Chapter Text
Leorio looked up at his new house, it was two stories tall and painted a lovely shade of olive green, just like a certain vegetable. Despite its beautiful exterior and charming coloring, the house had been suspiciously cheap. Prehaps it was haunted, or someone had been murdered inside, but whatever the reason, leorio didn’t care--he was running from his demons and couldnt care less about something as trivial and plebeian as ghosts. The inside of the house seemed to be as quant and sweet as the outside, although whoever had decorated it had possessed a certain obsession with the color green. There were green walls and furnishings, the carpets and the curtains, fluttering in the morning breeze, were all various shades of ruddy green. Leorio did not like the color green, but he was running from his demons so he didn't care.
For the first few days all was normal. Leorio unpacked, he pissed in the living room corner to assert his dominance and claim over his new home. He pointedly did not eat any of the pickles jarred in the fridge--they brought back painful memories. It was during his sixth day in the new house that he noticed something strange. The bread from his fridge was missing. Leorio was a man who enjoyed chewing on raw slices of bread so this discovery proved quite upsetting. He screamed, and kicked the fridge, and shook his fist and hollered, and when all that didn't work he burst into tears.
The next day a single egg had been snagged from the refrigerator, vanishing into the night. The day after, two slices of bacon. The next, half a block of cheddar cheese: extra sharp. Leorio was in a state of near mental collapse. He loved cheese, especially extra sharp cheddar. He had checked his entire house looking for signs of the culprit and had come up empty. Besides, he doubted anyone would come into His House and steal His Bread and His Cheese after he had asserted dominance on his first day home. There was only one place left on the property that a thief might go, and it was one leorio had avoided so much as looking at since he had moved in: the root cellar.
See, for many, the advertised root cellar that came with the home would have been a plus. Who didn't love root cellars, especially one as spacious and sturdy as the one in leorio’s new home. Leorio, however, wanted nothing to do with root cellars or what could be stored in them ever again. He was running from his demons, demons that would almost certainly arise within the confines of a root cellar. Still, he knew now that he had no choice. It was either build up his courage and check the root cellar, or continue to lose all the food items he held dear. Who knows, maybe the canned ham would be next; he couldn't handle that, not after everything else that had happened.
So, on his tenth day leorio descended the stairs into the root cellar, and carefully unlocked the cellar door. The cellar was dank and eerily dark. There was one small light just beyond the doorway, however it did little to light up the vast expanse of the root cellar. Leorio could see shelves extending as far as his vision allowed. Strangely, for a house that had been abandoned for years, the cellar was filled to the brim with jars. Upon closer inspection, the jars were filled with pickled substances, all picked with great skill and care (leorio knew a thing or two about pickling) and more importantly, all pickled recently. As he continued walking into the darkness, leorio saw more than just standard food pickled in the jars, but rats and roaches that had once presumably lived within the cellar. Even worse, leorio soon discovered the fate of his bread, egg, bacon, and most horrible of all, his cheese. They had been pickled. All of them.
Once, the sight of all these pickled goods would have filled him with joy, but now, he felt only dread and unfathomable dispare.
There was a skittering noise in the pitch black corner of the root cellar which tore leorio from his thoughts. He turned towards the source of the noise and yelled “I know you’re in there, show yourself pickler!” It was only then that he saw a shape moving towards him in the dark at a terrible speed. The Thing ran on all fours, not in the way that a dog or deer might run, but with a gait far more similar to that of a crab or a beetle. It was large, nearly as big as leorio himself, and before he could do anything to stop it, the creature reached him and clamped its horrible teeth down on his shoe.
Leorio fell back, screaming and flailing his foot, but the Thing did not let go. Instead it was shook around until the shoe finally fell off, and shoe in mouth, it retreated back into the darkness. Leorio did the only reasonable thing he could think of: he abandoned all hope of punishing the thief and ran for dear life back up the stairs, locking the door behind him. He didn’t know what the hell he had encountered in that root cellar and he didn't want to know.
Except… as days went by leorio found that that wasn’t true. He couldn't stop thinking about the root cellar, and the strange allure of the creature within it. He was angry and afraid, but even moreso, he wanted to return to the cellar. It was on his second week that Leorio finally made up his mind. The unthinkable had happened, the worst case scenario: the canned ham was gone. This time there was no mystery, Leorio knew that the ham had been taken, dragged down into the cellar by that Thing which had somehow bypassed the locked door. The loss of the ham hurt leorio badly. When he discovered it, he punched a hole in the wall of the kitchen, and when that failed to relive the pain, he cried bitterly in the shower.
