Night 57: The Coliseum
Touching the sandy grounds of the coliseum was a catalyst, and the progression of day did not mean the end of the process. By fortune or otherwise, this group's efforts were not allowed to halt simply due to the rising sun. Therefore, when nighttime was pronounced, those who had undergone the beginnings of an incomplete trial were pulled from their
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Except that in the end they hadn't walked through it at all. Peter and Jones had offered their blood to the snake statue there (and once again Harvey had been grateful for the hero types and their propensity to take proverbial bullets, remembering when he'd been one) and then after that...
The sudden switch in scenery was odd. It wasn't at all like when they teleported with the ring; it was more like he'd fainted and then woken up again. Still, it hadn't been quite as jarring as the switch to morning, either, which was why Harvey found himself squinting upward as he came to in the coliseum and found that it appeared to be day.
It sure as hell didn't feel like that much time had passed, but it wasn't like he could tell these days. Either way, what he found was a large arena, a dazed Scott next to him, and Jones and Peter on the coliseum floor, talking.
He immediately got a bad feeling. With the way they were set up to watch the two who had given their blood, he had to wonder if there was a layer to this whole thing that they hadn't considered. Harvey stood up for a moment to watch, wondering if the pair had noticed them, and then caught sight of the other two members of their group on the other side of the area.
"What the hell is this?" he muttered to himself under his breath.
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There were voices, muffled at first, but clearer the more awake Scott felt. They came from both below and beside him. "Ughh, who's talking?" Scott groaned, rubbing his head as he sat up in his seat (not that his head actually hurt; it just seemed like the thing to do in situations like this).
Wait, his seat?
Scott jerked fully upright. Yes, he was sitting up, with cool stone under his butt, and next to him a- "Gah!" Scott almost shouted "Monster!" at the sudden sight of exposed muscle, bone, and eyeball next to him, but he caught himself in time. It was just Harvey. He was sitting somewhere with Harvey. Okay, he knew where one person was now. So where did that leave everyone else?
He turned his head, squinting in the sunlight (?) as he laid eyes upon a giant arena space. This was a coliseum all right. Stone, sand, stands, and sun. But he only saw two things down there: Peter and Indy. That wasn't right. It shouldn't have been just them down there. Weren't the lot of them all supposed to...
Scott went pale, and not just because a familiar, accented voice chose that time to speak.
He was up on his feet before he even realized what he was doing. Aguilar was there. He had Peter and Indy down on the ground for some kind of test, one that even Scott didn't have a hard time figuring out. Like hell he was just going to let this happen. "Son of a bitch! You are so going down!" Scott started a run across the seats and took a flying leap at Aguilar, aiming to punch in his stupid Spanish skullbrains. That plan crashed and burned in less than a second, however - Scott bounced off some kind of invisible force field before he could get far, and went sailing right back down to where he'd started, his head liable to land against Harvey's side in the small space if the man didn't move. Scott shouldn't have been surprised, nor should he have even tried something that dumb in the first place, but logic wasn't exactly playing a big part in his thought processes right now. All that was running through his brain right now was something along the lines of "*** **** **** **** *** ** * **** **** ***********".
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Well, he'd just have to see where this all went. Harvey watched as Sangamon sat there (was he eating something?) and Depth Charge started pacing back and forth in frustration, but it was obviously Scott's awakening that stood out the most, mainly because the kid yelled.
"Watch it!" he snapped, though he couldn't exactly blame Scott for getting startled when the first thing he saw after coming to was a burned, deformed face. Still, having a little more courtesy would have been appreciated.
They were both quickly distracted when a familiar voice sounded, though for once it wasn't muffled by coming through a speaker. Harvey stood up almost instantly and laid his eyes on the man that was in the middle set of stands, his shoulders tensing as it all sank in. This was Aguilar. He'd actually come out of his hiding spot to come and watch this.
Scott made the obvious move, but it was also a stupid one. His attempt to jump toward the general (which would have been impossible anyway, considering the distance) was shot down almost instantly. Harvey ended up with Scott falling back against him and his arms reached out instinctively to grab for the younger man's shoulders and hold him steady.
"You didn't really think that was going to work, did you?" No, they couldn't attack the man, but they could ask questions. After sending another glance to Jones and his new set of weapons, Harvey pushed past Scott and walked to the edge of their stands, looking straight at Aguilar.
