multiversallogs | The Arena Riots ( open, gamewide )

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The Arena Riots ( open, gamewide )

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.

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Those dragged from Militia custody are separated into two groups – some, branded, are shuffled out and thrown in with the other branded combatants who've arrived on their own. The rest – the majority – are hauled into cramped, barred quarters lining half the Arena floor walls. They aren't told what they've been brought here for, and none of the Militiamen will speak to them; some of them laugh, watching, others merely stand as silent sentries. Hooded agents with black stripes along their shoulders walk slowly back and forth in front of the cells, emanating a great, overpowering nothingness: blocking out the magical and supernatural abilities of the prisoners, if they happen to have any.

In the ready area for the combatants, conscripted convicts are joined by proper gladiators, and they know what they're here for. Sadists, violent animals, and those looking to earn marks with the war-god's clergy swing weapons in lazy preparation, talking amongst themselves here and there, some grinning, some occasionally calling out enticingly to the prisoners across the Arena floor.

Wolfgang keeps going between scared and sick and numb. Mostly he keeps his head down, seated on the floor, his head between his knees to keep from throwing up, his mouth moving but no sound coming out as he prays and he's not even sure why. For serenity, maybe; it keeps him calm, even if he's pretty sure God is not listening.

There are a lot of faces here he recognises, a disturbingly high number of them. He can tell the ones who have done gladiator combat from the ones who haven't, because the ones who haven't look as sick as he feels.

His head has this muddled, cobwebby feeling from whatever they're using to dampen their captives' supernatual abilities; it's strange to experience the world again without the senses he's become accustomed to being there, leaving him disoriented and confused.

Which might also have to do with how he hasn't had any medication in about two days.

Whatever comments are being made, whoever else is there — and he sees, out of the corner of his eye, the volunteer combatants showing off, scaring the shit out of everyone who is here against their will — he ignores it all, withdrawn deeply, trying not to be afraid of dying. He's had months to prepare for the idea, the certainty that he's going to die in this city sometime within the year.

It hasn't helped, clearly.

He stands up after a while, arms wrapped around himself, staring across to the volunteers while they warm up and practise, trying to understand how people can get like that, and wishing he didn't.

Somewhere in the over crowded holding area, Hassan is slumped against the wall, long legs splayed out and arms folded. This has been a fucker of a week. He didn't know if someone had remembered his face from his arrival, or if it was just his usual ability to attract trouble, or if it was simply because he was new and would go unnoticed. But there he was, sporting a black eye that he was hoping wouldn't swell up and affect his sight when things kicked off.

And they would. He didn't know much about the Gods other than what the pamphlet had mentioned, or what personal shrines he'd seen in stalls and the less polished shops around the city, and he knew less about the arena. But he knew what happened in arenas, thanks to vague memories of history lessons and action films.

The gladiators remind him of fighting dogs. And the non-fighters --of which there were many-- made him think of the small dogs used for the fighters to chew on. One of them is doing so right now, looming by the gate and telling a thin, crouching, man how giving his life to Gediron will be the most worthwhile thing he can ever do, because he is a worthless, Spatter dwelling, stranger--

Hassan laughs. Because the man is ridiculous, because this is ridiculous, because everything in his life is fucking ridiculous. Everything -- everything -- is so absurd. A couple of people nearby whisper that he's cracked and maybe it's true. The gladiator takes it as insolence and gestures for him to come over, while Hassan straightens, hands behind his back. Who do you think you are-- and on it goes, in a tirade of legacy and the dihonour he will visit upon him.

Hassan rolls his eyes, pushing himself off the wall, before grandly announcing to the room at large, "I am Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of Rome. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."

And then --quick as a dart-- spits at the gladiator behind the gate. The Militia are already dragging him to the other side of the room and slamming him down while he yells ruuh fi sittiin alf dahya. Everything is more tense afterwards, but he doesn't care. He has nothing left to live for and he'll take down as many of you fuckers as he can.

