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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Really, Erika was growing tired of the constant teleporting and randomly showing up in a new place. Did the door even open? She couldn't remember, only that their lights suddenly turned off and they were plunged into darkness. The darkness soon faded away to another scene, one that Erika had not been expecting at all. She squinted as her eyes adjusted to the sudden bright light that flooded the room, unable to make out her surroundings until the spots finally faded from her vision. What she saw was... interesting, to say the least. She saw the sandy floor before anything else, and to the right and left of her, seats. She was on one side of what looked like an arena of some sort, with a line drawn in the middle separating her and someone else on the other side. Someone else who Erika quickly recognized as Noah, which made perfect sense considering how they were the two who offered blood.
Perhaps it would have been better to shove Sync or Boy #1's face into the fang instead. Where were they, anyway? Erika looked around again, trying to get a grasp of where everyone was and if she and Noah were the lucky ones, or the ones who got screwed. From the looks of it, she was going to entertain the idea that she was unlucky, but whatever they were going to face, she was going to make sure Noah got the nastiest brunt of it.
Erika had to shield her eyes as she looked upwards, spotting three sets of seat after turning completely around. Were the others there? At the moment, she cared less about where she was and more of finding out where everyone else was, because if all hell broke loose, Erika obviously wasn't going to be the only one suffering. There was a slight tingling in the back of her neck, a familiar feeling that was -
Ah. The right of the detective, the detective's authority, had been returned to her. The power she received from her master was once again rightfully hers, and Erika knew what she was seeing had to be the truth. The detective's authority permitted that her senses wouldn't be incorrect, and that meant the man before her really was Noah, and that Sync and Nigredo were sitting behind her - though she normally might not have been able to make them out, her heightened vision clearly identified them. And then, in another pair of seats...
Who was that figure? Landel, or the General who had taken over since? And why did she suddenly get the detective's authority back? Now that Erika was once again the detective, she once again had the true right to solve these questions.
"And who are you supposed to be?" She asked the man who was watching over them, the one unfamiliar one. It felt like... despite her newly regained authority, he was still somehow above them. The Gamemaster, in other words.
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More interesting? Exactly like the night before, his body had become heavier, burdened with the weight of a grace. Not that anyone else in the room was particularly privy to it, but his wings were back where they belonged, unfurled and unclipped. It was like being uncircumcised again. Refreshing. (Or so he assumed.) Gabriel could feel the grace, the light, his personal power flowing back into his fingertips. Just to make sure, he rubbed two fingers together, feeling sand fall from them. Sand he had made himself.
There was a difference between the power now and the power from before. The difference? He didn't feel as he should not. There wasn't that tugging in his mind, telling him to stay here and go there. There didn't seem to be any strings guiding him, but Gabriel was wary. He hid the wariness behind a tilted smirk, still as amused and uninterested as he had appeared the whole night.
He turned, uncharacteristically silent, examining the lines of seats and the small forms of the two other children on the other side of the room. Another figure was clearly there, separated from the others. The proverbial throne, he imagined. Humans.
Gabriel rolled his shoulders, readjusting to the feeling of being a damn angel again. This humanity thing could really drag a guy down. Besides, he had an audience now. Might as well look like this sort of thing happened to him every day.
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[ turning her attention here ]
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Since this man had no idea who he was dealing with, Erika was willing to forgive him for his disrespect. The disrespect for now, not what happened at the Sphinx. He was going to pay dearly for that. Of course, the most obvious argument against him was pointing out the fact that he didn't act anything like an angel. He must have heard that one a lot, so it probably annoyed him. A good move, but since it was one that he expected, Erika knew she was going to have to go at it from another angle.
"I'm not going to deny that angels and Heaven do not exist. I'll have you know that my furniture comes from Heaven, and while I wish I could deny such incompetent servants, they provide me with some entertainment as well," Erika began, waving her hand. There was a ripple in the air, like heat rising from the ground, and the ripples formed the shape of a translucent blue scythe, much like a scythe that one would imagine Death to carry. She gripped the handle and swung it down, enjoying the whooshing sound of the air parting before the blade. She pointed it at Gabriel, prepared to make her first move.
Of course, not denying angels and Heaven didn't mean she had to accept this man as one. All she had to do was cut down his farce, and she could expose him as the pathetic mortal he truly was. Just like how she did with Beatrice. Erika had an unpleasant look of a hunter on her face, grinning cruelly at the man before her.
