once again, he gets up and puts on his glasses and some sleep pants to go out to the kitchen.
Rubbing his eyes under his glasses against the harsh kitchen light, he yawns, “King? What are you doing up?”
“Logan! I could say the same to you, kiddo! Oh and call me Patton, King is much too formal from you!” Patton calls behind him, not even looking away from the new cookie dough he was making despite there already being a batch of cookies in the oven.
Logan sighs, “Your majesty, the smell of chocolate chip cookies woke me up. Are you stress baking again? You must know that a good night’s rest is essential, especially for your title, and-”
“Lo, it’s fine! Just go back and lay down, I’m fine.”
“Please, Ki- er, Patton, I suppose. What is wrong?”
Patton sighs, “Lo, I… Roman’s having nightmares again.”
That made Logan wake up a bit more, “About Remus?”
Patton nodded finally turning around to look at Logan. When he did so, however, he noticed the shirt Logan was wearing. Barely holding in a laugh, Patton says, “Nice shirt, Lo!”
Logan’s eyes widen as he looks down at his shirt, a black tee with a purple cloud with lighting coming out of it, a huge collage of skulls littering the entire background of the shirt. Logan blushes and crosses his arms.
“If I do more research to try and find Remus tomorrow, er- later today technically, will you go to bed?”
“Really?” Patton’s tear-filled eyes seemed to sparkle, “You’d do that for me?? For us???”
“I am the Royal Scientist, your- er, Patton. It is, quite frankly, my job.”
“But you had all those other projects you were working on, right? That special jam?”
“Yes, but it is my duty and pleasure to help you and King Roman with this, especially if it is ultimately causing you harm.”
“Thank you, Lo!” Patton runs up and hugs Logan, who freezes in his hold. He pulls back, hands on Logan’s shoulders, “As soon as these cookies are out of the oven, I’ll-”
“No need, your majesty, I’ll listen for the ding and put the other cookie dough in the fridge. You go to sleep, you can have some when you and King Roman wake up.”
After a bit more convincing, Patton eventually goes to bed.
Logan sighs and puts the dough in the fridge before going back to his room, deciding to leave the shirt on but putting a black dress shirt over top of it. He also changes into dress pants, puts on socks, brushes his hair, and puts on his blue striped tie.
He gets back into the kitchen immediately before hearing the timer go off, taking the cookies out of the oven to cool. Next, he goes into his lab, knowing he couldn’t get back to sleep even if he tried.
Around noon later that day, Logan is sitting down, looking into another feather borrowed from Roman with a microscope before wheeling over to another microscope with a raven’s feather to inspect the differences. He looks intently before moving to scribble down some notes about the differences when he’s pulled out of his research by a loud banging on the window.
Raising a brow, Logan is in the top of the highest tower in the castle, after all, he pulls back his curtains. His eyes widen as he’s greeted by a floating humanoid with a log cloak flowing around them, long gloves, tall boots, and purple hair peaking out. Frantically opening his window, for once thankful that his windows open inward as the purple-haired boy falls in.
Logan leaves him for a moment to close the windows and the curtains before gathering the boy up into his arms, fussing over his red and blistered chin, “Virgil, what were you thinking? It’s the middle of the day, you could’ve died! Here,” he lifts Virgil up before gently placing him on the couch he has in his lab for late nights, going to grab some cream for his wounds.
“Lo… I… I found-”
“Shhh, you can tell me in a bit. Have you drank anything recently?”
Virgil avoids eye contact as he shakes his head.
“Virgil, not even an apple?”
Virgil shakes his head again.
Logan sighs, grumbling, “why did I even invent an apple tree that doesn’t need to be watered,” before moving to the kitchenette in the corner of the room. He pulls out a bowl of strawberries from the fridge, bringing them back to Virgil, “here”
Virgil’s eyes dilate at the sight of the fruit, grabbing the bowl and picking one up, putting an inhumanly pointy tooth into one of them. A sucking noise emanates from him as the red starts to get sucked out of the small fruit, turning it into a light grey and slightly shriveled-up version of what it was. He continues on to finish the whole bowl within about a minute.
Without making eye contact, Virgil mumbles, “Thank you Logan”
“You’re welcome, Virgil. You really have to start taking better care of yourself.”
“I know, Lo,” Virgil mumbled before sitting up, folding his blanket, and draping it across the back of the couch.
