"Ronin. Hisoka contacted me."
Abachi had stayed behind. The first sentence out of her mouth stopped him.
From everything before this, Hisoka had no interest in her and no wish to pick the friendship back up. A call that started with him was not kindness.
"What does he want?"
"He wants me to set a fight with you."
She had to push the words out.
Ronin frowned. A match with Hisoka did not pull at him. The man's Hatsu work was good. The gap in output and in tools was already a cliff. Numbers had finished the argument. Experience would not break Susanoo. Ronin had more than Susanoo.
Abachi saw the refusal forming and kept going.
"He knows he isn't your match. He still wants to try. Basics only. Nen fundamentals. A spar."
That was a different request. Ronin thought it over and nodded.
"You want to see him. Even if seeing him is probably going to be a disappointment."
"I know." Her head dropped. "There are still things I want to ask him in person."
"Fine."
It cost him nothing. Call it a favor.
Abachi's ability was useful. On the Dark Continent it might do work he could not predict yet.
"Thank you." The gratitude was real. "I said it because I want to see him. I also said it because I can tell you still want fights with people who can actually fight. Hisoka is a genius. A genius who lives in combat."
"Mm. So it isn't only you. He has a read on me too." Ronin smiled.
"One more question. Heavens Arena, or quiet?"
"Quiet. If Beyond weren't sitting in the dark watching, I would rather take the ring and let the room scream."
He did not dress it.
From the day he had woken in this world and climbed a Heavens Arena platform, he had liked the heat of being watched. Winning in front of a crowd stretched the win. It felt good. For him, it did.
"All right. I'll tell him. He'll come fast. He wants this more than you do. He wouldn't have called me otherwise."
The laugh she gave herself was thin.
She left with the phone still in her hand.
Kurapika came back to the rest room the yard had given Ronin.
Pairo was not with him.
What he carried instead was a head with the eyes gone, and a glass jar that held the eyes.
He pushed the jar across.
"Here. Pairo said to give you these."
"You're sure?"
Ronin had no speech prepared. He took the eyes.
Up close the difference was obvious. Pairo's pair had more light in them than the other Scarlet Eyes of the clan. They threw a polish that belonged on a gem. They did not look like they had followed their owner into death.
No wonder the auction had gone insane. The pair was a peak. Beauty that sat above the Seven Great Beauties instead of inside them.
Ronin put a lid on the urge to fuse them where he stood.
"Yes." Kurapika nodded hard. "I have to look forward. I'll put him in the ground later."
Ronin nodded back just as hard.
"Do it. I'll back you. That's not going to change."
"Thank you, Ronin."
Kurapika meant it. He bent at the waist, a full formal bow.
Ronin stared.
Kurapika came up and did not dodge.
"I'm sorry. I doubted you. I let a lot of grievance sit in my chest."
He had not unpacked it at the time. The thing had ended as unwise words, pulled out of him, and then it had been left on the floor.
He had done more thinking since.
"It's fine."
A dozen sentences collapsed into those two words.
A hairline crack had been sitting between them since that day. Saying it out loud closed it.
"The Dark Continent, then. I hope there are more of us there."
Kurapika's eyes were steady.
Chrollo was dead. The Troupe had come apart. The Fourth Prince was dead. The hate in his chest had finally had somewhere to go. Pairo's weeks at his side, and the work Ronin had done without putting a price on it, had pulled him out of the slaughter's shadow.
"Yes."
Kurapika left to deal with the head.
Ronin did not know where the grave would be. Pairo would have named the ground already.
The jar sat in his hand. Anticipation sat with it.
He did not wait. Nen wrapped the glass. Pretty and expensive did not matter. What mattered was fuel, and whether the Sharingan would move.
The Scarlet Eyes dissolved under the wrap and threw a hard red light.
The light ran the Nen into his body and went straight to his eyes.
Heat gathered there. He shut them. It did not hurt. It felt good, like a hand he could not see working the fatigue out of the tissue.
The heat was not the only change. His aura volume climbed while Pairo's eyes sank in.
The feeling held for a full ten minutes.
When he opened his eyes again, the knowledge was already there.
Overuse would not put irreversible damage in them. Abuse would not steal his sight.
This was the thing the stories named.
Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan.