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

[caballero]

He catches sight of Rachel - of course he does - before she's properly near him, and Bruce ends up in the stands at the edge, ducking behind the railing, grimace on his face. He had to duck or get his head blown off, but now he's making a target of himself in front of civilians. He runs towards Rachel, low and hard to see, and when he runs into her he stops, yanks her down too so nobody can see them.

"Down," he snaps at her, pointing below them - if she's not going to get out then she needs to get down into the Arena catacomb of ready-rooms and not be out in the stands where projectiles are flying and people are getting dragged off by their hair.

Suddenly, determined footsteps, and someone is running at them. A Militia agent, who appears out of the dusty gloom, and Bruce springs up, clocks them under the jaw, shoves them over the side, and then - hops off, and down, back into it.

[gotbottle]

She nods to show him she understands, but Tom is up and on his feet before she's even finished, the Militia agent over the rail before she's found her own feet. And then over the railing he goes, back down into the fray.

Oh. Just like that, huh?

Rachel grabs the railing, takes a deep breath, and vaults up and over. The drop isn't as bad as it looked from above, but it's a bit much for your average untrained would-be reporter to properly stick the landing. She hits with a knee and her left hand, both scuffed up by the hard dirt surface when she gets up.

She glances around to get her bearings, heading for a wall and a doorway she glimpsed through the thinning cloud of dust.

[caballero]

Oh for the love of... he'd hoped she'd take the stairs, seeing as she was so keen on struggling through crowds anyway. Too late now - and maybe he should have known, given what he knows she's capable of getting up to just for kicks. (Something distant, like fondness; she's his friend, isn't she?)

Fortunately, there's less actual fighting happening in the hallways underneath the stands - people huddled, injured, hiding, and while there are Militia agents, the ones who've remained have no weapons, and are instead working to patch up grievous injuries of people caught in the madness. One agent ignores Rachel's presence entirely, too focused on trying to hail a medic over his radio, but being unable to catch a break - no one wants to try and get inside, anymore.

Outside Bruce draws fire away from a number of escaping prisoners. It's amazing to think it's still this bad, but the floor of the Arena is vast, a monumental space, now a war zone. In the clearing dust, he can see that the Militia has hauled out a piece of equipment he's never seen from the before - a large black disc mounted on a rolling support platform, the edges of the disc crackling with blue static.

It's familiar, though. He skids to a halt the second he hears the tell-tale sound of a device warming up, and darts back. He shouts at the nearest combatant, covering his ears in demonstration. Everyone smart enough to follow his lead does so, and he sees one woman's eyes widen in horrified recognition as she does so, before leaping out of the way.

The LRAD goes off, a horrifying, sub-sonic sound and feeling. Bruce feels immediate nauseous and disoriented, and he's never been more glad for the material his gloves are made of, because while his ears hurt, he can tell it's not enough to have burst his eardrums. The ground shakes, and he hears someone screaming - howling, rather, it must be some kind of shape-shifter who didn't get his ears covered fast enough, now subject to what his super-human senses are experiencing.

[gotbottle]

It may not have been the wisest or safest route, but it was the most expedient; not having to fight the crowds down the stairs means Rachel is well inside the hallways quickly. She freezes a moment inside the doorway, at the sight of Militia agents spread around the corridor. But when it becomes evident they don't much care about her presence, they're seeing to other things and other people, she starts picking her way among people and the odd discarded piece of weaponry or armor.

The stone walls of the Arena offer the people within its corridors some protection when the LRAD starts up; provided they're well away from doors they aren't immediately incapacitated by rupturing eardrums. But it's still disorienting, still very uncomfortable bordering on painful. It makes Rachel double over a moment, one hand splayed on a wall to try to brace herself, before she straightens up and covers both ears.

Her first instinct is to backpedal away from the noise, and she does, scurrying away until she trips over a shield someone dropped as they fled. Her hands drop to break her fall and the noise starts pounding harder at the inside of her skull, making her stomach turn over. Frantic, flailing, desperate for some kind of cover, she grabs the shield and hauls it up in front of herself.

The noise doesn't stop, but it's abated, mildly better than holding her hands over her ears. She can get up, and she can peer around it in brief glances to try to figure out what's going on.

Most of the people in here seem to gather that being further away is better, and are heading back towards her. But the Militia agent, the one trying to raise a medic as she passed, had removed his helmet (maybe hoping for clearer communication, maybe out of frustration, who knows), and is trying to flail around for it with one hand while trying to drag the injured person he'd been sitting by back with the other.

