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His world ended on a stage not too long back.
How long has it been? Days, weeks? He doesn’t know. Barely has been coherent enough to keep count.
Now, all he knows is that his world has to — whether he’d like to or not — begin on a stage again.
It starts with a spark — one, two, three. Clad in a fancy suit, decorated with glitter and jewels just like a peacock. All for the dazzling limelight to shine down on him and make that red, red blood stand out from the fabric it seeps through.
The stage is set. White rolling hills trim the edge of the arena, preventing any mode of escape. They already had a breach the previous round. Veritas Ratio had disappeared without a trace. No matter how many guards they set upon him, his trail had all but dissipated like mist on a sunny day’s breeze.
Aventurine’s not naïve enough to hope for any miraculous rescue. He knows his fate: to either ascend as an alien’s new favourite idol or to die in the miserable dredges of all the other losers. He already accepted his fate: to die as a loser. Loser, loser, loser, loser, loser.
But then, Gaiathra Cyclops’ gaze be damned, with all the bearing she has on her sight on the living and dead of Sigonia, the last remnants of the Avgin tribe was now reduced to just him. It was meant to be a tie. It was! That was their master plan, to scheme and deceive, to go out on their own terms.
His sister was always too good to him. She flubbed it on purpose. Kept singing, as was their only joy, with him till the end. Until the final few notes, she halted her melody and just smiled at him. A gentle, loving smile, and that was a blessing as much as it was a curse.
The splattering of blood was hot against Aventurine’s cheek. Scalding, like acid, and it burned with the fury of a thousand suns. He wanted to scrub his cheek until it flushed red with pus, until his own blood mixed with his sister’s and were indistinguishable from one another. He wanted to preserve the last living remnant of his sister forever.
He wanted to tear apart the whole stage strand by strand.
Why do they live to be another being’s plaything? Why live another day when fate had only death left for them?
Ratio had asked him once what exactly it was that he wanted. Aventurine answered, in bleak hope and a prayer for tomorrow, he wanted to die.
Aventurine picks up the microphone. He’s going up against the previous winner of Alien Stage. He knows he holds little chance. Despite it all, he’s trying anyway.
The alien who bought him always preached about chance on the big table, on the power of luck and the spirit of the gamble. They loved tossing around their little dice, the thin line between a bust or taking it all. Aventurine had tried once, when they sent him on a little cabaret dance to entertain all the other aliens. But he’d been rejected, mocked, turned down, because what was a human slave to do among all the greats?
Well, wouldn’t they be laughing now. Aventurine now held a place at the table, he was officially one of the big gamblers. And, for him, it was all or nothing.
This was it. He has nothing left to lose, no one left to lose. Nothing left but to turn his body into a chip and gamble his life away.
The song’s backing track begins chiming in from the speakers that surround the stage. Aventurine closes his eyes. He’s heard, practiced this song enough to know it by heart. He knows his opponent is in the same position.
He pries his eyes open a smidge to peer at the Halovian. The acclaimed previous winner, back for who knows what reason. Sunday’s gaze gleams in the spotlight, his eyes menacing in the way they glint with barely concealed amusement, smugness emanating from his every pore.
Sunday smiles. A shiver runs down Aventurine’s spine. Despite it all, he smiles back.
Aventurine’s done his research about the man. A few years older than him, also from Anakt Garden. The alien who bought him got him as a pair with his beloved sister, a similar enough situation to Aventurine himself. It doesn’t earn him any sympathy points, however. He’s ruthless on the stage; one must be to survive. Robin might have been the best singer of Anakt Garden, but Sunday was their prized student.
Sunday has already crossed their starting perimeters by the edge of the first note, the first word out of their respective mouths. He reaches a hand out, skirting the air around Aventurine’s hips, pulling him in by the waist. Aventurine doesn’t allow himself to falter; the melody comes out clear out of his mouth, steady and resolute against its backing harmony.
He pivots himself around Sunday’s grip, letting the latter’s hands to wander across his body. He hears the crowd roar in the background, sensual appetite bottomless and greedy for a show. Everyone loves seeing the idol play around with the rookie topping the popularity polls, like a child saving their most savoured meal for last.
