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

[lupa]

"Ostie."

No one notes the incongruity of the Quebecois curse growled from animal jaws because GG's drowned out by the noise around her, the sudden surge -- forwards, inwards, outwards, the sudden movement -- catching her in its tide. She is slammed into the present, paws scrabbling on the earth below as she runs on four legs, for a moment simply moving without any destination in mind. It just seems important that she should not be the only thing in the Arena left immobile.

The Militia have opened fire. A man screams as she bats him to one side before he realises that she's pushed him out of the trajectory of the bullets, one of which nicks her on its way. The wound, without the burn of silver to keep it open, seals over swiftly. She howls all the same.

[alan_shore]

Alan's row sways as if in a car that's swerved sharply, one person hurled into the next. A bony shoulder knocks against him, and he gathers his scattered impressions--a gunshot, cracking louder in memory than the moment it was fired; a child, hair tangled in the wind, lifted up by the scruff of her coat; nail polish, pink--like so much paperwork before he's shoved to the ground. A sneaker comes down on his calf and he fights panic, fights what could be dread or certainty burning cool and fatal as any bullet, squirming free of mental paralysis and struggling to his feet.

He doesn't know the exits--the lone part of this setup that ought to have interested him, and he has no choice but to fling himself into the crowd's choppy flow. There are more shots, screams, and snaps and crunches--those very bodily sounds--that sicken him more than any of it. Alan stays low and keeps moving until somewhere in the fray he glimpses the scarlet the popcorn vendors sport.

As best he can in the crush and panic of the crowd, he follows the color, the chance (it isn't hope--his constricted thinking can't accommodate that) at being led to an exit, a storage room. Through outflung limbs, skirting fallen bodies, slipping more than once in blood or vomit, he stays in sight of his faceless guide. Whoever it is, they press on without hesitation, undaunted by an animal howl or the ball of sinew and muscle and teeth from which it issues.

Alan, on the other hand, loses a second to fear--a second in which the crowd shifts, a man realizes his life's been spared, and the vendor slips away.