Chapter Text
It’s dark, in the jungle.
Sam - likes it, honestly. The deep green light filtering down even at midday soothes something uniquely creeper in him, settles his instincts in a way that nothing else can. And - in among the lush, rustling leaves, there’s a feeling of safety that lingers, even if he knows it’s an illusion.
He’s being hunted. He knows it. Dream won’t have stopped at the borderwilds - he’s spent years ranging the lands between servers, as hunter and hunted, and he knows these regions better than Sam could ever hope to -
But Sam isn’t dead yet. Isn’t dead yet, and he’s not managed to set his spawn out here, but neither has Dream. If he can land a kill before Dream can -
If he can kill Dream before Dream kills him, Dream will be a thousand chunks away, spawning on his own server, and Sam will be home free.
If Dream kills him -
Well, he’s lost two lives, already. If Dream kills him, nothing else will matter.
Above him, thunder rumbles, and he laughs, because -
Because even Dream isn’t stupid enough to chase a creeper through the jungle in a storm. It’s a chance - a little bought time, an opportunity to build chunks between him and his pursuer, and he hauls himself to his feet, and wraps his fingers around the shaft of his trident, and moves.
And the sky breaks open, heavy droplets pouring from the sky and pattering against the canopy overhead as he makes his way between the swaying trees, and it’s - good, honestly.
The world around him darkens as the stormclouds roll overhead, and Sam lets himself smile, because there’s wind tracing across his leaves, and even in the jungle it’s cooler than the Prison ever was, and -
- and even hunted, he’s freer than he’s been in a long, long time.
-----
“Doc?”
Doc looks like hell, is what Mumbo thinks, catching sight of him through the trees. He’s yellowed, for one thing, leaves curled and wilted-looking, drooping almost flush to his body. His lab coat is - missing. Only the flash of his trident and the chestplate - gold, not Doc's usual diamond or netherite - keep him from mistaking the hybrid for an actual creeper.
He’s on a death run, obviously, so Mumbo folds in his elytra and drops down between the trees to offer a hand.
It’s not Doc he almost lands on, that’s for dang sure - even if the gas mask confuses him, for a moment, the flash of metal on their face so familiar that for a second he’s not sure what’s going on.
He barely manages to skirt sideways in time, burning the last of his altitude to avoid getting skewered by the creeper hybrid’s trident. They flick their fingers, and the blue weapon reappears in their hand, lining up for another throw, and Mumbo panics, a little, throwing himself backwards and around a bush to avoid getting impaled -
“Wait -” he yells, ineffectively. “Wait wait wait wait -”
They don’t seem to care what he has to say. He recognizes the hiss that Not-Doc makes, a bone-deep threat that his whole body knows on an instinctive level -
But there’s no explosion, because the guy isn't actually a creeper. Mumbo drops down behind a tree, and it’s a mistake, because there’s no blast to duck - instead, there’s a hollow, ragged laugh, and then -
And then Mumbo dies, because the rain is still dripping from the leaves, and the withered-looking hybrid takes half a step and leaps, and suddenly, the threat is behind him, with a clear shot, and the trident goes straight through him and pins his dying body to the tree with a sickening crack.
-----
Sam laughs, again, because he has to.
He laughs because, as the player’s body crumples to the ground and fades, they leave behind a pile of stuff. And - and there’s food, and armor, and - shit.
He shoves a golden carrot into his mouth, hardly chewing, and it’s been so fucking long since he ate something that wasn’t melon or raw meat -
There’s cooked beef in the pile of gear. He tears into it with his teeth, not caring that he’s getting the juice on his hands and his face, because he hasn’t risked a fire since leaving the SMP.
He -
He looks like a maniac, probably. He doesn’t care.
He straps on the player’s armor - the guy was leggy, which works for him, the pieces too narrow but long enough that he doesn’t have to cut fresh straps - and tosses the rest of his stuff - the tools, the shears, the bedroll - in his own pack. It’s heavier, but fueled by cooked food he doesn’t give a damn -
But the player will. The player - if he’s respawned nearby, he’s going to be back for his shit, and -
And there’s always the risk that the guy has friends.
