bakerstreet | The Slave Auction Meme

The Slave Auction Meme

â§ Leave a comment with the character's name, fandom, and whether your character will be playing the part of 'slave' or 'master', plus preferences for scenarios if you have any.
â§ Respond to others with one of the scenarios below or feel free to make up your own.
â§ Please remember to be respectful of others while you play

Warning: Be aware that this meme deals with dark subjects like slavery and may also contain non-consensual/dubiously consensual sex, violence, and kink.

SLAVES

1. The Newbie - This is your very first auction and you don't quite know what to expect. Hopefully you remember your training and don't disgrace yourself in front of your new master. Hopefully someone thinks you're worth buying at all.

2. The Oldtimer - You've been bought and sold and bought again so many times. You've seen it all before and don't think this time is going to be much different. In fact, the only real anxiety you've got is whether or not someone's going to pay for a more than slightly used slave.

3. The Pet - You're a pleasure slave. A bed warmer. A decorative piece of artwork. You're meant to look pretty and be pleasing and not much else.

4. The Guard - Your master hired you because of your ability to swing a sword or shoot a gun, not your looks.

5. The Escape Artist - Somehow you always manage to squirm out of your master's chains. Too bad you seem to get caught after a while. Maybe your next daring escape will be permanent. Then again, maybe your next master has special ways of keeping you locked up.

6. The Undercover - You aren't a slave at all, you're just pretending to be one. Why? Well that's up to you. Either way, your cover is blown if you don't act the part.

7. The Specialist - You have a skill that no one else has. Something rare and valuable. Something your master needs more than anything else.

MASTERS

1. The Customer - You've owned slaves before and this trip to the market is nothing new to you. Still, you're hoping to find something worth your while.

2. The Gift - Someone bought a pet for you, isn't that nice of them? Or maybe it isn't so nice. Did you even want a slave in the first place? Well you're stuck with one now.

3. The Giver - You're selecting a slave for someone else, and they need to be perfect. Perhaps you'd better test them out first to make sure you're getting your money's worth.

4. The Trainer - You specialize in taming unruly slaves and making them over into perfect, obedient, well-trained pets.

5. The Rebel - You hate the idea of slavery, but the system isn't going to go away any time soon, so the next best thing is to buy up any slave you can get your hands on and free them, right?

6. The Companion - You want someone to be with you always, someone you can talk to and depend on, someone who will never leave your side. It's a good thing that money can buy that these days.

7. The Undercover - You're not actually a Master. You're at the auction for an entirely different reason. Maybe it's special policework, maybe you're trying to hunt down a certain someone. Either way, your cover is blown unless you act the part.

As always, feel free to use a combination of scenarios or make up your own if you have other ideas.

Snagged from here.

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Her features darken as she prepares to order him more harshly, but he fortunately moves to do it on his own. She keeps the gun out of sight, quickly slipping it back in its holster as she sees the hotel employee on the other side. She affects utter disinterest once again, flipping through her magazine before waving a hand in the vague direction of an empty space.

"Give this to him." Her tone is firm, and, despite not lifting her head from the article she's reading, obviously intended for Tony. She holds up a twenty dollar bill, welcoming Tony to take it from her. Why should she have to get up, after all, when she has him around?

Your stink eye doesn't scare him, Sharon.

Fortunately, expensive seafood is a way better motivator than intimidation. Tony sighs and walks over to grab the twenty, rolling his eyes at her for good measure.

"Thanks, man." Tony gives the hotel employee his first genuine smile of the day, and trades him the twenty for the tray of food. The kitchen wasn't as slow as she'd threatened - they probably fast-track orders from the penthouse suites.

He seats himself in one of the other lounge chairs and digs in.

"Do I get any kind of orientation now, or am I walking into this totally blind?" he asks, dunking a chunk of lobster tail in the melted butter.

"Totally blind." She needs his reactions to be genuine. "And don't expect me to protect you. Also, if you try to run tonight, I will have you sought. I have a reputation to maintain. After you're done, when we return, then we'll discuss the matter at hand."

She flips another page in the magazine. "If it matters, I won't punish you without good reason. And use a napkin. And don't eat too fast - you don't want to throw up lobster."

Tony almost rolls his eyes again. "If you're trying to scare me, it's not working." He dunks an extra-large chunk of lobster. And doesn't use a napkin. She's his owner, not his mom.

"I don't get scared easily. Whatever Mission Impossible crap you've got planned is better than being a boy toy for one of those other creeps who bid on me, so I'm on board." He takes another defiant bite of his lobster. "I'm eighteen, not eight." He can handle himself, and he doesn't need to be talked down to.

