Chapter 2:
The heartbeat of the men next to the bus driver sounded like the lost echo of a nightmare, as he leaned slowly down to the driver. "So you better keep on driving."
Like under a spell, the bus driver startedthe engines again. The man with the gun grabbed the receiver from the dashboard and handed it with a nearly bored smile to the driver. "Now call the police and tell them exactly what is happening here."
The driver looked completely startled while looking at the other men. Senritsu could hear his heart pounding so hard against his chest–like it wanted to jump suddenly out of the meat-cage–but it needed just another glance of the man with the gun to do what he was told to.
"What idiots!" The hissing from behind Senritsu´s seat was so sharp it felt as though a knife was cutting in her ear. But instead of Senritsu turning around, it was Leorio who slowly leaned back towards the student who sat behind them.
He knows that voice behind him, he heard it from one of his seminars at college, but rightnow he just couldn´t find the name belonging to the older semester-guy, so he just whispered back with his hand touching his chin to hide his following words. "Watcha mean?"
Leorios eyes slowly drifted to the side towards Senritsu who sat slumped down on her seat, motionless like a statue of stone, with lips so pressed together that all blood had already fled out of her round face and left a white mask behind.
The answer came abrupt: "Those idiots let the driver call the police, so they can blackmailthem with our lives. But they showed us their faces, even when they can get out of the bus we will recognize them after this. They are really idiots! Super idiots!"
"Or they could just shoot us dead all in one after they get what they want, so we can´t recognize them," Leorio answered with a tormented grimace, twisting his usual optimism. He watched the men in the front of the bus, trying to figure out what to do and end up frowning like a confused child. He couldn´t tell what, but something was just wrong with the abductors, something was just strangely unnatural.
The older semester-guy behind them swallowed hard. "Yeah…yeah that could be an option too."
Senritsu just kept silent. Her half closed eyes were fixated to the ground, her little hands clinched hardin her trouser legs–like she was a trembling little child.
Although Leorio knew this concentrated look of her–she was listening focused, hearing lumped–he wasn´t sure what she was listening to.
In the front of the bus, the bus driver handed the receiver connected with the police over to the man with the gun, shivering like a leaf. The men with the gun took the receiver and smiled dryly, talking with a strange monotone voice to the police from the other line. "So you guys heard what the driver said? We have six hostages here; seven with the driver. We will drive until we leave the city and we will set them free there if you do me a favor."
In the middle of the bus Leorio cocked his ears when he heard about the "favor". Maybe… he thought for himself and he felt like a big hand was brutally mashing all his insides. Maybe those guys were from the Mafia, his mind continued. Maybe Senritsu only met one of them, that´s why she only heard one familiar heartbeat. Maybe they are here for her, to end the job the guy that shot through her knee didn't finish that time…
And he sat there next to her, the one who promised her protection, the one who promised Pietro healing but couldn´t save him before his illness, neither he could save Kurapika before himself and now he was just as useless in protecting her.
He couldn´t even save one of them.
He was just so useless.
Just useless.
"Two days ago, you had imprisoned Doctor Lefuet from the Za-ban university hospital. I want you to set him free and give him an airline ticket to the other side of the continent. Assoon as he calls us from the airport, we will let those guys here free! You have one hour, then I will start shot the first one."
The heavy rain pattern accompanied his monotone voice. He ended the call languid.
A choppy sound dwelled from the last row of seats, like a brittle echo. The only woman in the group of students started to cry and one of the men laid a arm around her, comforting her softly and whispering soothing words against her hair like trying to hush down a little baby-girl.
"Shut up there!" The next moment the men in front of the bus shotthrough the other window and made the girl in the back cry even more. Panicky, she shrugged back and buried her face terrified against her friends' pullover.
Senritsu had covered her ears with her little hands, like a stubborn child.
It was Leorio who abruptly jumped up on his place. "Are you totally crazy, you scum?! Just let her cry, you–"
The next moment he started into the gun barrel, as black as his own future shroud.
"Playing the hero, huh?" The man in the front gave a bored smile. "I know your kind. You use to fill more than half of every graveyard. Sit down in the hall, so I could see you better!"
Leorio slowly stepped on the floor, hands stretched up in a defensive gesture but even if he sat down as he was told to, his voice oozed with recalcitrant disgust. "Doctor Lefuet...I heard of him in the Medicine Institute. Wasn´t he the guy who sold donated organs from the hospital to the best paying patients? A lot of patients who needed the organs more died because of his greed…"
"But you better not care about this. You better just care about yourself." The other man with the gun answered barley, just in the same moment as the sound of a police horn cut through the sound of the working bus engines. The men with the guns didn´t move, didn´t twitch, didn´t shrug. They just looked nearly bored out of the windows, while one of them said slowly to the bus driver. "Seems like we got visitors. You better keep on driving."