Sam doesn’t think he’s strayed into another server. He’s - pretty sure that he’s still in the wilds - but there’s always the risk he’s close to another controlled territory. Somewhere the anchor-magic of an alien admin is letting people set spawns - somewhere where the guy may actually be able to reach his death spot and come back.
If there’s a server, that means reinforcements. Especially against an outsider -
He gets moving. Tosses himself upward, into the canopy, where he can move undetected, and where he’ll be able to see anyone approaching him before they can see him - drop down into the trees and hide, or race away through the dark on the mobless tree-tops.
And -
And something in his chest goes freezing cold, because - oh. He’s made - good distance, in the last day. Gotten further than he thought -
Because out ahead of him, at the fading edge of the forest, there’s a city. A huge, looming castle, as large maybe as the prison, rising over a dozen houses -
And to his left, there’s a tree, preternaturally vast - tall enough to tower over the jungle, over the town - tall enough that the canopy is ringed in clouds. To his right - an ocean. He turns, and behind him, there’s a huge, spiraling glass tower, lit from within and shining like a rainbow, and he’s - he’s not on the edge of a server, he realizes, and fear claws at his chest.
He’s in the middle of a server. He’s wandered -
Like a fucking idiot, he’s wandered right into the middle of a server, and killed one of it’s players, and he’s going to die here.
Sam laughs, again, because he can’t do anything else.
-----
“Doc,” Mumbo begins without preamble, and Doc doesn’t quite manage to choke down the scream.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” he yelps, shoving the lanky, grinning man off of his chest a little harder and more panickedly than he maybe needs to, but he was asleep and his hearts are pounding like jackhammers in his chest -
Mumbo takes the shove - well, it’s definitely not gracefully, but he doesn’t seem put off at landing in a tangle on the floor of Doc’s bedroom, either. Or at the trident aimed at his throat - though Doc only holds it there for a second before letting it drop back into the nothing of inventory.
“Did you know there’s another creeper hybrid on the server?” Mumbo asks him, with a grin, dragging himself back upright.
“What?” Doc forces himself to his feet, because - what? “Since when?”
“I don’t know, an hour or two ago?” Mumbo offers with a shrug. “Bit of a brusque guy - he killed me. Are tridents a creeper thing? I didn’t realize they were a creeper thing -”
“They attract lightning, yeah,” Doc tells him almost offhandedly, processing, and then: “Wait - he killed you?”
“Pinned me to a tree by my guts, yeah,” Mumbo waves a hand dismissively. “Probably stole all of my stuff too - he was really yellowed. When you get browned bits around the edges of your leaves - that’s not good, right?”
“Too hot,” Doc confirms. “Or overwatered, but - you told Xisuma, right?”
“No.” Mumbo cocks his head. “You think we should?”
“There’s a strange player killing people on his server,” Doc grinds out, and - “Yes. I think he’ll want to know.”
“Yeah,” Mumbo considers that, for a moment. “You’re - probably right. One sec -”
There’s a moment of silence, as he keys in the message, and then -
“Do we have to do this in my bedroom?” Doc grinds out a little plantively as Xisuma appears with a sharp crack.
“Doc?” Xisuma looks - a little frazzled, honestly, eyes blearly behind the tinted lenses of his mask. “Mumbo said there was a creeper emergency? Urgent?”
“Oh for -” Doc shoots the other player a glare, stepping forwards to steady his clearly just-woke admin, and shoving him back onto the bed. “Not me -”
“What?” Xisuma - blinks, and then shakes his head as if to clear it before looking up at Mumbo. “Did something blow up over at the redstone base?”
“No, no -” Mumbo starts, and Doc cuts him off ruthlessly before he can confuse things any further.
