CHAPTER 12
No money, no identification, no phone... The troupe had taken away all her meagre possessions, and Rooke was having a hard time planning how on earth she was going to get back home. Well, she had solved the money problem by swiping some wallets, but for the phone and identification problem, they weren't solved yet.
But those were the least of her worries now. Although she'd bought and donned some disguises, she doubted that that would prevent the Troupe from recognising her, since they had felt what her nen... felt like. It'd be easy to pinpoint her position if they used En. Therefore, logically thinking, the only way to avoid the Troupe members was to use whatever left of her miserable headstart to scram from Wildemont A.S.A.P..
Wildemont, Rooke knew, was a landlocked city,with its borders surrounded by dense forests. If she headed South, she would cross the forest to Gillens', a seaport where she could stow on a ship straight back to Melfis. However, there was a worry for Rooke - would it be too obvious? She would be travelling linearly, and the Troupe knew where she had lived.
Alternatively, Rooke could travel west to Pajan, where she'd be able to get to Melfis by crossing an additional river. She wouldn't be travelling linearly, but then that meant a higher chance of getting lost. Additionally, it was time-consuming as well. But it felt somewhat safer!
"Ugh," Rooke grumbled. All these worrying was bad for her health. And why was she worrying this much? All because of the stupid Phantom Troupe and their nasty little sadistic torturer. Speaking of the torturer, Rooke shuddered at what would become of her if they found her. They'd probably cut off all her limbs - then she'd be of no use, because who would need a memberless member?
The bad pun made her chuckle. Ah, well. There's no use in worrying - she'd do best to decide on a course of action. Rooke quickly bought some food, insect repellent, water, and just in case, a first aid kit, and headed to the west of the city - she decided to take the roundabout way. It's much safer, anyway. (Or so she thought.)
It was getting extremely dark in the forest, and Rooke was in a sour mood. The forest was damp and dark, and Rooke wished that she had bought some matches earlier on, because this little journey of hers proved that Rooke was absolute crap at starting a fire of her own. Too many years of living in the comfort of gas stoves and lights, added on with the lack of practice at starting fires, reverted her to being a noob at the art.
But more importantly, her insect repellent was proving ineffective, and worst of all, the forest had an unimaginable number of bugs. Pair up a clean freak with a forest full of bugs, and you get an interesting scene. Rooke was extremely disgusted with everything - the snails, the worms, the ants, the centipedes. Worse still was that they were everywhere.
However, if there was one good thing the bugs did, it was keep Rooke awake. Rooke kept walking, and walking, and walking. She was exhausted for having panicked and sprinted at the start of her trip, so for now she focussed on moving forward and conserving her energy. She'd do whatever she can to avoid the Phantom Troupe and their mean little torturer, to keep her limbs and head safe.
Speaking of the Troupe, Rooke found it a miracle that she hasn't been found by the Troupe yet. By now they should've realised that she was missing, and probably started their hunt - but here she was, still free and not caught. In fact, it felt too good to be true - they must've tailed her, or something, so that the little guy, whatever his name was, could torture her. Or perhaps they liked having their prey run, and catching up with them later, like a game of Hide-and-Seek?
Rooke started walking quicker. Well, if the Troupe is giving her a chance to escape, she'd take it. In fact, she'd snatch it right out of their hands if she had to.
Rooke briefly considered flying, but decided against it as she had wanted to stay inconspicuous. If the troupe had yet to locate her, she didn't want to reveal her location.
The sun had set for a few hours already, and it was pitch dark - Rooke couldn't really see what was in front of her. The moonlight, if any, were mostly blocked out by the canopy of leaves above. Rooke kept bumping into trees, vines, and occasionally, spiderwebs. All that was nasty and all, but through a great load of determination, Rooke decided that the Troupe was to be feared more than the bugs were to be disgusted at. Thus, she kept going.
However, this proved to be a dangerous decision. After walking for a while, Rooke was nearing a sloped cliff, and due to the darkness, couldn't see much. However, not knowing this, she kept walking rapidly, straight towards the slope.
When Rooke finally noticed the presence of the cliff, it was too late - both her feet were already in thin air, and she fell. Fast.
Rooke gave a short scream, before she had the sense to quickly transmute a dragon and hang on onto it. Her dragon narrowly saved her from hitting the ground hard, but due to her panic, she wasn't focussing on her dragon, and it was going reflexively in random directions, just to dodge incoming trees and whatnot. However, her frenzied state of mind was not enough to maintain the dragon form, and as soon as it had appeared, disappeared into thin air, flinging Rooke horizontally into a tree, breaking it, and stopping her motion.
When Rooke had calmed down and got to her senses, she stood up, dusted herself off and checked for damages. Due to her nen, she wasn't hurt too much, and if all is well, she could continue walking soo-
"Well, what do we have here?~ Someone's joined us."
The felled tree let in some light to the forest floor, and Rooke could make out two heavily injured men, one supported by the other. But, however injured they were, Rooke instantly knew somehow that they were dangerous. She jumped back to a safe distance.
"Leave me be," Rooke coughed out warily. "I come and go in peace."
The red haired man eyed the little box poking out of Rooke's pocket. "You have something that we want in your pocket~ Mind giving that to us?"
Rooke looked at her pockets, then back to the injured men, and put two and two together. She pulled out the first aid kit and threw it over to the two men. "There you go."
The red haired man caught it as Rooke turned to leave. "Aw, leaving already? We're heading to Wildemont, why don't you come with us? " Hisoka set the paralysed man down on the log, and began wrapping the bandages around him.