Logan rolled his desk chair over to be across from Virgil on the couch before sitting down on it, “Well, what did you find?”
“Lo, you’ll never believe it! I found Janus .”
“I’m sorry, who?”
“Janus! Janus the Sky Witch!”
“Ah yes, I remember now. You’ve been looking for him for quite some time now, haven’t you?”
“Yes, and now that I’ve finally found him I need your help! You’re the only one who can help me get into his lair.”
“Why me?” Logan crossed his arms, “Aren’t I just some nerd who’s full of himself? Why would you want my help?”
“Look, Lo, I’m really sorry about what I said, ok? I, uh, tailed her to an enchanted forest, but it's all jammed up with barrier spells.”
“ Uh-huh .”
“Well, you love getting out your big brain and... and... I just thought it'd be cool to spend some quality time with you,” Virgil sighs, “I need your help, okay?”
“Why are you even so interested in finding Janus?”
“It's just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really important to me.”
“Whoa, ok, let me just-”
“This bag has everything you need, let’s go!” Virgil said, excitedly shoving a bag in Logan’s arms.
“Um, sure, but-”
“Hold on to that but, Lo!” Virgil uses his strength and quickly floats out the window, Logan with his backpack in hand.
They fly for about thirty minutes before they reach their destination, the enchanted forest. Virgil floats down and places Logan down before settling onto the ground himself. Now in the shade, he pulls down his hood.
There’s a large wall of vines in front of them, and Virgil tries to go through it by transforming his hands into large claws. Clawing and clawing at the vines, he groans as they grow back for the tenth time, “Why. Isn’t. This. Working!”
“Virgil, calm down,” Logan gently places a hand on Virgil’s shoulder, causing him to calm a bit and detransform his hands. Logan pulls out a thimble with flashing lights and puts it on, rubbing his finger with the thimble on the vines, “It’s a Sleeping Gate Bramble.”
“How do we kill it?”
“We must take the path of least resistance.”
Virgil pauses and puts his hands on his hips, looking around, “Alright, where is it?”
Logan chuckles to himself, “It’s in here,” he points to his head, “and in here,” he places his other hand over his heart. “Now, take a deep breath,” he leans back on the vines, “and be passive .” After Logan says this, the vines glow around his body and he falls through them to the other side.
Virgil grumbles something to himself before lying back on the vines. He aggressively breathes in through his nose, getting angry and banging his head back on the vines repeatedly when it doesn’t budge, “Argh!”
Logan pokes his head back through the Bramble, “Hello Virgil. Trouble relaxing?” Virgil grunts. “How about a cup of chamomile tea?” Logan brings out a steaming cup of tea in a red mug, seemingly from nowhere.
Virgil groans and sucks the red out of the mug, leaving the mug on one side as he finally relaxes enough to get through the Sleeping Gate Bramble.
Virgil looks around at all the neon glowing mushrooms growing on the forest floor beyond the gate, “Oh cool! This is wild.”
“Certainly,” Logan holds up a compass, only to open it up and see projections of charts madly changing come out of it, “My googoomamameter is going babies. And look at my watch!”
Virgil looks at Logan’s watch, “It’s, uh… blue.”
“It’s running backward. There is a very high concentration of magic here.”
Virgil looks around and sighs, “Come on, Lo. We don’t got all night.” Virgil drags Logan further into the forest by his arm.
They walk deeper and deeper into the forest before Virgil stops and sniffs the air. A black feather floats down in front of his face and he hisses in response.
The two look up to see countless wooden carvings of heads of various creatures hanging from the trees.
Logan adjusts his glasses, “What are those things?”
Virgil grumbles, “Totem cairns. Of course.”
A loud caw makes them look to the left, seeing a giant feathered humanoid with huge wings sitting in a tree.
Virgil points, “That’s Janus’ familiar!”
Logan hums and jots down some notes in a journal, looking up when the familiar starts to fly away, a feather falling from where it was. Logan tries to catch the feather, but it goes right through his hand and as soon as it touches the ground, it disintegrates. “What…”
From where the feather touched the ground, a light purple stuffed animal of a spider rises up and Virgil gasps, tears forming in his eyes. All eight of its legs seem to be made of a different fabric, seven of its eyes different buttons(or things used as a button), and one of them is essentially just a hole with stuffing coming out, which clearly used to be an eye. Its stitched-in mouth manages to open, however, saying in a stitched-together voice, “Virgie! It’s me!”
