Not My Pyre (A Pearl-Centric Double Life FanFic)

Chapter Sixteen: Away

Last week I posted a one shot! It's called 'Unwatching Eyes' if you want to read it.

Also, before you read this chapter, I'm going to advise you read or reread the second paragraph of the author's notes. It has been edited since this was first posted, but that was when only the second chapter had been posted so maybe you've seen it already.

The sun rose, bathing everyone who had gathered in an orange light - sort of symbolic, to Pearl, since orange was not one of the life colours in the Game, and those who were gathered were every colour - the Boat and Box Boys on Red, Desert Duo on Green, everyone else Yellow.

And everyone was there. All fourteen of them, and Pearl hadn't even had to spread the word much herself.

A quick steadying breath, and Pearl was ready to begin.

"Alright! Everyone's here, so we can begin. Everyone's got their swords?"

All fourteen people pulled out their iron swords - iron, not diamond or netherite. Those made wounds much more painful.

Pearl had already taken off her hoodie so she just had to roll up her sleeve to get to the tracker chip embedded in her shoulder.

Every contestant had one, and they did many things. They triggered the Red bloodlust, tracked their locations, and allowed them to respawn. But most importantly, they were what caused the shock when they left the border.

Pearl braced herself, but didn't give herself much time to think about what she was about to do. She pressed the sword against her arm, around where the chip was, and flicked her wrist.

Pain jolted through her shoulder and left arm - the chips had been embedded in their non-dominant arms, just in case something went wrong - but the chip came out, and that was what mattered most.

But the blood leaking from her arm mattered quite a bit, so she dropped down and grabbed the wool bandages they had prepared, tying them in place.

The other contestants followed her example.

"Stop. Stop what you are doing or suffer the consequences." The voice of the announcer boomed across the arena.

Pearl grabbed her camera - they were live streamed, but that would be shut off soon - and spoke to it.

"People of Misharin! I don't have long, so listen up, and listen well! Life here is wrong, so wrong that it is better outside of the Border Woods, where - supposedly - the monsters live. We want to do something about it. Whether it's leaving or getting some better leadership, it doesn't matter. We will fix our lives and those of our families or die trying. Will you?"

She barely got her whole speech - which she'd written up the night before - out before the livestream was cut off.

"Look!" Impulse called, pointing at the sky.

There was something flying towards them. Pearl drew out a spyglass to get a closer look.

It was a large carrier ship marked with the insignia of the Lords - a purple rectangle with two of the corners pulled out, outlined in black.

Pearl dropped her camera and shoved the spyglass in her pocket - luckily, losing the tracker chips didn't lose the excessive amounts of space in their pockets. "Time to run!" She called to the other ex-contestants.

And that they did.

~*~

"The world border! I can see the world border!" The shout came from Bdubs, who was close to the front of the pack of revolutionists.

Moments later, the giant blue wall became visible to Scar - and presumably everyone else, since Scar was at the back. Being at the back gave him a lovely view of the man chasing them whenever he glanced over his shoulder.