For an Eye

Part I: Autumn's Children

Author's Note:

I do not own Hunter X Hunter, or any of the characters therein.

Because this is an AU, the occasional exchange of dialogue and some partial scenes from the manga have snuck into this story. If necessary, I can add a note at the beginning of the chapter pointing to the source location … but I don't think it should be required. Mostly because this story contains a multitude of spoilers for everything from the beginning of York Shin to the end of the Chimera arc; if you haven't read/watched that far in either the manga or anime I strongly recommend that you do so. The original story is and always will be superior to an amateur story written solely for fan enjoyment.

That said, this is a story based on the manga (although both anime as well as the OVA are very close) and the world, including character descriptions, conforms to what I understood them to be in that format. Character and place names are … er, well, I just picked the spellings I felt most comfortable with.

Final and possibly most controversial note: Kurapika is a girl in this story. For a long time, I wavered on the fence of this debate … and although I have now come to the conclusion that the author intended Kurapika to be male, there is no way around making that character female for this story. It simply has to be, for the sake of the theme and the plot and several other things that if I told you would be spoilers. So, there you have it.

Now that all of that is out of the way: please enjoy the story! This is part one of three. Updates Tuesday and Friday.

Prologue: First Law of Motion

That which knew itself to be the Queen ignored the humans looking down on her.

Her children harvested food from the metal chutes that led upward. Ever hungry, she devoured the meat and took strength and vitality from it – realizing her potential with every new bite. And ever watchful, she played a waiting game with her watchers.

The humans in the glass platforms above could not study her any more intently than she studied them; but she had been created to be perfect, so she would be the one to learn most in the end. Humans had made her to adapt and evolve and strive after power – and she hungered for theirs. Nature dictated that she surpass all previous generations.

She ran antennae across the humanoid features of her face and triple-jointed hands and felt pleased with the hard planes of her exoskeleton. Flawless. She was flawless. Would be flawless forever.

Death had visited her, more than once before, but each time she rose up again: stronger and uncrushed. These most recent humans had found her during one of the weak times … And if they had been wise, they would have destroyed her then. Instead, they nourished her with the strongest food they could find – other chimera ants and their own flesh and blood – but she knew that more power was possible.

At the bottom of the metal nest they had constructed for her, the Queen remembered how to make plans. Her wisdom had already out-paced the humans, even as they fed her on their own kind. She grew stronger, and passed that strength on to the children that served as her hands and feet and eyes and ears. They would be ready. Very soon now.

But success required patience. With every moment she was developing the skills necessary to overcome the humans. Someday, she knew, she would give birth to a child capable, worthy of standing on top of the world. That glorious place – the pinnacle of life and strength – called out to her. It was within her grasp.

The Queen perfected life, and closed faceted red eyes to dream hungry dreams.

Kurapika walked the halls of the Hunter Association's headquarters, and strongly suspected that she was wasting her time. Light from the windows glowed across the stone and wood at her feet. For a moment, she let longing overcome her – the desire to walk through a wild forest instead of exotic hothouse plants, and to hear birdsong and the wind in the leaves instead of quiet jazz piped across invisible speakers. To taste snow and pure ice on the wind, instead of subtle perfumes.

Is there anything for me here? She should be spending this week tracking down one of the rare items needed to buy her way into service of the Nostrad family. By the end of the month, she needed to be installed in the ranks of their bodyguards and on her way to York Shin. This could be nothing more than a distraction. Then again, she reflected, it was never wise to ignore the invitation of the chairman of the Hunter's selection committee. Especially not when he sent a private airship to pick you up.

Netero's office was located on the top floor, which she had expected given what she knew of the man's love for heights. His secretary, a shapeless and smiling man she had met during the exam, pointed out the correct door to her. She knocked on the ornately carved wood.

"Yes?" Netero's voice called, muffled.

Kurapika opened the door.

Netero was contorted into an improbable yoga pose on top of a large desk. She tilted her head to one side, single earring sparking, to better see his expression. His grin remained as cheerful as she remembered.

"Kurapika, right on time," he waved an upside down hand at her. "Come in! Come in!"

Entering, she took a quick glance around the room. As the office of a professional hunter, it was everything it should have been – strange sculptures and instruments scattered in a deceptively eccentric fashion, floor-length windows that filled the room with light, and maps of the world and ancient ruins and modern cities hanging between them. Her gaze returned to the man who worked in this room, thoughtful.

"What is this about, sir?" she asked; no point in delaying things, and left on his own the Chairman had the tendency to ramble.

"Can an old man not congratulate one of his newest Hunters on her stellar achievements in the unofficial, last test of the Hunter exam? Though you had something of a head start, hm?"

