Ryozha hung in midair, twitching and trying to scream as Nen shaped into raw FORCE simply held him aloft in an agonizing grip. One of the surviving Nostrad lackeys managed to overcome his shock long enough to point his gun at the boy, but there was a hiss of "MINE.", more felt than heard, and a tendril of force-Nen reached out and swatted the Mafiosi out the window, to plummet screaming to the concrete, four stories below. Then an indistinct figure sauntered into the room, blurred beneath a heavy carpet of Nen.
He(?) smashed the skull of one of the still-frozen Mafiosi with a casual-looking backhand, a blast of Nen launching out of the other hand to crush the last goomba against a wall, leaving a smear of blood trailing down the wall from the spiderweb of cracks at the point of impact. Ryozha had been shoved out into the room by the oncoming wall of Nen coruscating around the… thing.
But he had been lucky. The thing's attention had wavered for just an instant when it smashed the goon. And it was CLUMSY. Powerful beyond anything Ryozha had ever sensed, but it was like watching a toddler the size of a barn. Anything in its path got smashed, but there wasn't exactly a whole lot of fine motor control. Power surged with the strike, and Ryozha was spat out of the web of force like a pea from a kid's mouth when his mother wasn't looking.
The Speed Hunter bounced off the far wall like a rubber ball and hit the ground running. Being who he was, his first step was in the room… the second was ten feet across the room, turning sharply out the door. The third was only four feet past that… and the fourth was two hundred feet down the hall. Then he simply hurled himself through the window at the end of the hall in a shower of broken glass.
Leorio was startled to see a streak of golden Nen weaving erratically down the street, sonic booms in time with drunken lurches as it blurred unevenly closer. One last desperate burst of speed, and Ryozha crumpled at his feet. "Hurts…" the boy managed. Behind him, the entire face of the building distintegrated with a roar. Leorio stared for a second, then gathered up the younger Hunter and ran, his long legs eating up the distance as… something… hopped out of the building, dropping four stories with magnificent unconcern and landing with a heavy crunch, walking out of the small crater as if it had just stepped off a curb.
The Premed Hunter glanced back. There was something odd about the way the… something… that was chasing them was moving, visible even through the wildfire of Nen that surrounded it. It didn't seem to want to chase them, moving almost as though something in its hand was dragging it forward. But it WAS chasing them, and with an uncanny, deceptive speed. Ryozha moved in his arms, and Leorio glanced down. "Can you make me go faster with your hatsu?" he asked shortly. Ryozha shook his head weakly. "C'd… m'be… if I was… in b'tter shape… ri' now, tho', prolly… tear you apart…" he mumbled. "Right. So not an option, then." Leorio commented with a wry twist of his mouth. He put his head down and ran harder.
"What did you find in there, anyways, Godzilla?" he demanded. Ryozha smirked faintly, stirring slightly. "Dunno. Big." Leorio gave him a look, nearly running into a telephone pole. "… y'think?" he riposted eventually. Ryozha grinned at him. "Feeling… a bit better. Should be able… to run… soon." By this point, he was alternately vibrating, then suddenly dragging like he weighed half a tonne. Leorio just gritted his teeth and ran. Cars were erupting from the street behind him as if he were trying to outrun a slow-moving shockwave of some unthinkable bomb, building faces were crumbling… then Ryozha slid on his headphones. Sheryl Crow's voice belting out "Real Gone" could be heard for a second, spiraling up in the the ultrasonic, and the kid slid out of Leorio's arms. The world jerked sideways, and, abruptly, they were somewhere else.
"Whew." Ryozha gasped, hunching over with his hands on his knees. "Can't do that… too often. Did we… lose… it?" Leorio glanced around. They seemed to be in some kind of warehouse district near the river, miles away from where the monster was smashing around. He shrugged. "Looks like it, kid. What did you…" he paused. Behind them lay a swathe of destruction- far less than what the whatever that had been chasing them was doing, but still looking like the results of a really nasty windstorm. "Uh…" he commented, pointing at it. Ryozha didn't even look up, just shaking his head. "S'all good. I jetted us over a block, then back the opposite way from the direction you had been running. Any smash-iness…" then he did glance back. "… oy. It's been a LONG time since my control slipped that bad just from running. Guess that grab messed me up worse than I thought."
