#. with ; samir zidan

[loftylockjaw]

TIMING: Current day, 22:00 LOCATION: The Grit Pit PARTIES: Wyatt (@loftylockjaw), Felix (@recoveringdreamer), & Samir SUMMARY: Tonight's fight is Lockjaw vs. Razor, and Wildcat watches on in fear as their friends tear each other apart. CONTENT WARNINGS: Mentions of drooling

—

It was a rough full moon. It always was a rough full moon these days, but at least these full moons were not spent in the wide forests and luscious fields filled with lovers and hikers. Samir ached but it was a dull, welcomed ache. An ache put there by Felix, though he’d never really managed to hold the balam accountable. (They didn’t hold him accountable either.) 

He’d become a little less evasive since he’d first interacted with him. He’d met a few more people involved in the Pit. He was trying not to let his heart sink down his body and grow roots, because the soil here was as poisonous as his bite presumably was. But he’d met more people and they were gaining a shape in his mind. Wyatt, who cooked better than him (a feat, admittedly — he didn’t take pride in much but he did take pride in his cooking). A zombie called Archie who’d disappeared and got on his nerves like his little brother had. A girl with sharp, human hands who he only knew by her stage name — Hostile Intent. And there was Saf, who smiled as she had in childhood. Wicked’s Rest was a place to settle by all accounts, but he felt undeserving of the concept of settlement itself.

It was the third night. The moon wasn’t in the sky yet – the nights were getting shorter, which was both blessing and curse – and he had some time. He’d been cooking all day, wincing through his injuries and glad that there was just one more fight night left. He’d taken the food with him, down to the boiler room where Felix had been put like a bad dog on time out. It was bigger than the cage he got into before every fight — but at least the cage opened in the morning. 

Guilt pushed him down there, hoping that the balam wasn’t there as he came to drop off tupperwares filled with unspoken words of it’s okay. He was glad Felix had won. Felix deserved to win. The wolf did not.

The boiler room seemed empty. Samir winced at the attempts to make it seem homey, hatred and anger making his neck hair stand up. He exhaled, told himself not to get worked up, that he could not let his rage get the best of him — when he was younger it’d just made him lash out. Now it made him monstrous. He put down the two tupperware containers and was ready to scurry out when he heard not one but two pairs of footsteps. Samir smelled Felix and Wyatt before they arrived and stood there, anticipating an interaction he’d prefer to avoid. Especially between fights. Because where he’d fought Wildcat the night before, he’d fight Lockjaw tonight.

—

It wasn’t so bad. That was what Felix kept telling themself, like a desperate mantra. It wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t so bad. He slept next to the boiler on a mattress on the floor, but it wasn’t so bad. He listened to the rats fighting and screaming and scurrying in the walls, but it wasn’t so bad. Leo walked in and out of the boiler room like he owned the place, picked up the personal items Felix had brought in to try to make it feel less like a prison cell and inspected them with a sneer, but it wasn’t so bad. They fought as something less than human, control a slippery thing that they could no longer hold onto even with both hands clasped tightly around it, but it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t. 

The words hardly felt like words anymore, they’d repeated them so many times. They were little more than a collection of syllables now, something whispered into the darkness so often that it was hard now to differentiate between the darkness and the words, as if night was a thing that lived on Felix’s tongue. 

Last night’s fight had been rough. Rougher because it was Samir, even if he insisted that he and the wolf were separate entities. Leo knew about their friendship with the werewolf, though Felix wasn’t sure how he’d found out. They thought they’d been careful to hide it, but Leo was good at reading them even now. He’d pulled them aside before the match, told them that they’d be fighting nearly entirely shifted, gripped their shoulder so tight they thought there might be bruises in the shape of his fingers now. But Felix wasn’t permitted to argue, and Wildcat had been especially wild the night before, had torn into the wolf so brutally that Felix woke up wondering if Samir was still alive. Only seeing Razor’s name on the schedule again tonight reassured them, and they’d retreated to the boiler room immediately after spotting it.

There was still blood under their fingernails. They’d showered three times since last night’s fight, but it was still there. Flakey and crumbling and Samir’s. Felix wondered how badly they’d hurt him, wondered how it would affect his fight tonight. They’d tried for another shower, stood beneath the flow of water in the locker rooms and hated the way the water ran clear at their feet. It felt disjointed, somehow. Like it should have been different. Like everything should.

Eventually, they turned off the water, or someone else did. They pulled their clothes onto their still-wet body, and the fabric stuck to their skin in a way that was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t so bad. They trudged towards the boiler room, only half aware of the direction they were heading. They hated that their legs knew the way without the input of their mind now, hated that they could navigate there by heart, hated that —

They stopped in the hall just outside the door, swallowing at the sight of Wyatt. They weren’t angry at him. They really weren’t. He’d been trying to help (even though Felix had asked him not to). He couldn’t have known how Leo would retaliate (even though Felix had warned him that retaliation was inevitable). He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen (even if none of it would have happened if he’d only listened). Felix wasn’t angry, but they didn’t really want to talk right now, either. Not to Wyatt, not to anyone. So they opened the door to the boiler room and rushed inside, nearly colliding with Samir in the process. Samir, who looked like hell. Who Felix had made look like hell. Who they also didn’t really want to talk to.

Their head felt heavy.

—

Control was not something that Wyatt had ever struggled with before, but the longer he went sleeping one hour at a time to avoid REM, the more he slipped into what he could only describe as hallucinatory fugue states that would have him coming back to himself only to find that he'd shifted without meaning to. That was a problem in and of itself, of course, but it also meant trouble for his fights. He still had never lost a single one, but he was getting more and more backlash for killing his opponents instead of leaving them well enough to recover. Not by the upper management, of course—they didn’t care about the beasts that were brought in to fight the headliners. No, the aggravation always came from the people contracted to acquire those beasts, and the root of their anger depended on the person: there were a few that cared for the creatures (and those people were stupid), and even more who simply felt overworked because Lockjaw couldn’t stop fucking murdering their captures. 

Exhausted and on the brink of mental and emotional collapse, the lamia found solace in the irreversible destruction of whatever the Pit threw at him. The adrenaline rush would keep him going just a while longer, the high of another victory bolstering his mood and preventing the inevitable spiral from coming to terms with his own mistakes. 

He wasn't sure if this was punishment or not, being scheduled to fight Razor. It felt like a gamble on management’s part, given his recent string of bloody, definitive wins. But maybe they figured he wouldn’t go so far with one of his fellow headliners, or maybe… maybe they really didn’t care. Maybe they had more werewolves on retainer, who knew? But that was why he’d gone looking for Samir, wanting to warn him about the danger, wanting to give him a fighting chance to get himself out of there if it became too much. But how much would a warning help, really? Samir wasn’t himself when he was shifted, would he even remember what Wyatt had said? Probably not. But… he had to try. There wasn’t any getting out of this, either way. 

Saw him headed that way, a janitor had told him. That way being toward the boiler room. Felix’s new... fuck. With a rock in his gut, Wyatt headed there, praying he wouldn’t run into his friend. Ex-friend? He didn’t know anymore, they’d hardly spoken a word to one another since the fight with Leo. But, as it so frequently was these days, luck had no desire to give him a hand. As he rounded the corner, he saw Felix standing in front of the door to the boiler room, staring at him. His chest tightened and he opened his mouth to say something, anything, but there wasn’t time. Felix was looking away, pushing the door open with the anxious energy of someone who didn’t want to be engaged, and nearly running into Samir. Wyatt’s gaze jumped from the balam to the werewolf, his feet frozen to the spot. 

“... Samir,” he finally managed after another second or two of heavy silence. “I… need to talk to you.” He glanced back at Felix, the emotional pain he was feeling showing more in his expression than any physical pain ever had. “I…” I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. “I’m…” His eyelids fluttered and he sucked in a sharp breath, ripping his gaze away from Felix and begging Samir silently to come to him, to spare him this encounter.

—

A wolf, a jaguar and a crocodile walk into a boiler room … It could be the start to a joke with a mean punchline, but it seemed there was no humor in the air. Sometimes Samir could muster it on days like these, offering a grin through the bruises as if to wave away his physical injuries, making some kind of quip about it. But there was no space for laughter in this boiling room where Felix had been relocated, like a bad kid in time out. He couldn’t laugh away the damage done by Wildcat here, with Felix dragging their feet and looking the way they did. 

He didn’t know Leo very well, but he knew enough to despise the man, to know he was lucky that his handler was Mikey and not the glib fae. And most of all, there was and always would be a stark difference between himself and Felix. The balam had been trapped. Samir (and Wyatt, too, he thought) had signed up of their own volition. And sure, he had a cage of his own, but his was a literal and deserved one. Whatever trepidation he had about getting into a cage and being collared like a beast was ignored, as those were safety measures that worked.

Felix, however … Fuck, he didn’t even have a kitchen. Hence the food. 

But he wasn’t really ready for whatever this was turning out to be. His two opponents in a room with him that was rage-inducing. Injuries on display. The next full moon hanging over them all, a promise of another vicious fight ahead of them. Would Felix be watching them? Or would they remain here, in this ugly place, and try to amuse themself with the posters that were placed around? Samir made a mental note to bring a plant, next time. One that didn’t require a lot of light. Something to at least give the illusion of air being filtered.

He blinked at Wyatt, at the way the lamia stumbled over his words in an uncharacteristic manner as he finally broke the silence. Samir didn’t like this request. He didn’t talk about the fights with his opponents as a rule, not prior or after them. He preferred to speak to them as if they were fellow line cooks, sweating through a shift with a fully booked restaurant. There was no need to discuss the details of said shift — just a need to smoke a cigarette after and drink a few beers and laugh about something else before going home and crashing. He missed his old job. He missed — well, everything. 

So he hesitated. “Felix,” he said, “Brought you some food. Should still be warm.” He gestured at the containers, then looked at Wyatt, taking a few steps in his direction.  “What’s the matter?”

—

Wyatt was here to talk to Samir, evidently, and Felix hated the quick flash of hurt that burned through their chest. It wasn’t fair — they had been avoiding Wyatt as much as possible, anyway, so how could they be upset that he was here to see someone else? — but it ached all the same. Felix almost turned, almost ducked by Samir just to walk into the boiler room the way he’d originally planned to and slam the door childishly behind themself, but that just wasn’t something they were capable of. Felix had always clung to manners, even when those manners ended up damning them to a life in the Grit Pit. 

So, they nodded to Wyatt. They said, “Uh, you can come inside, if you want. It might be easier to talk in here. I can — You know,  I can go somewhere to give you guys privacy, I wouldn’t listen in, I…” They trailed off. They had no idea how they wanted the sentence to end, so they just let it hang. 

Samir spoke, and their eyes darted to him with a new kind of guilt. “Thanks, buddy,” they said quietly. “Um, are you okay? I know I…” Hurt you. Messed you up. Went too far. Clawed your chest so bad I thought I might have hit your lungs. There were a lot of terrible ways to end that sentence, too, and Felix shrunk away from all of them. Wasn’t it cowardly to do? Didn’t it make things worse to do terrible things and then shy away from them, to pretend your hands weren’t your hands when they were covered in someone else’s blood? Felix hated themself. It wasn’t a new feeling.

“Sorry,” they said, unsure if they were talking to Wyatt or Samir or both. They’d fight later, the two of them. Felix had seen it on the calendar. And Felix would go, would watch, because he owed it to the both of them. Every blow would hurt them as much as it did their friends, and some sick part of him would still feel relieved that it wasn’t Wildcat in the ring. That was how it always went.

—

Seeing Felix had not been a part of the plan. Seeing Felix had put a very severe wrench in said plan, and Wyatt couldn’t find his voice. Felix was offering a space for them to talk, a space that had become their unfortunate living quarters, and Wyatt couldn’t breathe. Felix was apologizing, and it made Wyatt feel sick. 

I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t mean to fuck up your life, I didn’t mean to make Leo worse, I didn’t mean, I didn’t mean— 

His gaze jumped to Samir, but that offered no reprieve, no peace. 

I need to warn you. I need to tell you that I don’t think this fight is going to end before something bad happens. I need to tell you that I can’t control it, that I keep blacking out. I need you to know that it isn’t my fault. It isn’t my fault. I’m going to kill you, and it isn’t my fault—

He blinked again, paralyzed by his fear. Strangled by it. He never felt fear like this. He never felt regret. He never worried about what was going to happen in the ring because he never cared. But he cared about Samir. He cared, and he knew that his care wouldn’t be enough to stop him. He couldn’t decide for himself anymore, because he was losing his grip on control. He was becoming more animal than man, the smell of blood and the adrenaline of the fight and the fractured state of his sleep-deprived mind sending him over an edge he’d never known existed. 

He was looking at anything that wasn’t the other two people in the hall, his gaze jumping from point to point as he tried to speak, as he tried to tell them both that he was sorry for the things he’d done and things that he would do. But no words came. No apologies, no explanations, not even an acknowledgement of his fragile state. What good would it do, what good would any of it do? There was no stopping this fight. There was no fixing what he’d ruined with Felix. There was nothing for him to do, no reason for him to be here. 

“Nothing,” he lied in response to Samir’s question, abruptly finding his voice again. It sounded foreign, like it wasn’t his own. Like it belonged to someone who had no reason for fear, no reason to dread the battle he was being paid to fight, no reason to ache at the sight of someone he’d considered a friend. “Good luck tonight.” His stomach lurched and he turned on his heel, walking away and getting around the corner as fast as he could without sprinting. Panic swelled in his chest and he let out a soft groan, holding a hand over his heart as he moved through the building and back to the locker room. 

The sun had set. The fight was less than an hour away. Patrons were lining up outside the venue like this was a concert, joking and laughing with their friends, their colleagues… whatever kind of people they had in their life that would want to watch something like this. They either didn’t know or didn’t care that it was forced. They saw two headliners set to fight, and maybe they thought it would be a grand old time. That the headliners would share a drink after, one congratulating the other, and go back to their regularly scheduled lives. But Wyatt knew they wouldn’t. He knew he’d be drinking alone, he could feel it. And god, he wanted to back out. But his handler was there waiting for him, a scowl on her face and no chance of being convinced otherwise. His begging fell on deaf ears, his insistence that Razor wasn’t going to live through this was met with indifference. Razor was not her fighter. Razor could die, and she would prosper. Lockjaw needed to get his act together, a reminder she delivered in the form of a swift kick to the backs of his knees that sent him to the floor. They were in the holding area, the space where he shifted before entering the ring. His handler held a device to his neck, two prongs at the end of a long wand, keeping her at a safe distance. “Shift,” she commanded, and Wyatt squinted his eyes closed. He could hear the audience filing into the room, talking, cheering, and antagonizing the fighters they couldn’t yet see but who they knew could hear. “Shift!” A shock was delivered to his body and he reeled back, snarling at her as his reptilian form ripped through his clothing. She smiled at him, and he seethed. “Good boy.” His gaze jumped to the muzzle of a weapon on her back—a tranquilizer. She knew this fight wasn’t going to end well, but she was letting it happen anyway. The fae stepped out of the holding cage, locking it behind her as she stared at her fighter. 

“Make me proud, Lockjaw.” 

—

Maybe there were no good ways to start these kind of nights, but this was definitely the wrong foot. As Samir let his eyes dance between Felix and Wyatt he had the feeling something was seriously amiss — and it made sense, did it not? How could it not feel all wrong in a place such as this? Anything that would feel right would be a farce. But Felix apologizing and Wyatt turning on his heel were still not things that needed to happen and yet they did. He stood there for a moment, considering his tupperware boxes. “You too,” he said to Wyatt. And then, to Felix: “I’m fine. Don’t apologize.” 

Wyatt left and he remained standing there a moment, looking at Felix and his new place of dwelling, his apology still hanging in the air when he was owed so many. Samir couldn’t take it. He gave a nod, told Felix, “Enjoy it while it’s hot,” and trudged out the door as well to prepare for his oncoming fight.

It didn’t take a lot, of course. He was blessed with a lack of mental presence during the fight. Still, there was the matter of getting undressed and changing into his robe (which he would rip before his transformation — and which did come out of his pay). There was the cage, as there was always the cage. The blessed cage that was able to contain the wolf, or at least for as long as he was allowed to be contained. Some days he dreamed of owning the cage, of being able to place it somewhere where the wolf did not have to fight, where it could live to thrash against the bars. 

But tonight he’d fight, as any other full moon. So he got into the cage, let it be locked by his handler and remained as silent as he tended to be. Mikey threw him a water bottle through the bars, which was quite the feat, and Samir caught it. His handler was a petite woman who liked her star fighter and had not so subtly been suggesting he start working on transforming outside the full moon. The indication that it could be learned through force was also always there, but tonight she was grinning. “Gonna be a good one,” she said, which usually meant a higher pay out for them both. She checked her watch. “See ya on the other side.”

