Generation Next

Dismal (Pt.1) by NervPoison

Prologue: Gondola

Drifting

Look back

Twist your neck

Until it snaps

See the murderer's cathedral

Drifting

Past it

Can you smell it?

The black bile

Wherein we're drifting

Further away

Luckily nobody's

Evil enough to play music

Yet

While we contine drifting

Every minute

Of every day

Until the gondola sinks

How should I swim in this?

Who can teach me?

I don't know how I should be

Drifting

Past the floodgates

Straight to hell

Is this still drifting?

Behold, our gondola returned

And brought along some screams

Are we there yet?

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C1: Carpet

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"Send in your skeletons. Sing as their bones come marching in."

Foo Fighters (The Pretender)

It was a real place after all. The Outerhold. He could guess why the semblace of myth was being kept up. Although he couldn't help but wonder if anyone would have actually cared about people like him, and who else could have given the world such a scare that they had been sent here. He would find out soon enough, and he wasn't in a hurry...

"Seiryu Raiamma?", a man with a clipboard asked. The boy answered affirmatively.

"Passed the detectors...Went to the mana extractors...Alright then: last check-up before the definite designation! Momunofu! Momotaro!", the man commanded.

The two heavy goons who had flanked the man up till then positioned themselves next to Seiryu and and started to body-search him. He didn't understand; he had to change into his prison garb half an hour ago. What was the point?

"Squeeze his arms. He could've sewn a knife underneath them."

Seiryu wondered if anyone had ever been crazy enough to do that, but even if that were the case; (s)he would have not succeeded.

The absurdity of this final "check-up" was suitable ammunition for mockery. And Seiryu liked a good laugh. Anywhere but here at least. Hence his face insisted on the expressionless state it had maintained since he got here.

"Tongue.", the chief of inspection ordered. The young man obeyed and a thin metal rod probed deep into his throat. The new prisoner wretched and coughed.

"Nothing in there either."

A coercing "Take off your pants!" announced the most embarrasing part of the inspection (according to Clipboard, it is possible to hide a weapon in every hole of the human body).

"Approved.", he concluded.

He was brought to sector 7, the place he'd be forced to call "home" for the rest of his life. As slowly as the guards (the same chunks of beef from before) allowed him to, Seiryu strolled across the hallway. To his left Seiryu saw a man sitting in the corner of his cell, his face hidden between his knees. Was he sleeping, crying or going crazy? Who knew?

The newbie glanced at every cell. A pale haggard woman and a man with gray stubbles glanced right back, and Seiryu knew that they wouldn't stop staring until he was out of their line of sight? What else was there to do?

Seiryu was eventually thrown in a cell next to a woman's, a girl who had probably looked mannequinesquely beautiful in her civillian days. The cell straight across his kept a robust-looking man with a cubical head.

That's where his cell was. A cell in the Outerhold, where rights nor laws existed, where living was obligatory instead of allowed.

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Lexicon

The Outerhold: A prison of which the very existence is disputed. It is often regarded by civillians as an urban legend. It is located on an island that isn't part of any nation, hence it has no laws, no human rights, no nothing.

mana extractor: Machine that drains a human's magic and stores into a databank. Whatever happens to these databanks is unclear.