Viscoun

Chapter 1: Your Attitude is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

“See people for who they are, not what they do.”

Six years later...

Gridlock floated through a sea of darkness.
Around him, the snow poured in, filling the black with white, trapping him in. He tried to scream, but the surge of snow knocked the breath out of his lungs. It filled the chamber until it rose over his head, and he could no longer breathe.
A light streamed in through the roof, and a black glove descended from the source of the light, grabbing him roughly by the collar and pulling him up, up through the snow. The pressure on his head was so high, he thought his skull would burst before he made it to safety.
It was a dangerous ascent, and twice Gridlock thought the wind would break the black glove’s grasp, sending him shooting back down into the pit below, where certain death awaited. But the fingers remained steeled in their position, and soon Gridlock became accustomed to the journey.
He sighed. The fact that he knew he was dreaming meant that he was semi-conscious already. He had been dreaming the same dream for months since he started high school, and yet it seemed like a new experience every time he closed his eyes and awoke to see the frozen white glop crash down the sides of the dark cave he rested in. Then, the hand would pull him out, and he would wake up again, shaken and sweating, his dark brown hair soaked, the crow’s feet below his eyelids straining to push his eyes open, his sharp jaw tucked under the blanket while his shallow forehead served as a conduit for more sweat, a gentle slope for them to trickle down.
BOOM. A thunderclap jerked him fully awake, pulling him from his dream as abruptly as the hand in his dream had pulled him from danger.
Wearily, he glanced at the tall double-doors. They were wide open, revealing the grand, sumptuous, high-ceilinged corridor, and the equally well-decorated girl standing in it.
The corridor and the girl were complete opposites, despite the fact that they had both been decorated by the same household. The corridor was a mass of red carpet and bright candles, the hallway of a typical rich mansion that one would expect belonged to a successful merchant from some olden age or era. Although no other doors were visible from Gridlock’s bed, he knew that there were many more lining the walls of the corridor, leading to other obscure parts of the house. He would be able to see them as long as he mustered the strength to leave his bed, a layering of wood, cotton and fine silk that he would never have left for the past 6 years if not for the girl.
The girl in question, the girl who stood at the doorway, radiated a different sort of beauty. It was not physical, ornamental beauty, but the beauty that came from someone who was confident and loud in all she did, and yet remained gracefully quiet and elegant at the same time. A shade shorter than Gridlock, she still managed to appeal to watching eyes in her plain school uniform, a white one-piece which allowed for no glamorous shows of skin. Her only un-redeeming feature was her face, which would have been pleasant to look at if not for the scowl, evidently aimed at Gridlock himself. It was an expression that Gridlock saw daily, despite his efforts to wake up on time.
“You---” the girl began. A second thunderclap from outside silenced her instantly.
Gridlock smiled, waving at the window, where a view of black and grey smudges with the occasional flash of light could be seen. The mansion was one of the twenty-odd structures on the island that had been granted special permission to be built overground. “Nice weather, isn’t it?”
“Better than usual, I suppose.” The girl stared outside for a moment, lost in thought, then turned back to Gridlock. Putting her hands on her hips, she pressed her lips, an action which reminded Gridlock of his late mother.
By that time, Gridlock had already risen to his feet, shuffling towards the wardrobe with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner on death row walking to the execution chamber. “Go out, I’m going to change.”
“How can I be sure you won’t just go to sleep again?” The girl’s scowl deepened. “It’s happened before.”
“If I’m not done in 5 minutes, you can come back in.” Gridlock raised both hands, flicking them in the girl’s direction. “Shoo.”
“You had better hurry up, we have half an hour left.” The girl marched past the doors, closing them with a slam.
Gridlock sighed, staring at the door, the slam ringing in his ears. She could at least treat the doors with care. The room they had given him had once been a storage room, cluttered with the things the Uncinnar family did not need. The Uncinnars were so rich, they needed a trash can bigger than a Sector Nine house, the type of house Gridlock had once lived in before what had been dubbed “The Collapse”.
The Collapse had been no normal incident. But then, Hatau was no normal island.

