Book 2: Malum

Chapter 24: War Paint

A/N: Let me begin this by saying that I am so incredibly touched by the amount of reviews that the announcement I might be discontinuing this story got. I hadn't realized that there was a large number of people who truly enjoyed this fic. I had assumed that it was amateurish and difficult to read, because rereading my own writing, that was the impression I had gotten.

I can't express the gratitude I feel that you've stuck by me this far. I'm so sorry for having gone so long without updating. I threw chapter together in 2-3 days so forgive me again, and pelase forgive me in the future if the updates are few and far between.

Without further ado, please enjoy the story. You've all made me very happy.

- coincidenced

She hears murmurs no matter where she goes.

The soft clicking of her heels against the concrete eases her nerves just a little, and Rita's always liked playing dress up -it makes her feel powerful- and so she takes a deep breath and charges onward.

"Hey miss!" Someone suddenly calls to her in accented English, and she shoots a glance over her left shoulder. A man with strange, sea greenish hair comes trotting up to her. "You dropped this!"

She is shocked to see her cellphone in the man's hand. Rita looks down to her clutch to see it tightly clasped. There was no way her phone could have just slipped out.

Pickpocketed? She thinks. Me? What skill..

"Oh," she breathes in faux relief. "God, thank you so much, that's so important; I was expecting a call."

He slips it into her open palm with both hands and Rita quickly flips through it. Relief floods her system, although discreetly. Pariston had yet to contact her, unless the man had somehow gotten through her password and deleted the message. She would have to follow up on this later.

"You should be more careful, miss." He smiles, bending over to bring her hand to his mouth. "It's dangerous here tonight."

He looks like the dangerous type – narrow, glinting eyes, longish hair pulled back into a short ponytail. Clad in what looks to be a very expensive black suit, he shoots her a smile.

"I'm sorry," she brings her closed hand to her chest and does her best to look abashed. "My date's cancelled on me tonight but I have to be here for something. Would you mind accompanying me, just for an hour or so?"

He opens his mouth to reply but Rita isn't done acting yet.

"I know I'm being incredibly selfish!" She jumps in, forcing a flush onto her face. "I'd just feel safer with someone by my side, and you-"

He brings a finger to her lips. "Say no more." He smiles, obliging. "It'd be my pleasure. I don't believe I caught your name."

"It's Rita." She smiles reciprocally, in the same manner. "Thank you."

"Marzio, at your service." His eyes twinkle with mischief and magic. A shame; Rita's sure she could have truly befriended him in any other situation. "You look wonderful tonight."

Rita knows what she looks good in. The midnight blue clashes wonderfully with her orange hair done up in a bun. It is plain, tight around the waist but slightly looser around the legs with a daring slit; around her neck is a shimmering choker. "Thank you." She says again and bows slightly to humor him.

"Shall we?" He extends a crooked arm.

She nods and takes it.

They fall into a comfortable gait, taking leisurely steps as they wander around the grounds until the auction begins, whispering to one another when they see something interesting as if they had been acquainted with one another for much longer than they really had been.

Much to her relief, people eye her but do not approach her, most likely because she has a man by her side. That had been perhaps the other half of the reason why she had asked him to accompany her.

"Are you from around here?" She asks, bringing up material for small talk; might as well get to know each other.

They analyze one another in the subtlest of ways, raking gazes down each others' bodies. He flares his Nen for tests, and she must reign hers in.

"I'm not, actually." He says playfully, answering the question but playfully drawing back and refusing an explanation.

She eyes him coyly and thinks a little. His English is accented, but not in the way that she's used to. It isn't an East Asian accent, because she's had more than enough of Pariston's shitty English, and she knows the way that the Japanese tend to pronounce their words.

"You're European," she throws the guess out there.

He makes a face, as if this was not what he had expected. "European," he rolls the word around in his mouth with a laugh. "Yes, I suppose, but not primarily. Only by extension."