The Speed Hunter sat on the curb, flopping back a bit. "Anyways, any smash-iness from my running is covered up for nearly two miles by that thing's destruction trail." Leorio nodded, slowly. -Just how fast IS this kid?- he wondered briefly. As Ryozha slid his headphones off, Leorio's phone rang, and he blinked. While the kid watched him curiously, Leorio stuck the clunky-looking beetle up to his ear and barked "Y'ello!"
Ryozha blinked a little, as Leorio changed yet again. A layer of reserve that the Speed Hunter hadn't even been aware of slid away, and Leorio smiled, very faintly. "Kurapika." he said. Then he blinked. "You're coming here..? Ah, of course, the Nostrad thing. Yeah, they were having a firefight with some idiots… not sure, Demon Rugby Fans? No, wait, Devil Hooligans… I was there for a meeting… just some Hunter stuff, taking a break from studying… no, wasn't planning on getting myself killed… yeah, we saw it… Nenzilla, yeesh. Biggest concentration of Nen in one spot I've ever seen, even the Spiders couldn't compete with it… alright, I'll see you there." He spun the phone around his hand, snapping it off, then tossed it into his inside pocket. Ryozha looked at him oddly, and Leorio grinned. "C'mon, kid. Got some friends coming." Then he looked thoughtful. "And the one might even be able to help you with your ancient language problem."
Two hours later found them at Kingcliffe International Airport, waiting for an airship to come in, and Leorio was discovering exactly how hyper his new companion was. Eventually, he snagged the kid and sat him down, sticking his headphones on his head and spinning the control he'd seen Ryozha use to accelerate himself… in the opposite direction. The Speed Hunter blurred oddly for a moment, then shut his eyes, very slowly. After about ten minutes, the blink finished, and Ryozha started to reach, very, very slowly, for the 'speed control' knob. An hour and a half later, his hand reached it, beginning to twist. Twenty minutes after that, he was moving at more or less normal speed and glaring at Leorio. "DON'T do that again." he snapped with a flat look.
Leorio shrugged and looked sheepish, but not especially repentant. "Sorry. It was that or go insane." he said with a faint smile. Ryozha grumbled, but took the reproof in stride. Then his ears perked up, and he glanced at the board displaying arrivals and departures. "It's here." he said shortly, blurring off down the concourse. Leorio followed at a more measured pace, grinning to himself. -Mercurial, much?- he thought with some amusement.
Leorio arrived at the gate fairly quickly, to a look that said, plain as words, 'what TOOK you so long?!', from Ryozha. Leorio gave the kid a quick smirk and turned to scanning the debarking passengers. Ryozha joined him, then realized he hadn't a clue who they were looking for, and slumped against a pillar, idly listening to music. The line trickled slowly to a halt as Ryozha got increasingly restless... Leorio pretended not to notice that the kid had vanished at least twice, returning with snacks once and a printout of some kind the second time... and then the Speed Hunter's head jerked up as his player made an odd sort of noise, and skipped tracks, abruptly belting out Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like a Lady" as the final two passengers stepped off.
Ryozha frankly stared. One was... well, short, bald on top with long sides, and looked a bit like a kind-hearted gnome... well, mostly. As soon as the song kicked in, they'd stopped dead, looked at Ryozha, followed his gaze, and started to giggle. The... person... with them was... well, 'blonde' was a good spot to start, although Ryozha really wasn't sure where to go from there. Not-quite-shoulder-length-hair, a long earring, and a... well, the only word to describe their face was 'pretty'. The rest of them was... -Sort of a mutated tabard/dress cross, sweats, and ballet slippers? ... bweh?- Ryozha thought. Whatever he'd been expecting of Leorio's 'mafia buddy', this WASN'T it. A second, closer glance revealed a strange, ring-and-chain-arrangement on the blonde... person's... right hand, carried like a weapon.