[To here.]
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He got himself back upright (no thanks to Harvey, who pushed him almost as soon as he was sitting up again), and watched as his seatmate moved to the edge of the stands. Once Scott's head was done spinning, he got back to his feet and joined the party.
[To here]
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Harvey threw himself onto the stone seat with more force than was necessary. There was no way this could end well, no way that any of them could win. And they had risked their lives for this? The implication was that the survivors won some sort of prize, but he had to wonder if it was even worth it at this point. He didn’t like the fact that they were all being used for entertainment’s sake, that they had worked and worked only to be put in the same tired situations.
Except this was worse. No one was brainwashed. Everyone had to make their own choices, except for him (and Scott); they were the pieces of meat that would suffer if anyone hesitated, and while Harvey had longed for death before, he sure as hell didn’t want to go out like this.
“This whole thing is shit,” he growled to himself, running a hand down the good side of his face.
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Scott moved back closer to Harvey, but he didn't sit yet. He knew it was dumb, but he had to fight this somehow, even if it was totally ineffectual. After backing up enough to take a short running jump, Scott cried out and punched the force field again. He got knocked back, as expected, but kept on his feet this time, at least. Panting, he took another leap, this time jump kicking the thing.
"You pussy!"
Bam
"You assbag!"
Kabamf
"Come out of that stupid little bubble and fight us fair! We're not your freaking toys!"
Slam
He landed again after ramming the field with his shoulder. He was just battering himself at this point and he knew it, but Scott didn't care. Death was something worth fighting tooth and nail against, whether it was his own death or his friends'.
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It looked like Sangamon had gotten fed up and was starting to take things seriously himself. He talked big -- from what Harvey could hear considering they were clear on the other side of the arena -- but in the end it was all empty threats. He would back Sangamon all the way if they ever got to a point where they could actually drag Aguilar’s (and Landel’s) name through the mud, but that wasn’t going to be happening any time soon.
When had he become so defeatist? Oh, right, after he'd put his all into saving a city he loved only to be chewed up and spit back out again.
It was stunts like this that proved to Harvey once again that the world wasn’t a place worth saving. He couldn’t help watching as Jones and Peter spoke amongst themselves. He didn’t envy them for a single second, though he was also getting nervous the longer that the two of them were inactive. When were those unpleasant side effects going to kick in, anyway?
“Give it a rest,” he muttered to Scott after a pause. “I think we’re better off keeping an eye on the two who have our lives in their hands.” He wasn’t interested in telling either of them what to do down there, but he at least wanted to figure out how this all worked. How long could they get away with just chatting? And did Aguilar have to flip some sort of switch to trigger his and Scott’s deaths, or was it some other sort of impossible magic?
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“Peter, no! Are you nuts?! Indy don’t- Yeah, see? He’s not gonna shoot you!” Scott punctuated the shouting with another shoulder ram to the force field.
Even as he kept shouting and cursing at his friends to stop, however, a cold, sinking lump was forming in Scott’s stomach. What else were they supposed to do, if not what Aguilar wanted? Let him and Harvey die? He wasn’t exactly rooting for that option either.
In his mind, the scenario he wanted to see play out was Indy spotting a ‘til-now-unnoticed weak point in Aguilar’s shield, shooting it with his amazing powers of Indiana-Jones-ness, and giving Peter the opening he needed to web his way up to the General’s seats and punch Aguilar all the way back to his precious second world war. That was what always happened in these sorts of climactic scenes, where it seemed all was lost. At least in the movies, or in comics. But, as Scott well knew, it didn’t matter what movies or comics or books anyone came from - every one of them was flesh and blood here, and the only narrator driving their story right now was the sort who wasn’t particularly enthused by happy endings. Even so, Scott kept screaming and hitting. It was the only thing he could do, Harvey’s logic be damned.
“I am going to pull your balls out through your nose when this is done!” he shouted up at Aguilar, punching the barrier again. “I don’t even know how that’s going to work, but I will freaking do it! We’ll see how bored you get when you have a nose full of balls! We’ll just see how you like that! Then everyone will call you Noseballs for the rest of your freaking life! Noseballs McEagle! How do you like that, huh?! How do you like thahkgh!”