That night, armed with a flashlight and a hammer, Leorio once again descended the root cellar steps. He realized now that this may be a suicide mission, he might not make it out alive, not with whatever creature was scuttling around down there…pickling things. The cellar was just as dark and sinister as he remembered, and as leorio made his way into the back corner he saw that, not only had the canned ham been pickled, but so had his shoe--tooth marks still intact. Looking closer at the shoe only deepened the mystery. Leorio was a doctor not a dentist, but the ring of tooth marks on the shoe looked disturbingly human. A loud skree was all the warning leorio got before something charged at him. This time he was ready, and swung his hammer at the creature, which screeched and ran deeper into the cellar. Leorio gave chase until he finally corned the Thing against a wall of pickled rats. Hunched over in the corner, with what appeared to be half a beetle hanging out of his mouth, was some guy.
All the mystery and fear left leorio in an instant, and he raised his hammer threateningly. “You bastard. You pickled my meat. And my shoe!” The pickling man just scoffed at him.
“It isn’t my fault that your simple mind cannot comprehend pickling” he snarled at leorio. Leorio felt enraged, how dare this fucker come into His Root Cellar and insult His Pickling Skill. He didn't care if he had promised to never pickle again, in that moment all that mattered was proving that bastard pickler wrong.
“I do too know how to pickle!!” leorio squealed and pointed an accusing finger at the pinckling man.
“Oh really. It’s hard to believe that, considering you’ve owned this house for two weeks and haven’t pickled anything,” the pickler picked some moss off the wall and began to chew on it in challenge.
“Yeah well, just because I don’t pickle anymore doesn’t mean I don’t know how--and why did you pickle my shoe?” Leorio would not be distracted from the loss of his shoe, not by sexy moss eating or by pickling insults.
“I pickled it because shoes are a delicacy pickled, a real pickler would know that. Try some” The pickler said. he opened up the shoe jar and pulled out the wrinkly and acrid smelling shoe. He then ripped it in half and offered the heel to leorio. After a second of hesitation, leorio took it and slowly, took a bite. The shoe was filled with flavor, the acidic taste of the vinegar mixed with the smooth taste of leather to create a truly heavenly combination. Leorio finished the shoe and turned to the still smug pickler.
“Holy cow!! did you pickle this with Special Pickling Vinegar?” he yelled. The pickling man looked shocked.
“You could tell? I’ve never met another person who recognized Special Pickling Vinegar, not since…my family was brutally murdered.”
“I told you I’m a pickler too, I used to pickle all the time!” leorio chose to conveniently ignore the last part of the pickle man’s sentence because he really wasn’t sure what to do with that information right now.
“I see. In that case, my name is Kurapika, we should pickle together some time” kurapika stood up and leorio shook his hand. Even though he was afraid of pickling, leorio couldn’t help but feel excited at the prospect of meeting another pickler. Who knew there had been one in his house the whole time. “That hammer you have, do you mind if i pickle it?” kurapika asked.
“Oh gee this old thing, sure you can…but…do you think…I can… help you?” leorio asked the question before he could stop himself. He hadn’t pickled anything since…Pietro the Pickler. But meeting kurapika, and seeing his expertise in pickling, leorio suddenly wanted to give it a shot. Maybe, even pickling was worth trying again.
~~~🥒🥒🥒~~~
The next few weeks passed in a blur or jars and vinegar. Leorio was hesitant to pickle at first, his confidence dropping as soon as Kurapika handed him the hammer to pickle. Still, he got up the nerve to place the tool into one of the various jars and found that it wasn’t nearly as difficult as he had expected. Kurapika was still annoyingly smug about his pickling abilities, and even more irritating, he seemed to have the skills to back it up. Leorio had never seen such a technique before, Kurapika’s methods were similar to that of the first picklers: the ancient Mesopotamians. He would brine the goods as normal, but would spit into the pickling liquid. Even though he had been skeptical of this method at first, something about it always produced the finest pickles Leorio had ever tasted.
Finally, Leorio reached a point where he couldn’t stand it, he had to know the secrets behind Kurapika’s pickling prowess. By now they had known each other for three and a half weeks, and in that time Leorio had begun to renovate the root cellar, adding new lights and shelves, bringing in tables and pickling supplies. He felt like, after all his work alongside Kurapika to build the best root cellar possible, he deserved to know what exactly made his pickles so good. “Kurapika, I gotta know what makes your pickles taste like that?” Leorio asked intelligently.
“Wouldn’t you like to know pickleboy” Kurapika responded with incredible wit. Leorio couldn’t help but yell, “Hey I’m not a pickleboy!” and stop his foot, which seemed to make Kurapika relent.
