we're finally notdotq anymore

This is a true story. If you don’t believe it, ask the C.Beetle. He knows everything.

One day, I was playing with some fourteen classmates on a remote island. We were all Brittanians, our parents busy with the hard work of keeping Area 11 subdued. It was summer time… and, without out parents around to take care of us, we got shipped off to this island.

For the last two weeks, it’s been nothing but boredom. My classmates were all wrapped up in nonsense like fireworks and organizing parties… I alone realized the futility of it all. Of living our sheltered, meaningless lives out in Area 11.

… but that’s in the past now.

I found a cave, the day before we were supposed to return to the main island. Within it, what I found was…

… a secret.

I invited my classmates inside, and they followed, their interests no doubt piqued by the fact that this was the first time I’d spoken to them. Yes, they followed me inside, to the cave in which we met C.Beetle. C.Beetle seemed kind at first, asking us if we wanted to play a chess simul with him. We played… all of us, all fifteen of us… we played against him, and he won. We had thought for sure that we’d win on at least one board. … it was foolish. Well, we lost, and he won. So we handed over to him our ante…

… our left eyes.

It was like we were in a mirror and he was Nahash and we were Jabesh Gilead and he gouged out our right eyes. Except we weren’t in a mirror and it was our left eyes he took, replacing them with something he called JASS. Only later did we find out that this C.Beetle fellow was a half-11. He was Japanese. JASS was a mispronunciation. JASS was…. JASS was… “Zearth.”

We soon discovered that using the Zearth, we could manipulate people. It was as if we all has Sharingans or something. It was really cool to us at the time, since we were just kids. None of us knew… none of us knew anything.

And when we learned…

… what we learned was…

… nothing.

We were pitted against groups like us from other Areas. No one cared about class or origin, it was just Zearth vs. Zearth and every time we won a battle, one of our number disappeared. It was frightening. We were scared… we were terrified… but we won all our battles, and in the end, it was just me left standing. Me and C.Beetle. And he looked down at me and laughed because I was Brittanian and I was standing in a pool of Numbers blood and my classmates were all gone.

It wasn’t that I p-particularly… cared about them, or anything. S-stupid. I… I just happened to be in the same class as they.

But they were dead. And my enemies were dead. And I realized that everything I’d fought for was dead, and I didn’t know my own place in the world anymore. And so… so I have to present to you today something terrible, something awful: yes, within this box, is the left eye I myself removed from my own socket. This, Gentlemen, is my Zearth. My second left eye. My second left eye removed. My Sharingan… my battle trophy… my curse.

…

I… I just played a game of chess with my friends.