It took three weeks for the effects of the synergy sedative to lose its effectiveness, and what a miserable two weeks they were. The days and nights were much the same and would have blended together fully were it not for the consistency with which the snakes forced him to fight. Once a day, at noon, to Yamaguchi's best guess, he would be drawn into the arena and set upon a host of other war prisoners and feral animals.
He had, midway through the second week of his captivity, begun to wholly lose hope. There seemed to be an endless supply of fresh faces with which to litter the arena, and Mika's taunting chatter did nothing to secure Yamaguchi's faith in the resistance. The first time Yamaguchi spotted a prisoner who he recognized from the resistance, he nearly dropped to his knees and cried. That, of course, would have resulted in his imminent death, but the matter still stood.
Luckily, or perhaps, unluckily, the fighting field was not the only place Yamaguchi spotted his former comrades. During one particularly brutal fight, where the snakes had sicced an entire pack of hungry wolves on him, Yamaguchi saw a familiar face in the arena crowd. As he ran from the pack, stopping to occasionally slash at the nearest wolf, he saw one of the reconnaissance officers in the stands. He was up high and in the far back, the cheapest seats there were, and he watched the match with concern masked by intense loathing. Yamaguchi could not for the life of him remember the man's name, but he knew the face well as one of the people near constantly at Shirofuku's side. Not long after, still running from the wolves, dwindling in number as they were, he noticed two other vaguely familiar faces at various places in the crowd.
On the second day, he noticed the reconnaissance team; he was locked in battle with another war prisoner. The snakes had, evidently, grown tired of Yamaguchi's refusal to harm other people, and so they endeavoured to send him men with increasing levels of depravity and desperation. Those who he faced in the arena now could hardly be called human, minds so broken and twisted as they were. There was no means to reason with them, and they were not all so clumsy as to fall and impale themselves, so Yamaguchi was forced to end their torment. He prayed, with a newfound spirituality brought on by the lonely and bloody days in the colosseum underbelly, that their souls would ascend to a better place in the Goddess's hands.
Yamaguchi only noticed his allies the second time because they had so nearly jumped into the arena to try and help him. Daishou's men had, on that occasion, sent out not one, but almost a half-dozen of the maddened war prisoners. They, much like the first man he had fought, were gaunt, frothing at the mouth, and lustful for bloodshed. They would not turn on each other, and so gave Yamaguchi much trouble. The reconnaissance team, there had been three of them that day, looked greatly disturbed by Yamaguchi's predicament. The one closest to him, a tall woman only three rows away from the arena centre, lept out of her seat and leaned halfway over the rail to try and aide him. Yamaguchi had to, as subtly as possible, signal to her to remain seated. Surely, if she or anyone else, were to offer him any form of help, they would be captured and sorely punished, if not killed outright. She had, as per Yamaguchi's quiet but desperate insistence, returned to her seat, and he could see her associates had been equally as tense.
As much as he was loathe to do so, Yamaguchi had very few options, and so ventured to kill his crazed pursuers. The first one was fairly easy; he was the largest of the five, somewhat more nourished than the rest, but was blind in one eye. To isolate him from the others and catch him from his bad side took very little effort, as little effort as killing a man could take. The second and third, perhaps once a married pair for they bore matching rings, died just as fast. Yamaguchi had snagged a mostly functional bow, as well as two arrows, and from the top of the rotting corpse of an elephant, he shot them down. The fourth was the first to cause injury to Yamaguchi that day; he, too, scrambled atop the carrion pile and attempted to wrestle Yamaguchi down. The northerner was, by his own admittance, rather poor in hand-to-hand, and the man pinned him easily. Yamaguchi rolled, however, and the fall was just enough to snap the other's neck, although the landing had bent back Yamaguchi's wrist and broken it with a sickening crunch. He would have to be left-handed until Mika saw it fit to heal him. The fifth proved to be a formidable opponent; she was fast and clever enough to stay out of range of the axe Yamaguchi had picked up. She saw weakness in his injury, though, and that was her downfall. She darted in to strike just as Yamaguchi stopped for a breath, and on reflex, he swung the axe. She had landed a good blow on him, her knife dug deeply into his hip, but the axe did far more damage. Her sunken in stomach had been sliced clean open, and she gaped as a mix of scarlet blood and pinkish-grey entrails spilt out onto the dusty ground. Yamaguchi dealt the final blow so as to not make her suffer.
