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mimzilla · 7 years

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Well goddamn it turns out it’s been literally 1 whole year since I uploaded the first chapters of Only the Dead Know!! Time flies when you’re finishing college

In celebration of both that and the fact that my impending graduation will give me enough time to keep working on it in earnest, here’s the opening few pages of my revision of chapter 1! :U

Dogs always ended up trailing after Ging’s heels.

Or, as the crowd around him demonstrated, dancing around and competing for his affection. A greyhound all skin and bones stuck its sharp nose between his palm and a beagle’s head, stealing the ear scratches the squat, tan dog had been melting into. The beagle whined and nipped at its bony legs, squeezing between them to nuzzle up against Ging’s side. There wasn’t much else it could do—he only had two hands and one lap, and his crossed legs were currently trapped beneath the body of a huge, shaggy beast. A sole spaniel managed to perch atop it, but everything else the chow-chow warded off with a low grumble.

“Alright, alright,” he said, curling his arm around the greyhound’s back to scratch its side. “There’s enough of me for all of you, just calm down.” Which was not, strictly speaking, true, but he could do his best to pet all of them. The tiny spaniel, a skinny little thing with matted hair, licked his face.

“You’re pretty snuggly for strays,” Ging mumbled when the spaniel’s tongue wasn’t over his mouth in its quest to bathe his whole face. “Okay, okay, that’s enough—that’s enough—”

The chow-chow sighed as he twisted his torso, fruitlessly trying to keep his face away from the enthusiastic spaniel. Ging would have attributed its docility to how animals tended to calm around Hunters, but even taking that into consideration the dogs were abnormally well-behaved. The chow-chow especially—the breed was closer to wolves than dogs, but the one in his lap was nothing less than boneless. Not unprecedented, but noteworthy considering that it clearly wasn’t getting enough to eat.

It roused his curiosity enough that when a distant whistle, two low notes followed by a wavering high, made all the dogs’ ears twitch, there was no question that he would find whoever’s dogs they were.

The chow-chow moved first, its great mass heaving itself up into a lumbering walk. The spaniel on its back scrambled to leap away, taking the opportunity to dart into the shadows of the ramshackle houses nearby. Dilapidated, patchwork constructions of wood, cardboard, and aluminum; most of them had collapsed under the intensity of Ecinev’s storms, and those that hadn’t were on the verge of it with rust and splintered wood. On the fringe of the shantytown, only people with nowhere else to go set foot. Or, in Ging’s case, people who had shady characters to find.

With a sad whine, the beagle against his side was the last to scamper off. It went in the opposite direction from the whistle, its claws clicking against the concrete of the storm drain’s outlet. Ging’s attention narrowed to the chow-chow’s retreating shape. He pushed himself up to his feet and squinted down the massive, cavernous storm drain. It was from there that the whistle had come, and he could only assume that the whistler had indicated their dogs should scatter and reconvene somewhere. Someone being chased, likely. The dogs’ sudden departure would have looked strange, but nevertheless random, if he hadn’t heard the whistle. And a normal person wouldn’t have heard the whistle.

Ging grinned and set out after the chow-chow.

Ecinev’s storm drains were the city’s main claim to fame. Twenty feet tall and thirty across, they wound around the sewer system in an intricate labyrinth of concrete and rushing water that never intersected. In the dry season, tourists were led along the walkways to goggle at the dams, meticulously placed mechanisms that could block off passageways and redirect the flow of the canals. Each juncture had one that could be independently controlled through the city government’s engineering office, a department solely dedicated to keeping track of weather patterns and determining how best to keep the relatively clean water moving to the reservoirs that plunged into the land around the city, the dirty water to the processing plants and the outskirts of the city. The contaminated water was more often than not pointed toward the most populated part of the shantytown. Those with the weakest resolve would be driven away by the scent and the sickness. One had to grant the city government that it was good at keeping vagrants on the move.

With the wet season approaching, the tunnel passageways would be left unblocked soon enough, the dams lowered to keep the torrential and near-constant rain from drowning the city. Glancing up, Ging confirmed that the street gutters running along almost every inch of the space between the road and sidewalk had been recently reinforced with stainless steel, preparing for the downpour to come.

He couldn’t help but grin, seeing such a clear demonstration of how the environment and the architecture of a city shaped the lives of those within it. Living in Ecinev was, by all accounts, driven by gathering as much money as possible during the dry season; the cultural economic divide was a massive gap between those who were capable of taking care of themselves and those who had to go crawling to the mafia for protection from nature itself.

