[ he'd known about these events. it seemed to make sense, really, with the hapsburg mice being built to take so much. they'd never put him into one, given he isn't a single-use mouse. if they kill him, he's dead. if they injure him past repair, their template is gone.
There's also the fact they aren't sure how it would turn out if they stuck him into a ring with another mouse. if it'd be carnage or if he'd just turn on the guard door and try to get his way out into the show arena at large and start a massacre. It takes six years until the event staff finally thing they're ready to give it a try.
Zoe had been having an incredibly good run, an impressive winning streak, making records with it, and they'd decided to finish it with a cruel kind of bang, in sending it the advertised psychotic to rip her apart. It'd be easy, they'd thought - Andyr likes fighting them, likes killing them, hates the mice with a passion, is a darkly delightful kind of macabre in his style. Just let him have his fun, and we'll make absurd amounts of money off it.
They should've figured, by now, that Andyr's learned how to read lips after six years behind soundproof glass.
When he's pushed into the ring, it's with the kind of restraints they use on him during very, very bad days, when there's a corpse to account for, mostly for the sake of show. there's a reputation they'd built with him, making use out of the pain in the ass that he is, and that's what they're counting on for the theatrics of this show. cuffs on his arms and legs, muzzle over the lower half of his face, metal collar that's attached to a long pole to push him into the ring with. With a gun or two aimed on him, another guard removes all the restrictive nonsense one by one, and Andyr's eyes skim over the crowds in the establishment, cheering and waving cash and stuffing themselves full of drink and fancy foods. The last to come off is the muzzle, before the guards move to retreat and bolt the door of the cage behind them.
eyes slide towards the other girl, not far away, and a slow smile pulls across his lips, as the crowd starts to cheer and yell in a frenzy. ]
Aim for the face. [ he calls out to her, and then just waits. ]
In fairness to them, they don't care what mouse does come back out in her matches. Some of the higher end mice don't go to the death like she does. But she's got clones to fucking spare. Lose her, and they'll replace her by morning. Not a problem for them. It's nearly the same story for the other saps that get locked up with her.
But when you've got a winner, you keep playing that shit over and over again. You let the crowds come to scream about the girl that just won't die. Because she fucking won't die. No matter how many mice they throw in with her, she'll always be the one to leave. Does she feel bad about killing? Hell no. It's her or them, and the choice is damn easy. She's expendable, she knows it. But she's not going to let herself be spent so easily.
So when the crowd enthusiasm starts to wane, it becomes obvious. The cash cow is starting to dry up. Everyone's waiting on baited breath to watch her die and she just keeps making it through each match. So they push her in the ring with those luxury models she's seen. This one isn't expendable in the same way she is. She's the underdog fighting her way up. These models are the top dogs. And she's being fed to him. She doesn't have to look around the room to realize it. The crowds larger tonight. It's louder. It's screaming for blood. Her blood. This is supposed to be a merciless spectacle.
The air buzzes with the electricity of it all. With the raw energy the crowd feeds into the ring. With the way they scream for him. They don't scream for her victory. So she feeds off all the things they don't say. All the things they don't want.
The doors lock. The only signal they need to start.
He doesn't move.
She paces slowly. Staring him down. Letting his words sink in.
What the fuck kind of shit game is he playing at?
Finally she crosses the room. She grabs his shoulders, finding no resistance. She meant to raise herself up. Instead she pulls him down as she lifts. Her knee slams into his stomach before she shoves him to the side. ]
fighting other augmented KNs is always fun, when he's actually fighting. taking a strength boosted knee to the gut with no resistance aside from the durability alteration he's had? not fucking fun, and Andyr's body goes tumbling to the side, shoulder bashing into one of the grated cage walls. and yet, after he's finished coughing and hacking, it's a morbid kind of laugh that coming out of him, as he rolls onto his back, hands over his stomach. ]
Getting a vacation. Your aim sucks.
[ that was not his face. there's a good margin of safety zone between the walls of the cage and the start of the audience area, and that means they aren't overheard, difficult enough for their voices to be picked out over the roar of the crowd besides.
a hand on the grate, Andyr hauls himself back up, stepping forward for her again, without any kind of defenses up, just cracking his neck, head tilting to one side and the other. this is going to hurt. ]
Come on, mouse, you can hit harder than that. [ He yells a bit louder, stepping towards her like he'll walk right through her if she doesn't move or stop him. ] Making me piss blood isn't gonna win this.
[ there's a lot of augmentation she needs to get through, and before the event staff decides to cut this short. ]
[ Her aim doesn't suck, this weird as shit act is what sucks.
Okay sucks isn't the right word. But she doesn't have the right word because this makes no fucking sense. He wants her to hit him? Everyone is clearly betting on him to win, which means he has a reputation. And he's just standing there. Goading her.
