Nagisa lay awake in bed, thinking over the argument she'd had with her father at dinner. It was all she could think about. Her friends Orine and Yuka were planning on leaving Lancastar to join AKB0048. Naturally, Nagisa wanted to join them, but her father was strongly opposed. She didn't know what to do.

It was late at night. She'd been disturbed from her sleep by a strange noise, and now she couldn't fall asleep again. Deciding a drink of water would help, Nagisa got out of bed and headed for her door. The house seemed a little too quiet, even for the middle of the night. Making her way down to the kitchen regardless, Nagisa headed straight for the sink. Grabbing a glass and holding under the faucet, she pressed the button on the tap.

The faucet sputtered, but didn't produce any water. Nagisa tried again, got the same results, and gave a heavy sigh. She tried again and again, suddenly feeling more thirsty than she thought possible. On the sixth try, the faucet started shaking. It felt a bit like water was trying to move through the pipes, but she was getting wary of the whole situation.

Then it came out of the faucet, spraying into the sink and quickly back up in her face. It wasn't water, but a white gas. She had inhaled the gas before even realizing what was going on, and only managed a few steps before collapsing. Everything went black.

Nagisa blinked her eyes slowly, adjusting to the light. She was laying on her chest, her head turned to the right. Closing her eyes again, she groaned painfully and pushed herself up. Looking around, she determined very quickly that she was no longer in her home. The small room had walls of metal plating, and in the middle of one wall there was what looked like sliding double doors, with a control panel on its right. On either side of the room was a railing in front of a panel with buttons numbered one to nine. The one on her left had a picture of an infant over it, and the other had a similar picture showing an elderly person with a cane.

In the back corners she saw a fire extinguisher and a metal case with a picture of a fire extinguisher on the front. Over the case was what seemed to be instructions for the fire extinguisher. There was also a poster on the wall with various pictures of people of all ages on it. There was some huge red machine across from the door with a screen on the front and cables attaching it to the wall. Looking up, she saw several electric lights set into a ceiling of metal grating. There was a big round hatch in the center of the ceiling with a wheel on it.

And then there was the other girl slumped against the wall behind the machine at what Nagisa had decided was the back of the room. This other girl let out a long sigh, not even looking up or acknowledging Nagisa's presence.

Walking over to the door, Nagisa knocked on it with her hand. "Is this… an elevator?"

"Yeah, maybe."

Turning back to the other girl, Nagisa asked, "Where are we?"

The girl shrugged. "In big trouble. That's all I got."

"Oh." Nagisa looked around for a moment longer before finding another question. "What's your name?"

The girl fiddled with her wrist idly. "I'm Makoto."

"It's nice to meet you, Makoto." Of course, under the circumstances, that was mostly only true in that she was glad to not be alone or trapped with someone scary. Makoto looked more scared than Nagisa felt, which made her feel better in an odd way.

Makoto, on the other hand, didn't seem to think there was terribly much nice about it. She made a sound half way between a sigh and a grunt, and then continued fiddling with her wrist. Nagisa noticed Makoto was wearing some sort of watch on her left wrist. There was nothing else, as far as she could tell, that she had to busy herself with, so she decided to inquire.

"That looks nice. Is it a watch or a bracelet?"

Makoto looked up at her for the first time. "What?" Nagisa simply pointed at her wrist. Following her finger, Makoto realized what she was talking about. "Oh… I don't know. It was there when I woke up, and I can't get it off. …You have one too."

Nagisa looked at her right arm, then at her left arm. Sure enough, though she hadn't even noticed, there was one just like Makoto's in every way. "Someone… must have put them on us."

Makoto sighed. "Most likely. Maybe the same person who kidnapped us and put us in here. There's just two buttons on it, but I pressed them and nothing happened."

Nagisa watched the watch for several seconds, seeing that nothing was changing on the display. "It just says… the number three and the word 'pair' in green text. What does that mean?"

Makoto shrugged. "I suppose it's too much to hope that it means we get three pears as a prize when we figure out how to escape from here."

Interrupting them, a deep voice echoed around the room seemingly from nowhere. "Welcome, contestants. Participants in the seventy-seventh annual Nonary Game. You will notice that you are inside an elevator. You have been given only a limited amount of time to escape before the elevator is dropped, with you inside. Good luck."

Nagisa and Makoto exchanged shocked looks. "WHAT?!"

While Makoto started panicking and running around the room helplessly, Nagisa was looking around frantically. Clearly, there was supposed to be some way to escape, but she had no idea what it was supposed to be. Were they expected to try and open the door or escape through the hatch above them? Was there a button to open the door, or were they supposed to bash it down somehow?

In her panic, Makoto bumped into one of the railings, knocking the end loose. Nagisa gasped.

Hearing the gasp, Makoto stopped. "What is it? Is something wrong? What happened?"

"No, it's not that!" Nagisa pointed to the railing. "Look, it's loose. Look at it. Doesn't it seem strange?"

Makoto observed the railing, desperate for anything to calm herself down. "It… the railing is made of metal, but the ends are colored plastic."

Nagisa nodded, looking over the other end, and then at the other railing. "Green, red, blue, and yellow. It's a color code, I think."

Grabbing the loose handle, Makoto pulled it out. "H-hey! It's not a handle at all! Well, uh, actually, it is, but it's a screwdriver handle! They're screwdrivers! But… wait, what does that mean?"

Nagisa moved over to the other railing. "It means we can get out of here. Get the other one. I'll get these two out and then we'll look for anywhere with screws we might be able to work with."

