"You know, I haven't seen Nova in a while." Gon searched around on the top of Trick Tower. "Where do you think she went?" The airship had left them on the top of a tower, with seventy two hours to get to the bottom of it.
"She even left us when we were trying to get the ball from the old man." Killua was a little bit pissed. She had just up and left without a single word to either of them. Well, then she also had that weird cold thing, even though she didn't seem like she was sick. His eyes swept the top of the tower as well. "There's less people here than earlier."
"About half." Kurapika replied. "There are 23 people remainings, which suggest that more than half a people have found a way down."
"Kurapika, Leorio, over here." Gon waved them over. "You can go down by pushing on these stones and there's five of them."
"Each person can only use each door once." Killua added, recalling when they tried to use a door that they had seen a previous contestant using. "Gon and I have decided to use the doors and go down, not bad feelings if one of us springs a trap."
"I agree. On the count of three?" Kurapika suggested when each of them took a three of them jumped on the doors, falling through to..
The exact same room. Gon approached the dais, where there were five watches and a set of instructions above them. Kurapika took a closer look at the instructions. "Could it be that we can't leave until a fifth person drops in?" From a black box in the corner of the room, a voice spoke. "That's correct!"
The four of them turned to the corner, listening carefully. " I am the prison warden, Lippo, and will also be your third phase examiner. You have chosen the path of majority rule. Cooperation will be key if you wish to pass this phase. One person's selfish choices can derail the entire group. In addition, until a fifth person drops in, you are stuck here."
Killua slid down against the wall and sighed. "Really, where did Nova go? Id she had been with us, we could have gotten going already."
There were murmurs of agreement from all present.
"The only people up there are probably idiots." Leorio made a fair point, proven when Tonpa rained from the sky, just a few minutes later. More than four hours had passed, and there was only 68 hours left.
#
-Elsewhere-
Damn, did Nova wish she could speak, if only so she could curse. No doubt, if she could have, long strings of profanities would have come rushing out of her mouth. As it was now, she said them in her mind, never letting up for a moment.
Fuckity fuck, fucking shitty hell, scum of the Earth, why in the seven blazes do I always choose WRONG?
First, she had been stuck with Hisoka of all people for about half an hour, not to mention he was the one waiting for her. She would have told Gon and the others about the trap doors, but no, she just had to step on the one next to where Hisoka had gone down. Really, she couldn't be any more unlucky. She thought that would have stopped when the paths diverged with their choices; she had chosen X, and he had chosen O for the paths, and it turned out that they actually did separate, though the cursed prison guard, Lippo, said that this was the path of 'Pairs'. Either way, she thought she was glad for whatever twist of fate that got her away from the clown, but instead, she was now faced with the horrors of 307.
In a way, she was glad that he didn't talk to her, because she didn't have to attempt to explain why she could not respond to him. But the staring was also bad. Quite, quite bad. His eyes were like a dead fish's eyes, and she regretted ever opening that door on the airship, because he clearly remembered her. He didn't go so far as to take the pins out of his face, but the first look he gave her when she dropped into the room he was at was evidence enough. When she wasn't trying to avoid his stare, she wondered where the other needles had come from, because there weren't any less needles on his vest.
The walls were pushing in on them now, and she gave the middle finger to the little camera in the corner, where she knew Lippo was watching the too of them, and probably laughing as well. When he had first come on the loudspeaker, she had heard the distinct rustling of a chip bag, and she would bet anything that he enjoyed to watch other people's pain and discomfort. Nova was now so close to 307 that she could smell the poison coming off him. It wasn't on all of the needles, but it was most definitely on some of them, and his long, nimble fingers looked like they were meant only to manipulate needles.
The two of them raced along the closing hallway, Gittarackur ever so slightly behind her. Internally, she wished that she wasn't in front of him, because that meant her back was exposed, and she couldn't know what he was doing. It was disconcerting, and right now the only thing keeping her alive was the fact that Lippo had implemented a 'no killing rule'. He must really be having a field day today.
