A disclaimer before I start, because I forgot to write it on the last chapter:
As much as I wish I did, I do not own Hunter x Hunter. I only own what you do not recognize :)
"Seriously? You too?" Asterra groaned as she picked out the soggy map with her thumb and index finger from her soggy sling backpack. The seawater had caused the colored ink to leave its place on the paper and bleed together so much that now she couldn't tell what was what anymore. She laid the map next to her a soggy coil of rope and a soggy blanket, deciding to throw it out and look for a new one once she got to Dolle Harbor. She gave the backpack she had brought an exasperated flick. "I thought this thing was supposed to be waterproof."
"The vendor said water resistant, not waterproof," Kikiri said drowsily to her. "And he said that five years ago too."
She glared at the Dokujo for a moment then looked up. The sky was cloudless and a bright sun beat down on the sea and the ship sailing on it. "Well at least it's sunny." Asterra looked to her pile of soggy belongings. "Won't take long for everything to dry." In fact, 40 minutes of sitting on the deck had dried her jacket from drenched to damp, and her orange shoulder-blade-length hair was almost dry too.
Asterra checked the rest of the things that had been in her backpack-food, water canteen, a penlight, first aid kit, and a penknife. Food, which consisted primarily of jerky, had gotten a little wet, but it was still edible. The water canteen and the water inside it were okay. The penlight still worked (for now, at least), the first aid kit wasn't waterlogged, and the penknife seemed to be devoid of any major damage too.
Guess it could have been worse, Asterra thought as she waited for her things to dry. She looked towards the deck area towards the middle area of the caravel where the majority of the people were gathered to pass the time.
Out of the roughly 200 people who had been on the port, only about 50 remained. Only 50 people, and they barely fit on the deck. It probably would have been impossible to fit all those people waiting at the port, which brought her to a chilling conclusion.
Had that…gangplank event been carried out deliberately in order to eliminate some of the applicants?
It was the only scenario in which that event could make sense-to her, at least. It gave reason as to why a merchant ship had only stopped at port for 10 minutes, an amount of time that made any kind of loading and unloading of cargo impossible. Otherwise she would have to assume that the captain was simply a sociopathic nutjob that liked seeing people scream and suffer and react like animals, and Asterra really did not want to have to assume that was the case.
Either way, she had to keep on her toes. There was always the possibility that the captain would try something again during the trip-something that would shave down the number of applicants even more.
Asterra sent the thought to the back of her head and turned her attention to the distribution of the people.
Their formation had not changed by much-many of them sat as far away from each other as possible. In fact, Asterra herself was doing the same thing by sitting in an area near the ledge of the boat where there were not many people.
But there was one exception to the situation. As Asterra's eyes roamed to the starboard side of the boat, she spied a 2 men sitting near the starboard railings. One looked brutish, with a thickly muscled body clad in a tank top that had seen better days and army fatigues. Scars ran across his tanned face and bald head and a tattoo wrapped around his upper bicep. His eyes, though, were dull; they lacked the light of creativity, of cleverness.
The other man sitting next to Brawns was leaner. He wore a dark long-sleeved shirt with an outdoor vest over it and long light-colored pants. His light brown hair tossed messily all to one side and he sat with his back against the railing in a relaxed manner, as if he was on a luxury cruise rather than a shipful of tense applicants that weren't afraid to get rough. A cocky smile played on his lips while he spoke, and his eyes looked sly. From the way that the two exchanged words, it appeared that he was trying to strike up a partnership with the human troll.
The cocky one offered his hand and the muscular one took it, nodding. Apparently the two had come to an agreement.
As the two ended their handshake, a voice cut through the air from the area towards the back of the boat. It sounded similar to the voice on the megaphone. Asterra looked towards the source of the sound to see who was speaking.
Towards the back of the boat was a wall with the door to the areas below deck. On both sides of the entrance there were staircases that led up to an upper deck that spanned the back one-fourth of the caravel. On this elevated deck stood a sturdy, stout man dressed in a heavy seafaring coat with arms behind his back. From the way the skin crinkled around his eyes, one could tell that he had spent a good portion of his life squinting over the horizon as the sea air whipped his face. A grey beard that covered more than half of his face gave him a grizzled look and a white and a navy blue admiral's cap sat atop greying hair.