Rita sighs a little and runs her fingers through her hair as she continues strolling with him. "Say something."

"Like what?"

"Something your native tongue."

"Ah, but that would be cheating. You seem like an educated lady with enough language training under her belt to know mine."

Well, that was certainly a long enough spiel for Rita to put her finger on it. "Spain," she says a little more confidently this time, narrowing her eyes a little. "Or perhaps… Italy?"

"Italia!" He beams, giving a congratulatory nod.

His genuine smile is so charming it takes Rita's breath away for an entire second; she needs to clear her throat in a guise to recover and returns a feeble smile of her own. "How was I? Faster than the average?"

"Just impressive. People usually don't get it. But it's disappointing for me. It shows my English still needs work."

"Getting rid of accents is hard," she consoles slightly by bringing her other hand to his arm and touching it lightly. "And your appearance in and of itself might be a giveaway."

"Speaking of which," Marzio stops and exchanges a street vendor a flower for a few zenny. He places it delicately in her hair. "It is hard for me to tell your nationality, Miss Rita." The flower is a bright ochre shade, one that goes well with the rest of her getup.

"Oh me," she shrugs the thought away with a wave of her hand. "Unimportant. I am me and that is all. I have never allowed my origins to play any part in who I actually am."

Marzio seems intrigued by the words that have most recently left her lips. He cocks his head to the side and stares at her with his unreadable expression on his face when –

Both of them suddenly whirl themselves around to face something from just behind the corner they recently turned, bristling, hypervigilant, prepared for…

For what?

Nothing is there.

Rita catches Marzio's eye in a moment of frenzy, and then they both begin to laugh. It is a real laughter, the kind of laughter Rita sorely misses from her time with Gon and Kurapika and that fool Leorio and most especially Ging.

"I wonder what that was," the female brushes herself off and straightens herself up.

"Whatever it might have been, the poorly controlled malice and bloodlust was palpable even from three meter away." Marzio and cracks his knuckles. "Where were we?"

"On our way to the auction?" She suggests, extending her arm this time. He takes it jubilantly.

"Right you are."

After the incredibly unsettling encounter at the dilapidated library she had experienced a few hours ago, Rita had gone out and spent an extravagant sum of money on playing dress up. The one thing Pariston allowed her was an infinite supply of money to indulge in whatever the hell she wanted, which was, what he said to be asmall perk of her job under him.

She'd be damned if twisting necks and taking lives didn't warrant a handsome sum of money, for god's sake.

From there, Rita had gotten dressed, applied her make-up, and and then assumed a persona. So far, stumbling across the mystery of the man named Marzio seemed to be working out for her pretty well.

Kurapika was in the city, waiting in ambush for the Phantom Troupe to arrive at the scene. She had definitely gained his trust, and she could only hope that she had done a satisfactory enough job with him and finding out his intentions to placate Pariston.

Speaking of the devilish Zodiac, where the fuck was he with information on her mission tonight?

"You seem distracted." Marzio commented, snaking an arm around her waist.

Perhaps a few years ago, the touch would have made her incredibly uncomfortable, but Rita has become far too accustomed to the rough touch of a man in these past few months, and so it doesn't bother her nearly as much as it should.

"I have many thoughts flying through my mind tonight." She narrows her eyes a little as the auction hall comes into view. Its lights are bright and there are dozens of mafioso crawling round near its entrance.

Vertigo from a bout of deja vu hits her full force again, and Marzio steadies her carefully like the faux gentleman he's trying to portray himself to be. "Are you alright?"

"Never been better." She laughs a little as gets a fucking hold on herself.

As of late, she's been getting a fuck ton of headaches. Not normal headaches, but short ones that throb and pound with excruciating pain. It's obvious that her body or her brain has put up some sort of defense mechanism to keep her from recalling her memories. It's painful. Not just psychologically, to remember, but physically sometimes as well. The scar on her stomach has a tendency to really hurt on rainy days as well.

