In the fray, in the impossibility presented here — he's only a human, he's only a human — Ryo had been presented a challenge that should have ended just like this: death by the hands of the Araneans whom he turned down or death by the hands of the Aranean who issued the summons that trapped him to begin with. The time it'd taken him to be called from the party to this moment, right now, had been gruesomely short. And in the end, in the pressure to choose his hand, he'd tried his luck to buy time to live.
But, nerves had rattled him. So, too, had the many eyes cast down from the stands, the weight of the gun in his hand. No matter how well he shot, his opponent was fleet and experienced. He'd seen far more powerful than him fall to a spider's maw, their bodies devoured with a primal adroitness. He'd seen the tender color of their flesh, the insides of exoskeletons. The scent of their deaths reached him, even up in the roar of the stands. And now, he was surrounded by it. He was coated in it.
Everything is a furious rush in his head, his vision blurring through tears as he reloads his gun again. No matter how sure his fingers are, it's no use as he's crowded in by dark limbs. The crowd is a smudge in his periphery as he tries to shove the butt of the gun up into the spider's mouth, air breaking from his lungs in hysterical laughter. He's lost so much blood, so much blood — the blunt row of his teeth is stained in red as he pulls the trigger, only to miss and clip the Aranean's armored exterior as he pulls back from the blast. He'd long used up the more useful properties. Left to only bullets, he feels the weight of a leg press against the meat of his shoulder and shove him back.
He's already unsteady. It doesn't take much. His feet are out from under him already, clotheslined by another limb.
The world upends and all that's left is the sharp buzz that erupts from within as the back of his head hits the floor of the arena, the massive body of the spider a long shadow over him. Distantly, he can hear the proclamation that he's about to receive a killing blow — ]
[ It doesn't happen.
The air of the arena shifts, a living and tangible thing. It comes in the sudden surge something so cold and so bright from Ryo's vulnerable form that it seems to burn against the underbelly of his opponent. They rear back, hissing loud enough to be heard across the stadium.
What happens in the next few moments is difficult to describe, in part because it is difficult to see. Ryo pulls himself up with an inhuman fluidity, the lines of his body lit like a match. From his hands, he drops his weapon and reaches up to remove his goggles.
His opponent charges back in.
There's something bright that sparks off him, like a current. It cuts into the softer portions of the spider's body, but at such close range, it is difficult to tell what it is. It engulfs the pair and the ensuing scuffle sends the spider skidding backward. With the Aranean's underside now exposed, Ryo emerges from the bright with a looseness that has never been suggested in him.
But, it can't be argued. Somehow, he's already leapt up onto the vulnerable point of the spider. Feet planted on the underbelly, Ryo lets out a ringing laugh as the spider tries his best to right himself — legs tearing at Ryo's form with an instinctual viciousness. In the darkness, his eyes cut like the knife he jerks out from his boot as he bends down, one limb cleaving a line across the high of his cheekbone. It should have drawn blood.
It doesn't. The skin mends. The skin mends and Ryo bears his teeth, rears his arm back —
It's excessive, in the end. His opponent struggles and squirms — cuts into his sides and across his arms — but ice spreads out from beneath Ryo's feet as he hauls his arm back again and again. Even once it is evident that the Aranean no longer lives, Ryo doesn't stop.
He doesn't stop, until he notices the stadium has exploded into riotous cheering. His eyes blink the gore from his lashes — once, twice — as he lifts his head.
He straightens, tearing a loosened limb from his opponent as he goes. He doesn't stay still for long, as he hops off without the wobble and sway that had dictated his movements before. He lands light, slower than he should. The tips of his toes brush the ground beneath him as he settles like one stepping back from a waltz.
He hoists the limb up, mouth upturned in a way both hungry and beatific. ]
House Jankeh, [ he calls, his voice projecting further than its bodily constraints. It rings clear and bright, like a champagne flute struck with the flat of cutlery. He glows amid the darkness, the smallest slip of light in a sea of unseen bodies.
Lord Ngsh's blood rains over the golden crown of his head. ]
A.
[ There's something strange and feral behind his eyes, his skin somehow alight against the slick of ichor. His movements don't seem to fit in his body as he moves outside the Stadium's ring, the weight of his presence a visible luminescence in the dim. As though beneath a dark ocean, he appears a bright and beautiful thing, his head held high and blue eyes chatoyant. Across the obsidian bodies of Araneans, the upward sweep of his right hand to rest against his chest casts a cool and brilliant glow. It softens their hard edges, makes them somehow more approachable than the one who stands at the center of them, encircled as soon as he exits the doors.
