Breakfast is not all that Jellal hoped.
The fat guy must have spread rumors about him or something, or maybe all guards just have a nasty temper, but whatever the reason he's kicked in the shins about five times before they even reach the main hall: a giant bowl of gray stone with a floor dusted in sand, bare of any furniture, but so packed with people they have to pick their way through the bodies on tiptoe to squeeze in the last niche of free space. Even then there's an elbow stabbing Jellal in the ribs, and someone thinks it's okay to balance their bread on top of the boy's head like he's a table. He gets crumbs all over his hair.
"...Is it always like this?" he asks Rob, but the room roars with noise and the old man's gone deaf with age, so Jellal just gives up on asking questions.
Rob just laughs, and signals to an indistinguishable figure who brings them each a crust of bread—crust being the key word here. Jellal wonders if it'll disintegrate if he tries to hold it too firmly, so he just bats it from hand to hand, trying to keep it from crumbling. His stomach groans.
"Eat, Jellal!" Grandpa Rob shouts above the din.
"But—"
"I recommend that you eat as much as possible as quickly as possible. Generally, most of us are civil towards one another, but some of the hungrier kids might..."
"Might what?" Jellal shouts back. It's no use—he can't hear himself think, much less talk.
The bread begins to shake alarmingly, so he decides the only thing to do now is to frantically stuff it in his mouth before it disappears on him. He just barely makes it. It tastes kind of like a mix of flour and dirt, and he really hopes he's mistaken, but is something crawling in his mouth?
"Yum," he tells Grandpa, giving the old man a thumbs up.
Grandpa Rob smiles.
And then the guards walk in—and the roar softens to the hiss of whispers, which then gives to the click of hard boots, a slam of a spear (and the sickening crunch of bone, a cry of pain); a man in a gold mask cleans the blood off his spearpoint with his spit, and steps on the bread of a girl barely four years old—then silence. Thousands of people, starved to the point of madness, put down their food and look up.
"This," the man in the mask says, "is an orientation. Welcome, one and all, to life in the R-system." His eyes, through the holes in his mask, crinkle with kindness, like he's a kind babysitter or a clown at a kid's birthday party. "Rest assured, if you don't die, then I hope you enjoy your stay here."
His spear, from point to shaft, is a dull and faded red—and is it possible, Jellal wonders, to spill so much blood that you can't even clean it off anymore? How many bodies were impaled on the end of that thing to stain it so red?
The man with the mask flips the spear in the air and catches it with a bow. "Ah, this? This is Lightning. We're old friends. Would someone like to volunteer so that I can show what Lightning can do?"
No one makes a sound.
"Come on," he pouts. "You new workers are no fun. No one?" He waits for a second, and then, "Fine. I guess I'll have the honor of choosing my own volunteers. How about...aha! You look like you need some love, don't you, little kitten?"
A small, whiskered little girl in the back of the room goes white and lets out a soft, "Meow?"
She's propelled forward by the crowd—which ebbs back and forth, like waves, pushing the girl and receding, pushing and receding—and they tie back her hands and get her down on her knees, like a human sacrifice.
The spear hums. Electricity zaps down the length of it's bloodstained shaft.
The girl is going to die.
.
.
.
Jellal will not let this girl die.
She can't be more than seven years old. Her smile is gap-toothed. She only comes up to about his shoulder. She looks exactly like a kitten, down to the fluffy hair and the button nose.
She will not die. No one else is going to die anymore.
Steeling himself for a fight, he prepares to run at the masked man and knock that bloody spear out of his hands (and yes, he knows that the man can pick the spear back up, and no, Jellal has not thought about what he's going to do next). Magic powered the lightning in that spear, but Jellal didn't have magic; he didn't have anything except a conviction that this girl cannot die, and that's enough for him. So he gets ready to charge.
He charges exactly two feet before Rob grabs him by the scruff of the neck and hauls his scrawny butt back into the crowd.
"Are you mad?" The old man's kind expression turns deadly with rage. "Do you want to die?"
"Lemme go! He's going to kill her!" Jellal whisper-shouts back.
