How I got here isn't exactly clear: a bright light, a loud bang, then pain. Goddamn the pain. I remember the moment that my sister hit me with the Subaru when learning to drive and getting a broken femur as a result, thinking, this is the most pain I could ever imagine. I was wrong. It was as if every bone in my body had been pummeled by a semi going sixty miles an hour.
The place in which I landed was familiar, yet so strange. I had grown up with an uncle who ran a junkyard and my first reaction was that I was back there, somehow transported a few hundred miles to that old, backwoods town. The fear set in when I realized that the machine next to me was entirely foreign, not just to me but to my planet. Nothing like it had existed on earth, even Elon Musk was years from even imagining it.
I knew I had a concussion; the fuzziness, nausea, and pain indicated as such. Was this all just because of that, like, Is this some hallucination? Am I dreaming? Am I dead?
The effort I was expending started taking a toll on my brain, and I felt myself fading.
The next image I got was of a bright room, too bright for my eyes to focus on anything or anyone making the voices I heard so strange and disembodied.
"What's this?" the voice was gruff, but female.
"A gift. Something he hasn't seen before." This voice was male, some odd accent foreign to me.
"I highly doubt that, but I will let him know. Stay there."
I tried to cry out, ask them not to leave me. I'm going to die. I don't even know where I am, but I am going to die here. Alone. I felt it coming back, the blackness, and I was helpless to stop it.
The next time I awoke, the room was just as bright but I could handle it now. It probably had something to do with the mental helmet strapped to my head. I attempted to sit up, but realized I was paralyzed, completely unable to move anything except for my eyes. What the actual Fuck is going on?
"You can relax, it is just a nerve agent. You aren't permanently paralyzed." A tall being with light pink skin and rounded furry ears came into my line of sight. Now who is this Pink Panther looking mother fucker? "Its momentary, just something to keep any damages from accruing. You came in with a pretty bad concussion, wasn't sure if it could be reversed. You are a lot tougher than you look, Terran."
Terran? What the fuck is a Terran? I tried moving again, causing the screens to blink and beep and he must have noticed because he chuckled.
"You'll be kept here for a few days to observe your recovery, then the Grand Master will decide what to do with you." Mr. Pink Panther left then, shutting the main light off leaving me in near darkness save for the two machines I was hooked up to. I tried to figure out what exactly it was that they were monitoring, but they had strange symbols rather than words.
I was visited three times a day the next four days, sometimes by Mr. Pink Panther alone, other times by him and a pair of golden women. They spoke to each other as if I didn't exist, many times in languages I couldn't even recognize.
On the fifth day, a woman with a severe bun and a military-esque uniform came in and placed a small disk on my neck. The disk immediately attached itself painfully into my skin. If I could have cried out I would have; it was as if I had just been bitten by a small metal rodent. She then grabbed a small needle off the nearest tray, full of a mean looking yellow liquid. She injected me through the arm and the reaction was almost immediate: the paralysis I had felt for the last five days was wearing off rapidly as every vein in my body burned.
"You will meet the Grand Master soon. He's not one to suffer fools so keep your mouth shut and accept your fate." Her disinterested and gruff voice was familiar, but I couldn't place it. She gave the chair a shove and it started moving on its own, leading me to a doorway and through it.
The world around me started to go black and I feared I was passing out again until a calm female voice started speaking, "Fear not, for you are found. You are home and there is no going back. No one leaves this place. But what is this place? The answer is: Sicar." The darkness was suddenly shattered with light, disorienting images floating around me. "Surrounded by cosmic gateways, Sicar lives on the edge of the known and unknown. It is the collection point for all lost and unloved things. Like you. But here on Sicar, you are significant; you are valuable; here you are loved; and no one loves you more than the Grand Master. He is: the original, the first lost, and the first found, the creator of Sicar and father of the Contest of Champions. Where once you were nothing, now you are something. You are the property of the Grand Master. Congratulations. You will meet the grand master in 5 seconds, prepare yourself. You are now meeting the Grand Master." The images that had been a combination of an unrecognizable galaxy, the representation of the building of a futuristic city, and a gladiator-esque battle blended together and all at once disappeared, leaving me in a large room facing a flashy man sitting above me on a dais.
The man looked to be in his mid-fifties with white and grey hair. His clothing consisted of a bright blue and red tunic over gold pants with a golden robe that seemed long enough to trail behind him like a bride's train. He scrutinized me with his light brown eyes, lined in a metallic blue. Next to him was the gruff woman who had confined me to the chair.
After not being able to speak for that last five days, it was hard to remember exactly how to do it, making my words clumsy and disjointed, "What is… here? Why am I—what is—why?"
"Delightful, simply delightful!" his words were disconcerting.
Trying again I opened my mouth, but before I could speak the woman pressed a golden button and pain shot through my entire body from that small disk she put on my neck. "Stop your blabbering, terran."
"Topaz, that will not be necessary. She's confused. It's understandable." The pain stopped and I collapsed back into the chair weakly. I glared openly at the woman called Topaz. "ooh, do you see that Topaz? She has fire. Spunk. I'm digging her vibes."
Looking around, I saw a small group of soldiers dressed oddly with masks and spears. The room was incredibly large, golden like it seems everything else is in this place, more a great hall than a room.
"I want a closer look. Topaz, move me closer." Topaz gave his throne a push and he glided towards me. He looked me up and down, scrutinizing every inch of my five foot four frame. I only just realized that I was no longer in the jeans and sweatshirt I had been in when I arrived in the junkyard. Instead, I was now wearing a short yellow skater dress, revealing both my legs and my chest.
"Who put this on me?" I looked unseeingly down at the ground, eyes wide with repressed rage.
"Oh, she spoke again! What was that my dear?" the Grand Master looked more amused than disturbed.
"Where are my clothes?"
"Oh my dear, those have been destroyed. Simply unbefitting your new position."
"And what position is that?"
"Watch your tone when addressing the Grand Master, trash." Topaz raised the golden devise with the button, a clear threat.
The Grand Master put his hand on Topaz's arm before replying, "A gift, my dear. A gift. You will be a gift to a new friend of mine once you are fully prepared. A way to solidify those special little bonds of friendship."
"Oh fuck no! No, no, no, no!" I struggled harder, the clamps around my wrist creaking with the force of my movements.
"Now you can, Topaz. Make it a high one. I can't have her damaging herself"
Topaz leered at me, greedily pushing the button and holding it down until I lost consciousness from the pain. It seemed like the first week I was in this Sicar I spent most of it in involuntary comas. I guess the easiest way to control someone is to render them unconscious.