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It was going too well to not end badly.
Admidst the hide-and-fight game of Lifesteal, Jumper has grown used to the twist in the good, the 'but' with the luck and always being the butt of some twisted fantasy of something larger than life.
As any time out of cahracter does, the past few weeks with Couriway have suceeded in almost making her forget everything Lifestela has ever taught her once again.
Perhaps because learning to speedrun feels less more like hanging out with her friends, where nothing happens and everything is joyous and fun and well. Perhaps she has forgotten that this is still a server where injuries can happen.
It would be wrong to say that Jumper is new to the concept of injury — dramatically wrong, in fact — but the version of her who is, that version of her isn't the one she is and is now.
Right now, she is herself. She is Jumper, who likes tricking people and learning new things, who wants to learn th ezero cycle and make Couriway proud.
The version who knows what to do, watching her arrow ricochet of the dragon's wing and spear Couriway's indtead, shotting him from the sky... That version of Jumper is a different one.
She flinches as the dragon roars.
A moment later, she wishe sit hadn't stopped.
That moment later, she hears the snap of bones and Couriway hits the ground.
Jumper glances down from her platform, clutching the edge of it. Suddenly intimately aware of the height of it all.
If she falls, she'll die.
And Couriway didn't fall quite as far, but — Jumper watches as his right wing twitches. The left one is bend at a grotesque angle.
Slowly, blood stains the golden feathers and spreads out over the redstone. Like watercolor, she thinks vaguely. It reminds her of Squiddo attempting to teach her after season Five.
She has to get down.
It feels as if the years of playing have suddenly been eroded from her mind. Nothing remains.
Only the dragon roars and the sound of breaking bones playes on repeat, and Couriway's wing twitches and Junper trembles atop her high tower.
Y-Level 95.
Jumper has never been afriad of heights.
She thinks she might be now.
What is she supposed to do now?
'Get down', a part of her mind screams, 'Help him!'.
But how?
Her hands shake violently as Jumper tears them away from her iron grip on the block edge.
Landing on top of Couriway with sounds like a really bad idea. So that's not a risk Jumper should take.
And he probably shouldn't be soaked with probably contaminated water, so that's out?
She doesn't have cobwebs.
The dragon roars again, different this time, and Jumper recognizes — the crystal beam rips away and the dragon flies of — of towards Couriway.
Finally, Jumper's brain locks in. She scales down the tower with more of her netherbricks. When she gets down, her right ankle hurts, her palms and kness are scraped.
Normally, she is good at parcour.
It was the strenght listed on her selection during the draft! She remembers Couriway talking about it, how parcour and speedrunning shared a lot of mechanics.
Even that has left her now, as she drags Couriway towards the edge of the island. Just away. Away from the dragon.
This close, she can hear him groan. Whimper in pain as Jumper lifts him the half of the way she can manage, the injured wing grinding along on the floor.
As Jumper looks over her shoulder at the dragon, she sees the trail of blood Couri's wing leaves behind.
Jumper still has to one-cycle this before they can leave.
There's a clump in her throat and tears in her eyes.
Couriway is supposed to coach her through this.
His body falls onto the endstone wirh a thud and a murmur of pain.
Jumper stares him down.
What is she supposed to do now? Couriway is supposed to tell her when the perch comes and when to set of her explosives. What side the set-up has to be. If the dragon is the right way around.
"I don't know what to do", she confesses to his limp body. At least there still is a body.
At home, at Lifesteal, the code is modified to make sure that serious injuries aren't made worse during respawn. That everything is pieced together the right away around.
Jumper doubts that this practice map has a death protection like that.
She swallows.
'Get yourself together', Jumper says in her mind, then repeats outloud for good measure.
It doens't help, only makes her more aware of the silence. The lack of a response.
Loocking down at Couriway again, she finds his eyes open.
Open.
"Couri!", she exclaims, so relieved, so relieved she could cry, and she is crying, clutching his hand with both of hers and bawling her yes out.
"I didn't know what to do!", she cries out between sobs.
"Jumper...?", Cpuriway mutters sluggishly. Wrong. He sounds dazed, confused. Is slurring his words. "Wha— what happen—ned?"
A cold shower of devastation rains upon her like a punch to the face.
Couriway aquints even in the minimal light and, though Jumper didn't notice at first, his left pupil is blown wide open, a void swallowing the warm, the golden, the gentle brown of his eyes. But the right pupil is a pin-prick, that eye looking unnaturally bright.
A concussion, probably. Jumper knows her concussions. Especially since the Mace came around, they've been seen in enourmous amounts on Lifesteal.
It also tells Jumper that leaving Couriway alone is a bad idea if he seizes or chokes on his own vomit, but — the dragon perches.
She glences back and fourth, then throws an ender pearl bedore pulling Couriway into the recovery position, not without drawing more whimpers of pain from his bloodless lips as his wing is jostles.
Then Jumper is jerked away.
She improvises the set-up as the dragon comes clsoer and closer and — the first bed explodes.
The second one. The third.
Then she's out.
Another three she used during the zero cycle.
Jumper turn so fast the world spins even afterwards, pulling out her axe and jumping up to slash at the dragon's throat, cutting away scale after scale and heart after heart, slowly carving her way towards victory.
Their way towards the end of this misery and the way to get Couriway some professional help.
She wipes at her eyes in a futile effort to chase away the tears, but her eyes are as steady and reliable as a cobblestone generator in Skyblock.
As the dragon rises and eises and explodes into a shower of green, Jumper finally remembers that she needs to get out of the end fountain.
She scrambles onto the rim just in time for the portal to appear, throwing her alst pearl towards Couriway.
Who is still alive, though not awake.
Later, Jumper won't remember what she is doing now, exhaustion finally overtaking her mind as the adrenaline starts to abate.
Later, Jumper won't remember how she dragged both of them through the end portal, but she does, somehow. On the last dregs of strenght she wasn'r awre she could pull on, Jumper pulls both Couri and herself to safety.
At home, they collapse.
It's someone else's problem now.