A/N: Hunter x Hunter (c) Yoshihiro Togashi!
OWC: 3,641
Chapter 09
Surprises around the Corner
The sun beat dangerously, angrily against the thin, glistening layer of sweat that rested on her skin. It had been almost an hour since the Chairman's airship had put the examinees down atop a giant tower they couldn't just figure out, and they've been looking for a way down. The five of them friends stood silently, broodily, by the edge of the tower, in a little circle, looking at the distance and the height that they would have to traverse, wondering how the in the world they would manage to get down from the top. Really, it was just the how that seemed to escape them.
"Speaking of intolerable abysses," Akane grumbled. She held her knees as she tipped her head down to look down the tower, to the trees that were like tiny insects and the sand that was at the base of the tower. As a shudder run down her spine—free-falling had given her quite some danger recently—she retreated and sighed. "We're probably ten thousand feet and more above the ground."
Killua nodded. "And it's not a good idea to climb down." He said, pointing at a tree where a group of cannibalistic, man-eating birds were halfway-done feasting on a proud rock-climber who decided, much earlier, that climbing down the tower that was more effective. Akane turned away from the sight, nausea building up at the back of her throat. She put out her tongue in disgust.
"Delicious lunch," she said sarcastically, frowning, and Killua rolled his eyes, a faint smile on his face.
Kurapika, hands in his sides, tapped his foot against the ground. He seemed to be thinking through the entire problem deeper than the rest of them. "Surely, there must be a trap door that would lead us inside," he said, looking around for clues but finding none in easy sight. "If there's no way down from the outside, it's most likely from the inside. The test would make more sense that way."
Gon, Leorio, Akane, and Killua nodded in thought, trying to catch his train. They looked around consciously on the floor where they were standing on. And then suddenly, almost at the same exact time, all of them noticed something with the people they were with.
"Kurapika," Akane started, weighing the possibilities. Her voice was soft and almost whisper-gentle. "The number of participants…"
"I know," he said. His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked one more time around again just to be sure. "They've decreased."
"What?" Leorio asked, out of surprise. He started counting with his eyes, only to be surprised even more afterwards. "You're right, there's only half the amount of people here!"
"They must've used several different doors," Kurapika concluded. "It's better if we search for other doors. We don't want to run out of choices. Let's separate; the bigger space we occupy, the better."
And that's exactly what they did. Gon and Killua went together, while Akane, Kurapika, and Leorio went their own ways. They started tapping around for a few minutes, and then suddenly Gon called them. "Leorio! Kurapika! Akane!"
The three immediately went to their call. "Yeah?"
"We found a way to go down," Gon stated simply, pushing with his left foot a trapdoor slowly down. "But there are five separate ways." Then, he turned to Killua.
Killua nodded. "And what's peculiar—at least I think so—is that they're all next to each other. Pretty weird huh?"
"Five?" Akane asked again, and Gon nodded cheerily. "Then that's enough for all of us."
"I know," Killua said, then looking at the four others with grave eyes, told them about his observation, his thoughts about it. "But I think one or two or more of them might be traps. It's already suspicious enough that they're all together, you know."
"And also," Gon added, raising a finger to emphasize his point, "You can only use these trapdoors once. We chanced to see this guy coming down through a certain trapdoor, but when we went over to check, we couldn't do the same. It was locked."
"So then we realized that the passing is one by one," Killua said. "Each person has to pass through a different trap door."
"So Killua and I decided to pass through these doors," Gon said. "No regrets, if these are traps." The unsaid question What about you guys lingered in the silent air that suddenly wrapped in the midst of the conversation, but it easily dissolved in the air.
Akane nodded, and tapped at the trap door right below her lightly with her foot. It creaked slightly as it opened and even though her heart was angrily knocking her chest—she'd learned to hate jumping with her recent experience, especially if she didn't know where she might end up in—she still answered with a mumble of "I'm okay." (She thought that it was time she got back at her fears for holding her back.) Kurapika nodded too. Leorio grinned and let out a thumbs up. "I'm okay, too. They say luck has a force."