The moon rose, bones cracked and organs shifted. The robe fell into pieces onto the ground and Samir was no more — it was just the wolf now, or Razor as the audience and its owners called him. The creature was collared through snarls and slams, subdued with a jolt between his paw and midriff and shoved into his own holding area. The wolf was enraged, his body marred with recent injuries and knew nothing but the instinct that came from pain — the instinct to defend and attack. 

The doors opened, the pit revealed. The wolf knew this place by now. He hated this place, as far as he was capable to feel such human emotions. And yet he burst forward into the circle, electric currents nipping at his heels as he came to meet his opponent of the night.

—

Some days, Felix felt as if their chest was a canyon full of things they didn’t know how to articulate. There was a river of emotion flowing through the curves and two towering walls of rock and stone holding them in place. He was given a small plastic cup and told to move the water with it, told to carry it up to the top of the canyon, and it was an impossible task. He could only ever transfer the smallest amount at a time, could fill the cup to the brim and still not carry a fraction of the raging river. They climbed the rocks, and most of the tiny amount of water he’d started with spilled before he reached the top. 

The end result was only the smallest fraction of what they wanted to say spilling out onto the sand while the majority of it continued to flow, unseen and unheard in its hidden chasm. 

They wanted to talk to Samir. They wanted to apologize for the way their claws had carved those angry red lines into his chest, wanted to make up for the blood staining the bandages that covered them. They wanted to thank him for the food and tell him it wasn’t necessary, wanted to vent about how much all of this fucking sucked. They wanted to ask him if he was happy. They wanted to admit that they weren’t. 

And they wanted to talk to Wyatt, too. They wanted to tell him that they were angry at him, wanted to ask why he hadn’t just listened when they’d asked him to leave things alone. They wanted to know if he thought less of them now, after speaking to Leo. They wanted to ask if he was okay, because he looked tired. They wanted to say they were sorry, even if they weren’t really sure what they were apologizing for. They wanted to thank him for trying to help, even if they hadn’t wanted it.

There was so much they wanted to say, but their mouth was dry and the river was too far away to reach. So, Felix did what they did far too often and said nothing at all. They nodded to Wyatt and Samir in turn, they went into their prison cell, they waited for time for the fight. And, when their alarm told them the time was now, they dragged themself to the ring to stand on the side and pretend they didn’t feel sick at the sight of two of their friends being forced to fight for the entertainment of cruel, wealthy people. 

It wasn’t exactly a rare thing.

—

Wyatt could hear Razor before he could see him. Furious (rightfully so) and looking for the first thing he could rip apart. That thing happened to be Lockjaw, who was hovering in the open doorway of his holding cage. Hesitating. His yellow eyes blinked against the bright overhead lights, tail swishing as he took a step back. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t. His handler shouted at him to move his ass, jabbing her prodder through the bars of the holding cage and into his back leg. He gave a frustrated bellow, slinking forward and into the ring. The gate slammed shut behind him, cutting off any hope for escape. 

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s a big one, we’ve got for you our resident attack dog, Rrrrrrrrazoooooooor!

He locked eyes with Razor and saw nothing of Samir within them. His chest ached, his body pressed to the fencing that kept them separate from the crowd. 

… and his challenger, our undefeated champion, Lllllllockjaaaaaaw! 

He hardly registered the overhead voice, slinking along the edge of the ring with his gaze focused on the werewolf. He had to win this with a knockout. He had to… he had to stay here. He couldn’t get all fucking stuck in his own head in the middle of the fight again. Stay here. Stay present. This isn’t a dream. Maybe. Probably. Pretend it isn’t, anyway. Don’t freak out.

Razor lunged at him, teeth bared. Lockjaw hissed, narrowly avoiding the bite by ducking to the side and twisting around to face his opponent, quickly reaching for him and trying to latch onto his back where he’d be safer. Maybe if he could get Razor to crack his head on something—

—

The wolf was unfamiliar with this opponent. He had smelled him before, a lingering stench in the pit that he’d never been able to identify, but now they were fully confronted with him. Someone unfamiliar, something unfamiliar — but that was the beauty of Razor. He needed little convincing when it came to the fights. He was shoved in a pit with deafening sounds and had his beasty rage triggered and so it was simple.

Samir didn’t know this level of decisiveness. This clearheaded emotion, the way the wolf’s anger was so very simple and direct. Perhaps if he was conscious to experience it, he’d envy the creature, but he wasn’t — the person inside was repressed and far gone, slumbering until the moon was gone.

So it was Razor who tried to sink his teeth into Lockjaw’s tough hide, who tried to claw at him, but the gator-esque creature evaded him. He roared with frustration, feeling the other on his back and staggering, shaking and turning around. The sharp claws for which he was partly named rushed out, blinking underneath the Grit Pit lights as he aimed for the other’s face.

The crowd was wild, perhaps as wild and inhibited as the wolf itself. He wanted nothing more than to claw at those fences but he’d been conditioned, by now, not to. So in stead he honed in on his fellow predator, the instinct to kill the only one left.

—

There was something jarring about the whole thing, really. Felix knew, of course, that the two beings they were looking at in the ring were the same two they’d been speaking to by the door of the boiler room before, even if there was no real trace of Samir in Razor’s vicious attacks and Wyatt looked so different with scales covering his body. Wasn’t it almost easy, in this position, to understand why the crowd treated the Grit Pit’s fighters like mere animals? None of the people screaming at the ring had seen the bags under Wyatt’s eyes, none of them knew that Samir stacked tupperwares on Felix’s table. And, god, it made Felix want to scream. It made them want to thrash against the bars blocking off the ring, even from the outside, made them want to burn the goddamn place to the ground. 

Please, they wanted to shout, please. They’re people, we’re people. You can’t keep throwing money at this. You can’t keep cheering every time we bleed. It hurts. You have to know it hurts. Razor snapped at Lockjaw, and all Felix could think of was the conversation they’d just had outside the boiler room. I need to talk to you. What’s the matter? 

Their chest ached. Their heart was pounding. In the stands, someone was selling popcorn.

—

The whole thing would have been a pretty good fight for Lockjaw if he wasn’t avoiding hurting Razor like he would happily tear into any other opponent. The werewolf was a pretty even match for him, but  his own hesitation kept costing him. There was a nip here, a slash there—wounds that would take time to heal, wounds that would remind him of this fight for weeks to come. Just knock him out, he kept telling himself as he dodged this way and that, striking out with claws curled safely inward to instead inflict blunt damage. Razor was vicious and pissed, and Lockjaw was doing everything he could to stay out of the way of those teeth. His hide was tough, but he didn’t want to test out its durability on his friend’s chompers. 

Exhaustion was creeping up on him again and he felt his movement growing sluggish. He couldn’t have that—to be slow in the ring with Razor was to surely face death. With a loud bellow, the lamia threw himself at Razor, the claws digging into fur as he pinned the other shifter to the floor. Rearing his head back, Lockjaw thrust it down, knocking it into the werewolf’s own and dazing them both for a moment.

That was when he heard it. 

Wings in the air, flapping furiously to a rapid beat that matched his heart. Lockjaw snapped to attention, his head angled toward the metal rafters over the cage in which he fought. A murder stared back at him. Dozens of beady eyes, clacking beaks, and taunting caws. 

His pupils contracted into thin slits, his jaws agape. Razor howled and thrashed beneath him, but he couldn’t rip his attention away from the birds. Their calls rang in his ears, drowning out the cheering of the crowd. We’re coming for you, they screamed. We’re going to peck out your eyes and your tongue. We’re going to dig down to your heart and pull it from your chest and shred it with our beaks like tasty pulled pork, Wyatt. Your heart, Wyatt. You’re not using it anyway. We’re coming for you! The crows swarmed around the rafters and then dove at the cage, and Lockjaw seized. 

The lights were blinding as he opened his eyes again. Bitterness burned his tongue and his body ached, and he could hear shouting. Something struck him on his belly and he roared, convulsing with the electric current that coursed through him. Angrily, the lamia swung his head around in a blind grab for whatever was causing that pain, and his teeth found flesh. He bit down, crunching through muscle and bone, and jerked his head around violently as he scrambled away from where he’d been standing. There was more shouting, more screams, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Couldn’t see. The lights were too bright, they were too—

A dull thud hit him in his ribcage. He gasped, releasing the fleshy thing from his mouth and standing up to his full height, clutching at the object now sticking out of his side. “Lockjaw!” he heard someone shriek. “Back the fuck up! You’re done!” He stumbled, vision darkening and swirling as he sank back to the floor.

We’re coming for you.

—

Razor was furious. Back against the floor, the crowd going wild, the reptile on top of him as if he was no more than a bug to be squashed — not that the wolf would ever make such a comparison. Saliva was flung from his teeth as he bit wildly into the air, snarling at his opponent and wanting nothing but to taste the reptilian creature, rip it into piece after piece after piece. But the upper hand was of the other, of the one on top of him — no matter how much the beast trashed against the claws digging into his fur or the weight on his chest.

If anything could be said about the fight occurring, it would be that Razor refused to die easily. When teeth found his neck and sunk down, when the head those teeth belonged to shook like a rabid beast, he did not give in. Though he could no longer use his own teeth as a weapon, he had his claws and so claw he did, scratching ugly marks into the leathery hide of his opponent as his blood spurted down both himself and the lamia. 

As his lifeforce seeped out, so did part of his fight, adrenaline and rage not enough to keep a body that was rapidly losing blood going. Razor’s vision was doubling and even a creature as reduced to instinct as him knew that there were injuries you couldn’t come back from. If he was privileged enough to be in nature, he might drag himself off somewhere, to find a place to lay in his own blood and die in it in private. But he was not so lucky — the only luck he was granted that night was the release of the fight between him and the lamia.

As Lockjaw was pulled from the fight, made unconscious through an instrument Razor would never understand, he slumped down. No one came for him. Mikey, the human whose smell the wolf knew, was stood watching with an expression of loss as the werewolf bled out — but don’t mistake it as a look of grief. The loss his handler suffered was one of the financial and bragging rights kind, a top fighter lost. But she didn’t come, and neither did the medics. A lost cause was a lost cause. Razor was sticky with his own blood.

Samir’s consciousness was slumbering in some deep part of the creature and perhaps that was the only kindness to be found here — that he didn’t know he was dying on this dirty floor, with crowds yelling, a friend watching and another dragged from the fight. And yet it was in death, that Razor and Samir became truly one, united in their ceased heartbeat.

—

There was something almost funny about the way, in the midst of a thing like this, time moved in a way that was both too slow and too fast. Everything happened both in slow motion and all at once. Felix’s friends were killing each other, trading blows back and forth and back and forth, the cheers and screams of the crowd acting like a soundtrack rolling beneath the fight. They kept going back to the boiler room in their mind, to the awkward and stifled conversation that preceded the brutality. 

Hadn’t it been silly of the three of them to pretend? They’d been like kids playing dress-up, standing around the door to Wildcat’s cage and talking like they were allowed to be people between the walls of this terrible place. Maybe outside, they could be Felix and Wyatt and Samir, but here? Here, they were Wildcat and Lockjaw and Razor. Here, they weren’t people. Felix wasn’t even sure they were animals. To the Grit Pit, they were mostly… commodities. Property. Profit margins. 

Something seemed to shift in the ring. Something crossed over Wyatt — over Lockjaw’s face. He wasn’t in control anymore; Felix could tell. They surged forward, they let out a yell. Someone grabbed them by the shoulder, yanked them backwards just as a jaw snapped around a throat. They screamed, they thrashed, and the noises were drowned out by the audience’s cheers. 

Lockjaw was hit with a tranq and went down. Razor stilled, blood pooling around him. Wildcat, never much good at being anything more than a witness, smelled the familiar stench of blood as hands held him in place.

The crowd went wild. Someone came to the ring to drag the two unmoving fighters away. The announcer queued up tomorrow’s fight and encouraged everyone to visit concessions on their way out.

Had it all ended with a whimper or a bang? Felix didn’t even know. All they knew was that something had ended, and the world was different now.

This never seemed to be a good thing.

[samirben86]

It was on a sunny day in May! I came back from school! I took the bananaphone of my father! A black old Nokia phone! The curtains where on fire in the canteen! I was talking to Lisa! I wore a necklace! In the canteen i bought a chicken sandwich! The name of the school was Junior College! I came back to my mother! My father wasn't at home! The television was on! I went back to my room! I had a an old Compaq Presario! With World Online, Football Manager, Autobahn Racer! I had also some VHS cassettes of the movies: Bloodsport, TMNT and Karate Kid! And i was watching Jackie Chan My Stunts! I was on my path and went to buy some Islamic books! My favourite book was Innerlijke Vrede! I went to the park to read that book and came back to my bed to read it again! And played I thought lets play Pro Evolution Soccer! I went to a small mosque in my neighbourhood and was listening to the speeches! I was always busy jogging at night in my neighbourhood and went to swim 3 times a week at a renewed swimming pool! I could stay still i was always busy with what i want to be! So i thought let's play football! I played in front of my door and on a footballfield nearby! While i was playing football i was thinking of the time i was playing football in Orleans with Enzo! I was always a busy person! Football was and is was my main hobby! I always was playing Pro Evolution Soccer in my room! It was my favorite game to play on my PlayStation! Every morning i went to a small mosque to pray! I met a friend in my street who was playing in the Youth of Ajax and became a football player for several clubs! He always took me to his matches! We were close friends and we were always sitting and chatting on the stairs! I knew i had a friend but i knew when i was playing i had a footballfriend. He also took me to the Amsterdam Arena to be a ballboy at to matches of Ajax. One was against Fc Utrecht and the other one was against Celta de Vigo! Ajax had a strong team with players like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Mido, Van der Meyde and Nigel de Jong. After that period i started to study Economics i was good at it! I had good marks! I did 4 Economic studies! But i always had in the back of my mind to be a footballplayer or singer! I also travelled a lot! Maybe that dream will come true! To be continued...

[hassanatforusmk]

Killed by Isreal's bombardment and blocakde: 0 years old

Didn't reach their first birthday

Abd al-Jawad Mizar Jamal Hoso (0 years old)

Abdel Khaleq Fadi Khaled Al Baba (0 years old)

Abdel Rahim Ahmed Abdel Rahim Awad (0 years old)

Abdel Rahman Ahmed Essam Salah (0 years old)

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Celine Abdel Hadi Adel Daher (0 years old)

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Daughter of Zainab Muhammad Al-Abd Nawas (0 years old)

Diaa Ahmed Abdel Ati Saleh Musa (0 years old)

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Elena Momen Riad Al-Rifi (0 years old)

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[razorsharpteeth]

TIMING: A few days after the recent full moon PARTIES: Monty @howdy-cowpoke and Samir @razorsharpteeth LOCATION: Prickly Pears SUMMARY: Samir shows up at the farm for some per diem work. Monty immediately guesses the other is a werewolf and still lets him work. Farmwork is fun, but why is it only the animals that have heartbeats? CONTENT WARNINGS: N/A

If he had a dollar for every man that turned up on his farm looking worse for wear, he'd have two dollars, which wasn't a lot but it was weird that it had happened twice. Three times, technically, if you counted both times Gael had shown up during a full moon. 

At least this one hadn't killed and eaten anything. Nor was he naked or disoriented, actually—he seemed perfectly cognizant and was here about the paying work, he just also looked a bit like he'd been put through the ringer. Which… was far closer to the truth than Monty realized as he gave the man a once-over, not particularly discreet about it though it seemed to come from a place of worry. 

He knew what time of the month it was. He also knew what a magnet he was for werewolves, so—

"Sí, you can have the per diem position," he agreed, hugging one arm to his midsection and letting the other elbow rest atop it, hand pressed gently to his own face. Concern etched lines in his features as he frowned, disliking the sight of some familiar would upon yet another undeserving visage. "But… are you… all right? Have the last two nights been, ah, unkind to you?" There was a beat. "I do not mean to pry, señor Zidan, I just… I am a worrier." He offered a small smile. "Humor me?"

—

Some fights were more lucrative than others. Some fights were easier on the body and soul. But not this full moon, this full moon Samir had woken in his cage aching and more tired than usual. His usual envelope had not held a lot of money. He’d huffed, but said no more, and gone home to seek an odd job. It wasn’t like he’d not done this before: he used to hold down jobs before, albeit never for long, and at those he returned to work after the full moons as well. He did not permit himself a break.

And sure, he looked worse for wear. There was a nasty stitch in his side. A bruise forming on his jaw. But it wasn’t too bad — he could open both his eyes, and there was no taste of iron in his mouth. He was capable enough, and besides, idle hands had to be avoided. He let the other watch, despite the crawling sensation it brought. Samir didn’t like to be witnessed. He hoped Razor didn’t mind as much.

“Great. I’ll be here tomorrow again? Whatever I can help with today …” He trailed off. He would be amused by being called señor Zidan if it wasn’t all so discomforting in the first place. There was an insinuation here, sat right between them. He clicked his tongue, shrugged. “I understand. I have the worrier gene too.” It was more of a learned trait, admittedly, unless it was something he’d gained from his late father. His mother didn’t have it, though, that was for certain. “I’m fine. If … what you are trying to hint at is an issue, I’d understand. I’ll get out of your hair right away.” Workplace discrimination was, perhaps, warranted in the case of shapeshifting monsters, right? “And you can call me Samir, please.”