As Sunday draws near, his solo part giving Aventurine reprieve, he also leans in, his breath ghosting against the Halovian’s ear. He whispers, low enough for the microphone, blocked away by the palms of his hands, to not be able to pick up, “I know your weakness.”
To his credit, Sunday doesn’t waver in the slightest. His singing carries high across the stage. Still, his eye twitches, the only sign that he heard Aventurine at all. Sunday tilts his head upwards, his halo catching the light in a way that shines directly into Aventurine’s eyes.
Aventurine lets his smile morph into a smirk. The ball’s in his court.
Oh, he knows. He knows very well. The reason why Sunday agreed to this twisted game, twice for goodness sake, to begin with.
All for his beloved little sister to never step foot on the stage. All so she can enjoy a blissful life sheltered in the Family’s embrace, their alien owners satisfied with one putting on enough of a performance to keep the other one safe.
Aventurine stifles a laugh. What a sister complex. Not that he could protest any of it; he would do the same if he could, granted a privileged enough chance to do so. His own master could hardly care about any of their individual fates, so long they bring him entertainment and money plenty. Their lives didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
He allows himself a glance at the scoreboards hanging overhead. Halfway into the song, and their scores are evenly matched. Not that Aventurine doesn’t already know what the end result would be. He’s planned the gamble in his mind, his finger curled around the coin.
Sunday’s hand skates down the length of Aventurine’s arm to his wrist, his touch featherlight and smooth in its glide, but Aventurine can sense the hidden tension underneath. The way Sunday’s vein swells, pressed against the skin of his forearm. Sunday’s grip is tight enough to leave a mark against the fragility of epidermis. Aventurine could nearly preen in delight.
Sunday’s glare could speak for itself. “You don’t know anything,” is the message exuded by his piercing eyes.
But Aventurine does. He knows the Family’s plans. He knows that the moment Sunday meets his end, Robin will become the next showpiece to peck at. And if not, if he survives for yet another game, what could be more exciting than the finale of a bout between siblings?
Aventurine knows. Aventurine knows full well.
And Sunday should too, any wise man should. A control freak so desperately pulling at his own strings, entangling himself further in depravity. Everyone can see it’s a scheme expired beyond salvation, too past its due date and now covered in mould and rot. Too stuck in a hole of his own making that the only thing he can continue to do is dig deeper.
Sunday steps away, his body as graceful as a swan, allowing the melody to guide him. His hand extends towards the ceiling, a smile plastered across his face. A modicum of gentleness accompanies his swaying motion, his eyes narrowed in faux pleasure, and for a moment Aventurine is sent back, back to the beautiful fields of the garden, of his sister dancing amongst the flowers.
Ah, life is cruel, isn’t it? It always is.
The final quarter of their song comes. The harmonies swell in intensity and volume.
It’s time.
Aventurine discards his microphone, the forgotten instrument clattering against the floor with a sharp noise. He walks towards Sunday in great strides, plucks Sunday’s own one from the latter’s grasp and does the same. Sunday stares at him, shocked, but he has barely enough time to react before Aventurine closes the distance.
Pulling in Sunday by the hair, fingers tugging at his halo, Aventurine kisses him. The stage pauses around them. The crowd quietens in disbelief. The guards don’t know just how to react.
Good. Let them flail.
Sunday tries to tug away, but Aventurine holds on tight. His lips press into Sunday’s, biting on that soft flesh. He intensifies the kiss, pressing as hard as he can, pushing his tongue into the other’s mouth. Putting on a show, that’s what he’s known for. Sunday gasps and Aventurine takes the chance to deepen it, hard enough to turn that delicate pink tissue a blushed red.
And while the rest of the crowd is distracted, Aventurine takes his chance. A device he had hidden away in the pocket of his costume; he plunges his hand in and presses the button he’s dreamt countless nights of pushing.
The world explodes around them, igniting in a series of flames and sparks. The guards shoot aimlessly, sending bullets scorching through the air. One of them find home in Aventurine’s shoulder and he grunts from the pain. Blood spurts from the wound, staining his clothes a deep scarlet.
Still, he doesn’t relent. He lets go of the kiss but holds on still to Sunday. A second later, the floor caves in beneath them. His grip on Sunday remains iron-tight as they fall, deep under the stage.
