Chapter Text
Flame didn't like working with his rival.
Yes, people said that when nemeses teaming up, they were unstoppable. All that "when enemies join forces, even God trembles" nonsense. But when it came down to it, Flame wanted to drag whoever said that over and make them experience it firsthand.
Who would actually want to cooperate with someone they fought every single day? Who knew if the other person would take the chance to stab you in the back the moment you turned around? Okay, fine—Flame‘s the one who had actually done that.
Anyway, he and Wemmbu had only ever worked together twice in their entire lives.
The first time was the famous 1v1001 incident. Back then, the invisibility score between him and Wemmbu was still unsettled, and they were fighting each other to the death, when suddenly Law's people showed up and decided to chase them around like dogs for two days.
Okay, Flame still remembered the miserable and awkward experience of sharing strength potions with that guy.
The second time was now.
Here's how it happened: Wemmbu's close friend Egg had been captured. And Flame happened to need to ask Egg a question too—okay, technically he could have gone looking for answers on his own, but considering Wemmbu had already blown up half his base, Flame figured that instead of letting Wemmbu stay behind to "accidentally" destroy more things, he might as well take him along.
Mainly, Lomedy was still in the base, and Flame didn't want his own teammate to be buried along with it.
Oh, and he thought, if only Saparata had paid that invisibility assassin enough back then, he wouldn't be in this mess today.
He explained this logic to Wemmbu. Wemmbu listened with a blank expression.
"So you're using me."
"This is called a win-win," Flame corrected. "We're both protagonists who need to go find Egg."
"...So we're competitors, then?"
That wasn't entirely wrong. Flame thought about it for a moment and shrugged.
Wemmbu stared at him for three seconds. The look in his eyes clearly said "you'd better stay the hell away from me." But in the end, he just turned around without another word.
Flame rolled his eyes and followed.
The next twelve hours were arguably the most agonizing of Flame's life.
Wemmbu was angry the entire time. Flame could feel the low-pressure system radiating from him, like an invisible sword hanging over his head—and that sword kept smacking him on the skull every now and then.
Flame could understand it, honestly. Anyone would be upset if their best friend got captured. But the problem was, the other person's anger was his own problem—what did it have to do with Flame?
He wasn't the one who took Egg——or maybe he was. He just wanted to ask Egg where the orbital strike cannon was—even though the orbital‘s owner was literally right next to him, but no, who would want to ask Wemmbu?
And Wemmbu was clearly blaming everything on him.
Flame didn't know how Wemmbu's brain worked, but the guy seemed convinced that "if Flame weren't here, none of this would have happened." The logic was about as sound as "if I kill myself, my boyfriend will stay with me forever."
But Flame wisely kept that thought to himself, because he still wanted to be alive to ask Egg his question.
They found a small boat.
Wemmbu had brought a beat-up little wooden boat that could barely fit two people. The oars looked more weathered than Flame's entire career. The moment Flame stepped onto it, the boat let out a concerning groan.
"Is this thing safe?" Flame asked doubtfully.
Wemmbu ignored him and sat down at the stern, moving with the crisp efficiency of someone who had already made peace with death.
Flame sat at the bow and picked up the other oar. The two of them paddled in silence for a while, the only sounds being water and the slap of oars against the surface. The atmosphere was as weird as two strangers who'd just had a fight and still had to split a meal together.
Then Wemmbu started humming.
Flame didn't think much of it at first—maybe the guy was just trying to calm his anxiety with music. But he quickly realized something was off. The tune Wemmbu was humming had a certain gritted-teeth rhythm, like he was venting through sound.
Flame listened closely to the lyrics—though they were mumbled, he still caught a few key words: "hate," "despise," "if one day," "disappear from the world."
The guy had clearly altered the lyrics. That was copyright infringement.
But Flame magnanimously decided to pretend he hadn't heard anything.
Then an oar came swinging straight at Flame's head.
Flame instinctively leaned back. The oar whistled past the tip of his nose, stirring up a gust of wind. He nearly flipped completely out of the bow—barely managing to grab the gunwale and steady himself, but not before half his pants got soaked.
"What the fuck, Wemmbu?! Was that on purpose?!" Flame's eyes went wide.
"No," Wemmbu said without changing expression, not even looking at him, continuing to paddle. "You're overthinking it. The boat's too small. Hard to control."
"Too small? You‘re the one who picked this boat!"
"So what? What are you gonna do about it?"
Flame took a deep breath.
Calm down, he told himself. You're a mature, seasoned Combat Master. You can't lose your temper just because your nemesis hit you with an oar. Besides, you've done way worse—like that time you stabbed Wemmbu in the back...
Okay, he was starting to understand the other guy's anger now.
Still, he opened his backpack to leave on his own. He rummaged around and pulled out a folded raft—empty. He rummaged some more and pulled out an inflatable life ring—punctured. He kept digging and pulled out a—wait, what was this? An oar? When had he even stuffed an oar into his backpack?
He dug some more.
Okay, because of that time he'd almost gotten killed by an angle exploit on Lifesteal, he'd even brought chorus fruit.
But a boat? No.
Wemmbu caught the whole backpack-rifling process from the corner of his eye. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly—Flame couldn't tell if he was about to laugh or curse.
Flame expressionlessly stuffed everything back in, zipped up the bag, and sat back down.
"No boat?" Wemmbu asked.
"...Not right now."
"Then shut up and sit tight."
Over the next three hours of sailing, Wemmbu "accidentally" hit Flame no fewer than twenty times. Flame had stopped bothering to ask why by then. Each time he got hit, he silently added it to the mental tally, calculating how much he could extract from Wemmbu later.
