Alrighty, new chapter complete! Hope the wait wasn't unbearable, though I guess that's kind of arrogant to assume. Maybe in a way I hope it was unbearable. At least it'd be a testament to the quality of my work. Do I think my work's at that level of quality? Probably not, but I'm aiming for it! Hehe, so I do hope it was at least a little unbearable. But wait no more! Here is the next chapter!
After a couple rounds of having to surge my aura to push away the speaking roots, Killua finally tells me to put my shirt back on. I'd forgotten I had it off. I pull it from where it's been half stuffed in the waist of my pants. I slip one arm through and pause. Killua's hand loosens on mine, and I grab it back and hiss, "You said we had to keep touching!"
"We're right in front of each other. It'll be fine just to put on your shirt."
"No."
The end result is an awkward dance of switching hands. The expression on Killua's face makes blatant he thinks this is a pain. I turn up my nose and relatch the clasps with my free hand. My arms are still bare, but if covering my skin will help stave away those things, for once I wish my shirt covered them, too.
A thought hits me. I can't help but bristle as I ask, "Is that why these humans wear so little clothes?"
Still pulling me along, Killua glances back, and has to think for a minute. The hand holding onto mine tightens. "Don't know. There's too little information."
Information. Is that what we need right now? Will that help us escape? "What kind of information do we need to get out?"
Killua pauses and fully turns back to me. The surprise on his face, no matter how subtle, is insulting.
"What? There something wrong with what I said?"
"No." Without explanation, he turns back forward and we keep going. A small burst of blue alights ahead of us and disappears as quick as it came. Travelling now is much easier than before, because as Killua goes, he crisps the plants that get in the way, leaving me brittle branches to crumble and grey ashes to walk on. A patch of flowers obstructs our path, and every bloom gets zapped before I can breathe in their scent. "Right now what we need the most, in addition to somewhere relatively safe to make base, is information on the enemy. Whatever it is uses roots to contact its target. It can be fended off with Nen. If it's not, we can probably assume the target ends up like Omim."
"What do you mean, like Omim?"
Another glance over his shoulder. "What do you mean? He was right in front of you."
My last image of the man is of a blurry outline, the lines on his torso worming around, and an indistinct grin. I grit my teeth. "...My eyes were bad. What happened to him?"
After a moment, he finally answers, "It looked like the plants were absorbing him."
"That meaning...?"
"Consuming without eating. He was becoming a part of the plants."
Still, no fucking idea what that means.
We come to a stop. I immediately do a scan around me for any reaching roots. Killua, on the other hand, looks up through the break in the trees. The lighting of the jungle hasn't changed much since we came, but it looks like the sun's lowered from its place overhead. Then Killua stomps a foot, and snakes of blue lightning whip out and scorch everything below the break in the leaves before sizzling out. A large circle of slightly smoking ash is left in its wake. He pulls me to the center of the circle and sits down on the ground. I stay standing. He sits with his back straight, his eyes surveying the circle.
"What're you doing?"
"Be on guard for attacks from below. This might be the safest we can get."
"You honestly think the plants are the problem? They're plants."
"You saw the roots. I saw them on Omim. And the flowers clearly have some kind of anesthetic effect. There could be something manipulating them or some other explanation. Especially if it's some other explanation, we need to be careful. If it's a human or Ant, we can work with that, but if it's not, it'll be hard to predict what it'll do."
The nails of my free hand dig into my palm. Great. Just wonderful. The freaking plants are a danger. It's literally the perfect ambush. No one would suspect a thing, and already be surrounded on all sides. No wonder they say nothing comes out. How are there humans that still want to come in?
The leaves rustle. They sway in a wind I can't feel, leaves touching, then parting to go brush against another. The buzz of insects hasn't stopped, but in the radius of ash, the sound seeps out from the trees' shadows like a predator, patiently waiting for its victim to wander into its grasp. My eyes fall back to the human on the other end of my hand. At one point, he may have been my greatest danger. I turn away so he doesn't see me scoff at myself. Somehow, he's now become my best chance at escaping danger. I have to rely on his willingness to take me along when he's in danger himself.
Or is he? Apparently he can fend the thing off with Nen, and he's got control over his. If that's the case, odds are in my favor. It'd be less of a burden to look out for me if he doesn't also have to look out for himself, which makes him more likely to protect me than if he was also in danger.
Actually, isn't this gambling?
I peer at Killua out of the corner of my eye, his attention not on me. I've gambled with human lives before, but I'd never seriously gamble on my own if I had the choice. Here I don't. I have to place my bet on his willingness to stick with me. Judging by the rate of returnees from this forest, if I'm alone… The odds are against me. Killua raises them. The problem is I also have to gamble on just how much he raises them.
And if I lose, I die.
"How long will it take to get out of here?"
"Longer than it took to get here," is his ambiguous answer.
I have to hold my pride in my teeth to say it, but considering the options, I go ahead and bite down on it and say, "Then we should look for Naii."
