Chapter Text
The first was on a visit to his newest toy. Well, perhaps it was akin more to a tutoring session. He was perhaps 3 or 4 years younger than Hisoka. The son of a South Sahertan mafia boss. His father had scouted Hisoka in an underground fighting ring, not unlike the shining Heaven’s Arena, though grimier and of course bloodier. Tournaments were every night, around 30 combatants each, with only one survivor. An excuse to harvest organs from the losers and entertain sick rich fucks high off the thrill of the kill.
Hisoka had only been fighting there for a week and the organisers already hated him, resenting the loss of perfectly good bodies, perfectly good profits gone down the drain from the way the teenage magician left their corpses mangled and disfigured every night, as though the arena was a canvas, his twisted, crimson art splashed across it in macabre beauty.
Perhaps that was the reason his toy’s father had taken notice and hired him as a nen tutor, entranced by the beauty in his bloodshed and eager for his son, who they’d just discovered to have a great affinity, to learn more refined forms of cruelty.
Though he’d only just started collected his toys, Hisoka had taken a great liking to his new protege. The way his eyes gleamed with determination when they sparred, the sheer potential of his nen, one in five million. It’d been only a week and the boy was already crafting his nen ability. Hisoka could barely stop himself from breaking him in two and devouring him whole.
Patience. He’d have to remind himself. Wait for the fruit to ripen.
The stone mansion was quiet. Water dripped from a leak in some deep winding corridor, echoing loudly. Was it too quiet? Or had it always been this way? Hisoka couldn’t really remember, always singlemindedly focused on his toy the few times he’d been there. He made his way through the narrow corridors, following the boy’s nen signature all the way up the tower, where his lavish bedroom sat.
Hisoka was perhaps only two floors away when he felt another, much stronger nen signature blink into existence. A nen user? Another tutor? A bodyguard? Had he been in zetsu the whole time?
A two second pause.
Drip Drip.
Then the weaker of the two auras fluttered, flickered out.
A body dropped to the floor with a muted thump and the Magician in the stairwell saw red.
He kicked the door open to see a young, kimono clad girl, standing, head down, over his discarded toy. He had been ripped at the seams, crimson stuffing spilling out of his plush abdomen. It was a shame, really, he was so beautiful even in death.
Her head shot up at the sudden movement, revealing pitch black eyes, as large and as sleek as buttons, long dark hair cascading over her slim shoulders like waterfalls. Her skin was porcelain, features delicate. Hisoka could tell that she was meant to be beautiful, had all the features the women on TV cut their faces apart to achieve, but each was drawn to such a grotesque extreme that she could only be described as uncanny and perhaps macabre. Doll-like in the way a doll was dead.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Focus, he reminded himself.
She'd touched his prey. Taken away the ecstasy of ripping him apart, savouring his soft flesh and sweet juice, and after he'd invested so much time and effort into him no less. Now no more that a dropped fruit rotting at the base of the tree. The mourning of a farmer waking up to discover that all his crops had been ravaged by an infestation.
Hisoka flung himself at her, cards spinning, slicing the darkening air around him. Meant to hurt. Meant to bleed. Meant to kill. Wanted to feel her bones crack, her blood drain, see the light leave her abnormally large eyes. Perhaps he’d rip them out, hang them like car baubles, make them into a keychain.
She jumped back, only narrowly avoiding his blows. Blocked another attack with her forearm, grabbed his card hand and twisted it at an unnatural angle, then sent him flying back with a kick to the chest. Hisoka crashed into a mahogany cupboard at the corner of the bedroom, an array of figurine trains, chapter books and animal plushies spilling out from the splinters.
He was up on his feet in an instant, readying himself for another flurry of attacks, but she only watched from the other side of the rather spacious room.
Her blank eyes seem to raze his body. Hisoka felt dissected, a specimen of undocumented bacteria under the microscope, four hundred times magnitude, that was her piercing glare. She was waiting, Hisoka realised. Watching, as though a prolonged state of contemplating fight or flight. The magician could see her weighing the pros and cons in her head.
