Chapter 6:
This had to be officially pointed out sooner or later, it's not like it was impossible or anything. Alas, it had to be announced on a later side.
Ruka was a wimp.
Yes, yes you were not fooled in perspective; the word 'wimp' was mentioned, indeed.
Did you really believe that he wouldn't have been scared after all that's happened? It was preposterous if he ever came back after seeing that 'demon' taking over Hotaru, body and soul, less of the soul part.
It was just… the normal thing to do, if not it'll be completely on the out-of-character category.
Hotaru hunched forward at the idea. She had the carefully syllabified 'wimp' to soothe the tension building up in her stomach generally. Nervousness digesting the bit of food she took not too long ago but this was her conscious; 'hunger' was nothing here.
She scrunched her eyes in contemplation, what with the problem giving her a headache.
Of course, Ruka would've... If not, should've listened to her words, something crossed between a 'protect Mikan' rule and 'forget about her (and perhaps all the pains and sorrows she suffered)' command. She forgot either way of what she had told him.
How long has she been in this dirty prison? Days? Weeks? It had alikeness to several years if she had given out her own opinion personally.
Minutes before, she had seen Nonoko from behind the eyes that were controlled like an easy going video game to the 'spirit', so it's only a matter of time before her classmate would figure out the news and come get people to...
Hang on a second!
What the hell has she been doing?
Since when has SHE ever been the damsel-in-distress? Hotaru's eyes blinked away of all her negative emotions, seemingly to fit a sentimental princess desperate for her savior to swoop down in a 'magical' white horse from above the skies and destroy the dragon that's been keeping her from the world.
She shuddered at the pondered image of her in a fluffy pink dress and -dare she say it- Ruka mounted on one of his four-legged animal friends, reaching a cream felt hand towards her. She, as a young ditsy girl would gleefully accept it and before you know it, they were riding off towards the sunset which was pointlessly thousands of light-years away from them.
Her eyes were agonizingly forced open, she cringed in disgust. She refused to be one of those girls. Not that she was impatient but she'd do anything to stay away from fluffy pink dresses.
Standing up from the pitch black mind she had been trapped in for the passing time, she cracked the only ten knuckles her fists had offered her. SHE will be the one to save herself, not some corny old prince from one of those sappy movies Mikan would eventually force her to watch (and that was the politest way she'd insult Mikan's Barbie sugar plum princess movies).
Hotaru bounded for the end of her head, which was miles and miles stretched out horizontally. Giving up on walking any farther, she smacked her balled up hands onto the colorless floor below her feet, multiple times she smashed the ground with all her might with no given response.
This went on for so long, she wondered how the 'spirit' could have handled the ignored migraine, falling back on her spontaneous plan she sat down in a frustrated dismay. Physically, she knew she couldn't win, mentally wasn't a choice either.
Even if she was incredibly gifted with the mind of Einstein, the 'spirit' had communication to that area as well, taming it useless to her. Plus she wasn't in the best position to do much, she groaned at the idea.
Maybe it wasn't so bad to just die here besides that was the most probable outcome with what Ruka could do, unless he had a better idea than anything she could think up.
"No" she stubbornly disagreed "that just wouldn't be normal"
Sneaky, that's what he had to be.
The scent of smoke slithered into his nose without another settling. He twitched his nose disdainfully but had knowledge that he was at the right destination.
His feet barely could lift themselves; they dragged behind his body in a queer speed.
There were a couple of yells from inside the room, frightening him for his courage was at a small size. Unbeknownst, that the shouts were mere spoken instructions of highly trained doctors and nurses, which from the inside was no louder than the cricket sounds that loitered through a coincidentally open window.
The night was young as he was patient at the time ticking.
Tick. Tick.
Not yet.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Almost.
Tick.
Perfect.
He launched ahead, ready to knock down the door that blocked him from success.
"Now now" said a sudden feminine voice "whose little pet is this?" he was lifted by the back of his thick fur, where Ruka had massaged hours ago.
He gritted his tiny teeth, it felt the least comfortable with the sharp nails the woman had obtained at an unknown parlor and it scratched his little hairs as he attempted escape.
"Ooh, a little feisty, aren't we?" she pinched his whiskers
"Well, your not allowed here lil' one, this is a hospital. Let's go find your owner" the animal grimaced, both at what he knew of how buildings such as these didn't allow flea-ridden pets such as he and that no matter where they tried to look, he had known already of his master's presence far from where he was.
