gladiator updates!
No updates today, except for those students who are in the gladiator battles! They start right about now, guys. Have fun!
GROUP: Ira, Willa, Marla, Dorothy, Wally
Like clockwork, at 5:00 PST, the next round of gladiators - as picked by Patience and Mycroft - are teleported away. There's something new, this time, though -- Jillian Rivers is teleported away, too.
As everyone with a PDA will later see, one battle pitted Willa Marsh and Ira Kazan against each other: two notorious genius brains. Of course, when Caesar flickered into view on the holograph, this is what he highlighted in his speech -- the desire to see just how their intellects measured against one another. "I admit, a chess game seems a little boring, but do not worry! Whoever loses will still suffer the consequences."
Their PDAs buzz, and if they look down at them, they'll see photos of that which will be hurt should they fail: on Ira's screen are pictures of his parents, innocent of all the insanity of Neopolis. On Willa's, photos of her family farm. They have a chance to look, and then their PDAs go completely dead, and stay that way until they return to their groups.
"Now, let's make this a little more exciting, shall we? You are both intelligent -- I shall allow you to make up a new rule each, to make the game a little more hoppin'."
Even shaken by the threats presented to them, Ira and Willa were quick to mull over their options and choose a rule. Ira decided to make his knight's modified vector leaping distance determined by the number of major pieces he'd captured (castles, bishops, knights, and the queen) divided by the number of pawns he'd captured; Willa chose a classic fairy chess piece, the Nightrider: an unlimited number of knight moves (that is, 2,1 cells) in any direction (though, like other riders, it cannot change direction half-way through its move). Having made her choice, she gave Ira a great big hug and said matter-of-factly, "I am sorry I have to destroy you, sir." And then they sat down to play.
After two turns on the video feed, Caesar appears atop of it, looking annoyed. "Their gameplay is brilliant, but good lord this is boring to rewatch! Let's fast forward, shall we?"
Zipping through footage of Ira looking deep in thought, and Willa looking thoughtful and focused, then irritated, then frustrated... they came to the end of the game, when Ira moved a piece and declared, "Checkmate." There was a briefest flicker of triumph in his eyes -- forgetting the stakes, just enjoying the victory -- and then he remembered, and was suddenly somber. Willa simply sat and stared at the board, looking numb. "B8. I shouldn't have moved there." she decided, in a small voice. But before she could say anything more, or Ira could respond, the video stopped; they'd already been teleported back.
Dorothy Duncan, Wally Marshall, and Marla Tudor found themselves in... stalls, overlooking an obstacle course in the open air. With three walls around them, they could see only what was in front of: the course, and a holograph of Caesar.
"Welcome, to Death Race 2010!" he laughed, gesturing expansively to the course behind him. "The rules are simple: get through this obstacle course before your opponents, and win. I'll be generous today -- the first two to the finish line shall be considered 'winners', but the last one is a sore, sore, sore loser. Better be quick, bunnies! There are three of you, and only one course. And don't try to cheat and deviate from the course -- it means instant lose, and a nasty surprise for you."
But before they came face-to-face with their opponent, the three of them came face-to-face with their consequences. As with Willa and Ira, their PDAs buzz, and videos come up. For Wally, an image of Jillian appeared. The pretty redhead was in hysterics - clearly terrified, and barely able to choke out words of encouragement: "You can beat those jerks, Wally, I believe in you." For Marla, her mother, looking her best to seem unafraid for her daughter as she delivered a soothing message, "This will be over soon. Just do your best to persevere, my Marla, and take care of yourself." For Dorothy, a face she thought she would never see again -- that of her father's, glaring and threatening, "So help me, Kinesis, if you disappoint me..." Then, the PDAs went dead. And the starting gun went off.
For the first 200 yards, it was simply a mad dash. Then the obstacles began -- some of them in triplicate (a hurdle for each racer) but often only one challenge (only one tube to squeeze through). The course is also set up with booby traps -- minor mines that cause them to trip and fall, quicksand traps, swinging razor wires.
They were all rattled by the video messages, and the threats that loomed over their heads, but it could be argued that Wally Marshall was the best at turning his fear into determination. He blazed through the course, only falling behind once (quicksand) before getting up and going again. His techie skills helped out more than once -- Caesar said he couldn't deviate from the course, but that didn't mean he couldn't pull out a screw here or there and make it easier for him.
Also making it easier for him was Marla Tudor, who had taken her mother's words to heart and focused on what she considered to be the biggest threat: Dorothy. Determined that she and Wally would be the winners, she sent a few hexes the other girl's way, tripping her up and inciting her wrath. Much to Caesar's delight, the two girls fought each other more literally than simply racing each other, throwing curses and charged pebbles with abandon, each trying to get ahead of the other.
Under normal circumstances, it might not have been any contest at all -- Dorothy had a lot of firepower under her belt. But the sight of her dead father had unsettled her to the point where she just wasn't at top form. As such, she kept missing, and falling, and stumbling. Three quarters of the way through the course, the outcome was clear: Wally Marshall would win, but Dorothy Duncan and Marla Tudor were neck and neck, struggling through the course and grappling with each other. Everytime Dorothy would push Marla into a trap, Marla would come back with a hex that would put Dorothy behind three paces.
Finally, at the final obstacle - a rope wall that they had to climb - it happened: Marla's fingers slipped, and she fell. Triumphant, Dorothy scrambled up the wall, charged the rope wall... and exploded it, so that Marla would not stand a chance.
They were all transported back to their groups, worse for wear -- Wally with scratches and aching muscles, Dorothy with a hex-headache, cuts and bruises, and Marla with a twisted ankle, burned fingers, and bruised ribs.
A while later, the winner announcement and the video recaps came over all the PDAs...
...and Willa and Marla receive the photographic evidence of their punishments. Willa got sent pictures of her family farm in ruins -- barns ablaze, fields destroyed, soil turned over and lined with piles of salt. Marla was forced to witness her mother, Meredith, be hit with a particularly nasty curse -- one that forced her to be violently ill until she was turned gaunt and dessicated, a husk of a woman coughing up blood and covered in her own sick.