"And what do think you can do about it? Do you think that the Head Official is the only guard with an electrified spear? What about the other twelve men behind him, hmm? If you save that girl, you will provoke them into openly attacking. And then there will be a massacre."
"I—I can do something—"
"There is nothing you or me can do. Nothing any of us can do. She has been chosen."
"But Grandpa, look at her, she's going to die without any help!"
"She will not die," Rob says. "That is not their aim. They do not intentionally kill off their slaves—yes, they are not very nurturing, I'll admit, but for all their cruelty the Officials are not stupid enough to eliminate their work-force, especially the children. They need the children most of all."
"She's...going to live?"
"Yes. Perhaps."
"Perhaps? What do you mean, perhaps? So the fact that there's only a possibility of certain death makes this all okay?" He struggles even harder to free himself from Grandpa Rob's grip, but for all his old age, the man holds steadfastly onto Jellal, and his hold only tightens. "Lemme go right now, Grandpa, I can't let someone die or get hurt again—"
"And I can't let you get hurt." Rob sighs. "If I put you down, do you promise not to do anything reckless?"
He nods.
"Fine, then. But don't think I can't catch you again. I may be old, but I'm determined, too." He deposits Jellal gently onto the cavern floor.
"You said that there would be no punishments today. That the worst that can happen is we run out of bread. Did you lie to me?"
"I did not," Rob says, a gentle tone to his voice now. "I'm sorry. I truly did not know that it was going to be like this. Things are...changing now. More child slaves being brought in, less food. More punishments, targeting the small and weak, weeding them out. Longer hours. They're anxious to get the R-system completed quickly."
Jellal glances at the girl and the masked man, who is still toying with her, scratching her under the chin and calling her kitty. "Here, kitty kitty, do you want to play with Lightning?" The girl is shaking like she's freezing cold, cat-like eyes round and wide, and her meows decrescendo with each threat, until Jellal realizes she's not meowing anymore—she's whimpering. She's scared.
"Is there really nothing we can do?" he murmurs softly.
"Not now," Rob replies. "If we can get to her quickly enough, then I might be able to treat the girl. I know some basic herbal remedies that can be found around the R-system. It might not be much, but it should be enough to keep her alive."
Jellal cringes. "And...if it isn't?"
"Then she's dead," Grandpa Rob says flatly.
"That's it?"
"That's it. She might die the instant she's electrocuted. Unlikely, but with someone so small and frail, possible. If I don't treat her within a single minute of her punishment, her heart might fail, and at that point...it's the end for that poor child. She'll be gone."
"A single minute," Jellal repeats.
"Yes. A minute is all she has."
The lightning racing up and down the length of the spear crackles, and the masked man grins. "Guess it's time now, pretty kitty. You ready?"
"Please don't hurt me," the little girl squeaks. Her eyes close.
Just like that, Jellal forgets everything Grandpa Rob warned him of (spears, deaths, a massacre, to hell with it) and he runs as fast as he can towards the man with the battle cry of, "LET HER GO!" but his timing is off by a split second, a fraction of a second, even, because the instant he reaches the girl and grabs her arms, her body ignites yellow and she starts screaming—and screaming—and screaming screaming screaming...
And Jellal is screaming, too...
The man's mask is gone now, and he smirks at Jellal before vanishing into a cloud of black smoke, taking his guards with him.
"Milliana!" someone cries, and everything goes black.
.
.
.
He feels like someone's boiled him in acid and then dropped a piano on him. And then hit him with a train and whacked him with a hammer for good measure. He feels like death. He feels like he's been tortured. He feels like hell.
"You should feel like a fool," a voice snaps. Does he know that voice? He probably does, but everything is so hazy, he can't even remember his name...
.
.
.
"Is he going to be okay?" a voice asks, very softly. It's a different voice—a girl's voice. And this one he's sure he knows.
Crying girl, he thinks.
"Yes, Erza, don't worry. He'll be fine. A bit achy in the head for a few days—and though I don't like seeing him hurt, I can't say he wasn't asking for it—but fine nonetheless."
"And Melly? Is she going to be okay?"