He yells louder, getting the crowd up, and moves toward her. For a second, she thinks maybe the beginning was an act to unnerve her. It worked.
Expecting him to go in for the kill, she leans back, one hand going out and heel going up. Her feet are bare, but that doesn't make the heel to his throat any easier to take. It won't kill him. But she hopes it winds him enough that when she drops, already halfway there, and pulls her momentum back around, she can take him down with her. She's not short, but fuck if he's not bigger. ]
[ and the bigger they are, the harder they fall, especially when they're fighting every reflex to hold out an arm to catch themself or slap out and distribute the impact. Andyr does neither, lets the full force of his body slamming into the arena floor, knocking the wind out of his again, leaving his throat in a painful gasp through an already burning throat, after the kick she gave him. ]
You can't make me. [ he wheezes out against his straining windpipe, interrupted with a cough, before he looks to her with a kind of dead seriousness in his eyes. ] And neither can they.
[ there's a quirk at the corner of his lips, pulling into a smirk that flashes teeth, before he's hauling himself up again. that's the game in this she's looking for - they put him in here to fight, because that's all he's ever done with them, but he's not fucking doing it, and even if they come in here with cattle prods, it won't make him fight when he doesn't want to. they counted on him just being some nutjob that needed violence, but that's not the fucking point.
Hapsburg is about to have a room full of very angry patrons, and Andyr's just going to laugh. But not if this girl doesn't hurry the fuck up and waste him. ]
Come on. The face. Please. [ He's pointing in a vague circle at his face. Hell, even a good blow to the head would be good. Get him down for the count. ] Break a bone or at least get me bleeding, christ, it's not that fucking hard.
[ they put him in here to kill you, girl, so hurry up before they start to realize he's not playing. ]
[ Mal had wondered, at first, why they let him see the cage fights. It's not something that he thinks House Gloriana would overly approve of, not when they want their mice to turn out like little angels. He gets it, though, once he's been there a while. Once he's watched the Hapsburg mice beat the tar out of each other for the entertainment of everyone around. It leaves him feeling sick and hollow, which, he decides, is exactly how they wanted him to feel.
The mice are nothing to these people. They're not even anything to each other.
Mal thinks of the relationships he's formed, of the people he lives with now. Of Posie. And they're nothing to these people. Mal doesn't feel like he has a lot to lose anymore. His father is already gone, along with his freedom. His only hope lies in reclaiming them. But he'd been wrong. There's a hell of a lot more to lose, and he has to hold to it.
It's why he approaches her afterwards - her, the winner, the one who'd swept the cages like a fucking champion. ]
You know you could have killed him.
[ She has to know. Mal doubts she even cares, but he cares, even though he doesn't even know the name of the mouse she brought down. ]
What happens when you do? When someone dies in there, what happens then?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cage fights and stuff;
There's also the fact they aren't sure how it would turn out if they stuck him into a ring with another mouse. if it'd be carnage or if he'd just turn on the guard door and try to get his way out into the show arena at large and start a massacre. It takes six years until the event staff finally thing they're ready to give it a try.
Zoe had been having an incredibly good run, an impressive winning streak, making records with it, and they'd decided to finish it with a cruel kind of bang, in sending it the advertised psychotic to rip her apart. It'd be easy, they'd thought - Andyr likes fighting them, likes killing them, hates the mice with a passion, is a darkly delightful kind of macabre in his style. Just let him have his fun, and we'll make absurd amounts of money off it.
They should've figured, by now, that Andyr's learned how to read lips after six years behind soundproof glass.
When he's pushed into the ring, it's with the kind of restraints they use on him during very, very bad days, when there's a corpse to account for, mostly for the sake of show. there's a reputation they'd built with him, making use out of the pain in the ass that he is, and that's what they're counting on for the theatrics of this show. cuffs on his arms and legs, muzzle over the lower half of his face, metal collar that's attached to a long pole to push him into the ring with. With a gun or two aimed on him, another guard removes all the restrictive nonsense one by one, and Andyr's eyes skim over the crowds in the establishment, cheering and waving cash and stuffing themselves full of drink and fancy foods. The last to come off is the muzzle, before the guards move to retreat and bolt the door of the cage behind them.
eyes slide towards the other girl, not far away, and a slow smile pulls across his lips, as the crowd starts to cheer and yell in a frenzy. ]
Aim for the face. [ he calls out to her, and then just waits. ]
ready to ruuuuuuumble
In fairness to them, they don't care what mouse does come back out in her matches. Some of the higher end mice don't go to the death like she does. But she's got clones to fucking spare. Lose her, and they'll replace her by morning. Not a problem for them. It's nearly the same story for the other saps that get locked up with her.
