visitmyp4tr3 (5) : belamy20
Pairo's eyes had been the right pair. Ronin had guessed that much. Feeling the Eternal Mangekyō lock in still hit him like a charge.
The mirror showed the change.
The figures that had sat on the tomoe were no longer still. They moved. The pattern ran deeper, down, as if it opened on a drop with no floor.
The step from Mangekyō to Eternal did not raise the rank of the techniques. What it did was cut the cost off at the root. He could live in the dōjutsu without flinching, and living in it was how the extra power came out.
Without the Eternal pair, even knowing pupil force came back with time, he had never quite trusted the spend.
After Chrollo, then Beyond, his sight had already sent a note. Not blindness. Normal vision sliding into a hundred or two hundred degrees of myopia. A warning. Overuse would ruin the eyes, and combat did not let him leave them off.
That problem was gone.
He could run the Sharingan as hard as he wanted. Fatigue, yes. Damage and dark, no.
Kurapika came back with Pairo finished.
Once he knew the Dark Continent trip was a search for Kurta, he put his weight on the route, the supply list, and the hulls.
With Kurapika on that work, Ronin could breathe.
The next piece of news did not let him.
Scarlet Eyes were moving to Yorknew. The auction was three years out.
To anyone else it was a curiosity. To Ronin and Kurapika it had their names on it.
The count matched. The date wanted a second look.
Ronin did the short math.
"Those eyes are with Beyond's people. He's been building this for a while."
He did not know which door had put him on Beyond's list. Adley. Muhael. Something else. He knew that after Yorknew, after the fight with the Troupe, Beyond had put a hand on the Scarlet Eyes.
Kurapika had said then that someone was collecting. They had all assumed Troupe.
Not only Troupe.
That was fine.
When he killed Chrollo and came away empty, he had written the missing pairs off. They were not destroyed. They were in Beyond's pocket. For Ronin, that was the better version.
Why three years. He ran the calendar again.
"They can't finish the front work soon. Three years is his number for the plan."
"It may also be you sitting down with the Chairman," Kurapika said. "He flinched. He still doesn't want to let you go."
"So he read the deal I would cut with Netero, and he thinks Scarlet Eyes will buy me back into Mobius Lake in three years."
Ronin sat with that.
Honestly, once the Mangekyō had gone Eternal, more fusion did not move the needle much.
Above Eternal was the Rinnegan.
A Sharingan did not become a Rinnegan by ordinary work. It wanted Indra's chakra and Asura's. He had neither.
So the conventional road was closed.
What more Scarlet Eyes would give him now was aura volume.
Aura volume could be trained. Until he hit a wall, he did not need a foreign battery.
This trip was a hunt for Kurta. If he found them, the board changed anyway.
Beyond's bait, today, did not pull hard.
It pulled Kurapika.
That was the difference in what the clan meant to each of them.
"Yes," Kurapika said.
"Then we leave a buyer."
An auction did not require his body in the seat. The problem was the second move. If the hand that took the lot was not Ronin's, Beyond would have a follow-up waiting.
"Who," Kurapika said.
Anyone standing in that room needed enough force to make the follow-up expensive.
He had also heard the other half. Ronin did not intend to attend.
Kurapika had no argument.
They were going to the Dark Continent. Official records counted a hundred-odd expeditions and one return. Nobody got to promise a live exit, or a clock that matched a sale three years out.
Beyond was not simple. That left one read. He was betting.
If Ronin came back alive, good. If he did not, Beyond lost nothing he could not spare.
Three years was a long cushion.
"Saiyu. Hisoka."
Saiyu owed him from the night Chrollo died. Buying Scarlet Eyes was a favor Ronin thought the man would pay.
There was a second thought under it. In the three-year window, whether Ronin came home or not, Beyond might reach for Saiyu again. Whatever Saiyu chose, having him on the bid still let Ronin sleep.
Hisoka was a contract.
The man lied for sport and still treated a promise like a rule. If he took the job, the eyes had a real chance of staying bought. His ceiling was high enough to trust.
Kurapika turned it over and nodded.
He had been thinking Miriya. She sat too low.
"All right. We do it that way."