(Published July 12th, 2015)
"The first person to pass the third trial is applicant 63, Akumi Chisio, with the time 65:47, taking a total of six hours and thirteen minutes in total to finish the tower."
Akumi stepped into the empty circular room, before plopping carelessly to the ground.
"My head hurts."
"Well Hanzo, that's what happens when you get nailed in the head by a foot."
"That hurt Kumi-kun!"
"The second person to pass the third trial is applicant 294, Hanzo, with the time 65:46, taking a total of six hours and fourteen minutes in total to finish the tower."
Oh hell no, that nickname was not sitting with her. She gave him a look that would have most seasoned hunters running with tails between their legs, but Hanzo just gave her a grin.
"My name is Akumi, and I swear to whatever damn deity you ninjas believe in, if you call me that again, I will have you rolling on the ground lacking a certain organ that I'm sure most guys are very fond of having."
"A stomach?"
Akumi had to hold herself back from banging her head into the wall.
"Besides," Hanzo said, lying on the ground and staring up at the ceiling. "I'm gonna keep doing that until you tell me how you do the thing with the blood. That's not anything I've ever seen in my training."
"Is that seriously it? I would've told you that without having to bargain." She scooted over so that she would be closer. "That's something pretty simple, though most tend to keep ne-"
"The third person to pass the third trial is applicant 44, Hisoka, with the time 65:43, taking a total of six hours and seventeen minutes in total to finish the tower."
"Hello my lovely pomegranate," Hisoka said, waltzing into the room while twirling a card in his hand, no worse for wear other than a cut in his shoulder. "And other person."
Ignoring an indignant Hanzo, Akumi threw one of Illumi's needles at Hisoka. "I am not a damn fruit! Why is everyone insisting on calling me something other than my actual name?!"
Hisoka gave Hanzo a questioning look that asked, 'What did you do to piss her off?' before joining the pair to create a triangle.
Ignoring the sour look on Akumi's face, Hisoka began building a pyramid out of his cards, only to watch them tumble to the ground as Akumi blew on the top layer.
After boring herself annoying Hisoka, Akumi began inspecting the room they were stuck in for the next three days, finding a bathroom off to one side. After telling the pair in the main room, she undressed to inspect the her wounds, before getting into the shower.
The slits on her wrist were deeper than she had needed them to be, panic causing her to cut too deeply, but she knew it would be healed in a few days. One of the things she could do with her blood was focus the all the nutrients towards one specific wound, healing it at a rapid breakneck pace. The majority of her attention was taken by the large gash in her side, which she knew would take much longer than the day it would take for her wrists. The adrenaline had finally left her entire system and she could feel the exhaustion of her rapid blood reproduction stunt wearing on her.
The enhancer based ability had come after realizing that one of her major weaknesses was losing blood so quickly without a way to replenish it. The first time she had tried the stunt, her master had dragged her off to the hospital after she had only been able to create enough blood to not die immediately. The second time had results similar to the first, and it wasn't until she made her first limitation that it worked well enough that she wasn't dragged to the hospital immediately afterwards.
Her first limitation was simple, which stated that any blood she took out of her body couldn't be put back. That meant as she used more and more weapons, she would run lower and lower on blood. And the blood reproduction ability wouldn't kick in until she was near dead, with almost half her blood gone. It ran all sorts of risks, but it was the simplest thing she could think of that still managed to keep her nen as powerful as it was.
She finished up showering pretty quickly, walking out to see her clothes clean and no longer covered in dirt and grime. She gave them an odd look, before putting them back on and walking back to the main room to find a meal cart sitting in the middle. Grabbing the one that had her number painted on the top, she was surprised to find one of her standard meals from the Zoldyck household in front of her. Beginning to eat, she looked over to see Hanzo wolfing down various types of sushi.
"I'm taking a nap guys. Wake me up if someone drops dead." Without waiting for a reply, she slumped backwards, falling asleep quickly, albeit with a dagger hidden in one hand.
A familiar killing intent woke her up just in time to deflect a pin flying straight for her eye. Rubbing her eyes, she stood up, working out the stiff muscles in her body before turning to see Illumi in front of her, the needles gone from his face and in his normal appearance.
"Took you long enough to get here," she said, noticing that Hanzo was out cold and Hisoka was throwing cards at some unknown target on the wall. "How long have I been out?"
