Chapter 48: City of Death

tw: dead animal, mentions of colonization and genocide.

Salty breeze. Breathtaking landscapes. The purring of the car. Smooth asphalt stretching for miles on. Sun.

Sun.

Sun.

… More sun.

"Hana, I'm telling you, if we don't find some shadow soon, we'll both be mummified before we reach York Shin City."

Lynd wasn't wrong. Hana's throat was currently shriveling on itself, a parched land dry as parchment begging for the solace of a cold drink, and it wouldn't be long before her internal organs dissolved into puddles of sand.

She fished into her backpack resting at her feet for her bottle of lemonade prepared by none but Killua the day before — at least someone had checked the weather, unlike her.

"You take seven pairs of panties but not one bottle of water? Jeez," he had sworn the day before, all the while pressing some lemons into her bottle. She might have rolled her eyes, then, claiming the ride would be smooth and fast and that her sun-starved skin would drink the sunlight, which had earned her some snide remarks about her self-acclaimed photosynthesizing skills.

Never had she been so relieved, as she slurped on the drink, that Killua hadn't listened to her preposterous claims. It turned out Hana was not, in fact, a plant.

"The next gas station is just an hour away," Hana replied after relieving her thirst, waving the bottle of lemonade under Lynd's chin. "We should be okay."

Lynd took a sip of lemonade from the swirly straw, her eyes never leaving the wheel. "Thank god. I'm getting tired of this repetitive scenery."

"What do you mean?" Hana argued, gesturing toward the endless sandy lands, the sparse ruffled grass kissing the borders of the road, the clean line of watercolor sea in the absolute blue horizon. "It's beautiful!"

"I didn't say 'ugly,' I said 'repetitive'. I'd like to see more than sand after two hours driving."

"Like what?"

"Something fresh. I'd drive into a lake right now if I could."

Hana took her heart-shaped sunglasses that had been resting on the board and adjusted them on her nose, blasting her legendary one-million-jennie smile at Lynd. "How about something cute instead?"

Lynd laughed. "Honey, I love you, but that doesn't fix my problem."

"I'm a breath of fresh air," Hana argued. "Killua always says that. There, you got something fresh and cute. Fashioned by the gods themselves for your starving eyes."

Lynd snorted. She eyed Hana from the corner of her eyes. "I'm driving us to a possibly dead woman's family, nearly dying of thirst, while you're sending heart-sunglasses selfies to your boyfriend. Girl, please."

"I gotta document that pretty face, Lynd."

"Sure, whatever you say. You vain creature."

She put her phone back in her bag, satisfied after Killua's reaction at her pouty selfie — 'i wanna bite those lips', to which she had replied with a monkey that hid its face and a shy 'Hana machine broke', to which he had replied 'have you tried switching it off and on'. "I'll drive after our stop at the gas station."

"And fail documenting that 'cute face' for the rest of the way? Damn, what a sacrifice."

"I know, right? Such a loss for the world," Hana feigned to sigh. "Or well, for Killua, but that's the same thing."

"I'm gonna pretend you didn't just say that corny shit. Instead, imagine what future archeologists would deduce from our era's humanity if you were the only human whose remains they find. 'Humans from that era performed strange rituals where they took pictorial documents of their facial features while kissing the air. It is still to be determined what this ritual is for—be it a mating call or a common practice of the time."

"Assuming I'd be buried with my selfies?"

"Because you wouldn't?"

Hana pondered the question. "I would. Most certainly."

"See? Buried like a queen with all her most prized belongings. Exactly like those pharaoh tombs filled with treasures."

"You're right. My selfies are treasures," Hana flaunted. "I'd probably give unrealistic expectations to future humans. They'd find my pictures and think everyone was that tragically beautiful during our era."

Lynd hummed in agreement. "Hana, the face of humanity. The Mother of our species. Your heart-sunglasses selfies will be printed in history books."

"And in museums."

"Museum of Human History, featuring your wardrobe as ancient garment."

"They'd be like, 'damn, the face of humanity had style."

"Until they see your dinosaur onesie."

"Then they'll know I was also a woman of culture."

"Or a furry."

"You wouldn't believe how nice those people are. I heard they tip massively when they commission artists. They're literally just here, vibing, having the time of their lives."

"Supporting handmade labor to boost freelance services."

Hana chortled. "Anyway, who even told you about furries? I thought you weren't too keen on internet culture."

Lynd shrugged, eyeing Hana for just an instant before her eyes settled back on the road. "I had to learn more about those memes of yours. Partly for my job. Then internet culture as a whole kinda sucked me in."