“You see, I come from the Kurta clan, one of the most famous groups of traditional picklers. We lived in the mountains, pickling everything we came across and selling our pickles around the world. Even the famous pickling conglomerates couldn’t compete with our organic home grown pickles. We had a special ingredient, that no other company was able to replicate: our spit. Kurta spit processes special properties, a genetic result of being isolated and inbred over time. Our spit, when mixed with vinegar, accentuates all of a pickle’s natural flavors, making it even sweeter or saltier than it was before. Our spit is also a strange red color, so it became known as the Scarlet Spit.” Leorio listened intently, sure, he had seen Kurapika spit into all of his pickling jars, but he had assumed it was just a weird fetish or something, not an actual aspect of his technique. Now, he stood in awe at Kurapika’s natural born pickling skill.
“Sadly, many of the giant pickling companies were jealous of our talents. They tried to force us into labor, making us spit into all their pickle jars, and when that failed due to the uprising of 2004 they sent the Phantom Picklers to kill us all. To put it simply, they succeeded in killing all except for me. It is my duty now, as the sole survivor, to ensure that my clan’s pickling techniques live on.” Kurapika clenched his fists and looked angrily at the ground. Leorio suddenly felt horrible for rehashing Kurapika’s terrible pickling trauma.
“I’m sorry, I lost…someone to pickling too once.”
Kurapika looked at Leorio with an unreadable expression, and he felt a strange twinge of Something. Looking at him now, Leorio took in the sight of Kurapika, he had clearly been underground in the root cellar for a very long time, and had spent nearly all of it without bathing or changing clothes. He was so pale his skin was almost grey, and he appeared to have several vitamin deficiencies. Still, there was Something about him that Leorio couldn’t stop thinking about. He brushed the thought aside, it was probably just their connection as grieving picklers.
Before Kurapika had a chance to respond, however, there was a horrible scratching sound which came from the far wall of the cellar. The two rushed towards the source of the noise, reaching the scene just in time to see a small boy burst through the wall and fall headfirst onto the floor. Leorio stared in horror, first at the child now lying on the ground and then at the tunnel that was now drilled into his root cellar wall. He had just renovated those walls!
“Gee whiz sorry about the wall mister!” The kid, who was strangely green themed in both his hair and clothing, smiled sheepishly at the pair of picklers. The picklers just stared back, dumbfounded. “Uhhh hey mister, did you happen to have a kid 14 years ago that you walked out on, by any chance?” The kid squaked.
“JUst hoW oLd dO YOu ThInK I Am???” Leorio shouted at the child.
“Ummm well I dunno mister, maybe 40?”
“FoURty??” Leorio foamed at the mouth, he wasn’t that old, that was just insulting!
“Strange, I would have assumed you were at least in your early forties myself” Kurapika said while absentmindedly chewing on a pickled banana.
“Shut up grease boy, no one asked you” Leorio howled at him.
“Excuse me? Who are you calling a grease boy!?”
“So is that a no? Sorry mister I'm looking for my Dad. Have you seen him?” The child, who Leorio had momentarily forgotten about asked.
“Sorry sport, I don’t know who your Dad even is” Leorio told the child who was clapping his feet together on the floor (he seemed bored).
“My Dad’s name is Ging! He’s a pickler! I want to become a pickler too and find him!” The child did a somersault on the floor.
“Ging… as in Ging the Freak, the famous pickler?” Kurapika asked, taking another bite from the pickled fruit.
“Yeah!!! Do you know him??!!!”
“Who?” Leorio had no idea who Ging the Freak the famous pickler was.
Kurapika smacked him in the back of the head. “Are you truly so simple that you’ve never even heard of Ging the Freak? He was one of the most famous solo picklers in the world, inventing new pickling techniques seemingly all the time. Until about 14 years ago when he vanished, never to be seen or heard from again. And no, I don’t know him.” Kurapika explained.
The child looked terribly downtrodden. He sat criss cross applesauce on the floor and looked as if he might cry. “Oh no :( this was my tenth root cellar this week and he wasn’t here either” he sniffled sorrowfully.
“Well you could stay with us and we could teach you pickling. Whaddya say sport?” Leorio asked the kid before he could start crying all over the newly renovated floor.
“Really!!! Oh boy oh boy!! You would really let me pickle with you guys???!!! My name’s Gon!! Gon the Freak!!!!” Gon jumped up and down, nearly knocking over one of the pickle shelves.
“First thing’s first Gon, you need to learn the basics of the art of pickling.” Kurapika instructed him. “Take this cucumber. Your first lesson will be to turn it into a pickle.” Leorio watched as Kurapika began to carefully show Gon how to set up the jar and cucumber for pickling. He wasn’t sure how, in just a few weeks time he had gone from never wanting to pickle again to building a makeshift pickling family, but he was excited for all the pickling to come.