Chapter Text
The Best Isekais Start In The Trash
Big cities never seemed to rest.
Even at the latest night cars bustled down busy boulevards, lighting up the already lit streets like comets across the sky. The echo of revving engines, the slamming of doors and the chatter and rustle and click of hurried people sung the chorus of the city night.
The slap of soles against asphalt struck a comforting beat to ___'s excited jog. He couldn’t wait to get home and the thump of fresh books bouncing in their paper bag with every step only did to remind him why.
Sure, the night had passed into the realm of ungodly hours for a high schooler to be prancing back home from a bookstore but ___ would argue that it was for a good cause: Yoshihiro Togashi had finally released a new volume of HunterxHunter after a hiatus of nearly three years.
The line to buy the manga had not been for the faint of heart but ___ was no quitter, he stood stubbornly until finally obtaining his own copy and bragging rights to obnoxiously wave in the digital faces of his online friends.
Perhaps it was due to his excitement but it was becoming unbearable to wait any longer, he had to read the book as soon as possible and the world seemed to slow down in comparison to his eagerness, people he walked past may have looked back to stare at him zoom by but that was the least of his concerns.
The final crosswalk before his home looked as though it had a defective streetlight. ___ stared at the little red pictogram of a good samaritan until he was convinced it had been burned into his retinas because whenever he went to anxiously check the streets, a green afterimage of the standing man drifted across the suspiciously desolate asphalt.
Oddly enough the road was completely clear, empty enough to jaywalk safely in ___ s standards anyways so he did just that, reaching for his house keys with his eyes set straight ahead in longing for the soft comfort of rolling up in his bed with a good book.
Hard, cold metal pressed against his closing palm. The sharp tips of ___' s keys prickled but not nearly as much as a flash of light closing in on his peripheral vision.
There was a screeching of tires before the world went black.
—
Sym woke up against a dumpster, though that wasn’t the first thing he noticed.
He jolted upright from the pain of his spine being pressed flush against rough, rusted iron. His head felt like it had been pumped full of lead and his limbs buzzed awkwardly with the indicative sensation that their circulation had been cut for way too damn long.
As it turns out, concrete and metal didn’t make the most pleasant resting spot, not to mention a smell which definitely wasn’t Sym’s ideal scent to wake up to. The acrid burn of fish left too long in the sun stung in his nostrils as he attempted to peel himself off of the pavement, gravel popping out of his clothes as he did so.
Sym was dazed, disoriented and dressed in a slightly scuffed up tracksuit he definitely did not remember buying, the narrow alleyway he’d crammed into really did not help with the case.
"Where am I?"
His throat felt like a well-used racing track, trampled and ragged, as if he hadn't spoken for a very long time. Sym decided to spare them some work as the fry nearly spooked him back into silence.
Tattered posters swam across Sym's vision but all of them sported oddly familiar but illegible pictograms which he very quickly gave up on deciphering.
How did he get here?
Sym tried to rack his memory for any type of clue but he came up blank. It was like someone had carved a huge gap in his mind, cutting out anything relevant to his situation. He began to panic.
Who was he?
Sym Karde, seventeen, male, at least that’s what the card in his pocket read. He was of average height and built with rather bad eyesight and a taste for sweets.
But what was he besides that?
It felt as though someone had stuck a tube into his ear and slurped out his memories like some sick slurpee, if that’s how that even worked.
Panic began to bubble in his stomach, tightening at his throat. As confused as Sym was, it couldn't distract from the terror of having your identity snatched out from beneath your feet, leaving you with nothing but a few opinions, niche knowledge on your hobbies and the style of an active grandpa.
Luckily, the beginning of what could have been a fully fledged panic attack was cut short by a man looking like he felt worse off than the kid with severe amnesia.
"Ah… I guess third time really is the charm when it comes to the Hunter Exam…"
Hunter…?
Well that's quite something to unpack.
At least more than enough to shake a fanboy out of his existential dread and start a conversation with you as you dejectedly slide down a back-alley wall to have your own crisis besides a dumpster.
“Hunter Exam?”
The depressed newcomer gave Sym a funny look.
“Yeah, I thought I could retake it this year but I can’t find the next stage.” He shook his head in defeat, “why? You interested?”
Suddenly everything seemed to click into place in Sym’s mind.
