Nexus HWR 8.9 Midnight Escape:
The Capital of the Cooperative
The Ant King, Meruem, for the first time in two months, looked surprised. "That boy?" He questioned. The green and purple Chimera Ant stood in a room alone with one of the three beings he trusted the most in the world. After a few seconds of slightly widened eyes and a questioning gaze in them, they returned to normal as did the rest of his posture. "That is interesting," he admitted.
Neferpitou, or Pitou as her King and fellow Royal Guards called her, nodded her head and the two of them continued to stare at the screen on the black wall in front of them. Bright white light-filled tubes were on the sides of the room going from the floor to the ceiling, with bubbles of different colored lights all over the spectrum floating around inside them. The black steel walls had them boxed into the room that was one of the smallest ones in the King's castle. That small room was still hundreds of feet wide, long, and almost as tall.
The two standing in the room watched the images on the screen flashing by at three times the speed they originally took place in. Watching them in real time would have been boring for the two who could see the fight, impressive as it was, going on easily with their naked eyes. Even at three times the speed, Meruem still watched them moving in slow motion, though Pitou examined the movements of a single boy in the fight of twelve on twelve much more closely. Meruem glanced at her while she continued to watch and he remarked, "You fear him."
She flinched and spun to the King apologetically. She bowed her head and opened her mouth to deny the fear, but realized there was no point and she did not want to call the King a liar. "Perhaps, a part of me does," Pitou stated. "I am sorry that-"
"It can not be helped," Meruem said, brushing off her apology as unnecessary. "It is to be expected that some lingering natural instinct, likely from your human, or even your cat DNA, warns you to stay away from the one who once took your life." The Ant King tilted his head to the side and stared oddly at the boy on the screen who had large muscles for a kid his age. He had spiky blackish green hair and an intense expression even though all he was fighting were alien gladiator warriors who were being forced to fight him as well. The battle speed was slow for the spectating Ant King, but he still enjoyed watching.
He is not nearly fast enough to defeat Pitou. This is strange. He opened his mouth to ask her, but closed it and smiled instead as he continued to watch. Asking Pitou would have been easy, but figuring out how it happened on his own was much more entertaining. It has been two years. Pitou from two years ago fighting him as he is now would have been an interesting fight from what I can see, yet even Pitou as she is at this moment is afraid of him. I say it is instinct, but she is watching him fight so carefully, she is making sure she could defeat him if she had to face him again, as impossible as his escape should be.
As Meruem questioned how the boy on the screen could have defeated Pitou two years before, that very same boy was woken up in the middle of the night by a short Italian man wearing a red had with the letter 'M' on the center of it in white. He was in the same city except underneath the giant Colosseum in the center of the Southern Quarter dozens of miles away. The boy sat up and opened his mouth to ask what was going on, but Mario put a finger to his lips and whispered, "Shh." The Italian man stood as tall as Gon Freecs when the boy got up. He was a little chubbier than the boy, though he had a full mustache on his upper lip unlike the fourteen year old boy. "Follow-a me," the former plumber whispered. He waved a hand towards the bars and Gon confusedly followed him away from the mats around the walls where most people in their cell were lying.
Once they were next to the cell's row of electrified stronger-than-steel bars, Mario darted his eyes around then pointed them straight at the boy in the darkness with him. "It's-a time to escape-a this place," he said in a hushed voice.
"Escape?" Gon whispered. The boy glanced around himself and then leaned towards the older man. "No one gets out of the Capital," he whispered. "Break outs always fail-"
"I have a power that I may have not mentioned before," Mario interrupted, though his heavy Italian accent and what he said made Gon wonder if he heard him correctly. Mario nodded his head at the kid a few times and then turned straight towards the bars. He stood there and Gon had to rub his eyes in confusion and then awe as Mario's body changed in the blink of an eye. The former plumber in a red hat stood in front of him still, but as Gon walked a semi-circle around him, he stopped when he was directly on the other side of Mario as the bars. He stopped because he lost sight of the man completely. He looked up and down, then stepped a little to the side again and was able to see him once more. Mario smiled, though as Gon came to his right side the boy could only see half of his face and half of his curved up mouth. "It's-a-me, Paper Mario," the Italian man said. Then, in an action Gon found almost as unbelievable as Mario literally turning himself two-dimensional, his comrade stepped out of the cage they were trapped in. Mario had not been in a cage with any of his fellow Resistance fighters for over a month now, but after their last match they switched up where he was staying and he finally got in a cage with the boy he was looking for.
