#fly pariston

[kenergized]

24 25 🙂

arya youre so fucking real for sending LOL

What is an alternative life path your OC might have gone down? How different would their life be if they'd made those decisions?

now i get to answer for all four of them <3 theres more but the four i posted about lol

sav - would be a farmer in india if his village hadnt been decimated. he would have developed an interest in plants regardless but it would be more tame. dunno if hed be trans still but probably? would not have transitioned tho. probably wouldnt have learned to read but its not absolutely impossible

ode - unlike my other three, she lacks a significant life defining incident. she was born into this street circus and stayed in it and eventually moved upwards enough to accrue power in the mob world. its the 'ideal' trajectory i guess. i think she really lucked out finding sav tho. she probably would have otherwise gotten so attached to someone who would have taken advantage of her and abused her :c

ananke - dont really know for sure what would have happened had he not been trafficked since it literally happened as a goddamn embryo. he doesnt know this but he comes from a black family in the equivalent of liverpool so he would have grown up in a tight knit community. he would have a hard time due to being a little autistic but i think he would have found a somewhat honest life (whatever that means in this world). worked in some kind of store im feeling pawn shop for some reason

rosie - so if she had not been kidnapped and chimera’d, she’d been one miserable princess (not sure if that’s still gonna be her title) forced to marry one of the royals of england. she understands the importance of this and would not have complained publicly but she would be soooo sad :/ she’s my little baby butch lesbian.

What is your favorite thing about your OC?

so a lot of these characters are traits i adore cherrypicked from preexisting characters that have disppointed me LOLLLLLL this amuses me so ill answer in terms of this

sav - tgs jekyll's extreme compartmentalization of his emotions even pre-potion. sav can come off as really cold cause of this but hes more just wary of vulnerability and socially awkward. i love this fucking trait so much man

odetta - UMMMM shes my clasic bpd-coded gal . asuka - eva (monster) - pariston - mariko you know the drill. all time favorite trope probably Lol

ananke - so i make a lot of mean characters but thats cause i just find it so fun to figure out why they are so mean. ananke isnt really mean but he can be nastier than youd expect... and i like that. he's resentful of his circumstances but redirects that anger away from the source of his problems. hes honestly such a nice guy tho generally speaking sorry ananke :( also hes inspired a little by izutsumi, al from fmab, but MOSTLY sans + papyrus from the handplate comic .

rosie - straight up marie antoinette and oscar from rose of versailles combined but in a way that doesnt piss me off so much. shes a little like rapunzel + h+c pariston as well <3 sheltered child with an enormous burden that she only later realizes isnt a good cause at all and certainly not worth destroying her life over. also i just love wings and flying and shes got WINGS and flies

[milliondollarhoe]

The reason why I love hxh so much is that the anime shows class discrimination in every arc in its own way. Some may say its shown in CAA only or whatever but I feel, class discrimination started in the anime at least since the mention of meteor city. Not only class discrimination but it also shows misogyny in some way, how the examinees listened to male examiners carefully while the only female examiner was taken lightly and even made fun off but in the end her exam was the most difficult one to pass and failed almost everyone. But yes, Togashi did dwell into class discrimination more than anything in hxh. Phantom Troupe originated from Meteor city, a ragged place. They were the ones who made that place at least livable, remember the glimpse of chrollo's past? Where he was running in torn clothes around a pile of trash and nothing? Remember how phantom troupe was formed around a pile of trash? In CAA Meteor city had buildings, it was looking like a place that was at least livable, that is because of the crimes did by Phantom Troupe against Mafias, who are also criminals. If it weren't for their annihilation of the Kurta clan (which I am very very very sus about) they would've been considered robinhoods. The Hunter association is not at all "good" in fact as mentioned, Pariston has sent people for missions that are impossible, he is known to be responsible for the disappearance of many hunters. Hunter association is also affiliated to Mafias. Yet they are never seen in the bad light and Phantom Troupe are considered to be the most wanted criminals. The class discrimination is more clear in the CAA where Togashi used the Ant hierarchy to explain. A "king" is born to rule the world while others follow him without question. Mereum existence not only was a threat to the world but was also a threat to the Hunter association. In this case the Hunter Association can be considered as the other "king". Fighting for absolute domination. Hunter association that barely gave two flying fucks suddenly started caring about humanity. Because they would then lose power. Hxh characters are some of the most amazingly written characters out there. Gon is no typical shonen protagonist, who was always the "good" side in fact he is a gray character. He isn't good but he isn't bad either. Thats what makes Gon different. Killua used to be an assassin, that doesn't erase the past of his killings and his association with his family and the fact that one of the villains is his own Brother, again making him too a grey character. Leorio is the only supposed "good" main character but he is literally not shown in most of the arcs that is there. And there are "bad" characters too, for example Mafias, who too die or whatever. But here is what, Togashi making characters like Mafias and Leorio, he is not denying the fact that there is no absolute "good" or absolute "bad" but you don't see them often, they are rare. Humans aren't just supposed to be "good" or "bad", Humans are more than that, they are more than just "good" or "bad", no they are beyond those concepts and Togashi portrays it brilliantly.

[fenrir-fen]

i just stumbled on your account, but reading your Ging headcanons really just,, made my brain happy 😭☝️ do you have any more you’d like to share? :O

OMG THANK U!!!! yes of course I do hehee

this isn't really shown in the manga or anime but I like to think he has a LOT of battle scars and just general injury scars from exploring

his special interest is obviously archeology, if you mention it around him his tough guy persona completely slips away and he'll ramble for hours

he's a dog person as opposed to pariston being a cat person... i think if they lived together he'd get him a cat to make him happy but he'd quickly bond with it himself since he's shown to be an animal lover in general and animals are known to be drawn to those with strong aura

he's scared of flying, he can never go on planes :(

he smoked as a teen, but quit into early adulthood

he's a major heavyweight when it comes to alcohol, he could drink all night and be just fine, but when you actually manage to get him drunk he's OUT of it

he actually likes at LEAST one of paristons suits but will not divulge which one(s) because he's a little shit

his comfort food is ramen, he likes it spicy :3 he likes spicy food in general but mostly because he's afraid to admit he's got a low tolerance for it

[helenawa-art]

I just remembered that last night I dreamt that I was on a car with Leorio and that car was flying on the space and all that happened on a laser tag so I had to shoot with the laser pistol to other people while Leorio drove and I was horrible at it so I just jumped out of the car??? 😭😭😭 Later on I found that white guy from bobobo and Pariston hanging out on an ice cream place so I just joined them????

[sweetchup]

💌Love/Hate💌

Type: Pariston Hill x Reader

Prompts: Soulmate Au (Colorblind) + 7– Innocent/Corruption Kink

Author Note: OMG I am so so so sorry this took so long. I’m not sure what it was but my brain couldn’t write for Pariston. Like it was if the zodiacs took over and put it into a total shut down mode. It was insane. (ALSO Small warning, this is Pariston and, as expected, he’s an abusive dick)

(Valentine’s Day Masterlist)

When you had first accepted the job of being randomly assigned someone’s secretary, you hadn’t expected to be assigned to the CEO of a high end tech company. You mean, who in the world would have known that by just calling a flyer on a street corner would have led to working with someone so prestigious.

It almost sounded too good to be true!

….And, you wished you hadn’t jinxed yourself in that moment. The CEO of that high end tech company actually turned out to be only 21, having inherited the company from his father. He was not only a spoiled brat and a player but, my god, was he lazy. You were sure that if you hadn’t spent hours on the phone discussing ideas with his father and done all the paperwork for him, that the company would be in ruins before someone could say “We’re broke!”.

Though, no matter how hard you worked your ass off these past couple months, nothing could prepare you for this moment.

“Dear god someone help me…”

You and his father had told him many times over this week. On February 14 at noon, you have an important meeting with the Hunter Association. You can’t miss it.

But, of course, that lazy ass was running late. By 45 minutes to be exact.

“Miss (y/n), is Mr Avoli going to be showing up any time soon? It isn’t like him to be late.”

… And it surely didn’t help that you were standing in the meeting room, waiting for him with the Hunters Association's very own Zodiacs.

Shamefully, you turn to the doglike woman who had introduced herself as ‘Cheadle’ earlier and give an apologetic bow, “I-I deeply apologize. You see Mr Avoli's son, Hunter Avoli, recently took over the company. I reminded him constantly this past week about the meeting but I’m afraid he may have forgotten...”

“Oh that guy.” You hear the monkey zodiac ‘Saiyu’ spit out in disgust, “He is almost as bad as that dirt bag, Ging.”

“It’s not a problem Miss (y/n). I’ve met Hunter many times before so I’ve seen first hand how unprofessional he acts. This is clearly not your fault.” Cheadle reassures, giving you enough confidence to lift your head up from bowing to look at her as some of the Zodiacs complain in the background.

As you stare at the grayish colored woman, you can’t help but wonder what color she was wearing. Due to you still not having found your soulmate, you can only see the color of your soulmate’s eye color. Which, in your case, was brown. A chocolate brown to be exact.

And, usually dogs were brownish in color so you kind of wondered what color Miss Chealde chose instea—

“We are still waiting on the chairman and two other zodiacs so why don’t you take the chance to try and give Hunter a call.” Mizaistom, the ox zodiac, suggests suddenly.  

“O-oh of course. Thank you very much Miss Cheadle, Mr Mizaistom. I’ll be very quick— Eep!”

Oh god why me?

Just as you made your way to the door to exit the room, someone on the other side had already swung it open. Making you, in pure surprise and shock, take a step backwards. Though, just like how your day is going so far, Luck truly didn’t seem to be on your side as you end up tripping on your own two feet and begin to fall backwards.

You expected to land hard on the cold tile floor in front of everyone, extremely embarrassing really, but instead you don’t. You still hit something firm and hard but… it was different. Actually, now that you think about it, you felt higher up than you were before…

“Ah, Ging this is why I said you shouldn’t barge into rooms so suddenly! You scared our poor guest!” A voice suddenly calls out from behind you, his breath slightly tickling the shell of your ear. Quickly, in surprise, you whip your head around to—

…Shit.

As your eyes lock with the male’s chocolate brown ones the room suddenly bursts into a flurry of color. Blues, reds, greens, maybe yellows? You honestly didn’t know the proper names for all the colors you were seeing for the first time. However, in all this chaos, you happened to know two things.

One, That you had just met your soulmate and Two,...

… it was none other than the Vice Chairman himself, Pariston Hill.

“Oh my! How unexpected!” Pariston chuckles out, causing what seems to be sparkles to pop out around him, “I never thought our guest here today would end up being my soulmate. Not at all!”

“I—“ “Shut up Rat!”

You freeze as something suddenly comes flying past your head. What the fuck...

“You have a soulmate? Not a Chance! Not a Chance! Not a Chance!”

“Quit joking.”

“I doubt the King Of Kickbacks would have an ordinary soulmate.”

It was as if a bomb had erupted in the room, everyone was in pure disbelief at what Pariston had just said, Suggested, he even had (Well everyone except Ging, of course). Hell, some of them haven’t even found their own soulmates yet. So, why did the heartless ass Rat get to have one?!

“I assure you, I’m speaking the truth. Why would I lie about something like this?”

We can think of many reasons…

“U-uh…” You suddenly speak out, slightly flinching as everyone’s attention turns to you, “He is telling the truth… I saw colors other than brown for the first time when we locked eyes.”

“See!” Pariston says happily, pulling you affectionately closer to him in his hold. As you are flustered by the act from the handsome man, he takes the chance to walk to what you believe is in the direction of an empty seat. However, you soon realize that wasn’t what he was intending as he walked right by it and leaves through the other door located in the room.

“Hey Rat!! Where do you think you are GOING!?!” The tigerlike man screeches out, storming through the door you two just left as well.

“Well, I’m going to spend time with my soulmate of course.” Pariston exclaims, his smile not even flinching as bloodlust from the other zodiacs creeps out from the room.

“As if I—“ Suddenly, a loud chuckle behind you rings out, cutting Kanzai off.

“C-Chairman Netero!” You squeak out in surprise at the older man. Oh god, what a disaster. As someone trying to make a deal to him, this looks bad. So bad.

“My, what a twist!” The Chairman rings out, stroking his beard as he thinks as he walks past you two. “Hmm… You and (y/n) can be excused from today’s meeting, Pariston.”

“B-But, Chairman!” Kanzai rebuts. Soon shutting up however as the chairman grabs onto the collar of his jersey.

“It only makes sense to give them alone time, Kanzai. We will just call Mr Aloisi for the meeting instead of having (y/n) give it to us.” Netero explains, giving you a small wink as he drags Kanzai as if he was some kitty cat back into the meeting room.

What a strange group…

As you sit there stunned at everything that has happened so far, you don’t realize Pariston has already begun walking again. It takes you a while to realize as well, precisely the loud sound of the door of his private office being closed. He must have walked pretty fast…

“A-ah. Umm you can put me down now.” You mumble out to the… Blonde man (unable to tell if that was the correct color).

“Hmm. What was that?” Pariston asks, as if he didn’t quite hear you from before.

“Oh. I was wondering if you could put me down.” You tell him again. Shit, the way you said that came out bad. “I-I mean I’m really appreciative of you saving me but you are likely getting tired of holding me and I can walk on my own.”

“Oh!”

You expected at that exclamation that Pariston would instantly put you down to the floor, but instead he walks over to his deck and places you down in front of that. Odd, but you don’t question the sparkly man.

Speaking of odd, as you looked around the room, you realized it was really cold in here. Much colder than the conference room and hallway. God, what a bad day to wear a skirt but no tights. Especially those insulated ones you recently bought.

“Are you Cold?” Pariston suddenly voices up, causing you to turn behind you to look at him. He still hadn’t moved from his spot right behind you.

“A-ah yes I am. I don’t want to be a bother but could you possibly turn it down a couple of notches?” You ask, taking a step back a little to give a little bit of space between you two.

“I’m afraid I can’t. My thermostat broke this morning.” Pariston exclaims, his smile turning into a bit of a frown. However, that didn’t last long as he soon had a full blown out smile again. “But, I do have my jacket that I wore to work this morning. It should be… Ah! There it is! Right on the seat of my chair if you want to grab it.”

“Oh.. thank you.” You give Pariston a small smile before leaning over the desk to grab the brown coat.

You couldn’t wrap your head around it but for some odd reason you didn’t feel fully comfortable around him. Which was even weirder because you didn’t understand what was causing it. Shouldn’t you naturally feel comfortable around your soulmate?

Perhaps, you just needed to get to know him better. That’s likely it. Your just nervous since he was supposed to be your clien—

“Ah!” You let out a yelp as you feel pressure and sharp pain in your lower regions. At first, you thought it was perhaps a weird cramp or something like that. However, once you fully grasped what you were feeling, you realized you were just trying to make yourself believe that.

“Oh whoops! Tight. Tight. That must have hurt.” Pariston chuckles out, rocking his hips back and forth as his eyes watched his cock disappear and reappear out of your hole. Harshly letting go of the strap of your panties that he had pulled aside to watch as an ever so slight bit of blood comes out in your slick. Delighted to see such results.

“P-Pariston. Please be gentle.” You gasp out, turning yourself by your waist to place a hand on the man’s chest. Ever so slightly fisting the fabric of his suit when he suddenly gave a really hard thrust. “Let’s slow down… too soon…”

“How come? I thought you said you were grateful to me right?” Pariston teased out, pulling your hand off his suit as well as pushing your front down against the desk. Making it so you were trapped underneath him.

“I-I am but—“ “Shh… I’m only taking my reward!”

However, even with your constant pleas for him to be slower, gentler, Pariston continued his actions. Watching you grow more and more wet as that uncomfortable burning sensation suddenly turned into pure ecstasy.

It was perfect…

Pressed down against the desk, unable to move as you were essentially being taken advantage of by him. Your very own soulmate.

It was embarrassing, agonizing and traumatizing.

Surely, you hated him. You despised him.

Having waited long enough, Pariston decided to finally pull out and flip you over so he could see you and the results of his hard work. “Now, Now my dear. It’s not so—“

Pariston feels himself blink a couple of times.

Oh… So, you were one of those types huh?

It was if you were some humanized version of a golden retriever. Your eyes that were supposed filled with terror or hatred were still as sparkly and innocent before you began. You were loyal to him to a fault and he honestly doubted you could bring it in your heart to even hate him.

It was annoying but it wasn’t that big of a problem. He could always break you in other ways.

However, that’s not exactly what was troubling him right now.

Fluttering? Or, Bubbles?

Whatever it was, he didn’t understand why he was feeling this sort of way. Especially seeing you look at him like that. With that love filled look…

“Pariston…” You mumble out, your voice slightly slurred. “Are you okay? Are you done?”

Are you okay?

Those three words ring in Pariston’s head. Eventually, causing him to break his composure and let out a light laugh.

“Aw. Did I leave you high and dry? Here I’ll fix that.” Pariston calls out. A slight shiver going up his spine as he hears you let out a small moan as he slips back into your dripping cunt.

