Post by Jade on Feb 25, 2020 17:46:14 GMT -5
Mid-afternoon, somewhere on the seafloor in the Grand Line...
An annual celebration, held far beneath the waves, with food and festivities for three days straight. Its existence was something of an open secret among the children of the sea - and it wasn't as if it was something they necessarily took great effort to hide either, it was more a matter of the locale being all but inaccessible to the races less adapted for the environment.
As the vast majority of those in attendance had no need for air, nearly all of the festival stalls and vendors were simply plunked down in the open water, with various underwater light sources strung up on the broken masts of wrecked ships or placed on top of harpoons that had been jammed into the ground. Here and there, an air-breather walked among the fishmen and merfolk, wearing a resin bubble around their bodies in order to avoid what would otherwise be a crushing pressure... And, of course, the water.
However, on the outskirts of the rest of the festival, was a dome-shaped bubble, encapsulating the entirety of a peculiar structure that had the appearance of massive, open clam shell. There was no fancy sign announcing what the structure was - there was no need. If one made it down here, they either knew what that building was or would quickly hear it from the one who brought them down: the Sea Floor Coliseum, which hosted an ongoing fighting competition for the entire three day period of the festival.
The inside of the coliseum was almost disappointing plain compared to the obviously themed exterior. There were stadium seats, filled with people coming, staying awhile, and leaving, built around a circular arena that was nearly a quarter mile in diameter. The arena floor was an uneven mishmash of stone and sand, with a handful of stone outcroppings jutting up to potentially provide cover; more than one of these had been cut cleanly, leaving piles of rough stones with oddly smooth, flat surfaces strewn across the arena. And in the center of it all was a saltwater lake, featuring the floating wreckage of a vessel bobbing gently in the water - intended, in theory, to allow an air-breather to continue the fight even if their opponent tried to take the fight into the water within the coliseum.
Tally had signed up - not that she necessarily expected to win the whole thing, of course, but it seemed as good an opportunity as any to test herself against other undersea fighters. It had been far too long since she had last been able to do so, and, after six years of being unable to practice her combat skills in a practical manner, she was morbidly curious to see how much she had deteriorated. But that thought wouldn't stop her from putting her best foot forward.
The booming voice of the coliseum's announcer broke her concentration - he announced the name of the previous bout's winner (it wasn't a name familiar to her, though it sounded like Berserker, or perhaps it had been Berk?), and then began hyping up the next set of fighters.
"Our next bout is a special two-on-one one!" The man's cheery voice boomed across the stadium. "First, let me reintroduce you all to a familiar face from a few years back - hailing from the waters around Fishman Island and the Sabaody Archipelago is the six-armed coating mechanic, Tally!"
Tally doubted even a quarter of the people cheering had the slightest idea who she was, even if they had seen her fight down here before. She pushed herself up from the bench she had been sitting on as she waited for her name to be called, rolling her six shoulders as she stepped out into the shockingly bright lights shining down upon the stadium, in sharp contrast to the dark waters held at bay by the resin bubble dome. Two-on-on... She pushed away everything else, every other distraction, focusing simply on the repetition of putting one foot in front of the other and her own thoughts. A bit more than you signed up for here, but I'm sure there's a reason for it.
The octopus fishman took her place at her end of the arena, standing beside a stone outcrop that had somehow managed to avoid the worst types of damage its kin scattered across the rest of the stadium had suffered, and looked out across to the place where the other two fighters would be coming from, interested to see what sort of fighters she'd be up against.