WASP [bnha reader insert] [gender neutral]

Part twenty seven [here the sky is black]

Ever so often though you would get a glimpse of a larger crowd. Twenty or so kids, stuffed close together with four guards walking around them forming a tight square.

Nowadays you only had one guard around you when you left your cell. You didn't know if it was the same one or did they switch them out. Their red uniforms gave nothing away.

You passed that group of kids in a larger hallway while being taken away to a testing room you were in only a couple of times before. They seemed to be just leaving that place.

Their faces were sunken in, pale and bruised over like you were watching a parade of ghosts. Their bodies, thin and mangled to the sides bearly kept up with the ruthless pace the guards were setting. None of them let out even a whisper to each other.

There was a moment that stuck with you when you passed the group. It was as if time slowed down. You made eye contact with one of the kids. A small teenager with sunken eyes and a long scar climbing up his jugular. He was holding the hand of the boy next to him. Their fingers laced together tightly as if they were trying to mangle the limb into one being.

It hit you at that moment, truly and properly, that these children would die.

Both of these boys would not survive, either one of them would have to watch the other one die, or they would be separated and then killed. Not even providing the closure of seeing each other in their final moments.

You didn't know why that startled you so much. You were accustomed to death. Not only that, you yearned for it. For the release of all the pain and anguish. Yet the death of another felt so cruel. Staring at a mangled body, even that of a stranger hurt worse than any injuries your body had to haphazardly heal. Even trying to distance yourself from the sight of dead bodies didn't work for very long.

You understood Henry's words at that moment. Why they were so eager to help you live through the nightmare happening all around you yet held their own survival in such disregard.

Something had to be done.

Though you weren't sure if there was anything you were capable of doing.

[...]

The crowd was rowdy today, like any day. They sat on their assigned seats like vultures perched on top of high branches. Peering down with eyes blackened behind the thick shadows of their porcelain masks. While you stood there, exposed.

You couldn't really tell if they were watching you or something else, despite their enthusiasm the masks stayed distinctly static.

It made you wonder sometimes whether their screams were a product of some elaborate hallucination you developed.

A trick of light would sometimes make the masks smile ever so slightly.

"TODAY IS A SPECIAL DAY! OUR BELOVED SUBJECT 572 WILL BE FIGHTING ANOTHER COLISEUM LEGEND!! BRING IN 098! BRING IN OUR SECOND-PLACE CHAMPION!!" The announcer chanted, his showman voice echoing across the crowded place and making the audience soar.

Pain gripped your heart but you quickly stifled it down. If they were bringing in their second-best it meant the chance of you dying was higher than usual. Maybe you'd even score a multiple.

The doors opposite of you opened, mocking you with their screeching sound that you've heard so many times before.

And out walked out...a smiling prisoner. Grinning ear to ear, with their vest haphazardly put on and a botched buzzcut lining their head. Their red eyes shone with mischief and something completely inhuman, optics immediately snapped to you and didn't leave. They were underweight but noticeably better off than most people you saw in the facility. Though their hands were mangled and had a strange bluish tint to them. 098 was also leaning slightly to their left which indicated that something was off with their right side.