Part 10 of the story about Meta's Nen: in which Meta finally encountered the mysterious guest.

Part 10

THE GUEST

When Meta came to, the first thing he did was to shake off the disorientation that was crippling him silly. The next thing he did was spewing strings of colourful expletives that would make Buddha's ears bleed and the crudest of all pirates blush, directed at a certain cat with golden eyes.

The next time I see that blasted feline, I'm going to make a cat-kebab outta that bloody creature, Meta hissed mentally as he swiped the thick layer of dried blood that was caking on his face and nursing the award-winning soreness on his cute little butt.

He had fallen over the ravine all the way into the streams, get swept along in the currents, and ended up God-knows-where. The blood all over his face? That was from the cut somewhere on his head. Now, that cut itself wasn't so bad and wasn't anything serious. The thing about head is that the scalp was thin while there were ungodly amount of blood veins criss-crossing up there. So a tiny cut on the scalp could produce copious amount blood gushing out unhealthily all over the head. That didn't bother Meta, though. He had bled worse than this before, and to be honest blood didn't bother him in the slightest.

Wringing the water off his clothes as much as he could, Meta looked around the place where he had regained consciousness. It was some desolate corner of the ravine, dark and damp and perfect for skeletons to rot. He was surrounded by the solid earthen wall of the ravine, and the only opening there was around him was the relatively big fissure on one side of the rocky wall. It looked big enough to accommodate a grown man, and so Meta figured that he would have no difficulties to squeeze himself into that crack. However, there was no telling whether that fissure only led to dead end or to the world up there above the ravine. Meta had heard of those horror tales of men who had taken the risk of entering a fissure that seemed big enough for them, but had ended up tragically trapped inside when the said fissure had narrowed down so much they got stuck in it and ended up dead from starvation and exposure to the elements.

But! Meta was pretty sure that this fissure indeed led to the world up there. Why he was so sure? Because he heard faint singing drifting from inside the fissure, meaning that there was at least somebody up there, singing his or her head off, and the voice was carried all the way down.

And so began Meta's adventure into that fissure of darkness to climb his way up there.

…

Which turned out to be a disappointment because there was nothing to inspire an exciting adventure. It was more like a trek up the mountain than anything else. Contrary to his worry, the fissure led to a kind of cave within the wall of the ravine, and reassuringly it was indeed leading up. To entertain himself, Meta played detective on the insects that lived in the darkness of the forest. When he saw some rare ones, he would paralyze them with his Nen—a skill courtesy to his attempt to ward off Bia whenever she went PMS-ing electric eel on him—and pocket them with intention to give them to Lucian as well-intended present. For once.

As Meta climbed the gradually-steeper floor of the cave, he started humming a tune. It was the tune of the singing that he had been hearing since he entered the cave. The singing drifted down and filled the entire cave soothingly. Meta wondered why he knew the tune. He was pretty sure he had never heard of it before, but it felt vaguely familiar to him. Dismissing it as something unimportant, Meta merely continued humming in tune of the singing.

Before long, Meta reached the surface. True to his heritage, instead of climbing out of the hole that connected the surface with the cave, Meta jumped out of it with a feline grace that would have made Lucian swoon—that man had some fetish about graceful things. Meta even executed a nearly flawless somersault before landing on the solid ground on both feet. When he looked around to assess his surroundings, his eyes were quickly attracted to something that he expected to be there.

A person.

"Hi there!"

The person turned around with slight jump at Meta's sudden energetic chirp. The person obviously hadn't heard Meta's arrival—which wasn't really surprising since Meta had been trained in stealth by a certain obnoxious ex-assassin. Upon seeing the person's face, Meta's eyebrows dipped.

The reason for this unexpectedly unexpected frown was because Meta couldn't discern whether that person is a male or a female. For a male, too effeminate. For a female, too masculine. Meta and Bia had been taught the art of disguise by Kuroro when he was around and had no better things to do (which Kuroro begged to differ because he thought that this was one of the best things he could do when he was at home, while the other best things being…well, you know). The other Spiders also had taught the children their own methods of disguise when they happened to be around, or when they were decreed to babysit the children. By that standard, Meta was equipped with the skill to see through any disguises; be it a male disguising as a female, or the other way around. He could see from both the outward appearance, and the subtle nuances in the body language that betrayed their true identity.

