Chapter Text
“Leorio, Kurapika, look! There’s someone else here too!”
What the fuck?
The sudden voice caused you to shoot up from whatever position your body molded itself into while you were sleeping, which was not the wisest decision, because you somehow managed to bang both your head and your funny bone on the round table you were leaning on.
A little boy in green came rushing to your side as he noticed your very obvious physical anguish, as the other two(?) people had their own conversation. The little boy kept asking if you were alright, but you were only focused on the gigantic words you saw above you.
Hunter x Hunter, what the fuck is that?
“It’s happening, this is my retribution,” you muttered, slamming your head back down onto the table, which caused you to produce a strangled sound from your throat.
“Miss, you should really stop doing that, you’re going to hurt yourself!” the little green boy spoke, and you recognized him as the one who woke you up earlier, “I’m Gon, and this is Kurapika and Leorio! It’s nice to meet you!”
You turned your head, which was still planted on the table, to the boy and smiled.
“Nice to meet you, Gon! There’s no need to call me Miss, I’m Y/n, and-” you stopped, the realization of having no idea where you were or how you got here had just hit you.
You shot up again, this time looking at your surroundings, as well as the people that were in this… room, with you. Gon was a small boy, with green clothes and green gravity-defying hair. Apart from him, there was a lanky blonde boy, and a tall blue man, all of them, like you, were sitting on chairs around the round table.
You gave Gon another smile, the only difference was this time you looked insane, “Gon, where are we?”
“Hah?” The man in blue responded, “What do you mean where? We’re on the way to Hunter’s Exam, of course!”
“What the hell? Listen, you didn’t even answer the question properly! I’m gonna ask again, where the fu-”
“I heard it’s once every three years,” the blonde boy interrupted, “of a rookie passing the exam.”
“Huh?”
“That’s so little!”
“Rookie? For what, football?”
All three guys in the room looked at you weird when you said that.
“Some have been severely injured by the harsh tests, while others have been mentally beaten down by the veteran candidates,” the blonde boy, which you have just figured out was Kurapika, continued, “It’s made them never even attempt to retake the exam.”
Okay, so everyone’s just gonna ignore me. I see how it is!
“Wow,” Gon said, “even with all that suffering, everyone still wants to be a hunter.”
“You can say that again!” The blue man, which you now knew as Leorio, due to the process of elimination, shouted excitedly, rising up from his chair, “being a Hunter is the most money-making job in the world!”
“You’re wrong!” Kurapika shouted back, also getting up from his chair, “a Hunter is the most noble profession of them all!”
“Are you trying to look cool?”
“Money is all you care about!”
Leorio suddenly turned to you and Gon, leaning in extremely close, “Gon! And uh.. Y/n right? Listen-”
“Do we have to?” you murmured.
“Every year, over 50 hunters make the list of 100 richest people in the world! Plus, they can use public facilities for free! Doesn’t that sound amazing?”
Kurapika tsked, and then held up his finger, “Hunters protect cultural heritage, animals, plants, and even catch criminals! Even though these jobs are hard, they are of utmost importance!”
“Being a Hunter can get you rich and famous!” Leorio yelled, leaning in once again.
“Newfound knowledge, a sound mind, stable body, and noble intentions, that is how a Hunter gains his glory!” Kurapika shouted.
Kurapika and Leorio suddenly turned to you and Gon, faces angry, “You two! What kind of Hunters do you want to be!”
“Well actually if you had listened to me, you’d know I have absolutely no idea what-”
A loud ‘ding!’ resonated throughout the room, cutting you off in the middle of your sentence.
Kurapika looked back, “..Seems like we’re here.”
“We’re getting back to this later,” Leorio murmured.
You sighed and massaged your temples, all of that arguing, and you still had no clue where you were! Hunters? Exams? Fame and fortune? Yeah, you needed a break.
Kurapika and Leorio left what you just figured out was an elevator first, but Gon tugged on your shirt, which made you turn around curiously.
“Y/n, you’re alone, right?” Gon said.
“Well, ah, haha funny story-”
“Why don’t you just stick with Kurapika, Leorio and I?” Gon beamed, “The more the merrier!”
You thought for a moment, “You know what, sure! But-”
Gon just smiled and left the elevator with a “Yay!”, not even allowing you to finish your sentence.
You just sighed and stepped out of elevator doors, proceeding to make your way into what has got to be the most damp, and dingy room you have ever seen.
The massive room was filled with hundreds of people, all of them looking very… unique, and all of them were staring at you.
“This whole place feels kinda creepy,” Leorio said quietly.
Kurapika nodded, “Everyone here is clearly different from the ones in town and the harbour. They’re all experts at whatever they’re good at”
Gon stepped forward with a smile, “Excuse me!” He straight-up yelled.