"First of all," the captain's voice boomed across the ship. "I, Captain Rilto, want to congratulate all of you that managed to board my ship. As you can see, not many of you did. So as a little treat for your work, I'll take you to the port closest to the Hunter Exam site: Dolle Harbor! So rest easy, you lot! Five hours and you'll be close to the exam site!"
Cheering erupted from the applicants. Five hours meant that they would be arriving in Dolle Harbor at about half-past two in the afternoon.
Captain Rilto waited for the cheering to die down before continuing. "I can imagine, though, that five hours is a long time to just wait for any one of you. So I have a little game that all of you can play to pass the time called 'Find the Stowaway.'
"Right now there are 30 men, not including myself, working to keep this ship going. But a stowaway's managed to disguise himself as a crewman. I want each one of you to try to figure out who that is."
"Can't you do that?" an applicant hollered.
"I could; but then you lot wouldn't have a game to play," the captain grinned. "Every crew member has a nametag; you are going to write on a piece of paper the name of the crew member of who you think is the stowaway and give it to me once we reach Dolle Harbor. I won't tell you if you're right or wrong; I'll only give you a piece of paper in exchange. And if you follow the instructions on the paper, you'll know whether or not you were right by the end of the day."
Asterra narrowed her eyes. So there was another test to thin the herd of applicants.
One of the crew started giving out a slip of paper and a pen to each applicant on the boat as the captain continued. "Before the game begins, I want to lay down a couple of rules. First rule: you can't ask the crew or anybody else who works on this ship who the stowaway is. Second rule: You can't harass my crew into telling you who the stowaway is. Third rule: You can go anywhere on the ship except for my quarters. Fourth rule: Give me back my pens when you're done! Anybody that breaks the four rules will be swimming before they know what hit them. Any questions?"
Nobody asked. However Asterra did hear applicants around her mutter phrases along the lines of "How the hell are we supposed to figure this out?"
"Good. Then get started!" With that the captain disappeared from sight.
Asterra received a paper and pen from a crewman-whose nametag said "Devo"-and packed her now dry things. She then gathered up her hair into a side ponytail on her left. Kikiri ran up her arms and took his usual place on her shoulders as she put on her backpack. Asterra then began walking towards the captain.
"Wait, Asterra," Kikiri said. "Shouldn't we go below deck to look for the stowaway?"
"I want to ask the captain something first."
Within a minute Asterra had made her way to the captain, who was descending the stairs on the left. "Captain!" Asterra called.
"Yeah?" the captain asked as Asterra jogged up to him. "You aren't going to ask me who the stowaway is, are you?"
Asterra shook her head. "I heard your rules; this is about something else. Why did you call your boat 'The Maiden Voyage'?"
The captain laughed. "You're not the first one to ask me that. Do you know what a maiden voyage is?"
Asterra shook her head again.
"It's the very first trip a ship takes after being built. It's a beautiful sight-the new ship sliding into the water without a splash. And a ship on its maiden voyage smoothly responds to every turn of the wheel, every part of the ship working together without a hitch." The captain patted the railing of the staircase affectionately. "And I want this girl to always be in that kind of shape so that I can keep sailing on her til the end of my days."
Asterra blinked as she processed the answer to the question that had been bugging her since she had seen the name of the ship. It was an odd answer-the captain humanized the ship by calling it "this girl"-but it satisfied her curiosity.
"Got any more questions?" the captain asked.
Asterra shook her head. "No; thanks for answering the one I had. I'll go look for that stowaway now."
The captain gestured towards the door in the wall with his chin. "Way below deck is there. Stay out of my quarters."
"Will do," she smiled.
=o=o=o=
After the ordeal at the gangplank, all the majority of applicants wanted to do was sit on the deck of the boat and vegetate while sunbathing. A part of Asterra felt the same way but a bigger part of her was excited to have the task. Frequent traveling with her parents and constantly being thrown into new environments, combined with a brain wired in a way that doing nothing drove her insane, had made Asterra a rather restless youth. Kikiri knew from experience that if she wasn't doing anything, she ended up pursuing whatever caught her attention at that particular moment, whether it was a crack in the wall or a flower growing out of a crack of a cliff face, even if sating that curiosity meant facing danger. Five hours of doing nothing would have killed her soul.
