As consciousness slowly returned to Misaki, she was fairly startled to realize that she couldn't recall actually having fallen asleep. Nonetheless she forced herself to hold her current position flawlessly, which as far as she could piece together through closed lids was on her back and upon a sandy surface with lips slightly parted. The daylight flickered from beyond the shelter of the self-imposed darkness, and she understood that she must be partially shaded. Multiple loose strands of hair tickled her neck and forehead in the breeze, having obviously abandoned their posts in her previous up-do. The bulk of her thick, purple hair had lowered to the nape of her neck; cool, stale and damp with salted water.
She attempted to allow her senses to take reign in order to pick up on whether she was in the company of another or completely segregated, but without the use of her En it was a difficult task. The use of nen in a situation that could have easily unveiled an enemy awaiting reaction from her vital signs would certainly encourage an undefended attack her way if she risked it.
'I feel completely drained,' Misaki noted. 'I bet I couldn't use my En even if I wanted to right now…'
"Oh, you're awake," Killua's unenthused voice greeted her.
She rolled her head lazily in the direction of the voice and then opened her eyes to see the silver haired boy perched on a large, orange-red boulder with his elbows propped on his knees. In his hands was her original grey and black parasol, and his blue eyes were inspecting it tediously.
'He's good to know that I was faking,' she acknowledged inwardly. 'Many professionals have been completely fooled this way before.'
"It's just an umbrella," she explained to him upon recognizing the suspicion in his face as he continued to spin the closed 'weapon' in repeated circles through his palms.
"I know that," he argued back lightly. "I was just thinking about what your nen type is. I assumed manipulator at first, but if that were true then there's no way you could have done what you did."
'What I did…'
"Are we alone here?" she questioned, hoisting herself in to a sitting position.
Her head throbbed terribly, and as she eased a cool hand to her temple in an attempt to sooth the ache, her vision became littered temporarily with black orbs.
"Gon…" his voice started, wavering slightly with discontent at the spoken name before he paused.
'Ah yes, that's right,' she mused between the pulsing in her head, 'Gon pulled that foolish move back there…'
"This plan is ridiculous," Killua grumbled.
Misaki (following the task of enhancing the size of her own umbrella drastically and flipping it upside down about knee deep in the massive body of water), climbed aboard the make-shift "raft". She extended a confident hand toward the trio of boys upon the shore of the beach, although all three hesitated for a good half minute before Gon finally accepted her invitation. His grasp was far less firm than she had imagined it would be, although she supposed his obvious dismay towards both the looting and the fate of the people he clearly desired to save were the cause of it.
'An admirable trait, except when it isn't,' Misaki pondered regarding the young boy. 'It seems sometimes that he's so community-minded that it's actually a bit selfish in the long run. Should we die when there is no hope to save the others? Would he still risk his own life for an impossible outcome? Would he perhaps risk Killua's?'
"Southeast wind," she announced, storing her questions for future reference. "We're in luck."
Ignoring the reluctant faces surrounding her, the girl handed each boy a separate, colorful parasol.
"Are we sailing?" Gon questioned, despite his words sounding fairly distracted.
Nodding, she responded, "Exactly that. I'm going to increase the size of these, and we'll need to allow the wind to catch them. Since all the boats leaving the island are already overfilled, this is our only chance."
"The wind can change directions suddenly," Killua argued. "This plan has a high chance of failing before we get to another island."
"It's a gamble," she agreed casually, "but we don't have much choice otherwise. Risk death this way or ensure it by sticking around here."
The former assassin's eyes scanned over the masses of people on the shore and the silhouettes rushing wildly through the streets of the city. Tanzanite's apex was very nearly fully engulfed by the billowy collection of smoking cloud. Had the eruption happened already?
"How long to the next island?" the silver haired boy asked.
"If everything works in our favor, it would probably take approximately four hours traveling this way, assuming we were moving at a decently paced, constant speed," Haku explained quietly.
"Four hours, and that's if nothing goes wrong," Killua murmured. "Are you able to use your nen like that for so long?"
"We're about to find out," Misaki replied. Once again disregarding the hesitant glances around her, she added while pointing delicately with her index finger, "Open your umbrellas so that the top faces that direction, and we'll be on our way."
"They might not have washed up on the same island as we did," Killua announced in a voice that revealed how desperately he hoped that his words were false.
"I suppose as long as they weren't carried back to the one we left…" Misaki mused aloud.
Apparently this was the absolute worst train of thought she could have vocalized, as Killua immediately spun on his heel and rushed back to the shoreline. In one swift movement, he removed his shirt and performed some common warm up stretches with his feet wading in the shallow water that lapped over the sand.
"What are you doing?" she asked rather calmly.
