Disclaimer: I do not own Hunter X Hunter or all the characters pertaining to it, except my OCs Merula and Art, and the rest of other characters not pertaining to the Hunter X Hunter anime/manga.
Warning: Referring Kurapika here as female. Some bad language, OOCness (but it's inevitable right? ;P ). And moreover…Please note that anything stated here, no matter how much it sounds logical and believable, is still fictional. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Note: I would like to thank all of your reviews. They helped a lot really and sorry if the previous chapters still have grammar and typo errors...I'll keep working on the improvements. Anyway, keep the reviews and corrections coming. ;) Thank you.
Chapter 11:
The Deal
"The eyes are the windows to the soul"-old proverb.
"What…." Kurapika stammered, "…was that?" Her back brushed against the trunk of a tree as she pulled herself into standing position. She had unconsciously pressed her back against the said tree behind her as she looked at the thing impaled against the other tree in front of her with wide, bewildered red eyes. She stared at that slimy, disgusting thing, which attempted to attack her abruptly just minutes ago.
"A mistake," was Merula reply as she halted from the running. She walked warily towards the impaled thing and examined it with her mismatched eyes, not daring to touch it with her hands. Art, on the other hand, came with few mild pants as he pulled over beside Kurapika and stared at the impaled thing.
"Holy… (*pants*)… shit," he gasped under his breath, "Don't tell me it mutated!"
"It did," Merula said, "It was exposed in the fire after all." The fire Merula was talking about was from explosion in the boat they used, while they were fighting the enemies who pursued them through the sea.
"Crap! You're right!" Art blurted, smacking his forehead in disappointment, "I should have seen this coming. I should have had paid attention to it!"
"That's why I gave it you," Merula pointed out as she picked up the glass cylinder and its lid from the ground, "To watch it until we get to your place. I didn't tell you to give it to her. Anyway, check out Kurapika if she's clean."
Immediately, Art grabbed the blonde hunter by the shoulders and tried to spin her around to examine her. The Kuruta flinched and quickly broke away from the agent's grasp.
"Don't you dare touch me again, you lecher!" Kurapika barked as she glared at Art with burning red eyes.
"I just want to check you if you're not infected," the agent explained, bearing Kurapika's address to him.
"Infected?" the blonde hunter frowned.
"If that thing touches you and infected you, you'll turn into an ugly monster," Art continued, "You saw what happened back in the lab in Boracay, right? (Chapter 03) Same thing will happen to you…or probably worse because you have a pair of genuine Kuruta eyes."
"I….I don't understand…" Kurapika faltered, shaking her head in confusion.
"I know right," Art shrugged as he heaved an indolent sigh, "Now. Do you feel anything different? I mean physically in your body?"
The blonde hunter slowly shook her dismayed head, casting her eyes on the ground and trying to recover from what just happened.
"Well, I guess you're okay," Art declared apathetically. Then, he turned his back on the Kuruta and walked towards Merula who was cautiously pulling away the switchblade from the tree. She held and carefully examined the switchblade with the tentacle-thing still impaled in it.
"Is it dead?" Art asked as he frowned at the thing.
"Probably," Merula answered. She then put the thing back inside the glass cylinder and shut its lid tightly, "I'll go ahead of you and give this to Marj. We can't afford to have another accident because of such recklessness."
"Well soooooorrrryyyy if I was reckless," Art whined, his hands doing some elaboration, "My mind was pretty fucked up recently you see!" He glanced at Kurapika who looked back at him, still dazed. The agent looked away immediately to hide from her the apparent guilt on his face.
"I'll put you in full charge with her then," Merula said as she started to sprint.
"SANDALI! (WAIT!)" The agent called and Merula halted. She saw Art hurrying towards her, "You're putting me in full charge with her? Paano kung magtangka siyang tumakas? (What if she tried to escape?) Hindi na siya nakatali. (She's no longer bound.)"
"Sinong bang nagpakawala sa kanya? (Who unbound her anyway?)" Merula scowled which stunned the agent. He rarely saw an expression on her face, "Sa totoo lang, okay lang sa akin kung bugbugin ka nya (I wouldn't mind if she beat you to death to be honest). May kasalanan ka naman talaga sa kanya (After all, you did something undesirable on her). I think she deserves seeing you bleed."
"How could you say such cruel things? You are so heartless!" Art pretended to cry like a dejected child, "Besides, I've suffered enough when you kicked me and almost broke my ribcage!"