But that was supposed to be a secret, oh well oops.
"Hurts, d-doesn't it Natsume?" she gave out a nervous giggle.
"Shut up polka-dots!" the boy countered, fury grazed on his face as he tried to catch a glimpse of his talkative classmate. Unfortunately, the bandages were too over exaggerated with only two available openings, so his crimson pupils and thin chapped lips could provide necessary sight and mindless chitchat thus he saw only part of Mikan's pigtails, which weren't much.
"you look like a mini mummy" she forced laughter, almost like pointlessly attempting to fill in the emptiness of her sewn up arms and legs, which stung even as she licked her cracked lips from drying up entirely.
Movement was restricted for she too was thoroughly wrapped in white like a risen pyramid immortal but Natsume hadn't insulted her about it yet, probably meaning his head was not permitted to move that much to keep her in view.
"Shut up!"
"There's a bunch of fruits here, look! Permy even sent you a good... Three, four... Fifteen apples!"
It took a dominant amount of her energy to swivel her eyes to that direction and it didn't help that her neck noisily cracked in timing. Her bones and joints have gone numb after usage being minimized in her bandages, only a matter of time before she breaks a leg or two.
"I know, just shut up already!" she flinched, half because her extended neck had warned her not to command anything else to adjust and half because Natsume had cried out so forcefully, she found his mood curious.
"A-all you say is 'shut up!' you know?" Natsume sighed
"If you keep on talking, your voice will strain your body"
"But you're talking als-"
"Shut. Up!" Mikan mentally zipped her mouth; it had gone empty of any reusable saliva anyway.
She understood he meant well even if he was bossing her around so normally.
Puffing out an inhale of air and being glared at for it, she thought of the several possibilities of what her best friend had been doing for the past hour. 'Had she began to eat breakfast yet? Or had she seen that burned down construction yet? She'd be devastated if she saw it. Is she at school already?'
Noting that Hotaru wasn't there when the fire had started, hope swelled in her chest though little it was. All of a sudden, her mind flashed some clear positive images of Hotaru and her lifeless purple orbs out on the streets of Alice Academy, viewing the wind like a new mechanism, her in the library flipping through a math book, preparing endlessly for the trigonometry test tomorrow (which Mikan hadn't study for yet), her screwing on a piece of metal to the body of a robot. The last of which was the most believable of all motions the subjective slideshow could provide of what she COULD be doing currently.
The authentic sights of her missed companion running through her mind formed cold spiced tears to balance on her weak eyelashes and they lightly started to tingle the recesses of her eyes. She evened them out by numerously blinking and firmly neglecting the images from taking a second entrance.
"Where was Imai back there?" Natsume perked up, remarking of her peculiar non-appearance back at the conservatory. At the sound of his inquiry, Mikan destroyed all evidences leading to her emotional breakdown and soon replied
"Oh? Natsume, I thought we weren't supposed to talk"
"I said three words, you said ten words"
"That wasn't-...five, six, seven...that was NINE words!" she could've raised nine fingers at him hauntingly, if she wasn't so tight within the wrappings. She awaited a witty comeback but nothing else was spoken by the maroon eyed boy. Timidly, she tried to explain what she knew of Hotaru, in answer to his question.
"Actually I don't know really know where Hotaru-"
"shhhhh!"
"Hey, you were the one who asked me about her! So don't you-" she silenced herself as blaring voices came from outside their door, eavesdropping they chose to do. It was muffled, difficult to decipher with their covered up ears.
"What do you mean? No... I thought they'd ALL be fine already!" 'Narumi-sensei?' Mikan guessed
"... Ruka didn't...actually it... Hotaru is still lost out there" 'Hotaru's brother!'
"….…..…..the others, what's...okay?"
"Their fine, their fine...checked records….…..out tomorrow"
There was a loud heaved sigh of relief.
"…. But I just heard..."
"Ruka's gone?" alarmingly Mikan's eyelids were pushed up to one of those wide eyed looks nobody finds attractive lately, Natsume should have heard it too but his stoic tic facial expression remained dead. The same thought was there though,
Ruka, where did you go?
Our blonde hero was weak to his knees, running two kilometers straight whilst his arm in a cemented cast was no mild walk in the park. He inhaled more rapidly, exhales being thrown out every once in a while, he just couldn't take anymore of the unexpected exercise.
Geez, he's such a wimp.