You know what, he didn’t care how strange you were making him feeling.

Whether you looked at him with loved dazed eyes…

Or cried out how much you hated him with those kissable lips of yours.

Either way, he would enjoy every bit of playing with you. You had the rest of your miserable lives to try it out after all.

[thethousandyearwitch]

Fatal Taste

“The townspeople believe you’re some kind of evil spirit or monster-” he laughed lightly, not sure if it was because of that ridiculous thought, or because of the soft lips that were caressing the underside of his jaw. “Oh, Ging,” Pariston sighed against his skin in a way that chased goosebumps up his spine. “They are right.” -----------

Ging Freecss has been summoned by his elusive pen-pal Pariston Hill, to examine his claim of a rare and unheard of art collection. Even despite the warnings and difficulties on the way, he was not prepared for what awaited him at the artful mansion.

M-Rated; Vampire!Pariston Hill x Art Appraiser!Ging Freecss.

AO3 Link!

It was the height of summer, as a horse drawn carriage made its way into a small valley village, about 8 miles off the coast, 20 miles from the country’s capital. The sky was mostly clear, and hungry crows on fenceposts watched the carriage pass between grazing fields. The carriage itself didn’t carry a heavy load, just some imported goods from the harbour destined to be sold in the capital, the carriage driver, and a stranger to the country, with messy black hair and rough beard stubble, who had asked for a lift. During the ride he kept mostly quiet, though he introduced himself as “Ging Freecss”.

As they reached the village’s main plaza, the man hopped of the carriage, and bid the driver goodbye with a thanks and some money he had pulled from his trousers, seemingly with no mind paid to how much he was actually giving out.

There wasn’t much to this town, a couple rows of houses with dusted windows, a quaint pub with a few tables decked outside, one of which was occupied by an elderly couple, and a shrine to a local god adorned with candles and food offerings. Ging decided to sit down for a brief rest at the pub, grateful to take refuge in the shade of a sun umbrella next to the tables.

After a short while, a short and stout young woman greeted him and offered him a menu, though he knew well that all he wanted to order was a cold beer. And his wish got fulfilled, as she returned quickly with half a litre of local beer and some trail mix in a bowl. The waitress spoke up with a bubbly voice. “We don’t get many outsiders, sir, you’ve must have had quite a trip. Are you on your way to the capital?”

Ging took a large gulp of his drink before he replied, welcomed the cool chill that chased down his throat. “Ah, No, though I heard it’s a beautiful old city. I’m here to appraise someone’s art collection. Do you think you could help me find an address, actually?” He handed the waitress a neatly folded letter and pointed at the sender’s address. She mustered the handwriting closely before gasping lightly.

“That’s mister Hill’s manor! How do you know him, sir?”

At the same time, the old man at the other table turned around with a stern look. “You must not go there if you value your life, son.”

“I’ve only been in correspondence with him over letters, and though he seems like a weird fellow, I doubt that his antics will cost me my life.” Ging laughed with a rough voice, though the man’s stare didn’t waver.

“He’s a strange and dangerous man. I’ve heard of women visiting him and never returning.”

“Maybe they liked it there so much that they didn’t want to leave! I’ve met him before, he was real polite and friendly, even invited me to his home. But my parents would have killed me if I’d gone out that late in the night.” The waitress sighed wistfully.

“Do you insist to go, young man?” Now the old lady spoke up, her voice sounded sore and stutter-y.

“I’m here to do a job, and if his collection is the real thing, then I’d hate to miss it. But I’ll be quick, probably on my way back to the harbour by the end of the evening.”

The old woman stood up and walked with slow steps over to him, before insistingly grabbing at his hand and pulling him up from his seat. “Come pray then, boy.”

“Ma’am, really, I will be fine, I- I am a grown man- “She pushed him towards the shrine and signalled for him to kneel. “I’m not very religious, y’know- “

“Nonsense, in the face of danger, every man can turn towards any god. Let me pray over you.” Ging rolled his eyes but knew better than to argue with an elderly woman, being beaten with a cane can teach you that lesson. “Dear Gods, watching high above, protect this soul who has strayed from his dedicated path. Guide him to safety and be the shining armour that repels any and all mischievous evils. Assist him in making his judgement, and forgive him for his faults, as we forgive as well. Hold him tight within your hand until he may part which his earthly body to meet you once again.”

Ging waited and listened to the eerie prayer until she removed her hand from his shoulder. “Say, Auntie, a couple rumours don’t turn a man into a monster, do they?”

“People have gone missing in the woods around the mansion. The house itself, it’s always been known to home something evil, for centuries. You youngsters are not in touch anymore with recognizing something malevolent even if it were to spit in your face.”

That cryptic message- or insult- still couldn’t convince Ging not to head towards his destination. Afterall, something like evil spirits couldn’t be real, or else he’d be haunted twice over after disturbing crypts and burial sites, places of worship and sacrifice, the last remains of civilisations long gone. Not once did he think about ghosts or monsters taking revenge.

This ‘Pariston Hill’ was no monster, but most likely just a pretentious man with too much money, feigning interest in art without understanding their purpose and meaning.

Ging asked the waitress again about the address, and she explained a step-by-step on which road he had to hike up to reach the manor. He left her a tip, bid farewell to the old couple, and started to head up the hill road, burlap sack with a few travel belongings over his shoulder.

The road quickly turned from sturdy cobblestone to dirt as he walked, the surrounding forest grew thicker and unkempt around the trail. The woods were quiet except for the occasional crow-cry and wing flutters in the tree crowns. Sweat made his clothes stick uncomfortably to his skin, his hair frizzed due to the humidity. He was an experienced hiker, but he still was sure that anyone who decided to build a mansion only accessible via dirt road was a sadist.

But as much as Ging craved refreshment from the heat again, the subtle static in the air and the increase of tiny insects flying around hinted at something unwelcomed: A summer storm was brewing. It wasn’t unusual for this part of the country, but it could certainly throw him off his schedule.

“Please, anything but- “Ging tried to plead to whatever deity in these parts might be responsible for weather, however he was interrupted by a blinding flash of lighting, followed by booming thunder, and finally cold rain. “Asshole.”

After a half-hearted jog through the rain and mud that would soak him head to toe, dim lights of a fenced in mansion came into view. A lit oil lamp illuminated an unlocked gate, and a gold-plated sign with fancy curled letters that spelled ‘Pariston Hill’. Ging didn’t second guess the open gate and let himself in, eager to get out from under the downpour. As the gate creaked open, he could have sworn he saw a cat that scurried around the corner, but it was gone before he could have been sure. An orange brick path led directly to the main entrance of the house, adorned on either side with well-kept lawn, hedges cut into elaborate shapes, and exotic flowers that Ging had seen in other countries and continents. The entrance was made up of two large solid wood doors, intricate floral carvings, and two iron door knockers that seemed to be decades old but kept in good shape.

But as the rain seeped deeper into his clothes, Ging disregarded the aged architecture and gave the door a few heavy knocks. Through the rain he tried to listen for a response or approaching footsteps, in vain. And yet without any warning, the door clicked, creaked, and slowly opened. Bright light from inside illuminated the outside area of the entrance. In the middle of the light, there he stood.

He seemed a bit taller than Ging, a perfect posture as if practiced. His hair stood out even against the equally golden light, and he wore a vermillion suit, most likely more expensive than the entirety of Gings closet combined. For some reason, the term ‘handsome devil’ came to mind.

For a second, the man looked down on him with a serious, even hostile expression, before he gave a pleasant smile in recognition. “Ging Freecss, I assume? Seems like you had a refreshing journey here.” He leisurely held out a hand, which Ging immediately took for a hearty handshake, subtly making sure that rain splatter from his hand and sleeve would scatter.

“I do enjoy a good hike, and a free shower is a free shower.” He flashed a determined grin, and Pariston removed himself from the man’s cold and clammy grip, still smiling though disgust flashed within his dark eyes. He stepped a bit to the side and made an exaggerated hand motion to invite Ging to step inside the manor.

The entrance hall was lit with a large crystal chandelier and a warm fireplace at the other side of the room, with two red velvet seats facing the fire. Marble floor was covered with a long red carpet, while the walls were adorned with classical paintings. Just at a glance Ging could tell they weren’t imitations.

“Ging- If you allow me to address you so intimately,” Pariston started, though he didn’t wait for an answer before he continued, “Ging, I’ve been anxiously looking forward to your visit. Now, I could have always called a local appraiser to come and do their job, but I sense a sort of passion within you that I’m sure won’t disappoint me.” He flashed another smile, though far from genuine as his stare and tone dripped with mockery.

“Well, usually I would have declined to come such a long way on a shallow request of a pen-pal, but it would be a shame to let the outrageous claim of a complete Ushiromiya portrait collection go unchecked. Where’s the goods?” Ging leisurely started to press out the water that had soaked into his clothes, directly onto the red carpet below. In any other case he may have shown an art collector more respect, but the smug aura of this man, which had already seeped through any and all letters he had ever received of him, pushed Gings buttons in all the wrong ways.

“I’d think a professional appraiser such as yourself wouldn’t want to examine rare paintings in such a condition that you’re in. It would be a shame if you were to get some dirt on them. Why don’t you go ahead and have a shower, while I retrieve the paintings from their safe?”

“I’m pretty confident in my ability to spot a forgery from a safe distance.”

“I’d be a terrible host if you were to catch a cold.”

“Never been sick in my life, now, I insist- “

“This is my humble home, and they are my paintings, Ging. I am the one who insists. And after all, a free shower is a free shower, isn’t it?” Pariston approached him and took clear advantage of his height, looking down at his visitors with an overly polite smile. Ging had never backed down from a challenge, however, his curiosity about the paintings had increased more and more as he looked around the mansion and noticed more authentic art and architecture. If Pariston Hill had truly come into possession of a rare collection, he didn’t want to deprive the world of this discovery just because he refused to take a shower.

“Alright then, but I don’t have a change of clothes.”

“I’ll generously lend you some of my attire, though I won’t make any promises about it fitting someone of your stature.” Pariston laughed lightly as he proceeded to push Ging towards another room down the hall. “Use any towels, soaps, and the likes as you please, be my guest~”

The washroom Ging got ushered into was equipped with a marble sink, a spacious shower, and a white cabinet that held towels of different sizes and colours. It was clean, maybe too clean, as he could find no trace of this room being used…ever. No water stains on the faucet or at the shower tiles, no used toiletries. Most likely it was a washroom just for guests, and he didn’t want to think about the over-the-top luxury that must hide in the master bathroom.

As he pulled his water-heavy clothes off his body, cold air hit his damp skin, there was a knock on the door. “I’ve got your change of clothes~ I’m sure you’ll like these even more than your regular attire.”

“What am I supposed to do about my clothes? I assume you don’t want me to leave them on the floor to rot?” He cautiously pressed one shoulder against the door, just in case his strange host would get any ideas.

“If you insist to keep them, I can hang them to dry by the fire.”

“You mean ‘dry’, and not ‘burn’, right?”

There was a moment of hesitation, before another light laugh echoed through the door. “What kind of person do you take me for?”

“I’ve been told it’s rude to insult a host. Thanks for the clothes!” Ging quickly opened the door just enough that he could fit his arms through, grabbed the neatly folded pile of fresh laundry, and dropped his soaked clothes into Paristons still extended arms, before he shut the door and clicked the lock. He could hear the sound of the clothes hitting the floor with a wet noise and snickered to himself.

.

.

After a long, warm shower, Ging tried his best to towel dry his hair, though in the end he opted to just slick it back. The clothes Pariston had picked out for him were simple, though not necessarily his style: Black slacks, and a white button up that didn’t seem to fit quite right, thus opting to roll up the sleeves just below his elbows and tuck most of the shirt into the pants. He kept the three most top buttons unbuttoned, because he had always hated the stuffy feelings of suits and dress shirts. The faint smell of cologne that wasn’t his stuck to the clothes, but he pretended not to notice. It smelled of cinnamon.

He exited the bathroom, towels discarded in the sink for whoever to clean up, only to find Pariston at the fireplace, Gings clothes neatly folded over the velvet chairs, as he held a small piece of paper. A picture.

“What an adorable baby!”

Ging approached him with quick step and snatched the picture out of his hands at an admirable speed. “Do you usually go through your guests’ belongings or am I a special case?”

“My, I was merely picking up something that fell out of your pockets. Is it your child?”

“What if he was?” Ging glanced over his spread-out clothes, suspicious of any tempering that might have been done.

“He certainly looks like you, if not as, how do you say,” Pariston waved his hand around as if he were to grab a word out of thin air, “bellicose.”

“Whatever that is supposed to mean. He’s my son; since you’re so curious.”

“Well, well~ Congratulations to you and your- “Pariston glanced at Gings hands, before he made eye contact again, prying smile “wife?”

“No such woman exists. Did you invite me here to pry in person about my life, or do I actually get to see the art?”

“Just making casual conversation. But since you are less of a hazard now, I’d love to see you go to work.”

“Don’t throw me out when you have to face the hard truth, though.” He shuffled through his light luggage to retrieve some appraisal tools, then followed Pariston Hill up a wooden staircase that opened to a long hallway of unmarked doors, and the walls here too were lined with paintings. Some were simple landscapes; others elaborate portraits of different eras. A couple of the artists seemed familiar, though most of them seemed to come from absurd sources or lacked an artist’s signature at all. He stopped in front of one particular painting: A painting of this very mansion. It was yellowed with age, and the edges that poked out from its golden frame seemed worn out and somewhat burned. A signature at the very bottom read in cursive ‘P.H.’ and a date around 50 years back. “Huh?”

“Ging~ Here please.” Pariston held a door open, this time with a smile that seemed almost painful with how his teeth were clenched. Ging decided not to question it, and followed his host into a dim room, packed with various dusted boxes and furniture covered in blankets. At the very end stood a row of aged easels holding up paintings.

“Think they will look more genuine in the dark?” he joked dryly, but his eccentric host flicked on a gas lamp in the row with a fool’s confidence, and-

The room lit up and Ging faced four stunning paintings.

He had studied the previously only known Ushiromiya painting painstakingly when he was still just an apprentice. He learned the way the brush strokes had been made in deliberate ways, burned the colour choices into the back of his eyelids, knew the exact curvature of the one-winged eagle that adorned its signature.

These paintings were real. There was no other explanation.

He went up close, examined the texture, searched for any mistakes in disbelief. But each one was flawless.

“And? Did I waste your time?” Pariston stood a couple feet back, arms crossed, and head tilted.

“They are real… Pariston, this is ground-breaking!” Ging spun around, his face a mix of bewilderment and pure joy. This joy only doubled when Pariston clapped his hands together and seemed to be just as elated.

“Wonderful! Simply splendid!”

“We might be some of the only people alive to have ever seen these!” Ging enthusiastically grabbed Parison by the shoulders, his mind was racing with potential studies he could write on these paintings and the way their existence was to alter history. “How did you get these?”

“They were given to my family by the original artists; So I’ve been told.” A mysterious smile, almost melancholy danced on his lips, before he gave another flash of his shining teeth. “I never doubted their authenticity, but I couldn’t keep their existence to myself, could I?”

Ging gave an enthusiastic slap on Paristons shoulder, feeling for the first time like the two of them shared a surprising, genuine connection. “Will you donate them to a museum? Try to contact the family of the Artist? Or the remaining Ushiromiya family members?”

“I will keep them here. Maybe hang them in my study. Now, would you care for a meal, Ging?”

“What?”

Pariston had already walked back to the door and flicked off the light, his silhouette only illuminated by the faint lights in the hallway. “I’ve let my chef prepare us a meal. I assume you don’t get asked for dinner often then.” He chuckled.

“I thought you didn’t want to keep their existence to yourself!”

“And I didn’t. You know about them now. Exciting, isn’t it?” He chuckled once again, before he disappeared into the hallway.

Ging weighed his option if he were to grab the paintings and escape into the night, but the storm still raged on outside, and he couldn’t safely juggle 4 large canvases all the way to the harbour or capital by himself.

For now, all he really could do was to find a way to convince Pariston to change his mind, through persuasion, threats, or force. Maybe if he were to get some outside forces to apply pressure, he recalled his colleague in forensics, Cheadle, owed him a favour.

He stepped into the hallway and quickly fell into step besides Pariston. “Dinner would be lovely, I’m sure, unfortunately I’m on a tight schedule, so I’d rather get going. I could write you a certificate of authenticity for the collection, though I’d need a second appraiser for the process. My good colleague Miss Yorkshire would be thrilled to visit, I’d think.”

Pariston came to a halt, ran his hand through his messy blond streaks of hair with a sigh. “Oh, Ging, I simply can’t let you continue in this weather. No ship will sail under these conditions, and the way to the capital is prone to mudslides. I don’t want to be complicit in your accidental death.” Ging was about to argue before he was cut off once again. “As for your colleague, you can gladly summon miss Cheadle Yorkshire here, though we’ve never been on very good terms.”

