Philza's POV (the next morning)
Phil smiled. Today was the day. He had everything planned out, and he was sure that both y/n and Tommy didn't suspect a thing. He went about his day as normal, the only difference was the excitement he felt for what was going to happen in the afternoon. Around 1:50 pm, he opened up Discord on his PC and entered "vc 69", which Tommy had told him to join for to record the video. Philza sighed at the name, but then again, he wasn't surprised.
He unmuted his mic and turned up the volume on his headphones. He was happy to hear that y/n and Tommy were already talking to each other.
"Tommy, did you really feel the need to name this 'vc 69'?" y/n said, sounding like she was rolling her eyes but also like she was trying to suppress her laughter.
"Yep!" Tommy said proudly. "Oh, Phil's here! Hey b!tch!"
"Hi Phil!" y/n said quickly, trying to cover up Tommy's derogatory but customary greeting. "How are you today?"
"Hey big man, hey y/n. I'm doing well," Phil replied, ignoring the rude words Tommy had spoken to him.
"Can you both turn on your face cams? I'm going to start recording for the video," Tommy said, turning his face cam on and opening up the OBS software. Tommy wasn't going to stream this challenge, he was just recording it to put on his main YouTube channel.
Y/n turned her camera on and Phil did too. He noticed Tommy staring at y/n for a long moment, but she didn't seem to notice. Tommy announced that he was starting the recording and everyone joined the Minecraft world that he had sent in the Discord chat.
"In this video, we have to beat Minecraft, while solving the scavenger hunt in time! If we don't find the next clue in time and assemble the secret message together in The End, we die! With the help of my best friend, I am going to try and beat the game while solving this scavenger hunt, but the only catch is that it was designed by Philza!" Tommy said his intro so loudly he was practically yelling.
As Tommy went into his speech about how only a small percentage of his viewers are actually subscribed, Phil saw that y/n was looking at Tommy the way Tommy had been looking at her before. Phil smiled as he thought about what was about to happen. He had triple checked to make sure everything would turn out according to his plan.
"Alright mates, I'm kind of the moderator, I can help you with all the usual things to beat the game, but not the scavenger hunt part since I made that myself," Phil told the two teens. "Your clues won't make sense until you bring them all together in The End. For the first clue, I'll tell you the coordinates," he kept explaining how the scavenger hunt would work. It was time to start.
Your POV
You pressed the space bar on your keyboard as your character jumped up and down next to Tommy's in the plains biome where you had spawned. He made his character jump up and down next to yours.
Numbers appeared in the chat once Phil sent the coordinates where the first clues were. You made your way to the coordinates that were listed for your first clue until you found yourself in a forest biome. There was a chest right at the spot of the coordinates. Opening the chest, you found a book inside that said:
"Clue #2: Y/n
'both'
You have 5 minutes to find your next clue,
somewhere near flowers at y-coordinate 11"
Right after you opened the book, a timer popped up on your screen that began counting down from 5 minutes. If you didn't find the next clue in time, you would die and the game would be over. That's where the extra challenge came in.
"I FOUND MY FIRST CLUE!" Tommy screamed excitedly. "Oh sh!t, what's this timer for?"
Philza laughed. "I've got a bunch of wood for you, now I'm going for stone," he said and then explained the timer system to Tommy. "Better get a move on, mate!"
Philza has made the advancement: [Stone Age] the notification banner popped up as you rushed to reach y-coordinate 11.
You made it with time to spare and saw a meadow filled with flowers straight ahead of you, and as you looked to your right, there was the next chest. You still had 3 minutes left on the timer, so you didn't open it immediately. Instead, you stopped to collect some wood from nearby trees. When the timer was down to a minute and thirty seconds, you went over and opened the next chest, examining the book inside:
"Clue #4: Y/n
'a'
You have 8 minutes to find your next clue,
somewhere in a village near spawn"
A new timer popped up on your screen, and you started to run back to the spawn point.
"Phil, why are all the clues out of order? Did I miss one?" you asked him, a little bit confused.
"No, you're good," he replied. "Each of your clues has a bold word on it. At The End, you and Tommy will have to put your clues together and then it will make a message that makes sense. So you have the even numbered clues, and Tommy has the odd ones," Phil explained to you.
"Hey, did you just call me me odd?" Tommy sounded offended.
"Yes," Phil said, with absolutely no hesitation.
"F^ck you man!" Tommy said angrily, as Phil laughed uncontrollably. You couldn't stop yourself from laughing too. That was definitely going to be a key moment in the video.
"WHERE THE F^CK IS THE CHEST?" Tommy screamed through his microphone. "I ONLY HAVE 30 SECONDS LEFT- oh, there it is!"
"Tommy, you almost just lost the game for us!" you reminded him loudly. "Be more careful please!"
You continued to collect clues. In total, you only had 4 to find, but it took a while since they got harder and harder. The last one was literally in the Nether, which was a stressful experience to say the least. But somehow you did it! Once you finished you were left with a jumbled mess of words that made no sense together, but that was because you didn't have Tommy's clues with the other half of the message yet.
"Tommy, I'll meet you in the village near spawn once you find your last clue," you said, glancing over at his face on your screen.
"Ok y/n," he said, looking and sounding like he was concentrating hard. His eyebrows were furrowed and his lips were pressed together in a straight line. Instead of cracking jokes every 10 seconds, he was working silently, which was a rare occurrence.
"I've got enough ender pearls and blaze rods!" Phil commented. "Who's ready to go to The End?"
After another moment, Tommy let out an incoherent scream and you knew that meant he had found his last clue. There was no longer a timer counting down for either of you, but there would be another one once the final message was assembled. Tommy joined you and Phil at the village. Phil threw an ender pearl and everyone followed it until you found the stronghold.
"Want to do the honors?" Phil asked you, as he threw you the eyes of ender to place in the broken portal. You put all the eyes in place and the portal opened with a whooshing sound.
"Ok, we can do this," Tommy said, hyping you up. "Y/n and Tommy, the best duo ever!"
"Y/n and Tommy, the best team together!" you replied, smiling as you completed the rhyme you always said to each other. "Are you ready?"
"Hell yeah I am," Tommy responded confidently. He smiled into his camera and you felt your face heat up.
Your characters both jumped into the end portal at the same time.
"You're on your own from here, mates," Phil said, staying in the Discord call but not following you into the portal. "You have to put your secret message together in the empty book, and then the final timer will start for you to kill the Ender dragon."
In the area of The End where you spawned was the last chest, this time holding a book with no writing. No mobs were able to reach you in the spawn area, so you could focus on writing out the secret message. You were curious as to what the message was going to be, especially since the words on your clues made no sense together.
"Ok, c'mon, we can't kill the Ender dragon until the final message is put together, and we type it into this book," Tommy urged you. "I'll type it."
"I have the second clue, you have the first one, so you have to start," you reminded him.
"You..." he read, and you heard him type it in the book.
"Both..." you said.
"Have..." he continued.
"A..." you read your next clue.
"Crush..."
"On..."
"Each..."
"Other..." you finished the message but it didn't quite click.
"You both have a crush on each other?" Tommy put it all together, but the way he said it sounded like a question. "Wait, what-"
You heard Phil let out a small giggle and then the noise alerting you that he had disconnected from the vc. A new timer popped up in the corner of your screen, the numbers beginning to count down from 10 minutes.