But of course.
He must be dreaming!
He’s probably tucked away in bed, snoozing off to a hyper realistic dream that he somehow ended up in HunterxHunter. Brains always have their funny ways of absolutely decimating your memory as you sleep anyways… right…? Anyways.
“I’ve always wanted to take the Hunter Exam,” Sym said truthfully.
As a matter of fact, one of the things he did remember was that he would try to find ways to work around each fictional trial so that he with his far too realistically pathetic skillset could make it through.
“I guess today is your lucky day then.”
The man handed Sym a small plastic card embossed in more wiggly pictograms and sporting two small buttons. Probably tipped off by the recipient’s quizzical expression, the man offered a quick explanation.
“It’s an application, if you want a crack at the exam you can take mine. Don’t get your hopes up though,” he looked Sym up and down, “you can always retake it next year.”
The latter remark fell upon deaf ears as Sym was pretty much buzzing with excitement at this point. He enthusiastically gripped the foreign technology and turned it over a few times, only to look back up at the man in newfound confusion.
“I’ve already wiped my name from it so all you gotta do is press the bottom button to register,” he elaborated, a bit exasperated.
“Oh, okay thanks.”
What minor embarrassment Sym may have been feeling was washed away with the little ‘blip’ of the machine bringing him one step closer to the lucid dream of, well, his dreams.
“Well, good luck kid.”
With that the man apparently decided his internal crisis had been resolved by passing his responsibilities to a kid and got up, leaving Sym alone in the alley again with more questions than he had before and an extremely important item that he’d easily obtained in true dream fashion.
Wow what an NPC.
Anyways, where was he?
The road beyond the alley was rather busy, brightly dressed passerbys marched on their ways through countless stands and shops teeming with flashy merchandise. Large and prideful signs boasting bold red pictograms hung above anything from fancy stain-glass lampshades to intricately made jewellery to fruits Sym had never seen before.
The whole scene seemed to be enveloped with the buttery light that screams ‘adventure and opportunities!!’ which he was more used to seeing when coming across the main town in an MMORPG for the first time. It was touching, really, nearly enough to make Sym tear up as he’d never expected his brain to have enough capacity to produce any more than the occasional ‘whoops I accidentally went to school naked’ dream.
Though, despite all this, Sym still didn’t know where he was. The world of Hunter x Hunter was huge, especially considering the fact that it’s a fantasy reassembled version of the normal globe. He could be anywhere from Yorknew to-
“Come try Zaban’s famous panda frog on a stick! It’s a true delicacy!”
“Bonafide artefacts excavated from Zaban’s underground palace! Get genuine national treasures for cheap!”
Zaban? As in the location for the first actually relevant stage of the Hunter Exam? As in the easiest stage to access because all you have to do is know where to go and what to say? Things could not have been more perfect.
Right on cue, a short and tubby little man wearing a bright blue vest possessing what was probably the most rectangle nose Sym has ever seen toddled by which made him want to kiss himself for his apparently boundless intellect.
Tonpa. Good old shit-eating, soda-spiking, rookie-swindling Tonpa waddled by and Sym had never once been happier to see him.
In a daze he realised this was his once chance to actually fulfil his Hunter x Hunter fanboy dreams and actually take the exam (real or not) considering he probably wasn’t going to be able to hunt down an obscure restaurant that happens to have a secret elevator room that leads to an extremely long tunnel which brings you to absolutely buttfuck nowhere.
Within this daze, Sym also realised that with his very very average seventeen-year-old-shut-in physique he wasn’t going to be able to make the trip to ‘absolutely buttfuck nowhere’ without dying a couple hundred times before ultimately dropping out, so he did the next best thing.
Sym hastily knocked a nearby motorbike belonging to some poor guy who went to get a drink at a nearby cafe off its kickstand and wheeled it confidently along with him as he did his best to tail Tonpa through the bustling road.
“It’s not theft if you’re asleep,” he mumbled to himself convincingly.
Apparently, nabbing a motorcycle was easier than government-issue anti-stealing adverts let across. Also apparently, restaurants in HunterxHunter didn’t mind if you rolled your entire ride into their store so long as you ordered a ‘steak combo grilled over a low flame.’