Virgil holds his arms out, Logan backing away slowly, “Ragno!”
“Yeah, boi! What took you so long? I thought you gave up on me!”
Logan glares over at Virgil, “Your teddy bear ?”
Still addressing Ragno, Virgil starts to walk towards it, “I’m sorry buddy!”
Logan grabs Virgil’s arm, “Hey, wait!”
Virgil snaps over to Logan, “What?!” his tempest tongue coming out as his face becomes monstrous and bat-like.
“Virgil, how old are you? It’s a trick, right? Come on!”
Ragno speaks up again, “Help me out, dum-dum!” he starts to clearly fake crying, “Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo!”
Virgil aggressively shoves Logan off, “Get off!!” He goes forward to Ragno again.
“No!” Logan tackles Virgil to stop him.
Virgil grunts, “Logan!”
Logan throws the googoomamameter at Ragno, causing Ragno to disappear and wooden pikes to thrust upward through the ground where he was.
Virgil looks up with tear-filled eyes, “You killed him?”
They both get up as Logan says, “Don’t be,” he pulls out a flashcard, “dense! Ragno can’t even talk. Snap out of it, Virgil!”
Virgil mumbles, “He’s been with a witch this whole time, maybe he can talk now.”
Logan sighs and takes off his glasses to clean them, “That’s seriously what this is about? Rescuing your old teddy bear ?”
“It’s a spider! Ugh, this is why I didn’t tell you! You probably wouldn’t’ve even come.”
“Uh, yeah . Roman could make you a new Ragno easily,” Logan laughs, “Even I could make you a new one. Probably a better one, too. He could actually talk! Have emotions and thought, I’ve been working on a prototype to create more advanced citizens.”
“I’m not getting a new Ragno. There’s only one Ragno.”
“It’s just a doll .”
Virgil raises his fist and aims for Logan’s face, “See this?” he starts to move it around in circles and make airplane sounds, “Vroooom”
Logan crossed his arms, unimpressed, “What’s that? Are you going to punch me?”
“It’s coming in for a landing, What’cha gonna do, Lo? Gonna keep dissing Ragno?”
Logan sighs before saying in an even more monotone voice than usual, “I’m sorry Virgil. Let’s go find Ragno.”
Virgil pulls his arm back, “Disengage.”
Looking off into the direction the familiar went, Logan states, “We should track that familiar.”
“Right.”
Logan looks out into the trees, focusing intently, “Hmm,” his eyes widen, “There,” he points, “are some broken branches. It left a trail.”
“I see it,” Virgil quickly flies after the trail.
“Wait!” Logan pants, “This backpack is extremely heavy!”
Virgil ignores him and keeps flying, shielding his face against the branches.
Logan huffs as he digs through his bag, digging out a light blue ray gun. Mumbling a “Dammit, Virgil,” he uses the gun to create a large cloud with a face.
“Heheh, I’m alive now!”
“Cloud, lower,” the cloud obeys, allowing Logan to get on it, “Cloud-”
“I’m the only one here, man! I know you’re talking to me.”
Logan sighs, “Follow that vampire.”
The cloud grumbles, “A please would be nice,” but complies anyway, chasing after Virgil.
Logan yells, “Dammit Virgil! I thought you needed my help!”
“Stop.” Logan has the cloud stop just before a pond, “Huh,” looking into the pond, he sees the reflection of a house in the sky. Looking up, nothing is there. “Nice trick, Janus.” He jumps off the cloud to dive straight into the water, yelling to the cloud, “Stay here! Please!”
He swims straight down to arrive on the other side, falling down and gripping the doorknob, opening it to get inside.
Looking around the house, he sees an odd layout of a large foyer surrounding a huge chandelier.
“Alright, Logan, use your brain.” He looks around, spotting a handprint on the top of a doorframe, a spiderweb in the opening to an attic, peeling wallpaper under a window, a broken piece of the railing on the stairs, one of the candles on the chandelier is out, a wrapped up horn on a set of armor, a cracked keyhole on a doorknob, and one off-center picture matching the images of Janus he’d seen before. Pointing to everything he noticed, he says to himself, “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, wait… yes.” Finally settling on the one candle on the chandelier which is out. He quickly jumps around the house to balance on the chandelier, waiting for it to settle before climbing up the chain.