Mario turned back 3D as soon as he got into the hall between the rows of cages. He turned back around and smiled at the kid inside who was looking at him with an expression of wonderment. "Come on," Gon said in a hushed voice, waving Mario towards himself. Mario nodded and ran to the side of the electrified bars on Gon's right, where he pressed a few buttons on the manual control pad the Italian man had seen a Chimera Ant use earlier that week for the first time when the remote the guard had on him was not working. He waited a few days to get the rest of the logistics of his plan down, but this was the night he decided on and he was following through with it.
The almost silent buzzing of the electricity filling the bars faded out and Mario leaned in so his head was on the other side of the bars and he nodded in at Gon. The boy reached forward slowly, wrapped his hands around the two bars in front of him, and grinned from ear to ear. Gon tried to keep quiet as he pulled to the sides, and Mario shook his head in slight amazement at Gon's impressive strength as the boy's muscles bulged and he managed to bend the powerful steel. "Alright," the kid said as he stepped sideways through the slightly bent bars and out into the hall. He glanced behind him to see if any of the other prisoners heard him get out, but the rest were still asleep. He frowned though as he looked at them, and he looked back at Mario sadly, "We can't break all of them out." The plumber nodded his head and Gon frowned deeper, "The more people we escape with, the less likely-"
Mario shook his head and Gon stopped whispering, his eyes going wide. "No more people," Mario whispered. Gon got ready to argue but Mario put a finger back in front of his mouth to keep Gon quiet. He did not feel the need to say 'Shh' again, but he did whisper, "I'm-ma sorry Gon. If we try-a to save all of Delta Squad, we will get-a caught."
"You don't know," Gon began, but Mario started shaking his head and Gon clenched his own teeth as he thought about how they would escape with all those people. I don't even know where Kiba, Akamaru, or Soul are. Axel got taken months ago. But… Gon turned his head left and looked at cells not far from their own. His fists clenched at his sides as Mario started explaining the rest of his plan to him. Black Star, Tsubaki, Kuwabara, if I leave them here, they might never get out. This is the best chance I'll ever have to save them.
"…Once-a we get the anklets off, we will be able to escape without them tracking us. If I do get-a caught, Gon," Mario grabbed the boy by the shoulder and Gon's faraway look snapped to the then-and-now. "You must use Zetsu and escape without-a me." Gon looked hesitant and Mario clenched his shoulder tighter, "Promise me Gon. I made a promise to your padre a long time ago. I will get you out of the city."
Gon stared into Mario's eyes. If I leave with Mario, Black Star and the others will never be free. If I try to free them though, we will still be on the losing side of the war. We will still be caught again, and enslaved and tortured again. There is only one thing I can do, and I'm in the perfect place to do it. The kid shook his head at Mario who lowered his hand from Gon's shoulder as the boy shrugged him off. Gon's face shadowed over even more and his eyes looked dark and serious as he stared ahead at Mario, "I am staying."
"No!" Mario exclaimed, his voice a very loud whisper that made him look around a second later to see if anyone woke up from it. "I need-a your help," the man urged, having freed Gon for more than just the fact that they were comrades.
"I know," Gon said. "But after I get our anklets off," he continued, "I'm going after Pitou and Meruem." The boy did not flinch as he said it, while Mario's face covered in sweat and he took a step back from the insane kid in front of him.
Several miles away from Gon and Mario and about a mile above their elevation in the underground below the Colosseum, Meruem suddenly turned around. He closed his eyes and opened them back up a second later as he began mentally speaking. "I have a job for you."
