Chapter Text
“Killua… sorry. Can’t keep us together. Too hard.”
“…how far away will we be?”
“Five years.”
“Five years? What do you mean?”
“Wait.”
“I should wait five years?”
“Yes. I love you, Killua.”
“Nanika… I –”
Killua slowly opened his eyes, letting them adjust to the light. His mind was drowsy, and his senses were not quite there yet… which immediately rang several alarm bells inside his head. Training kicked in, and adrenaline jolted him up, now sitting on the bed he had apparently slept in. He felt very uneasy.
After a quick scan of his surroundings confirmed he wasn’t in immediate danger, he took the time to look more closely at where he was. The room in which he was located looked like a hospital room: white, mostly empty, with a bed, a sink, and not much else in terms of furniture. The smell and the noises leaned towards his guess, as well as the hospital gown he was wearing. He didn’t seem to share the room with anyone else and was currently alone.
What was uncertain, however, was why he was hospitalized in the first place. He seemed to be in good health, had no bandages, and there wasn’t a trace of him following any kind of treatment. Maybe he had been knocked unconscious, or had otherwise passed out? Obviously something had happened, because he did not remember getting there, and would never have let himself fall asleep without keeping part of his brain alert.
On top of that, there was that sinking sense of unease that would not go away, as if something was terribly wrong, but Killua couldn’t figure out what exactly.
His last memories were hazy, but he did his best to recall them. He remembered having been travelling the world with his sisters (and he realized, increasingly panicking, that he had no idea where they were), before being found by pursuers. (Who exactly? He couldn’t remember. Illumi or someone working for him seemed like a good bet, as he still coveted Nanika’s power, but he wasn’t certain.)
The pursuit had been relentless, and both him and Alluka were exhausted. To gain some sort of reprieve, he had ended up asking Nanika to transport them to a place outside of their assailants’ reach. Then, they had found themselves in a white space, and he was having a short conversation with Nanika… and this was his last memory before waking up here.
Five years. Nanika had told him to wait five years. She had told him they would be five years apart. But what did it mean exactly? He had meant to ask her more questions, but unfortunately had lacked the time to do so. Which meant he had to make do with the little information he currently had.
A good place to start would be figuring out just where he was exactly. He got up and started searching the room. It was pretty barren, but despite this he noted a few elements of interest. There were some writings in a complex and archaic writing set named kanji, which had long fallen into disuse, replaced by the much more popular simplified script. Jappon really was the only place where kanji were still widely used. His knowledge of it was a bit rusty, but workable enough for him to read what was written.
There was a small leaflet about good practices in a hospital room, and labels for various equipment, including a button to call to someone. This did seem to confirm his earlier suppositions that he was indeed hospitalized, although he still couldn’t remember why.
One possibility was that Nanika had transported him so far away that it left him exhausted and made him pass out. As she had said that granting the wish had been hard even for her, this was far from unlikely. And if he was indeed currently in Jappon as the use of kanji would suggest, the country was located at a large distance from where he had been before, which may have explained why Nanika had a hard time (although this wasn’t fully satisfactory, she had done crazier things before).
Another possibility was that something had happened to him immediately after being transported, so fast that he hadn’t had the time to form any memories of it. This didn’t seem fully satisfactory either, as it seemed a bit contrived, but he had to keep in mind every possibility if he ever wanted to figure out the truth.
There was a window, from which a city was visible. This wasn’t really helpful, as there was no recognizable landmark that would indicate a more precise location, but at the very least it confirmed that he was located in a large urban area. From the sun’s position, it seemed to either be mid-morning or mid-afternoon (it wasn’t really possible to have a more precise estimate without knowing east from west, and he had no way to tell yet).
As there were no remaining items of interest to inspect, he decided to leave the room in the goal of asking the hospital staff where he was and what had happened to him. However, to his surprise, the door was locked, which he was quite certain to not be standard procedure for a hospital room. He immediately checked the window again, which did not seem to have any way to open. After further inspection, both the door and the window seemed to be reinforced. All of these elements led to a simple conclusion: he was not simply a patient, he also was a prisoner.
He had no idea who held him prisoner, or why, but one thing was for certain: whoever it was had no idea of his true capabilities, or else the security wouldn’t be so lax. He was quite certain he could escape this room if he wanted to, if only by breaking the walls, which seemed ordinary. This meant that his captors didn’t know him, or at least didn’t know him well. This was almost certainly excluding his most dangerous enemies, who certainly wouldn’t have left him unattended in a place like this. Unless…
After a quick and painful inspection, he confirmed that he didn’t have any new needles jammed in his skull. This never was a likely possibility, as Illumi would have almost certainly programmed them to make him not want to check, but one could never be too cautious when it came to this. He also tried to determine if the place he was in was a Nen construct, but couldn’t feel any aura emanating from it, so that seemed to eliminate that possibility too.
