Day One: Part 1

[Violet]

Prey. It’s everything anybody was here. You were the meat or you were the butcher, but you could not be in between, and it was a concept she knew all too well. Without numbers, prey is all she would be. She failed to make any alliances during the pre-show, and being freshly spawned into this realm had allotted her no time to make connections with anybody.

It wasn’t until the helicopter lifted off and disappeared into the distance did it hit Violet just how utterly alone she was. Years ago, when she played the game, she at least had her clanmates, her group of ragtag warriors who, despite their wildly extreme differences, joined forces to fight the good fight. Through their actions, they had managed to stave off bad guy after bad guy, until the day came when there were no more bad guys to fight.

Well, no, that wasn’t true. There were always bad guys out there; what changed was them. Time had done what time does and they drifted apart. Some disappeared completely, or faded into that gentle good night that so many had found before. Death was a sweet release for those who either couldn’t fight anymore, or were too weak to fight in the first place. She’d always been a fighter, but even she was taken under the cloak of eternal sleep a few times.

Luckily for her, death wasn’t always a permanent state. With the right connections, one could pay (albeit quite heavily) to be resurrected, although communicating that to those who could request the ritual was either them being willfully aware of your desires, or someone who could talk with the dead. In her case, she had been fortunate enough to have people who had loved her, or at least strongly cared for her.

As she hauled the heavy bag onto her back, her arms looping through the thick, canvas straps, she was taken back twenty years to her last Abyss. She’d never won one of these things, and didn’t imagine her chances would be good this time around either, but she had to try. Being alone crippled her, but who could she trust out here? If there’s one thing she learned from her previous experiences, it’s that trust is a precious commodity, and placing it in the wrong hands could get her injured, or even worse.

Worse was not an option. There were people at this very moment that depended on her, whether they were aware of it or not, she had made a promise and didn’t intend to break it. Notoriety was her ticket to the Elite ranks of Coruscant’s ruling class. It was her only way to achieve what she needed to in order to fulfill her promise to Charles.

As much as she was reluctant to admit, Violet had no desire to let innocent people continue to be persecuted when there was something she could do about it. Others may shrug it off as not their problem, but for her, it was. There were people who could not defend themselves, and it was a theme one could find anywhere, regardless of what reality they lived in, and as long as she was able to, she would use the strength and intelligence she’d honed for decades in order to overcome those who sought to oppress those who could not help themselves.

Violet’s eyes scanned the horizon around her. She was dropped onto a beach, with ocean spreading out in one direction, and in the other, she could see the faint lights of a town in the distance. She realized she was looking down into a valley, and through the trees, she could see the moonlight reflecting off landmarks in the distance as they poked their way from atop the canopy.

Usually, she would have looked out there into all that darkness and knew there were people waiting for her to join them. Now, when she looked out into the distance, all she could feel was the stares of dozens of empty eyes, empty except for the desire of her death shining in their deep recesses.

What choice did she have except to shine it back at them?