9

A red number blazed on an electronic timer. It started to beep, counting down.

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

A loud noise startled Junpei awake, and his eyes snapped open. As they adjusted to the light, he realized that he didn't recognize his surroundings.

Bang!

"Ow!"

With a "crack", Junpei's head connected with something metal. He rolled over and threw out a hand to steady himself, but he found himself groping at empty air. His balance lost, and his still fuzzy mind struggling to understand what was going on, Junpei tumbled down to the cold grey floor.

"OUCHGODDAMMIT! What the hell?!"

Junpei glared around the room, still trying to determine where he'd woken up. The fall had shaken the last cobwebs of sleep from his mind, and finally he understood where he'd fallen from. A bed. A 3-level bunk bed, in fact. Junpei has fallen, apparently, from the top. His shoulder hurt, his knee hurt, his hip hurt... everything from his head down to his hooves hurt. He could feel a lump forming on his forehead, where he'd slammed it against the low ceiling.

He wondered if that bump was the reason he felt his vision wavering a bit, but seemed unlikely...

It had been going on far too long for that.

His legs were trembling, probably just another effect of the rude awakening that he got, he thought to himself, but as he looked around, he realized it was real. The whole room was shaking.

'Was it an earthquake?'

It was shaking far too quickly for an earthquake, so that didn't seem likely. Then again, he had no idea what it was, if not an earthquake. He tried to tell himself that it was important.

Junpei rubbed the growing bump on his head, gingerly climbing to his hooves. His balance regained, he finally took his first good look around... and muttered to himself.

"Where... am I...?"

His pain forgotten in the face of the confusion of his circumstances, he looked around the room again.

Minutes passed while Junpei struggled to get his bearings. Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the tremors ceased. A cold silence fell over the small room.

From somewhere, Junpei could hear the sound of metal squeaking. He felt his stomach tighten. There were a thousand things the sound could have been, but none of the things he could think of were good.

Trying to distract himself, Junpei looked around the room for the third time.

There was a stove. It looked more antique than functional. The 3-level bunk bed had mattresses that were so thin that they were little more than blankets. On the other side of the room was an identical 3-level bunk, and, set in the wall between the two beds, was a slightly dirty iron door. The first thing Junpei noticed about it was the number, roughly emblazoned across it. On the surface of the door, somepony had written...

5

"5...?" he said to the empty room. "What's this 5 mean...?"

Suspicious, and still utterly confused, Junpei approached the door, slowly.

Standing, at last, in front of the door, Junpei grabbed hold of the L-shaped handle. A push gave no movement and push yielded the same results. A few more tried cemented the truth in Junpei's mind: it wouldn't open. It didn't matter how much he pushed and shoved. The handle wouldn't budge.

Next to the door was an odd-looking device that reminded Junpei of a card reader. It didn't a genius to figure out that the odd-looking device was keeping the door shut. Junpei knocked, hard, on the door.

"Hey! Hello? Is anypony there?"

He knocked again, more forcefully.

"Open the door!

There was no response. Junpei threw his left fist into the door – and then stopped.

"W-What the hell is this..."

He wasn't really sure what else he could say.

On his left wrist was a braclet of a sort he'd never seen before. In the center was a large LCD display. It looked nothing else so much as a watch. But it clearly wasn't that. After all it showed only a single number.

5

"5... That's... the same as the door..." Junpei exclaimed.

True, the numbers were the same... but he had no idea what that might mean. All that he knew was that it was strange, and new... and that he REALLY wanted it off. Junpei flipped his hand over, as if to remove a watch, but...

The other side of the strange bracelet was solid: no buckle, no clasp, nothing. He sighed, and flipped the thing back over. There were a number of rivets around the rim of the face. Perhaps...

Click, click, click

He pushed them, but nothing happened. On a watch, they might be dials for adjusting date or time, but on this bracelet they did nothing. Junpei was at a loss. What he going to do? Growing more desperate, he began to tug at it. However...

"Urrrrrng! Damn!" He sighed deeply. "It's no good. The damn thing won't come off!"

A steel ring ran from the face, around Junpei's wrist, and back into the face. He wouldn't be pulling the bracelet off any tine in the near future.