"Aren't you supposed to be grateful to me?" Merula replied with a cold, stoic stare, but her voice sounded sarcastic enough, "Kailangan kong gawin iyon bago mo mpagtaksilan ang iyong sarili (I had to do it before you betrayed yourself.)" Then she leaped into the branches of the trees and disappeared together with the glass cylinder she carried with her.
Merula's latter sentence hit something significant within the agent. It made him remember something, which he seemed to have forgotten. Probably, for several years that he worked with her, she had gotten to know him well enough.
Art, being left alone with the Kuruta, felt awkward and thus refused to take another glance at Kurapika as he proceeded to walk, "Well, what are you waiting for? Let's go, princess."
Sensing that the blonde hunter was not moving, he was compelled to crane at her. Art saw Kurapika was still frozen and still confused to the level that it seemed she could not decide whether she should go with him or take the chance to escape. Or maybe that was not the real reason at all.
Art walked towards the blonde hunter and stopped at a distance safe enough for him just in case the Kuruta erupted again and reattempted to smash his face. Art realized that it was not practical not to make peace with her since it seemed that the blonde hunter was going to be stuck with him and Merula for a while. The guilt was starting to torment him anyway, so to prevent it from getting worse and to prevent another ruckus to occur between them, he decided put his pride aside for the mean time, and…apologize.
"Kurapika. Look. I really didn't mean to do that to you back when we were in the cave," a faint flush emerged on the agent's cheek while he rubbed the back of his neck, unable to look straight into the blonde hunter's face, "I was probably not in the right state of mind, and a lot of things happened too but….I'm not going to force you to forgive me. That's pretty much understandable anywa-"
"If you want my forgiveness then explain everything to me. All of the things that happened and the things you said I'm not still aware of, especially about our eyes," The agent was startled for a moment when he saw Kurapika looking at him straight eye to eye with resolve. Her eyes were back to their cerulean color although there was still a trace of distrust in her eyes.
Something dawned on the agent. It occurred to him that maybe the Kuruta would not attempt to escape. She had questions needed to be answered, and she could only get those answers from him and Merula. This was his tramped card.
"Hmm…" Art turned his back at Kurapika and proceeded to walk.
"Hey!" Kurapika barked, annoyed for being ignored and eventually, she was forced to walk too, and followed the agent, "I have all the rights to know! Explain everything to me NOW!"
Abruptly, Art stop, turned and faced the blonde hunter. Kurapika almost bumped into him and their faces almost touched. Kurapika saw the agent stared at her close with apathy. This gave her some shivers and made her take a couple of steps backwards.
"Will you stop that!" the blonde hunter railed.
"Stop what?"
"Playing games with me!"
"I'm not playing games with you, or do you want me to?" the agent gave a naughty grin. Kurapika blanched at it. Then, she turned her back and crossed her arms together on her chest, furious for failing to get what she wanted immediately, and silently muttering curses.
"What about we make a deal?" Art said suddenly. Kurapika looked over her shoulder and annoyed to see the agent's confident gestures. She hated it. She knew Art got something up his sleeves. The agent would make some conditions where she might be forced to comply. But she had no other choice, hadn't she?
"Depends on the conditions," Kurapika replied reluctantly as she turned and faced the agent.
"I don't think the conditions wouldn't be too hard for you to agree with actually," Art said as he began to walk again. Kurapika followed him.
"How about going straight to the point," the blonde hunter scowled as she ambled behind the agent in fair distance.
"Relax," the agent smiled at her over his shoulder. The Kuruta rolled her eyes on this, "I will tell you everything you want to know…..IF…." the agent raised a finger, "….if you'll cooperate with us as long as you're with us."
"What sort of cooperation?" Kurapika specified.
"Mainly, if ever enemies attack us again, you'll help us fight them but…there would be instances that we won't let you."
"Huh?" Kurapika raised an eyebrow, utterly confused with the statement.
"And there are other situations that might occur in the future, which I still can't specify right now, where we also require your cooperation," the agent spread his arms in elaboration as he continued to speak with the blonde hunter while walking, "To make it simple, just treat us like your comrades who have the same mission like you-to retrieve the scarlet eyes, especially from the organization."
"So you're saying that my people's eyes are in the possession of the organization you mentioned? But why wouldn't you let me fight in some instances like you said?"