“Wh- How do you know her?”

“Let’s discuss it over dinner, shall we?”

.

.

Ging expected to be taken to a large dining hall with a table set for a dozen people, but in the end, they entered a separate room adjacent to it, with a medium scale dining table only decked for two. Unlike the other rooms in the house, this one was lit with multiple candles in elaborate holders -17thcentury bronze, Ging thought – and a phonograph was playing a concert recording. The men took their seats at opposed ends of the table, Ging sat with a natural comfort and slack, as if any seat he claimed was immediately his own with no regard to manners or humility; Pariston sat with seemingly practiced confidence and superiority as he made a show of crossing his legs and resting his chin on his hand. A confidence that irritated Ging to no end.

“Must be lonely to usually eat by yourself in this large, dusty room, huh?”

“I keep company one way or another.” Pariston spread a napkin on his lap, though the twitch of his eyebrow indicated his true annoyance with Gings remark.

Just then the door from the hallway opened, and a tall man in a chef’s uniform entered, as he pushed a small silver cart stacked with dishes. As he stepped closer, Ging noticed strange markings around his eyes, though there was no telling if they were tattoos or merely makeup. “Good evening,” he mumbled, in a voice unlikely for a man of his tall stature, “tonight’s meal is wagyu rump steak with rice and garlic Bok choy, served with a bottle of mister Hills personal wine selection.” After Pariston nodded in approval, the tall man started to serve the plates and poured two glasses of deep red wine.

“Don’t tell me you eat like this every day.”

“Of course not~ I prefer Kobe Fillet. I was trying to be mindful of less acquainted tastes.”

“You’re right, I don’t eat beef a lot. I prefer fish, but I understand that not everyone can get their hands on bluefin tuna.”

“Maybe I will let it be prepared for next time.”

“Is it that lonely up here that you’re already inviting me to another dinner?”

“I just assumed you’d appreciate the company, without a significant other and the fact that your child is most likely not under your care.”

The men exchanged challenging looks. Pariston still had a polite smile, though he started to lean forward in his chair like a predator about to pounce, while Ging couldn’t keep an irritated smirk form his lips. The tension was only interrupted by the chef, who cleared his throat and told the men to enjoy their meals. Just then the sweet and savoury smell of the food hit Ging, and he couldn’t deny the hunger that had built itself up.

Pariston lifted his own wine glass up, red liquid sparkled in the candlelight. “To the most interesting guest who has found his way into my home.”

In response, the man in question raised his own glass, though with less bravado and more at leisure. “To the Ushiromiya collection and their questionable owner.”

Both of the men started drink from their wine, though Ging noticed Paristons eyes on him, as if he awaited a reaction. The wine was sweet on Gings tongue, it lacked the usual sting that wine would give him once he swallowed.

“How is it?”

“Could be worse. You’ve got a lot of time on your hands to even make your own wine.”

The blond started to cut off a piece of his meal, and took a small bite, never breaking eye contact. “I am a man that easily gets bored. I need a lot of hobbies.”

“That makes two of us.”

They ate mostly in silence, music from the phonograph kept the atmosphere light. Ging hadn’t realized just how hungry he was, until he finally ate enough and the lingering knot in his stomach loosened. He emptied his plate in what felt like record time, no regard for table manners, and drank more wine while Pariston ate at a patient (and reasonable) pace. After his third glass, he was expecting the normal pleasant buzz that alcohol gave him, in vain.

“You still need to explain to me how you and Cheadle are acquainted.” He poured himself another glass, which Pariston seemed to approve.

“We have met a couple years prior, at a theatre opening in the city, hosted by Sir Netero. A friend of a friend, so to say. Unfortunately, people like us aren’t meant to get along. I offered her a dance out of curtesy, but I felt like she might have mauled me if I insisted.”

Ging laughed lightly, “She does have a temperament. I can’t imagine her being much of a dancer.”

“Saying something like that about a lady isn’t very nice, especially considering the same could be said about you.”

“Bold assumption, with no evidence.”

“You don’t look like you’d have the grace required for dancing.”

“I may not get invited to many balls, but I’ve known myself around a couple dancing events.”

“Are you willing to prove yourself?” Pariston got up from his seat, walked over to Ging, and as the phonograph started to play another orchestra song, he extended his hand to him. “May I have this dance?”

The shorter man hesitated, but unable to admit defeat to the other, he took the hand and immediately got pulled into the starting position for a Viennese Waltz, his right hand in Paristons, his left rested on the others upper arm; Paristons right hand rested on Gings shoulder-blade. As they started to move, Ging had to concentrate hard to not look at his feet, seeing as it would be an admission to not being confident in his steps, though locking eyes with the other man stirred something uncomfortable within him. He couldn’t clearly remember the last time he had danced with someone else, so the closeness of it felt foreign. As the music continued, they waltzed through the room, at first only in the ‘natural box’, though soon Pariston led them to side whisks and natural turns, a steadily increased pace.

“I do have to admit, you’re better at this than I initially thought.” Pariston smiled.

“You shouldn’t judge a book so easily by its cover.”

“You shouldn’t forget who has the lead.” Before Ging could question the statement, he was dipped low as the orchestral music seemed to reach its climax, hands immediately grabbing for more hold before he’d meet the ground. In the end, he clung to Paristons shoulders in a move that lacked grace but not force. The other man meanwhile had let go of his shoulder-blade, and instead had both hands secure at Gings waist. “Afraid I would drop you?”

“It’s what I would have done.”

The two men laughed and stood themselves up straight once again, but their hands remained where they were, whether it was a conscious decision or not. A slower song started, the name of it at the tip of Gings tongue, and as he pondered it, he may not have even noticed that they started a slow dance together. It was a simple three-step, and Pariston would occasionally close his eyes to hum along to the music, uncaring of the closer contact between him and the other man; The longer it went on, so did Ging.

“I didn’t think you’d agree to dance.”

“Maybe the alcohol made me more susceptible to idiocy.”

“There was no alcohol in that wine, Ging. Or at least not enough, to get you anywhere near an inebriated state.” He chuckled.

“A wine without alcohol can barely call itself a wine. What is in it, then?”

“I wonder if you can guess~”

Ging thought about it for a minute, determined to prove himself better once again. “It was very sweet, but too water-y to just be crushed fruit.” This only elicited a humoured ‘Mhm’. “I think it is a process of combining younger wine with some sort of flavoured tea.”

“Incorrect, but a good try~”

“What is it then?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Ging rolled his eyes, but continued their slow dance, as he got used to the hands on his waist that occasionally tapped their fingers to the music. “Keeping secrets must be another of your hobbies. The wine, the portraits…” He trailed off when he realized that Pariston inched closer; He smiled, self-satisfied, dark eyes focused solely on the other. Suddenly Ging felt the blood in his veins run cold, like faced with a predator in the woods, his heart was beating in this throat. Every nerve in his body started to feel shocked and screamed to run. But he couldn’t. Didn’t want to. And so, he stood still when Paristons ghostly cold hand cradled the side of his face as if another rare piece of art. When Ging didn’t flinch away from the touch, the blond placed a first kiss just on the corner of the others mouth. Then another. And another. Until Ging turned his head just enough to connect their lips.

Paristons lips were soft and faintly tasted of that sweet wine, with each kiss his hold on the others waist would tighten, like he was afraid he’d turn and run. But instead, the shorter man wrapped his arms around the blonds’ neck, even a tad eager to press his tongue between his lips, to be closer, to taste more. Every new connected kiss made his stomach twist in just the right way, he relished that it felt dangerous, maybe even wrong, and yet so satisfying.

After what felt like hours, though realistically it was probably a couple of minutes, their lips parted and Gings head was left spinning as Pariston continued to kiss along his jaw. But there is one thing that pulled at his mind, annoyingly so.

“The townspeople believe you’re some kind of evil spirit or monster-” he laughed lightly, not sure if it was because of that ridiculous thought, or because of the soft lips that were caressing the underside of his jaw.

“Oh, Ging,” Pariston sighed against his skin in a way that chased goosebumps up his spine. “They are right.”

“Wha- “Suddenly a sharp, paralyzing pain shot from Gings neck to the ends of his body. He couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, all he could do was to drive his nails deeper into the others shoulder, and let out quiet gasps. Meanwhile a thumb stroked over his cheekbone as if to soothe, the other hand on the small of his back to keep him from collapsing.

He wondered if he was going to die here, at the hands of a vampire that he’d been warned about. He wondered if he’d been deliberately seduced- did he consider himself seduced? – just to be killed.

He threaded his fingers through the vampire’s hair, with no energy to pull him away from himself, just enough to hold on. Acceptance. He felt cold.

A tongue lapped over the fresh wound on his neck, followed by a few soft kisses. The pain subsided to a dull numbness. His line of sight started to darken. Pariston cradled Gings face in his hands, lips and chin stained red. He pressed another kiss to his lips, so tender as if he had never revealed his true nature, and the shorter man but couldn’t help but huff out a laugh with the last of his strength.

“Tastes like wine.”

“Another secret revealed to you.”

The last thing Ging saw was Paristons smile and dark eyes. Then blackness.

.

.

When Ging came to, the past day felt like a distant dream. He felt no pain, only a comfortable warmth that surrounded him, and someone’s fingers that combed through his hair.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. A dim room he did not recognize, next to him a bedstand with a carafe of water and some medical tools that included gauze, needle, thread, and a dirtied scalpel. He himself was still wearing the clothes he had been presented with after his spontaneous shower. He turned his head to the other side, and there sat Pariston on the same bed, one hand in the man’s hair, the other held an aged book. At the movement, he retracted his hand in shock, before his signature smile flashed once more.

“You’re awake.”

“I’m alive.” It somewhat hurt to talk, and as he reflexively reached for his own throat, he felt a thick bandage at the side of his neck. “You kept me alive. Why?” He started to sit himself up, not wanting to be physically talked down to.

“I don’t want to be bored. You’re the first visitor I’ve had in a while that managed to keep my interest. I guess I am pretty selfish.”

“You are.” Ging reached out to brush a strand of hair from Paristons face, before gently pulling him in for a kiss. “So am I.”

He felt his stomach twist again as they kissed, so sickly sweet, and he wanted more. He deepened the kiss, drank up every relaxed sigh that came from the other, let himself be greedy and reach for more. Even though Pariston almost killed him, still could, he touched Ging like he was something treasured, close enough to not let him escape, but not enough to break him. And maybe that’s what Ging wanted, to be desired, even in a destructive, dangerous sense.

As the feeling returned to all his limbs, he took advantage of it to properly sit himself up, then straddle Paristons lap. He broke their kiss, leaving the other somewhat panting. Again, the blonds’ hand was at the side of his face, not as cold this time, and his thumb traced small circles into his cheek.

“How often have you coerced someone here, just to feed?”

Pariston closed his eyes in thought, “It would be pointless to keep count. But no one has ever made it as far as you have.”

This prompted Ging to claim the vampires’ lips with his own in a possessive kiss. Paristons free hand started to trail up and down the shorter man’s thigh; In response, Ging started to feel his way from Paristons shoulders to his chest, lean but firm muscle.

And no heartbeat.

Of course, there wouldn’t be. He was dead.

Ging thought about how, maybe in a different lifetime, the two of them could have met through different means, both alive and entirely human. He thought about the countless people that have stepped into this mansion, never to return to their families. How even he would one day pass, either through natural means or because Pariston had lost interest in his existence. Would he ever let someone else get this far, after Ging? He felt cold steel in his hand.

This time, Pariston was the first to break the kiss, only for a moan to escape his lips. By now, they had slipped further down the mattress, with Pariston flat on his back while Ging still firmly straddled his hips. He looked so human under Ging, dark eyes half lidded and even the faintest flush on his cheeks.

Ging thought about how long he could stay here. About all the paintings in this mansion and their history he could study. About shared dinners and slow dancing to orchestral music. The image of himself as a corpse, entirely dry, flashed in his mind. A wine bottle with his name written on it.

Ging took Paristons hand from his face and held it over his racing heart. “I don’t think someone else has ever done this to me.” It felt ridiculous to say but it also tasted so bitter with truth to say out loud. His other hand grasped the foreign, cold object harder.

“What an honour~” Pariston purred, and he tried to lean up to unite in another kiss before he got pushed back into the mattress.

“We are both selfish, Paris. I don’t want you to do this to anyone else. And I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

In the vampires’ eyes flashed confusion, irritation, and then the glistening object that Ging had hidden. The scalpel from the bedside table. And in his last moment, he smiled with such honesty, that it felt like it was Ging who would receive that fatal blow to the heart.

It was over in a moment.

The scalpel, with enough force, had swiftly pierced through the ribs all the way to his heart, and after a pained gasp and a bit of twitching, Pariston Hill had died.

Ging remained seated for a while; He did not move, just looked. He wondered if he should cry, if he even could if he wanted to. But in the end, he closed Paristons eyes, gave him a parting kiss on the forehead, and left.

He never told anyone about the paintings.

Never told anyone about what he experienced in the mansion.

He wanted to be selfish and keep this secret just between himself and Pariston. Forever.

[plumknodel]

i dont want dark continent arc i dont want to see pariston or ging or any of these monarchy family people i dont want to see the phantom troupe or hisoka i just want to smile again taiyou abite you can fly away sekai wa kimi no kagayaki no matteru daichi wo fumishimete kimi no mezametei yoku tenshi no hohoemi de tsuredashite

[kulluto]

pariston is like the icarus of anime men. he has done so much problematic shit and yet the fanbase still likes him. but like a greek tragedy pariston will fly too close to the sun and suddenly decide he’s going to call for the extermination of ai for no reason and nanika will die as a result. and that will be his fall from grace

[jyuanka]

A belated paridling Valentine drabble.

Cheadle receives a naughty gift, then a phone call. More cheeky and suggestive than anything.

“Did you receive it?”

It was his cell phone number, but the spirit of his voice was that of someone gleefully twisting the cord of a landline. There was a commotion around him, and he was distracted for a moment when somebody called his name on the other side. He didn’t hear her answer.

“Cheadle?”

She took off her glasses because she didn’t want to keep staring at the elegant foam-green box hugged gently by the sheets of her bed.

“This shit cost fifty thousand jennies, Pariston.”

“It shouldn’t have a price tag.”

“I looked it up online,” she said, unable to stop her fingers from trailing over the box’s smooth surface, the protruding golden letters, pulling her leg up to the bed. “Stop buying me expensive things I never asked for. It’s embarrassing.”

“Why?” He asked, feigning hurt, and she could imagine the hand that went to his heart, the way his eyes widened, the curve of his open mouth. “Aren’t we friends?”

“No, we aren’t. What world do you live in?”

“The world where you use my gift and tell me how good it is.”

“I won’t even open it.”

“Not even if Ging used it on you?” He murmured. “Not even if I was watching?”

Her heart dropped, beating between her legs, the tips of her fingers. She held the phone away from her face just to sigh and take a shaky breath. He walked out of whatever room he was in, his surroundings growing much quieter. She could only hear the sound of his breathing.

“He told you he’s coming?”

“Mmhmm.”

She reclined on the bed, head swimming, the free hand not holding the cell phone drawing quivery circles over her thigh, sneaking under her blouse. She couldn’t hold her breath anymore.

“And you?”

“I won’t be able to fly over tonight,” Pariston said, sighing glumly, his voice lost to the gust of wind that sent crackles through the phone. “Wouldn’t a video call be exciting? How about 11:30, your time zone.”

“Where are you now?”

“Still in the MP office.”

“What are you wearing?”

“Your favorite suit,” he trailed off. “A butt plug.”

Cheadle closed her eyes.

“You?”

“The red harness.”

Pariston drew a breath.

“Let Ging open the box for you. Don’t cheat and use it before I call.”

A breathless laugh bubbled up in her chest. “I can’t believe you. It’s a fifty thousand jennies gold vibrator, Pariston.”

“I love to spoil.”

[to-move-on-means-to-grow]

just between you and me... who do you want to Fuck, Marry, and Kill to?

any anime/real life characters is fine

Hmmmm, tough one, not gonna lie 😂

I'm going to choose from HxH because this is the one I'm truly invested in right now ♥️

Also, very long because I like to explain my choices so no one misunderstands or anything 🙇

Kill: Pariston or Shaiapouf (maybe even Tonpa) edit: Tserriednich (I can’t pronounce his name, so I call him Terror Sandwich like someone else said)

Fuck: Hisoka, Razor, Machi or Pakunoda

Marry: Chrollo, Melody, Knuckle, Shoot or Mizaistom

For 1), the reason I chose those is because I don't really get to truly hate a character that easily. I can almost always find at least one thing that I like about them, but I just can't find anything about them.

Shaiapouf's only redeeming quality (if you can even call it that) is the fact that he looks attractive - at least in the manga I really think so.

Tonpa is just a dick and I'd probably push him off a cliff.

