@bade-wavewar | we die like men
when sal was sixteen years old, he was thrown into a pit, hellish and dark and full of large skittering beasts, left to die under the cloudless sky, left to claw and bite and scratch his way out, nothing but his rage and the bones of the boys who had come before him, died before him like meat to vicious pets. he was nine the first time his father taught him to use a weapon instead of just his own body, how to stand, how to hold, how to brace his nerves against a coming onslaught like a mountain in a storm, stone and steel and flame-- always flame.
he’s had audiences before, sneering spectators betting on how long he’d last out in the wilds of the fontaine prison planet, the most inescapable rock in the galaxy, or bar patrons who’ve witnessed his temper’s incendiary fuse, but nothing so loud before, nothing so wide before. he glances over at the entrance to the arena and inhales the gathering crowd’s chants and hollers, boisterously preening for a good fight, for a good show. two men, fifty battle droids. they ought to make it a hundred.
“i know you’re used to being competitive, but you do know how to operate as a team, yes?” he tightens the guards on his wrists and shins. “i need you watching my back or we don’t get jack shit.” temporary truces and all that.














