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

[serjeant]

A career soldier in close quarters combat doesn't live as long as Seoraj has without a talent for fighting (for killing) - the hammer in his hand is his most visible (and as a gladitorial fighter, arguably his most iconic), but it isn't the only thing he's carrying and he's both more nimble and more creatively ruthless than he looks. When the riots break out, he throws himself into the fray without consciously choosing to do so because what doesn't ever occur to him is the notion that he might choose to do anything other than what he does - this has been a slaughter, this is wrong, and he is not a politician or a vigilante or someone who gives orders and comes up with plans, he has been waiting for the moment when he would be something like the right tool in the moment. Here it is.

(Because habit compels him - you don't fight if you're not getting paid - he lifts the wallet of the first man he drops.)

He'd been one of those murmurs of recognition, but he isn't fighting to get close to Bruce; there's no point, there's too many screaming, straining bodies between the two of them, he trusts that Bruce doesn't need him and focuses instead on what he can do, on trying to be the reason a handful of people survive. He can't save everyone - he heard Argo's command clear as the rest of them and doesn't assume he'll necessarily even save himself - but a few, yes, and those lives don't stop mattering because the number is so small. (No, a treacherous thought crawls under his skin, they stop mattering when the number becomes large.) Still - those bodies are moving, shifting, falling, and when he does see him again-

-the brutality is not horrifying, but like a lock clicking into place, a realization, the realization. The first day that they met, he'd looked at Bruce and seen something familiar, and he sees it again now - he sees something he understands, knows without hesitating over it that he understands, that if he will always be the man who can feel in his hands the sword he's always waiting to pick up again then this man, this man would never have to ask him why. It comes as bittersweet certainty and not revelation; a knowing that he's had a long time, now, that he's not until now had the moment to really think about. There is a reason why they make sense to him, a reason why he finds himself skittish in a way he's never been before-

It's split-seconds and then bodies like a rip-tide end it, a fist in his stomach and a hammer coming down on the spine of the man who threw it, and if he's going to have any emotional revelations, they're going to have to wait until he knows whether or not he's going to live through til tomorrow.

[caballero]

Whatever Seoraj thought - a week ago in his kitchen, months ago in the woods, right now - Bruce does not need him. Still, he needs so very little. He doesn't need other people or validation or his millions in Gotham or cars or smokescreens. He needs oxygen, he needs his heart to keep beating. Everything else is desire, and no one takes a precision scalpel to desire like Bruce Wayne.

It would have done him some good, to need Seoraj. Or to need Hasibe, or even Vanessza. He remembers needing people; his parents, Rachel. Henri. He's burned it out of him, like curing a wound. He'll only get it back if it grows now, if he's crippled long enough for it to culture. A glance, a half-heartbeat of distraction, and for this split-second he wants to move across the Arena.

It's meaningless when it shouldn't be. And it's one of the reasons he never walks out.

Their eyes don't meet. Bruce doesn't see him again.