(Inspecting the room that way increased the feeling of unease he had earlier, and he felt like something important was missing, but he still couldn’t understand what it was exactly.)
So, he was a prisoner, but he could easily escape and probably wasn’t under some kind of mind control. Additionally, seeing as he was in a hospital room and not in a jail or a basement, his captors obviously cared somewhat about his well-being. As he badly needed some information about how he had ended up arriving here, he decided to play along for now, and not try to escape, at least not until things seemed to take a turn for the worse.
However, he certainly wasn’t going to wait alone in an empty room until someone deigned to check on him. So, after quickly washing away the blood from his needle inspection at the sink, he decided to press the call button in order to speed up the process. After that, he sat down once again on his bed, waiting for someone to arrive.
And sure enough, a few minutes later, he heard footsteps coming from what likely was the corridor. There were two pairs, one light and natural, and another heavy and trained. If he had to guess, the light ones belonged to a medical worker, and the heavy ones to a guard, which would make sense as this place seemed to be both a hospital and a prison.
What was surprising, however, is that he couldn’t feel any aura to accompany the footsteps. Were the persons approaching using Zetsu? Maybe they weren’t as amateurish as he had thought. Still, if they were only relying on aura suppression to not be perceived, they couldn’t be very experienced, and likely didn’t pose a threat. Killua knew, however, that it didn’t mean he should let his guard down. He should remain ready to escape if he ended up needing to.
The door opened, and indeed, as he had thought, the two persons were a nurse and a security guard. The guard remained by the door, closing it behind him, while the nurse stepped forward.
“Good afternoon!” she exclaimed in a chipper voice. “How do you feel? You were unconscious for a while.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” he answered in the most neutral tone he could muster. “How long was I here for?”
“You were admitted early afternoon yesterday, and have remained unconscious since then. Are you sure you are feeling all right? No strange pain anywhere? No trouble to think or to move?”
“Nope, everything’s fine.” And on these words, he jumped out of bed, standing up and extending his arms as if to advertise himself. “See?”
“You certainly seem to be well,” admitted the nurse. “However, seeing the circumstances, I would like to make extra sure you do not have a concussion. Would you mind answering a few questions to check if everything is fine?”
“Sure, whatever.”
Killua then plopped down on the bed, sitting on it once again, and tried to shove his hands in his pockets but failed as the gown he was wearing lacked them. In the meantime, the nurse took the guest chair and sat on it, then proceeded to ask a series of questions obviously meant to test his mental faculties. He answered them, seeing no harm as he wasn’t required to provide any personal information.
While this was going on, he decided to think about all of the information he had obtained so far: it was the afternoon (and so now he was able to distinguish east and west), he had been unconscious for a little more than 24 hours, and his captors seemed genuinely worried about his health. He still needed to know more, but so far the results were encouraging.
What he didn’t understand, however, was why the two persons in the room didn’t leave their state of Zetsu: now that they had revealed their presence they no longer had anything to conceal, and they ought to see his Ten, so they had to know he was a Nen user. It didn’t make sense for any of them, especially the guard, to leave themselves open to Nen attacks, did it? What was going on there?
Maybe, like Gon once did, they had learned Zetsu naturally, outside of Nen training? But that didn’t really make sense either: they would only be using it if they were trying to hide. Killua was only seeing two possibilities: either they were under the effects of a Nen ability forcing a state of Zetsu, or they were indeed trying to hide from someone else in the building.
He tried to see if there was anyone else close to them… and that was when he realized. That was when he understood why he had felt uneasy all this time, why he had felt like something important was missing.
With the exception of his own, he was unable to see or feel any aura. None whatsoever.
And while it was possible, although unlikely, that every human being in the vicinity was using Zetsu, humans were not the only ones having aura: every single living being did. Some animals could learn Zetsu too, but plants and microorganisms never did. No matter the place or the circumstances, there was always at the very least a light background of aura that could be felt. But here? There wasn’t anything, which should not be possible. It wasn’t like he had lost the ability to perceive aura, either, as he could still see his own.
“Are you all right? Can you hear me?”
Oh. It seemed like he had become so engrossed with his thoughts upon the realization of not perceiving any aura that he had neglected to continue answering the nurse. He had to recover the situation quickly.
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just… well, I realized that there was an armed guard in the room. What gives?”
There, it was perfect. It was a plausible reason for suddenly acting shocked, and would also provide him with more of the answers that he needed.
“Ah. Well…” she muttered before nervously turning towards the guard.
Said guard finally spoke after having kept silent thus far, still not leaving his position next to the door.
“You are currently in a villain hospital,” he said matter-of-factly.
“A… villain hospital?” answered Killua, clearly confused.
