If you're enjoying these stories, consider leaving a comment, review, or vote.
You can also visit the Pat** on at: belamy20
Shizuku's story hit Kurapika harder than he expected.
Both parents gone. A one-way sprint down the revenge highway. Even took a hit to the head that scrambled her memory.
Neon, being Neon, went full softie the second she heard it. At first she'd been low-key worried Shizuku might be hard to get along with—already rehearsing her best ice-queen routine. Now her eyes were glassy, and before anyone could blink she'd latched onto Shizuku's arm like it was a lifeline.
Shizuku tugged once, twice. When the arm didn't budge, she just… let it happen.
Ronin kept his eyes on the road and stayed quiet.
Recruiting Shizuku had been stupidly easy—way easier than he'd braced for. Before they rolled into Meteor City, his biggest headache was the fact that she already had history with most of the Troupe. But from everything he'd seen, before the Spence mess blew up, Shizuku had been living a normal life with actual parents. She wasn't cut from the same cloth as Chrollo and the rest.
Born in Meteor City, sure. But raised more like any regular kid from outside the trash heaps.
Maybe the head trauma was a mercy in disguise, Ronin thought. If she'd remembered every second of watching her mom get tortured and her dad turn traitor… how broken would she be right now?
The car rolled out of the forest and back into the garbage-choked streets.
While Ronin's crew had been carving through Spence Manor, the Meteor City Elders had patched into an emergency call.
One topic only: how to put down the outsider who'd dared come here and raise hell.
"Contact Chrollo," one of them growled after the shouting died down. "Spence's seat is empty. Offer it to him. Let the Troupe clean up their own mess."
The suggestion shut most mouths. Ronin's strength was obvious to everyone. Nobody wanted to bleed their own elite fighters dry. The Phantom Troupe—already half-outsiders themselves—made the perfect disposable hit squad.
"But we're just supposed to let this bastard run wild until the Spiders show up?" an old voice snapped. "He took Spence. Who's next?"
The conference line went dead quiet.
"Hmph."
The same elder opened his mouth to spit more venom—then someone cut him off.
"Wait… Theodore didn't show, did he?"
The name landed like a brick. Every mind in the call conjured the same picture of the crazed old fanatic.
Theodore. One of the hardest-line Elders Meteor City had ever produced.
His creed was simple: outsiders attack us? We turn our own people into living bombs to send a message. Humans were tools. Meat. Walking ordinances he could detonate whenever it suited him.
"He's what a real Meteor City Elder should look like," the old voice rasped, almost wistful. "I'm getting too old for this. If Theodore fails… then we stand together. Enemy at the gate. Killing him comes first. I'll wait at my villa. If he doesn't die to Theodore, he'll come for me next."
The moment those words left his mouth, half the Elders knew.
Ryan had definitely been neck-deep in the Spence conspiracy.
And the speaker? Ryan himself—the bastard who'd flipped Hiroki, set the whole trap, and helped turn Shizuku's family into collateral damage.
But family feuds were internal business. The guy who'd actually killed Spence was an outsider. So Ryan was right: dead outsider first, questions later.
"Fine. I'll send people to you," someone answered.
More voices piled on in agreement.
Ryan's lips curled into a thin smile.
Come and try, you filthy roaches. You're nowhere near enough.
On a different street, Ronin's car slammed to a halt.
Ragged figures in torn cloaks and face rags blocked the road. Bare feet on broken asphalt. No guns. Just bodies.
Ronin hadn't taken them seriously—until one stepped straight into the fender and detonated on contact.
The reinforced windshield spider-webbed. The whole car rocked like it had been sideswiped by a truck.
Ronin kicked the door open and stepped out, eyes narrowing on the leader.
The guy had Ten wrapped tight around him. And that explosion… Ronin's mind flashed back to the memory he'd pulled from the thug earlier.
No record of this face. Not Ryan.
But the outfit—rags, mask, bare feet—matched exactly.
The same look Chrollo had shown Hisoka in the manga when he explained the ability.
The Paired Destroyer.
A rasping voice crawled out from under Theodore's hood.
"Meteor City is not a playground for outsiders. So… please die."
The second the words left his mouth, shapes dropped from the rooftops on both sides of the street.
Same rags. Same masks. Like twisted copies of the old man.
Every single one of them clapped their hands together the instant they landed.
Paired Destroyer.
The ability stored in Chrollo's book. Positive and negative marks planted on targets. The moment the marks touch—boom.
These human bombs had been pre-marked.
Ronin's eyes snapped into Mangekyō.
Susanoo erupted around him in a surge of crimson armor. The massive skeletal hand whipped upward like a flyswatter, smashing every falling body out of the air.
Explosions still ripped off on contact.
At the same time, ragged figures poured out of every alley—dozens, hundreds—screaming with fanatical glee as they charged straight at the car.
Ready to turn themselves into shrapnel the moment they got close enough to touch.