Anon Meme Part 2

[rocks_not_dead]

Now that we have moved the meme to dreamwidth, all commenting will be moved there as well. The community and posts still work exactly the same and are in the exact same order. Additionally, commenting anonymously works just like on livejournal

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Re: [Even old dogs can learn new tricks] 3/?

[anonymous]

They walk him along between them into a room with a bright light, and press a sticker to his chest that bears a number, and stop at the edge of the stage at the end of a long line of men and women who are all as confused and helpless as he feels. Each one has a keeper, a hulking beast of a man or woman holding up the prize to ensure none of them is able to avoid being put on display. As the minutes pass, stormclouds of commotion explode here and there through the smoky room. Cigars. Kotetsu tries to figure out who is smoking a cigar indoors-- it's against Stern Bild law-- while numbers and prices and names fly without meaning over his head and all around him. By the time he is pulled to center stage, the crowd is worked up, laughing, drunk, and many of them are smoking, all of them leer, he feels small and wishes he could escape. No luck, though: whenever he reaches for his powers, tries to activate that familiar blue glow, he feels faint and dizzy and loses his concentration before he can get there.

The auction gavel gives him a terrible headache. He can't keep his feet, and they've only dressed him in an oversized white dress shirt that does nothing to conceal him from the hungry eyes of the bidders.

When he ducks his head, the man keeping him upright sinks fingers into his hair and pulls his head back so they can see him, see his teeth chattering and his eyes, not really focused on anything, haunted and hollow. He hears voices, lots of voices swirling and scornful and interested and leering and laughing and shouting and arguing and when his knees tremble and threaten to drop him to the floor, the man holding him up grips him by the back of his neck, lifting him an inch off the floor, showing him off for everyone's pleasure.

He wants to hide his nakedness but he can't even move his hands. He's sharply cognizant of his toes where they dangle.

It feels like it takes forever. The fever pitch of the bidders' excitement makes him feel tired, and as the price on his head climbs higher and higher he tries and tries to free himself, to find his strength and use it to escape before they realize he's not like the others. If he can just get out of here, get to Barnaby, they might be able to save the other people who were taken, they might--

But nothing happens, save his fingers twitching a little and his head feeling like an open wound. He'd vomit if he had anything left in him, but he doesn't so he grimaces instead.

Some number, a high number, is said and they snap the wire around his neck, pushing him down to his knees. Someone else fastens a strap with the same number as before around his right ankle, rips off the sticker on his chest, slaps him until he can focus enough to see who it is, and forcefeeds him a pill so big he almost can't swallow it, covering his mouth and pinching his nose while others hold him down until his throat bobs as his vision's beginning to tunnel.

They drag him off by a chain fastened to the cuff around his ankle, just drag him while he tries to crawl the opposite direction, fingers making little tracks of blood on the floor when he keeps clawing at it. Inside an elevator, he claws at the door, shrinks into the corner when one of the men escorting him tousles his hair. He tries to speak, at one point, hoping to appeal to their sense of reason and what's right. "I'm not--" he starts to say, but two of the bodyguards kick him in the stomach so swiftly that he's left choking and gasping with his face pressed into the elevator floor, one boot crushing his head down against that hard surface, the other placed just so before his nose.

When he lifts his eyes he finds that the boot belongs to a portly, short man that looks a little like Antonio-- it's the hair, maybe-- and Kotetsu's head swims, and his gut rebels. He bites his tongue against it.

"I am your owner, now," says the man very calmly, as if he is willing to be reasonable despite Kotetsu's behavior, as if Kotetsu's behavior is somehow wrong.

He doesn't know anymore. Maybe it is. He licks his lips, waiting for the man to explain the rules of this situation. If this is who is in charge, his 'boss', he needs to know what this person wants.