ArchivedLogs:Their Own Terms

Their Own Terms
Dramatis Personae Merit, Shane
In Absentia	2013-05-05 '
Location Thunderdome
It's a basement, somewhere, that much is clear from the slightly musty-cool feel, the lack of windows, the stark-bare cement decor. What purpose this place originally served is hard to discern; something industrial, judging by the heavy reinforced eyelet hooks still set into the ceiling, now devoid of any loads to bear. Of late the place has been repurposed, though. Around two parallel edges of the room, sturdy cells have been constructed, heavy reinforced metal segmenting off large cage-like cells. The enclosures are largely identical: two sets of bunk beds with pillows, thin sheets, identical grey wool blankets. A pair of large covered bedpans, a bucket usually filled with fresh-ish water. The center of the room is divided in two. One half is large and open, a spacious expanse of cement floor and emptiness. The other half holds long trestle-tables, long benches, both riveted into the cement floor. The ceiling -- of the room, of the cages -- hold very noticeable dark security-camera bubbles. There is one door leading out of here, heavy steel that is securely chained and barred from the outside. The clanging open of the door to the room is a familiar sound. Heavy rattle of chain, heavy thunk of locks, heavy scrape of metal on concrete. It's not meal time and it's not fight time which tends to either mean trouble or a New Addition. Today (tonight? it's hard to tell, no windows and no clocks, though it's been a while since the last meal) it is /two/ new additions, carried in rather than prodded or dragged. Identical in appearance if not in dress, little and blue, gills and webbed fingers and tiny-compact forms they do not look like much; the guards who carry them handle them as though they do not FEEL like much either. The door to Merit's cell opens, and the men give a narrow-eyed look before dumping both kids unceremoniously on the floor. They've been hog-tied, ankles to wrists bound tight by plastic handcuffs that have been pulled securely enough that by now they are biting deep into flesh. One man stoops to cut them free. One of the twins is dressed colourful-bright if now speckled with blood and dirt, a pink t-shirt with a monarch butterfly, a swishy black skirt with batik-printed pastel flowers, pink fishnets and Care Bears socks though his shoes are missing. He is battered through and through, a dark mess of bruising splotched puffy and purplish against his blue skin, and he doesn't move after he's unbound. Just flops kind of limply, one eye swollen closed and the other pressed against the concrete floor. The other is, at least, more active. He's dressed absurdly nicely for this place, pale linen slacks with faint paler pinstriping, neat pale shortsleeved button-down, dark vest. Bow tie. Black dress socks but also no shoes. His teeth -- a /wealth/ of them, sharp and sharky -- bare when he is unbound and in a heartbeat he is turning, uncurling, crouching, /coiling/ like he's poised to strike. This does not seem to phase the men who have brought them, much. One tap of a pad that they hold and the more alert of the twins is twitch-jerking with a sudden zap of voltage. He doesn't strike. He just watches them from jet-black eyes, narrowed and hateful. A lanky Asian man sits on the bottom bunk, watching the twins' arrival with little apparent interest. Behind the messy fringe of black hair and beneath the drooping eyelids, however, his gray eyes look suddenly keen when the guard /disciplines/ one of his new cellmates. The unbuttoned collar of his slim white dress shirt--ruffled and dirty but largely free of blood--frame a bulky device, different from the ones worn by the twins. Tight black jeans cling to his legs, which are folded across each other. He does not move until the great steel door slams shut behind the guards, and even then only to straighten hunched shoulders. His gaze drifts over the two blue boys. "Merit Constantine," he says. "What do you call yourselves?" The neutrality of his voice and a face devoid of expression makes the tone of the question difficult to place. Shane does not move again once the collar has zapped; he just watches the guards as they disappear. The moment the door clangs shut, though, he is moving, kneeling by the other boy's side with his expression dropping from hateful to worried. Sebastian's gills are fluttering slowly but aside from that there is no movement; Shane lets out a soft 'ksss'-hiss of displeasure, hands moving to press at the sides of Sebastian's neck like holding those gills /down/. FROWN. And then slipping his hands beneath Bastian's butterfly-t-shirt to do the same for the longer pair of gills that are down his sides. "What?" At first he just answers irritable-sharp, a twitch-jerk of head settling his eyes on Merit, briefly. His hands clamp harder against Sebastian's gills. "Come here," doesn't come out so much as a request as it does a demand, although the harried edge to his tone suggests this is more panic than arrogance. "-- Shane. This place looks -- different. The fuck's with your --" His chin jerks towards Merit's collar. Merit unfolds his legs but does not rise at once. "The collar will in theory blow my head off in the event I do something to displease our captors," he replies blandly. "Blast radius unknown. Does that change your request?" There is maybe something to be said for Shane's current state of worry or, perhaps, something to be said for his past experiences that this information does not so much as make him blink. "Cute," is what he does say, and, "I need an extra pair of hands. Come /here/." Sliding to the edge of the mattress, Merit drops to the floor and covers the distance to the twins in two long strides. He darts a cold, gray stare at the nearest security camera turret before kneeling down across from Shane. If a closer look at the unconscious young man's injuries moves him in the least, it does not show. "Here -- just. Press." Shane reaches for Merit's hand, gesturing in indication where his own hand is pressed down hard against Sebastian's gills. They're as covered in bruises as the rest of him but, unconscious, he doesn't flinch at the pressure. Shane moves his own hands up, back to Bastian's neck to press down against the gills there, frowning