So, someone had pointed out that 'The Girl' isn't much of a name. Truthfully, I agree, but you need some sort of name to work with when you're posting the first chapter, and frankly, I hadn't the slightest idea what to call this when I started writing it. I wanted something simple, something that was meaningful to the story as well as something that wouldn't give anything away. So, 'The Girl' was born. I did think about changing it, but no matter what name I came up with, it just seemed like too much. What do you guys think?

Anyway, read away.

Everyone had left in a rush, the words 'auction', 'chainuser', and 'scarlet eyes' having been passed around. Whether they'd forgotten her or had left her on purpose, she didn't know, and she almost didn't care.

Almost.

It was the first time she'd been left entirely alone since Feitan had found her. She quickly discovered she didn't like it. She wished Chrollo had stayed behind, at least, but he hadn't. Now she had no one to watch, no one to listen to or speak with. She found herself bored.

So, in light of this, she stood and began to look for something to claim her attention. You would think this would have been easy for a girl who seemed to learn something from everything, but it was anything but. Without active distractions, she was left primarily to her own thoughts. The problem was that she didn't have much to think about. Before she had met the Phantom Troupe, she never had such a problem.

Why hadn't she had this problem? She couldn't seem to avoid it now, but she had paid little mind to anything before Chrollo had begun to teach her, and that had never been an issue to her. And another problem was that the question confounded her. She couldn't come up with an answer to it, or an answer to a myriad of other questions that had surfaced in her mind when she was left alone, and she found it mentally taxing at the least. At the most, she found it psychologically painful.

Not that she could have told this to anyone, had anyone been around.

So she sought, somewhat desperately, to distract herself. But how was she supposed to do that? She had never done it before. Well, even if she had never done it, others had. What would they do with her?

Feitan would probably dig some sort of sharp object into her, or drop something down her throat, but she wasn't particularly fond of the sensations his entertainment caused her. Shalnark would either be writing or talking or messing with that thing he called a phone. She couldn't write, and she didn't have a phone, but she could speak.

She began exercising her mouth, testing out words she had heard but never used. When she became frustrated with not knowing what she was saying, she began to run through things she had been taught. She started with her face, and tentatively added in pronouns, and words like 'the' and 'a'. When it sounded right in her ears, she continued until she had named every body part of hers that she knew. Then she moves onto clothes, but she didn't know much other than 'shirt' and 'pants'.

But as she continued to do this, she began to grow bored with it, too. It just didn't appeal to her as much as it did when other people were around. She continued to do it, regardless, because she knew she needed the practice, but as she did so she searched for physical things to do. At first she was simply pacing, her eyes wandering, and then her eyes fell on Chrollo ledge. This time, she knew he wasn't there, but she wondered if the stuff he usually carried was up there. Like a book. Books were strange, but they were interesting. If she understood correctly, every little scribble meant something that wasn't it. It didn't quite make sense to her, but she found it fascinating. There was even a sort of line that meant her, Ilya.

She wanted to see if there was a book, but the ledge was far from within her reach. She had gauged from the first time she'd seen it that she was unable to climb up there, but was there another way?

….she couldn't think of any. So that was out.

She sighed and returned to her monotone pacing, spitting out words and stringing them into sentences that only occasionally sounded right. It didn't last long, though. She rapidly grew fed up with it, and plopped back down onto some rubble.

Craving something, anything, she lifted her head upwards. Nothing happened. Moaning, she let her head drop heavily.

Colors bloomed abruptly behind her eyes at sharp motion, causing her to clutch her face. Images, fuzzy and unfocused, arose and fell in her vision as quickly as thoughts could come and go. She couldn't process an image before it transitioned to a new one, and it made her ache. Her eyes, her brain, all of it hurt!

And then it stopped. As she caught her breath, she scrambled to understand what just happened. There were new words now. No, they were old words. Words she had forgotten. And that man had been there again! He had never appeared during the day before! He wasn't real, so why was she seeing him when she was awake? There was more than that, too. A place. A little house, and a workshop.

A workshop? She hadn't had a name for it before, but she recognized the place. The house was new, old, whatever, but she had known the workshop. That place...is where she woke up. She had woken up plenty of times after sleeping, but that place had been the first. She ransacked her brain for all it was worth to understand even a sliver more, but no. Nothing came up.

She hated this! She truly, wholeheartedly hated this! How long was everyone going to be gone? When were they coming back? Would she have to endure this until they returned? She wanted someone to come, to talk to her. Even if it still confused her, she had more words now! She wanted to try to talk with someone, rather than be talked at. That's the way it had been in the past, she knew, but she couldn't recall when that had been!

Argh! Thinking was too hard!

Gritting her teeth, she resorted to Feitan's methods. Using a nearby stone, she carved patterns into her arm and watched them healed. She made it a challenge, trying to complete some semblance of a picture before the wounds closed.