But this person. He couldn't guess. He really had no idea whether the person is a he or a she. The wavy hair is long and smooth, with the dazzling colour of deep gold.

Then, something occurred to him.

The guest! He cried mentally in delight.

And indeed the person was the guest that had been staying at Fino's Prancing Pony Inn, whom Meta had been stalking ("I DID NOT stalk!") recently. The guest was staring at Meta with an unusual mix of expressions; it was an expression between confusion, relief, surprise, and…something else.

"Hi there!" Meta said enthusiastically, trying to hide the uneasiness that started to surface in his mind.

To Meta's gargantuan surprise, the guest answered him.

With real words.

"Hello, young one." The guest smiled thinly.

Meta's jaw dropped to the ground. Metaphorically, of course.

"You…" Meta started in astonishment. Fino had told him that the guest couldn't speak!

"I am Epiales." The guest said with decidedly friendly tone.

Meta tilted his head to the side while restraining from clucking his tongue in annoyance. That name could either be a man's or a woman's, and his voice could either sound like a man with unusually high pitch, or a woman with unusually low voice—in which both were a high-rate possibility. This Epiales is such a pain!

"You stay in Prancing Pony Inn, right?" Meta asked with pretended carefreeness. "What are you doing here?"

"Yes indeed I do. And I can ask you the same thing, boy. What are you doing here, in the middle of nowhere, all by yourself?" Epiales asked Meta back with soft voice.

"You haven't answered my question, so I'm not answering you." Meta pursed his lips while putting his hands on his hips.

"Of course." Epiales smiled again. "I am painting. See?"

Epiales moved aside to reveal a painting on an easel behind him. Meta raised his eyebrows; why hadn't he noticed them before?

"Oh. You're a painter?" Meta asked innocently. Epiales didn't really look like a painter. Meta had never seen Epiales carrying such huge easel and any canvas or painting tools either. Perhaps he had to ask Fino later.

"Well, not exactly." Epiales shrugged with the smile still etched on the face.

"Can I see?"

"By all means." Epiales made a slight bow and a smooth sweep with his arms towards the painting, like a gentleman welcoming a guest to his manse. Seeing this, Meta then decided that perhaps Epiales was a he, after all.

With all the lightness of a child, Meta skipped towards the painting and scrutinised it. It was a painting of the environment where they were. It was a very realistic painting, with the shape and shade of everything exactly like how the eye saw it. However, there was one disturbing element in that painting.

In that painting, Meta was looking at the painting, Epiales standing behind him with his hands on Meta's shoulder and his face close to Meta's head.

"What do you think of it?" A pair of cold hands descended onto Meta's small shoulders, and Meta had to fight the urge to stiffen. "Perfect, is it not?"

"Perfectly accurate." Meta admitted with a chirp, while inwardly his siren was blaring WARNING! WARNING! PERSONAL SPACE BREACHED!

"Yes. I have been waiting for days to finish this painting. Today I can finally finish it." Epiales said with his silky smooth voice, but Meta could feel a cold mist drifting from the direction of his mouth.

"How?" Meta couldn't help asking. He couldn't move his body. He tried jerking his shoulders off Epiales' hands, but he couldn't. He felt like his spine had turned into an ice column.

"Why, that is a strange question you are asking." Epiales laughed softly, the chiming of it freezing Meta's innards solid. "But curiosity is a good thing, my child. I will show you how I will finish this painting. Observe the painting, boy."

Meta did, and he wished he hadn't.

"Are you sure it's here?"

The question came from a little pale girl with white hair, whose thin arms were folded across her chest and her small dainty foot tapping impatiently at the soft ground.

I'm perfectly 120% completely sure it's here.

And the indignant booming voice came from an irate black unicorn who looked like he could nuke the girl.

Una was calling him, but he did not respond. He seemed to be chasing after something.

And the soft voice came from the smaller white unicorn with a black horn standing not far from the relatively gargantuan black unicorn.