Like a loud howling monster the autumnstorm rushed outside on the streets.
The policecars accompanied the bus on the street like a herd of hunting animals.
Not for the first time Leorio noticed that there was something wrong with their moves, something was strange, just unnatural, like a bad foreshadowing that thought burned nearly painful in Leorio's head and wouldn´t leave him alone. But right now, in that situation Leorio just couldn´t tell just what exactly it was.
It was when one of the police cars finally drove nearer beside the bus when Senritsu's quiet voice sounded to Leorio's ears like a soothing lullaby for the first time since the bus had been abducted. "Their heartbeats are as calm as they would take a walk in the park. They won´t let us leave; neither they think they will come out alive from this. They will first kill us all and then kill themselves, after they are sure that doctor isin the air." Her voice was quiet but surprisingly calm. Her eyes were fixated on the two men in front of the bus.
"So do youhave an idea on how to get rid of them?" Leorio gave his very best to not move his lips so the men with the gun wouldn´t notice his words. On the edge of his consciousness he noticed that Senritsu slowly moved to the hall.
"Yes…I have…" She smiled nervous.
It was the moment when he noticed that her little hands hold her children crutch so hard that her bones shined like white crystals under her skin, that Leorio realized what exactly her plan was.
Throwing herself at the two abductors, so he could bring out the other students out of thebus.
"Oh…oh no!" Leorio did his very best but he couldn´t hold his voice from hopping up two octaves higher. "No no no no no! Listen, girl! You're not gonna go on a suicide trip when I am sitting right beside you! You hear me!?" There was a deep snarl sounding in his whisper, like from a dog that wanted to bite. "I am a doctor! I won´t let you do this! I have something called Hippocratic Oath!"
Senritsu slowly slid from her seat. Thanks to her short height she was now completely hidden behind the seat in frontof her. There was a tense smile in his direction dancing around her white lips: "You're a medicine student in second semester and not a doctor. You haven´t made the Hippocratic Oath yet." Senritsu's look stuck towards the men with the gun. "And that is actually the only choice I have if I want to leave this bus. If the mafia guyis noticing me, I will be dead, not now but he will search for me and then you will be dragged into this too. I can´t bear that. I have to protect you. But if I attack this guy there, I may have the chance to not be shot to death and can come to the hospital before I have to face that Mafia-guy at the following interview from the police. That´s my only option; to leave the bus without being noticed by the Mafia-guy. I am not strong, but I can distract them…I can use Nen, you could not. I can do this."
"I want to remind you that you'renot bulletproof at all. Look at your knee, idiot! Did you think about that too!?" Leorio clinched his teeth–stressed, trying to stare down the little woman who perfectly avoided his gaze. The young man just stared at her, wishing only that he could justgrab her and while shaking those thin shoulders knock some sense into the cursed woman head.
She didn´t look at him. Her little hands were clinched so hard around her crutch that the metal seemed to bow under her force. And that was the moment when Leorio finally realized that she HAD thought about it.
Without any hesitation Senritsu stepped in the hall.
The two men in front of the bus turned around to look at her.
She grabbed her crutch even harder.
Beside her, a heart's melody changed its tact.
Just a second too late, she turned her head to Leorio.
Suddenly he leaned on his elbows and kicked with all his force against her injured knee. There was a hollow crack, like a dry branch that would break, and with a loud scream the young woman crushed to theground, holding her knee, yelping like a hit animal.
The two men in the front grabbed their guns and dashed forward, but Leorio was faster. He got on his feet just a second after and reduced the gap between him and the first man with the gun.
"Don´t…!" Senritsu whimpered. Her little fists clinched hard to the ground. Her eyes wide in shock as she saw the gun pointing at Leorio, her voice broke into a scream. "Don´t Leorio! You don´t know…! They are…they are…"
The bullet shot through Leorio´s shoulder like a burning arrow that silenced the young woman.
Leorio was ready for it so the pain shock didn´t slowed down his next move. With all his might he grabbed the handle of the gun and used his suddenly adrenaline-boost to swing around and crush the other guy flying in the benches. The gun swirled through the air and landed with a hollow sound on the floor, but the gun keeper laid motionless between the row of benches.