"King! Of course! What is this task? I will complete it without hesitation!"
"Two people have just escaped from the Colosseum. I want you to bring them to me."
"Understood!" The mental connection broke an instant later and the man who the King requested a job from pumped a fist up in the air excitedly. "Yes!" He shouted out loud in the middle of his bedroom.
The light-skinned man leapt out of his bed and did a few jumping jacks. He had blond hair falling straight behind his head to his shoulder-blades. He had a beard of brown stubble on his chin and upper lip, and his earlobes were longer than the normal man's, though he was still very human in appearance. He was not wearing a shirt, and as he slid into a set of tight-fitting armor, he admired his body's incredible muscle tone. He slid into the armor that once inside fit perfectly to his skin, then flexed his arms to his sides. His armor was black and looked like a tunic only stretchy, and it had no sleeves, looking almost like a tank top.
"Alright!" The man shouted happily. He clapped his hands together in front of his body so fast that a shockwave rippled around him.
Across the city, Gon stood on a bustling street full of people and cars. "The city that never sleeps," or the Capital, was the biggest city on all of Aebrith. Gon walked down the road in a brown cloak he got from the Chimera Ant guard he killed before getting his and Mario's anklets off. The anklets were not meant for blocking their powers, that was the purpose of the PB-4 Gon had on his right wrist, and the PB-3 Mario had. Mario was no longer with Gon however, and Gon Freecs took a deep breath as he looked over some massive skyscrapers, and still could only see the bottom of the Northern Quarter of the city. He glanced left at a section of the city much higher than the lower Southern Quarter he was in. The Embassy Quarter. That's where I would find the others who were taken by Lords and High Lords for their amusements.
Gon snarled, but he turned his attention back to the north and the giant section of the city that rose up into the clouds. It was made mostly of purple steel, at least the walls visible from the Southern Quarter were all dark purple. There were buildings built right into the sides of that giant fortress, and guard posts all over the place. Planes flew around in the sky above him, and he saw flashing red lights in the distance to his right. The Residential Quarter was just as busy as the Business Quarter this time of night, and Gon could hear sirens going off in that direction. He was dozens of miles away from every other section in the city, but he turned to the one in the north and bared his teeth at it. Meruem, this is all your fault!
The sight of all of Gon's friends appeared in his mind as he started running north down alleyways to stay out of sight. Killua, he thought, hating how he never found his friend, wondering if maybe Meruem caught his best friend like he did him. He wondered if Killua was dead after all this time, and no matter how many times he told himself over the last two and a half years, he finally was losing hope of ever finding him again. Gray, he saw the ice mage vanishing into thin air. Axel, he imagined the look on Axel's face when they discovered he was a Nobody, when Saix took him away. Kiba, Akamaru, he watched as the two got dragged out of each other's arms, everyone else screaming at the guards the whole time, roaring at the Lord for taking Akamaru away.
Gon kept running but he clenched his eyes shut in pain at the next memory. Kuwabara, he imagined the look on Kuwabara's face when that green haired girl, Yukina, was dragged by a Lord through their cell block wearing nothing at all, and how she screamed at him to help but he could do nothing. And he remembered how the Lord was tired of her complaining, and how he beat her to death right in front of their cages, how she screamed Kuwabara's name to the very last second while Kuwabara's anklet was turned on and he could do nothing but scream her name in agony as she died.
Soul, Gon thought, imagining a similar situation when that girl Maka was marched through their cell block only a few days ago. The Lord who broke her spirit broke Soul's that day, but apparently he wasn't satisfied, and someone came back and took Soul away the very next day, they all assumed to bring him to Maka and torture one of them in front of the other.
The boy with dark green hair was almost at the giant wall of purple leading up to the Northern Quarter. He saw entrances all over the bottom part of the artificial structure that made up a hundred miles at the very top, or so he had heard. I can make everything right, Gon thought. The images of all his friends from Delta Squad, all of them so tortured, they got combined with five times as many faces now, the faces of all those friends Gon had lost since the start of this war. At the very front of them was another member from Delta, Rambo, he thought, then clenched his fists and snapped his gaze up at the wall. I'm avenging you and everyone else we lost.
