While running a marathon, there came a point where one's pain became pleasure, and a runner felt like they could run four kilometres more than their intended goal, no sweat. This experience was known as a runner's high.

It did not apply to running north of twenty kilometres.

For her, it didn't apply to north of ten.

Bodies had started dropping like flies after the three-hour mark, and the instructor didn't seem eager to lower the pace. Which was brutal enough already.

Additionally, she was paranoid that the floor would open up under her, or that canons would start firing from the walls and ceiling. No matter how unreasonable the scale, a "simple" challenge like running should have still had a catch. She didn't plan to fall for it. In her eyes, no instructor was trustworthy until proven otherwise.

She told as much to her running group, seeing as they had endured the qualification rounds together on their way to the exam. They resembled buddies who had met in the tube and eventually hadn't minded hitting a pub together.

Only Kurapika had considered her words. Leorio was occupied with thinking about nothing while he pushed his body to its limits, and Gon was happily chatting away with a skater boy his age. The two tykes were illogically energetic and drifting farther up the group like they didn't know what lactic acid was. It didn't help she had been mildly jealous that the skater kid had been coasting on his board, until Gon had challenged him to a foot race.

Goodness. If the instructor had decided to make everyone race, she would have been finished. Her dreams of ascending to heaven without dying a certain way would have evaporated along with her spot in the exam.

The thought alone fuelled her desperation to put one foot in front of the other.

There were a few upsides to her current situation. One of them was having a variety of characters to observe while everyone ran the same direction. She was slower than Leorio and thus rode his drift, but the participants around her kept straying to the front, sides, and end of the crowd like a mixed bag of clothing and colours.

No two people looked alike. She had already spotted two participants with animal companions, except one had had a monkey, and the other had had a snake. The clown from earlier had also briefly entered her vision. She could respect his devotion to makeup and SNS nails. There had even been another participant who wore all green like Gon, yet had looked starkly different.

For one, the man's head had resembled a pin cushion.

She had not been hallucinating.

It was mildly disheartening to run for more than three hours and not see a participant who looked a little like her. She didn't let herself dwell on it given she had more pertinent issues. Like the exam instructor now leading them up an endless flight of stairs.

Underground! Stairs! In a Runway!

Whoever had supervised the civil engineering for this area should have been fired. Along with the genius who had green-lighted it.

She told Kurapika and Leorio that the only thing worse would be the stairs turning into a slide.

Everyone who heard her immediately blanched.

Tonpa wheezed breathlessly from aside. "You're…unexpectedly…pessimistic…!"

"Paranoid," she corrected. "If the first phase is supposed to weed out the weak, I wouldn't be surprised if oil then leaked out of the walls and slicked the slide. If Satotz is especially cruel, he'd also light up the oil—"

"Please…no more…!"

She felt as miserable as most everyone around her looked. Despite draining her water bottle, a stitch had still developed in her side, and her entire body was overly flushed with heat. It had been a mistake to wear a sweater and jeans the day she had died. After using Kurapika's money to buy water, she might as well have gone farther and also purchased a complete workout outfit.

Another kilometre up the stairs passed before reason finally trumped propriety, and she shed her sweater to tie it over her bra like a towel. A few participants offered their shirts where they could, but the clothes were either too small — Kurapika — or wearing them had been the equivalent of keeping her sweater on — aka Leorio's dress shirt. She had actually spotted several female participants who had arrived at the exam intentionally wearing what amounted to swimwear, and no one had batted an eye, so she felt less self-conscious than she would have. Perhaps this world's sense of clothing differed, and her combination of jeans and a bra was just starkly mismatched compared to the coordinated outfits of the less shy women.

After another hour of misery and paranoia, she finally reached the top of the stairs with the rest of the crowd. The dirt walls opened up to an overlook of a marshy expanse, complete with heavy fog concealing the ground and horizon in greys and blues.

It was humid and hot as hell.

They weren't even at their destination.

The instructor seemed to have stopped just to allow a water break and to warn everyone about the marsh's obstructive nature, complete with demon monkeys. Or something. She was vaguely aware of an exchange between Satotz, a shape-shifting ape, and the clown participant while she collapsed on the ground and gasped for air.

Black spots melted her vision, and the call of sleep hooked her by the limbs. Only her experience with crashing blood sugar persuaded her to fight the exhaustion. She didn't want to test the likelihood of her falling into a coma. When the sky stopped spinning, she shakily picked herself up and placed one foot after the other as Satotz and the crowd ventured forth for the other side of the marsh. She was being left behind.

Gon surprised her out of nowhere by gently tugging on her wrist. "Need water?"

This angel.

She didn't have the energy to speak. It was a miracle to her that she was even standing. Still, she shook her head.

"Leave her," Gon's peer, the skater boy, advised. "What she needs is sugar, and there isn't exactly an abundance of that here. She's better off giving up now than risking her life crossing the marsh. The instructor and the front of the group have already vanished into the fog."