So, now, she was praying to every god that she didn't believe in so she could get off this path and take one by herself. Of course, she would regret wishing for that too, because when she chose the path of logic, and Gittarackur chose the path of strength, she got stuck with the worst possible person to have on your team when it came to common sense. Friggin' Hanzo.
"-and when I was eight, we had to go through this training that focused on each individual finger strength. It took me ten days to train each finger, and all the while, we had to dodge kunai knives-" She wanted to bang her head on the brick wall next to her and ask the prison warden to change her partner again. Then again, every time she wished that, it had come true, and each choice just seemed to be getting worse. He didn't even pay attention to the riddles on the wall, which he left for her to do all by herself. For crying out loud, he didn't even ask her name, and had just started to tell her his life story.
Her fists pouded on the buttons, partially out of frustration at her situation,, and partly so she could get the door to open. Did the examiner think she was stupid as well as mute? Giving her a bunch of shapes and determining which slot they were supposed to go in was just insulting. He didn't even need any prompting to start the next subject. "-because during summer, the fish become more active, and we have to catch fifty a day in order to give to the rest of the villagers-" To be fair, not all of his subjects were boring. "-then I got a papercut on my left pinky and it really hurt, but because I'm a ninja, I didn't cry-"
Okay, maybe they were. Add that to the fact that her sense were now heightened because she had been on a path with two killers just moments before, and now she couldn't even turn off the listening part of her mind to concentrate solely on passing. But, she didn't wish for a different partner, because that probably would have just ended in a worse partner. Damn her luck- she stepped on exactly the wrong tile, and she dropped in on the triplets, Amori, Imori, and Umori. It really shouldn't have been that bad, except for the fact that these guys actually expected her to talk with them.
Wonderful.
They spent the next four hours trying to get her to talk to them, all the while facing flame spouts that appeared from random parts in the wall, pushing her in front so they could see if there were any weight sensitive traps, and teasing her about being mute.
"What, cat's got your tongue?" God, those guys were idiots. She thought that she didn't really like Leorio because he seemed like an idiot, but these guys took the cake. Yeah, they smart with tactics, but anything else, nada, zip. Leorio was good with medicine, despite his explosive personality, but these guys were cunning, conniving, backstabbing bastards.
Nova really was cutting loose. In the castle, she hadn't even thought of any cuss words, partially because she didn't have full exposure to them yet. She just let the anger store within her stomach, and to an extent she still did. But she was moving constantly here, and that was also a good way to let off steam.
One of the axes cut her hoodie across the stomach but didn't go deep enough to actually cut her. When her feet touched the ground, she began to run. "Aww, did little-bitty mute girl get hurt?" Umori had looked back there was a trail of blood.
Contemplating whether or not to answer his 'mute' comment, Nova ultimately decided that pulling out her notepad at this point in time would just get it incinerated. That was a no-go. She shook her head and pointed to his own leg, still bleeding, even though the edges were turning purple, probably from poisoning. It had happened a while ago, if she recalled correctly. His face got red, fists clenching and unclenching with his brothers by his side. "You little bitch. Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?" He reached out for her jacket, but she evaded his hand, pushing forward into the door they had decided they didn't want to take.
It was a straight drop down.
"Nova, contestant 144 is the fourth to arrive. Total time, 18 hours and 22 minutes." Wow, she really did have the best luck. All three guys that she had on her paths a) finished before her and b) were now in the same room as her, staring her down. Just shoot her already. Instead, she took to the many, many, many platters of food that somebody had left out for them and took three of them. She refused to look at 307 as he ate the thin bread stick like he was a tree cutting machine, didn't even glance at Hisoka as he shuffled his cards and licked his lips, and most definitely did not give Hanzo the chance to talk to her again.
Then she waited for Gon, Killua, and the others to catch up as she wondered why she couldn't have ended up with them instead.
