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

benji and wolfgang; dreamscape; after riots.

[cestrumnocturnum]

Whether it's unusual for Uri or unusual for Benji, they dream together of Baedal.

Or something like Baedal. The shape of the coast is like the north, and there is fog fuzzying the horizon -- who misses the sharp clean horizons of a normal realm? Benji, sometimes. However, the weather is a little damper and wetter in a way more persistent than the occasional blot of bleak seasonal weather. The coast is more rock than it is sand, grey slabs that are wet nearest the ocean, rock pools in between them, cracks filled with broken stone, dead crab pieces, dried seaweed. The wind is uneasy and restless and slaps the sea against rock so insistent that sharp white spray keeps punctuating the peace at each wave.

A little aways from the water save for when the wind blows finer droplets in her direction, Benji sits comfortably, her clothing practical, hair longer than in reality becoming tangled before she secures it beneath the collar of her jacket. She is at more peace than she has been, as if having forced herself into it. Conway has been missing and Uri, now, too, and she hasn't touched her CiD since that first day things had begun to go wrong again.

But now she has found him, and casually takes over his dreamscape with her own, and waits.

[gramarye]

It's a welcome change. He's been dreaming abstractly, which he never does; his dreams are always clear and precise, lacking the surrealist quality of true dreaming. They feature actual people, realistic events. They're memories. This subconscious thing is strange. He doesn't like changes in his predictable routines, they make him wonder if it's real.

He's been dreaming about being in the army again. His hair will be short and he'll be in fatigues, inside, and they'll all be standing behind desks, hacking away at pieces of meat, all in time with each other like a well-oiled machine, and he'll just keep looking at the knife and thinking what's the point. So he'll walk outside and there will be a field of poppies on fire. Or he'll be in his first grade classroom, hunched over one of those tiny tables meant for six-year-old bodies, desperately trying to find the key in a pile that fits in a lock and knowing he can't leave until he does, while his parents and his teacher talk to each other in low voices and look at him with concern, ignoring the dead crows piled around all the exits. Or he'll be seven years old again and in a crowded street on a sunny day, aware that he has lost someone and frantic to find her but every girl he finds with curly dark hair is never her. They all look at him accusingly and say Why aren't you trying harder?

When he dreams about Baedal, it's all focused on the Arena. Or the Spatters. The police are opening fire in the crowds again. He's not fast enough this time. Or none of them are and they all die. Or they wait a little longer and he has to stand out there on the battlefield, dropping the knife again because he won't do it. Then he dies.

The beach is nice, even cold and rocky. He doesn't mind a little gloom, has the right amount of obnoxious poetic melancholy to appreciate it, but as he approaches her, he's shivering with his arms wrapped around himself like he always does when the temperature drops below 30°C. (He's sort of a wimp about cold weather. Why is this city always so cold? — He doesn't realise he's dreaming, people usually don't, but he can't quite place a timeline on this either, since what happened a few hours ago feels very far away, here.)

"You came," Uri says. He sounds — it's hard to tell. Pleased, yes, relieved, yes, but also slightly unsure the way he always is, like maybe this was an accident or she didn't think he'd be here and he's reading too much into it. Maybe it's a coincidence. Then, with a fuzzier, confused quality, like he's not sure why he was worried: "You're okay."

Of course she's okay, why wouldn't she be? Nothing's happened in the timeline of here, but the Arena looms in the background, impossibly large, like a supermoon.