Special thanks to the members of AAOA, especially Roger V., for letting me bounce around ideas for this
Chrollo moved first.
It was a small move, pulling out the bookmark, but he was already bounding backward, putting space between he and Hisoka as he did. Hisoka's arched brows bent inward so slightly and he was in pursuit without a moment of hesitation. Even knowing the odds he was up against, he gave no sign or signal of self-doubt. Chrollo, for his part, was equally void of hesitation or doubt. He raced headlong away from the center of the arena, antennas in hand with Hisoka close behind.
"The battle resumes! But...Hisoka goes chasing after Chrollo! Into the stands? What's going on?"
"If he gets too close," Shalnark commented, "the antennas will be problematic for him. But if he keeps his distance then he'll be playing to Chrollo's strengths."
"He'll try to close the gap," Winry predicted. It was outside of Hisoka's comfort zone — he generally kept his distance, letting his Bungee Gum do the heavy lifting. And if she knew it, then it was doubtless that Chrollo did, too.
Foom! A big man of a spectator — tall and bulging. Heaving. A real beefcake — stepped into Hisoka's path, and Chrollo vanished from sight of the cameras then, too. Out of view, he would be free to use his collection of abilities safely. Meanwhile, behind him, Hisoka grappled with the big man whose arms were outstretched to intercept him. Hisoka didn't have the patience or the time for that; he lashed out, slamming the man's arms up and out of the way, and the force of the blow sent blood splattering the crowd. But, soon as he got around the big man, another got in his way. Hisoka's frustration showed on his face. He raised a heavy fist and brought it down on the crown of the man's head, and the man collapsed out of the way.
Hisoka seemed less than pleased, but he stopped to stoop over the body for a moment — to retrieve the antennas, Winry realized.
"Chrollo wouldn't be that sloppy," Machi said, realizing the same.
And he wasn't. Hisoka came up empty handed and, unbelievably, even more annoyed looking. The sounds of the arena had dissolved into chaos as people rushed for the exit, alarmed at the prospect of the fighters bringing the competition so close and personal. The commentators had switched to begging for calm instead of narrating the fight.
"People! Please do not panic! It's dangerous to rush the exits all at once!"
Where was Chrollo? Another, small screen had come up in the corner as the cameras panned the crowd in search of him, too, while the other stayed focused on Hisoka, and Winry could see the revolutions on his face as he went through the possibilities in his head.
"What's going on?!" the female announcer shouted. "The audience members—"
But Winry had eyes and she could see for herself what was happening. People in the audience — many of them, but not all of them — had given up their pursuit of flight, turned, and were bounding in Hisoka's direction instead. He was easy to spot in his whites, the brightest person in the room. Then Winry spotted a red and yellow striped shirt on the small screen, just for a flash, as the same shirt charged toward Hisoka. They weren't people attacking him — they were copies, she realized. Then she saw as the rest of the Troupe slowly reached the same realization.
"He does Gallery Fake first," Phinks murmured, "then he Bookmarks it. Then he creates an entire crowd of copies and activates Order Stamp. And then—"
"Break Hisoka," Winry whispered as the copies converged around him.
"He can't possibly behead them all," Shalnark said.
Hisoka seemed to realize the same, because his next move was one Winry had never seen him do before — retreat. He flew upward into the air, away from the growing crowd, letting a strand of Bungee Gum carry him out of reach. But the simplicity of Chrollo's command, Break Hisoka, overrided logic. They clamored forward, climbing over each other in their haste to reach him, building a human bridge forged from momentum and a mindless, subservient determination to break Hisoka.
Hisoka retaliated with a well-excited front kick, practically taking off the head of the copy in front of him, and the three heads that had been in the way of the swing.
"There!" Shizuku gasped, and the humming of the tattoo gun abruptly stopped.
Chrollo was a blur behind him, dressed in a different set of clothes with a striped watch cap pulled low over his forehead. Hisoka seemed to sense him, raising his arm to block the shot, but Chrollo was too quick. He adjusted in that split second and landed the blow on Hisoka's back instead. The tremendous Kreak reached the microphones above the arena. Hisoka's eyes rolled back in his head, and Winry cringed. It wasn't a reaction to taking a hit like that. It was the same look that she'd seen on his face far too often.
Lust.
Appetite.
Salaciousness.
He landed flat on his back, and the copies swarmed in close to him. It wasn't even for a heartbeat but they came so close. Hisoka effortlessly leapt to his feet and went on the defense, leveling out kick after kick to keep the copies at bay.