The action caused you to slap both of your hands over your eyes and bend yourself backwards in embarrassment.
All the people previously looking at you guys shifted, and were now either staring at the floor, or each other.
“Everyone seems really tense,” Gon noted.
“Who wouldn't be? I thought there would be people crying! Didn't you say this was an exam?” you said, slightly surprised, “where even are we?”
“I told you we’re at the Hunter Exam!” Leorio said as he sighed.
“And I told you that’s not good enough of an answer!” you replied.
Before Leorio could respond, someone approached him and handed him a badge, before doing the same to Kurapika and Gon.
The man walked towards you too, smiling while giving you a badge, saying “Please take your number,” and you almost let out a bloodcurdling scream when you realized the ‘man’ was in fact a small green blob.
Getting over your initial shock (and terror), you accepted the badge with a quiet ‘thank you’, and saw that it had the number 406.
“Are you guys new around here?” You snapped your head towards the new voice, and found a big, burly man sitting on top of a pipe.
“You can tell?” Gon asked.
“Well, more or less,” the man said as he jumped down, making his way over to you guys, “How do I put this? This’ll be my 35th attempt in the Hunter Exam.”
His words made your eyes widen in shock, “35th attempt? Woah! You must be super bad!”
Kurapika flicked the side of your head, “Don’t say it like that.”
The man just laughed, “I guess you could call me an exam veteran! You can ask me about anything you don’t understand,” he said while smiling.
You stared at him, eyes glimmering with hope, was he going to be the one to finally tell you about what the actual hell was going on?
“They call me Tonpa,” He said, hand outstretched.
Gon happily shook it, “I’m Gon! And these are Kurapika, Leorio, and Y/n.”
You waved, while the other two simply nodded in acknowledgement.
“Hey, Tonpa, I have a question,” Gon started, “are there any others here who have taken the exam so many times like you?”
“None of them are as experienced as I am,” Tonpa said with the same smile of his face, if you were being honest, it was starting to unnerve you, “speaking of experience, look over there.”
He pointed to another large and burly man, “That’s Number 255, Todo, the wrestler. Not only is he strong, but he has a sharp mind.”
“Opposite to him is Number 103, Bourbon, the snake charmer. He’s a pretty vengeful guy, so you don’t want to mess with him,” Tonpa’s voice explained, but you couldn’t see any other part of Tonpa, or actually, literally anyone that wasn’t Bourbon. Instead of simply just looking to wherever Tonpa was pointing, your vision was moved in a way that reminded you of a panning screen.
“What the fuck?” You muttered, trying, and failing to regain control of your eyesight. Eventually, you just gave up, and allowed whoever was doing this to you to just have their way.
“Number 191, Bodoro, the martial artist, he might be old, but hardly anyone can beat him in a spar.” Tonpa opened his mouth to continue, or at least you think he did, you couldn’t exactly see, but was interrupted by a horrified scream.
There was a series of gasps from the people around you, no doubt looking at whatever caused the man to scream so loudly, but the only thing you could focus on was finally being able to control what you were looking at.
“Oh my God, finally, my precious eyesight, my precious eyes,” you said while touching all over your face, which caused the people close to you to move away.
After you finished appreciating your eyes and being able to see, you looked at where the man’s cries could be heard. You glanced at him for a second, thought nothing of it, before realization hit you and you did a double-take.
The man was currently on his knees, whimpering as he saw his arms disappearing into flower petals.
“How magical…” you heard someone say. Slowly, you turned around and looked past the man who had now collapsed, only to see a man with pink hair smirking, “His arms became flower petals just like that. No smoke and mirrors here.”
The man with pink hair began to say something else, but you could not hear it because of the extremely loud Spanish guitar music that started blasting into your ears.
Tonpa started speaking again, looking very worried, but you still couldn’t hear anything.
“What?“ You shouted, drawing the attention of a lot of people, “sorry, can you talk louder? The music is way too loud! I can barely hear myself!”
Tonpa gave you a confused stare, while Gon just smiled and Kurapika and Leorio gave each other concerned looks.
Tonpa shook his head slightly, before he launched into conversation with your three new friends(?). While they were doing that, you were hitting your ears very aggressively, hoping that it would make the music quiet down so you could actually hear what was going on around you.
It worked. The music wasn’t gone yet, but it was now manageable.
“Basically, no one likes that guy,” you heard Tonpa finish, and as soon as he did, the music finished too.
Did I just work that hard to make the music quieter for nothing? Are you kidding me?
“Wait, who are we talking abo-”
“By the way!” He cut you off, and started pulling out cans of orange juice from his bag, “why don’t we celebrate our new friendship with drinks?”
“Oh, that’s so kind of you!” Leorio said, taking the drink happily, “I happen to be thirsty right now!”
