Finding The Way Back (A Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts Fanfiction)

[21] Medical Citadel

Days pass by as Chess repaired his chess piece gear and makes his way across the land, his mecha flea scuttling across the earth and all terrain with ease. Occasionally, he checks the map given to him to make sure he's on the right path and sometimes corrects his course. Eventually, Chess would find himself at the end point of the map...

He has been led to a forest, a dense thicket. Mecha Pierre won't fit between the trunks.

Putting away his knight piece, Chess curiously enters the forest and is shadowed by its canopy. He looks back to the divide between ruin and nature, the collapsed foundations of human buildings seem distant, a flatland being a physical divide between this forest and the buildings around it. The tuxedo cat felt something...eerie. That eerieness came from the forest itself, as he notes that the feeling had come around the moment he stepped into the forest

It's like someone knows he's here.

Chess questioned himself if he followed the map correctly. But he supposed it wouldn't hurt if he just looked around for a little while, sometimes such places are hidden from plain sight. 

"It's just a forest," he tells himself. "Not a haunted house."

He delves further into the forest, the canopy above silently sifts as the leaves sway through the invisible wind. For minutes he walks, every tree and its bark starts looking more and more identical to one another.

"Rrrhhh..."

Chess is starting to wonder if he's actually going anywhere, looking around for any sign of variance in the landscape around him. The trees may be tall like in his home territory, but they are not as thick. A light fog permeates throughout the forest itself, perhaps a contained humidity due to the thickness of the canopy.

"Hmmm..."

Feeling light he could get lost, Chess slowly took out an axe and looked towards the nearest tree. Seeing as there's no one around, he surmises that he could cut down a tree or two to create a landmark in case he gets lost. Though...there's a feeling of warning like someone is looking at him in disapproval. He listens to that feeling, looking again through the light fog to see if anyone is really watching.

...

...

No one seems to be...Perhaps it's just his imagination. 

Heading towards the nearest tree, he brings up his axe and-

"Wait!"

The sound of a young adult male voice forces him to pause. His ears swivel, and he turns his head left. In the distance comes an individual he swore he should've seen. A tall, and rather thin, rabbit Mute, a harlequin rabbit. His bronze and black fur split his head like night and day, along with his eyes being like that of silver and gold. Strangely, the rabbit Mute wears what appears to be human clothes (though Mutes often just take from abandoned clothing stores, so that's not out of the ordinary), although they look like they're going to some kind of high-end bachelor party. Black suit, red tie, and gloved hands, he almost looks like a butler.

"Please, don't do that." says the rabbit Mute. "I don't know who you are, but you must respect the forest if you have come here to heal."

Heal...? Wait...that means the hospital is here. Chess puts away his axe and calms down a little, which the slender rabbit approaches him afterward. The cat is quick to note that the rabbit in question is probably a foot taller than he is, or a little more. Either way, the rabbit looks down at him, leaning while doing so. The eyes of gold and silver peer into his yellow-green, his voice being soft as lavender.

"It is a pleasure to meet you," the rabbit bows in respect. "The name given to me is Scott, though I've been given the title Scouter."

Wait...given?