Trust Fall
Spiral walks swiftly out to the arena, looking a little sweaty and his hair even more of a mess than usual. Being under the attention of a whole arena isn’t his forte, but those sweet event rewards won’t be won by themselves. He stations himself in front of his challenger and takes a deep breath, mentally readying his memorized script, but instantly snaps his mouth shut as he takes a wide double-take. He appears more hassled than before as he searches for someone, before his eyes snap to the entrance he came from. His arms flailed aggressively as he beckoned them with quiet curses and Haru meekly stepped out to join him. You can hear bits and pieces of their conversation, more from Spiral who appears to be unable to control his volume.
“.....didn’t follow me?!....supposed to… at the same time!”
“....rry!... distracted…”
A loud sigh echoed throughout the arena, Spiraling seemingly forgotten where he was in the fog of exasperation. He slapped a hand over his mouth as the echo resounded around. His ears flicked excessively, and a rather stinky side-eye was sent Haru’s way who looked rather sorry, which was enough to make Spiral feel guilty for his outburst. He cleared his throat in an attempt to shake off the prior embarrassment.
“Alright, my challenge should be relatively easy, but it’s nothing to sneeze at! You should at least Once try this fool-proof, absolute way of determining the BOND and TRUST between your friends. Indeed,” he does a rather smug sweeping hand gesture and tosses his head, “this is what the challenge is today! Trust falls! The most glorious of all falls!”
“Allow me to demonstrate, with my friend, Haru.” He tries to inconspicuously gesture Haru to get in position like he had made them rehearse way too many times, but his gestures turned out to be too aggressive even to be considered sort of hidden. Haru trots into position cheerily, and follows his previous instructions perfectly. Spiral nods with an air of satisfaction that seems excessive for a mere trust fall. He gets into his position, in front of Haru and crosses his arms in an X across his chest, and gets ready to fall backwards, safely into his friend’s arms.
He doesn’t notice, up in the seats of the arena, a particularly sly grin appears on Aspen’s face, a neighbour of his, that has a love of toying with Spiral. A plan has been brewing since he had spotted Spiral drilling instructions into Haru’s head about this challenge he had so brilliantly thought of, and now would be the absolute perfect time to execute it.
“HEY HARU!” Aspen yells with the most obnoxious voice he could muster, “LOOK, DESI’S CHEERING YOU ON!” which was a big fat lie, as Desi was still busy in the waiting area for his next challenge. He sneezes three times, and feels a chill up his spine, a foreboding sense that he might be yelled at soon.
The trick worked, Haru lifts his head up, eyes sparkling and bushy tail wagging, distracted from the thing he was supposed to do.
Spiral falls backward, serene, calm, trusting.
He keeps falling. He thinks, huh, this is an awful lower than it usually go-
His back hits the dusty floor and his head painfully bounces.
There is no more trust, only pain. His mouth opens to screech “WHAT IN THE NIGHT KING’S NAME-” and he ends abruptly with a stifling cough and stiffly sits up. His pride hurting, he stands up with as much dignity as possible and dusts his clothes off. He makes a meaningful gesture accompanied with a glare that could only mean screaming would be on it’s way to Haru’s door. Haru’s tail droops, and Aspen definitely does not cackle with all his might, absolutely not, Spiral will not acknowledge it.
He coughs. “Well! That was the trust fall. But not like that, it wasn’t supposed to be- ANYWAY YOU GET THE GIST SO IT'S YOUR TURN”