Chapter 3: Queen
Warning: Things get a little graphic. Like the nature channel. With humans getting eaten…
Meryem lifted the head of the old man to his mouth and dug in his teeth. He felt the flesh give way and allow the sweet, salty blood to trickle into his mouth. With it came the flood of power from the defeated Hunter Committee Chairman Netero as the king absorbed the dead man's Nen power. His aura, already absurdly powerful in comparison to any human's, doubled in size. "So that was the power of the old fool," Meryem mused.
He had barely escaped from the old man's final recourse: blowing himself up. Of course, this was only because after the long and grueling fight, the hardest he had ever encountered, he wanted some measure of satisfaction other than hollow ideals like victory. His safety and the continuation of his reign was not the only thing he wanted to gain from the fight. And so, he had risked his safety (a foolish notion, he thought, one that he would not repeat) to decapitate his prone enemy and take the head with him.
The new aura strengthened the weary and devastated muscles and nearly shattered bones from Netero's powerful, supersonic attacks. He finished off the flesh, then cracked open the skull and ate the brain. It was still warm.
Meryem noticed an unconscious boy lying behind a wall of rubble. A human. The king stared at the scene, wondering why and how anyone defeated by his men had just been left there and not killed or captured, or why the enemy had left one of their own behind, and a child at that (the humans had such an odd way of protecting their offspring when they would do much better to survive and procreate again). Then he looked at Pitou, and realized that Pitou must have taken him as a toy, then been forced to fight the other enemy, and had hidden his first toy from harm.
Though he was not one to consider his subordinates' wishes, he figured allowing Pitou this one luxury would not be out of place. Besides, he could now be generous. The strongest foe the humans could muster had been dispached with minimal damage to himself. The personal satisfaction gained from the fight was enough to cancel out any major desire to eat the boy then and there and tell Pitou to shove any complaints (not that Pitou would actually complain to the King's face) up his rear end.
The king sighed, then yelled, "Pufu!" The guard approached hesitantly. After he had assumed the king dead in the explosion, he had begun to tear up the landscape and threatening to kill every human on the planet. Then he saw the king, and with tears welling from his eyes flew at him and hugged him. The king was… not pleased, and had promptly punched Pufu so hard that his nose broke.
"Yes, Your Majesty?" Pufu said.
"Take Pitou and these two humans to the infirmary. Tell the doctor to treat Pitou first. He can deal with the two humans when he recovers. And please, Pufu, don't eat them. Should you choose to disobey me," the king added menacingly, "I will hug you back."
Pufu shuddered.
(Scene Change)
The human doctor sighed as he looked down at Pitou's body, lying prone on a sterilized bed. The Royal Guard would not be easy to treat, and without any basis for skin grafts or any idea of what drugs would work, even saving his life, let alone repairing any scarring damage, would be nigh impossible. The only thing that might have worked would have been Nen, but this doctor did not have that capability. The king had sent Pufu to find a Nen doctor, but in the meantime the palace doctor had to keep the ant alive, or he would surely be killed. Not that it would have been any different when he was treating the Great Leader, but at least he had known how to deal with that man's injuries. This goddammed ant biology!
He looked at the injured white-haired boy and sighed. At the very least he could do something about this one, though oddly the king had ordered that he remain sedated.
The black-haired boy was also kept unconscious by was of an IV. The doctor disliked this, fearing permanent damage, for which he would certainly be blamed, damn the fact that he was only following orders. That was, after all, the way those in command looked at their subordinates: tools to disregard when they succeeded but who were suddenly blamed for any failure that the leader might have brought about.
The doctor heard a knock on the door. He opened it hesitantly, but it was not the horrible ant king, but a blind girl. Her blonde hair was restrained (barely) in two wild clumps on each side of her head. Snot dribbled out of her nose.
"So sorry, sir," she mumbled. "Is His Majesty here?"
"He is not. This is the infirmary." He hesitated, noticing that she seemed lost. If he let her wander, and something bad happened, he would be blamed. "Um… are you lost?"
"Just a little. Do you think you could help me find the Gun Gi room?" He nodded, then hastily replied verbally.
"Yes." He took a last look at his patients. They were stable. He could spare a few minutes.