It's called "The Pacified Pacific: Hatau". Genre is, if classified in manga terms, probably shounen + military + alternate history + school life + romance, amongst others.

It's set in a dystopian future/present, where much of the world has been taken over by a Union, similar to the UN but way more aggressive and Axis-like (WWII). You could say it's a story about World War 3.

However, it's mainly about this island in the Pacific that suffers from natural disasters every day due to its being positioned in the middle of some air currents and underwater currents.

It's centered around a bunch of smart kids who work to defend Hatau (the name of the island) against nature, as well as military attacks from neighboring countries and the "Union" itself.

Prologue: The Collapse

“Only the man who has seen hell can find heaven.”

Gridlock watched in awe as the first man flew past the window, arms flailing, legs kicking.
The man grabbed onto the exterior of the window, borrowing the power of friction as he pressed his palms against the reinforced glass. For a moment their eyes met, the man’s eyes staring imploringly into Gridlock’s innocent young face. But, like all others who had come to accept the cruel conditions offered by the outside world, Gridlock knew it was a futile struggle.
Besides, even if he wanted, what could he do? There were three different types of locks barring their home’s portal, but that wasn’t the only thing deterring the child from taking even one small step past the doorway. Curiosity killed the cat was the watchword here, as his parents were ever quick to remind him.
The man resigned himself to his fate, and relinquishing his grip on the window, he left the way he came, arms flailing, legs kicking. The flapping tails of his navy-blue suit were the last thing Gridlock saw of him before he vanished into the mist, almost certain to never return again. Gridlock knew he should have felt some measure of sadness, but ten years of watching people fly by had robbed him completely of his empathy. The sight of people in flight was now as ubiquitous as the sight of his mother cooking, or the sight of his father sleeping in the kitchen chair, arms hanging.
A second man sailed across the street in an equally inelegant manner, though he did not have the fortune of being able to grip onto a nearby window and savor the extra last few seconds of his life that he gained from doing so. He followed the first man into the fog, another man dead, another man too foolish to heed the National Conservation Service’s repeated warnings.
“Griddy, don’t stay in your room for too long.” A woman’s voice called from downstairs. “Come down and have some tea.”
“But I’m not hungry, Mom,” Gridlock whined.
“No buts,” The woman’s tone grew sharper. “We drew the special ration lottery ticket yesterday, we can’t waste these. You only get to eat these a few times in your life.”
“Alright, alright,” Gridlock stretched himself out on his bed, summoning the will to get up. But his efforts were as futile as those of the men outside. He raised one hand feebly into the air, then let it flop onto the soft linen mattress. He stared up at the ceiling, tracing the curvature of the roof with his eyes until he reached the embedded fluorescent lighting. A single black wire trailed from the side of the light, sticking to the ceiling until the side of the wall became vertical, at which point it dangled downwards, ending at a small red button socketed into a hole in the wall. Several other wires linking from the bed, swivel chair, table, and numerous other items of furniture also congregated at the little button.
“Griddy!” The voice was more strident now.
“Coming.”
Although Gridlock’s room was located on the second floor, in actuality the floor was on ground level. The real “ground floor”, where the main rooms were located, were actually in what would normally have been called a “basement” in other countries. Looking outside, it was not hard to see why this change in structural design was necessary.
Gridlock stepped out of his room and immediately coughed - the dust from below-ground always managed to find its way up, despite his mother’s fervent efforts with the vacuum cleaner. He made his way down, careful not to step on any of the catches lining the walls that would release the magnets keeping the detachable stairs in an unfurled position, and cause the entire set of stairs to fold up into a single rectangular bar of metal in the blink of an eye.
His mother, short and petit with brown hair that splayed messily across her shoulders, was pouring a cup of milk as he entered the dining room, which was actually the kitchen, cellar, and actual dining room all rolled into one. There was little room to accommodate such luxuries as “separated rooms” in an island nation like theirs. His father, the exact opposite of his mother with his bulky frame and red, bloated complexion, sat facing the entrance, his mustache tickling the sides of his coffee cup as he took another long, slow sip from it.
