I felt like I should write something for this fandom since I hadn't in a while. This is based loosely on the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo. I'm not going by all the events that took place within the real experiment since I haven't found a lot of information on the subject.
Just bear in mind I don't own any of this, but new characters might be brought in (most of them male).

Prologue

"You can go now." He seemed more nervous than he had in the past five days, standing there with his nightstick and those sunglasses hiding his dark eyes from the world. The guard bit his lip, looking at the prisoner. The man wasn't smaller than him, but he appeared to be because of the way he was curled around the dirty, brown blanket that had provided him with comfort for the entire ordeal.

"I can go?"

"Yeah, Steve, you can go," Johnny said quietly, watching his friend shuffle off, still clutching the blanket. There were people like him all around; people he had known and had been friends with in some cases. Clutching blankets, crying, looking unsure of where to go, unsure of who they were. He glanced down briefly at his own attire, seeing the light khaki of his uniform had become a dull brown. Blanket brown.

Behind him, Sodapop put a hand on his shoulder, looking at the damage that had been caused with a blank expression. His brother... his own brother for chrissake, and the things he had done to him... the young man in question moved to Steve, looking pitiful with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Johnny caught snippets of the conversation, and they only weighted his spirits further.

"... my name?"

"30231," Steve replied automatically.

Ponyboy slumped a bit but nodded. "Right, yeah."

A voice, crackling with the static from the awful PA system down in the basement of the math building, filled his ears. A welcome distraction even if the matter was not one that generally brought warm feelings. "All guards report to the meeting room."

Moments later he and the others chosen for the position of 'prison guard' sat around a table. They looked exhausted, unsure of what to say to each other now that it had actually happened. At the front of the room stood Darrel Curtis, warden and the person who had come up with the insane idea in the first place.

"We're stopping the experiment nine days ahead of schedule," he began, pressing his pointer fingers together in front of his mouth as he surveyed the group. "I have footage of the riot..."

Johnny felt sick to his stomach, wanting to jump up and yell for Darrel to burn the footage and erase any sign that the riot had ever occurred, that any of the awful experiment had ever occurred. However, he didn't, losing all strength the position of guard had given him, and finding himself very much bound in place by fear alone.

The footage began; grainy, raw and frightening, with the camera hidden in a corner of the room yet jostled by the force that people were forced up against the wall. He could see himself in the crowd, holding one of the prisoners (70982? He couldn't remember) and screaming in his ear, making him recite poetry, any sort of poetry, and screaming at him as he did it. There was Sodapop, forcing one of the others down, forcing him to do pushups until the prisoner's arms gave out and he collapsed, shoulders shaking with sobs that were lost in the overall chaos.

But there was Dallas, in solitary confinement, you could see him through the bars, and he was sitting there. Just sitting, until his door was broken open, when he jumped into the fray only to find himself moments later with a bag over his head, forced against a wall, screaming that he, 64193, had done something wrong and should be punished.

"Do you believe this to be unethical?"

All was silent. Johnny buried his head in his hands and shuddered a bit as the images played across his mind. He had toyed with people mentally... as bad as his parents...

A boy by the name of Mark decided to speak up, leaning back in his chair with a troubled expression. "Yeah. They didn't do anything... we didn't give 'em a chance."

Slight inclinations of the head was all his statement brought but it was enough to keep him going. "They didn't even start a riot. There were rumors... we acted on 'em and... Christ..." Mark looked like he was going to be sick.

There was more silence that followed, and finally Darrel sighed, ran a hand through his hair and looked at them all again. "You can pick up your hundred dollars on the way out." As they filed out, shedding bits of their uniforms as they did so, Johnny saw Sodapop farther ahead and jogged up to him, falling into step beside his friend and letting out a soft sigh.

"I dunno how I'm gonna go back to Pony," he said nervously.

"Dunno how I'm gonna face him again," Soda replied, looking absolutely devastated. "I did some awful things to him, didn't I?"

Johnny didn't know how to respond. He could try and comfort his friend, but God knows they both did some horrible things to some of their best friends without another thought. It was all a power trip.

"We both did."

"Yeah."

M&M leaned against a tree ahead of them, looking horrified as they approached. Briefly, Johnny's mind flickered to the times before one of the youngest members in the experiment had been taken out. He had locked M&M in a dark room, his laughter filling the small space as the young man begged to be let out, to be allowed some sleep. He didn't run, though, having been taken out three days in when he broke down from stress.

"I can't deal with it, man! Fucking... I can't... I'm too fucked up. Can't deal with it, too much stuff... fucked up..."

Had he been crying then? He couldn't remember.

"Hey."

The other two nodded in greeting and M&M stepped back a little bit, looking down at his shoes. He still looked tired, still afraid.

"How're you?"

"... 'm alright."

"... cool."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Johnny looked sideways at Soda, who at last put a hand on M&M's shoulder. He jumped back at the pressure and looked at them wildly. All at once Johnny could see himself back in the basement of the math building, making people recite Shakespeare, leading the prisoners in shaming their comrades. Always the same thing: "number so-and-so did a bad thing."

"They ended it early," he said slowly, showing M&M the check.

"Oh. Well... okay... I'll see y'around then?"

"Maybe."

To be truthful, Johnny didn't want to see anyone ever again.