I still don't know how it happened. The decisions that Ayano made were so long ago.
What made her agree to the worst choice in her life? Why did she say, "Alright." And not think it through? Was she a fool, or was it something else?
Regardless of the theories I've come up with, it won't change the fact that it was a part of her orchestrated Fate; tragedy rides on her shoulder like a loyal companion.
It was her best worst choice.
You can argue with me, my friends, but you will not sway me! One day I'll save her. I'll rescue her from Mistress Fate. That was my vow.
I have yet to uphold it.
~*~
"Wow, this port is bogus compared to the one in Padokea." Leorio whined. His suitcase was slung over his shoulder as he slouched his way from the terminal. The polished white tiles below reflected their forms back up at them, white-washed and blurry. Ayano quietly enjoyed the soft taps of their feet against its surface, humming under her breath while they observed the café's, waiting areas and shops the Airport had on display! Kurapika and the young female walked on either side of him. "You sure you wanna stay here, Kurapika? You could always travel on the next Airship with me!"
The blond regarded the older male with a smile. "It is quite alright, Leorio-san! This is my destination and I will not stay here for long. Thanks to Ayano-chan I have a general idea of where I need to go." The girl on Leorio's right side dipped her head in response.
"Are you certain that you can calculate those coordinates?" Ayano questioned.
Kurapika waved his hand in dismissal. "I only need to enter it into The Hunter's Index. It should be moderately simple."
The fourteen-year old nearly tripped in disbelief.
When she regained her balance, the two males were watching her with surprised expressions! "You good?" Leorio teased ruthlessly. "Do I need to tell the floor to shove off?"
"Tell Kurapika-san that!" Ayano bursted. Loose strands of hair fell in her face and she brushed them aside, exasperated. "Are you an idiot?! After what happened last night, you truly think that Zoldyck isn't going to be watching the forums for the coordinates he gave us?"
The Kurta seemed startled by her outburst while Leorio mumbled 'Zoldyck' under his breath grumpily. "Are you certain he would do something like that?" He inquired slowly. "You sounded completely different from your usual self. I believe that he would have a hard time figuring out who you are."
The Prodigy shook her head and mumbled a few undistinguished words. "And you're telling me that you don't know how to find coordinates on a topographic map?" She asked him disbelievingly. "You don't know how to find latitude and longitude manually?"
The boy's stared at her silently. Finally Leorio cleared his throat and sighed. "To be honest, nobody really does that anymore. We have The Hunter Index now! Why would we know how to do that?"
Ayano felt the side of her jaw twitch. Why? It was a key skill to learn! How could nobody know how to calculate your destination and present location on a map? For the love of Lady Muse, she would need to teach both of them if they had to get anywhere!
Like a mother scolding two little boys, the girl pinched theirs ears and yanked them towards the main section of the Airport. Leorio whined in protest and flailed his arms! "OI SHORTY, LET ME GO OR ILL POUND YA!" He shrieked.
Kurapika only sighed and stumbled along with her, leaned closer so that her tugging wouldn't hurt as much. "Ayano-chan I find this to be unnecessary." He tried to reason. "Please release me and we can look at a map in a civilised manner?"
She only pinched their ears harder and began to walk faster. It was funny, seeing two tall boys stumbling behind a freakishly short girl by the ears! People stopped in their tracks to chuckle at the sight and a few muttered teasing comments as they skirted past.
"Getting an earful, you two?"
"Should have listened to your little friend ey?"
Finally Ayano stopped in her walking! Releasing the boys, she briskly walked up to a man in an elite looking uniform; an Airport Guard. Both Kurapika and Leorio massaged their ears glumly as she conversed with the man before coming back with a piece of paper in her hands.
"This is a map of our current location." The girl informed coolly; it was obvious that she was still annoyed at them. "We are going to sit down and I'm going to educate you in reading topographic maps! Got it?" She gestured towards a table outside of a café and made her way towards it, pulling out chairs for the three of them.
Leorio slouched further into his suit, coffee eyes darting around for a way to escape. "Oh gee!" He stated loudly. "Y'know, my flight leaves soon I should probably leave you and Kurapika to it. Don't wanna be late forー"
The intellectual blond next to him grabbed him by the tie and yanked him down into a seat. The doctor spluttered before Kurapika tugged him closer, grey eyes cold and furious. "You will not abandon me. Is that understood?" He warned.
"B-but I was never good at maps! I DONT WANNA DO THIS!"
"Do I look like I am thrilled? We have no choice; we can not escape."
There was a sound of hands being slammed down on the table in front of them and the duo glanced up. Ayano had her hands splayed over the map with a pen held delicately between her lips. Turning the map to face them, she grabbed the pen with her hand and smiled. "Let's get started!"