“If the lad doesn’t want to eat, don’t force him to,” his father muttered gruffly.
“Nonsense,” his mother scoffed. “He needs to learn to never take things for granted. Here, Griddy, you can eat this here or you can take it back to your room.”
If you’re letting me eat this in my room, why not just bring it to me? Gridlock eased himself into the folding chair facing his father, glaring at the small cupcake that his mother had been so eager to have him try. It was a brown, ugly little thing that reminded him of excrement, but he wasn’t going to complain, not in front of his mother at least.
He took a fork, jabbed it into the cupcake, and bit. It was slightly stale, and overly sweet for his tastes, something to be expected from the “special rations” that the island’s government provided daily for anyone bored of eating the same things over and over again.
“How is it?” His mother smiled as she set down the cup of milk in front of him.
He couldn’t quite find the words for it. “It’s... okay?”
His mother beamed. “I’m glad you like it.”
No, I don’t, he thought.
His father, who obviously knew - and probably agreed with - his actual opinion of the cupcake, snorted, smiling as his lips tugged slightly from beneath the bushy growth on his upper lip. The snort ended halfway, however, and from the corner of his eye, Gridlock saw his father’s smile freeze.
He looked up to find his father staring at him.
“What?” Gridlock asked quizzically.
His father’s eyes flickered. Then, Gridlock realized that he wasn’t looking at him, but something behind him.
He turned around. The wall was a dull grey, the specked grey of hard stone, with fine wisps of white and ridges of black that lined its rough-cut surface. It had never been painted over. What was the point when the possibility of having to move out existed every day?
But the irregularity of the stone wall’s patterns was not what had captured his father’s attention. Something like that would not suffice to enrapture his father in such a manner; after all, it was something they saw daily, something they could get tired of looking at. No, it was the small crack that grew from a small point in the stone, slowly creeping across the wall, weblike in its appearance, that had his father looking.
“Pack up your room.” His father spoke quietly at first, a barely inaudible whisper, but then suddenly he yelled, “GO! We have to get to the Bypass as fast as we can!”
“What is it?” His mother turned, but Gridlock had already left the dining room, scurrying up the stairs as fast as his small legs could carry him.
“Fold the stairs when you come down!” his father called.
“Got it!”
Gridlock reached his room, and, leaping across the inlaid carpet that took his steps without complaint, he punched the small red button on the wall, the button he hoped he’d never have to press.
At once, his entire room changed.
His bed, the bed that he’d slept on, played video games on, and used as a stress reliever for the ten years of his life, folded in on itself, the mattress snapping shut hastily without regard for the bed-sheet that had been neatly spread across its top. With bits of bed-sheet sticking out from the gap between the two halves, the mattress sank into the aluminium frame, which immediately collapsed into the form of a portable suitcase.
Gridlock picked up the bed-suitcase, and waited for the other furniture to finish folding up. The items on his shelves were unceremoniously swept into a plastic box by a series of boarded springs lining the sides of the wall above the table. The table in turn was folding into another suitcase-shaped object, the legs flipping upwards as the hinges in the center turned, their un-oiled joints creaking and screeching, a cacophony worthy of a wailing newborn. He manually snapped his folding swivel chair shut, and attached it to the table-suitcase by means of a large magnet situated underneath the chair’s seat.
“I’m done!” he called.
“Good, throw down the table-chair, we’ll take that. Get the rest by yourself.”
Gridlock grasped the handle of the table-chair and lifted it outside, where he saw his father with hands outstretched. At the sight of his son, he beckoned with his hands. “Throw it,” he said.
Gridlock hesitated. The table-chair wasn’t heavy, but it was enough to make him release a breath from relieved pressure every time he set it down.
“Hurry!”
He took the handle, turned away slightly, and tossed it down the stairs. His father took it full in the chest and stepped backwards slightly, but managed to keep himself from falling as he set it down.
“Slide for the rest.”
“Got it.” Gridlock punched a green button above the first stair, and the column of stairs sprang up, curling into a large ball as it rolled down the now-exposed rock slope underneath. His father caught the roll in his large fat palms.
