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As a general rule, Branzy assumed that anyone he met would try to kill him before the day had ended.
This was not a rule he had always had! Once upon a time, in the back of his brain where all the survival instincts huddled together and made their plans, an invitation to an event or a meeting had not, in fact, sent goosebumps shivering over his limbs.
But on Lifesteal? On a battle-heavy server full of individuals who liked slaughtering each other for their hearts until they tore the last vestiges of health from their poor victims and sent them screaming into the void? Yeah, Branzy wasn’t attending any gender reveals any time soon.
“None,” he emphasized to Clownpierce, though really at this point in a ramble he usually assumed he was talking to himself. Vitalasy would hang around for a while and wander off as soon as his back was turned, and Rekrap would listen politely as his eyes gradually glazed over, but everyone had their limit. Once you’d been in the mines for several hours, attention spans dropped to nil. “None at all, do you hear me? Rek could spontaneously gain a child and insist on everyone coming to a baby shower where he gave us all netherite, and even though Rekrap is super nice in a way that is, frankly, kind of infuriating? I would not go. I would watch from a distance, because someone would have trapped it.”
Ooh, redstone. Never could have too much of that. Branzy picked out the ores and stuffed them into his inventory in handfuls, scarlet dust sparkling like a disco ball all over his sleeves. “Probably it wouldn’t be Rek trapping the baby shower, though,” he speculated. His ears were alert for any change in sound, but it didn’t sound like there was anyone walking behind him. That meant the mineshaft behind him was either empty or occupied by Clownpierce, whose steps were quieter than a rat’s. “He wouldn’t want to harm the hypothetical baby, that would be too ruthless– it’d have to be, like, Reddoons– do you think Reddoons would kill a baby? Would you kill a baby?”
No response. A chill shot up Branzy’s spine, the hush suddenly menacing , some hidden cue screaming at him to go still so the predator would let its eyes pass over– and Clown said thoughtfully, right by his ear, “I think it depends on if the baby tries to kill me first.”
Branzy shrieked and scrambled back, smacking into the wall and sending a shower of redstone down on them both. Clown sneezed, wiping off the dust and smearing the makeup around his mouth; Branzy tried not to stare, failed, and yelped when Clown caught him in the act, jumping back with his hands raised in surrender. “You’d kill a baby?” he squeaked.
“If the baby underestimated me,” Clown agreed. “Then it would be a matter of honor.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“I am completely serious,” Clown said in his soft way, on the verge of giggling. “Baby? Spawntrapped. Just like that. Whoosh , gone, one heart down!” He wiggled his fingers in jazz hands. Branzy snickered. “Though maybe Rekrap’s baby would be better at avoiding traps than the average infant, considering.”
“That shit is in the blood, it’s gotta be,” Branzy said. “But we’re supposed to be mining! We’re getting off track.” Clown nodded agreement: they had gotten off track. The two of them were in accordance. “You were up at the casino like an hour ago, right? How’s it looking?”
“Good,” Clown said. “Really good. Parrot tried to get inside, but he ran off when I showed up.”
“Should we set a guard?” Branzy asked, frowning. Having to ferret out traps would be no good. He hated doing that: digging down into the dark, looking for the glitter of redstone before it was lit or that first whiff of contained gunpowder, the smooth red corners of TNT and the knowledge that one wrong move, one clumsy brush of elbow against rock, could send so much percussive force through his body that he’d wake up charred and screaming in his bed–
“Nah, they won’t mess with it too much,” Clown said with a wave of his hand. “They’ll want to see what we’ll do with it once it’s finished, that’s much more entertaining than stomping it out now. You know we don’t just fall into the void, right?”
“Huh?”
“Focus,” Clown said, scythe slipping into his hands. The blade came to rest at Branzy’s jugular, a cool thin weight like someone had drawn a pencil tip across his skin, one swallow from slicing him open. Branzy pressed himself against the rock, mouth dry. “You can’t let down your guard, Branzy. Anyone could kill you at any moment, I thought you knew this by now.”
Some people enjoyed being constantly threatened with death, Branzy reminded himself hysterically. Some people liked it, they signed up for it, Vitalasy had signed up for it and Subz had and Spoke and Mid and Rekrap and he betrayed them as easily as rolling his eyes but Vitalasy still grinned that cat’s-tooth grin when they met in passing–-
“Oh, I am very aware of that,” Branzy managed. Clown’s face paint turned his intent expression into a leer. Would he smell like circus peanuts if Branzy stepped closer? Should Branzy help him smell like circus peanuts, or maybe cotton candy? Clown would appreciate the adherence to theme. An indentured servant-slash-ally-slash-friend would surely want to do things that his fellow player would appreciate.