It seems a struggle for many of them to remain in his range for long. Their clustered, wet eyes wink and glitter like strange stars against the way he cuts at their comfortable dimness. But, their mandibles still clack and their legs still reach with questions and inquiries. Ryo's face is a neutral mask, blood dripping from the tips of his fingers as he holds what appears to be a portion of a limb, the straps of his gun and his goggles in his left hand. It is hard to hear his answers unless someone steps in, though his voice seems to have no trouble rippling outward like a low tide at a certain radius. ]
It was what had to be done, [ he says, silvery and soft. His eyes lid against the gore that brushes against the high points of his face. His mouth goes sweet and pliant, adorned with the glimmer of white teeth beneath the ugly and artful split of his lip. ] Move back. I need to clean myself off.
[ When they don't move back, there's a subtle and slow dip of the air about them. It comes like a pale frost. It spans past metaphorical, webbing its way across anything living or warm closest to him. Even then, it's with a reluctance that they seem to scuttle back and allow him move.
If he passes by the person who has come to witness this, especially if they've lingered in curiosity, he lowers his right hand and idles — for a moment. ]
What is it? [ He asks. His eyes skim a slow line from head to toe. Somehow, the tone of it is too absent to be absent at all. ]
B.
[ He doesn't come back to the stands.
Instead, he's tucked himself into a quiet corner just beyond the entrance. Most seem to have overlooked him here, no longer bright in any sense of the word. To them, it was another body curled in on itself. Covered in blood as he is, with his hair matted to the curvature of his skull — he could pass for something near to death. But, death doesn't touch Ryo Asuka as much as others might have thought it had.
Close to him, one can hear the short and shallow intakes of breath. He'd pressed himself here in the darkness some time ago, his back up against the corner and his arms bent and pulled flush against his raised knees. His forehead has long rested hard against the tops of his knees, his fingers buried in the slick of his hair with enough dedication to reopen the wounds that litter their way across them. An observant eye can map what's caused them: a digging in of nails and joints beneath the soft plates at the bend of chitinous legs. The subsequent drag back had skinned them here and there, his pale skin a raw and vicious red beneath the discoloration of oxidized gore that does not belong to him.
Touching him only escalates the staggered nature of his breaths, the minute trembling of his body. He can't seem to get words out to questions, as much as he can seem to get words out to himself. His voice is how it always was, though rasped and low — tremulous, now. ]
What did I do? Why didn't I lose? What did I—?
[ It doesn't matter if anyone goes. But, if someone stays and waits, it might be possible to guide him back out of the Stadium to get himself cleaned up. ]
ryo asuka ( tennou vergilius maro ) | ota | stadiums
[ There was no way to win.
In the fray, in the impossibility presented here — he's only a human, he's only a human — Ryo had been presented a challenge that should have ended just like this: death by the hands of the Araneans whom he turned down or death by the hands of the Aranean who issued the summons that trapped him to begin with. The time it'd taken him to be called from the party to this moment, right now, had been gruesomely short. And in the end, in the pressure to choose his hand, he'd tried his luck to buy time to live.
But, nerves had rattled him. So, too, had the many eyes cast down from the stands, the weight of the gun in his hand. No matter how well he shot, his opponent was fleet and experienced. He'd seen far more powerful than him fall to a spider's maw, their bodies devoured with a primal adroitness. He'd seen the tender color of their flesh, the insides of exoskeletons. The scent of their deaths reached him, even up in the roar of the stands. And now, he was surrounded by it. He was coated in it.
Everything is a furious rush in his head, his vision blurring through tears as he reloads his gun again. No matter how sure his fingers are, it's no use as he's crowded in by dark limbs. The crowd is a smudge in his periphery as he tries to shove the butt of the gun up into the spider's mouth, air breaking from his lungs in hysterical laughter. He's lost so much blood, so much blood — the blunt row of his teeth is stained in red as he pulls the trigger, only to miss and clip the Aranean's armored exterior as he pulls back from the blast. He'd long used up the more useful properties. Left to only bullets, he feels the weight of a leg press against the meat of his shoulder and shove him back.
He's already unsteady. It doesn't take much. His feet are out from under him already, clotheslined by another limb.
The world upends and all that's left is the sharp buzz that erupts from within as the back of his head hits the floor of the arena, the massive body of the spider a long shadow over him. Distantly, he can hear the proclamation that he's about to receive a killing blow — ]
[ It doesn't happen.
The air of the arena shifts, a living and tangible thing. It comes in the sudden surge something so cold and so bright from Ryo's vulnerable form that it seems to burn against the underbelly of his opponent. They rear back, hissing loud enough to be heard across the stadium.
What happens in the next few moments is difficult to describe, in part because it is difficult to see. Ryo pulls himself up with an inhuman fluidity, the lines of his body lit like a match. From his hands, he drops his weapon and reaches up to remove his goggles.
His opponent charges back in.