Tonpa’s very mundane balding head and short stature made it a bit difficult to follow him through the crowds but thankfully Sym was able to catch glimpses of his obnoxious blue vest among the sea of people and follow him all the way to a little, inconspicuous shop. Though the shopkeep did give him a bit of a weird look when he came in, soon enough Sym was on his way down to his destination.
Then, reality hit.
Ironically enough, just as Sym hit the floor.
He tripped on his way out of the lift, stumbling on thin air like a badly-written reverse-harem protagonist and landing with an uncomfortable thud.
It hadn’t been anything too serious but Sym was pretty much certain that he’d given himself rug burn with his pants as his knees skidded unceremoniously across unfinished concrete floors. To make things worse, his new motorcycle decided it was a swell time to tip and smack him on the head, weighing him down heavier than the embarrassment of glares from across the wide cavern.
Tears prickled in Sym’s eyes and he gnawed his inner cheek to calm down as he brushed himself off and slunk to a far wall.
That wasn’t meant to happen.
Dreams weren’t supposed to hurt like this, were they?
The sharp throb of his skinned knees sent wary thoughts through his head, maybe the blow from the bike somehow helped jog his memory but the same scene could not stop repeating in his head.
A dark road then a flash of light.
A dark road then a flash of light.
A dark road then-
Where the fuck was he?
People filed in through the metal double-doors, their hushed chatter sounded warbled to Sym’s ears but he tried to focus on them nonetheless, anything to distract himself for even just a moment.
This wasn’t a dream, was it?
The numbers on their pins grew larger and larger and Sym fiddled with his own. A bold black “17 ” glared back at him, upside down from where he’d pinned it in a panicked daze. From his angle the seven looked suspiciously like a very stern ‘ L’ as if telling its poor loser of an owner to get his shit together.
How did he even get here?
Those were questions for another time, Sym finally decided. As confusing as waking up with a dumpster as your pillow and somehow being whisked away into your favourite fictional world may be, it can all wait.
First, Sym was going to absolutely destroy the Hunter Exam, then he can have a breakdown.
For him to (quote) ‘absolutely destroy the Hunter Exam,’ Sym was going to need some preparation, and by preparation he meant wheeling his motorcycle to the opening of the tunnel and mentally setting himself to slamming the gas as soon as Satotz showed his seemingly mouthless face.
Thankfully, the concept of driving motorcycles isn’t too difficult to grasp with some hope and some delusion so Sym was already a step ahead with that. As he softly (obnoxiously revved) his way through the steadily growing crowd, a scream nearly knocked him off his sweet ride.
“Muh- Muh- MY ARMS!!”
Sym whipped around to see the crowd watch in horror as Hisoka performed his ever-so infamous introduction, but all he could focus on was the flash of pink light that shot up towards the dark ceiling with something in tow before seemingly disappearing under a tarp of invisibility.
Bungee gum… and Texture surprise??
Holy shit. Sym could see nen already?
Oh man this was totally going to play out like a Mary Sue fanfiction where Sym would get badass protagonist powers and he definitely wasn’t complaining.
But if he could see Hisoka’s Bungee gum that means… Sym scanned the room before his eyes fell on a familiar face. Gittarackur (said ‘Illumi Zoldyck’ or ‘BrotherStalker123’) stood off to the far wall of the chamber, being stuck with nen-infused pins he was looking more like a disco ball than an ominously designed side character like he was supposed to which made Sym snicker to himself.
He looked much better without his clot- the pins anyways. ( Wink wonk.)
(Sym? More like simp.)
Brushing the whole nen situation aside a little too quickly, Sym saw that bit past TotallyNotAZoldyck and way closer to him than expected stood a somehow very excited yet dazed looking girl in full kimono à la Kalluto knockoff but less emo.
Who shows up to the hunter exam in a kimono? Sym couldn’t recall any of the main or even side cast passing the exam in traditional gown in the six times he’d reread the manga, maybe Togashi had gotten bored of drawing bland Uniqlo mannequins for background characters and thrown in a festival-goer as an easter egg that he’d just never spotted.
As far as Sym could see, the girl's expression was about as discreet as her outfit.
Man, her handfan does not cover her psychotic smile that well. That is one creepy ass background character. What was Togashi thinking?