Hisoka himself decided that she had to be either a specialist or a manipulator, perhaps a conjuror, though he wasn’t sure on that one. Her movements were too controlled to be an emitter, too calculated to be an enhancer, yet too direct to be a transmuter.
Well, only one way to test his hypothesis. He threw himself at her yet again, enhanced cards being met by a multitude of needles she seemed to have produced from her kimono sleeves. They punctured the wall behind him as he dodged easily, though she'd already prepared more between each of her knuckles.
More needles whistled towards him in the air, faster and smaller this time. He twisted his head, dodging one aimed straight for his skull, it instead grazed his cheek with the speed of a bullet. Two others punctured his left wrist and he soon lost feeling in his hand. With a swish of her long crimson sleeves, the first few needles pulled themselves out of the wall and stabbed themselves into Hisoka's neck and back. Ah, a cunning ploy, to pretend to have missed then to use emission to send them back to attack him from all sides at once,
Simultaneously, cards sliced the thick fabric of the kimono, revealing the milky white flesh of her now exposed abdomen. Blood began to flow out of a small cut on her toned stomach, scarlet against ivory. Hisoka licked his lips.
They clashed a few more times, each doing equal damage to the other but Hisoka could tell his opponent was slowing down. Her movements were lithe and precise, a one-shotter rather than a melee combatant. She wouldn’t last much longer with her battle stamina, and the Magician wanted to see how long it would take for her to break.
Hisoka's heart was racing, equal parts adrenaline and pleasure pumping through his veins. Pupils dilating, though of course still not as large as his opponent's, the Magician wondered why he'd ever wasted time on his toy at all. If the boy had been an apple, golden delicious or perhaps granny smith, plump and sweet and satisfying to pluck when the time was ripe, his opponent would surely be a pomegranate. A fruit of death. Hisoka wondered how many seeds he would have to eat to be doomed to the underworld. A worthy trade, he was sure.
They stood there. Panting. Card against jugular, needle against forehead. Hisoka’s other hand was still immobilised by the multitude of needles in every vein and artery, slowly turning red and then purple, while the girl’s other arm had been twisted at such an unnatural angle the Magician couldn’t even figure out how he’d achieved it in the fight. Neither could move.
Then, a sudden ringing shattered the tension. Hisoka jerked his head to seek the source of the noise. He hadn't realised how silent it had been the entire time, they hadn't even talked in the entirety of the fight, something Hisoka usually loved to do to taunt his victims. The girl took the opportunity to press her thumb down on the head of the needle. Driving it straight into the Magician's skull.
"Father."
"Have you completed the mission yet? It was a simple task, you should have sent your Confirmation Of Kill already."
"I was not informed that another strong nen user would be present and as such I had to dispose of him once he saw one of the bodies. It was not an easy fight."
"Even so, you are a Zoldyck. You should have been prepared for any outcome and should have scored your surroundings, as well as disposed of the body as fast as possible. The client requested the kills be clean, swift and discreet. We will discuss your punishment for your incompetence when you get back home. Do so immediately."
"I'm sorry fa-"
The line went dead and the killer, with the face of a girl but the apparent voice of a young boy hung their head and sighed.
"So, princess, you're an assassin huh?"
The killer whipped his head around.
"You're still-"
"Alive? Conscious? Sentient?" Hisoka smirked.
"How-"
"Heh, a magician must have his secrets. Maybe I'll trade you. Tell me, why would such a pretty little girl get caught in the nasty business of assassination?"
"I'm not a girl.”
"Ah? Really? Then why are you wearing a dress?"
She, ah, no. He, furrowed his arched brows.
"My mother likes it, and my father says it will help me refine my movements by forcing me to fight with more restrictions. Furthermore, it will also make me more comfortable with Honeypot missions in the future, though he hasn't told me what that means yet."
"Hm." Hisoka snorted derisively.
