Disclaimer: FLCL and all associated ideas, characters, and images are the property of Gainax and Production I.G. All use on my part of the aforementioned is purely for entertainment purposes only and result in no profit on my part. I will not delay in removing this story should the property's owners request it.

FOOLY COOLY DUO

Mabase. An average little town where nothing extraordinary ever happens.

There was a time where that wasn't so. The ruins of the old Medical Mechanica plant juts into the landscape forever in the distance, serving as a reminder to those who know the truth. The truth of just how close humanity as a living, breathing organism came to a sickenly quiet end.

Shame that you can count the number of those who truly understand the significance of the monument on one hand. The rest of them wander about, content to keep their eyes to the ground. The strange events of the past are less than a memory to the people of Mabase.

The rubble has long been since swept away and all has returned to normal. In a sad little family bakery business is as poor as usual, printed papers scattered all over the floor reveal the owner's real passion: a trashy little minizine.

Children grow older. Day becomes night. A truck backfires in the distance.

That's Mabase.

At least, that's Mabase as I remember it.

I haven't seen a single brick of it in five long years.

Introduction: Letter to the Editor

Imagine, if you can, what it must have been like for me. That's the point isn't it, of a story? See the world from someone else's perspective? Live vicariously through the eyes of someone whose life is exceedingly more interesting than your own? It's nothing you should be ashamed to admit.

I had been through so much by that point, but you know all about that. My actions had saved my friends, my family, and the future of humanity itself. I had finally learned what it was to love another, and to feel the ache of that love being unrequited. Through all the madness I adapted to all the changes within myself and everything around me. I overcame my hormone-induced frustration and in the end I wielded the power of a god, power that no one entity should ever have at their disposal. Not Medical Mechanica, and certainly not the woman I adored more than any other.

I realize now that releasing Atomsk wasn't why I lost her. I lost her simply because I never had her. No one ever has, and no one ever will. Haruhara Haruko loves power, the ability to do anything and everything she wills precisely when she wishes to. It's the only way she can protect herself and inadvertently people like her—those who their lives so far off the reservation. I'm not bitter, five years of hell does a lot to diminish the pain of losing a first love. Makes it seem rather silly after awhile.

I had finally learned what it was to be adult, to be whom and what I am. "Be yourself," I'll be the first to admit it sounds like a cheesy slogan. However, I realized then and now that the act of trying to grow up was in fact what made me self-consciously immature. By simply accepting myself for the age I was and letting time take its natural course, I had already surpassed in maturity every other adult in my life. It seems so simple now: by being a kid I had finally grown up. That is precisely why it was it was so cruel that I was taken when I was.

The kind of brutally efficient cruelty that only good intentions can bring about.

I was plucked from the streets after school not long after I began my first year at Middle School. As far I know my former friends and family consider me dead or missing. I feel like both. I was blinded and unceremoniously tossed around like a sack of potatoes, until I finally shoved into the cold, sterile facility. That was when the real horror began.

I am an anomaly I have been told. A genetic or even spiritual impossibility brought on by a combination of factors so twisted, overlapped, and complex that no blend of modern human science can even hope to begin to pick apart the strings. Humans of my unique persuasion normally could never have been expected until well over four millennia further down the trail of human history. What makes me so special you may ask?

Between the two hemispheres of my brain I am capable of sustaining an N.O. channel more powerful than any seen by human eyes. It's worth noting that human eyes now extend well beyond our own solar system and have begun to pierce the homelands of others. However, none other has been found able to rival my own. I'm the best kept secret to be found for light years in any direction, known only to select human circles and even fewer among the Galactic Space Patrol Brotherhood. That makes an immeasurably precious commodity on an interplanetary scale.

I can barely contain myself.

With my N.O. channel my captors are able to draw out objects of varying sizes from distances ranging from next door to across expanses so vast that light years alone cannot measure them. I'm essentially an alien technological grab bag. Humanity has grown tired of being the primitive arm pit of the known universe, the butt of every alien species' joke from here to Alpha Centauri. With me they hope to skip millennias of bothersome evolution and technological advancement. They have any number of drugs, tools, and procedures now to extract technology from my head.

My sleep consists of no fewer than twelve hours of drug-induced nightmares. This is the time in which they extract, log, and carry away their little goodies to be picked apart for further study. I know this only because I woke once in the middle of the process, when the pain inflicted on my mind and body by an especially large object broke through the fog. I won't attempt to describe that sort of pure carnal fear and agony, it's not possible.

During the day I'm run through a variety of exercises designed to increase the power and efficiency of all sections of the brain. Classical literature, art, mathematics, the sciences, and even a variety of hand coordination drills to encourage ambidexterity. I have no idea where I stand education wise in comparison with others my age in the outside world, as I have never experienced it. My best guess however, puts me well beyond normality. At night I suffer, and in the day I suffer some more. I am a machine. The studies I am force fed are where I find the most peace, the rest drains my sanity with obnoxious hoops to jump. On top of this, I'm fed a constantly changing experimental cocktail of drugs and substances intended to improve my abilities. Some side effects I doubt there are even names for. Every room I'm wheeled into bombards me from every wall with a streaming mixed video of random words, events, and images. I can only assume this is intended for further brainwashing. This strikes me as tremendously unnecessary.

In the beginning I was treated almost like a human being. However with the addition of each new method of "improvement," less of what I was remained. I've degraded from an animal to a simple tool. I am atrophic from the waist down, this is no inconvenience to men who can now simply wheel me now where they please.

My captors are the Department of Interstellar Immigration: Research and Development Branch. I am the sacrificial lamb on the altar.

The prayer? A brighter future for mankind.

Any and all information revealed here is almost entirely the product of my own observations and insinuations. Almost none has been volunteered to me.

I live now solely within the refuge of my own mind, for my body is no longer my own. Even my mind however, is under constant assault. I find my spells of total human clarity lessen with every day. If I am to do something to escape this existence, I fear it must be sooner than later.

With this sad little butter knife I intended to take my own life. Moments ago I wished for nothing more than to leave this sickened, waxy shell empty here in this sparse and dank little cell. When faced with the possibility of death and its simple mercy however, I find myself unable to do the deed. What stays my hand I do not know, but instead I use it to carve this message.

Perhaps it is that single tiny window and it's light. I wish it were lower, so that it may provide me some view. But, it does not and never did, no matter how much I screamed for it, back when I had the moisture of tongue and the air in my lungs to do so.

Below the loose tiles of this floor you found this message and you wonder why bother?

Simply to gather my thoughts I suppose, to keep myself sane for just this much longer.

Honesty. Named for honesty.

Is it ever too late to pray? I hope not.

Nandaba Naota

Author's Note: Let this serve as an introduction, an attempt at testing the waters of the FLCL fanfiction base, so to speak. If you liked what you read, than please let me know and I will update with haste in a more typical fashion. By this I mean: plot, story progression, character interaction, and my favorite: dialogue. Let this message be my way of delivering the concept.