That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.

At least, that's what my dad used to say.

Originally a quote by German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, the idea is supposed to be that your trauma can lead to growth. But does that mean that I have to endure what's happened only to come out better in the end?

At this point, it had felt like we'd been here for so long, I started to come to the understanding that we'd die here. I'd guessed that everyone else felt the same. There was seemingly no end to the teams we had to fight, the battles we won, and the people we'd killed.

Thinking this way has made me take a long, hard look at myself over the past… six months? If someone were to have asked me that long ago how hard I'd fight to stay alive, I would have scoffed. But now, I have an obligation to my team and those that are gone by my own hands to tell their story.

"Nick?"

I turned as I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. Morgan, guised as Agni, stepped forward and dropped his hand. "What's up?"

As Sol, I shook my fiery head. "Just thinking about some stuff is all."

Both heads nodded. "You wanna talk?"

"I'm alright," I said. "It's just… how far we've come since being stuck here, ya know?"

"Yeah. I'm glad we made it though. I think being here has changed all of us. We know what's at stake. I never particularly cared about my future until this happened to us."

I bit my bottom lip. "I never really imagined a future beyond college."

"You do now," was his only answer. But with it, he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of Ross.

I gave him a lopsided smile. "Guess you're right."

He put his hand back on my shoulder. "That's all that matters now, right?"

I nodded, then quirked my lips into a smirk. "You know, it's really hard to take you seriously when I'm trying to look you in the eye, and you have two heads."

He pulled back his hand again and touched his fingers together. "The better to see you with!"

I quirked an eyebrow. "Did you just reference Little Red Riding Hood at me?"

"Maybe," he said, folding his arms.

We stared at each other for only a second longer before both bursting into laughter.

"What'd I miss?" Chase asked, approaching as Geb.

"Oh, I was just telling Nick how much I like Little Red Riding Hood." Morgan stated.

Chase cackled. "What?"

We were all doubled over when Melody and Ross finally came over as Kumbhakarna and Sun Wukong.

"Did I hear that right?" Ross asked.

Melody shook her head. "This is why we broke up." she said before everyone burst into laughter again.

"Hey, hey," Morgan said, putting his hands up. "A lot of my humor came from you, so I think you introduced me to your bad habits."

"Oh, you are not pinning this one on me!" she shot back, suppressing a smile. "You were crazy before me."

"So were you!"

Through the laughter and tears, I caught Ross glance over at me. I looked back to the team before turning toward him and following him back to base camp. As we stepped through, we detransformed.

"So how'd that conversation start?" he asked, sitting against a column.

I followed and slid down beside him. "I thought we were trying to have a serious conversation, but then I couldn't focus because he literally has two sets of eyes! How do you look someone in the eye when there's four of them?"

Ross chuckled. "Good point." He paused briefly. "What was the conversation about?"

I shrugged. "Just where we started versus where we are now. I've just been thinking a lot lately."

"Not much else to do here but think and fight, fight and think." he conceded.

I nodded and looked up at the ceiling. "Do you think we'll make it out of here?"

I saw him turn his head to stare at me. "I would hope so. Otherwise, we'd have come this far for nothing."

"I don't think so," I said, turning back to him. "I think we've accomplished a lot."

"How can you say that?" he said, wide-eyed. "I thought… I thought that you finally had something to live for, having been stuck here."

I shook my head, amending, "No, I just mean that I think we've all learned something from being here. Don't get me wrong, I want to survive. For the first time in my life, I have a reason to keep going, even if it is in spite of something else. I'll admit that might not be right, but it's true." I paused. "You know that doing this and having kept going this long was to save all of us, but I meant more that I think we've all grown as people from being stuck here. Even if we die here today, it won't have been for nothing because we'll have died feeling something and fighting to keep pushing forward. I think that's something worth being proud of."

"Hmm…." he hummed. He looked up for a moment. "I think I get it. But for me, I've never looked to the future for reasons different from yours; I just didn't care. I've always been a 'live in the moment' kind of guy. But now I see a future… I need a future to hold onto… with you." His eyes softened.

I smiled back at him but twisted it into a smirk. "Ah, so now that our lives are at risk, you're willing to look forward to our future?"

"Of course! Why else would I be?" He smiled back-catching my cheek in his hand when I shook my head at him-and pulled me into a gentle but firm kiss.

"Eww! Mom and Dad are gross!" Chase whined as he came back to the center, Morgan and Melody on his heels.

Ross and I broke apart, smiling. I glared at Chase and everyone laughed.

"Match commencing in ten minutes."

When we all exchanged glances, something occurred to me.

"Guys…."

All eyes turned to me.

"Has anyone else noticed that the announcements aren't consistent? Like, they aren't… automated?"

Ross nodded. "I thought that was obvious."

When no one else agreed, he sighed. "It's clearly a person, yeah. I thought you guys knew that."