Of course, she's his owner - she can talk down to him if she wants. It just means he'll probably ignore her.

She raises an eyebrow and sets her reading material aside. Her hands drape over the armrests of the chair. "I would appreciate you taking it more seriously. I like to think I'm not a bad person, but I don't tend to forgive people who fuck me over." Her tone is light, but there's undeniable sincerity underneath.

She pauses, her thoughts elsewhere as she plays out possible ways tonight could go. "You really don't want to eat the lobster that fast," she says at last.

He doesn't respond to the continued commentary on his lobster. If she thinks he can't power eat and still parkour his way through her super secret mission, she has clearly never spent much time around the caloric black holes that are teenage boys.

Anyway, what's she gonna do? Take it away from him? (Maybe. His body language becomes just a shade more defensive.)

"Did I say I wasn't taking it seriously? This is me taking it seriously." An understandable confusion, since he sure acts like he never takes anything seriously. "You said you'd free me for just one night of shadowing you at Fight Club or whatever. I'm taking that really seriously."

He still doesn't actually believe that she'll do it, but, hey, he'll try anything once. Known factors are safety— but unknown factors are opportunity.

She glances at her watch and sighs. "The car is scheduled to be here in less than twenty minutes. You'd better get ready."

She, on the other hand, is ready to go and has been for a while, so she gives him a meaningful look that says, "Get going," and turns back to her magazine.

"Oh, no, how will I have time to do my manicure?" At least this time he actually sounds amused, not insolent and vaguely hostile.

Since she won't tell him what they're going to be doing and he's already dressed, finishing his meal seems to be the only thing on the "get ready" checklist, and he completes that item with great satisfaction. The hype is justified after all: lobster is pretty damn delicious.

He still has a few minutes to spare, and she's ignoring him, so Tony goes to wash his hands and does a quick pass of the kitchenette while he's in there. There's a bowl of complimentary snacks on the counter: some fruit, three little squares of expensive chocolate, and a couple of fancy hippy granola bars. Nice. He eats the chocolates and pockets the granola bars.

Then he returns to the living room. "Okay, Boss, ready when you are." (The 'Boss' is definitely sarcastic.)

She holds herself back from rolling her eyes.

By the time Tony is back, there's a man standing at the door, dressed as a chauffeur. Sharon is still sitting, looking for all the world as if neither of them are there. Once Tony announces his arrival, she sets the magazine aside and strides toward the door.

"Come along, then."

She doesn't wait, instead following the man to the elevator. She doesn't speak along the way; neither does the man. Nor do either of them speak outside on the way to a limo waiting at the curb.

The man holds the door open for her, and she slides in. She still hasn't so much as glanced at Tony; she doesn't seem inclined to start now, either.

Tony follows his master and the silent chauffeur with some approximation of obedience. The limo is swanky as hell – "Nice," Tony says as he slides in after her.

He settles in, patting the leather seats appreciatively. "Not a Lamborghini, but it'll do." He grins. "So, what's your name? Or, your cover name, right?" After all this cloak-and-dagger crap, she's surely not going to tell him her real name.

She tilts her head as she studies at him. They're obviously going to have to talk about how the limo doesn't belong to her and might be bugged.

"My name is Sharon Carter. I work with SHIELD." She smiles thinly. "The cloak-and-dagger crap, as you call it, was to get you to make less of a fuss. I hate dealing with tantrums. Not many people are appropriately afraid of me when they first meet them, and it's easier - and oftentimes more entertaining - to manipulate them into doing what I want. I trust, though, that I won't have to worry about you at all after tonight."

She doubts he'll do it, but nonetheless, she mentally yells at him to play along, to shut up, to at the very least keep his damned mouth shut.

"You work for SHIELD?" There's that calculating interest again, just like when she'd offered him new clothes – but now it's more intense, and laser-focused.

He could say something snotty to her comments about manipulation and tantrums, but he'd rather push her for information about SHIELD, while she's in a sharing mood.

Tony knows SHIELD – who doesn't? – and he also knows that, once up on a time, his dad had had some big contracts with them. Stane International still sells them weapons, of course, but Howard Stark's contracts had been a little more... wide-ranging. A lot of it had been real cutting-edge stuff, at the time.

SHIELD's bought tech from a Stark before. Maybe they'd be interested in the work of another Stark, if he can find an opportunity to prove he's just as smart as his father was.

It's not the way out he'd been planning, that's for sure. But he's flexible.

"Did I stutter?" Her voice is calm, but has turned even colder than before. "Now behave, or I may just shoot you myself."