Edited 2012-10-04 17:47 (UTC)

It's the accent that catches his attention. There are enough Arabic speakers in Baedal that, while it's always a pleasant surprise, it's not jarring enough to pull Wolfgang out of wherever he's withdrawn to. Neither is the sound of a scuffle, because there have been plenty of those so far — guard against prisoner, gladiator against prisoner, prisoner against prisoner. The accent is jarring enough; of course he recognises a Palestinian accent. He ends up drifting in that direction, not sure if it's out of curiosity or instinct to be close to anything that reminds him so much of home. He barely has to tip upward — while not the tallest in the room, he's cutting it pretty close — to peer at the face associated with that voice.

His face goes dead white. He staggers backwards.

No. He's not real. It wouldn't be the first time he's imagined a face that wasn't there, projected it onto someone totally unrelated. There was a week — a long, horrible week — where every little girl with black curly hair was her. That he could hallucinate Hassan's face on a stranger...

Wolfgang is learning about checking. It's easy to do in theory: subtly or overtly taking cues from other people to see if they experience the same things he does, if they heard, saw, or felt what he did; sometimes he has to ask, sometimes he can just gauge by their reaction. It's important to establish what is real and what is imagined, although magic complicates things and it doesn't always work. But it helps.

All of that goes right out the window the second he sees that face and he blurts out, too loud, "Hassan?"

The things that are different — he's older, over a head taller, his hair is shorter and several shades lighter, there's a scar on his forehead that is new, and he's gaunt where he was only skinny before and so pale, like a ghost — are outweighed by the things that are the same. The same face — he even has the same moles, crooked teeth, lopsided eyebrows. The same unusual in-between of male and female, neither quite feminine nor exactly masculine. The same way he holds himself slightly back, uncertain, his arms wrapped around himself defensively. Doubting himself even though he'd know that face anywhere, he still expects rejection all the time. And his skin is nearly grey in colour, a deeply unhealthy shade like he's going to be sick or already has been.

No. He shouldn't have said anything. He can't tell if this is really happening or if it's all in his head, some horrible projection his subconscious has made because he's scared and hurt and wants so badly to go home. He can't tell and there's no one here he trusts enough to check for him, no one he could ask without fear. And he could be wrong; there are people here with identical faces but completely unrelated to each other, it happens all the time. He must be wrong.

Edited 2012-10-04 21:45 (UTC)

Hearing his name called has Hassan firing through possible sources to the point where his mind goes blank and his stomach tightens. He hadn't been in the city long enough to get to get to really know anyone or make a lasting impression. He hadn't even used the CiD much or communicated with the network, instead choosing to explore the boundaries of the city and gather first-hand knowledge before consulting anyone else. It wasn't something he was expecting.

As soon as the Militia agents finish slamming him into the wall, tell him to stay down, then let him go, he turns around to see--

A dead man.

No; the person in front of him is living and breathing. Even with whatever they drugged him with, even given how sick Uri looks, Hassan can tell he's breathing, blood beating, living in front of him. It doesn't knock the wind out of him but his shoulders and stance suddenly go from tense and fighting to slumped and --not defeated, but not far off. This is how they could get to him, he thinks.

"Uri?" His frown is somewhere between the edge of confused and angry. He's not really thinking when he straightens and moves forward, putting hands on shoulders and later he'll remember that Uri was always a little bit uneasy with physical contact, but establishing the fact that he's here seems more important.

"Uri." His expression dissolves into a dizzy sort of realisation. "Uri." If he keeps saying it, maybe that will ensure that this is real.

All of a sudden Hassan's hands are on him and they're solid. He can feel the slight roughness, the heat of his blood. And he stays solid. He's felt things that aren't there before, usually when he's half-asleep, but this is different, it has to be. Other people can see him, other people can touch him, this has to be real.

He doesn't flinch. Wolfgang will wince and pull away when people touch him, but never with Hassan.

He can see the swelling around one of his eyes, blood under the skin turning it dark, all the lines in his face he doesn't remember being there before. He can't tell how old he is, but time is less linear here than it is otherwise, and it doesn't matter anyway because he's here. This close, he can even smell him, and has he ever hallucinated a smell before? That's different, too — there's an adult muskiness there he doesn't remember; the last time he saw Hassan, he was fifteen and Uri was twelve.