The curve of the blade was forcing his chin up, exposing his neck. Terrified tears pricked at Branzy’s eyes. “Clown, you’re stepping on my foot,” he squeaked.
“I am? Oh, sorry.” Clown stepped back, put away the scythe. Branzy shuddered in a breath. “But you know we don’t fall into the void, right?”
“Haha, yeah, right,” Branzy agreed. “Just back to Hub.” Usually. When they weren’t– except he wasn’t thinking of that, was he, he was stopping that train of thought right there. The brakes were shrieking, sparks were being thrown, the train was grinding to a halt. The changes to his data wouldn’t let it reach the station. “Did you get the coal we needed?”
“Yeah, I got it.” Clown bounced on his heels. “We should go before someone corners us down here. I’m telling you, Vitalasy has it out for me right now.”
“Well, you are the strongest assassin on the server,” Branzy pointed out. “So the laws of scarcity make you a pretty sizable target.” Not that Clown wouldn’t be aware of that. Knowing Clown, he’d have eight plans in motion already, Rube Goldberg-style ploys just waiting for that first domino to be flicked. Spawntrapping, elaborate spy agreements, eavesdropping from locations no one thought to check while shrouded in invisibility– the options were endless! Sometimes Branzy felt such envy that he had to struggle not to snap.
At least Clown didn’t do much redstone, though. Other people on the server did redstone, but Clown outsourced his silly death machine plots to Branzy. That was what Branzy got out of their relationship.
“I’m not a target they can hit,” Clown said with maybe more confidence than was warranted. “Come on, Branzy. Time’s a-wasting.”
“Right,” Branzy agreed. “Wouldn’t want to run out of time,” and he couldn’t help smiling with relief at Clown’s back. The important thing was moving on, focusing on the present– on where he was now, not how he’d gotten there. The important thing was getting the casino finished, so Clown would see how useful he could consistently be and keep him around. Everything else was background noise.
*
It was a truth universally acknowledged that to live by the sword was to greatly increase your chances of dying by the sword, and unfortunately the same rules applied to living by the scam. Branzy had gotten used to that little fact a long time before the word Lifesteal had ever graced his ears, promising dumb trades to the other players on his home server and skipping out before they noticed that the shit they’d bought was worthless.
He’d made a game of it. How much showmanship was needed to draw this guy in? How fast could he talk before they started politely agreeing to everything he was saying? How sadly could he make his eyes glimmer, full of unshed tears (of laughter)? He’d been great. And then he’d moved servers a few times, made some okay friends, met Rekrap2 who was arguably a good friend, and camped out in the World Hub, where anything was possible—
Where it was possible to have a scam run terribly out of control, and get banned from the Hub for six months because of it. Where it was possible to meet the low-level administrator sent to cast him away and realize that he’d scammed this guy out of a ton of money back in the day, and now, the administrator was cheerfully telling him, the time had come for revenge.
Because if you were banned from the Hub, the place you were supposed to go was a private single-player world where you would contemplate your crimes. Multiplayer servers weren’t allowed, because being banned from them would automatically boot you to the Hub, and when you were barred from the Hub, that meant getting smashed between two firewalls and dumped directly into the void.
The administrator had had access to his data, so he’d frozen Branzy in place while he explained all of this, grinning like he’d been given a gift. I could send you to a place you’re already banned from, he’d concluded, and you’d be in the void fifteen minutes from now, BranzyCraft.
At that point Branzy had been freaking out kind of a lot, though, so he’d amended that to, fine, fine, stop crying— seriously, shut up, shut up, have some fucking dignity— I won’t be that mean. It’ll look better if it looks like stupidity on your part, anyway. I’ll send you to Lifesteal SMP. Oh, you’ve heard of that? Yeah, no shit you’ve heard of that, who am I kidding here?
Stop crying. Just don’t lose all your hearts. If you last six months, you’ll be out good as new, right? Naturally I’ll make sure you can’t tell anyone, but you can survive without being a snitch and cheating . Be honest for once in your life.
But I mean— for the love of the universe, do I have to make you shut your mouth, good, thank you, finally — let’s be real here.
We both know you won’t last six months.
*
Rekrap was too smart to come inside the casino, which was basically a trap but slow-motion and targeted at greed instead of bodies, but he had no qualms about hanging around while Clown and Branzy put on the final touches. Clown was too distracted to go after him while showmanship was on the line, and Branzy couldn’t beat Rek in a straight fight. Plus Rekrap being around gave them both a reason to show off.