"Actually," the agent answered as he halt for a short while to take a breath, then started walking again, "We are not really sure if the red eyes possessed by the organization are the authentic ones or the ones artificially cloned. When I haven't been busted yet by them that I was doing the inside job, when I was conducting the investigation, I heard…that the organization was able to buy a pair of scarlet eyes from the Nostrads actually," the agent glanced at Kurapika with scrutinizing look, "They're you're former boss, right?"
"Yes! They are….," Kurapika gasped in surprised, knowing that the said organization made a connection to her former employer.
The agent chuckled as he continued, "Well, heard they were going bankrupt that time that they started selling away Mr. Nostrad's daughter's collections of human body parts. They said, the girl lost her psychic ability, which was their main source of income. Poor them! Such fucking disaster ain't it?"
Yes. It was true. Kurapika remembered that time when Mr. Nostrad was sulking in one corner, horribly devastated and depressed about Neon loosing her Nen to predict the future. He was crying his eyes out, begging the blonde hunter to do return his daughter to normal. Unfortunately, she could not. Probably if Kurapika was able to kill the leader of the Phantom group, a miracle might have had happened. But no such thing happened before she was caught up with Art and Merula.
"So then the organization got a pair of scarlet eyes from them but…" Art continued, "…but rumors said that the said pair was fake. It was speculated that one of Spiders who breached the auction did it. One of them had this Nen ability to copied things perfectly identical to the original."
Art, without glancing back at the blonde hunter, was oblivious that Kurapika's eyes were glowing in scarlet color again as he talked about the Phantom group. The Kuruta still could not help feel the rage rising from her whenever she heard about the Spiders who mercilessly killed her people. Kurapika compelled herself to calm down then. She shut her eyes tightly and opened them again to reveal her irises went back to their cerulean color.
The agent chuckled again, "Well, no wonder most of the organization's experiments were fucked up! The monsters they created, if not short-lived, were too berserk to be controlled that some of those who work in the research ended up dead."
"What are you saying? You mean the organization uses the scarlet eyes to create monsters?"
Art shrugged, "They called those monsters homunculi actually. You've read about Paracelsus right? Tell me what you recall about him."
"He's a Swiss alchemist in 16 century," Kurapika replied, "He pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine and-"
"Do you know that Paracelsus believed in the existence of Philosopher's stone?" Art broke off.
"But it's just a myth!" the blonde hunter argued, "It never exists. Paracelsus believed it was just an undiscovered element, but there was no such stone that can rejuvenate or immortalize people or transmutate metals into gold whatsoever in reality! Why are you bringing this up again!"
"Oh really, you think stones like that doesn't exists?" the agent asked as he walk continuously without glancing at Kurapika behind him,"What if there were highly classified evidences telling that they do?" Kurapika did not answer, "What if I tell you that the scarlet eyes of the Kuruta are the predecessor of the Philosopher's stone?" Art sensed that Kurapika stopped on the track. He turned and saw the blonde hunter's shock expression, seconds later; a sneer drew on her face.
"What crap are you talking about?" Kurapika scowled, obviously, she did not believe such statement.
"You know, I used to work in the organization as one of their Geneticist." The agent proceeded, "The organization was actually able to discover pretty old documents pertaining to Paracelsus works and accounts about his experiments. Its content were a bit deviating from those that were published in books and distributed in public. But, it can't be help if such documents were concealed? Such information might drive people to create abomination. You've probably read that Paracelsus used experimentation in learning about the human body, right?"
Art realized that walking and talking at the same time was pretty exhausting so he walked towards a shady tree and to rest and proceeded to talk the rest of what he was going to say there. He leaned his back against the tree trunk, crosses his arms together in his middle and began to continue his explanation, while the cool breeze in the woods blushed against them.
"Books said that Paracelsus gained a reputation for being arrogant, and soon garnered the anger of other physicians in Europe. He was accused that he had publicly burned traditional medical books. So, he was kicked out of the university he used to work in, then wandered in three continents in pursuit of hidden knowledge. He revised old manuscripts and wrote new ones, but had trouble finding publishers," the agent gave Kurapika a meaningful grin, "Happened that some of those unpublished works of his fall in the hands of the organization. Apparently, we can consider that Paracelsus is one of those mad scientists who actually used live human body for his experiments.