"Only a few hours," Hisoka replied, eyes burning a hole into the wall. "Ninja boy won't be waking up from any noise. I made sure of that." Closer observation showed two blobs of Hisoka's sickly sweet nen covering Hanzo's ears, effectively muting any noise the trio might make.
"Say Akumi," Illumi said, twirling a needle in his hand. "It seems the ninja has some interesting aura running through his system."
Akumi gave him a look. "I had to take some desperate measures to get through the last phase."
"Really Akumi?" Hisoka asked, eyebrows raised mockingly. "And here I thought you were actually an interesting piece of fruit. All of this has been terribly easy so far. It's a wonder if you're actually that powerful, given how much trouble it seems you had."
Akumi opened her mouth, only to close it again. It wasn't any use trying to defend herself. Leaving Hisoka with just a glare, she turned her attention towards Illumi, who had begun to polish the heads of his needles. Taking the last of the needles out of her pocket, Akumi threw them at Illumi. Seeing him do nothing in retaliation but give her an annoyed glare, she gave an exaggerated sigh and threw herself against the wall. It was going to be a boring two days.
Save for the single applicant that had stumbled in with a gaping hole in his stomach during lunch, not a single remotely interesting thing happened in the sixty hours following Illumi's appearance. The aforementioned was back in his Gittarackur disguise, clacking away at anyone that decided to give him more than a passing glance. Hisoka was staring off into space thinking of god-knows what, and Akumi was focusing her nen on fixing the now-smaller hole in her side.
Distantly, she realized that there was little more than ten minutes left, and no signs of Killua or company, but the boredom over the past few days led to Akumi finding herself lacking even less shits to give than usual.
Wild arm movements out of the corner of her eye brought her attention to Hanzo, who was talking about something nobody cared about to an obviously annoyed examinee, who was shaking their head everyone once in a while, though whether from trying to stay awake or feign attention, she really wasn't sure.
Oddly enough, Hanzo had never disclosed the details of the phase to the other applicants. When asked about the phase, he would just start complaining about the wire maze, excluding Akumi's involvement in it completely. The first time, after giving a long detailed epic about the wire maze, Hanzo had turned towards Akumi and given her a very not-discrete wink. During the course of this, she had attempted to figure out whether he was really that stupid, or if it was all an act. After the fifth time, which ended with her thoughts running in an endless circle, she gave up trying to figure out what made that man tick.
With two minutes left on the clock, Akumi got up, stretching the muscles that had been sitting on the floor for the past five hours. Glancing towards Hisoka, she saw a smug smirk on his face, the same one he had worn after punching her in an alleyway. What's that clown face up to now?
A ding interrupted her before she could continue wondering what Hisoka was plotting, revealing the trio of Gon, Killua, and Kurapika, followed moments later by Leorio and Tonpa.
Wonder how all of them managed to get stuck together. Though it would have been interesting to see me with them. Seems like it would be fun killing Tonpa.
She gave a little nod to herself.
Yeah. I'll add him to my 'kill at some point' list. Right there under that snotty hunter, Menchi.
Hunting each other, eh? Akumi looked around at the crowd, amused at the accusatory stares that everyone was giving each other. Unlike the others, she left her tag on, waiting to see if she could learn anything. Besides Illumi and Hisoka, she was not at all worried about getting her tag stolen, and even those two would most likely go after other targets instead of herself.
She felt the hairs on her neck rise as someone looked at her tag, feeling the fear radiate off of them moments later. Bingo. She turned towards the applicant, number 326, who was staring at the ground way too intently. Feeling another gaze on her, she turned to see Killua looking at her, unable to hide the relief on his face upon seeing that his number didn't match hers. Meeting his gaze, she gave a small smirk, before following the other applicants onto the ferry that would take them to Zevil Island.
"Go!"
Akumi stepped off the boat onto the wide open field, staring into the trees before taking off at a leisurely pace. Before she was hidden from sight by the trees she turned around and waved back towards the boat, a single tag in her hand. Moments later, 326 was searching through his pockets wildly, searching for the tag that Akumi had grabbed moments after they had stepped onto the boat.
Leaving a confused group of applicants behind, she began running through the forest, ignoring the hunter who was following behind her.