Quickly getting the red and blue handles out of their places, Nagisa rejoined Makoto with the green and yellow ones. They quickly set about scouring the room for screws. Makoto spent most of her time investigating the big red machine, trying to find a way to get into it. Nagisa moved over to the control panel beside the door. Kneeling down, she found herself eye-level with a metal grate.

"I think…" She called over to Makoto. "I think this is it! There are colored screws on here!" Makoto joined her, and they quickly realized they had a problem.

Makoto verbalized both their thoughts. "These screwdrivers don't work. Why… why would they give us broken useless screwdrivers?"

Nagisa looked over the blue one. "I think… I think it needs something on the end. We might be able to find them if we look around some more."

Makoto turned to look at the fire extinguisher case in the corner. "I might know where to look." Heading over to the fire extinguisher in the other corner, she put her hands on the top. "The picture above the case has weird instructions. It looks like it says to get a key from the fire extinguisher and use it to open the case. That doesn't make sense. Unless of course the fire extinguisher is fake and only really here for hiding the key."

Nagisa watched as Makoto pulled the pin from the extinguisher, revealing it to be a key. She went back over to the case and unlocked it with the key, smiling that she had figured something out. Inside the case was a package with the shapes of the handles, which were in fact socket wrenches and not screwdrivers. There were also four sockets designed to fit into the ends of the handles they had found.

Makoto took them and scurried back to the metal grate. "Okay, I get it. The green screw is a pentagon shape, so the green handle and the pentagon-shaped end go together. Blue is square. Red is hexagonal. Yellow is triangle…"

She put them all together accordingly, finding her way around it surprisingly fast. Nagisa found it difficult to get in and even see what Makoto was doing, and by the time she found a good angle Makoto was removing the last screw, which was in fact actually a bolt. Not that either of them knew the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench, or a screw and a bolt.

Makoto pulled the last bolt free and dropped the wrench, grabbing onto the grate and pulling at it until it came off. When it gave way, sending her falling onto her back, it revealed a compartment hidden in the control panel. Now able to get in, Nagisa reached into the compartment and pulled out the sole content.

Looking over it, she mused quietly. "It's… a game?"

Makoto hopped up, looking in at it. "A game?" It took her only a moment to identify it. "Oh, yeah, I know these. It's a slide game. You have to slide that green piece so that it falls through that hole. The pink ones get in the way, and they're too big to fit in the hole."

Nagisa handed it to Makoto. "I'm from a planet with entertainment restrictions. I haven't done anything like this before."

Makoto accepted the game. "Well, I can do it then. I'm from Naniwastar. It's completely free there." She stopped. "That means… if we're from different planets, then that means we could be anywhere. Whoever took us moved us away from our homes."

Nagisa got up. "I'll start looking for anything else we need to do while you figure this out."

Makoto went about quietly sorting out the slide puzzle by the control panel. Nagisa stepped back and looked over the rest of the room. They hadn't done anything with the two panels on the sides, with buttons numbered one through nine, and the panel by the door had numbered buttons as well, including a zero. Above the buttons was the picture of a rabbit. Reaching up, she pulled the poster down and looked at it. There was writing along the bottom.

Nagisa read the line out loud, trying to make sense of it. "'Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18.' What does that mean?" Turning the poster over in her hands, she found more written on the back. "'Try counting the number of babies and old people.' What? No, wait."

Flipping the poster over again, she looked over the pictures of people. Some were elderly, while others were infants. She counted seven elderly and four infants. Looking at the panels on the sides of the room, the answer came to her. Under the image of the elder, she pressed the button numbered seven. On the other side, she pressed the one marked with a four. Approaching the panel beside the door, she scrutinized the picture of the rabbit. There were no rabbits on the poster. She pressed the zero.

At the same time, Makoto solved the slide puzzle, and a green card popped out of the game. Nagisa saw a blue card pop out of a slot right beneath the rabbit image. They turned to each other, holding their respective cards.

Makoto frowned. "Well, uh… what do we do with them?"

Nagisa found the frown to be contagious. "I don't know."

Just as quickly, Makoto's mood brightened. "Wait, I saw slots in that machine where these should fit." She grabbed Nagisa's card and rushed over to the machine. By the time Nagisa caught up, Makoto had entered both cards into their respective slots, and a big screen on the machine was lit up bright green. Confused, Makoto exclaimed, "What does this mean?"

Nagisa looked at the screen. It showed only a three by three grid. Three of the spaces were occupied by a sun, a moon, and a star shape. "It's a pattern… or something."

Makoto knelt down. "That looks like the button on this thing."

Nagisa looked down at what Makoto was referring to, seeing what she had thought was another part of the big machine. Now that she looked closer, it looked more like a safe. "Ah, so that's a password?"

Makoto nodded. "Okay, I'll open it. Tell me what to put in."

Nagisa started to relay what was, in fact, a passcode and not a password. "Okay… the top right corner is a star. The bottom left is a moon. The middle left is a sun." She looked down again. "Did you get it?"

Makoto stood up, leaving the safe hanging open. She held up a key. "I mean, I think it worked. Now where does this go? We've run out of places to look."

Nagisa looked back at the control panel beside the door. "There's a keyhole over there."

Makoto nearly tripped over herself running over to the panel. She fumbled with the key before managing to get it in and turning it. Opening up, a small section of the panel revealed a red button surrounded by yellow and black stripes. Without hesitating, Makoto pushed the button.

With a loud metallic thud, the hatch on the ceiling swung out and open.