Scott was cut short. There was something around his throat.
His first instinct was to grab for the hands. He found no hands, though. It felt like there was a pair of slender hands there, pressing into his skin with far more force than hands that size ought to have had; but when Scott scrambled to pull them off, there was nothing there. All he felt was the pressure cutting off air in his windpipe, slowly crushing it.
His eyes bulged as he struggled for air. He tried to cough, but was unable to. Still pulling at the invisible hands, Scott fell against the balcony with a dull “whumph”, then slipped below its edge to the seat floor.
The only intelligible thoughts he had while this was going on were: F*** you, Aguilar and There weren't supposed to be any more vegan fights...
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More than that, Scott's comments were so immature that Harvey had to wonder how he was past his teenage years.
It wasn't as if Harvey wanted to see a kid like Peter get shot, but he didn't want to take the brunt of the damage himself, either. And Jones, well -- actually, if he had to pick a side, he'd be rooting for him. It wasn't a choice he would have admitted to out loud unless he'd had to, but Harvey knew where his loyalties laid in the end.
Not that any of that mattered, since he was suddenly assaulted by an unbearable pain in his arm, almost as if he'd gotten shot. There wasn't the impact of the bullet hitting him or the heat of it actually being stuck in his skin, but the wound was still there, painful and bleeding.
"Augh--!" Grabbing for his arm with the opposite hand, Harvey doubled over in his seat, only barely aware of the fact that Scott was also suffering from some sort of invisible assault. So this was how it went? Well, an arm wound was something he could survive, but if this continued then it might be another story.
How could something like this even be possible? He would have tried to sort through it if the pain hadn't made all coherent thought impossible.
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"Oh shit," he breathed, pulling himself back up to the seats and over to Harvey. "It's not bad, is it?" He couldn't tell with the sleeve in the way; there was too much blood. Crap, Scott didn't know the first thing about first aid. Was he supposed to wrap that with something? Would that even help with magic mystery wounds?
He didn't have much time to think about that. The sound of three gunshots snapped Scott's head around to face the arena before Harvey could get much of an answer in. His chest un-seized itself when he saw that none of the bullets had hit anyone, thank goodness. In fact, they had been miles off, if the way Peter was shouting told him anything. How had Indy ended up on the ground, and all the way across the arena? He could have sworn he heard a big "thud" during the whole choking thing. Had Peter- Oh god, was Peter starting to go serious Spider-man with Indy now? For once in his life, Scott didn’t relish the sight of the beloved Marvel icon sticking to the wall in all his lithe, red-and-blue glory. Right now, that pose only meant one thing, and that was the certain ass-kicking of whoever the spider was up against.
Until Peter opened his mouth and threatened to turn the ass-kicking on himself if Indy didn’t do it first. “You’re still trying to- Peter, what the hell? You are an idiot! No one wants you to freaking martyr yourself!” Scott yelled. His voice struggled to get past the roughened patches of his throat. Sustained yelling followed by choking hadn’t been kind to him.
Despite the cracks in his voice, though, Scott forced another yell across to the other side of the Coliseum, to S.T. (who apparently thought now was a good time to pick out new flooring for the grandstands) and Depth Charge: “Am I not right?! You guys don’t want him to just jump in front of a bullet for no reason either, right?!”
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Forcing out a breath, Harvey pulled his hand away. It was stained red and the pain was still there, but it had become manageable. He glanced over at Scott, not surprised to see that he was also off the hook for now. The kid looked concerned for him, and he was quick to shake his head.
The gunshots coming from the arena were a distraction for them both and Harvey forced himself to sit up in his seat even as he started to yank up his sleeve, wanting to get a better look at the damage that had been done to his arm. Was there even any point in wrapping it up, when he might have a matching wound on his other arm soon enough?
Granted, that all depended on how Peter and Jones performed, and right now they were at least trying to phone it in. Even if Peter was being loud about it, his point was valid: Jones had to make it look real, and when it came down to it? Death couldn't be faked.
Of course, the martyring just became worse, as Peter threatened to shoot himself (did the kid really have the balls?) and then Scott called over to Depth Charge, who was offering to take one of the fighter's places. Harvey groaned both with pain and some annoyance, shaking his head.
