The Emperor

12

ADELINE

Kaiser wins.
The three rounds. He wins.

       He absolutely destroyed the Finisher. He stands in a puddle of blood, Archange unconscious on the ground behind him, just a cut on his eyebrow and lip, his believers going completely insane.

       "Lord Kaiser! Lord Kaiser! Lord Kaiser!" They sing in unison, over and over again. Lord Kaiser. Not a single one of them dares to say something other than those two words, except Dawn and I who keep our lips shut. Alexander is talking to the referee and I think someone is calling an ambulance to evacuate Archange. As for Kaiser, well Lord Kaiser, he is staring at me, a smirk pulling his lips as he wipes the blood on them with his thumb. He's devastating. A single lock of hair crosses his forehead, not a crease on his face, a thin layer of sweat covers his flesh, his green eyes darkening by the second the more he looks at me. He throws a white towel on his shoulder, never breaking our contact.

       He won. I lost.

He knows it, we both do. He gives me a wink of his green eyes and then turns to his public, to his fans, to his believers, and raises a simple fist making them go feral. Like screaming at the top of their lungs kind of feral. It's quite humiliating for the Shades. A hundred people praising the opponent they just lost against. They don't take a break to breathe, I'm not even sure they blink. They only stare at Kaiser like they would an altar, no one else, it's scary.

        "What's up with their chants?" I ask Dawn, looking away from the dark man claiming his bloody glory.

       "It's weird, really. Alexander have been trying to talk Kaiser out of this but his pride is too big to make him stop, it's like a fucking cult. They pray to him, they plead to him, they go to him for advice, they confess to him, they think of him as a divinity when truly he's just a pretentious dick. Every time he fights, he wins, they chant his victory no matter how messy and fucked it is." She shakes her head in disapproval, she must have seen things like that going on for a little while now. It is weird. Right at the end of her explanation something else happens. One by one they get on one knee, then the other, kneeling for Kaiser like they would for their Emperor.

Honestly I'm not surprised. He fits in every criteria of the Emperor. I suspected it and the Bauer are so loyal to him they wouldn't do that for anybody else. They would accuse them of betrayal if they did.

       He loves it. I can tell how pleased he is. They're giving him exactly what he wants; Power.

Dawn drops her head on my shoulder, almost falling asleep to the sound of their chants, she wraps her arms around my waist and sighs heavily. "Okay, time to go." She says once they become quieter. She proposed to me to sleep at her house and I can't. I have to sleep in my dorm. They don't even know I've been sleeping somewhere else, and if they do they'll tell Mom and I can't let that happen. She would freak out.

       A restless night hurts less than her.

       I don't mind staying awake from dusk until dawn if it means staying a call away from her.

"I'll sleep in my dorm tonight, darling, it's already been a week and I have exams in a few days." I tell her walking to the exit of L'Arène, apart from the Shades we're only one leaving. My arm sits on her shoulders while she nods. "Your call, Adie."

        We reach the main empty corridor that leads to the door, none of us talks, watching a fight is exhausting. Especially when you're sick in the stomach for worrying about a punch hurting the man who won't leave you alone. I wish I wasn't. I wish I didn't care. But I do. I care a lot. I care about everyone. And it doesn't please me when I see someone getting beaten up in front of an audience.