"I'll spare you the personality argument. I'm sure the Bible provides many examples of angels acting as ill as their God. Instead, I'll give you this: No agent of God, let alone one as powerful as Gabriel, would find themselves trapped, powerless, in a place like this!
Her words seemed to form tinted blue spikes that surrounded her form, and shot out towards Gabriel, but the spikes didn't connect. Rather, they flew past him, as if avoiding the man completely. Erika's expression didn't falter, not revealing if her words was a hit or miss.
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The Creator, huh? It always came back to Him. The One who didn't interfere. Who helped those who helped themselves. That hadn't done a lot of good for either Lucifer or Michael, had it? And here was the kicker: it was all coming back to fry his ass all over again. Karma, ironically. He couldn't escape it once, and he wouldn't be able to do it now. Now it was worse. Now humanity was involved in a way much, much more personal.
And boy. You could insult the Father - He had to know he deserved it - but there were only so many lines that someone could cross with Gabriel. This girl had decided to cut it in half.
He was smart enough not to be amused with her choice of weapon. There was a reason Aguilar thought this girl was enough to compete with him, especially knowing what he was. A human - even if this girl was not completely one, she certainly had a soul - could never compete with an angel in power, not alone.
The spikes didn't harm him. Of course not. They weren't meant to. Gabriel, his Grace returned to him, burning as brightly as ever, felt it before his human eyes saw it. He could feel his brother leaking out of his human form, harmed by a weapon no human had the right to wield. He didn't need to look -
He did. When he turned back to the girl, his eyes were cold.
The blade in question, the one causing Castiel's wounds, dropped out of Gabriel's sleeve and into his hand as if it had been stowed there the whole time. It hadn't. In fact, the old one had turned back into its original pipe form. He didn't have to rely on paltry parlor tricks now. This was a true angelic blade.
"He could if he was dead where he should be," Gabriel said, wasting no time on secrecy. He couldn't. Not at this point. The blade spun in his hand, almost amiably slow as he took a few steps to his left, beginning a slow circling of the girl. "You wield a pale imitation of Death's weapon, but you clearly don't know his M.O. Everything dies, kiddo. Everything with power eventually fades away."
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Angels didn't die, however. Gods did, surely, in most mythologies, but angels seemed to made of tougher stuff. Yet he was refuting her statement, albeit not with the red. It seemed like he was not permitted to defend himself with the red, so this fight would be solely decided on her reasoning, and her reasoning alone. It was a most interesting approach, at least.
"You made two fatal mistakes, Gabriel. The first was assuming this blade belonged to Death, when it is actually the right granted to me by my Master, Bernkastel, the Witch of Miracles. Furthermore - "
She grimaced then, a tear appearing in the fabric of her leggings as if her own blade had sliced through her skin. The shock of the pain made her stagger, but Erika did her best to grit her teeth and bear it. Was this the sacrifice the General had spoken of? She scowled, realizing that whatever it was, she was wasting time.
"Nevermind, I don't need to point out your own mistakes to you. I'll say this: If you are admitting your own death, then you no longer have the authority to call yourself by the name of Gabriel, the Archangel! You are no longer the owner of that identity! Either someone else has taken up that post or that name has died with you!"
The blade shone brilliantly in the light as more blue stakes formed in the air, shooting one by one as Erika shouted out her sentences. This time, the stakes fired themselves directly at Gabriel, intent on striking him and pinning him into place. She grinned wickedly, as if expecting her strikes to be dead on the mark.
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Gabriel watched the stakes - what the hell was all this? - but didn't move. The Old Man better had been watching this shit with a tub of popcorn and five dollars on him, because this was probably the kind of crap he would set up. Gabriel wasn't like Lucifer - not in every way - and he had once been a dutiful son. He probably still would be if God hadn't been the first official deadbeat Father. He hadn't ever disobeyed. Ever.
Wrong way to think. This wasn't for anyone but himself. And boy, was he gonna have a hell of a time with this girl once her ten minutes were up.