The mystery girl cackled to herself a little more, at this point she probably could have fit right into the Plastics from Mean Girls if she’d let her hair down into obnoxious twirling vicinity and looked a little less like she’d spent the last few nights doing anything but sleeping.
She surveyed the crowds with a little more conscience than Sym was comfortable with from a filler… whatever. She was definitely just a treat for kimono-character loving fans to point out to their friends while they try to pretend to be interested, though it was just a bit odd that she’d been wearing roller skates.
Sym couldn’t remember any relevant character besides Killua who decided to bring any mode of transportation to the Hunter Exam, maybe the skates were too discreet to make it in and they were just an idea of Togashi’s that materialised into this world… it didn’t matter anyways, besides the getup the girl was too generic to be any more than a background character anyways.
Why was he getting so hung up on her anyways? She wasn’t even his type and he only had eyes for a lowkey freakishly tall long-haired beansprout looking assassin with a dubious relationship with his brother who he’s planning to somehow woo with his newfound Mary Sue status and some hopefully Kirito-level plot armour.
Okay, back on track loverboy.
He wheeled the motorcycle into position, hopping on with a bit of trouble after nearly tripping on it and skinning his knees again, and getting ready to burn rubber at a glimpse of violet whiskers.
In the meantime, Sym gazed out into the darkness ahead. In a moment of cliché serenity he wondered what would this world bring? Aside from the usual “what the fuck is he doing here” or even “what the fuck is he doing?” Sym felt eager. Eager for the first time in a long time to discover and adventure, something he’d slowly been preparing himself to be unable to do as he grew older and life took its throes of responsibility.
Wow, that was kind of cringe.
As if on cue, the sharp sound of an alarm cut through the buzzing crowd, silencing everyone in turn and Satotz perched on a thick pipe above the applicants, ready to deliver his opening statements.
He was about to open his (totally existing) mouth when he was cut off by the rev of Sym’s engine.
Pedal to the metal bitch.
He shot off into the gloomy tunnel.
The Best Isekais Start in the Dirt
Note to self: driving is fucking terrible.
It leads to silly little things like oops, that’s a person, and less silly things like, fuck I just ran over a person. And then very unfun events such as swerving out of the shock of accidentally running over a person (very messy business, that) and ramming straight into a light post.
The indestructible metal pole stands its ground as her airbags fail to deploy in time, her seatbelt is cut from the broken windshield glass, and the force of momentum jolts her forward through the broken car bits and head first into the aforementioned light post. She hits it with an unsettlingly loud CRUNCH of broken bones and other important body parts, and dies.
It’s all rather unfortunate, because the last thing she remembers is the elation of having received her driver’s licence just that morning. Oh, and staying up late last night from bingeing HunterxHunter manga for the seventh time.
Aww man, she thinks, vaguely aware of the immense amount of pain coming from her split-open skull. I didn’t even get to finish the Chimaera Ant Arc again.
And that’s when things start to get a bit weird.
She wakes up, very comfortably, on the ground. It’s dark and cool, with a tranquil stream trickling somewhere nearby. If this is heaven, she’s perfectly fine with it.
Someone starts shouting angrily from a distance away, but she ignores it for now, because surely it can’t be aimed at her. It must be an angel having a spat with the cute cherubs or something. And the vibrating ground must be an inbuilt massage feature, not the signal that that angry person is running hard enough towards her to shake the ground with every step. And the tugging at her hair is –.
Ah, fuck it.
“Oi, are you the new hire?”
There’s a large, angry man yelling at her. He’s decked in fancy clothes that are vaguely East Asian in nature (if at least five different cultures decided to meld to make one ugly looking baby, sure), with red cheeks and an overly bulbous nose. This is also when she realises that she had just been resting face-down in the dirt.
“Yes,” she lies instantly.
The man sneers. “Then get your act together, servant girl! I wanted all new hires by the gardener’s quarters, not in the middle of King Nasubi’s zen garden! Ah, all idiots, this lot…”
So there’s waking up in the middle of some random dude’s garden, then there’s waking up in the middle of some random dude’s garden whilst fully sober. Also, probably dead. It’s safe to say that she’s not having a great time at the moment, but her subconscious pushes her feet forwards towards what looks like a giant shed (shaped like a Buddhist temple?) and an old, pruning lady with a comically small clipboard and ballpoint pen.