"Oh my God." Uri puts his hand out, slowly, afraid, like if he touches him he'll burst into a cloud of smoke and disappear, poof. But he doesn't. Uri's eyes fill with tears that spill over immediately. He has his arms around him, suddenly, fiercely, face buried in his neck because God he's crying and people are going to see and think he's weak and how dare any of these people touch Hassan, how dare they, he should kill all of them —

"Oh my God," he says again. "You're tall." And it's weird.

Hassan has a lot more belief in his senses that Wolfgang does, when the extenuating circumstances aren't this extraordinary. When his hands make contact with Wolfgang, he can already feel his lips wavering into that open-mouthed smile, that mad bastard smile, only for once it's not directed towards the world in mocking determination. And then Uri is hugging him and, looking past his shoulder, the reality of the situation hits Hassan again and something balls fierce in his stomach, fists curling into Uri's clothes. No, no, not here, how is he here, don't be here— and the guilt of that overwhelms him, because he's alive. Alive, when they're all about to be sent to their deaths.

It feels as though he's being winded and there is a weird sort of exhalation to accompany the sensation as he says, "I'm tall?" He thinks of Uri, five-years-old, button childish face and that same long hair. Or even Uri the last time he had seen him, gangly and pre-adolescent. And now there is --twenties? Mid to early twenties Uri, pale and skinny, but still Uri, still the same person he'd steadfastly decided at seven-years-old yes, you, you're one of us now.

There are people watching them. The guards are looking at the two of them with interest, whispering to one another and he hasn't felt this level of anger in a long, long time. In his own world he is on the move as much as possible, treading a fine balance of keeping his family at a distance but not too distant (losing one child is enough) and now there is something, someone they can use against him.

He huddles them both into a corner. It's a useless gesture but he feels the need to create the illusion of privacy anyway.

"So. What --where do we start?"

He huffs a laugh, slightly choked because dammit he's crying. "Yeah, you're tall." And it's so weird to not have to look up at him; Uri has always been tall for his age, but roughly two and a half years and puberty separated them towards the end, and he didn't really hit his growth spurt until he was thirteen. And he doesn't remember Hassan being this tall, either; he remembers a gangly teenager trying to look older and cooler than he was. If he succeeded it was probably because Uri was younger and dorkier than he was.

Uri allows himself to be herded into a corner and wipes at his face, trying to get himself under control because it's embarrassing to be seen like this, as if no one here has good reason to get emotional right now. Of course everyone else does, but he holds himself to a different standard where he has to be a robot who has no feelings and does everything by himself, not that he's paying any attention to anything else around them right now. Even the guards are completely forgotten.

He switches to Arabic because, like a lot of first-gen immigrants, he resents how the city more or less forces everyone to speak English or learn Ragamoll. He's not bad at English and in fact has gotten much better since coming here, but he still doesn't like feeling cut off from what he grew up speaking.

Also because it's likely no one else here will understand them.

"How long have you been here? I mean in the city." He has to have come here recently, or they would have seen each other by now, if not in person then on the Network. "And how long exactly did it take you to get into trouble? What on Earth happened?" He suspects that Hassan didn't do anything to land himself in here, that makes sense with what Uri knows of the Militia — and he knows a lot of the Militia — but he is sort of afraid the answer might be so I punched a cop in the face... or something.

Edited 2012-10-14 20:43 (UTC)

GG is holding her shape. It's a full-time occupation.

She is braced human-shaped against the bars, head hanging down as her bones try to break and reshape themselves and she forces them back into place. She doesn't know what it is. Perhaps it's that she's hurt and hungry, perhaps it's whatever they're using to block magical abilities, perhaps it's that she's caged, perhaps it's just that she's so angry--

She has to stay like this, she reminds herself, breathing hard with the wrong lungs. She has to at least surprise them when they come for her. It will give her an edge- a few more minutes. The idea that she might survive this, after all, is stupid- but she'll cling on to every last second God grants her.

She remembers the smell of the Militiaman she got her teeth into, that one good, bad, necessary night; he must be here, somewhere, and for some reason she thinks that if she can rip him to pieces before the same happens to her, it will be enough. It's not a plan- it's the fantasy of a dead woman walking- but it helps her stay in her skin.