Gon was at the edge of a line of buildings, and he had to make a dash to get from there to the base of the Northern Quarter. He knew the King was somewhere up there, and the kid sprinted out from the building line. He made it halfway when a figure on his right caught his attention. The man was there so suddenly, that Gon spun and leapt back twenty yards away from him while getting into a fighting stance at the same time. "Who are-" Gon froze mid-question, his jaw dropped, and his eyes turned as wide as saucers. The man walking towards him looked so familiar that Gon had to rub his eyes a few times, and when he examined the man's body as he got closer, Gon became even more shocked.
The man walking his way was illuminated by artificial lights coming off street lamps and off buildings all around. There were not many people near the base of the Northern Quarter at this late hour, and those who were mostly ignored the young child and middle-aged man facing each other from twenty feet away. The older man was smiling at the boy, but his smile lowered after a couple of seconds. Gon's shocked expression steadily shifted and the kid smiled ear to ear. "Netero-san!" He exclaimed.
Isaac Netero's eyes opened wide. Gon ran across the twenty foot gap and looked the figure up and down, "It really is you! You're so young!"
"Am I?" The man asked, looking down at his body and wondering if this was considered young.
"You must have come back to life younger huh?" Gon questioned, an excited look on his face as for the first time, in a long time, some good luck came his way. "What are you doing in the Capital?" Netero opened his mouth but Gon spoke faster, "Actually, it doesn't matter! Now that you're here, you can help me!"
"Help you?" Netero questioned the boy, intrigued at what he was saying. "With what?"
Gon turned and glared up at the giant purple wall. "I'm going to kill the King. With your help we can do it. You've done it before, so-"
Netero chopped a hand into the side of Gon's neck and the boy never even saw it coming. Gon collapsed to the floor, and Netero stared at the boy's body with huge eyes. This man killed the King?! I had no idea! It all makes sense now, why the Royal Guards were so hostile towards me those first few months! Oh King! I wish you had told me! Netero leaned down and picked up the boy lying on the floor. "I am so sorry," he said aloud, but it was not Gon he was talking to.
Gon's eyes fluttered open. His vision was blurry, but it became less blurry every second, then became clear all at once as he recognized the face in front of him. "Netero-san!" Gon exclaimed. The boy jumped up, then turned around and saw that he was just sitting down on a purple metal chair on the middle of a dark floor. He was standing on a black-steel ground and in the distance on his sides he could see walls that looked like they were made of the same material. He looked up and the ceiling was far above him, then he lowered his head back to Netero to question what was going on.
When Gon lowered his head, his heart skipped a beat and his breathing became ragged and sped up. Isaac Netero stepped to the side with a smirk on his face that Gon could never imagine the nice old man he once knew smiling like. Beyond Netero, where Gon was staring in absolute horror, were a couple of figures. First there was Neferpitou, or Pitou, crouching with her hands down on the floor beneath her bent legs, glaring at Gon with glowing red eyes and all her hair standing on end. On her right there was a slender figure in a white long-sleeved shirt with antennae sticking out of his head and thin insect wings sticking out of his back. Shaiapouf, or just Pouf, glared at Gon while crossing his arms and looking down his nose at the inferior human. On Pitou's left, or at least to the left of her from Gon's perspective, there was a massive red figure covered in muscles with slicked-back black hair unlike Pitou's curly white and Pouf's straight-falling blond. Menthuthuyoupi, or Youpi, examined the child up and down and he frowned deeply as he knew where he had seen the boy before, on the very same day he died.
There were two other figures in the direction Gon was looking, both of them in between Gon and the three Royal Guards. One figure was sitting on his butt with his left leg curled in towards his right that was outstretched in front of him. That figure was the King, Meruem, and he was holding the other figure on his lap, grabbing him by the shoulders with the top of his head right in front of Meruem's own mouth. The Ant King looked straight into Gon's eyes while he opened back up his mouth and took another bite out of the opened skull of the short Italian man he was holding. Meruem pulled back and yanked brains out of Mario's head that he slurped back and bit into, sending brain juice splashing out towards Gon.
Gon stared at the lifeless eyes of the man Meruem was holding for a few moments before Meruem dropped him to the ground and got up on his feet. The Ant King stepped forward and crushed Mario's skull under his foot which was even easier with it being hollow and already partly broken. He never took his eyes off Gon, who stared in horror at the puddle under Meruem's feet, then lifted his gaze up to the Ant King with a body shaking like mad. "H-How?" Gon snarled.
Meruem spoke, "I felt you use Zetsu back at the Colosseum. A presence in my Capital vanished suddenly, of course I would notice. It did not matter that the two of you had on Power Blockers. I flew over and killed him, then watched as you approached my castle. I knew that you were acquainted with Isaac Netero so I made arrangements to see how you would react to seeing him again. I had hopes that you would notice Netero was not himself sooner, however-"
"Who is he?!" Gon shouted, getting angrier and angrier by the second. He spun from the King, an action that made all of the Royal Guards tense up angrily. Meruem held up a hand though as he did not want them to kill the boy just yet. Gon turned to Netero who continued to smirk at him, then threw both arms up in the air on either side of his head. He dabbed to the right, then swung his arms to the left, right again, before making a pose with one leg curled up with a foot to his thigh and both hands pressed together high above the top of his head.
"The honorary Royal Guard of the King! Protector of the Capital and the High Commander of the King's Army!" He re-planted both feet on the ground and punched his fists down to his sides, then brought them slowly up the front of his body, crossing them across each other before swinging them straight out to either side like an airplane. He spun around on one foot and leaned his body forward while kicking his other leg back behind him.
"Ginyu, enough," Meruem said. The dancing man dropped down to a knee and nodded instantly. Meruem wiped some brain from his lips with an arm and then continued to Ginyu, "You did well. Thank you for your good work."
"It was nothing at all Your Majesty! I live to serve!" Ginyu exclaimed.
"Thank you," Meruem said. "Now you may leave," he added, and Ginyu looked up and without any hesitation nodded at the King. Meruem smirked as the man who looked like Isaac Netero left. He did not mention what this boy told him of Isaac Netero killing me. Hmm. I do not believe he is planning anything however. He must not want to bring up my death for another reason. Ginyu is strange in that loyalty is his most redeeming quality, which I have only ever seen before in my Royal Guards.
"Where is the real Netero?" Gon growled towards the King and his Royal Guards.
"Watch how you speak to the King you insolent brat!" Pouf screamed, unable to hold back.
"Pouf," Meruem warned, and the guard behind him held his tongue but continued to glare at Gon furiously. Meruem looked Gon in the eyes, but as he got ready to speak to the boy, he was thinking a hundred times as fast and his mind was astray. That is another good thing about Ginyu. Unlike my Royal Guards, he never questions an order. Unlike them, he has no true attachment to me, does not truly care if I live or die, however until I do I know he will remain loyal. Strange man, very strange. "Ginyu destroyed his old, damaged body, after switching bodies with Isaac Netero. The man you once knew died in that body," Meruem explained to Gon, making the angry boy open his eyes wide in pain and anguish for a second, before dropping his gaze down to the floor.
Rambo, Mario, Soul, Maka, Kuwabara, Kiba, Akamaru, Killua, Netero, Knuckle, Rex, Jimmy, Axel, Gray… I'm sorry. Gon stopped trembling. He stared at the floor beneath him that was getting more red every second as blood from Mario's corpse spread his direction. It got all around his feet and pieces of brain chunk floated around on the red river beneath him. "I-I… I'm done."
