Next to posters, event reports, political news and lots of very questionable ads, the "Weekly Sorcerer" also featured a section called "Open Questions". In it, all wizards were invited to propose answers to such eternal questions as "what type of magic is best suited to stop a volcano?", "how do you defeat a stellar wizard if you are both locked in a book store?", "is there an efficient spell to find the best route for a traveling wizard with a given number of jobs to get to?" and similar.
Among them, "how do you lock up an ice wizard?" was quite popular, and for Gray, it was a point of pride that he always found some hypothetical way to break out of any of the proposed prisons. No heat, intricate locks, flexible walls, rearranging corridors, deathly traps or similar could ever hold an ice wizard of the highest class, with the highest training and a bit too much time on his hands. Sadly, nobody had ever suggested "strap him to a bed and dose him with drugs until he can't move anymore". It seemed to be working perfectly right now.
He could still turn his head a tiny bit, and breathing wasn't a problem, either. But all the more or less intricate hand movements required to form anything out of ice were completely impossible. Not even the single-handed, highly unstable and tiny Ice Knife that he had learned after reading about one particularly effective prison was possible.
So he was resigned to looking and listening. The room he was in was brightly lit and large. There were other beds with other people around him, but how many, he could not say. Next to all of them, various machinery was placed, showing glowing lights in different colors and going "beep" every few seconds. Through high, arched windows, he could see some sort of forest, or possibly a park. Nobody was moving or talking. Nothing seemed to happen for a long time, so after what felt like an eternity, he fell asleep.
He was awakened by the sound of footsteps. A group of people had entered the room and were methodically moving through the rows of beds. They paused at all of them and muttered a few words, but he couldn't understand them clearly. Maybe this was a side-effect of the drugs.
After a few minutes, they arrived at the bed next to him, and he could finally get a good look. The leader of the group was obvious. He seemed to be at least eighty, with completely white, short hair and old-fashioned glasses. Instead of normal clothes, he was wearing a white lab coat with a tie underneath. Various pens, rulers and a syringe were visible in the front pocket. He looked at the woman lying next to Gray for a while, then at some of the various equipment around them.
"Miss Medina. This specimen seems to have died. Why wasn't I informed earlier?"
"I'm... I'm sorry, Professor Von Harzburg! This must have been recently. We've been having trouble with the alerting system on this floor." answered one of his underlings, a woman about the same age as Gray. The other underling, a man about the same age, nodded as if his life depended on it. Miss Medina continued.
"We did tell you that more personnel was necessary for uninterrupted monitoring, sir."
The professor seemed to get angry for a second, but caught himself. "Yes, I suppose you did. But you do realize the dangers, of course? The more people know..."
"Of course, sir! We understand completely!"
"Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk. Tell transportation to dispose of the body in the usual way. This one wasn't giving us good data anyway. Now, the next one..."
He moved over to Gray, while the male underlying handed the woman a sheet that she passed on to the professor. She began to explain.
"This one is new, sir, the replacement for specimen 87. Male, seventeen years old, uses ice magic, and according to initial readings, strength seems to be in the top five percent for his class. He was brought in just this morning."
"Ah, that is excellent news! I really need a form magic user for some of the next experiments, and 87 was way too weak anyway."
The professor probed Gray's arms and legs. Gray tried to kick or hit him, but his limbs would not move. Slowly, he opened his mouth and tried to speak.
"What... are... you... do.."
The professor turned to his underlings.
"It speaks? That's annoying. Please adjust the dosage."
"Right away sir!" said the woman. She nodded towards the man, who came over and adjusted something.
"Alright. Let's see, the next one is..." said the professor, as everything around Gray went dark.
Author's note: I think that people in Fiore actually speak english, and the Manga and Anime were just translated to Japanese for the convenience of the readers/viewers. Obviously, this does not work if taken literally (there is too much japanese culture seeping through), but I do get the impression that this is what we're supposed to believe. So I made the conscious decision to have the underlings call their master professor and sir, instead of japanese honorific suffixes. What do you think?