The next morning Gon and Killua awoke at the crack of dawn. Gon was in charge of waking his friend up, as the Valkyrie was not a morning person. With a yawn, the hybrid untangled himself from Killua - the two of them had gotten all tangled up during the night again.
He stretched big, and popped his back. Gon glanced over at Killua, who was making incoherent sounds in his sleep as he grappled at the empty spot where Gon had once been. The horned boy found himself smiling.
Time to wake him up!
"Killluuuuaaaaa," he prompted softly into the Valkyrie's ear.
The silver haired boy grumbled and turned over.
"I know you're awake," Gon said.
"Mmmmmmmgghhhhh."
With a grin, Gon poked his friend between the shoulder blades.
Killua squirmed and grumbled some more. "Noooooo," he said, finally choking out something coherent.
Taking this as his cue, Gon leapt forward with a wicked laugh and tackled Killua in a bear hug, pinning him to the bed. "Wake up!" he said directly into Killua's ear.
"Too… loud, get off… ur heavy."
Gon complied, and rolled them off the side of the bed. They crashed to the floor, and Killua cracked his eyes open to glare at the culprit. "It's too early… to exist," he mumbled, and fell limp in Gon's embrace, likely trying to go back to sleep.
"But we gotta get up super early so we can sneak out!"
"Oh yeah," Killua practically growled. "Who's idea was this again?"
"Yours."
"I hate you."
Gon giggled, and stood up. He dragged Killua to his feet, and shook his sleepy friend back and forth a few times. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!"
"I'm awake! I'm awake! Cut it out, would ya? Damn, why the fuck are mornings even a thing in the first place?"
Gon shrugged with a smile, and walked to his closet to get dressed.
…
Finally able to wear clothes of their own choice, the two boys walked onto their balcony. Gon was dressed in a pair of baggy green pants and a black long sleeved shirt. Killua had on a pair of form fitting purple pants and a black turtleneck.
"Ready?" Gon asked with a wicked grin.
"As always," Killua said with a grin to match.
And with that, the two boys leapt off the balcony and sprinted across the rooftops. The early morning air was frigid, and Gon's breath puffed out in front of him in billowing white clouds. His cheeks were already numb, but the hybrid didn't care.
Anything was better than being cooped up in the constant supervision of Isolde and her lackeys. They'd only had one day of it, but Gon had already had enough.
"Where do you wanna go?" Killua called out to Gon.
"Let's race to the edge of town! Maybe we'll find something there!"
"You're on!"
Gon braced his muscles, and drove his knee down hard on the next rooftop, exploding forward with an incredible force. He looked back to see if he had left Killua in the dust, only to find that the Valkyrie was keeping up stride for stride.
Gon grinned wickedly, he sure did love a fight!
The horned boy pushed himself harder, faster, and soon was relying on his sense of smell alone to navigate because his eyes couldn't keep up with his surroundings. Unfortunately, Killua was pulling ahead.
Damn!
Gon gritted his teeth, and pumped more power into his legs.
Whenever he was competing with Killua, he always found himself pushing beyond his limits. A dangerous aura leaked off from Gon, whenever he went all out it was impossible to control.
Killua's ears angled backwards.
Ah, crap, Gon thought with a look of exasperation.
The Valkyrie looked backwards, an evil glint in his eye.
And just like that, he was gone, leaving a thick cloud of Valkyrie aura behind him.
Gon flinched as he passed through it, but found his face contorting into one of fear mixed with excitement. The more powerful humanoids had a certain aura that leaked off of them, one that asserted dominance over those below them. The scent would grate one's bones and make their will tremble.
Usually, this was a deterrent, an intimidation tactic used during battle.
However, on Gon, the commanding aura only served to make him more excited.
Killua's left me behind in his dust trail, but maybe if I…
With a snarl, Gon opened up a doorway within himself, allowing a strong biochemical to flood his veins. Veins popped all over his body, and it hurt like hell, but it gave him even more speed. A sonic boom erupted as Gon broke the sound barrier, and a cloud of his own know-your-place aura was left in a jet trail behind him.
I always knew that I had the sixth sense, that aura that makes people flinch when I enter a room, and this biochemical that can enhance my strength, but now I get to add the neurotoxin to that list. What exactly am I? Each time I discover a new ability hidden within my gene pool, it just seems to muddle the water even more.
But that just encourages me.
The harder this mystery of who I am is to solve, the better.
Gon barked a laugh, feeling his horns growing in length and his teeth getting more jagged, a side effect of using the biochemical. He didn't like to do it, because it hurt so bad and also it made him look like some sort of scary monster. But Killua always encouraged him to break his limits and cross lines he had drawn in the sand, it was so invigorating. Something about competing with a humanoid so inherently above him in rank was indescribably FUN.
The good thing about activating the chemical, however, was that it enhanced Gon's senses. Now his eyes could keep up with his surroundings. Surroundings that showed Killua stopped up in front of him, standing before an enormous barricade.
Uh oh, not only did Killua beat me even with the biochemical, but now I built up an unnecessary amount of momentum with not enough room to dispel it.
Gon gave a jagged grin.
I'll just do something super cool to slow myself down, I'll try and impress Killua!
At his next step, traveling at neck breaking speeds, Gon twisted his body around, pushing his hands off the ground and doing several handsprings until he reached the end of the building. From there he sent himself spiraling up into the air, spinning in all directions with his arms crossed over his chest and legs kept pointed straight out, feet together. As he reached the max height of his jump, he curled into a ball and spun on his way down. At the last second, right before crashing into the roof next to Killua, he whipped himself out of the cannon-ball position, and landed in a crouch.
Killua whistled.
Gon grinned up at him, feeling his eyes glowing with the excess power generated by the biochemical. Speaking of which, he shut off its flow, and pumped a muscle-relaxant (which now that he thought about it, was very similar to his neurotoxin) through his body to quell the effects of the chemical.
"That was pretty impressive, dude. I didn't think you had the speed capability to break the sound barrier!" Killua complimented… in his own, Killua way.
"Yup!" Gon said cheerfully as he jumped to his feet.
Killua pricked his finger on one of Gon's now jagged, and longer horns. "The hell? What's all this for? You look like you went into some sort of battle mode."
Gon rocked back and forth on his heels as his teeth and horns shrank back to normal size, "It's another one of my powers!"
"Another?"
"Yeah! There's this biochemical I can release into my body to increase my strength and muscle capacity. However, it hurts really bad and warps my features like crazy."
"And why didn't you tell me about this before?" Killua said with an angry/playful/sharp-toothed grin as he slapped Gon hard across the back.
"I wanted to surprise you!"
Killua burst out laughing, "Thought it might give you the upper hand in one of our races?"
"Yeah.."
"And how did that turn out?" The silver haired boy asked with a cat-faced smirk.
Gon puffed out his cheeks, "You still beat me.."
"So you have the sixth sense, that creepy aura, the neurotoxin, and a biochemical?"
"Yeah, and a pretty high-ranking bloodlust!"
"True. Man, your blood is so weird. I have no idea what you could possibly be! What is your father, some sort of undiscovered humanoid?"
Gon sighed, "For all I know, he could be a rock."
"We'll find out though," Killua said with a light hearted smile, a dusting of sweat across his pale brow. "As soon as we clean up whatever mess this is in this village, we'll be in Yorknew City. If you're gonna find a clue to his whereabouts, that's the place to be."
Gon grinned wider than ever, and slung his arm across Killua's shoulders, "You're the best, Killua!"
The Valkyrie sighed, and looped his arm around Gon's shoulders in turn. "Yeah, yeah. You too, ya idiot."
"So, what's this thing?" Gon asked as he looked up at the reason Killua had stopped.
"I dunno."
The barrier stretched what had to be a hundred meters into the sky, and covered the entire western side of the city. Based on the city's shape, and the specs High Priestess Camilla had given Gon at dinner last night, this wall was not the edge of the city at all, but some sort of barrier. What made it the most strange, is that it was built from some sort of rusty metal, rather than the usual dark colored stone and wood of the rest of the village.
"I thought the wall that stretched around the outside of the village was all the same height, and that it was all 10 meters. This thing is 10 times that amount!" Killua exclaimed.
"Yeah…" Gon trailed off, deep in thought. "This goes against everything we know about this place."
"Not that we truly know anything at all," Killua grumbled. "We know that the monster we fought is preventing the Neko-Girls from holding their rituals, and that we have been declared heroes for driving it away. We're trying to figure out what exactly the monster is, and why it's causing so many problems for them. But all of them, even the High Priestess, won't even mention the fact that they are being prevented from practicing their religion. And that just doesn't match up. Their religion is incredibly important to them, and here we are, showing signs that we can get them back to normal, and they won't even tell us how we can help."
"Right," Gon looked down for a moment, and then nodded. "We'll just have to see what's beyond this wall. This barrier shouldn't be here, it doesn't exist according to the information the Neko-Girls gave. I'm certain that the answer is beyond this barrier."