There's something bright that sparks off him, like a current. It cuts into the softer portions of the spider's body, but at such close range, it is difficult to tell what it is. It engulfs the pair and the ensuing scuffle sends the spider skidding backward. With the Aranean's underside now exposed, Ryo emerges from the bright with a looseness that has never been suggested in him.
But, it can't be argued. Somehow, he's already leapt up onto the vulnerable point of the spider. Feet planted on the underbelly, Ryo lets out a ringing laugh as the spider tries his best to right himself — legs tearing at Ryo's form with an instinctual viciousness. In the darkness, his eyes cut like the knife he jerks out from his boot as he bends down, one limb cleaving a line across the high of his cheekbone. It should have drawn blood.
It doesn't. The skin mends. The skin mends and Ryo bears his teeth, rears his arm back —
It's excessive, in the end. His opponent struggles and squirms — cuts into his sides and across his arms — but ice spreads out from beneath Ryo's feet as he hauls his arm back again and again. Even once it is evident that the Aranean no longer lives, Ryo doesn't stop.
He doesn't stop, until he notices the stadium has exploded into riotous cheering. His eyes blink the gore from his lashes — once, twice — as he lifts his head.
He straightens, tearing a loosened limb from his opponent as he goes. He doesn't stay still for long, as he hops off without the wobble and sway that had dictated his movements before. He lands light, slower than he should. The tips of his toes brush the ground beneath him as he settles like one stepping back from a waltz.
He hoists the limb up, mouth upturned in a way both hungry and beatific. ]
House Jankeh, [ he calls, his voice projecting further than its bodily constraints. It rings clear and bright, like a champagne flute struck with the flat of cutlery. He glows amid the darkness, the smallest slip of light in a sea of unseen bodies.
Lord Ngsh's blood rains over the golden crown of his head. ]
A.
[ There's something strange and feral behind his eyes, his skin somehow alight against the slick of ichor. His movements don't seem to fit in his body as he moves outside the Stadium's ring, the weight of his presence a visible luminescence in the dim. As though beneath a dark ocean, he appears a bright and beautiful thing, his head held high and blue eyes chatoyant. Across the obsidian bodies of Araneans, the upward sweep of his right hand to rest against his chest casts a cool and brilliant glow. It softens their hard edges, makes them somehow more approachable than the one who stands at the center of them, encircled as soon as he exits the doors.
It seems a struggle for many of them to remain in his range for long. Their clustered, wet eyes wink and glitter like strange stars against the way he cuts at their comfortable dimness. But, their mandibles still clack and their legs still reach with questions and inquiries. Ryo's face is a neutral mask, blood dripping from the tips of his fingers as he holds what appears to be a portion of a limb, the straps of his gun and his goggles in his left hand. It is hard to hear his answers unless someone steps in, though his voice seems to have no trouble rippling outward like a low tide at a certain radius. ]
It was what had to be done, [ he says, silvery and soft. His eyes lid against the gore that brushes against the high points of his face. His mouth goes sweet and pliant, adorned with the glimmer of white teeth beneath the ugly and artful split of his lip. ] Move back. I need to clean myself off.
[ When they don't move back, there's a subtle and slow dip of the air about them. It comes like a pale frost. It spans past metaphorical, webbing its way across anything living or warm closest to him. Even then, it's with a reluctance that they seem to scuttle back and allow him move.
If he passes by the person who has come to witness this, especially if they've lingered in curiosity, he lowers his right hand and idles — for a moment. ]
What is it? [ He asks. His eyes skim a slow line from head to toe. Somehow, the tone of it is too absent to be absent at all. ]
B.
[ He doesn't come back to the stands.
Instead, he's tucked himself into a quiet corner just beyond the entrance. Most seem to have overlooked him here, no longer bright in any sense of the word. To them, it was another body curled in on itself. Covered in blood as he is, with his hair matted to the curvature of his skull — he could pass for something near to death. But, death doesn't touch Ryo Asuka as much as others might have thought it had.
Close to him, one can hear the short and shallow intakes of breath. He'd pressed himself here in the darkness some time ago, his back up against the corner and his arms bent and pulled flush against his raised knees. His forehead has long rested hard against the tops of his knees, his fingers buried in the slick of his hair with enough dedication to reopen the wounds that litter their way across them. An observant eye can map what's caused them: a digging in of nails and joints beneath the soft plates at the bend of chitinous legs. The subsequent drag back had skinned them here and there, his pale skin a raw and vicious red beneath the discoloration of oxidized gore that does not belong to him.
Touching him only escalates the staggered nature of his breaths, the minute trembling of his body. He can't seem to get words out to questions, as much as he can seem to get words out to himself. His voice is how it always was, though rasped and low — tremulous, now. ]
What did I do? Why didn't I lose? What did I—?
[ It doesn't matter if anyone goes. But, if someone stays and waits, it might be possible to guide him back out of the Stadium to get himself cleaned up. ]