Already, Ging’s footsteps made quiet splashes in the half-inch of water that spilled over the canal’s edge onto the walkway. He didn’t begrudge the dampness seeping into his socks, though, because the chow-chow’s heavy trot was all the more audible for the slosh of water around its legs. Its pace had remained steady, and it never paused at the tunnel’s intersections. Occasionally, it would raise its nose and snuffle, or prick up its ears, but there were no more whistles. It never spared a moment to dissuade Ging from following it, either, but that was to be expected. Ging had always found it easy to gain the trust of things desperate for affection.

A sudden shout and a rapid series of whistles, one low and two high—distant, but close enough that the echo reverberated around corners without losing the shape of words—was what spurred the dog past its easy gait. It broke into a run with a snarl and Ging followed at a distance, his excited grin widening and the sound of a commotion growing closer. With each step, the furious sound of a man shouting grew clearer, the words steadily more comprehensible through the din of splashing water and dogs’ yelping.

“If you think I’m going to let you run away again you’re dead wrong, you filthy street rat—”

The man’s voice cut off with a pained grunt. There was a series of quick splashes—likely some small dog—then a frustrated yell and a sharp yipe that bounced off the tunnel walls.

Ging rounded the corner in time to see the man, muscle-bound with fraying, too-small clothes, take a pipe to the face.

His sunglasses flew off and fell into the coursing water of the canal, disappearing down the tunnel within seconds of their hitting the current. Blood dripped down his chin from his broken nose and dispersed similarly as it fell from his skin into the water. The man doubled over and moaned in pain, his hands wavering in front of his face, torn between gripping the injury and not wanting to make it worse by touching it. As he stumbled sideways he favored his right leg; through the shredded cloth Ging saw a flash of dark blood. Running away from the injured man was a small terrier whose muzzle was matted and red. With a high-pitched growl, it scampered behind the legs of the ragged figure holding the pipe.

“You,” the man coughed, spitting blood from his split lip, “oh, you’re gonna get it!”

Whatever “it” was became irrelevant as the chow-chow plowed into him with all of its bulk and momentum and sent him careening over into the drink.

With one last furious shout he was swept away, and the last Ging saw of him was a mess of thrashing limbs fighting to keep on the surface of the water.

The chow-chow gave a gruff ‘woof’ that was as satisfied as a dog could sound, and with its tail wagging ambled over to its friend with the pipe. The rubbed its head gratefully, beginning to kneel and reach for the smaller dog.

“Nice hit,” Ging said, and they snapped back up to their feet and brought the pipe up to bear. A wave of Ren that fluctuated wildly in intensity crashed into him. It was probably meant to scare him away, but accomplished the exact opposite by feeding Ging’s already-strong curiousity. He held up his open hands and smiled. “These dogs are yours, then?”

The show of non-aggression didn’t do much to appease them. Their shoulders, hidden under a coat several sizes too big with a popped collar, clearly heaved with each rapid breath they took. It was difficult, even for Ging, to tell whether the water dripping down their face was spray or sweat. Whichever it was, it did a good job of washing some of the dirt off of their pale, drawn face. Their wide brown eyes, ceaselessly tracking every minute move he made, were underscored with shadows. In all, they looked as skeletal as their dogs—if not more.

Not likely to win any contests of strength, Ging mused, but their Ren wasn’t bad. Not exceptionally good either, but that was attributable to the fact that they clearly had no idea how to properly control it. Ging lowered his hands and casually shoved them into his pockets; the street rat tensed and shifted their grip on the pipe. On closer inspection, Ging noted that the weapon was more of a makeshift pike: there was a spike messily tied onto the end and jutting out.

“They’re well-trained,” he went on. “You should be proud.”

The street rat blinked, and confusion flitted across their face that morphed rapidly back into alarm when the chow-chow lumbered over to Ging and grumbled happily. “Hey, buddy,” Ging murmured, keeping a close eye on the pike as he slowly patted its head. It wagged its tail. The street rat gaped at him soundlessly, their Ren faltering. Ging watched it weaken and hummed thoughtfully.

“You shouldn’t ground your Ren in emotion so much,” he said. Unsurprisingly, their guard snapped back into place and they glared at him. All the same—

“See, this is what I’m talking about.” Ging gestured vaguely at the uneven mist of their aura. “Making people feel it when you’re angry is one thing, but like this you’re just an open book. You might as well just yell ‘I’m scared’. That would have pretty much the same effect.”

