An Amusing Interlude – Part 2: Capture – In which another
player enters the game.
By
Deborah (Kosagi) Brown
Hunter X Hunter is copyright Yoshihiro Togashi. Quoll and Clapika aren't mine more's the pity.
CLAPIKA:
I awake to a furious headache and aching sinuses. Because of that it is several seconds before I realize that I'm tied, tightly, to metal pipes. My hands are separated, bound by wrists, elbows and shoulders. More rope is tied around my waist and crosses my chest, and another rope pulls my legs out forward towards another set of pipes across from me.
"What the" I gasp, trying to pull free, but without any luck. I'm very firmly trapped. Looking around I see I'm in an abandoned building's cellar in what might have once been the furnace room. Nearby, seated on a box, is Quoll. He's just finishing a bowl of noodles, a small book set on a larger box beside him. At my motion he looks up, sets the bowl down and stands.
In the dim light from a small fire, he's a terrifying figure. He's returned to the costume he wore when I first met him. Dark pants, shirt and coat, the last with thick white fur at the collar and a reversed cross on its back, bluestone earrings reflecting red in the firelight. Only his hair, allowed to fall loose around his face, softens the cruelty of his appearance. His wide, unnerving, stare takes me in consideringly and I find myself unable to speak. He's going to kill me, I realize.
"Ahhh. Awake, then. Hungry?"
I blink at him, unable to believe the question. He seems to recognize the confusion in my eyes and he shrugs and goes to a pot simmering over the fire and puts more noodles into a second bowl. "I'm sure you are."
"Let me go!" I growl angrily.
"Hmmm. Will you remove the Judgment Chain, if I do?" He glances my way, smiles wryly. "I thought not. In which case, letting you go just means going back to fighting, and I don't feel like it right now." Rising to his feet, coat swinging about him in a swirl of black, he walks over to me and sits down cross legged. "Now then Open wide."
I glare at him, teeth gritted as I answer, "The hell I will, you bastard!"
"Such language," he shakes his head. "You need to eat. The Eyes take it out of you." At my stare, he shrugs. "I know something about them. Possibly more than you do." He lifts a few noodles from the bowl with a pair of chopsticks and repeats. "Eat."
"I'll use the strength to kill you," I swear and am surprised to see an amused smile cross his face. "What? You don't believe me?"
He uses the moment to pop the noodles into my mouth and I spit them in his face.
QUOLL:
I'm not entirely surprised that, even bound and helpless, Clapika is resisting anything I offer him. It doesn't matter, though, because I fully intend to get food into him. I can see the way his fingers are shaking and it isn't just rage that causes that tremble. He needs to eat, or he'll make himself ill.
"Tsk," I tell him, wiping the mess from my face. "You eat this or I find another, less dignified means of making you eat. Do you understand?"
He stares at me and I can see angry comprehension in his eyes. Then he opens his mouth and lets me put more noodles in. As I feed him, I answer his question. "It's simple, little Kurota. You won't kill me because you can't." I use a chopstick to point at his heart. "You're not a killer. Not in there. If you were, you'd have found a more direct means of dealing with us than that chain of yours. What was it you called it? Chain Jail. Not exactly the most effective use of your energies, Clapika."
He stares at me, his eyes more grey than blue in the firelight. "What"
I wonder why I'm telling him this. Clarifying an enemy's weak point for them is just plain foolish. Still, I can't help but continue. "You'd use your Judgment Chain on us. Then let our own choices be our deaths. That was how Ubo died. Refusing to answer your questions. Refusing to tell you our reasons. His loyalty to the Spider was greater than his fear of death and your Chain used that against him."
His eyes widen and he swallows his food. "I don't understand. I don't understand any of you!" he growls furiously. "You. Ubo. Pakunoda All willing to die for your stupid Spider"
"PPakunoda?" That startles me and it's a moment before I regain my equilibrium enough to ask, "What do you mean"
"She broke the Judgment on her. She told someone about me. I felt her die."
CLAPIKA:
I blink at his expression. Tears are streaming down his cheeks, but somehow, despite that, he shows little emotion. Still, I have a sense of having told him something agonizingly painful. I don't know why, or how, but I almost feel the waves of hurt rolling off him. I'm surprised when he simply holds out more noodles for me, saying, "I see."
Chewing and swallowing quickly, I can't help but demand, "How can you say that so calmly? She was one of you. She risked her life with the rest of your group to save you!"