"What does that have to do with anything?" Killua asked Leorio mockingly, and the elder pointed at his elbow, then Killua's head, making Killua shut up but with a grin still on his silly face.
Kurapika's cough interrupted the two of them, and they fell in attention."So who picks first?" the blond asked, his blue eyes glinting.
The five of them decided that a round of janken (rock paper scissors) would do the trick to arrange who would pick their doors first. "Jan, ken, pon!" Akane shouted with glee as every round passed. The results: Kurapika first, then Leorio, then Akane, then Gon, and then finally, the last one was Killua because he lost with a defeated grumble.
They took their respective positions above the trapdoors they had chosen for themselves. "At the count of three, we all jump," Killua said. "Our roads will split here."
"See you at the bottom," Leorio said with a confident smile.
"Yeah," Kurapika said.
"Good luck to you guys," Akane said, her voice trying to hide her racing blood, her pulse angry at her veins mixing in with her fears.
"Do your best," Gon said.
Killua started the countdown to nothingness. "One… Two… Three!"
They jumped, their eyes closed as their feet landed on hard ground (well maybe except Leorio, where it was his head and back that hit hard ground.) Slowly, they opened their eyes, peeling up their eyelids, and the light flooded their irises, and the room started to light up. Killua and Gon stared at each other and grinned sheepishly.
"Heh, looks like we just fooled ourselves," Killua said while grinning his ever so normal Cheshire cat grin and scratching that nonexistent itch at the back of his head. Akane could imagine him growing kitsune (fox) ears.
The race in her veins started to slow as she was calming herself down with her thoughts. "The trapdoors ended up in the same room," Akane said, more to reassure herself than anything else, the fear clung at her throat starting to edge away, knowing that she wasn't going alone anymore. Not in this round, not in this journey. "Apparently."
Gon looked around the room curiously with wide-eyes. Then, he said, with a whine for a tone, "But there's no exit!"
"I think you should read this first, guys," Kurapika endorsed, pointing at a poster on the wall with some words—instructions, most likely—written on it. The four stood up quickly, dusting their pants from the dust they had picked up on the ground, to see what he was pointing at.
'CHOICE OF THE WAY BY THE MAJORITY.
For the five candidates, you will all have to reach your goal following the majority's choice.'
"Well, there's five of us here already," Killua said. "And here's five watches. This must be… for the choice-making. Wear it." The four complied. As the material of the watches met their skin, it circled and closed around their wrists, like a prisoner's manacles.
Killua's eyes were narrowed. He could sense something odd about the way the exam would work out, but he figured that wherever this choice by the way of the majority would bring him, there would be no turning back. (It was always like that with his life. No turning back.) He had his suspicions about the Hunter Exam, and they were starting to come true.
And then suddenly, a loud voice broke their silence. "ALL RIGHT!" It came from a speaker hanging by the grey brick wall. The five people inside the room could not help but stare at the speaker in surprise for its sudden noise. "This tower contains numerous passages. We can't assure you of the safety of each. Each one contains its own crossways. You can only move forward following the majority's choice. It's impossible to pass if the choice comes from one guy only. The difficulty is that cooperation is the essential condition. On that note, just fight well!" the voice explained thoroughly. "Oh, and by the way, I'm your examiner. And I'll be watching close guard…"
They heard the static and the voice disappeared, silence befalling the room again. Suddenly, a door opened from one of the walls, almost out of nowhere.
"…Oh, here comes the door!" Leorio exclaimed, as it was right in front of him.
When they neared the door, there was a sign posted on it. 'THE DOOR: O opens, X does not.'
"The first door and they're actually making us choose," Leorio grumbled, pressing on O. "Pretty stupid ideas for a hunter test."
'O 5, X 0,' the sign read. The door opened.
"It may be not as easy as you think," Kurapika lectured Leorio. "This is just the opening. You'll see later."
"Yes, boss…" Leorio grumbled, defeated in the challenge. Suddenly he remembered why he hated arguing of the sort with smart people.
They entered the door and soon saw a crossroad. 'WHICH WAY: Right O Left X' the sign said.
