Welcome everyone! Please read, comment, enjoy, and come back for more! Will be updating regularly.
The background of the AU:
5 years after the dark continent arc, Killua has learned hacking from his brother Milluki, Kurapika has resolved the issue with the Phantom Troupe, and Gon has become a Hunter Examiner! The world has changed, but many things remain the same... welcome to Hunter x Hunter: Beyond the Rift!
The plot:
Killua & Kurapika team up to discover the organization that hired the Phantom Troupe to slaughter the Kurta Clan. Featuring hacker Killua, a beyond-revenge Kurapika, character development for Kuroro, an OC Kurta clan member, OC enemies and organizations, new nen abilities, fun plot twists and much more!
It was a lazy Friday afternoon at Yorkshin University. The sun reflected off of tall glass buildings and illuminated the grass lawns below with window-pane patterns, and students lazily walked along the long grassy malls on their way home from class. On Fridays everyone would go home, so the campus became vacant quite early.
Killua glided through the campus on his skateboard at a leisurely pace. He wasn't a student at the university (he was a single star hunter and too busy for school), but at 19 years old, he fit right in with his bag loosely slung over his shoulder, his shorts and t-shirt and his clear-rimmed rectangular glasses. He rode through the mostly empty campus, and if you looked at him for a while you would notice that he never propelled the skateboard himself. A closer look would reveal a small motor next to its wheels, and an even close look with gyo would reveal it being powered by his nen turned into electricity.
Killua breezed along until he reached the library, then swiftly kicked the skateboard into the air with his feet and caught it behind his back. He strapped it onto his bag and went in.
The university library was mostly empty. A few people were using the computers in the corner and there were a few more in the café, but other than that it was a slow day. Killua walked in, took a seat in the lounge, flipped a manga out of his bag and started to read.
He had spotted his target immediately, a young professor sitting at a computer in the far corner. Kurapika had made it easy for Killua to find him, giving him both his face and his location patterns in the mission briefing. If all went well, the target wouldn't even notice that he was there.
Killua flipped through the manga at a steady pace, chuckling to himself every so often and fidgeting his legs. His back was towards the public computers and he was a fair distance away. Killua found himself amused at all the precautions he was taking; most likely the target wasn't even a proficient nen user. But it was better to be safe than sorry.
Still, probably only the most astute hunters would have noticed the tiny fluctuation of Killua's tetsu. A tiny thread of nen snaked out from Killua's foot, going around the room and connecting itself to the back of a particular computer case. This particular nen ability, circuit thread, transmuted his nen into a thin conductive thread that could stick to any surface and enable the transmission of electricity to and from any object.
Killua used it to connect to his target's computer and he now was reading every signal sent to and from it. The signal fed into his nen supercomputer that translated it into relevant information, like keystrokes, onscreen display, programs being run, and anything else you would want to know, and that fed directly into Killua's consciousness, giving him instant access into everything that the computer was showing.
Killua quickly sorted through the information in his head and grinned. The target had his email open but was watching youtube on another tab. He quickly sent several electrical pulses to the target computer that would cause it to execute several email searches (all in the background, of course), and transferred the data over to himself. A quick initial scan of those emails looked promising; Kurapika didn't tell him much, but the amount of emails the searches brought up seemed to be a good sign.
Kurapika had also asked for his password, and while he could spend the time to brute force it, often there was a much easier way. Email searches for password hints came up with nothing, so Killua decided on a different approach. He sent a few more pulses over to the other computer, forcefully logging him out of his email and causing youtube to lag and then crash. And then he waited.
The older student was noticeably upset at the computer, even hitting it a few times. As he closed the tab that was frozen and glitching quite badly, he noticed his email had signed out, and reflexively signed himself back in. He then opened up youtube again, found his video, and did his best to roughly continue back at the same spot.
Killua grinned; he had a log of the keystrokes. He laughed a little as he flipped the last page of his manga, closed it, tossed it in his bag, and walked out, hands in his pockets. Mission accomplished.