Seeing the auction hall, she had assumed, would be nothing extraordinary, but the very sight of it leaves her reeling. It is so familiar. She knows where the bathrooms are and what the clearing behind the hall looks like; more terrifying, she knew exactly what that clearing looks like littered with bodies and –

"-ita… Rita!"

"Hm?" She immediately snaps out of her reverie. "Oh, god, I'm so sorry. I don't know what's gotten into me."

"Don't apologize." His brows furrow together in what seems to be genuine concern. "You seem out of it."

"And Marzio would know how I look when I'm "out of it" how?" She says playfully. "Apologizes. But, I think this is where our journey will end. Thank you for bringing me here."

"So soon?" The green-haired male asks. Rita does not miss the subtle flicker of apprehension in his Nen that alerts her to his internal turmoil. Although he skillfully covers it, it was too much of a waver in confidence to have been a fluke. "I thought we would accompanying each other throughout the auction."

Rita doesn't have an excuse for this, but she can't stay close to the man, she knows. His dip in self-assuredness confirmed that he was tailing her, and quite frankly she was fucking terrified.

"I'm okay Marzio. I don't need someone doting after me. But, if you'd like, we can go out for coffee after. Shoot me a text." Rita winks at him.

"But I don't have your-"

"You do." The female flashes an fiendish smile at him.

And then she's gone.

"I lost her," comes the irritable growl in thick Italian. "Shut the fuck up, you wouldn't been able to find her in the first place. Know your place."

"This is unlike you, Marzio."

"Give me a light."

"Yes sir. What should we do, sir?"

"She's a lot more skilled than I thought she would be."

"It has been four years. And her intellectual capacity was modified to be much larger than the average person's of course. It's only natural that she's surpassed our expectations."

"This is dangerous."

"It'll be better, if we can actually get her."

Silence. And then…

"I'll look for her alone. We need to know how much she knows and who exactly she's working under. I don't even know how the higher ups let this entire shitload of a debacle even happen. They should have nipped it in the bud twenty years ago."

"Is it really even her? The Phantom Troupe specifically said they killed her with a special sword or something-"

"I know what the Phantom Troupe said. You know what, just get the fuck away from me okay? I'll settle this."

"You are so infuriating." Rita literally fumes as she speaks in rapid Japanese to Pariston into the receiver. "I was in the dark for at least three or four hours without even a clue as to why I was even in this godforsaken city and you decide to call me literally halfway into the fuckin auction-"

"Rita dearest I need you to calm down and listen to me."

"Listen to you my ass," the grumbling continues of course, but eventually dies down as she really does need to receive instructions from the Rat. Tonight will be a big night and she doesn't intend to blow it. There's a lot of tension in the air, like a thundercloud that's heavy and about to break, and Rita plays her cards right, she'll finally be able to figure out why these missing chunks in her memory are so strangely fragmented and just… empty.

"You're there to make sure that a certain item is won by a certain man. Should someone else bid higher than he does-"

"Dispose of them, I'm seeing the picture now."

"You've always been quick to pick up on things. I entrust the rest of it into your-"

"Pariston." Rita suddenly breaks into his sentence, tone grave.

The pregnant pause reflects the shock on the Rat's part. Rita sounds apprehensive; scared even. It is unlike her, this haughty, self-assured girl, confident in her own ability to get things done, even if it meant having to get her hands dirty.

"What's going on?"

"Someone is tailing me and I don't know what to do."

Sometimes Pariston needs to remind himself that Rita is barely older than a teenager and has been forced to grow up very quickly. Sometimes he needs to remind himself that although she was probably born of a petri dish and gametes in test tubes and things like that, she is still a human being, albeit a little more enhanced in certain areas.

"Who is it."

"His name is Marzio. Or that's what he told me. Allegedly Italian. Greenish hair tied up into a ponytail. Reeks of smoke. Mischievous. Strange Nen quality I can't put my finger on. Skilled."