"They won't stop unless they're completely decapitated," Shizuku said as she resumed tattooing. "And with zero emotions, they'll be more troublesome than regular attackers."
A flash through the crowd and Hisoka lurched forward. Krak!
"Chrollo's waiting for guaranteed hits — coming in for a strike, then springing away. Trying to land mortal blows," Feitan said in his quiet, whispering tone.
"He's got no choice except to decrease their numbers one by one," Nobunaga added as Hisoka was struck from the side. Another flash of dark clothes and a striped watch cap as Chrollo dodged in again while Hisoka struggled to strike heads off the shoulders around him. Hisoka's eyes bulged. Then Chrollo was above, coming in hot.
The ground shuddered around Hisoka then cracked. Dust from the cement flew up into the air, clouding the camera. There was a moment where the television flipped between cameras as the broadcasters struggled to find a view that was clear enough to see what had happened. Winry wished she could sink down into the couch and disappear. She had done this. She had been the catalyst for Hisoka having such power.
"What happened?" Shalnark asked.
"There's a wall," Machi gasped, and Winry heard the sounds of her sitting up in her chair. "That isn't one of his Nen abilities."
The dust had begun to settle, and from a camera above the arena they could see that a thick block of cement had risen where Hisoka had been. Chrollo was nowhere to be found, but Hisoka's trail was given away by a fine mist of blood in the air. The camera tracked him down on the other side of the arena and, with Gyo, Winry saw the thread of Bungee Gum still attached to his hand. He had used alchemy to raise the block in his place while he'd used Bungee Gum to make a fast escape, and took a head on his way out.
Slam!
Chrollo caught Hisoka in mid-air with his foot, driving the Magician into the ground. Blood spurted from Hisoka's mouth and nose, and the head in his hand spun away, skittering across the ground, discarded.
"I was watching you," she heard Chrollo say.
"I know," Hisoka murmured through bubbles of blood.
Except Winry was still using Gyo and, as the camera changed angles she would've leapt up to her feet had Shizuku not had her leg in her grasp.
"Look out!" she cried out all the same, flinching as Hisoka yanked the head back to him with Bungee Gum, its velocity nigh breaking the sound barrier. He controlled its trajectory with it, and it wailed into Chrollo like a bowling ball.
"Wow," Hisoka coughed out as he got to his feet. "You still won't let go."
"Hisoka succeeds in striking back! He's drawn blood from Chrollo! The crowd is in chaos! The judge is dead! What a mess! And what tricks did Hisoka the Magician pull back there with the arena floor?!" the commentator was shouting.
Winry's eyes widened, unsure of which surprised her more — Hisoka's restraint with using alchemy, or that he had managed to draw blood. She supposed it didn't surprise her that the crowd considered it to be just another one of Hisoka's tricks that he kept up his sleeve. Anything was possible in the arena...Even alchemy. He had avoided using it, however, until he'd had no choice. He didn't want to resort to alchemy unless he had to.
She wasn't even sure where Chrollo was anymore as her eyes darted across the TV screen. They weren't giving her the time to find him, either. Already the focus was back on Hisoka as he used the decapitated head and his Bungee Gum like a trebuchet against the fresh swarm of copies, popping their heads off like a line of dominos.
But Hisoka was in a hellish loop, one he might never escape. The more of them he destroyed, the less Chrollo would need to maintain Order Stamp — which would free Chrollo to make more copies with his Bookmark on Gallery Fake. Chrollo could lie in wait and wait for them to wear him down. His best bet would be to find Chrollo and use alchemy to crush him. And, if she were Chrollo, she would stay where she could make more copies and Stamp the previous ones.
Hisoka seemed to think the same.
He was suddenly moving again, bolting across the arena and weaving through the copies and straggling spectators who were still struggling for a viable exit. Winry jerked as Hisoka's severed head, forgotten somewhere in the melee, suddenly shot through the air. The camera swiped across the chaos, barely tracking it. In the crowd, Chrollo leapt out of its way. The spectators surrounding him suddenly flew off their feet, launching backward, and for only a moment Winry saw the surprise on Chrollo's face as people slammed into him from every direction.
Hisoka had laid a trap — attaching his Bungee Gum on the backs of the fleeing people, and anchoring it to the floor. They were like human bullets. Hisoka swung his arm and Winry watched enraptured, with Gyo, as he used his Bungee Gum to whip the "forgotten" decapitated head out of the crowd and swing it with full force toward Chrollo.
"Whoa, he missed?!" the commentator gasped aloud. "Hisoka lost a golden opportunity!'
