Title: Rebel in a World Full of Rules
Summary: Charles is a troublemaker. He's broken one too many of the major rules, and now everyone's observing him. If he breaks another major rule, he'll be released. So when a member of a rebel group approaches him and asks him to join them, Charles must choose: release or rebellion?
Disclaimer: Any recognizable characters, settings, rules, concepts, or objects do not belong to me and I am not taking ownership of them. I am writing this story for fun, not for profit.
Notes: So I decided to write another fanfic that wasn't about Harry Potter. Mainly because I've had this chapter written for a while and have now decided to publish it.
Also, I edited this chapter.
Chapter One
Charles knew that everyone was watching him.
All of the Elders apparently called it "observing". It was considered rude to stare, and rudeness was against the rules, but the Elders had said that this "observation" was necessary. People would report to the Elders if they saw Charles breaking another major rule. He hadn't been observed this carefully since he was an Eleven.
He hated it.
If he said that aloud to anyone, anyone at all, he would be chastised for using imprecise language. Hatred...it wasn't a word so much as a sound. But he knew what it meant. He had heard children use it, before they learned that it was imprecise, and it was in one of the reference books in each dwelling, classified as imprecise.
He hated being watched. But he wouldn't say that aloud to anyone.
He felt people staring as he entered the Gardening Crew Headquarters. It was either because they were "observing" him or because they still weren't used to his presence here. He had trained here for a year and a half—having been dismissed from his training at the Nurturing Center only a year and a half after his Ceremony of Twelve—and yet people still weren't used to his arrival every morning.
Maybe they were, however, and simply didn't like the idea of training a boy who had been classified as Unsafe.
Charles himself had been surprised at the reclassification, even though he should have seen it coming. Tossing his family unit's copy of the Book of Rules into the river wasn't going to go unnoticed. Neither was attacking a Security Guard in the middle of the night. It made sense that people were anxious around him.
But did they really expect him to want to do something that could result in him being released?
Father went first for feelings, after the evening meal. "I felt annoyed, today," he stated. "Groups of Engineers were assigned to repair a few transportation vehicles. My group consisted of several advanced Engineers, but one of the workers couldn't figure out how to do something that was taught in basic Engineer training classes. I was annoyed because he likely hadn't cared enough about his training to pay attention to the lesson in which the procedure was explained."
"Maybe he forgot?" Anna suggested. She was an Eleven, and would become a Twelve this upcoming December at the Ceremonies of Advancement.
"He was in my group when we were in training," said Father. "As I recall, the lesson was a very memorable one. One female shocked herself by accident and had to be taken to the Rehabilitation Center. That was why we learned the procedure so quickly: none of us wanted to be shocked because we made a mistake, so we worked hard in order to master the procedure to the best of our abilities."
Mother went next, recalling an amusing moment during her day when a Four in her class—she was an Instructor of Fours—was reading a passage aloud to the other students, but pronounced words amusingly incorrectly.
After Mother was Anna, who stated that she was feeling anxious about her upcoming Ceremony of Twelve.
"Charles? You're last, tonight," said Mother.
"I...I mostly felt uncomfortable, today. Everyone is still watching me."
"Observing," Mother corrected.
"Precision of language," Father chastised.
"I apologize," Charles replied, nodding to Father. He didn't mean it, but it was required.
"We accept your apology."
"Everyone is still observing me. I don't like it."
"It's for your own good, you know," said Mother. "It encourages you not to break any more major rules. We don't want you to be released as a punishment."
And yet Charles couldn't help thinking, Don't you, though?