Leorio: (°_°)
Kurapika: (￣^￣)
(((FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DONT WANT TO LEARN HOW TO FIND COORDINATES ON AN ACTUAL MAP DONT READ FOR THE NEXT FEW PARAGRAPHS!)))
Ayano placed a pen down on the areas around the map, her brows creased. "Remember this; Longitude is across from East to West. Latitude is North to South like a ladder climbing up the earth. If you look at all these numbers and lines you'll get easily off course so pay attention ONLY to the places I indicate. Up by the Latitude and Longitude lines there are black and white bars," she tapped the long border of the map and helped the sour males identify the black and white bars.
"Okay, and?" Leorio huffed grumpily. "What do those do?"
Ayano smiled. "They tell time." She stated simply. "There are many different types of coordinates but we have received GPS type coordinates from The Zoldycks. I changed them to DMS, which can be used on any physical map. stands for Degree's, Minutes and Seconds. I will tell you how to find them! Kurapika-san, we are in one of the places I stated clearly to him so the second last coordinates should be 21° 18' 56.1708'' N 157° 51' 29.1348'' W."
Kurapika leaned forward and placed his finger up in a contemplative gesture. "Ah. Alright, let me look at the coordinates you've recalculated," The blond smoothed out the paper on which Ayano wrote last nights GPS to DMS coordinates and traced his finger down to the second last coordinate. "21° 18' 56.1708 N. What does the stand for?" He inquired.
"21° stands for twenty-one degrees." Ayano placed her finger on the bottom right corner of the map and pointed out the number. "Remember that Latitude is before Longitude. So we have twenty-one degrees and...?"
"Lemme see....18' 56.170ー" Leorio started but the girl shook her head.
"Just the first two numbers please." She stated. "18' you said? That is fairly easy! The number with the apostrophe behind it is Minutes. Remember the black and white bars I told you about? You count eighteen bars up...." The two boys watched closely as her pale finger slid up the side of the map, slowly counting the black and white bars until she reached eighteen. "There! That is the eighteenth bar." She finished.
"Er....." Leorio mumbled. He squinted at the rest of the coordinates and frowned. "What about this 56.1708 N stuff? What does that do?"
Then the blond next to him gasped, putting a finger up once more! "Seconds!" He said, his eyes glowing at the revelation. "The numbers before the apostrophe are seconds and millisecond!"
The doctor next to him grinned at his quiet enthusiasm before his smile twisted into a grumpy scowl. "But...there aren't any bars for seconds or milliseconds." He stated.
Ayano's lips quirked upwards, deciding to step in again. "This is where we estimate the location." Her pen twitched in her hand as she observed the eighteenth bar. "This represents a minute. There are Sixty seconds in a minute, so where do you think 56.1708 seconds might be on this minute bar?"
Kurapika leaned forward in his seat; he was deeply interested now that he was catching along! "If we simplify the milliseconds we would have 56.2 seconds total. I would say here." His finger landed on where most would assume 56 seconds would be then moved his finger a hair to the left.
The girl marked the place with an obvious dot. "Good!" She praised lightly. "That would be our Latitude coordinate. Are you ready to tackle the Longitude coordinate? The way to find it is exactly the same!"
The doctor slumped in his seat, groaning about how this was a waste of time! The other male merely nodded his head in earnest and together he and Ayano deciphered the Longitude coordinate 157° 51' 29.1348'' W.
It only took them two minutes before Kurapika leaned back, a glint of modest triumph in his eyes. "All we need now is something to connect the lines!" He observed. The fourteen-year old girl nodded dutifully before digging into one of her trenches pockets, whipping out one of the many booklets she salvaged from her home. Gently she aligned it with each dot and drew a straight line from the latitude and longitude until they crossed over one spot.
Even Leorio leaned forward to see where the lines landed!
(((OKAY YOU GUYS THE BORING MAP COORDINATE STUFF IS OVER CONTINUE ON)))
It landed on the tiniest, most unimpressive smudges of man-made squares in existence.
"...."
"EH?!?" Leorio shrieked, launching out of his chair. "ALL OF THAT FOR SOMETHING WE CAN BARELY SEE?!" The other two stared at the smudges before Ayano blinked. Once. Twice. Then with a sigh, she picked up the map and walked back to the Airport Guard. Kurapika rested his chin in his hand and observed the doctor's whining with mild disinterest, while the young girl conversed with the elite looking man.
There was some neck-scratching and some head shaking. Then there was a look of mild disappointment before the youth walked over to the two males. "The coordinates are correct," Ayano affirmed as she sat back down. "But you will have to locate the Airport on the map and use a compass to walk your way there. The location of the Sengi Guild is in a nameless slum according to the man over there; all of them are labelled with these disappointing squares."
"I see."
