The Arena Riots ( open, gamewide )

[civilobedience]

Who: The Militia, the city, and you.
What: The Arena Riots.
Where: The Arena, Griss Twist.
When: Newdi, Eliaderen 1. (Monday Oct 1st)
Notes: Companion post for questions and plotting is here.
Warnings: Violence, police brutality, disturbing content and imagery, graphic death.

It's apparent even before dawn that something out of the ordinary is happening. Canton sheriffs are roused from their sleep or pulled away from their work to be told that on no uncertain terms, today will be a day that they do not leave their neat lines on the map. That their individual offices will be responsible for all crime and unrest within their jurisdictions, with no help; the powers that be offer no details, but the creeping feeling in their presence suggests no questions would be tolerated anyway – the implication that they'll all be watched is a strong one. In Mog Hill, Sheriff Norrington proceeds as he always does under such orders. In Mafaton, leadership is stoic but one deputy laughs, sharp and bitter, while the Emissary of the Council merely checks his watch, unseen underground. Sir Hellsing is pulled away from her dinner in the Guild Hall, a Sobek Croix deputy anxiously relaying the news. The sound of shattered glass disturbs the pre-dawn silence in Flyside, a brick hurled by some faceless figure into the front window of Thames – and nothing else.

From the Spire, hooded Militiamen move quietly and uniformly south, to Griss Twist. They are followed by wagons, full of prisoners.

Comments

[amberdrake]

Drake's stitches are neat and tiny, once the envy of his teachers at the Chirurgeon's College of Predain. He gets on with it with a minimum of fuss, the wounds left from the through-and-through gunshot are now more akin to twin, shallow stab wounds. One in front and one in back, which he bodily half-rolls Wolfgang to reach once the front is stitched.

They undoubtedly still hurt like a son of a bitch, as stab wounds do, but they're not gushing blood.

"Are you part of 'Ceidary Blue 523'?" Amberdrake asks while he's working, as though he Heals and stitches strangers in panic-torn streets all the time. He can't let the fear and panic and dismay and worry around him impact him; can't let his hands shake, can't let his mind fog with terror. So, with the strength of will that has held an entire small nation together, he doesn't.

Not yet, anyway. Not while there's work to do. "If so, you will be able to find me on their network, should you want this fixed the rest of the way later." Stitch, stitch. It doesn't hurt any worse than absolutely necessary, as Amberdrake's stitches are perfectly spaced to take the strain off each other and the wound, and the needle doesn't go deeper than needed.

Having amputated limbs off screaming, live, conscious patients as a child, he's not in the least squeamish about something as mild as passing needle and thread through a person. He finally takes a glance at his patient's face as he ties off the last stitch. That worry is felt too, and not unexpected. Anyone with someone to lose out in that would be worried.

"Careful when you get up," Drake adds once this is complete, "the Healing Gift takes mundane energy from both of us." Not to mention all that blood loss.

[gramarye]

They do hurt like a son of a bitch, and the stitches, despite the care Amberdrake takes in making them, are also not exactly a picnic. He's sweating by the time he gets to his back, panting through his teeth and clenching his fists until they're white-knuckled and his nails pierce his skin.

Needless to say he is incredibly grateful when it's over, and he lets out this hissing sigh of relief. It still hurts, but at least it's a steady, hot pain without a series of tiny pierces on top of that. He doesn't manage to get up, but he can, with effort, prop himself up on the nearest wall, a hand gingerly over the stitched-closed wound, instinctively protecting it the way people do.

And applying a tiny bit of pressure just to see what would happen, because he is a fucking idiot who should be locked in a tower somewhere, and it turns out what would happen is it will hurt! A lot! So there's something he's not going to do again after his vision comes back after a white-out.

He focuses on breathing instead even though every inhale and exhale causes a painful pulling sensation. His eyes are slightly glassy and he's shaky and pale, but he's holding it together well enough to indicate this is probably not his first injury at this kind of rodeo. "Thank you," he offers after a moment. "What's your name?" If he offered it before, Wolfgang didn't catch it.

[amberdrake]

Amberdrake doesn't even try to get up just yet. Some twenty-seven years of experience has taught him his limits, and the gray cast to his deep amber skin isn't exactly a trick of the light. But he's been a kestra'chern for so long that he just sits there on his knees and shins, and folds his hands calmly in his lap once he's stowed his supplies back in his bag.

He somehow makes it graceful and calm. Being covered in random people's blood and having their terror and pain beat relentlessly at his shields, while steadily draining his physical resources through-out the day... it's not an easy thing, but he's had a lot of practice at it.

"Amberdrake," he says, "and you're quite welcome."

Honestly, he'd be dragging them both away from here if he could. It's not the safest place to be. But he can't, so he just takes the moment to regain some strength. Every moment has to come by itself during such chaos; one foot in front of the other. There's no point in looking further ahead than that. He could be shot in the head ten seconds from now, after all.

Speaking of--

"And my thanks for... whatever you did to the man with the gun."

Why yes, he'd noticed. He just hadn't let it derail him mid-procedure.

[gramarye]

Amberdrake. In his cohort. He'll have to remember that later; odds are good he won't. "Okay," he says again, noting the man's calm, wishing he could do more than just lie here.

Blankness in his face. "Did what?"

