the battle block // Vanya vs Avriel

[Deleted]

"Welcome to your 10th day, bitch," she spits at the eighteen year old. Got Graduation on friday and an Nationally streamed ass whooping to get on Saturday, and Vanya's right on time mfer. Vanya's been keeping her schedule clear ever since dropping the e-invite to Bitch Boy Baptiste for throwing dirt on the Bellisario name. 

Gotta finish what Love started, love. "You're lucky filming's had me booked or I would have kicked your ass weeks ago," Vanya says, cracking her neck and grabbing her weapon. They've been connected in the meta-dome for a good 2 minutes and she's already slinging trash talk and gearing up the fight back up. Going through the mental list of everything Avriel's done that's pissed her off, and exist is at the top. 

All's fair in Love & Vanya, she takes a dirty swing to start the clock before Baptiste's fully entered the match.

[ e-throws axe at avriel ]
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[ --- ]

[ VANYA: 0/25 ]

200+10000

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

a v r i e l .

"you are weak
but not foolish
you have learned
how to die."

The world rolls out before him, building itself up even as his digital body forms beneath him. Avriel tenses, half his vision still stuck in the training room that they've set him up in, the other half taking in a small grass arena with an endless drop on all sides.

Disorienting is an understatement and it seems that his opponent is already here to greet him. Vanya spits poison at him and it's as confusing as the first time he met her at the 88th afterparty a week back. Avriel hadn't killed Love, hadn't even nicked him, though he'd wanted to for what he'd done to Ariel.

His body's still forming when the axe comes flying at his head. A surge of fear runs through him, though he knows this is all just virtual they'd promised him that the pain would be real, "for authenticity." He throws himself to the side but he's not fast enough and the blade of the axe cuts through his neck. Avriel lets a cry out as pain flicks through him. Vanya's voice becomes muted and for a moment it distorts, cuts a little bit lower.

It's been two weeks since that day at the canoe shed with Reece and his axe but it still feels too close.

Avriel pulls himself back up and despite everything, the exhaustion that holds him still and the lump in the back of his throat, all of this almost feels natural, like home. He's more used to fighting for his life than he is to just living it now.

"Vanya Bellisario," he says, and reaches for his hip, where the programmers promised his knives would be. His hand closes around the familiar cold of the metal and Avriel grins. The stakes don't feel as heavy here.

"Still crying about Love?" he asks, tone sharp. Though he's known for his gentleness in the arena, he has learned how to speak to careers at this point, "You know it wasn't me who killed him right?" The argument means nothing at this point, it's not something she wants to hear but it does serve to distract as he reaches back to throw a knife.

Blood already on it. He blinks and it's clean again.

djk_sdLLL2throwing knife

-9

4.5/25

throwing knife

[Deleted]

"Still crying about Love?"

And like a banshee, she shrieks when the shot lands square in her chest. There may not be blood but the knives bites all the same, her hand's dry as she holds the gash but damn does it hurt. Impressively so close to the real deal, "you're gonna regret!" Vanya yells out, echoing in the chasm that is the meta-dome. 

She didn't show up just to walk away a loser again -- the 88th crown was supposed to be their's. Winning this match won't bring her brother back and she knows that full and well, but bringing that piece of pride back to Bellisario is worth the electro-shock HP draining. Down on the board, she hears the 90 second clock going and all she can think about is a little bit of revenge. 

"The problem is that you made it out alive at all!" Vanya yells as she launches the next hatchet: 

[ e-throws axe at avriel ]
7x3qQsFiG9200+10000
[ 10114 -- Axe in Stomach -- 9 damage ]

And it lands with a sickeningly high quality audio cue; nice. "The fact is you're no better than us, Baptiste, and I'm not letting you forget it!" Vanya strikes a crit hit pose, the camera trailing up the blade of her raised throwing axe.

[ VANYA: 9/25 ]

200+10000

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

a v r i e l .

"you are weak
but not foolish
you have learned
how to die."

His blade flies true and embeds itself in Vanya's shoulder. Avriel stares, impassive as always as the blade flickers and the pixels crumble. That's not how real life works.

This is just a game.

Avriel looks down at his hands, the backs of them carry little silver-white scars across them, but the wounds are closed. When he turns them over, dirt and blood crust his palms, dried out enough that the blood doesn't look quite real. He turns his hands over again and the blood is gone.

Programming failure or is he just going batshit?

Vanya raises another axe, "The problem is that you made it out alive at all!"

Avriel blinks, doesn't move, one of them had to live. "Why not me?" he whispers.

The axe comes flying for him and Avriel has time to move but he doesn't take it. He stands there, watching as the axe buries itself in his stomach. Pain, so intense and sharp that it sends Avriel to his knees runs through him. He drops his next knife and places both hands on the hatchet buried in his stomach even as it crumbles to digital dust.

Maybe Vanya is right.

Vouloir c'est pouvoir.*

"It's not about worth, I don't owe you shit," he mutters. The same words he told Reece, "Vouloir c'est pouvoir."

Avriel staggers to his feet and pulls another knife from his belt.

P8WzcSisdEthrowing knife
[Knife in Stomack -- 6.5]

His knife lands again and Avriel's confidence grows. "Weren't you supposed to be kicking my ass?" he asks.

av: 13.5/25

*to want is to be able

throwing knife

[Deleted]

"Weren't you supposed to be kicking my ass?"

"Keep running that mouth and it'll be your fucking head!"

Vanya's always been a girl committed to a fight, even when it's two knives stuck in her digital body. They fizzle away eventually, fade away without her ever noticing, but the pain still sticks. It's a soreness that runs through your body, bruises pop up like crop circles the next day and she just focuses on staying connected to the game as her stomach is pierced. 