"Aguilar's not going to renegotiate with us," he said to Scott, if only because Scott was the only one he could talk to. "We aren't going to be able to wriggle our way out of this." He knew that it wasn't so easy for people to accept facts like that and then do what needed to be done, but at this point they were just dragging it out, making it worse.
And then -- then Jones really shot at Peter, and Harvey leaned forward, not sure what he wanted the outcome to be.
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The graver implications of what the bot had just said kicked in as Peter snapped at them for not letting him go on about how he was too much of a snot to live and oh god Spider-man really did get whiny sometimes. Scott grit his teeth as he listened to Peter. There wasn't much he could do to stop the guy from carrying on, any more than Peter could toss them anywhere right now. But that didn't mean he couldn't be frustrated as all get out. Oh my god, what do people have to do to convince you that the entire world doesn't revolve around Spider-man's emo bullshit?! The sentiment struck something buried deeper inside Scott, made him feel like he was missing something here. But he let the feeling go as the thought continued, and his head drooped. There are people who would care if you were gone, goddammit.
But Peter was right, though: would he care less if Indy was the one who got offed? That guy was the first person who had joined Scott's party in the Institute, and he put up with a lot more crap from Scott than most people should have had to. As famous as he was and as short as the time here had been, Indy was starting to feel more like a father figure to their group than an icon at this point. Hearing him take his turn at the self-sacrificing speech was choking him up and making him rage just as much as Peter's was. Scott hadn't noticed the tears on his cheeks until just now, as Indy laid it all on the line.
He couldn't watch this. Scott turned back to Harvey, the other man's words still dully there in the back of his head. He knew the man was right about Aguilar, as much as that made him want to get up and start punching things again. The only thing he could think of that might possibly take the death sentence away from the guys in the arena was to make the exact same dumb speech that he was getting angry at D.C., Peter and Indy for making. He knew he couldn't do that - one, because doing that would take Harvey with him; and two, because Scott was too big a pussy.
He thought back to those invisible hands on his throat, and the idea of following that cold, strangling vacuum all the way to its conclusion. A lump filled his throat. The overwhelming emptiness of death, real death, was too much. He couldn't bring himself ask for that. He was too scared, too selfish. He couldn't even use the excuse that he needed to stay alive for Ramona's sake. He was just too much of a goddamn pussy.
Scott bit his lip, his chest burning with tension and emotion. "I know," he finally answered.
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Of course, just sitting back and watching left a bad taste in his mouth, and yet Harvey knew his options were limited. Jones was trying to offer himself up now, using logic and the fact that he was older and had lived for longer to justify why he should be the one to die. He had a point. Harvey couldn't see Peter's face that well and his voice was muted from this distance, but it was obvious how green he was, how absolutely young.
Growling to himself, Harvey finally got his sleeve pulled up enough that he could see the bloody mess of his wound. He tried to wipe some of the blood away to see the ruined tissue and muscle underneath. It hurt like hell and he could barely move his arm at all at this point, but he didn't have any bandages to work with.
He was about to ask Scott to help him rip most of his sleeve off so that he could use it to apply pressure, but it was at that point that he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, turning his head in time to see that Peter had somehow gotten Jones' gun away from him.
As Peter put it to his head, Harvey suddenly was on his feet again, his heart in his throat because a child was about to kill himself unduly. It just seemed wrong, going against the shreds of justice that part of Harvey still held onto. But even as Peter pulled the trigger, nothing happened, and Harvey realized that the kid didn't even know how to work the thing.
"Goddammit. The kid doesn't even know how to fire a gun and he thinks he's ready to die?" He sighed and shook his head, but the lack of damage being done down there might be bad news for them. He exchanged a look with Scott as his dread grew. How much longer before he suffered another gunshot wound from nowhere?
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His morbid reverie was broken by Harvey's sudden movement. Scott jolted, his head turning to follow, and his eyes widening for the umpteen-millionth time that night. Peter had the gun. Scott coughed as he got up with Harvey, barely able to get out a strangled "No!" before Peter pulled the trigger.
And nothing happened. Scott blinked, then remembered. Indy had fired off a whole bunch of shots already. The thing was probably empty. A big puff of relief came out of Scott's mouth at that. At least, until he remembered that the longer Peter spent fumbling with the gun, the more likely it was that he and Harvey were on the chopping block again. Choking block. Whatever. He met the older man's look then, and shared the dread right back at him.
