Miss Fortune

Chapter 5: Shrouded

The young female known as Ashley was currently in her jackalope form walking through a rather small forest on the outskirts of town. She was sniffing the air to try and find anything of interest, and fortunately, it didn't take long for a rather pleasant aroma. When she arrived she saw a carrot in a rather simplistic trap. Honestly just how stupid did they think she was? She could see the rope! 

Ashley then heard the snapping of a branch nearby and began to scan the area around her in a panicked motion before she finally spotted the source of the sound. A fairly young male with short white hair, it was fairly clear from the blindfold over his eyes that he couldn't actually see Ashley and was instead relying on his sense of hearing to locate the female. Ashley smiled slightly seeing this again, he was something of a 'hunter' or at least that was the nice way of putting it. 

She had seen him set up several traps for her specifically, he didn't really show any desire of trying to capture any of the other animals that lived in the area. However, he was rather bad at accomplishing this. At first, Ashley thought it was kind of annoying, however, after nearly three years of his attempts she actually thought it was a bit funny since he never seemed to get any better at the traps that he constructed. 

Ashley then began to slowly approach the carrot that he had placed out for her in a rather teasing manner. As she did she would occasionally glance to the side to make sure that he was still watching, or rather still listening to her. As she did she could see his obvious excitement starting to take place. Ashley then stopped for a moment and kicked a rock towards the rope that was holding up the trap. 

As she did it went at a much faster speed than should have been possible showing that Ashley had used her powers. The rock hit the rope snapping the contraption that he had made. She wasn't sure what kind of trap this was since she had never seen anything like this before, however, it was more than elaborate with Ashley having to wait nearly a minute before the trap finally came to an end. 

When it did, Ashley walked up to the carrot that now laid in the center of Chrom's destroyed trap. It seemed like he was actually going to let her keep it if she had gotten caught by the trap. Ashley then began to nibble on the carrot happily as she noticed the male slowly approaching her trying to be quiet as he did. For a blind male he was doing surprisingly well, however without his sight there was only so much he could do. 

He eventually stepped on a branch snapping it, and Ashley pretended to use this to her advantage picking the carrot up in her mouth and beginning to run away from the sound with the carrot in hand. Chrom began to run after her as he heard starting to move, he had to catch her! Ashley continued to run from the male, purposely letting him get close to her before putting some distance between them. 

Something she had noticed about their past few encounters is that Chrom had a lot more stamina than most of the other hunters that she had encountered before him. He also seemed to be a bit faster than them as well, however, he was still human and when compared to a rabbit especially a supernatural one, there was only so much that he could do. Ashley continued to let the male chance her letting him believe that he was getting close to her. 

She led him to the edge of a small hill and began to run alongside it. It didn't take her long to find a piece that didn't look as stable as the others and Ashley jumped over it, and just a few seconds later Chrom stepped on the place she had avoided and began to fall down the hill sliding down it. When he did Ashley looked down at him with a smile before she began to happily hop away. 

When she did Chrom grit his teeth and began to beat his fist against the ground in frustration. After several minutes of Chrom cursing to himself about how he let the Jackalope once again escape from his grasp, he stood up and began to walk back to where his trap was. Chrom picked up the rope that was laying on the ground and began to gather what scraps he could of his now failed trap.