Mini-Grand 5101 [Round 3: Xilyon Odyssey]

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Bartleby’s arrival was not optimal. He was already disorientated from being grabbed out of his own bedroom and so hurriedly introduced to the other contestants in this fight to the death. This was not improved when he found himself plummeting off the side off a ship into the freezing waters below. He thrashed uselessly, gasping for air. He knew how to swim, in theory, but this body wasn’t the most suited to the water; he could not close his mouth properly and consequently was swallowing a lot of it. His mind struggled to make sense of what was going on, where he was and what he was doing here, but as he was struggling to stay afloat in an unkind sea, it was not the best time for such ruminations. In his struggling his backpack slipped off his shoulder, plummeting into the dark waters below. Rapidly running out of breath he attempted to coordinate his unfamiliar limbs to pull his knife from his belt. He felt his long fingers close around the blade, reached up and stabbed himself in the heart. Bartleby knew from experience that drowning was a lousy way to die, at the very least this would be quick, and relatively speaking painless, which isn’t to say that it didn’t hurt like hell. As he lapsed into the deep blackness of death, Bartleby’s home away from home, he couldn’t help but feel that this was a pretty lousy way to start the day.