Kurapika and Gon soon followed, but you stared dubiously at the can in Tonpa’s hand for about 5 seconds, before you shrugged and decided he probably wouldn’t be dumb enough to poison you guys.
“Let’s pray we make it through this smoothly,” Tonpa said, “Cheers!”
While everyone cracked open their juice cans and was preparing to drink, your vision was interrupted again, this time showing a split second close-up of Tonpa’s face contorted into a nasty smile.
“ I’ve added some potent laxative into the juice cans that I gave you,” you heard, which caused you to look at Tonpa, wondering why the hell he was telling you this.
It was then you realized he wasn’t telling you, he wasn’t even opening his mouth. But then how the fuck did you manage to hear that?
“One sip is enough to send you purging 3 days in a row” you heard again, “You’ll need to take the exam in diapers!”
You shot Tonpa a disgusted look and threw your drink to the ground. What an ass! To think this was who Tonpa really was, if you were being honest you never had high hopes for him anyways but still!
You noticed Tonpa started to sweat as he saw that you threw your drink away, “H-hey! What’s wro-”
The attention was shifted to Gon, who had just spat all of the juice he drank out. Rubbing his mouth clean, he looked at Tonpa.
“Tonpa! This juice is expired!” He said, which prompted Leorio to spit out whatever he had just drank.
“Seriously!? That was a close call!” Leorio said angrily.
Tonpa clapped his hands together and bowed, smiling sheepishly, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize the juice was expired!”
“Impossible! That laxative should’ve been odourless and tasteless!” You flinched as his voice was once again resonating in your head, seriously, how was it doing that?
“It’s alright!” Gon told him, smiling, “Is your stomach alright, Tonpa?”
Tonpa laughed, but you noticed he began sweating even harder.
“I’m fine, don’t worry!”
“That’s great!” Gon beamed, “I’ve tried all kinds of plants in the mountains, so I was able to tell from just a sip.”
“Is that so?” Tonpa laughed nervously, “You’re truly amazing!”
You were once again graced with a second long close-up of Tonpa’s angry face, his thoughts echoing once more throughout your mind.
“Damn, where's this kid from? Tch, just my luck,” he gave you a side-eye, which made your face contort nastily, “Something’s off about this girl too, what the hell’s up with this year’s rookies?”
“I’m so sorry about that, but I have to get going now!” Tonpa said before he rushed away.
Weirdo. Oh! Speaking of weird…
You stared at Tonpa’s retreating figure, hearing his thoughts was one thing, but the sudden restriction of your eyesight and the loud assault of Spanish guitars was another. If you took the time to think about it, it reminded you slightly of watching a TV show...
A loud, ground-shaking rumbling stopped you from thinking any longer, a very large wall-like door rose up, revealing a… purple-haired man with no lips?
“Apologies to keep you all waiting for so long,” the man spoke, his mustache moved with each word he said, despite his lack of a mouth, “We have now come to the end of Hunter Exam registration.”
He took a deep breath, and made sure his voice was loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.
“The Hunter Exam begins now!”
“I still don’t know what that is,” you muttered, before your confused face turned into one of horror, “Oh my God, I’m gonna take an exam and I don’t even know what it’s about!”
Kurapika turned to you with a look of genuine concern.
“Let me remind you,” the purple man at the front spoke again, “if you are not lucky or strong enough, taking the Hunter Exam could lead to serious injuries, and it could possibly cost you your life.”
“If you are taking the Hunter Exam in spite of that, follow me!” He continued, “for those that are giving up, please leave by taking the elevator behind you.”
“Y/n, if you really don’t know what a Hunter or the Hunter Exam is, I think you’d be safer if you left,” Kurapika whispered to you, worried for your brain and your safety. He had no idea how you managed to make it to the exam site if you didn’t even know what it was, but that wasn’t the most important problem currently at hand.
You looked around you, and noticed that nobody was or was going to leave.
“I would, except no one else is!” You whispered back, “do you know how embarrassing that would be? At least if I die in the exam, I won’t be the only one!”
Kurapika gave you a confused look, before sighing and deciding he wouldn’t even try to figure out the thought process behind your words.
“Very well. All 406 candidates have decided to take the first test,” the man said, before promptly turning around and beginning to take long strides, bending neither his legs nor arms.
His leisure pace didn’t last for long, and before you knew it, everyone was sprinting to keep up with him.
“I forgot to mention, my name is Satotz, and I am the official examiner for the First Phase,” the man introduced himself, “I am currently taking you all to the Second Phase venue.”
“Second Phase?” You heard someone ask, “what about the first?”
“The First Phase has already begun,” Satotz replied, “Following me to the Second Phase venue is what the test is all about.”
So, the first phase is just.. running?
“Oh fuck,” you shook your head, “I am so fucked.”
And what do you know? For the first time in your life, you were right.