"... Excuse me?" Hana hesitated. "For your job?"

"You wouldn't believe how many alt-right groups use humoristic pictures to spread their ideology—especially to younger audiences, but not only. So I had to learn which pictures to look out for. Let's just say I found more memes than I needed."

"A bleak but valid reason. And so, any favorites?"

"Ugh, no. I don't get you. Jino made me listen to Nyan Cat once and it was stuck in my head for three days on," Lynd whined.

Hana's lips slowly stretched into an insidious grin — one that only reflected the sudden horror creeping on Lynd's face.

"You do not," Lynd blurted out, but it was too late. Hana was already blasting the damned song through her phone, much to Lynd's misery. "You will have to walk to York Shin if you don't stop this song, Hanaiko Torana!"

Hana was still shaking with laughter when she stopped the song. "I don't need to blast it continuously for it to be stuck in your head."

"And for that, I hate you."

"Nah, you love me. As everyone does." Hana scrunched her nose.

Lynd smiled. "As everyone should."

York Shin was everything a fashionista that doubled as a crime hunter could dream of. In the same street, one could find both a designer fashion shop and a perfectly legal weaponry exhibition — with a not-so-legal underground weapon shop right beneath it.

Hana happened to be both a fashionista and a crime hunter. It wasn't long before she had emptied her wallet for pretty dresses she might wear once in her life and high heels she would wear even less but that would look great in her pantry. Not so much because she didn't wear enough dresses and high heels but because she had so many she could wear a different one on every day of a month and still have some left.

Now, would that really stop her?

Nah.

"How does it feel to spend all your hunter money in lace dresses?"

Hana pondered Lynd's question, her arms full of shopping bags. "Feels pretty great."

"How do y'all hunters even find what to do with all your money? Hunters are basically millionaires."

"The money I choose to waste during my princess-wannabe frenzies is all earned — from my cases. The license itself doesn't earn you money; its monetary value is huge but that's only if you sell it, which is usually a bad idea."

"Oh? Why so?"

"It's really practical to have around. Between the privileged access to reserved events and countries closed off from tourism, the online perks of navigating hunter-only websites, the VIP status in traveling—both with the travel conditions and the speed to acquire tickets and reservations—and exclusive suites rented for free to hunters… You name it."

Lynd hummed quietly. "Kinda necessary for a crime hunter, then. I guess people who sell it are not in it for the job."

"Usually, yeah. Unless they have no other option. It's definitely a handy, safe plan if your hunter career doesn't work out as planned."

"Yeah." Lynd scoffed. "Though I find it messed up that a class of already rich people gets away with not paying rent and taxes. No offense to you in particular."

"I wouldn't say I'm exempt either," Hana confessed. "I'm aware of the unjust privileges; I benefit from them just like any other hunter. And I don't think I'd ever relinquish them. But at the same time, I feel like all those privileges come with a great responsibility — for all hunters. Be it to maintain world order or use our means and powers to do what most people can't. Bypassing the law can also mean having none of the procedural restrictions and loopholes in the legal system that make it so hard to seek justice or conclude criminal investigations."

Lynd smiled, her gaze lost in front of her. "Babe, not everyone has your sense of duty. We'll both die twice before a wealthy Sahertan man does anything with his money beside buying another yacht and bribing the judges to get off the sexual harassment lawsuits against him."

"It's just like hunters who use their license to steal and kill without consequences. It's one thing to be an elite with special powers; it's another to use that power to do evil."

"An elite system like the hunter one was bound to have cases like these," Lynd added. "But also, the world order was made so we can't live without hunters, by teaching whatever your power is only to hunters—in theory."

"Nen?"

"Yeah. I wouldn't have learned about it if it weren't for your big mouth, babe."

Hana puckered her lips. "I don't have a big mouth."

"Yes, Hana, you do."

"You think the core of the issue is in the gatekeeping of nen, then?" Hana asked.

"It could be. Like, it's also not safe to make this knowledge public, because you don't want that kinda power in a mass murderer's hands, but it's almost criminal that some people could have miraculous healing knowledge and wouldn't teach it to doctors unless they risk their lives in death camp."

Hana thought of Leorio—using his nen to help others for free. How tragic was it that his dedication and altruism were one of a kind and not a norm among her kind. They could achieve so much—yet so many used that status for evil. "Yeah, I never considered that before but it's true... Ideally the power structure would need to be reworked from scratch, though it would disrupt the world balance and would take decades to be implemented—if not longer."

"No big change happens overnight," Lynd stated. "And it starts with awareness. How many people do you think are aware of what you and I just talked about?"

