I have no idea if you know me... but I'm already writing a story named "Next" here.

But because my brain is full of story ideas which want to be written down properly I started to write down this story one day.

I know it's silly writing two stories at once, but in fact I'm writing... *counting* 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... around eight to nine at this time. I'm serious.

And there are so many which I have to start.

However, I don't want to bore anyone which such information and tell straightaway what you need to know about this story.

There will be a lot of twists and turns and everything but it DOES make sense. Really. I promise.

And now have a nice time reading it.

Prologue:

The Lost Girl

"The people connected by the blue thread are destined to spend a life crossing each other, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break"

"When you're lost there's nowhere to go but forward. One step at a time – and the way will show itself"

October 2102

There she was. Sitting in the darkness, barely be seen from the position he stood.

The girl was merely ten years old and was already living all alone on the cold streets. He could see her shiver in the darkness, a simple and small movement in the dark. Almost every second a shiver ran through her body and he could hear her cry silently. He could see her, even if she couldn´t see him.

He had just been walking around. He loved walking around the glittering night. But usually he walked to a forest far way. Nowadays everything was paved and full of silly skyscrapers. There were only a few forests left. In a forest you could see the sky in his whole beauty if there weren´t that many trees in the way. In the city the sky was always illuminated by lights which made it hard to look over to the stars who shone like gigantic, but far, far away diamonds, in the dark blue sky. But today he hadn´t had enough time ‒ so little time, so much work to do ‒ to go there and so he had simply decided to just take a walk in the darker parts of the town.

Every time he went to the forest, to his very special walking-around forest, he never met another person on his way due to everyone just being in the city. And when the took walks in the city he tried to avoid as much people as he could. In his opinion taking walks should be quiet, personal things. Things you didn´t share with someone else. And still he had stopped walking when he saw this little girl.

The girl was sitting between two really ugly buildings ‒ probably the ugliest the boy had ever seen ‒ and a bunch of boxes full of paper and old furniture. The faint moonlight, who had succeeded not being catched by the bright lights of the city, illuminated her hair, giving the brown a silver glance. Her face was pale in the light and her tears glittered like crystals. He heard her sobbing and saw her shivering and for a moment his heart sunk.

Should he reveal himself?

She only wore a thin dress, a dirty light blue which had been probably not so dirty once. Her hair was messy and her dress showed marks of fire.

The boy didn´t like fire. He couldn´t remember why, but he had always hated fires. He didn´t fear them, he just hated them. And probably the girl would hate but also fear the fire from now on.

The fire-marks, the late time and the fact that she was alone in a part of the city which is not exactly the best place for such a little child, crying, shivering and looking just poor with her thin, unhealthy-looking face, he could only guess that she recently lost her family due to a fire. That was the only explanation why her parents hadn´t gone to search for her already. That she looked so thin and incredibly fragile. That her face was marked by poorly brushed smoke. That her hair was also shining dirty grey in the white light of the moon. And that she coughed during her cry.

The poor girl had lost her family to a fire and had ran in her panic to flee from the flames to this ugly and dirty place. The boy assumed that she even got lost here.

A few days before his fourteenth birthday he had lost his father to some ax-swinging maniac. He had been over it in seconds but his mother had been still sobbing herself into sleep sometimes, even years after the incident. His mother died just around half a year ago due to an illness, leaving her only son all alone on earth. All alone in this terrible country.

He hadn´t mind. But he had never been the understanding, sentimental one. He was the frowning one, every time someone said how bad they felt. He couldn´t understand why so many people cared about so trivial things like "I forgot to water my beloved, of-all-times favourite plant. I will miss you forever, Dahlia Number 314". Even as a child he didn´t cry for such things like the death of the class mascot. Also he couldn´t understand why the children of his age never questioned anything or thought before doing anything. They just ran around, screaming and nearly killing each other in their plays.

But this girl was probably being really desperate due to her current state. She had lost her family or just her parents. She had nowhere she could go to. She was alone in a terrifying place with a ghost boy watching her.

If he was be this little ten-year-old girl and not he or he being ten and a girl, but this girl herself, he would be quite terrified too.

He never felt pity and sentimentality to someone before, but now to this girl ridiculously much. It surprised him.

Also he had never stopped to watch some person on the edge of the street. Something had catched his attention, even if this had happened unconsciously.

The boy looked around, in hope to find out what exactly had caught his attention. He didn´t like what was happening to him in the slightest. Why this girl interested him or why he felt for the first time in his life pity for someone.

And then he saw it.

