Hey, ya'll. Hope you're doing well. 2020 seems intent on killing me since the fires in CA literally got within 7 miles of my house. We had to even evacuate. It was awesome. Totally enjoyed it. But anyway, this chapter is a bit... Well, you'll see.

I won't be answering reviews this chapter but every single one of you guys GAVE ME LIFE. Seriously. With how frankly unstable my life is right now every one of you guys make me smile. And I really appreciate it.

Chapter 18

Splash! I resisted the urge to shriek, tucking my mouth into my shoulder as the cold water gurgled over my raw, bruised flesh. I had taken a lot more damage than I had originally thought, the skin around my bicep swelling up and darkening almost instantly.

No human could be that strong, right? I bit down on my hood as I forced my arm a little deeper, my mind buzzing with burning pain before sizzling to a dull throb. Minimal options had led me to the nearest stream, forced me to roll up my sleeves and ice it as much as possible. The fight with Hisoka wouldn't stop me from going after Ichihiro but my injuries were quickly adding up - split hands, minor scrapes and bruises, bruised side, and now a nearly fractured arm.

"Arnica, panda," my mother's voice whispered to me. For a moment, I could feel the hot steam of her breath on my ear. The smell of herbs and lavender on her skin. "Crushed arnica will always take the pain away."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear my own hair out. More than that, I wanted to fucking make her stop. I wanted to never hear her voice again. It was like she was here - like I was slowly going out of my mind in these woods.

"Stop it," I snarled, yanking my arm out of the stream and then stilling as my gut tightened. Talking to invisible people was the first sign that you were going mad.

I gulped, revolted and scared. Before I left this place, I would probably lose my mind. My jaw tightened, my teeth scraping together until I felt like I was grinding them away to stubs. My eyes burned, dragging across the morning dawn horizon and to the eastern front. As long as I got to Ichihiro first did it really matter?

I dodged past a tangle of roots, leaping over the foliage and then stopped, crouching. This part of the island wasn't as dense as the other side. The trees were tall with thin trunks and reedy roots that speckled the ground below, gouging through the ground below. It made the ground hard to manage, dips and valleys alternating at rapid, uneven degrees.

My eyes ran across the area once more, trying to discern any bit of abnormality. And finding nothing. I wasn't that great of a tracker. I had learned to rely to heavily upon Minoru for that. For that reason, it had been very hard to even make my way this far, following the subtle scrape along the base of a root, the scent of sweat that permeated a certain area.

Now I had all but ran any trail dry. Gnawing at my lip, I took a tentative step to the side, drawing closer to the ridge of the cliff just to my right. There was no way that-

Snap!

Two things happened at once. One was that my feet went jerking out from under me, sending me teetering to the side in a flurry of hair and hands as I tried to right myself. Two was that the foliage around me shivered and I finally noticed something that Minoru would have probably pinned down once we got within ten feet of the area. That the smattering of leaves was too dense in this areas. That there was a net obviously hidden just below the foliage.

I let out a hoarse scream, trying failing to right myself, to snap my daggers down as I went catapulting into the air, the net and leaves cinching up and around me so that I was all but trapped within a giant bag. My shoulder throbbed as the trap jerked, sending me toppling as it rebounded, swaying to a rough stop.

My heart leapt, my whole side on fire as I tried to get my bearings. The whole world spun the ground so far below me as the trap twirled lazily. Moss and dry, crusty leaves cocooned me, making it hard to see any of my surroundings as it stuck to the thick rope that made up the base of the trap. It was well designed, sturdier than I had thought.

"I guess this means that you're not that great of a tracker, huh?" It was a leisurely call, one that sent my lunges into overdrive as I scrambled about in my little cage, making the swaying even worse as I tried and failed to tear my way through with my bare hands. Dirt collected beneath my nails, coating my hands.

Above me, I heard a bit of quiet rustling, the jiggling of the trap getting worse as someone grabbed ahold and pulled it in like a fisher reeling in crab cages. I gulped, sweat beading along my brow as I turned my gaze to the tip of the trap, the only area not obscured by dirt and moss where it tapered into the cinch of the trap.

I opened up my mental walls, draining some more of my energy as I yelled out for Minoru. I had no idea how far away he was, no clue if he would be able to pinpoint where I was in time-

Black pits peaked over the edge of the trap, the beady pins almost obscuring the white outer ring of his eyes as Ichihiro peered inside. I would have thought that seeing him would be my main source of fear. I was surprised to find that it wasn't.

It was his lack of emotion, the way I could only see those eyes of his, nearly glowing a sickly white that heightened the darkness of his pupil. Seeing those eyes peering down at me, wide and interested like a thoughtless animal, looking into a pit -

My muscles locked down, fear pumping through me so quickly that my head went light for a moment.

Trapped. I was trapped. An insect inside of a box, waiting for him to turn my contained upside down so that he could stomp down on me.

A wave of deja vu chilled me, bile rising in my throat as he blinked, his eyes going wider and wider as he stared down at me. The whites growing and growing until they looked like moons in my sheltered sky.

"Cozy?" he asked and I bit my tongue at the warmth in his voice, the deepness of his voice.

My teeth clacked together, my shoes sinking into the unsteady moss beneath me as I struggled to my feet. "Why - why are you doing this?"

I cursed myself, hating the raw insecurity in my own voice. My confidence had ebbed considerably since the beginning of this trial. First, it had been the inability to find him. The sudden headaches and random flashes of my past. And now… now he had me. Trapped.

I couldn't put a name to it. Couldn't understand why he would want to best me in such a humiliating way. Not a clean fight but trapping me in a dirty hovel, watching me squirm for however long he kept me. He was enjoying this. And the most chilling thing was that I didn't know how long he intended to keep me.

His eyes crinkled, some of his hair falling forward to frame them like curtains about to eat up the stage. "Do I need to have a reason?"

My teeth gnashed together. "You've made it your mission to terrorize me. To draw me out. To threaten my brothers. I don't even know you."

"Oh." His eyes went wide again like he was trying to lap up every detail of me trapped in here. "But I know you, little mouse." My palms itched. Would it be a good idea to draw my daggers? Would I be able to saw through the ropes? Not quickly. I could tell that much from the overlapping triangles that I could see above. He had doubled lapped them. "You come in here and you fool everyone with your wide eyes and your cute face. And then you slit their throats, steal from them when they aren't looking. Women like you deserve to be put down. Treacherous vipers."

I let out a tight laugh, edging back so that my back hit the net behind me. My dagger was a cool reassurance, slitting easily through the moss as I subtly started to saw through the nets beneath. "Sounds like you're jealous."

His face didn't so much as twitch, his eyes staring wide, calmly detached. "My mother was like you. She'd bring guys back to our house. Sleep with them while I was in the next room. They'd come back to the next morning, screaming about how she recorded it all. How she had told their wives." I flinched, sweat dribbling down my spine as I saw the glint of a knife dangling from his fingers, poised just above me. My mind buzzed, something about having the tip of that blade pointed squarely down at me, making my head give a throb of recognition.

"So I remind you of your mother?" I asked, trying to sound brave, even insolent but ending up sounding breathless like someone was squeezing down on my windpipe.

The slow curling of his lips crinkled up his eyes.

He didn't answer.

Instead, he let go of the dagger.

As always, welcome back to our cult meetings and if you're new here I welcome you. On Mondays, we do a read-along and Wednesday through Friday is for silent contemplation and cookies. Sunday is a down day because we're classy like that.