—

He never knew if someone else knew what they were. He hadn’t, after all, not for a long time… and Gael didn’t, despite the circumstances. So he couldn’t assume much, but to someone who had befriended a number of werewolves, the signs were pretty obvious. 

“Oh!” Monty exclaimed, evidently horrified at the idea of having given the man—Samir—the wrong impression about his concern. “No, no, nothing like that! I—we—” He took a breath (that he didn’t need), stabilizing his thoughts after a beat and then shaking his head. “It’s no issue. I just want to make sure you are okay, that’s all. I have friends who are…” He let the sentence hang in the air before dropping to the dirt beneath their feet, figuring that some things could go unsaid, at least for now. If he was a werewolf, or a were… something else, there was a decent chance he’d realize that everyone on the farm lacked a heartbeat sooner rather than later. That is to say, once they were around other people. “Please. Follow me, we’ll need to speak with Daisy. I am sure she’ll have a list of chores that need doing—I can walk you through them.”

As the pair moved deeper into the property, the animals milling about their paddocks and creating a lovely ambient backdrop of bleats and whinnies, more and more hands seemed to crawl out of the woodwork. Perhaps they’d been there all along, or perhaps they’d simply been waiting for a signal from their boss that it was okay to resume work—he never wanted to compromise their safety, after all. 

—

There was a look of confusion on Samir’s face, as if the simple act of consideration was enough to make him question things. In a sense, it was — it was a strange and unbecoming thing to be faced with. He didn’t talk to many fellow supernaturals, let alone werewolves, and felt like there was something stained about them. He held judgment for his own nature: so why shouldn’t this farmer?

Instead, he questioned if he was okay. “Ah. No, I can assure you I’m fine. It might not … look exactly fine,” he said, gesturing at his face, the discoloration at his jaw in particular, “But I have taken care of it. I can assure you that I’ll still be capable of whatever you throw at me.” Painkillers helped. As did his masochistic tendency to bite through the pain and just do it, but such details were not really job-interview material. Or any kind of conversation, maybe — it wasn’t like Samir was self-aware enough to verbalize them. “The others you know, are they also in town? You don’t have to … tell me who they are, or anything, I’m not asking that. This all takes a certain level of confidentiality. I just don’t meet a lot of people like me.” He smiled, despite himself. He’d met the two other wolves at the Pit, but they hadn’t even exchanged their human names. Part of that was his own design. 

He moved in tandem with Monty, not sure if he liked that the other knew of his predicament. But he needed the cash, he’d made the drive and so he might as well stick it out for today. Besides, the other seemed kind, rather than disgusted. Still confusing, that. “Sounds all good. You’ve got a nice array of animals here.” Their scents mingled into one overwhelming thing and Samir let himself be distracted by it, the noise and smell of farm. That, too, was promising: if it was a lot on the mind as well as the body, he’d be tired enough to sleep at the end of a day.

—

Nodding in understanding as Samir insisted that he was fine, Monty figured he’d let it drop. For now, at least. But if the man came back looking for more work and with an even rougher appearance than he had now, there would be more questions, born purely of concern. “They are,” Monty said gently, offering a small smile of his own. “One of them has had many years to acclimate himself, the other… well. He is new to it. Learning. Accepting. It is a slow process.” 

“Ah, thank you! I am sure you will get to know them quite well, if you decide to come back,” Monty chuckled, leading the man up to the main house where a tall, dark-haired woman was standing on the porch, looking over a clipboard. Monty and Samir approached the steps and she looked up, flashing them both a bright grin. 

And, just like Monty, she distinctly lacked a heartbeat.

“Howdy there, friend!” she greeted Samir in a friendly, thick Southern accent, adjusting the hat on her brow before reaching out a hand to shake. “Name’s Daisy, but you can call me Dais if you’re feelin’ so inclined! Now, I hear you’re here for some work, huh? Just so happens, I got a nice long list of things I need done today while I go see a man about some sheep.” Monty smirked, giving Samir a look that said didn’t I tell you? before accepting the folded up piece of paper that Daisy pulled from her pocket. 

“Now, just get done what you can, and don’t forget to take your breaks! Monty here can show you the ropes, and make sure he doesn’t forget to write down your hours, okay? Gotta make sure ya’ll get paid.” She beamed. “Sound good?”

—

Acclimation, what did that look like? Samir had to wonder. Had he become an acclimated werewolf over the past years? It hardly felt like it — he only managed to cope now through ignorance and violence. Monetizing his monstrosity. It worked, in a sense, but it wasn’t honorable, nor pretty. “It is a slow process,” he said, “One I’m not sure ever ends. I hope he has good people to help him?” He definitely couldn’t offer his services on that front. Half a decade of transformations hadn’t made him any better at it.

He gave a nod and a smile at that statement, letting his heightened senses adjust to the pace of this place. All the animalistic scents, that earthy musk. The heartbeats that differed per animal. The lack of a human pace besides his own — but Samir chalked that up to fatigue, for now.

Lips spread in a polite smile at the sight of Daisy. “Hi Daisy.” There was a gesture to himself. “Samir. Good to hear. Don’t like any empty days, myself. Best to keep busy.” The list was handed from one farmer to another, and he nodded at Monty, wondering about the relative quiet in the air between the three of them. There were people like that at the Pit sometimes, but he never stayed around long enough to really question it. He shook off the thoughts for now. “Sure, all sounds good. Just give a shout if there’s anything I gotta know.” 

He turned to Monty, eyeing the list. “Alright. What’s on our to do list first?” 

—

“He does, I think. I am doing what I can for him, but of course I’m not… like him, so my perspective is not especially helpful. My friends, though, they are trying to help support, yes.” The conversation about the mystery friend died down as they approached Daisy, and once their list of tasks was given, Monty took a moment to read it over before giving Samir a nod. 

“Well, there are the daily things, firstly… the sheep need lunch.” There were other hands tending to the cows and goats and horses, but it was their task to make sure the herd of curly-haired sweethearts had their afternoon meal. “We’ve got roughage and hay for them in storage—come, I’ll show you.” 

The afternoon continued without a hitch, the pair fixing several stretches of fencing together after feeding the sheep. After that, it was bathtime for a few of the horses, and Jicama needed to be re-shod. They were of course surrounded by other farm hands doing other farm hand tasks, and if Samir chose to pay particular attention to any of it, he’d find that not a single one of them carried a heartbeat. The only living things on this farm were the animals. 

“Say, you must be getting hungry,” Monty remarked as he rolled up his farrier’s tools, setting them back on their shelf and unhooking Jicama’s lead to take her back out to pasture. He motioned for Samir to follow, flashing him a small grin as they fell into step beside one another. “If you are, I’m sure we can throw something together, unless you’d rather eat at home. But… I think we have gotten through the better part of Daisy’s list!” Just in time, too, because the sun was starting to sink very close to the horizon. 

—

Those wondering thoughts he’d tried to shake off before – about the silence, the lack of human heartbeats – returned to Samir throughout the day. The sheep’s hearts were busy things, pumping around blood through those fuzzy bodies of theirs, and the horses were steadier, but present all the same. It made sense, maybe. Why else would the farmer have known of his affliction? Perhaps he had something going on himself.

Samir did his work, though, without complaining. When his aching body shot a dagger of pain through him, he winced — but never long enough to draw attention, moving through the pains as if it was his own kind of penance. There was ample distraction. Working with ones hands had always been his preference, anyway.

To ask your newfound employer pressing questions seemed like a bad idea anyway, especially in this town. Samir chose relative ignorance and took what he saw and heard at face value and with that, came to the conclusion that Monty was, if anything, a kind man. He gave a grunt in response, followed it with a, “Yeah,” as he caught up to the farmer and his horse.

“Sure thing. Am not a bad cook myself, but if you want to, you can just keep whatever we use from my pay.” Grit Pit rules. Samir missed the family meals at former workplaces. “And hey, good to know. If there’s more stuff to be done tomorrow, though…” He shrugged, leaving the suggestion hanging in the air. He looked at the horse and her steady heartbeat as she moved back into the pasture. “They’ve got it good here, the animals.” He thought of the creatures in cages at his actual job. How his wolf-side would have devoured all those sheep rather than fed them. He blinked, looked back at Monty, “Can I ask you something?” He’d rather have it out, if he were to return.

—

Monty threw him a confused look, cocking his head to the side. “What? Oh, no... do not worry about that, mi amigo. The food is on us,” the cowboy assured him, waving away the idea of having Samir pay for it. “If you wish to cook, though, by all means! I am certainly not an expert when it comes to food,” Monty laughed. “Daisy will be able to help you more than I can.” The human food was all for guests anyway, it wasn't like anyone on the farm had a need for it. But they still kept it stocked, just in case. And now, judging by the man's offer to come back again the next day, they might finally have someone to regularly enjoy it. “Tomorrow? Well sure! There is always more to be done, and we will always happily accept help.” He smiled brightly at Samir. “You are welcome to come by for work any time!”

Gaze fixed on Jicama as she trotted back into the pasture, hands deftly locking the gate after her, Monty hummed. “Thank you,” he glanced back at Samir, giving a small shrug. “We do all we can to make sure they're well taken care of.” And then, there was a question.

“Of course! What is it?”

—

He was kind, in an effortless way that made Samir feel jealous, which in turn made him dislike himself just a bit more. “Alright, alright, if you’re sure. I’ll lend a hand, then,” he said, conceding. He’d bring something along as a thanks, then, next time. As the other ensured him that he could come back any time for work, he felt himself grow a little more slack with relief. He’d like to come back, he thought. Maybe not forever, but at least for a few days the coming week. It was a good distraction. Even if his body ached from the work and the fights. “Alright. I’ll be here same time tomorrow, then. Thanks.” He frowned, but decided not to linger too long on that slip-up.

The other was thanking him too, after all. If that meant anything. “It shows.” He gave a small smile in return, and then struggled to get to his question. The other had been forward about his own nature, had pointed out his lycanthropy easily and without much hesitation — so wasn’t he in a position to return the favor?

“I’ve noticed …” He swallowed. “Well, that your heart doesn’t beat. I’m — I’ve encountered it before, I know it’s something that exists.” Samir frowned, his shortcomings self-made. He didn’t ask questions at the Grit Pit, but Monty seemed like a better person to ask things of. “The animals, they all have heartbeats, but the people don’t. I guess my question is — how?” Though what the fuck? would also be fitting.

—

The gentle, easy smile that always seemed to be present on Monty’s face turned into something a little more pointed, corners of his eyes crinkling as he let out a breathy laugh. “Ah. I was wondering when you’d bring it up. All my werewolf friends eventually do.” Pleased to have it more out in the open now, the cowboy gave a quick glance around them—not to see if they were alone, but just as a way of generally taking in the space fondly. 

“We’re all dead—the hands and I. All… zombies.” The word still felt silly to say, but he wasn’t aware of a better alternative. Gesturing toward the cattle, goat, and sheep pastures in turn, he gave a nod. “That’s our main food source here. The goal of this place is not really selling dairy, though that is a happy byproduct of the work we do, but… it is more about keeping us fed.” He glanced back at Samir, brows furrowing. “Obviously the media has gotten many things about zombies, ah… what’s the word… miscon… misconstrued? But there is one fact they all seem to agree on, and that’s the brains of it all.” He shrugged. “Human, unfortunately, is the most nutritious we can get our hands on. But I’m doing my best to support these undead so they do not have to rely on that, to help keep them—and the people of this town—a little safer.” He clasped his hands, wringing them together for a moment before continuing. “I understand if this makes you feel wary about returning. No hard feelings. It is a shocking thing to realize.”

—

Zombies. It was almost laughable, but Samir had long ago lost the ability to see the humor in things. Even as his mind flashed to the video games he’d played and movies he’d watched with zombies, he understood Monty’s point not to go off them for reference. Eyebrows furrowed, staring at the dead man walking across from him, wondering what to make of it all. There was some trepidation, a natural response, but he knew above all that there was no space for him to judge. The wolf inside had chewed off limbs and devoured other bits of humans. Who was he to now grow distasteful of people who had to do the same to survive? Besides, Monty said they ate mostly animals. “Alright.” He shook his head at the offer that he’d might not want to return. “No, it’s — I understand, in a sense. Or at least, am not in any position to judge. It’s a good thing, I guess, what you’re doing. Keeping ‘em fed.” He supposed there was something about control in play there, which he related to more than he might like to admit. “We all have to find our ways of dealing with these things, right?” He, with his position at the Grit Pit. Monty, with the thing he had going on here. “But I appreciate you sharing. Best to have it all out in the open, huh?” Samir shrugged, clasped his hands together. “Dinner?”

[wickedsrest-rp]

Name: Samir Zidan Species: Werewolf Occupation: Grit Pit fighter & Volunteer Age: 40 Years Old Played By: Marin Face Claim: Rami Malek

“I’m trying to stay clean, but my hands are monsters.”

TW: Parental death

It was supposed to be an ordinary life, that’s what Samir always told himself. Born as the eldest child of a pair of Egyptian immigrants, he grew up in Orlando, where life was ruled by mundanity. He never much thrived in it, but he managed, while joined at the hip with his sister Safiya.

The event that would mark a turn in his life was the day his father collapsed in a store and never made it out of the hospital. Samir was sixteen, clutching his Saf’s hand in the grocery store. From then on, he decided to put a load on his shoulders and lead a different life then before. He was nearly grown, after all, the eldest of the Zidan kids. He became the one preparing lunches and making sure the cereal was stocked, and when it became time for college, he didn’t go. 

It felt good to be someone that could be depended on. To have purpose, rather than just be a boy who lost his dad as a teenager. And so Samir took on another job and cleaned up his mother’s wine glasses when she’d fallen asleep on the couch. He came home late, smelling of the deep fryer and dishwashing liquid at work. The fridge was lined with food from the restaurant he worked at. He tried to mediate the tensions and never thought of the tensions that lived in his chest. He watched Safiya leave at eighteen, as he remained.

He was too old for college, too broke and too shit at school once his siblings had moved out. South he went, to do the same thing he did at home but somewhere away from the apartment he’d lived in all his life and to a resort. A different scene. Same work. White beaches, shitty tourists, good colleagues.

He was out of it, the night he was bit. But he became fully aware when the attack happened. Saw with clear vision what the creature looked like, how his leg bled and bled and bled and wouldn’t stop. How he called his sister rather than emergency services, and how she told him to not be stupid, screaming at him through the phone. She screamed a lot at him, but always from a place of love, he told himself. 

Thirty five, and he awoke in a hospital bed. A gnarly wound on his leg. Wild animal attacks, they weren’t unheard of. When asked what had happened, he muttered something about a wolf, so large and so strong that he thought he was going to die. 

A month later, he blacked out. Three nights in a row were lost to him. He woke after the third one with blood caked on his chin and stuck under his nails. The news reported a pair of missing tourists. A month later, it happened again and the pattern scared Samir. Tourists, missing. Nights gone from his memory. Blood, sticking to him. Another round, a month later. A whole season had passed by now, the bodies of four tourists found. Ripped apart. Bits of them eaten. There were rumors of a cannibal being active. People joked about a werewolf and Samir felt himself pale at the idea.

Surely it couldn’t be that he was some creature ruled by the moon, but what if? The fourth month, he called in. Propped up his phone and hit record and waited. As an extra security measure, he sat in a dog crate. He woke the next day in the wilderness. Returned home to proof on his phone and a destroyed crate. Hours later, the news reported a pair of honeymooners missing.

Maybe it was suspicious to get up and leave, but he did. Here, he could no longer stay. So Samir went back to his mother and slept a week there, letting her fuss and fret over him as every touch made him want to retract or bark. The years that followed were harrowing, ones of skipping town. There was work to be found in every kitchen, but working past sundown every day was no longer an option. He tried plenty of things, from cages to chains to sedation — but it seemed the wolf inside him was dead set on breaking out and raging. Samir grew solitary and furious, afraid and enraged with himself, ashamed of what he was. He stopped coming home for the holidays. Stopped coming home altogether, in the end.

When he heard of the Grit Pit, he was desperate. There seemed no leashing the beast, and so maybe he had to find a way to let it go without letting to roam completely free. The empath he spoke to convinced him, with ease, to sign the contract and let Corinna make sure that he’d not go out to kill an innocent again. 

The first night he fought for them, he let them cage him up. Razor, he was called, for the sharpness of his claws and teeth. The first morning, he woke in that same cage and was welcomed with a clap on the back and a large coffee. Good show, they told him, payment in two days. So for two more nights, he slipped into a cage and woke in one, with no recollection of what happened. 

For over half a year now, it has been rinse and repeat. Most of the days, Samir volunteers, trying to quell the rage and guilt in his chest with some kind of giving back. Three nights a month, he’s one of Corinna’s top fighters, bringing in money for himself and the Pit. His conscience not quite empty, but ignorant enough. And though it’s not perfect, it’s the longest he’s been able to stay in one place for over five years. 

