#orbit chapter 1

From a seemingly abysmal corridor a mechanical arm shoots towards BeiBei, violently seezing his wrists behind his back and pulling. Hard. The boy is silent as he’s dragged into the darkness, in fact before his face is shrouded by black, you swear on your life you see a small grin cracked onto his lips.

[♫♪♫] 

The next time you see BeiBei is on a screen Caligula has set out for you. The room is empty save a long, white noose dangling down in the center. Enter the still-grinning Shichirobei, hands bound much like the style of his victim. Prodded up to the noose by the same arm that had yanked him out of the room, the camera filming this spectacle pans upward, revealing an almost comically oversized shoe suspended from the ceiling of the unknown room, the laces  found to form the rope soon to be placed around his neck.

When the film cuts back to the guilty party, he’s made his way up the thirteen steps. Tears stream down his still grinning face as he ducks his head into the loop. A count-down starts of 5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

  Nothing.

  Bursting into silent sobs, the shoemaker gropes hungrily at the lace. The rope… it’s still heading up! Why isn’t he dead?! Why isn’t he-

BeiBei looks up just in time to see the sole of the shoe that had been his gallows coming down onto his skull.

The screen cuts out, you hear the sickening crunch of bone and squelch of blood, and the last you see of BeiBei is a broken blood soaked hand peeking out from underneath the footwear.

If you check your ID card, it has had a brand new app installed, with an icon of a sheet of paper with indistinct red writing on it. Opening it will show the following information: 

CALIGULA FILE

Victim: Lucius Choshinsei 

Place of Body: First Aid Room

Time of Death: 4:01 AM

Cause of Death: Died instantly. 

You are rudely awakened by a loud bell tolling out through the station. An ominous feeling rises in the pit of your belly as Caligula's image appears on the screens. 

"Ahahahahahaha! Here we go! Ladies and gentlemen, let the show begin! Oh, it almost feels like Christmas! A BODY! HAS BEEN! DISCOVEEEEEEEERED! After a short period of investigation, the trial will begin! Go check out the First Aid room for an eyeful, ahahaha! And when you're done, I've given everyone a little extra on their ID cards!" 

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Running through the space station, you can see Yuu Yanaihara and Yuki Sada standing outside the door, apparently having found the body before you. As you go in, you are confronted by the sight of...

It was, very possibly, an odd thing, to see Shinobu in the first aid station but sure as day, there she was. Rooting through the shelves for plasters and supplies she looked to be a girl on a mission. The sound of someone else entering the area causes her to shut the drawer on her hand, an action that has her swear under her breath. The footballer opens the thing once more and eases her hand out before finally facing the stranger, the usual small frown she wore plastered on her face.

"Oh hey... don't tell me, I'm in your way?" Shinobu tilted her head. It took her a couple of seconds to realize she'd just rhymed her sentence and wondered briefly if she was picking it up off of Sin. Unlikely, but that would be hella cool, right? Maybe she could be the world's best footballer and a rapper, too.

"Turns out even stars like me mess up sometimes, see?" Shinobu waves her right hand in front of the speaker without a care. The non-gloved hand is suffering from a rather deep cut. Certainly didn't seem like a training injury. Just what was this girl up to exactly?

Pandora had not been expecting the series of events that transpired, per se. But she wasn't surprised. It seemed that for once, the plot wasn't to kill her, specifically, but rather to kill off the lot of them in a particularly creative way. Turning them against themselves. Some people would say that the most important thing in this situation was trust. 

Those people were idiots. Pandora knew what reality was. There were people out to get her all the time, and now she could only be more careful. This proved it, this proved it to them all, all the skeptics and doubters, her parents and the world. She wasn't paranoid. They really were out to get her. 

Seeing a person near her, she instantly put up her guard until she could be sure that they weren't planning on immediately assaulting her, Carefully listening to her earpiece to make sure there were no sneak attackers coming up behind her, she leaned on a wall and took a swig of orange juice from the flask she always kept at her hip.