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

[gramarye]

"You should see the other guy," he croaks, because he thinks he's hilarious.

Duly unsettled, he takes a sip of water, pauses, then drinks half of it in one go. It does make him feel slightly less shitty, so there's that. She can stare enough for both of them, he keeps looking around, trying to remember where he is and shit what it must be like at home, all the shit he has to do — "How is it out there?"

He's too foggy to sign, but he makes the effort to make the movements of his lips distinct and not mumble, so she doesn't have to strain to hear.

[rhinemaid]

“Bad,” she says, after a moment. “Outside of Griss Twist, things are mostly- very quiet.” Oppressively so, people trying to go about their business ignoring what's happening in and around the Arena, or sitting indoors glued to the CiD coverage. She's kept up with it while staying indoors here, but less than she was before Lea came; now there are people coming and going occasionally, and now she has things she's supposed to be doing that don't involve sitting in one place. “It'll have to end, eventually, it's just- not. Yet.”

[gramarye]

"Probably take a couple days, at least." A minor incident set off riots in the Spatters for one or two days. But opening fire on crowds of normal civilians? Then again, the rest of the city likes to look away when things like this happen. You never know.

He rubs at his eyes, drinks some more, little sips now instead of trying to drown in it. Something occurs to him as he's looking around, something is missing, and he sits up abruptly, alarmed. "Where's Hassan?" If he went back out there in that, Wolfgang is actually going to kill him. (Spoiler: no, he isn't.)

[rhinemaid]

“I think he's still here-” Ilde half-stands in the midst of that thought, to see if she can get a better look of the rest of the room or maybe spontaneously develop the ability to see through walls and keep track of where people are and are not at any given moment. (And why not, anyway, it'd be nice if she'd come out of the apocalypse with something useful to apply to her every day life, instead of something she has to work not to use.) “Would he have gone without saying to you?”

Probably it goes without saying that she's curious about Hassan - who he is, when he arrived, how Wolfgang knows him, why he's so very important - but now is almost certainly not the moment for interrogations.

[gramarye]

"No." He thinks. He's suddenly not sure. It's been ten years, people change. But not that much and he obviously still cares, he wouldn't just leave him here without at least telling someone where he was going. Right?

He could check, but he doesn't. Partially because he trusts him, partially because he's completely wiped out, he has nothing left. "No, he's here." He lies back down instead. "Where is here, by the way?" The events immediately leading up to his coming here are sort of a blur for him.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde could check, too, but Wolfgang says no, he's here and she sits back down because given the option of staying nearby, she'll take that one, under the circumstances. It takes her a minute or so to work her way back around to answering the next question, although she can't decide if it's more or less complicated than it feels-

“It's my house. Um, my other house. That I inherited, sort of.” That she did in fact inherit, but she's semi-confident that it didn't involve anyone actually dying, thus complicating how 'inheritance' works. Not being in Baedal is as good as, legally speaking, something that only makes Baedal seem all the more alarming, even if it makes sense. It's the kind of mental logic puzzle that is the refuge of a mind that can't decide between trying to forget the things she can do nothing about right now or trying to aggressively remember them because she should, she just should, because it isn't fair to look away. And here she is, looking at- her hands, mainly, but then back to Wolfgang, in case he speaks, because she is paying attention today. “I have another house. This one.”

[gramarye]

"Oh." Yeah, he understands what that means. Death in Baedal must be a relief against the uncertainty of people randomly coming and going, never sure how long they'll stay, if they should build a life here or if they might go back home and never come back, and just leave everything and everyone behind.

He's thought about it a lot.

"It's a nice house," he offers after a moment. "Sorry for bleeding on it." That's a joke, ha ha.

"Are you okay?" It occurs to him that prior to this she might have been out there, too. Or something else could have happened. He's been out a couple hours, probably, at least.

[rhinemaid]

“I'm fine,” she says, quickly - it's a rerun, it's the monsters falling all over again, people in danger and Ilde sitting safely indoors, wringing her hands and feeling sorry for herself. She hasn't got anything to complain about so she doesn't. “I'm fine, I've just been here to let people in and make sure everything's...I don't know, everything.”

Organized. Suitable. Readily at hand for people who are distracted and in no mood to dig around for what they need.

“Sonja's at the Arena, and I think Ivan might be, but I couldn't go, since-” a gesture at what is definitely not just a fold in the fabric of her dress from sitting, “-so I'm doing this. It was Lea's idea.” A good idea that she'd seized on.

[gramarye]

"Oh... right. How is the baby?"

If this sounds slightly (or a lot) awkward, well, it is. This is probably not the time for this, but right now he doesn't want to think too hard about what's going on out there. He'll have to later, but he might as well put it off until he feels less like hammered crap and can do more about it than worry and feel anxious and sad and angry.

[rhinemaid]

It does require a moment of mental recalibration, but if Wolfgang would rather think about her baby than the riots, then...well, it's not like it's not a subject she devotes a lot of daily thought to. She can make that conversation.

“Good, I think? I'm past the usual 'don't tell anyone in case you jinx yourself' cut-off date and nothing has gone terribly awry yet.” Besides the fact that this is innately ill-advised. “I've been really careful, I have to pay attention to- absolutely everything, I guess. Ivan bought me a sort of fae wine that I can still drink, though, I thought that was...sweet. I've been thinking about talking to this woman in the river, too, since she has...well, my baby's probably going to look similar to her, and it's not as though I have a set form, per se? I thought it'd be nice if I could be like that, so the baby would- have something like she is. Um, that's probably more than you were wondering.”