"No, not really," Chase replied.

"So that means we're not just being recorded," Morgan pointed out, lifting a finger.

"So if they're always watching us, can't we just… refuse to fight?" Melody asked cautiously.

I shook my head and crossed my arms as I thought. "We already know that if we don't fight, it's a draw. And a draw means we both get axed."

"Then we need to find a different way to make a statement," Morgan said.

"Even if we could," Ross said, "who's to say that we won't all just get killed for it anyway?"

"I mean, as long as we follow the rules, we shouldn't be, right?" Chase asked.

"No," I said firmly. Startled, everyone turned to me. "That's not a risk we can take. We have to try to make it out of here alive. If not for ourselves, then for all the people we've… fought."

Everyone exchanged glances for a moment before turning back to me with a steely determination in their eyes.

"We've come this far," I said, louder, hoping they could hear me, whoever they were. "We're not giving up now." I held up my arms to everyone. "Bring it in guys."

Ross was first to come into the huddle, followed by Melody, Chase and Morgan. It might have been more of a hug, but our heads were bowed together. We waited, breathing quietly together to get our nerves in line. This had become our… pre-battle ritual. It reminded us to stay together, lean on each other, and to remember that it was okay to be afraid. But we did our best to sync up to each other, calming each other down before following through.

And then we were transported.

We landed in the base as our respective characters: Sol, Agni, Sun Wukong, Geb and Kumbakarna. Unorthodox, but that was our signature at this point.

Chase followed me as Geb to the duo lane and we looked to each other for an instant before grabbing a camp.

Seconds later, I was spinning in the air, whirling fireballs at the enemy that tried to gank us. With Chase at the ready, we were able to take down the Neith and Sylvannus with some ease. As we took down the enemy minions and attacked the first tower, I swallowed a bit.

"Chase," I said slowly, "are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Don't underestimate them," he said quickly. "Just because we know the characters doesn't mean we know their fighting style."

I nodded, and we pressed on.

Only a little while into the match was our first death, Ross as Sun. He yelled as he got thrown into a wall by one of the enemy Scylla's tentacles and despawned.

"Ross!" I cried out. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," he groaned through gritted teeth. "My fault. Underestimated their Scylla."

Sure enough, the match was hard fought, and eventually, we had our backs to the wall. The other team still had all of their phoenixes, and we were down to none.

I crossed into Melody's lane for a brief moment while waiting for the Gold Fury and managed to take down the other team's Cabraken. She waited patiently when I came up next to her run toward the Gold Fury. Her shoulders slumped as Kumbakarna and the mustache downturned. I put a fiery hand on her arm. "It isn't over until it's over."

"Thanks," she said with a half smile. "Just glad I didn't die there."

I nodded. "Me too."

"Nick?" Her voice was low and a little shaky.

I glanced at her.

"Is this it?"

I studied her expression for another beat. Then I pulled up the scoreboard. Our deaths were racking up, but it was closer than it appeared. We weren't too far behind them, and we had almost as many items. The progress of the map was the bad part.

I looked through, scanning for weaknesses. There had to be….

Something.

I tapped the screen on the last character of the other team: Mercury. He had very few kills, no deaths.

"Guys," I said quickly over the comms, "we need to find and hunt down their Mercury. He doesn't have many kills, so I think he's their weak point. Try to corner him by a phoenix. We could get him down and hopefully take out one or two people that try to save him."

"On it!" Ross and Morgan called together.

"I see him," Chase said, "he's in the solo lane coming your way, Melody and Nick."

"Gank him!" I called.

The four of us stormed through the jungle until we got up closer to him. We waited until he got far enough down the lane that we could get behind him. Melody ran out into the lane in front of him, and the three of us came up behind. He charged at her, and his health started to dwindle before Morgan used his ult to stop him. Ross followed suit, and I took out the last of his health as he doubled back toward the phoenix.

"Hurry, guys!" I yelled as I shot fireballs one after another at the phoenix, everyone rotating in and out of its fire.

At last, we took it down and stormed the base to get the titan.

"They're coming this way!" Chase warned us as he doubled back to our base. "I don't know if you can get it first!"

"Hold them off for as long as you can!" I shouted.

Sweat sizzling on my fiery form, I hurled fireballs as fast as I could. I heard somewhere over the comms Chase yelling as he tried to fend off the other team before finally going down.

"Come on!"

The familiar tune of victory music played.

I collapsed to the floor, tears running down my cheeks.

Everyone followed suit.

When we came face-to-face with the other players, we were all crying. Some were shaking their heads, most of us were hugging, more were apologizing to each other.

Then, the other team vanished.

When we landed again, all of us formed a tightly knit circle, hugging and crying.

"We're… we're gonna finish this," I said through sobs. "We're going to do it for everyone that's here… that's… that's gone… that's waiting for us. We can do this."