This devil.

However, the skater boy hadn't said anything she didn't already know. At this point, it wasn't a question of if she'd faint and possibly damage her body from severely low blood pressure, but when and where.

She kept walking.

"Hey…!"

"Ha ha, I'm not surprised!"

Gon grinned up at her and raced ahead into the fog, skater boy darting after him. Leorio and Kurapika shot her looks, but she shook her head, and they reluctantly ran ahead.

She walked into the fog alone.

Crossing the marsh was like a walk in the park.

Jurassic park.

"NOOOO DON'T COME NEAR—!"

STOMP. CRUNCH.

"HE DIED! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"

She sluggishly blinked at the sight of participants fleeing from long-necked dinosaurs with turtle shells and piranha teeth. More specifically, she was riveted to the strawberries growing on the dinosaurs' shells.

Sugar.

A participant swung a stick at a dinosaur and missed its neck, knocking off a strawberry that tumbled to her feet in wet pieces. She shakily grabbed a handful and shoved them into her mouth, not even capable of chewing and swallowing.

As her saliva broke down the sugar, she inwardly cursed the exam instructors. The entire tunnel hadn't had a single trap, and just when she had been willing to lower her guard….

Bam!

Man-eating turtles.

When she felt her condition significantly improve, she didn't bother wasting her energy on shouting a warning. She wordlessly picked up a fallen branch and charged at the dinosaurs with heavy arms ready to swing. The participants who noticed her hastily parted out of her way, and someone struck the dinosaur's head from above, bringing it down to her level.

CRACK!

Ah, a homerun.

"Nice one, 22!"

A glance upwards revealed Leorio and Kurapika tag-teaming the other dinosaur and finishing it off with a disabling strike to the throat — but not without Kurapika getting caught by a headbutt and being sent flying into the fog. More violent creatures could be heard in the direction he disappeared. No corner of the marsh was safe.

The dinosaur flinched, opening itself up to a concussive blow from Leorio and another participant before it could take advantage of Kurapika's absence. The two dinosaurs fell with a thunderous impact.

No one celebrated.

Everyone who wasn't dead merely caught their breath, then determinedly ran in the last direction they had seen the main group. Without a compass, it would be a miracle if no one got lost. She couldn't tell how long ago they had entered the marsh or where they currently were, but they must have easily been eight kilometres deep already.

She caught up with Leorio to diverge for a different direction, the two of them agreeing to look for Kurapika. They weren't ashamed to admit that they needed the blonde to survive.

Her clothes and hair undoubtedly had dirt caught in them, and she could feel strawberry juice and saliva staining her chin. A hasty wipe with the sleeve of her sweater-crop-top saw to her looking and feeling less like a disaster.

They kept warily walking, and instead crossed paths with Gon, who had gotten sidetracked. By now, more than half of the original crowd must have been left behind in the tunnel or separated from the main group. The walking club of three accepted that the capable Kurapika would have been headed for the finish line by now, and reluctantly pushed forth, led by Gon's strong nose and Satotz's lingering scent to indicate the way. As the fog thickened, the three of them warily stuck closer together.

All the while, Gon and Leorio glanced at her periodically. Maybe it was her resting bitch face.

Or because she was still swaying as she walked.

"…Are you okay?"

She glanced at Leorio's sweaty face wrinkled with concern. She dismissed the query with a nod.

"Why do you want to be a hunter?" Gon asked innocently. From anyone else, she could have been asked, "are you a masochist?"

She sighed, still running on just handfuls of strawberries she had picked from the dinosaurs. "It's not really about the license. I just want what anyone else wants. What about you?"

"I want to find my dad," Gon replied. "He's a hunter. I'm willing to do anything to see him."

Leorio nodded. "Family is a pure motivator."

Now, that was a pointed statement. She could hear the questions currently painted on Leorio's face:

What pushed her so hard? What was on the line for her, like family?

Ha. As if she could begin to explain.

Honestly, she had mixed feelings about the insight she was gaining on her walking group. They were leaking the scent of tragic backstories. To begin with, the literal child among them was wilfully blind to his deeply-rooted abandonment issues. She also recalled Leorio mentioning in the start of the first phase that a friend of his wouldn't have died if doctors could help children for free, and Kurapika sharing he was pursuing a hunter's license to be able to avenge his murdered clan.

She had spent her fair share of years as a "street" kid, before. It was the sort of childhood where she knew where to find everyone based on the number of bicycles littering a sidewalk. Gon, Leorio, and Kurapika resurrected memories in her of amiable kids with tough vibes. Those years had been fun, but not without discomfort considering the fact that some children's home lives had been the reason they had been out playing in the streets when they could. Similarly, no one taking the hunter exam seemed to have led conventional lives, else they wouldn't have progressed as far as they had.

Or taken this insane test to begin with.