slightly at the feel of the collar beneath his hands. "Yours is different." There's a question in his voice even if it isn't phrased as one. This time Merit does as he is bade without further comment. For all his apparent nonchalance, he seems to focus quite intently on his simple task. "As you have discovered, yours delivers an electrical shock on a signal from our jailers," he explains, without looking up from the small, unmoving body beneath his hands, "as does your brother's. Mine just explodes. Or so they say, at any rate." A brief pause, a wry smile. "I do not feel particularly inclined to call that bluff just yet." "Shit," says Shane, lips twitching slightly upwards as he looks down at the puffy-bruised but otherwise identical face of the unconscious twin, "who told you we were brothers?" He keeps his hands pressed flat against the fluttering gills, and eventually they lie still and flat and no longer fluttering. Sebastian draws in a breath, then, shallow and ragged. He doesn't wake, but the breath he draws in makes Shane expel one, heavy and relieved. His hands don't move, but he does look up at Merit now. Longer, taking his time now to scrutinize the older man. "... explode? Seriously? The fuck are they going to learn from exploding you? You been here long?" "I almost said 'sister'," Merit says dryly. Then, perhaps feeling the shark boy's gaze on him, he looks up. It is hard to tell whether he owes the shadows under his eyes to weariness or smudged eyeliner. "'Learn'?" he echoes. "I suppose they would learn the limits of my self-control or my willingness to die, but I doubt our captors have much interest in either. They bring us here to fight each other." "You could say sister. He wouldn't mind." Shane's eyes drop away, to the unconscious twin between them, a heavier weight settling into his expression. His hands don't move from Bastian's neck but one thumb does brush upwards, briefly touching against the other boy's jaw. But his gaze snaps back up to Merit at this answer. "They what?" Blinkblink, rapid, one clear inner set of eyelids and then the next. And then he is /laughing/, a short breathy hitch of sound as his gills flutter. "They -- this is -- these people are -- we're here to /fight/?" Shark teeth flash as his soft hiss-breaths of laughter continue. "Yes, fight. Until they grow tired of us." Merit seems immune to both the grim implications of his own words and Shane's sudden mirth. "They brought me here maybe two days ago, but I have heard the others talking." He looks out across the row of cells and shrugs. "Some have shown more enthusiasm for this than others. I gather you are in the enthusiastic camp. Or was that more of an anguished laugh of irony?" "No -- no. I just. Really? They're -- putting us in cages to fight. Like pitbulls." Shane's words hitch, too, just as his laughter had, a stuttering hiccup of sound that cuts in and out as his gills open and close. "I just. I was so scared that -- I thought this was serious," he explains to Merit. "I -- the last time people stuck us in a cage -- it wasn't like this. They were professionals -- this is -- they're just some /thugs/." He looks down at Sebastian, whose breathing is starting to even out. Slowly, tentatively, he lets his hands go. Bastian's gills stay pressed flat against his neck. Shane exhales heavily. "-- Do we have to kill anyone?" "Yes. Really, really," Merit replies abstractly. "I do not make a habit of begrudging others their comfort, wherever they find it. Those professionals you speak of must have given you an awful time if you prefer dealing with thugs. I do not feel very strongly about the professionalism of those who would call themselves my masters." Following Shane's lead, he removes his hands from the still-unconscious body lying between them and sits back on his heels. "Not in every fight, but in some." The focus of rendering aid has left Merit, and his entire posture suggests weariness again--or calculated languidness. "I suspect they may find sport in arranging death matches between those apparently reluctant to hurt one another." "It -- wasn't fun, no." Shane curls up his knees towards his chest, wrapping his arms around his shins. His chin rests on his knees, eyes drifting between his brother's body and Merit. "So we give 'em a good show and we stay alive?" The hairless ridge of his brow raises. His eyes slice briefly around the room, then return to Merit. "Not the kind of Master I usually --" he is grumbling, but then just studies the other man again. "You mind hurting people?" "Perhaps." Merit's shoulders barely rise and hunch back down. "But I would not give them too much credit for consistency, either. Compliance will only get us so far with their ilk. I do not see too many other options at this point, but I keep looking. I have not much else to do until they decide to throw me at someone." At the last question, Merit's half-lidded eyes gleam. "No. I do not mind hurting people. I just prefer to do it on my own terms. Why, do you?" This answer draws a small curl of smile out of Shane. "In general --" His fingers flex, claws extending briefly and then retracting again. He shrugs. "I mind doing it for some fucking flatscans' entertainment. What do you do?" Merit appears so entranced by the movement of Shane's claws that for a moment it seems possible he did not register the question. Then his reply comes, neither humble nor prideful, "I DJ. Go by 'Straylight' on the scene" His left hand gestures vaguely in the direction of an imaginary window on the wall. "I do guest sets, all over town. Looking to establish my own venue in West Village now." A look of mild irritation crosses his face. "I will probably miss my community board meeting, at this rate. What do you...'do', then?" This last he says with an odd, cryptic smile. "Yeah," Shane says this with a quiet note of laughter, "I -- can't imagine they're gonna let you out to make your work commitments." In front of him, the gills on Bastian's neck are starting to open again; reflexively, Shane, reaches down to press his fingers against them until they close. He looks back up at Merit's smile, and slowy his claws extend again. "Me?" His eyes linger long, sweeping down over Merit's form and then back up to his face. "Talk to me when we're out of here, and I'll tell you then. I guess for now, I fight."