First appearance: S4E8 — Blood Rain — Fatale v Claudia · watch it on YouTube
Blue slushies are the drink of bloodshed. Wherever the floating grandstands appear, the Acolytes are holding them, spilling them, hurling them at each other and pouring them over their own faces, usually while ripping off their shirts. They began as stadium snacks sold alongside hot dogs. By the Season of Vigilance they had become something closer to a currency of favor: a champion drenched in enough blue slushie fights like someone with a whole crowd at their back.
Description
Blue slushies are blue, cold and extremely sticky. When TD was pelted with them, it ended up coated in “sticky blue raspberry syrup,” which settles the flavor. They are sold at the arena’s concession stands next to hot dogs and plizzies. Before big nights the staff of the Dread Fortress make sure the stands are restocked. They are not cheap. As the Grandmaster reminded two champions, they are “expensive in this economy.”
Mostly, though, they get thrown. A good moment in a fight brings a shower of them down from the stands, and Acolytes have been known to aim them at the champion they like best. A champion who gets doused with slushies gets a jolt of adrenaline. One who collects five of them finds their next blow landing with devastating force. The Acolytes’ favor lasts only as long as their mood, though. As the Arbiter put it, the slushies help “until they don’t like you.”
There is only one flavor that counts. In one telling the crowd spilled their “blue and only blue slushies.”
History
The slushies first appeared during the Shadow King’s reign, in Fatale’s fight against Claudia. After the Grandmaster snapped her fingers to give everyone “a bit of a reset,” freeing Fatale from the spell holding her, the match broke for blue slushies and for clearing the hot dogs off the ship.
They became a fixture of the crowd during the Season of Fate, the vision in which the Arbiter ruled the Void as the Lord of Fate. Acolytes threw them at each other just before The Box of Chaos slammed down between Robbie Clark and the Hunger and Bob the Barbarian. They flew as Bone Daddy squared off with King Bofus. During Atlas’s fight with Frigidoom, the crowd spilled them while failing to chant “Frigidoom,” because the name has too many syllables. They flew everywhere at Kopy Katt’s match with Ragu, where Acolytes tore off their breakaway jeans “as is tradition.” In Ruby Rust’s rematch with Bone Daddy, the Lord of Fate apologized for getting distracted and declared “Blue slushies on me,” and attendants and goblins handed them out to the whole crowd. When Teddy Oso cracked Ragu’s face off its hinges with a spinning kick, the moment came in slow motion, with blue slushies spilling everywhere.
In the Season of the Trials, the Grandmaster, Thea and the Arbiter rushed to restock the concession stands with blue slushies, hot dogs and plizzies before the Ether Drifts bout. They were already late. For the season finale Thea made sure the slushies were full while Doug the Pug yelled in the background. Thousands of Acolytes then threw them over the wrecked tavern, still full of drunks, pools of dried vomit and people passed out on tables, where Emmery was wiping the bar and Frigidoom, Bob the Barbarian and The Duke fought it out.
In the Season of Vigilance the slushies stopped being decoration. In S7E1 — A Soup Served Cold — DeeDrah v Gazpacho Man Andy Gammage, the Acolytes aimed theirs straight at Andy Gammage. He guzzled one and fought on, fortified:
Andy Gammage: “It’s no gazpacho, but it’ll do.”
Big Business and Bog Boy were greeted by a ring of slushie-holding Acolytes. Big Business later regretted putting a raw steak in his gears on top of them (“between the slushies, I ain’t feeling too good”), and the Grandmaster blamed “a combination of raw meat and blue slushies.” The Acolytes spilled slushies and beer on themselves as they screamed Jinx’s name in her fight with Akumu. In S7E4 — The Cheese — Sila v Ol’ Pumpernicklejack, drunk Acolytes poured them over their faces while stomping on the minitaurs in the crowd. The Grandmaster then warned Sila and Ol’ Pumpernicklejack not to waste the crowd’s generosity:
The Grandmaster: “They have… poured out their blue slushies, which are expensive in this economy.”
Iowa-Ska and The Pebble were both doused until each held five slushies’ worth of fury. At the end, the Acolytes stood and poured out their slushies in honor of the winner: “This is for your victory. This is for your legacy.” On Father’s Day the crowd threw slushies over each other with their fathers beside them, and splattered TD in blue syrup during its fight with Jerry Bonesman. When Agatha Middlebrooke’s toffee generosity stopped her match with Lug Hardblock for a toffee break, the Arbiter sent the crowd off to “go get yourself some blue slushies and some toffees.”
In S7E8 — Private Bathrooms — Livid Lady Lin v Gandor Thalion Umbrae, the slushies flew over a snowy mountain while the Acolytes ripped their shirts off, “nipples hard in the cold weather.” The crowd chanted every name except Gandor Thalion Umbrae’s, which was too long. They then gave Livid Lady Lin five blue slushies, and with them she cast off his attempt to fill her head with doubt. Gandor got so angry his orb exploded. The Acolytes cheered with blue slushies once more under the graveyard moon of S7E9 — Necro-Nightmare — Squiggles v Ray S’urdead, as Squiggles faced Ray S’urdead.