An Amusing Interlude: Part 3 – Combat – In which Neon makes demands.
By
Deborah (Kosagi) Brown

Hunter X Hunter is copyright Yoshihiro Togashi. Quoll and Kurapika aren't mine more's the pity.

(Apologies for last installment... I forgot to fix the spelling on Kurapika. I'll have to update when I have a chance.)


KURAPIKA:

I crouch in the shadows above the fight, watching Quoll. His knife work is fast, his fighting skills incredible. I think I see why Hisoka was so anxious to fight him. If there is anything that perverted clown loves, it's a challenge. Quoll would be a challenge even without his nen, though I can also see that he's got no chance of winning. There are too many of them.

When the nen user leaps at him, I'm stunned at her speed. She's using strength, maximizing her physical output. Small, delicate and fragile in appearance, she might well have been a rival for Ubo.

I watch Quoll roll helplessly across the floor and somehow manage to land on his feet. "That's all there is to the infamous leader of the Genei Ryodan?" the woman demands. "No nen? Just shielding and your natural speed and strength?" She sneers. "You're fast, a good fighter, but it's not good enough!"

Quoll shrugs, breathing hard, watching her silently. I consider my own actions. I can't interfere here without risking both our lives to no purpose. There's too many for me to handle by myself, even if the nen user is within my power.

As the nen user circles around Quoll, he drops into a ready crouch. Her nen enhanced strength and small size makes her too fast for him. Sooner or later he'll tire enough that she'll be able to hit him. He knows that and I see him glance towards the window, as if wondering if he has the remotest chance of reaching it. I doubt he does, doubt that – even if he made it – she'd let him get far.

They dodge and spin and evade, but I can see I'm right. Ever so slightly, he's slowing down, and each time he misses an evasion she lands a blow that sends him rolling. Each time, he takes a bit longer to get back to his feet. Each blow leaves its mark, her clawing fingers rip fabric and skin below, her kicks less obviously damaging, but I can imagine what they're doing to him. Once she grabs him by the leg and swings him around, throwing him across the room, ripping his boot off in the process. At last she doesn't even have to move quickly to hit him and her kick, straight for the center of his stomach, throws him backwards against the wall. He coughs, blood spattering the ground in front of him and collapses into a heap.

QUOLL:

I close my eyes against the pain, feeling my cracked ribs creak every time I breathe, feeling the sharp stab of broken bones. No amount of ten could protect me from those blows, and each time one landed my ability to focus became that much less. Now all I can do is maintain composure for what I know is coming. I have to.

My attacker nudges me slightly. "Disappointing," she mutters. "But not bad, even without nen." I hear Neon stepping forward, hesitantly at first, then more quickly once she's sure I'm not faking it. Heh I wish I was. Everything hurts and I wonder if I could manage a dead faint before she starts questioning me.

"So. Why is it you can't give me back my skill, thief?" Neon asks softly. "You know how much trouble you caused me and daddy?"

I stay quiet, feeling blood dribble out my nose and mouth. The internal damage must be spectacular. It's certainly all I can do to ignore it. I feel hands moving on me, pulling my arms behind my back. It only takes a few minutes before I'm trussed up so tightly that Kurapika would have been proud of the effort. I'm forced to kneel, my head pulled back so that I'm looking up into Neon's face.

"Are you going to answer me?"

I manage a shrug, though the effort is almost more painful than it's worth. "I've lost my nen," I say finally. "Let's just say the thief was robbed and leave it at that."

"Someone else is running around with my skill?" Neon's voice is high pitched and furious. "How could you be so careless with my skill?"

I manage a smile. "Something like that," I admit. "Suffice to say that I can't do a thing for you now." I'm not going to tell her I'd die of it. There's a chance, I suppose, that I could free her page from my book before I die from the Judgment Chain, but that still leaves me dead. Not just yet.

Neon is about to ask something more when one of her men speak up. I realize he's climbing out of the cellar, where I'd been hiding. "Miss Nostrad There must be another here. I found two bowls down there."

"Kurapika?" She spins, turns to me. "Was Kurapika here?"