The blond frowned softly at the map and his posture shifted to get a better look. Leorio stood next to the table and tapped his foot impatiently. "You guys, I gotta go!" He complained. "Can't this wait? I want to say goodbye!"
To the doctors surprise, Ayano stood up and wrapped her arms around him. "E-er...Shorty?" He inquired. The purple-haired female only hugged him tighter and released a deep breath of air. With an aura of uncertainty, Leorio hugged her back. "You really gonna miss me?" Was his shy mumble.
There a moment of silence between them.
Then she pulled away, her shoulders rising and falling in her awkwardness. "I suppose." She told him. "You look after me and make sure that I treat myself with respect...it is more than I could ask for from a friend." Her ghost eyes travelled up to his face, a foreign emotion for the man flickering in her gaze; fondness. "Stay safe on your travels Leorio-san. Give people a better future and take care of yourself, understood?"
The nineteen-year old seemed touched by what she said, for his eyes lit up. "You got it!" He assured her boisterously. Then his voice grew serious as he added, "Take care of yourself too. I know that you like to push yourself and I can't say I like it. Now that The Hunter Exam is over you should treat yourself; take a shower, sit down and enjoy the sun, eat a lot of food or something that normal kids do, got it?"
The duo shook hands. "Got it."
Leorio grinned once more before clasping Kurapika on the shoulder. The blond jolted from his deeply immersed state, the pen in his hands clattering on the table. "I'm off!" The older man chuckled. "See ya, Kurapika!"
The younger boy turned and smiled up at him, placing a hand over his. "Of course, Leorio-san. Safe journey! Till we meet at YorkNew City."
The three briefly exchanged inquiries on communication in the next six months; they decided that Leorio and Kurapika could use their codes to communicate. With one last shoulder-clap and a wink, the doctor wannabe jauntily walked off into the bustling terminal.
And just like that, he was gone.
Ayano stared at the spot where the older male disappeared. The girl found herself already missing his presence. "Have you figured things out yet?" She inquired, turning to Kurapika.
The boy fiddled with the pen absentmindedly, his gaze wandering the map. "More or less." Was his vague answer.
The girl observed his handiwork. There were a few scribbles on the paper and some obviously frustrated writing, the words slanted in the scribes haste. But the Kuruta had figured out which direction he was coming from and where he needed to be heading.
There was just something. . .off about his behavior.
"You're certain of your direction?" She said; it was more of a statement than a question.
"I suppose." Another ambiguous reply.
Then it clicked; the fiddling, the vagueness. "You don't know, do you?"
The pen-fiddling stopped and he fixed her with his cool, grey stare. "I never said that I did not know where I was going." He answered, but there was a defensive edge to his tone. Ayano's eyebrows raised a fraction but her expression was otherwise neutral.
Then, like steam curling off of boiling water, the reason came to her agonizingly slow. "You know where you're going," she started. "But, you are uncertain of travelling without proper directions?"
The Kuruta turned and looked down at the map again. Ah, she was correct!
"There's nothing to worry about," Ayano assured, sitting in the chair next to him. "It might be difficult since it's way out of the way but I'm certain you will reach the Sengi Guild eventually!" Kurapika only shifted and stared harder at the map, like a clear road to his destination would emerge from willpower alone.
In a way, it seemed childish.
"See, according to the coordinates and our location, it would only take you forty-three minutes to get to your destination." She logically encouraged him, pointing at the smudges and the nice blue dot with the words Airport labelled in nice clear writing; the slums didn't have any writing at all.
Kurapika exhaled and observed the two locations. There was a familiar glaze over his eyes that Ayano had seen before. The older teenager was struggling, a twisting dance of choosing to either follow his emotions or disregard them altogether.
She watched, amused, as his emotions grudgingly subdued in his cornerstone gaze. What was so difficult for him? What was he trying to decide?
He turned to face her and the odd emotion roared to life. He avidly ignored it and spoke a sentence that seemed so utterly reluctant to leave his mouth.
"I want you to travel with me."
Those words were followed by a pause, before the blond dipped his head hastily. "I mean, I would appreciate it if you would accompany me to this place! I am concerned that if I travel by myself, one who has little experience in using DMS coordinates and judging distance," His words became tight in his embarrassment. "I would become. . .lost, and deeply discouraged."
Ayano fought to keep a straight face.
Kurapika's own expression was one of annoyance. Not at her, but at himself. Was he truly beating himself over the fact that he was wasn't confident in using a map to find a nameless place?
Men, Ayano thought ruefully. They truly were made in Fate's own image.
It would be unkind to taunt him. Instead, the girl stood from her seat and began to fold up the map. Kurapika observed her curiously before standing with her, pushing his seat back under the table. Without so much as a word she placed both the map and the booklet in one of her many pockets before glancing at him.
"Alright, Kurapika. I will travel with you."