"The Black Whale is an F-class civilian level cruiser," Ging announced, leading Gon and Killua through an enormous space in the center of the ship. "It's meant to carry thousands of people at a time, but obviously we're operating at minimum capacity."
Killua glanced around. The ship really was incredible. Every surface was made of that sparkling white crap, and the ship was a city in its own right. Ging was leading them through the center recreational area, a park in a way. The space was huge, the ceiling hundreds of feet up.
There were trees growing inside the ship, lined up in a regular pattern down the center of the area. There was a long pool of turquoise dyed water running along the center, with several pathways jutting out across it. The place was dimly lit, using the light of torches rather than electricity like everything else. Everything was made out of white colored stuff, true, but the lighting made everything appear soft and brown.
There were seating areas sprinkled all over, with restaurants and convenience stores bordering the walls. It was like the main lobby of a hotel, with balconies and windows overlooking the recreation area from hundreds of sets of barracks.
"This is the main area of the ship," Ging explained, "and every boarding room is connected and overlooking this space. If you look up, you will find a skylight, showcasing the endless expanse of space. If you look down, you will find an even more incredible feat, the floor."
"Haha. So funny I forgot to laugh," Killua grumbled.
The man soldiered on, too excited to brag about the ship to be disheartened by Killua's retort. "This ship holds more facilities than the ones showcased here, but most of those are only accessible through specific tickets. Pariston and I have full-access tickets, and can go anywhere we want using these ID cards."
Ging and the Demon held up two sparkling white cards, similar to Gon and Killua's debit cards for Heaven's Arena.
"The two of you are stowaways, you entered the ship without tickets and paid off the guards to let you stay. So the two of you do not have ID cards, and therefore no way to access anything at all on the Black Whale. While traveling on this particular ship, money for the journey itself is transferred onto your ID card, and without a legal ID card (which is only purchasable with a ticket) you are unable to purchase food, water, and you can't even get into the bathrooms to take a shit. Everything is locked up around here, and unless the two of you stick with Paris and I, you'll be pretty much screwed!"
"If that's the case, then are you even gonna be able to buy us a room?" Killua grumbled.
"...Probably not," Ging admitted. "You'll just have to crash with us."
Killua scoffed. Why'd he even offer up the idea if it wasn't possible in the first place?! The Valkyrie glanced over at Gon, who had been quiet this whole tour. Killua was worried about Gon. He'd been chasing after Ging his whole life, but this fateful meeting was just so anticlimactic. Ging had ruined any and all sentiment with his shitty attitude, and had just unceremoniously dropped the contents of Gon's blood into his lap with no sympathy whatsoever.
Ging was a total piece of work. Killua couldn't believe him and Gon were related.
Killua brushed his pinkie finger up against Gon's, and the hybrid shook himself out of a bit of a stupor. He gave Killua a weak smile.
Damn it, Gon.
Killua sighed, and wrapped his tail gently around his friend's leg.
It's okay. I'll do all the talking. Just… hold out for now?
"DAMN, I'm so fucking hungry!" Ging complained. "Come on, let's go eat!"
The hybrid led the other three off to the side, where Ging swiped his card to unlock a gate leading to a hallway. It was so cozy inside, reminding Killua of a compact city street. There were tons of tiny restaurants, all shoved together and lit by colorful neon signs. There were no torches here, everything was lit by the lights in the restaurants. There were a few other people about, but not many.
"What do you guys want for dinner?"
"I don't care," Gon said, finally speaking up.
"Well I don't care either," Ging countered. "Pariston, what do you want?"
"Let's try some alien food!" the blonde perked up.
"Great idea! Come on, I saw an ad for this place that caught my eye, I think it's down this way." Ging picked up to pace, darting in and out of the thin crowd, Pariston all but skipping along at his side like some sort of pet.
The Valkyrie followed after them, hating every second of this. Gon followed behind him, letting Killua's tail tug him along. How was Ging acting so casual like this? Couldn't he have a little sympathy for Gon? He'd been nonexistent in Gon's life for 19 years, and here he was just acting all casual!
Killua ducked after Ging and Pariston into a tiny self-seating restaurant. The Elf-human hybrid led them all the way to the back corner, plopping down in a secluded booth. Pariston sat down beside him, and Killua took the booth opposite Ging. That way Gon didn't have to sit across from this nutjob of a father.
An alien waitress arrived at their table, passing out menus and asking for drinks. Ging ordered some weird fruit shit for all of them, and then proceeded to order all of their food on the spot as well.
Killua tried to interrupt multiple times, but Ging was a master at interrupting, it seemed.
Once the waitress was off, Ging slouched against the boot and lit another cigarette.
"That's bad for your lungs, you know," Pariston mused, twirling a pair of chopsticks in his hand.
"Fuck off," Ging snapped, blowing a cloud of smoke from his nose.
