The arena was booming with energy. People were doing waves across the crowd and mead was flowing like a wide, long river through every tauman's bloodstream. The stands were absolutely packed, every inch and crevice teeming with someone or something watching the arena stage intently, waiting for the end of the halftime show and stubbornly refusing to leave the stands to relieve themselves.
This was a cultural quirk unique to Gifflenberg, but everyone who'd visited the region at least once was well familiar with it.
Why people culturally refused to leave the stands to go to the outhouse stalls during halftime was anyone's guess. It was not due to a lack of outhouses - conversely, there were thronging rows of state of the art outhouses throughout the bottom floor of the stadium. Some people said it was because they didn't need to go, but this was not always the case. Regardless, it was such a common cultural phenomena that it was well known to bring your own seat cover to the stadium, as otherwise one would run the risk of sitting on something that had once been inadvertently soiled by someone with a weaker bladder.
It was not because they were not allowed to go to the outhouses. Once again, the new outhouses were there for people to use. People were even technically allowed to leave the game itself to use the facilities, but you would only ever find foreigners doing it, even when Gifflenberg locals assured that there was absolutely nothing wrong with going to the bathroom during halftime. See, none of the locals who espoused these views would ever, ever be caught going to the bathroom during halftime. It simply wasn't done.
Local legend said the real reason nobody went to the outhouse during halftime was in honor of a famed day drinker who was known to all but live in the stadium about five centuries ago during the great Currdling. Some people coped by becoming exceptionally clean and tidy, some people coped with Curr by becoming shut ins, and others still, like this guy, coped by drinking their face wood off with mead. And of course he was always going to the outhouse, as he was always drinking mead. It was a self fulfilling prophecy.
What happened - or at least what was said to have happened - was that one day, while he was urinating in an outhouse and whistling the Gifflenberg classic 'Nine thousand bottles of mead on the wall,' a dragon that was queued up to be fought in the arena got loose and started storming the stadium. Everyone ran out and escaped because they saw it happen in the stands, except of course for the poor day drinker, who was pissing in the outhouse when shit hit the proverbial fan. When he pulled up his trousers and sauntered out of the outhouse to get another pint of mead, he found himself face to face with a ravenous dragon that immediately devoured him as if he were a chocolate eclaire.
This was often debated to be a fake story. There was no record of this man existing from five centuries ago, though at the same time, there often was not a record kept of drunk vagrants whom lived in arena stadiums. Either way, people were still thinking about the story to the present day. It was real in their hearts irregardless of anything else. The real superstitious fear lived on, too - there was a palpable feeling that, if people did not heed the fact that this had happened once, it would indeed be doomed to one day repeat itself. So people local to Gifflenberg never, ever caught themselves going to the outhouses during halftime, or fulltime, or any time. The outhouses were spotless because no one would go. They still had a cleaning crew and they still regularly had water elementals drain and refresh the water outhouse water systems. But it was all for show. And if you ever even suggested to a Gifflenberg local that they ought to just go to the bathroom, or even leave the stands for any reason during an arena match, they would look at you as if you told them to go get eaten by a ravenous dragon that was seeping with Curr - because in their cultural context, that is what you were saying to them.
So everyone made sure to bring their own seat cushions to arena matches. Just in case.
"Ohhh, so I came up that hill with a pail of go-ho-hooold,
And in my hands, I tell you, I would ho-ho-hooold,
Your heart, my heart, our hearts of STOOOOOOOO-HO-HOOOONE,
Don't you leave me alo-ho-hooone,
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
My heart of STOOOO-HOOOOO-HOOOOO-HOOOOOO-HOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOONE!"
"Wh-wh-who greenlit this singer?" grumbled Timmy T, one of the partial owners of the stadium. His angular, wooden nose was sharp enough to cut a thick block of cheese perfectly. He was perched up in the nicest box in the arena, drinking a fabulous cocktail with a lemon twist and a small daisy. "Seriously, I can't stand the way she enunciates. It's bizarre, it's like she's some round man giving away presents or something."
"What the hell are you talking about, Titi?" asked a woman with exaggerated proportions sitting beside him.