While Pariston just creeps the hell out of me. He smiles too much and I just can't understand him or his reasons for being the way he is. Compared to him, Hisoka is a sweetheart. I hated him before I even read about him in the manga and I haven't changed my mind.

edit: Terror Sandwich is just despicable. I don’t know if he’s just as bad as Pariston or even worse, but I can’t stand him. I hope he dies. Again, Hisoka = baby compared to this dipshit. I don’t care. I hate this guy. End of story.

@Chrollo, baby, please, kill him.

When it comes to 2), man... I can't lie. Physically, Hisoka is extremely attractive. He was the first character from HxH that I knew about before I even got into it and I find him really interesting. Plus, I have a feeling that he's really good in bed, very experienced and maybe, big maybe, also aims to show his partner (whether serious or a one night stand) how good he can make them feel 😏

Razor just grew onto me, especially after seeing how... good he became because he was given a chance. I really like how he looks and also how competitive he is. Very driven towards his goal and respecting the rules. I have a feeling he'd be very good with his partner and treat them well.

For Machi and Pakunoda, it's not just the looks, but also how nice they seem to be. I know that they are part of the Troupe and everything that happened and what they were part of. But I really liked what we were shown and I just know that they'd love their partner and want them to feel good and loved 😳💕

For 3)... you can't tell me you didn't see Chrollo being #1 😂 But I'll leave the best for the last and explain the other choices.

Melody... a sweetheart from top to bottom. I didn't really feel anything in the very beginning, but I really got to like her a lot. I have a feeling she'd be very affectionate and understand her partner very easily because of her ability. The looks just fly over my head when it comes to her. I'm curious as to how she looked like, true. But she's so much more than that and awww, she's just really cute and sweet (ʃƪ＾3＾）

Knuckle and Shoot have become my favourites very quickly during the Chimera Ant Arc, along with Morel (who I see as a more fun uncle of sorts or a very good drinking buddy 😂). Knuckle is such a dummy sometimes, he likes animals and is very compassionate and empathetic and just wants to help everyone. While Shoot is so scared and anxious, but in the end he just proves to want to help as many as he can and just swallows his fears and charges in. I somehow see myself in both of them and know that anyone would be lucky to be married with any of those two.

Mizaistom weirded me out a bit in the beginning, especially because of the costume 🐮😂 But I really like how calm he is and just seems to think about what would be best for everyone. He seems very wise and experienced and is clearly the type of a person who can make quick decisions and actually be rational. He seems like the type of a husband and person you could just have a calm and interesting conversation and also have fun, maybe even make him a bit more... outgoing, let's say? He does seem pretty reserved. But I think in private and with the right person, he's a bit more relaxed. I really like him a lot and I can't wait to see more of him. 😍

And now, my #1... Chrollo!!! 💞🙇

Honestly, it's because of him that I actually started reading and getting interested in HxH. I was reading the HxH Kareshi Doujinshi (pretty much different HxH characters as boyfriends) and there are two stories for Chrollo in that book. I don't know what drew me to him. Maybe the looks, the tattoo, the way he talked or the fact that he was in a bookstore 😂 But I just searched his name afterwards and Holy God Damn, I was in love 😳

I can't lie and say that I was pretty disappointed but not really surprised that he was one of the villains and pretty... upset, let's say, after reading about the whole Kurta thing. All the bad things that he and the Troupe have done are still there, in the back of my mind. But I choose to focus on the aspects of him that I like and find attractive: intelligent, powerful, a great strategist, strong, likes books, is polite and also charming. He's very charismatic and no, I didn't forget that he's physically attractive (to me, he is; beauty is subjective, after all).

I feel bad for him because of the way he grew up and I sort of understand some of the things he does and says. That doesn't mean I condone them.

But with a partner (no manipulation, stealing, yandere or anything like that), I think he'd be a great boyfriend and even husband. I see him as someone who could come to care greatly for someone and do his best to make that person happy, loved and content with the fact that they chose him of all people. He might rely more on the material at first to impress his partner, but if his partner turned out to be someone who doesn't care about that and wants him and his love and time, I think he'd be more than happy to provide.

I don't think many people loved Chrollo or even showed him love, so if someone he cared and loved showed it back to him, I think it would actually make him extremely happy. He wouldn't want someone who would lie or cheat, mostly because he is very good at lying, so he'd know. No one wants someone like that, right? So the fact that he could be himself, all vulnerable and relaxed, around someone would feel refreshing and freeing. Him having a family, someone he could wholly trust, besides the Troupe, sounds beautiful.

I'd love to read and talk and debate with him for hours and days and actually even attempt to show or teach him things and get taught in return. I'd be so curious to know what he knows and likes 😄

Also, I love the fact that he's polite. Some people can be such jerks for no reason and with strangers and it irritates me a lot. I value manners a lot and always think that I'm talking and being polite because I'd like to be treated in the same way, no matter who it is. Of course I'll talk and act in a different way with friends and family, but that's because they know me so well. But with strangers? Politeness is key. Unless there's an actual reason why someone shouldn't be polite, then I'd prefer being civilised.

Anyway, those are my theories and observations.

Phew, I'm tired 😂

I hope this answered your question. And if there's anything else, just tell me and I'll be glad to answer. 🙇

[tiaragqueen]

Could I request a Yandere Pariston from HXH if all possible?

Bête Noire

✂ Pairing: Yandere! Pariston Hill x Reader

✂ Word Count: 1k+

✂ Trigger Warnings: Manipulation, brief violence

[Edited]

***

This is, by far, the most shocking request I've ever gotten. And not because I feel unnerved by his smile and eyes, nope. I also want to apologize if he seems OOC. I'm not very familiar with him.

If you like my writing, please support me on ko-fi!

“I don't wanna know. If you're playin' me, keep it on the low, cause my heart can't take it anymore. And if your creepin, please don't let it show.” - I Don’t Wanna Know [Mario Winans]

There was a small part of you that knew that Pariston wouldn’t come. Why would he? Ging was more interesting than you could ever be. He was intelligent, powerful, and insightful. Sure, there were a lot of such people in the association, but Ging was the only one who Pariston hated so far. Whereas you were merely a simple woman who managed to grab his attention somehow, and that alone spoke volumes about your relationship. You didn’t even know why he stayed with you when he didn’t even bother to drop by most of the time, but you figured something about your personality still interested him in some way.

And you weren’t sure if you should be grateful or angry, knowing that he only dated you simply due to your ‘appeal’. Because, honestly, was he even capable of loving in the first place? Could he ever love someone beyond the certain intrigue he found from them? Could he ever stop provoking and destroying people that he ‘loved’? Probably not, and you might not have the right to question his ways when you’d already agreed to plunge yourself into this predicament.

Heck, you might be the first woman who dared to form a ‘relationship’ with him, and that proved your stupidity.

But there wasn’t any way out, was there? As far as you were concerned, you were bound indefinitely to him. You couldn’t break up or try to manipulate him into doing it because he always succeeded in seeing through your pitiful endeavors and twisted the words straight from your mouth, and he did that with an amused smile on his face. Yeah, of course, he was amused. What were you thinking anyway? There was no way you could manipulate a manipulator, especially a skilled one like him. Your flimsy lies were nothing compared to the elaborate deceit that he weaved seamlessly from his lithe hands and beguiling features.

Maybe that was the reason why this relationship continued until today. You’d shown him an unexpected side of you, after all. A malicious side that you’d never thought existed within your otherwise bland person.

Still, you sighed woefully as you rested your chin on the edge of the table, he could’ve at least had the decency to come and savor the meals you’d been slaving over. You weren’t a proficient cooker by any means, but you still wanted the best for this special day. And yet, he wouldn’t even deign to leave a reply to your incessant messages, despite having read every single of it.

This must be the punishment for being too hopeful, you thought. It was useless to desire a miracle from him, that much you were aware of, and yet, you still did anyway.

Sighing at the futility of the situation, you stood up from the dining chair and slouched towards the living room. Perhaps you could find some shows to distract your mind, regardless of how hopeless it sounded. Anything was better than getting depressed over your usually absent boyfriend, even if it meant watching cringy movies.

But, of course, the universe just couldn’t let you rest for a second.

The front door opened, and sauntered inside was none other than the anticipated guest himself. He noticed your almost instinctive glare and waved cheerfully, beaming as he did so.

“[Name]! How have you been? Long time no see, huh?” His wide smile expanded slightly when he noticed your darkening mien. “I almost forgot that today’s our anniversary! Oh, how silly of me~”

You considered flipping him off, but the abrasive gesture couldn’t possibly serve your warranted anger enough justice.

“Oh! Fuck off, will you?” you barked. “You were probably just playing with that man, Ging!”

Pariston cocked his head and hummed questioningly. “Are you jealous, [Name]?” he inquired in mock innocence.

“Don’t be stupid. I know you’ve read my messages, and now, you dare to show up after ignoring me for hours! Two hours, that’s how long I’ve been waiting for your wretched self!”

Throughout your rant, never once he made an effort to interject or deny it. Instead, he merely grinned as though he was watching the most entertaining show of the century.

“My, my, [Name]. Has anyone ever told you how adorable you look when you’re angry?” He purposefully mused to burn the flame even hotter and brighter. “I’m utterly grateful to have such a cute girlfriend like you. It makes it all the more worthwhile.”

You didn’t stop to consider the motive behind his words or take a second look at his expression. In your fury, you grabbed a cup that was sitting on the coffee table and flung it across the room, hoping to physically injure him the same way he’d been mentally wounding you. Chuckling at your ineffective attack, Pariston effortlessly swiped the flying cup before it could crash on to his face and strutted towards you.

There was no time to avoid him, nor did you expect him to move so freaking fast, and soon you found yourself trapped against the wall. His hand gripped your jaw to keep you at eye level, while the other pinned your arm.

“What’s wrong, [Name]? Can’t move?” he inquired, grinning shamelessly to your face. “Come on, attack me again. Throw me more things and hurt me however you please. Show me that expression again. Let me know how much you despise me.”

“You’re an insufferable little bitch, Pariston.” you snarled as you squirmed in his pervasive hold.

“And yet, you accepted me.” he retorted easily, gleefully. “And stuck with me ever since. Does that make you insufferable too?”

“I don’t have a choice!”

“You don’t have a choice, or do you simply love me too much?”

You didn’t answer, knowing that either way, Pariston would still be pleased. Riling him up was an impossible and emotionally draining task, so you resorted to silence as a form of quiet defiance.

“Sulking, are we?” Pariston blinked owlishly, not quite expecting such a response. Nevertheless, it didn’t deter him from teasing you relentlessly. “What a childish thing, but I guess that’s what makes me love you even more~”

[subdee]

Paraging Coffeeshop AU from discord

*Pariston is the barrista, he is rich and does not need to work ever but he is slumming it to see how the common people live

*He is interested in Ging, and tries to date him to slum it up even more, because ging is a greasy scholarship student in his eyes

*Although Pariston wants to date Ging to experience what it’s like to be an authentic poor(TM), the joke’s on him bc Ging is a genius scholarship student rolling in grant money, with a lot of rich friends

*Pariston’s rich family family keep trying to get him to quit his job and go to the Hamptons with them, go yachting with them, fly to Provance with them, etc, but he turns them down and works the early morning weekend shift that no one else wants just to spite them

*(Via Cia) Ging comes in before his 7 to 5 at like 5:30 because he lives off campus and pariston is always bright and sparkly bc he wakes up at an ungodly hour

*(Via Cia) Ging skips the classes he's required to take to sit in on random lectures for fun. pariston can NEVER figure out his schedule bc of it 

*Pariston is taking a gap year, but his family already bought his place for next year.  this is an elite university, like harvard or yale (or varvard, haha)

*mizai, of course, is a regular at the coffee shop. don’t bother giving him milk, he brought his own

*(via Will) sketchy bitch NETERO is the prof who makes up a weird ass assignment where “you have to go ask your local coffee shop barista a philosophical question” but the question ends up being... absolutely stupid and suggestive and he just has to ask it for the grade

*Kite is ging’s fellow TA? ging is always saddling him with the grunt work and buzzing off. Ging is technically an undergrad but he spends more time in the faculty lounge than the undergrad common areas, eventually pariston figures out to look for him there

*cheadle is ging’s longsuffering thesis advisor, she is a new, young professor in her first or second year.  she can’t stand pariston and doesn’t understand what ging sees in him. 

*ging sees pariston like an archeological dig, he’s interested in the Layers

*basically an AU based on Pulp’s Common People

[paristonkinnie]

we all know those 18 hunters are dead who are you trying to fool

How dare you say these slanderous things!!!! Pariston Hill, ex vice chairman of the hunter association, would never hurt a fly!

[ask-hunterxhunter]

Do you think Pariston and Hisoka could love someone? Analyze to your hearts content ❤️

Pariston

Honestly? Nope.No way, Jose. Not a chance in Hell. If that ever happened, to quote the NostalgiaCritic: “The Apocalypse has finallybegun, pigs are learning how to fly, Satan is skating his way to work and I’mpretty sure that I just became a monkey’s uncle”.

 Okay, jokeaside and seriously: Like with Illumi, I cannotsee Pariston as someone able to loveanyone, not in the actual sense of the word, though not for the exact samereasons. Illumi seems, to me, more a case of nurture to be blamed and Pariston is(until now, at least) one of nature.

 He displays sociopathicsigns and though I’m not absolutely sure if I could go and call him a complete psychopath (since I’m not anexpert after all), he seems to be close enough to me (and according to what I did study about the subject, psychopathsdon’t love, just for starters).

 And thisdetail aside let’s discuss how Pariston acted/said and the nature of thefeeling of love. Even the worst kind of person, when truly in love, certainlydoes not feel the impulse of hurting theother, like Pariston admitted he does. Yes,there are people who show love in ways that are not exactly healthy (being toopossessive, too controlling, etc), but they don’t get to this level unless theyare either obsessive (while believing themselves to actually be in love) orthen having certain external circumstances. This whole “each person shows love in their own way” and “people may feel the same emotions, but not in the same way” does not apply here. Pariston is perfectly aware of what he isdoing, it’s not a case of harming/pushing away/lashing out at someone you loveby accident (for whatever reason), it’s completely intentional.

 Think aboutthe people you love. Would you liketo hurt them?

 According to Paristonhimself, he also feels happy when being hated and it doesn’t seem to be in the “if they hate me, they’ll stay away, whichmeans they will be safe” we can see in other stories, either. So, what, theopposite is also true, he will feel bothered with being actually loved? Yeah, thereare people who have been hurt so much that they have problems with accepting/believingwhen someone loves them for real, but does this seem to be Pariston’s case?

 So, no. Theway I see, Pariston is someone who can certainly be obsessed, but never love. He can own, he can desire, he can lust,but not love.

Hisoka

I alreadycovered Hisoka here, but hey, let’s talk about it at least a little more becauseI can’t get enough of this sociopathic guy!!! I mentioned in the other postthat, while very hard to happen, I think he at least has the capacity to develop serious feelings forsomeone.

 But again, itdoesn’t mean it would be easy, or that it willhappen. I think Hisoka would have trouble accepting not only someone actuallycaring for him, but also having an honest relationship as he could see itplacing him in a state of vulnerability. The guy is a lone wolf, his comfortzone is being with the only being hecan absolutely trust: Himself.

 Not tomention his focus is finding strong opponents. This seems to be his passion,like writing or art can be for some people. His focus, way of life and personalityseem to make it hard for him to open up enough to allow feelings to grow deeperin nature.

 Although Iwrite headcanons of Hisoka in love, sometimes I wonder if he wouldn’t turn outto be the sort of person that, unable to be actually comfortable with intimacydespite his own feelings, ends up pushing his partner away. Again, I honestlydon’t know.

[nenastrology]

we kept calling leopika straight like heathens when the real straight coded pairing was pariging look at me in the eyes and tell me im wrong

paristons the wealthy housewife living with only contempt for her deadbeat husband whos inherited the family money and shes just waiting for a time to divorce him but now they just have terse dinner conversations as their only interactions day to day gings down making fishing lures and flying off to do stupid rich people things and paristons gossiping with the neighbors and growing more resentful every day

[mymisguidedfairytale]

[fanfiction] Hunter x Hunter - ORCHiDELiRiUM

Title: ORCHiDELiRiUM Word Count: 14,390 words Pairing: Cluck x Kanzai Summary: ORCHiDELiRiUM: the name given to a period of time where the acquisition and discovery of rare orchid plants reached a fever pitch among the collectors and enthusiasts of the wealthy and titled. None were prized more highly than the rare Black Orchid, native to a small republic whose only access point was severed by a tremendous rockslide during the plant’s last cyclic bloom nearly seven years ago. Professional Botanical Hunter Cluck is contracted to not only recover a specimen of the rare flower, but protect it from any and all intruders. She is more than up for the first task, but for the second, she enlists the help of her colleague Kanzai, and the two find themselves battling mafia legions, the strangely misanthropic people of the once-isolated nation, and a living forest in pursuit of their prize. A/N: Written for the Hunter x Hunter Big Bang 2018 Challenge. Takes place an indeterminate amount of time pre-canon. Huge thanks to awitchyghost who will be doing some lovely art for this story! I hope you enjoy! [FF.net] [Ao3]

ORCHiDELiRiUM

Cluck stares across the flat, nearly empty surface of her desk. Not at her own, impeccably-ordered files and the thin stack of leaflets one of the secretaries had dropped off earlier with the latest updates from the various committees for her to review before she left Swaldani City for any personal business. Her desk forms a co-working space with those of three of the other members of the Zodiac Twelve, and her gaze is affixed firmly towards Saiyuu's desk.

