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Flying didn’t mean much to Zam before the Void. When wings were first added to Lifesteal, they didn’t mean much to him - they were nothing but an easy way to get around, maybe, and a nuisance to bind under armour for fights. He had understood why Planet had protested so vehemently against them, but not enough to add his voice to their complaints.
Wings were useful, nothing more, nothing less. That was what Zam had thought, until he and Mapicc began their stupid funny schemes to build void holes at spawn. It was just a trap - a dramatic way to kill people, a fun game. Until Mapicc had dared him to jump into the void and fly out again and Zam had agreed on the condition that Mapicc would do the same.
Flying didn’t mean much to Zam, until the first time he and Mapicc had thrown themselves headfirst into the darkness under spawn, unfurled their wings and flew. They had probably spent less than a minute under there, but soaring under the bedrock, swooping so close to the edges of eternity that Zam could dip his fingers into the death that waited for them, mouth wide open and hungry - Zam had realised that flight was freedom.
And there was nowhere better to fly than the void. Skirting the edges of death was a difficult game to play, but goddess did it make him feel alive. He died a few times, sure, fell into his own traps and was unable to fly out in time, but that was okay. The Void was hungry, and they hadn’t killed nearly enough people to satisfy it yet. He could sacrifice himself a little. It was worth it, for the freedom it gave him.
(He didn’t notice, at first, when the black-purple feathers began to grow in.)
And soon, the void holes expanded - now two, now three, all over the server, and their team expanded more: first Mapic, Zam, Bacon, then Jumper, Pentar. And their plans had grown, too. From a little chaos and murder, to a kilometre wide void hole mapped out under spawn, plans to take spawn itself away from this undeserving server. And as they prepared, Zam rarely hid his wings, swooping between TNT bundles with flint and steel in his hand, riding the thermals of the explosion, until under spawn an immense cavern waited.
The day they finished preparing the cave, the Void Ponies (or the Abyss to the rest of the server, who of course hated fun, Zam is looking at you , Minutetech) met in their base under the desert to go over the plans for the puzzle. Sitting still for the first time in a while, Zam couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably, wanting to do something. Around the Void Ponies, he didn’t have to hide behind a mask of mania, didn’t have to grin and giggle and remind everyone he was murderous, he was dangerous, he was fearsome. They already knew who he was, and they accepted him regardless.
But that just left him with a restless sort of energy, the urge to do something but he didn’t know what and it left him restlessly tapping his hand on his leg until -
Mapicc’s chair scraped against the obsidian floor, and Zam flinched despite it being so, so long since he’d had reason to fear Mapicc. That didn’t stop his heart pounding as Mapicc vaulted the table and pulled out the vacant chair next to Zam. Bacon had stopped talking now, staring at them both with a faintly annoyed, faintly amused look that was so typical for Bacon Zam wanted to start laughing.
“Your feathers are covered in dust, dumbass,” Mapicc said, poking him in the centre of his shoulders, just above where his wings met his body. “Doesn’t it hurt? And some of your feathers are a different colour. Is that… normal?”
Zam wrinkled his nose, uncomfortable with the attention from all four of his teammates now. “No, it’s fine Mapicc, I don’t -” It wasn’t really, now Mapicc had mentioned it he could feel every single grain of explosion debris in the barbs of his feathers, and shook his wings for a second to try and loosen it.
(He wasn’t sure what to think about the void speckled feathers, so didn’t answer Mapicc’s other question.)
“Yeah, I’m fixing it,” Mapicc said decidedly. “Bacon, why did you stop talking? Go on.”
Bacon sighed and pushed his glasses further up his nose. “Do you even know what I was talking about, Mapicc?” he asked.
“Not a clue!” Mapicc said cheerfully. “It’s your job to know this stuff. I’m just the muscle.”
Bacon rolled his eyes, but resumed his little speech / explanation / rant-on-the-uselessness-of-the-other-server-members, and Zam found his wing being yanked into position by Mapicc, no care from the other for how Zam muttered curses at him. Typical Mapicc. Can’t show care for someone in a normal person way because of course not, that wouldn’t be Mapicc would it -
It was still nice, though. Zam had forgotten what it was like to have a team that was there and present and caring. It wasn’t that Pangi was a bad teammate, but… it was nice to be able to rely on people.
And the next day Zam was incredibly glad of this fact when the Void Ponies stood on the ground of a destroyed Sanctuary and realised how incredibly fucked the server was.
“Void, we can’t ever catch a break, can we?” Pentar said, laughing shakily. Zam was suddenly aware of the fact that half their team were painfully, painfully new to the server. A world-ending threat made Zam think of the wormhole, of the Cleansing, of Clown and Team Chaos, of a thousand withers and -
Pentar and Jumper didn’t have that experience. He didn’t know how to word his complicated, protective thoughts towards them, but as the team flew towards Spawn, future-Ground Zero if Wemmbu got his way, he made sure to fly above them, his wings casting shadows over theirs. When they landed, argued with the others, those uncaring, dismissive players, he stayed with his team, until it was time for him and Mapicc to leave, to try and save not only their own plan but the server itself.
It felt weird being the hero.
And in the end they didn’t even get the chance. Minute and his team found the nuke but accidentally set it off (wasn’t Minute supposed to be good at this heroics thing, that was hardly good that was bordering on incompetent), Spawn was saved by the Aquarium 2.0 (and that one had rankled a little, but Zam guesses it was worth it to save Spawn before it's inevitable destruction. Only the Void is allowed to destroy Spawn, not some annoying purple-themed wannabe supervillain).