For a second, the only sounds were the chow-chow’s happy panting and the rush of water around all of their feet. Little by little, the street rat’s Ren dwindled to nothing. They stared down at where the chow-chow was pressing its head up into Ging’s hand, and their eyebrows—distinctly lighter in color than their nest of hair—drew down into a furrow. They pursed their lips and whistled, a drawn-out low note followed by a shorter one of the same tone. The chow-chow’s ears twitched back towards them and it immediately left Ging’s side. The terrier hovered around their ankles and sniffed the chow-chow’s head curiously. Below the immediately local noises, Ging noted quieter splashes down the surrounding tunnels. Likely the rest of the dogs he’d met.

“You have a lot of dogs, don’t you? Manipulator, right?” Ging asked, half-rhetorically. They stared at him blankly. “I mean, they aren’t conjured dogs, are they?” Ging wouldn’t have put the kid as being strong enough to maintain that for any significant amount of time. A 5% chance, maybe.

They shifted their stance, right foot sliding forward so that they were facing sideways and ready to bolt. The chow-chow, following a silent cue, stepped protectively in front of all of them so that its bulk formed a furry wall.

In a cracking, roughened voice that was barely above a whisper, the street rat asked him “What are you talking about?”

Ging couldn’t quite contain his excitement, and the kid flinched slightly as his voice came out louder than before. “Your Nen type. Manipulator? That’s how you control the dogs?”

Their disconcerted expression didn’t change. “What are you talking about?” they repeated.

Ging blinked. “Nen.”

They stared at him. “Nen?” he tried again. Their weight shifted onto their toes, readying to run. “You know what Nen is, don’t you? You just used it!”

At last, understanding dawned on their face. “The magic.”

“Basically, yeah. I mean, sort of. Not really. But yes.”

“… It’s called Nen?”

“Yup.”

They examined him again, and he could see their opinion of him changing. It took some effort for him to quell his impatience. “Can you use it?”

“I can.”

Slowly, the tip of their pike lowered until it rested on the ground. “Who are you?” they asked quietly.

“Ging,” he said. “Ging Freecss. Nice to meet you…?”

The street rat either ignored or didn’t pick up on the questioning lilt of his tone. “Ging.”

“Right,” Ging confirmed. He waited a few seconds, but the street rat said nothing. “Uh, do you have a name?”

They started and stared at him in blank shock. “… Yes.”

A few more seconds passed.

“And… what is it…?”

“Oh,” they said, blinking owlishly. For a long moment, they stood looking blankly into space with an expression of mild confusion. “… Kite,” they finally said. “My name is Kite.”

“Kite,” Ging repeated, smiling. “That’s a nice name.”

Kite shifted their weight uncertainly, easing out of their flight-ready stance. The compliment hadn’t lowered their guard as much as Ging would have liked—if anything, they looked all the more bewildered. Ging clicked his tongue without losing his smile, thinking to himself that friends were probably hard to find for weak street kids. They would probably get themselves caught up in bad company more often than they’d stumble upon a friendly face, especially in a city as rife with mobsters as Ecinev.

“It’s nice to meet you, Kite,” he said, stepping forward. As expected, Kite stiffened the moment that he did. Ging held up his empty hands again, but it didn’t reassure them enough to keep them from bringing up their pike and pointing the spike at him in warning.

“Don’t come any closer,” they said, their quiet voice cracking again, but with fear rather than disuse.

“Or what?” Ging asked, taking another step. “You’ll drown me, like you did that guy?”

What little color there was in Kite’s face drained away, and their eyes flickered to the unending rush of water behind them. “He’s not—he won’t die.”

“How do you know?”

“Not deep enough. Not fast enough.”

“Looks pretty deep and fast to me. And people with concussions don’t tend to be good swimmers.”

Kite ground their teeth together. “… It gets shallower that way. He won’t die.”

The chow-chow growled as Ging stepped closer, a deep rumble that worked its way up from the depths of its chest, and its bright, single eye trained on him. Perhaps it sensed Kite’s growing distress. The terrier danced around Ging’s ankles, snapping the air beside them but not following through. Undeterred, Ging pressed forward until his knees were nearly pressed against the chow-chow’s side and Kite had backed away to the very edge of the canal. Though their hands were shaking, their grip on the pike didn’t falter.

“Stop,” they hissed through clenched teeth, staring at him in all but absolute terror. Ging did stop, but slowly extended his hand toward them.

It was most likely a reflex, Ging thought, for Kite to snap their pike forward in an arc that aimed the rusty tip of the spike at Ging’s shoulder. Both dogs bit Ging’s ankles in the same instant, their teeth sinking through leather booths into bloody flesh—

—or they would have, had their jaws not closed on reinforced skin that might as well have been steel.