“Yes. Do not worry, this does not mean that you have been labelled a villain. However, you are currently under police investigation. Which is why your medical needs are being handled here and not in a regular hospital.”
So he was in police custody? Well, this certainly explained his situation. It was actually somewhat reassuring, as there was a higher likelihood of things going well compared to being captured by a criminal group. However, it also was a bit of a complication, as being uncooperative would put him at odds with the local authorities. And he would likely need their cooperation to understand what had happened to him and have assistance in locating his sisters. This meant that he probably shouldn’t try to escape unless they actually locked him up in prison.
“I’m in police custody? What for?”
“According to your file, you are under arrest for ‘possession of unlicensed support equipment’. I don’t have any more details than that, however. You should ask for the details when you’ll be at the police station.”
Well, Killua had no idea what it meant, but this did not sound very serious. Even if he actually did commit the offence, it was likely he’d not get a lengthy prison sentence. That was good news, as that meant he would likely not have to fight the authorities, sparing him a headache. He might even be able to leverage his Hunter status and walk free.
“All right, I see. I have another question: how did I end up here? I don’t remember anything happening to me that would warrant being hospitalized.”
“Well, we hoped that you would enlighten us,” lamented the nurse. “The hero that checked you in just said that he found you unconscious in a street and refused to give more details. That doesn’t help us diagnose you! All the tests we’ve ran so far revealed nothing wrong, and you had no injuries when you were admitted. Our two leading theories are that either you had a concussion or you passed out from exhaustion.”
Well, he was quite certain he didn’t have a concussion, so the most likely answer was indeed that he had passed out from exhaustion, which had been one of his own theories. Still, he had not been fully satisfied with it… but on the other hand, he was very exhausted when he asked Nanika to transport them away. It’s possible that, instead of the transportation draining his energy, it was quite simply his own exhaustion catching up with him once he was out of immediate danger.
Yes, this was the most likely explanation, unless police was hiding something important, which was a possibility he shouldn’t neglect. His overall good health, however, made it unlikely, so he was going to run with the hypothesis that he passed out from his accumulated exhaustion once he escaped from danger.
Also, what was the deal with “heroes” and “villains”? That was a weird terminology. He could always look that up later, however.
“Okay, thank you. Also, what happened to my belongings?”
“Well,” answered the guard, “naturally, it’s all been confiscated by the police to be potentially used as evidence. Your clothes were cleared, however, and will be returned to you as soon as you are discharged.”
So he was spared the humiliation of being interrogated in a hospital gown. He hoped he’d be able to recover everything else, however: his Hunter license was irreplaceable, his yo-yos were one of a kind, and his phone was helpful in keeping in touch with his friends.
“Okay. Also, if you don’t mind me asking, where am I and what day is it? Since I’ve been out for a while, that’d be useful to know.”
“Sure!” answered the nurse. “While I can’t tell you which one for security reasons, you are in one of Tokyo’s villain hospitals. As for today’s date, it’s October 16th.”
October 16th? That didn’t sound right. He had only been out for a day, meaning he was admitted on October 15th. But the date when he had asked Nanika to transport them was December 15th, so something was definitely not right. He knew that Nanika’s teleportation abilities were instantaneous, and suddenly losing ten months’ worth of memories seemed highly unlikely. What was going on?
Wait. Nanika had mentioned they would be ‘five years apart’. Could it mean… that they had traveled through time? That certainly put them outside of their pursuers’ reach, as he had asked, and would explain why Nanika found that wish especially difficult to grant. He badly wanted to ask the current year, as that would confirm or infirm his hypothesis, but that would sound too suspicious, so he decided he’d find out later.
There was something else, however, that he could ask.
“Tokyo?”
The nurse looked surprised at his question.
“Yes, Tokyo. You know? The capital of Japan?”
Oh, this was supposed to be a well-known place. No wonder she had looked surprised. Also, this did seem to confirm he was in Jappon, which would explain why kanji was used, although she had pronounced it weirdly. (Maybe a local accent?)
Wait. Jappon’s capital wasn’t Tokyo. In fact, he knew the capital of every country in the Known World, and none of them were called Tokyo. What was going on? Between that, the time travel possibility, and the fact that he could not feel any aura besides his own, something was very wrong. He just couldn’t figure out what yet.
In any case, he needed to recover in order to not sound too suspicious.
“It’s just, I didn’t expect to be in Tokyo.”
“Oh, I see,” stated the nurse. “In any case, if you do not have further questions, I would like to resume the testing. As I said earlier, a concussion is one of the two leading hypotheses for what happened to you, so I really need to finish that test.”
“I just have one last question: when will I be able to go to the police station?”
“Whenever you are discharged, meaning the sooner you complete that testing, the sooner you can go!”
“All right. Let’s get to it, then.”