So he noticed that. Kurapika's expression twitched into a brief frown. I sincerely doubt that he's called the other candidates in for individual interviews like this; I'd have heard something. So he wanted something from her in particular, perhaps a job offer, but was unwilling to come right out and say it. She would have to wait for him to come to the point of his own accord.

Wasting time.

Kurapika shoved the thought out of sight, and kept her expression polite.

"Close the door, please," he added when she didn't answer.

She shut it softly behind her back. Immediately, he untwisted from the top of the desk and landed on the chair behind it in another unlikely pose. It made her spine hurt just to look at him.

"So, congratulations!" Netero said. "And now that that is out of the way, I have a few questions for you."

She came forward to stand before his desk; it would enable him to read more from her expressions and posture – but it gave her the same advantage as well. Nothing personal, but she didn't feel comfortable with him. He played the role of eccentric geezer well … but his eyes were clear, unclouded by age or foolishness.

"First: what do you intend to do now that you have mastered nen?"

"Mastery is a relative term, sir," she replied, playing for a moment to think. "As you know, I registered as a blacklist hunter."

He studied her, in a way that said he was not fooled by the noncommittal answer. Kurapika kept her own gaze steady. Whatever he wanted from her, she would not give it up for nothing. She trusted no one with all her secrets.

"Blacklist hunters generally spend more time arresting mafia dons, not seeking employment with them."

Oh ― so that's what he's worried about. Hunters are given complete freedom … to choose sides for themselves and to oppose each other. It would be unwise to make an enemy of Netero; she should cooperate for the moment.

"I have a specific target," Kurapika declared. "Access to information about the Genei Ryodan is hard to come by, so the best way is to search among the underworld for their previous contacts."

Hide the truth beneath the truth.

"You're seeking revenge for your lost clan, then?" he asked, in a voice that did not require an answer.

She could not conceal the slight, nervous twitch of her fingers. Some one in the Hunter Association was bound to know about that. She had, after all, announced her intentions in the beginning of the Hunter exam. At the time, it had seemed like a fitting move: a bold declaration of war against all those who desecrated the Eyes of her kinsmen … A fitting way to attract attention from her targets, to lure them into the open as they came to hunt her.

Now, she could only be thankful that only the examiner, Gon, and Leorio had been there to hear.

The Chairman smiled, in a way that meant he could read the trend of her dismayed thoughts.

"Of course, we know all about your history with the Genei Ryodan," he said mildly. "The Association thoroughly investigates the backgrounds of those who pass this final test. We are well aware of your origins."

"And is this information available on the public site for Hunters?" she asked, with a bit of a snap.

"We wouldn't be much of an organization if we got in the habit of painting large targets on our members' backs," he replied with unruffled calm. "And information on your tribe itself is hard to acquire anyway."

Not good enough, she hissed mentally. "Not in the habit" and "never" are not the same thing. The organization prided itself on its 'survival of the fittest' philosophy … Netero himself would not bat an eyelash if she were to get herself killed, not even if he unintentionally had a hand in her death.

But there was no point in wasting her anger here; if necessary, she would take further steps to protect her identity. As advantageous as owning it was, the Hunter license could too easily be used to trace her movements; she would have to use it sparingly, and to the maximum efficiency.

"The Ryodan is a high target for a newly fledged hunter, working on her own," mused Netero, looking her over in open evaluation.

You have no idea, Kurapika thought ironically, how high I intend to reach.

"I believe my skills to be sufficient," she said aloud.

"Then you intend to fight solo?"

"As you said, the Ryodan is a difficult mark," she gave him a few of her reasons for free, "I believe a single hunter will have more success in approaching them unnoticed than a large group."

He untwisted from his strange pose and stood upright behind the desk between them. "To fulfill your duty to avenge the clan?"

"As the sole survivor, my duty has always been to ensure that the fallen rest in peace." She had learned how to lie without lying, though it still felt wrong to let others deceive themselves. I must smother even my own conscience under a weight of lesser sins – in order to fulfill a more righteous cause. With absolute focus on her goal, she believed that she might be able to hold on to her soul anyway; she would be justified in the end.

"A noble sentiment," Netero nodded to her in respect, folding his hands into his full sleeves in a monk's benediction. "Please accept my best hopes for your success."

"Thank you."

"And thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule for an interview you no doubt consider to be a pointless gesture." He chuckled. "The secretary at the front desk will arrange for your transportation to any destination you request."

Chairman Netero turned away, indicating that her audience was over. With a mental shrug, Kurapika headed for the door. His voice called her back only when her hand was already turning the handle.

"Kurapika." Over her shoulder, she could see that he was smiling. "Before you leave, you might want to stop by the anthropology exhibit on the third floor. I'm sure some on with your keen interest in the field will find the collection fascinating."

I do have a specific interest … but I'm in a hurry. I don't have time to spare, she thought in suspicious bewilderment. His smile remained intact under her scrutiny, too much like that of a kindly grandfather to be anything other than a deception. This is what he really wants from me. As casual as he looks and sounds, this is the real reason he called me here.