Leorio, meanwhile, had started forward with a grin, his hand out. He gravely shook the blonde person's hand, then, reached down for the little pink-haired gnome's hand, and then engulfed her(? Ryozha was pretty sure that the shorter of the two was female, just because of how she walked) in a big hug. "Kurapika! Senritsu! It's been too long." he exclaimed. He started to turn to Ryozha to introduce everybody around when the big plate glass window over the doors shattered.
The world slowed to a crawl and Ryozha spotted the incoming bullet, a weird, shimmering point of non-light in his sixth sense as the kinetic patterns of the world unfolded around him. The blonde... guy(?), Kurapika, already had one of his chains out... the one attached to his fourth finger, with a small steel ball on the end. Ryozha was genuinely impressed- the bullet was supersonic, which meant that Kurapika had reacted fast enough to draw out his entire chain in less than a tenth of a second. Then he frowned. -I don't think I can snag the bullet properly...- he thought, giving it a quick once-over. Even at these speeds... faint trails of friction fire licking around his limbs, inertial drag a constant, bizarre falling sensation... the bullet was moving visibly, ablated only slightly by passing through the heavy window.
Making his decision in a heartbeat, the Speed Hunter simply grabbed Kurapika and hurled him aside, the chain snapping out to full length for a second as the blonde was tossed across the lounge, the bullet tagging the steel ball on the end and making it twist. Ryozha was already gone by the time Kurapika was halfway across the room, sprinting hard towards the shooter's position, a laser-straight line of displaced air clearly visible in his mind's eye as he traced the direction with his motion sense.
The sniper was perched on top of one of the control towers. Ryozha covered the open ground in a blurred rush, passing Mach two as he ran, wreathed in scarlet-and-gold Nen. The young Speed Hunter flipped his momentum ninety degrees at the base of the tower, running straight up. He crested the tower in a flying flip kick, his foot moving UP and IN in a move that jerked the gun sideways, yanking the sniper's finger off the trigger and slamming it into his jaw with a -CRACK- so sharp it sounded like another gunshot, lifting him off his feet and starting to tumble him off the tower.
Ryozha finished the flip, catching the slowly (from his perspective, anyways) tumbling rifle by the strap with one hand and snagging the limp gunman with the other. Then he did a quick twist in the air, reorienting himself, and zipped down the tower and across the tarmac, running more easily now.
It had been less than three seconds.
Once Ryozha reentered the terminal, hopping lightly through the shattered window with the limp form of the sniper in tow, he glanced around briefly. Kurapika was upside down against the far wall in the wreckage of two rows of seats, his chain binding his arm to his head and basically mummifying head and arm alike. Judging by the muffled noises he (probably... Ryozha still wasn't too clear on that) was making, he was alive and more than a little irritated. Senritsu was clutching her arm with blood trickling under her fingers, and Leorio was staring around, a little wide-eyed. Then he spotted Senritsu's injury and was at her side before Ryozha could even ask what had happened.
Ryozha dumped the shooter to one side and went to help unwrap Kurapika. He managed a half-turn before the chain simply dematerialized and he nearly jammed his fingers in Kurapika's eyes as he lost his balance. The older boy (Ryozha was pretty sure he was a boy, now... for that matter, he probably wasn't THAT much older than Ryozha himself... a few years, at most) snarled and shoved him off, righting himself and re-grabbing the Speed Hunter in the same motion.
-Huh. He's wearing contacts. Wonder why?- flitted irrelevantly across Ryozha's mind as Kurapika got in his face. "You're as careless as you are fast, brat. My dowsing chain HAD that bullet, and Senritsu wouldn't have gotten hit." Ryozha pulled back, but was jerked up short. -He's STRONG...- he thought briefly, giving up on pulling loose and just glared back, then smirked faintly, glancing over at where the bullet had hit... the faux-marble tiling was smashed into a crater, the bullet penetrating close on to seven inches into the concrete below before stopping.