“So tell me about your plan here, man,” Rek said. He’d set down a little tower of dirt blocks to crouch on, keeping his feet under him in case he needed a quick escape. Nerd. If Branzy had been trying to trap him, the setup would’ve been way better. He had some strengths! “Do you really think people are gonna gamble for hearts?”
“Well, they could succeed,” Branzy reasoned. “Great risk for great reward, that’s a draw, right? It puts dopamine in the brain.”
“Luring them in like bees,” Rek said sagely.
“Exactly. Bees to honey.” Branzy snapped for emphasis. “Plus they get riches!”
“Are riches worth it when you can wager six hearts and lose, though? As much as someone might want to play your games, life is a limited commodity. You’re gonna run out of people.”
“That’s the game,” Clown interrupted, hopping down from the roof. It was a long drop, but he landed in a somersault, sprang out from it into a cartwheel, landed again on his feet. Sometimes Branzy kind of hated him. “The casino isn’t meant to be permanent. Hey, you wanna see something cool?”
“I haven’t seen anything cool so far, so, sure,” Rek said, grinning, and dodged a clod of mud Branzy threw at him. “Wow me with performance.”
“Branzy, get the hoop,” Clown ordered.
Branzy complained, “That sounds like a torture device,” because it so did , and darted into the casino to find it. The hoop was literally just a circle they’d made out of wood because they were bored waiting for rain to stop one day; Clown had giggled so much fooling around with it that Branzy hadn’t had the heart to throw it away.
“I have the hoop,” he announced as he jogged back, and took a second to smooth back his hair, adjust his lapels. “Prepare to be dazzled, Mister Rekrap!”
Clown danced when he fought, dodging blows with sinister grace and using his unpredictability to slide under his opponents’ guards. That was what made him such a horror show to go up against: he had throwing knives and swords and a scythe to sweep you close, and when you thought you’d escaped him, he’d leap out from some shadowed corner and whack you apart at the knees. Worse, he’d cackle while he did it.
It took practice, though. When Clown wasn’t running people down for his own entertainment, he got that practice by messing around with his allies— and Branzy was overjoyed to enable him.
“Step right up for the show of the century,” Branzy declared, doffing his imaginary ringmaster hat and bobbing into a bow. Exposing the back of his neck even for that brief moment put his heart in his throat, but it was Rekrap, and besides, Clown was right next to him; he could lower his guard a little bit. “On stage today we have Clownpierce, Lifesteal’s deadliest assassin, the nightmare of literally every other player and basically a demon that haunts my dreams— and he is going to jump through a circle we made on a crafting table!”
“Aw, no, make it sound cooler,” Clown complained, and in the exact same tone of voice Branzy amended, “ And he is going to jump through the Froot Loop Of Death!”
Rek cheered supportively. Branzy built a small tower and held out the hoop from the top— high enough that it’d take effort to reach— and Clown backed up, going still with deadly focus. He broke into a sprint, leaped into a back handspring, flipped through the hoop— and landed in the grass with a wobble, stumbling onto his side and blinking dizzily at the sky.
Rekrap clapped. Clown vaulted to his feet and took a bow. Then he turned to Branzy, eyes sparkling, and breathed, “Now set it on fire.”
“No! Do not set it on fire! We are not setting anything on— oh, you’re doing it. Oh, that’s a flint and steel, okay.” Branzy dropped the hoop. Clown caught it, tilted his head consideringly, and set it on fire. “And now it’s on fire. Coolcoolcool. I’m not holding that and you can’t make me.”
“What if I threatened you with agonizing death?” Clown asked, looking up at him with wide, hopeful eyes.
“Still no,” Branzy said. This was another sick mind game, but he was determined to win. “Holding things that are on fire is also agonizing. I like my flesh where it belongs, which is on my hand bones.”
“Branzy has a point,” Rek said, because he was a good friend and a saint. Branzy would never have survived without Rek . His PVP skills had been abysmal when he’d arrived, Rek had made so much fun of him for it.
Why’d you even sign up for Lifesteal if you can’t fight, he’d laughed, and Branzy hadn’t been able to answer. He’d had to grin, strained and beaten, and come up with some sort of response before Rekrap noticed him stumbling. His mind had barely let him parse the question.
“You wanna throw it, though? I think we could throw it,” Rek added. He inched off his safe platform and scooped up the flaming hoop with his pickaxe. “Okay, let’s go– one, two— hup!”