He frowned. No, this couldn´t be. This was simply... impossible.

On the other side of the two ugly buildings the girl sat in-between there was another one of these incredibly ugly houses. But this one had one of those street scanners attached on one of its walls. The boy didn´t like them because they measured hues and hues were important to determine psycho-passes. Also they were instruments of the Sibyl System which had swallowed down entire Japan years ago. Even if he thought in such a deprecative way of the System he was still walking around as freely as you could be in this rotten world.

When he was a child he had always wondered why he could detest the System and could still have a ridiculously pure hue and low psycho-pass. Later, right after his mother´s death, he found out that he had the ability to control this two things. If he wanted his hue to cloud, it immediately clouded. If he wanted to rise his psycho-pass, it immediately rose.

The boy had never heard of something like that or that someone had the same ability as he. But he knew that Sibyl would send people to catch him if he shared his ability with the world so he remained quiet.

However, this girl had probably lost her family days ago and sat wobbling right in front of one of those street scanners. It was known that not even children were safe from Sibyl, the checks and the scanners. Even children could be declared as latent criminals. And latent criminals were those who thought about the System as a bad thing or who could possibly be someday maniac who killed people or something like that. Psycho-passes, in fact, could rise every time. If you were stressed or desperate. Or... or you had already lost your entire family to some fire.

But this little girl was crying for her loss, mourning for her parents and possible siblings. She felt desperate because she didn´t know where to go. She was cold because she sat between some old boxes full of rubbish while a cold wind rushed through the dark night. She was afraid and shivering. If she was sitting here for days, she was probably even incredibly hungry and thirsty.

There could be no way that her hue still wasn´t clouded a bit.

And there was no way that the scanner still didn´t catch her.

Unless...

For a moment the boy´s eyes widened and his belly turned flips. He had never thought that there could be someone like him in this world. But this was the only explanation why this little girl could sit here in the dark and be all desperate and sad without alarming this stupid street scanner. And suddenly he felt something warm in his stomach.

He stepped forward and the girl stopped crying and flinched when she noticed that someone was walking to her direction. She tried to stand up, but she was too weak and fell back to the ground.

He stepped before her and for the first time he could see her face as clearly as you could see a dirty face. He frowned. Something of this little girl´s face was strangely familiar...

In the white, ghostly moonlight her face was somewhat frightening.

"I´m not here to hurt you", he told her, as softly as he could, showing her his bare hands. He had never talked to little girls before and didn´t have an idea how he could speak to her without scaring her.

And, he thought, why I am doing this anyway?

Wasn´t it easier to let her go? But wouldn´t she die then? He had never mind if someone had died. He shouldn´t yet.

And then something on this little girl was familiar.

And then she was like him: Lost and special.

The boy kneed so that he was on the same eye level as the girl.

"You can trust me. I won´t do anything to you. I´m here to help"

Still she just stared at him.

He held out a hand to her. "Really. You can take it. I won´t do anything. Promise. You know? I also lost my parents"

Suddenly her eyes widened. So he had been right all the time.

"Orphans know each other, right?"

The boy tried a simple smile and he hoped that it wasn´t terrifying. For a long time she looked at him and then slowly took his hand. Her hand was so incredibly small and fragile in his. And her eyes were so wide and beautiful in the white moonlight when she looked at him and said through them: "Really?"

He nodded and his smile grew a bit bigger.

"I´m Makishima Shogo and you can trust me. I promise"

The quote is by "Journey of Shadows" by Sam J. Charlton, which I didn't read but the quote fit.

The second quote I mean. The first one is just a general saying for the red threat which I... edited. And this will be kind of the lead quote of the whole story, don't ask.

And why again quotes? I had so much fun searching for quotes for "Next" (I already have them all) that I thought... "Why not again?". And also... it's a story with Shogo. I think quotes fit here even more than in "Next."

Also the time will skip between the present and the past. This chapter is a piece of the past, by the way.

After a long thought I decided to not beta this story. Because I don't want to find myself another beta-reader (this whole system is SO strange) or overwork the nice Aruu who agreed to beta "Next." (Thank you so much.)

However, this means that this story would more likely be TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, DREADFUL (sorry). And if you want to correct me, do it in the reviews of mail me. I will correct it and will try not do the same mistake again. Deal? Deal. (Yes, I can hear you scream "Deal.")

Fine.

Seeing you next time!

Momo

- currently working on chapter eight ("CA") and twelve ("Next") and patentietly hoping that someone actually likes this story and everything

(Updated on October 25, 2014 and October 27, 2014)