“Is that all?” Ging said, the pike’s wicked point held unmoving in his hand not an inch from where it would have severed his tendons. “I’m surprised you lasted this long.”

Kite’s harsh intake of breath was drowned out by the enraged howling of the chow-chow, which let go of Ging’s leg and began throwing itself against him. The noise echoed through the tunnel, reverberating and layering on top of itself until it was deafening. Other dogs—ten, Ging counted—came racing around the storm drain’s sharp corners to flank the four of them.

“Ah, come on. What happened to liking me?” Ging muttered, his voice inaudible even to him. The hand he proffered to the chow-chow nearly fell victim to its bared teeth. He stepped back obligingly, dragging Kite away from the water since neither of them were loosening their grip on the pike. Kite dug their feet into the concrete and tugged on it fruitlessly, their efforts redoubling as Ging fixed them with a looked of amused exasperation. There was no chance of his actually getting hurt, but fighting his way through a small mob of loud, angry dogs was not his idea of a good time.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Ging shouted over the din. It didn’t surprise him much when they clearly didn’t even consider believing him for a second. He stepped back against when the chow-chow barreled into his knees, and scowled at the lost ground. What would convince the kid to trust him without involving Ging totally backing off? He could allow the dogs to bite him, he considered, or, rather, allow the dogs to hurt him—they had already been biting him for the few seconds that had passed. If he got hurt and still wasn’t hostile, that would be fairly persuasive. The dogs’ teeth probably had some nasty germs on them, but that was nothing Ging couldn’t handle. Infection and poison had little effect on him anymore.

Though his decision was made in a single moment, before Ging could put it into practice a howl cut through the echoing clamor. The street rat’s focus shifted abruptly to the tunnel from which it had come. The dogs around their sides ceased barking, though their hackles were still raised high.

“What—?” Ging started in the sudden silence, breaking off into “Hey!” when Kite gave him one last panicked look and let go of their pike, spinning and sprinting away from the howl. The dogs followed after them in a stream, rushing down the tunnel in parallel with the water. Ging caught the falling handle of the pike and watched them go, bewildered. He was tempted to follow, but it wouldn’t be difficult to track them down again, and the question of what they were running from was just barely more interesting than where they were going.

The noises from the tunnel became clearer as the splashing of Kite’s retreat faded. Faint growling; an angry mutter; a metallic clank followed by the sound of feet hitting water. Someone getting of the ladder to the street, Ging concluded. Likely a companion of the man washed away before.

More than likely, he amended, as there was a familiar yell-yipe sequence, and around the corner of the juncture the beagle that had snuggled up to him was pulled by the current. Its little legs pumped to keep its head above the surface and move it back to the walkway, a job that that the beagle was doing much more successfully than the man who had been swept away. The pike clattered dully against the concrete as Ging dropped it and dove for the edge of the walkway, both arms outstretched to scoop the dog up.

The beagle was a wet, squirming ball of fur in his grip, and it scratched his wrists in protest before he was able to calm it down. Once the man came around into the tunnel—definitively a companion of the one before, given their almost identical suits, so probably mafia—its focus shifted to straining forward and growling. An expression of surprise came across the mobster’s face as he took in the dog wiggling in Ging’s arms and the pike lying abandoned below the surface of the water. Surprise didn’t last long in the face of anger.

“Who the hell are you? And where’s that dog brat?” he demanded.

“Ging,” Ging provided. “And why do you ask?”

“None of your business, Ging. Where is he?”

“How should I know? I’ve never met him before.”

People were really not inclined to believe him that day, Ging thought with no small irritation at time wasted; the scorn on the mobster’s face was more than enough to convey how likely he was to accept Ging’s answer. But to be fair, he was carrying two of what were likely to be Kite’s prized possessions.

“How about this,” Ging said, rubbing the beagle’s head until it subsided and snuggled up against his chest. “You take me to whoever you work for, and I’ll tell you where he went.”

The mobster responded by reaching to draw his gun.

Ging sighed in annoyance and shifted the dog to his left arm. It took less than half the time the mobster needed to aim at Ging’s head for Ging to cover the distance between them and twist his wrist enough that the gun fell from his spasming fingers.

“What the-!?” the man yelled, his eyes gone wide and his face pale with shock and pain.

Obviously not a Nen user, or even someone decently physically strong, Ging surmised. Boring. Whoever ran the Ecinev mafia might turn out to be a disappointment, then, but it was worth a shot all the same.

“I’ll rephrase,” he said, digging his fingers into the man’s wrist. “Take me to whoever you work for.”