"So it's decided." Killua looked up and down the wall. "It doesn't look like there's a gap anywhere, and it's constructed so that you can't see what's on the other side of the wall no matter what. We'll just have to climb over it."
"Climb over what?"
The two boys jumped out of their skin.
They whipped into battle stances at the speed of light, bloodlust and dominance-aura pouring off of them in droves, ready to defend against their assailants-
"Isolde?!" Killua practically yelled.
"Eh? Nix, Zephyr?" Gon added.
"What the hell are you guys doing here?! Don't sneak up on us like that! I could've killed you!" Killua snarled as he stepped out of his stance and shut off the flow of bloodlust and aura.
Seemingly unphased by the threatening display, Isolde simply fixed the two with a disappointed look. "The real question is, what are you two doing here? You shouldn't leave the inn on your own! You could get lost!"
"Or fall into the river and drown!" Nix added on.
"Or accidentally stumble across a holy ground barred from an outsider's presence!" Zephyr finished.
"Like hell we would! We found our way here perfectly fine, and look at that! We didn't fucking trip in a puddle on the way here, who would have thought? Gods forbid we get some mud on our shoes, what if we get cold feet?" Killua mocked.
"And what's this barricade?" Gon asked with a stern look on his face. "I'd say that that's the only real question. This shouldn't be here. You guys showed us the entire village, and told us about every major landmark. Why would you leave something like this out?"
"Prince Killua, you seem to have broken a sweat!" Isolde nagged, completely ignoring the two boys' harsh words. It was as if they had never said anything at all. It was a weird feeling, and Gon didn't like it.
Zephyr and Nix walked up to him, and wiped his brow with silken handkerchiefs. The Valkyrie hissed and swatted at them, but they always managed to slip out of his reach. "Cut it out, would ya? Gon asked you a question!"
"Master Gon, you're trembling! Are you in pain?" Isolde asked, suddenly appearing before Gon. The hybrid jumped as she took his hands in her own and pressed them to her chest. "Come, we'll escort you back to your rooms, we have a pool on the grounds that you will be able to occupy yourselves in. We apologize for losing sight of the two of you, it is the High Priestess's wish that we make sure to escort you everywhere!"
"But what about the wall, damn it?!" Killua demanded.
"This way, Master Gon. And do watch your step, dear, wouldn't want you falling off the roof!" Isolde cooed as she all but manhandled Gon into coming with her.
Nix and Zephyr did the same for Killua, and the two boys were dragged back to the inn - which might as well have been a cage - with a strength the two of them had not been expecting.
…
The rest of the day the two boys were monitored like hawks. Not a second passed in which there were not at least six Neko-Girls standing by. Gon didn't know what it was, but something about the Neko-Girls made them seem predatory. They were threatening, like a cat sitting on a high ledge. You could reach your hand out to her, but there was always that nagging feeling that she might bat you at any second.
Come to think of it, the Neko-Girls were exactly like cats. They did whatever they wanted, with no regard for Gon or Killua's wishes. They wouldn't speak unless they wanted to, and no matter what the two boys always found themselves complying with their demands.
They were incredibly stubborn, and had a certain attitude that was near incompatible.
They were completely unpredictable, and their faces were blank and impassive masks.
Gon sighed as he and Killua sat on the pool patio, with a dozen eyes watching their every move. He turned to talk to his friend, but his sixth sense sent a zing up his spine. Someone was coming.
Just then, Circe appeared at Killua's side.
Killua gave a halfhearted wave.
"Where did you two go this morning?" Circe asked, ignoring the scrutinizing eyes of her coworkers.
"We went to the west edge of the village, and found a huge barrier."
Gon watched as Killua had an intense staring contest with his handmaid. It was a battle of wills.
"Based off all the information you've given us, that barrier shouldn't exist," Killua said.
Circe blinked, Killua won the battle.
"I see," she said as she looked off into the distance, ignoring Killua's ever persistent gaze.
A tense silence stretched out. Gon could feel the tension in the air.
"Would be a shame if you happened to sneak out again tomorrow morning."
And with that, Circe left. Braids swishing against her back.
Gon blinked for a few moments, alternating his gaze between Killua and the retreating Circe. "What was that all about?" He asked when the Valkyrie showed no sign of clarifying.
"It means, that we should sneak out again tomorrow. I think she'll help us out."
Gon felt his ears begin to steam, "But I thought she said it would be a bad thing if we snuck out again?"
Killua sighed and gave Gon a soft-eyed look.
"Idiot."