Killua glared at him. This guy was such a dick. He wasn't even acknowledging Gon! Did he not see how upset Gon was?! Gods only knew what was going through Gon's head right now…
The hybrid was just sitting there, staring blankly at the table. He hadn't said a word this whole time, and hadn't even protested when Ging had ordered all his food for him. This had to be hard for him. There was no way he'd expected this to be what meeting Ging would be like. Killua knew he'd been planning to talk with Ging for a little bit, maybe get to know him for a few days.
But that was it. He had never intended to get dragged along on some wild mission, getting involved in a war with the Chimera Ants. This was completely insane, and on top of all that he finally knew what half his blood was made of.
Only thing was, Ging had just dumped that revelation in his lap like it was nothing at all. He hadn't even given a well thought out speech of encouragement! Nothing! It had just been: "oh, you're part Elf and part human. It's not that important!"
The mood at the table was tense, to say the least.
Killua hated Ging for treating Gon like this. He wasn't just some teammate! Gon was his son, for gods' sake! So why the hell was he treating him like some new hire?! Some rando he'd picked up off the street to help him out on a job?! This all felt so wrong. Killua hated that Gon had to go through all this, he hated that Gon was forced to have Ging as a father.
The assassin slipped his hand across the seat of their booth, resting it over Gon's. The reaction was invisible to anyone who wasn't Killua, but Gon stiffened. Just barely took in a quick breath. He was having a really hard time, but he wasn't gonna show it.
Killua squeezed Gon's hand, letting him know that he wasn't alone in this.
Gon flipped his hand over, and laced their fingers together.
Killua's heart warmed.
Yeah, that's right. I'm here for you. I'll love you forever, you don't need this jackass. Don't let him psyche you out.
The waitress walked back over, passing out a class of some blend of glowing blue fruit crap. She then placed multiple bowls of… weird… tentacle shit, all over the table. She gave them all a grin, and then slipped back off.
Ging chuckled excitedly, and quickly snatched everyone's plates before they could start dishing out their own food. He piled various stacks of strange food onto everyone's plates, then handed them out.
"All this food is native to the planet Acyko!" he explained giddily, sounding like some kid explaining all the freshly invented lore of some new stuffed toy. "It's a super humid, swampy planet that's completely tropical! The native animals are all aquatic, and the plants are all carnivorous! It's a nasty place, I've visited a few times. The caves are incredible though! What we have here are dishes called verrah. The tentacles have been taken off the species of alien fish, and are served raw! The different flavors are divided up by color! I got blue, pink, and green, because those are the best kinds!"
Killua frowned down at the three multicolored piles of rubbery… spaghetti looking… translucent… strings of raw fish meat. He poked at them with his chopsticks. They looked like freeze-dried intestines… except they were all moist and still steaming from the pot.
"The green shit is the ground up inner lining of one of their non-poisonous species of plants!" Ging continued. "It's been fermented with Acykian beer over three entire months! It's to break down the acidity so our teeth don't melt out when we eat it."
Killua shuddered as his pile of muddy green sludge bubbled as it cooled. Nasty…
"The dumplings are made from Acykian cold oven bread. It's impossible to start fires on Acyko, the only way to heat anything up is by dunking it in a pool of natural acid. Cold oven bread uses that acid to cook down a special mixture of natural grains and powders, poisonous until bound together by the heat of the acid! The dumplings I got are stuffed with the brains of these wacky little squirrel-fish fuckers called brasha, I tamed one once! Damn, I really miss that little guy sometimes."
"I told you he wouldn't survive in the southern geyser fields," Pariston taunted in a sing-song voice.
"He had heart!" Ging exclaimed. "I saw it in his eyes that he believed he could survive! He just… didn't have strong enough lungs."
Killua picked up the glass of blue and glowing… stuff. He smelled it, and immediately shuddered. It smelled sharp, almost like formaldehyde. There was no way in HELL Killua was drinking that!
"Smells wild, I know!" Ging commented, seeing Killua's reaction. "It's blended racka fruit! They glow, and are the only natural source of light on Acyko other than the sun. It smells like it'll kill you, but that's because the chemical in the fruit makes your eyes glow when you eat it! Isn't that badass?! It turns your eyes into your own personal flashlights! Oh, but if you've got any tree nut or corn syrup allergies don't eat it cause it'll give you reverse dysentery so bad you'll hurl up your own digestive tract."
"I got reverse dysentery once," Gon murmured, staring down into the glass of racka juice in thought.
"What?! No way!" Killua and Ging exclaimed at the same time.
Killua sounding concerned and Ging sounding excited.
"What the hell, were you okay?!" Killua demanded, leaning in closer to Gon.
"How much did you vomit?!" Ging demanded, grinning like a fool and leaning across the table. "Did you shed the inner lining of your stomach and stuff?!"
"I'm okay now, but I couldn't hold anything down for a whole week," the hybrid answered, pushing the verrah around his plate. "And I did shed the lining of my digestive tract! How did you know?" Gon was starting to perk up. It was like watching a rain storm melt away, and Killua felt a tension release in his chest. Gon was smiling again.