"Milliana suffered quite a shock, but she's not badly hurt. In fact, she didn't even take the full brunt of the blow. I think when Jellal grabbed her he must have absorbed some of the electricity in his own body, or shielded her, or along those lines—otherwise the injuries she sustained could well have been fatal."
"He was so brave," the crying girl—Erza, was it?—says in a hushed whisper.
"He is a brave boy," the other voice, which he identifies as Rob's, admits. "Addled in the brains without a doubt, pulling a stunt like that, but it does take more courage than I believed anyone could possess. He...reminds me of some old friends of mine, a long time ago."
Determined to get up, Jellal struggles to open his eyes; he catches a flash of bright red for a single second before they slide shut, like they are made of stone. "Grandpa Rob..." he croaks.
"Ah, you're finally revived. Shh. It's night-time now. Just go to sleep."
"But the cat girl—"
"—is fine," finishes Erza. Her voice is quiet as ever. Jellal wonders if she's ever shouted in her life. "You saved her. Thank you."
"I'm—glad that...you're both okay," he manages. "You're...that girl from the cart...aren't you?"
"You don't look so good," she frets. "Why don't you get some rest?" A gentle hand touches his forehead, and he sighs with equal parts contentment and exhaustion. "I...um, we can talk when you wake up, okay?"
"Okay." He yawns. "Hmm. G'night, Erza."
"'Night," she whispers back.
They both fall asleep at the same time.
.
.
.
Boing, boing, boing.
He wakes up to the cat girl bouncing up and down on his chest, squealing, "He's awake! Mrow!"
"...Huh?" Jellal says.
"Jeez, Melly, I told you to wake the guy, not jump on him," comes another voice. It comes from a boy that's taller than Jellal, with fair skin and dark eyes like most of the prisoners there. His head is oddly square-shaped.
"And you're here, too, Wally!" the cat girl squeals.
"Hey, is that kid with the blue hair up yet?" says yet another unidentifiable voice. Jellal is starting to get a little fed up with strangers peeking in on him when he's trying to sleep. It's another kid, tan and dark like Wally—but his head seems a normal enough oval-ish shape. Do I have a funny-shaped head? Jellal wonders, for the first time.
"Simon," Wally greets. "Yep, he's up."
"Simon! You're—"
"Yes, Melly, I'm here, and that's very exciting." His face softens. "Hey, I'm really glad to see that you're okay. Yesterday must've been really scary for you."
Milliana's chipper mood doesn't wane the slightest bit. "Yeah, but Jelly Belly saved me because he's the best kitty ever. He's an even better kitty than you, Wally!"
Wally shrugs. "Hey, if you want to go through the torture that's being Melly's cat, then you're welcome to it. Honestly, I'd actually appreciate it. Any more of carrying her around and my back is going to give out."
Jellal blinks, still groggy. "Wait a second...Jelly Belly? Um...kitty?"
Simon sighs. "Stuck being her cat, huh? I feel bad for you. But thank you. You know, for saving Melly. I owe you one for keeping her safe." He sticks out a hand. "I'm Simon Mikazuchi."
"Jellal Fernandes." They shake hands.
"Hey, wait a second, where's Erza?" Simon asks suddenly, looking around.
"Erza?" He likes that name a lot, for some reason—it sounds pretty when he says it. "She was here when I fell asleep. Grandpa Rob isn't here either. Maybe they went somewhere together." He struggles to his feet. "You want to go find them?"
"Yeah. Okay. You coming, Wally?"
"I'm going where Jelly Belly the kitty is going!" Milliana asserts.
Wally nods. "Okay, sure. If Melly's going, then I'll come. I don't even know who Erza is, though."
"I know Erza, and Shou is probably with her—they were both put in the same cell as me. Grandpa Rob—is that the guy who healed you and Melly?"
Jellal nods.
"I should thank him, too. Let's go." They walk out together, with Milliana still bouncing up and down and squealing, "Kitty!" every time she spots Jellal. He sighs.
He's not picky about nicknames, truly—
.
.
.
—but if he were allowed any input on the matter (which of course he isn't) Jelly Belly...would not be his first choice.
He considers telling Melly that, but she almost died, and she loves cats so much—he just doesn't have the heart.
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AN: Hmm. Reviews greatly appreciated.