Once again Rachel starts battling her way upstream, trying to reach them, trying to help.

[caballero]

The Militia agent inside is soon clearly incapacitated, but when he sees Rachel, able-bodied and clear-eyed, he holds out his communicator to her, expression anguished. It's apparent in an instant that he can't hear - he's in pain, so maybe he can only hear a horrific ringing, but he's useless with trying to figure the medic out. Once that's shoved helplessly into Rachel's hand, he goes back to trying to help the injured civilian.

From outside, there's another whine of the machine charging again, the only warning sign before the LRAD blasts into action. It's aim several meters to the left this time, but there's no apparent target in its path.

Bruce knows what's happening in an instant though, holding his hands over his ears again as he ducks behind an overturned food cart that had fallen from the stands. They're clearing the area - all except for him. No one's going to come over here when he's in a triangulated corner whose edges are being guarded by that. He's never seen one of these things - or anything like it - in the Militia's arsenal before, and didn't think the city had the right technological bent, but judging by the crackling around the edges of the disc (and the otherworldly disoriented feeling not entirely in line with a traditional LRAD), it's powered by something magical. He scrambles a couple different ideas on how to disable it, but before he can get up, it goes off again, this time several meters to the right. He hears a few straggling yells of fright, and then their little edge of dusty-floored hell is left clear.

Heavy footsteps sound in the clearing. A commanding voice: "Get up."

Bruce wraps his hand around the hilt of his sword, and rises - then turns around to face Argo.

The other man - xenian, but human-looking - is standing across from him, in front of the LRAD, and while he must feel very proud for standing there alone, a row of heavily-armed and primed-for-action subordinate agents stand, watching. Bruce knows this face off is only symbolic. He's cornered.

[gotbottle]

Rachel makes an attempt to call again for help, but there's another blast from the LRAD, then another, and she can't even hear herself think, there's no way anyone will hear her calling. She gives up and starts an effort to one-handedly type out a text message with her left hand, shield still hoisted with her right arm.

There's blissful silence and stillness when the LRAD cuts off again. Her ears are ringing like she's just come out of a concert but she can hear, thanks to the instinct that made her take up the shield.

Get up.

She hears that, hears the command ring out in the quiet that's settled, and she knows it means trouble. She edges toward the doorway, and can just see that they have Tom cornered as he rises to his feet.

Even she can see there's nothing she can do to stop them. Any one Militia agent could take her out without much expenditure of effort or energy. Charging out there means two bodies (or maybe two people in a cell, but they didn't even spare the prisoners they brought out here for bait, she's under no illusion they'll suddenly feel merciful).

But she's not entirely unarmed.

She prays, briefly, silently, that the shield she bears protected more than her hearing. She prays the overwhelmed, incapacitated Militia agent who shoved his CiD at her does not remember, in all the pain, panic, and chaos, that he gave his device to a young woman with red hair, a color that some of his comrades found so remarkable in a curbside interrogation.

She prays she gets out of here in time and undetected.

And she prays this isn't all for nothing.

She prays. And she sets the Militia agent's CiD to video broadcasting, to the citywide channel, to full volume on the microphone, and, careful to avoid filming her own face, she reaches out through the doorway and props the CiD up on a ledge on the stone wall, pointed as best as she can manage toward where Argo has Bruce cornered.

And then she turns, shield held to protect her identity and to help clear people out of her path as she charges down the corridor, headed for the stairs.

She came here to bear witness. Whatever is about to happen, she wants to see it with her own eyes, not rely on a video broadcast.

[caballero]

It's actually pretty damn anti-climatic, in the end.

Argo wants the satisfaction of winning – taking him in single combat, taking his head, something visceral and final and for his city – but he can't. He's bigger than Bruce is, less injured from the battle so far, better equipped, but Bruce is just better. He gets the Militia captain bad and nearly takes his arm off, even while he's reeling from a blow to the head that's left him bleeding and unsteady. Argo whirls around and tries for his back, but Bruce drops, comes back lower – it's not graceful, it's (not a dance) stilted and painful-looking and grudging, and if it were just them on some distant shore, there'd be no contest. Bruce knows it, and the look on his face reflects it.

That look does not foster any friendship.