His eye caught Aguilar again after that, staring down from the exact same spot, with the exact same expression he had had on the last time he checked. Was this guy made of solid Notcaringonium? How could he not even flinch watching a fifteen-year-old almost shoot himself in the head? Even if he wasn't the creator of this whole dog and pony show, there was no excuse for the utter lack of... anything going on up there. He wanted to shout up at the man again, but at this point, Scott was done yelling. His voice was on the verge of wrecked, and his hope was starting to run dry. The most he could do was stare up at the man with a thousand sharp, nasty, pointy things embedded in his glare.
"How is this even happening?" he said to himself upon turning back to Harvey, putting a hand to his forehead. The blood caught his eye again, and Scott winced. "Ugh. Do you need, like, help with that or anything? It's oozing again." Not that helping Harvey would do much good if they got "hit" again, but what else could they do right now? Wait for Peter to hang himself by his own webbing? (Oh god, please no, he thought. That wasn't even funny. Peter would do it if he got the idea in his head.)
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So the gun was out of bullets. Harvey hadn't exactly been keeping track of how many times Jones had fired the thing, but the man had at least been smart enough to use them all up before Peter could do anything stupid. On the other hand, that meant that they only had their bare hands and a whip to work with -- whoever died, it was going to be in a slow and messy way.
He glanced over at Scott, wondering if he would be able to watch when push came to shove. The kid spoke up then, posing what Harvey guessed was a rhetorical question before offering to help. He had to give him points there. Even if the blood clearly wasn't easy for him to even look at, he was still trying to of use. Harvey nodded and glanced back to the wound with a sigh. "Just need you to tear my sleeve off so that I can try to wrap it, if you can manage." It wasn't something he could do one-handed, really.
Though then Harvey was distracted by the display Jones made, snapping his whip and managing to wrench the gun out of Peter's hands. "Holy hell, he can actually use that thing," Harvey remarked with a scoff. He'd seen Jones smack monsters around with the dog leash, but this was on a whole different level. Where did the guy even learn how to do that?
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At least he could sort of pretend to be useful right now, squeamish though the blood made him. Wasn't that the most bizarre - at this point, he was (mostly) over the whole face-melty-death side of Harvey's face, and instead, it was the tiny, simple bullet wound that made him feel like leaving puke stains on the force field. The things he had and hadn't gotten used to in Landel's, he thought as he chewed the inside of his cheek, doing as asked and quickly tearing the sleeve off, trying to avoid as much of the blood as possible.
"Like that?" he asked as he clumsily wrapped the fabric around the wound, trying to crane his neck back every now and again. Much as he didn't want to watch what was going on down there, he also didn't want to miss anything important. Like maybe Peter would spontaneously find a way to tunnel through the sand to China. Or Indy would summon the spirit of Sean Connery Highlander 2 style and sic him on Aguilar. Or Scott would wake up in Ramona's bed and this would all have been a terrible dream.
Scott tensed when he heard the muffled sound of metal hitting stone. Or none of those things are going to happen, he thought with a panic, finishing Harvey's makeshift bandage with a slightly-too-tight knot and rushing back over to the balcony edge. Peter had webbed the gun to the wall. Was that good? No, he thought, that meant that the two fighters only had their fists, their feet, and their long, flexible, iconic weapons. Not exactly things that were known for killing people fast and clean. God, was it getting to that point now? Where all he had to hope for was that it would be quick, whoever got it?
Scott's jaw gaped open and closed uselessly again as he watched Peter make his next rush. He was going for Indy's gun belt; Scott could see clearly now. Oh god, Peter was going to kick Indy down, grab the bullets, and do the deed. Indy had to get out of there. He couldn't let Peter at those bullets. At the very least, he had to take the kick and just kick right back or something.
And then Scott remembered that Peter had super strength. He swore he could hear that cracking as clear up in the stands as if he were standing right there on the arena floor.
The man crumpled to the floor, his hat falling off his head. The seconds went by. He wasn't getting back up, only reaching around uselessly for the lost hat. The horror on Scott's face was incalculable.
"INDY!"
Scott knew shouting wouldn't do any good now, but what else could he do?
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