5 A Surprising Meeting With The Unfeeling
"Alright, Rex Corystes, 10 years old, your number is 6,174, remember it Good, on the first floor, you will be called by this number, you can enter now."
As Rex entered a hallway and got closer and closer to the end, he could already hear very loud cheering, but when he looked around again, he could see that not very many seats were taken.
"Get him finished!"
"That's it!"
There were several fighting rings, with two people fighting in each one.
Rex climbed down some stairs and sat at the lowest seats, so he could observe the fight better.
And his eye gave off a faint yellow-gold light.
'Karate, Judo, JiuJitsu, Boxing, Taekwondo.... I didn't know very many of them and I didn't really train anything, except for the little bit of karate that a friend once showed me, but in this life I should make it my goal to master and evolve all the martial arts that I know.'
When he was again aware of what will await him in the not so distant future, a kind of euphoria filled him, he knew that the childhood years are the best times to grow, and he had to use them as efficiently as possible, preferably by learning as many techniques as possible, and for this reason he looked very eagerly at the fighters who participated here in the fight....
He watched the whole time very excitedly, his improved eye had not only the ability to see better, but also the ability to remember what he saw better, and to better transmit it with the optic nerve to the brain.
But then his eyes caught something very special.... It was a child.
It was standing in the middle of the arena, but its face showed no excitement or nervousness...
And then, out of the blue.... the child was able to defeat his opponent, who was ten times bigger, with a single blow.
'Wow, don't tell me that's-'
And then, after an hour of waiting, the announcement finally came from a loudspeaker that Rex had been waiting for all along. "The fighters with numbers 6,174 and 1,243 please proceed to ring E."
He got up, walked to the arena and did a backflip to land on the elevated platform.
Once there, he was in the same fight ring as the child before and he saw that his opponent was a huge, fat and well-trained man.
But, before the referee gave the start signal, a few from the audience shouted with their arms outstretched and a few slightly drunk.
"Hey, he's just a kid!"
"You squirt, run away while you still can!"
"This ain't no game! Come on man, smash this brat out of the ring with a big fist bump!"
When the audience calmed down again the referee started talking. "Here in the rings on the second floor we judge the skill level of the new fighters, please show what you are capable of within the time limit of three minutes."
"Then start now!", shouted the referee, swinging his right arm up at the same time.
The man looked at Rex pitifully for a short time, cracked his fingers, took a quick swing with his left arm and said, "I'm really sorry little guy, but you'll feel a lot better after one punch!"
But against his expectation, his punch landed not in the crab mask, but in the open air.
The man looked around in panic, his head turned left, right and even above him.
'What the hell, where is h-'
And before he could finish his thoughts, a soft, non-Nen induced, fist from Rex landed in the man's lower jaw, knocking him unconscious in no time.
But before he fell, he coughed up a lot of blood from his mouth, as it was typical in many anime.
"Ew... Man, I'm not allowed to use nen here yet, I don't want to make anyone a nen user", Rex muttered quietly to himself as he swung his fist many times to remove the blood.
Fortunately, none of it had hit his clothes.
"Wow, that kid's got it!"
"Did you see where he was? He disappeared so suddenly!"
"So much power!"
"He's the second kid already! How do parents feed their kids these days?"
The referee looked at him and took out a device from his pocket, he typed in a pair of numbers and out came a ticket, which the referee gave Rex. "Number 6,174, you can go up to the 50th floor."
After that Rex took the ticket and went to an elevator, where a child and a staff member were waiting for him and then after he entered, the woman explained everything. "The first 200 floors of Heavens Arena are grouped into classes of 10 floors, which means that if a fighter wins a fight in the 50th floor class, he goes up to the 60th floor, and if he loses, he goes down to the 40th floor, that's how the system works...".
"If you have any questions, you can ask me now", But the two children stared at her blankly.
'What are kids doing here anyway... Why are they staring at me so strangely? And what about the smaller one's eyes? Why does he have such big black pupils...? Yuck! so creepy...'
"We've reached the 50th floor."
Both kids left the elevator and walked a few steps together to the next arena. "Why did you wait for me?"
Since the atmosphere was pretty awkward, Rex couldn't help but start the conversation.
