Not My Pyre (A Pearl-Centric Double Life FanFic)

Chapter Two: Soulbound

So I drew inspiration from what actually happened in Double Life for this part and lots of what happens after. It's not completely accurate, with lots of changes to better fit the story, so don't mind the messed-up timeline. (and the fact that I didn't actually watch Pearl's perspective of Double Life... Probably shoulda done that before writing this.) :)

The newly-chosen contestants lined up in the chosen area for the next Game, ready for it to start.

A hologram of one of the designers of the Game walked in front of them.

"Alright, contestants. The rules for this Game are a little different from the last. You still have three lives, just like Third Life, however, now you have a soulbound."

There was murmuring about what that could mean.

"A soulbound is one person in the world who you are bound to. You will take the damage they do. Your chips-" The contestants had electronic chips embedded in their shoulders that tracked them and allowed the rules and respawn to work "- will ensure it works properly. They will also keep the base rules of Life and Death Games. You will have to find out who your soulbound is on your own. You are bound randomly, and it is permanent. You will have to face off against your soulbound if you make it to the end. Now, better get started." She winked out of existence, and all the contestants ran off in random directions.

~*~

Pearl immediately started setting up a little base, with a crafting table, a bed, a double chest, and a few furnaces. She made sure that it was easy to disassemble so that if her soulmate wanted to live elsewhere, she could move everything.

"Chilling with my iron. Waiting for my iron to smelt. Do, do, do, do." Pearl sang quietly. She'd sung some variation of it in Last Life, but couldn't remember exactly how it went.

"Pearl!" A voice called. "Is that you?"

"Well, hello, Martyn!" She greeted the other contestant. "What's up?"

"Just wondering if you're my soulbound." He smiled.

She walked up to him and punched him. "Nope. We're not."

He sighed. "Dang it, you're scary. I was hoping to be bound to you so I could get second place."

"How do you know you wouldn't get first?" Pearl asked.

"That would require beating the Scarlet Pearl, which I don't think is possible for me." Martyn smirked. "Anyways, I was thinking of going to the Nether. We're not soulbound, so we've got two separate bars of health. Do you wanna come with me?"

"Sure!"

~*~

Grian laughed with Joel and Etho as they bragged about having found their soulbounds.

Then Scar cried out at the same time as he took damage for no reason.

No. Absolutely not.

He looked to Scar, who was swimming after an allay.

"Grian? What is it?" Joel asked.

"I just took damage." Grian responded.

"Is Scar your soulbound?" Etho gasped.

"I don't know..." Grian hoped not.

"Let me check." Joel swam after Scar, then hit him. "Did that hurt?" He called to Grian.

It had.

"Oh, no. No, no, no." Grian was panicking. Not again... "Scar!" He called. Might as well have him know...

Scar responded with something about soulmates and allays.

They were soulbounds, but Scar was too busy chasing fairies to realise. Of course.

Grian grumbled incomprehensibly, then screamed. "No!"

"Should we tell him?" Joel asked.

"No. I want to see how long it takes for him to figure it out himself." Grian responded. Maybe Scar would get mad at Grian for keeping it from him, and they wouldn't end up working together.

Who was he kidding, though? This was Scar. He'd literally killed him, and Scar hadn't been mad at all. They had even teamed up!

But Grian could hope.

If only he'd done what he'd been told and stayed out of this...

~*~

"Tango was blown up. Jimmy died." The booming voice of the announcer said, declaring the deaths, as usual, even to those in the Nether.

"Already? And it was Tango who got them killed, and not Jimmy?" Martyn said.

"I wonder what he was doing..." Pearl commented. The two of them were searching for a Nether fortress, hoping for a monopoly on Nether wart.

"Maybe looking for the ancient city? That seems like something he would do, going and messing around with the terrifying new monster immediately." Martyn laughed.

"Look at us, Martyn! We're in the Nether, within a day of being here. We don't even know who we're soulbound too! Whoever they are, they're probably mad at us for the amount of time we've spent on fire." Pearl batted a fireball back at the ghast that sent it.

"Oh, they'll be so mad." Martyn laughed again. "But they've got to partner with us, they don't have another choice!"

"And they'll be grateful if we manage to get all the Nether wart there is. No one else will have access, just us and our soulbounds." Pearl twirled and almost fell off the edge into the lava lake below.

"Careful, Pearl! I don't want to be in the Nether alone!"

~*~

"Nope." Pearl sighed. "Martyn, there isn't a Nether fortress here. It's not worth the risk to keep searching."

"It really isn't..." Martyn paused, then brightened. "We should find our soulbounds now! I have an idea."

"Oh? What is this idea?" Pearl asked, curious.

"You'll have to wait and see." Martyn smirked, tapping away on the communicator that all the contestants received.

"I can be patient."

Guys I keep thinking what I write is long. Looking back, in A Path, I thought the outline - 6500 words, twenty chapters - was long.

The story I'm currently working on  (which you won't see for quite a while, there's another story to post in between) has an outline of 23000 words and forty chapters. What am I doing with my time.