But when you've got a winner, you keep playing that shit over and over again. You let the crowds come to scream about the girl that just won't die. Because she fucking won't die. No matter how many mice they throw in with her, she'll always be the one to leave. Does she feel bad about killing? Hell no. It's her or them, and the choice is damn easy. She's expendable, she knows it. But she's not going to let herself be spent so easily.
So when the crowd enthusiasm starts to wane, it becomes obvious. The cash cow is starting to dry up. Everyone's waiting on baited breath to watch her die and she just keeps making it through each match. So they push her in the ring with those luxury models she's seen. This one isn't expendable in the same way she is. She's the underdog fighting her way up. These models are the top dogs. And she's being fed to him. She doesn't have to look around the room to realize it. The crowds larger tonight. It's louder. It's screaming for blood. Her blood. This is supposed to be a merciless spectacle.
The air buzzes with the electricity of it all. With the raw energy the crowd feeds into the ring. With the way they scream for him. They don't scream for her victory. So she feeds off all the things they don't say. All the things they don't want.
The doors lock. The only signal they need to start.
He doesn't move.
She paces slowly. Staring him down. Letting his words sink in.
What the fuck kind of shit game is he playing at?
Finally she crosses the room. She grabs his shoulders, finding no resistance. She meant to raise herself up. Instead she pulls him down as she lifts. Her knee slams into his stomach before she shoves him to the side. ]
The fuck are you doing?
no subject
fighting other augmented KNs is always fun, when he's actually fighting. taking a strength boosted knee to the gut with no resistance aside from the durability alteration he's had? not fucking fun, and Andyr's body goes tumbling to the side, shoulder bashing into one of the grated cage walls. and yet, after he's finished coughing and hacking, it's a morbid kind of laugh that coming out of him, as he rolls onto his back, hands over his stomach. ]
Getting a vacation. Your aim sucks.
[ that was not his face. there's a good margin of safety zone between the walls of the cage and the start of the audience area, and that means they aren't overheard, difficult enough for their voices to be picked out over the roar of the crowd besides.
a hand on the grate, Andyr hauls himself back up, stepping forward for her again, without any kind of defenses up, just cracking his neck, head tilting to one side and the other. this is going to hurt. ]
Come on, mouse, you can hit harder than that. [ He yells a bit louder, stepping towards her like he'll walk right through her if she doesn't move or stop him. ] Making me piss blood isn't gonna win this.
[ there's a lot of augmentation she needs to get through, and before the event staff decides to cut this short. ]
no subject
Okay sucks isn't the right word. But she doesn't have the right word because this makes no fucking sense. He wants her to hit him? Everyone is clearly betting on him to win, which means he has a reputation. And he's just standing there. Goading her.
He yells louder, getting the crowd up, and moves toward her. For a second, she thinks maybe the beginning was an act to unnerve her. It worked.
Expecting him to go in for the kill, she leans back, one hand going out and heel going up. Her feet are bare, but that doesn't make the heel to his throat any easier to take. It won't kill him. But she hopes it winds him enough that when she drops, already halfway there, and pulls her momentum back around, she can take him down with her. She's not short, but fuck if he's not bigger. ]
Fucking hit back you piece of shit!
no subject
You can't make me. [ he wheezes out against his straining windpipe, interrupted with a cough, before he looks to her with a kind of dead seriousness in his eyes. ] And neither can they.
[ there's a quirk at the corner of his lips, pulling into a smirk that flashes teeth, before he's hauling himself up again. that's the game in this she's looking for - they put him in here to fight, because that's all he's ever done with them, but he's not fucking doing it, and even if they come in here with cattle prods, it won't make him fight when he doesn't want to. they counted on him just being some nutjob that needed violence, but that's not the fucking point.
Hapsburg is about to have a room full of very angry patrons, and Andyr's just going to laugh. But not if this girl doesn't hurry the fuck up and waste him. ]
Come on. The face. Please. [ He's pointing in a vague circle at his face. Hell, even a good blow to the head would be good. Get him down for the count. ] Break a bone or at least get me bleeding, christ, it's not that fucking hard.
[ they put him in here to kill you, girl, so hurry up before they start to realize he's not playing. ]
I can't kick my own fucking ass.
random text yo
hey buttercup
what up girl
no subject
no subject
post-cage fight
The mice are nothing to these people. They're not even anything to each other.
Mal thinks of the relationships he's formed, of the people he lives with now. Of Posie. And they're nothing to these people. Mal doesn't feel like he has a lot to lose anymore. His father is already gone, along with his freedom. His only hope lies in reclaiming them. But he'd been wrong. There's a hell of a lot more to lose, and he has to hold to it.
It's why he approaches her afterwards - her, the winner, the one who'd swept the cages like a fucking champion. ]
You know you could have killed him.
[ She has to know. Mal doubts she even cares, but he cares, even though he doesn't even know the name of the mouse she brought down. ]
What happens when you do? When someone dies in there, what happens then?