And the plastic, purple plant that rests in an almost equally insulting ceramic vase. It has two ugly, perfectly uniform leaves, and a dusting of uneven white paint along the tip of the clustered petals.

Behind her, along the wall, the printer beeps as it continues to slowly churn out papers for her. She taps manicured fingernails along to its rhythm, before groaning and swiveling in circles in her desk chair.

Across the room, Kanzai walks in. He gives a half-hearted wave, before jerking one thumb back towards the hallway.

“The office up front just got a power stapler,” he says, moving to the cubbies on the far wall and grabbing the safety-cone-colored knapsack from inside. “Piyon and I have been seeing how far we can make it fly.”

“Stop terrorizing the secretaries,” she answers automatically before turning back to her papers.

“We're not! It's a competition.”

He sounds defensive, and she looks up, watching him as the printer makes an ungodly series of electronic screeches. “You're Pro Hunters, and you're losing?”

“What? No!”

“Just you then. Better redeem yourself by lunchtime.” Cluck reaches out to poke one plastic petal with a pen. If it was real, a petal would have fallen, or a leaf. It would grow or shrivel and die. And it's insulting her personally.

“Round Two will see a weather change,” he says, and makes a few punches in the air for emphasis.

“Don't lose more of your money,” she cautions. “You know you'll get taken for every cent you wager.”

“See you at the meeting.” He's gone, and he leaves the door cracked open, too. The worst.

The printer screeches again, and on the next three sheets the ink is increasingly transparent. She shouts after him, “Don't be late!”

He's late, by a good five minutes, but Pariston is late by ten and gets the full force of the room's blame. There's a variety of things on the docket today, mostly involving minor adjustments, financial proposals, and seasonal updates from some of the more significant committees. The Exam Committee's scouting for representatives, and after volunteering to coordinate one of the phases once , years ago, now when they want involvement among the Zodiacs they look at her. She makes sure to be looking at her phone during the entire report, first scrolling idly and then looking for something more serious among her apps and news sites to make the distraction useful.

So she happens to be checking her email in the middle of one of Beans's presentations. Cheadle is giving her a glare strong enough to melt a glacier, but if there's someone who more accurately embodies all bark, no bite it's the Dog of the Zodiac Twelve. In her professional account are a slew of unread contract proposals—one asking her to give a concert of L'equivoco , like she'd come out of retirement for some new money heir's birthday party—and a second wanting her aide in tracking a series of near-endangered swanbill sighted outside their Yorubian nature preserve. She purses her lips. Probably collectors, from the extremely high numbers quoted in the proposal. The third is from the Razing Society of Arboreal Enrichment , and reads like an amateur academic's exercise in garrulousness.

Surely our esteemed organization needs no introduction, as you may recall both our winning contribution to the Southern Continental's horticulture competition some years ago, upsetting the Federation of Ochima's five-year winning streak, and our meeting at the same event—

Cluck doesn't remember this.

— As you well know, the many prides of the Republic of Razing include its Endeløs Forest, which has provided its citizens with medicinal herbs, flowers, and gourmet fungi of the highest quality and provenance. With the completion of the tunnel restoration project, access to the city center has been reestablished as of this year. The limited resources of the Razing Department of Public Safety have left a void of preparedness in our anticipation of the Black Orchid's returning bloom cycle. We expect a wave of visitors who will want to experience this legendary event, and while we do of course encourage education of the masses we wish to restrict access to both the Forest and the plants to professionals. As one of the foremost Botanical Hunters, you will be able to recover a specimen for our study and ensure its protection in the wild. The city has already seen an increase in numbers and lodging is thin. We can ensure you a place to stay while you work and access to transportation and the best of our equipment and research staff if you require it, although we are sure someone of your caliber and experience would hardly deign to accept our organization's principium. Anyone would leap at the chance to view this once-in-a-lifetime event, and even without our offer you have most likely already made plans to visit our republic and view the Black Orchid for yourself. We await your response. Our office is open Mondays only from 3-5pm.

Cluck's eyes begin to water. She reads the message a second time, and still can't quite figure out what it is these people actually want her to do.

Then she's called on for her opinions on their current debate, and Cluck forgets about any of her contracts—and Pariston gets to repeat his speech on the profits from the Association's current real estate holdings, to his delight.

After the votes are in and they are all dismissed, she dawdles in the office once more, staring at a folder of everything one of the secretaries had been able to acquire on the status of the Republic of Razing. There are very few countries that have had no Hunters to represent them, and this is one of those.

She also wracks her memories for a trade show held across the various states of the Southern Continent, and recalls that the Republic of Ochima has won it every year except one where they were unable to attend—due to catastrophic weather, and a tiny unacknowledged nation had taken the top prize. This was years ago, at least seven, and would have been when she was in deep pursuit of a Star for her license and throwing herself into every bit of study and experimentation. Such shows were a great way to network and hear lectures from top researchers and university professors. And they were useful for reconnecting with old colleagues, and for providing free meals and free drinks to celebrity guests. Huh. Maybe there was a reason she didn't remember much.

The Republic was, in a word, isolated. Located in the exact middle of a ringlike group of mountains, the city-state had a small population and wasn't known for anything in particular beyond the peculiar circumstances of their existence. There was one tunnel, bored through the mountains, for access, and it had been destroyed in an accident—she checks her notes—about the same time ago. They'd used helicopters and had air-drops for supplies they couldn't grow or manufacture themselves, but overwhelmingly the entire country had been separated from the outside world for all that time.

She's still in the office hours later, her interest growing, reading through more research and investigating the mysterious Black Orchid the Society representative had mentioned. There are sketches of it, drawn by the late, famed naturalist Laudubon, and as a Botanical Hunter Cluck is well-versed in the history of orchid collecting and exhibition. It had hit a craze, when the world was beginning to be connected by airship and media and many new species had been discovered all at once, each more intricate and uncommon than the last. There had been the honey orchid, peacock orchid, and the strangely-gimmicky disco orchid, named for its apparent propensity to glitter under any movement or light. But the rarest, and the one that had fetched the highest prices, came from a forest in the very same mountain range of this country, the Black Orchid. In the sketch, the orchid's petals are a deep and glossy black, and of such perfect symmetry and balance, without flaw or blemish. The perfect curl to the edges, the perfect drape of the filaments. She can feel her very soul being drawn into the flowers.

And that was only a portrait. What must the real thing be like?

She understands the desire those individuals must have felt, bidding at auctions in the hundreds of thousands of jenni, for the chance to own those flowers. Airship travel to the region is largely inexpensive, and she hovers over the website with tickets in her cart. She has no major obligations for the next few weeks. It's been relatively uneventful around Swaldani City and the Hunter Association, almost to the point of suspicion.

She glances up to see Kanzai peering over her shoulder, nose scrunched up.

“What are you looking to travel all the way out there for?”

She jumps, spinning around in her chair and reaching out to smack him on instinct. “Kanzai! You shouldn't sneak up on people!”

“I wasn't sneaking. I didn't even use Zetsu .” He drops his shoulders in apology, and rubs his arm as if her punch had done anything at all. He moves to Saiyuu's desk and sinks into a chair. “You're just distracted. Don't tell me another Hunter went missing?”

“No. I'm looking into something for work.” Not that she's officially accepted the contract yet, and not that this Society even seems to want to admit they need her help at all. “How about you? Got anything coming up?”

“Assignment fell through,” he says, kicking his feet up on the edge of his desk. Cluck eyes his sneakers with distaste. “Still, they paid my fee. Can't argue with that.”

She gets an idea, a bright spot in a sea of monotony and solitude. The thought that she could share the brilliance of that sketch in reality with her closest friend. “So you're free. To come work with me, travel a bit. If you wanted.”

“If I wanted to travel to the boondocks with you? But I don't want that.” The edge of his mouth lifts into a scowl, and it twists the tattoos across his upper cheeks. “How much are they paying?”

Her face twists as she remembers the line of the contract that detailed her fee. It was in line with what she believed the country could afford, but hardly in keeping with her level of experience. “The work is its own reward, or something.”

“That's even worse .” He watches as she adjusts her purchase to include a second ticket. “I'm a bodyguard , not a—” And he waves his hand in her direction, as if to encompass everything in Cluck's varied portfolio. Musician, Scientist, Birdkeeper. “I won't be much help to you, unless what you're doing is really that dangerous.”

“I think it could be. Have you ever guarded an object?” she asks.

“Once I was hired to transport a painting. The convoy was attacked. Too bad for the thieves.”

“Which painting?”

“Don't know. I didn't look.”

“You didn't look? ” The strangled croak in her throat grows louder when she remembers with vivid clarity what that assignment had been. It was rare that the Southernpeace Auction even got such masterpieces, and those who could afford them could also afford the best protection detail. “That was a Nonet , Kanzai! A Nonet! His last completed work!”

He gnashes his pointed teeth. “I have no idea who that is!”

“Well, do you want a job or not?” She shouts back, matching his pitch. “I could use the help. I have a lot of ground to cover.” She laughs to herself at the unintentional joke, her mood shifting in an instant.

He sighs, glancing away. “I want to keep you safe. Well, what are you Hunting? Don't keep me in suspense. You know how much I love a good surprise.”

“I'm Hunting a plant,” she says.

A pause. “You've got to be kidding me.”

“I'm not,” she says. “And we're not going to the boondocks. We're going to the mountains .”

–

Despite the elevation, the climate is mild, but the skies are thick with clouds and a light rain begins to fall the moment they leave the airfield. Anticipating fieldwork, she's retired her typical outfit for a strapless romper in the same blue shades and a matching jacket with a thick line of white fur trimming the hood and sleeves. The airship could only take them so far, to a city on the other side of the mountains, where the single road would take them into Razing and towards her mission. So it was that Cluck and Kanzai were seated shoulder to shoulder in the front of a retrofitted utility vehicle being driven by one of the country's native sons.

“So,” Cluck says, staring out the window at rows upon rows of identical-looking trees, leading to an eerily uniform bank of mountainside. “Do you want to put on any music?”

“No.” The driver doesn't even acknowledge her, and she spends a few moments studying his face—brown hair, a thin mustache but otherwise clean shaven, and dark, plain clothes. Young, too—younger than she is, and he would be boring if he wasn't so interesting.

She tries again. “So, what do you like to do around here for fun?”

“I go driving,” he says. Beside her, Kanzai muffles a snort into one arm.

“Yeah? Well let's open this thing up, see what it can do,” Cluck suggests. The vehicle continues on at a safe, respectable fifty-five.

“No.”

She breathes in, counts to five. She is a professional, and while she has no problem being blunt around her colleagues, belligerence around strangers would probably not be very well received.

Cluck eyes the driver again. Probably.

“Is there anything you'd recommend we do, you know, as tourists? Anywhere we should go? Anything we shouldn't do? We want to blend in.”

The driver inclines his head for a moment, to look at her. “That is impossible.”

Cluck's vision goes red for a moment. “ Okay, first off— ”

“We have not had any tourists in almost a decade. Therefore there would not be anything to publicize, as those of us who live here have already seen it all,” he says, and Cluck deflates.

“And how do you feel about that?” It's Kanzai, speaking for the first time since their drive started. He'd been quiet for the majority of their trip, but Cluck is able to read his moods after spending so much time together. When he complains, it is more performative than purposeful, and he has remained by her side, handling whatever details come up regarding security and their equipment with deep consideration. He hasn't cared about how to use the scientific instruments and collection vials and components in her bags, but he handles them with a delicacy she finds heartwarming.

The driver takes a moment to consider the question. “It is better this way.”

And like that, her mood sours again. They pass through the tunnel—it spans a distance of ten miles, and is in itself a marvel of architecture. It would probably have seen more media coverage, Cluck thinks, if the people connected to it were the least bit sociable.

The driver leaves them at their hotel, a government-owned building that used to host international diplomats before being repurposed in-part into a storage facility. The rooms are small and bleak and the décor looks like it came from a period film set more than thirty years ago.

“I'm starving,” Cluck tells Kanzai. “Let's go for a walk, see if we can find something.”

They take a street at random. Only a few blocks outside the city center the buildings change dramatically, from older brick structures set close together to dated-looking strip malls with a wild assortment of tenants, from fashion marts to hardware stores and individual stores for bakeries and butchers instead of one combined grocer. Each intersection is so unremarkable that Cluck has to remind herself, yet again, that this place has been essentially frozen in time.

Cluck squints to read the signs of the stores in one such center. “I think that one's a restaurant? No, never mind. Cheese store.”

“What about that one?”

Cluck follows Kanzai's outstretched hand to a storefront with more than a dozen cars parked out front. “Liquor store. Maybe later.”

The next block sees another strip center, set even further back from the street. Weeds sprout through the cracks in the pavement of the parking lot and as they make their way closer Cluck can see a tiny restaurant tucked in the very far corner.

“There!” She points, before grabbing Kanzai's shoulders and turning him towards the flickering neon sign. “Food!”

The parking lot is mostly empty—there are no cars in front of the restaurant or the laundromat next door, but the lights are on inside and Cluck can see movement past the vertical blinds behind the front window. The door had a placard matching the neon sign that read Jordel's Restaurant .

Cluck opens the deceptively heavy door and slips inside, not even waiting for assistance before grabbing a menu off the hostess stand. She flips through it—it's in the local language, but she can recognize a few words after spending the airship flight with a language primer, and decides that at this point she's too hungry to care whether everything is boiled or covered in unidentifiable gravy, and tries to wave over a server. There's only one visible, a man currently pouring water for one of the other tables.

“Hey, this place must be pretty good,” Cluck says, her eyes sweeping the restaurant. “Look how many tables are full.”

While the tables in the front, sized for couples, are empty, the tables in the back have been shoved together and are full of men in suits, eating quietly. The restaurant itself is plain, with a few framed photographs on the white walls and dated brass fixtures. Finally, the server makes their way over to the front, and Cluck waves her hands at one of the empty tables.

“Hey, can we have that one?” she asks, gesturing with the menu. “And can you show me where the drinks are in this thing?”

The nervous-looking server leads them over to a table and Cluck makes a show of throwing her jacket over the back of her chair before sitting down. With the server's help she picks out a red wine and a bunch of dishes for them to share, and tries a number of different ways to cross her legs to get comfortable in the narrow wooden chairs.

“Hey, relax a little,” she tells Kanzai. “There's no reason we can't enjoy ourselves a little bit while we're here. If that's possible.”

He's quiet, and Cluck drops her chin into her palm. “I know you don't like the rain—”

“It's not that,” he says quickly. “Maybe just keep your voice down.”

“Why?” The drinks arrive, along with a loaf of soft bread, and Cluck busies herself with tearing it into small pieces before eating. “We've got to go over our plans. I was gonna call the people at the Arboreal Society, tell them we've arrived, and arrange transportation to the forests.”

Kanzai makes a pained face, the markings on his face curving more the deeper his grimace. “Cluck—”

“I'm hoping they can give us some maps. I feel lost here already.” She takes a deep drag from her drink. “Not having a car of our own sucks.”

“ Cluck .”

“If we can find a few bulbs it'll be even better. I'd hate to have to transport a fully-bloomed orchid. They're so delicate, and I imagine this one'll be even more so.” She speaks around a mouthful of bread, the words muffled.

“I've been studying the weather and what I can find from the last time the Black Orchid bloomed,” she continues, gesturing with a piece of bread. “There aren't many resources. No one documented this, it was essentially a free-for-all. My research shows that the bloom is actually going to come early. So it's lucky we're here now, before anyone else gets involved.”

Kanzai tries to shush her again, but before he can say anything more the waiter returns, carrying platters of vegetables, lamb, and crispy whole fishes. Cluck pokes one of them with her fork before digging in.

“Hey, this is actually really good.” She chews thoughtfully. “Hey, Kanzai, you're still bristling. Eat up.”

“I am not bristling .” His shoulders are raised and his hair is spiky from the rain, and Cluck narrows her eyes and points her fork at him.

“Eat your fish,” she says.

“ You eat your fish,” he grumbles, before snagging one and beginning to saw into it with his knife. Cluck looks up to see a few of the men in suits watching them, and gives a little wave in return.

“ Cluck , don't,” Kanzai repeats. A bit of fish falls off his fork. One of the men at the farthest table stands up and begins to walk over. He can see the server start to clear everyone's plates.