#ficxprogress #hxh #My writing #gosh darn its been a while huh

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mimzilla · 6 years

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I’m adding shitloads of stuff to chapter 5 because I felt like it was way too short and really rushed and rn I’m just bullshitting tons of stuff about how arctic research is done and even I am like ‘this is........ a stretch. this is probably not how things are done. anybody who knows shit about this is gonna see through it in an instant’

but u know what, first drafts are for bullshitting. then u edit it all into coherence later

#ficxprogress #now there's a tag I haven't used in a while #it's anime I don't HAVE to be realistic #I already rewrote chapter one entirely and it's longer #and now chapter 5's gonna have a new like ten pages #if not fifteen like I'm already at eight and there's lots of stuff to go scene-wise #whew I swear I'm doing my best to keep things as concise as I can I just have a lot tosay #about............ my dear son Kite's angsty angsty life #I'm actually remembering how much I love just the process of writing? which is super nice #mmmmmmmmmm it's 3am and I'm rambling

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mimzilla · 8 years

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HxH Big Bang blog: In the future we’ll probably have an upper limit on word count because some of these fics are so long

My 260-page-WIP ass: I’m so sorry I’m literally so sorry honestly rip in peace whoever’s doing art for my extensive angstfest they have a hard road ahead of them

#ficxprogress #tfw you're being vagued at lakdlhaskldhgkls;agk #IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS LONG #the situation is not easy on anyone

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mimzilla · 8 years

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!!! It’s been like a month since I made an update post about my fic but I am happy to say that I have chapters 1-7 written! Not edited yet, but I have all of May for that. I sent in my link to the bb blog too, so that’s done!

Though there are eleven chapters in total, I decided to split my work into an unofficial part one/part two. Part one goes through chapter 7, and part two is 8 to the end. I would feel worse about not getting it done by now if it weren’t for how the first seven chapters alone are literally 260 pages asldkglsdklgasdgkslagl

Excerpt time!! From the very last bit of chapter 7, without major spoilers.

There could be no doubt that when Ging set out to create something amazing, he succeeded.

Greed Island was a singularly beautiful place, both in landscape and in terms of what was necessary to maintain it. The fact that an island-wide game could be kept going at all hours of the day, for years on end, was nothing short of incredible—to say nothing of how many varieties of cards there were and how specific the conditions for collecting them were.

“Someday,” Ging told him, twirling a Giant Cyclops card between his fingers, “my son will come to this island. I’m sure of it.”

Kite, cradling a soothed and docile Remote Control Rat in his upturned hat, waited for him to continue. Ging only rarely mentioned Gon, but when he did it was always with a fierce, prideful fire in his eyes.

“And he’ll win the game,” Ging went on. He turned and smiled brilliantly at Kite. “When that happens, if he’s not piggybacking on his friends that’s when he’ll use the Magnetic Force card to come find me. If he’s using Accompany, though—I’ll send him to you, Kite.”

Kite stopped mid-stroke on the Rat’s back. “To me?”

“Yeah. So you can whip him into shape a bit.” Ging ruffled a hand through Kite’s hair. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it.”

“Oh,” Kite said, blinking hard. It had been a long, long time since he’d been happy enough to tear up. It was nice. “Thank you. I… I’d be honored.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ging muttered, not without fondness.

Kite basked in that feeling of contentment for a full twenty-four hours before he allowed himself to considering the implications of Ging’s plan.

#ficxprogress #me: whats the worst possible thing I can make happen to kite #me: oh I know

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mimzilla · 8 years

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( ∙_∙) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)>⌐■-■ (⌐■ ͜ʖ ■)

I’d like to say thank u to everyone who has been encouraging me thus far, for without your kind words I may not have been able to muster the motivation to write my fucking ass off like I’ve been doing for the past, like, three weeks straight. Twenty days ago I was just over 50k and now... now I have broken 75. Soon..... .. . . .. . ..... 100..... .. . . ..

Before that, though, here’s like a solid 4 (unedited) pages from chapter 3, “A Bird in the Hand”. (And a link back to the bits from chapter 2 bc why not)

It had taken until one year after he passed the Hunter Exam for Kite to ask about Hatsu.

“Most people don’t think about that until a few years into their training,” Ging mumbled evasively, pretending to concentrate on shaping his Nen into silly little shapes that danced around his fingers.

“Most people can’t do Ren for seven hours,” Kite countered. “Or use En at ten meters.” He had to actually concentrate on getting his Nen to form any shape at all, let alone the variety of warts Ging produced with such ease. At the moment he’d managed to get one to travel slowly around the curve of each of his fingers and was struggling to form a second.