Asterra sat down on a bench-like piece of wood in the center part of the deck, the wind whipping her face and hair. She had five hours to find and identify the disguised stowaway. How would she do that though? The captain had taken away the easy road of asking one of the crew members who the stowaway was. How else could she identify an outsider? Use ship vocabulary? That would have been a great idea if she knew any.
"Asterra, shouldn't we get moving?" Kikiri asked but Asterra ignored his question, as she was too engrossed in people watching. Hunter Exam applicants and crewmen alike milled about, each person on their own separate mission. The door to below deck opened and closed rhythmically; one person walked out, another walked in. Her eyes strolled across the deck lazily, jumping from person to person, from people that sat against the boat ledge to people who stood stiffly with crossed arms and eyes focused in thought. His body language said-
Body language.
Of course; why had she not thought of it before? The crew were not allowed to tell the applicants who the stowaway was. Not telling something was something that they chose to do consciously. But there was something that they could not control via conscious thought-body language. How their bodies reacted upon seeing an outcast-the shift in posture, the shift in glances-would telegraph their emotions to an observant eye. As long as the crew knew who the stowaway was, their body language would betray their sentiments towards the stowaway. And then there was the flip side: she had to look for a crew member who looked unsure of what he was doing, assuming he had not been working on the ship for long.
A small grin lit up her face as a plan formulated in her mind. She would have to observe all the interpersonal interactions between all of the crewmates, including the higher-up ones. But she didn't have the time to tail every single member of the crew and see every one of their interactions. In an ideal world she would have been able to observe them while they were all in one room. But this wasn't an ideal world, so she needed the next best thing.
A sailor walked by her, carrying a box of something. "Excuse me," she called and the sailor turned towards her. "Berett" was written on his nametag. "Berett."
"Yeah?" he asked.
"When do the crewmen eat lunch?"
"We usually eat lunch in shifts-a group eats at noon, another eats at one, and another group eats at two."
Damn. She had to give a decision to the captain by half past two; that didn't leave her much time to observe the third group.
"Why do you ask?"
"Out of curiosity," she replied, then added, "and I may or may not be getting kinda hungry." She wasn't lying: hunger was poking at her stomach, but it was a tolerable nagging sensation that she could stand for a couple more hours.
Berett laughed. "Forget to eat breakfast?"
She shook her head, a smile on her face. "No, just ate early."
The sailor shifted his grip on the box. "Well, I'm not sure if our cooks would give you anything, but if you go in there"-the sailor pointed at the door located towards the back of ship-"the galley is on the first floor. Go right down the corridor and it's on the left side."
"Ok. You have the time?"
"10:30."
One and a half hour until the first lunch shift. "And where's the mess hall?" she asked again.
"Near the galley; actually, it's right in front of it."
"Got it," Asterra replied, smiling, and stood up. "Thanks."
"Yeah, no problem," Berett replied as she walked past him towards the door. He then spotted a particularly rough-looking Hunter Exam applicant glaring at him and cringed. The captain had warned them that something like this would happen and asked them to hang in there for five hours. Berett faced forward again, feeling the applicant's eyes bore into his back. It made him wonder why the majority of the applicants on this ship had to be intimidating men rather than cute, friendly girls like the one he had just talked to.
=o=o=o=
Asterra found the mess hall and galley easily. A quick peek into the mess hall proved that it was empty, so she decided to observe the cooks in the galley, although the mouthwatering aroma that snaked out of the room had a significant influence on her decision. There were two cooks in the kitchen and the both of them bantered with each other like old friends while chopping up vegetables and stirring pots. A minute or two of watching also revealed that both of them knew exactly where everything was. Neither of them wandered around the galley's cabinets; they just walked over to one, reached in, and walked back to their station with desired material in hand. Both of these cooks were too well-adjusted to their surroundings to be the stowaway.
A quick look at the clock told her that she still had time to burn until lunch. She had started to walk out the galley to observe the other sailors when she noticed that Kikiri was missing from her shoulder. "Kikiri?" she called, looking around.
The outraged cry of a cook answered her instead.
"You little-!" the cook nearest to the door shrilled, raising his ladle above his head. "Get out!"
