"Alright, it doesn't matter if we win, let's just try to score some of us in the top individual or get our team in the top 5." Dream's voice was tired, and his last words stretched out into a long yawn. Lana knew he was just giving the "winning isn't important" speech because she was playing, and it was supposed to make her feel better for not playing well, but so far, she didn't feel any better, in fact she was only beginning to grow more anxious.

Sapnap and Punz were deafened, starting up their streams and talking to chat. Lana had contemplated just not streaming, maybe it would relieve a lot of the stress, but she knew her chat would be upset if they missed this.

"Are you streaming?" Dream asked, jumping around the steps that sat beneath the looming timer, counting down to Lana's demise.

"Not yet." She could hear the gruffness in her voice and immediately coughed, attempting to clear her throat.

"Oh okay, sounds good..." The air was tense and awkward, and Dream's voice trailed off, he sounded like his thoughts were a million miles away.

Lana was just about to come up with something to say, trying to fill the empty air between them, but thankfully Sapnap unmuted, "God, I've got to piss."

"Ew." Dream mumbled.

"You'd better watch out or I might go into your room and pee in your mouth." Lana could hear Sapnap stretching backwards in his chair.

"I'd pay to see that." Lana laughed; she'd always liked watching Sapnap's streams. She enjoyed how nonchalantly he said some of the strangest things.

"Come on now." Dream's voice was close to his mic, his smirk audible. Lana felt a sudden jolt flush through her.

"I'm gonna start my stream really quick." She said quietly, Sapnap and Punz were arguing and didn't hear her, but Dream responded, "You'd better hurry." Lana could hear his voice moving closer to the mic once more, "3 minutes."

She deafened herself and quickly caught her bearings before starting up her stream, "Hey chat! It's mcc day and we've gotta hurry, I decided to wait till the last minute to get the stream started." The chat began to fill with excitement and various emotes, and Lana rejoined the call.

"Dream was just telling us we should get ace race out of the way, even though he's good at it." Sapnap was trying to get his friend to reconsider, but Lana knew why he was suggesting it. She was grateful he wasn't telling everyone the real reason, but she still felt a pang of embarrassment that she was making Dream sacrifice one of his better games for her.

"I'm fine with whatever the team wants, not super picky about my game order." Lana awkwardly laughed, just trying to get through this discussion without feeling like a total ass for being the worst one there.

"Okay, then it's settled." Dream said firmly, "Let's get ace race out of the way, and then we can save the ones that Lana is better at for the end, since the rest of us are pretty good at everything."

Oh god, he really had to say that?! Lana facepalmed at her camera, and mouthed her embarrassment at the chat, which suddenly began to fill with either encouraging messages or pleas for her to play as bad as possible.

The bridge opened and they all ran through to the main building, the first game ended up being to get to the other side, Lana tried her best, but she ended up being the last one through on most of the rounds. Dream was trying his best to be encouraging but she could hear his patience thinning. Sapnap on the other hand had no problem teasing her about it, he'd laugh about how she was carrying them all, which oddly made Lana feel a lot better about everything. She could tell he didn't really care how well they placed and that he wasn't actually being a douche about anything.

All the next games Dream was playing extra hard, trying his best to make up a lot of the points they were losing. He didn't talk a lot, and it only took two more games for him to finally stop trying to be nice about Lana's playing.

Much to Lana's dismay, ace race was the last game they were playing, she tried to calm her breathing. It was gonna be fine, Dream already thinks she is gonna be shit at it, so it shouldn't matter. Yet, it still mattered to her.

"Just try to finish, alright." Dream spoke up, it was the first time he'd said something in the past 5 minutes.

"He's alive." Punz laughed, Sapnap was already deafened, apparently, he needed complete focus for this.

Then it started and everyone took off running, Lana actually wasn't doing that bad so far. She maintained 15th for most of the first lap, and in the second she slowly began to fall back. Her chat was spamming with their excitement, but Lana stayed focused, she just needed to not be last, anything but last and maybe Dream would stop being such an ass about everything.

"Second." Dream sighed, "Just after Phil."

Then Sapnap was 5th and Punz was 8th. Lana was hanging onto 18th, then she passed 17th, and then she passed another, finishing as number 16.

