Disclaimer: I do not own HunterxHunter, nor do I profit commercially from these writings.
ABC Series
E IS FOR EGGS
"What…are these?"
"As you can see, they are eggs, darling."
"Don't you darling me, jackass. My question is: eggs of WHAT creature are these?!"
It was just another day in the Lucifer Kuruta household; another potentially noisy day when all members were around—i.e. when both Kurapika and Kuroro happened to be home and off their respective jobs. As it was, this time the reason for the noise was a certain basket full of questionable-looking eggs that was sitting innocently on their dining table.
"I don't know," answered Kuroro with an uncaring shrug.
Kuroro Lucifer brought home a basket of questionable objects and HE DID NOT KNOW what they were. Kurapika's suspicion went sky-high and her alarm bell went off to high heaven.
"What?!" Kurapika hissed and drew back from the eggs, as if it was oozing toxic fume. "You brought home something you don't know?!"
Knowing their jobs and the things that went along in their job description—meaning danger and dangerous items—Kurapika and Kuroro made it an unspoken policy (a lot of things were unspoken between them, but that was for another discussion) to never bring home something from their jobs that were the least bit questionable or suspicious. Reasons being: nothing could prevent their children from conducting inspections on said suspicious objects; in which the result could potentially be more hazardous than the objects themselves. Bringing home suspicious objects were just short of suicidal in their terms.
"These are not from my trip, mind you."
"No?"
"Nope."
"Then from where?!"
"Mr. Fruity gave it to me."
Kurapika's eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets.
"Mr. Fruity?!"
Mr. Fruity was the fruit vendor of their quaint little town. He was a regular visitor to the inn because he supplied the fruits there, and he occasionally visited the children because he just so adored those little monsters—including Fino's own little fiend. That big, bulky, muscular man was a gentle giant with little kids; absolutely harmless. He loved passing free fruits to the kids via Kurapika or Kuroro. He was also one of the few people in town who knew of the family's secret—them being the new Kuruta clan and protected by the Hunters Association—and his role in this aspect was to keep prying eyes and ears away, and interfered when suspicions arose.
'Mr. Fruity' wasn't his name—obviously—but a nickname bestowed to him from really-young Meta when he first knew the hulking giant of a man. Meta refused to call him by his name, Kuroro never bothered to remember his real name because the nickname from Meta was more interesting, and Kurapika forgot his real name in the end. Meta's siblings simply followed in their eldest brother's footsteps.
"…He is a fruit vendor."
"And he doesn't sell eggs, yes." Kuroro rolled his eyes. "But he gave it to me, telling me that each of us could have one egg."
Indeed, there were six eggs sitting innocently in the gargantuan basket; all of different sizes, shapes, and colours. Kurapika looked at the egg, then to Kuroro, and then back to the egg again.
"I don't trust these eggs." She muttered.
"Kurapika, eggs are not to be trusted." Kuroro said seriously in a you-should-know-better tone and with a straight face.
Kurapika looked up to Kurapika with a raised eyebrow. What was he trying to say? That all eggs were dangerous?
"They are either to be consumed, or hatched." He dodged a flying fork. Apparently his wife wasn't exactly in the mood for jokes.
…And where the hell did that fork come from?
"I'd say we get rid of these before the kids come home." Kurapika wanted to massage her temple. She could just imagine the headache coming from trying to get those sticky fingers off these suspicious eggs.
"That's a shame. I'd love to see what creatures hatch from these eggs." Kuroro picked up one egg and examined it. "They are beautiful."
"Creepy." Kurapika muttered while eyeing the biggest egg of the whole batch; it had weird patterns with weird texture on the shell, and was more enormous than a gigantic watermelon. "But you agree that we should get them out of here before the kids return."
"Indeed. I wouldn't want to have to deal with four excited children with six hatchlings." The ever practical and pragmatic debonair said flatly. Under normal circumstances, he would wait until the eggs hatched, and then he would deal with them. However, when taking into account four insanely curious children and what they would do with those hatchlings, such notion is not appealing anymore. Kuroro had learned this lesson the hard way before; something that Kurapika was still gleeful about until now because the 'lesson' was at his expense.
"So how do we get rid of them? We can't just throw them away, and I wouldn't want to destroy these."
"The usual."
Kurapika raised an eyebrow, willing him to elaborate more. He did.
"Call Lucian."
