1.04

Insanity

Next thing I remember were people talking.

"Why, Argonaut? He wasn't looking for an answer."

"I know, but I promised Onore that I'd give him the same choice."

They say that when you die, you're surrounded by light. I never bothered to ask how they would know. I now believe that the phrase got screwed up and instead, it's that the first thing you see after being rescued from the sewers is the florescent light above the medical table. Soon my eyes adapted, and I saw what looked like Argonaut, except in poorer condition: His outfit was replaced with an old wool shirt lacking any sleeves, and his tribal mark was gone. To my right stood girl with the French braid, only her braid was gone, and her clothing matched Argonaut's. She looked down at me.

"Mornin', Sunshine." She said with a small grin.

"What the fuck's going on?" so much for composure.

"After you fell into the sewers you lost consciousness and we hoisted you up onto our hovercraft."

"What?"

Argonaut stepped in, "Just relax; we need to rebuild your muscles."

At that point I looked down; the entirety of my body was covered in needles. I tried to say something, but the girl with the red hair, whatever her name was, put her hand on my forehead, "Shhh," she said, "All answers will come in time. Now, you need to rest." A thing that can be said about women; they know how to make men do what they don't want to.

I woke up in what looked like a submarine's cabin room. I put my hand on my head to see if I had a fever, only to find out that all my hair was gone. I checked the entirety of my head. Yep, I was a cue ball. I also found a hole surrounded by metal in the back of my head. A hole! What was I doing with a goddamned hole at the base of my head!

Argonaut walked in. He asked me if I was feeling okay. I lied and said I was, so he told me to get dressed. I grabbed a wool tunic and caught up to him.

"Where am I?"

He continued walking, "A better question would be when, not where."

"Okay… when am I?"

"You may think that this is the year 2005, but it's closer to 2205. I would give you the actual date, but I don't know it. Don't bother asking around, nobody knows. I'm the captain of the Mikado; the hovercraft you're on now." He climbed up a ladder, "This is the main deck."

"Wait!" I ran up to him, "I agreed to your offer in hope of finding my father. You said you knew him."

"Yes, I said I did. Before anything else, though, I'd like you to meet your crew: This is Graft," he pointed to the girl that I so longed. She looked up at me, giving me a sly half smile. Her hair was shorter than when I saw her the other day, like it was growing out from a buzz cut. "Aequitas," the kid I met earlier waved at me. I didn't know what to make of him, so I just waved back, "Felix is around here somewhere," a man's arm jumped up from an array of seven or nine monitors.

"Yo!"

He led me over to a reclining chair and told me to sit. The chair was old, had a couple of rips in it. What I was confused about wasn't that there were foot clamps, a headrest with a hole in the middle, but that there were over eight like it with computers next to each one. I asked him why, and he told me that he needed to show me something. An uneasy feeling swept me, but I'm not sure if I had any other choice. They clamped my feet down, and pushed my head back onto the headrest.

"Just relax," he said. He put a metal rod in the hole in my head.

Pain; that's the best way to describe it, I guess. Or, rather, "weird" could be a better choice. I wondered before why they didn't say "Hey, Shotokan. We're gonna put a piece of metal in your head." Oh well. I didn't have time to complain, cause next thing I knew I was standing in the middle of a white… nothing; no floor, no sky, nothing except for me. The white noise you get when you leave the T.V. on but nothing's playing surrounded me, and it was driving me mad.

I put my hands over my ears when I discovered my hair – my jet black ponytail – was back. I was no longer wearing that smelly old tunic anymore, either; in its place was my old denim jacket surrounding the green shirt my friend Gabe knifed against a wall; the rags that covered my legs were replaced by my favorite pair of jeans; I was even wearing my luck ring.

I was seriously beginning to question my sanity at this time.