A Series of Mistakes and Unfortumate Events

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A/N: I made this while listening to Bill Waterson by Lemon Demon if any of you are curious. Also sorry for the sudden hiatus I know it's been a while, I started school again and honestly forgot this fanfic existed bc object permanence lmao. anyways here, I have returned to feed you few that still wait for updates.

!!!TRIGGER WARNING FOR: gore, violence, and death!!!

the section with such topics will be marked with

---TRIGGERING SECTION---

and

---END OF TRIGGERING SECTION---

Read at your own risk.

They watch the first few rounds play out. Not many differences from what they expected. The arena is sort of like a cage, having bars to prevent competitors from getting into the stands. They were right to assume there would be a lot of bloodshed. It's the colosseum, what else could they expect? Most of it's actually a bit underwhelming.

Most of the time the competitors and the colosseum bugs die from stab or slash wounds. How boring. Although instead of leaving the bodies until the end of the round there are designated bugs which go around collecting the bodies. The bugs assigned to dispose of the  bodies (which Jayus had dubbed the cleanup crew) wear brightly colored armor sort of like safety vests since it makes them stand out from the competitors and tells the competitors to not attack anyone wearing them. 

Although all of the uniforms are stained with hemolymph from the various injuries on the dead and dying bugs.. The most interesting rounds are the ones with the platforms and spikes. Jayus finds they particularly enjoy seeing the bugs fall onto the sharpened spikes that pierce their armor and impale them. One particularly unfortunate bug got impaled in such a way that their organs were rearranged and they stayed alive for 5 minutes before the cleanup crew got them off and put them out of their misery.

They watch the trials to get a grasp of the etiquette and how the trials themselves work. After watching quite a few trials (they lost track at 9) they decide to give it a try. What's the worst that could happen? If all else fails they can just do what they'd done to that infected guard. They leave the seats and go down to the entrance where the new competitors enter, pay the fee, and head down to the area under the arena to wait.

When they get down there they find the hot spring which they do not have to knock down a wall to reach unlike the game. They sit in the spring until they feel they've filled up on soul again. It doesn't take long. They do remember that person who sent them here had mentioned something about larger soul capacity? 

At least they think they did. They sit on a bench and pull out their charm box to rearrange the charms in a way that'd be better suited for combat. A lot less bugs stare at them in here. Maybe because they're used to seeing odd strangers come in. They don't know and frankly, don't care.

Once the last bug before them dies and it's their turn they walk through the gate and into the arena. At first they're a bit nervous. But once the round starts they realize they have a bit of an unfair advantage. Besides being almost double the height of most of the bugs that is. The bugs have a very one dimensional fighting style.