“There’s another creeper hybrid on the server,” he clarifies. “Have you added any new players lately, or do we have a tresspasser?”
“Another -” That, at least, seems to cut through some of the fog. Xisuma blinks, and then straightens, fingers flicking up his console. “Oh - one sec -”
A pause as he fiddles with the glowing magic, and then -
“Yeah, we’ve got - someone fresh. Maybe more than one - oh -” A map flickers to life in the air between them, familiar and illuminated, and one edge faintly red. “Oh. Yeah, we’ve got border irregularities all along the north edge of the server. The storm, probably - I’m getting a lot of weird EM interference -”
He taps something else out, and then - “Give me a minute, I’ll refresh it -”
There’s a - shudder, in the world. An awkward twist of the magic all around them, and then -
“There.” The screens flicker into nothing as Xisuma glances up at them. “I’ll have to add our new player to the console manually, but it shouldn’t take long. Is he at your house, Mumbo, or…?”
“Oh, he’s still in the jungle, I think,” Mumbo replies breezily. “I don’t know where he went after he killed me.”
And Doc -
Doc snorts a deserved laugh at the way Xisuma stiffens, eyes going wide behind his mask as Mumbo’s words register - at the white-knuckled way his hand curls into a fist.
“What?” Xisuma asks, voice dangerously, impassively flat, and if he hadn’t been woken up just after midnight, Doc might bother to feel bad for the other creeper.
-----
Sam didn’t feel the server border, crossing it the first time, but he feels it shift as the Admin refreshes it. He can - hell, he can see it, a glowing, blue-light wall raised to keep him out of the controlled territory.
Trapping him in, now. He’s - there’s no way he’s getting across it, not tonight.
That doesn’t stop him from trekking closer, though. It’s dark enough that he can move unhinderered through the canopy, his trident more than enough to ward off the occasional circling phantom, the leaves hiding him from observers on the ground below. At least, he hopes they’re enough to hide him - he’s exhausted, exhausted enough that phantoms are circling in the first place, and -
And if he’s in a new server - he might have new lives.
He’s not an admin, is the trouble. He doesn’t have that kind of magic - so he’s got know way of knowing what’s going on with his lives here. If the Admin is pouring their magic to their players freely, or will have cut him off, or if Dream’s magic, faded with his two previous deaths, is what’s left to fail to call him back a third time -
It doesn’t matter, really. It doesn’t change what he should do. Set spawn, get some sleep while dark and the forest are still hiding him, hope that the rain keeps his pursuers at bay long enough for him to get ground in the morning and run. If he lives -
If he lives, nothing changes. If he dies - if he dies, and respawns, he’ll be far enough away to hide again, to keep away from his bed and keep running and respawning until either the Admin gets tired of chasing him and stops allowing him to respawn entirely, or he finds some crack in the shield that lets him escape back to the borderwilds.
He stops short of the shield by maybe twenty chunks. And -
And he has the bedroll. And he’s tired. HIs limbs are heavy - he’s been running a long time.
He hasn’t slept in longer.
And -
He drops to the forest floor below with a thump. The ground underfoot is squishy with wet, and soft with moss, and it’s - nice.
He shoves himself under a low bush - an unremarkable low bush - and drags out the bedroll. It soaks through almost immediately, but the wet feels good against his leaves, and he’s been parched since the prison, honestly -
And he can feel his spawn settling in around him. And - and he’s safe. Safe in a way he hasn’t been since -
In a long time, because if Dream finds him - one way or another, he’s never going back to the SMP. Dream can’t make him - even if his bedroll gets destroyed, he can feel the server’s magic sinking in, stitching him to new soil and a new Admin.
That’s -
It shouldn’t be as comforting as it is. Dream’s SMP is is home, but -
But maybe it hasn’t been in a long, long time.
He’ll - survive, here. He’ll slip outside the borders when he finds a chance, and disappear, and -
And that’s the thought that drags him down into sleep.
Above him, there’s no sound but the drip of water through leaves.
-----