Andabatae II: The slave figthers (W.I.P.) (Patreon)

{ENGLISH}  

They are Joshua and Claire, my self-insert O.C.'s.  

I wrote a book about them long ago, but I couldn't publish it (in the real life). However, I decided to do with them the same I did with Random (in order to continue drawing them): Sending them to another universes (either mine or created by others), and letting them to protagonize, co-protagonize or do cameos on another stories.  

In this case, this is another story created by me: Andabatae, or "the slave fighters". An idea I had already had back in 2004, when I was young. "Andabata" used to be a type of gladiator in the old days of Rome, who used to fight at the Colosseum and other arenas, wearing a helmet without eye slots, and armed with a sword only.   

According to the most recent archaeological research, gladiators could be either volunteers or slaves, either male or female, either owned privately or state-owned, and people could be either straight or non-straight. But, back in my old days of youth, all what we Mexicans (I'm Mexican) used to watch on TV and cinemas, coming from Hollywood, was assumed as something historically correct and even as unquestionable dogmas! Thus, the original story used to be like this:  

Two dark-skinned immigrants coming from some point in Eurasia, who ended up losing everything but themselves (they're married) end up offering themselves as slaves in that Ancient World. Alas, their bodies are so well-shaped, and they're so tall and strong, that there's no master or mistress interested in owning them. They fear them to rebel some day. So, they end up rejected and unsold over and over again, until arriving to Rome, where they are acquired by a school for gladiators.  

He had been acquired to be used "for training purposes" (basically, to be a punching bag), whereas she had been acquired "for entertainment purposes" (don't make me to explain this). But when their master discovers that both he and she are superior fighters and experts at that kind of "entertainment" (in such a degree that they even enjoy it, and ask even much more), he decides to make a gladiator and a "gladiatrix" of them.   

But the master decides not training them as they came (they arrived with no clothes at all), but as handicapped as possible, in order to make fighting encounters more equal and fair for the rest of rivals... And sexier. And that's how they acquire their restraints and their "special" helmets. Also, she'd become the very first "gladiatrix" ever, defying a patriarchal and archaic society (and originating a totally new "like" in the public), and inspiring another female to become a philosopher (yes, I'm talking about Hypatia).  

At the end, they learn Latin, become invincible champions, get their freedom and many other privileges of that age and that place, but they remain fighting as volunteers until the end (I never could imagine a proper end for this story, beyond "their legend being written down in scrolls that end up burned in Alexandria's library long ago"). She's the very first female who owns the privilege to be a "gladiatrix", and wearing "the clothes of a male Patrician citizen", whereas he ends up owning the school in which they were trained in the beginning, and teach their particular fighting style (and other arts) to others.  

I know, it's a funny and historically incorrect story, influenced by anime and the modern Western mindset. But I have been thinking seriously about reviving it, re-drawing it, re-writing it and re-posting it. Specially because I thought for a long time that I had invented fetish stuff like this, and clothes like bikini armors or "helmets without eyelets". xD