The look on Quoll's face turns frightening. It's a chilling, angry and hate-filled look, almost seeming to burn like the Ruby Eye. Then it's gone, replaced by a quiet, thoughtful, expression. "Yes. She did. She betrayed the Spider's rules by doing so. It was her choice, and her right to choose. It was not the way I would have wished the prophecy broken, but who am I to decry it? Especially considering it worked – possibly better than anything I had planned."
It bothers me more than a little that he seems to be taking Pakunoda's death so lightly. I had been furious at the time, furious at the Spider and furious at myself, so I hadn't realized just how hard she was trying to save her leader, how much she'd sacrificed to that purpose. Yet he sits there, calmly feeding me, as if I'd simply told him she'd taken a long trip.
A faint smile crosses Quoll's lips as he puts more food into my mouth. "Don't try and elicit a response, Clapika. I cannot afford to let my feelings on the matter free. Nor would you appreciate the result." I recognize a threat when I hear one, and I go silent.
At last he's put the last bit of food into my mouth and I have to admit that I feel much better for it. My hands feel stronger and my head is no longer swimming. He was right that using the Ruby Eyes like I had is a drain, though I have no idea how he could possibly know. He probably studied us, before he targeted my people. He rises and walks over to the fire again, putting more wood on it and setting the bowl aside. Then he goes back to his own food and I realize he'd let it get cold. I don't like this. He's my enemy. Why is he being so solicitous of me? Is he trying to find a way to change my feelings towards him? It won't work!
"What are you going to do?" I ask finally, glaring at him. "You don't expect to keep me here forever, do you? Why not just kill me?"
QUOLL:
I look up from my book. "That's a good question," I tell him. "I'm not really sure yet. I really didn't expect to catch you. Wasn't expecting to see you again for a while, so I'm afraid I'm playing this one by ear." He simply stares at me and I continue, "As for killing you. Your hatred for me is such that doing so might well be my own death. Not quite the optimal solution for the problem. My Spider needs me alive still and" I force my voice not to break, force the emotions back, "P Pakunoda sacrificed herself to make sure I survived. I'm sure she told the others what she knew in order to keep them from looking for me. I was fully expecting to have to stay on the run from them as well as you." In a way, that knowledge eased – ever so slightly – the pain that Paku's death caused me. It was not in vain and I will not permit it to be.
"Don't think you can force me to cooperate," Clapika warns. "I won't make the mistake of underestimating you again. I get free and"
"You'll use the Chain Jail on me," I agree. "Yes, I know. Not to mention some neat new Judgments, given you can." It's not possible to tell from his expression whether he could change the Judgment, or add to them. It's not a risk I plan on taking. Losing my Spider and my nen is quite enough of a headache. I shrug. "I'll have to think about how to keep you subdued. For the moment, though" I pause, glancing upstairs, listening intently.
"What?"
"We have company. I'm relatively certain we weren't followed." I rise to my feet and move to a position under one of the holes in the ceiling. Through it I can see a man. Dressed in a suit, he screams Mafia. Well. Damn. This isn't a good development.
"I smell smoke," one man says, then I hear another voice, a familiar one. "Then he's here?"
I stand still, thinking fast. Neon Nostrad wouldn't be with these men if they weren't under her orders, or her father's. I couldn't imagine her looking for me out of some peculiar form of puppy-love. She might not realize what I did to her before we parted, but I'd given her no reason to see me as a possible boyfriend.
"Probably, Miss. You wait here with the guards and we'll start looking for him. That kid is dangerous." I frown at that. Somehow I don't think I'm the one they're looking for. I look young, but not that young, surely.
Kneeling beside Clapika, I whisper, "Is there a reason Neon would be hunting for you? Aside from your eyes, that is?" Neon Nostrad had a thing about collecting body parts, including Kurota eyes.
His eyes go wide and he glances upwards with a look of momentary panic, quickly stilled before it can shift his eyes into red. "I stole her collection of eyes before I left. She had a few before the auction."
CLAPIKA:
I have to fight down fear. Here I am, helpless, while one of the people who had collected my people's eyes is looking for me. I curse the impulse that had made me steal her part in the collection before going to search for Quoll. I should have waited until I'd finished my other business, not revealed my intentions so boldly.
Quoll's expression is thoughtful and I pull back, wrenching my shoulder, as he draws a long, elegant, knife from a sheathe at his side. "Don't move," he growls. "It's a poison blade. You'll be paralyzed if it so much as nicks you." While I stare, he slides the blade along the rope around my left wrist and cuts it halfway through. He repeats the process on the other wrist, then sheathes the blade. "There's an exit that way," he says, pointing into the darkness. "You'll want to use it."
