999: Virtue's Last Reward

Chapter 1: The Nonary Game

 "Where am I?"  I seemed to ask myself when I woke up on the floor on what seemed to be an elevator. I didn't know what to do. I was confused but I felt like I was here before. My name is Tatsuya. I was having a walk at night and got knocked out by some white gas but I never got to the see the person who did it.  Now I'm here in this elevator.

There was someone sitting down on the corner of the room. She seemed to be looking down, her knees up to her face. "Who are you?" I asked her and the only response that I got was her head looking up to me. "You're awake.... Tatsuya.." She said in a low and calm voice but it seemed that she was unsure on what she said. How did she know my name? I wondered in my mind and I asked her.

"I don't know." That was the answer that I got. "I just know alright.." She added to what she said.

"Do you know why we're here?" My voice seemed calm and I decided to not question her further about my name.

"No... but--" She was interrupted by a transmission that came through the elevator screen that was above the buttons.

"Welcome!" A high pitched voice said. The person saying this was a ... rabbit? "I am Zero The lll and this is the NONARY GAAAAME!!! AMBIDEX EDITION THE SECOND!!!" He was yelling quite loudly of course catching my attention. "I'll explain everything later but for now please leave the elevator by solving it's puzzles and such." The rabbit said quite quickly and left.

I didn't have the time to say anything at all but the girl that was next to me tugged my shirt even though she was about as tall as I am. A time had appeared and it said that only ten minutes were left as it began to count down. "I'm Akiri, pleased to meet you. We can continue this chat later but let's solve the puzzle before the time runs out.. I think something bad will happen when it does..."

With a quick nod we searched the room. It took us 8 minutes to solve everything and get a key that opened the hatch of the roof. The puzzles were revolved around elderly and young people. It was easy enough to figure out. You had to figure out how many kids, young adults and elderly were in the pictures that we had found on the room. It wasn't anything hard but we did have a discussion for some reason. She thought that there were 6 kids, 7 young adults and only 5 elderly but that was all wrong and there were actually 5 of each. I showed her by putting the code in the safe and grinned at her when the code actually worked. She didn't seemed pleased and was ready to hit me but we didn't have time to think and I lifted her up to the roof of the elevator. She did struggle but got up onto the roof on the elevator as she then helped me up.

"Next time tell me when you're going to do something like that!" Her face was flushed and I couldn't help but chuckle. We looked around and it seemed that the elevator we were in was not actually an elevator.. it was a room which we got off of. There were other people trying to open some kind of gate with the number 9 painted on it. Approaching them I called out to them and only one of them turned around. It was an old man.

"You two were trapped in that room too?" He asked and we nodded. "Well, were trying to get this door open but we're having no luck." A sigh came out of him as he looked down onto our left wrist as he did so did I and I noticed that I had a watched that said... "So you both are the red pair and you both have the number 3. I'm Yuu and those people who are there." He pointed at them. " Are.. Vellicya the on wearing black with long hair, the other is Yuuki the short one with brown hair who's wearing pink, that's Blossom the one who's also wearing pink and sister to Yuuki, the other three that are left are Drace the one that's dressed like a prince, Mint the one that looks like a girl but don't let him fool you he's a guy and last but not least Rain the one in blue. He's quiet so don't disturb him much. That's it for all of them."

They all introduce themselves to us and so did we a few minutes after we gave up trying to open the number 9 door. A screen appeared and that rabbit appeared once more. "Welcome once again. It seems that all of you are out of the Ambidex rooms. Please instead of asking questions just look at the rooms." We all looked and all the rooms said AB ROOMS in a plate. I guess that was short for ambidex room. "All your watches have different colors and words. The ones that say pair mean you are paired up with someone and that someone you are paired up with is the person with the same color like Akiri-pyon and Tatsuya-pyon." The rabbit chuckled. "The ones that say solo mean that you are all alone. Now let's go with the numbers on your bracelet. Those are bp points and when you get 9 bp you can get out of the number 9 door by pulling the lever. The number 9 door will only open once so be sure to have 9 bp before you open it. To get 9 bp you need to go through the chromatic doors. Which are the red, green and blue doors. After you do you solve the puzzles in that room and get key cards to open up the AB rooms." As the rabbit explained everything he was showing us were everything was the doors that he mentioned were at our right and how it opens in a specific time that we press both buttons on our watches it tells us. "I'll explain all other rules when you come back and remember only 3 people can go through a chromatic door no more no less and it has to be the coressponding color."

The rabbit left we were still unclear but we didn't know what to do but play this "Nonary Game". The chromatic doors opened and we were forced to go.At least we know that people from the same color were the only ones allowed to go through the Chromatic door of that color. That was easy enough to understand. Akiri and I got paired up with Drace and we went through the red door. This was the start of our survival. We had to beat the Nonary Game. We had to beat Zero and we will. We all seemed determined and the first room was shown to us when we entered the chromatic doors. We will all survive.