Winry shook her head, seeing what Hisoka had done. It had been nothing but a diversion — Bungee Gum was anchored to Chrollo's calf. Chrollo's feet went out of him and surprise was still fresh on his face as he launched backward to where Hisoka waited, brow furrowed and amber eyes glittering with anticipation. Shizuku shoved herself to her feet, the tattoo gun going silent and the only sound in the room was the deafening slam as Chrollo smashed into the floor. Cement cracked and splintered, dust flying into the air, and — as it settled — Winry saw it wasn't Chrollo at all.
"It's not him!" the commentator shouted.
"He made a copy of himself with right-handed Convert Hands, and manipulated him — with the Bookmark on Convert Hands," Phinks scoffed.
"But then why is the head there?" Nobunaga asked.
"It was a fake out," Winry answered, reading the two men — the two people she was closest to — like open books. "The real trouble isn't that the mark on Hisoka would be permanent, but that a marked puppet won't vanish. We all assumed that, like Gallery Fake, an ability that requires both hands can't be used in conjunction with another ability. He can imprint the Sun with just his left hand. Chrollo never said 'You may conclude that Gallery Fake is still in use while the copies remain.' This is all just foreplay, to confirm Hisoka's understanding of what Chrollo had explained."
Eyes turned toward her.
"It's Activate Gallery Fake, Bookmark and close the book, create a crowd of copies then activate The Sun and The Moon. Mark the copies with the Sun, then deactivate — because a marked copy is protected by The Sun and The Moon's intensified Nen, and won't vanish. Then activate Order Stamp and command them to 'Break Hisoka'."
"What now?! Hisoka stands in the middle of the arena! He's looking for Chrollo, who's disappeared!" the commentator was continuing.
"Chrollo can continue to prepare then," Feitan whispered, "but he can't take his time. He has maybe ten minutes before paramedics and security begin clearing the arena. Chrollo's next attack will be the real thing."
People in the stands were still panicking and racing, crashing into each other like waves on the shore.
"Break Hisoka!"
"Was that through the PR system?" Phinks asked, sitting up straighter.
"Chrollo gave his command to all the puppets that way," Shizuku said, lowering herself onto the couch beside Winry. The copies launched toward where Hisoka stood at the center of the ring, eyes angry and thoughts vacant, following their only order. Break Hisoka.
Hisoka's expression went devilish and bloodthirsty, his wide lips splitting into a deviant, toothy smile. He slung Bungee Gum left and right, strands flinging from each fingertip to attach to the copies charging him then slinging them around in a whirlpool of bodies and blood. He used them like a mallet, batting back at the oncoming mob. In his left hand he still held the first decapitated head, keeping careful track of it even as the others continued to rush him.
"It's a riot! Hundreds of audience members are rushing to attack Hisoka, and he's beating them back with a human hammer!"
Blood sprayed as whole pieces of bodies littered the arena floor, breaking already. Without enveloping the entire grouping with Bungee Gum, they were too fragile — and they wouldn't stop until the head was destroyed.
A flash of light burst from Hisoka's left hand, and Feitan gave a quiet chuckle as the cameras tracked Hisoka's stricken face.
His hand was blown to ribbons.
Chrollo had kept track of the body through the chaos, and the rest was all to conceal the time it was taking for him to turn it into a maximum-power bomb — then detonated it by manipulating someone with the cellphone to touch a minus to the body's plus mark.
They were quiet, the only sound a chorus of their breathing, as the Troupe watched Hisoka smash back enemy after enemy, one after another. Hisoka kicked out with one leg then catapulted to the safety of the wall above the arena, rescued again by his Bungee Gum. But the crowd clamored over themselves, racing to reach him. More copies were rushing the second floor, scrambling to get close to him before clasping their hands together and exploding. The floor and walls of Chrollo's suite trembled, even this far away.
Hisoka's right leg was blown away below the knee. His white clothes were wholly red now, and Winry could barely see the club and spade on his chest. Even now though, with the odds overwhelming him, he hadn't dissolved into panic.
Hisoka slung his Bungee Gum along the wall, swinging like a jungle animal, away from the chaos that was on his heel. The camera's waved unsteadily as they tried to track his movements — he was so quick. He headed back to the first floor, moving deliberately, to the spectators. The copies on the lower floor changed direction, scrambling to reach him — to break him. There was an empty space in the corner — there was no exit there and people hadn't rushed to it in their frenzy to escape. He couldn't stay here though, he would be trapped and overrun. He had to have a plan, or else he wouldn't risk himself being cornered. Hisoka landed in a lopsided crouch and ran his good over the open space in the corner, and Winry sucked in a hiss of breath as his Texture Surprise dropped away, the illusion destroyed.