"Hard to say when so many are censored." She tapped Lynd's nose with her free hand. "By that very institution you serve."

Lynd's gaze grew darker. "You know, sometimes I consider quitting. I became a cop to dismantle everything wrong with it from the inside, but the more I try, the more impossible it feels. It's like thrashing against the current when I could be putting those efforts elsewhere."

"Like where?"

"A private investigation office, an org, a law department, literally anywhere. You know the saying, a few bad apples can rot the entire barrel." She exhaled. "I don't want to rot. I don't want to be complicit."

Hana nodded absent-mindedly, rewinding Lynd's words in her head. These questions—privilege, corruption, censorship—frequently came around in debates among hunters—those that cared enough, anyway. Though many hunters had a tendency to look down on non-hunters—who were at the mercy of both a brutal police institution, inactive governments, and the Hunter Association that could single-handedly vote a country out of a map and wipe away its infrastructures, would they judge it necessary—others were genuine about their desire of change. For them, it was often because becoming a hunter felt like a necessity to them—to support loved ones who needed money or miracles, to access the kind of privilege and magic some could only dream of as a way to counterbalance all the burdens they carried by way of existing. The injustice some had to fight all their life long—because of their skin color, the shapes of their eyes, the language they spoke, the heroes and gods they worshipped—was endorsed by governments and officials, sometimes even enforced. What better way to tear it down than bypass the laws made to keep them down?

Death camp for a chance at a decent life. How dystopic. "You have the right heart," Hana finally said, thoughts still whirring. That was her deal—once she started thinking of something, she needed a solution now.

Lynd shrugged. "I don't know. Something needs to change, but I wouldn't know where to start. I gave myself an ultimatum that if in a year I see no change I'll quit my job and work from the outside. The barrel might be too contaminated for me to clean it from the inside, ya know? I might need to just get the fuck ouf of there."

Hana stopped walking, her eyelids twitching ever so slightly. An idea brewed in her mind—one that made so much sense, in the context of this conversation, despite all the rules it would go against.

"You okay, babe?"

She raised her eyes toward Lynd's. "Yeah, yeah I'm good." She flashed a smile, changing the topic. Her plans still needed time to grow. "I just thought of something. The conversation got deep."

"That's the cool thing with you. Being able to go from fashion to philosophical ponderings about the elite system in our world."

Hana chuckled.

"The duality of a woman."

As promised, Hana was the one to take the wheel on the way to Impala City, after a fruitful shopping session in York Shin City. One that might have ended, admittedly, with a trip to a candy shop. She simply couldn't return from York Shin without anything for Killua, and what better gift for her sweet tooth of a boyfriend than a collector chocorobot giftbox? She couldn't wait to give it to him.

Next to her, Lynd was enjoying the fresh air of the woods—pine trees and sweet sap and that cold, earthy scent permeating the air. After the desertic scenery they embraced the first part of their ride, it was relieving to enjoy some cool shadows. The sun only peeked through the thich foliage in sudden flares, its light dripping on their skin in shifting shadows that looked like they had a life of their own.

"This country is too big," Lynd announced, sighing in relief as she leaned back in her seat. "How in four hours did we go from scorching sun to magical woods. Who even decided it was okay to take half a continent and make it one country."

"Colonization. Genocide of indigenous people." Hana tapped her fingers against the steering wheel. "Old white men."

Lynd snorted. "Why do I feel they're behind so many climatic and social disasters."

"Maybe because they are."

Lynd nodded pensively. Her demeanor changed then, just as a strange stench gripped Hana's stomach. Something at once sweet, rusty, and intoxicating in a way only death can be. She thought of the morgue—of Priman's corpse laying there after months below the ground, only to be uncovered with evidence in his damn stomach. There were so many morbid times her life had entwined with death. It was as if it always found its way onto her path, branding her with a macabre kiss.

When she noticed Lynd sniffing the air, Hana glanced at her. "You smell that too?"

"Yeah... Like, a cadaver…"

A few more meters and they both saw it: a dry mass of nothing lying across the road in a brown patch of old blood. Hana slowed her car while Lynd peeked outside through the window with a hand over her nose.

Lynd narrowed her eyes. "It's a dead animal."

"What kind?"

"I'm not sure… looks like a deer, but there are farms nearby so it could be a cow that got stranded from the herd."

If curiosity were a disease, Hana would be chronically ill. She exited the car, frowning at the carcass. "It's so weird," she said, circling the animal. Her gaze was stuck on the bloody hollow in its side, ivory white ribs peeking from half-eaten flesh that still glistened with wine-colored pearls. "It's like… something ate it from the inside."