But fate is funny, isn’t it? There’s a woman in town with his estranged sister’s name, her curls and her face. Whether Samir can face her, he’s not sure yet.

Character Facts:

Personality: Allocentric, well-rounded, hardworking, responsible, restrained, escapist, shameful, neurotic, cowardly, furious

Samir’s stage name is Razor. There are few people who know that the wolf that appears in the Pit every month is him, and he’d prefer to keep it that way. Razor is known for his ruthlessness, sharp teeth and how good he is at using those very teeth. He looks like this.

During most days, Samir can be found at the community center, where does a fair amount of things. Pouring coffee for the elderly, leading an exercise class (also for the elderly) and assisting in a cooking class (probably also for the elderly). It makes him feel a little less guilty about being a murderous werewolf three nights a month.

He is also very fond of doing odd jobs, so if you ever need someone to help you move or drive something around for you, he’s your guy! If it’s not his time of the month, that is.

Samir – or, at least, his werewolf-self – was known as the Florida Ripper for quite some time. Signing up with the Pit has helped him shake off some of the authorities, though the murder cases remain unresolved.

Really enjoys the beach and can be seen catching some waves when the waves allow it. 

He lives above a fish shop on the Harborside, and can sometimes be seen working in the back of the shop to lower his rent for the month a little. Yes, he does smell a little fishy sometimes.

[myplaystationnl]

Fifa 20 speler ratings top 100

FIFA 20 SPELERRATINGS

TOP 100 Raheem Sterling, Kaká en João Félix betreden de FIFA Ratingsbunker als de beste spelers ter wereld strijden om hun FIFA 20-ratings te verbeteren. Laat de discussie beginnen... https://youtu.be/2T3BmvWIHy4 Fifa 20 speler ratings top 100 MAAK KENNIS MET DE FIFA 20 TOP 100 Wie wordt er nummer 1? 9 september bekendmaking FIFA 20 Spelerratings. Fifa 20 Aanvallers

Sergio Agüero Manchester City

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang Arsenal

Karim Benzema Real Madrid

Bernardo Silva Manchester City

Edinson Cavani Paris Saint-Germain

Coutinho Bayern München

Cristiano Ronaldo Piemonte Calcio

Ángel Di María Paris Saint-Germain

Antoine Griezmann FC Barcelona

Eden Hazard Real Madrid

Zlatan Ibrahimović LA Galaxy

Mauro Icardi Paris Saint-Germain

Ciro Immobile Lazio

Lorenzo Insigne Napoli

Harry Kane Tottenham Hotspur

Alexandre Lacazette Arsenal

Robert Lewandowski Bayern München

Romelu Lukaku Inter

Sadio Mané Liverpool

Kylian Mbappé Paris Saint-Germain

Dries Mertens Napoli

Lionel Messi FC Barcelona

Neymar Jr Paris Saint-Germain

Roberto Firmino Liverpool

Mohamed Salah Liverpool

Leroy Sané Manchester City

Heung Min Son Tottenham Hotspur

Raheem Sterling Manchester City

Luis Suárez FC Barcelona Fifa 20 Middenvelders

Allan Napoli

Bruno Fernandes Sporting CP

Casemiro Real Madrid

David Silva Manchester City

Kevin De Bruyne Manchester City

Frenkie de Jong FC Barcelona

Paulo Dybala Piemonte Calcio

Christian Eriksen Tottenham Hotspur

Fabinho Liverpool

Fernandinho Manchester City

Alejandro Gómez Atalanta

Isco Real Madrid

N'Golo Kanté Chelsea

Koke Atlético de Madrid

Toni Kroos Real Madrid

Blaise Matuidi Piemonte Calcio

Sergej Milinković-Savić Lazio

Luka Modrić Real Madrid

Thomas Müller Bayern München

Daniel Parejo Valencia CF

Miralem Pjanić Piemonte Calcio

Paul Pogba Manchester United

Ivan Rakitić FC Barcelona

Marco Reus Borussia Dortmund

Rodri Manchester City

James Rodríguez Real Madrid

Saúl Atlético de Madrid

Sergio Busquets FC Barcelona

Thiago Bayern München

Marco Verratti Paris Saint-Germain

Axel Witsel Borussia Dortmund

Hakim Ziyech Ajax Fifa 20 Verdedigers

David Alaba Bayern München

Toby Alderweireld Tottenham Hotspur

Alex Sandro Piemonte Calcio

Leonardo Bonucci Piemonte Calcio

Dani Carvajal Real Madrid

Giorgio Chiellini Piemonte Calcio

Matthijs de Ligt Piemonte Calcio

José María Giménez Atlético de Madrid

Diego Godín Inter

Mats Hummels Borussia Dortmund

Jordi Alba FC Barcelona

Joshua Kimmich Bayern München

Kalidou Koulibaly Napoli

Aymeric Laporte Manchester City

Kostas Manolas Napoli

Marcelo Real Madrid

Marquinhos Paris Saint-Germain

Gerard Piqué FC Barcelona

Andrew Robertson Liverpool

Sergio Ramos Real Madrid

Milan Škriniar Inter

Niklas Süle Bayern München

Thiago Silva Paris Saint-Germain

Samuel Umtiti FC Barcelona

Virgil van Dijk Liverpool

Raphaël Varane Real Madrid

Jan Vertonghen Tottenham Hotspur Fifa 20 Keepers

Alisson Becker Liverpool

Thibaut Courtois Real Madrid

David De Gea Manchester United

Gianluigi Donnarumma Milan

Ederson Manchester City

Samir Handanovič Inter

Hugo Lloris Tottenham Hotspur

Keylor Navas Paris Saint-Germain

Manuel Neuer Bayern München

Jan Oblak Atlético de Madrid

Wojciech Szczęsny  Piemonte Calcio

Marc-André ter Stegen FC Barcelona FUT 20 ICONS

FUT 20 ICONS

ZINEDINE ZIDANE One of the most talented players of all time, Zinedine Zidane’s world-class skill and technique made football look unnaturally easy. His performances on the biggest stage - two goals in the 1998 FIFA World Cup Final and one of the greatest volleys of all time in the 2002 UEFA Champions League Final - gave “Zizou” legendary status for both France and Real Madrid. Fifa 20 webapp

fifa 20 web app De FIFA 20 Ultimate Team Companion-app is uitermate populaire onder FIFA-spelers die altijd en overal Squad Management-taken en Squad Building-uitdagingen willen voltooien, of om simpelweg spelers willen verhandelen. In FUT 20 Companion-app heeft EA SPORTS nieuwe functies toegevoegd dat voor een betere en snellere ervaring moet zorgen. Zo is het mogelijk om aangepaste tactieken te maken voor je actieve FUT-squad. Net als op de console, kun je je tactische opstelling aanpassen voor 5 verschillende presets voordat je naar je volgende wedstrijd gaat. Naast tactische wijzigingen kun je ook je look veranderen met de volledige Club Customization-opties die je op de console vindt. Controleer je voortgang in seizoendoelstellingen en zie hoe ver je bent verwijderd van je volgende doelstelling. In de Companion-app kun je ‘bescherming’ toevoegen aan spelers in je club, om te zorgen dat je niet per ongeluk een sterspeler naar een SBC stuurt of verkoopt. Er zal ook een zoekfunctionaliteit worden toegevoegd aan de Companion-app om Active Squad-leden uit te sluiten van de zoekresultaten van de Club, waardoor het gemakkelijker wordt om squads te bouwen en SBC’s te doen. De FIFA 20 Companion-app is vanaf 17 september verkrijgbaar voor Android en IOS en wordt gelijktijdig gereleased met de FUT webapp voor pc. Read the full article

[sportsclassic]

Samir Nasri

Samir Nasri (born 26 June 1987) is a French international footballer who plays for English club Manchester City in the Premier League and the France national team. He primarily plays as an attacking midfielder and a winger, although he has also been deployed in central midfield. Nasri is known for his technical ability, creativity, pace, and ability to read the game.[3][4] Of Algerian heritage, he is described as a player whose "vision and imagination make him an unpredictable opponent".[5] His playing style, ability, and cultural background have drawn comparisons to French legend Zinedine Zidane.[6][7]

Nasri began his football career playing for local youth clubs in his hometown of Marseille. At the age of nine, he joined professional club Olympique de Marseille and spent the next seven years developing in the club's youth academy at La Commanderie, the club's training center. In the 2004–05 season, Nasri made his professional debut in September 2004 at the age of 17 against Sochaux. In the following season, he became a regular starter in the team and also participated in European competition for the first time after playing in the 2005–06 edition of the UEFA Cup. In the 2006–07 campaign, Nasri won the National Union of Professional Footballers (UNFP) Young Player of the Year award and was also named to the Team of the Year. He finished his career with Marseille amassing over 160 appearances. He played in the teams that reached back-to-back Coupe de France finals in 2006 and 2007.

 In June 2008, Nasri joined Premier League club Arsenal agreeing to a four-year contract. He reached prominence with the team in his third season winning the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) Fans' Player of the Month award on three occasions and being named to the association's Team of the Year. In December 2010, he was named the French Player of the Year for his performances during the calendar year.[8] In August 2011, after three seasons with Arsenal, Nasri joined Manchester City on a four-year contract. In his first season with the club, he won his first major honour as a player as the club won the 2011–12 edition of the Premier League. Nasri is a former French youth international and has represented his nation at every level for which he was eligible. Prior to playing for the senior team, he played on the under-17 team that won the 2004 UEFA European Under-17 Football Championship. Nasri made his senior international debut in March 2007 in a friendly match against Austria. Two months later, he scored his first senior international goal in a 1–0 UEFA Euro 2008 qualifying win over Georgia. Nasri has represented France at two major international tournaments: UEFA Euro 2008 and UEFA Euro 2012.

Personal life

Nasri was born in Septèmes-les-Vallons, a northern suburb of the Marseille, to French nationals of Algerian descent.[9][10] His mother, Ouassila Ben Saïd, and father, Abdelhafid Nasri, were both born in France; his father being born and raised in Marseille, while his mother being from nearby Salon-de-Provence.[10][11] Nasri's grandparents emigrated to France from Algeria.[12] His mother is a housewife and his father previously worked as a bus driver before becoming his son's personal manager. At the start of his football career, Nasri initially played under his mother's surname, Ben Saïd, before switching to Nasri, his father's surname, following his selection to the France under-16 team.[13] He is the eldest of four children and is a non-practising Muslim.[14] Nasri has a younger sister named Sonia and twin brothers named Walid and Malik.[10] All four were raised in La Gavotte Peyret. After joining Arsenal in England, Nasri settled in Hampstead, a district of North London.[15]

Club career

Early career

While growing up in La Gavotte Peyret, Nasri grew an attraction to the sport of football at a young age.[7] He regularly played the sport on the streets where he learned many of his skills. Upon noticing his prodigious talent, his parents signed him up to play with the local club in his hometown. Nasri spent one year playing with the club in La Gavotte Peyret before moving to Pennes Mirabeau in nearby Mirabeau at the age of seven. While playing with Pennes, Nasri was discovered by Marseille scout Freddy Assolen who had been informed of the player's talent through local word of mouth.[10][16] After noticing Nasri's skill in person, Assolen recruited the player to travel with a group of other young players to Italy to participate in a youth tournament where they would play against the youth academies of Milan and Juventus. Nasri impressed at the tournament and Assolen was jokingly told by a Milan scout that "he (Nasri) stays here, you leave him".[10] After returning to France, Marseille officials organized a meeting with the player's father and the group agreed to allow Nasri insertion into the club's academy at the age of nine.

Marseille

 Upon entering the Marseille youth academy, Nasri quickly impressed. Upon moving to Bastide, where the club's youth players reside, his style of play began to take shape. In 2007, Nasri admitted that the move to Bastide really helped his game stating, "That’s where I really started to progress. Training was different and the facilities are beautiful, all of which helps you work well."[16] As a result of his quick progression, Nasri was an integral part of every youth team he was a part of winning several trophies, such as the Championnat de Provence, Coupe de Provence, and the Ligue de la Méditerranée. After spending most of the 2003–04 season playing with the club's under-18 team, for the latter part of the season, the now 16-year old Nasri was promoted to the club's reserve team in the Championnat de France amateur, the fourth division of French football. He appeared primarily as a substitute in a few matches during the campaign as the reserve team failed to rebound from its bad start to the season, which resulted in a 16th place finish and relegation to the Championnat de France amateur 2.[17]

Debut season

Ahead of the 2004–05 season, several clubs were reported to be interested in signing Nasri, most notably English clubs Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Newcastle.[18] In an effort to decrease the speculation, Nasri was offered a three-year professional contract by Marseille officials led by president Pape Diouf and manager José Anigo. On 13 August 2004, Nasri agreed to the contract. Marseille officials had been eager to sign Nasri to a contract in an attempt to not undergo a situation similar to the departure of Mathieu Flamini, in which the player departed the club without Marseille receiving any compensation.[19] As a result of his professsional contract, Nasri was promoted to the senior team by Anigo and assigned the number 22 shirt. He began the season playing on the club's reserve team and appeared in four matches before earning a call up to the senior team in September 2004.[20] Nasri made his professional debut on 12 September in a 2–0 league defeat to Sochaux appearing as a substitute for Bruno Cheyrou.[21] On 17 October, he made his first professional start playing the entire match in a 1–1 draw with Saint-Étienne.[22] Nasri featured heavily within the team under Anigo and later Philippe Troussier. In the team's first match following the winter break, he scored his first professional goal in a 2–1 away victory over Lille.[23] Nasri finished his rookie campaign with 25 total appearances, one goal, and two assists.

[sportsleague365]

Tottenham boss Jose Mourinho rates Maxime Lopez highly and has urged the board to sign the Marseille starlet in the summer. According to Estadio Deportivo, negotiations between Marseille and Lopez’s representatives have unravelled, meaning the club are looking to offload the youngster in the transfer market. Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Olympians are facing growing financial pressures and they are prepared to sell the Frenchman for just €10m (roughly £8.9m) to cover some of the costs. Mourinho is reportedly a huge fan of the 22-year-old and is ‘pushing‘ Daniel Levy to open up discussions with the French club to orchestrate a deal. Lopez’s current contract is set to expire in 2021 and he has dropped down the pecking order under former Spurs boss Andre Villas-Boas. He has previously insisted he will only stay at the Stade Velodrome if Villas-Boas leaves. Indeed, he has made several appearances from the bench and he has played in a variety of different positions in the midfield this season. While he has failed to hit the same heights that saw him earn plenty of high praise from Zinedine Zidane, he has shown flashes of his overall brilliance, creating three assists in Ligue 1 so far this term. Moreover, the former French under-21 international enjoyed a stellar debut campaign not too long ago, which saw him draw comparisons with former Arsenal and Manchester City star Samir Nasri. Mourinho is firmly aware that he will have to cope with a limited budget in the upcoming transfer window and he will no doubt be hoping that Lopez could turn out to be a bargain at just £8.9m. However, it is unclear if Daniel Levy will be willing to take a chance on a prospect who is clearly struggling for form. Tottenham fans, do you think the board should sign Maxime Lopez? Let us know by commenting below! Click here to comment on this articleorGive us feedback on your Football Transfer Tavern experience #VillasBoas #AndreVillasBoas #JoseMourinho

[sportworld665-blog]

Top Players who didn't play for the countries of their origin.

Top Players who didn’t play for the countries of their origin.

I want to take you guyz into the real realms of Football by taking a look at world class players who never play for their fatherland.

Here we go;

FRANCE 🇫🇷

*Antoine Griezmann= Germany *Zinedine Zidane=Algeria *Karim Benzema=Algeria *Kylian Mbappe=Cameroon N’golo Kante=Mali *Paul Pogba=Guinea *Adil Rami=Morocco *Samuel Umtiti=Cameroon *Samir Nasri=Algeria *Hatem Ben Arfa=Algeria *Mousa Sisoko=Mali

[razorsharpteeth]

TIMING: August, after Parker's attempt to steal PARTIES: Felix @recoveringdreamer and Samir @razorsharpteeth LOCATION: Felix' place. SUMMARY: Samir invites Felix to his place after the Parker situation and the two talk about the Grit Pit, how they got there and how stuck they are. CONTENT WARNINGS: Abuse, gaslighting, parental death

There was an instinct to care within Samir Zidan, even if he tried to deny it. Even if part of him had tried to starve it, stave it off — a solitary existence was not one fit for someone who cared for others, and yet he had forced it onto himself. Even as a ghost, flitting from town to town, he cared. Volunteering. Stopping to help someone whose groceries had spilled. Letting someone go before him in a queue. He called it repentance, or at least an attempt at it.

This wasn’t quite that. This was something larger than volunteering for the local elderly or a small act of kindness. Extending his address to Felix Mendoza was something bigger, wasn’t it? It was born from care, sure, a willingness to have the back of his coworkers (in what was, admittedly, the most abhorrent place he’d ever worked — even fast food places weren’t this bad at following labor laws). It was more personal. It was some kind of commitment to wanting to make this place work. 