"This is gonna take more time than I thought," Kurapika muttered under his breath. But time is of the essence in this round. If anything, we better hurry. He quickly chose his answer. So did the others.
'O3, X2,' the sign read.
Leorio's veins popped in his forehead when the right gate opened. His screams stopped his companions' stride toward the right corridor, as he pointed angrily at the left corridor. "WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO? WHEN IT COMES TO THESE, WE CHOOSE THE LEFT, RIGHT? THE LEFT WOULD BE THE OBVIOUS CHOICE! THE RIGHT ISN'T SO REASSURING!"
Kurapika sighed again. He was trying his best to hold on to that tiny string of patience for Leorio that was continuously wearing thin. "There was a behavior study conducted by scientists of the sort, and they concluded that when people are lost, they tend to decide that they will pick left, or go to the left side," Kurapika said.
Killua nodded, saying, "I heard the exact same thing."
"I don't understand you," Leorio said, voice lowering in volume as compared to earlier. There was something biting at the back of his brain that said he was going to lose the argument yet again. Why couldn't he win for once? "You're telling me the opposite of the result we got! What did you guys choose anyway?"
"Right," Kurapika, Killua, and Akane all said at the same time.
"Instincts tell us that we should choose the left side," Kurapika explained again, his words almost coming out of an encyclopedia. "The examiners would know this most likely, so there's a strong possibility that they made the left way much harder, or longer than the right way."
Killua nodded as Akane said, "Exactly!"
Leorio surrendered in the word battle with a guttural sound of defeat. A smirk went up Killua's face as he did so, for the feeling of victory just seemed so refreshing. He used to have that feeling every night but the sensation just faded from his grasp recently. The other four walked to the open door leading to the right side, Leorio at the end murmuring things to himself, but Gon was left behind as he stared at their backs.
"Then I picked the wrong side?" Gon said, making a sad puppy face. But no one bothered to answer him.
After the long road of nothing but an abysmal darkness, their eyes finally caught sight of the light again. There was an arena at the center of the gigantic room. The room, the walls and whatever was visible with the floor, was a color between sandy-brown and golden-brown. The arena was like an island—it was separated with a good amount of space from the other two walls.
Kurapika guessed that there would be two bridges to connect them to the arena, from the rectangular holes that were bound to the wall below them. But he just couldn't give a guess on what they were supposed to do in that said arena. A doubt that was more nervous than anything washed over him like a shower. "What kind of majority decision do you think this is?" He whispered the question to Akane, but Akane just raised her shoulders, shrugging, not knowing, either.
They thought they would just wait in the emptiness when suddenly from the other side, they heard the clanging of heavy manacles and shackles, chains. They all visibly tensed. Akane was already shaking like a leaf in the wind, but obviously she was trying her hardest to still herself. But even if so, the shaking, she couldn't be sure if it was because of her fear or her excitement.
Suddenly, a face came to view. He was in some kind of brown robe, but his hood was taken off so they could clearly see his face. He was a big muscled man, with a few badly made stitches across his forehead. But he still looked fairly human.
"We are the jurors for the trial commission," he said, straining his voice to become louder. "Our mission is to fight against you. The matches are one against one, and one can only fight once. The order of passage is free. You'll have to reach three victories if you want to go on," he continued. "The rules are simple," he said, voice sounding softer than before. "Everything is allowed. One's defeat is his opponent's victory." He paused, thinking if he missed anything else. "You lonely have to tell if you accept this trial or not! O if you accept, X if you refuse!"
"It's not like there's any other choice than this, right?" Killua asked rhetorically. "Well, it's for the sake of the qualification anyway." He pressed on O.
"I'm the first one to fight!" the muscled man said. "Pick your fighter!"
The five of them stared in silence at each other, putting the strengths of the fighter in great consideration. They were looking at each other in a way that was asking who wanted to volunteer first, but no one spoke a single word. They were weighing themselves in a battle scale built in somehow in their minds. Everybody wanted to be second, not first, so that they would have a view of how the round would go before going to their own battle.