As he dutifully walked back to where his cage would lower him into the ground, Yamaguchi spared a glance at his former comrades. Their faces were grim as if they had just watched a gruesome execution, which they had, but when he made eye contact with each of the three, they shot him supportive smiles. It was all the encouragement he needed to live a little longer. If the resistance had sent people out to keep an eye on him, then it could only mean that they had a plan for him to escape.
They were there the next day, too, as he fought a bear. That particular fight had been an exceptionally challenging one. The bear, brown lumbering thing that it was, had been released from its cage just a slight bit earlier than Yamaguchi had been released from his. To make matters worse, Yamaguchi had caught a glimpse of blond hair in the invigorated crowd. Blond hair was not too terribly uncommon, but the figure had such a look about him, that proud posture, the angular nose, those sharp golden eyes behind silver glasses; the blond man looked so awfully much like Tsukishima, albeit a little less well kempt. The several seconds Yamaguchi wasted simply staring, as well as the head start, had been enough for the bear to catch him before he even could grab a weapon. It reared up, claws deadly sharp and eyes frantic, and battered him across the chest. Yamaguchi's shirt shredded, and blood poured rapidly from the deep gouges as he desperately scrambled away. The bear reared back for another strike just as Yamaguchi grabbed a half-broken spear, only the metal head still intact. It must have been his imagination, but Yamaguchi swore that he could hear someone scream his name, his given name, as the bear bit at his leg. Just as quickly as he acknowledged the call, he pushed it to the back of his mind, now was not the time to moon after loves that could have been. Yamaguchi lifted his hands, and drove the spearhead into the bear's skull, its jaws still firmly locked around his calf. It took a few blows for him to kill the creature; the metal was blunt, the bear possessed a thick skull, and the animal's head looked more like a hairy bowl of reddened oatmeal by the time Yamaguchi was sure it was dead. As he staggered back to the cage, he felt an intense stare; the blond man watched him with such an intelligent gaze and intent fervour that Yamaguchi could be convinced it was no one else; Tsukishima was here, and he had found Yamaguchi at long last.
If the resistance fighters had given him hope, Tsukishima's visage filled Yamaguchi with such an intense desire to survive that it was the first thing Mika commented on when she saw him after the fight. As much as it disturbed Yamaguchi to think so, Mika had become somewhat of an appreciated presence in the fearful life of the colosseum. She was, by no means, pleasant, but she brought him food and drink, and never endeavoured to harm him. The woman was also, Yamaguchi found, a loose-lipped font of information. She, as all the other snakes did, thought Yamaguchi's synergy to be thoroughly sedated and so, considered him no threat of importance. Given her love for both Daishou and herself, it was no difficult task to get her to talk of the snakes' brilliant plans. With just a few choice words and a docile temperament, Mika would happily prattle on and on about the inner workings of the Slithering Isles military. Yamaguchi would even venture so far as to say she was somewhat fond of him, for her smiles had lost some of their cruel bite, she healed his injuries more fully than she had at the beginning, and the food she brought seemed of better quality than what should be fed to prisoners, if only marginally.
Frequently, when she tired of tittering over the actions of her military, she would make snide comments on the matches that happened while he was under the ground. Sometimes, she would enthuse over an especially bloody show, perfectly happy to marvel at how much blood a man can bleed before he dies, or about what a woman looks like skinned alive and covered in dust. Her twisted interest in such vile and macabre topics made Yamaguchi's partially empty stomach roil, but he endured the chatter in hopes that it would eventually give him some sort of advantage.
Far less useful were Mika's comments on the appearances of the arena fighters. She spoke almost giddily over the poor state of the prisoners; her eyes blazed, and her face flushed with a cruel sort of delight. Sometimes, she would mention a specific prisoner by name, or at least by title. Mika's voice, then, would gain a twinge of regret much in the same way a farmer might regret the loss of his prized hog. She would go to great lengths to describe the appearances of these people from when they had been healthy and well, and once she had established their attractiveness, she would bemoan the loss of it to weariness and scars. Mika's tastelessness had confused Yamaguchi slightly, if she had such a love of beautiful things, why should she venture so to praise Yamaguchi. There were no mirrors in his confines, and he was not so vain to try and catch his reflection in a spare bit of metal, but Yamaguchi was sure he looked no better than many of the other prisoners.