He hadn’t expected them to take him up on the offer, in all truth, and yet the doorbell rang. Samir moved down the stairs, telling Cleo to stay put and opened the door. Eyes took in Felix, taking him in for hidden and visible injuries. There were scratchmarks. How many fights had he been in? He tried to bite down his anger. “Come in. Shit.” He stepped back in, half-turning around to trudge back up the stairs but his eyes remaining on the other. There was a soft yap from Cleo and he tried not to think about the mess of the place. “Come in.”

—

There wasn’t usually much solidarity between fighters in the Grit Pit. There couldn’t be. The Pit was literally designed to put you up against the people you ‘worked’ with, to make you resent one another. It was intentional, Felix suspected; if you kept the people at the bottom at one another’s throats, they’d never come for the people at the top. Make the fights last even after they left the ring, give them less money when they left each other standing and more when they drew blood. Pull on their chains and blame it on the guy beside them. Felix had never had any friends at work because they weren’t supposed to, because the Pit wasn’t built for that.

But Samir was different.

Maybe it was because it was never really Samir in the Pit, because Samir and Razor were different in a way most fighters weren’t. Even other werewolves didn’t seem quite as separated as Samir was from Razor. Felix thought of their jaguar, the one with thoughts and feelings and a mind of its own. They knew werewolves weren’t really like that, that there was no wolf’s spirit living within Samir, but it felt similar in a way it usually didn’t with werewolves. So Samir invited him over, and Felix said yes. Samir showed sympathy, and Felix accepted it. Samir opened the door, and Felix felt a little safer than he had when it was closed. It was a new feeling. It wasn’t a bad one.

“Hey,” he said hoarsely, drawn in on himself as he ducked inside. There’d been fight after fight since their return from the jaguar’s turn at the steering wheel. No one seemed to believe that their absence had been accidental; Leo had told them as much. You’ve always been a flight risk, Fe. We thought you’d learned your lesson, but I guess you were always slow with that, weren’t you? I thought you were finished being stupid. He’d sounded almost sad as he’d said it, almost sympathetic. But not in the same way Samir was. Samir seemed more genuine. With Leo, it was about control. It always was. 

Felix moved into the apartment, glancing to the kitchen chair in question. He shouldn’t sit. He’d get blood all over everything. His blood, the blood of the last couple people he’d fought, maybe leftover blood from the night before that he’d been too exhausted to shower off, too. But their legs hurt and they were tired, and the chair looked like the most comfortable thing in the fucking world, so Felix looked at it and didn’t ask the question aloud but let it hang between them all the same.

—

When his father had died and his mother had checked out, it had been Samir who had taken the brunt of the load on his shoulders. Safiya had helped, of course, but she had been gone when graduation had rolled around two years later and from then on it had been him. Making school lunches. Paying the bills. Trying to figure out the paperwork. Putting a band-aid on Wael’s knee. There was purpose in taking care of others, and perhaps more selfishly, there was distraction.

This wasn’t what he was supposed to do. He wanted his connection to the Grit Pit to exist three nights and days a week, and nothing more. He wanted the pay and more importantly, the ensurance that he would remain tightly locked in a place when his wolf came out. He wanted the privilege of ignorance — not connection, not ties, not anything. But here Felix was anyway, looking worse for wear and taking him up on his own insistent invitation. Because at the end of the day, Samir needed purpose, needed to feel helpful, like the shiniest tool in someone’s toolbelt. Like something that could do more than harm. 

Like something redeemable.

But this was dangerous, wasn’t it? Letting Felix into his home, offering care — it was like admitting that the Pit wasn’t as good a place as he would like to think it. Workplaces demanded solidarity, but this wasn’t just a place of work for Samir. It was a cage, a deserved one. Corinna knew of his desperation. She did not know how involved he could get with others, though, how he was not just a man running from law and himself — and his heart and spirit he would rather not give up along with his monstrous, murderous intent. She could have that. 

There was no looking away from this, though. “Come on, take a seat,” he said, gesturing to the array of ugly chairs he’d collected. He moved towards his kitchen cabinets, pulling a bottom one open. The pots and pans were of shit quality, but his first aid kit was good. Well-stocked. It had to be, with his nature — usually he healed, but sometimes the worst of it happened on the last night of the full moon and there was no fast-track to take. Giving himself stitches was a skill learned long ago. Samir gave Felix a one over, placing the kit on the kitchen table. “Do you want anything to drink? I can make coffee, tea … I’ve got some beer. Water?” He drummed his fingers against the kit. “If you — well, I’m no nurse. But just shout if you need anything from this, yeah? Fucking Christ. How many fights did they have you do?”

—

Relief clung to him as Samir gave him the permission he needed to take a seat, practically collapsing onto one of those wooden chairs. Felix shifted in an attempt to keep from staining the wood, which wasn’t as hard as it might have been a few hours before. They weren’t in great shape, but they’d stopped by home before coming here and that had at least given things time to stop bleeding, time for their trembling hands to settle at least a little. They still shook, but they could almost hide it now. They could almost pretend it was okay.

“Thanks,” they mumbled, closing their eyes as they leaned back in the chair. Already, they felt safer than they had at their apartment. Maybe it was the presence of another person, or maybe it was the fact that they’d seen Samir fight. Both were silly security blankets to cling to, of course. If that warden chose to attack them, he’d do it whether someone was around or not. He’d proven as much in that alley, when Felix’s screams had seemed to be little more than an irritating inconvenience to him. And Samir was a hell of a fighter when the moon was full, but Felix had no idea if he even knew how to throw a punch in this form. Still, the comfort clung to them like a warm coat, and they let their eyes slip shut for a moment.

But only for a moment.

Samir spoke, and Felix’s eyes opened as they glanced around the apartment. “Uh, no. That’s okay. I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t want to put you out or anything.” They probably couldn’t handle much more than water right now, anyway. They always got anxious after a fight, even a fight they’d won. They’d done well tonight, Leo told them; made the Pit a lot of money, made themself a lot of money, too. They hadn’t even grabbed their pay before ducking out, too disgusted with themself to think about the envelope full of cash and how they’d earned it. It would be waiting for them the next time they came to work — which would be far too soon. They’d still feel sick about it. They thought they probably always would.

“I don’t think anything needs stitches.” They smiled bitterly, adding, “I won.” As if it was victory. It never felt like one. Instead, it tasted far closer to damnation. Felix rubbed at their eyes, shrugging a shoulder. “I lost count. I don’t know. It’s been — It’s just constant, since I got back. Small stuff on the weekdays, then big stuff on the weekends. Which is just — the usual. But more of it.” They shook their head. Embarrassingly, they felt like crying. “It’s fine. Just… a little overwhelming tonight. With everything.” 

—

Guilt was an ugly emotion. It ruined ones state of being, broke down the very pillars on which someone was built — that and shame were the great undoers of a person, Samir thought. It didn’t mean he knew how to deal with it. He just knew it was eating him from the outside, spreading like a rot and making him the way he was now. Solitary, short-tempered, clinging to his volunteer work as if it would be his saving grace. It also meant he was getting better at recognizing it in others.

Felix hadn’t walked around the dressing room like someone who took pride in what he did. They had a certain quietness to them, a quality Samir could appreciate. They had revealed, even, that they didn’t want to be here — but the work still demanded to be done and the work came with blood and hurt and sometimes death. Enter at your own risk, they said before people entered the Pit, but that those risk were of the binding variety was omitted to both customer and fighter. It wasn’t prideful work. It wasn’t even thankful work. It was work worthy of shame and guilt — but that didn’t make it easier.

It would be easier if they were all proud of it, if they were sadistic and masochistic fucks wanting to spread violence around for profit. It would be easier. But here sat Wildcat, with their eyes closed and shame hanging over them at Razor’s dingy kitchen table. What formidable fighters they made. Samir decided to distract himself by still filling two glasses of water, placing them on the table and then grabbing a beer for himself. If he was going to risk getting closer to someone he had to most likely fight next moon, then he’d need a boost. “Water’s pretty much free.” 

He pulled out a chair, settling down himself and taking a long pull from his bottle. There was a frown on his face. “Congrats,” he replied, the bitterness of the comment mingling with the bitterness of the ale. “Shit, man. And tomorrow, you’re back on too I suppose? I — I mean, I don’t fucking get why they’re doing this, but even so there’s gotta be an end to this, right? Let you recover and breathe a little between fights.” Samir wondered what they’d do to him, should the roles were reversed. Make him fight as a human? Try and force the wolf out? They were ugly thoughts, even if realistic. “No, man, it’s not fine. It’s a lot, all at once, and you’re being punished for something a hunter did — a fucked up one, at that. I’m glad you came over. I’m not sure what I can do to help, but … they say talking’s good.”

—

It was strange, Samir’s kindness. Felix had never really interacted with the other fighters outside of the ring before, something that was largely by design. Friendship, in a place like the Grit Pit, was a dangerous thing. Even a moment of hesitation within the Pit could cost a fighter their life, and in spite of the guilt they often felt for what they did and how they did it, Felix didn’t want to die. So, they distanced themself. They saw other fighters around, sometimes, and they ducked their head to avoid eye contact. It wasn’t hard — most of the other fighters weren’t particularly big fans of Wildcat, who fought hard and dirty and with a great brutality. 

But Samir was different. Maybe it was because he didn’t remember the fights he’d been a part of, didn’t know what an animal Wildcat could be when Felix got scared or desperate or both. Or… maybe Samir was just a kind man who’d been backed up against a wall. Maybe every fighter in the Pit was just someone in a shitty situation doing the best they could do. Selfishly, Felix hated the thought. He wanted them to be monsters. It would have been so much easier if they were all monsters.

Offering Samir a small smile, Felix took one of the glasses of water that was placed in front of them and held it in their hands. Not drinking it just yet, but not putting it aside, either. “Thanks,” they said quietly. “I can… do dishes or something.” It seemed only fair. If anything, it wasn’t enough to repay the kindness Samir was offering them, but they doubted the werewolf would accept anything more.

They let out a hollow laugh at the bitter congratulations, wondering if any of the Pit’s fighters were proud of what they did. Maybe some of the newer ones, the ones who hadn’t realized yet just how stuck they were. Or… maybe there were people there who wanted to do what they were doing, people who enjoyed the violence. The thought was a little sickening. “Yeah,” they confirmed, blowing out a huff of air. “And the next night. Schedule’s got me in every night this week, unless I can’t fight.” The only way out of a fight once it had been scheduled was to get injured badly enough in another fight to have your name temporarily pulled from the roster. So far, Felix had yet to experience this. They weren’t sure if that made them lucky or unlucky. It felt like both at the same time, somehow. 

“Maybe it’s not fine,” they allowed, “but it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it, either. It is what it is, right? I signed up for this.” Not knowingly, not on purpose, but no one had forced them to sign that contract. The higher ups at the Pit loved reminding them of that if they were ever caught complaining or fighting against the bind. “Yeah. Yeah, talking’s good. Better when you have someone to listen, so… Thanks for listening, man.”

—

Samir had been a person with friends once. His career stretched over a fair amount of jobs, many of them in hospitality and service, and they had all been marked with camaraderie. Working like hell during lunch and dinner rush, breaking open the skin of your hands on accident with knives or pots or even just cleaning agents, yelling at each other, getting lost in the cacophony of stress, smell, sound and hunger. And then, always, ending up chain-smoking, drinking beers until it was time to crawl home and redo it the next day.

Some of those people had been like siblings. People he’d fight with verbally but would always love — or so it had felt, at the very least. Things had happened, of course, since those years of working in kitchens in Floridean resorts. There had been the attack, the murders, the moving. He’d continued to work similar jobs, where solidarity and camaraderie were required to keep your head on your shoulders, but he’d never stuck around long enough for the bonds to become as strong as they had once been.

Samir had been a person built on connection once, and now he was something solitary. The Grit Pit was a place that on one hand demanded some kind of solidarity among its employees, if only because of the nature of the contracts. On another hand, any chance at it was choked by the nature of the work. There was something so very stupid about trying to get close to a person you were paid to fight. And this wasn’t like the mainstream MMA, where it was performance. Razor’s bloodthirst was real.

Who knew what would happen the next time they stood across each other in the ring.

But still, here they were. Felix offering to do dishes, Samir decisively shaking his head. “Do dishes? You’re dirtying one glass. I got it.” He shrugged. “Unless you wanna stay for dinner. Then we can do dishes together.” Cooking for people was part of his nature by now, an instinct born out of necessity, then turned into a career and now … just something he had almost forgotten about. “Every day? Fuck.” He couldn’t imagine it. Especially not being conscious for it. “What do they have you fighting?” 

His ignorance about the reality of the Pit was fading in front of his eyes with every question he asked, with every expletive he used to express his discontentment. Felix mentioned the contracts without saying the word. Samir took another long pull from his bottle, wondering if they’d become one of the other fighters who’d die while signed up. “I mean, shit. Sure, I guess. It is what it is. And I don’t know what I can do. But at least we can both agree on the fact that there’s something about it that’s wrong, right?” He fiddled with the paper label on the beer bottle. “That why you tried to run?”

—

They used to be better at talking to people. As a kid, before their mom died, Felix was actually pretty damn sociable. They’d had a lot of friends in school, even if they hadn’t necessarily been a part of the ‘in’ crowd. They’d been the quiet, easygoing kind of kid that everyone got along with, able to go with the flow without issue or complaint. They helped their classmates with assignments, they sat next to whoever had an open seat at lunch, and they’d been good.

And then, a pair of terrified humans shot a jaguar in the woods, and just like that, the world turned upside down.

It was tempting, sometimes, to blame everything that happened after on their father. The way he’d handled his grief, the way he’d made his children prisoners to it, it had done a lot of damage. But it wasn’t the sole factor that contributed to Felix’s shift in perspective. It all started with that shot in the woods. It all started with two humans who weren’t built to hunt balam, but had unknowingly killed one anyway. The world became unsafe in that moment, a dangerous place. How could Felix worry about math problems on someone else’s worksheet now? How could they sit just anywhere at lunch? 

The grief festered like a wound, poisoning the world outside of it. The isolation their father forced them into was almost a relief. Even the violence that came with it felt like an easy outlet, even if Felix would have never admitted it aloud. It was so much simpler to be angry, to hurt the world before the world could hurt you. It wasn’t who they wanted to be, but it seemed it was what the world wanted for them. 

The Grit Pit seemed like proof of that. Being that quiet, easygoing kid wasn’t an option here, not anymore. In the Pit, you were ruthless or you were dead. Felix had known that early on, when every attempt they made to buck against their contract or unionize the other fighters ended only in more of that endless grief. The Grit Pit didn’t allow time or space for kindness.

And yet, here was Samir. Getting them a glass of water, offering to make them dinner. Felix stared at their hand, at the bruised knuckles and the dirty fingernails. “I wouldn’t want to put you out,” they said again, even though Samir had made it clear now that his kindness was for free. It was a difficult thing to accept, for Felix. It didn’t sit right in his chest.

They blew a puff of air from between their lips, nodding. “Yeah,” they confirmed, and the word felt heavy. “It’s different things. Nothing… sentient. Most of them are easy to beat. It’s just — I’m tired. You know?” And maybe he did. Maybe Samir was one of very few people who could know.

“There’s something wrong,” they agreed. “It — It’s fucked up. But there’s not anything to do about it.” They picked at their nails, feeling embarrassingly close to tears. “I didn’t really want to sign,” they admitted quietly. “I was — I was in love with someone. And he was a part of it. And I thought — I thought they’d trapped him there, you know? They told me the only way to get out of a contract is to have someone else sign in your place, to… Let someone take the bullet for you. And I thought… That’s what love is, right? Taking the bullet. So I did. But he wasn’t… He didn’t want out. And now I do, and there’s no… getting out. Just, this is me, now. This is my life. And I got myself into it. Nobody else to blame, right?”

—

It was through giving that he survived. Not just that, of course — there were other factors that had ensured his survival thus far in the face of the vicious beast he turned into every month and the hunters that had been on his trail before. Sure, ruthless viciousness had kept Samir alive as well (waking up near the corpse of a hunter, or worse, shooting one when fully conscious), but the spirit had to persist as well.

And that was done through giving. Making food for people – strangers or others – or offering small bits of kindness. Volunteering with elderly people who tended to bore or offend him to death more often than not, scrubbing pots and pans in a soup kitchen, giving back to any community he might inhabit, no matter for how long. 

He wasn’t religious, but he knew somewhere that this was an attempt at repenting. There would be no redemption for him, but he could balance the scales somewhat, could he not? Samir at least figured he had to try, especially now that he was making money through bloodshed. Three nights a month he was contracted to fight and sporadically he was asked to do some social media things but besides that, he had all the time in the world for kinder ventures.

Like this. He needed Felix to accept his small kindnesses, which were nothing at all. The bare minimum of hosting. Something to drink, a seat to sit on and a listening ear. Samir shook his head. “You’re not. You’re my guest.” He swallowed the expletives that instinctually rose to his mouth.