“Name,” the old lady says.
What’s that?
And that’s mildly alarming, holy shit. She can’t remember her name? Well, backing up a bit, there was landing in the dirt, but before that was a tragic car accident, before that was reading manga like a weeb, and before that was…
Hmm.
“Sana,” she says, with the complete confidence of a total bullshitter. “My name is Sana. Family name, Taizer.”
So it turns out being isekai-ed into a magical world isn’t all that great.
Because the lack of a legal identity here is appalling to some and downright terrifying for her, personally, Sana renegades as some idiot servant girl, working in the gardens for the massive palace of the Kakin Empire. She’s not employed by any specific person, thank goodness, so instead she minds her own business, slowly learning about the intricacies of the world whilst trying not to get kicked out by the increasingly irritated groundskeeper.
On the plus side, the country is super rich. Like, super duper rich. As in, even the servant girls get to have some real high-class shit, like lovely thick kimonos and nice, warm meals about five times a day. Sana would be set for life, here, if she had some way to magically transport her laptop from Earth to the gardening quarters so she could become an internet-mongering fiend in her off hours.
But alas, the internet here, called “cyberspace” (because Togashi wanted to be hip and cool, yeah whatever), is fairly limited compared to the unlimited reaches of infinity of Other Internet. Possibly because the world here developed less in the realm of science, and more in the way of combat – evidenced by the main transport in the skies, a fucking blimp. Yeah, who needs things like a one-thousand kilometres per hour aeroplane when most people here tend to remain within their continent’s borders?
Ugh, blimps.
Dammit, actually living in the world of HunterxHunter is somehow making Sana less of a fan of the manga.
And it’s all fine and dandy, really, (no, it’s real fuckin’ traumatising), but a few weeks later, she overhears one of the royal princes loudly proclaim that the Eighth Queen Oito is newly pregnant.
This is when Sana realises, oh yeah, this is a fictional world and I know the plot.
Wait, the plot.
Something, something, Gon goes on an adventure, the Hunter Exams, the Yorknew showdown(s), Greed Island, then like five million people just fuckin’ die because one oversized bug decided to take a lovely swim, then the unfinished Dark Continent arc.
Right.
It’s ass o’clock in the morning, but Sana zooms straight out of the servant girl dorms to check the calendar posted on the wall outside the door. It’s December, the Hunter Exams start on the first of January, and being a Hunter is a surefire way to mysteriously (and legally) gain a new identity without swindling a bunch of scary authority figures. Of course, there’s the whole ordeal of going through with the life-or-death situations in the exam, but she’ll come so prepared it’ll put Mary Poppins to shame.
Yeah, fuck this country. Adventure awaits!
Sana Taizer, nineteen years old and fresh out of fucks to give, embarks on probably the stupidest idea of her (second) life. She attaches a pretty white ribbon to her dark hair (with velcro straps, because she’s definitely not nimble enough to actually tie a real ribbon, but shhhhh that’s a secret) and wears a maple leaf pattern furisode to start off the epic anime adventure, because if there’s anything that Sana deems important, it’s aesthetic appeal.
Then she stuffs a bag (not stolen from the stinky groundskeeper, of course not) full of handy dandy items that are definitely not stolen, and very, very slowly runs away. The Kakin Empire is hardcore, with a rich and bloody history born from its political secession from the Azian continent, and traitors are given to the dogs – namely, ripped to shreds and then, whilst still half-alive and flayed, boiled to death in an obnoxiously large golden coffin.
Which sounds extremely not fun.
To avoid this potential fate, Sana does the smart thing and disguises herself in plain sight. She’s not legally employed by the kingdom, after all.
“Oh dear me, terribly sorry, coming through,” she says, bumping into pretty much everyone in sight in the public market square, her bag hidden under her kimono like a pro. “I’m just a clumsy pregnant woman, sorry! Haha.”
Yep. Nailed it.
There are some mercenaries and palace guards eyeing her strangely, with a few whispering in the alleyways conspiratorially, but Sana’s come fully prepared.
This is for Netero, that sexy piece of GILF flesh.
A few people start pointing directly at her, which sucks, but Sana pretends it's because they’re all jealous of her beauty. Hot damn, she is a snack. Then a fancy guard with an exasperated expression blocks her way in the market square, so close to the docks, and says in the gruff voice, “Servant girl. Come with me.”