The stakes hit him, passing by and clearly showing how physical they seemed to be, but he didn't take his eyes off of her. Less than ten minutes and counting. "Are you kidding me?" he asked with a grimace. It hurt, but... pain was relative in a human body. It was distant. Injuries, wounds - they weren't connected to him. "Kid, I am the freaking origin of that name. I am the bloody name. If anyone ever had a right to call themselves Gabriel, it's me. It exists simply because I was brought into being." Despite the pull of the stakes pushing him backwards, he took a step forward. It wasn't a physical balance, but his wings helped; they were their own special little force. They weren't restrained now.
He spun his blade between his fingers, the movement creating a repetitive pattern of flashing, just as hers did. The light, however, wasn't coming from the environment itself, but from inside the blade. "Death doesn't destroy a title. Believe me, I know the guy. Great car, by the way. You think if I called myself Rodney Dangerfield, he suddenly wouldn't exist?"
Another step.
"No one else can do my job. The job is the title, the title is me. Believe me, the Host has tried to find a replacement. I'm the original Slim Shady, sister. There's no getting rid of me."
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"Tch, so that just means your post died with you..." But Erika wasn't going to bother using that as the basis of her claim that Gabriel didn't exist. Maybe not in whatever sorry Fragment he came from, but here, he existed, and she was doing a piss-poor job of trying to disprove it. Doing her best to ignore the pain, Erika closed her eyes and focused, determined to figure out a new strategy. She couldn't approach this in her usual manner, because this was a different kind of fight.
Focus... Focus... Guh. Yet another slash, this time striking her shoulder, made Erika falter for just a moment. And then, she suddenly became grateful as the fresh pain also brought forth a new epiphany, one that made Erika realize just how stupid she was being. Of course! The bastard was stalling. He only had to wait out the 10 minutes by making any sort of excuse he wanted, while the burden of proof was on her to destroy him. If she kept dancing around his excuses, then of course she was going to lose. Gabriel didn't have to prove anything, he only had to wait. Her mistake was not calling out his tactic.
".... Yeah, I get it now. That's a good tactic. Really good." Erika sneered, literally brushing the blood off her shoulder as she gripped her scythe and pointed it at Gabriel. "I'll give you some credit, you almost got me with such a cheap and easy strategy. Sometimes the most obvious solution really is the best one!"
Originally, Erika hadn't planned to let Gabriel show off any of his supposed "power". There was no point, she had reasoned, if she could just rip apart any excuses he made. But Gabriel was just throwing her words back at her, so they were literally getting nowhere. That was fine for him, but Erika couldn't allow that to continue. In truth, she made the mistake of making the first move.
"Alright, you did almost get me. Good, very good! But the only trick you've done so far to prove yourself is summoning that fancy sword of yours, and that's hardly impressive." The sword was likely the same as her own weapon, a manifestation of power and nothing else. "I'll tell you what, I'll forfeit my remaining time if you show me a miracle that I can't explain. That's well within your power, isn't it Gabrieeeeel?! Go ahead, show me what you can do with your supposed 'divinity'!"
This time, she was going to be ready.
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Only a few minutes left by now.
He hadn't missed the fact that the damage he should have taken was going to Castiel, and the girl's went to herself. The light of his brother's Grace kept scratching at the archangel's attention, a power that was probing and familiar. It'd been a while since he had been around another angel. Pagans just didn't have the same flare.
She wanted a miracle? Fine.
He turned his head to assess the damage on the angel in the stands; he may have still been in his human form, but its eyes were not blinded by the light. How delightful. After a moment he turned back, throwing the blade into the sand hard enough to make it stand.
"Here's your miracle." Gabriel raised one hand, snapping his fingers. For a moment, nothing happened. There was no change, no magnificent indoor thunderstorm or locusts or whatever humans thought miracles were these days. Maybe a good Brett Ratner movie.
The real magic was set to start whenever Erika next tried her blue worded bullshit. Once the words were formed, they would manifest in a way she certainly was not going to expect, following by a small, glowing, rocketing star, a long tail trailing behind it...
"Not all miracles have to be obvious, kiddo."
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"Just as I thought. Your pitiful -"
It was then that Erika was treated to the most peculiar sight in her life. Instead of the whirlwind of blue that usually surrounded her when she made her claim, the words escaped and shot into the air, trailing behind a star and sparkles. The text itself was nothing of what she said, but rather a message written in the most hideous, gaudy rainbow coloring she had ever seen in her life. It was a message from Gabriel, Erika could note, but she did nothing else as she watched the words fade away, leaving her silent. And silent she was, just staring at the space where she witnessed this "miracle".