Kurapika was close to hysterical, and Kuroro was—for once—at loss on what to do.
Here they were, standing on the outskirt of the forest that was their 'backyard', and both were undecided on which way to proceed. They had called Lucian and asked for his service in regard of the eggs, yes. Lucian had answered and agreed to adopt those eggs for his own research, yes. They passed the eggs to him and he flew back home, yes. He had all six eggs with him, NO.
Noooo, things didn't go as planned because Sarai just had to overhear their conversation and the sneaky little thief just had to steal the smallest egg of the batch and hide it away until it hatched. And lo and behold! A healthy baby raptor was born from the egg, and it thought Sarai as its mother.
That wasn't even the worst part. The worst was that ALL children seemed to be taken to the raptor baby and were adamant in keeping it as a pet—even Noah. So when Kurapika put down her feet and demanded that they handed over the raptor baby so she could ship it to Lucian, the children decided that it was high time that they rebelled. So they upped and flew to the forest, taking the raptor baby with them.
And as mentioned before, the forest was the children's playground. They knew every nook and cranny of that place, and neither Kuroro nor Kurapika could hope of ever finding them when they decided that they didn't want to be found in the forest. They could comb the forest with their En—which could now stretch to a few miles when combined—but Meta and Bia could use In while Meta had a daemon who could put invisibility on Sarai's and Noah's presence. They would never find the children unless Kuroro used his Solomon Ring—which he would never use for anything short of an apocalypse.
"A raptor… A damn raptor! Why didn't our rings turn red when we were around the eggs?!" Kurapika moaned in despair. Their enchanted rings were supposed to notify them when there were mythological creatures around! Were their rings defective?
"…To my knowledge, raptors aren't exactly…mythological." Kuroro said slowly.
"What?! But aren't they the cousins of dragons?! Sort of?"
"Well…" He covered his mouth in his trademark contemplative gesture. "I'd say dinosaurs are more of historical creatures, but not exactly mythological because there are physical evidence left behind."
"The bones?"
"I suppose."
"What? So mythological creatures don't leave behind bones when they die?"
Kuroro gave her a knowing look.
"Remember what happened to Ishtar when she died?"
That sentence sent an ice down Kurapika's spine and her heart missed a beat. She remembered that night when Ishtar turned into ashes upon her death very well—too damn well—along with the promise that Ishtar made her swear; which she ended up keeping until this very day anyway but still raised Kurapika's suspicions that the medusa knew that things would end up like this.
That devious woman. Kuroro definitely took that trait from her, birth mother or not.
But still. It was a sad memory.
"….Oh."
Kuroro's face was unreadable, but his eyes were telling her that the memory still disturbed him but he had come to terms with her death. Finally. Kurapika knew how long he had let the memory festered inside him, like an infected wound. She still remembered years ago in Tichitt Walatta, when Kuroro took a four-year-old Meta into the temple and they both mourned for the passing of Ishtar's spirit. She supposed that was when Kuroro managed to somewhat reconciled himself with her death and his shortcomings when it came to her.
"So, I suppose this solves the question on why our rings didn't turn red?"
"It still doesn't explain how Mr. Fruity can get his hands on the raptor egg! They are not supposed to exist!" Kurapika was close to pulling her hair off her scalp by now.
"Well…"
Kurapika honed in her attention to Kuroro. She HEARD that tone—the tone that betrayed Kuroro's I-knew-but-didn't-tell-you attitude to Kurapika. Without further ado, Kurapika pointed one accusing finger at the Spider Head, the other hand on her hip, eyes narrowed into slits, and lips curled back into a snarl that befitted an angry canine.
"YOU!"
"Yes, me?" Kuroro tried his I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about-I'm-innocen t blink at Kurapika.
"Out with it!"
"With what?"
"Kuroro Lucifer! WHAT have you NOT told me?!"
"That Mr. Fruity is part of an underground ring?"
"Yes, that one—WAIT, WHAT?!"
Kuroro sighed with a smile. He always found it cute whenever Kurapika was this flustered. His darling Kuruta was just so gullible. Too bad her eyes weren't turning scarlet. He loved those eyes.
"Mmhm. He came across these eggs and thought that since you are a Hunter specialised in endangered clans, you probably can do something for the babies from these eggs. After all, they didn't look like any other eggs in existence, so it's safe to assume that these eggs are of endangered species. This is your area of expertise, so to say."
