Smoke

There was a massive fire on one of the servers I was in.

The fire swallowed everything in its path. The entire community, basically a huge village, was consumed by chaos. Buildings were reduced to blocks; they just another path for the fire, to get to the next building. Players scrambled around, trying to put it out; but it was useless. This fire was different. Water did nothing; instead, it seemed to make it spread faster.

Panicked, people started bulding a wall. A wall made of cobblestone, sand, anything that was thought to be fireproof. They thought it would save their builds.

The fire destroyed it in seconds. The cobblestone turned to ash, everything turned into ash. The wall collapsed.

The moderators could do nothing. It seemed like someone took away their permissions. Defeated, the players stood on the sidelines, watching as the buildings they put so much work into go up in smoke.

One of the other players, who had recently come back from mining, was shocked to see a skin he didn't recognized. He looked like he was wearing some sort of rain jacket, with a red hat. The player wearing it was standing in the middle of the flames. Stood still and watched the entire town as it burned.

The player managed to get a screenshot. The mysterious player's tag?

"TheFireMan".

The player who had taken the screenshot happened to be my friend. He left the server and sent the screenshot to me, after alerting me that his PC started acting up. He said that it was getting hot.

My friend's house burned down that day, but my friend's body was never recovered from the wreck.

Multiple servers, they had fires just like this. A slow, crawling wave of destruction that no one could stop. No one saw "TheFireMan", though.

Maybe he learned from his mistake.

I kept the photo my friend gave me. I didn't know what to do with it, so I kept it in my file folder.

________

I just thought about it today. Months after my friend's death. I was just reminded when a news report, splayed up on the tv,  told me another building went down in the ciy today: another victim of the same arsonist who was responsible for lighting three other  buildings on fire.

I ran to the computer, and I pulled it up.

I studied the screenshot.

"TheFireMan" was still there, face tilted up to the sky. Surrounded by flames, he looked like something from an action movie. His skin was pure black, except for the jacket he wore. It was still yellow.

His hat matched with the fire dancing around him.

Maybe a clue, or something, was hidden there. I took it and sent it to one of my... "Friends" through the internet. He replied quickly.

TheOneBoon: Voice Chat.

"What is it?" he asked, when I turned on the mic.

"Remember all those fires that happened across all those servers?" I replied. Surely, he'd remember. He was he owner of one of those servers.

He posted the screenshot on the chat.

"I remember. Those arsons from this morning reminded me." He sounded like he was smiling, though I couldn't imagine why. I heard a click.

"Oh no," he said.

Half a second later, another picture came up. It was of "TheFireMan", standing in front of a burning building, but...

It was from third person, front view. He deleted it quickly.

"...You weren't supposed to see that." He growled.

"...Who are you?" I asked, starting to panick. He couldn't've taken that picture unless he was him.

He didn't answer.

TheOneBoon has went offline.

I got up off of the computer. The day went by in a haze, because I wasn't focused on any of it.

My dreams were restless. I was in a burning building, lying on my bed. I felt like I couldn't breathe. It was too hot. Beads of sweat rolled down my face. My nose, my lungs, were filled with ash. I was suffocating.

I gasp awake. There was no fire. No ash.

To keep calm, I looked out the window, seeing a bright red glow.

I smell smoke.

Author's Note
I should realy start announcing these things before I write them. I'll edit this for mistakes in the morning. (9:36 pm)

maybe add something more.

CubeDueler