Lynd joined her, standing on the side of the animal. "That brown patch has to be dry blood." She bent slightly, grimacing. Maggots were feasting in the animal's wound, a small swarm of flies circling it. "There are like, bite marks, but they look too small to be from a bear or a wild boar."

"Call me crazy, but the bites look like they were made by humans," Hana said.

"Ew, shut up."

They returned to the car, but not before Hana took pictures of the carcass. What? Sometimes a girl likes collecting gory pictures of roadkills stranded across their way and sending them to their boyfriend. 'Think it's still alive?' she captioned her picture.

He replied immediately—as if he was just sitting there with his phone waiting for her to text. She could picture that. 'Resident Evil: Farmville,' he replied

They were both terrible people.

Maybe that was why they fit so well together.

There were three more cavaders like this one on their way, all of them having the same small bite marks. Some showed traces of a struggle, as if they had fought their oppressor—who was too small to be a wolf, but in a too big number to be a single predator. One had a torn piece of textile in its mouth that could either be someone's clothes or any sack, tablecloth, bedsheet it could have stolen as it ran from the farm. It was so muddy and damaged, it was impossible to distinguish a pattern of any sort.

An hour after their morbid encounters, they finally passed by the first farm. All the animals were kept inside, the farmers pretending there was an illness they needed to eradicate. The second farm didn't pull the plague card, but the animals were not left alone and Hana noticed one person counting the cows at regular intervals.

"Did something happen to the herd?" she asked as they paused by the nearby gas station, refilling their fuel. "We saw a few carcasses on our way here." Lynd was picking candies by the counter. Hana ogled the pumkin seeds — bezer latkin.

"I'm not exactly sure, ma'am," the gas station employee said. "I heard from the locals that some animals went missing lately so the farmers reinforced their security against wild animals, but I haven't seen wolves ever since they built a sports complex in the woods. Doesn't sit right with me if ya ask me. There's something weird in the air and I don't like it."

Hana thanked him, bagging five pumpkin seeds packets while Lynd bought enough snacks to last them the week. They would be gone in a night, probably. Then, the girls were back in their car for another forty minutes.

The closest they got to the city, the more Hana understood what the man had meant. Maybe she was biased, but when they finally drove through the humble arch that announced they were in Impala City, the air around them had this same rancid, intoxicating smell as in the forest. A cool shadow, a hand straight out of an old grave pressing against their mouth.

Impala City smelled like death. And Hana wasn't sure what worried her the most: that thought, or the fact that it made her feel excited.

A/N: hiiiii i bet ya thought you had seen the last of me :))

Jokes aside, it's been a while. I've had time to ponder everything that happened, move on, write a book (which was pretty damn good but I decided to rewrite it from scratch because i guess i have a knack for writing monster projects then being like 'actually let's build it back from Zero'), get 5 new WIP ideas, get masters on support in overwatch and drop back to diamond like the pleb i am, fall for jeon jungkook, and realize i love making overwatch video montages.

so yeah. hi. i'm back. for how long? idk. please don't expect regular updates because you will Disappointed, but if you're fine with a chill thing then we'll get along. I've grown a lot since I last touched this fic; my views on a lot of things have changed, i'm still as aggressively bisexual but now i'm also a fckin nerd gamer who studies superjump guides and practices superjump rez, and i still love Roy very much (my dog, not roy mustand). All that to say if I reread this fic I will cringe a lot, and maybe one day if I have the energy I'll edit some chapters, but for now I'm happy that my growth as a writer can be documented.

that being said, again, as Sigma says, lower your expectations to zero - i'm just tentatively touching fics again, partly because reading my friend's fic (A History by jyuanka on AO3, which is excellent and you should all read it, there is the plague and blowjobs and excellent writing) made me realize I do still love HxH, i just hate the fandom with a passion. or well, i used to hate it; now i just don't care much about it. Writing in solitary for two years with only a few select friends reading your works sure teaches you humility and Chill and godly, blessed Detachment.

So i am back more humble, grown, and chill, but still as chaotic. Still as tentative and cautious as before.

To all those of you who left me kind reviews while I was gone, thank you. It meant a lot to me that people were still reading this despite everything.

To those of you who are still reading today... good luck lol. you're in for a ride. and thank you, for giving me a chance. don't quote me on that, but maybe i can try to give this story a closure. one day. like, in fifty years.

I hope you are all good and healthy. That your families and friends are also healthy. Wear your masks, take care, and see you someday again, maybe.

- kigamin