On the twentieth hit, the oar connected directly with the back of Flame's head.
"What was that for this time?" Flame rubbed the back of his head, his voice cracking.
"Mosquito," Wemmbu said with a completely straight face. "There was a mosquito on your head."
"A MOSQUITO?! At this latitude, this season, this temperature, you're telling me there's a MOSQUITO?!"
"Ugh, don't yell. Could be a mutant."
Flame swore he saw a flicker of amusement in Wemmbu's eyes.
This guy was doing it on purpose. The whole time.
"Boat too small," "undercurrents," "mutant mosquitoes"—all excuses. Wemmbu just wanted to hit him, and he was doing it with complete justification, complete peace of mind, every stroke of the oar loaded with personal vendetta.
Flame breathed deeply, again and again.
He told himself this was nothing. Compared to all the grudges between them, this little skirmish practically counted as friendly interaction. Besides, he'd stabbed Wemmbu, and Wemmbu had blown up his base. They were barely even. And Egg's capture? That really had nothing to do with him!
...Maybe it did. If he hadn't put Egg in that obsidian cage.
He opened his mouth to defend himself, but Wemmbu cut him off. "Don't talk."
"I haven't even said—"
Flame opened his mouth. He wanted to tell Wemmbu fuck you, but that would probably earn him another oar to the face. So he shut up.
When they were close to shore, Wemmbu gave a massive heave of the oar, the motion so exaggerated it looked like he was trying to flip the entire river over. This time, Flame really couldn't keep his balance.
He toppled over, man and oar together, and splashed into the water with a loud plop.
The river was freezing. Flame floundered for a moment, surfaced, and saw Wemmbu already standing on the shore, looking down at him. The guy's expression was still that same keep-away-from-me face, but Flame could swear the curve of his mouth was just a little bigger than before.
"You definitely did that on purpose," Flame said from the water, hair plastered to his head, looking utterly pathetic.
Wemmbu crouched down, tilted his head, and for once, wore an expression that could almost be called innocent.
"You're overthinking it."
"Inertia doesn't just launch a grown adult from the bow of a boat into the water?!"
"Hey, bro. Bad physics isn't my problem."
Flame took a deep breath.
Okay, Flame thought. There's only one truth here: Saparata is the real culprit in all of this.
When Flame climbed out of the water, he looked like a dog drenched by a rainstorm. His clothes clung to his body, his boots sloshed with every step, and when he turned them upside down, water flowed for a full ten seconds.
Wemmbu stood three meters away, watching him, showing no sign of offering help.
They walked along the riverbank for about an hour, the sky gradually darkening. Flame's wet clothes were half-dried by his body heat but still stuck to his skin, unbearably uncomfortable. His hair still dripped in strands, making him look like he'd just survived a minor shipwreck.
"Time to set up camp," Flame said. "I'm about to freeze into a popsicle."
Wemmbu stopped and looked around.
It was a moderately sparse forest, the ground fairly flat, with a large rock nearby that could block the wind. He was silent for a few seconds, then started pulling things out of his backpack.
Flame had assumed Wemmbu would pull out a one-person tent—the guy was a loner, after all, and likely wouldn't have prepared a two-person model. But as Wemmbu laid out the tent components one by one, Flame froze.
It was a double tent.
"You..." Flame opened his mouth. His mind raced through a thousand terrible possibilities: Did the guy have a boyfriend now? Why else would he be preparing double of everything—
Wemmbu clearly caught his confusion and explained expressionlessly, "The last tent collapsed."
"So you bought a double one?"
"It was on sale."
Flame was silent for a moment. Okay then. His cold, ruthless nemesis waits for sales on tents.
The two of them soon had the tent set up.
By "the two of them," it was actually Wemmbu doing all the work—Flame had tried to help but inserted a support pole in the wrong spot, nearly poking a hole in the tent fabric, and was banished three meters away by a single look from Wemmbu.
So Flame stood by the large rock and watched Wemmbu work with efficient, practiced movements—ropes, stakes, poles—smooth as if he'd done it hundreds of times.
Which was true.
Wemmbu had been out on his own for so long, a homeless little purple guy; his tent was probably one of his most familiar companions.
Once the tent was up, Flame crawled inside and found the space smaller than he'd expected.
It was a double tent, but the manufacturer's definition of "two-person" seemed to be "two very close friends snuggling tightly together" or "two people as thin as paper." Flame and Wemmbu were both on the taller side of average adult height.
When they lay down side by side, the gap between them was barely wide enough to fit an arm.
Flame shared this observation with Wemmbu. Here‘s Wemmbu's response: "Then you sleep outside."
"I don't have a sleeping bag."
"Shut up."
Flame shut up.
He dug his waterlogged sleeping bag out of his backpack—yes, his chorus fruit was soaked, his sleeping bag was soaked, there wasn't a single dry thing in his entire pack.
He shook out the sleeping bag, sending water droplets flying everywhere, including onto Wemmbu's freshly laid mat.
Wemmbu took a deep breath.
"I didn't mean to," Flame said before the other could speak. "It's the sleeping bag's fault."
"The sleeping bag's fault," Wemmbu repeated flatly.
Flame decided not to add fuel to the other’s anger.
He silently spread the wet sleeping bag in the corner of the tent, hoping the night breeze would dry it a little. But the nighttime temperature was much lower than he'd expected, and wind crept through the gaps in the tent, carrying the dampness of the river and the chill of late autumn.