"Now that I think about it," Gon exclaimed, "you weren't in the ship's cabin when Leorio, Kurapika, and I first met. What's your name?"

His voice scattered her thoughts as irony filled her. What did a dead person's name matter?

She looked at him. "What name do I look like?"

The party contemplated before Gon shrugged. "I dunno. Something nice?"

What was an angel doing, taking this exam!?

Her lips twitched. "…Titania."

"Ti…what?"

22 was the atomic number for titanium. She hadn't considered that while this strange world spoke something like her native tongue, not all of her vocabulary carried over.

"Just Ti is fine." Like tea or chi.

"Ti," Leorio repeated.

She nodded. "Like that—"

Leorio snatched Titania's elbow before she could break through a copse of trees and bushes. The aspiring doctor crouched down with Gon as the two males warily peered through the vegetation to the open field below.

A cluster of participants had surrounded the clown from earlier. They looked like they were hazing the clown.

With knives.

Titania immediately dropped to the ground and joined her company in exercising stealth.

"I proudly admit that I can't stop the scene ahead of us," she whispered. "Gon, any chance we can go around them?"

The little green boy shook his head. "From what I saw at the top of a tree, we either cross a herd of wild boars, or cross the breeding grounds of paralysis butterflies."

Leorio murmured, "How wild are the boars?"

"They seem self-sufficient," Gon replied. "The smallest of them have grown to the size of a sedan."

Titania suddenly appreciated the strawberry dinosaurs. Long-necked as they had been, their mobility had been limited to open, flat spaces. They had also been less likely to charge at her on sight, relying instead on mimicry to draw in prey.

The bullies in the field suddenly fell around the clown, dead. The clown lowered a razor-edged card in his hand with grace.

Nope.

Titania would rather test her luck with the boars.

"Now's our chance!" Gon and Leorio unexpectedly declared, and charged at the clown.

Excuse her!? What were they thinking!?

"Shoot — guys! Wait!"

Titania panicked down the hill for the open field where the clown engaged with Gon and Leorio.

And sent them flying.

Titania stumbled at the bottom of the hill, instantly debating retreating back up the incline, or running after her closest club member to grab them and flee.

The clown licked his lips and smirked at Leorio and Gon with half-lidded eyes, crooning something like, "yes…yes!"

That decided it for Titania.

She was not leaving her party to a pervert!

"Gon!" she wailed. "Get up and run you idiot!"

The little green boy was whipping his fishing rod out to attack the clown. Poor angel was oblivious to what a pedophile was and how to identify them. What was up with this exam!? Titania literally couldn't trust anyone!

The clown materialised into Gon's personal space with a smirk.

"GON!" Titania panicked.

"You pass my standards," the clown declared.

Titania grabbed a rock and threw the same time the clown moved to attack Gon. "I think not, you perverted creep!"

The instant the rock left her fingers, it returned and struck her forehead.

She collapsed.

The clown backhanded Gon to the ground. He cast a mildly irritated glance Titania's way as the clown neared the fallen Gon…

…And passed him for the unconscious Leorio.

Stupid clown! Stop it! Stay away from her walking club!

"It would be a waste to kill you two," the clown addressed Gon and the limp Leorio. He picked up the latter and flung him over his shoulder. "You have potential to be fun prey. I'll see you on the other side of the marsh."

The clown vanished into the fog.

The hell!?

This had to be the height of failure. Titania had let one of her party members be abducted by a textbook pervert with a circus fetish. Self-hatred overpowered her ability to cry.

"I'm sorry," she spoke muffled into the earth.

Gon crawled over to her. "It's okay, Ti. I'll beat Hisoka next time."

Now she really wanted to cry. That stupid clown didn't deserve a cute, girly name!

Eventually, the feeling returned to Titania and Gon's limbs, and they helped each other stand up to head for the source of Satotz's scent. When they arrived, they found only a few dozen participants at the gates of an enclosed courtyard, with Hisoka, Kurapika, and Leorio among them.

Titania immediately headed over to the latter two, checking that they were alright. It was a bittersweet relief that the clown had apparently only carried Leorio to the gates and dropped him down where Kurapika had found him. Titania still didn't trust the pervert, though.

Titania hated the hunter's exam.

But Hisoka? Titania feared him. Around the clown, she was powerless.

"Welcome to the second phase of this exam!" Satotz jovially declared, steamrolling her gloomy thoughts. The courtyard's gates slowly opened. "Please proceed to a cooking station!"

A/N: My first reaction to the props for Phase Two was, "this better not turn into Shokugeki no Soma. That's way too many genres in one show." My friends had merely laughed at me using logic on Hunter x Hunter. I should have known better.

Also, when you feel like fainting, do NOT lie down! Keep your heart/upper torso elevated, else your heart might stop. When MC collapsed, it had been against the cave/outer walls of the stairs so that she was essentially sitting up, and her head was leaning back against the wall. Otherwise, this fic would have ended very quickly!