“My friends!” The man has a deep accent, same as their driver. “I can't help but notice you must be new here. Are you enjoying yourselves?”

“The food's great.” Cluck is all smiles, still chewing. Kanzai casts a serious look down at their plates.

“I couldn't help but overhear something. You are interested in the forests surrounding this city, yes? You are...scientists, perhaps? Not tourists?”

“We're Hunters,” Cluck answers proudly, and Kanzai's palm makes contact with his forehead.

“ Hunters , really.” He turns and says something to one of the others in their native language, and the other shouts back a few words. The man's expression never changes, as implacable as the black suit stretched across his shoulders.

“There is someone here I think you should meet—”

“—Thanks,” Kanzai interrupts. “Now if you don't mind, we really need to get back to our meal—”

“Nonsense. We have a great deal in common, you and I,” he says. “We also have interest in this orkidé you mentioned. We would be delighted to hear more of what you have to say.”

Cluck opens and then closes her mouth. Kanzai can almost see the wheels turning as she begins to put together the pieces. Then, she speaks.

“Sorry,” she says. “I don't work with others.”

Kanzai feels a twitch in-between his eyebrows. Cluck has never sounded less convincing.

“Then who is this?” The man asks. “Your housecat?”

Kanzai stands, abruptly, and at once every suited man pulls a weapon from inside their jackets. The implacable one merely claps a hand onto Kanzai's shoulder—an intimidation tactic, meant to bully him into compliance, as the man is nearly a foot taller than Kanzai—and begins to push him further into the restaurant.

“Cluck, just say the word,” he says.

“No, I want to hear what they have to say.” She stands as well, and collects her jacket, draping it over one arm and shaking it to get crumbs off the sleeves. “Maybe they know something we don't.”

“Come, come.” The man gestures again. “There is a room in the back where our boss is eating. He would very much like to meet you. Nikolaus will take you.”

“And you are?” Kanzai still glowers, even after the man steps back, putting his body squarely in front of the door. As he moves Kanzai can see the holster hidden under his jacket.

“I am Mikkel,” he answers.

A young, timid looking man approaches in a too-large suit, and leads them towards a doorway in the back covered by a curtain of patterned orange polyester. He keeps his distance, and when Kanzai cracks a muscle in his neck for fun the man jumps back even further.

Beyond the curtain is a large space much more ornately designed than the main dining room—which still isn't much of a compliment, considering the overly stylized molding on the tops of the walls and baseboards, and the sprawling wooden chairs and tables, inlaid to excess with lighter wood. The wallpaper is gold and striped, and Kanzai looks down at his own shirt and feels a little put-off by the comparison.

“Malk, these are the Hunters here to see you,” Nikolaus says.

The large, older man at the head of the table rises and adjusts the glasses perched on the edge of his nose. He extends a hand covered in rings towards Cluck and Kanzai. Neither make any immediate motion to shake it; Cluck glances down at the oversized jacket in her hands and makes a show of trying to adjust it to free a hand. After a moment, the man straightens his back and drops his hand, all pretense of politeness disappearing.

“Hunters. How curious. You may call me Mr. Content. I am the leader of the mafia here in Razing. You will tell me what I need to know.” He says the word Hunters slowly, and with a reverence and distance that makes Cluck for a moment wonder if he even knows what that means.

Then she holds up a hand. “Wait a second. Is your name really Malk Content?”

“Yes. Is there a problem?”

She drops her shoulders in an articulated shrug. “Well, that just seems lazy.”

He slams one giant fist into the tabletop. “Tell me what you learned about the Black Orchid !” His pronunciation is slightly different, using the words in his native language, and when he snarls to the men at his left and right it becomes impossible for Kanzai to understand further.

“We're not tellin' you squat,” he says, and watches the man's face grow red.

Kanzai turns towards her. “Hey, Cluck, I don't think they know anything.”

“And here I was hoping they had access to some kind of mapping software, satellites, something that would better pinpoint their location. They only grow in soil with a specific acidity, you know.” Cluck shrugs again.

“And how do you know that?” Mr. Content says, pulling a knife from inside his jacket.

Cluck could have gone into detail about how the sketches of the flower had all shown the same deeply red soil, and how first-person accounts had shown that specimens stored with soil from the area lasted twice as long as those that had been replanted, and although all remnants of flowers from the last bloom cycle are long dead and disappeared, examples of the soil are still around and Cluck was able to contact a lab outside of Yorkshin for the detailed summary of the soil composition. She doesn't say this, however.

“Cause I'm a Hunter! And we know everything!” She jabs a finger forward, before sweeping it around the room, turning to each gunman in turn. “And we're bulletproof! So you better put those things away!”

About half of the gunmen draw back, visibly unsure. She decides to roll with it, and points instead at Kanzai. “And this one's crazy! ”

He turns towards her, his face drawn up, his eyebrows twitching. “What the hell's your problem?”

Mr. Content steps back, behind the others, adjusting his knife in a stance meant more for protection than offense. “Gentlemen, by your leave. Best not to have them getting in our way in the forests. Take them into secure custody.”

The first man clicks off his safety, and Cluck is running backwards, aura rushing to hands as she grabs the gigantic wooden table and flips it forward, onto its edge. Gunshots ring out, piercing the wood but not passing through. Kanzai ducks in beside her; he does not even need to crouch to get full cover.

Cluck's astonishment grows as more gunshots ring out. There's the curtained entrance back to the main dining room, and a separate closed door she recalled behind where their leader was standing. No windows, and she doesn't much relish the thought of having to work their way through an entire roomfull of guards, no matter which way they go.

There's a moment of silence before they can hear the clicking sounds of the guards reloading. Kanzai elbows her in the side. “Hey, what's with that face? You got a plan?”

“What? No! I didn't think they had any ammo. With the tunnel closed, how would they have gotten any resupplies? I thought they were just carrying around those guns, you know, for tradition. For the look.”

His scowl deepens. “So no plan, then.”

“We could roll the table. Use it for cover.” Cluck gives it an experimental roll, hanging on to the cross-bars at the table's base. It's more oval than round, and nearly topples from the effort. “Or maybe not. Batter up?”

Cluck watches Kanzai rolls one shoulder back, the aura coalescing in her eyes with Gyo as he conjures a baseball bat into his hands. This one is different than she remembers—it looks longer and lighter, and has a giant letter F in the middle of the grained wood. She makes a face.

“It's a practice bat,” he explains, noticing her staring. “Like I'd treat any of these suckers to Ash or Maple.”

“I'll be right behind you.” As they run out, the gunmen resume shooting, and Kanzai angles the bat in a wide arc, ricocheting the bullets like he's returning a four-seam fastball. Cluck keeps her body shrouded in aura in case any stray bullets get past Kanzai's batting stance—unlikely—but as they run back into the main dining room they are greeted with another dozen suits with a variety of weapons from antique-looking revolvers and modern pistols to curved knives and wooden truncheons pointed straight at them.

“Hey, I think that guy has a tazer,” Cluck says. Kanzai looks to her, then at her empty hands.

“You didn't bring a weapon ?” he shouts, and they are under fire again, switching sides and letting him take point as he sweeps away the bullets, sending them harmlessly into the far wall. “Well, find something!”

Cluck begins searching the tables for something to throw, but they've been cleared of all plates, all cutlery, and all glassware. There isn't even a spare wine bottle to use as a club. “See? I told you this was a good restaurant.”

“What?” Distracted, a bullet whizzes past, slicing the sleeve of his uniform. “Cluck, we've gotta go!”

Without any better options, Cluck grabs the white tablecloth off of the largest table, whipping it into a circle and throwing it over the heads of the advancing mafia gunmen. Then they run, out the door—and there's a bell over it, chiming their escape, and isn't that great—before they find themselves once more in the nearly-empty parking lot, running across the pavement and down the street as fast as their Nen -powered legs can take them.

“Got a plan now?” Kanzai shouts, holding the bat to his chest as he runs.

“Working on it!” Cluck casts a glance back—they aren't being followed, for now, and she's about to ask whether they're even running the right way or not when a car pulls up beside them with a screech.

“Quick! Get in!”

Kanzai swivels in place, bat raised to swing, when the driver instinctively lets out a scream.

“Hey,” Cluck says, “You're that kid that was with them. You brought us to the boss.” She snaps her fingers, trying to remember his name.

“It's Nikolaus. And quick, get in before they see us.” He unlocks the doors, and begins winding up the front window—Cluck can already feel her lip curling at that, as the car is one of those models she'd thought gone out of style with bell sleeves and the bubonic plague—but she pulls open the back door and turns to Kanzai.

“I think we can trust him. As nervous as he looked earlier, he looks downright terrified of us.”

“And we don't have any other options,” Kanzai finishes. Cluck shrugs in agreement, before sliding inside.

The moment the door closes, Nikolaus speeds away. The inside of the car is nicer than Cluck expects, and she props her feet up on the middle console.

“Hey, I bet you're a driver for the Mafia, aren't you?” she asks. “Is this even your car?”

“No, and don't do that!” He tries to brush her away, but Cluck only shifts to catch his eye in the rearview mirror. Beside her, squashed against the door, Kanzai sighs; the moment he removes his hands from the bat, it disappears.

The car nearly swerves of the road. “How did you do that?”

“Hey! Focus!” Cluck points forward, grabbing onto Kanzai with her other hand for support. The car rights itself, all passengers grumbling, and Kanzai reaches for the seatbelt.

“Kanzai, how did you know they were Mafia? You could've told me.” Cluck pouts, leaning back. The feathers in her hair are getting in his face.

“It was obvious. You're just dense,” he says. “At least the food wasn't poisoned. I can tell these things.”

“I know. You have an extremely sensitive palate.”

“Don't insult me!”

“Hey, hey!” Cluck shouts at Nikolaus, who's continued to hold the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grasp. “Where are you taking us, anyway?”

“Your hotel isn't safe. I thought we could lay low at one of the safehouses I know. No one would be looking for you there,” Nikolaus says.

With every twist and turn of the car, taking them further away from the city center, Kanzai does his best to keep a close guide on their path, just in case. “And why are you helping us?”

They come to a stop at a red light, and Nikolaus turns around to look at them. “Well, you're Hunters, right? They're the greatest of the great! They're like superheroes! Surely you're more powerful than the mafia here. They've kept the country under their thumb ever since the collapse of the tunnel—and it wasn't just the roads that broke. It was the media cables, the water lines, power lines—they said they could get them working again, and they did. But it came with a cost. They own everything around here. They're in control. There's no options for me. And I'd really like to get out of this place.”

“The light is green,” Kanzai says.

“So you help us, and we help you.” Cluck taps her fingers against her chin. “We can do that.”

“What?” Kanzai swivels between the two, the caution in his expression even further exaggerated. “We don't need help!”

Cluck rolls her eyes. “I asked you for help, didn't I?”

“That's different! You needed a bodyguard! What is it that this guy can do for us that your contacts can't?”

“At the Arboreal Society?” Cluck pulls out her phone, scrolling to find their number. “I tried calling when we landed, but got an answering machine.”

“Oh,” Nikolaus says, “they're probably Mafia, too. Maybe they wanted to get a professional here to help them recover a specimen of the orchid—they've been searching all this time, for any sign of it, to no effect. We've been combing the forests for weeks.”

“ Weeks !”

“Hey,” Cluck interjects, “do you have access to a map of the forests? Of the surrounding areas? Because of the mountains, I couldn't get any kind of satellite imaging of this place. Something about the geography or the minerals in the ground throws off most electronics.”

Kanzai continues spluttering. “It's a plant !”

“And I can't wait for you to see it!” Cluck snaps. “I want you to see it! I want to share this part of my life with you! You...ungrateful cretin!”

In the rearview mirror, Nikolaus looks away quickly. At the next light, the thick silence in the car is cut by the loud, foreign hip-hop music blaring from the car stopped beside theirs.

“Yeah, I should be able to get you a map,” Nikolaus says after another minute. Cluck maintains a frosty silence, crossing her arms and pulling up the edges of her fur-trimmed jacket. Still, she doesn't move, doesn't give Kanzai any more space in the backseat. She stares out the window, at the mid-rise apartment complexes and mini-marts they pass by. Every time the car stops, or turns to the right, her shoulder bumps against his.

Nikolaus still won't meet either of their eyes in the rearview mirror. “Malk...Mr. Content already has a buyer lined up. I overheard the conversation, as his driver. The price is higher than any number I've ever heard. And I'd rather help people who appreciate it. And any profits will go a lot farther split three ways.”

“Well, you can take the man out of the Mafia but you can't take the Mafia out of the man,” Kanzai says. “Don't worry, if it's money you want consider yourself officially on our payroll.”

“That's not...exactly what I had in mind...” Nikolaus coughs, his earlier blustery confidence fading away in the face of Kanzai's impudency. “How did you...do that thing earlier? With the bat? Are you like a magician?”

Kanzai glares at him, his lip curled. “Do I look like a magician?”

“It disappeared! I saw it!”

“Listen, kid,” Kanzai says. “You wouldn't understand it even if we told you. So just do your driving, and leave the rest to us, get it?”

Nikolaus is quiet for a moment. Then: “Maybe you can't do it again. Maybe it was a one-time thing. A fluke.”

“ What you sayin'?” Suddenly, the bat appears in Kanzai's hand again, the same fungo bat as before. The driver screams again.

“Yeah? Look at that!” The bat disappears and reappears again, filling the rearview mirror. “Is that a fluke to you?”

“Kanzai, cut it out,” Cluck says. The bat disappears immediately. “He's crying.”

“No I'm not.” There's a very distinctive sniffle in Nikolaus's voice. “We're here.”

The apartment complex they pull into is set back from the road and comprised of several smaller buildings instead of one tall one. The corridors are set outside, facing an exterior staircase of white-painted wooden panels, and there are enough cars in the parking lot that theirs won't stick out as much as Kanzai had worried it might.

“It's on the first floor,” Nikolaus continues. “I picked this one because I've got a key...some of the newer ones have a keypad access, and they might be able to track if someone's accessed it remotely. This one's mainly used for recovery, you know. A place to lie low if you've been hurt or if you need to avoid somebody.”

“Sounds perfect,” Kanzai says. “Been planning this for awhile, have you?”

“Leaving? Yes,” he admits, parking the car in a lot in the back and climbing out. “I've just been looking for the right moment. You still don't trust me, but you can.”

“Is there food?” Cluck asks. “I'm hungry again.”

“Non perishables. But there should be something.”

Her excitement plummets, and she follows Kanzai and Nikolaus—the former's aura spiking, his En reaching out for any sign of hostiles, even though there's nothing to be found—as they enter the apartment.

It's every bit as plain as the restaurant had been—there's a large leather couch and a table and chairs for furniture, one of those dated television sets that's deeper than it is wide, with dials instead of buttons, and a fan with a patterned glass shade that turns on when Nikolaus flips the lights. Cluck takes a perfunctory tour of the place, just to make sure there's no one else crashing there—there are no signs of anyone, no belongings, just an empty bedroom and the most tiny, dingy bathroom and kitchen. Nikolaus comes up beside her and starts opening cabinets.

“See? There's canned sardines! And some soup!” He sounds proud.

“You didn't also cook for the Mafia, did you?” she asks.

“No, that was his aunt, Dis.”

Cluck pauses for a moment, then turns and walks away. “Just give me the map when you find it.”

Five minutes later and they've found not only a series of maps, but a compass, set of radios for communication, and a first aid kit to clean the cut on Kanzai's arm. She's got the map spread out over the dining room table—the sardine cans are anchoring the corners, as she doesn't trust them anywhere near a plate—and she's doing notations in a notepad, trying to map out the curve of the mountainside with regards to what she's read about where the flower is likely to grow.

“This doesn't make any sense!” She drops the pencil on the table to keep from throwing it, grinding her teeth and fuming. “My calculations aren't off, but the math doesn't match up!”

“How so, Miss Cluck?” In the iterim, they'd finally gotten around to introductions, and Nikolaus has not stopped using it, and adding unnecessary formalities.

“It's Doctor Cluck, technically!” She picks up the pencil and goes back to scribbling, re-checking the measurements she's taken with her divider caliper and tugging on her hair in frustration. Unrolling a second map with Nikolaus's assistance, her summations are no clearer.

“And there's supposedly a river that runs through here , but where it's marked in this map doesn't match the other one! And there are these four groves of taller trees, marked here”—she shows Kanzai, even though he isn't looking—“but they're on the total opposite side on this other map! And you say you've been searching for weeks, right? So which is it!”

“Miss Cluck, keep your voice down,” Nikolaus says.

“That's Doctor Professional Hunter Cluck , four-time winner of the Golden Stage award to you!”

“So, why would the maps be inaccurate?” Kanzai asks, curled up on the couch with a thick plaid blanket. “Isn't that their entire purpose?”