“… True,” Ging admitted, letting his Nen sink back to the level of his skin. “Uhp—nope, you keep going with that.”

Kite groaned under his breath but complied, painstakingly reforming the lump that had half-disappeared when his focus lapsed. “What is this even going to do, master?”

“Don’t call me that,” Ging said absentmindedly, waving away the question with a languid hand. “Precision of Nen control, practice getting it to conform to your intention, good as a party trick…”

“So nothing,” Kite said under his breath. Ging glanced at him sidelong and the ghost of a smirk passed over his face before he yawned and it vanished.

“Manipulating your Nen at this level is good practice for when you want to develop a Transmutation skill for something. Besides, making shapes out of Nen is exactly what Conjurers do with their Hatsu, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”

Kite opened his mouth, then closed it again with a frown as he looked at the little bump of Nen at the tip of his finger. “I… I guess that’s true. So this is already training for using a Hatsu?”

Ging shrugged in a way that more or less conveyed ‘Sure, why not’.

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

“Hatsu training’s pretty specific, since you have to know exactly what you’re aiming for before you even start. This’ll help speed things up, probably, but it’s not going to be directly useful in a fight.”

He briefly checked the time on his phone as Kite divided his attention between maintaining the exercise, with greater fervor now that he knew there was a point, and thinking hard. “What if my Hatsu isn’t useful for fighting anyway?”

For the first time he saw what incredulity looked like on Ging’s face. “What? Don’t be ridiculous. Why wouldn’t you develop a Hatsu you can defend yourself with?”

“Well—” Kite stuttered, “Why would I develop a Hatsu for fighting? I don’t want to fight if I don’t have to, so a Hatsu that does something else would be more useful…”

He trailed off as Ging shook his head. His little Nen wart collapsed in on itself as he lost concentration worrying what he’d said wrong.

“Hunters can’t afford to have a Hatsu that’s not useful in a fight unless they’re so proficient at using techniques like Ken and Ryu that they can make up for it.”

“I could just practice using those until I can do that, then.”

“That would take decades. Frankly, I’m not willing to play teacher for that long.”

“Then once you run out of patience I’ll just find someone else.” Ging’s brow furrowed slightly and a pang of guilt spurred Kite to continue, “Not that I don’t want to learn from you, but once you decide you don’t want to put up with teaching anymore…”

Ging looked slightly mollified, but it didn’t soften his countenance much. “There aren’t a lot of people in the world who have mastered Nen to the extent that would be necessary to teach what you’re talking about, and none of them are the type to waste time teaching. I can guarantee that. It’d be possible to get stronger on your own, definitely, but it’s just the better option to develop a Hatsu and spend your time refining that. Also, don’t think I haven’t noticed you gave up on the exercise.”

Kite stiffened and looked at his hand, which certainly didn’t have any Nen warts crawling around on it. The conversation had completely driven it out of his mind. “Sorry,” he muttered, refocusing and reforming the little bump. It was more difficult than it had been the first time because he couldn’t help but uneasily return to the question of a Hatsu again and again, which kept making his progress backslide.

Once he’d shaped it and sent it moving around his finger, an effort that left his hands shaking, he looked up from under the brim of his hat. “Still, I could just avoid getting into fights altogether. I’m good at that. I’ve been doing it since I was five. Approximately.”

It didn’t help his uneasiness that the reply to this suggestion was a long-suffering sigh.

“Like I said, Hunters can’t afford to have a Hatsu that won’t help in a fight.” Ging said with a distinct tone of grumpiness.

“… Right,” Kite muttered, looking down at his hand. Ging hated repeating himself. Despite the urge to shut up and make himself as invisible as possible, he tentatively pressed on. “But I’ve been able to handle everything so far, so…”

“I’ve been taking easy jobs,” Ging shot him down flatly. “For your sake.”

“Oh.”

Silence settled over them. Recalling the kinds of places Ging had been taking him, Kite felt an anticipatory thrill. They had all required strenuous traveling; clambering across rocky cliffs to reach an ancient outpost, fording a wide river densely populated by predators in search of sunken trade ships, curling up in a cave as outside a blizzard roared and threatened the lives of another expedition. If those were the easy jobs, what would a difficult one look like? A normal one, even?

Sweat dripped down his face as he managed to form two warts and move them around in unison. Maybe it was best to take Ging’s advice, since he knew what he was talking about.

“What kind of Hatsu should I have, then?” he asked.

Ging, who had slumped back on a tree with crossed arms, presumably to nap, raised an eyebrow without opening his closed eyes. “What do you want to have?”