Clown shot after the hoop like a cat chasing a laser pointer. Branzy laughed so hard he choked.
*
Sometimes living on Lifesteal could be entertaining.
Other times—
“Sorry, Branzy!” Rek called as he slashed his throat, one week into the most violent six months of Branzy’s life and—
Clown looked blankly at Branzy where he’d burrowed under the End portal earlier than the rules allowed, lip quirking at Branzy’s desperate attempts to get backup, until Branzy guessed wrong about alliances and the scythe cut a line across his torso and—
Reddoons bashed his skull in like an egg and—
Okay maybe he shouldn’t have gone back to the End fight, who knew the dragon was this temperamental—
And the spikes at the bottom of the well came up too fast to close his eyes.
It always worked out in the end. Rekrap saved Branzy from the trap he’d baited with himself before he could finish being dramatic about things. He watched Clown slaughter a screaming PrinceZam in the circus pit, which made up for being impaled at the bottom of a pit and left to bleed, and in the meantime he polished his silver tongue, practiced fighting until his knuckles bled.
He strangled Spepticle with his bare hands.
*
A muffled laugh gave away the game. Branzy shot off like a startled rabbit, skidding into a shallow ravine and pearling up the other side on the diagonal, aiming to vanish into the trees. His boots pounded the grass, too heavy, leaving a trail; someone teleported to cut him off in a burst of blue and green, and Branzy stumbled, skidded, fell on his ass. Scrambled back with hands raised, grinning with terror. He wasn’t about to outrun Parrot.
His breath was not coming in whooping gasps. That was an illusion. “Hey, dude, how’s it going?”
Parrot’s expression was impossible to read behind the painted mask. Some of his feathers had been ripped out in handfuls, leaving his plumage ragged and uneven; his primaries looked kind of fucked up, too. Branzy guessed he’d be having a hard time dropping builds from height limit on people for a while, at least until he went through a molt.
“Hi, Branzy,” Parrot said, false and friendly. “Didn’t expect to see you out and about tonight.”
“Haha, well, you know how it is!” Faint shadows shifted across the ground to his right, too small for armor, thin and tapered. Weapons in the hands of invisible enemies. Parrot had to know they were there. “Mining. At night. Against all advice in songs and legends.”
His heart count burned on his wrist. Branzy wasn’t a high-profile target like Parrot liked to kill– honestly, he’d been conveniently sideswiped while Parrot was targeting other people, and that was about it– but the key word there was convenience. If the option presented itself, anyone on Lifesteal would kill for the buffer of an extra heart. Whatever Parrot and his allies were up to, they wouldn’t mind an appetizer before the main meal.
Parrot tilted his head. “So– just, you know, from curiosity– how many hearts would you say you’re on now, Branzy?”
“There are some things gentlemen don’t discuss in public,” Branzy said, shifting his weight. Tiny sounds to his left, a hint of a laugh– Leow0ok, from the sound of it, so he was gonna guess the other person was maybe Roshambo. Or Spoke, depending on what the scheme was, Branzy wasn’t sure who Parrot was on good terms with at this point. It couldn’t be Rekrap; Rek wouldn’t kill Branzy except as unavoidable collateral damage. “And we’re outside, Parrot, so this counts as public, I think! The public forum. Like in Athens.”
A considering pause. Branzy shrank his shoulders in and widened his eyes, shooting for pathetic and honestly not having to aim that hard. He was on two hearts . Dying here would dangle him over the void, just a heart away from burning into nonexistence against the Hub’s firewalls.
“Please leave me alone?” Branzy begged, and Parrot said, sounding amused, “Okay, now I have to kill you.”
Branzy threw his gathered redstone like a smoke bomb and dashed for the nearest cave. His shoulder checked someone else’s on the way, armored, but they were reacting like this was a trap, like Branzy had known they would: jumping out of the way or freezing in place, convinced that the redstone shower was hiding other mechanisms, because why would Branzy have been out alone except as bait?
Which, sure, he’d done that before a few times, to questionable results, but– not this time. He had Clownpierce, he wouldn’t bait a trap with himself these days unless he had backup. That was the job of a champion PVPer.
Fighting Parrot should also have been the job of a champion PVPer, but Branzy would just have to deal with it himself. He darted down the main passage of the cave where he’d been mining, tore out a chunk of rock to detour into a smaller one, reached the end of that passage and swung into the staircase he’d created, the one that opened into a waterlogged amethyst cavern. The place was stuffed with torches, cold light glitzing off the purple walls; Branzy slowed, trying to find where he’d hidden the emergency passage, and Parrot tackled him into the water.