He'd been hiding a set of great cages there, hidden from sight with his other Nen ability — and the sounds of the crowd covered any noises the hulking animals inside may have made. A tiger paced in its confinement, drawing back its muzzle to bare its canines at Hisoka, muscles rippling underneath its fur. In the cage beside it a grizzly bear was trying to rear back on its hind legs, great claws slashing through the air fruitlessly. A wolf was leaning back on its haunches, hair bristles and snarling — its wild eyes darted over the crowd charging toward them.
A small gaggle of people who'd been hiding in the vicinity leapt to their feet and began trying to scramble over the seats to put distance between themselves and the chaos bearing down on them. Hisoka threw his good arm in their direction, strands of Bungee Gum clinging to them off each finger, and he dragged them back to where he stood. Winry covered her mouth as she watched, horrified, as Hisoka threw a person inside the first cage with the tiger. He clapped his hand and his bleeding stump together, then stuck each through the bars of the cage to touch them.
Bright light slapped out from inside the cage, blinding the cameras for a moment. When it sapped away at last, Hisoka had already opened the door and his monstrous creation emerged — the tiger stood back on its hind legs like a man, and it had a torso now. Its front legs and deformed into something like arms, and its face was humanoid but with a snort muzzle. It charged the copies that were converting on Hisoka without human reservation or fear. Meanwhile, behind it, Hisoka had already thrown another person into the cage with the bear to repeat the process.
"He's making chimeras!" Winry gasped, her throat closing in horror. Chimeras. She had expected his alchemy against Chrollo to be like how Ed fought — for him to create barriers and then fight around them. But how Chrollo had created a horde of copies to attack made it impossible for Hisoka to even find Chrollo in the crowd, never mind fight against himself directly. As the chimera bear burst from its cage, claws swiping, Winry saw that Hisoka would level the field with brute force — and forbidden alchemy. A third blinding flash of light and Winry knew that the last transmutation was complete. The wolfman dashed out of its prison.
Already Hisoka's counterattack was working. The animal instincts of the chimeras overrode their human consciousness, and fear of the oncoming copies made them aggressive. Chrollo hadn't directed the copies to attack or fight back against Hisoka's creations either. Their only thought was to reach Hisoka — to break Hisoka. They were hapless under the fury of the three chimeras. Their presence freed Hisoka of the grunt work of fighting them off one by while, while chimeras fought them down three or more at a time. Whatever the wave of copies carried to them, the chimeras held them back.
Hisoka clapped his hand and his stump together, then touched the ground. He drew a war scythe from between his legs, using it to balance himself as he pushed himself up on one foot. The bleeding had stanched; at some point after releasing his chimeras, he'd torn a piece of fabric from his clothes and used it to tourniquet the limb. One of the copies made it mad the chimeras and came charging.
Hisoka swung the scythe artfully, his balance with one leg flawless even now, as he brought the blade around and sliced it through the soft meat of the copy's throat. Blood pumped out in a geyser, spraying the ground in a monochromatic arc-en-ciel. Hisoka swung it once more and the head lobbed free, rolling away into the chaos and leaving its collapsing body behind. Perhaps this hadn't been Hisoka's original intent when he had brought the animals in, but now the chimeras he'd created were giving him breathing room he had been suffocating for.
He was like a wounded bird, wing broken beyond repair, still trying to fly.
Around her, the rest of the Troupe was in chaos. They didn't know what Hisoka had done to create the chimeras, or what they really were. It was unlike any Nen ability they'd seen before, and it was unlike any Nen ability Hisoka had ever before displayed. Winry didn't know how to tell them that this wasn't Nen. These were the abilities that Hisoka had learned in her homeland — from the mentor she had introduced him to. It didn't matter what coercion had occurred or that this had been before Chrollo and Hisoka's rivalry had piqued. They would see it as a betrayal. They would kill her before Shizuku had even finished her tattoo.
Winry took solace in the fact that Hisoka still had a mountainous task before him — he had to find Chrollo...and then kill him. Even now, with three chimeras laying out destruction before him, she wasn't sure he could. There was no prophecy, no Lovely Ghostwriter, to tell them what would come next. Hisoka had made sure of that. Neon Nostrade had done nothing in her life that deserved dying. Neon's death had only been to restrict her Nen ability. She was practically a child and she didn't doubt that Hisoka had killed her without hesitation or remorse.
