"Hello!" A loud voice, sounding like that of a young child, broke both of them off from their game. They had shifted from KamiJack to the jester's own version of "War," a card game where each card's face would determine its value, and the more valuable the card, the more likely it was to win. A king beat a queen, a queen beat a jack, and so on. That was the standard version, anyways; the custom version was stranger, with 7 being the strongest card and ace and king being tied for the weakest. This often forced more ties, and as a result, more risky matchups.
The Greyscale had won two rounds of War, but the jester had won the same amount and was well on his way to winning a third when they had been interrupted. Now that their concentration had been broken, the jester had realized what time it was. He
"We are about to begin." He said, voice much more neutral than it had been hours earlier. He held out a hand and the Greyscale put his cards inside of it. The jester slipped the cards into his deck and shuffled them before sliding them into his pocket. The Greyscale stood up and leaned against the wall while the jester walked off into the crowd of people that seemed to be nearing five hundred people. As he watched the jester go, he noticed someone bump into him. The jester stopped and turned towards him, and after a second, walked after him, and he lost him in the crowd. A moment later, however, a cry rang out, and people began crowding around an area where a small trail of flowers was floating up into the air. An unmistakeable voice could be heard over the person's whimpering.
"Oh my, it appears his arms have turned to flowers. No smoke and mirrors here. When you bump into someone, you really should apologize." With that, the jester walked off. The Greyscale caught a few whispers from the crowd; a word they kept repeating was "Hisoka."
So that was his name. Hisoka.
The room had been shaped like a hangar; with the semi-cylindrical concrete and steel walls and the two flat, semicircular ends. The elevator was the only way in or out that he saw; at least until the other wall rumbled open to reveal a man in a suit. He was a tall, thin man, with a pale complexion and a very thin, dark handlebar mustache. His pale purple hair ran down the side of his head. His tie, a bright red, seemed to have been torn on the end. Ordinarily, over the noise of the crowd, it would have been difficult to hear him. However, everyone had quieted at the sound of the door opening combined with the ringing of an alarm.
The man introduced himself as Satotz; he would be the Phase One examiner. After everyone accepted obligatory oral contractual agreement that "the exam is dangerous, back out now if you aren't ready to accept the dangers" and, as was unspoken, the Hunter Association was financially absolved of anything relating to the injury or death of participants, the examiner turned around and began walking down the enormous passageway. As he, along with the other examinees, did as they were instructed, the pace began to steadily increase. They went from a walk, to a stride, to a jog, to nearly a sprint.
He had been running for well over an hour. In front of him was nothing, behind him were miles and miles of tunnel. The tunnel had been an old mineshaft that had been expanded and supported for the purposes of the test. Hisoka was a little ways ahead of him, and the Phase One instructor a little ways in front of Hisoka. Several had dropped, several more had slowed, and by now, the front pack only contained around sixty people. The test was far from difficult, thus far; a 40 kilometer jog on flat ground was an everyday occurrence for him.
He heard grumblings and groaning up ahead and looked up. There, ahead of him, was a seemingly infinite staircase. This he could understand; staircases were more difficult to run up. Beyond the extra effort needed to lift one's legs higher, a single misstep, set on by fatigue or just plain old bad luck, could cause serious injury. Indeed, a loud crack resounded from behind him as someone's foot caught on a step and their head smacked against the stair.
As he ran, he reviewed his mission objective: Pass the Hunter Exam, pass along information from within the Hunter Archives, and continue to remain on the planet, ready to respond at a moment's notice. The planet was of very little political importance to the wider galaxy, but to the Equinox Corporation, discovery of other humans was huge.