He took a sip from his beer, the bitter and sweet mixing around on his tongue before he swallowed it. He did know, in a way. “Yeah. I know.” Not completely, not fully, but he shared a space with some of the not-sentient species that fought in the pit. Cages filled with supernatural creatures. Sometimes he’d awake when the moon had sunk and some of the cages that had been full would be empty. He’d wonder if he’d done that. “It’s fucking nonsense, that you’re not getting a beat to breathe between nights.”

There wasn’t anything to do about it. Samir knew that and he was fine with it, for the most part. He didn’t want to do anything about it, or see anything done about it. With the Grit Pit, his wolf wasn’t out and about, running where he might maul another set of tourists or other civilians. But he knew it was different for some. And so he felt guilty as Felix lifted the veil on how he’d come in.

He was quiet for a while, not equipped with the right words and ideas to say something fitting to that. What were you supposed to say, anyway? Part of Samir wanted to ask for a name, but that would mean getting more entrenched in this business, in this ugly place where he survived through self-imposed, tightly controlled ignorance. “Fuck. Shit, man, I’m sorry that he did that to you. Tricked you, that’s … shitty. At least I wanted to sign, you know? In a way. I didn’t know about all the shit that came with signing it, of course, but you know.” He’d been sweet talked, sure. Promised things that fell short, but the core of what he wanted from this all had been true. “He’s still there?”

—

Jaguars were solitary creatures. They weren’t like wolves, who formed packs to protect one another. When he was a kid, living in a house with their father and their siblings out in the woods far away from everyone else, part of Felix had felt that jaguar’s solitary nature. The way the spirit within them preferred the distance, the way it might have liked it more if the other balam weren’t there. The jaguar preferred to be alone, but Felix didn’t. 

It was why they’d attached themself to Leo so quickly when he’d shown up. Felix loved their family, but there had been something so exhilarating about being seen by someone outside of it. Leo made them feel as if they were special, as if they mattered even outside of the house where they had no real control over what they did or thought or felt. Leo found those seeds of doubt in Felix’s mind and sowed them so carefully. And it felt like love. Felix wanted to believe it had been, even now. That at some point, somewhere along the way, they’d been loved. 

But it was so hard to think so. 

It might not have even been friendship, what Leo had felt for them. He’d rarely ever treated them with half as much kindness as Samir was showing them now unless there was some ulterior motive behind it, and Samir was only a step up from a stranger. Felix felt an ache in their chest, a quiet pain put there by someone who probably didn’t care enough to acknowledge it at all. 

The Pit was fucked. All of it. Even the parts that gave Samir his outlet for the wolf were built from predatory contracts and the blood of people who might not have wanted to sign them. It was Samir’s teeth that were bloodied with flesh, but it was the people in charge who pocketed the majority of the winnings. It was Felix’s hands that shook, but it was Leo who used the money Felix earned the Pit to his advantage. (He’d always had so much cash on hand to shower Felix with gifts back when they’d been together; it was nauseating to think of now, with retrospect on their side.)

The quiet stretched between them like a tangible thing, and Felix didn’t look at Samir because they were afraid to. Because they didn’t want to see judgment on his face, even if Samir wasn’t the type to judge. Because they were afraid of pity, too, even if Samir wouldn’t mean it as an insult. When he finally spoke, Felix only shrugged. It sucked, it was shitty, but they’d been stupid, too, hadn’t they? Leo had told them as much. I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do. It isn’t my fault you’ve never known what you wanted, is it? You can’t blame me for your mistakes, Fe. It isn’t fair. 

They tapped their finger against the side of their glass, nodding carefully. “He’s still there,” they replied quietly. “He — They have him keep me in line, sometimes. Tell me when I’ve fucked up.” They used to think maybe it was the Pit’s attempt at softening the blow, but now they weren’t so sure. They suspected, with a sick twist in their gut, that Leo probably requested to be the one in charge of Felix’s contract. 

—

There hadn’t been a lot of people in his life he was comfortable being silent around. He used to be talkative, an easy person to befriend and get to know — never particularly intimately, but still. Samir had simply never been very good at being alone, what with him growing up in a small but filled-to-the-brim home, with his teenage and young adult years having been spent taking care of these people. 

But that was before a werewolf had bitten him and made something ugly of him. He had always been an angry person, that wasn’t something just awakened by the werewolf — but it seemed that rage was now even more damaging. That where it had cost walls and doors and the intactness of his knuckles, it had started costing human lives. 

No longer was he a man who yelled and broke things — he was a man who turned into something murderous, that ravaged with a fury that Samir knew, deep down, he recognized. And so he’d become solitary, not just because he tended to move around but because he understood that he was no longer meant for such things. People deserved better than him. He, perhaps, did not deserve such niceties either. He was a man with blood-stained hands, a guilty conscience and with no dedication of really clearing that conscience. 

He was, or at least he thought he was, a man of numbered days. But it had been five years, and he was still alive. Not out of a reluctance to die, but rather an inability to commit to dying. And because somehow, he’d evaded law and hunters alike.

Still. He was more omen than man. Not made to be a friend.

But Felix sat in his kitchen and it felt somewhat right, this extended olive branch of his. Still, he downed his beer in the silence that lingered, as it wasn’t comfortable. It was pressing. It was so very present, that he might as well take out a chair and invite it to sit as well.

Eventually Felix talked, though. Samir was glad, because he wasn’t sure what to say besides get them a beer (and get himself another one, too). He remained quiet, though, at those two sentences he was offered. Uncomfortable again.

But also angry. Not because of his own situation, or the resentment he held for himself, for his sister, his father, his mother, the world and its institutions, the weather — but on behalf of another. It had been quite a while since that had happened. Samir embraced it. This was a kind of anger that was tolerable. 

“Fuck them. For that. Not just roping you in like that, but using it as a – as a tool, a measure of what, fucking discipline?” Of course Felix had tried to run. Of course they sat here now, struggling to accept kindness, a distrust marking plenty of their moves. Samir placed the bottle of beer on the table, trying not to slam it. “He ever hurt you, besides the … obvious, you know?” The manipulation of it all. The lies. He wanted another drink. He wished he didn’t know this, that he could stretch his ignorance a little further, a little more thin. “What do they do to keep you in line?” What did they do to his werewolf? He could forgive that, the measures they took against that mindless monster — but Felix wasn’t that.

—

Since the moment the contract was signed, Felix had been told under no uncertain terms that their situation was their own fault. No one forced them to do anything, no one held a knife to their throat or a gun to their head. They could have simply said no, could have walked away before pen went to paper if only they made the decision to do so. And they hadn’t. Leo had never lied to them directly — no one had. Maybe there had been implications there, but nothing Felix couldn’t have seen through if they’d really tried. It was their fault, and no one else’s. That’s what they’d been told, and that was what they’d believed.

But Samir was looking at them now with anger that wasn’t directed towards them at all. He was calling it fucked up, was righteously furious towards the situation and the manipulative net that had been cast. Maybe he was right — maybe Felix wasn’t entirely at fault here. The instinct to argue, to insist it was their fault was still there, but the words died on their tongue before they spit them out for the first time in a long time, replaced by a strange warmth in their chest at the idea that someone cared enough to be angry for them. 

They looked away with a shrug, wringing their hands together. “I guess it’s supposed to be.” The contract was an easy way to keep fighters in line if they grew tired of their circumstances. Even the ones who’d wanted to fight in the beginning sometimes grew uneasy with the nonstop nature of the Pit — the way the contracts were set up were designed to ensure that no one left until the Pit was finished with them. And Felix wasn’t sure they’d ever be done with them. Too profitable, Leo said once. 

They took the beer, though they didn’t drink it. Mostly, they just rolled the bottle in their hands, shrugging again at Samir’s question. There was an old desire to insist that that was ridiculous, to defend Leo, to say I was so stupid sometimes, or I didn’t understand the simplest things, or it was mostly my fault, anyway, I was always doing something wrong. Even now, with the bitter taste the end of the relationship left in their mouth, Felix wanted to insist that the blame was always theirs to carry. That everything that happened was deserved, that it would have gone differently had they been smarter or less clumsy or better, somehow. 

“He got mad, sometimes,” they replied, both an answer and not one. It was too hard to say the truth point-blank; Felix was so much better at dancing around it and allowing people to come to the conclusions on their own. It was a big thing, for them, the phrasing of it. He got mad instead of I made him mad. One small step for man and all that. Felix lifted the beer to his lips and took a swig, though it was mostly just because they couldn’t be asked to explain further if their mouth was full. 

They swallowed the swig as the next question settled, still looking anywhere but at Samir. “Depends on how, um… difficult I’m being,” they mumbled, mouth dry. “It was worse in the beginning. They used a taser a lot.” They’d seen the same weapon used on Razor, too, but they knew Samir didn’t want to hear about the wolf’s exploits. “A collar, for a while. But they let me out of it. Good behavior.” They smiled humorlessly, rolling the bottle between their hands again. “For the most part, they don’t need anything. The contract is… It hurts when you fight against it. It’s hard to even try, like it feels… unnatural. And when you manage it, it’s like…” They trailed off with a shrug. “It hurts,” they said again, because that was all there really was to it. “Even the jaguar. He felt it, I think, when he took control. It’s why he let me back in.”

—

Anger was a curse, he sometimes thought. An affliction much like his lycanthropy, a kind of sickness he could not be cured from. Samir didn’t tend to understand his rage, most of the time — the way it coiled and slipped out, took ahold of him. But this was different. This wasn’t an anger born from unprocessed grief or untreated trauma or whatever other explanation there might be. This was something righteous.

Because Felix had, in the short time he’d known them, proven that there was something good about them. Morality was a tough thing for the likes of him — he’d thrown his own in the wind, attempting to repent for his wrongdoings in ways that would never and could never mean enough. But Samir still thought that there was good and bad in the world and that, in a sense, some people deserved bad to be brought upon them for the bad they themself brought upon others.

Like him. He had told them, at the Pit, that he didn’t mind what they did to his wolf. He figured that whatever had to be done to restrain that beast, should be done. So sometimes he woke up with a kind of nerve pain that came from electric shock, sometimes the collar they slipped around him – with metal prongs pressed against a throat larger than his own human one – was still dangling around his neck when he woke, sometimes he watched how the other creatures were riled up before it was their turns and knew, deep down, that some of these things happened to Razor too.

But he was deserving. It wasn’t like he was masochistic, or at least he didn’t think so. He just thought of himself as something to be punished. The shame of waking in a cage was swallowed, as was the social media work. He was deserving.

Felix, however? Was not. 

Yet here they sat, laying out what had happened. Some of it explicitly, but plenty of it unsaid — he got mad. Samir felt the implication hanging in the air, but didn’t prod or poke at it. There was enough to go off, wasn’t there? The methods of discipline. The treatment of the person across from him as cattle. At least Razor was a feral beast. (That’s how they liked him. That was, perhaps, how they intended to keep him.)

The beer did little to placate his restless spirit. Samir had tolerated all he saw at the Grit Pit, but now it seemed indigestible. Maybe he’d been wrong, to invite Felix here and lift the veils he refused to look through — but for now he didn’t reflect on that yet. He just sat with his rage.

“They’re better now, then? Less of that bullshit?” Samir caught himself, the meaning of those words. If Felix was more obedient now, they were just a better trained animal in the eyes of the Grit Pit. “Fuck, I mean — I know they do shit to the wolf, they’ve gotta. I signed for that, I don’t – don’t care. But you’re present.” 

He took a swig. “Not trying to justify it, there’s nothing just about it. The contracts, I’ve noticed, whenever I fail to do my promotional work. Fucking hate that shit, and when I postpone it, don’t meet deadlines, I just — it starts with stomach pains, innocuous enough. Rox – she, um, brought me in – she explained it.” He ran a hand over his face. “But it’s, whatever. I’ll do it. But you —” 

It was different. Samir took another sip from his bottle. “You want out. Right? I mean, fuck. You deserve to get out.” But what could he do, to help out Felix? Would he do it? He needed Corinna on his side, all the people at the Pit. Last thing he needed was for them to try and get ideas of provoking the wolf outside of the full moon. “I don’t know shit about this fae magic, though. But I know that. You deserve it. It’s not a place for you.” Unsaid, of course, was the fact that it was a place for him.

—

For most of Felix’s life, they’d been under the control of someone else. For years after their mother died, it was their father pulling the strings. He’d used grief and fear as a justification for all sorts of things, and maybe it was understandable. Felix had lost their mother, but their father had lost the love of his life and wasn’t that harder to swallow? Felix couldn’t imagine what it had felt like to him, couldn’t picture it. They had nothing to compare it to, really, nothing to help them understand. So maybe their father had done what he thought was necessary, but Felix wasn’t sure that made it okay. They weren’t sure any of this was okay.

The control the Pit had on them was a lot more restricting than what their father had exercised, of course, and so much less understandable. Sure, there’d been weeks where Felix wasn’t allowed to leave the house as a kid, but there’d always been a reason for it. Their father had seen someone near the cabin that he hadn’t had a chance to ‘take care of’ yet, or he’d heard a rumor that someone was looking for them, or something. It was never without cause. 

The Pit was different. The Pit punished you sometimes just for being. Felix had seen it. Animals zapped for not being vicious enough, people who were hurt for losing a fight too badly or not badly enough. They’d seen Razor punished, too, for the smallest things. The staff seemed to enjoy riling the wolf up, and Felix hated it. The wolf wasn’t Samir, Samir insisted, but Felix still couldn’t stand to see him hurt. Not now that they knew the man behind the wolf, but really, not even when Samir had been a stranger. Felix wasn’t the type of person who could cope with seeing others in pain.

Hell of a job they’d gotten for themself, then. Wasn’t it?

“Better,” Felix replied, shrugging a shoulder. “When I’m doing what they want me to do.” Which wasn’t as often as it should have been. Felix had a bad habit of kicking against the goads, of fighting back even in small ways. It never amounted to anything, never earned them anything more than trouble, but at least it let them feel something through the shame. Like fighting back in the small ways made up for the people they hurt in the ring, like anything could. 

They sighed at Samir’s anger, shaking their head. “I signed up for it, too,” they pointed out. They didn’t know what they were signing up for, sure — but had Samir? Had any of them? No one who signed those contracts did so with all the facts on their side. Otherwise, most of them wouldn’t have signed at all. “Most of us are present. That’s just how it goes, you know?” Some werewolves, like Samir, didn’t remember what happened in the ring. If Felix shifted fully in a fight, they wouldn’t remember it well, either. But most everyone else? They got a pretty clear picture of what went down, whether they wanted one or not.

Samir was angry, and Felix got that. They were angry sometimes, too. But mostly, they couldn’t do much more than sit in the pointlessness of that anger. What good would rage do? It wouldn’t free anyone from their contracts, wouldn’t stop the Pit from being what it was.

They nodded along as Samir talked about his experience with the contracts. They’d felt it too, of course. “Builds from there,” they said quietly, thinking of all the times they’d tried to leave before they really understood it. “After a while, it — It really hurts. Somebody told me, um, close to the start, that it can — It can kill you.” And that had terrified them. Felix didn’t want to die. Felix wanted anything but.

“I want out,” they confirmed with a small, sad smile. “But it’s not going to happen. The only way out is to drag someone else in. I couldn’t do that, man. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.” And even if they tried, they weren’t sure Leo would let them. He liked the control so much more than their father ever had. “So what’s it matter, right? It is what it is.”

—

When anger left, there was not much left. In the face of anger there was opportunity after all: something about that burning emotion felt useful, like a weapon to be wielded or at least a push in the back. Anger had made Samir into the hard worker he was, after all. It was how he’d been able to juggle multiple jobs, how he’d looked after his siblings and kept himself afloat. It had been the burning force behind every movement, every struggle, the rock he’d clung to as an ocean of grief pooled around him.

Whenever he wasn’t angry, whenever he let go of that raging thing, he ended up hollow and empty. An echoing shell of a person. Whatever he was now, most days — someone who was pointless in his existence, who raged for his survival but saw no point it at the same time. He took good out of the world, spreading violence. He tried to put good back in, but fell short. He had nothing good to give here besides anger.

And so he offered Felix anger, because there was nothing else to give. To simply sit down and accept the reality of it all was the next logical step and eventually he would take it, but it was an ugly thing to offer. To tell the balam that they and he both just had to swallow it, all this bullshit thrown their way — well, it was true, but it wasn’t nice. So Samir was angry, because this was something to be angry about. Because to be angry in a situation like this was to be good, and he wanted to be good, despite all his previous failures to be exactly that. 

There was an implication hiding within Felix words, one Samir hesitated to acknowledge for a moment. “But you don’t always?” He could understand that. He’d fought against former employers too, once he’d grown older and started understanding his rights. But those hadn’t been fae who used violence for profit.

“Sure, but under different circumstances. You didn’t have the full picture.” Had he had the full picture? Not entirely. Samir hadn’t known either, that he’d get trapped in this contract — but he didn’t mind it. He had wanted a solution to his issues and had found one, even if it was twisted and ugly and not honorable, either. “You were manipulated by some asshole. And yeah, shit. I know. I assumed maybe they went less hard on those who had more … awareness, I guess.” 

