Chapter 11

What happened next was regrouping, this time 96 landed in group F, it bothered him that they moved things around so frequently, it didn't seem all that organized to him. One of the people in white came over to the group and took the children over to the pile of F ranked Crystal's never the less they looked quite appetizing to 96 who had not eaten yet that day, but he knew that he would have wanted to eat them even if he wasn't hungry. 96 was rather disappointed in his own lack of self control when it came to eating, but now he needed to focus on the task at hand. He survived all of the crystals, they seemed to be giving off strange colors, blue, green, purple, pink ect... finally he came across one that's color was totally black, it felt as though it was drawing him in and he did not like that feeling, he knew he needed to stay away from it instinctively. But to his horror the person in white picked up that very crystal and brought it over to his basket, then one of the cloaked figures came by with a piece of hot metal and lightly placed it on 96s forehead, he grunted in pain as the rod burned his stin, the figure seemed interested in the fact that he didn't scream like the others but the figure shrugged this off and placed the crystal into the burn spot were the skin quickly grew over the sides of the crystal holding it in place. The figure then took out strange quill and etched something onto either side of the stone, 96 was annoyed that he had the did not know what was on his own face. Once finished the hooded figure moved on to the next child who began screaming its lungs out as soon as the hot iron was applied, 96 sighed he just wanted to get back to his room and eat.

It took about an hour for the presses to be complete, 96 sat extremely still focusing on the pain in his forehead, he had no desire to mess with the black crystal, he wondered why they would even have something like this, but then he remembered all of the other abominations that they had and he no longer wondered, the burn itself did not bother him all that much but the crystal was digging into his skin trying to get deeper and deeper into his head, he had already made scales form under the crystal but it was still trying to break through. He could feel the darkness seeping through the cracks in his scales, he was so focused on the crystal that he barely noticed the voice crawling back into the basket.

When they finally brought him back to his room they left him with a chunk of bread and a bowl of milk, once they had left the voice crawled behind 96 "you dont mind if I changed this out really quickly do you?" 96 shook his head in response and the voice quickly began pulling the crystal out of his forehead, first he tore away the skin and then used its teeth to pry the crystal out, it stuck fast for the first couple of seconds after which it began to strain until finally it popped out. Once it had popped out the voice quickly replaced it with the A rank crystal that it had stolen, while the voice was doing that 96 picked up the black crystal swallowing it whole, it had a rather spicy flavor to it but it didn't taste bad. "you really shouldn't eat that kind of thing you know." the voice had crawled down and was sitting next to 96 looking alittle ticked off, and was muttering something about insignificant lifeforms, 96 smiled at him and got out of the basket so that the two of them could enjoy their meal, he wondered what the hooded figure had written on his forehead but that just served to worsen the voice's mood "the moron wrote 66 on your head instead of 96 because he read it wrong" 96 wondered if the other 66 was still alive, but for right now at least that didn't matter, he split the bread and gave half to the voice, they both took turns dipping small pieces into the bowl of milk. Both of them enjoyed the meal tremendously, to 96 he could think of no better time that he had experienced in all of his lives.

Ater finishing there meal 96 went over to the pool to see if anything had happened, he was rather shocked to find that black lines had started to form all the way down to his left eye turning it a solid black, 96 sighed and shook his head, he would have to find a way to fix this. The other crystal in his forehead was a different matter altogether, it seemed to be pulling the darkness back into itself, the crystal itself had no discernable color sp he had not really known what to think about it, but perhaps he would not have to worry about his eye since it seemed that the clear crystal would do his job for him.

From what he had gathered the crystals were supposed to invoke mutation, but as far as he could tell he had not undergone anything significant, that was until he woke up the next day. The first thing that he noticed upon waking was that his mouth hurt like crazy and his jaw felt like it was going to come off. The voice looked at him for several moments not saying anything "um since when did you have teeth?" 96 put his hand up to his face and felt his newly formed teeth, they were sharp like knives. The second thing he noticed was that his left arm felt alittle heavy, he lifted it to see what was happening, he was confused to find that his had had turning completely black it stopped at about his wrist, he could excuse the change in skin tone but why had his arm grown heavy? the voice came over to inspect his hand "it turned solid, but solid what I can't tell, can you move it?" 96 flexed his hand, it was alittle stiff but he could still use it well enough, he picked up the needle to see if he could hold it, but as soon as he touched it the needle sank into his hand disappearing. 96 inspected his hand looking for the needle, he focused on the image of it in his head, he had a tingling sensation in his fingers and then the needle reamerged only now it was the same color as his hand. as he picked up the needle a burst of information flooded into his head all concerning the needle. 96 looked over at the voice, "What in the world just happened" the voice stared at 96 with a blank expression and then he realized that he had just spoken.