"And you've tested it, have you? Against military-grade sniper ordinance? Armour piercing rounds coming in at better than Mach 3?" he snapped back. "I'm sure it's stopped handgun bullets- you would have gotten it in the way easy, you're FAST... But if you were wrong... that shot would have gone straight through you and... Senritsu, her name was?.. as well. I'm sure you're all that, but it's not going to do a lot for you when your guts are painting the wall behind you." Ryozha growled. He didn't appreciate being grabbed like this, and was very near to doing his very best to put Kurapika through the wall.
Thankfully, Kurapika dropped him with a snarl and turned towards his friends. Ryozha trailed after him. The Speed Hunter looked at Leorio and opened his mouth to ask how Senritsu was, but Kurapika overrode him, demanding "Is she..?" "She's fine." Leorio responded. "The shot just grazed her, and she's tougher than she looks." Senritsu chuckled and spoke for the first time. "I really am. You should know that by now, Kurapika." her voice was gentle, but there was a bit of reproof in it.
Kurapika, briefly satisfied that Senritsu wasn't about to expire on the spot, turned to the gunner that Ryozha had dumped on the floor. A cursory examination, and Kurapika all-but-spat "One of Zenji's men. That fat pig has never forgiven me for holding a knife to his throat when he threatened Light Nostrad. He must have known that we'd be called in, and set this as a trap." Kurapika waved Leorio and Senritsu forwards. "Come on. I don't feel like answering a lot of questions right now; let's just get out of here."
Kurapika, Leorio, and Senritsu headed out the front, with Ryozha trailing after, mumbling about being ostracized. –I suppose I shouldn't be surprised,- the Speed Hunter thought, -but it still kind of sucks. Leorio WAS helping ME, at least until his lordship decided to haul him off on his little crusade.- Then he frowned. -Of course, I'm not sure I'd WANT his help if he was the type to just ditch old friends because something more interesting had come up.- A one-shouldered shrug, and he decided to put himself forward a bit, even if Kurapika didn't seem to WANT any outside help.
"Uhm…" he started, stepping out in front of the group. Kurapika gave him a frosty look. Thus encouraged, Ryozha swallowed hard and offered "If you want, I've got a room in a cheap little hotel right across the street from where that… whatever it was… attacked the Nostrad goons. Since I don't have any connection with you, it might help throw off the Zenji clan clowns, so that you're not dodging sniper bullets every time you turn around."
Kurapika hesitated, but nodded after a sharing a brief glance with Senritsu. "It's a good enough plan for now." he said curtly. "Lead the way." Ryozha offered him a lopsided half-grin and set off at a gentle jog, moving juuuuuust fast enough that the others would have to really stretch to keep up with him, while some small voice at the back of his mind chided him for being petty.
The small party moved rapidly through the wee hours of the Landinium morning, even Senritsu moving easily at a forty-mile-per-hour jog. The Dropkick Murphys belted out "Oi Oi Oi" through Ryozha's headphones, and he jiggled back and forth impatiently, edgy and uncertain that he was really welcome. Then the song cut off in mid 'Oi', and Guns N' Roses started blasting "Welcome to the Jungle". -When did I get so much eighties metal on this thing..?- Ryozha wondered briefly as he fell back a bit and snagged Leorio's sleeve. "Here." he said, tossing his room key to the premed student. "Something's happening- lead the way to the hotel, I'll catch up. Not sure what's going on… just a sense." he blurted.
Leorio caught the room key without looking and nodded. -Probably just as well.- the premed student thought. -This way I can maybe get Kurapika to calm down a little. He wasn't happy about being chucked across the room like that.- He smirked. -Even if it WAS pretty funny with him all wrapped up in his own chain.- Aloud, he commented "The kid's splitting for a few- something in the air he wants to check out." as Ryozha disappeared in a blur of speed. Kurapika frowned, but didn't comment, and Senritsu went oddly still, stretching her amazing senses out, 'feeling' for anything untowards as the now-trio continued to race through the night.