…
After running for an hour, Akumi reached the center part of the island, where the two sides were connected by a thin strip of land and surrounded by beach. The sun was nearing its highest point, and she could feel boredom creeping up on her again. Nearly a week to hunt down two other people. I'm just going to be sitting on my ass for the entire week.
A quick swim in the water gave Akumi enough fish for a noon meal, and minutes later, a small fire was burning in the sand pit. Placing the fish by the fire, she walked around the surrounding area, looking for some form of entertainment. A movement in the grass caught her eye, just in time for her to see an arrow lodge itself in a tree a few meters away. Following the direction that it came from, she saw an archer facing another person, before they collapsed to the ground.
Poisonous arrow, she thought, seeing the small cut on his shoulder. Taking hold of the shaft of the arrow, she pulled it from the trunk, keeping half an eye on the man in the grass going through his opponent's bag. Suddenly, she felt eyes on her, though it wasn't from either of the examinees in the field. Scanning the area, she saw two brown eyes staring at her from the cover of trees. Their eyes met for a single moment, before the other scrambled away, barely rustling the canopy.
That must have been Gon, she thought, watching as the archer left the other man on the ground. I wonder how he saw me. The kid must have a crazy sense of hearing. She broke the head of the arrow off, tucking it in one of her pockets.
After eating, Akumi checked the injury on her side. Skin had grown over it, though that was basically all, and she knew it would be another week before she could move comfortably again. She spent the rest of the afternoon meditating, trying to hurry along the slow process of healing.
...
The day passed, continuing on into the next with Akumi's boredom getting the better of her. Exercise and nen training could only go for so long without her going on a killing spree, and combined with the two days of sitting in Trick Tower, she was ready to attack the hunter who had been watching her. Before she could make a move towards her stalker, a monkey burst suddenly through the trees, followed by Kurapika and Leorio, the latter of whom was screaming profanity at it.
Caught off guard by the bizarre scene, Akumi could only blink for a few moments before laughing and getting up to follow the odd trio. Running soundlessly through the forest, she arrived just in time to see Leorio jump on top of the monkey, while Kurapika grabbed the badges in its hand.
"Hello," Akumi said, stepping into the small clearing. Leorio scrambled to stand back up, pulling out the dagger he had. Kurapika took a defensive stance beside him, barely concealed panic in his eyes.
"Oh calm down," she said, waving her hand around. "I'm not here to steal your badges. I'm just bored out of my mind."
There was a tense silence, broken by the monkey who scrambled away. "Prove it," Kurapika said, body still tensed in a fighting position.
Sighing, Akumi reached in her pocket, only to cut her hand open on the arrow head still in her pocket. Shit. Reaching in the other one, she pulled out the plate, which read 287.
"No idea who it is, so I'm just waiting for two other people to pop in."
Leorio decided to speak, though it came out more like a strangled yelp. "And what's to say we aren't those two people?"
Akumi shrugged. "Well, you guys seem kinda interesting. And the Kurta over there has a lot of poten-"
"What did you say?"
Kurapika's voice came out deathly quiet, startling Akumi for a single moment.
"Kurta. You," she pointed at him, speaking slowly. "You're a Kurta." She paused. "Was that supposed to be a secret? 'Cause the clothes kinda gave it away kid."
"What do you know about them?" he asked, eyes starting to turn red.
"Well they're supposed to be dead, seeing as they were murdered by the Phantom Troupe, but I can see now that you're still alive." A small voice in her head was telling her she was treading on extremely thin ice. She ignored it. "Terrible thing. They were wonderful fighters, I heard. Would've been fun to fight them. Too bad the spiders got to them first. Though I can see the beauty in taking the eyes. They fetch a wonderful pri-"
She was cut off as Kurapika charged at her, eyes glowing a scarlet red. Oh damn, he really is pissed. Dodging the wooden swords, she let the blood from her cut on her hand form a thin layer, before hardening it. The next swing came from her right, and she ducked down, before swinging her arm upwards, catching him in the gut. He flew up, before crashing into a tree.
"Holy shit, calm yourself kid. That's how you get yourself killed with the Phantom Troupe." She walked over to him, grabbing a fistful of his hair, before staring intently at him. Damn, this kid is gonna be strong when he learns nen. I wouldn't even mind teaching him. I'd probably kill him with the nen baptism though…
His eyes slowly dulled from crimson, to burgundy, to maroon, before finally reverting back to brown, though he still looked ready to punch her.
