Chapter Text
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
Another chaotic day on the Unstable smp.
Flame just got out of a fight against some bandits that had been hunting him down for days now. The knowledge of why were they even doing that was still not known to him.
Usually he can take multiple players at once. Hell, he is peerless in taking outnumbered fights. It’s what he always does. But this time it was different; There were three of them at first. He was popping their totems, slowly draining their resources. But suddenly, another two players jumped in and caught him off guard.
He never runs from a fight unless it’s necessary.
But this time he had to, to save his own life.
Flame bursted into his base, shutting the door behind him and quickly ran towards his room. But before he got there, in all the panic and adrenaline his legs betrayed him and he tumbled on ground.
He collapsed, landing on his knees and hands, breathing heavily. He could feel his whole body burning, heart racing and the exhaustion weighing down on him. His chest felt heavy, and his hands shook.
Spitting out blood, he touched his lower lip to see a blood stain on his finger afterwards. But that shall be the least of his worries right now, considering his whole body was badly injured with bruises on his stomach and scratches on his arms.
Flame felt so stupid for letting himself lower his guard like that. Such a simple rule- never lower your guard no matter what. He could’ve easily beaten them all if he was paying more attention. So much free loot too. Sigh…
Looking forward, there was a shulker box ahead of him just couple of blocks away. He was 99% sure there were golden apples in that. If he could just-…
Pathetically, he held out his hand trying to reach for it, and failed miserably. His whole body hit the floor, face first. He groaned in both pain and annoyance lifting his head up.
Soooo clooooosee…If he could just get up and grab the golden apples. But he was too exhausted for that right now and he damn well knew that.
With his right arm he tried moving himself forward, moving like a block.
Great, just another ten more blocks.
He got so desperate for reaching that shulker box that he almost forgot about how badly the injuries hurt. Only almost tho. Because as soon as he crawled to the second block, an insufferable pain shot through his body and he quietly groused in pain, rolling onto his back.
Gripping his stomach like a lifeline, as if it would help the pain, he stared up at the ceiling of his base. As he laid on his back, his breathing was a ragged, painful gasps with not enough time to inhale.
The spruce wooden ceiling of his home was the very last thing he saw before passing out in his own base.
── ⋆⋅彡⋅⋆ ──
The heavy boots crushed the ground beneath them. Tail lashing behind him, his hand always on the handle of a sword prepared to fight and an orange blindfold over his eyes was ManePear, happening to stumble upon Flame’s base.
(Definitely didn’t threaten multiple players just to find out where the base is, and 100% found it by pure luck).
The outside of the base looked…Hm, how to put this lightly. It looked laughable. Like- some silverfish xp farm and bunch of cows, and that’s it? That’s a base for a chungie compared to Mane’s old tree house. Flame as the strongest player should be truly embarrassed for where he lived.
He finally reached the door and pushed it open. The inside of the base was as bad as the outside, maybe even wors-
Okay, maybe let’s stop with the base slander…
Mane immediately noticed Flame lying on the floor, unconscious and very obviously injured. Mane wondered how there was no blood track or anything, huh.
He took few steps further into the base, standing above the other player’s unmoving body. He crouched down to take a better look at the injuries. He saw few minor scratches on his face and his lips bleeding. Then a bit more scratches on arms that were bleeding unlike the ones on his face. Flame’s clothes covering his stomach was soaked in blood, so Mane assumed there is some nasty bruise there underneath it.
ManePear got back up, hands on his hips scanning the body as if he was trying to analyze something. He was just thinking about what could’ve happened.
Not to be an immortal demon glazer, but it was strange to think that Flame actually lost in a fight, outnumbered one also. So, something must’ve gone very wrong for Flame to be in this state.
He tapped his foot against the wooden floor thinking and looking around the base. For second he looked back at FlameFrags, and after very careful thinking and a lot of deliberating he decided to brew some potions for himself.
He walked past the body on the floor towards the brewing stands, and started doing his work. He found bunch of brewing materials for the potions in the shulker boxes that were just lain around and also in chests. He made some strength potions and especially speed potions.
By the time he was almost done, Flame decided to come back to his consciousness and woke up. He sat up looking around a bit confused, until he stopped looking at ManePear. It was hard to read his expression because his eyes were covered with a black blindfold, but Mane could tell he was surprised.
“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Mane mocked.
“Wh-…what…” Flame could only mumble. ManePear noticed his hand twitched as if he was about to reach for his sword but then he realized he doesn’t have it-
Wait. Why doesn’t Flame have his sword. Whatever, that’s not important right now.
Mane smiled as his tail flickered behind him and he bent over his knees as he spoke. “How is little Flamey doing, being the ‘strongest’ player, hmm?”
Flame didn’t say anything, just sitting there in silence. He clutched his side and whined quietly from pain. Clearly didn’t have time to be even be annoyed about ManePear’s comments.
Even tho Mane knew he shouldn’t care, since he didn’t really have reason anymore, he still somehow felt a pang of worry wash over him as he looked just a bit longer at Flame fighting against the pain.
He couldn’t exactly tell why he felt this way. But despite how much he wanted to laugh at the others suffering- he handed him golden apples instead.
Flame took them without saying a word, but he seemed a bit suspicious of this small action. Nonetheless, he ate them and his injuries started to heal.
Mane watched as he slowly stood up. Flame let out a shaky exhale, and it was clear that he was still weakened even tho his wounds were healing. But ManePear didn’t draw his sword to attack, no, at least not yet.
“So like..” Flame broke the silence, titling his head back a bit, probably in some poor attempt of intimidation. “Why are you here, bro.”