Kurapika stared at Kuroro as if he had just grown ten more extra heads. Wait a goddamn minute. Did she hear him correct? Kurapika had long ago understood Kuroro's lingo and she knew perfectly well what Kuroro had just indirectly said. And if she understood correctly, the jackass had tricked her AGAIN. So Kurapika did what she always did.
She exploded.
"YOU KNEW?! YOU CONNIVING BASTARD, YOU KNEW THE EGGS ARE DINOSAUR EGGS!"
"I did not. I simply assumed they are eggs of unusual creatures that are not exactly mythological; which I concluded to be something historical or highly endangered. I didn't know it would be something to the scale of pre-historical." Kuroro retorted back in his defence.
"And you still—"
"Kurapika, what's the harm, really?" Kuroro said in attempt to placate her further, after she had simmered down a bit and had stopped trying to loop his head off. "Look at us. I have Solomon Ring, Meta has an army of daemons at his becks and calls, Bia has a safety parameter set around the house which will automatically paralyze anything with harmful intention towards us, and we are living with two unicorns—one of them demonic, mind you—in our backyard. We have Lucian, Anansi, and Hatsubaba as backup plan."
"But—"
"Nevermind that they are dinosaur eggs, but they only produce babies when they hatch. How much damage can babies; dinosaur or not, do to us, anyway?"
"What about when they are grown?" Kurapika snarled viciously, attempting one last time to sock him in the face but failed. "We can't have a fully grown raptor running around in town! It will attract people from other places, and the last thing we need is a bunch of curious idiots and greedy scumbags coming to our doorstep!"
"It will be taken care of when the time comes, Kurapika." Kuroro said gently as he stepped around to stand behind her and squeezed her tense shoulders lightly.
"I want it taken care now." Kurapika whined, like a petulant child.
"Let the children have their fun. We already have two unicorns living in the forest and the townspeople—with the exception of Fino—are still none the wiser about them. We will be fine, Kurapika."
"But it's a predator…" Kurapika protested weakly.
"So Sarai will have to take care of it. It's about time that she learns about responsibility, yes?"
Kurapika thought about it. She kinda liked the sound of it because goodness knows how much a spoiled kid Sarai could be when she started ditching responsibility like smelly sock. Kuroro spotted the look in her eyes and he knew that he had hit jackpot. So he delivered the coup de grace.
"We will be fine, Kurapika. We will always be." He purred, and pecked her on the cheek.
Kurapika visibly relaxed and Kuroro knew that he had won the case. Next was to make peace with the children and negotiated the conditions.
God, these children were becoming fine terrorists.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
"3 a.m… Goddamnit… Hello?"
[Lucifer! It's T-REX!]
"….What?"
[The gigantic weirdass egg is a T-rex egg!]
"Right. Congratulation on now having a T-rex in your home. I'm going back to sleep."
[WHAT?! Hold on a minute! That overgrown lizard is destroying my home! Do something about it!]
"Lucian, you agreed to take in the eggs knowing that they are dinosaur eggs."
[I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR A GODDAMN T-REX!]
"None of us do. Good night."
[WAIT! HELP ME OUT HERE!]
"No. I'm going back to sleep."
[LUCIFER, YOU DEVIL!]
"I'm living up to my namesake, thank you very much."
[NU E UN COMPLIMENT!] (it's not a compliment)
After hanging up the call, he turned the phone off, locked it inside the bedside drawer, and promptly snuggled back into the warmth. Apparently, Lucian's infernal screaming had managed to wake the other occupant of the bed.
"Nngh… Whassat?" Came the bleary voice.
"Nothing. Go back to sleep." He whispered sleepily and pulled her to him. After having Lucian's high-pitch shrieks assaulting him so early in the morning, he'd rather spend the rest of his sleep cuddling with his woman under the warm blanket.
To his delight, she didn't fight back and instead tucked her head under his chin, effectively nuzzling his collarbone.
"Stupid loud vampire at 3 a.m. in the morning…" She muttered before succumbing to sleep.
Evidently, she had heard enough.
Author's Note: A random chapter. I had a problem with E because there are so many candidate words but none give me an interesting story. So here. Eggs. Completely random. This is how Sarai adopted that raptor baby named Bibi that was mentioned in previous chapter. Oh, and Fino and Shalnark had a kid. Finally.