Red hair flowed like the hem of her dress. She was running and running, but they ran faster. Even faster than them was a bullet.

She will never outrun that bullet.

Her body made impact with the ground below, the wild ferns and woody debris scrapping her elbows and dirtying her forehead. Her ankle was snagged by a root, keeping her down like a trapped animal. At that point, she had already given up. Her voice shut down, her eyes snapped close. She braced herself.

In darkness, the footsteps sounded almost human. Her skin jumped at the touch, because it felt like a hand, warm and gentle. The voice was the most human of all.

"It's okay."

Everything will be okay, he reassured her. And when she opened her eyes and looked into his, she almost believed him.

"Damn it, Gon!"

Approaching them was a second boy, his shirt splattered with what looked like blue ink. His hands were dripping in the same color, as he wiped his cheek against his bare arm. He reminded her of a mountain cat cleaning himself after a kill. The look in his eyes said he was ready for more. Killing, that is.

Only, his next words were very different from what she expected, as was his tone.

"Does it hurt?"

She was confused by his question. But then, she followed his gaze and saw.

The boy named Gon had a radiant smile, so much that she never noticed the bent in his arm, the swelling of his veins. His skin did not break, but just about everything else on the inside had. It seemed unlikely he had any control left of his fingers.

The bullet had to be stopped somehow. Funny how she forgot that detail.

Swallowing hard, she forced herself to look. Lying a short distance away were four dismembered creatures. Their sizes were larger than human but smaller than that of a bear. It was a horrific sight, gangly appendages and razor-sharp hairs, a pool of bright blue leaking out the cracks in exoskeleton. One wing of chitin jutted crookedly into the air.

Then there was the fifth. Even though it was small, smaller than her, that one scared her the most. Because that one was the most abnormal of them all. That one had spoken to her, spoken to her the most terrible of words.

Looking at them, she understood she would have never escaped. She would have never gone any farther than the rest of her family. Water blurred her vision, as she finally understood how meagre her existence was, how hopeless.

Yet, she survived.

In exchange for an arm, she survived.