"What the hell is the deal with this thing?!"

Frustration, desperation... they were beginning to mix as the reality of the situation began to dawn fully on Junpei. So much was happening, and none of it made sense. Junpei felt as through he were about to explode.

"Where am I?!" he shouted. "And why the hell am I here?! Why! Why!? What the hell happened to me?!"

It was at moment he noticed the window. It was round, rimmed in riveted brass, like a window from an early 20th century ship.

"What? Am I... on a ship?"

Junpei walked slowly toward the window. He could see nothing beyond it... but thick, impenetrable darkness. He squinted, trying to see something... anything... It was at that moment –

Crack!

"What the- ?! You've gotta be kidding me!"

Crack!

"Wh-What the hell is going on here?!"

A crack split the glass of the window, and for a moment Junpei stared at it. Then the window burst, and water began to pour into the room.

"WHAT THE HELL! GODDAMN IT!"

Junpei yelled and spun around. His hooves slipping on the water already coming through the window, he ran for the door. He tried the handle again and then slammed his fist against it.

"Hey! Anypony! Is anypony there? C'mon... if you're there, say something!"

There was no reply.

As Junpei screamed, and pounded on the door, the water began to rise. It was now a few centimetres up his leg, quickly rising towards his knees. Things were not looking good for Junpei. Not good at all. He needed to find a way out – and quickly!

Junpei ran a hand across his forehead, brushing the sweat out of his eyes, and then looked around the room.

He tried to slow his breathing. He needed to remain calm. First, he looked at the broken window. It was way too big to plug. He looked at the pipes next.

"Hey! Maybe I could squeeze up the pipes!"

There was a silence from the room, apart from the water gushing in.

'There's nobody here to make fun of my lame jokes...Man, this sucks.'

Junpei looked at the sink near to the window. He walked over to it and peered inside. Nothing.

'This is the only drain in this room... Ha... I'm not going to drain shit with this.'

He was about to turn away when he noticed something. Two somethings actually.

A slip of paper was pinned up on the wall. He grabbed it and looked at it.

It was a note...

Junpei looked at the note, bewildered. He turned it over, but nothing.

'This looks important... but for what?'

He slipped the note into his pocket. He turned his attention to the second something he saw. It was a picture frame. It had a ship on it. He flipped it over and saw that some screws were keeping the back on. He put the picture frame into another pocket and he left the sink. He walked over to the stove next and placed his hand on the handle of it and pulled. It opened easily enough.

'I just wish that the door out of here was just as easy to open...'

"Huh... what's this? A red handle?"

He reached his hand in and pulled out the red handle. It was a screwdriver. Excitement flared within him and he pulled out the picture frame. Placing the screwdriver to the screws, he got them out. The back felt out and so did the picture. He quickly caught the fallen picture and he threw aside the wooden frame, where it made a splash as it hit the water.

It was just the picture from before. Junpei turned it over.

'So somepony wrote a bunch of number and symbols on the back of the picture, huh. Wait a second...'

Junpei pulled out the note from before. 'Could these be connected in some way?' He put both of the helpful pieces of paper back in his pocket. He looked back to the stove and closed it. His eyes flicked to the ancient kettle on top of it. He opened up the lid and peered inside.

'There's something in here!?'

Junpei grabbed the object from the bottom of the kettle and looked at it. It was a small, blue key. He looked at the door with the 5 on it. It didn't have keyhole.

'If this isn't the key that unlocks that door... what does it unlock?' he thought to himself, slipping the key into his pocket at the same time. It was then that he noticed a blue briefcase. He walked over to it and picked it up. It was almost entirely blue. He tried to open it, but it was locked. He noticed a small keyhole.

Excitement flooding through him, he placed the blue key he found into the keyhole, turned it and tried to pull open the briefcase again. Nothing.

He sighed and looked at the briefcase again. Right next to the keyhole were numbers. 0101. He touched the numbers and he found out that they could move.

"So I have to have a key AND the right code?" said Junpei to the room. "Ugh..."

The water had risen slightly, enough to restrict movement. Junpei looked at water and back at the briefcase, which he placed back on the bed.

