Chapter 2: Something's Off About This Hunter
The near-instinctive materialization of the full Little Tyrant's Endless Amusement set had burned through every last drop of aura Ross had on his first awakening, leaving him looking a little hollowed out. But the forced Zetsu state that came as the price of that first materialization stopped any further aura from leaking away.
The excitement of getting it back lasted all of a few seconds before Ross noticed his materialized set was missing two components.
The game cartridge. And the 2P controller.
The second controller he genuinely hadn't plugged in during his final test run, but unless his memory was completely wrong, there should have been a test cartridge slotted into the console at that point.
He'd even gone out of his way to print a label for it — a perfect replica of the original cartridge artwork, applied to the front with the kind of obsessive precision that probably wasn't entirely healthy.
So the cartridge clearly hadn't been counted as part of the console set by the ability. And without a cartridge the thing couldn't run normally. Which meant he was probably going to have to acquire one through some other means.
Not that now was a good time to keep thinking about it. The elevator had been dropping for a solid two minutes, and with a grinding mechanical shudder it finally hit the bottom.
A thought, and the Little Tyrant set vanished from Ross's hands.
Even locked in Zetsu and completely unable to move his aura, Ross could still feel the console sitting somewhere inside him, waiting. One thought away.
Almost the instant it disappeared, the elevator doors in front of him slid open.
A wave of eyes landed on him immediately. The overwhelming majority were not friendly. The whole space had a weight to it.
He was looking at a large underground cavern, clearly man-made but rough around the edges, its natural texture still intact in places. The lights set into the walls were dim enough that taking in the full layout at a glance wasn't really possible.
Ross walked out of the elevator without changing his expression and tried to fade into the crowd.
He already knew the burst of aura from his awakening had almost certainly been picked up by whoever in this group was a real Nen user playing tourist among the newcomers. That couldn't be helped. He'd deal with it as it came.
He'd barely taken two or three steps when a short, heavyset man bustled over with a wide grin already deployed. He had a squarish nose that dominated his face and a badge on his chest marked 16.
"You must be a first-timer, huh~~ My name's Tonpa, nice to meet you~"
The man extended a friendly hand without any hesitation.
Ross took a small step back instead of taking it. His eyes had already moved past Tonpa's slightly deflated expression to the three people standing behind him.
Suit and tie, briefcase, small sunglasses, and the exhausted face of a man who looked forty before his time.
Traditional ethnic clothing, a sling bag, short golden hair, and sharp features that leaned slightly androgynous.
A kid in green with a small backpack and a fishing rod over his shoulder, hair spiked up like a hedgehog.
Badge 403, Leorio. Badge 404, Kurapika. Badge 405, Gon. The three figures at the center of everything that would unfold in this world were all watching him — sizing him up, staying guarded, or simply curious, each in their own way. Or rather, each was doing the same thing in their own way: watching everyone in the room.
Ross quietly drifted toward the edge of the cavern without making a move toward any of them, looking for a higher vantage point where he could observe the whole venue without being obvious about it.
He hadn't made it far when a sharp, ugly scream pulled his attention sideways.
Most of the room turned instinctively toward the source. What they found was some poor applicant halfway embedded in the wall, still screaming, and beside him a tall, lean figure with a playing card turning lazily between his fingers and the suits of hearts and diamonds printed across the back of his fitted outfit.
"When you run into someone, you're supposed to apologize~"
His voice was slow and a little bored. The star and teardrop stickers on his cheeks creased as he smiled.
The room erupted into noise, but not one person made any move to step forward. Everyone in the vicinity had already quietly put more distance between themselves and him.
"Can't believe this guy is back again this year... Badge 44. Hisoka the Magician."
Ross was still close enough to hear Tonpa behind him, who had apparently survived thirty-five exam attempts and was still cheerfully upright, explaining things to the three-person group with the air of someone enjoying their moment of expertise. The gist of it was that Hisoka had gotten disqualified the previous year for putting one of the examiners half to death and had seriously injured over twenty other applicants in the process, leaving some of them permanently disabled. Best to stay far away.
Ross already knew all of this. As the HxH world's most dangerous, most persistent, and most completely unhinged fruit farmer, Hisoka was not a figure you forgot.
Combat instinct ground down to the bone. An unpredictable and layered personality. Desires that had long since gone past the point of ordinary fixation. And underneath all of it, a focus so absolute it could push past death itself to get what it wanted. Put it all together and what you had was something like gum that had been chewed too long — once it stuck to you, it wasn't coming off.
Anyone who knew even the basics about him would want nothing to do with him. Ross was no different.
Except it was already looking like that wasn't going to be an option.
Hisoka stood comfortably at the center of the room's attention, a card held loosely to the corner of his mouth. His gaze drifted sideways, easy and unhurried, and landed directly on Ross.
The moment it did, something like ice water shot straight through the top of his skull and crawled all the way down his spine to his heels.
If Ross had to reach for a comparison from his own memory, the closest thing he could find was that moment in high school when he'd been sneaking a listen to his MP3 player in class, glanced back over his shoulder, and found his homeroom teacher's head poking through the back door window, staring right at him.
Hisoka's mouth curved open on its own.
And Ross quietly let go of the last bit of wishful thinking he'd been holding onto.
His awakening had been clocked. Someone real had been paying attention.
"Well. Damn Green Apple Paradise."
Ross's mouth went flat. His head had already produced the image without asking him: Hisoka in a straw farmer's hat, staring up at a tree with that slow, savoring look, and hanging from one of the branches was a green apple wearing Ross's own face.
But what could he do about it at this point. Just keep moving and see what happened.
If it really came down to being forcibly picked, at least let me get one last game in first.
His thoughts had started to drift despite the situation when the elevator doors behind him scraped open again and snapped him back.
That surprised him. As far as he remembered, Gon at badge 405 was the last applicant to arrive on time in the original story. His own 406 was already a variable that didn't belong there. So who was this?
He turned to look.
Blue student uniform, red pompadour, a face with a distinct and specific ugliness to it — something about the structure faintly recalled Leorio, just pushed in a different direction. Badge 407.
Green student uniform, black pompadour, about half a head shorter than the guy next to him, which by contrast somehow made him look noticeably better. Badge 408.
Two obvious delinquents in school uniforms walked out bickering at each other.
And then it hit Ross exactly which cartridge he'd had slotted in during that final test run.
"Yu Yu Hakusho... Makyou Touitsusen..."
A sharp bell cut through the underground cavern almost in sync with the words leaving his mouth.
At the same time, a man dropped from above. Suit and tie, hair parted precisely down the center, two thin mustaches that looked borrowed from a medieval portrait, and where his mouth should have been — nothing. He switched off an alarm clock toy in his hand and addressed the room without preamble.
"Registration is now closed."
"The Hunter Exam officially begins."