"Going to look for Gon," he insisted stubbornly.
"You're going to swim aimlessly around in the ocean until you find him?" she questioned back doubtfully.
"Gon would be willing to do it for me," he snapped determinedly, dismissing her argument.
"I can't allow you to essentially commit suicide in front of me," she vowed in a deadpan voice, approaching him from behind.
"I don't need your permission," he muttered under his breath.
"I thought you were the rational one," Misaki said neutrally. "You must know that the ocean is gigantic and that you have a better chance of collapsing and drowning from exhaustion than actually finding him this way. I'm sure you know that it makes far more sense to stake out here for a few days until I recuperate enough to use my nen again in order to search more safely."
With exceedingly cold eyes that appeared to suppress the true melancholy behind them, Killua glared over his shoulder and hissed, "Using your nen to get across the water was the same idea that got us separated in the first place."
'No,' Misaki disagreed secretly, 'it was Gon's foolish actions that separated you from one another, not mine…'
"The wind is definitely changing directions," Gon confirmed following about sixty minutes of sailing.
The sight of land had vanished to nothing over the course of the trip, and the waves were growing in size and intensity. The sky was darkening rapidly, occasionally flickering with white zigzags in the near distance and echoing softly with thunder.
Misaki pinched the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth in apprehension. If water were to fill the "boat", either by rain or by large sweeping waves, it was likely the umbrella would exhaust its usefulness and sink. She supposed she could attempt to use the parasols as floatation devices of sorts when turned right-side-up in the water, although there were issues with this plan, too. The girl had, up to now, used her nen to expand the umbrella that the group was currently borrowing as a raft, as well as reinforcing the four distributed in their hands in order to strengthen the durability and increase the dimensions for use as effective sails. This of course required an extreme amount of focus and aura, which was draining on both the mind and body.
'Would I be able to use so many umbrellas as life preservers, or support so much weight for more than a few hours before I collapse?' she wondered uneasily as she eyed the charcoal shaded clouds hot on their trail.
The answer, she soon discovered, was not to her preference. The water quickly seemed to rage and thrash madly about, rocking the largest parasol to and fro as the storm above caught up to their coordinates. As the rain forcefully injected itself in to the situation, it became a challenge to see beyond the borders of the engorged umbrella spine.
"Grab the handle!" Misaki commanded, and both Gon and Killua abandoned their own parasols to obey.
Haku however, was not quite so fortunate. As the "boat" surrendered to a particularly cruel wave and swung upside down, the man had not yet secured his grip and was sent tumbling and struggling amongst the relentless flood of water.
"I can't swim!" he managed to gurgle out between air and liquid.
"Haku-san!" Gon cried out once the remaining two joined him at the surface with the edge of the bobbing umbrella clasped in their fists.
"It's too late for him!" Misaki insisted.
Gon flashed an expression her way that made his following actions far less unpredictable. His eyes gleamed with an unbreakable hope and passion before he released his grip and fought the storm in order to swim toward a drowning Haku. The man's glasses had drifted away from him in the meantime, though his broken cries for help could be heard in part through the commotion of the thunder and violently rushing water.
"Gon!" Killua called after him.
In an instant, Gon and Haku were swallowed by a collapsing wall of liquid blue. The final boy positioned himself as if to kick off and launch his body from the floating parasol.
"Killua!" Misaki shrieked after him.
The plum haired girl snatched his ankle in her hand, disallowing him from following through with his obvious intentions to dive after his friend. The results were vigorously flailing limbs and additional surges of energetically splashing water. In her mind, Misaki could see nothing beyond her mission now. Illumi's face lingered just out of reach in her head, and the possibility of his younger brother's demise under her care was both startling and unacceptable. She could not allow him to do this thing, to throw himself so willingly in to death's embrace under the premise of saving the boy that she would very likely have to kill soon, anyway if he happened to survive.
"Let go!" the boy shouted furiously, but she refused.
Seeing no other options, Misaki separated from the self-powered flotation device in order to apply pressure to a partially exposed vein between Killua's neck and shoulder. At least if she rendered him unconscious, he would be inadequate to fight against her this way and she would be able to support his body until she found land. To her credit, she did manage this successfully. However, Killua was not one to accept restraint so easily, and as the girl grasped his pressure point through the waves, he simultaneously swung a firm karate chop across the nape of her neck. Her eyes resorted to displaying in double vision immediately from the unexpected impact.
Having used all her nen in the umbrella, the girl was virtually defenseless at the boy's retaliation. The world was rapidly blackening and her ears were ringing profusely.
'Forgive me, Illumi,' was her final thought before the world blurred and vanished, Killua's partially emerged, unconscious body just out of her reach as her head slipped below the line where air meets water and finally gave vent to her swoon.