Asterra turned to see Kikiri bolting towards the door, stubby little legs working overtime to get the Dokujo out of the galley as fast as possible. There was a piece of meat in his mouth.
It didn't take long to put two and two together. "Kikiri!" Asterra groaned.
"Get this thing out of here!" the cook screamed at Asterra. "It'll make my crew sick!"
"Hey! Kikiri does not have diseases!" Asterra snapped back. "He's clean!"
"I don't care! Get it out of here before I kill it!"
Red-brown streaked by her feet and into the corridor. Asterra followed suit before the cook screamed anything more. As soon as they reached the corridor, the door slammed behind them.
"Kikiri! Why didn't you tell me you were hungry?" Asterra asked, leaning against the corridor wall. "I would've given you some jerky."
"I wasn't," Kikiri insisted as he ripped the meat apart with his paws and teeth. "But that was raw meat! Real, raw meat, not that salted, dried stuff you've been giving me for the last two days!" His voice rose in pitch to a whine. "How was I supposed to say no to that?!"
"You didn't have to! You could have at least asked nicely instead of just taking it!"
Kikiri swallowed the stolen meat. "He wouldn't have given me it!"
"You don't know that!" Asterra shot back, hands on hips. Then she took them off. "Ugh, you know what? Forget it. What's past is past." She knelt down and Kikiri bounded up her arm, licking his lips, and the two continued down the corridor. After a few moments of silence, Asterra asked, "Did you at least enjoy it?"
"Mmhmm. A lot," Kikiri said dreamily. "I can't wait to get back on land. I'm sick of that salted stuff you give me."
"Hey, watch it," Asterra shot back. "'That salted stuff' is what's keeping you fed at the moment, since I can't carry around a cooler full of fresh meat. Or would you rather go hungry for the rest of the day?"
Kikiri face gained a horrified expression. "You wouldn't."
"You know I would."
"Meanie," Kikiri said and head-butted Asterra's ear, which made her laugh.
=o=o=o=
After two hours of observing and wandering the corridors, Asterra had a mental list of four names that she suspected of being the stowaway. She sat on a bench on the corner of the room, pretending to be engrossed in the newspaper that had been sitting there. Kikiri slept on her lap.
All four of the candidates appeared in the first lunch shift, which consisted of about ten people. And after an hour of lunch, all of the four sailors were crossed off the list.
The second lunch hour didn't provide any promising candidates. She first thought that a blonde eating by himself might be it, but then two sailors joined him at his table. A minute later the blonde was chatting away with a lively grin on his goateed face, his posture relaxed.
"Tch," she muttered; Kikiri looked up at her once and then went back to his nap.
The room cleared a second time and Asterra glanced at the clock. Two o'clock. She had 30 minutes until she had to give a name. Come on, come on, she thought. I know you have to eat lunch sometime.
A crackling voice spoke from the speakers. "Attention, crew and applicants. We will be arriving in Dolle Harbor in about 30 minutes. Applicants, please do not forget to make your decision."
The third group filed into the mess hall carrying trays with steaming bowls. Sailors slid into a seat, following a routine, a seating arrangement that had been established by days, weeks, months at sea. All except one.
Hello, Asterra thought as she spotted a young man with brown hair look around for a place to sit, tray in hand. This one didn't know the seating arrangement by heart-he was new to the system. She zeroed in on him as he finally sat down at the empty half of a table. Sitting at the other end of the table was a particularly lively bunch of sailors. As soon as he sat down, the two sailors nearest to him turned their heads, then turned in towards the conversation, showing their backs to the lone diner.
She continued to observe him for the next few minutes. During the time period none of the other sailors invited him to join their conversation. Asterra didn't know the inner workings of a ship's crew, but every other sailor she had seen today was a part of some group, some conversation, even if they looked like new members. But that wasn't happening with this guy. Nobody beckoned him to come over and sit with them. He ate his meal in silence at his empty end of the table.
Asterra checked the clock. 2:25pm. Her decision was due in 5 minutes. At this point this lone diner was her best bet. She took out her pen and paper to scribble down his name, but her wrist stopped as soon as she touched the point of the pen to the paper.
What was his name?