"We learned that he experimented on people with unidentified severe disease. He seemed desperate to attain great reputation in medicine. So he tried to create an actual Philosoher's stone out of human body by trying to alter the process of human circulatory system without killing his lab rats. His journal indicated that he bribed 15 homeless people to convince them to let their selves be used in his experiments," Art looked carefully at the blonde hunter and begun using elaborations as he proceeded.
"Kurapika, imagine him doing some sort of reviving-Frankenstein-thing on a living sick person, that kind of thing with electric cables connected to the person's skulls and body, and injecting some chemicals into his blood vessels," the agent saw Kurapika looked away in disgust when she imagine those things.
"Actually, apparently," Art rubbed his nape with a hand, then, he looked at his hand as if wondering if he caught something. He turned his hand down after seeing that there were only sweats in there, "Paracelsus was just aiming to find out if his newly invented method of curing disease was effective, if only madness had not gotten into him. He believed that human body was capable of producing the said undiscovered element. He compared the process to the formation of a child inside the woman's womb. And so, he believed that injecting several elements into the human body and trying to control the brain and the circulatory system of a living being, will make him succeed on what he was trying to gain. And yes, his lab rats suffered extremely. Few died actually. But some have survived."
Art decided that it was time to move on again so he pulled away from the tree and started walking again. The blonde followed as usual, compelled to listen attentively to the agent's narration.
"After a couple of months, Paracelsus noticed changes on those survivors he kept in his secret lab," the agent continued, "They grew strong and healthy and the disease they had had abated. However, he also noticed that the melanin in their bodies started to fade. According to his journal, Paracelsus was not sure if the lost of their body tint was the result of excruciating experiment on them. They grew light colored hair, mostly blonde. Some of them gained blue or green eyes."
The latter statement made Kurapika travelled a hand on her hair and face. An incredulous expression invaded her countenance. Art was oblivious to it though since he just kept on walking and not glancing at her.
"What surprised him, was whenever the survivors was in the height of their emotions, their eyes glow red. He said, it seemed he created some monsters," the agent can imagine Kurapika's reaction to what he was saying but he did not dare confirm it by taking a glance at her. He proceeded to walk without looking.
"You see, the documents said that when the changes on those survivors completed, they turned out to be pretty strong people; probably had the strength of three people in one. The alchemists become scared actually, that's what he said in his journal.
"Another month later, one of the survivors died when he tried to escape from the lab. Paracelsus accidentally killed him by a pistol. That was the time he discovered that the red color remained on the eyes when the owner died. He couldn't afford any of his experiments to be exposed in public though, otherwise people will know what he had done and he will be accuse of sorcery and be hanged to death. Paracelsus believed that the red eyes were the very Philosoher's stone. He also believed that the reason why the eyes glows red was because the changes of energy in the body, when the experiment became emotional or angry, affected the stone. The eyes remained red when the person who owned them died, because the eyes absorb the remaining energy in the body, and thus finalized the process of giving birth to the stones."
Kurapika was silent. She could not argue against this since everything the agent said was consistent to her and her people's characteristics.
"Eventually, Paracelsus's lab was discovered one night and was raided. But they found nothing there before they put it in fire. The modern researchers of the organization speculated that the alchemist was informed that such thing was about to happen and so he was able to make preparations and escaped. It was also hypothesized that probably, the alchemist let his experiments escaped, too, and told them to leave the city. And these people started living in isolation and formed their own society, hidden from the outside world because they learned that people might go after them because of their eyes."
"After learning all about this, the organization began secretly stalking your tribe more than ten years ago to conduct studies and was able to prove several things." Art finally took a glance on Kurapika behind him. The blonde hunter's eyes were glowing scarlet but fortunately, those glowering red orbs were not cast at the agent himself. They were cast down. This did not surprise the agent though, in fact he was expecting this. He knew this was too much for Kurapika to digest. Art returned his eyes on the track ahead.
"So that was why the organization was after you Kurapika," Art added, "They want you alive actually. Since they learned that there's still remain a living Kuruta, they will stop at nothing to get you. They might use you for breeding more of your kind to reproduce more authentic scarlet eyes."
Kurapika shivered at the word "breeding".
"But….," the agent continued, "….their experiment will not be successful if they don't get their hands on Merula either."
"Merula?" Kurapika frowned.