'I better get moving.'

Junpei looked at the bed in which he had fallen from. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary but he checked the beds just in case. Under one of the pillows was a note.

'Another one? Hmmm... this one is different from the one from before. Maybe they fit together somehow?'

He slipped in into his pocket to look over later.

Junpei looked around again, and saw a curtain hanging near the door. He threw it open to find himself staring at something red. It was another key, taped to a mirror. He snatched it up and shoved it into his pocket and he was about to close the curtain, when he saw his own face.

He froze... He scarcely recognized himself.

"What's up with my face...?"

The brown fur that covered his face looked fine. But his actual face was drawn and pale and the dark circles under his eyes made him look as though he was nearly dead.

"Man... what happened to me? How did I end up here?"

Even as he said it, something in his mind opened, and a memory bobbed to the surface. It was the last thing Junpei remembered before waking up in the strange room.

~~~~~~~~~

It was well past midnight when he came home.

Junpei shuffled up the stairs, and opened the door to apartment 201. Inside was his apartment. A small, one-bedroom affair, that ran him about $630 a month. He moved in when he entered collage, and so far he'd been there for 3 years and 7 months. He stepped inside and turned on the lights. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling blinked and flickered slowly to life, as if waking from a deep slumber. Their cold light illuminated the landscape he'd come home to, many time before. Everything was as he'd left it.

The magazines piled up in the corner. The text books collecting dust. The CD cases covering the floor. The jeans and t-shirt he'd worm the day before, then tossed on the floor. There was one thing that didn't belong though...

There was a breeze.

Breaths of cold night air wafted into his apartment, carrying the smells of autumn with them. The white curtain sway in the wind.

'Huh. That's weird... Did I leave that open...?'

He walked towards the window, trying to remember if he'd closed it or not before he left. One of the panes was hanging open. He stuck his head out, and looked around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Junpei shrugged. He must have just left it open earlier. He closed the window. Then it happened.

He saw somepony behind him in the reflection. He turned, and found himself face to mask with a stallion, dressed all in black. The stallion wore a deep hood, and bulky gas mask – his face was entirely hidden.

Junpei tried to scream, but all he could manage was strangled croak. He tried to step towards the figure, but his legs could no longer support his weight. Junpei collapsed to the floor – a crumpled heap of limbs, like a discarded puppet.

Too late, he noticed the white smoke that was quickly filling his apartment. A small object, shaped distressingly like a grenade, sat on the floor on front of his face, hissing. The white smoke poured out of it at an incredible rate. The smoke had grown so thick that the details of Junpei's apartment began to fade in the white haze. He could feel his mind begin to fade as well, a white that was not the smoke creeping into the edges of his vision.

"Consider this a privilege. You have been chosen."

A rasping voice wormed its way out of the gas mask. It was cold and harsh, and distorted in some way Junpei couldn't put his finger on.

"You are going to participate in a game. The Nonary Game. It is a game... where you will put your life on the line."

That was the last thing Junpei remembered. The white smoke overpowered him, the masked man faded from his vision, and he felt his consciousness fall away into the white mist.

~~~~~~~~~

"That's right!" Junpei exclaimed. "That guy with the gas mask! That son a bitch must of take me here!"

As to who the man was, or might have been, Junpei had no idea. Indeed, he wasn't ever sure that his assailant had been a stallion. The voice had been cold and mechanical – most likely passed through a voice changer – and the body had been covered in a thick cloak.

'Who was that in the mask?'

"You have been chosen." Junpei remembered that much, but...

What it might mean... That was beyond him. Junpei had no idea where he was, or why he was there. There was only one thing from his memory that seemed important...

"You are going to participate in a game. The Nonary Game. It is a game... you will put your life on the line."

"What the hell is a Nonary Game? God damnit!"

With a yell, he drove his fist into the mirror.

Breathing heavily, he looked around the room again, collecting his thoughts. There was another curtain at the other end of the room. He moved over to it and threw it open. Junpei saw another briefcase, this one red. He picked it up and walked back over to the bed where the blue briefcase was sitting. He placed them next to each other and he fit the red key into the red briefcase.

"I've got the keys... now what is the code?"