Ryozha, meanwhile, was accelerating smoothly away, stretching his legs a little after what, to him, felt like an agonizingly long time of puttering along at pathetic speeds. As he ran, he extended the sixth sense that helped him manipulate kinetic energy by making it 'visible' to him, the swirling dance of air currents suddenly standing out in stark non-colour, patches of heat showing up as faint fuzziness from their increased molecular activity… and… nothing.
Ryozha slowed for a moment, shimmying up a lamppost and perching, staring around. -Something's not right, and it's driving me crazy. I should KNOW this.- he frowned. -Whatever it is, it's… familiar?- He glared at the darkened cityscape.
--
Several blocks away, John Graves was holding court with his gang. "A'right, mates. We've got problems. Nobody much buggered with us before, but we've got these out-of-townies in now, and they want to set up shop here." He stood, getting off the wooden box he'd been sitting on, and waved his gruesome mace like a sceptre. "I can take 'em, of course, but the rest of you sorry lot don't have a prayer against those big shiny guns o'theirs. So… we need weaponry." He sat back down on the box, and watched the Devil Hooligans get into an animated discussion over where the best spot to pick up sweet guns was.
He'd been elected 'leader' (i.e. the guy that organized the beer runs) by general acclaim after the terrible firefight earlier that night, and, somewhat to their surprise, had started taking the job somewhat more seriously than expected. However, it was also something of a relief; the Hooligans were dangerous enough in their own way, but no real match for the heavily-armed Nostrad legbreakers.
"Oi, Cutter!" Jackie 'the Rat' eventually piped up. "Word has it that the Turvy Hall Shamleggers were goin' up against the MI#s- got a load of fancy-dan weaponry, the buggers've been using it to claim a stake in the coke trade." The rat-faced little informant sidled closer. "I seen 'em myself, Cutter. Real science-fiction stuff, they had- even some ray guns shootin' lasers." Cutter nodded to him. "Good eye, Rat." He glanced around. "Alright… Great Burke, Huge Jackie, with me. We'll be paying th'Shamleggers a visit, see if we can't talk them around to our way of thinking. If they got some toys from th'Numbers, it might be what we need to get the Mafiosi offa us."
Huge Jackie unfolded himself from the couch, a burly giant of a man. He burped and squashed the beer keg he'd been drinking out of against his forehead, the way a normal bloke would smash a beer tin against his head. Then he tossed it aside, and roared "Le's go, Burke, y'mindless git!" A monstrous shadow detached itself from the general well of them, a man so big he made Jackie look tiny, fully eight feet tall and nearly seven across at the shoulders. John "Cutter" Graves shouldered his mace and strode out between the two of them, looking for all the world like a Pekinese flanked by a pair of St. Bernards.
--
Ryozha, meanwhile, had swarmed up a lamppost and was bouncing from one to the next in a series of long, floating strides, skimming up one street and down another in a trail of thrumming lampposts and wavering light. His player was spitting out The Presidents of the United States of America "Peaches", which he considered was singularly unhelpful, if mildly amusing. Or at least it would have been, if he could focus; the Speed Hunter was finding he could neither pin down the feeling of unease, nor banish it. Unfortunately for him, all that his senses could tell him was that there was… something… hostile, 'somewhere' in the area.
His standard high-speed grid search had turned up little- he hadn't even been able to find the centre of the aura of unease, and his listless, instinct-driven wanderings had been equally unfruitful. Now he was getting frustrated; Ryozha was feeling he'd wasted his time, and he was quite sure that Kurapika would be quick to tell him so.
So it was with a stomach-knotting combination of apprehension and annoyance that the young Hunter approached his own room. -Honestly, if I didn't still need help with this hunt…- he thought irritatedly. He swung the door open, ready for a stream of vituperation, to… nothing. Kurapika, Senritsu, and Leorio weren't there. Ryozha slumped and blew out a sigh.
