The First Match

[realitymods]

Characters: Robespierre, Oliver Day, Spectators
Location: The Coliseum.
Time: Two days after Weber's announcement.
Summary: The first of the death matches.
Warnings: Character death warning.

Dressed as before, the man in the cravat stepped up to the edge of the Emperor's box. He held his smile, eyes scanning the audience and the combatants below him.

"Welcome to the first of too many fights. To start us off, Maximilien Robespierre and Oliver Day will engage in mortal combat, without the health bars. They have until the hourglass runs out to kill each other."

The man picked up the hourglass and turned it over so the sand was at the top. It held perfectly still despite gravity, waiting for its cue.

"It isn't a fair fight, but I think you've all realized by now: we don't fight fair." The man clasped his hands together. "Let the fights begin."

And the first grain of sand fell.

Comments

[le-traitre.livejournal.com]

"Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers."

Robespierre closed the Bible in his hands quietly. The Psalms were words of power in the hands of a Poet, but they were just as equally words of prayer. His faith in God had wavered with Lia's death and the revelations of his country, but his faith was still his own. He knew the irony in the Psalm he had chosen to read as a prayer, but he was not the one sitting in the Emperor's box. Royalty did delight in murder throughout history, didn't they?

As the man began to speak, Robespierre deposited the Bible in the inner pocket of his jacket, setting a hand instead on the sword at his side. He wished that the opponent he would face would not make him draw his sword. The Psalms themselves were all together more swift and merciful with the death they caused. He stepped into the arena, glancing without a word to the hourglass and the man in the box.

His expression told nothing, passing no judgment. And the silent stare soon fell upon his opponent, instead. Robespierre said nothing, waiting first for his opponent to speak.

[collector]

Braxiatel took a seat in the stands, close to the forcefield, and tapped against the barrier. No one would pass, that seemed likely enough. He looked down at Oliver. The boy didn't deserve this. Robespierre might feel no guilt for the blood of it, but Oliver would feel the effects of dying. No one came back from death unchanged.

Quietly, his right hand a fist, he said, "Barbaric spectacle."

For those who knew Braxiatel's mother tongue, the word for barbaric might bring pause. It was a heavy slur against the stupidity of the lesser species, their primitive idiocy so unworthy of even the dirt at his feet. It was not an insult often used by the man who so often avidly endorsed the panoply of the universe, who sang the praises of all the younger species. Far more often would it be found on the lips of a xenophobe.

Poor Oliver Day.

excuse my fail, the heat is eating my brain

[charmandsmiles.livejournal.com]

The Doctor, meanwhile, made his way toward the Emperor's box. He wasn't watching the match -- he couldn't watch Oliver die. Instead, his eyes were intently focused on the man in the cravat. His expression read Not Pleased as he knocked three times on the forcefield.

[lamb_of_gold]

Mu stood very much on his own, gazing down at the spectacle below. Though he'd come, initially, to speak to the man in the cravat, seeing Oliver off seemed far more important. There would be other opportunities to talk. This was likely to be once in a lifetime.

Mu's right hand was pressed against the forcefield as though willing it to dissipate, but knowing it would not. He was enraged that he could do nothing, and enraged to know that getting mad would also do nothing.

He closed his eyes, leaning his head on the field as well, and his mouth began to move, silently reciting a Tibetan prayer for the dying.

His hand balled into a white-knuckled fist.

[brigadiertardis.livejournal.com]

Everything had to die. The TARDIS knew that. By her relative time line, Oliver had long since turned to dust. But it was different seeing it happen in front of her, watching the black barrier fall away with only Robespierre in sight and the ship stood silent and still among the stands, staring down on the dust that had once been her Doctor's companion.

Mortality, ethics, right and wrong ... they meant little to her. She just didn't care about such concepts most of the time. But Oliver was one of the few she liked, one of the few she remembered fondly, and seeing what was hers come to harm was enough to send her into a rage. An ineffectual rage, as she couldn't do anything, but a rage nonetheless.

So she stood and watched and shook from the violence of her anger, hands pressed to the barrier and eyes on Robespierre as he disappeared from the arena.

[bodilesswarrior.livejournal.com]

Barbara arrives in the midst of their battle, if a battle it could be called. She barely glances at the spectacle - a spectacle, made of murder, it turns her stomach - as she approaches the dome, a safe distance from other spectators.

That's when she starts throwing batarangs. They're large than usual, and made to explode on impact.

They do not, of course, do any good at all, but she keeps trying anyway, long after it no longer matters.