Battle Life SMP

CHAPTER 19 | Day 4 Part 6

Hyper notices something and latches onto it.

"You weren't sure about it, though. You gave it to me in case you died." He snarks.

Tanqr seems a little annoyed at Hyper's counter, and scoffs.

"I gave it to you because it would be funnier if I didn't have it. They doubted you so much, so better for you to have it."

Hyper very suddenly gets the urge to go straight to the deep end.

"How would it be 'funnier' if they never got to see it? Unless you had a feeling they might?" He asks with a smile, and Tanqr's indignant sigh only makes him more intent on pushing him further. Yes, it's stupid, and just a few hours ago, he'd never do this- he doesn't even know why he's doing it, really, but he's in it to win it now.

"No, Hyper, it was- a tactical move."

"Tactical for what, exactly?"

"Hyper-"

"I know what you were worried about, Tanqr. You're not very slick."

Tanqr looks Hyper up and down, completely silent. Hyper tries to hide the fact he's sweating from nerves, as he doesn't know what Tanqr's going to say, but yet, words come out of his mouth anyway.

"Admit it, you were scared you weren't going to win, weren't you?" Hyper smiles in that mischievous way only a few people can truly perfect, not realising it.

Tanqr takes a second to think of his response. He absolutely wants to encourage Hyper to be more daring, but he'd also like to keep his pride here.

He sighs.

"Ugh, fine, you win, whatever. It was...just in case something did go wrong."

Hyper can't help but pump his fist in the air, a little excited that he won the argument.

"Yessss-" He celebrates under his breath, but since he and Tanqr are the only people in the vicinity, Tanqr hears anyway. He smiles. It's almost endearing. Tanqr just waits for him to be done before talking.

"Doesn't matter anymore, seeing as we don't have it."

Hyper shrugs, and Tanqr takes that as a cue to move on and continue mining.

It's silent in the cave, at least for a few minutes. Hyper's found a bit of gold, but not that much. Tanqr said they have spare, why exactly are they doing this? But it's keeping them out of trouble, so he doesn't really mind.

Though it's not difficult to notice something's bugging Tanqr. He seems awfully distracted, and even more irritable.

"Tanqr, was it really only that that was annoying you?" he eventually settles on asking. "You seem stressed."

"Ugh. Yeah, I'm annoyed at everyone right now." Tanqr admits, a little ashamed.

"Oh, I didn't expect you to admit it. What's up?"

"No point in hiding it. It'll only make me feel worse." Tanqr puts his pickaxe on the floor and uses his hands to lean against the wall, looking down. "Thing is, no one's taking this seriously! Everyone's acting like this is just a fun little excursion. But it's not! We're in a death game!"

Hyper senses a point of weakness for Tanqr. He's clearly passionate about this. He puts his stuff down and walks up to his angry ally, patting his shoulder as an attempt at comfort. He has to reach to do so, but still.

"No one ever really takes this stuff seriously." Tanqr continues. "It's just fun. Even when we're in genuine danger. "

Hyper doesn't really know what to say to that.