This is now officially a shared account. I humbly add my own efforts to those of the awesome AnotherGestapo--the name isn't as creepy as it sounds, by the way, if you've seen the Monty Python skit. This is a Naruto fic, unlike the others she's posted. It is also a prompted fic, and an AU. The prompt asked me to use six words, which I don't remember now but could probably point out if you really wanted me to.
Enjoy. Please.
BLOODMATCH
It's made of glass.
The arena, that is. Sleek, curved crystal walls and a clear dome. Both the walls and the impossibly high roof ripple with electricity. There should be blood everywhere, but there are only a few spattered crimson puddles on the glass floor. Any drops that fall against the walls fizz and smoke and hiss into nothing.
Hot white light spills down from above, casting the shadows of the spectators overhead. They're cheering for the good sport.
There are two today, two Brutals pulled from the Silver Pits for a bloodmatch. (No killing, the rules say. It's a clean sport, theoretically. No killing.)
With these two, the sport is intensified a thousandfold. It's practically impossible for it to turn into a deathmatch. Already they've set a record for most wounds in a bloodmatch, and it'll go on for several hours yet.
Each of the spectators has a program with the rest breaks scheduled in it as well as various entertaining intermissions. Oh, and profiles on the contestants. Name, Ring title, history, and stats.
The first: dances like a fire, flickers fast as lightning, scarlet-gold and swift. Could be an ordinary human, save for the way his features flicker when he attacks--wild, cruel joy etched on sharp vulpine features, white-fanged maw stretched wide and blood-red in a snarling grin. His fight clothes are gaudy--ragged scarlet jacket lined with black, and battered gauntlets with spiked knuckles. The air howls around him, shredded by his speed.
Uzumaki, the program reads. No other name for him. The announcers say it increases the drama of the game.
The second: gleams like ice, rushes like a snowstorm, cold and still and silent, and yet fast enough to avoid his opponent's erratic attacks. Ivory skin and a mane of sleek ebony spikes, brushes back as he blurs from on wall to another, footsteps singing like wind through icicles, eyes blazing like scarlet mirrors.
Uchiha.
Banter adds to the entertainment value. Battlers are encouraged to exchange witty retorts during the match.
Today is different. Brutals don't do banter. It's fatal in that caste of contestant. It only stays a bloodmatch as long as they're both on their guard, and deaths in a bloodmatch ruin the show for the crowd.
Deathmatches are only for the truly desperate battlers. Sometimes there is more that one contestant, all tearing at each other in a screaming melee. What the crowds watching above don't know, their hearing blocked from the gruesome noises of the grisly spectacle, is that deathmatches aren't a fight to stay alive.
They cry their wicked, anguished pasts to the maddened brawl around them, their words springing off the walls and rippling across each other in soft, tormented whispers.
"...father sold me..."
"...burned and tore at my..."
"...did that to her! Could have stopped them..."
"I failed to protect milady. Forgive..."
"...only five years old!"
And behind each of these, the haunted, sepulchral shadow of the plea: Kill me, kill me.
The last one standing weeps for his survival.
The bloodmatch is coming to a break. The contestants pause, neither breathing hard, eyeing each other with amiable enmity and chilly indifference (respectively).
Most of the crowd filters away for refreshments. The rest are chattering so loudly--making bets and appraising their programs' evaluation of the contestants--that they wouldn't hear anything over the speakers even if Uzumaki loosed one of his blood-freezing howls.
But Uzumaki isn't in the mood for such things. Instead, he leans forward, blue-gold eyes focused intensely on Uchiha's.
"Yo."
Uchiha glances at his opponent, disinterest stamped on his white features. With one gloved hand, he adjusts the high collar of his dark, faded blue coat, shrugging off the other contestant's greeting.
"What happens to the dead ones?"
"They are recycled and used as compost in the outside world," is the crisp reply. Uchiha's eyes--now hard and black--are still turned away. he speaks with no hint of revulsion in his deep voice.
"Think you could die?"
"Yes."
"And come back?"
A pause, and Uchiha's gaze become shrewd and calculating as he turns his head a fraction towards Uzumaki.
"If necessary."
"Let's, then."
It's uncertainty, hanging heavy in this fresh break in conversation. There's no sign of it on the contestant's face, but it's there, a slight imbalance in his cool, confident aura.
Uzumaki knows this, and uses the silence to illustrate his point.
"Let's get out fo here. They're not letting us out. When Brutals get too strong, they die. The faculty kills us. Because they're afraid. Afraid of us."
Uchiha's nod is almost imperceptible, but Uzumaki's vision is remarkably good.
When the battle resumes, the speakers are shut off. They're not saying anything anyway, so why bother paying spectators with the sounds of battle?
Uzumaki starts it, of course, They're starting the endgame, clashing more and more frequently, and he's at his best, borne on wings of exhilaration. It's a deathmatch now, he reasons. Let's honor tradition.
Iron spikes scrape against the bright, freezing blade of Uchiha's sword, spraying cyan sparks that sink into the walls with a faint pulse.
"Uzumaki Naruto."
Dodge away, feral eyes laughing, pounding his fists against each other with a defiant, rhythmic clang, clang.
Red, tomoe-ringed eyes widen for a moment, and then narrow as five blue-black points whistle past his nose.
"...born in the slums--"
Iron on steel, screaming as their eyes lock, enemies and friends in the same moment.
"Uchiha Sasuke," he hisses through clenched teeth, and throws his opponent back with a powerful twist of his torso.
"Born a noble--"
--Ducking a kick that could have shattered his skull like glass--
"Trained by the best tutors--"
"Fought off thieves and muggers--"
"--swordplay, so I put all my effort--"
--Blood cascades down the blade--
"--grew strong, so strong--"
--He grins, swipes one scarlet-dripping hand up--
"Then, one night, I came back--"
"There was this girl named--"
"--dead on the floor, and they--"
"--killed her, right in front of--"
--Claws drawing five clean crimson lines in white skin--
"--brought me, chained me--"
"And it all went red, like--"
"--won every fight. Every--"
--Locked in the immortal stance, the deathblow nascent in the air--
"--killed them all but woke up in a cell."
"--into Brutal was easier than--"
"--swore I would kill them all!"
"And now I'm here."
"I got this far."
--Arm pulled back, claws splayed, prepared to rend flesh and bone--
--Sword raised high, a fang wrought of moonlight--
"DIE!"
That may have been a little confusing. Um. There's more story after this, really, but I don't feel like writing it. You don't want more, right?
Right?
My policy is the same as my accountmate's: if you favorite, review. Even if it's a stupid little thing like "It's cool, write more". Just to know you care a little bit. Thank you!
~AG2