Junpei pulled out the photo and the two notes and looked at them again. Finally, it clicked in his mind.

He grabbed the blue briefcase and spun the numbers around, inserting a code. He took a deep breath and turned the key.

A loud click sounded. Junpei smiled.

"Yes! It opened! Looks like there's something in here... What is this? A file...?"

There was a red file in the briefcase. Junpei took it out and opened it.

"All right, let's see what's in this file... Hm... "Digital root." Let's see here."

Compute a digital root with the following steps:

First, add all the numbers in question to one another. If you end up with something greater than a single digit number, add the add the digits to one-another. For instance, if you have a double digit number, add the number in the tens place to the number in the ones place. Keep adding digits in this manner until you have a single digit answer. That final single digit is your digital root.

Example: The digital root of 678 would be: 6+7+8=21 → 1+2=3

Therefore, the digital root is 678 is 3

Example: The digital root of 1234 would be: 1+2+3+4=10 → 1+0=1

Therefore, the digital root of 1234 is 1

"So I just keep adding numbers until I get a single digit number. That's simple enough."

Junpei was about to put the file away when he caught a glance of something on the back. "Huh?"

There was a notebook, pen, calculator... and a stack of key cards. Junpei put the calculator, pen and notebook away in his pocket, putting the file down on the bed as it was too bulky to carry, but he looked at the key cards... They were blue. Each of them had a number on them. 6, 7 and 8.

Junpei turned towards the number 5 door and slid each of the blue cards through the card reader. One of by one, a red asterisk flashed up on screen. Junpei held his breath and pulled the lever.

There was a loud beep and the lever returned to its original position.

'Did it work?'

Junpei tried the handle. Nothing.

'Shit... Do I need some more cards for this? If so, I need to find them... NOW!'

He turned back to the red briefcase. 'They must be in there!'

The water was up to his knees. Junpei waded towards the red briefcase. He glanced at the notes and at the picture, figured out the combination and turned the key. A loud click sounded.

"Yes! I unlocked it!"

Junpei threw open the case, revealing 3 red cards with number on them. 1, 2 and 3. His heart leapt as he grabbed them. He got back to the scanner and scanned the new cards. He pulled the lever...

A loud beep and the lever returned to its original position once more. Junpei tried the handle. Nothing.

"Ahhhhh!" he yelled, slamming his fist into the wall. "What now!?"

The water had risen even more, and Junpei panicked. And, in that moment of life or death, his mind went calm and shining light of hope came through.

"Those files... it said something about a digital root." he muttered to himself.

He looked at the door. The 5 stared back at him.

'Do I have to make the digital root of 5? I'm not really sure about this... Eh, it's worth a shot. I'll just slide the cards that give me the digital root of 5 through the reader.'

It didn't take him long. He just had to figure out what equalled 14 from a combination of 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8. He tried 8 and 6, which equalled 14, who's digital root was 5, but nothing happened.

"Huh? But that equals 5... Wait... Do I need 3 cards to make the digital root?"

He tried again, using 7, 6 and 1. He pulled the lever. There was a small triple beep and a blue light flashed on, followed by the sound of something going click.

'That's a new noise... Huh... Did it just unlock?! Well... there's a blue light there now. No doubt about it... Wait... what am I doing?! I have to get out!'

Junpei pushed the door and it swung open. Accompanied by a wall of angry water, Junpei shot out of the room and into the opposing wall. Gasping to catch his breath, he looked around. He was in a narrow hallway. The water that had followed him out of the room was rapidly pouring out of the door. It flowed quickly down the hallway, and slammed into the foot of the short flight of stairs. Just 5 steps in fact. And at the top of this short staircase...

"A door! Another door!" Junpei yelled.

Junpei leapt up the stairs, straight for the door. The door burst open, and Junpei exploded out of it... only to freeze in his tracks. What other possible response could there have been to what he saw?

"Wha... what the hell...?"

His voice trailed off, and all he could do was stare.

Author's Note

This story is gong to be LONG and CONFUSING! Strap yourselves in!

A small birthday shout out to Egonuss, who has been my follower for a while and this chapter was posted on his birthday. Happy Birthday!