And shit does it hurt. 

But break a bone get a signed cast, she's picks a fight and sees it through. Two feet planted firm as she's up against Avriel Baptiste, anticipating the next throw a bit too heavy. His aim is good- just a fact, not a compliment. Nothing less to be expected from a victor and damn, district 9 does not disappoint in his first two throws. 

She starts grabbing the hilt a little tighter as desperation to win sinks in; aim for the torso. Broad target, center gravity -- "pouvoir? What did you just call me?!" 

Vanya takes a running charge onto floating debris, running to the outer bounds of the Meta-dome map to angle her strike on Baptiste. He says he owes her nothing, but he's wrong. 

He owe's Vanya his blood, bitch. 

[ e-throws axe at avriel ]
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[ 10041 -- Deflected -- 0.0 ]

"Boomerang time, bitch!" She yells out, painfully defiant to the tide being turned against her. The desperation is too real to shake, it's just a game but the pain knotting in her chest doesn't budge.

All she hears is her dad's voice as the axe vanishes out of bounds, deflected by Avriel himself -- don't disappoint me again.

[ VANYA: 15.5/25 ]

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[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

a v r i e l .

"you are weak
but not foolish
you have learned
how to die."

Another axe comes flying for him and Avriel swiftly pulls another knife out of his belt and holds them in an 'x' shape in front of him. The metal clangs as the axe hits, he feels it all the way up through his arms and he grunts from the pain of the block, but the axe is stuck in mid air, disintegrating.

This isn't the same.

"We're just playing pretend, Vanya" he says and flips the spare knife back into his belt. "This isn't real, none of this is."

It almost makes him angry.

There he was, fighting for his life, crawling at the very end to his death and here the careers are, playing games and acting like tough shit. Not for the first time, Avriel is grateful that he grew up far away from this culture. He used to see his non-career status as a disadvantage, not anymore.

Avriel traces Vanya's footsteps but on the opposite side of the map. Large debris float around the edge of the arena but they look sturdy enough. The both of them have throwing weapons, but this feels less like a fight, more like a show. He jumps onto one of the debris and steadies himself as he tips forward over.

What happens if he falls?

"I said, to want is to be able. That's why I'm the one standing here, not Love," he says. The words feel like bullshit coming out of his mouth but they lend him more confidence.

Avriel throws.

"Catch this for me, will ya?" he asks.

61dO75XjGCthrowing knife
[Knife in Forearm -- 5.5 ]

av: 13.5/25

throwing knife

[Deleted]

"I said, to want is to be able. That's why I'm the one standing here,"

"Huh?!"

"Not Love."

"What are you saying to me!"

"Catch this for me, will ya?"

She didn't ask for the emotional breakthrough of her very psyche in a techno-cyber vibrant world; she did, however, ask for the knife in her forearm. Dodge and weave, girl, it's the first thing careers get taught in secondary's. Vanya's pain tolerance has dipped working the night life again, the most she had to do working bouncer gigs was cut up a cat fight. 

Three of 'em, fucking musical kids. 

And so the knife cuts deep, even his catchphrase was better than her's. He was right to say it was all pretend, the pain's real but as her health depletes, she can't help but wonder if it was still worth it. There's a tang of embarrassment in losing to as an official trainer - to a boy from 9 of all. To the boy who outlived her brother, who got to go home to his family at the end of it all. 

Vanya goes home to 2 alone next week; she can't even remember the last time she told her brother she loved him. 

"Ugh, you're screwing with my head, Baptiste, and I'm sick, of it-" she ends her sentence with another thrown axe. 

[ e-throws axe at avriel ]
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[ 10082 - miss - axe lost ]

And this time, it's all on Vanya. Axe #3 goes wide, her trick shot bowing out into the abyss and the blue vixen herself stumbling to keep her balance. She fights to stay upright until she notices the debris crumbling beneath her feet. There's a short reaction time as she attempts to jump to the ledge, barely catching herself on the main land's edge. 

Dangling, above the void - it wasn't worth it. 

[ VANYA: 21/25 ]

200+10000

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

a v r i e l .

"you are weak
but not foolish
you have learned
how to die."

Maybe he should have expected it, that same strange falseness that Love had hid behind drapes over Vanya and for just a flicker, he sees her expression change before it goes hard again.

He pities the Bellisarios before he can help himself and then grits his teeth against that feeling. They don't deserve that from him. No matter what kind of fucked up upbringing they've had, it doesn't excuse shitty behaviour.

He can't forgive Love, even dead, for Ariel and he can't forgive Vanya for blaming him for his survival. He's already going to hate himself for the rest of his life, he doesn't need the condemnation of the career districts.

Don't they know by now that their reign isn't absolute? Time and time again it's been proven that victors come from all over now.

"You're sick of it?" he asks and there's almost a snarl to his voice, "Imagine living through a games and then still having to prove yourself to people like you!"

Avriel uses the platforms to get closer to Vanya. His knives stay in his belt, he can't hit her the way she is right now, dangling off the edge. His breathing is too fast, his ribcage can't hold his lungs still anymore. It's only been a week since he woke up, this is pushing it further than he should be right now.

He arrives to her place on the ledge and looks down at her, anger clouding his judgement even as he realizes that finishing this is the only way to make the higher districts shut up. They saw a weak, scared little boy.

Time to show them the Victor.

He digs his boot into Vanya's hand.

"Don't contact me again."

cASeMbiKrPthrowing knife
[Deep Gash on Chest -- 9.5 ]

av: 13.5/25

throwing knife