(no subject)

[opening_act]

Who: Exael and the Unlucky Contestants
Where: The Game Tower
When: 86, Evening

[ Between one step and the next the walls (or streets, or open air) around you changes. The sight before you is a room inside the game tower, a new pressure at your neck. Reaching up or looking at the people around you reveals it to be a collar, titanium with a small green blinking light set in the center. ]

[ the screen flickers on, on your cellphone. It's a half-second, blink and you miss it— Exael, chewing on a nail, looking uncharacteristically nervous— then the moment's gone and she waves both hands and smiles for the camera. ]

"Ladies, gentlemen, honored guests! Units of all stripes and sizes! I come offering you a game and a few familiar words, rearranged for the occasion!"

Her carnival barker demeanor shifts for a moment as she lowers her head to say: ] "Glory to the highest, and on earth peace—" [ her head snaps up, her pigtails bouncing with it, and she's grinning again, all pomp and energy ] "even if we're not getting much down here! So let's kick up a ruckus, put on a show, and see how much good goodwill alone can manage! If you wish to save your fellows, now is the time speak!"

[ The rules appear on your phones. ]

[ Rules ] [ Rooms ] [ Results ] [ Endgame, Revivals & Winners ]

Comments

[stakesthesame]

There's not... much to explain? I guess Doodles saw you as an easy target since I was busy with Mars.

[liftoft]

Nah, I mean... Why'd you guys agree to do it at all?

[stakesthesame]

... uh, agree to do what?

[liftoft]

Kill people.

[stakesthesame]

...

You know, they were giving out punishments for people who didn't do anything, right? If nothing happened in a round. I wasn't going to let Zrael walk out of there completely srewed over again.

[liftoft]

The only thing I did was undo Doodles gettin' killed though. There's a difference in doin' nothing and doin' what the producers tell you to do, y'know?

But I'm not tryin' to say you're wrong or anything, for choosin' the way you did... like I said, I'm just tryin' to figure everybody out. Most times it's like... they take somebody away from us, or we know there's poison, or somethin'... it was just weird as hell to me that so many people were just--willin' to hunt each other down.

[stakesthesame]

It didn't happen that round, but in a later round I was in the terms were start some sorta conflict or your unitmates get punished--

[ a pause ]

Doodles got killed?

[liftoft]

Almost! But nah, Alcheme's got a skill for that, y'know?

[stakesthesame]

[ looks

Kinda horrified ]

A "skill for that"?

[liftoft]

Uh, yeah it's like--we can't do it very often, but we can see into the future, just a little ways. So I saw him get killed and did what I had to to keep it from goin' that way.