Bia had gone to look for Meta because Fino had told her that the brat had run off into the forest like demon-possessed (she didn't know how possible that was, considering the Solomon Ring being the 'family hairloom' and such). Una had then met her in the forest, and told Bia that Bara was following Meta across the forest. When Una and Bia reached Bara, he was standing by the cliff that was facing a very, VERY deep ravine. Bara told them how Meta had run headlong among the bushes and consequently dropped into the stream at the bottom of the ravine. Bia was sceptical that Meta would be that stupid to actually fall into an obviously gaping ravine like that.

"Chasing something? What?"

We did not see. Una shook her head sadly.

I'm amazed that there's something that that diabolical brat can't catch. As far as I know, the brat can practically catch anything in this forest. Aside from me, that is, Bara snorted smugly.

"Well, I don't really care about what he's chasing after. I just need to get his back up here in one piece." Bia groused.

Then hop on my back, lass. I'll take you down there. Bara offered without lowering his body to the ground to help Bia in getting on to his back.

Apparently, Bia didn't need such assistance as her legs were strong enough to let her jump onto the black unicorn's back in one go. Without further ado, Bara unfurled his leathery wing and then jumped into the ravine, gliding down in the air. Una observed them for a moment while nervously beating her hoof to the solid ground, before she turned around and headed back to the direction of the town. She was going to wait at the outskirt of the forest, waiting just in case Kuroro or Kurapika would be back soon. The children wouldn't appreciate her telling them about them getting into troubles again, and Una usually didn't report them to the grown-ups.

But Una felt that this time it was necessary.

Is he sleeping? Should I wake him up with my hoofs? Bara asked enthusiastically while brandishing his trusty hoof with equal enthusiasm.

"Under normal circumstances, I would've let you." Bia muttered.

They had found Meta in no time. He was sprawled on the sandy bank, half of his body on the dry land and the other half submerged in the stream. The first thing Bia did had been to nudge him not-so-gently with the tip of her boot. But he hadn't responded. Meta just lay there on the ground, looking perfectly dead like a log for all the world could see. Bia had raised an eyebrow at this, and proceeded to shove her boot to Meta's side, but still no reaction. She knew that something abnormal had happened to him AGAIN.

So she ran a scan on his body—which she could do easily with her Nen, no problem. She checked his brain wave and activities, and other things that her electromagnetic Nen could detect. So far, his body was functioning as per normal and his brain activity indicated that he was dreaming. However, it was odd that Meta wouldn't wake up from his dream even after the abuse Bia had inflicted on his body. Then, she knew why.

"It's empty."

What is? His brain?

"This is just an empty husk. His spirit is somewhere else." Bia clucked her tongue in annoyance.

Yeah? How do you know? Bara raised an invisible eyebrow at the white-haired girl.

"He can do astral projection, remember? I've done some experiments on my own when he was out gallivanting around in his spirit form. This is the exact same state when he's doing his stupid astral projection." Bia had the urge to kick the boy again, but fought against it as it evidently was of no help to the current predicament.

So we need to find his spirit. Great. So exciting. Bara muttered while figuratively rolling his eyes.

The black unicorn had just taken several steps away from the crime scene when Bia called his attention. She had screamed; and since Bia was essentially mute, her scream had been translated into a jolt of electricity that ionized the air.

What now?

Bia's response was the agitated charge in the air. Bara turned around and trotted back to where Meta's body was, and he found out why the pitchfork-sharp-tongued-nerve-of-steel Bia was rendered speechless.

There was blood streaming steadily from his nose. Under normal circumstances, Bara would have accused the boy of doing some dirty things in his dreams, but such thoughts instantly evaporated from his mind as soon as he saw the equally steady trickling of the crimson liquid from the boy's ears and eyes.

Author's Note: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Damn late update, I know. Can't be helped, you know. With college and all… Animation ain't easy, and my programme leader is bat-shit insane. Sometimes. Anyway, I'm in holiday and hopefully I can finish this thing about Meta's Nen during the holiday. It's getting to the end, anyway.

So REVIEWs guys!