Meanwhile, Virgil is walking through one of the many halls in the maze of a house. Virgil calls out, “Where are you, Janus, you creep?” As he’s walking, the hallway suddenly becomes too small. He bumps his head on the ceiling, “Oof,” he notices a small door at the end of the hallway which steadily gets smaller and smaller, “What?” he crouches down to open the door, revealing Ragno, “Ragno!” he opens his arms to hug the spider. Still, Ragno falls back and starts transforming into the familiar from before, “No!”
The raven person caws loudly before Virgil yells, “You again! I’ll kill you! Give me Rag-” he’s cut off as the familiar slams the door in his face. Groaning, he opens the door again and follows the familiar back to the foyer of the house. Virgil kicks the familiar in the chest, making him fly across the room into the wall. He grunts and gets up, shaking off some feathers before preparing for a fight.
In the attic, Logan is looking through boxes and boxes of various items.
Logan sighs, “This must be all of his stolen things. Ugh, what a creep,” he lifts a toy car , scoffing, “Ford Broncus.” He continues to look around, spotting a box labeled My Privates . “‘My Privates’? That must be it.” He climbs up piles of junk to get to the box, accidentally falling and taking down that box and a different box with him, “Whoa! What the—?” he picks up a paper that fell from the box, “Invoices? Receipts?” reading it aloud, “‘Zumma zoom bleep blop for the purchase of Ragno.’ What?!”
He looks up to see Janus the Sky Witch levitating toward him. “That's my private box. Janus’ mitts only, ya goof.”
“So you purchased Ragno? From ‘some weenus named Remy’?”
Janus cackles, “That's right. He was a weenus so I wrote it on there as my personal joke.” he pulls the real Ragno out from his cloak, “But the sale is still legit. Ragno's mine! His body's all juice-logged with sentimental affection—a savory spell spice. So get out of my face, alright?”
“Where’s Virgil?”
“He’s busy with my familiar. I knew that tranch wouldn’t respect my proof of purchase. So, what about you, Teach?”
“By the laws of my kingdom, I must honor the exchange of goods for legal tender. But I'm not leaving without Ragno.”
Janus cackles again, “So what are you gonna do about it?”
Logan makes a fist with one hand and starts to unbutton the buttons on his sleeve, “I'll tell you what I'm gonna do.”
Virgil is still fighting the familiar and just manages to knock it out before Logan comes down from the chandelier. “Virgil!” Logan throws Ragno to him.
Virgil aggressively drops the familiar and catches Ragno, “Ragno! I’m here, buddy!” Virgil’s eyes fill with tears as he hugs Ragno tight. He looks up to Logan, “How did you-”
“I took care of it,” Logan firmly states before jumping around and down, jumping right on the knocked-out familiar’s back. “Let’s go.”
Virgil nods and transforms into a giant bat-like monster, kneeling to let Logan climb on his back before punching through the door and flying out, right back through the pond.
“Whoa!” Logan’s cloud exclaims at the splash of the two coming out of the water.
“Get on the cloud, Virgil, it can take us home,” Logan says to a detransformed Virgil panting on the shore.
“Whoa, buddy? It ?! Excuse you, I use they/them pronouns.”
Logan rolls his eyes, “Sorry. Virgil, get on the cloud. They’ll take us home.”
Virgil laughs and gets on before promptly passing out as the cloud took them all home to Logan’s lab in the castle.
Janus watched them leave through a magic mirror before hearing grunts and dragging noises from behind him. He turns around to see his familiar dragging himself in with his hands on the ground, grunting out, “They got away with your,” he grunts again, “Ragno.” before lying down and transforming into a normal man with pitch-black hair with a white streak in the front and a mustache on his face.
Janus cackles, “Well, duh! I let them!”
“You what?”
“I made a trade... for this!” Janus pulls out the shirt Logan wore under his dress shirt today, rubbing it on his face, “Mmmmm…” he sniffs the fabric deeply, “Sentimental freshness! Ah, the psychic resonance on Ragno is nothing,” he rips a sleeve off the shirt, “compared to this baby!” He tosses the sleeve into the cauldron, causing a giant yellow flame to burst out of it, “Whoo!” he cackles once again.
The raven person sighs, “Look, Janus, I don’t wanna be your familiar anymore. I wanna find my br-”
“Shut up and get me some paper, I’m going to write up a receipt.”
The raven person sighs again and forces himself to get up, limping out of the room to do as Janus asked.