She stepped back, waiting to see if he would charge. When he didn't, she opened her mouth, then closed it again.
"Don't die yet kid. You have potential," Akumi finally said. She ignored the odd look – probably from the complete change in her personality from the last time Kurapika saw her – before turning around and walking out of the clearing into the forest.
Later that day, Akumi was playing with the blood that had flowed out of her hand, when the snapping of a twig brought her attention to an unfortunate applicant who had stumbled into her campsite.
"Oh, hello there," she said, forming more small bullets of blood like what she had done in Trick Tower. She ignored the frozen look of horror on his face, twirling the blood around in small circles. "You see, I'm about to go on a little killing spree, as I couldn't fight the other applicants I ran into. Don't bother running. I'll kill you before you can make it that far. Don't take it personally."
The projectiles flew towards the unfortunate applicant, piercing through his midsection and the joints of his knees. He fell forward into the grass, and in a blind panic began to drag himself forwards with his elbows.
"Tsk," Akumi muttered, putting a leg on the applicant's back. "I told you running would do no good. Anyways, you have two choices here. You're gonna die either way, but I can make this painless, or very, very painful. Where's the tag?"
"B… Bag," he stumbled out. "Front… Pocket"
Pulling more blood out of the cut in her arm, Akumi formed a dagger before stabbing downward into the applicant's spinal cord. A glance around the body revealed a small green book bag under a bush. She grabbed the bag and walked back to the camp, only to see the blood running down to the sand.
Seriously, guy? You can't even bother to not bleed out into my camp. Heaving a sigh, she tossed the body out in the direction of the hunter that had been with her for the past three days. She assumed that someone would retrieve the body when she wasn't looking.
Looking down at the blood, she realized how much of a pain it would to clean up. Too much effort and nen. Settling down behind a rock, she began going through the supplies that the applicant had kept with him. None of the things were interesting, save for a rather nice knife that she decided to keep, along with his tag, which read 178.
With nothing else to do, she began Hatsu training. First she would create small balls of blood, starting out with five, before increasing the number. Then, as time went on, she would change the shapes to cubes, pyramids, and prisms before a mix of all of them. Every once in a while, a butterfly would fly up to her, and she began a game of how many pieces she could cut a single butterfly into.
Hours passed like this, with the numbers of butterflies increasing until an entire swarm was sitting with her. Are they attracted to blood? Looking out from behind the boulder, Akumi saw that there another swarm surrounding the puddle of blood left by applicant 178. Settling back down, Akumi was content to just watch the butterflies fly around before she detected another presence around her.
If not for the fact that her senses were on alert due to the nen training, she would have missed the body of someone that was sitting on a tree. Channeling out a bubble of en, she realized that it was Gon, who had tied a pair of the butterflies to his finger.
"Gon, I know you're there," she said, standing up and disrupting the butterflies that had been sitting on her shoulders.
Gon froze, before pulling out his fishing pole.
"Calm down, kid. I'm not gonna kill you either." She walked over to the fire pit she had going, tossing some fish on it that she had gathered earlier in the day.
"Either?" Gon asked, eyes still wary but not full of panic like before.
"Yeah," Akumi said, turning the fish over. "Ran into your other buddies a few hours ago." She saw his eyes dart over to the blood on the ground. "Not their blood. Anyways, had a nice chat with the old guy and Kurta before I left them.
"I'm assuming you're still on the hunt for whoever it is you have to get. And I know it's not me. Already got the guy who had me as a target. Now go and find your target and don't die."
With those parting words, Akumi turned back to the fire, ignoring the confused look on Gon's face. They hadn't exactly had the calmest meeting last time. After hearing the rustling of leaves as he left, she snapped her head over to a bush tucked in the corner. She gave it a glare, before the applicant hiding in it scrambled away.
When the next applicant stumbled into Akumi's camp on the third day, he fully expected his death upon seeing who occupied the clearing. Akumi, too concerned over trying to catch her lunch, merely gave him a look of annoyance before turning back to staring down the fish.
It took a total of three seconds, during which the applicant used to escape the clearing, before Akumi jolted up from her seat, eyes wide in shock. Sparing a moment to glare at the fish flopping in the sand, she darted in the direction the applicant had run. Spotting him a few meters away, she ran up and grabbed the back of his shirt, dragging him back to her camp.