After a few minutes of searching, the young Hunter found the other three sifting through the wreckage of the building he had been fighting… or at least stomping on… the Nostrad goons. He wondered briefly how Kurapika felt about that, but the blonde chain-wielder didn't seem to care that much. He was shaking his head in aggravation. "Nothing." he snapped. "So much Nen was unleashed here that it's burned into the very stones, and yet it just… fades. Nothing." he repeated. Leorio looked up from where he was crouched and nodded to Ryozha, while Senritsu looked at the boy oddly, apparently puzzled about something.
Ryozha simply shook his head to Leorio. "Sorry, nothing. Whatever it was, it had either moved, was a residual impression, or I was just wrong." he said with a shrug. Kurapika glanced at the younger Hunter. "What did you think you sensed?" Ryozha shook his head in frustration. "I can't figure it out. It was familiar, but…" He shook his head again, then blinked. "Wait, what did you say about Nen burned into the stones?" Kurapika snorted. "Can't you even sense THAT?" he asked, almost contemptuously. Ryozha glared at him, but opened his senses, eyes shining with Gyo.
After a moment, he shrugged. "Okay, so?" he asked. "This is the same stuff that we saw earlier around Nen-zilla…"
A voice from the street cut him off. "Oi, what are you lot doing in here?" the voice demanded. The voice was quickly followed by its owner, an older Landinium street policeman. "This is a restricted area, this is… nasty business, too. You lads can't just go poking around in…" then his voice trailed off as Kurapika flashed his Hunter's license and turned back to what he was doing. The copper's face turned red, and he strode forward to roughly grab Kurapika by the shoulder. "'ere now, lad, I don't care what sort of fancy card you've got to wave about; this is still a police site…" His voice trailed off as he went to tug Kurapika around, and the slightly-built blonde youngster simply didn't move, completely ignoring him.
The policeman pulled back, his face wary. Leorio glanced from his friend to the officer, frowning a little, but Ryozha stepped smoothly in. -Leorio could probably do this better, but… ergh…- he thought, a little incoherently, the desire to prove he wasn't an idiot driving the boy forwards. Catching the policeman's arm and giving his best helpless-little-kid look, he said "Sir? Please, sir, We need to be here- big brother..." he gestured at Kurapika... "is searching for clues, so that we can stop this from happening again."
The policeman seemed to soften a little, and Leorio followed Ryozha's lead with impeccable timing, handing his card respectfully to the beat cop. He took a better look at it, and did a double take. "Ah, so you're with that lot. Maybe you can do some good after all..." Ryozha grinned. "Maybe... we ARE pretty good at this kind of thing." The old copper chuckled. "We'll see, lad, we'll..." his voice trailed off as his radio squawked urgently, a storm of static resolving into a dispatchers voice "... at the old Cannery Row! Repeat, there's an intense firefight at the old Cannery Row. Military-grade weaponry being deployed by both sides. All units, respond!"
Ryozha, Leorio, and Senritsu exchanged glances as Kurapika's celphone rang. He opened it, listened for a moment, then... smiled. Ryozha stared at him. It wasn't a nice smile. The policeman had already departed at a brisk trot after a final glance at the four, and Kurapika apparently felt he could speak freely. "According to one of my sources, that firefight is Mafia-related- he thinks he might have seen some of Zenji's men there."
Ryozha shook his head. "I still don't think we should leave them shooting it out- too easy for innocent people to get caught in the crossfire." Kurapika shot the younger Hunter an annoyed glance. "I didn't SAY that, now did I?" he asked peevishly.