And now there they were, the Void Ponies, struggling to rebuild the Freakinator after it had blown herself up once again, all tired and achy from the day’s events but determined to get her working at least once.
They’d worked so hard on this project. They deserved at least a little success.
In his exhausted, sleep-loss haze Zam hadn’t noticed that Mapicc was even more distant than usual, until Pentar, handing over a stack of pistons, mentioned it, and once Zam had, he couldn’t stop noticing.
The next time Pentar and Jumper were out of earshot, and Bacon was god-knows-where working on the puzzles, Zam jumped off the machine and glided down to his friend.
“Sooooo Mapicc,” he said brightly, tapping him on the back and dancing out of the way of Mapicc’s half-hearted punch. “Why didn’t you tell us you’re injured?” he finished with an anxious smile.
Mapicc rolled his eyes. “I’m fine. Aren’t you supposed to be working on the bedrock breaker?”
“The Freakinator will be fine for a bit without me keeping an eye on it,” Zam said absent-mindedly, squinting at Mapicc. “What’s wrong?”
“ Nothing, ” Mapicc glared.
“I’ll go find Bacon,” Zam countered. “You don’t want to annoy him, right?”
“I’m not scared of fucking Bacon-and-waffles-Zero,” Mapicc scoffed, but sighed and extended a wing awkwardly. “I just sprained it when we were flying around the nether looking for Wemmbu.”
“And you continued to fly with it?”
“Zam. You have done far worse,” Mapicc said flatly.
Zam paused. That might be true, Void knew how Zam had been in Season 4, with his habit of fighting while injured and never accepting help. But Mapicc wasn’t Zam, though. And times had changed. There had been a time when seeing Mapicc’s horned silhouette would make Zam go pale with fear, when Zam’s golden figure would make Mapicc want to kill something, but those were long in the past.
They were a team, now.
“No more flying,” Zam said firmly. “I’ll tell Bacon if you do. You can collect pistons instead of Pentar.”
Mapicc glared at him. Zam held his gaze. Past-him would be proud - not only was he a fully fledged supervillain now, but he wasn’t scared of Mapicc and wasn’t that awesome? Zam had grown so much and he’d changed so much and Zam was getting off topic.
It would also be awesome if Mapicc would accept the way out he was being offered. Zam really didn’t really wanna hear another Bacon-rant today, even if it was aimed at Mapicc rather than the entire server.
Eventually, Mapicc rolled his eyes, and shouldered his way past Zam to yell at Pentar to swap roles.
Zam giggled, then flew back to the Freakinator. Another thing he’d missed about having a reliable team - being able to be the one who cared, not just accepting others' help but being able to be there for the people he cared about.
And he was - all through that week, trying to protect Mapicc from the Foundation as they carried out their tasks, following Jepexx to the other side of the world, destroying another nuke because of-fucking-course Wemmbu had another one, all the way to the final day when -
They failed.
The Foundation had won. No more void.
No more flights under bedrock, the first taste of freedom Zam had known in a long, long time. He’d known this was a possibility, of course, that the nature of Lifesteal was that you could never guarantee a win, but - he’d hoped. He’d hoped.
But this was it. The Void would forever stay hungry, the deaths of its own champions being the last lives it took. And Lifesteal would once more be safe with steady ground. A strong foundation. Hah. No more thrilling uncertainties, no more dances with death… maybe even no more Void Ponies.
Zam tried to look Jumper in the eye as they both stowed their armour in their e-chests, desperate for some sort of sign his teammates felt as lost as he did.
How had they lost, after all of this?
Falling didn’t feel like freedom, this time.
They all jumped together, a team till the end. It was difficult, knowing he was falling to death, not to open his wings and try to fly out, but he stopped himself with the knowledge that this was fair, this was what they’d chosen when they started this. He knew what a void death felt like - a burning cold, ice crackling over your limbs, colder and colder until nothing. It was nothing he hadn’t done before.
So now, as he crossed that threshold into death, did it feel different?
Instead of ice, the void was drowning him, oil thick and smothering his screams. It was wrong wrong wrong -
And when death finally took him and he respawned in a bedrock room, and he looked at his communicator and only saw four death messages instead of five, he realised why.
.
.
.
Flying didn’t mean much to Zam after it ended.
No access to the Void meant no more void-flights, no more dances with death.
No more Void Ponies. How could they remain a team, with one of their members a traitor from the start, and another just on the wrong side of uncaring, too dismissive of their plans?
Zam had thought they were something more.
He should have learnt the first time.
So flying became a chore once again. It was a way to get around, a way to scare people by swooping out of the sky and landing next to them giggling, because he showed his real self to the Void Ponies and look how that turned out. It was safer to be the crazy one, the scary one, the wildcard no one could trust.
And when the election was announced, he bound his wings and pulled on a suit, because Mapicc and Bacon were all he had left and he had to make an effort for them, even if the idea of a president sounded so incredibly wrong because Lifesteal was about freedom and whoever became president it would still be some form of control and they’d lost so much already and -
And then Redd and 4C won and were banned in the same day, and Zam found a use for his wings as they chased Captainsparklez across the server and they failed again and he swore he was losing feathers from the stress of this -
But Minute was president, and he was triumphant and sure of himself and Zam couldn’t let that be how this season ended so he put on a new persona, purple suit this time, red lipstick, green tint in his hair, colours clashing and now he didn’t bind his wings because who needs armour when you’re trying to break someone?
The fully void-black feathers only completed the look.