She ignored the look of horror on his face, sitting him down on her rock and glaring at him. Upon seeing no damage being done to his body, the applicant, number 295, turned into a blubbering mess.
Akumi began pacing in circles, ignoring the fact that she was now in the company of a fully grown baby.
"What the hell is wrong with me? Before this entire exam, I would have chased you around, scaring the living shit out of you before torturing and then killing you. Now, I don't even feel like killing you! What the fuck happened?!"
The applicant, who at this point had managed to revert back to acting his own age, was staring wide-eyed at the psychopath in front of him as she talked to herself.
"Even now! Why the hell am I saying this all out loud? What happened to the cold, calculating me?! I barely talked to Illumi, much less some weakling like you!" She turned her attention back to him. "Why the hell are you even alive!?"
At this point, the applicant had just shut his eyes, waiting for what he knew was his inevitable death.
"I even let those kids go without a scare. Well, except blondie, but whatever. I should've at least done something! But no! I even almost offered fishing boy dinner!"
She finally snapped. Too fast for even the eye to see, she kicked the applicant as hard as she could, sending him flying and crashing into the trunk of the tree. Ignoring the fact that the impact had broken the applicant's neck, she stomped down on his head, the skull caving in. She continued her beating, taking out her anger on the barely recognizable corpse.
The sound of someone retching slowly entered the mess of her mind, bringing her back from her rage to notice the swirl of her nen as it spewed out in every direction like water. If the sheer toxicity of her aura was causing a trained nen user to react so negatively at close range, she knew normal people all over the island were either throwing up or passing out.
She stopped moving, closing her eyes and slowing her breathing in an attempt to get her nen under control. Slowly, the chaotic aura slowed its movements, before settling back into a calm ten. Taking an extra breath, she grabbed the tag lying amongst the small indistinguishable pieces of red before looking upwards at the now darkening sky. Annoyance filled her as she stared at the calmness in the stars. Now I'm getting pissed off at inanimate objects. Great.
"Fuck this, where's Hisoka? I'm losing it."
If she was losing it, she might as well do it in the company of someone equally crazy.
When Akumi, in a much better mood, finally tracked down Hisoka after spending the entire afternoon looking for him, she was greeted with the scene of him talking to what appeared to be a mound of dirt.
"Uh Hisoka, who are you talking to?" She gestured towards the dirt pile, giving him an odd look.
"Why, it's Illumi of course."
Suddenly the dirt pile opened up to reveal two giant eyes staring at her. They blinked once, dislodging the dirt that was stuck on their eyelashes. Illumi blinked his eyes again before folding his arms in front of himself and propping his head on top of them.
She gave him a small wave, showing off the three tags that she had collected.
"Already got yours, Illumi?" Akumi asked, staring boredly at the blank pair of eyes. Giving a nod, Illumi gathered the dirt around him before ducking back into his hidey hole.
Acting as if Illumi disappearing into a hole was an everyday occurrence — it wasn't –– Akumi turned towards Hisoka, tilting her head and staring intently at him for a moment. Something looked different than from the last time she saw him. She ran through a mental checklist. Hair? Still defying gravity. Face paint? Still there. Butterflies? Not it. Outfit? Still miraculously clean. Ta- Oh.
"Hisoka," Akumi said, head still tilted. "Where's your name tag?"
"Someone took it."
"Took it?" She stared incredulously at him. "How did that happen?"
"I gave it to the boy. It doesn't matter anyways. I have all the tags that I need for the next phase."
"So what are you doing for the next four days on this hell hole of an island?"
"Wherever seems entertaining."
"So basically just scaring the shit out of everyone, right?"
The final day came with Akumi staring at the mound of dirt that housed Illumi underneath it. She had taken the liberty yesterday to gather some lovely flowers, poisonous of course, and plant them in the ground above what she assumed his head.
"The Fourth Phase of the Hunter Exam has now ended. All examinees may now return to the area where they were dropped off. Upon return, no tags may be swapped or stolen under risk of failing the exam."
Akumi began collecting her tags, letting the pebble sized orbs of blood surrounding her fall to the ground. She had spent the last few days refining her nen control with emission, forcing blood to separate into smaller and smaller pieces. Eventually she was hoping to create a mist with her blood, which she could then transform into any shape that she wanted.