"It's a shame, though," the old man went on in a wistful voice, "that one of the centerpieces of the exhibit will be leaving us this weekend. The Association is donating it to the Yulu Museum. If you want to see it with your own eyes, you should do so before ten o'clock on Saturday."

She nodded again, and left the office.

The third floor exhibit did not take long to find. A whole room had been dedicated to lost and ancient civilizations, bits and pieces of their history preserved beyond time in glass casements. She passed by the relics of the dead: a lonely trespasser on their sacred rest. In the center of the collection, she discovered what it was that Netero wanted her to find.

Stepping as softly, carefully as if she had been walking on shards of glass, Kurapika approached the illuminated display.

"The Seventh Wonder of the World," the placard on the stand read, "Scarlet Eyes of the Kurata Clan, now extinct tribe of Lukuso Mountain."

Her own eyes began to burn.

The lobby of the abandoned hotel echoed with sounds – the creak of old wood and the soft murmur of water from broken pipes and the rustling of the wind. Kuroro looked around in satisfaction. This is the place. The crumbling elegance of broken pillars and cracked cement floors – long stripped of their carpets – appealed to him. It had all the tragic majesty of a ruined cathedral.

Classic.

He hopped up what was left of the grand staircase to examine the upper levels.

Room after room revealed itself to him, in various states of decay. Kuroro paced through them, the soft swish of his coat and the muffled thud of his boots disturbing their silence. Scents of dust and water-rot filled his mouth when he inhaled. There will be plenty of room for us here, he decided with approval. The power had been cut long ago … but Shalnark can wire it for electricity to make our stay more comfortable. He found no evidence of anyone else having adopted the derelict building for their own uses, which meant it was free for the taking.

Satisfied, he headed for the roof, kicking out the metal door when it proved too rusted to open on its own. In the distance, the neon lights of York Shin gleamed like a treasure-box. The hotel on which he stood, his hotel now, was a derelict remnant of old development; the center of the metropolis had long ago moved away from the wasteland and closer to the harbor. But the moon shed its cool, impartial light down on both the city's thriving heart and its discarded husk.

Kuroro raised his face to the stars and smiled. After a moment of savoring the night's quiet promises, he got back to business. The phone only rang once when he made the first call.

"Machi? It's me. Spread the word: York Shin, September first. All of us."

Crouching beside the road, Kurapika adjusted the black scarf covering her wig. Tall grasses hissed around her as she settled back onto earth baked hard by the summer's heat. On the horizon, she could see the reddish glow of the city; here, though, all remained quiet. Insects buzzed around her head, attracted to her sweat and emboldened by her stillness. The rich taste of descending autumn filled the air.

"Saturday, ten o'clock," Chairman Netero's voice echoed in her memory.

He must have known what she would do with the information. In fact, he had given it to her freely – but for what purpose, she could not yet uncover.

Maybe he also feels how sick it is to carve people up and put them on display; maybe he also objects to showcasing the death and suffering of others as a morbid amusement. An unfounded conclusion. She could not assume that, just because of his past history as a hunter who protected the treasures of the world from greedy, unworthy hands, he would be altruistically interested in her cause. The Association had obviously entertained no compunctions about including the eyes of her clan in their exhibit.

For the last two days, she had laid a false trail that would point to the Eyes being stolen by one of the more infamous body-collectors in the mafia. Hopefully, the authorities would assume that she was a middleman acting for someone else. She counted on Netero to keep the Hunter Association from getting directly involved. There would be no point in setting her up for failure now … besides, she believed he would have the decency to take her out face-to-face if he truly desired her downfall.

And Kurapika would ensure that by the time any pursuit caught up with her, from any quarter, they would be unable to find the seventh wonder that she had stolen anyway.

In her pocket, the cellphone chirped like a cicada.

Ten o'clock: minutes between me and the Eyes.

Nen-chains rattled at her from where they wrapped around her right wrist. With a practiced flick, she unhooked the dowsing chain and let it fall free; it would give her a sure warning the moment the courier van transporting the Eyes came within range. She could attack instantly, without needing any visual verification of her target.

Four years of training and planning and waiting and wanting – they would begin to end tonight. Wild anticipation and premature triumph bubbled up in her chest. But she forced them back down under the iron bonds of painfully won self-control.

Snapping to the left, the dowsing chain rattled.

Here it comes.

Headlights rushed towards her.

The chain lashed across the road, puncturing the front tire. Metal and rubber squealed against pavement as the driver lost control, tried to recover, and failed. The van fishtailed to an abrupt halt. Kurapika shot along a silent, parallel course through the grass, coming to a stop directly across from the car once again.