#
Leorio let out a room-moving sneeze. "Geeze old-man, are you allergic to something here?" Killua eyed Leorio, vaguely disgusted by his poor hygiene. The man aspired to be a doctor, but he didn't even put a hand over his mouth when he sneezed. His spittle had gone all around the room, and Killua flung the parts that had gotten on him back at Leorio.
With his index finger, Leorio tried to see if there was anything else that was going to come out of his nose and then sniffed in. "It's probably because somebody's thinking about me," he said proudly, puffing his chest out and nodding his affirmation. Really self-centered, but a good guy at heart, deep, deep, deep under all of his obsession with women and money.
Fiddling with Gon's fishing pole, Killua hooked Leorio's pantsuit. Right after he sneezed, he had gone back to sleep and not bothered to clean up any mess. No, it was time for retribution. Dragging Leorio like a fish, he pulled him closer to Tonpa, who was also asleep. They were a great match, both of them with horrible smelling feet and toes in their socks. Barely conscious, Leorio moved around a bit after smelling Tonpa's horrible feet, and shoved his own near Tonpa's mouth. Thus ensued a horrible, horrible eight hours in which both of them refused to budge and the scent only seemed to get stronger with each passing moment.
Gon, who had been using Killua's skateboard, abruptly stopped and sat down on the unoccupied couch, followed by Killua. "Say, Killua," Gon began, looking up at the ceiling like it would provide him some answer that he was searching for. He did not wait for a response, because he already knew that his friend would be listening. "Do you think Nova is our friend?" It had been a question he had been genuinely wondering about for a good amount of time, ever since the top of Trick Tower.
Putting his hands behind his white hair, Killua said, "I don't know what to think of her." He thought that she was a lot like he was, because that's the kind of vibe she gives off. But she also sort of feels like Illumi, with a powerful presence behind her, powering every move that she made. Some people called it conviction, but Killua knew it was more. What his brother was able to do was not just conviction. He shook his head; he had come to the Hunter Exam to get away from his family, not to keep thinking about them.
Across the room, Kurapika stopped reading to listen in to their conversation. The girl that he had been running with in the tunnel. He was fairly sure that she had been listening to him as he told his story, but he didn't really mind. His gut told him that they were after similar things in life, and for that, he pitied her. No person so young should feel the want for revenge against somebody. He didn't want her to go down the same path that he was.
"I think she's really nice." That's what Gon had decided. "She reminds me of something from when I was younger, but I can't put my finger on it." A little girl that looked so similar to her had been in his dreams, dreams where his father was present. All of the dreams up to that point had been happy, but the dream that had the Nova look-alike had him crying at the end, but no matter how hard he tried to recall the dream, he couldn't determine the reason of his tears.
"Is that so?" At this point, Gon was also lying on the couch beside him, and both of them looked up at the white ceiling for no apparent reason but to not look each other in the eyes. Nova's footsteps were just like his, but he felt like it was for a different reason. Where he made his steps quiet to better help kill people, her footsteps had become quiet because she was scared. The first time he had set eyes on her, Killua thought she looked to fragile, too breakable. When she passed him, he thought that she wouldn't even have the strength to make it to the end of the tunnel.
He had been wrong, and she had kept up with them every step of the way. Killua was unable to tell whether she was following them, but seeing that she was a drifter, he told himself that she drifted to them for the same reason that he had drifted to Gon. She was probably looking for friendship. Unlike him, she seemed more detached, less willing to get up close and personal. Her constant frown made him uncomfortable, and he had found himself unexpectedly thrilled when she smiled as he started to tickle her on the airship.
Now, in the room where a glaring read clock read 22:43, he came upon the realization that he wanted to make that girl smile more in her life. If she was like him, then she should have a chance to smile too.
Side by side, Gon and Killua fell asleep, not lifting an eyelid when Kurapika walked to them and set a blanket over them. They were still children after all, and they deserved rest.
I think I liked how I ended his chapter. This chapter might seem a little short in comparison to past ones; my chapter lengths vary depending on how hard it is to write and what my mood is. This was really hard for me to get out because I was shifting Nova between so many people.
The time that the clock lists is the time they have remaining in the room.
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