#infuse

Just a colored version of the drawing because I liked the sketch a lot!! I lowkey like the fully colored version way more 💔

The sun was still beating down on Stormz's head when the reality truly sunk in — carving itself into his heart, letting itself fully take hold in his mind as the hope of a true team — true friends sank away from him. They didn't want him. They didn't care about him, only about what he could offer their lackluster team of righteous members. The term cheater followed Stormz around wherever he went, constantly dragging him back down to hell whenever he thought he had finally broken free of what apparently lowered him below everyone else.

Righteous. Yeah, right. Dolphin's mace, clutched tightly in the hand of its owner, glittered faintly with enchantments and runes that danced their way up Dolphin's arm. It made him a god, placed him on a pedestal that Dolphin could use to keep climbing his way above everyone else. Nothing about what Dolphin did was righteous. All that differentiated the two of them, in Stormz's eyes, was that Dolphin's methods were worshiped while his own were scorned.

And he told Dolphin as much, burning each of his own duped maces, watching Dolphin stay still and uncaring to what Stormz wanted. It devolved — Stormz tried to kill them, it didn't matter. They didn't care. He was alone, again.

Stormz flew away from that fight with fury coursing through his veins, nothing but his own spite keeping him from sinking into the acceptance that this was him. He was below death and hell itself, never meant to rise above it. If things were simpler, if Stormz cared less, maybe he'd have sunk into the embrace of feeling so horribly alone.

And yet—

—

If there was one thing Stormz could count on, it was that his cheats could keep him on par with Dolphin, if not prove his point. Killing other players was no novelty on their server, with Stormz all too used to the feeling of bones cracking and respawning in an instant under the weight of a mace or an axe. Taking down the first two players and resurrecting them as aliens was as simple as typing out commands in his communicator — even more so when the two of them stood on either side of him with sickly green particles marking them as his teammates, not Dolphin's.

Every player they brought down to be like him, every resurrection that forced another to join, Stormz wished he could have said it was satisfying. Instead, it all pointed to one goal: one person, the mark of whether Stormz had a teammate that mattered or not.

But still, it wasn't enough. Stormz changed himself to fit what Dolphin wanted — he tried, and tried, and agreed to meeting after meeting with Dolphin that left him increasingly lost. Every time, Stormz thought things were on the up and up — they weren't, with Dolphin stooping to the same lows Stormz had been crucified for in the same week. It didn't make sense, every day spiraling into hours of nights spent sleepless trying to understand what was going on.

Who even was Stormz? Without his cheats, forcing himself to meet expectations Dolphin apparently didn't hold himself to, Stormz was losing sight. If he just had Dolphin for a teammate, his hell would end, and he'd be free.

And yet—

—

And then Jelex and Dumb joined him, and Stormz knew things had shifted — he wasn't nearly as alone as he pretended was the reason he was so hellbent on Dolphin's allyship. He could let it go, he could stay separated and without his end goal. Dumb became a priority quickly, keeping him alive and unhealed from the alienation. If they took Dumb from him, Stormz didn't know where he'd be — he'd be alone again, and that wasn't an option.

Dumb told him to cut the tie — Stormz knew he was right, that his obsession with Dolphin was the source of so much of his own confusion and loss of self.

Besides, Dolphin was using him, surely — all he cared about was his own goal, he didn't understand Stormz nor sought to, so when Stormz snapped and started running the command to just kill who he wanted, what did it matter? The world trembled under Stormz's wrath, it collapsed and emptied out as player after player met an unfair end. But then, Stormz had never been offered the chance of fairness from Dolphin, representative and champion of the other side, so why should he offer it now? Fairness as a concept felt like a mockery of the entire week. For all Stormz cared, Dolphin could go to hell himself if that's what it took for Dolphin to understand Stormz.

Who cared? Who cared? The world splintered apart, hundreds of players joined in for Stormz's cause and died, and Stormz killed everyone left with Dolphin, and the rain poured down over all three of them remaining, cutthroat words flying back between the two of them while Dumb stood as a final pillar for Stormz.

Stormz understood himself better than he ever had, when Dolphin finally accepted him as an equal. His teammate.

And yet—

—

"So where does that leave Dumb?"

Dumb stood separated from his two best friends — the two people that had supposedly cared for him and wanted him with them more than anything. First Dolphin, then Stormz, and now the two stood side by side, taking in the consequence of their personal war with equal uncaring expressions. All the fighting, the alienation, the hurt and harm that had come to Dumb while his two previous teammates fought it out — had been for this?

Dumb fought back the chills, refusing to shudder in front of them. It was funny, Dumb hadn't understood what alienated really meant until the second Dolphin splashed the serum on Stormz and healed him. Dumb had stood quietly to the side, watching the causes of most of his problems agree to team together — to leave him behind.

Stormz reasoned with him, threw his own words back at him, all falling on ringing ears that left Dumb mute until—

"You're just as much of a tyrant as he is," Dumb blurted out. Stormz fell silent, with nothing to say to that.

And when Dumb flew away with nothing but the stars to greet him, he understood the truth wholly; he was a pawn of a game greater than him, his morals had never mattered in the plays of the two people closest to him. Dolphin and Stormz were cut of the same cloth, the same blood that turned a man into a monster and a rainfall into a hurricane. Who was Dumb to them, other than a byproduct to be discarded as soon as they could at last have each other as teammates?

They were made for each other — Dumb wasn't. He'd thought he was, he'd always had someone at his back and a cause to throw himself wholly into. Even alienated, there had been others like him, thrown down but thrown together. Who was with him now?

Dumb didn't get to live happy. He didn't get to live, period, did he?