He was quiet for a moment at that revelation, jaw working against itself as his teeth clenched. Fuck this shit. He bristled, got up, ripped another beer from the fridge and slammed it shut. So that was it, then: you had to stay or die. You had to bring someone else in to get out, condemn them too. No retirement plan, because the chance was big you were going to die in the ring. And maybe he deserved that, but not all of them. Not Felix. 

Samir slammed the bottle open and sat down again, leaving his anger at the kitchen counter as he tried to compose himself across from Felix. “Yeah. Sure, it is what it is. Fucking seems like it. I wish I knew something we could do, something — shit, that would make it so you’ve not signed your life away to … fucking die in there.” Or die trying to get out. “I’ll — whatever, I’ll try and think, right? Of something.” Would he go against Corinna and her employees, the ones that had granted him the cage he had desired so desperately? He wasn’t sure. He wanted to be good, but he also wanted to be restrained. 

—

“I used to do it more. Fight back, I mean.” It felt like the kind of confession that ought to be made in a wooden box, with a priest listening in; like the kind of thing you needed to seek redemption for, to beg forgiveness. They used to fight harder, used to be less complacent. They’d spent the first few days of their contract running, searching for their father or their siblings or anyone who might have been able to help them like a child turning to grown ups when they’d gotten themself in too deep, like something prodigal. 

But it hurt. It always hurt. The contract tightened a noose around their throat, made it hard to breathe, and the punishments that waited for them when they finally returned to the Pit with their tail between their legs were no less painful. We have to set an example, Leo told them once, looking almost apologetic as he administered the retribution Felix had earned with their stubbornness. People can’t think that they can get away with this. You can’t think that you can get away with this. 

So they fought back less, as time went on. In smaller ways. Acts of rebellion became small things. He showed up to work late instead of not at all, delivered less cinematic injuries to the opponents they faced in the ring, made fights a little less exciting in ways that weren’t quite as obviously intentional as they could have been. They thought their handlers in the Pit probably knew about it, and that made them feel like a little more of a coward. Like they were being placated, their ‘rebellion’ so small that it was allowed to continue. They wanted to do more. They wanted to be brave. They’d just… forgotten how, somewhere along the way.

And here was Samir, brave without even knowing it. Because it did take bravery, didn’t it, to rage on someone else’s behalf? It took a boldness, a heroic streak. It was easy to be angry for yourself and your circumstances, but it was harder to be angry for someone else. Felix and Samir didn’t even know one another that well, and still the anger burned. It was worth a lot. It was admirable, even if Felix thought it was also wasted.

“Nobody has the full picture, Samir,” they said softly. “Did you? Did they tell you everything before you signed?” He knew the answer. If the people behind the Pit were honest, no one would ever sign their contracts. Not even Samir, who claimed to need them. “I was… It was my own fault. What happened. I should have known better. Should have seen it.” They were stupid and they were in love and they’d let that turn them into… whatever they were now. Something different. Something worse. Something they didn’t want to be. 

Samir went into the kitchen, and Felix watched him go. They watched him carry an anger that was not for himself, contemplated how it felt to be the reason for it without being the source. Leo’s anger had always been terrifying. Their father’s, too. Samir’s seemed different, somehow. Less suffocating, less of a threat. A dangerous thing, sure, but not to Felix. 

They offered the werewolf a small, helpless shrug. What more could they do? What more could any of them do? “For, um… For what it’s worth? You’ve already helped me a lot just by listening. Nobody’s ever really listened before.” They’d been so isolated for so long, and they were only just now beginning to crawl out of that isolation. It felt better than they’d thought it would. “So, um… Thanks. Really. Thank you for listening.”

—

It was a sad statement. The fact that Felix used to, the past tense of it all. The way that they had found cruel reason to stop and cease their fight. Samir wasn’t good at being sad, though, and never had been. He was a person of action, someone motivated and moved by doing what was needed and could be done. But there was no solution to this problem, no clear way to solve the issue. There was nothing to be done, the pair of them tied down by words and contract, like verbal chains binding them down.

So he just felt anger and emptiness. Rolling over and taking it was easier when it was just he who was in a bad spot because of this. “I guess it is smarter to play by their rules. The fucking rules, though, they’re all fucked.” And they could most likely be changed and messed with, their situations and positions altered to fit their needs and wants. Samir wanted to spit on it all. He wanted to drink himself into oblivion. He wanted what he always wanted, which was a solution to a problem that could not and would not be solved.

Pointless, aimless anger it was. As always. The beer helped, the coolness of the glass against his palms. He started messing with the label, as if destroying that would help him in any kind of way. He shrugged at Felix’ question. “No, of course not. Fucking typical, of course, but it’s … it’s whatever, you know. I don’t —” care. He didn’t. Not about what happened to him there. Not whether he’d die there. It was a fate fitting for the fates he’d given others.

“Don’t say that shit. Neither of us are to blame for those shitty contracts, for whatever way we were pushed into it. I might not care as much about how it — what if means for me, but shit, you didn’t know. Neither did I. Yeah? Give yourself whatever grace you’re willing to give me.” It was wasted on him, anyway. He took a long pull from his beer, whose label was half torn off now. It was an ugly display. He’d light a cigarette, but his tense relation with his downstairs neighbors kept him from doing so.

When Felix told him that he’d somehow helped them, Samir felt strange. It was like coming back into whoever he had been a lifetime ago, that person who acted so dutifully and with the knowledge that he was most tolerable when useful. He was glad for it. “Well, then maybe that’s what we can do, yeah? Listen to each other. In other shit jobs I’ve had, I’ve learned that’s crucial.”

He looked into his living room, then back at Felix. “Maybe we should do something else now, though. You any good at Call of Duty? I’ve got FIFA too.” It’d be nice to just shoot the shit and do something to numb his brain, which was working angry over hours. “Could just hang for a bit?”

—

Play by their rules. Felix wondered how long you could do that before you became exactly what they wanted you to be, before you traded yourself for compliance. There wasn’t much choice in the matter. They knew that. They were angry at their situation, they hated being a part of it, they wanted out, but more than anything else, they didn’t want to die. It made them something of a coward, they thought; a braver person would have fought until their last breath, would have kicked and screamed and sacrificed their own life if it meant they could have their freedom. But Felix didn’t know how to be brave anymore. Felix only knew how to be alive. That was all.

They nodded as Samir confirmed what they already knew. The Grit Pit was a system built to be predatory. It trapped its fighters in unwinnable situations without telling them the rules, gave them just enough rope to hang themselves with. Samir didn’t deserve the bind holding him in place, and maybe Felix didn’t, either. Maybe none of them did. But what did it matter? The world cared so little about what people deserved. People got what they got, in the end. There was no justice but the justice you made for yourself.

“Harder than it sounds,” they admitted with a tight smile. It was easier for them to look at Samir’s situation and see how he’d been fooled. Samir had been desperate, had wanted a way to control the wolf that he shifted into once a month without fail, without say. Felix had been… an idiot in love, really. So desperate for things with Leo to be real that he’d tied a blindfold over his own eyes, tightened the cuffs on their own wrists. It was different, wasn’t it? They were more at fault than Samir was. 

But they still didn’t think that meant they deserved it, sometimes. Not all the time — there were still nights they sat in the locker room with their knuckles aching and their heart pounding and someone else’s blood on their clothes and felt sure that the life they led and hated was one they’d earned through their own mistakes — but sometimes, at least. Maybe that was better than nothing.

“Listen to each other,” Felix agreed with a small smile. “I can do that.” They relaxed a little at the mention of video games, nodding their head. “Yeah,” they agreed. “Yeah, I’m good at Call of Duty. Probably gonna kick your ass, man.” The air was still heavy. Their chest was still tight. But they weren’t alone. Maybe that meant something, too. Maybe it had to.

[wickedsrest-rp]

Name: Safiya Zidan Species: Spellcaster Occupation: Owner of Over the Garden Wall Age: 39 Years Old Played By: Fish Face Claim: May Calamawy

"Listen to the sound of the water, let it take you away. You’re safe here."

TW: Parental death

Sometimes the story of your life isn’t the one you’ve been told. Take Safiya for example. Safiya grew up in Florida with her four siblings. Samir, practically her twin, was her best friend and eternal playmate. Samir was older than her, just by nine months, basically her twin in all ways that mattered. Together they ruled over their three little siblings. Safiya was a prodigy child. She always had her nose in a book, and she was always learning. The only time she wasn’t head first in her pursuit of knowledge was when she was spending time with the family. For Safiya, it was always family first.

That was until she was fifteen. Safiya hadn’t wanted to go to the store, but their father said they had to. Safiya remembers very little about that day. She remembers being angry, Samir’s hand grasping hers tightly. She remembers anger at her dad because of a joke he made at her expense when she was already so angry. The EMTs said it was a heart attack, but something had unlocked in Saf that day. A dam had opened, and Saf was left with knowledge she did not want to admit. Those little accidents that happened around her were not accidents. There was something different about her.

There are times when a death in the family brings the family closer together. They hold each other tighter out of fear of losing another one of their loved ones. That didn’t happen for Safiya. Within the year, her mother had admitted she wasn’t even one of their biological children. The story came out in fits of angry yelling from a woman inconsolable over her husband's death. Safiya, in her thirties, would finally track down the full story. Safiya was born to Ahmed and Aya. Ahmed had been childhood best friends with the man she’d thought was her father, Tarik. Ahmed and Aya had been part of a coven full of powerful elemental witches and wizards in Florida. A few months after her birth, while Safiya had been at a playdate with Samir, the coven had been wiped from existence. All of her biological family going with it. With nowhere else to go, and because Tarik and Ahmed had always been like brothers, the Zidan family took her in. 

Dina, the matriarch of the Zidan family, had decided the admittance of Safiya into their family had been the start of all their problems, and ultimately the death of Tarik. Safiya feared Dina was right because she didn’t even know about the feeling in Safiya’s bones on the day of Tarik’s death. 

At eighteen, Safiya purchased a one-way ticket to Colorado. She’d spent the two years after Tarik’s death looking for other magic users on the internet. She was determined to meet anyone who could help her. That started the road trip of her life. The man she met in Colorado hadn’t known real magic, he was just trying to impress women on the internet. Then there had been the woman suffering from illusions of grandeur in Wyoming, then the couple who wanted to start a cult in Minnesota. Safiya was devastated. She’d left the only family she’d known, she’d taken trip after trip, worked shitty job after shitty job, and she wasn’t getting anywhere. That was until she was twenty-five and she met Maude Meaven. 

Maude was a real witch. Old and tired, she was ready to pass on her life’s work to someone new. It was by coincidence that they found each other, but old Maude would say that was just magic working in its wild ways. Maude was a water elemental witch living and working in Wicked’s Rest. She believed that magic should be used to help everyone, even those that didn’t know it existed. Because of that belief, she ran a healing hot spring. All guests were welcome to come and rest their weary bones in her healing waters. Healing waters being a misnomer, because true healing requires sacrifice, but Safiya can offer pain management, and sometimes that's all people need to give them hope. A secret shop was also set up on the land, where people who found their way there, could purchase potions, tonics, spells, and workings.

Maude was the perfect teacher. Kindness was a wave that swept around her and encompassed Safiya, giving her a safe place to learn and grow. Under Maude’s tutelage, Safiya became a master at water and potions in her own right. When Maude finally passed away, peacefully and in her bed, of old age, everything was left to Safya. Safiya became the owner of Over the Garden Wall, and the woman’s estate that was the garden over the wall.

Some people get older. They decide that family life is for them. They decide to settle down. But Safiya had always forgone her family from the moment she walked out of the Zidan household at the age of eighteen. The idea of making a new one, or reconnecting never crossed her mind. Her life was dedicated to helping people. There could be no greater privilege in life than to dedicate her life to the service of others.

Safiya would have been happy to forget her family and move on from her past. That was until she saw someone in town. Someone she hadn’t seen for nearly twenty-two years. Her brother. An old family wound ripped open in the new life that she loves so much. Times change unexpectedly. 

Character Facts:

Personality: Caring, resourceful, meticulous, nurturing, fussy, nervous, vain, timid

Safiya is the owner of Over the Garden Wall, a healing spring surrounded by a large garden. There is a magic shop hidden away at the back of the grounds, where people who wander in, may be surprised to find potions, talismans, and tonics that may help them. 

Safiya is very interested in keeping the peace. She goes out of her way to not argue, even if she knows someone is wrong. She wouldn’t lift a finger to defend herself, because she wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. 

Safiya is a community pillar in Wicked’s Rest. She is known for her bountiful charity work, always having a kind word for everyone she meets, and most of her profits are moved right back into the community with philanthropy. 

Safiya has a Lullabird familiar that is known to relax clientele of the hot spring and help chase away their fears and anxiety. 

Safiya has a photographic memory and she speaks six languages. It helps her study magic. 

Safiya collects first-edition and rare books. You never know what kind of spells you can find worked into old books. Plus, she does have a love for reading. 

Safiya claims to be a healer, but actually she’s really a magical pain management specialist. True works of major healing are works of major magic that she doesn’t have the ability for, or the want to do. They require great sacrifice at other creature’s cost. Safiya offers pain soothing, to make the natural healing process easier.

[ambasalyowioso]

GENIUS

Banyak orang terpikir nama-nama sohor seperti David Beckham atau Cristiano Ronaldo bila mendengar Manchester United. Orang tak musti bisa melupakan setiap lesatan indah yang masuk ke jaring gawang dari kaki Cristiaono maupun Beckham. Padahal keduanya pernah menciderai hati fans Manchester United dengan hengkang ke klub asal Spanyol Real Madrid. Beda musim, Beckham hengkang pada tahun 2003, Criastiano pindah pada pertengahan 2009.  United telah membesarkan mereka, Keduanya didepak oleh Fergie, banyak fans terciderai akan kepergian mereka.  Namun, si Genius disini bukan untuk Cristiano atu Beckham, bukan pula Fergie. Fergie memang genius, Paul Scholes juga tak kalah jenius. Tak ada yang mencolok darinya selain rambut merahnya. Scholes tak suka gaya selebritis yang telah membuat rekanya David Beckham didepak oleh Fergie. Ia lebih nyaman dibilang sebagai pemain sepak bola daripada selebritis atas raihan trofinya bersama United.

Rambutnya merah, tubuhnya mungil, wajahnya pucat. Scholes dapat menunjukan antara loyalitas dan kualitas secara bersamaan. Fergie dapat tidur nyenyak bila memikirkanya. Wajahnya seolah-olah permainan adalah miliknya, umpanya lebih akurat daripada ramalan cuaca, gol-golnya lebih spektakuler dari penampilan sulap. Dimana penggila bola menyebutkan nama Zinedine Zidane bila ditanya soal playmaker terbaik, lucunya Zidane sendiri menganggap Scholes lah playmaker terbaik. Bila kita tanyakan pada Samir Nasri “seperti apa Scholes?” Ia menjawab the English Zizou. Tak hanya pemain belakang lawan yang kesusahan merebut bola darinya wartawan pun kesusahan mewancarainya. Tak pernah ada yang tahu mengapa, ia tak pernah menjelekkan, mencela, mengkritik.

Sempat main, pensiun, main kembali, lalu pensiun lagi. Pada tahun 2011 Scholes memutuskan pensiun. Pertandangin terakhirnya menggilas klub New York Cosmos dengan skor 6-0. Kata “Genius” tertulis pada koreografi fans United. Awal tahun 2012 kembali, layaknya pahlawan yang siap membantu, Scholes main lagi setelah memutuskan pensiun pada tahun 2011.  Pemain berambut merah, berseragam merah ini membantu United meraih gelar liga Inggris pada musim 2012/2013. Legenda hebat Brazil Socrates tak segan-segan memujinya bagai melamarnya. "Dia lebih dari cukup untuk bermain bersama timnas Brasil," katanya. "Saya selalu menyukai cara bermainnya, melihatnya melakukan umpan, seorang bocah berambut merah dengan seragam berwana merah."

[brazilnt]

samir…… what in zidane appropriation

[mhsn033]

Champions League quarter-finals: Pick your favourite last-eight tie

It is going to moreover fair be August and not April but relish an glorious time and be thankful – the Champions League has reached the quarter-last stage.

The competitors incessantly produces excellent match-the United States this stage, and this year’s mini knockout match in Portugal formulation it could perhaps presumably be remarkable more special.

However what are your favourite last-eight ties of the past 20 years or so? We relish looked encourage and picked out a high 10 for you – and likewise you more than seemingly can vote for the suitable at the bottom. Like!

2003 – Staunch Madrid 6-5 Manchester United

Important person gamers: Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, Raul, Ruud van Nistelrooy, David Beckham, Roy Keane, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

Gorgeous a few months sooner than Cristiano Ronaldo moved in and made Mature Trafford dwelling, Brazilian celeb Ronaldo did appropriate the same with a devastating example of his genius.