"I just didn't expect to meet another kid here", The child said honestly. "I'm Illumi Zoldyck, and you? Did your father send you here too?"
'Oh, it's really Illumi! The first person I meet from Hunter X Hunter is a psychopath!', Rex thought with a bit of dread and excitement, but he couldn't keep Illumi waiting any longer, so he replied, "I'm Rex Corystes.... But are you really a Zoldyck? I've heard that they are a brutal and merciless assassin family..."
Then a thought flashed through his brain. "Wait! W-will you kill me?"
Illumi shook his head calmly. "You already know a lot about us, but don't worry, you're not on the list."
'Oh man, he showed zero emotion, what did Silva let him go through? I even played the scared young boy!
...But at the moment, I wonder if I could make him into a specialist or an emission guy, I mean, he's still just 6, you can give his personality a final polish for that.'
The two continued talking, and arrived to a much larger arena than the one on the tenth floor.
The seats were also much more crowded, so they had no choice but to sit at the bottom of a staircase.
"So, do you know any assassin tricks?", Said Rex, trying to learn anything from illumi and maybe pick something up.
"Yeah, why? Are you interested in that?"
"Well, sure, it's not every day you meet an assassin from the infamous Zoldyck family."
"You can stop saying Zoldyck all the time."
'Huh...did I hit a nerve?', Thought Rex as he touched his right ear lobe. "Chill out, why do you get so pissed off right away? Could it be that you don`t even like the zoldyck family?"
Illumi stared at the ground for a couple of seconds thinking about everything possible and in the end he said. "I don`t understand you, how can you be so sure that I`m from the zoldyck family, I haven`t shown any tricks yet... This confident face you're showing me, could it be that you`re a new butler hired by my father?"
"...Or are you an assassin yourself?", Said Illumi, who outwardly still looked casual and relaxed, but this could not fool Rex, Illumi was ready to kill Rex at any time, Illumi had all his muscles fully tensed, but these were hidden under his long shirt and the big shorts he wore.
'The situation is very tense, it's probably better if I loosen it a bit', Rex thought as he stretched both arms up, but he himself had now applied Ten around his body.
"Haha, so you even have butlers, but I have to disappoint you, I'm not a butler or someone sent by your father or someone else, I just thought you were telling the truth, or is it not true?"
"...", Illumi stared at him a little bit, unsure what to do.
But then he decided to relax his muscles a little bit, "You are a funny guy."
Illumi raised his hand in front of him, and suddenly a lot of veins hidden deep in his hands came out and focused on his fingers, which for some magical reason caused his fingernails to become very long.
"Wow, that's awesome!" Rex said in real excitement and wonder, still protecting himself with Ten in case Illumi got any stupid ideas, but loosening it a bit, as he suddenly felt a lot safer than before.
Apparently Rex's childish side pleased Illumi a bit, which he couldn't show with his blank face.
"Say, can you teach m-"
"Number 6,174, Rex Corystes and number 2,428, Illumi Zoldyck, please enter the arena."
"Haha, that must be fate!", said Rex happily as he stood up and stretched.
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Math Jump-Scare:
Illumi is at the time of Gon's hunter exam 24 years old, and the world (Canon) of Hunter x Hunter starts at 1999. And if a Zoldyck enters Heavens arena, he does it at the age of 6 (In this FF)
So 1999 - 24 = 1975. And that + 6 = 1981.
This means that he entered Heavens Arena in 1981.
Rex by pure luck also entered the arena on the same day as Illumi. (1999 - 28 = 1971... 1971 + 10 (Rex age) = 1981.) Meaning Rex entered Heavens Arena in the same Year.
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But yeah, what did you think of this random encounter? Was it surprising or predictable?
Well, you can tell from the conversation that Rex wants to end up as Illumi's friend, plus Rex is and was a person full of true compassion in his former and new life, he doesn't want Illumi to end up like he did in the show. (For Illumi's sake, and the people he can save by not letting Illumi be a fucking assassin).
And he also knows through Killua that it can be changed, I mean, he might have a harder time than Gon, because it's Illumi and Rex is not Gon, but Illumi is now much younger than Killua was, which means that Rex can better teach him a new way of looking at life...
Plus he has a lot of time in Heavens Arena...
