1 Going Down

"Soft tacos are just burritos, fucker!"

"No, they're tacos with a soft tortilla shell, dumbass."

"I don't give a fuck w…"

An Asian boy with various piercings and blue eyes sat at the metal table he typically goes to in the cafeteria and, like usual, overheard the two annoying boys having a debate over meaningless things, though it was more of an argument filled with insults than it was a debate.

But still, he ignored them and continued eating his shitty food. "Four more days… just four," he almost silently mumbled. In 4 days, he'd be executed, or as everybody called it, "floated".

Every crime—no matter how small—on the Ark is punishable by death as long as you're 18, or over the age of 18.

But even for juveniles under the age of 18, they were just put in lockup, or as they called it, the Sky Box, until they turned 18, and then they'd be executed. A somewhat torturous and bleak sentence for the kids, but civilians would cause a stir-up if they realized the council was executing children.

The Asian boy, Sen, like many others, was put in lockup at a young age, and had essentially grown up in the Sky Box around other criminals.

'All for something so small,' he thought, but he wasn't annoyed or angry at his extremely unfair situation like he used to be in the past. After all, he knew it wasn't only him who was going to die for something that wasn't his fault. He had long resigned to his fate of dying, though it all felt much more real now that he was only a few days away from being floated.

*BEEEEP*

*BEEEEP*

Hearing the sirens, Sen got up from his seat, and before 10 seconds could even pass, 3 guards came up from behind him with two of them grabbing each of his arms, and the last one pulling his shock baton out in one hand, and holding a tranquilizer gun in the other hand, pointing it at Sen's neck.

They then started moving down a hallway near the cafeteria.

None of the other juveniles got this treatment, and were instead walking to their cells on their own, but Sen wasn't a stranger to this little routine that had been happening for around a year now, and he couldn't even blame the guards who were treating him like a rabid animal. After all, he did kill 3 guards with his bare hands alone, and even kept silent instead of telling anybody why. This was after he was locked up, of course.

After walking for a little longer, they came upon a room with a solid metal door that seemed to be smoking slightly from how cold it was, but that small amount of smoke wasn't even comparable to the smoke that came out when the guard stationed at the metal door took his key and opened it.

A wave of ice cold smoke washed over both Sen and the guards, causing everybody but Sen to shiver.

Before the guards could get any colder, they threw Sen into the ice cold room, which was revealed to be a 3 meter by 3 meter empty room with nothing but freezing cold smoke coming out of 3 small holes on the bottom of both the left and right side of the room

The room was meant to be an extra storage room for artificial meat needed for meals, but after Sen had killed the three guards, he was put in this room as some kind of justice for the guards.

Feeling as if his blood was freezing, Sen did what he always did to distract himself; he got down and started doing push-ups, crunches, sit-ups, and any other workout he could even think of.

At that point, despite it being freezing in the room, Sen even had to take his shirt off to cool himself down, which revealed the numerous tattoos he had gotten from a young tattoo artist in the Sky Box, though he had to pay for them with some of his rations.

Suddenly, the door was unlocked and slammed open, revealing the same 3 guards who had thrown him into his freezer of a cell a few hours earlier.

"Turn, face the wall, and put your hands behind your back, inmate 27," one of the guards spoke as he pulled his shock baton out in a threatening manner.

"I still have four days until I turn 18. It's not my time yet," Sen explained while standing up and walking back into the wall behind him.

Despite killing 3 guards before, the guards back then didn't have their weapons out and ready unlike the guards now, and Sen wasn't dumb enough to believe his amateur fighting ability was efficient enough to fend off 3 guards who were armed to the teeth and ready to attack.

While analyzing how to get out of being executed before he could ready himself, Sen noticed that one of the guards had a tranquilizing gun in hand, and he instantly visibly calmed down. He had seen many kids get taken away to be executed, and not once did any of the guards ever use a tranquilizer to take them.

Realizing that he was likely just being transported somewhere, Sen did what the guards said, and faced the wall, where he then felt a prick in his shoulder, and his body relax. He didn't try to fight off the tranquilizer even if he could, and let it take him to the land of unconsciousness.

____________________

*CRASH*

"AAH!"

Hearing yells and constant conversation around him, Sen opened his eyes and looked around.

He noticed that he was strapped into a seat and surrounded by other juvenile inmates in the same situation as him. He wasn't dumb, he knew he was in a shuttle, and the only place he could think of where he could even be going is Earth, but from what he'd heard, it'd be many years until Earth was safe to live on.

Before he could question anyone around him, monitors attached to the wall of the shuttle he was in suddenly flickered on, and he saw chancellor Jaha—a person he wasn't particularly fond of—directly on the screen, but despite not being fond of him, Sen still listened to what he was saying on the monitors.

["Prisoners of the Ark, hear me now… You've been given a second chance. And as your chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us, indeed for mankind itself.

We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you… expendable. And if-"]

Interrupting the broadcast, a kid a few seats away from Sen yelled out, "Your dad's a di-"

But before he could finish his loud little "joke", Sen yelled out, "Shut the fuck up so the people who weren't born out of a drunken whore can hear!"