She takes out her phone and reads and types, not looking at him again even after they've arrived at their destination. The chauffeur opens the car door, and she slides out, accepting the man's help to stand.

They're in front of a nondescript office building, one that wouldn't look out of place in any metropolitan city in the world. There's a doorman who obviously isn't a doorman - too many muscles, and his eyes are too suspicious - and he regards Sharon and Tony as if they're murderers who may go ballistic at any moment. Sharon eyes him surreptitiously as she studies her phone screen, but he holds the door open as she walks through. On the other side of the door, another man leads them to the elevator. Only when she's dropped her phone into a small bag is she allowed on, with yet another man pressing a button that he shields with his body.

She doesn't look back at Tony to see if he's following, but he damn sure better be.

"Gosh, and here I thought we were developing a rapport," Tony snipes back, to disguise the fact that he's actually a little stung. Apparently all the information he's going to get about SHIELD is that its agents are super rude. He shouldn't have expected anything else from someone willing to buy up expendable slaves just to throw them into a black ops meat grinder.

As ordered, he keeps his mouth shut after that. He spends the rest of the drive sulking and desperately wishing he had something to entertain himself with. What are the odds she'll give him a smartphone for this? Not good, probably.

He tails Sharon into the office building, assessing the muscle out of the corner of his eye. They haven't been searched yet, but they sure have met a lot of thugs already, for having only just walked in the door.

She focuses on the wall before her, still not sparing him a glance. Though if he's sharp, he may notice that for a moment, she does watch him in her peripheral.

The only indication that they're going up is in the slight force exerted at the beginning of the trip and the moment of lightness when they finally slow to a stop, but both are so slight that it's easy to blame the imagination.

On the other side, they're met by yet another burly man. He gestures for them to follow him, and Sharon does so without looking back at Tony. They're led through a small labyrinth of coriders into what looks like a converted office space, the air conditioning on high and a crowd of people gathered around a circle on the far side and cheering at something down below.

"Get me a drink," she says carelessly to Tony, her eyes focused on the scene across the room. "Tell them to bill me."

What the hell is this place? 'Repurposed office building' is a seriously lame aesthetic for sinister villainous activities. This operation seems to be pretty well entrenched, though, so Tony guesses hiding in plain sight is working out for them.

His first thought when he sees the crowd circled around some spectacle is that this really is a fight club. He's formulating something clever to say along those lines, when she interrupts by ordering him to fetch her a drink. "Right away, Mistress," he snarks instead, and saunters off to do as he's told. What he'd really like to do is get a look at whatever's going on on the other end of the room, but his insatiable curiosity is tempered by enough self-preservation to keep him playing along. He has a feeling he'll find out soon anyway.

"No drinks for slaves," the bartender says before Tony can even get a word out. Of course. Why else would a scrawny teenager be tagging along with someone like Sharon?

"That's cool, I wouldn't drink any of that crap you've got anyway. It's for Devil Wears Prada over there." He jerks a thumb at Sharon. "She says to put it on her tab. I hope she's not kidding about the tab, because I really don't want to end up as collateral for three fingers of watered-down Jack Daniels."

"You'd better watch your mouth, kid," the guy says, but Tony's read was on the mark: he's smirking a little, and the tone isn't threatening. Tony grins at his new buddy.

"He says you'll like the vodka tonic." Tony returns to Sharon and hands her the drink, wondering if these people really do know who she is or if vodka tonic was just the bartender's educated guess. "Now what?" He cranes his neck, trying to get a peek through the crowd.

She takes the drink but doesn't do anything more, not yet. She does, however, spare him a glance. Which is more than she's done for several seconds. It's enough to assure her that he's unharmed so far, and that he isn't panicking, either.

"You won't be fighting tonight. I want you to scope out the competition." She leads the way around the crowd and finds a vantage point where they can both watch. Tape has been pressed to the floor in two circles, and everyone is lined up along the perimeter of the outer circle. In the inner circle, two young men are fighting. They're both bruised and bloodied and tired, but still fighting.

Sharon stands there, letting him watch and understand that this is an illegal fight ring featuring slaves. And no, it isn't until first blood. It isn't until one of them wants to yield. It's to the death. She keeps her tone quiet, not moving her lips. "I need intel on both sides. I can get it from the people here, but I need someone else getting it from the other side. I need names, ages, places, and what they know about their owners. Got it?"

Only when she's sure he understands does she point to a door behind her. It, too, is guarded by security, and there's a scrawnier man with a clipboard standing nearby.

"Come on." She turns and heads to the man. "James. Good to see you. This is my new slave. He'll be fighting for me. He needs to go find out what it's like behind the scenes, so to speak. Care to add him to the list?"