When she was in the middle of her fifth picture, of what she didn't know, her hand suddenly stopped. Slowly, she withdrew the stone from her skin and watched as the bloody slices healed.

Now that she was thinking, even if she wished she wasn't, everyone had shown interest in this. Feitan's eyes had had quite the enraptured look when he had been doing this to her, and Shalnark had seemed pretty interested in it too. Even Hisoka had done this to her, for seemingly no purpose except to watch her heal.

Why was that?

Was she….unusual somehow? Was she new? The only things she could think of that drew her own attention like that was when she was learning something new. But what about this offered something new?

She studied her arm, made it bleed some more, and repeated this. No matter how many times she did it, though, nothing stood out to her. She couldn't understand. Why did the others like seeing this so much?

The frustration caused her hand to flex and the stone to dig farther into her skin until it hit bone. She didn't care, though, and began to grind away at it.

"Hm, what's this?"

She twitched, raising her head to meet the eyes of the clown. He watched her with amusement on his lips, but she didn't like his smile. Chrollo's smile, Shalnark's smile, those had been good things, but there was something wretchedly different about the way Hisoka twisted his lips. His smile, she knew, wasn't right.

"Has Pet begun to pick up Feitan's habits?"

Finding the ability to control her temperament, she took a deep breath and removed the stone from her arm. Having been open for so long already, the wound began to heal even as she was still retracting the rock. Unable to come up with a clearer answer, she simply replied, "No."

Hisoka blinked. "Oh? You understood what I said?"

Not quite, but she had figured out that 'Pet' meant her, and that he was implying something about Feitan that she didn't like. She could tell from his tone. And since it had been a question, she had given and answer.

"If you understand what I'm saying, then this will be much easier," Hisoka concluded. He hadn't much to go off of. He'd known from the minute he'd come up with his plan that she would be the most difficult part, that she would be the chess piece most difficult to read. It was obvious she didn't like him, considering how she had reacted the other day, and judging by the way she had tensed when he had arrived, she was being cautious. He hadn't thought she'd had it in her not to trust, but it seemed like that was the case. How inconvenient. "You see, there's been a slight issue, and it seems unlikely that Chrollo will be back for quite some time. I believe our interests line up. You appear to like the boss, and I have my personal reasons for wanting the two of you to stay together. We'll have to cooperate, though." He paused, looking her over. "And you aren't getting any of this, are you?"

He couldn't be lead to believe anything else, considering how blank her gaze was. She hadn't moved since he'd begun his dialogue, and her eyes had remained cold through all of it. He was nearly correct. She still had not understood a good half of it. Most adjectives and the like had escaped her, but all she needed was what she got. Issue. Unlikely. Chrollo. Boss. Stay. Those were the primary words that grasped her attention, and along with other less significant words that she had understood, she was able to mostly fill in the blanks. It would have been easier, though, if Hisoka had boiled down his words to the bare bones. He talked too much.

Hisoka did not expect the next word that came out of her mouth.

"Why?"

So she did understand. Some of it, at least. "Why what? Why would we have to cooperate?"

"Why...won't Chrollo be back?"

"He was captured by an enemy of his. The chain user." The first sentence had been unnecessary. All she needed was 'chainuser', and she understood that Chrollo was being held.

"Why...can you...not...get rid of chainuser?"

Hisoka raised a brow. With the 'the' she'd left out, she'd sounded a bit like a caveman, but this was the most complicated sentence she'd come up with so far. "That's none of my concern. Now, will you work with me or not?"

"Why?"

"You want to see him again, don't you?" He offered her his hand. Had it been anyone but him, this would have seemed gentlemanly. With Hisoka in front of her, though, she found the gesture immensely intimidating. And then as if that weren't enough, he had to show that gruesome smile. "If you don't take my hand, Ilya, you might never see Chrollo again."

She hated him, this man in front of her. He made her blood boil. The one person she had seen able to control this joker, if he was telling the truth, was about to be gone. And if she was being given the choice to go with him or stay with this man, she didn't need the time for something as unnecessary and exhausting as thinking.

She dropped the rock in her grasp and grabbed Hisoka's hand.

Alright, so I had had a slight concern when I first began writing this story about our protagonist's name. Because of the font, it might be difficult to tell the difference between a capital I and a lowercase l. To be clear, her name is I-L-Y-A. I apologize if this causes or caused any confusion for you guys. Oh, and, after a few more chapters, I'll be branching off from the source material. Oddly enough, I'll actually be branching off in the same place I branched off in the Number Zero. That just seems like a good spot to do it. It should be an adventure discovering what happens after that. We should look forward to it!

Till then, Kisses from SnowyNeko! :3 MEOW!