When they land, they don’t land lightly. It’s with a heavy thump and the rest of the floor caving in above them.
Energy fuelling him, Aventurine pushes his way from the rubble and drags Sunday along with him. The other, perhaps too dazed or stunned, lets himself be pulled along.
They run, through the network of tunnels that lie under the stage. The map, seared into Aventurine’s mind, lets him guide them to a temporary repreive, a corner hidden from camera’s view and allowing them a safe space to catch their breath.
Sunday heaves, coughing and spluttering. “What was that?” he hisses, suppressing his volume so they won’t be caught. His mind, working a mile a minute with the sudden change in affairs, must understand the crux of Aventurine’s plan, and just what it means that they’ve escaped their arena.
“Explosives,” Aventurine huffs, gathering his breath back. Falling from a considerable height on top of running away does wonders on his battered lungs. “Rigged from components I’ve won from aliens during those special nights. They don’t know how important each individual bit is until they’re all combined.”
“You know very well that’s not what I meant,” Sunday spits. He rubs at his lips, no doubt sore, in all means of the word, from what had just transpired. “Get to your feet, it’s not over yet.”
Aventurine laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs.
Sunday pulls him along, dragging their heavy heels through the tunnels of their tomb. The blood drips, drips, drips from the hole in Aventurine’s shoulder. A steady stream, droplet by droplet, defiles the clean metal flooring.
“You fool,” Sunday grits out. His expression is downright murderous. “What were you thinking? You doomed us both.”
Aventurine can barely stop himself from breaking down in even more peals of laughter. “No,” he says. “My gamble paid off.”
“To get both of us killed, that is,” Sunday retorts. “You undoubtedly have a death wish. You involved me in it.”
Aventurine doesn’t want to live. Really, he doesn’t. Life is nothing but an endless series of suffering.
But what he wants is revenge. To tear down at the system that let his sister be murdered. To desecrate an already broken and corrupted carcass and reveal the fly-ridden decay that lays beneath. To expose it to the cruel skies and pouring rain and revel in the destruction of it all.
Only then can he truly die in peace.
And to do that, he needs Sunday’s help. The only one with the knowledge behind the prestigious alien organisation, The Family, the one hosting Alien Stage to begin with. The only one Aventurine can use to tear it down at the seams.
He knows Sunday wants to. He may be maniacal on the stage but he’s not a psychopath. Sunday just lacks the means to, the very ones Aventurine can grant him.
“It’s not a chance to survive. Not anything as pure as that,” Aventurine admits with a sly grin. He slumps against Sunday, forcing the other to support his weight further. Maybe it’s the adrenaline pulsing through his veins, the ecstasy at a successful gamble, but Aventurine feels as though he has the world thrumming under his very fingertips. “A chance at revenge. You want that, don’t you?”
“You’re insane,” Sunday mutters.
“You are too, otherwise you would have dumped me already. The guards are right around the corner for you to deposit me like a pretty, little gift. But you won't. I know that,” Aventurine hums.
Aventurine takes the lead this time in guiding them. There’s a breach in the wall they haven’t yet repaired from the time the human terrorists blasted their way onto the stage and took Ratio away. They just have to peel away at the shoddily done metalwork and escape is just a step’s away.
“I lost my sister,” Aventurine says.
Sunday gives a minute nod. “I know.”
“If you grant me your help, I can save yours this time.”
Sunday scoffs, his wings twitching in disbelief. “That’s hardly a proposal. You’ve barely given me a choice. We’re both wanted fugitives now.”
Aventurine smiles, insidious yet promising. “That was the plan. Either that or imminent death. What do you say?”
“Anything for Robin,” Sunday mutters.
And Aventurine understands. That’s the part of him he was gambling to capitalise on.
It’s not like he doesn’t get it. Looking at Sunday is akin to staring into a mirror, enough to make Aventurine want to punch it and make all the reflective bits shatter into broken glass.
Knowing your enemy like you know yourself is a gift in its own right, though. It’s what turns an enemy into an ally, no matter how tenuous the link is.
When they finally reach the edge of the stage, Aventurine laughs. And laughs and laughs and laughs.
Who’s the loser now? Forevermore, it will always be all or nothing.
And that’s just the way Aventurine likes it.