She looked at him again, but his sitting position made his nametag unreadable. And he was still eating, which meant he wasn't going to be turning any time soon. She jabbed Kikiri. "Hey, get up," she hissed. Kikiri drowsily looked at her and she beckoned at the lone diner with her head. "Go find out his name."
Kikiri yawned and stretched, then turned on his side. "No."
"Ki-Are you kidding me?!" she hissed. "Why?"
"I'm tired."
"Tired? Don't you think that my entrance to the Hunter Exam is a little more urgent than your napping needs?!"
"That is a very subjective statement," Kikiri yawned and set his head down. She poked him until he grumbled, "Can't it wait 5 minutes?"
"I don't have freaking five minutes! I need to turn in this paper in"-she glanced at the clock-"3 minutes!"
Kikiri didn't stir. Dammit Kikiri, Asterra thought and poked him again. No response. Fine then. Plan B it is. "I'll get you some meat at the next butcher shop we see."
That woke him up. Kikiri's ears pricked up at the mentioning of the word "meat" and he shot up from his napping position. "Promise?" he asked.
"Promise," She replied and he jumped down her lap. He then dissolved into the shadows and crawled over to the stowaway. In a few moments he was back on the bench next to her.
"Seto," he whispered and Asterra scrawled down the name onto the piece of paper, muttering her thanks.
Just as she finished the last strokes of the final letter, a voice over the intercom announced, "Applicants, we have arrived at Dolle Harbor. Please take your decision to the disembarkation point."
Asterra put Kikiri on her shoulder and took her leave. A few seconds later she was out on the deck, where to her right there was a long line of people. A gangplank-a proper one that prevented people from falling out, not the one used before-connected the ship to the pier below. The captain stood at a point near the gangplank, taking pens and pieces of paper from applicants and giving out pieces of paper in exchange.
Asterra stepped in line and a minute later she was giving the captain her decision as well as the pen. Captain Rilto took both, opened up the folded piece of paper and read it. Then he took out a piece of paper from his left coat pocket and gave it to her. She gulped-the captain had taken a piece of paper out of his right pocket for the person in front of her-then calmed herself. Her answer was logical, based on observations and evidence. At best it was correct, at worst it was an incorrect educated guess. And that was better than a random guess in her mind.
She accepted the piece of paper, put it in the pocket of her hoodie and walked down the gangplank. Her legs itched to run, but they couldn't because of the person who was walking slowly in front of her. So she settled for taking in her new surroundings.
Dolle Harbor had the same layout as Essel, just on a larger scale. Concrete connected the town to the sea; workers unloaded boxes from merchant ships docked at piers. Large red-roofed stores and multi-story buildings bordered hugged the harbor and followed its crescent shape. Beyond the grey of the harbor town were rolling hills, dark green with the leaves of trees that grew in the area.
"I wonder if the rabbits in those forests are tasty?" Kikiri murmured by her ear.
"I'm sure they are," she replied absentmindedly.
"And you are going to get me meat at the first butcher shop you see, right?"
"You can have whatever you want as long as I can afford it. So don't expect a filet mignon."
Asterra felt Kikiri bounce around on her shoulder, squeaking giddily, and shook her head. That Dokujo and his food.
The person in front of her stepped onto the pier and her pace quickened. Almost there. Almost there. Despite herself she felt a giddiness well up within her.
Asterra added a jump to her last step and her black sneakers hit the grey concrete of the pier.
And just like that, she was officially in Dolle Harbor-the harbor closest to the Hunter Exam site.
Thanks for reading! As always, constructive criticism and comments are appreciated.
People interested in why Asterra's mom is an anthropologist rather than a sociologist, read on.
Moire: I did a little research on anthropology vs sociology after reading your quote. Sociology is indeed the study of social relationships, and it focuses on modern societies and their social problems like crime and unemployment. Anthropology has a lot of subfields and ones like sociocultural anthropology (studying cultures and focusing on social organization and kinships) can overlap with sociology. The big difference between the two seems to be that sociology tends to focus on modern societies, while sociocultural anthropology tends to focus on "other" cultures. Asterra's parents both focused on "other cultures" and traveled frequently to study different cultures, which is why I decided to keep Asterra's mom as an anthropologist as opposed to a sociologist.