Another shrug is my only answer. With luck, of course, Kurapika is long gone, having chosen discretion over valor – especially where his worst enemy was concerned – and escaped. Luck, unfortunately, is not on my side. My shrug causes the man holding me to tug my head back further, to arch me backwards and roar into my face. "ANSWER HER!" That, however, isn't nearly so disturbing as what I see hidden in the shadowy recesses of the rafters. A familiar shape, holding so still that I'm fairly sure he wouldn't be seen. None the less, panic hits. He should not be there, not when the Mafia brat is prepared to take his eyes from him. Not when the only thing here is his worst enemy. Stupid idiot! GO AWAY!

At the same time I hear Neon gasp. "My god! HE HAS THE EYES TOO!"

KURAPIKA:

As his eyes meet mine I'd almost swear I see a gleam at their depths. Imagination, I decide, clinging more deeply to the shadows, clutching the rafter tightly. Just in time, too, because somehow he manages to project a thought straight into my head. Stupid idiot! GO AWAY! It rips into my mind, an agony I've never felt before.

I stare, startled and in pain from the force of his mental communication. He shouldn't have been able to do that and I'm in shock. So much so that I barely comprehend what Neon says next. When I do, however, its with utter disbelief. Quoll can't have the Eyes. He's not Kurota. He's our killer, a thing of evil, not a kinsman. Not my only living kinsman left.

Watching Neon grasp Quoll's face, I'm reminded of someone buying a horse. She stares into his face consideringly and though I can't see her expression I don't need to. I've seen it on her face before. That possessiveness that makes her so obsessive about what she wants. "You have the Eyes. I saw the glow!"

"Stupid. The Kurota clan is dead."

"Not Kurapika. You two were together, two clansmen trying to evade capture. Trying to get the eyes of your people back."

He laughs, softly. "I'm sorry. No. Kurapika wants me dead." There's a faint edge to his tone, as if he's trying to remind me of my purpose, trying to insist that I go without actually saying it. "I murdered his clan, after all. Each and every one of them. Down to a child of 13." That sets my teeth on edge. I know which child that would be. My best friend Damn you!

Neon laughs. "Maybe. But that doesn't mean you're not Kurota too. A renegade, perhaps? Or simply one who got too greedy. It doesn't matter. I'll have your eyes as well as Kurapika's. I don't have to kill you for that. You can consider it a payback for your theft of my skill." Her words put a chill through me. I don't want to think of what she intends to do to me. I ought to consider Quoll losing his eyes to her a kind of ironic justice, but I can't. I'm furious at him, furious at the reminder of what he did, and yet She's going to tear his eyes out while he's alive Oh god I feel sick to my stomach.

"Ohhh?" Quoll manages to put a tone of amused inquiry in his voice, though I'm almost certain he feels no less ill than I. "Even if I am what you think, there's little value in my eyes in their current state. Are they glowing now? You don't get that glow without getting the owner upset. Do I look upset to you?"

Neon ponders the question. "True enough. And your eyes didn't glow until just then, so getting beat up more isn't going to help matters." She taps her finger on her lips thoughtfully. "But they did glow. Faintly, of course, but still That says something happened to make you react."

I realize where she's headed. I always thought of her as not too bright, but it seems I was wrong. I can't see Quoll's expression but I have a feeling it's that of a man who's swallowed a sour lemon. "Yessss," she continues. "I don't think my man yelling at you"

"WAIT!" Quoll's voice breaks through her musing. At her raised brow, he continues, "I I'll give you my eyes." His head is lowered, dark hair falling around his face. In the light of the flashlight, he seems broken and lost.

Neon gives an excited squeal. "Get me a knife," she orders, and someone hands her a dagger. "Make them shine for me, Quoll. Make them glow."

Quoll is shuddering. "I will," he promises. "It'll be like nothing you've ever seen before."

QUOLL:

Damn that rotten little bastard child anyway. This would have been so much easier if he hadn't decided to hang around. Did you want to watch me suffer? I wonder and realize I've projected as I feel his power rising, egged on by the force of my own. I don't have to see him to know his eyes are glowing brilliant with rage.

