Chapter Text
The Association vice Chairman’s office is a sterile environment. The air is filtered, cool, and carries only the faint scent of Arabica coffee from the machine.
Pariston Hill takes a sip. The temperature is perfect. The office’s occupant sits back in his chair, lazily flipping through a digital report. His face wears the mask of a benevolent idiot, but his fingers, resting on the desk, tap rhythmically against the surface.
There’s a knock at the door. The secretary—a pale young man with eyes that have already witnessed firings over improperly formatted margins—enters with a folder.
“Sir, the morning incident report. You asked me to highlight particularly… unconventional cases.”
Pariston smiles. His smile is just stretched skin, revealing his teeth.
“Thanks, Kenji. Leave it here. And please, don’t forget to order new folders. The corners are a bit crumpled.”
The secretary nods and runs out. Pariston opens the folder. The first five pages are trash: minor bar fights, speeding tickets, the usual routine of failed Hunters. He flips through them with disgust, as if inspecting dirty laundry.
On the sixth page, he freezes. His gaze is drawn to the surveillance footage from the underground club “Black Lotus.”
The club has been torn apart and turned into a theater of destruction.
In the center of the frame stands a tall, unnaturally flexible figure. A bright mop of hair, strange makeup, and the blurred outlines of flying cards. Hisoka. He’s toying with the guards, contorting his limbs into geometrically precise, grotesque poses.
Pariston leans forward. In place of his usual blank mask, a lively curiosity emerges.
“Interesting…”
He watches as Hisoka, with a single “Bungee-Gama” move, turns the bar counter into an improvised guillotine for two bouncers.
If this man joins the Association, if he gets a license, if he gains access to all restricted areas, to the archives, to the Zodiacs… It won’t just be a breach—it will be an aesthetic catastrophe that neither Chidle nor Mizaist will be able to wash away.
The vice Chairman picks up a pen. His handwriting is flawless, flowing calligraphy. He jots a note in the margins of the report: “Candidate No. 1. Grant access. Difficulty level: maximum.”
Pariston picks up the phone and presses the call button.
“Good morning! We have an opening for the 286th exam. I thought one of our… potential candidates might make an excellent source of inspiration. Arrange his invitation. And do ensure he believes it was entirely his own idea.It’s crucial for his self-esteem..” And also… (a light chuckle) could you perhaps show him the disciplinary regulations? Let him know what awaits him if he forgets our rules. People like that need to be… properly socialized.
He hangs up and takes another sip of coffee.
“It’s going to get very lively around here soon,” Pariston says to the emptiness of his office, drawing a perfect line across the paper to cross out the name of the bureaucrat who had been too persistent with his inspections.
He doesn’t need obstacles. He needs the perfect tools to destroy the very thing he heads.
----
The setting: an abandoned museum city in the desert. The examiner, Master Togari—who would later return to the 287th exam wielding four swords to seek revenge—had devised a stage called “Glass Balance.” Candidates had to carry a huge, perfectly polished crystal sphere through a maze filled with traps and aggressive mime monkeys. If even a single scratch appeared on the sphere, it meant immediate disqualification. The goal was to test composure, aura control, and the ability to suppress bloodlust, since the monkeys attacked only those who showed aggression.
Hisoka walked calmly. He used Bungee Gum to keep the sphere floating behind him, never touching the floor or the traps. It was too easy. A conflict arose when Togari began to comment: the path of the hunter was the path of humility; tricks were cheap gimmicks unworthy of a true warrior. When Hisoka was almost at the finish line, Togari ordered him to stop and wipe the sphere with a cloth, claiming that “too much dust from his filthy aura had settled on it.”
The magician did indeed stop.
“You know, dust is no big deal… But that red color really suits this sphere.”
The sphere filled with a thirst for blood and flew toward Togari at the speed of a cannonball. When the examiner tried to block the blow, the sphere exploded into thousands of sharp shards, transformed by Bungee Gum into deadly shrapnel.
The dust from the exploded crystal sphere had not yet settled. The shards glistened in the sunlight like diamond dust, mingling with Togari’s blood. Hisoka stood motionless. His shoulders were relaxed, but the fingers of his right hand twitched slightly—residual electricity from the instantaneous release of his aura. A mask of disappointment was frozen on his face. His pupils narrowed to slits. He tilted his head slightly to the side, examining the blood spatter on his cards, and only one thought swirled in his mind: “Is that all? I expected something more sophisticated inside him…”
A deathly silence descended. The other candidates, who had just been his rivals, turned into stone statues. Someone dropped a sphere, and the sound of shattering glass seemed deafening.
A slight irritation boiled in his blood. Hisoka felt as if he had gone to see a highly publicized play, only for the actor to forget his lines in the first act. He slowly brought the bloodstained playing card to his lips, licked a single drop from the edge, and grimaced.
“So bland,” he whispered, barely audible.
Togari looked like a defective mannequin. The left side of his face was covered by a crimson mask, through which his exposed cheekbone glowed an unnatural white—a shard had sliced the flesh down to the bone. His breathing was a gurgling wheeze; with every exhalation, bloody foam was pushed from his mouth, instantly absorbed into the gray dust. His blue hair and ceremonial uniform were covered in patches of brown substance.