Her reasoning...
Her perfect reasoning... her blue truth, her weapon of logic...
It was... ruined. Defiled! For the second time that night, the man before her had taken her moment of glory, when she would crush the opposition with her mind, and ridiculed it and turned it into a spectacle for the unwilling audience. As it finally dawned on Erika that this man was mocking her to the fullest extent and that he had no intention to take any of this seriously, it was like a fissure had cracked her demeanor apart. One minute, she was staring up with a neutral expression, and the next moment her teeth were clenched and Erika had a wild look of pure fury in her eyes as she cast the most hateful gaze in the universe on this man, this man who was the source of all her suffering in the current moment.
Why rainbows? Why did he do this? Why couldn't he be a proper opponent? Why was there a double rainbow where her words were?
"You... YOU IDIOT! YOU CAN'T EVEN TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY?!" Erika screamed, stamping her feet and pointing at the idiot before her with the most severe of all pointer fingers. "YOU WOULDN'T LAST THREE SECONDS IN A REAL LOGIC BATTLE! THE ONLY REASON YOU'RE STANDING BEFORE ME IS THIS RIDICULOUS HANDICAP! YOU KNOW WHAT, FORGET IT! I'LL KILL YOU AS YOU ARE, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!"
In a rage, Erika turned to Aguilar and did the stupidest thing that she would ever do in her miserable, soon to be shortened life.
"I don't need any more time! Let me fight him now. I'll crush him, powers and everything!"
It was a good idea at the time: Erika had intended to crush him when he was fighting with his full power, if only to make a point that she could do it. Erika's error, then, was thinking that she could do it.
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Here, however, was an admittance. An existence gambling for his position with a cool face and a focused demeanor was an impressive sight, further accentuated by his proof of a miracle. Color Aguilar impressed; he might have even clapped if he had been a lesser man.
Instead, he leaned back into his chair, noting both the time and the reaction from Erika. Foolish girl. "...I suppose you can have your real battle now," he said, tone bordering disinterest. "Ten minutes are up. You may now have free reign."
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Then it flickered, the wings straining, turning black.
His jaw was clenched hard enough to crack teeth once he was facing Erika again, directly flying in front of her. Flying for angels was something that wasn't meant to be seen by mortal eyes; if anything, it was as if he'd teleported directly in front of her, leaving his angelic blade far behind him, still sticking in the sand.
"You don't mess with the Host, Erika." It was the first time he had acknowledged the girl had a name at all, and it would certainly be the last. Absolutely no humor was left in the archangel. His brother was dying by her hands - insulting in and of itself, really - and Gabriel had been forced to sit here and watch.
He leaned closer to her. He didn't snap his fingers this time, unlike the thousands upon thousands of punishments he had doled out before this moment. He didn't need the snap. It was showmanship, and that was now completely unnecessary.
Erika would begin to feel her skin tightening like a raisin in the sun. Her organs were well on their way to solidifying, but not in their natural, wet shapes - they were separating into smaller bits, turning hard and hollow, depending on what square of internal flesh it was. Her blood evaporated, or perhaps it was sucked into the hard, cell-like pieces her body was becoming.
The best part? It should have killed her the moment it begun, but Gabriel made sure she stayed alive. Just for now. He left her eyes for last, just long enough to see his blade appear in his right hand in a soft flash of golden light.
Oh, he was going to enjoy this. Gabriel hadn't torn apart a pinata in years.
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"Oh?" That was the only sound that came out of her mouth, because ... there was a squeezing feeling, like her own skin was suddenly two sizes too small for her own body. Because of that, her vocal cords were quickly crushed and constrained as her body began to rearrange itself, shrinking and twisting, changing form. The girl was only minutely aware of what her new form was like, because it was a new form without nerves, without blood, without feeling. Perhaps it was a form fitting for a cruel girl like Erika, with no heart and no patience to understand it.
"...?!"
There was no way for her to look surprised, because her new paper-mache form was dangling in midair, on an invisible thread. Even though pinatas were supposed to be fun, colorful toys, there was something creepy about the pinata that was swinging in front of Gabriel.
After all, who ever heard of a spider-shaped pinata?
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