The bracelet on Gon's right wrist broke. Meruem's mouth twisted into a huge grin as this is exactly what he wanted. From the moment he felt Pitou's fear during the last gladiator match that they visited together, he had been awaiting this moment. He put that Italian man in the same cell as Gon's because he could feel that the man's hope was not as faked as the rest of his comrades, that he might have had a way out of the cells, and knew the two were friends from the way they looked at each other once while within the King's vision. He had actually been waiting for the boy to break out when he was re-watching the clip with Pitou only a little earlier, and when he told her who had escaped from prison the first thing she asked was whether or not the King set it up that way. This moment was what the King had orchestrated so simply, but the feeling that everything fell so perfectly into place was a great one, especially as his curiosity was finally being satisfied.
Pitou's eyes turned huge and the female Chimera Ant braced herself to pounce. Pouf and Youpi were also shocked as Gon's power that was hidden behind his PB-4 slammed into them. The boy's body surrounded in a dark aura that stretched all the way up to the ceiling, a white veil around it, and his hair shot up inside that aura stretching all the way up with it. His hair was pitch black like his skin that turned the same color, and his eyes when he snapped them up and glared forward. I can't, he thought. He tried so hard to keep it together, but after months of this, and years of steadily reaching that point, he lost all remaining hope. Netero's appearance was a lie, Mario never made it out of the prison, and even here, he could only see himself dying or going back to his cage to die in the Colosseum. So I don't care. Whether it's today, or tomorrow, I'm dying here. This, is what I can do. Maybe, I'll manage to save some people, maybe, I'll give the Resistance a chance. All I need to do... his enormous aura slowly shrank down to his body until there was a golden veil around him.
Gon's body was no longer that of a child's. He was huge, taller than Meruem and as muscular as Youpi. He rose a fist and clenched it in front of him, and the floor beneath his feet cracked down. I am stronger than last time, he thought, then rose his gaze to Meruem once more. This is my full potential. This is everything I could ever throw at you. "I'm going to take all four of you down," Gon said, his voice sounding different just like he looked like a totally different person. He stared straight ahead and Meruem understood now how the boy managed to kill Pitou back on their world. The two of them locked eyes, and a dark purple aura surrounded the King while white auras surrounded each of his Royal Guards.
Gon got into a fighting stance and Meruem did the same. They faced each other, man against beast, a King against a warrior. The two of them shot off the ground towards each other and met right in the middle. They both punched forward their right fists and a flash of white light exploded when their fists collided, filling the room and surrounding everything in its glow. Gon and Meruem could see each other in that light as they pushed harder into their punches. Gon glared into the Ant King's eyes and he roared, "MERUEM!" Then, the light became more solid and worked its way over their entire bodies, up their faces, and over their eyes.
A/N And... cliffhanger! XD Thanks for reading! Posting this past three in the morning since I finally made it home from college, (took me 34 hours in all). Hope you all enjoyed the chapter! Next chapter is the Gray team chapter, so get excited! I'm posting one a day all week! Oh, and happy Mother's Day.
Darugus chapter 46 . May 13
Nice chapter
Well bounty of 20 million and rank black luffy is probably just getting started
Also I was really wondering if you would include the whole shima spy thing since you included lucifer who was in the manga
Shima being a double agent for mephisto and lucifer was really a twist in the manga
And luffy jumping into the cataclysm head first hope that doesn't go bad
Zoro probably heard that luffy is on aebirth wondering how he react after being separated from his captain for so long and if he would still be loyal to him
Thanks! Hope you liked the new chapter and glad you read the Blue Exorcist manga so it wasn't a Spoiler! Word of Luffy's deeds may spread to Zoro's ears considering we saw his group hearing about Goku beating Doflamingo earlier. Wonder how he'll react?... XD
Espada-001 chapter 46 . 7h ago
Well not too much to say here today, so all I have is that I'm feeling sorry for the Hippo and I look forward to seeing more of the resistance. Oh and I had a good laugh when Luffy did his little cliff diving. lol. Well any way until next time have a good day and I look forward to tomorrow!
Hippo NOOO! Resistance coming in to play next chapter! Thanks for the review! And thanks again to everyone who read, faved, followed, and reviewed! 'Till next time!