Battle Life SMP

CHAPTER 18 | Day 4 Part 5

At least the pain's died down enough so he can go to sleep. Unfortunately, Sketch does not fall back asleep easily. So it takes him a lot longer than he'd like to drift away.

It's not the sun rising that wakes him up, but instead, Megan's text message pinging in his ear. Looks like he's going through this whole day trying not to doze off.

~~~

Back by the river, 13 finishes up as everyone freaks out.

"SKETCH?!"

"WHAT-"

"ASHLEY!!!!"

Pink notices that there's only two people not seeming surprised or angry. First one is Tanqr, who when he sees Pink watching him, winks at him. Oh, now he understands why Kreek hates Tanqr so much. He is so punchable.

The second person is Albert, who is still dancing, pretending none of this is happening. Pink doesn't know what else he expected. It's Albert.

"I uh...I did my best." BigB admits, still a little shocked from what's just transpired.

"You should've known that was coming." Tanqr teases, incredibly smug about being proven right - there's a happy glint in his eyes.

"Well, I didn't expect Albert to play the death record." BigB turns to the flamingo in question. "Albert, let's not do that a- why are you still dancing?"

Albert stops dancing when he's addressed, looks up at BigB and at the others.

"Did Sketch get his kill then?"

"Have you been paying any form of attention at all?" Pink angrily questions, but he's cut off by a yell.

"Sketch!" Kreek points at Sketch who is tiredly dragging himself and most of Ashley's things back to the river. He makes it over and dumps all of it into Sanna and Leah's hands.

"Sorry 'bout that, but Albert gave me an opportunity and I took it." Sketch lets out a sigh of relief and goes to sit down on the rocks next to his team, sweating.

"Sketch, you need to explain yourself! You said you weren't the boogeyman!" Kreek lightly shakes Sketch's shoulder.

"Yeah, uh, I lied. Obviously." Sketch explains, though he's clearly not got the energy to go into detail. "What else was I supposed to do?"

"Okay, he has a point." Hyper adds, before proceeding to get glared at by Sanna and Leah. "Listen! It's a lot more stressful than you'd think to get it! It's borderline painful! "

"Okay, I wouldn't call it painful, but it was certainly annoying for my body to start screaming at me to kill every five seconds. Especially since I was around my teammates the whole day." Sketch laughs awkwardly at the memory.

"It's not fun at all. I'm surprised you were able to hide it so seamlessly, especially when the entire server was here." BigB adds, tacking on a compliment at the end.

"What can I say, I'm talented." Sketch winks. "But that's why I might've been a bit snappish today."

"I didn't notice anything different." Denis attempts to reassure before realising how weird that sounds. "As in, you didn't seem mean at all!"

"Thanks, Denis." Sketch sarcastically responds.

"You're a good actor." Tanqr adds, and he seems sincere. "Well done."

"Wait, so did you trick Denis into falling off? Or were you planning on killing us?" Leah questions, still surprised and looking back on their earlier conversations with dread.