Always, he was covered in a layer of grime, dust from the arena floor, and blood from his enemies. If it was not easy on the eyes, it certainly was not easy on the nose. While Mika had ventured to bring him food regularly, it was only one meal a day, and not nearly enough to keep him in any proper state of health. His face he could not judge, but Yamaguchi's wrists had become very bony indeed, and he could see his ribs through his skin when he looked down. He had long since lost the leather strip he used to tie up his hair, and its length had become matted and greasy, and a bit longer as well. He may not have looked so horrible as the madmen that were sent to fight him, but Yamaguchi was sure that to a civilian eye, none would bother to make the distinction. While he was not a vain creature, he felt just a bit ashamed that his allies should have to see him in such a state.
The thought that Tsukishima had seen him like this, distressed him far more greatly than it perhaps should have. The prince had, those months ago, kissed him goodbye with a distance yearning in his eyes, but Yamaguchi could not fathom a world where Tsukishima could love him any longer. Any attractiveness that he may have had to his name, had surely been all but destroyed with his time in the arena. There were many times, almost every waking moment, it felt, that Yamaguchi could hardly fathom himself as even a person any longer. He had killed, and ruthlessly so. Sure, he had ventured to spare as many lives as he could, but when put in a position where that was no longer possible, he killed. It had come easily to him as well, something that Yamaguchi was sure had been obvious in his movements. As much as he had not wanted them to, the snakes had turned him into a monster, a traitorous man who would kill his own soldiers to save his skin. No sane person could love Yamaguchi, not after what he had allowed himself to become, and if they were so stupid as to try, he would have to stop them. No one deserved to love a broken man. Indeed, if Tsukishima and the others would go so far as to even call him a friend again, it would be more than he deserved.
And so, on that cheerful thought, another week and a half passed, as uneventfully as any could in the midst of a cruel fighting ring. Yamaguchi was raised into the arena, he fought, got injured, and caught glimpses of his fellow revolutionaries in the stands. Through those interactions, however brief, a message was transferred. During his time training with the underground resistance, Yamaguchi had been taught several cyphers, codes, and hand signals with which to convey important military messages. The gestures were brief, and he had surely missed some of them, but the message was clear enough; help is coming; give us a signal, and we shall ambush this place. What exactly the help was, Yamaguchi was not sure. Had the resistance convinced some of the snakes to turn coat and fight on their side? Had Inari and Izaki perhaps sent aide to Fukoni after the influx of refugees they surely had faced? Had Tsukishima brought the mighty wrath of the Firefly Empire and the Kingdom of the Iron Wall? Whatever it was, Yamaguchi could only trust that the help was competent.
When he was sure that the synergy suppressor no longer had any effect on him, Yamaguchi decided to send his signal. It would not be a difficult task, the hand signal for now was a short one, quick, succinct, and impossible to mistake.
All confidence Yamaguchi had as he rose into the arena, however, was quickly dashed as he heard the announcer's booming voice, "Here, my good people, we have the fight you've been waiting for! A clash of the most heinous, most despicable, most deplorable enemies of our dear nation. To my right, we have our very own escape artist; the brutal conman who has slaughtered over twenty of our soldiers in his attempts to desert the fight, and who has impressed us with his unparalleled merciless brutality toward his opponents!" The raucous roar of the crowd drowned out the announcer's next words, but from their enthusiastic chants, Yamaguchi could assume the man's name was Ito or some variation of it.
The crowd, after a minute, hushed and the announcer spoke again, "And to my left, we have the double-crossing weasel of an advisor to our own dear king Daishou. Champion of weakness and commander of cowards!"
The spectators made no attempts to hide their bloodlust and contempt for the gladiators. They shouted insults at both Yamaguchi and his opponent. Already, people had begun to throw things into the arena. Rocks, spoilt food, and other miscellaneous garbage rained down upon Yamaguchi as he cautiously edged around the arena's far end.
Ito, a large man with unnerving clarity in his eyes, strolled casually, or as casually as anyone could in a death match, and pulled a fully intact axe from the caved-in chest of a wolf. The man made direct eye contact with Yamaguchi as he bisected the decaying wolf with a single swing. Yamaguchi got the faintest hint that Ito hadn't been a war deserter but rather an uncontrollable wild card. No one who carried such a gleeful look with a bloody axe in hand would try and flee a battle.