Branzy’s shriek was strangled by the liquid in his lungs. He lashed out and scrambled to his feet, wishing he had better armor– why did he never remember to bring better armor– and Parrot said cheerfully, “Come on, you can’t get away that easily. You just tried to trap us!”
Branzy hadn’t had a trap planned, for the record, but he’d been setting up TNT to trigger here in case someone tried to rob him. He could work with that.
“Us? That’s weird, I only see you here. Did you, uh, bring more guests to the party I didn’t actually invite you to? That’s cool if you did, you do what you want with your superior fighting prowess and all.” The water came up to his knees, currents streaming toward a steep drop. Branzy tested his footing. “What do you want, do you want what I mined? I have more stashed around here somewhere, I can lead you to that if you don’t kill me, and anyway I, um, well, you see–”
His data wouldn’t let him say it. He was on two hearts and if he got down to one he’d be killable via paper clip, and yet he couldn’t spit it out—
“I think I actually will just kill you,” Parrot said decisively, and Branzy brought his arm up just in time for the axe to slide off his iron armor, a screech of metal and mineral that threw up sparks. The force threw him back; he yanked up his sword and parried, took an elbow to his face, used the momentum to dislodge a torch from the wall and smash it into Parrot’s redstone-dusted feathers.
They went up in a firecracker burst of energy. Parrot screamed and swore– Branzy ran for the amethyst, heart in his throat– and the next blow snapped his left forearm with an agonizing crack .
Branzy’s vision whited out. “Wait! Waitwaitwait, stop, please, wait we can talk about this Parrot!”
He’d buckled against the wall without meaning to, clutching his arm, in a part of the cave where the torches didn’t exactly reach. Maybe Parrot couldn’t see so well, maybe he’d leave Branzy be if he was injured– but that was a potion, and Branzy couldn’t get to his feet fast enough, and Parrot grabbed his arm at the break it was at the break it was–
Parrot yanked his hair and shoved his head underwater, pinning his knee onto Branzy’s back to hold him down. Branzy choked on an instinctive inhale, good arm clawing at the hand on his head.
His lungs burned. He went deliberately limp, let his good arm falter and slip into the water. Parrot faltered slightly, probably moving to draw a sword and end it clean, and that was his mistake: Branzy twisted and threw a lit torch from his inventory at the wall, at the open space he’d spotted there, and all the TNT he’d rigged blew up in both of their faces.
Parrot had gone when Branzy struggled out of the water downstream. His ears rang like struck bells, vision seared by the explosion. One of his ankles wouldn’t stand up to his weight. He cut out an alcove in the rock nearby, pulling himself with his good arm until he could tuck his limbs into it, and huddled there soaked and shivering, straining his ears for mob noises or player pursuit.
His breath came fast, liquid catching in his lungs when he inhaled too deep. He felt his heartbeat in his broken arm, touched a hard sharp thing that sent his nerves screaming and snatched his fingers away before he could think of what it was. Not thinking of it, that was the key. Not thinking of how much it would hurt to set the bone before he drank a potion, or if he could acquire a potion unless Clown had one free, or if Clown would care enough to help him.
He would, right? He needed Branzy to build the casino. Builders were more effective when they had use of both arms and also were able to walk.
Branzy’s ribs hurt, his heart was beating so fast. He shut his eyes against his own shaking, willing it to slow unless he wanted something to find him, and took a second to catalog his injuries.
Broken arm, that one was obvious. Swelling ankle, maybe broken, hopefully sprained because then he could limp on it. He thought he felt blood weeping from his temple, a coppery sting in his right eye, and bruises were making themselves known across his whole body, down his torso to his legs, on his arms where Parrot had wrestled him down to drown him. He hadn’t kept holding onto the broken arm after Branzy’s scream. That had been nice of him. If he had, Branzy would have been in too much pain to fight back.
The stinging in his eyes was probably tears, but it was better to cry quietly if he was gonna cry for real. Loud crying looked like crocodile tears, a way to get out of a fight by being pitiful about it, and that never worked . Lifesteal was voluntary. Anyone who couldn’t handle the strain had opted out of it by now.