"You were at Penelope Lane's show, weren't you?"

Wolfgang sits down close enough to be heard, far enough away to not be in her space at all — he likes having his personal space invaded even less than most people do, and tends to make the same assumption about others. And she doesn't have to talk to him, either, he just couldn't stand being so near the line of Militia guards, hearing them talking; he can't gauge the sincerity of half the things they're saying, it's equally likely they're just talking shit to put everyone here on edge or else just to humiliate them, make them angrier and more desperate.

After hearing the same slur used in speculation about his gender for the third time in an hour, though, he doesn't really care whether they mean it or not and just wants to not hear it anymore.

His eyes have the same glassy, far-away look a lot of other people's do here — fear and shock colliding to create a strange numbness, an artificial calm. But his hands are shaking, so he puts them on his knees which he bends and tucks against his chest. That could be fear or fatigue or withdrawal; who knows.

For a moment, GG doesn't realise he's talking to her; she's not sure why he would. But when she's had a moment to sort noise into words and shake herself from her concentration, she recognises him without looking, though his name escapes her if she ever knew it.

She lifts her head to eye him, looking strangely far away and confused, like she's not sure what he's doing here. (She's not, really). "Yeah," she says, sounding almost surprised by her own answer; the show feels a long way from here. "Yeah, I was. You were- yeah." The words seem to come sluggishly out of her mouth as she tries to drag her mind in a U-turn. She rearranges her thoughts, trying for a ghost of her usual dryness and just sounding tired and gravelly; "Better backstage facilities there than here."

She feels cut loose suddenly, grasping for something meaningful to say, teetering on the edge of the abyss of maybe it's just that this isn't meaningful. Everybody dies, she reminds herself, every day, and you can live forever in God all you like if that's your thing but you're still gone.

If Wolfgang had it in him he would say something meaningful right now. Something inspiring or uplifting or just anything that would make this be okay for even a second. He doesn't; the closest he'll ever come is anonymously posting some other people's poetry on the network. He wishes he could even remember any of that. Maybe Bialik —

If Justice there be, let it now shine forth!
But if it wait till I’m killed from under the sky
To shine, let Justice die
And its throne be thrown to the earth
And heaven rot with eternal wrong.
Ye wicked, go forth in this your brute force,
And live in your blood, a cleansed throng.

But that's not comforting, and the context is different, even if it's about what he's thinking, right now. He's trying to veer away from anger.

He laughs anyway at the joke, low and joyless. "Yes. Our cohort has mixed luck, I guess." One day rubbing elbows with Baedal's wealthy elite, the next day rounded up like cows for the slaughter in a dirty holding cell. "And they won't let me fight in a dress."

Ha, ha.

"Bastards," GG mutters, running dirty fingers through dirty hair -- maybe that's meaningful, the power to say bastards and not be scared of being overheard, because what worse can they do now?

She keeps it quiet, though. She might feel the freedom that comes of freefall, but there's no guarantee he agrees. She doesn't want to hurt him, however indirectly. That's a joke.

She watches him for a moment, and then decides that sitting down is a good idea; she lowers herself to the ground, folding herself up slowly like she has to force every movement to happen with intense concentration. Yes, she reminds herself, you do bend that way, though right now you think they shouldn't. She puts her back to the bars and stretches her long legs out in front of her, one hand still white-knuckled on the bars, up above her. "I don't know what to say. I'll probably--" She smiles; it crumbles quickly, but for a moment it's fine. "When I'm out there, it'll probably come to me. L'esprit d'escalier just- not. I'll yell it at you."

"I hope it's a good one. And... someday someone writes it down in a history book or, or repeats it in an inspirational movie or something. Only I guess it would be more one of those tragedies that are like three hours long and everyone dies or wishes they'd died."

Pause, then he realises what he said somewhere in the midst of that nervous babbling and winces. "Um, sorry." You know, for reminding them about their almost certain imminent death. It's a little hard to get off that topic, though, and how do you make small talk with near-strangers at a moment like this when you've spent twenty-two years being abysmal at it before? He gnaws on his thumbnail while he wrestles with exactly that dilemma.

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The Arena Riots ( open, gamewide )

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