"Just a weird dream I had recently of this strange man. He kind of laughed in the dream like the way she sings. But he was giving out presents. I don't know, it didn't make a lot of sense, it was after I'd taken one too many sleeping potions I think."
"Oh, Titi, how silly!" she laughed like a scarlet macaw. "Well, if I ever had some round man offer me things, I think the only thing I'd ask for is more living wood grafts!"
Tim groaned. "Come on, Hilu, you know I would get you more of those if you wanted them. It's nothing, really."
"I was just joking, hon," she giggled. "But really, Byronetta is great. She's, like, the singer to define multiple generations. You've got to just love her, Titi, you've got to."
"Oh, alright," he sighed. "If you say so, Hilu. If you say so."
They kissed briefly, and then not so briefly, and then with so much enthusiasm that their private bartender became extremely uncomfortable and started blushing under their wooden face.
"Oh, Titi, the match is starting again!"
Tim looked through the glass window anddown at the arena stage. He could see a strong woman walking out. Her black hair was in a slicked, tight ponytail and her eye shadow was so thick he could see it from a far distance.
"Who's this one, again?"
"New one, calls herself T-tanium."
"T-tanium?" said Tim.
"Yes, T-tanium."
"That's unfortunate, it almost sounds inappropriate."
"Oh, Titi, you're so money - I mean, so funny."
"What's that thing she's got perched on her shoulder?"
"It looks kind of like a foney." The woman squinted. "Then again, I can't be sure. It has two spires on its head. Don't fonies only ever have one spire?"
"I don't know, Hilu. I've heard people say that fonies start out with two horns, then they molt and shed one. Then the other spire moves to the center to replace it and doubles in size."
"That doesn't make any sense, Titi," replied the woman. "I think that's just an old husband's tale."
"Whatever," Tim said with a shrug. He rung a small, gold bell. "Can I please get another gin and wine?"
"Absolutely, your Timidness," replied the bartender, who rushed to work immediately.
"So why is she here?" asked Tim.
"To fight, of course!" said the woman.
"Sorry, let me rephrase... Why hasn't she been here to fight before?"
"Oh! Well, she just got a system," said the woman matter-of-factly.
Tim spat out his mouthful of drink all over the bartender, who had just walked over with a new drink.
"I'll get you a new drink, your Timidness," muttered the bartender quietly as they rushed off.
"Did you just say that she got a system?" Tim's left eye twitched. Memories flashed before his rich, snobby mind. Hours, days, weeks, years spent wishing he had a system of his own. Countless nights laying in bed, tossing and turning, wide awake, crying out in the dark how badly he wanted a system. And he thought he would never, ever have one. Sure, material things were no object to him. Tim always had the biggest and the best of everything, sooner than everyone else. But he'd never had the one dreadful thing that he'd really always wanted. And that was, unequivocally, to have a system. To level up. To know what it meant to progress, to become powerful, to have [skills]... he thirsted for it like a person abandoned in an empty desert thirsts for water. And yet it was always out of reach, or so Tim thought. And now his wife was telling him that someone in his arena had just... showed up one day with a system that they had somehow gotten?
How could that have been possible? It wasn't, it couldn't be, it wasn't fair! Tim wanted a system! The only thing that Tim had ever heard of that would cause a person who originally didn't have a system to suddenly fall into possession of one was the concept of [pairing], but that was a topic Tim researched to no end. In all his searching he had not once hit a rich vein of anything that could lead him to success.
And here some lady was with a new system... She must've [paired] to that two-spired creature, fony or not. It was the only way. But it had been so long since people had needed, or even been able to [pair] systems... Tim had partially assumed that the tauman species had almost evolved out of being able to [pair]. And yet, here someone was with just what he had always wanted.
"Let's keep a close eye on her," said Tim. "I'm very interested in seeing how she fights."
"Oh, of course!" said the woman. She smiled. "I was thinking of sending out a dragon."
Tim smiled a wide, toothy grin that could be seen through the mouth holes covering his face. "A dragon. Not a bad idea, dearest. Not a bad idea at all. Let's see how much fun she has with that, why don't we? Stress test her little system a bit."
"Someone's got to," she agreed. "And why not us?"