"We'll talk afterward. It's okay if he tails you if all goes according to plan, because you can just dispose of him after. It would be bad if my client isn't able to get the item however, and-"

"Pariston, he's stronger than me, I can feel it."

"Rita let me finish, I-" Dead silence. "Pardon?"

"I think I'd lose in a Nen fight against him. I'd die."

A long sigh. "You're shitting me."

If nothing else, the spectacle of Pariston cursing is one that Rita finds hilarious. The situation currently, however, gives her no solace.

"Pariston I'm scared."

The blonde-haired Zodiac has been in many different types of predicaments before throughout the course of this life. This is, however, one of the few incidents where he has been completely taken off guard.

He is a meticulous planner, the type that doesn't like things going wrong. At the very least, every possibility is usually accounted for so he is not unpleasantly surprised. Fear, on Rita's part had not been part of the plan; hell, it had never even part of the possibilities before.

"..."

"I know your job isn't to protect me. I don't know why I'm behaving like this tonight. This isn't the first time I've faced someone stronger than me. Please disreg-"

"Rita I need you to listen to me." His voice drops in volume several notches, which adds to Rita's apprehension. "The description you just gave me matches the current description of Marzio Salvador Marchesi, one of the caporegimes of the Italian Mafia branches that works literally worldwide. He is well-known in the Hunter and underground communities and to normal people. I've met him before on two occasions and I understand what you mean by his strange Nen."

"Pariston, I-"

"Let me finish, Rita," he says as the end of his phrase cuts off into a near-snarl. "There are two reasons he could be tailing you, whether it be one reason or a combination of both. Your connection to the mafia as the weapon they engineered might be one. The other is because I may have made an enemy of him through you. Several months ago I asked you to dispose of someone in Japan's branch to the Italian Mafia. He might be on a vendetta for that."

"Would he go to the trouble of tailing me for all that?"

"Like I said, it's probably a combination of the two factors. I'm not sure if we've ever established this fact, but to the Mafia, you're dead. You should have died four years ago when you were stabbed through against that tree so to them, you're bad news. They'll be confused."

The overwhelming bombardment of information causes the female's nausea to rise to a nearly unbearable level. "What…" She swallows, clears her throat, and tries again. "What should I do?"

"Forget the mission I just gave you. I will dispatch someone else to do that job, although should things go awry he won't be able to do it with half the finesse you would be able to," he tsks irritably. "I want you to focus on keeping yourself safe and staying away from the Mafia. You know a lot of my information too, and word tends to get around quickly from the underground to the Hunter Association, if you know what I mean."

"Should I just…" Rita looks up from the ground to see her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She had hurried out in the middle of the auction to take the phone call she was receiving. Her bright orange hair, although still done up in a nice bun, had many fly aways; her face was reddened, and her hands were dreadfully cold. Hazel eyes peered back at her, but Rita was filled with the curious sensation that they weren't exactly hers. "Maybe I should go talk to him?"

"Is your determination failing you now that the eleventh hour is nigh?" Pariston chuckles into the receiver. "This isn't the Rita I met four years ago."

"I'm just being reasonable."

"I'll tell you what Rita. I'm giving you free reign tonight. You can do what you think is the right choice. But my secrets will die with the both of us. Understood?" The unspoken threat hangs heavy over Rita's head. If they didn't, a fate worse than death would most definitely be in store for her.

In the thick cover of night, someone clears their throat.

A weak flame flickers to life and then catches on the wick of a small candle, illuminating a crumbling room of concrete walls. The air is chilly, colder than what would be to any of their likings, but it can't really be helped.

As the fire sheds light, twelve other faces become visible. They are set dead straight, uninterested and rather bored.

"It's nice to see you all again." Comes the quiet greeting from the shadowed figure standing at the head of the twelve. "Welcome to Yorkshin City; and the largest auction in the world."

TO BE CONTINUED