<Branzy> whispered to <Clownpierce>: can you come help me back to base? i hurt my ankle and im stuck in a cave
<Branzy> whispered to <Clownpierce>: pls
<Branzy> whispered to <Clownpierce>: kinda freakin out here
<Clownpierce> whispered to <Branzy>: Send me the coords
<Clownpierce> whispered to <Branzy>: If you betray me I’ll make you wish you’d died there btw
Branzy sniffled, telling himself it was from the cold and nothing else, and tried not to shiver too audibly. Okay, then. He was waiting. He could do that, he just had to think about other things until Clown came to get him. Think about how the circus would net them a ton of hearts, so he would never have to worry about dying easily again. Think about what he’d do once he got out of Lifesteal and back to the Hub, and wonder whether his other friends would still recognize him.
Clown and Rekrap would for sure, same with anyone he’d met in Lifesteal, but his acquaintances? His erstwhile business partners?
Branzy had lost some weight since he’d ended up in Lifesteal, and whatever the admin had done to his data had bleached his brown hair silver, dyed his golden eyes a cool purple. He carried weapons out of habit now. He shied away from being in the center of a room, at least when an enemy wasn’t in arm’s reach to prove the area wasn’t trapped.
Honestly, if the Branzy from six months had seen his current self, he would’ve thought he was looking at some kind of torture victim. He’d see every bruise, the new red abrasions and the older ones yellowing, splashes of blue and purple across most of his exposed skin. An arm in a sling, assuming Clown wouldn’t give him a potion. Maybe a black eye.
Not that Branzy wasn’t still Branzy– arguably a better Branzy, who sort of knew how to fight and had enough of a silver tongue to lure people into a circus themed after the most infamous assassin on their server, come on, guys, what did you expect– but he was kind of a concerning one, all things considered. Like a dog that had gotten stuck in a sewer pipe for a few days and came out starved and shivering, except the sewer pipe was full of murder. And pain.
It was fine. Adaptable was Branzy’s middle name.
*
He saw the others filling out forms once every week. Scheming ground to a halt on those nights, players pulling up communicators and tapping out responses, lounging against warm furnaces or tucked into wool blankets or, in Clown’s case, perched like horrifying raptors in dark corners, face lit an eerie white by the screen.
“I bet a lot of people are complaining about exploits this week,” Clown said after Branzy shrieked and dropped his soup bowl after noticing him, grinning down at him in amusement. It wasn’t his fault that it came off like a leer; it was his makeup, the black paint twisting the expression around his eyes. The death-mask he wore. “After what Ashswagg was doing.”
“Are you complaining?” Branzy asked him, legitimately curious. He never got forms. Probably the administrator who’d thrown him in filled out the forms for him, checking off no comment on every question and assuring the Lifesteal admins that he was having the time of his life.
Branzy amused himself imagining what the questions might say, though, on long nights when he had to keep watch: are you satisfied with the amount of horrific murders inflicted upon you? Do you believe your kills have been bloody enough? Check yes or no.
“Nope, I like a challenge,” Clown said. He cocked his head. “Are you?”
Branzy scoffed, mostly because the alternative was bursting into tears. “Not unless they have a way to make everything hurt less,” he declared, flippant, making it a joke. The urge to confess prickled at him, pressed against the backs of his teeth like if he tried hard he could spit it out. That sensation was a lie– he couldn’t even dwell on the truth, his thoughts diverted themselves if he tried– but it was convincing. Most of the time people did have control over what they said and thought. Even Branzy used to have that!
“Aw, but then fighting wouldn’t be fun,” Clown said, grinning a little. “How else would we know to avoid dying?”
Branzy’s arm had mended after Clown had set it for him, his bruises wiped away by the healing potions pushed into his hands. It’d been hard to sleep for the past few days, though. Hearing Clown nearby activated Branzy’s adrenaline response, even though he knew they were allies, that Clown considered him a friend. His stupid hindbrain kept waiting for the predator to change his mind.
Ten hearts, now that the Cleansing had happened. As much as he’d been on Clown’s side, wanting to keep his friend at the top of the leaderboard, the added buffer made him tear up a little to think of it. Inside, where no one could see.
Clown had given him four hearts. A guy could feel flattered by that. He might even start to consider the future, other servers, where he and another guy could hang out for longer.
If he survived to the end of the season, at least.
“I dunno, Clown,” Branzy said lightly, enjoying the respite of not having to worry about traps at all. Clown was watching the door. Branzy could look away from it. “I like to think I have some good reasons to avoid dying, myself.”
*
All it would take for Branzy to lose the rest of his hearts would be for someone to find him now, in the obsidian prison where ItzSubz had left him. He was shaky from repeated respawns, muscles giving out under his weight, as weak as a newborn kitten: killing him would be a cakewalk. There would be prizes at the end, also like a cakewalk. Someone could mine their way in and drive their sword through Branzy’s stomach over and over, holding him down so he couldn’t fight back or run, and after a while he’d stop coming back.