Kite hummed under his breath, trying to come up with a weapon that would suit him. A part of him wanted to say again that he wanted something that would just be useful in everyday life, something he could use that didn’t necessarily hurt anyone. But it was useless to try and convince Ging of anything once his mind was made up. “I… I suppose I’d want something that would let me deal with an enemy from far away.”

“Something long-range? Like a bow or gun?”

“Right.”

“Not bad,” Ging muttered. “What would you do if somebody got into mid- or close-range?”

“Guns can be close-range weapons,” Kite pointed out, then frowned. “But I don’t really want to be stuck with a gun.”

“They’re pretty popular among Conjurers. Real guns are pretty strong weapons, after all, and adding conditions or vows can make it even stronger.”

Kite bit his bottom lip thoughtfully. One of the little Nen lumps on his hand shivered and he refocused on keeping it stable. Seeing them lit up a lightbulb above his head. “Can I have more than one weapon?”

That got Ging to open his eyes and actually look over. “It’s possible. Most people don’t have the Nen capacity to do it, but with enough raw power and probably some restrictions on when or how you can use them, you could manage it.”

The Nen lumps sped up their movement incrementally as Kite grinned. “How much Nen capacity do you think I need?” He did his best to straighten up and look disciplined as Ging scanned him up and down.

“Right now you could probably do two weapons, three if you put a condition on when you can summon each one. Like one only gets used when it’s raining, another only gets used if you’ve been wounded… There’s plenty of room to maneuver in that sense.”

“What if it was a really difficult condition? So that each weapon was hard to get.”

“Probably still three, but you could push for four. How many are you aiming for?”

The lumps spun around one another on the tip of his index finger. “I’m not sure. As many as I can, I guess.”

Ging’s mouth quirked up into a pleased smile. “Sounds like a plan, then.”

Actually trying to Conjure something apparently necessitated a lot of staring at empty air and attempting to convince himself he’d already succeeded. It made sense, in a way, but for a long time only resulted in frustration and headaches. He’d amassed a small treasure trove of pieces of ceramic and metal that he spent nearly all his time with in one way or another. Ging had said, between small fits of laughter, that he needed to be intimately familiar with how the materials could be experienced with all five senses, so a certain amount of time was spent feeling ridiculous as he contemplated the taste of clay.

Kite sighed, suppressing the urge to complain as he once again peeked and found that his hands were empty. It would have been nice to end up with a gear or something, at least, but from the way things were going it seemed that he would get the whole package or nothing. He closed his eyes again and thought back to the designs he’d sketched out in his notebook and stared at for endless hours over the course of a month. A laughing face, cartoonishly exaggerated, with the reel in its mouth; it would only have numbers that corresponded to weapons he had successfully summoned once, and from that point on he would only be able to do so if its number came up. A clownish design, his own subtle mockery of what a bad idea he knew the whole system was, comprised of just a head, hands, and feet. All ceramic that would be unmade into smoke rather than shattering if hit before he could draw a weapon.

He knew what the smooth surface of glazed ceramic felt like, could call it up in his mind instantaneously and with perfect clarity. It would be slippery to the touch, not wet but untextured in every place but what was defined by thin, shallow grooves; the outline of the eyes, for example, and that of the question mark on its hat. Said hat would come to a sharp point, the only one on the slot machine except for the very tips of its strands of slightly curled hair. The feeling of pressing a point to his hands from every angle had been unpleasant, but he could visualize it, how the surfaces met in a subtle curve that prevented them from forming a dangerous edge. Everything else would be round—the brim of the hat, the clown’s red nose, the four fingers and bent thumbs, the shoes. It would be about the size of his own head, to accommodate its turning into weapons in a variety of sizes. Light, though, weightless enough to be held in one hand or, alternately, left hanging freely in the air.

The reel would trill when it spun, he’d decided. Slot machines did that, and dinged cheerfully when they stopped. Having dedicated himself to the idea, he damn well was going to go all the way. A G, the thirty-second key on a piano, repeated each time a number went by, which would slow down and eventually shift to the G an octave up when the final number was chosen. The initial kick to the reel would set it spinning at a speed of 200 revolutions per minute, from which it would slow to a stop over five seconds. He’d figure out the bit where it transformed into a weapon when he got there.