"Why?"
He shakes his head. "Another of those questions that I won't answer, Clapika. And I don't have time to discuss it anyway." He rises to his feet and heads towards the ladder that leads up into the next area and I realize suddenly that he's buying me time.
DAMN IT! I DON'T WANT YOUR CHARITY! It's infuriating, the more so because I have no choice. If I draw attention to myself I'll be caught. There's too high a probability that Neon realizes that I'm one of the Ruby Eyes, now. The thought of what would happen to me is terrifying, and I deeply regret letting that one man see them at the auction.
I work at the ropes, pulling them free after some struggles, then hurriedly undo the ropes around my ankles. I know why he made it so difficult. He didn't want me to interfere. Still He has no nen. He'll die up there for sure. I don't know why I'm not willing to have that happen, though it's tied up in the secrets he's keeping from me. Carrying the ropes away with me, I head towards the stairs he indicated. I can leave that way, but there's nothing to prevent me from coming back another.
QUOLL:
I ignore Clapika's mental shout and pull myself up onto the first floor of the old warehouse stepping out into the circle of light cast by my 'guest's' flashlights. One of them shines a light at me and I hear Neon gasp my name. "Quoll? Lucifer Quoll? You're here too?"
I smile at her, though I feel little friendship. "Why hello, Ms. Nostrad. Fancy meeting you here." The glare of the light is irritating, but I can still see her face as she stares at me. "Can I help you?"
Her expression answers one important question. She knows who I am. The way her eyes narrow, the flare of irritation mixed with fear. "My father's people are looking for you If you weren't shielded"
"Really?" I ask. "How nice." It occurs to me that they've been using her stolen nen as a search point and with mine locked away they couldn't find me. I shrug, setting the thought aside and consider how to stall. The longer I take talking, the more time Clapika has to escape. And why, Lucifer, are you letting him? It's a complicated matter, the more so since I acted as much on impulse as on anything else. Perhaps, in the end, it's the fact that this girl will take his eyes from him for no better reason than she collects body parts. Even my Spider had a better reason than that for what we did to his tribe. Then, of course, there's the fact that he'd probably be killed. I can fight these people, perhaps even escape, but if he's killed I'm likely to die of it. Besides, you captured him out of impulse. Might as well let him go for the same reason.
Neon glances at her men and I can see they're preparing to attack. Twenty, all told, with one small, fragile, little woman accompanying her. I keep an eye on that one, suspecting anything that delicate and apparently helpless. "He's the one who stole my nen," she tells them. "Don't kill him, but capture him. We need to force him to return it."
I dodge the first man, somersaulting out of his way. I don't bother denying my guilt, simply say, "There's a problem with that," as I break the next man's neck for him. "For various reasons I simply can't return it right now." It would, I think, be a serious mistake for me to tell them straight out that I don't have my nen. I've barely a chance at survival as it is.
I leap towards the middle of the room, aiming to get myself to the window, but am forced to pull back as a shot is fired. It wings my arm, but I ignore the sting of its passage in favor of dodging another of Neon's men. She's shrieking at them to be careful and I realize she's afraid that killing me would end up destroying the talent I'd stolen from her. And it might. I really don't know what would happen to those I've robbed if I die.
Suddenly the skinny little female is moving, climbing up one of the columns with a rapid skitter. Keeping an eye on her is a distraction, but I don't dare ignore what she's up to. Unfortunately, that gives one of the bigger of Neon's men a chance to grab me around the waist and lift me in the air.
I draw my dagger, slicing downwards. It nicks him and he collapses instantly. Of all the things I've stolen over the years, my little benz blade is the most useful. Its very metal is imbued with a poison that can paralyze all gross motor functions while leaving the victim able to breathe and speak. My nen requires a living, though not necessarily conscious, subject for stealing skills, so the blade has been invaluable.
It's proving its worth here. I'm able to take down five more of my attackers without wasting time making sure of a kill. I'm still paying attention to the nen user, waiting for her attack. When it comes, though, it's so fast that I'm lucky to avoid it. She doesn't just drop at me, she dives, flashing through the air too quickly for me to cut her. I try to dodge backwards but she's moving too damn fast, even for me. Only my ten blocks her blow, but not enough, not nearly enough. I feel her feet drive into my shoulder blade, cracking it and sending me flying.
To Be Continued
Author's Note:
Yes, I know Quoll just did something weird in here. Hang on tight, cause it's going to get weirder.