Sana blinks, looking spaced out (as usual). “Who, me?”
The guard oozes out the aura of someone who just flat out doesn’t want to be there.
“Aha – sorry. You must be mistaken. I’m here to catch a boat!”
The guard rolls his eyes, mumbles something about traitors, and reaches out with an obscenely large and muscular hand to grab ahold of her. Seriously, everyone in this country is jacked – must be because the Kakin Empire is such a foodie nation that everyone gets the chance to eat the same nutritional content as all the famous bodybuilders. Huh.
Instead of derailing her plans of becoming an epic anime protagonist and befriending at least one main character, Sana takes the risk of kicking her opponent in the balls.
He goes “ooof!” and she flees, nimbly wobbling away from under his trembling and curled up fingers and towards the port.
“Stop that traitor!”
Oh no, oh no, not good. Definitely not according to plan.
In any other situation, a traitor who leaves by boat would be easily tracked down by the Kakin Empire’s impressive marine fleet. This time, however, the country’s not allowed to track her down or interfere with her journey once she gets on that thrice damned boat, because it’s an official vehicle employed to the Hunter Association.
Yeah, that’s right. Sana fuckin’ Taizer mailed (with a pigeon and all, because this world is weird) her application to the Hunter Association to sign up for this year’s Hunter Exam.
She makes it to the port, to some grand sloop with beautiful white sails, and bounds aboard the mighty ship, screaming her name and application number like the elegant and proper bastard she is (read: like a loonatic) so that the bemused captain lets her through. The horde of mercenaries and guards stop at the floating docks, puzzled, and Sana barely resists the urge to stick her tongue out at them for losing.
Hah. Beat that, mildly dubious national guard.
Of course, there’s the eventuality that if Sana doesn’t become a Hunter, then the entirety of the Kakin palace guards will hunt her down for being a traitor and will publicly and brutally murder her in order to set a precedent.
Hmmm.
Long story short, Sana does, eventually, make it to Zaban City.
It involves pretending that seasickness didn’t affect her at all (a fat lie, but she’s even better at pretending that everything’s okay than not), thus impressing the captain, then being dropped off a port somewhere in Dolle Harbour. The journey also involved a bit of fudging her way into a traumatic, protagonist-esque backstory with several vague hints, then faking kindness to a thoroughly inebriated sailor, but that’s besides the point.
Sana’s in Dolle Harbour!
And because she’s a HunterxHunter weeb extraordinaire (and an excellent doomsday preparer), she steadily marches on towards the actual location of the Hunter Exam’s first stage. Yeah, fuck the inbetween stages with the shapeshifting fox people and the creepy abandoned village-place. Sana’s in for the easy ride here.
Zaban City is great. It’s all… urban and shit.
Fuck that, she doesn’t know anything about architecture or urban planning, but it seems like a nice, average city. There’s shops and tall buildings and stuff.
The barbecue restaurant isn’t hard to find, since all she has to do is follow the bumbling crowd of bright-eyed people entering a restaurant and just flat out not leaving. It’s quite conspicuous to the eyes of the observer, someone actually on the lookout for something she already knows, and her already incredibly inflated ego grows even more.
I’m so prepared, she thinks. I can do this!
“Steak combo grilled over a low flame,” she demurs to the chef, snapping up a folding fan to cover his face. To outsiders, it looked like she was a mysterious and pretty young woman, covering her face with an exotic green silk fan. In actuality, Sana was covering up an enormous shit-eating grin at the idea of this entire wacky adventure.
Oh my god oh my god oh my fuckin’ god I’m gonna meet daddy Netero holy fucking llama shit on a stick this is just so–!!!
A bean person ( holy moly it’s Beans!!! Why does he look like an actual bean?! It wasn’t just artistic interpretation?) hands her a tag with the number sixty-three, and she pins it on the elegant autumnal design of the furisode, sweeping the incredibly heavy sleeves in a fancy flurry. She snaps the silk fan shut with a satisfying sound, tucks it into her obi, and observes the crowd of Hunter wannabes, carefully sidestepping to the edge of the tunnel.
And what the fuck is this magical bullshit.