Yamaguchi kept low to the ground and hoped that his slight and malnourished appearance would deceive Ito long enough to give him an advantage. Ideally, he would have a light weapon, perhaps a knife or short sword; Yamaguchi didn't fare nearly as well when he had to fight with brute force weaponry like Ito's axe.
As if on cue, a knife, tied to a rock, landed on the ground next to him, having just barely missed his hand. Yamaguchi made sure to flash his signal to the revolution agent as he picked up his weapon. The knife itself was, as knives went, heavy. The handle was sturdy, and the bottom half of the blade was serrated, a hunting knife then. He gripped it firmly in his palm and squared up with Ito. He didn't need to win this fight, not this time. He just needed to buy time for the resistance.
The first few attacks, both from Yamaguchi and Ito, were tentative, meant to test each other. They swung and dodged and thoroughly sussed each other out. It wasn't often that Yamaguchi fought someone sound of mind, and it unnerved him greatly. Ito knew exactly what he was doing, and he enjoyed every second of pain he may or may not cause.
Mostly, Yamaguchi found himself on the defensive. Ito was stronger than he was, and the extra length of the axe made it hard for the northerner to get close. Still, before he even hit the fifteen minute mark, Yamaguchi landed a hit. Ito was slow, not incredibly so, but slow enough. One well-timed swing and Yamaguchi carved a deep gash in the man's thigh. And with the appearance of his injury, Ito proceeded to lose his mind.
The man's eyes clouded, his grin widened, and he clutched his axe with an ever-tighter grip. In that half second, a switch seemed to have flipped. Ito began to swing with reckless abandon, each blow perfectly aimed to kill Yamaguchi. It was all the synergist could do to keep away from injury.
As he dodged ceaseless blow after ceaseless blow, Yamaguchi knew his time was waning. He couldn't last forever, and already it had been almost an hour of nonstop movement. Aside from the first swipe, Yamaguchi hadn't managed to land another blow on Ito. He himself, however, hadn't managed to dodge every hit that had been thrown at him. His ankle clicked strangely and twisted at odd angles where it had been hit with a backswing of the axe; it was most certainly broken. Yamaguchi's shoulder, too, had suffered injury when he had tried to turn and run to put space between himself and the absolute war monster that was Ito.
Desperately, Yamaguchi looked around for the resistance members; if he could just spot one of them, he would know it was safe to use his synergy. It had been well over an hour at this point, and just as he had hoped, there was a flash of grey in the crowd. A stern face with grey eyes met his own, and Washio gave Yamaguchi the go-ahead.
That momentary distraction, however short it was, however, was just enough time for Ito to strike. The man's eyes blazed with an unmatched fervour as he swung the axe. Yamaguchi had enough of a mind to dodge, but he wasn't quick enough. The half-dulled blade of the axe connected with his left arm and cleaved it from his torso.
The pain hit him like a tonne of bricks before Yamaguchi could even register the sight of his detached arm laying on the ground. Blood soaked his side and spurted from the wound like a defunct fountain; the crowd delighted in his injury. For a moment, he couldn't breathe as Ito cackled gleefully. Yamaguchi felt himself lose his balance, felt as his legs lost their strength, and saw the shift in perspective as he collapsed onto his knees. His vision, for a brief moment, went black and then white, and he tasted blood as he screamed. It was a raw noise, one that tore his vocal cords, and the world descended into chaos around him.
Every mechanical item, from the simple announcement system to the delicate hydraulics used to keep the prisoners locked up, blew out. Yamaguchi could barely think, his focus split between the pervasive pain and his uncontrolled destruction of machines. The audience screamed in terror as the arena half collapsed, its mechanical infrastructure no longer sound.
A bullet pierced through Ito's skull as he lifted his axe to decapitate Yamaguchi, and the injured man didn't even flinch at the spray of blood and brain matter that hit his face in the bullet's wake. He heaved desperate gasps of air as he tried to regain his mind. All around him there was fighting. Some were prisoners, likely released from their cages due to Yamaguchi's synergetic outburst, others were snakes and the resistance, and others still bore uniforms that Yamaguchi didn't recognize. The noise filled Yamaguchi's head with a dull hum, seemingly separated from reality.