He wasn’t even strong enough to destroy the bed. He’d left his items in a secure location, one he couldn’t reach, and his fingers wouldn’t cooperate with his brain.
Vitalasy had warned him about the scrambled eggs his brain would become after dying multiple times in short succession. Branzy hadn’t really paid attention– he figured he’d died twice fast before, when everyone stormed the End, right? He’d be peachy! Except he wasn’t peachy, and phantom pains were spearing through him like the blade of axe had gone through flesh and tendon, embedded itself into bone and scraped along the nerves and he’d been begging at that point, struggling, so Subz hadn’t had an easy kill, he’d had to force Branzy down and then he’d respawned in his own fucking pool of blood–
It had looked like he approved of the desperate pleas for mercy, though. Real incentive there for Clown to drop his guard, make bad decisions in the name of adrenaline. Until Clown revealed the double-cross, Subz and Vitalasy would keep on thinking it had been to spur Clown to action, and once he did, they’d figure it’d been to fool them, instead. Real terror and trauma never entered into the equation.
Branzy tasted static. He was hyperventilating, chest hitching, a piston firing in the wrong part of a build.
He lost time. Branzy was in the corner, bracketed by shiny black walls, and his knees were drawn up to his chest. Branzy was in the corner and someone had their hand on his shoulder and he lashed out before he registered their face, caught Clown by surprise so the blow actually connected.
Clown rocked back on his heels in a flinch of aborted movement– a flinch that said weapons almost drawn– and Branzy pressed himself back against the obsidian, pulled his knees closer like guarding his organs would keep the knife out of his eye. Fear blocked up his throat.
“Hey, Clown,” he managed, strangled. “I think I– given that you died just now, I mean, I think I owe you a heart?”
“Eh, I got Vitalasy back in the end,” Clown said with a shrug. Branzy traced the lines he’d scratched across his face with horrified wonder; blood was beading up across Clown’s cheek. “Are you okay, though? That was a pretty rough scam, you sounded kind of–”
Hand coming toward his face–
“I didn’t mean to hit you!” Branzy shrilled, and there was nowhere to run, nowhere to go, the casino was done and Branzy was a notorious traitor and it’d be easy, actually, to finish the job Vitalasy had pretended to start and call it justified—
Clown didn’t like people betraying him, but he’d betrayed people, everyone had. Farming Branzy for hearts would be the perfect twist.
“I didn’t mean to hit you,” Branzy said again, weaker. Begging was kind of pointless, it always was, but he didn’t want to be burned out of existence. As deaths went, being erased from the universe would suck. “It– Clown, I’m not betraying you, it wasn’t on purpose–”
“I know,” Clown said. “I know, Branzy, it’s kind of obvious when someone’s trying to kill me– I mean, there’s usually a lot more threatening and explosions, and the axes are a big clue, can’t forget those. This would be a really subpar assassination attempt, if anything I’d expect like, TNT around the box. But I already checked for that.”
He smiled at Branzy, tentative like he was trying to figure out what to do with his face, and offered a hand. Branzy let his best friend lever him to his feet.
The obsidian prison reeked of blood and sweat, of harsh metal. Branzy breathed through his terror, his hatred of this whole scam actually and how Vitalasy asking him to participate had kind of trapped him, made it so he had to go to Clown so they could keep the upper hand, because letting opportunities pass was how you ran out of hearts— and said honestly, “I didn’t want to be here.”
Talking about the bedtrapping scam. That was all, nothing overarching– but the idea slammed into him with the force of a ravager, and Clown’s response made a perfect setup .
“You didn’t want to do the scam?” he asked, bewildered, because naturally the idea of not scamming someone with intent to murder made no sense to a guy voluntarily themed after an evil clown. “But you brought it to me, you agreed to it! You could’ve told Vitalasy you wanted to do something else to kill me.”
“Yeah,” Branzy agreed, holding onto the staticky part of his thoughts, the numbness creeping up on him. Clown was supporting a lot of his weight. He looked down at his feet, trying to arrange them into standing order. “I didn’t–” No, couldn’t say that. Think of this specific scam . “I got kind of strong-armed?”
“By Vitalasy?”