"Not so bad." Punz cheered, "Dream was worried about nothing!"

Lana smiled, "Tha-"

She was interrupted by Dream's laugh, "You should've seen her earlier this morning."

Lana felt her cheeks getting red, "Uh yeah, haha. I just got lucky this time." She knew he probably wasn't meaning to hurt her feelings (probably), but it still made her feel so uncomfortable. Lana knew how much Dream liked to win, and everytime he made those comments she felt like she was only going to let down the team.

"Well, we made it to dodgebolt, so that's all that matters." Punz interrupted her thoughts, and she was shaken back to reality.

"Let's see how well this goes." Dream muttered.

They won the first round, and then the next, but in the third and fourth they lost. It was tied and down to this round to determine who was going to win. Lana could feel her stomach in her throat, at any second she was going to vomit.

Dream got out, but continued shouting pointers to Sapnap and Punz, until the next two arrows hit them both, making them disappear into a flutter of confetti.

"Alright, it's down to you, Lana!" Sapnap was cheering her on, telling her to aim for Hbomb first. She missed the first, but the second found its mark right into the other team's best player.

"Ayy!" Punz yelled, Dream was silent, his character standing motionless on the sidelines, and just for a second he distracted Lana, causing an arrow to hit her character straight on, losing them the game.

"It's all good, you played better than Dream was making you sound." Sapnap's character crouched in front of her, before it ran off to check his score.

How was Dream making her sound? Had he been talking about her to other people, she knew he probably had but it still made her feel weird to think about Dream talking about her to his friends or people she'd never met. Especially if he was talking about how ass she was gonna be.

"This was fun, but I've got some stuff I need to get done." Dream spoke, "Good job everyone, and uh, nice playing with you Lana."

She mumbled a goodbye to Dream before letting everyone know she should get going as well.

After ending the stream, she pulled open twitter on her phone, she had a few new followers from Sapnap, Punz, and some other streamers from the event. Scrolling through the trending tab she noticed their team's name was one of the topics.

The first rule of being content creator is to never open something trending about yourself, especially if you had just lost the game for the most popular minecraft youtuber.

The first few posts were about funny moments or things Sapnap had said, but as Lana kept scrolling, she came across tweets "/lanaislame neg", she could feel her heart drop. Of course, she knew that at some point she would have to come across larger amounts of hate then what she was used to, but it still sucked to see tweet after tweet about how annoying it was that she wasn't trying, or that she was purposefully being bad so that one of the boys would have to help her.

User123

/lanaislame neg

Does this bitch know that playing shitty won't get her Dream's attention?

Replies:

User569

HONESTLY LMAOOO

She couldn't help but keep scrolling, even though she knew that it was only going to hurt her, she wanted to know what they thought of her.

"Lana!" Ingrid called, "You did so good!" They ran into Lana's room and grabbed her from behind, looking over her shoulder Ingrid saw the tweets, "Stop looking at those, they're bullshit."

"I know, but I just-" Lana didn't have an excuse for scrolling through all the hate, just that sometimes she didn't really like herself and she wanted a reason to justify it. To justify why she felt sad all the time or why she hated the girl who looked back at her in the mirror.

"Just what?" Ingrid pulled her chair around so that they were facing one another, "You did fine, it was your first mcc and you made it to the top 2!"

"Only because Dream had to carry me, he was so upset the whole time, I could tell." Lana hated being proud of herself, it made her feel like she was being full of herself.

"Who cares what that ass thinks, come on let's go get something to eat." Ingrid pulled her out of the room.

They were eating their burgers in the car when Lana's phone lit up, "Dream tweeted at me, it's probably some stupid we tried our best but due to unfortunate circumstances we came in second bullshit."

She pulled open the app and scrolled to her notifications.

Dreamwastaken

Saw a lot of hate regarding @ lanaislame , it was her first mcc and I think

She did pretty fucking good. To all of you sending hate, I don't consider you, my fan.

"Wowww, look at him defending you!" Ingrid smirked, nudging Lana.

"That's surprising, maybe he's not as much of a bitch as I thought he was." Lana hovered over the tweet, unsure if she should like it or reply. She just sat there rereading the words, over and over again.