Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
September 4th, YorkNew City, 9:55PM
As expected, the lobby of the Beichtaku Hotel was still bustling with activity late into the evening, when the seven Spiders and their two hostages strolled across its immaculate marble floors. 'Ah, there he is,' thought Nijiiro, as she wandered by Kurapika, who was sitting to the left of the entrance disguised as a receptionist. Clothes lied, but auras never did, and she could spot his from across a city block or three. 'Another costume change?' she mused silently, 'My god, he's quick...' Nijiiro smiled to herself as the Kurta was bombarded with a grisly tale of the two bodies found in the hotel trash incinerator just two days ago by a well-meaning old man in a tweed suit.
“Bad business, ma'am, all these mafia types in one place,” Nijiiro heard him say as they walked by, “better to keep yourself indoors at this hour, for safety...” She barely kept herself from laughing out loud.
“What is it?” Chrollo said, looking down at her smile. Nijiiro's grin disappeared like a fox down a hole, as she remembered she was in deep trouble with her winsome lord and master. If only she could understand why.
“Ah...It's nothing, just a...a passing fancy,” she said softly. He released her right hand, the hand he'd broken a few minutes ago, and Nijiiro bit her lip to keep from gasping. It was going to be a throbbing mass of pain until she could activate Serenity in about two hours. 'At least the glove will probably keep the skin from splitting open, even if it keeps swelling like this...' Her kid-leather glove was already rather tight over her injured flesh. She looked at the gilded clock in the center of the foyer. If Kurapika was planning to spring his friends from Spider custody, he'd need a coordinated effort. All Nijiiro needed to do was read the signs, and follow along. Killua had said in his earlier report that they were targeting a woman, but that could potentially mean herself, Machi, Shizuku, or Pakunoda. Kurapika would be aware of Shizuku's Nen ability, but that also meant he was unlikely to make her a priority. Machi would be a troublesome opponent for his skills, but he probably wouldn't actively target her without having a better grasp on what she could do. It had to be either Pakunoda, or herself. Of the two, it would make more sense to target Paku, because her ability was a well-defined intelligence type, but she wondered if perhaps they would switch targets once they realized Kurapika's cover had been blown.
“Wait here,” Chrollo instructed the others quietly. The four Spiders and their two captives arranged themselves around the four sides of a large marble-clad pillar on the west side of the lobby, with Machi and the two boys facing the center of the lobby, while Shizuku, Chrollo, and Nijiiro took the other three. Nijiiro pulled her hood back and sighed. Her side of the pillar faced the main entrance, but she knew no one of importance would be entering that way. She wandered back around the pillar, next to Machi, and carefully scanned the occupants of the lobby.
“Saisho?”inquired Shizuku, tilting her head slightly. Chrollo came back around and looked at Nijiiro, and Shizuku followed suit. To her eternal surprise, Kurapika's associate was a mere ten meters away, pretending to read yesterday's newspaper intently at nearly ten o'clock at night, and nervously twitching his foot as he sat on a brown leather sectional sweating bullets. Poor thing. The most damning evidence, by far, was the so-called invisible paint - very much visible to Nijiiro - covering his tan hands as they gripped the sides of the newspaper, which trembled slightly as Leorio waited for his cue. It was the same hideous, mildly radioactive paint Nijiiro had dabbed on the steering wheels of every Nostrade vehicle outside of the Beichtaku Hotel two days ago. 'Bingo. Let's see what Leorio has to say to these two. I have a feeling it won't be a terribly sophisticated code, either...' she thought, careful to turn away and look back at the entrance as if she hadn't spotted anything of note.
“What time do you think it is already, jackass?!” barked Leorio loudly from his post at the sofa. The two hostages looked over at him, as well as several hotel patrons and all of the Spiders except Nijiiro, who glanced over to where the disguised Kurapika was slipping away from the reception desk with a perfect Zetsu. “Dumbass! It's not Beiroku, it's Beitacle Hotel! How could you have heard it wrong, eh?! How many times do I have to repeat myself? The HELL are you lookin' at, huh!? You wanna have a go, ehh?!” yelled Leorio, at Chrollo himself, who simply blinked at the odd fellow's brazen disregard for his own life.
“Shall I eliminate him?” asked Shizuku politely.
“Ignore him, don't pay any attention. Continue the lookout.” Chrollo answered.
“Hey, hey, this ain't no show!” Leorio continued, turning his aggressive act on the couple behind him, who looked pointedly away. “Damn, my future is dark thanks to the failures who work for me! Just this once, I'm gonna close my eyes like nothing's happened! One more mistake, and you'll get it good! If it fails, you know what'll happen?! Listen close, ten o'clock on the dot! Come to this hotel by then! Otherwise, I'll fire you! I'll fire you immediately!!” Nijiiro saw Killua's fingers twist around in a way that probably meant he was dislocating several of his joints. Of course, even without thinking about it, she understood that the lobby would be plunged into sudden darkness at ten o'clock instant, but what remained now was likely the most difficult part of the operation thus far: retaining the hostages long enough for the Kurta to escape with his intended target, while the others were blinded by the sudden loss of light...