“Mm, no, and not you, and not Su– Subz. Just, y’know, generically.” Branzy waved a hand at their surroundings. Clown was getting this look on his face that meant he recognized something was up, brows furrowed; Branzy’s mind caught that and stole his words for a couple minutes, data locking down when he focused too much on what he was saying and why. “It’s. Um, it’s. I. Let go of me?”
“You’re gonna fall over,” Clown started, but Branzy made insistent noises until he stepped back. Gravity tipped over and spilled Branzy across the ground.
Branzy choked back a cry– that had hurt more than he thought it would– and gasped through the fuzziness, data struggling to catch up with four respawns in the span of an hour. A loophole. He had a loophole. “What’s that martial arts thing? With the dances?”
This was not a coherent loophole! Good to know.
“Capoeira?” Clown guessed. Branzy shook his head. “Uh, katas? Tan tui? Forms?”
Branzy dug his fingers into his own wrist until his vision flared white. “Forms! Yeah, that’s– and your room in the casino, the secret one you sleep in sometimes.”
Now Clown just seemed alarmed. “What about that room?”
“Never seen it,” Branzy said, and giggled. “This is so dumb. It’s so dumb, Clown. My face hurts.”
“Alcohol will help,” Clown told him solemnly. “Or at least it’ll drown out all other thoughts ‘cause you’ll be too busy dealing with the taste of mint. I’m honestly not sure how anyone didn’t leave the casino immediately after I offered those, I thought they were good and then I tried them– you said you didn’t want to do this scam?”
Branzy flexed his fingers against the floor. Yep, there was the shock setting in. His muscles trembled. “Are those the words I used?”
Clown hooked his hands under Branzy’s arms and heaved him to his feet, tugged his arm over his shoulder. “No,” he reported, sound humming nicely through Branzy’s torso, “you said you didn’t want to be here, generically, and something about forms, and never seeing– never–”
Suddenly Branzy’s best friend was carved from granite.
“I can’t talk about this,” Branzy said plainly, thinking I am too in shock to talk about this with all his might to drown out other mental interpretations. “I think I want to go to sleep. The season’s over soon, right? We should get to work on, um. On preparing for that.”
“Branzy,” Clown said, and his voice was high, strangled, wrong. That wasn’t a tone Clown used around other people. “This wouldn’t work as a scam, if you’re not– it’d get investigated. Spoke or Parrot would, they’d check. If someone passed that on.”
Open air. Clown said something else, white noise Branzy’s ears refused to translate. Branzy scoured their surroundings for weird depressions in the grass, shadows where people could hide, and came up empty.
“The season’s over soon,” he repeated, thready. Clown was talking about– Branzy couldn’t talk about it. Couldn’t follow the conversation. That was a bummer. “That’ll be six months. Six months on Lifesteal, can you believe it? I truly didn’t think I’d last this long.”
Clown tried to say something again for some reason, though it might as well have been gibberish. Branzy smiled at him, giddy with– with being outside of the box, that was all– and stumbled, his friend’s grip holding him up. They were in a hilly part of the server, mostly mud and trampled grass, but the breeze carried clean scents. Evening was ebbing in like a purple tide, cooling the air. Soon there’d be monsters spawning. “Could you repeat that?”
There was a lingering pause. “Let’s just get back to the casino,” Clown finally said. “We haven’t had a visit from MrCube yet, I bet he might like to gamble. We’ll– twenty hearts. We can get to that. And then we can consult some people about alliances.”
Branzy’s legs gave out. He blinked at the mud on his hands, surprised by the sudden shift in height, and Clown said, “Or we can find somewhere closer, we can do that. I’ll make a bolthole. It’ll probably be safe for tonight.”
“Clown, I’m not sure anywhere’s safe on this server,” Branzy said. Clown dug a hole in the ground and helped him into it, though, determined like he got with his projects sometimes, so Branzy had to follow his lead. “People are gonna attack us. We’re gonna get stuck in like a 6v2, and actually it’ll be a 6v1 because I don’t know if you know this, but I am really bad at PVP.”
Clown had his communicator out. “It’s fine, I’ll keep watch,” he said, and he sounded off still, ragged somehow. Strained. “No one’s gonna attack us tonight, Branzy.”
You know what, sure. If Clown wanted to deal with everyone coming after them all night, that was his business. Branzy tucked himself into a corner and folded his arms under his head, exhaustion eating at his resolve. “Remind me to give you that heart in the morning. Or I can keep watch, I’m good at that. Very paranoid.”
If Clown answered, Branzy didn’t hear it. He closed his eyes and kept them closed, and somehow, despite Branzy’s condition making both of them sitting ducks, no one came after them all night.