Argo jerks his head, finally, and the response is so cleanly executed that it must have been planned already, no matter how furious the captain looks at having to resort to it. Three Militia gunners take aim, and though Bruce scrambles, he still gets hit with two laser bolts – there's nothing PG-sci-fi about the burns; one yellow-hued beam seems to go straight through him. At the same moment, two more agents step forward, weapons raised, and rush to engage him while he's still righting himself after impact. Only when their steel meets his does Argo step forward once more.

Ultimately it's down to mathematics. Not getting hit is a variable in an equation, and the string of digits goes on and on until-

It's no longer solve-able.

If there were a replay screen, if it could be rewound and dissected and judged, there'd be no way out. Maybe, if thirty moves ago, he'd done something different, skewed reality in a different way, sent the card house crumbling slightly further east. But that's not how it goes. In this reality, Argo's blade catches him in the back, point-first, snapping through bodyarmor and finding an angle perfectly between his scapula and his spine, splintering his ribs, piercing his heart. Through his chest, blood-soaked silver can be seen for just a moment, before Argo rips it back the other way.

The last thing Bruce does before he falls backwards is smile briefly.

He falls gracelessly, not down onto his knees and over like an old movie, but stiffly, uncontrollably. He knows, distantly, he has a few minutes while the blood still moves through his system and keeps his brain going, before fluid fills his torn lungs, before his chest cavity gives up from the trauma. His vision will last the longest. His sword clatters away over the hard-packed ground, as if fleeing when he can't; he didn't bring anything else, not even his mask. It's weird, he thinks (yes, weird) that he isn't angry.

There's his vision going – or is it? Someone is looking at him, and for a second, Bruce recognizes the figure. He says one word, a name, barely-audible. “Harvey.” It doesn't sound like a plea or a question, just - Oh, it's you. He supposes he deserves to get his ass kicked in the afterlife. Maybe he can explain himself, or maybe he'll just watch on...

He's mid-thought when it goes dark.

And that's all there is.

[gotbottle]

By the time Bruce hits the floor, so has Rachel; she doesn't fall backwards but her knees refuse to hold her and she just needs to turn away now that she knows for sure what happened. She's seated against the railing, on the floor of the upper level, knees drawn up to her chest, sobbing.

She knew, intellectually, what was most likely to happen from the moment the man she knew as Tom revealed himself. And she'd steeled herself. But the reality was nothing like what she'd envisioned, she had no frame of reference.

And there's more, beyond the obvious horror. She's lost other friends in this city but it's always been that nebulous they probably went home, they're probably all right that accompanies people vanishing.

But this time, there's none of those comforting illusions, no hope of a happy ending somewhere out there. Her friend, someone she genuinely liked, someone she trusted enough to follow down a fire escape and not hide her shadow from, is dead.

She feels like she could sit there and cry forever, gutted, but a wave of noise below--footsteps, shouting voices, the swing and impact of weapons--stills her and then makes her reach up for the railing. She pulls herself up, scrubbing at her face with a sleeve, and looks down at the Arena floor.

Just in time to see that all hell has broken loose. People are flooding the Arena floor again; from what she can tell they're enraged or appalled at what's just happened and they want to make someone pay for it. Prisoners are rushing at Militia members are rushing at gladiators, and even some of Gediron's priests are down there, wading into the fray. She catches just a glimpse of where Bruce's body is before the area is overrun.

Her first thought is for his body--what will happen to him? As bloodthirsty as the Militia's been today, images of making an example by sticking his head on a pike or something equally horrible come to mind, and she won't have that. Once again, she goes pushing through the crowds.

By the time she steps back out onto the Arena floor, hugging the wall, skirting the chaos, she's grabbed a cloak off a fallen combatant somewhere in the ground-floor corridors and made sure her hair is hidden in it. She moves, making sure to stay well out of the way of weapons and fists, but when she reaches the place where she's sure she saw Bruce's body, he's gone.

But his sword still lies on the dirt. She doesn't hesitate, grabbing it and hiding it inside the cloak. She heads for the nearest doorway.

And she stops short. The CiD, the one the militia agent inside handed her, the one she set on the ledge outside a doorway to try to broadcast what was happening here, to the vigilante, still sits where she left it.

Rachel pulls the cloak up over her face, reaching up and snatching the CiD as she passes. Once that's also hidden away, she walks quickly through the ground-floor maze of corridors until she comes to an exterior exit.

And she gets out. And away from this place as fast as she can.