Kurapika had set up his base of operations in a three bedroom house in one of the nicer parts of Yorkshin City. He was trying to track down any information on the organization behind the slaughter of the Kurta Clan, and Yorkshin was a convenient location to do that. There were plenty of information brokers, rich people, body collectors and other entities throughout the city that might prove useful to his search. It also happened that one of his surviving clan members was a freshman at Yorkshin University, and he wanted to be around her to make sure she was safe.
On this particular morning, Kurapika grabbed a rustic key from the bottom drawer of his desk and went to a locked door in the far end of the hallway. He unlocked it and stepped inside; it was dark and empty except for a large bookshelf on the far wall. Lining the shelves were glass dome cases, and in them, pairs of vibrantly red eyes.
Kurapika walked over to the bookshelf, picked up a set of eyes from the bottom row and put it on a shelf at eye level. He stared at the pair of eyes and the eyes stared back; the glass reflected his face, and Kurapika could see his own blank stare in the reflection. He shifted a bit to the left, and his black eyes became overlaid by the bright red ones.
He sighed, closed his eyes, and then opened them again. One eye turned red; the other stayed black. Slowly, his nen aura pulsated into life, and as it grew, it encased the dome and wrapped around the eyes. The eyes started to shine, and they took on an even brighter glean - if that was even possible - and then the world went black around Kurapika as he entered into memoryscape.
Kurapika watched, passively, as the scene played before his eyes. There were sounds of fighting and shouting in the background, and all around him was destruction and panic. He calmly surveyed the memory; he had seen this many times before. Before him stood one of the elders of the Kurta clan, Taiki, his eyes alight with fire and face in furled concentration. He faced a man with dark skin and strange tattoos on his side and back. It was one of the Phantom Troupe that wouldn't make it back alive.
"You can't gain anything from our eyes. People before you have tried and failed. Leave now or you'll regret it," Taiki said.
"Who said anything about that," the dark man replied. "I've been dying for a good fight, so get ready!" A cackle echoed from his lips and he clapped in twisted glee. "I heard you all are strong, and it was a pain in the butt to track you down and break your little barrier trick! You better give me a good time!" With that, he dashed towards Taiki, his hand growing into a vicious looking claw.
Taiki's nen aura flashed briefly, and the man's feet became glued to the ground. His momentum carried him face first into the ground in front of Taiki.
"What is this weak technique? I'll crush it!" the man shouted, getting up. He got into a crouch, and tried to break the hold by force, kicking off the ground with all his might. He only succeeded in face planting again as his feet stuck firmly in place.
Taiki spoke, his tone very even. "Who hired you? If you say who, I'll give you a fun fight - otherwise you'll stay in that spot forever."
The dark skin man cackled. "Hahaha! Are you trying to negotiate with me? Especially since -" the dark man faded out, and reappearing behind Taiki, clawed at his opponent's head. " - your tricks are useless against me!"
Taiki looked sliced through, but then turned into nen and faded away as he safely reappeared a good distance away. As the dark man landed from the attack, he once again found himself bound to the ground.
The dark man grinned. "Ok, we can play cat and mouse all day but I am itching for action. The boss doesn't even know the organization's name but we called them 'R'. Good enough?"
Taiki was silent for a moment. "Anything more?"
Another cackle from the dark man. "You won't even get out of here alive and you want more information! Play time is over, let's fight-" The words were cut off as his throat was sliced open by an invisible blade, and dozens of slashes appeared all over his body as he fell to the ground. The air pressure around him squeezed him like a sponge, and instantly the blood from his body sprayed out, sapping his strength. He weakly tried to get up, but the pressure combined with the blood loss was too much for him and he slumped to the ground. He tried to speak but it ended up in a gurgle, and then he was still.
"That's one of my least favorite abilities, you know." A Taiki outside of the memoryscape appeared behind Kurapika and was watching the scene as well. "If you wanted to talk to me, you could have just materialized me in the real world instead of browsing my memories."