It wasn't until someone bore down upon Yamaguchi that he regained his control. Luckily, he still had his right hand with which to wield his knife, and without thought, he cut down the man who had rushed him. Adrenaline seemed to have increased tenfold, and Yamaguchi couldn't feel the pain of his missing arm anymore. Medically, that probably wasn't a great sign, but Yamaguchi no longer cared for his own safety. This would be the last battle, he could feel it.
Yamaguchi staggered into the streets to join the fight. The Snakes' guns and war machines exploded and backfired the second Yamaguchi got within twenty metres of them, and with his knife, he carved a wake of destruction in the snake's army.
Carefully, he noted the difference between friend and foe. Alongside the resistance, were a significant number of guards and military folk who bore the insignia of Fukoni's monarchy; the above-grounders cheered when they saw Yamaguchi pass by, and he allowed their weapons to function in return. More still, fought beside him, people in sparse garb, clearly from the north. Around him, vermin swarmed the Snakes and Yamaguchi couldn't help but smile; Suga had finally convinced that Daichi of his to join the fight, then. Others, still, wore heavy iron armour or the telltale gold and green of the Firefly empire. The cavalry, it seemed, had been called in; these then were the resistance's reinforcements.
Something hummed in the back of Yamaguchi's mind as he haphazardly wielded a gun that he'd picked off a dead body. The feeling, or was it a noise, grew stronger the closer to the castle he got. He felt as if he needed to get to the castle, as if there was something important there, although he could not tell why.
It became clearer, though, when he got close enough to decipher the mechanical hum. The force of it almost knocked Yamaguchi to his knees for the second time that day. All other noises faded away as Yamaguchi heard the ticking, grating, and whirring of the biggest machine he'd ever sensed. There, he managed to pinpoint the location, the highest parapet had been somehow repurposed into a holding room for a massive gun.
Yamaguchi ignored the fighting around him as he sprinted up to the castle and forced his way through the gates. Snake guards shouted and raised alarms, but he ignored them just as he ignored the ever-growing sense of dread that built in him. He extended his synergy to try and understand the machine better as he raced to where they kept it.
It was a gun, of course, but not like any other gun he'd seen. It was massive, twice the size of a canon, and infinitely more deadly. Once triggered, it would fire bullets the size of cannonballs faster than any soldier could empty his revolver. The thing would automatically loaf, and Yamaguchi could tell the snakes had made plenty of ammunition, considering nearly every box in the castle was full of the stuff. It only needed to be aimed, and it could singularly turn the tides of the battle. This, Yamaguchi intrinsically knew, was what the snakes had used him for.
From one of the few windows, Yamaguchi could see that the snakes were ready to fire their canon-gun. Snake soldiers had fled from the surrounding area like rats from fire and left Yamaguchi's allies confused and joyous in their false victory. The snakes meant to fire upon the clustered soldiers and thus decimate the reinforcements. Yamaguchi had to stop it.
He fired his gun without thought as he burst into the canon's room, instantly downing the man meant to aim the weapon. Yamaguchi threw down his weapon and frantically examined the large gun so he could best dismantle it. No matter the method, however, Yamaguchi was handicapped; he'd need both hands to manually destroy the machine, and he was notably lacking in the arm department. Woozy from blood loss and desperation, Yamaguchi gave the machine the only other command he knew. Self destruct.
It wouldn't take long for the gun to explode, and with all the ammunition in the upper castle, Yamaguchi knew he needed to run, and fast. As quickly as he came, he sprinted down the stairs to put as much distance between himself and the gun as possible. The resulting explosion would be massive, it would raze the entire castle, and the rubble would likely take out more than a few of his allies, but the damage would still be less than what the gun could with its automatic firing.
Yamaguchi had just made it to the deserted courtyard of the castle when he heard the explosion. Almost instantly his back was awash with heat, and the sound of breaking stone and built-up pressure left his ears ringing. Stones and shrapnel flew around him as the fire raged.
Before he could even register a hit, Yamaguchi collapsed as one of his legs failed him. Rubble and burning refuse rained down around him as his vision darkened. One of his legs was wet and in incredible pain, the other he couldn't feel at all. Yamaguchi's vision hazed and darkened, and he had just a second to classify the puddle of liquid he was in as blood before he lost consciousness entirely.
All around Yamaguchi's half-alive body fires burned and people screamed. All the revolutionaries knew his face, but in the midst of hundreds of lifeless corpses, what was one more?