Chapter Thirty Seven: Dystopia

"Oh... my head..." I muttered, opening my eyes. "Was that all a dream, or was I..."

I looked around. The sky was at dusk, clouded by storm clouds. I was still in the Radiant Garden's Marketplace, but it was different. Everything was in a shambles, including the distant castle.

"What... happened to me?" I asked myself, looking down at my hand. "Where am I?"

It began to rain. I trudged forward, unhappy but unafraid. After a few minutes, I made it to the Rising Falls... where I was shocked to see a shantytown. There were makeshift buildings all over the place, even on the water.

"Hey... what's goin' on?" I asked the first scraggly person I encountered. "What'r y'all doin'?"

"Whadda ya think?!" the stranger asked angrily. "Foraging for food."

Foraging? There ain' enough food?

I went through the shantytown, passing people huddled on the water around burning barrels... people sleeping in the streets and on the water, people fighting over small pieces of bread, people wandering aimlessly through the crowded and disorganized streets until they fell over, exhausted... or worse.

"There's an odd scent in the air," I muttered, sniffing. "The scent... of death."

After a little more wandering, I came upon a heap of burning bodies.

"What is this place...?" I asked myself, horrified. After getting over the scent of roasting humans, I went back up to the Marketplace. I wandered around a bit before spotting black coat wearing guys. I decided it would be in my best interest to stay out of their sight (as a rule, I never start talking to people who wear black unless I know who they are), afraid for my health.

After darting around, dodging more black-clad guards (who, by the way, were armed with large billy clubs), I managed to make my way into the now-dim corridors leading to Ansem's computer room. I dashed through the halls, still wary and making sure not to be spotted by the guards. Unfortunately, when I finally got to the room, it was closed... and locked.

"Hm... what should I do now?" I asked myself.

I don't have a Gummi Ship... Ansem's computer room is locked... there's a shantytown down in the Rising Falls... what's going on?

I went and jumped down to the Heartless factory, taking a bit of impact on the knees. After stumbling from the pain, I looked up to see the factory working... at an astounding rate. Heartless rose up to attack me, but I cut them down with relative ease. Before I could leave, an alarm began blaring.

INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER...

The voice was a lot different from the annoying, feminine voice of the computer before. It was harsh and rough...

"Crap!" I shouted to myself. I dashed up the stairs, then forced the door open with my spare hand. I dashed through the room, forcing the other door open as well, before being confronted with dozens of the armed security guards. I beat them all down, allowing the fact that they were only able to come through the door one by one, then jumped on their fallen bodies and ran out of the room. I dashed through the corridors until I reached the exit...

Where more security guards than I could possibly hope to take down on my own surrounded me.

"Halt! You're under arrest!" a guard shouted. I dismissed my Keyblade and held my hands up. One of the guards promptly handcuffed me, and I was led, with my head down, to the dungeons of Hollow Bastion...

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"Shaddup and don't move!" one of the guards shouted as I was thrown into the dungeon. I got up, massaging my bruised wrist, then began to putter around the dungeon.

What'd I do?

After a little while, I settled down on a flat rock and went to sleep...

I was jarred awake by someone's shouting. I got up and went to the bars of my cell to see someone kicking and screaming while being carried off by two of the black-garbed guards. I didn't make a sound, though other nearby prisoners shouted and hollered.

After the prisoner had been carried off, I decided to ask another inmate about this.

"Hey, dude," I asked the guy in the cell next to me. "What's goin' on?"

"You mean you don't know? What are you, mental?" the man replied.

"Well... no," I said. "I've been... away."

"Away? There's nowhere you can run to escape the Dark Lord," he said, sighing. "That's why we're all here."

Dark Lord...? Amy?

I sighed, then stared at the roof of my cell.

I wanted adventure, not a different brand of boredom...