James, done no favors by the bright lights with his balding head and pallid skin, looks Tony up and down. "Does it have a name?"

"Tony or something," she says flippantly, waving her free hand as if she doesn't remember and doesn't see why she should have to. "Let him scope out the competition."

James sighs and hesitates. After several seconds, he makes a note on his list. "Fine. When is he fighting?"

"Tomorrow at the soonest. I just got him today, and look at him." She looks at Tony pitiably. "He couldn't fend off a child. He needs a reason to bulk up."

James' expression looks odd for a moment, evidently wondering if Sharon wants bulk Tony up for any other reason, but he doesn't react. "Sure." He meets Tony's eyes. "Get back there. Someone will come for you when your mistress is ready to go. Try not to get your blood on everything."

Oh, okay. Actually a fight club. A serious fight club. A 'last man standing' kind of fight club. Tony suddenly loses his stomach for corny pop culture jokes.

She lets him watch until he gets the picture, and then starts murmuring instructions at him. Tony cocks his head to listen to her, happy to turn his eyes away from the end of the fight.

When she leads him out of the crowd to another door, Tony follows silently. There are too many people in earshot for him to feel like risking another smart remark. Especially now that he knows they're all here for lethal bloodsports and probably aren't amused by their ill-fated chattel getting mouthy.

He keeps his silence as she signs him in with James. He takes note of the sigh and the hesitation – pity? Unlikely, and even less likely that Tony will have any opportunity to make use of it, but he files it away anyway. You never know.

Reluctantly, when he's bidden, he walks through the door.

The room he enters is large and open, and populated mostly by slaves. There are well-armed guards, but, to Tony's surprise, the slaves aren't caged or chained. (That sort of paraphernalia, he realizes, can't be practical for an operation that probably moves regularly.) The effect is a lot like a large pack of feral dogs. Some of the slaves are sitting around; others are warming up; a few are grappling with each other, either scuffling or sparring. But they all move with wary hostility, giving the impression that any interaction could break out into violence without warning. The simmering aggression in the room is oppressive.

Tony slinks around the edge of the room, feeling the weight of their gazes as they all turn to assess the newcomer. He notes the reactions: dismissive, indifferent, pitying, eager. It's clear very few of them take him seriously, and, if he's honest with himself, they're not wrong. All these guys were bought and trained for this, and Tony— what does he have going for him? He's a stringy, underfed kid whose muscles come from fixing cars and boilers. Maybe if he had a tire iron or a pipe wrench he'd actually have a chance of putting a hurt on one of these guys.

He doesn't do anything to persuade them otherwise. Being underestimated is his best chance of getting out of this alive. The demeanor he affects is thus carefully calculated: determined, resigned, a little desperate, and more frightened than he wants to let on. (Fear is not usually one of his more convincing acts, so he takes advantage of the fact that he is, in fact, actually scared shitless right now.)

Tony scans the room. There's a man leaning against the wall, watching him approach with slightly less than average malice; Tony sets his sights on him.

"Come here often?" The joke is bad, delivered with a weak smile, and his target raises his eyebrows.

"More often than you, Hippodrome."

"Maybe I'm tougher than I look," Tony says, with halfheartedly feigned confidence.

"Whatever you say, kid."

"Isn't match fixing against the rules?" A tiny bit petulant, a tiny bit plaintive. That actually gets a snort out of the man. Then he looks away, and Tony wilts. A few seconds of strained silence pass. "Should I, like, be training or something?"

"Don't bother, kid. You'll just die tired."

"Happy frickin' birthday," Tony mutters under his breath.

"Rough luck," the man says, with something approaching sympathy. "Straight off the block?"

Tony nods dejectedly. "She says I'm the third. Honestly, I think she gets off on it." The man chuckles again. Progress. "What about you?"

"Boss likes to know his bodyguards can handle themselves. Win a few fights, maybe you get promoted."

Bingo. Tony doesn't break character, but inside, he's smiling.

"Wow. That sounds like a way better deal than what I got. Who's your master? Does he have any openings?"

...

Turns out, commiserating about shitty bosses (or masters) is universal, and there's a certain camaraderie in facing death together. Some of the less roided-out, dick-swinging competitors prove to be more sociable than first appearances suggested. Tony is surprised by how much intel he's able to gather. He has no idea how valuable any of it is, but he diligently memorizes all of it. Maybe if he gets anything useful enough, Sharon won't actually make him go through with the fighting.

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The Slave Auction Meme

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It's the oldest established permanent floating crap game-- uh, illegal gladiator ring-- in New York