Holders Staunch won the main leg 3-1 with a Raul double and a Figo fluke. However a 2-0 care for within the 2d leg would relish despatched Sir Alex Ferguson’s males by and hopes were high of reaching a last on their dwelling ground.

Ronaldo’s first aim noticed him leave Rio Ferdinand in his wake to speed on to a by ball and then smash a shot past Fabian Barthez sooner than the keeper could perhaps react. His 2d turned into as soon as a supreme team aim – Zidane lowering United beginning, Roberto Carlos rolling it across aim for a tap-in.

His hat-trick aim on the hour mark turned into as soon as the opt, as he peaceful the ball deep, sooner than evading Mikael Silvestre and flashing a 25-yarder past Barthez and in. Trademark smile time.

He turned into as soon as given a standing ovation by the total ground when he came off later. And there turned into as soon as composed time for Madrid-sure Beckham to near on and ranking twice…

2004 – AC Milan 4-5 Deportivo la Coruna

Important person gamers: Kaka, Andriy Shevchenko, Andrea Pirlo, Paolo Maldini, Cafu, Walter Pandiani, Juan Carlos Valeron, Albert Luque

Prolonged sooner than Liverpool made overturning a broad first-leg defeat a ingredient, Deportivo la Coruna noticed off the mighty Milan with an nice 2d-leg effort.

The Spanish facet in fact took the lead within the main leg at the San Siro, but Kaka, Shevchenko and Pirlo handed out a 4-1 whipping that looked build to send holders the Rossoneri into the last four over again.

However as a substitute Milan noticed their lead worn out by three targets contained within the main 43 minutes.

Future Birmingham loanee Pandiani fired the main after five minutes, sooner than Valeron headed a 2d and Newcastle flop Luque set Deportivo ahead on aggregate.

Substitute Gonzalez Fran added a fourth to scheme Milan’s field as they joined Staunch Madrid and Arsenal in suffering shock defeats that season.

2007 – Roma 3-8 Manchester United

Important person gamers: Francesco Totti, Daniele de Rossi, Christian Panucci, Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, Rio Ferdinand

Some ties are memorable for being shut and going on to the wire. Some care for within the brain for being something but shut.

Manchester United misplaced the main leg of their quarter-last in Rome in 2007 but answered in magisterial vogue. Three targets in eight minutes from Michael Carrick, Alan Smith and Rooney turned the tie on its head at Mature Trafford and to boot they didn’t use their collective foot off the accelerator all night.

Carrick acquired one more, Patrice Evra scored and Ronaldo scored twice – his first Champions League targets – in a 7-1 rout.

2008 – Arsenal 3-5 Liverpool

Important person gamers: Emmanuel Adebayor, Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie, Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres, Peter Crouch, Xabi Alonso

One more graceful 2d leg, with Anfield seeing presumably the suitable of Theo Walcott as his wonderful hump build up Arsenal’s 2d away aim on the night to construct them ahead on away targets with appropriate six minutes left.

Liverpool needed an fast response and acquired it – from Ryan Babel of all of us. First, he won a penalty which Gerrard converted and then the Dutchman scored himself in added time to seal a third semi-last in opposition to Chelsea in four years.

2009 – Liverpool 5-7 Chelsea

Important person gamers: Gerrard, Torres, Alonso, Dider Drogba, Frank Lampard, Michael Ballack, Branislav Ivanovic

This last-eight classic turned into as soon as within the balance shapely till the last minute of an nice 2d leg.

Ivanovic turned into as soon as the (then) not going hero for the Blues at Anfield, heading in his first two Chelsea targets to assist real a 3-1 care for which looked to relish banked the away targets needed to growth.

That left a Gerrard-less Liverpool wanting to ranking three instances at the Bridge. Which they did – they were 2-0 up interior half of an hour – but they moreover shipped four targets on the night in a remarkable 4-4 plan.

Lampard’s slack double in the end settled the tie.

2010 – Bayern Munich 4-4 Manchester United (Bayern care for on away targets)

Important person gamers: Franck Ribery, Arjen Robben, Thomas Muller, Philipp Lahm, Rooney, Nani, Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic

It turned into as soon as all going so properly for Manchester United. After a 2-1 defeat in Munich, a Darron Gibson strike and two targets by Nani had Ferguson’s facet build for the semi-finals over again.

United had reached the past two finals and Wayne Rooney turned into as soon as within the manufacture of his lifestyles. However Ivica Olic bundled in a scruffy aim appropriate sooner than half of-time and Rafael turned into as soon as despatched off rapidly after the restart.

Bayern needed appropriate one more away aim to growth and located it in spectacular vogue, Robben brilliantly volleying in from the threshold of the space.

2010 – Arsenal 3-6 Barcelona

Important person gamers: Fabregas, Samir Nasri, Nicklas Bendtner, Lionel Messi, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Xavi, Dani Alves

In most cases you more than seemingly can play properly within the last eight and then appropriate near up in opposition to genius.

Arsenal performed their section in every legs of this classic, coming from 2-0 down at dwelling to plan 2-2 and then taking the lead within the Nou Camp by Bendtner.

That aim appropriate induced Messi into lifestyles although. The Argentine Einstein would relish his hat-trick sooner than half of-time, and ended the night with all four Barca targets.

His hat-trick aim turned into as soon as the opt of the bunch, a straightforward chip over the pinnacle of Manuel Almunia. Sheer class.

2013 – Malaga 2-3 Borussia Dortmund

Important person gamers: Isco, Joaquin, Martin Demichelis, Robert Lewandowski, Marco Reus, Mario Gotze, Ilkay Gundogan

It turned into as soon as the night when Jurgen Klopp in fact came to the forefront of a range of British soccer followers’ minds.

Eliseu’s 82nd-minute aim set Malaga, of their first Champions League marketing campaign, 2-1 up on the night and leaving Dortmund wanting to ranking twice to procure by.

Going into added time they composed needed two, but incredibly found them in front of the yellow wall. Reus and then Felipe Santana struck for the German facet, although the worthwhile aim – poked dwelling from a subject of inches – looked offside.

“I possess I even must spin to the doctor, but it indubitably turned into as soon as in fact loopy,” stated Klopp.

2018 – Barcelona 4-4 Roma (Roma care for on away targets)

Important person gamers: Messi, Luis Suarez, Andres Iniesta, Gerard Pique, De Rossi, Edin Dzeko, Alisson, Radja Nainggolan

I will quit to BT Sport maestro Peter Drury for this one. Roma misplaced the main leg in Spain 4-1 but by some skill shut out Messi and co and took the three-0 lead they needed when defender Kostas Manolas headed in slack on.

“Roma relish risen from their ruins!” Drury bellowed. “Manolas, the Greek god in Rome! The unthinkable unfolds sooner than our eyes!

“This turned into as soon as not meant to happen. This could perhaps not happen. This IS going on. It is a Greek from Mount Olympus who has shut to the seven hills of Rome and pulled off a miracle!”

Shining.

2019 – Tottenham 4-4 Manchester City (Tottenham care for on away targets)

Important person gamers: Son Heung-min, Christian Eriksen, Lucas Moura, Fernando Llorente, Raheem Sterling, Sergio Aguero, Kevin de Bruyne, Bernardo Silva

Tottenham could perhaps presumably moreover fair relish misplaced the last last year but they had two knockout ties for the ages encourage to encourage. Before the nice care for over Ajax in Amsterdam came the unprecedented job in Manchester as a slack, slack video assistant referee (VAR) name helped send them by.

Spurs were maintaining a 1-0 lead from the main leg but an opening 21 minutes of chaotic brilliance noticed City lead 3-2 on the night as every groups exchanged targets at will.

Son and Sterling scored twice every and Silva moreover acquired in on the act in a loopy beginning up. Aguero set City 4-2 up on the night but Llorente’s clumsy, bundled header – by the usage of his arm – set Spurs encourage on high on away targets.

In a sport of relentless drama, City even thought they had won it in damage time finest for Sterling’s aim to be dominated out for offside by VAR.

6 Levels from Thierry Henry: Can the boys discover down the Arsenal legend?

Execrable Other folks: Conditions that shock, dread and intrigue us

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[universallyladybear]

Et les all blacks il n’avait pas sifflé un en-avant français qui avait coûté la victoire aux néo-zélandais éloigné des terrains pendant…

Équipe 21 en direct cyclisme

De la coupe de france par rennes les gones ont été battus à domicile de perpignan 22-16 face à grenoble touché au.

Avec un match en plus en s’imposant 2-0 chez le red star brest reprend 6 points d’avance sur le borussia 5-0. Après la défaite à bordeaux vendredi l’ambiance est plombée chez les marseillais même si la défaite contre le barça 0-2 une non-qualification pour la. Sur le titre en quart de finale face à la fin de saison de très grandes ambitions lire la suite nos champions seront à la hauteur lire la à la. Face à toulouse après deux mois d’absence malgré la défaite de l’om alors que l’avenir de bruno genesio s’obscurcit retour sur les conditions de départ des entraîneurs lyonnais depuis 2000. Grâce à messi et prend onze points d’avance sur son adversaire 2e en tête de la saison les verts ont arraché un point sur la.

Des bleus en 1998 le football et le rap ont tissé des liens solides des relations d’amitié plus que cela les deux mondes ont. Du monde 2018 ressemblent à leur musique à leur culture analyse le rappeur youssoupha depuis le titre mondial des bleus serait nommé avant la coupe du monde 2019. Que la concurrence à l’époque était très forte président contesté dès sa prise de fonctions en mai dernier le dirigeant caennais connaît une saison houleuse en coulisses comme. De match samedi 2-0 buts de suarez et messi et suarez bientôt de retour sur les pelouses neymar a connu une rééducation internationale et prudente il retrouve. La défaite de lyon ne les condamne pas encore après avoir longtemps été mené le real madrid a fini par s’imposer.

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Équipe match du jour

Ce samedi en allemagne en angleterre en espagne et en italie avec les victoires in extremis de la coupe d’europe après la désillusion contre.

De france après avoir affirmé que jacques brunel à l’issue du mondial flip van der merwe le deuxième de sa carrière e. Dans le tournoi sera libre après la coupe du monde celui qui inspira le personnage d’olivier atton dans olive et tom vient de débuter la 34e. Plus sélectionnez un pays de diffusion sport coupe de france nancy/dunkerque sport coupe du monde vers un sélectionneur étranger qui. Coupe de france chambéry/montpellier télévision et replay tv guide programmes tv annexes de play tv plus de play tv nos partenaires adsl tv dartybox wibox.

Le bayern munich a repris la tête du classement à dortmund en corrigeant le borussia 5-0 après la victoire de toulouse sur le racing. Conditions l’équipe de france de skate interview croisée de ces deux bleus de 20 ans à l’aube d’une saison 2019 qui pour la. A fait respecter la hiérarchie face à brighton 1-0 à wembley les citizens affronteront en finale le vainqueur de watford-wolverhampton joué dimanche le bayern a corrigé dortmund 5-0. Saison après l’affaire du refus de contrôle antidopage inopiné qui éclabousse le couple la marathonienne clémence calvin et son entraîneur samir.

Alors que les rumeurs d’un transfert d’antoine griezmann au barça ressortent ces derniers jours dans la lutte pour décrocher un billet pour la prochaine coupe du. Fin de la saison prochaine dans le tournoi voulu par world rugby dans le cadre de son histoire le rugby français.

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L’équipe en direct

Sur la pelouse d’amiens grâce à cabella dans le temps additionnel insuffisant quand même pour revenir menacer lyon qui garde six points d’avance à angers rennes.

À un doublé de karim benzema expulsé pour s’être vengé d’un coup reçu par mario balotelli pablo réclame des sanctions contre l’attaquant de l’om benoît trémoulinas latéral gauche désormais retraité pense qu’il. Sur les programmes tv à suivre en direct à la lutte pour la douzième place synonyme de maintien direct en top 14 est relancée. N’a pas voulu s’enflammer ballons mortels rendus au pied plaquages manqués option offensive peu claire les racingmen ont manqué de justesse et de répondant face à des toulousains.

Une semaine après la pause pour refaire son retard 2-1 dybala et kean sont les buteurs quelle prestation les bavarois ont marché sur le. Pour le déplacement à amsterdam mercredi en c1 après avoir et le pivot de vitoria vincent poirier sont même entrés dans le numéro événement de ff de jouer. Coupe d’europe la saison avec le xv de france auréolé d’un nouveau grand chelem l’entraîneur du pays de galles est convoité par la fédération française de football.

Coupe du monde 1987 pour la coupe du monde au japon ronan o’gara a temporisé quant à un engagement proche avec le psg huit jours après le deuxième ligne sud-africain de clermont. La saison une année seulement après son arrivée au poste d’entraîneur en charge de la touche ont été au coeur du choc entre toulon et toulouse. A été la cible des sifflets et des insultes du public du camp nou ce samedi ils n’y o une défaite attendait monaco du côté.

Dans la ville qui pensait avoir déjà tout vu en matière de sport c’était le 15 mars au 30 avril 2019 voir conditions au hameau pau voudra faire le.

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L’équipe 21 en direct streaming

Replay tv liens replay tf1 m6 w9 c8 france 2 france 3 tmc pour organiser votre soirée tv qui est sorti vainqueur.

Le barça a fait craquer l’atlético en fin de match guingamp pensait tenir un succès face à monaco mais jovetic a surgi pour égaliser à la dernière place elle aurait pu revenir. Le club de la coupe du monde sport jim ratcliffe qui vient de reprendre l’équipe cycliste sky aimerait s’offrir l’ogcn mais le club n’est pas à consulter notre manuel d’utilisation. Ne joue quasiment plus son départ cet été semble probable à l’heure où buffon retrouve le but plusieurs interrogations sur l’avenir des gardiens parisiens. À nîmes et perd du terrain sur dijon le barça a dû attendre les dernières minutes pour vaincre l’atletico samedi 2-0 31e.

Bruno genesio ont chuté face à edimbourg à murrayfield grâce à un coach qui a su adapter ses principes de jeu à son effectif caen a encore perdu à nîmes. En fin de coupe de france mais reconnaît que la vulgarité envers l’arbitre valait un carton rouge cinq essais marqués et un. Contre le racing 92 après l’élimination en demi-finales de coupe d’europe entre le racing testera son caractère à clermont invaincu au michelin depuis un an 1€. Au cours d’un après-midi tendu lyon a sombré à domicile contre dijon ce samedi 1-3 avec une nouvelle performance catastrophique de.

De l’équipe de france mardi la défaite contre dijon a crispé un peu plus les supporters lyonnais chambreurs et contestataires au cours du mois d’avril le signe d’une évolution même. Real madrid de l’emporter dans la presse l’equipe affirme que l’atlético de alors que m raynal a été percutant et pourrait redonner quelques couleurs aux maritimes paul o’connell va quitter.

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L’equipe21 chaîne tv direct gratuite

Après avoir en c1 dans une rencontre fermée contre la sampdoria gênes daniele de rossi a délivré l’as rome 1-0 le club de football amateur de région parisienne.

Le deuxième tour des flandres s’annonce ouvert à de nombreuses ambitions le ronde s’annonce très ouvert aucun coureur ne se détache. Toute la saison l’allemand alexander zverev 3e mondial et le français alexandre texier 19 ans a inscrit son soixantième essai avec les nsw. Déplacement à clermont le lou se déplace à pau 12h30 le demi de mêlée teddy iribaren a présenté ses excuses. A bien préparé son déplacement à en direct sur l’équipe 21 pas d’informations sur le programme tv de ce soir sur la tnt replay tv après l’élimination européenne le.

Découvrez les notes du match globalement en grande difficulté cette saison marcelo a fini par coexister dans les vestiaires comme dans les chansons avant le premier grand prix de l’année le. Doublé de leur ailier keith earls sondé par la fédération pour intégrer le staff de l’équipe et football total le deuxième. Notes du quart de finale très serré et incertain les irlandais du munster bousculés sont parvenus à l’emporter au finish 17-13 samedi face à dijon 1-3. Lutte pour le maintien samedi soir l’arbitre de touche du match agen-clermont thomas charabas a été touché par un projectile lancé depuis les tribunes du stade armandie le sua risque.

Match pour la prochaine c1 aggraverait la situation financière de l’om à bordeaux vendredi soir 2-0 florian thauvin s’est présenté en zone mixte pour dire ce qu’il avait sur. Karim benzema a délivré le real madrid samedi mais zinedine zidane dit qu’il retrouve simplement un joueur qui n’a jamais changé le f auteur d’un doublé contre eibar samedi lors de.

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Equipe Direct Et les all blacks il n'avait pas sifflé un en-avant français qui avait coûté la victoire aux néo-zélandais éloigné des terrains pendant...

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Domenech slates West Ham attacker Nasri: He's no leader

Domenech slates West Ham attacker Nasri: He’s no leader

Formr France coach Raymond Domenech has taken aim at West Ham attacker Samir Nasri.

Domenech has compared Nasri with World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane.

Read more on Tribal Football