“It's been...notoriously difficult to get an accurate reading of the ground in the Endeløs Forest,” Nikolaus admits. “It's thought to be because the ground is weak and always shifting—people go in and get lost, or think they're near one entrance but come out somewhere totally different. The tree cover is so thick, you can't easily see the sky, once you're in the center.”

“But you've been? This was your experience too?” Cluck asks.

“Yes. I spent three days in there, with a team, trying to find our way out after we got lost. What I saw...it was like the forest changed around me every time I turned around. I could not understand it.”

“Huh.” Cluck considers the map again, moving to the other side of the table to look at it from a different angle. “It could be like the Numere Wetlands, in the Kukan'ryu Kingdom.”

“I'm not familiar with that,” Nikolaus says at the same moment Kanzai asks, “What's that?”

“The Exam Committee's been trying to get a permit to use the site for ages. It's a swamp—there's a thick mist, it obscures the view of the ground and the local flora and fauna have evolved to use this to trap prey and take advantage of the disorientation.”

Nikolaus shakes his head. “There was no mist. I could see every step I took, I just didn't know where I was.”

“It's probably a you thing,” Kanzai says, agreeing with Cluck's unspoken sentiments. “We're professionals.”

“And I've lived here my whole life! I'm telling you, people don't go in that forest unless they have to. People say it's haunted. That the ground and the trees will eat you.”

“That's what the bat is for.” Kanzai's words are muffled into the edge of the blanket. Cluck can only see the fringes of black and yellow hair, visible over the top of the couch. “I'm taking a nap.”

“We've been traveling all day. It's probably best to get some rest before we go, and then get to the forest bright and early.” Cluck spends some more time working on the maps, before tossing her calipers aside in a huff. More work is only going to tell her what she already knows—that the forest is impossible to map, and probably for a reason.

Beside her, Nikolaus's nervousness is at a noticeable high. “Can you do that too?” He pantomimes what Kanzai does when he uses his technique.

“Can I make a baseball bat disappear and reappear in my hands? No.” Cluck checks her fingernails, looking for any chips in the polish. Still perfect, and even after all that business at the restaurant. She supposes when she has to dig them into the soil tomorrow that this will change.

“I can do something different. Something better ,” she continues. “But don't tell him that. Not that you'll see it. You'll be in the car. I don't want to have to worry about more than just myself and him.”

“What do you call it?”

“It's called Nen . But don't concern yourself about that. Your job is to drive us and keep us informed. My job is to retrieve a specimen of the Black Orchid.” Not for the Arboreal Society, not anymore, but for herself and for her team and for the world. “And his job is to take down anything that gets in our way.”

She concludes her little speech with a yawn, and makes her way towards the bedroom, shrugging out of her jacket.

“Miss Cluck? Where am I going to sleep?”

She all but shuts the door in his face. “Not my problem.”

The next day sees them awake and unhappy about it, sharing a pot of the strongest coffee Cluck's ever had in her life from among the supplies Nikolaus found in the cabinets. It will take hours, he says, to drive to the Northern-most entrance of the Endeløs Forest, where according to him there will be fewer Mafia grunts around, as the Southern side is more easily accessible, both for cars and for equipment. They've even tried to bring off-road vehicles into the forest, he tells them, with limited success, and gigantic spotlights and sensing machines. Everything gets lost, or breaks, and between them they have no weapons beyond what Kanzai can conjure, a limited amount of flares, and a plant transport container Cluck improvises from the empty, washed can of coffee grounds and a plastic bag from the mini-mart down the street where she buys some donuts.

She gets a few more hours of sleep in the car, leaning against Kanzai's shoulder with her legs tucked into the empty space at her right. As the crow flies, the distance from the safehouse to the edge of the forest isn't far at all, but the elevation changes drastically and the only roads are narrow and zigzag in such a way that it takes them much longer to make their way to their destination. They see no other cars on the road, due to the hour and the remoteness of their location, and as they drive the vegetation changes, from spindly, leafy trees set farther from the road to a wide variety of plants and mosses, curving over the railings and bridges their dark sedan traverses as they climb even higher into the mountainside. Cluck finds herself rambling, now wide awake and her attention fixed firmly on the hunt ahead of her.

“You know how in mountain ranges, the airflow means that one side is rainy and the other is mostly dry? The forests here are a rare result of the geography and weather patterns aligning to produce an area with rampant isochronism and a really diverse ecosystem. Plants rapidly grow and die, and they're replaced by even wilder, more niche species. Then the process repeats itself. And the animal life there must have evolved to live alongside these cycles. I can't wait to see it.”

Kanzai makes a face. “Isohedral?”

“Isochronic. Events occurring at regular time intervals. The Black Orchid blooms only once every seven years. It's probable that it's parasitic on whatever comes before it, a plant or fungi. Myco-heterotropic orchids are uncommon, but not unheard of. Maybe everything there is parasitic in some way—maybe that's even the reason the region is unmappable, if it's literally changing too fast to record. Maybe the maps we have would have been accurate at one point, but now we've moved past it in the cycle.”

“Cluck.” Kanzai speaks slowly, as if to a child. “The river moved between maps. You can't blame that on science .” He puts air quotes around the word with his fingers.

“Kanzai.” Her voice is even slower, with even more affectation. “ Everything is because of science.”

He pokes her in the shoulder. “What about Nen ?”

There's a long, measured silence. “That's...”

Then, she scowls, sitting up in her seat and jabbing her fingers against his sternum. “ That is totally unfair! You know how impossible Nen is to quantify! There aren't instruments that can measure aura beyond the trained eye and the variety in techniques doesn't even seem to be bound to our imaginations, considering how some people have abilities they don't even understand themselves! How can I possibly argue against that!”

Her teeth are gritted, her eyes narrowed, the feathers in her hair drooping. Kanzai matches her expression, growling, “Well, some people can't seem to create abilities that make sense —”

“ Mine makes perfect sense! ”

“It's like a princess in a fairy tale movie for children!” His scowl deepens. “Or like the protagonist in some low-budget animated series from twenty years ago.”

“How dare . My Pied Piper is unflawed. You're just jealous that as an Enhancer-type with a Conjuration ability, you don't have any delicacy with your skills,” she says. “Your strategy is always to just hit whatever you come up against with a bat and hope it dies.”

His head tilts to the side, stretching the marks across his cheeks. “If it ain't broke.”

“If you're done squabbling...” From the driver's seat, Nikolaus raises a hand, and both Cluck and Kanzai swivel their heads around to face him, sporting identical glares. “We've arrived.”

The forest's entry is marked only by the road's end into a cleared area of dirt and gravel, and a few signs and fences that appear to have not been replaced or cleaned in years. Ahead, they can see the slope of the forest curve upward, and the tree canopy growing even thicker the further they look.

Cluck affixes her coffee can to her back with a formless sack they'd found in the safehouse—it had been full of athletic equipment, and now it houses what few supplies they have. One of their two-way radios is left with Nikolaus, who will remain at the car, hidden as best they can behind a grove of bushes, and the other is clipped to Kanzai's belt.

Cluck pulls her phone out of her pocket; it's the newest model, the Beatle-05, and even though they'd had great service in the city center the screen flickers with connection problems. It had even worked in the airship, so she supposes the problem is deeper than the elevation or the isolation.

“We won't be able to contact you if there's a problem,” she tells Nikolaus. “Just be ready for our return. No matter how long that takes. Even if it's days, don't go anywhere. And if others from the Mafia show up here, hide or use your best judgment to confront or take them out. As long as you're ready, I don't care how you pass the time.”

“T-that's fine...” Nikolaus's nervousness is making Cluck nervous, so she steps away and moves towards Kanzai, who is doing calisthenics in the middle of the clearing, doing lunges and stretching out his legs and arms. Nikolaus glances towards the passenger seat, where a few silver cans are nestled next to the spare blankets. “At least I've still got the soup...”

“You good to go?” She does a few quick stretches herself, focusing on her arms and making sure her jacket is zipped to her chin and her pockets are fastened securely. She remembers an early mission, ruefully, where she'd been sent flying by an assailant and every candy wrapper and jenni coin in her pockets had come tumbling out. This had been in a protected wildlife preserve, where every contaminant was carefully detailed and collected and after dispatching the poachers who'd attacked her she'd had to scale a ravine just to get them back. The last thing she wants is to repeat the experience, especially when she worries that the ecosystem is too delicate to support even the most minor interference, not to mention whatever the Mafia had been doing in there for weeks in their search of the orchid.

“Ready when you are,” is his response. A moment later, and a wave back to Nikolaus from Cluck, and the two begin making their way into the forest. There is no path, but Cluck has memorized the maps, and begins traveling South as best she can, making her way between the largest gaps in the trees. In a minute, they completely lose sight of the clearing, and another minute later the trees have grown so much larger, and the tree cover so much thicker, that the light begins to thin and what sky is visible through the treetops looks darkened as if from a storm. Although there is no rain, the air is heavy with moisture and a little warmer than she expects.

“You're looking for something,” Kanzai says. “What is it?”

“Something different.” Cluck scans the forest, taking in the uneven pitch to the soil, and the meager understory above the forest floor. Every so often she stops, to listen for any sign of other intruders or to put her head to the ground to listen for running water. Once they find the river, Cluck is sure the path to the orchid will present itself to them. It will be easier to read the extent of the forest—right now, it looks not much different than any other forest in this part of the world.

She pauses again to listen, Kanzai right beside her. “It's strange,” she says. “I haven't seen a single animal since we've been here. No birds, no squirrels, nothing.”

“Your ability won't work without it, right?”

She makes a hmph in response, straightening and wiping the sweat from her forehead. “There's no berries, no flowers, either...it's springtime, so I'd expect to see some of that. But if there's nothing for the birds to eat, then of course there would be no birds. Unless the Mafia intrusion has chased them away.”

“Of course,” Kanzai echoes. “So, how do you explain that?”

She follows his outstretched hand towards a tree about fifteen feet away, unremarkable except for the faded X drawn on it in white chalk. Cluck bounds towards it in an instant, studying the mark and the ground around the tree. None others in the area are marked that they can see, but a few yards away she finds the remnants of wheel marks in the soft dirt.

“Something was brought through here,” she says. “Good eye.”

He makes a hmph at that, too, shrugging his shoulders and glancing back the way they'd came. “I'm hoping you know the way back. I'm not about to climb one of those to figure it out.”

They travel another few minutes in silence. Occasionally one of them will spot a tree marked with chalk—sometimes the marks are fresh, sometimes they look half worn away, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to their organization.

“I wonder why they call it the Endeløs Forest,” Cluck muses.

“Probably should've asked Nikolaus that.” Kanzai alights onto a boulder with an unfair amount of grace, scrambling up and over a rift in the ground that Cluck ducks around instead. She can tell, he would be moving faster if he could, but he sticks to her pace, acting both as scout and support. They pass another tree with a faded X, and continue down the slope of the mountainside.

“This is so much fun,” Kanzai continues. “We should really work together more often.”

“Shut up!” The constant running, the loud sounds of her breathing in her ears, and the growing humidity is making it hard for her to think. “We're missing something! It'll be obvious once we get to the river, I know it!”

“And you know that how? Because none of the Mafia are here?” Kanzai kicks a pebble off into the distance, watching it clatter against the base of a tree, covered in dark mosses. “I think we've been running in circles.”

“I think you should shut up!” She stops running to spin, turning towards Kanzai when the ground slips underneath her feet and she goes tumbling, sliding down what she thought at the time was a gradual incline in the ground. Instead, there is a nearly vertical drop, hidden by boulders and covered by leaves, and Cluck finds herself plummeting down into a hollow of crumbling leaves and dark loam.

At the last moment she covers her body with Nen , landing and rolling to absorb the impact without injury. Sitting on the ground, she takes a moment to recover her dignity before glancing around. Vines crawl up the rocky surface surrounding her, and her excitement at finding something different is short-lived as she sees Kanzai's face peek over the top of the ledge. She climbs to her feet to study the vines—they're grafted to the spindly tree climbing up the rocks, parasitic in nature just as she'd thought, and she almost misses Kanzai jump off the ledge and manage a perfect, noiseless landing in the soft dirt beside her.

“There should be more growing here,” she says, digging her hands into the ground to feel the earth. “This is some really good soil.”

“You have something on your face,” Kanzai says in response, gesturing with his thumb at a spot at the base of his right cheek. When Cluck brushes a dirt-covered hand across the same spot on her own face, it does nothing. “No, there. There . No, never mind.”

Even further down, the sky is that much darker, but when Cluck listens closely she can hear the far-off sound of running water.

“Come on. It's this way.”

They continue running, and still there are no sign of creatures—no snakes, no mammals, not even any insects, which worries her most. The only way that could be explained is if everything in this forest was nocturnal, which...

She stops in her tracks, stroking her chin in thought. Could it be possible...?

“I think we made a mistake coming here during the daytime,” she says. “It's not that there's nothing to see, it's that everything won't come out until nightfall! The plants are nocturnal!”

Kanzai glances around, at the plain, unassuming trees, branches, and leaves, as if expecting them to suddenly sprout heads and join the conversation. “What? What's wrong with them?”

“They're nocturnal,” she repeats. At Kanzai's blank expression, she continues, “Nocturnal creatures are active at night and at rest during the day. Like owls, and rodents, and some...cats. For plants, it's more common in arid biomes, where the heat of the sun would wither anything that blooms during the day, so native species adapted so that the flowers would only open at night.”

He tips his head up, looking past the rocky curve at their backs to the tree canopy now so much higher up above. “I dunno, it seems pretty dark in here to me.”

Cluck freezes again, before her mouth stretches into a wide grin. “That's exactly it, isn't it? The closer we get to the middle, the darker it's getting...and we've been traveling for what, an hour? A little more? Do you have the time?”

Kanzai rolls up his sleeve, studying the face of his watch. “No...we've been in here for over four hours.”

“What?” She pauses, the sweat on the back of her neck cooling with the realization. She was hungry, her muscles were tired, and as she looked up at the tiny slices of sky visible through the tree canopy she felt the smallest bit of vertigo.

“It's like he said, isn't it,” Kanzai continues. “The same thing happened to the Mafia members. Time slips away from them—what feels like hours turns into days. I thought, since we were Hunters, it wouldn't apply to us the same way, but guess not. It's a little humbling.”

“You don't like it.” Cluck's smile turns soft at his sullen attitude. “Neither do I. Let's keep going.”

The pace they set now is more measured; considering it's been hours since they've had any nourishment, and with as much as they're sweating they're going to have to replace the moisture they've lost somehow, Cluck doesn't want to risk overexertion or fainting. She's not a medic, and she wouldn't trust Kanzai to put on a bandage correctly, let alone monitor for hypoglycemia.

“I'm gonna steal so much food from the Mafia,” she says, panting, as they stop for another break by a tree with a freshly-marked X. “That restaurant was so good!”

“ Shh .” Kanzai lifts a hand, then begins pointing with a series of hand signals Cluck has no idea how to interpret. At her blank stare, he regards her with open disappointment. “Can't you hear it? Voices, up ahead. Be quiet.”

She can, now that she takes a moment to listen. Voices, and the strange sound of machinery cranking, like a fan belt or belay device. They creep closer, and while the voices become clearer, they're indiscernible—the speech is in the native language, and interspersed with laughter. Peering around the edge of a tall boulder, they are finally able to see the full extent of the Mafia's camp.

The first thing she sees is an oversized generator, whirring loudly and connected with cords to a variety of other equipment. There's some kind of rappelling device, as she'd thought—something large and heavy, with a kind of affixed frame to transport both multiple people and supplies. Luckily for them, the framework is at the top, but four Mafia gunmen sit around it, talking and eating. They're ribbing each other; every so often, one will laugh, or make a joke. None of them Cluck recognizes from the restaurant, but she does recognize the food they're eating, which fills her with understandable envy.

Tents are set up haphazardly in the cleared spaces between trees—and not all the clearings are natural, as she can see hatchets and log clearing machines, discarded and unattended beside jagged tree stumps. Tall, electric powered lights have been drilled into some of the trees about fifteen feet up in a perimeter, washing the area in a bright, artificial light, and beyond that, the ground dips in a brutally familiar way. Just like when she'd fallen into the cavern earlier, a second ledge leads down into an even deeper cave. At a glance, the edges seem to be fringed with a series of strange leafed bushes, but on deeper consideration they appear to be the tops of even taller trees. And below, the sound of rushing water of what could only be the river. Her anticipation grows, her hands shaking. The thought of a hunt—and she hasn't hunted anything in so long—is thrilling beyond all expectation.

“How deep do you think it goes?” Kanzai whispers. “Deep enough they need an elevator.”

“That's not what it is...oh, whatever.” Cluck returns her attention to the gunmen. “How do you want to proceed?”

When she glances back at Kanzai, he's holding a bat; this one is lighter in color, with extremely visible graining and a large letter A emblazoned on the side. He taps the bat into the palm of one hand and raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, fine, but make it quick. I don't want the whole forest knowing we're coming.”