Hormones rushed through Leorio's body like a wave of energy. He was a medicine student after all and had known wherehe had to be shot by the other man so he could still run to the next without being hindered.
Still in motion, he jumped forward and grasped the hands of the other man that held the gun to move it panicky up in the air. Two shots crushed through the air up to the roof of the bus, loud as thunder, before Leorio hit his knee brutally in the other man's stomach and wrestled him to the ground, burying him under his own body. They fell so hard down that Leorio nearly heard his own bones cracking like branches. Leorio's head hit against the cold floor like it hit against the hardest wall, but he still wouldn´t let the hands of the other man go.
His sense tossed down. But as heavy as a stone he didn´t move an inch.
"…Stop it!" Finally Senritsu's voice cracked through his nearly unconscious mind. "Don´t Leorio! They are manipulated by Nen!"
Leorio felt as though a big hand rumbled his insides. Just a short moment to late he returned to an upright position and looked over his shoulder, cold sweat running down his face.
His wide open eyes met the ones of the older-semester-guy on the floor that had sat behind him and finally he remembered where he had heard this voice before.
On the very edge of Leorio's consciousness he saw green Aura-scraps flaying around the other like shredded leafs, witnessing that he used Nen.
It was DoctorLefuet's student assistant.
The gun that belonged to the other abductor was now in his hand and it pointed menacingly directly at Leorio.
Why?
That was the only question that filled Leorio´s head and it ran laps inside his mind like a rollercoaster.
To be honest, he has always been a trouble magnet. It was just like a birthmark to him–he had grown up in one of the derelicts quarters of Za-Ban, his friend Pietro died of an illness, he passed the Hunter exam because of luck, he befriends a little sunshine that was hunted by a crazy lunatic, he met a running meter who was a coldblooded killer in truth, the friend he wanted to save to finally cancel the debt of Pietros death ended up being the lapdog of a Mafioso.
Really, trouble always seemed to stick with him.
And while Leorio kept staring motionlessly, frozen into the black hole of the gun barrel that was pointed at him, he just kept on thinking about one question:
Why on earth would just one Trouble-cliché not spare him over?
The following gunshot was only drowned out by Senritsu's panicky scream. Just at that moment the bus driver stopped the bus and everyone were pushed to the side.
Leorio barely felt the pain in his chest, but he felt warm blood under his shirt and it flowed down his stomach–like through a milky glass wall he watched Lefuet´s student assistant crushing brutally to the side. The young medicine student didn´t feel the pain as he fell to the floor. He didn´t feel Senritsu's little hands desperately grasping for him and just on the very edge of his consciousness he saw the police entering loud, yelling inside the bus. Senritsu's face filled his very field of vision. Her face looked very distorted, in pain. He felt hot wetness dripping from his nearly numb face like warm summer rain.
The verge of his vision field became blurry–it felt as though a wave washed over his sense.
And then everything sank down into the black cloth of darkness.
The scent of sanitizer filled the white room.
The smell of disinfectant has always been like perfume for him. He liked that smell, it made him proud of all he did to become a doctor.
Leorio groaned a little.
His eyes felt as heavy as a plump but he finally managed to open his eyelids.
The first thing he saw was Senritsu who sat in the hospital bed beside him with her little hands folded moveless in her lap. She looked horrible, even in her circumstance, just like him she was connected with a stand that held a sac isotonic satin. Her hair was a messy wave of red that flowed quite ruffling over her thin shoulders and she had dark rings around her big eyes that it seemed like she had circled her eyes with coal.
But when he noticed that she was scrutinizing him with a pitiful look, Leorio realized that he didn´t look any better. "Hey, Senritsu…" he tiredly mumbled in her direction, but she just bit her lips sympathetically.
"Hey, yourself."
Leorio tried sitting up, but a sharp pain in his upper body that bit his meat like they're made of sharp teeth, ceased him suddenly. "Tell me, just why do we always end up in a hospital when we meet…? That´s becoming a damn habit!"
His questions failed its purpose. Senritsu didn´t smile, her deformed face was blank and white, like a pale mask of wax, just as her voice was dismal. "It´s occupational, I think…"
With a heavy whistle on his lips the young man leaned back in his bed, rubbing his tired face with his hands and mumbled: "Just what…what happened?!"
"You were shot down by the student assistant," she answered and watched him with worried eyes.
There was a crooked smile that crept over Leorio's face, he really felt like he was run over by a car (What wasn´t so wrong at all). "You don´t say! What happened after this…? And how do you…why didn´t you tell me they were manipulated by Nen?"