Either he's playing dumb on the off chance someone else might be listening or he really doesn't remember; either is equally likely. He's always been a bit spacey and extreme stress makes it worse.

He can hear angry shouting in the distance, some with the cadence of chanting, some shrieks, an occasional loud bang or small explosion, and it's killing him that there's nothing he can do about it. He's trying to reach someone who can get him, mentally, his already far-reaching range added to by all the blood he's spilled everywhere, but he can't penetrate the thick cloud of anger and terror the people still storming or trapped in the streets are projecting; it's like a solid wall of thought. He switches tactics, looking for a specific mind within that solid wall — going in is easier than through. One that he knows very well. He has time to filter through, even if it's not very pleasant.

[amberdrake]

Perhaps it was a reflexive action? But no, there had been a bit of deliberate projecting going on at the end. Amberdrake had gotten the gist, Empathically: 'go away'.

"As you say," he's willing to go along with it, though. Whichever the reason is. Drake shifts a little, testing his strength, and then sighs and goes about wiping off his hands, at least, on one of the few clean patches of his scrubs left.

Nothing makes your hands slippery quite like layers of dried, semi-dried, and fresh blood. The Healer knows that one from experience, too.

His hands shake a little as he cleans them, but he refuses to give in to the urge to curl up in a ball and start screaming. He does, however raise his shields temporarily higher -- he couldn't chase after another injured person right now even if he detected them. A moment of sanity inside his own mind is welcome.

While his momentary companion is doing whatever it is he's doing, Drake uncaps the thermos at his side and takes a sip of the contents. He needs to stave off over-extension as long as possible, and giving his system a shot of the herbs that are meant to help with it can't hurt. During the war, there had never been time. The next patient had always been steps away in the crowded medical tents, and he'd barely had the chance to wipe his hands clean of blood when they grew too slippery.

[gramarye]

Finally he manages to zero in on a familiar mind — or more like a set of them, narrowing it down further than that, while something he can do, is difficult when he's distracted by literally every other element of the riots, every other mind that doesn't have some kind of psychic protection.

Where are you? Are you okay?

He used to be really good at this, could send and receive thoughts from kilometers away, could filter out exactly what he wanted, sense things like fear, pain and anger from a distance and respond immediately. But that was years ago and this is a skill he only just begun relearning recently; he can't block anything out, it's all there, where he is — he can see the cross-street from here, it's a part of Griss Twist he's been to before, there's a secondhand shop he goes to a lot down the block — who he's with, that he's in pain, because it's really hard to ignore. He's still reluctant to ask, but he can't get up and walk away and sitting out here isn't safe. I need backup — I mean, help.

He opens his eyes. "I found someone," he says, voice creaky. "But I don't know if they can make it out here. Are you okay?"

[sayyad]

Uri?

The shock of suddenly having another voice in his head distracts Hassan for a moment and he narrowly avoids someone swinging a baton to his face before swinging something back. Ever since the action in The Arena spilled out and over into the streets, he's been vacillating between madly searching for the little brother he just found again, God damn it give him a fucking break, and taking out his rage on anything trying to stop him.

The relief in his mental voice is almost palpable. I know where that is. I'm heading there now. Come Hell or high water.

[amberdrake]

"Well enough," Amberdrake meanwhile says in person, "I will need to move on once I can stand again. The best I can do if you are stuck here is attempt to conceal you in some debris."

He can't carry people out of the war-zone, not without ending up passed out in a ditch much faster than expected. Wolfgang would not be the first person he's stopped from bleeding out and then helped to conceal where they lay. The militia doesn't have time to look under stray brush and cardboard and other city detritus that's ended up against walls in quiet back alleys, and that's time that his patients have to recover their strength so that they can move on.

[gramarye]

"He's coming —" There's relief in his voice, and worry, but being on the move and headed towards somewhere less violent is preferable to him still being in the thick of it. It is killing him that he can't go out there and throw a wall around Hassan that makes everyone who touches it burst from the inside out.

This is bringing out some really disturbing tendencies in himself.

Wolfgang hasn't heard any gunshots near them in a while, which means either the armed Militia agents are moving on, heading in other directions to chase down rioters, or they've switched to other weapons. Bullets are not an inexhaustible resource even for the Militia.

He has to laugh darkly, but stops and winces when it pulls on the wound and ow. "It's uh... it's fine. I'll be fine. Are — are you sure, you don't look so good."

Nobody looks great right now and it's only been a couple hours, with no sign yet of letting up. This could go on for days.

[amberdrake]

"Am I sure of what?" Amberdrake asks after taking a longer pull from his thermos, "I am a Healer, surely there are plenty more who could use my Gift today... and this is no place to take a rest."

Because no, he doesn't trust the quiet around here, either.

And he doesn't ask who is coming, or how the young man knows. Perhaps he is a mind-speaker? Drake already knows he does something akin to mind-magic, which he isn't particularly worried by.

[gramarye]

"That you're okay... well, okay." Surely Amberdrake knows his own limits. Wolfgang does not, that's why he's here, bloodied in an alley while the city tears itself apart all around him, but other people tend to have more sense than God gave babies and vegetables, unlike Wolfgang.

Whether the Militia anticipated the people taking this without retaliating or whether they accounted for a response on this scale is a question that will occupy his time later. Right now all he can do is wait and see how it turns out.