Five minutes later, Kanzai's knocked out all four men before they even have the chance to blink, and tied them up with rope to one of the smaller trees. Cluck sits in their place, leaning against the generator, chewing on a sandwich. Of the thermos bottles around the campsite, only one has water; the others have coffee and vodka, which is worse than useless when combating dehydration, but the river below is promising and after they spend a few minutes burrowing through the tents they come up with even more food—energy bars and protein drinks and similar things she remembers from late nights as a student.

“Cluck.” Kanzai repeats her name twice, standing to the side with arms crossed as Cluck continues to sort all the trash she can find, stuffing the empty food containers into a plastic bag she'd found and retrieving the litter the gunmen had left around their campsite. “ Cluck .”

“Nature preservation is important!” She throws a wrapper into the bag and follows it with an empty soda can. “Who knows what damage they're doing down there!”

“I really think someone so interested in making money isn't going to risk ruining the very thing he's trying to sell with his efforts.” Kanzai tilts his head to the side as he watches Cluck hurl a full pack of cigarettes into the trash.

“ Still .” She stands, straightening her back and dusting off her hands. “I don't feel quite so bad about beating up all these strangers anymore.”

“Did you ever?” They make their way to the rappelling machine, studying it and climbing into the open cage.

“I mean, they don't even know Nen .” She grips one of the metal bars with one hand before leaning over the side, bracing with her toes and tilting her body straight down to get the best view over the crevasse. “It's not exactly fair.”

Below, the first thing that catches her eye are the bright, jewel-pink and orange flowers nestled in the tops of the some of the highest-level trees. The leaves are wide and spiky like a palm tree, the trunk thick and striated, and the flowers look more tropical than anything else. She cannot see any other people on the ground, only a metal surround for the rest of the lift platform to secure it after it descends. Kanzai handles the control levers, and the platform begins to slowly move down the side of the cliff.

As they descend, the air grows even warmer, and Cluck discards her jacket, balling it up and stuffing it inside her knapsack. And as they fall, the view crystallizes into unbelievable, astonishing focus.

Flowers, of every bright color nature could provide, scattered like sequins across the fabric of the forest. Vines crawling with beetles with shells patterned like amber, plants growing out of the rock with spiny protrusions and speckled leaves, everything in the full bloom of life. The darkness grows even deeper, but their descent is slow enough their vision adjusts as they go. Still, she cannot see all the way across this second level of the forest, only a few bright spots of unmoving color before it is swallowed up by blackness and silence.

At the base, they step off the platform—there are no others, or any signs of other Mafia gunmen. She breathes deeply, taking in the spiky grasses growing off to the side of a makeshift path, the rows of vividly-colored mushrooms along the edge of the cliff, the almost glowing mosses lining the roof of the cavern. Where the treetops brush the rocks, the air is heavy with mist and the branches seem to shake as if from some wind current she cannot feel all the way at the ground.

Even standing still, her feet seem to sink slightly into the loam, the dirt as soft as if it was freshly-tilled.

“Ok, you're up,” Kanzai says. He doesn't look fazed at all, but he does sound impressed, and she'll just have to take it. “I'll admit, this is a lot nicer.”

“You haven't seen nothing yet.” Cluck cracks her knuckles, the gesture reminding her suddenly of something Kanzai would do. She smiles, and begins leading a path straight into the forest.

The sound of rushing water grows even stronger—the river must be underground, or at least partially so, and as they approach Cluck can see water trickling down the rocks in places. A waterfall, maybe, or some rapids, depending on the strength of the currents. Bright mosses grow along the rocks, but here there are no insects, nothing else of note.

“Don't touch anything,” she tells Kanzai. “The brighter it is, the more dangerous, probably.”

Movement, up ahead. A few small birds, with bright flocks of color across their backs, resembling the same patterns of the bright leaves of a few smaller trees she remembers seeing around the mouth of the cavern. It's not enough—they're not close enough, and there's not enough of them to risk trying to use her ability. She will only have one shot at this, and she's determined to get it right.

She asks Kanzai for the time again—it's been another couple hours, longer than either of them thinks, and as they continue they see every type of fern, grass, and flower conceivable, except for the orchid she seeks. There are spiders, frogs with spots the color of jewels, and birds with sharp, hooked beaks drifting too far overhead to reach. Where the plants are oversized, almost large enough to be comical, the animal life is diminutive in size, and almost entirely useless to her. What does this say, that the plants are the predators here?

There are more chalk marks on the trees, and boulders jutting out of areas of soft, tilled dirt, and behind one such boulder the ground drops out and Cluck can see the river exposed, rushing over the visible roots of a gnarled tree and disappearing just as suddenly over another small drop in the ground. Narrow silver fish, like the kind they'd eaten at the restaurant, swim with the current, and when Cluck drops down against the ground, holding her palm above the water, she hesitates. The fish are there, perfect in numbers, but still not ideal for her needs. They could not travel with her, could not leave the cover of water.

And beyond, they hear voices. Shouting.

“I told you it was there!” The voice is frantic, half-sob and half-scream. “I saw something move!”

“You saw nothing!” She recognizes the loud, flat voice of Mikkel, and as they creep around a boulder they can see about a dozen Mafia gunmen with their backs to the river; all look dazed, their faces dripping with sweat and their eyes glassy. They clearly spent the night searching, and how many nights before that?

“If you cannot find the orkidé , then you cannot find excuses!” he yells. “When you find it you can rest!”

“I saw...” One of them staggers, trying to find the words. “I saw something! Where did it go?”

The next moment, Kanzai leaps out of the darkness, not even waiting for her cue, baseball bat in hand, swinging. He gets out two before the rest have the sense to draw their guns, and then he adopts a defensive pose, returning each shot as it comes and moving even further forward.

Cluck glances between them all, before looking down at her own feet. She's standing beside the boulder, out in the open, her every instinct telling her to keep moving, to dodge, to go on ahead. The gunmen must be right, they must be close; it is as if she can sense it.

Kanzai volleys another round of bullets, his posture wide, and when the others reload he grasps the bat in both hands and slams it into the ground, sending a shockwave that almost knocks them all off their feet.

What is he doing? He's taking all the fire, drawing it away from her. His mouth moves, although she cannot hear the words. Is he talking to her?

He is, though. He's been shouting to her for some time now. Why are her legs moving so slowly?

She glances up. They all do, at the sudden shadow that falls over them like a blanket. She squints into the darkness, uncertain, before her eyes widen and she staggers back as a branch whips through the air, catching one of the gunmen around the middle and launching them in mid-air back into the dark.

Adrenaline supplies her feet with motion and her mind with clarity, and she leaps out of the way of a second branch, sweeping across the clearing at knee-level. Most of the gunmen clear it, but a few are knocked to the ground, and Kanzai lands beside her, his bat held high and his eyes full of incredulity.

“What the hell is that?!” He holds out the end of the bat, gesturing with it as a gigantic tree, its trunk marked with a faded chalkmark, comes marching out of the shadows on large, disparate roots. It strikes, again, and this time the gunmen turn their weapons on the tree, emptying an entire clip each into its trunk with little effect.

“A tree, obviously.” Cluck has to crane her neck up to even see it all, and when the roots contract, sliding it backwards through the dirt and out of sight, she remembers the maps and their previously-unexplainable inconsistencies.

“You laughed when I told you we were going to be hunting a plant,” she reminds him.

It strikes again, and this time the branch lunges forward, striking the man on Mikkel's right and plunging straight through his chest. It retracts, dragging the body with it, and Mikkel and the others turn to canisters placed haphazardly around the rocks.

“Get the flares!” he shouts. “Burn them down! Use the liquid nitrogen!”

Cluck starts, reaching out for the other to try and knock the equipment out of their hands. “Don't!”

Kanzai instead reaches for her, yanking Cluck out of the way as the tree rushes forward again, two branches whipping out to try and snag any additional prey and missing all targets. It lingers, the branches poised, waiting for any movement.

A second tree, its branches tipped with coiled pink flowers, slinks through the darkness behind the first.

“How many do you think there are?” Kanzai asks. “Do you think they all move like that?”

“I think the entire forest is alive,” she answers, and watches as Mikkel raises a flare gun and blasts it straight up into the canopy of the main tree. It bursts into life, sending flames and red smoke across the treetop—the new light source illuminates the top of the cavern and with it they can see the writhing movement of dozens of other trees, coming closer.

“Retreat!” Mikkel shouts, sweeping out his arm and trying to push his men behind the cover of boulders. “Get back!”

Several of them run, others raising guns to fruitlessly cover their progress, their gait still uneven and their faces still disoriented and eyes glazed. She doesn't know if they're even running in the right direction.

On a whim, she lights up her eyes with Gyo .

It is as though she can see in the darkness as far as her En can go. She sees every rock, every blade of grass, every movement of the gunmen as they blip out of her radar and every minutiae of the tree before her. She glances to Kanzai, and sees that at her approach, he too washes his eyes with Gyo .

“I can't believe we didn't think to use our auras earlier.” Her En stretching out, she's able to track the one tree moving counterclockwise with an ease that completely eluded her earlier. “We're such idiots.”

There's screaming, from the Mafia men ahead of them. The second tree, trapping the others. Kanzai rests the baseball bat against his shoulder.

The next time the tree sends a branch forward, Kanzai is ready, and whips the bat forward, cloaked in aura, and splinters the branch with the force of his swing. The tree staggers back, and Cluck surges forward, spiking her aura and sending a Nen -infused punch straight at the center of the trunk. It splits the tree in two, and she feels the moment it flickers and dies, falling backward with a resounding crash that shakes the already pliant ground. The forest is silent, the other trees creeping backwards, and a moment later everything is still.

She stares into the darkness, her Nen receding. The pitch blackness of the forest reminds her of the black ink of the sketch, and her only thought once again is for the orchid. She finds herself turning, staggering on shaky legs over to the river and dropping to her knees beside it. Silvery fish dart through the water, seemingly unaware or unaffected by the fight that just occurred.

“Cluck.”

She barely hears Kanzai call her name, her hand outstretched towards the fish, her desire so profound to find the orchid that if it was anyone else, she doubts she would have paused at all. But it's Kanzai, and she does.

“Cluck, look at yourself.”

She does, glancing back into the river and meeting her reflection. Glassy, dull eyes stare back at her. A pallid complexion, wisps of hair clinging to the sides of her face from sweat. She looks like the gunmen, like whatever had trapped them here is now affecting her. And she remembers reading about the Black Orchid, about how just the sketch alone moved her to action, and how anyone who caught so much as a glance was bidden to offer every cent they had for the opportunity to own it.

And her mind clarifies, this time, she believes, for good.

She coughs into one shoulder, aware now of how her vision swims, what that means, and what to do when it happens.

“What happened to you?” She's never heard Kanzai sound concerned about her, but this almost seems close. He grips her shoulder tightly with his free hand.

“Spores, maybe. Or some kind of effect from a psychotropic fungus or flower. I wasn't expecting that. I'll be better soon.”

“Why didn't it affect me?”

She considers the options, not wanting to suggest aloud that it could be due to his height, or the fact that his high collar and long sleeves cover more of his skin than her outfit with its exposed arms and legs. It could even be that it merely amplifies whatever natural desires exist in a person, and a Botanical Hunter would already be predisposed towards wanting to enter the forest and unearth its mysteries.

“Maybe it did. Or maybe there's nothing to affect.” She means it lightly, but he takes offense, scowling and curling his lip over pointed teeth.

“Well, excuse me for caring.” He steps back, crossing his arms. As she studies him, he doesn't look like the gunmen—his eyes are focused, his posture is even, and he doesn't seem distracted by anything around him, despite how remarkable it all is. Instead, even as he feigns disinterest, she can feel through his aura the bulk of his attention is still exclusively centered on her.

“Come on,” she says. “We've come this far. Let's find that orchid.”

They walk together; she keeps her aura flexed, and every time they come into range of one of the larger trees, she feels it shrink backwards.

Beneath the lacerated leaves of a fern she finally finds what she is looking for. A cluster of small rodents, with large pointed ears and bushy tails sit together chewing on some kind of large, flat tubers. She holds out a hand, concentrating her Nen , and her Pied Piper flares to life.

The rodents stop, their eyes swiveling to focus on her. She can only use Pied Piper once per day, and once she establishes contact with it she cannot switch it to a new set of targets. Her ability grants her total control over any number of the same kind of animal, with the conditions that she must not have caused them harm, can only give them one command at a time, and cannot give them a new command until they finish the old one.

“Help me find the Black Orchid,” she tells them. “Please.”

The rodents turn and scurry across a rock, glancing back as if to tell her to follow them. And she does, leaping around boulders and under fallen logs, leaving the area by the river and making their way back up a steady slope of the cave floor. And she can feel the forest try to shift around them as they move, but the rodents know the forest well, and are able to correct course and take them straight to where she hopes the orchid is.

In an area blocked by a curtain of moss, the rodents sit and wait, chittering together and staring up at Cluck with black eyes. The air is brighter here, and tinged with something sweet and unfamiliar.

Kanzai uses his bat to sweep aside the curtain. “After you,” he says.

Cluck steps through first, her feet once again sinking into the soft dirt. There are cracks in the rocks above, letting in just enough light that slices of it hit the forest floor at frequent enough angles for her to see the first of the flowers.

She had thought she would only find one specimen, and maybe not even one in full bloom.

Instead, an entire grove of them spreads out before her, as far as she can see. Each flower is equidistant from the rest, open in perfect bloom, the black petals as flawless and beautiful as every documented example.

Kanzai steps into place beside her. She hears his breath catch in his throat, and feels him reach for her hand. But they both cannot look at anything other than the field of orchids in front of them.

Then, he turns to look at her. “Is it everything you wanted?”

She can barely make out the word. “Yes.”

“Great.” He stands beside her for another minute. He doesn't even comment on the tears drying on her cheeks, or the dirt smudged onto her hands and face. But he does still open his mouth to say, “How are we getting out of here again?”

“The rodents,” she says. “the rodents.”

“...And we're going to have to deal with a bureaucratic nightmare to package some of these up and transport them. Plus dealing with all of the dead Mafia. You got a plan for that too?”

She pauses, considering. She'll have to arrange a visa for Nikolaus, agriculture entry permits, and fast-track some laboratory assistance with negating any negative effects of the orchid's spores. Then, her mouth stretches into a grin. “I'll have to call in a favor. But that does give me an idea...”

–

Pariston Hill stands before the press briefing, wearing a black suit patterned with begonias. And gold aviator sunglasses.

To his right, Cluck is silent, arms clasped behind her back as Pariston reads off the teleprompter, some fluff explanation he'd scripted himself after Cluck called in the favor he'd offered her for voting in his interests in some real estate proposal some months ago.

“The Black Orchid will be preserved and cultivated, studied in labs across the continents and, of course, available for display at the museums here in Swaldani City and in Yorkshin!” He spreads his arms wide, a beaming smile gracing his face. It's hard to imagine him in a setting like Razing, covered in dirt and grime, but she manages. She's got to keep herself occupied somehow during this boring briefing.

“And now, my colleague Cluck will say a few words,” he continues, and Cluck startles. She certainly wasn't expecting this—it hadn't been in any part of their discussion. In fact, he'd seemed pleased to be in full control of the media dissemination, but now with little choice she steps up to the podium in his place and reads from the teleprompter.

“Charting the Endeløs Forest will provide us with a wealth of information and will lead to new discoveries in medicine and bioscience. And of course, none of it would be possible without the tireless work of my good friend, Pariston Hill...” She pauses, gritting her teeth. “Who is one of the most generous and selfless men I know.”

Pariston beams, and the crew of media reporters applaud briefly as she steps back.

“Thank you for your time!” He waves, beckoning her back behind the doors into the Association headquarters.

“Now,” he tells her, once the noise from the crowd of reporters outside has died down, “I still have some calls to make. And I was hoping you would be there for the opening of the exhibit here. It's tonight, and the guest list has already been decided, but I'm sure I can get you in.”

How generous indeed. “I can't, I'm afraid. I've got plans.”

“Really?” He tilts his head, his every microexpression a study in curiosity. “What might those be? I've thought your social calendar was a little thin as of late.”

“Shut up!” If she didn't want him to ruin her good mood, the first step should have been not to let him know about it in the first place. Or, she could always rub her happiness in his face. “Actually, I've got a hot date.”

His expression falls immediately, disgust marring the otherwise immaculate features. “You don't need to share every detail.”

“I wasn't. It's none of your business. Have fun at the museum! Bye!!” With reporters blocking the entrance and Pariston standing in front of the lobby corridor leading to the main bank of elevators, she doesn't have many viable avenues of escape. Still, she knows about a back door leading to the parking garage, so she takes it and slips out.

She has a few more hours to kill until Kanzai takes her to dinner. Somewhere nice. A surprise, he'd said.

At the end, he gives her flowers. Real ones. Purple orchids, for her desk.