“You spoke of humility, Master…” Hisoka’s voice sounded frighteningly soft, vibrating with a dangerous, broken melody. “But you yourself could not even control your own face in the face of a petty trick.”
Hisoka took the first step. Slow, deliberate. The other candidates instinctively stepped back, creating a vacuum around him—a zone of alienation where the air literally thickened with his thirst for blood.
Togari’s terror was palpable. His surviving right eye was so dilated that the iris appeared merely as a narrow rim around a bottomless black pupil. In that pupil was reflected inevitable death in a suit adorned with playing card symbols. The failed examiner tried to crawl away, but his legs would not obey; they merely scraped chaotically across the floor, leaving jagged furrows.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, a fan of cards flew from his fingers. The first one pierced Togari’s right wrist, nearly severing the radial artery. Blood gushed out, splattering the clothes of those around him with a cheerful speckled pattern. Togari let out a sound like the cry of a trapped animal—high-pitched, ragged, devoid of human inflection. His right hand hung limply from a flap of skin.
But his animal instinct for survival was still working. With his left, uninjured hand, Togari felt around among the debris for his sword. His face contorted into a grimace that was meant to be rage but was merely agony turned to delirium. Togari made a blind, desperate lunge, trying to ward off the threat.
The blade slid a couple of centimeters past his ribs—Hisoka managed to dodge and soften the blow. The toy had found the strength for one last burst of energy… Not bad.
“O-o-o…” Hisoka drawled. “So there was a beast inside after all?”
He abruptly thrust his left hand forward. His fingers, smeared with a pink mixture of dust and blood, gently, almost intimately, touched the fresh wound on Togari’s cheek. The invisible threads of Bungee Gum dug into the edges of the gash. Hisoka made a slight movement with his fingers, clenching them into a fist.
The edges of the wound snapped apart, bursting under the strain. Togari choked on a scream, his spine arching from the unbearable, pinpoint pain as his skin began to tighten like a noose.
Two candidates—a huge, balding man with a tattoo covering his entire head and a skinny, agile guy with a chain—decided this was their chance. They tried to “eliminate the threat” and curry favor, hoping for a free license.
Without turning around, Hisoka made a lazy gesture with his right hand. Two cards slipped from his fingers and flew backward. A dull, wet thud. The skinny guy with the chain froze in mid-stride, his eyes widening in surprise. The thin plastic hit him squarely on the bridge of his nose, piercing the frontal bone and entering his brain. Almost a lobotomy. He fell backward as if mowed down, the chain clattering to the floor.
The bruiser managed to take one more step; his raised fist froze in midair. A second card was lodged in his throat, deep inside his windpipe. He tried to breathe, but instead of air, a gurgling wheeze mixed with blood and foam burst from his mouth. His face quickly turned blue, his knees buckling inexorably.
The magician refocused on Togari, lifting his limp opponent by the collar. The cards vibrated in his free hand, ready to turn what remained of the man into bloody confetti.
He raised his hand for a final, slow swipe across the throat....
A dry, mechanical click pierced the silence of the hall. In the shadows beneath the museum’s dome, a turret fired. Three needles pierced the trapezius muscle with surgical precision.
The Association’s special tranquilizer instantly blocked the Nen nodes. The Bungee Gum holding Togari’s wounds together burst. The examiner collapsed onto the floor like a sack, drenching Hisoka’s boots with the last remnants of his life.
The world around him grew viscous. Excitement turned to cold lead. His fingers unclenched, dropping the bloodstained card.
A stocky Hunter in a sterile gray suit stepped out of the shadows of the corridor. A radio on his shoulder came to life. A sunny chatter poured from it, out of place and pathologically cheerful.
“O-o-oh! What an incredible sight! Jiu, did you see that? What expression! What dedication!” Pariston’s voice rang with sincere, almost childlike delight. “Hisoka, you’re a miracle! I’m looking at the sensors and I can’t believe my eyes—such an aura surge! You’re a true artist!”
Hisoka tried to smile, but his facial muscles were numb. He dropped to one knee, leaning heavily on his fist.
“But here’s the problem…” the sound of candy unwrapping came over the radio. “Our dear Master Togari is a fragile thing! And we still have two more stages left in the plan. You’re not mad that we decided to put you on ‘pause’, are you?”
There wasn’t a hint of judgment in his tone. Just the unbearable, beaming friendliness of a master praising his dog for biting the mailman.
“Jiu, be a sweetheart and escort our champion to the ‘rest room.’ You know, the one where it’s completely silent and pitch black? Hisoka’s so tired of the bright lights and noise; he really needs to be alone with his wonderful thoughts… say, for forty-eight hours?”
The radio cut off with a short, cheerful beep.
The security guard snapped the handcuffs—which suppressed Nen—onto his wrists, wrapped in cloth. The weight of the metal felt unbearable.
Hisoka lowered his head, and through the haze of tranquilizers, a new spark flared in his brain. The exam was worth the time after all.