Round Two - Haobin Xu vs. Celeste Strom

Whatever love is, it dies with Booker Ashwood. No sense of where his arms end and hers begin, she kills her best friend and he lets it happen. No, he craves his end, flickering out with the ghost of a smile on his lips. The longer she sits there, watching Booker become less and less himself, is torturous. Her chest twists, her jaw clenches - there's an overwhelming upheval of agony and grief.

Dead because of her. Dead for her. Dead by her hand.

She closes her eyes, head slumped on his shoulder. "Thank you." She mumbles to deaf ears.

There's no point in crying, so she doesn't. And when they pull her away from Booker and back into the flashy metallic interior of their chambers - she goes willingly. She observes without speaking, letting them force her arms through clunky metal armor. They make her into their crude idea of a warrior, as clumsy as a child playing with hollow dolls.

Now that there's nothing to go home to, it feels a whole lot like there's nothing holding her back. Whatever it takes, she vows, knuckles white around the knife now heavy with two souls. They don't clean it - she doesn't ask them to. Not from guilt but a strange sentimentality. A memoir to two dead boys who could have been so much more.

When they let her back into the arena the bodies are gone. Limp, lifeless things that were a lot more familiar than the boy stood across from her. What will they do to them, she wonders - chasing away a particularly dark thought about glass eyes in taxidermized skulls. The ground beneath her feet is yet another horrendously gaudy color.

It's as much of an insult as it is a fucking joke. Even here, even after asking them to fight to the death, they do not take them seriously. They are not owed civility and most certainly will not be paid respects. Celeste is used to it, of course, but that doesn't stop the realization from stinging.

"Can you believe this?" She half-laughs, eyes stopping their perusal of their new arena as they land on an the pretty thing that will soon become her undoing. In victory or death - all roads lead to the same destination, "They haven't made us into warriors, they've made us into punchlines."

She tosses her knife, one clean revolution before the handle is snug in her palm once more. "I'm sure you deserve better than this, but I'm going to kill you now."

She strikes before she's finished speaking.

[celeste attacks bin -- knife]
VO7GMl2ADoknife
[8.0]

knife

He's like poetry, she decides. Even bleeds with elegance, crying out when her blade connects. He grazes her in return, painful enough that her breath hisses from between clenched teeth. There's a honed edge to his words, surely as biting as the are beautiful. "They see all of us as fools."

Celeste has never worried about saying the right thing. Never felt the need to perform kindness for anybody, much less to lie for their sake. Perhaps that's why she'd had one friend for the entirety of her sixteen years. The very one she'd just slaughtered.

To be alone is not so lonely if you come to enjoy your own company. There's a wonder to life she's managed to compartmentalize, picking apart her own tragedy until it lays bare before her in more manageable pieces.

For someone to position themselves so far above her is not unfamiliar. She's often viewed down the bridge of one's nose, as though they don't currently stand on even footing. It used to make her angry, when she was much smaller and therefore the world unbearably large. That's what got her kicked out of the first home they'd placed her in, with a labyrinth of cavernous rooms and sparkling marble floors.

She didn't belong in a place so grand, where the ceiling wept crystals and all her clothes had floral lace. Her caretakers didn't bother to pretend she ever would and so she set fire to a painting they had boasted being worth a number higher than Celeste could count back then. Hell, it was probably higher than she could count today.

They never placed her in a hollow home like that again.

She shakes off his retaliation, almost relieved to see her skin mottled with blood after being wiped clean. It was demeaning enough to be dressed up like this, like they were fighting for the thousands of eyes upon them as opposed to for themselves. There should be no civility between two children fated to kill the other.

"Unless you think they admire you? Root for you?" She circles him, muscles tensed. The armor makes this less of a senseless hack-and-slash. They've got to wait for a weakness. Every fresh wound is at least partially their own fault now. "Are you content like this? Happy that they've dressed you up and set you loose?"

She furrows her brows, shifting onto the balls of her feet.

"I do not care how well I've chosen my words, only that I survive."

[celeste attacks bin -- knife]
AHCkYZFqriknife
[3.5]

knife

Starving iron devours, a gash across her abdomen that hurts enough that it almost feels fatal. Her throat closes like he'd wrapped his fingers around them, choked by fear and frustration. Through the fog of adrenaline, she looks into her opponents eyes and realizes something terrible.

She's scared of him.

She staggers backwards, grinding her teeth so hard her jaw aches. Trying and failing to keep her focus off of the sharp pain now radiating from her stomach. "They'll eat you alive." She grits out, more angry at herself for the sudden flood of emotions she's fallen victim to. "Maybe you'd like that."

The screech of his armor adds to the panic rising like bile in her throat. She flinches away from the sound, the hilt of her knife in a white-knuckles grip. It feels very much like a lifeline, like the only thing standing between her and this absurd spectacle. "They'll take more than you can give."

The crowd roars as she takes a step forward and stumbles, hounds catching scent of their prey. If she's to be made a spectacle, it will be on her own terms. Beautiful to spite them, breathing because that's all that's ever mattered to her. She was never a girl that caught eyes, a face that melted into a sea of a thousand others.

She looks at Bin and tries to understand his hunger. The twisted malice in his gaze, the way he manages to bite without teeth. If only she knew how he thinks she might find an advantage or a weakness to exploit. She might find something to hold on to instead of this endless chaos.

"Why sad?" Her only comfort is the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears, "After all you would be dead, not me."

She tries to mirror his expression, if only to see how it feels.

"I suppose you wouldn't be able to be sad about that."

And that's childish, as Celeste has always had a bad habit of being.

[celeste attacks bin -- knife]
nJVHOqP8gkknife
[8.0]

knife

She's always been a little bit like a shoe mistakenly worn on the wrong foot. An uncomfortable presence, that chafed skin raw and rubbed blisters between your toes. Not many people were pleased to be in their presence, and would prefer not to be. She hears the their outrage when she spills Haobin's blood.

He breathes life into her worst fears. A heavy blanket of dread enveloping her to the point where she fears it will paralyze her. There is only so much life one can life in sixteen years and none of them prepared her to face this boy. Cruel in the loveliest of ways, who wields harsh truth like a weapon.

They love him. They crave him. The crowd pulls him into their orbit, greedily leading him toward what lies at its center.

Nothing and everything, a cavernous yearning.

They don't fucking want her, he's right.

"I'll bear it all." Her steps are staggered. Tired. It's almost a relief not to think about their reality. Heavy armor and gaping wounds, the harsh breeze that leaves her throat uncomfortably dry. "More than that I'll enjoy it." She shouts now, though her throat closes in protest. The timbre of her voice mirrors the tremors in her hands.

"I hope you die hating me. I hope they despise me when this is through."

She cannot accept that this is her end. It would be easy to die by such a magnificent hand, but if the calluses on her palm are evidence of anything it is that Celeste does not crave an easy life.

Still, he's made her feel fucking stupid. Small enough that she'd begun to wonder why she never craved to grow tall enough to touch the sun. It would feel a lot like speaking to him, she imagines. Awful and a little bit wonderful.

"But maybe that's asking too much."

[celeste attacks bin -- knife]
h|Suu4TKTpknife
[0.0]

knife