"I think I'm going first, me!" Akane suddenly presented, jumping up and down. She was trying to shake of the anxiety, and the fear that bit at the back of her mind even if she was volunteering on her own and nobody forced her to. She made herself believe that everything was going to be alright. Then, calmer, more like a sane person: "I promise I'll do what I can." Her eyes turned light as she attempted to do a puppy dog eyes at her four male companions.
Killua sweatdropped at Akane's childishness. "You think you can actually do him?"
"I didn't train for years with my fat sensei to not pick anything useful up," Akane said with a pout. "Please, pick me! Pick me!" She continued, reverting back into a childish self, raising her arm in excitement, like a kid in class waiting to be called to answer. (And it is like this, so far, because this is in Killua's observation, where he pretty much did not see what was going on in Akane's mind as of the moment, which was actually a whirlwind of indecision and fear.)
"You're pretty mean to your sensei—It's not about the fat at all you know," Killua teased, but Akane paid no heed. He was ignored. Receiving no answer, Killua sighed. "You can have him, I guess," Killua said, finally giving in despite the doubts he held in on his own mind about her going to battle. She'd been pretty, um… incompetent as so far, and he didn't want to have to save her yet again so soon. "You guys?"
Kurapika nodded, though a little forcedly. Leorio and Gon did, too. They were weighing her in the balance of the battle and she wasn't passing it as well as they would have wanted, not as well as Kurapika would have, or Killua.
"I'm going to be your opponent Mr. Muscle Man!" Akane said, turning around to the guy. "Draw the bridge please?"
The bridge opened, and Akane went to the arena with a smile on her face. She was suddenly beaming with confidence, and the sudden 'mood swings'—as Killua had dubbed in his head—was freaking the four others out in an odd way.
Finally a decent fight. I wonder how well I'm going. Sensei would kill me if I failed at this one.
"I propose a death match," The muscle man said. "It's until the death or the surrendering of a fighter," he explained. "Are you okay with that, little missy?"
Her eyes narrowed really slightly at the nickname, but she decided to pass it off. "Mm-hmm, perfectly," she said, and picked a random stance she could think of at that very moment.
"LET'S GO!" Muscled man shouted, running toward her. Akane kept her ground, tensing her feet, as if digging her heels on the ground. When the man was near enough, she did a flying kick by grasping the arena floor with her hands, twirl around with her legs up, and hit the man square to the face. She did not stop there, though; she continued kicking the man's face with her heavy-duty boots as if she was tap dancing on them. The man was pushed backward, to the wall of the little room where the rest of their fighters wait.
Akane stood up, dusting her figure, and grinned to her other teammates who were staring with wide mouths to her. It tired her like hell—it had been a while since she'd trained and the strain with that sudden doing hit her like a grand piano—but she did not show it to to the others. She was hyperventilating, chasing after her breath, but she was smiling to supress it. Kurapika was smiling at her, because he knew that she was trained, but he was still a bit surprised. If she had such skill, then why hadn't she been using it in the past few days? "I've been trained since I was five, you know!" She told them and turned around to the opponents. Her smile had faded away and she had the most serious face they'd seen on her, her mouth a line, her eyes narrowed, glaring. "What does he say?" she called to the other people.
"He said he's given up," someone else spoke up, voice shaking, almost brittle. "He's too battered to talk but his eyes say it."
"Okay," Akane said, her voice blank and monotone. Then, hands behind her head, she walked back to her teammates, looking at the screen with their points turn from blank to a bright red "1". A grin then passed in her face, and her voice turning cheerful again, she stepped in front of them. "And so what did I say? Don't waste too much time on them."
Gon and Leorio still stood there, mouths gaping wide like a goldfish's. Killua was leaning by the wall with one eyebrow raised, and a mysterious smile on his pretty little face.
"Guys, someone better get on that arena, we're losing time," Akane said, turning to walk inside their little dark corridor to sit on the floor, legs splayed, exhausted. "Go, fight, geez."
But when no one responded, she sighed. "I have no idea."
Review Thoughts. I would be worried/scared shit too, if an incompetent 16-year-old girl who'd been halfway dead a lot of times the past few exams volunteered herself to fight a huge man. I would get even scared if she did successfully. o_o
Nao please tell me what you think, it feeds the author.
\/