"I'm not going to Wildemont," Rooke replied hastily. Now, if you'll excuse me." There was something familiar about this guy that Rooke somehow can't place. Like she's seen him before, somewhere - but Rooke can't remember it. She'd remember it if she had seen someone dressed this atrociously, but this man? She had never seen him before. But he felt so familiar! Maybe she heard him before?
Then Rooke realised. She had heard his voice before! It was him who that Shalnark guy had called and placed on speaker mode earlier when she was playing the keys. And if that man was the red-haired guy, then the black-haired guy would be...
Rooke gulped. The black haired guy was the troupe's leader.
And that meant that the incapacitated guy was stronger than the mini torturer and company. Additionally, assuming that the two men's multiple wounds were caused by a fight between themselves, and that the red haired man was still moving while the leader guy was not, that meant that the red haired guy was stronger than the leader, didn't it?
Rooke started to run blindly in the darkness, but Hisoka suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
"Excuse me, little lady, I need some help with the bandages~ Could you help me out?" Rooke was stopped half-sprint and was yanked her back by her wrist. Hisoka firmly gripped onto Rooke's wrist, shooting pain right up her arm, and dragged Rooke back to where he had left Chrollo and the bandages.
"Let go," Rooke grunted. "I can walk by myself. But seriously, promise me that you're letting me go after I help you out. A favour for a favour."
Hisoka complied, and loosened his grip. "Alright. But, why are you in such a hurry to leave Wildemont? "
Rooke opened a new set of bandages, and Hisoka stripped off his bloodied top, revealing a deep cut on his back. "Loansharks," Rooke fibbed, as she applied pressure on the wound.
"You're lying~" Hisoka smiled dangerously.
"Am not," Rooke proceeded to wrap the bandages around his torso.
"If you were indeed running from loansharks, you would've taken the quickest route out of there, be it by airship or whatnot~ You wouldn't be trudging through this forest on your pet dragon~"
"Y-you saw?" Rooke quickly tended to another wound. "Anyway, let me rephrase. It was a bunch of dangerous loansharks after my head - they've taken my identification card, so I can't exactly travel by airship. There's too little space to hide."
"You don't seem surprised that I can see your pet, little miss~" Hisoka commented.
Rooke collected herself, and finished tying up another bandage. "If you've been through what I've been through for the past few days, you wouldn't be surprised anymore. Anyway, what happened to that guy? Is he unconscious?"
"No, he's just momentarily paralysed. He'll probably be fine by morning~"
'Probably?' Rooke thought. "I see. By the way, I'm pretty much done here, so I'll be leaving."
Hisoka stood up and stretched. "I wouldn't conclude that so quickly," Hisoka said.
"Huh?" Rooke said, before narrowly dodging a left hook. She jumped back onto a tree branch.
She narrowed her eyes. "You're breaking your promise now?"
Hisoka didn't reply. Instead, he jumped up to where Rooke was, and Rooke jumped back, again, and ran. She quickly transmuted a dragon and flew up, up and away - but suddenly she was yanked down! Rooke struggled to hold onto her dragon, and through sheer might and willpower, managed to maintain her position in the sky. What she did not expect was for an insane red-haired man to come hurtling in her direction.
Hisoka neatly landed on the dragon's tail, kicking it off course somewhat, but his action caused him the use of his left foot. He'd skewered his left foot into a dragon's scale, and blood was spewing out at an incredible rate. But to him, that didn't matter - not now. He proceeded running up the dragon towards Rooke, injuring his feet with every step he took.
Rooke's ability allowed her to transmute her nen into the sharpest of blades, with the versatility of liquids, into any form she wanted. Usually she transmuted a dragon, but since her ability utilised her creativity, and creativity can be boundless, her abilities allowed her to get out of sticky situations. And now, with the aid of the moonlight in the air, she changed the form of her dragon. She formed high-speed wings for herself, much like a hummingbird's, while using the rest of the nen she'd drawn out to quickly surround Hisoka, with spikes pointing at him in every direction, and let gravity do its work.
The sphere containing Hisoka dropped to the grounds below, and Rooke heaved a sigh of relief. However, the relief did not last long - Rooke saw her sphere suddenly distort, and without warning, Hisoka burst out of the sphere, headed straight for Rooke. It was then that Rooke saw a trail of pink substance connecting her to the madman, and in the next moment, Hisoka's fist collided with Rooke's jaw, knocking her out, and the two fell back to the Earth's surface.
Apologies for the late update! :) I will try to update more frequently from now on :D
Geez, I hope that I wrote Hisoka properly… I realised that it's quite hard to write characters, well, in character. It's also rather hard (for me, at least :P) to describe group situations wherein there are so many people, and I'm not really sure how to allocate speech to each character. It's difficult to allocate equal focus and 'airtime' to each character in group situations!
Anyway, regarding the fight between Chrollo and Hisoka: I've mulled about the outcome of this for quite long… In the storyline I believe it was mentioned that Hisoka 'has been chasing Chrollo' to fight with him during the Chimera Ant Arc, as can be seen from Illumi's conversation with Hisoka after the Ant arc. During the conversation Hisoka seemed perfectly fine, too, which means that Hisoka couldn't have died if he did have a fight with Chrollo (which I presume he did, given that he wasn't focussed on fighting Chrollo when Illumi needed his help.)
In order to keep the Hisoka lovers and Chrollo lovers happy, I've decided to make it such that in this story, Hisoka and Chrollo tied, just that somehow Chrollo got cut with his own Benz knife. Whether Hisoka cut Chrollo with the knife, or Chrollo accidentally nicked himself with it, whatever happened in their fight, I'll let you guys decide. :)
Anyway, please do review! It makes my day :D