"Neh, Illumi," she said, turning back to the untouched dirt pile. "Come walk with me back to the boat."
She waited a few minutes for the dirt to move, giving an agitated sigh when she realized that he wasn't coming up. After Hisoka had left on the fifth day, Akumi had only had the company of a dirt pile, leaving her even more bored than before. At least at the beach, she had seen a few things interesting. Now, surrounded by forest, there was nothing.
She muttered something along the lines of him being an 'asshole that couldn't bother to even so much as move in the past four days.' Right as she was leaving the clearing, the pile of boulders to her left caught her eye, and after a moment of contemplating, she dashed over and got to work.
…
With only ten minutes left to get to the other side of the island, Akumi stare proudly at the pile of rocks surrounding Illumi's hiding place. She knew that Illumi would stay put where he was, even if it was just to satisfy his curiosity as to what she was doing. A pile of boulders rested above his head along with rocks surrounding him on all sides underground, reinforced with just a tiny bit of nen. It would still be child's play for Illumi to get out of the makeshift rock tomb, but it would still annoy him to no end. To top everything off, she left a small ring of flowers (also poisonous) around him.
After giving a small wave to the pile of rocks, she started running towards the meeting place on the other side of the island.
Over the course of the four days that she had sat in the clearing, Akumi had had plenty time to think about how the Hunter Exam had managed to change her personality. Staying with the Zoldycks for the past five years had managed to calm her down a little bit, though she would still most definitely end up in an insane asylum if she ever decided to take a psych test.
The first phase of the Hunter Exam hadn't really impacted her. She just ran. And ran. And ran. And also met Hisoka, but that hadn't exactly calmed her down. The swamp hadn't really impacted her, and neither had the cooking phase. But there was still Trick Tower.
Akumi slowed down a bit, thinking back to the events with Hanzo. Why did I not throw him under the bus? It's not like he had saved her life or helped her in anyway during the third phase of the exam. In fact, he had slowed her down and almost caused both of their deaths several times. And yet, she hadn't backstabbed him.
She'd gone from a backstabbing psychotic murderer to a murderer who wasn't as psychotic and slightly less inclined to backstab her partner. And she wasn't sure whether she like it or not.
Akumi arrived at the large clearing at the edge of the island with two minutes to spare. A glance around showed that Killua had managed to make it, along with Gon, Kurapika, and Leorio. She moved to stand by Hisoka, waving her four tags at the lady who was scanning Hanzo's tags.
"Where's Illu-chan?" Hisoka asked, scanning the tree line behind them. The Hunters that had followed each of them were lurking in the trees, watching them.
A clicking noise interrupted Akumi before she could reply, who turned to see a very irritated Illumi in his Gittarackur disguise.
"I buried him in rocks," Akumi said, seeing the questioning look on Hisoka's face. She could feel Illumi's scowl burning a hole through her. "It's not like it was that hard to escape from."
Ignoring the glare, she turned to see Hanzo waving for her to come over to the where he was standing with an old man and the archer that had almost hit her on the first day on the island. She saw the old man tense and could feel fear running off the archer in waves. Ignoring them, she allowed herself to be entertained by Hanzo's empty babbling while boarding the ship.
Akumi realized two hours into the boat ride and only halfway through one of Hanzo's stories that she still lacked the patience to deal with the hyperactive ninja in more than single, one hour increments at a time. She was seriously considering throwing him off the side when she finally saw the vague shape of an island form on the horizon.
Even Hanzo, being the thick-headed person that he was, could notice the sudden tension in the air. He look towards Akumi, who had put on a serious face to match his, was also staring at him. A single understanding passed between them.
The final phase of the Hunter Exam was about to begin.
I realized when adding in line breaks how many of them there are. Whoops. Well that's what Zevil island tends to do when not following canon. I'm not dead. Just lacking motivation. Don't worry, that's been me all summer.
Updates on progress are on my profile, so check there to see if I'm dead or not. I'm most likely not. Shout out, of course, to my fabulous beta, breather, who has helped me do this story, giving me advice when I need it. (Trust me, I ask for it. A lot.) Faves and follows are appreciated, and reviews are awesome. Any questions can be asked in a review or in PM.
Stay Fabulous.