Summoning the powers of his Alice and within minutes, he was mingling with a large eagle that had been crawling in the leafy jungle alongside the road he took. Ruka then hopped onto its feathery back and with a reassuring word of peace, they immediately soared to the skies.
Clouds fierce fully attacked his face from left to right, toying with his delicate eye sight. He had to squint his eyes to see better of the afternoon display. In the bright turquoise sky, there was an outline as one of the masses of clouds attempted to hide the medium sized sun from harmfully releasing its violent rays. Light sprayed out from the cloud, shaping it to a finer quality. It took the inanimate form of a heart, painted in a deep sea blue.
It was beautiful.
He wished SHE could see it. Having spent a week in that pitch black mind of hers, she might too find the blinding sight beautiful. Hesitantly, he promised to show it to her one day, he then returned back to course.
Up here, nothing was particularly visible not until he dives vertically to get even the most blurry view of the school, he wasn't picky about it. He knew in memory that he was hovering above it like a distinct map he originally envisioned before take-off.
As they riskily dipped down, there was that same rush of the wind that attempted to toss him off the bird, which was a failure of plan. He clung tightly to the back of the creature, in his hand was a clump of smooth plumage and strangely the eagle didn't mind the pulling. Ruka could also feel the skull of the wildfowl from behind four thick layers of tuffs; it was so feeble even as its existence as a predator.
Ruka realized that the wind stopped its blustering and became a calming air that flushed through his face, like this he was almost enjoying his free flying.
Once the clouds gave way and everything below was already visible to him, he notices a crowd gathering around someone in the cafeteria veranda.
'Maybe a fight had started but that's impossible since Natsume isn't there.' Ruka said to himself, joking about his companion's temper.
What can he say?
Natsume was Natsume.
Ecstatic questions and rushed exclamations were at his earshot, some of which broke goose bumps through his young spinal cord.
"Your back, Hotaru!"
"Did you see the fire at that precious place of yours, Hotaru-san?"
"Where have you been?"
"Do you know we'll have a quiz in five minutes?"
With a hassled order to land, the eagle flapped its wings in warning to the students below and crashed to the cemented floor. They moved aside, getting out of Ruka's way of amateur landing. Some girls were holding their skirts down, shrieking at the quick change of weather (having not seen the humungous bird yet) and some boys were blocking their faces from the microscopic flying dust which might peck into their fragile eyes.
Everyone backed away, except one.
There she was, as if she was perfectly fine, as if nothing had happened, as if he just woken up from a dream. A nightmare, more likely but does Ruka really need to correct himself NOW?
He froze in astonishment atop his new pet, his mouth fairly open but it was hardly noticed. Hotaru Imai was indisputably before him with the same cold face she put up with everyone, a hoard of classmates surrounding her; still she took no action similar to theirs.
The zoological Alice user launched himself off the beaked animal, patting its head gratefully and gaped at his friend in awe. The girl raised one of her thin eyebrows at the newcomer as if he had gone crazy, looking at her like that. It took minutes to recover from the shock, even the crowd thought he was nuts.
He rubbed his eyes predictably, drew in a helpless amount of air and spoke in a heavy unused voice.
"Is that... Imai?" he flexed a finger at her, who gave another questioning gaze at him.
"Oh. My. Gosh! It's Ruka-kun!" one side of the hoard bellowed. Fear it true, there was only one person who had the courage to speak something up in this awkward silence.
"Ruka-kun, you're back from the hospital?" Sumire waved, snapping the crowd back to normal.
"Oh yeah, he WAS in the hospital" one reminded the other
"Ruka, I'm glad your back!" one guy patted his back
"where's Hyugga, Nogi?"
"Ruka-kun!" in an instant, everyone had fully engulfed him into a one-man show, begging for answers and yelling his name, him struggling in the middle of the recreated ring.
"w-wait a second, guys-" he reacted
"Imai?" Ruka pushed through his devoted fan club and a gathered group of his friend wannabes.
"Imai?" he cried, being vulnerably swallowed in again.
Hotaru glimpsed at the boy once but no sooner left the scene quietly.
Author's Notes: I purposely put two chapters in as punishment for my un-presentness (?). Weeeeeeell, I did my best. Thats all i can say -.-'
What do you think? Did i choose right by NOT stopping this? I'll continue to the next update IF there's a 'Yes' LOL. yea, i know that won't happen.
Oh well, can't say I DIDN'T try, see you next time :)