Chrollo had blood on his hands, too. But between the two men, he was the more civilized. The more composed. More human. Hisoka was a pure predator, he had proven that to her time and time again over the past few years. He shunned her efforts to call him a friend. No, he had shunned and mocked those efforts. He wanted nothing to do with the rest of mankind except to devour and destroy them.
Hisoka clapped his hand and stump once more. The ground trembled beneath his feet before bursting upward in a plume of dust, and he rode it as the lost civilizations once rode whales through the ocean waves, tossing high and spray 'round. It carried him upward, handing him the high ground and a vantage point to see the full scope of the arena. It gave him even more space to breathe away from the copies so bent on his destruction. The framework of the arena shook. Winry felt the ground trembling under her feet, and she exchanged anxious glances of trepidation with the rest of the Troupe.
Beneath him, the copies were mounting their next attack, piling on each other again in their frenzy to fulfill their singular order. He had the wall of chimeras between him and the copies, but they were beginning to break through. While he had been buying his next breath with borrowed time, Chrollo had been making more copies from where he hid in the crowd. An almost impossible number of copies considering how few people were left in the arena, Winry thought, then the screen was blinded as another explosion went off.
When the dust cleared enough for them to see again, Winry saw the wolfman chimera lying dead, its torso ripped open from the force. More explosions began peppering the arena, setting off around Hisoka's chimeras and the small mountain he'd used to evade the copies. It happened fast from there. The chimeras were dead, each blown into their next life, and now the bombs were taking out the foundation of his high ground. It was giving away, the stability of its base gone.
Hisoka having alchemy didn't change Chrollo's plans in the slightest, she saw that now. He had been that confident in his plan and his abilities — she'd watched him experiment on the docks of Meteor City with the series of commands he planned to use, and he had followed through with it flawlessly here. Even with the power of the Philosopher's Stone behind him, he thought his strategy was the right path to follow. He merely used the Stone to amplify what he was already doing. Stronger bombs, less time for each bomb to reach its maximum potential.
Above the arena, Hisoka was forced to leap from the safety of his perch. His breath of air was gone. The copies were converging around entirely around him, piling over themselves as they had done earlier in their undiluted haste to reach him. To break him. Kill him.
He made it to the empty second floor of the arena, barely. His good arm wrapped over the edge of the balcony and he struggled momentarily to pull himself over. His good leg went out from under him as he did and Winry watched, breathless, as Chrollo — calm, cool, and ready — separated himself from the shadows of the second floor and approached Hisoka from behind. It took only a moment from there. The Bens knife slid out into his hand, and he traced it cleanly across Hisoka's throat before the Magician knew he was even coming. Blood spurted, raining red wetness across the copies, and Chrollo shoved Hisoka with ease. Winry bit her fingertips as she watched as his body fell over the edge of the balcony and landed flat on his back in the midst of all the copies. They covered him swiftly, hiding him from sight as one body after another flung themselves down trying to reach him. Throughout the mounting pile of copies, explosions began to flash. Blood misted in the air like wet fireworks. Winry didn't move. She didn't feel, even as the rest of the Troupe released their jubilation.
"That's it, folks!" the commentator was saying. "An amazing battle to the death between two of Heavens Arena's top fighters! Chrollo Lucilfer has triumphed, and Hisoka Morow is dead!"
Winry wasn't sure how long passed before Chrollo returned to the suite. It didn't feel like long, though. He walked in wearing the beanie and jacket he'd stolen, looking almost like a young child in the getup. There was only dust on him — no blood. If she hadn't watched the mayhem in the arena with her own eyes, she wouldn't have believed that he had been there at all. The Troupe met him with open arms, bowing low and congratulating him on his sweeping victory. Even with alchemy, Hisoka had simply been no match. Not when Chrollo had been allowed the time and opportunity to prepare. It had all unfolded as he had predicted.
"He will be so primed to fight me by that point that he will agree to whatever terms I lay in place. It will not be advantageous for him."
Chrollo had not been wrong. Had he ever been?
She rose to her feet and waited for him to reach her. Lingering in his eyes was the expression of a single word: knowing. Their mutual knowledge of what had happened in the arena was shared between only them, and it would die with only them. The rest of the world would be no wiser for what had really happened. Hisoka's legacy as the Magician would live on, with his greatest tricks — true magic, alchemy — being revealed in his final fight. And as for Chrollo, he and the Phantom Troupe would only look ahead to their next conquest.
"Thank you," was all he said as he tucked the Philosopher's Stone into her palm. She squeezed it tight and inclined her head toward him.
It was done then.
"We should get downstairs," Machi said. "We have Hisoka's last wishes to attend to."