Sana had noticed it earlier, back in the royal palace, that some of the guards buzzed with some sort of strange, ethereal energy, but it had just been some sixth sense, not an actual shroud of glowing wonder. She avoided those specific guards, the ones assigned to the princes, because the odd sensation gave her the heebie-jeebies, but in no way had she thought that that was nen. But fucking hell, that was definitely nen, because she has the same shiver up the spine when she spots your one and only deranged clown-person standing prettily amongst the crowd.
Oh no.
Blah, blah, blah, Sana is sensitive to nen, moreso to the average person, because she’s not accustomed to this world.
Which makes sense, but she hates the realisation that oh shit I can see nen because damn it meant that for the past month she’s just been so totally out of it and not noticing her surroundings to see that all those nen-users just exude epic Dragon Ball Z aura. Seriously, Hisoka and the creepy needle-face Illumi are bathed in shining light, like over-bedazzled chihuahuas.
Wait, I can see nen naturally! She thinks, snapping her fan open again to hide her impressively ugly fangirl cackle. I get cool protagonist powers, too! Fuck yeah!
She doesn’t account for Hatsu, yet, but eh. She’ll get there eventually.
While the crowds curry forth, Sana quickly takes her shoes off and switches them for roller skates, prepared for the first task. The stair portion doesn’t seem too difficult, especially considering that she’s been doing cardio in the form of intense gardening for the past month, but the whole “running for four hours straight” bit sounds distinctly unpleasant. No to that.
Feeling utterly prepared for the future to come, Sana does her best to not scream in horror when she spots a curious background character towards the front of the tunnel, nearly hidden in the darkness, with a motorcycle.
A real life, shiny, goddamn motorcycle.
Oh man, he’s gonna ace this part of the exam, she thinks. Then pauses, because she doesn’t recall, in her seven times re-reading the manga, about a character bringing a motorcycle to the event.
She squints suspiciously.
No doubt about it – that’s some geeky, tracksuit-wearing loser, with nerd glasses and a bitchy expression, ferrying a motorcycle on the far side of the crowd.
Fuckin’ hell.
Sana slowly, very slowly, skates towards the motorcycle dude. She travels at a pace that can be disguised as walking, and the abnormally smooth gliding is hidden by the draping lengths of her dress (some people are looking at her, somewhat confused by her smooth ghost-like gait, but she ignores it because everyone here is meant to be a suspicious and nosy bastard) towards the tunnel’s end, where the front of the group is. She skates around the bulk of the crowd, away from dangerous figures like Hisoka and Illumi, towards the motorcycle dude.
And damn, he looks unwell.
And really bitchy.
Ugh, he’s probably just a background character then. Maybe Togashi took liberties with this lot in the very minuscule parts of the shadowy background that she never noticed? Because this level of fashion mismatch can only belong to some simple bellend with no regards to their appearance, with a firetruck red tracksuit, messy hair, and the greatest travesty of all: socks with sandals.
Well, guess that not everybody here can be fabulous like her (cuz dayumn she is rockin’ it with her beautiful kimono and ethereal aesthetic).
Hisoka ends up chopping off some background character arms, which Sana doesn’t pay attention to, too busy observing the motorcycle dude for any other suspicious activity. He has golden eyes, hidden under those unfortunate glasses, and dark brown hair, puffed up in the distinctive bed head shape. Overall he looks… well. Not her type, to put it lightly. He’s someone’s dream, maybe.
Ah, not everyone can be as hot as Netero. Or Kite. Or those Zoldyck patriarchs, yum.
(Sana is obsessed with white hair)
(It is, in retrospect, quite worrying for her psyche)
When the examiner, Satotz, announces the beginning of the exam with a quaint “follow me,” the motorcycle dude smiles creepily, boards his ride, and zooms down the tunnel in a flurry at lightspeed, even surpassing the examiner.
Sana skates on after him, holding her arms in the opposite sleeve, her back completely straight and her posture held like a lady’s, as she glides down the floor. There’s a slight incline downwards, here, which she supposes is why the last stair bit had been so long – since otherwise the characters in the manga would’ve seen the light of day earlier on in the task. Good for her, at least, because the mild incline means that she can simply stand up straight and let gravity tug her along for the ride, surpassing several bewildered participants.
And so the Hunter Exam begins.