The younger boy balled his fists up, stomping on the ground like a petulant child. Cute.
"I really am a boy! For your information, my clothing was worn by both noblemen and women in ancient Jappon! I read about it."
"Ah, so you're just a pretty little boy instead of a pretty little girl."
He huffed. "I'm not going to waste time talking to you."
As he surveyed the surroundings, walls and furniture destroyed, equal numbers of cards and needles stabbed into the walls, bloody footprints from both parties stepping in the pool of blood littered the ground, he breathed out.
"Fuck."
Hisoka, meanwhile, had plucked the large golden needle out of his head, then discreetly peeled off the thin layer of bungee gum he'd added on his forehead that had coated the needle with his own nen to block out his opponent's nen, like a pimple patch.
He looked down to see the young assassin wiping haphazardly at the bloody footprints on the wooden bedroom floor with his sleeves. Every time he cleaned, more blood smeared across the floor, creating an even bigger mess. It was quite apparent to see he had never cleaned anything in his life.
Hisoka squatted down beside him, cocking his head. "Do you want some help?"
With a flick of his wrist, the stains were instantly covered with Texture Surprise and disappeared from the naked eye.
The younger boy gawked at him, oversized pupils flitting between the magician and the now clean floor.
"Do you want me to help you with the rest? You'll owe me though" Hisoka flashed a bright, superficial smile at him
"You were the one who attacked me for no reason, hence you caused this entire mess. You wouldn't be doing me a favour, you'd simply be cleaning after yourself."
"Ah, but I have no reason to clean up. I'm just the tutor. If I heard your dearest daddy-o correctly, the client requested no trace be found. That's your responsibility, not mine."
As the young assassin gritted his teeth, Hisoka licked his own.
"Fine. What do you want?"
"Your name."
They worked in silence. The younger pulling pins and cards out of the walls while the older fixed the punctured holes and disposed of unsalvageable furniture.
That was until Hisoka ultimately broke that temporary peace.
"So, would you assassinate me if I hired you to?"
"No."
"What? Why not?"
"You are too strong. Father would say that you wouldn't be worth the money."
"Aww, you flatter me!"
"Also, even if you requested through formal channels, an investigation would be carried out to gauge your power level, and it wouldn't be me being sent to kill you, rather it'd be my dad or grandpa."
"That's a shame…" Hisoka simpered from the corner where he was using Bungee gum to fix a hole in the wall he'd sent the younger crashing into. "I bet they wouldn't be as cute as you. Or maybe they are and you just come from a long line of gender ambiguous assassins."
The young assassin turned his head to wrinkle his nose at him.
"Furthermore, it wouldn't be the way you like it. You fight to fight it seems, while I fight to kill. If you hired me, I'd probably snipe you from afar and give you a quick, painless death. You wouldn't like that, would you?"
Hisoka furrowed his brows at that.
Him! Dying a painless death!
He banished that horrid thought from his mind and continued to work.
It was a slow process, but after perhaps half an hour they were finally done.
Hisoka stood up with his hands on his hips, admiring the fruits of his labour, then watched as the younger boy wiped sweat off his elegant, arched brow.
He caught the assassin staring at him blankly as well, and returned his gaze with a smile.
The younger looked away.
"Thank you for your assistance." He looked back at him awkwardly, cleared his throat, then continued. "If you ever need anyone assassinated, you can have a first-time 20% discount. Just mention my name."
Then, before Hisoka could reply, he disappeared. Out the window, into the night. Long crimson sleeves flowing in the wind.
In his wake, a sleek black card fluttered to the ground. Hisoka caught it before it could, thumbing the sharp corners till beads of blood formed on his finger tips.
"Illumi Zoldyck - Zoldyck Solutions PTE LTD"
He chuckled to himself. "Solutions? So like is the solution just murder? Well that answers that particular philosophical question."
He stared absentmindedly at the open window, as though those unblinking black eyes would grace him with their beauty once more if he looked long enough.
"What an interesting little toy you are, Illumi Zoldyck."