Night 57: The Coliseum

[el_aguila]

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

Comments

SOUTH SEATS

[vsyourface]

Scott didn't know why the older men were pussyfooting around the issue. From where he was sitting (leaning; whatever), Aguilar was being pretty clear about what he meant by "blood sacrifice". Two of their number were on the arena floor, one with superpowers and one freshly outfitted with weapons. The rest sat up in the stands, split into what could only be two opposite cheering sections. Scott wasn't sure about anyone else, but even he could add two and two together every now and then.

It didn't even take too much guesswork to figure what Aguilar meant by "unpleasant sensations". There wasn't anything specific about the term, but it was enough to send another massive shiver down Scott's back.

Maybe they just didn't want to admit it yet. Scott knew he didn't. He just wanted to punch the problem until it went away, same as he did with everything else. Now that punching was out as a solution, though, he could only gawp at the situation with his stomach twisting in rough, sliding knots, unable to do anything else.

"And what kind of sadistic dicktree made up that stupid rule in the first place?!" he yelled after Indy, gripping the stone so tightly he thought it might crumble in his hands.

[el_aguila]

One would assume the seniors of the group would catch onto the truth faster than their younger, more naive counterparts. In contrast, it was the latter who reached the conclusion first. Perhaps the fact was a testament to children and their usually quicker minds. They seemed ready to jump on their perceptions without a need to examine the possibilities, and here, their haste was rewarded. It was fascinating to witness.

Still, Aguilar kept to his matter-of-fact persona. There existed no need for dramatics; he was only a supervisor to their mission, after all. Better to answer queries directly and keep explanations clean. He wasn't here to make a sport out of death.

"You and Pilgrim will die, Mr. Dent," he stated simply, eyeing the west seats with an unamused expression. Yes, he saw the attempted thrown food particle. "That is, unless your comrades in the arena gain enough sense to fight each other. And this fight--as you and your friend have suspected, Parker--is one to the death." The man sniffed. This explanation was wasting precious time. "I'm certain you can fill in the rest."

If not, a demonstration would soon be in order.

“As for the reasons, well--” Here, he shook his head. “--better to save those questions for the creator. Provided, of course, that he ever sees his post again.”

[unheroed]

It wasn’t shocking that the younger members of their group wanted reasons for what was going on. Harvey himself would rather focus on the actual rules before he fell into that kind of train of thought, since in the end he knew he’d never get a satisfactory answer to the question why. He wanted to know exactly where he stood and so he remained quiet, a slow fire seeming to burn in his one functional eye as he waited.

Aguilar was quick to explain, if nothing else. The man almost seemed impatient, which annoyed Harvey more than it should have. Was he that eager to watch Jones and the costumed kid kill each other? Was he planning to enjoy this like they were back in Roman times?

However, Harvey -- and Scott, apparently -- were the collateral. It wasn’t like Harvey wanted to watch the two of them down on the ground level fight it out, but if they didn’t...

This whole situation brought up subjects that Harvey had put a lot of thought into recently. The value of a life, and the unfairness of who lived and who died. The Joker had turned it all into a game, a race against the clock. Harvey had put his own rule to it, if only to show how arbitrary it always was. His life wasn’t more important than Jones’ or Peter’s. He didn’t deserve to live, and yet some stubborn part of him wanted to despite that.

Hell, he was probably the one in this room who most deserved to be put down, and yet he wasn’t exactly going to offer himself up either. He could have yelled at Aguilar or pleaded with Jones to spare his life, but none of that was right. None of it fit into his model of how this was supposed to go.

So, after a lengthy pause, Harvey yanked his gaze away from Aguilar and stalked back to his original seat.

[To here.]

[its_the_mileage]

He’d already had a feeling that was it. He just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

Dent was the first to react: he walked quietly back to his seat and sat down. Not a bad approach, Indy thought wistfully. He wouldn’t’ve minded a few minutes himself to think.

But they didn’t have that kind of time, even if he’d thought it was likely to do him much good. How did you make a decision like this? Indy had killed people before: shot them, pushed them off vehicles, maneuvered them into the paths of large machinery, let them fall. He felt worse about some of them than others. Ironically, the ones that were most likely to come back to him at night were usually the ones that’d been least his fault: the deaths he hadn’t caused by pulling a trigger, but by not doing something. By being a few steps behind or a few minutes too late. By failing someone.