She would take the drivers in a rush, she decided as she crouched among the prickling grass blades, when they came out to examine the damaged tire. But she would have to strike quickly – before either of them tried to make a phone call to report the incident or another car drove by. Eagerness trembled in her heart, but her hands remained steady.

Be cold. Be cold and calm as snow on the mountain, she chanted to herself. Then bury them beneath the unstoppable avalanche.

Kurapika waited for her moment.

Hours later and miles away, she slumped to the ground, exhausted and drained and unable to cry. The Eyes bobbed sightlessly in their cracked container before her. Seeing them again, touching them one more time – it had been nothing like what she expected.

Kurapika pressed her face into her hands, surprised when her skin felt smooth and cool and untouched; it should have been a ruin of blood and bile and tears.

This is the price, she snarled at herself fiercely. Spend what's left of your life paying for other people's sins.

Chains bit into her wrist, reminding her of all the reasons she had to keep fighting. The glass prison of the eyes that had once belonged to someone she loved slid under her shaking fingers. Ruthlessly, she dragged the case to her chest and hauled her trembling body to its feet. Her pack of belongings bulged strangely when she stuffed the stolen case into it.

Hands unsteady, she swung it over one shoulder. The canvas bag settled at her side, an awkward, unfamiliar weight.

No one will ever return to carry this burden with me.

Looking up at the sky for the first time in hours, Kurapika found that the stars had dimmed. Pale light glowed in the eastern sky, washing over the withered grasses around her. Everything about the retrieval of the Eyes, at least, had gone as planned … but remaining so close to the Hunter Association's base would attract unwanted attention. She needed to keep moving. If she stopped now, she was certain that she would never be able to get up again.

Turning her back on civilization, she set out for the blue shadows of distant hills. The tall grasses hissed around her, tangling her steps, and stinging insects whined hungrily at her ears. She knew it was irrational, even dangerous, to go this way – shunning both the threat and the safety of other humans for the solitude of the wilds – but in her chaotic emotional state it was impossible to care.

Blood from her bitten lips tainted every breath.

She walked mechanically for miles; the sun's bright ascent first warming, then burning her as morning and midday came and went. Sweat and dust stained her skin. Grass seeds and pollen scattered from her fingertips as she brushed through the plants. For hours, she thought only of how to place her feet most easily among the rounded clumps of roots and how to avoid the shallow, annoying scratches of sharp-edged grass blades.

Hand outstretched to hold more waving stems of grass away from her face, she felt a light, tickling resistance. Kurapika blinked a second, her reverie disturbed, and realized that she had just reached through a spider's web. Skeins of near-invisible thread clung to her skin. She paused, then withdrew deliberately. Empty even of its maker, the web gaped in tattered ruins – its pattern broken by her fingers.

Spider.

With a sudden sigh, Kurapika cast herself backwards. Plants bent and cushioned her fall a little; still, the impact of her back against the hard ground helped recall her wandering, disordered mind. The sweet taste of dusty earth tethered her to the present.

High above, a hawk coasted in deceptively lazy arcs, no doubt hunting the scurrying rodents and other small prey that Kurapika could sense rustling around her. The world is a cruel place, she observed as the raptor dove to catch a smaller bird that rose too far above the safe cover of the ground. It stops for no one.

A lifetime ago, she had made plans to return the Eyes to Lukuso Mountain; to hold the ancient rites and bury them in the ashes of home; to appease them by watering the graves in the blood of their killers. But sometime over the course of the last twenty-four hours the idea had become unbearable. I will never last long enough to cross half a continent and an ocean, anyway, she thought with a cutting flicker of self-contempt. Never be able to return there now.

The weight of memories would break her.

Kurapika acknowledged that weakness and moved on. There was no purpose in torturing herself further over it; no point drowning in the endless darkness of the past when the present had enough troubles of its own.

Trembling blades of yellow grass shaded her face, thin slashes of shadow across the sun and parched blue sky. She would need to find more water soon, and food as well – though the thought evoked no particular hunger or thirst. Judging from the faint, feverish heat of the flush on her face, however, she was already in danger of dehydration. Taking off into the hills of an unfamiliar place without basic preparation was stupid; her knowledge of the region's geography, indigenous wildlife, and probable hazards was scant.

At least I have a little water in the bottle in my bag.

First, though, she would have to find some more. Hauling herself to her feet, Kurapika shouldered the small bag that carried all her worldly possessions. The Eyes, too. That knowledge did not bring the comfort or happiness that she once expected it would.

Looking back the way she had come, she saw only a plain of tasseled grasses. It was too easy to get lost in private introspection out here ― away from the distracting press of other people's concerns and plans. Time passed strangely: a succession of disconnected moments. She set out again, taking step after step deeper into the pathless wilderness. Her awareness of it reawakened, the pack at her side grew heavier every passing moment.