"I wanted to see if I could gather any more leads," Kurapika replied, not looking away from the scene playing. The Taiki in the memory used his wind nen to slice up the body into pieces, making sure his opponent was dead for sure, and then ran off to another area with more activity.
"You have matured, Kurapika. This doesn't even stir you anymore. I would be very proud of you if I was alive," Taiki said, grinning. His body next to Kurapika's looked less solid and slightly transparent. Taiki's personality and memories were preserved by the special properties of the Kurta clan's nen, but his soul had departed long ago.
"You do live on - as long as the Kurta clan is still alive your memories will not leave. And for that to continue, I need to make sure that no one else is targeting the Kurta clan, now or in the future." Kurapika's face was emotionless as he spoke. He looked beyond the scene at the burning village, at faces he grew familiar with by living through the memory hundreds of times, at faces he loved despite only knowing their look of anguish and terror. "Your grand-daughter doesn't need to know about any of this."
Taiki grinned. "I think she's strong enough to bear the Kurta clan's burden. Afterall, she's got my genes."
Kurapika shook his head. "After I close this matter once for all, no one will have to bear it anymore." Taiki shook his head. He had a feeling the Kurta clan's burden was not going to disappear so easily. He looked at Kurapika, who was still staring off into the memoryscape, and tried to imagine the weight that was on his shoulders. It was far too much for someone to bear alone.
Suddenly Kurapika turned to Taiki, pointed at the dead corpse and pouted. "Couldn't you have gotten more information out of this guy? He died way too fast."
Tiaki smirked. "I didn't think he'd die that quickly either. Honestly, I thought he would escape my attack with his nen."
Kurapika sighed, and after some more silence, slowly let his aura recede. The memoryscape slowly faded around him, and he heard Taiki say in the distance - "You know we are always proud of you Kurapi-". He opened his eyes; they were both black again, and the empty room came into focus. He put the dome back on the bottom shelf and exited, locking the door.
Kurapika barely left the room when a voice spoke up from the direction of his blind spot.
"Yo," Killua said. He was leaning against a wall, his arms crossed, looking at Kurapika.
Kurapika looked over to Killua, silently cursing at himself for not noticing the former assassin's presence, and then started to walk down the hall. Killua pushed himself off the wall and followed.
"I investigated the person you gave me and found some interesting data." Killua said. "Who is he?"
Kurapika spoke in a subdued tone, the memoryscape still fresh in his mind. "He's a scientist studying the properties of nen. Specifically, his research is observing humans that could utilize nen at a high level."
Kurapika paused, wondering how much more he should say about his hunches. Then he mentally scolded himself - this was Killua he was talking to, one of his closest friends, and one whom he entrusted with many more important secrets than this one. Besides, if there was any common advice from his clan elders, it was to learn how to open to others.
So he continued. "In his research he references something he calls the rift, a state of mind in which humans can utilize all types of nen freely without any loss of effectiveness," Kurapika said simply.
Killua immediately understood. The Kurta clan's special nen was triggered when their emotions flared, and it gave them the ability to use any type of nen freely; it was the same concept as the rift. "Do you think he might be related to the organization you're looking for?"
"It is just a hunch, nothing more," Kurapika replied. "No one else in his research area uses the vocabulary he uses, so he stands out."
Killua waited silently. He knew that there must be something more that would cause him to pursue this lead. Kurapika was not a person to give out information lightly, but Killua had been around him long enough to realize that he was beginning to earn his trust. He grinned as Kurapika continued again after a short pause.
"In my clan's memories, the Phantom Troupe called the organization that hired them 'R'." Kurapika said.
Killua's heart skipped a beat. He knew from intuition alone that Kurapika was onto something. He felt his back shiver as Kurapika finished the thought. "I think it might be related to the rift."
And the author said, let there be plot! And there was plot. Or at least the beginning of it, anyhow.
The next chapter introduces an OC, Masumi Kurta, a member of the Kurta clan that survived! Who is she, what is she doing, how did she survive, and what is her role in the story? Well, it may not be answered completely next time, but it will eventually. Stay tuned! :)