After the door closed, Killua opened his eyes and pulled out the IV, grimacing at his injuries. The burns were painful, muscles stiff, but at least his bones and his aura were relatively intact. Though he cursed his parents for the years of torture and poisoning, he had to thank them, grudgingly, for giving him the tolerance to remain conscious in the face of any sedative.
He looked over at Gon, then quickly stood and pulled out Gon's IV. If the worst came to the worst, he would have to carry Gon. But, that would leave him with a major handicap in battle.
Killua found the cords to some sort of heavy duty medical appliance, and ripped them from the apparatus and fired up his aura. The current from the socket hit him full force, but he gritted his teeth as his electric aura recharged. The process would take perhaps five minutes. Hopefully Gon would wake and the doctor would not be back by the end of that time.
The doctor was leading Komugi (the blind Gun Gi champion) around an area of the palace that he did not know. The two of them together were more lost than ever. They had walked in on the corrupt minister Bizef raping a prostitute. He had had to hastily give Komugi some innocent explanation for the horror, while he himself was trying to forget the image. They had walked in on the dumb Royal Guard, Yupi, eating the carcass of some poor human. Yupi did not even notice them as he shoved whole arms down his throat. And now they were wandering the opulent halls with the hope that they would magically discover the king.
"What are you doing, fool?" A cold voice said from behind them. "Did I not tell you to watch Neferpitou at all times?" The doctor gulped and wet his pants. They had found the king, and magic had nothing to do with it.
He turned around and bowed deeply, while Komugi stammered, "I-I'm so sorry Your Majesty, I asked him to help me find the Gun Gi room. I didn't know he was already doing something."
"I don't blame you, Komugi," the king said gently. "Now get back to your infirmary before I tear you open!" he snarled at the doctor, who ran for his life.
Just then he remembered that he could now not find his way to the infirmary. He cursed whichever cruel god had led him to this fate.
Gon woke up slowly, a black cloud pressing down on him, keeping him halfway asleep and unable to do anything but wait for the terror to pass. He was pinned. Something was opening its mouth to swallow him.
"Gon, snap out of it!" Killua commanded, shaking his friend. "Wake up. We have to get out of here!"
"Killua? Why are you here? Where am I?" It was a beautiful day. Bright sunlight entered through the window.
"The ants' palace. And we'll be ant food if we don't get out now. So wake up, fool." Gon frowned. He did not appreciate that tone.
"Shut up." He sat up and punched Killua in the arm, then winced as his friend yelped. He realized the Killua was covered in burns. "S-sorry," he said, ashamed.
Killua gave him the thumbs up sign. "No problem. Just get your butt in gear."
As the two prepared to flee, Gon noticed Pitou. "Let's take him, Killua."
"Why? We can't carry him and escape."
Gon's mouth tightened stubbornly. "He can help us fix Kite."
"Yeah, only if we heal him from that point. And after all the trouble I went to to do that to him, helping him is the last thing I want to do." Gon's eyes widened.
"You did that? Wow!" That Killua had injured the enemy he had lost to was an incredible thought to Gon. He had always known that Killua was somewhere ahead of him in combat skill, but since the Zaoldyeck had always been content to take the backseat when it came to fighting, he had never realized that Killua was capable of something like that. In a way, it made him feel inferior.
"I'll take him," Gon decided, and picked up Pitou, ignoring the ant's moan of agony. "If we get in trouble, we can just drop him, right? It's not like he's our friend or anything."
Killua threw up his arms and walked to the window. He noticed a certain lack of security, probably in the aftermath of their dramatic invasion failure. He broke the window after checking for alarms and finding none. "I give up. Just get over here fast!"
The two boys climbed out the window. The grass around them was green. As they started to run from the palace, a soldier ant tried to stop them but was ripped in two by Killua. There was no protective En around the palace, for some reason (they could not know that Yupi was busy and that Pufu was elsewhere) and precious few human or ant guards were watching. They would be looking for intruders, not escapees. (It probably helped that the king was preoccupied with Komugi and that the soldier ants had been mostly dispached by the other invaders, leaving the palace understaffed. Not that anyone in the country remained who could possibly injure the king.)
Outside the palace walls, the boys looked at each other and grinned.