I ignore him as I allow every last dreg of my inner shielding fade. No more ten. No more self control. With the pain I'm in, with my anger at Kurapika, with my rage at Neon for what she wants to do to me, it isn't at all hard to summon the Eyes. It is, in fact a miracle that they'd not broken free of my controls so much earlier. I can only hope the effect they have on Kurapika will be mitigated by distance, or his own sense of self-preservation.

"Tell me," I whisper, feeling the pain rise in my head, the aching searing bewildering confusion that the Eyes inflict on me. "Do you know why the Kurota eyes glow? Do you think it's just a sign of their strong emotions? Or maybe it's something else?"

"What are you blabbering about. Hurry up! Let me have your Eyes."

"I will," I promise again. "It takes a bit of time to release." I'm lying, but I want to give Kurapika time to get out. He mustn't stay there. Not now. Not now please go "Everybody has nen capacity, but only Kurota have the Ruby Eyes. Only Kurota have a power that they've concealed in their blood for generations. A power they learned to control, to put towards their protection."

"Huh?"

"The power of nen is nothing compared to it. Because of it, they forbade breeding outside their clan. Only a full blood could control it. Only a full blood could master it. Half-bloods, or worse, were a danger to be destroyed, lest that half-blood be their death." I sigh, softly. "But it's not possible to ensure a pure blood line. Every so often there were renegades. Or rapes, or worse. And at least one such half-blood survived. And that one half-blood was, indeed, their death." I lift my head, gazing directly at her, knowing what she's seeing. Not the Ruby Eyes, but something ugly and agonizingly painful to see. "You want my eyes? Try and take them, bitch." I tell her as I let the power go.

KURAPIKA:

I shake my head, unable to accept the idea that that fiend is my kin. He cannot be. He's some sort of horror. An abomination. He has to be. I realize as he talks that the power is rising in him and I can feel it swirl and shift in a tsunami of mental energy that carries not only him, but those around him away. As he looks at Neon and she starts screaming, I feel like the center of the room has exploded.

It hasn't, of course. The power of the Eyes is entirely a mind effect, a hereditary defense that we are taught to carefully control. Quoll isn't controlling this, though, anymore than I had earlier. He's letting loose a flood of raging mind power that sends his captors into hysterics. It isn't doing much for me, either. I do everything I can to block off the effect, clutching the rafter for dear life. Below, people are running and screaming from the dark clad figure at the center of the room.

Somehow the nen user keeps her head. She grabs Neon and makes a run for it, her strength carrying her out of the building too fast for her to be fully affected by Quoll's released rage. I don't know where they go, but neither do I care. All I know is that Quoll's anger is increasing my own and it is a terrible fight for me not to drop down and attack him. I know my eyes are glowing with my hatred for him.

I hold onto the rafters, waiting out the effects. Quoll is kneeling in the middle of an emptied room, his body limned by the fallen flashlights. As the rage and fear surrounding him lessen I can feel my own hatred calming. I still would prefer him dead, but it's no longer simply because his power and mine feed off each other. Was that how my people died? Responding to his presence and forcing him to respond in kind? The Ruby Eyes were a defense mechanism, but I couldn't see how his power could be anything but offence. It attacked, it overwhelmed and it destroyed whatever mind was near it. If I'd been closer I would have attacked him mindlessly and been consumed by his Eyes.

Slowly I climb down, make my way over to where Quoll kneels. His eyes are wide and empty, still gleaming a little with their power. Not, as he himself said, true Ruby Eyes. These glow with bloody light, yes, but they also swirl with other colors, like a demented rainbow. A confused and confusing mix that has its own attraction. If you like chaos, that is. Those eyes could drag you down into hell with them. I want so very desperately to kill him. To destroy the source of my anger. To rip his eyes out by the roots. NO! I cannot! I must not!

"Quoll?" I whisper, putting a hand out to touch his shoulder. Reaction is immediate. He drops to the ground in a sprawled heap, unconscious.

To Be Continued


Author's Notes: It was the way Quoll's eyes are drawn in the manga that inspired the idea of him being part Kurota. That, combined with what Kurapika's use of the eyes did to that one guy at the auction, made me wonder what the eyes are for.

Neon may seem a bit out of character here, but two points. She's the spoiled daughter of a Mafioso and she collects human body parts. These aren't things together suggest someone you don't necessarily want to cross. Apologies to any Neon fans out there.