He’d been in these standoffs before (“put down the gun or the Fraulein dies,” most recently)--but never one quite like this. “Kill your friend or your other friends die.” They were his friends, it occurred to him belatedly; when you’d been through the kind of things he’d been through with these people, you’d go to the mat for them. But how was he supposed to decide who lived and who died?

If someone posed him the question back in the safety of his office or over drinks, as a philosophical exercise, he might’ve been able to work out a theoretical answer about which of these people most deserved to live. He couldn’t do it now, and he wasn’t going to try. What he could do was operate on two principles: one, that kids ought to be protected, and two, that people deserved to make their own choices. They’d all known they’d signed up for something dangerous here, but Dent and Pilgrim had been expecting to be able to fight for themselves, not to be sacrificial victims up there in the stands. They might plead to be saved or yell that the combatants should just let them die, but they didn’t have any real power to decide. Indy did.

So far he’d always managed to find a way out of these situations; he wasn’t going to give up on looking for that yet. But if it came to that, he already knew how he was going to handle this fight.

[to here]

[vsyourface]

It was one thing to suspect Aguilar's meaning, and another to be flat-out told "You and Pilgrim will die". Not lose a life - not get turned into coins - die.

As dangerous as the Institute had always seemed, and as often as people disappeared from it, death had never seemed like an immediate danger to Scott. Maybe it was all the time he had spent behind a protagonist shield in his life, but the most he ever feared in the Institute was getting hurt really, really badly. Or his friends getting hurt really, really badly. Or maybe having to face his inner demons. Scott was twenty-four years old. You didn't even mention the "D" word when you were that young, at least not seriously. You were still basically immortal at that age, at least in your own mind. To Scott, getting the wake-up call that "Yes, you, Scott Pilgrim, could die - like, right now" was like suddenly getting the 16-Ton Weight of Existence dropped squarely on his chest.

Even if it wasn't him and Harvey, it was going to be Peter or Indy tonight. Spider-man or Indiana Jones. And this wasn't going to be some kind of cheap media trick where a hero got "killed", only to be resurrected/not-really-dead'd through some bizarre time travel plot that made no sense. Aguilar was going to have one of them freaking kill the other in front of everyone, for real.

Scott's jaw hinged open and closed uselessly as he stared down at Peter and Indy, and then across at S.T. and Depth Charge. Those two were going to have to watch this too, whatever happened; not a picnic on their end either. What could they do? What could any of them do? Everyone was just giving in already. Harvey was stalking back to his seat. Peter and Indy were turning away from Aguilar. And... was that a bag of pretzels in S.T.'s hand? Seriously?

Scott clenched his fists as he took a step back.

[To here]

[toxicspiderman]

[from here]

“You think you’re going to get away with this?” Probably, but he wasn’t going to be the one to admit it. “You think everyone up there is just going to smile and eat pink shit? Some of us don’t look good holding a shovel.”

This was as stupid as the flowers-in-rifles brigade. He’d just signed himself up on the death roster, if the asshole was even going to answer. He and D.C. were the leftover pineapple-anchovy pizza that nobody wanted to claim and was slowly evolving in the back of the fridge into a public menace or promising new antibiotic strain. Just along for the fucking show.

“I’ll make you wish you’d never heard of this place.” Sharing was caring, man. All of them wanted that. If Aguilar need to research them, he could damn well start there. S.T. was just getting rolling. “Your name is going to be under so much mud you won’t even be able to find sunshine. Won’t be able to go out in public without women crying and babies farting. Eagle will be a household name for fuck-up, on a national scale. We’re talking New York Times headline for a week level, minimum.” This was all complete grandstanding. Complete with fucking grandstand.

“You think people hate you know, just wait. The only way you’ll keep us down is to dump your entire thesis here down the drain. Which you don’t have the authority to do, do you?” S.T. sneered at him, the one that he didn’t usually get to use when doing this because the cameras were rolling.

[back to here]

[el_aguila]

A threat without substance was mere words, and even if the crude man could backup his statements with actions later on, he might find himself coming up with nothing more than a choking tongue. Of course, Aguilar himself found no danger in a sullied name as much as he regarded a young man attempting to force through an unbreakable barrier as remotely concerning. He had been called worse in a legitimate setting, for one. For another, they were wasting their valuable strength.

Emotions had made them idiots. If they continued to hold to their sentimental morality, they had only themselves to blame for the outcome.

"Spare me your denunciations," the General remarked, almost casual in the deliverance. Dark eyes trailed to each patient, disapproval and slight exasperation set in place. "I will only warn you once. I am a non-factor in this decision. Keep your strength for your 'test'."