Getting a few unwanted laughs from his insulting order, Sen looked back to the broadcast, pleased that the kid actually shut the fuck up like he told him to.

["-those crimes will be forgiven; your records wiped clean."]

["The drop site has been chosen carefully. Before The Last War, Mount Weather was a military base built within a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough nonperishables to sustain 300 people for up to two years."]

Suddenly, a few people started cheering a guy on who had unbuckled himself from his seat and was floating in the air, with Sen himself also getting bored with the broadcast at this point as he started watching everybody around him.

'We just went into Earth's atmosphere a second ago. This guy's an idiot. He'll most likely die,' he thought, looking at the guy floating around the drop ship and talking to an attractive blonde.

As they were talking, Sen saw two other guys copy the first guy and unbuckle themselves, leaving their seats and floating around despite the blonde's protests about it being too dangerous.

Suddenly, the parachutes on the drop ship deployed, and although Sen was sure the impact killed the two copy cats, he wasn't sure about the first guy to unstrap himself.

Sen stopped paying attention to the two dead kids he didn't care about, and instead noticed the flickering lights and the sparks coming from the drop ship, which didn't exactly make the drop ship seem safe.

Everybody was shouting and screaming as the drop ship descended down to earth, with the lights flickering out every few seconds and everybody holding onto the straps around their shoulder in fear of the impact that could come from the parachutes possibly failing when suddenly, the hum coming from the drop ship slowly went out, making Sen assume that the drop ship had landed while also being in damn shambles, with half of the shit on it broken, though the sparks stopped after the drop ship shut down.

"Listen… no machine hum."

"Wow…"

"That's a first."

Sen heard the two idiots from the cafeteria talking again, but he couldn't care less, as he instantly unbuckled his seatbelt, causing a chain reaction, as unbuckling noises sounded out through the entire drop ship and both the blonde and the spacewalker who was floating started checking to see if the two copy cats were dead or not.

Truthfully, Sen was curious as well to see if his assumption about them dying on impact was correct, so he went over to the blonde and spacewalker, which prompted the spacewalker to open his eyes wide, seemingly recognizing Sen.

Sen couldn't care less if anybody knew his crimes, and he just checked one of the body's on the floor for a pulse, but he didn't feel one.

Despite it being morally wrong, Sen just felt happy about this, as his little guess was correct.

"Is the other one alive?" He asked the blonde who seemed to have medical experience as she instantly placed her fingers over the boy's pulse on his neck instead of doing what Sen did, which was feeling around.

"No, he's dead," she said with a somber look on her face, making Sen wonder both how long she had been in lockup to be this innocent, and what her crime could've been. Though it was just a small curiosity on his part.

A guy near them then shouted, "The outer door's on the lower level! Let's go!"

The blonde girl who was called Clarke by the spacewalker named Finn was almost instant in yelling back, "No. We can't just open the doors!" As she ran over to the ladder and descended down to the lower level, and Sen just followed after her. No use in staying near the dead bodies like the spacewalker was. He couldn't care less.

Sen kind of zoned out a little due to boredom, and when he focused back into the conversation, Clarke was talking to a guy dressed in a guard uniform, though Sen was sure he wasn't a guard just because of the way he held himself.

"If the air's toxic, we're all dead anyway," the guy in the guard uniform said as he turned away from Clarke, looking back to the dropship's door, where he was standing.

"Bellamy?" Hearing yet another person talking, Sen looked over to the girl and saw one of the prettiest girl's he'd seen in a while, though he wasn't one to drool over a woman given his "upbringing".

The beautiful girl then walked over to the guy in the guard uniform who Sen now acknowledged is named Bellamy.

They then had a little reunion, until a kid in the back of the crowd said, "No one has a brother." And another kid chimed in and said, "That's Octavia Blake, the girl they found hidden in the floor!"

As soon as those words were said, the beautiful girl, Octavia, was about to attack the girl until her brother grabbed her and said, "Octavia, no! Let's give them something else to remember you by."

"Yeah, like what?" Octavia asked.

"Like being the first person on the ground in 100 years."

'Nobody's remembering that,' Sen thought in his mind, finding Bellamy's words laughable.

But still, his words brought a smile to Octavia's face as Bellamy turned around and pulled the lever next to the door down, causing the pressure in the drop ship to burst out as bright rays of light blinded almost everybody for a second, but when they opened their eyes, they were met with an otherworldly sight; or at least it was to them.

The sun was shining through the beautiful green trees covered in moss, the crickets and other insects chirped and made noises that were calming to hear, the grass grew wildly and brightly, the gentle breeze blew against everyone, and even the air smelled nice unlike the artificial oxygen on the Ark.

Octavia walked out onto the Dropship door which opened vertically, landing on the dirt, and with each step she took, everybody held their breath in even more until she eventually dropped onto the grass and dirt when suddenly she yelled…

"WE'RE BACK, BITCHES!"