Never The Same (Hunter X Hunter fanfic) [HIATUS]

Chapter 06: The Labyrinth Of Memories

Yugure fell through darkness and landed with a 'thump' on her rump. 'Who ever came up with that idiotic notion that cats always land on their feet is dead wrong' She though, standing and looking around her.

She was in a small room with a door on one side, a speaker installed above it. The room was made of the same stone as the roof of the tower, but when she looked up, her slitted orange eyes piercing the darkness with ease. She didn't see where she'd come in, and figured it must have closed behind her.

Her ears twitched as the speaker came to life, and a voice echoed in the room. "Welcome contestant, you have found the way the Labyrinth" the male voice said.

Yugure waved her hand "'Nough with the dramatics already, can ya please get on with it" she said, annoyance edging her accented voice.

The door on the other side of the room opened, and a weird fog pored out. The speaker sounded again. "See that? That's the incentive we give those on this path , 72 hours of breathing that stuff will kill you, an added bonus is it has several...side effects" he continued.

Yugure couldn't help but smirk, knowing the foggy stuff wouldn't effect her. A chuckle came from the speaker "And, just so you know, we've taken into account your enhanced and different immune system, so this gas is 100% effective against you" he said.

Yugure' s orange eyes widened. "Well, you'd better get going~" the voice said, and the speaker clicked off. Yugure suddenly had a stronger sense of danger, and no longer wanting to waist a minute, she plunged into the darkness beyond the door.

Apparently one of the side effects for this gas was hallucinations. Yugure kept seeing things that didn't make sense. Fuzzy images of her life in the Numere Wetlands.

She soon realized she was seeing her past. Interested, she followed the images, since she didn't know where else to go. When she did, the months started ticking back on the images.

Then, they stopped, suddenly. She backed up, and saw the image of her, purple hair and vibrant orange eyes staring up at the Nekoyona woman who found her.

She started, she had forgotten that moment till just now, but it came back to her. She had been lost, wondering the swamp, and had come across that woman.

Had she wandered away from home? She couldn't remember, and though it felt like years ago, the her in the image looked the same as she did now.

She put a hand to either side of her head, squeezing, as if to push the memory into the front of her brain, her tail lashing. But she found nothing, not a single memory of before that time.

Dizzy and feeling strangely unsettled, she walked forward, vaguely aware of time and passages passing. She was so deep in thought, that before she knew it, she was standing before a door, with an overly cheery "Congratulations" written on it.

A camera rigged up in a corner, observed her, and those watching the screen of the camera feed in turn observed her. A man with a purple mohawk say, crunching on some chips.

"The gas is meant to stimulate the part of the brain that hold memories, and bring to light the ones buried deepest. Normally this causes issues for the examinees, because it brings forth painful things they wanted to forget, thus making it harder for them to follow the memories backwards, for fear of seeing something they had successfully forgotten".

"It also usually takes them a while to realize that they need to follow the memories to reach the finish, this test has a bit of a 'face your fears' feel...but not only did that girl almost immediately recognize this -not really, she just didn't know what else to do- but it also looked as though they cut off almost at the start, I wonder why, and, miraculously, she still found the door in the end. Amusing".