She's another Nen user. She hasn't tried to kill me yet, and there's the fact that she's a mother and we are young. There's a chance she'll act to protect me, and even if she doesn't, another Nen user means more power, which could intimidate whatever we're facing, so even just having her with us could be useful. And if things really don't leave the forest like they say, even if that's bad news for us, it means she's theoretically within reach.
But Killua replies, "It'll be dangerous to move."
"What do you mean, 'dangerous to move'? Whether we move or not we still don't know what this thing is, and there are plants everywhere! Just keep burning them as we go like you were doing!" I try to pull him up, but he's a mule that refuses to move. He doesn't refute me or explain himself. He sits there like a rock and lets me yank on his hand, but I can't even get his torso to lean in the direction I pull. With a huff I give up on trying to move him manually. He can move me so easily when he wants to, but when I want to move him I can't get him to so much as budge!
He finally reacts when I kneel in front of him, using my free hand to support myself on one of his crossed legs as I lean in close.
"Knock it off. This isn't the time."
I don't break eye contact. He's tense, one hundred percent closed off. I don't back down.
"Unfortunately, I agree." My voice comes out frigid. "But we need to look for Naii, Killua. This is my life we're talking about. If we don't go and look for her, you can be sure I'll do everything I can think of to make you as uncomfortable as possible until we get moving."
He covers my mouth with his other hand and I draw back my lips in a scowl, letting him feel my fangs. He doesn't thicken the aura around his palm. If I wanted to, I could pierce the skin, and release a flood of lethal venom.
"I get it. It'd be better if she was here. I'm telling you it's dangerous to move because right now the danger of moving outweighs the benefit of maybe, if we're lucky, finding her."
I use the hand I'd had on his knee to rip away the hand covering my mouth. "How?"
"Be careful when you're talking. We're deficient in information. We can't give our enemy any more of an upper hand."
I sit on this. Then I sit back on my feet and let go of the hand he used to cover my mouth. The two hands we had originally held together sit on his knee, still intertwined.
I don't like it. He's keeping something from me. Even if it's because he has to keep it from whatever's listening, I want to argue with him on it, yell at him for it, but under the looming threat I've no choice but to swallow it. We can't let our odds of survival slip any lower.
"Then what're we doing?"
"Thinking. Whatever this is doesn't want us thinking clearly. It disoriented you first, and used that to try to control you."
Control, everything wants control. What do I have to do to have a little control? "You say that like it didn't do that to you."
"I blocked it the second I started hearing it. The only words it got out were trying to coax me to let down my guard. What'd it say to you?"
"They."
His eyebrows wrinkle closer together.
"Unless it was talking with itself, there were multiple things. They knew too much about me. It was" disturbing "disgusting. What gave them the right to talk to me like they knew me? They're just grimy little veins covered in dirt!" I force the unsettling feeling into rage before realizing just how much strength I've exerted on Killua's hand. I subtly try to lessen it. He doesn't react to the change in pressure. Hopefully he's chalked it up to my anger.
The inaudible words flit through my mind as I remember them. It almost feels like they're speaking again, hearing them replay in my head clearly but silently, but it's just the memory. When they actually speak, they're distinctly alien.
My memory rolls back farther. I jerk. Killua's gaze sharpens.
"They knew I was a chimera ant."
"Then it's basically certain what the villagers saw that time was an ant."
Well duh, I didn't doubt that from the beginning! "But it was more than that. They knew details. They argued about my age, and it sounded like they knew how we reach maturity."
His expression darkens. In a different scenario, I'd of probably gotten chills. "So it's possible they're working with the ant. No, something's off." He takes his face between his thumb and forefinger, gaze fixed on the ground without seeing it. "That's not a detail that makes sense to share. Why would the ant tell them that?" He thinks for a bit, then looks to me as if I might have an answer. I shake my head. It is really weird, now that he says it. Their knowledge sat like rotting fish in my stomach, but I thought it was just because they were so invasive. He's right, though. Why would they know about that? The same reason they thought they knew my character so well?
They way they spoke to me so intimately left a sour taste in my mouth, but now that I think about it, it's not like they said anything wrong. The only thing they messed up was that I don't give a shit about being the peak of evolution. But about wanting my freedom, they were offering a way to get away from my restraints. Definitely there's something wrong with that; the ants from the last town promised me that, and in the end tried to crush me underfoot. Even so, why didn't I at least listen? There might've been something in their method I could use.
No, my instincts don't fail me. There was too much risk.
And besides, if I leave Killua's side before subduing him, it would be like I lost.
Out of the corner of my eye, something flashes like it's falling onto the ground. Even though it happens behind him and there's no sound, Killua immediately twists and we both eye the culprit.
A small glob of gold glows slightly flushed in the reddening daylight.
...Honey?
On the last line, my beta left a comment that read "Nope. Nope. Absolutely not." So is the golden stuff honey? Mm, who knows? The answer to that is me, of course. I know, and next chapter, I'll share that bit of knowledge with you. See you then!