--
Some distance away, Huge Jackie and Cutter were trying to cajole Great Burke into moving, but the titanic man was cowering, covering his eyes, and, although it was difficult to see, he seemed to be sucking his thumb as well. Another explosion blasted shrapnel past them, and Huge Jackie took a sharp poke at Cutter. "Look what you've done now, then!" he yelled, prodding his nominal boss again. "We've walked into the middle of a deal going down between the Zenji clan and the Turvy Hill Shamleggers… an' we've soured it, no less! Both sides blamed the other for us being there, and then EVERYBODY started t'shooting!" Cutter gave him a look. After a moment, he answered coolly "Yes, I've noticed. Feel free to shut up about it."
Inwardly, though, he was worrying. The vast, roaring power he had felt destroying that collection of Nostrad goons wasn't coming. -Is there some kind of trigger? A magic word? What?- he wondered. -Or is it something outside of me?- He waggled the mace, but it remained unresponsive. He was still far, far, far faster and stronger than before, but... -Eh, just because I'm not feelin' invool-ner-able, doesn't mean I've gotta crawl here.- flickered across his mind, an irritable frown pulling at his mouth. "Right, you two. The Shamleggers might be a pack of freaks and losers, but they're Landinium boys nonetheless. If you see any of the Mafia goons, break 'em. Any Shamleggers give you grief, bop 'em onna bonce, but try to be gentle about it." With those instructions, he strode out into the firefight, smashing down the first dark-suited made man he saw with a single swift blow. -Still got it, looks like.- he thought smugly as his two huge attendants followed him, Huge Jackie all but DRAGGING Great Burke.
--
Up the street a little, Ryozha peered around a corner. The fitful light of small fires and distant tracers flickered across his face, turning his blue-grey eyes an eerie gold, but illuminated little. He pulled back in, not wanting to draw fire. "So... nothing but badguys, right? Just shut 'em down fast and hard?" he asked, tilting his head to one side and looking from Kurapika to Leorio and back. Surprisingly, it was Senritsu that spoke. "Yes, that would be best. If we can avoid being seen as much as possible, though... Nostrad cannot afford a war with Zenji right now." Ryozha nodded, and wound up like a spring, getting ready to blur away, then stopping as a thought hit him.
The Speed Hunter glanced at the other three. "Kurapikachu here can stop bullets; can either of you two do that?" he questioned, pointing to Leorio and Senritsu. The two shook their heads. "It might be a good idea if we stuck in groups of two, then- one who can stop bullets with each of those who can't." the younger Hunter finished, glancing at Kurapika for confirmation. Kurapika just grated "DON'T… call… me… Kurapikachu…", then frowned. "It's not a bad idea." he finally admitted, more than a little grudgingly.
Kurapika thought for a moment, then blinked when a particularly loud explosion shook brick dust out of the wall they were sheltering behind. "It's spreading." he said flatly. "Leorio, with me. Senritsu, stay with the idiot." he snapped, quickly suiting actions to words and ghosting rapidly into the shifting half-light of the wee hours. Leorio followed suit with a half-apologetic glance at Ryozha, and Senritsu moved to follow, then paused when Ryozha didn't come.
"Pompous, arrogant, stuck-up overbearing…" the Speed Hunter muttered. Senritsu raised an eyebrow at him, an odd look in her eyes. "There might be a thing or two about him you don't know…" she suggested gently. Ryozha waved her off. "Of course you'd say that; you're in the mafia, and he's your boss. You don't bad-mouth your boss in the mafia." Senritsu smiled, a little sadly. "Yes, definitely a few things you don't know. But we have work to do." Ryozha shrugged irritably and followed, chafing at the slowness.
The fight was raging through a defunct factory, and had spread to several surrounding buildings- a couple of empty warehouses, and what looked like it had contained the offices for whatever company owned this complex before it fell into disrepair. The thunder of automatic weapons mixed with the deeper, barking roar of high explosives and howl of rocket engines as heavy weaponry was deployed by both sides.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE (again): So, things are getting fun, and I haven't even introduced all the sides yet. If you'd like to see the story faster, but in shorter bits, let me know in the comments- I tend to prefer to put out about five thousand words or thereabouts for each chapter, which can take me a while, as I'm doing this in what I laughably refer to as my 'spare time')