From the low table in front of Leorio, a static-laden voice on a portable radio announced the end of the radio program.
“For a guest with the pen name Akimine-san, here's the song 'Moon Child.' Enjoy...” the announcer chirped, and tinkling piano jazz rose up through the cheap, hazy speakers. 'Only three minutes until lights-out,' Nijiiro mused. It was then that Paku, Nobunaga and Kortopi walked through the hotel entrance, brushing off the cold rain and looking mildly irritated. Well, except Kortopi, who looked like an old wet mop that had developed sentience and donned a tiny pair of worn leather boots.
“Paku and the rest are here,” Shizuku declared, sounding pleasantly shocked. She probably was, since Shizuku had all the memory retention powers of a hypoxic lemming.
“Ohhh? You guys got yourselves captured again!?” Nobunaga said loudly, strolling up to where Gon and Killua stood grimacing at the sight of him. “I get it!” asserted Nobunaga, who did not get it at all, “You two changed your minds! You want to join the Gennei Ryodan after all! Isn't that right?”
“The reward money on your heads had been canceled, and we didn't know,” frowned Killua, “That's all there is to it.”
“So you screwed up again while stalking us? Hahaha!How pathetic! But still,” Nobunaga said thoughtfully, “this must be fate at work. We ought to be friends, whaddya say?” He leered down at Gon and Killua expectantly.
“No way,” said Killua. “We were only following you for the reward. In fact, I honestly didn't want to ever see your faces again,” he concluded, closing his eyes and turning away from Nobunaga's smile, which only grew wider at the audacity of the comment. 'Ah, what an actor you might have been, Kitty-cat,' thought Nijiiro. The entire Dickens suite would sparkle, with such talent.
“Me either,” added Gon, closing his eyes and doing the same.
“What say, you Boss?!” Nobunaga laughed, “Their sass definitely reminds me of Uvo!”
“It's because they're kids...” said Machi, “They still don't know fear... Anyway, Paku, describe the chain-user for us.”
“First things first,” Chrollo interrupted, eyeing the two boys suspiciously. “Check these kids again.” The kids in question both winced.
“Okay,” said Paku obediently, “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know...what are they hiding?” Chrollo said darkly. Damn, that was a smart question. Of course, people, even children, hid a lot of things all of the time, and so it would give Paku plenty to sift through. Nijiiro could only hope that the boys' more banal secrets would fill the remaining minute until Kurapika's counterattack began. Paku reached for the two, and Killua attempted to stall her.
“It's no use,” Killua asserted, a little too confidently. Paku's hands hovered over the boys' heads, hesitating ever so slightly. “Your power lets you extract memories from people you touch, right?” he pressed on, grasping for things that might drag the process out just another twenty seconds or so. People usually liked to talk about themselves, right? “It's useless. We aren't hiding anything, and we know nothing of interest to you all. Even if you could reach our memories, we can just alter them to throw you off-” Pakunoda seized Killua by the jaw, lifting him several centimeters off the the ground. Nijiiro bit her tongue, and reminded herself to continue watching for Kurapika, who would strike in less than thirty seconds. The boys would live.
“Even if you ask your question, we could just think of something el-” Gon began where Killua left off. Paku grabbed his jaw as well, lifting him even higher from the floor than Killua, and held them both at arm's length with a sour look on her face. Paku was a woman of little compassion and no patience whatsoever, and her nerves were getting shorter for every minute the chain-user continued to elude the Spiders.
“Listen well, my powers can't be suppressed by altering your memories or simply thinking of something else. My power draws on memory in its purest form, the original, unaltered memory at its source. Like a stone thrown into a still pool of water, my question settles to the bottom, stirring up the bits of silt that lie at the very lowermost depths of the water. This silt would represent your pure, original memory, and from there I can simply scoop it up at my leisure. Do you get it? It is impossible to deceive me,” Paku said, her lip curled. “Now...to ask my question...What are you h-”
Nijiiro heard a thump as all of the lights in the hotel lobby suddenly went out. She dilated her pupils at will, forcing them to open fully, and the entire lobby returned to full visibility with only the dim light of the streetlamps flooding in from outside. Time seemed to slow as she watched a chain, vibrating with hateful Nen power, sailing toward Chrollo through the lobby. To her own bewilderment, Nijiiro watched her own hand, her broken hand, raise up in front of her, and shove Chrollo with all her strength out of the path of the chain, wondering exactly why on earth her hand was moving of its own accord. She heard her own voice, as if it had been recorded, howl 'No!' and echo off marble walls as the chain roped itself around her instead, and dragged her off her feet, backwards through the darkened lobby as if she were a small fish being dragged out of the water by a mighty fisherman. 'What have you just done, Nijiiro?!' she thought helplessly, as Chrollo spun around quickly, and his right hand caught her left, dragging her glove off without slowing her. She sped backward through the hotel's main door, eyes wide behind her veil. 'What have you done? What have you done...What have you...done...'