Inside, the king smirked as he said, "Checkmate." It was his fist victory against the blind champion. With the new senses and experience gained from fighting Netero, he had finally (but with much effort; much as the chairman had been his most challenging physical fight, so was Komugi his most challenging mental fight) defeated her.
Komugi flinched. She bowed her head, tears welling in her eyes. "You have beaten me, Your Majesty. May I be excused to end my life as I see fit?" There was no value in her life if she lost at Gun Gi, and she had long since sworn to kill herself at her first loss. As a child, that had been her only use to anyone, to the starving family that she kept out of poverty by defeating the champions of other countries. Surely some of those also knew that if they failed, even if they were not executed by the leadership of the country they had shamed, that they would be ostracized and useless: as good as dead.
"No." She looked up at him, shocked. Why did he refuse? Did he not understand that her life was Gun Gi and nothing more? That she had no reason to continue on living, for now she was no use to anyone at all? No one needed her, so no one would bother to keep her around or to care for her. If they did, she would only be a burden upon them.
"Please, Your Majesty, I have no more reason to live. You have no further use for me." She trembled, remembering her happiness at being with him and playing Gun Gi with him, having a challenging opponent who valued her skill and her company. She would miss that, more than any other thing in her largely pleasure-devoid life. She would miss being more than needed, being desired for a personal reason and not the honor of the state. She was finally valued as more than a bragging right, even if, as she suspected, the being in front of her valued her more as a curiosity, something that did not fit into his everyday world. She knew that he had never lost at a game, that he had defeated and killed all of the other champions in the country. But she knew, somehow, that to him, she was different.
"Yes, you do. You will die only when I tell you to." His tone was harsh and uncompromising. He could not allow weakness to show, especially not to her. Her perception, despite her being blind, was surprisingly sharp. And when he himself felt like he was diving into a void (the sickening sensation of free fall hit his stomach) he could hardly bear having someone know that. He faced this state alone as always, too proud to do anything else. But maybe, with this girl, there would be light at the end of the void. She gave him something new, experiences beyond the thrill of killing and power. Something beyond mere dominance.
He was well aware that he was not meant to be in this world. He did not belong. His power was too great, his viciousness surpassing all but the most cruel of humans. All animals ran before he caught them. Even his own kind, monstrosities though they were to the humans (and the entire ecosystem) were mere fodder to his desires, something to be eaten. He was not truly one of them.
Maybe with this girl he could discover something more meaningful in killing. Before, when he had known nothing but his own hedonistic pleasure and desire to conquer, that had satisfied him. But now that he knew that there was something else out there, he could not rest until he had experienced it. Even if it turned out to be unworthy of his greatness, he would not let that chance go by.
"Of course," she conceded. Her voice was hollow and dead. After a quick gasp, like wind on dry leaves, she started to speak again. "But--!"
"Be my Queen." Meryem interrupted, saying the words hastily, almost embarrassed. But once the words came, his dread vanished, and almost instinctively, he charged his aura. Now, without hesitation, he knew that he was meant to do this, if only because he decided that he was. Power flowed through him, bringing a jagged grin to his face.
"What?" The king stood, the fire of madness burning deep in his eyes. His aura expanded, enveloping Komugi. It was heavy and dark, but rather than stifling her, it lifted her like a pair of giant wings, above her normal level of consciousness. All of her senses heightened, and that intangible sense that she had when playing Gun Gi now arrived, magnified many times over. She could feel all of the objects in the room, could reach out almost mentally to touch them. She felt strength unlike anything else in her limbs. The aura she had developed while playing Gun Gi was now gently released by the King's baptism, and her Nen stretched as far as it would go, enveloping the palace grounds, tasting the grass and the birds and the open air. Gon and Killua shuddered at the presence, the towering En of some monster they had not known before, something as strong but less malevolent, or maybe just less openly malevolent, than Pitou's own.
The king smiled and held out his hand to Komugi. She felt the motion and extended hers. Power shocked them both, flowing between them.
"Your… Your Majesty?" she whispered.
He spoke in a deep, resonating voice, flowing with the strength of his Nen. "I know now that I am truly indestructible. No one can stand against me. I will take the world from its unworthy human masters. I will create and preside over a world where all will become what they deserve to be. And you will be at my side. I can think of no one more worthy, my Queen."