"I've never had reverse dysentery before," Ging explained, "but I did get a tapeworm once! I had to take some weird shit to force the inner lining of my stomach to shed and reform, that was the only way to get it out. I tell you, that was the longest shit I've ever taken in my life! I had to pull it out with my hands! It was so long!"
"That's so gross!" Gon exclaimed, shuddering but grinning all the same. "I kept suffocating on it cause it was coming up through my throat! It was so bad! I had to get one of those esophagus rods to hold my windpipe wider so I could pull it out without dying!"
"Dude! Did that shit hurt?! I've heard that esophagus rods are worse than a kidney stone!"
"Yeah! It hurt so bad! My neck was cramping up like crazy cause I had to keep my head tilted all the way back, and I kept gagging cause it felt so wrong pulling it all the way out! That's why I don't have a gag reflex anymore, I kinda trained it out of me when I had to pull 30 feet of dead tissue up and out of my body."
Killua choked on air. Well, now he knew that Gon didn't have a gag reflex. He also knew that he'd gotten reverse dysentery once… and lived.
"That's the gnarliest shit I've ever heard!" Ging gushed hopping up and down in his booth like a little kid. "How the hell did you catch that?!"
Gon scratched his cheek, "Yeah, I kinda didn't use protection and this Zombie-Selkie guy gave it to me cause it was the uh, lower half of his body that was half rotten."
"Ohhhhh, that's wild!" Ging gawked, covering his mouth with his hands, still grinning like crazy. "So he, like, shot it into you?"
"Okay! We're eating!" Killua snapped, hands over his ears… but unfortunately Ging and Gon talked too loud for that to be effective.
"Oh, sorry!" Gon said guiltily, smiling sheepishly. He shared a conspirative chuckle with Ging… but then the smile melted back off his face. Gon's eyes got sad again, and his formerly happy expression turned strained.
Ging twirled some of the green verrah onto his chopsticks, and sighed. "Hey… listen. I know this is probably hard for you and all. It can't be easy, suddenly having all this crap forced on you. Having me forced on you after all this time."
Gon relaxed a little, listening to Ging though not meeting his eyes. Killua brushed his tail against Gon's leg, but stayed quiet so Ging could talk.
"I'm sorry I didn't give you the reunion you deserved," Ging admitted. "I'm not good with words and emotions and all that jazz. Honestly, I was scared shitless when I saw you two in the shipyard. I haven't been in contact with you all this time cause I'm kinda scared."
"Of me?!" Gon squeaked.
Ging sighed grumpily, cheeks ears pinkening in shame. "Yeah. I left you behind, kid. I had no good reason to do it, I just didn't want you. That's really bad. I never wanted to meet you, cause I didn't want to have to look into your eyes… and see all my mistakes projected onto one poor kid. You didn't deserve all the crap I dumped on you, and I'm sorry."
Gon finally met Ging's eyes, fiddling with his napkin under the table.
"I'm sorry if it feels strange acting like nothing the past 19 years ever happened, but it's just easier for me to pretend like it's not you, you know? Cause, to me, when I think 'Gon,' I see that little shrimp I left with Mito. But now? When you come up to me and you say ' Gon?' I don't see that kid. I see this," he gestured at his son. "A fully grown man, who's mastered Sorcery and been all over the place. You've got your own life, and your own identity without me involved in any way or form. So, how's about we just start over? We forget I was the one who was horny enough to make you."
Gon sweatdropped, and Killua's ears tilted backwards in displeasure. That was certainly a rough way to put it. He made it sound like Gon's existence was a total accident. Though, knowing Ging, that was likely the case.
And Killua supposed… that it made sense. Ging knew that Gon was just here cause he was being stupid, and he felt bad about that. He didn't want to see Gon as just a past mistake, he wanted to see Gon as his own person, separate from Ging and his selfishness. It was a good sentiment, in its own little way.
"I don't have to be your dad, I'm sure you don't want me to be anyways," Ging said, waving his hand around as he talked. "So can we just be chill? We're comrades for this mission, is it okay if we just leave it at that? We can get to know each other better, I'm sure you wanna know what I've been up to. And I can say that I really wanna know what you've been getting into all these years. So… friends? Acquaintances, at the very least?"
Ging stuck his hand across the table. Gon looked down at it, and then back up at Ging.
He smiled, and grasped his father's hand.
"Yeah, we can be friends," Gon said.
Ging smiled. Not a smirk, not a shit eating grin, and not a condescending tilt of his lips. A real smile. A genuine one. In Ging's eyes… Killua could see that he really did care about Gon. He was in no way a good person, but he still cared.
Killua glanced between the father and son duo, shaking hands over a colorful meal, nestled in the underbelly of a giant spaceship hurtling away from their home planet faster than sound itself. Gon grinned at his father, at Ging. Their exchange spoke volumes.
The assassin smiled to himself, and scooped some of the verrah onto his chopsticks.
He supposed… that Ging wasn't too bad after all.
AN: aw, that's sweet