The young woman looked at him again worriedly. Her usual soft and soothing voice was a hollow whisper: "You and I were taken straight to the hospital after you collapsed. The policemen that have been here yesterday told me that the doctor they talked about and his student assistant did sell organs to the most paying. But he was imprisoned by the police so the student assistant that learned about Nen during his students came up with this plan to free his friend. He wanted himself to get out of this as the only survivor of the massacre. He didn´t want anyone else to survive; not even the men he was manipulating with his Aura. If I…" Senritsu explained, while she wringed her little hands helplessly. Her thin shoulders twitched hard and Leorio wondered why when she was so cold she didn´t crawl under the blanket. "The policemen told me that the abductors carried the guns with them because they wanted to protect themselves. Za-ban is a dangerous city…and when the student assistant stepped into the bus, he spread his Nen on the first persons he saw–who were them." She looked away from him, her little body was trembling like a leaf, "I heard it in their heartbeats. They sounded so monotonous and alike in a situation like this to not be controlled by someone else. But I did not realize it up until the moment when they said their claims. Their heartbeat sounded so unnatural. And the heartbeat of the student assistant was just too calm to be real. It was just a suspicion and if I had told you about this he would let them attack us."
The young woman avoided his gaze like she was a shy little child. Her thin shoulders trembled madly as she bit her lips the next moment and slid out of her bed to humble over to him. Her melodic voice became accusatory. "I didn´t want you to be attacked, I didn´t want you to be dragged into this…but you..you– did just…You kicked me down..! You attacked them by yourself!" Senritsu´s little hands clinched to fists and finally Leorio saw that her shoulders did not tremble because she was cold but because she was crying unbridled. "I wanted to protect you! Just why did you do that?!"
Leorio smiled defenseless, looking at the upset woman standing beside his bed with tears in her eyes she really couldn't help but pour. With a soundless snicker Leorio sheepishly scratched the back of his head, smiling helplessly like child that just tried to hide candies. "Well…cause of the same reason you didn´t tell me about your suspicion. I wanted to protect you. I really wanted to."
There were tears dripping down her cheeks. Finally her injured knee relented under her weigh and she sank meekly down with her upper body on his bed, trembling like aspen-leaf.
Senritsu buried her face in his chest, making him yelp like a little boy because of his wound, but in the end the pain vanished but the hard trembling of her thin shoulders did not.
"I am sorry!" The young woman's melodic voice was terribly distorted by her own loud sobs. "I am so sorry! It´s my fault. I should have heard it earlier! I should have done something earlier! I should have…I should… I should have– I should–"
She choked on her own breath with her flute of words. But in the end her words vanished in hiccups and sobs, and Leorio, who hadn´t the slightest clue of what to do with her (or what to do with himself) helplessly stroked her head with both of his hands, thinking frantically of a way to calm her down. He failed in a very epic way when he started to tell Senritsu that it wasn´t her fault at all–this made her sob even louder and made him more desperate about it, as she buried her little hands in his chest making him whimper because she just hit his wound every time again.
Eventually there came a moment when all her tears had dried, and she apologized–muttering to his chest for her emotional breakdown, but stayed with her face and little fists buried against his chest, listening to his heartbeat like to a soothing lullaby. Leorio didn´t bother about this at all, he breathed out with a relieved smile and placed one of his hands carefully on the side of her head. The end of his thumb caressing her wet cheek gently.
And just as instantly, a thought glimmered up in Leorio's head and made him twitch a little, like a bad foreshadowing.
Suddenly he sat straight upright in the bed.
He grabbed Senritsu's tearstained face with both of his hands, forcing her to look at him: "Senritsu…!"
She looked like hell–her eyes bloodshot and mournful, lank curls of her hair sticking to her cheeks, like red thin snakes. Senritsu blinked perplexed, but his strained heartbeat hushed her confusion.
Leorios voice was flooded with a wave of tenseness, it was fraught, stressful, haunted.
"The guy you recognize from the Mafia! The guy that was with us in the bus! The guy who followed you there! Who was it?!"
END.
Bai Feng: I love cliffhaenger. :)
Ah this story is screaming for a continuation, do it? ;)
Hah, who knows if there will be one?
Thanks again to the dear reeyachan for beta-reading. :D
(I wrote her nickname wrong in the first chapter! T-T
I hope you can forgive me, dear.
I hope I bring the LeorioxSenritsu pairing nearere to you readers muhahahahahahahahahahahaha~
Maybe I inspirate some of you to write a leoxsen story on yourself? I would be happy to read one. hehehe
If your nice, leave a review and tell me watche think hehe.