Fragment World - Round 6

"Why must someone such as yourself ask such an unecessary question? Do my friend and I look like people who have business with the nobles?" Karem shook his head. "The only thing we need to know is that we are paid for what we do. However, if you agree to fix what you've done, you have the chance to access the information about who hired us in the first place."

He turned away, but he knew Rosa was still glaring at him. "So, it is a yes or a no? We people are impatient for our friend's wellbeing."

"I am paid to do my job, too. Someone has to die, if it's not you and your friend then there must be someone else. Give me your promise. Once the girl is recovered, give me the name. That's all I need and you lose nothing from that." Rosa kept waiting to confirm that she would have the answer. She knew that the boy was just playing the patient game with her. She won't lose, for an assassin, patience is essential. Furthermore, he needed her, she didn't, if Ivy was dead, the money with be her "legally".

"I can only promise to introduce you to the person who knows the name. I don't really care about who hires me. Although I think there's no reason he won't tell."

Rosa sighed, she really thought that her master sent those people to punish her. She turned back to her house, gave Karem a sign to follow. "We need equipments still. Tell me about her current condition."

Karem followed Rosa. "Her breathing's strange, she keeps bleeding, and she has a fever. There was nothing we could do about it." He stopped for a while, before continuing, "And you keep your tools in a place like this?"

Rosa opened the door, revealed a small room with a bed, a small table set and a shelf full with many kind of bottle. "Rotten food from the rubbish mountain is the main food for medicine plants. The tools have to be cleaned with alcohol and rinsed through boiled water everyday to keep them hygienic. When I was at Clark Henderson's house, he kept me with him 24/7 so no time to do it. I think they collected dust and bacteria during the time. Have you tried to take all the needles out of her body?" She asked while her hands keep on choosing the medicine. A bottle of transparent liquid, which Karem guessed that wouldn't be just normal water, some bags of different dry herbs, a steel box that Karem didn't know what lied inside, were put carefully in Rosa's backpack.

"Well, it's natural we try to take the needles out, don't you think?" Karem said with a carefree smile, but from her asking, he could feel that it was probably not a smart thing to do. "I take it that you didn't mean to cause such a consequence. Thank you. Are you sure that you will be able to take care of this?"

"I'll do what I can" was what Rosa replied to him with.

The boy sighed - very quietly, not dropping his smile - but he didn't say anything else as he lead Rosa back to Kamen's drugstore. Not going through the front door, he came tapping at the back. Just a few seconds later, the door creaked open. The man in white looked down at them.

Rosa stared at the man for a second and bowed her head. Kamen bowed back and led them to where Ivy was.

"I'm glad you can find her. So she was really at Tian Jun's place?" He smiled at Karem then talked to Rosa. "This is the first time I know that he actually has an apprentice. What an amazing gift he left to this world before he died with all those unbelievable medical skill."

"You know my master?" Rosa looked at Kamen surprisedly. She knew that master was an assassin but she had never seen him hanged out with anyone before. "Well, compare to his technique, mine is nothing but a funny kid play." She sighed. "How's the girl now?"

"Seem to get worse, I tried to use some healing herb on her wounds, they stopped bleeding but the skin doesn't look good. Her temperature increased, too." Kamen said, his face changed from calm to worried. "Here she is"

They stopped at a small tidy room. Unlike the store, this room was filled with fresh air and medical incense. Ivy was lying on the bed unconciously, next to her was fresh cool water and clean towel, it seemed like they did their best to take care of her. Rosa stepped forward and sit next to Ivy's bed. She pulled out the equips and grabbed the bag of mixed herbs she prepared at home and gave it to Kamen.

"3 big bowl of water, boil 'till 1 bowl left and put in 5 bowls more and boiled again to get 3 last bowls." She said. "Can you please take me 1 empty bowl and 1 bowl with boiled water, too?"

As she finished telling Kamen what to do, she called out for Karem and asked to help her to pull Ivy sit up.

Kamen didn't look very happy about being ordered around in his own place. "Humph, as expected from Tian Jun's apprentice. Such attitude." He did what she told him to do still, lacking of knowledge to do something better.

At the meantime, Karem got to the bed and helped to sit Ivy up. He wondered if she was awake.

"We are both worrying about the patient, old man" Rosa talked back, for her, master was a perfect man and her attitude was perfectly right so what Kamen said irritated her a little. Rosa returned the attention to Ivy, she checked around Ivy's body, it seemed like only the spots that she had put the needles on were infected. Several ulcer spots appeared around the wounds.

Kamen appeared again at the door, brought the two bowl with him. Rosa left the bed and came toward the small desk.

"Please hold her still." Rosa told Karem and turned to Kamen, help him to put the boiled water bowl down. Rosa took out the needles and knives and threw them into the boiled water. With the other bowl, she put in some herbs and smash them with the alcohol she brought along. "It might be hurt when this touch her skin but I need you to hold her tight no matter what."

"All right." Karem agreed, his smile wavering a little as he wrapped his arms around the girl, letting her rest on him. "Please get it done with quickly." He requested, green eye blinking worriedly.

"Uhm." Rosa quietly answered. She carefully took out the needles, one by one, heat them up with the candle on the table and put them into the mixed herb bowl. There were only 5 main spots around Ivy's head and two on her shoulders. Since Rosa didn't want to kill her and her clothes are quite covered so the needles was only used to reduce the flow of "ki" inside Ivy's body so that she were only sent to sleep if this incident didn't happened. Rosa left out a quiet sigh. Lucky that they found her early, if not Ivy might be dead in a few days. She stepped to the bed with the herb bowl and took out one of the needle.

"Hold her still. It will hurt a lot." Said Rosa, started to inseart the hot needle that were covered with the mixture of herbs and alcohol into the first spot on Ivy right temple. As the needle went in, Ivy started to shake and scream as if she was suffering from a great pain that would send her to death.

(She does that even when she's still asleep? )

(I suppose that unconciousness doesn't mean you can't feel pain. Like... mhmm =D in Chinese Kungfu movie? xD Sometimes you are in pain but you just don't have enough strength to wake up. Beside, basically when they pull the needles out, she should be awake already. It just because of the infection that she got high fever and couldn't wake up yet.)

[This is the third time I type this already pffft *kicks forum* ]

"I-Ivy?" Karem startled, tightening his grasp around the girl. Never could he imagine her in such expressions of pain. Letting her head rest on his collarbone, he whispered into her ear, "Ivy, it's okay, it'll end soon, it's for your good I swear..."