The other units of furniture slid down after the folding stairs in a line. Gridlock himself was the last to go, jumping onto the rough rock slide and wincing as it rubbed his posterior with the power of friction until it was raw.
Three-quarters of the way there, Gridlock thought about what exactly could have called for such an urgent evacuation. What had the crack on the wall been? A crumbling of the foundations? Or something with origins deeper in the earth, something infinitely more destructive and fearful?
Whatever it was, it had been enough to startle his father, a man whose mind was as deeply set as his creased face. That in itself was a sign worth noticing, though a sign of what, Gridlock didn’t know.
Two-thirds of the way there, he saw his father lifting some other folded-up item of furniture. A sofa, perhaps. He saw his son and smiled reassuringly. Amid the apparent chaos, his father was the sole figure of calm, a smiling beacon of hope to his young son.
Halfway there, the earth opened up and swallowed his father in.
No scream was heard, there was no time for such a luxury. He simply vanished.
Such an opening in the floor caused the ceiling to bend upwards and tear open, and the entire reinforced rock roof caved in, the thin steel beams within unable to maintain their form after such force had been violently exerted upon them. The domed roof, meticulously carved out by the long efforts of workers with flame tools, pikes, and other assorted instruments of construction, was ripped open in a matter of seconds.
The storm outside, a deadly combination of gales and bullet-like rain-turned-hail that had been prevented from sweeping Gridlock and his family away by the strong rock and annealed steel frames that constituted the entirety of their house, poured in, a torrent of deathly white that buried and filled the gaping hole in the ground as quickly as the hole itself had been created. It filled the house, turning the first floor into a wintery tundra, lifting any luggage that had not already been taken into the depths of the earth.
A third of the way there, Gridlock was turned from a son to an orphan. His mother, who had remained in the kitchen to pack up the things located there, fell in as the hole extended its reach, the ground disappearing as if the white of the hail was consuming it, wolfing it down in the manner of a starving beast.
Gridlock tried to find the tears, but none would come. The even had come too fast, too shockingly fast. The hot tears, things which had not yet faded from his memory as a ten-year old child, would come later.
Then, a hand shot up from the crumbling grave of snow. A large, fat, ruddy, fully recognizable hand.
The face followed the hand, and, gasping for breath and shaking the dots of snow in his matted brown hair, his father hauled himself up and lay his torso on the slope, his legs dangling as he sought the strength to keep himself up.
Gridlock felt relief wash in. It would be alright, even if only one parent remained alive. It would be enough, despite the irreplaceable loss. A life as close to normal as he could get given the circumstances, what more could he wish for?
Then, relief turned to panic and panic turned to fear as he found himself on a crash course towards his father’s panting figure. He began to grip the floor with his hands in hopes to stall his rapid slide down the smooth rock slope, an all-to-familiar scene as he recalled with dread the man who had been fighting for his life outside his window just minutes before, gripping the window in an equally desperate manner.
The wind and hail reached his face and attacked it with unmatched ferocity, and with that, Gridlock was completely blinded. He released his weak grip on the floor to fling snow off his eyes, letting gravity lead him onwards down the slide.
Without warning, he came to an abrupt halt as he slammed into a soft, large object. The touch of the object vanished, and Gridlock realized what had just happened.
Opening his eyes, he squinted into the whiteness. There was a hole, his house, the collapsing floor before him, the slope behind him, and... nothing.
His father was gone again.
Despair returned, creeping in, a slow-moving poison that caused energy to flood out of his body as he resigned himself to death, as all others in his position would have done. He now had no parents, no home, no hope of rescue. What else could he do?
The momentary halting of his descent gained by the sacrifice of his father ended as his body slid slowly towards the abyss again. His pants were torn at the back, and he lamented that the last thing he would truly feel was the cold sharpness of the sloped rock scraping his behind.
This is it. He closed his eyes.
His legs were flung off the edge, the ground catching them and sucking them into the whirlpool of earth and snow that had once been his dining room.
The torn stone bruised his elbows as he fell.
A black-gloved hand reached down from the heavens...