"Yeah," Art answered, "Besides the reason that the organization wanted to prevent her from devastating their facilities and stealing the Kuruta eyes from them, whether they were authentic or cloned, they wanted her as well. Let's say Merula is already a successful output of what they are trying to achieve and they wanted to study her to be able to produce more specimen like her; the ones whom they could control like machines. Ever heard of biological weapons? And yeah, that's the reason why we want you away from them, because if the organization gets desperate, if ever they are able to get a single strand of your hair, or a trace of your blood, they could make some clones out of you. We can't afford that to happen either, can we? That's why we got hesitation to let you fight just in case the enemies attack us again. That' why it occurred to me that perhaps Merula was planning to finished you off as soon as we got away from Boracay, then burn your body into ashes so that the enemies wouldn't be able to get the chance to take even a single tiny specimen from you."
Kurapika's mouth opened wide, but no words came out.
"See how things have gotten more complicated when you appeared and turned out to be the last 'living' Kuruta?" Art put a stress on the word 'living', "You should be grateful though. Merula changed her mind. She decided to spare your life."
"Well, don't expect that I'm going to APOLOGIZE for being able to survive the massacre of my tribe and LIVE! And definitely I won't let myself get killed by the likes of you despite everything that you said," Kurapika barked as she hurriedly walked past ahead of the agent who just shrugged.
"No. I won't of course. Look, princess wait-"
"Stop calling me PRINCESS!" Kurapika retorted as she continued to walk hurriedly without glancing at Art who was catching up behind her.
"But you ARE…" Art trailed off then something dawned on him, "…okay maybe you WERE. Doesn't change the fact that you used to be a part of the Kuruta monarchy though," then he put more conspicuous elaboration to his next sentences, "Princess Kurapika, granddaughter of the late Kuruta King! Cousin to Mer-" Art was thankful he was able to cover his mouth to prevent himself from finishing the last sentence or else he might have had accidentally spilled some confidential information without asking Merula's permission. Seconds later, he saw Kurapika standing a couple of meters away ahead of him gaping and frowning.
"How did you…." The blonde hunter stammered. Art shrugged with arms wide open.
"Told you didn't I? I was there."
Kurapika turned away to hide her eyes that started to glow red again. She remained standing to where she was though. She wrapped her arms around herself and struggled to hold back her tears. What she heard, reminded her position in her tribe; it made her feel upset about herself. It reminded her that her people hid her and sacrificed their selves for her to survive and that she could not do anything but watched as they suffered.
A hand suddenly landed gently on her shoulder. It was Art.
"Look, Kurapika," the agent said apologetically, "I'm really sorry for what happened to your tribe. I wanted to apologize about what I did and said to you before as well. The truth is I really don't want you to be killed or die in the first place because it's not your fault. I was just…..torn between my conscience and logic back then. I'm not expecting you to forgive me immediately but I hope that you understand now that Merula and I have our reason why we are doing things. All I ask is that you cooperate with us until everything is over."
It dawned to Kurapika that Art was right. It seemed that she got no choice but to cooperate. She also realized, even if it sounded absurd, that it was the right thing to do for the mean time.
Kurapika shut her eyes tight. Rubbed the beads of tears in the corner of her eyes and opened them to reveal that they were back in their cerulean color. When she lifted her head and looked up, she saw Art wearing a gentle genuine smile, looking at down at her with gentle countenance. This made Kurapika's heart skip a beat.
"Well, princess, is it a deal?" Art asked enthusiastically as he reached a hand for a handshake.
….to be continued…
Author's Note:
Actually, some of the statements Art mentioned in this chapter, about Paracelsus's biography, I searched them from Wikipedia. But the latter parts about him doing such dreadful experiments on living humans is, of course, just a product of my imagination and is fictional. I admit this chapter gave me a major headache doing research and connecting things together. Actually, the revelations don't end there. There are more to come.
Sorry if there are still grammar and typo-errors here. I only have a day in a week to write a chapter you see, no enough time to proof-read. I am also not sure if I would be able to update this fic next week. The deadline of my project is getting close and I'm just still halfway to finish the whole project. Huhuhuhuhu….T.T
I also wanted to apologize if I couldn't answer your questions from your reviews directly through PM. I decided that the upcoming chapters would answer those questions. I would also like to apologize if you made some requests where you wanted certain events to see in the upcoming chapters but I cannot guarantee if I could make them happen. You see, like I said before, the whole of this story is already written in my mind. All I need to do is spare some time to type them all down in my PC. Besides, I have to be careful to make everything consistent since this story has lots of twists. Hope you understand. Writing this fic you see was a serious practice for me as an author ;)