The only issue that occasionally wormed its way into his mind when he was trying to concentrate was that if the slot machine always started in the same place and always spun at the same rate, it would nearly always land on the same number. To ensure any actual differentiation, the initial rpm would have to be randomized every time. But since he would grow accustomed to the movement of the reel over time, if he controlled the initial kick directly it was conceivable that he could subconsciously skew the result of the spin so that he ended up with a weapon he favored. Which wasn’t really a bad thing, in his opinion, but it would defeat the purpose of creating the slot machine condition in the first place. The mechanism would need to have some kind of autonomy, separate from what he wanted or was thinking, something that would always produce a random result regardless of what the situation was.

How he could go about creating something that had a sort of life of its own, he had no idea. It seemed impossible. It would be easier to simply set a condition that the reel spun at a random speed every time, though it would be difficult to prove that it was actually random.

Frustration raising its head and making him lose concentration, Kite sighed again and opened his eyes.

Bouncing slightly in the air just above his open hands, a clown’s face with a wide-open mouth, a pointy hat, and curved fingers and shoes accentuating it stared at him.

“Goddamn,” it said. “Would you look at that? I exist.”

#ficxprogress #*raises a hand weakly from where I am lying on the desert sand*#posITIVE FEEDBACK.........#the nectar of the gods when it comes to fanwork tbh #and work in general actually #anyway I am quite proud of having accomplished this much whOO it was not easy

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mimzilla · 8 years

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Broke 70k! I wonder if I...... can write 5,000 words in the next two days....... so I have 75k by the time that February ends...............

#ficxprogress #creativity is a harsh mistress #can't believe I ever had doubt I would hit 100k #the question now is how far PAST that I'll get #aauughhhh

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mimzilla · 8 years

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~*~GOAL MET~*~

Aaaahh, feels nice being on schedule, sort of. Heck if I know how maintaining this pace will serve me, but I shall keep it up nonetheless. I did my fixup of the last bit of chapter one, bumping its count up to 16.7k and the total count up past 60k!! ☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆

I don’t really have a set idea of what I want to get done next... I’ll probably get down bits of scenes from chapters 8 and 10 that I have a good picture of, then I’ll have some of all the chapters done ＿〆(-ε･｀)ﾉ^☆ And of course do pieces of editing with 1&2 along the way, make things easier for myself later lmao

#ficxprogress #if I do 1500 words a day until March 15th that'll be 33k #which will probably take me close to the end if not to the end #............ I sort of want to break 100k.......#BUT we shall see #1500 a day is kind of insanely grueling lol

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mimzilla · 8 years

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I!!! Did!!! It!!!! I finished chapter 2!!! And only two days behind schedule, as well (which I can accept because 1. I set unrealistic goals anyway and b. the chapter ended up being like 3k longer than expected). Word count now stands at 59.3k (｡･ﾟﾟ･o（ｉДｉ）o･ﾟﾟ･｡ *SCREAMS*) for full drafts of chapters 1, 2, and 6 and bits & pieces of all the other chapters except 8 and 10. At this point I think it’s safe to say that I’ll break 75k by the end, but we’ll see I guess!!

Next goal... I’d like to do my touchups on the end of chapter 1 because it was super rushed and those last scenes are actually super important going forward. I’ll shoot for... the end of this Saturday, the 20th.

Here are another couple of tidbits from chapter 2 as celebration!!

The Exam itself, as Ging had predicted, was nothing noteworthy.

There were some highlights, of course. Most of the prospective Hunters were older than he was by a wide margin and he drew a couple sidelong glances.

Nothing he wasn’t used to, though as each person entered he kept a careful eye on them with Gyo. Only two other people were visibly in control of their aura, and they both looked exceptionally bored. One stayed on her phone practically the entire time and didn’t look anyone in the eye; the other gave him a once-over, but didn’t make any moves.

Kite had been one of the first arrivals, so he had a good vantage point from which to assess the competition. He’d bet that all of them had him beat in terms of physical strength, though he was no pushover himself, so it would be best to keep his head down. Only one person made a special effort to single him out.

He approached Kite just as he was pacing along the edge of the crowd, searching out an emptier place to wait until the Exam officially began. “Hey, this is your first time taking the Exam, right?” he asked cheerfully. His distinctively square nose wrinkled as he smiled and held up a can. A quick glance confirmed that it seemed to still be sealed, but there was an eagerness to the offer that set Kite on edge. “Want to sit a while and talk? I’ve taken it loads of times, so I have a lot of exper—”

“No,” Kite said, and walked away.

Kite paused and looked up at Ging. “What day is it today?”

“January fifth. Why?”

“Then… that would make it…” Kite mumbled to himself, counting with his fingers. “December twentieth…”

Ging blinked for a second, then stiffened. “Oh! Hmm.” He crossed his arms and furrowed his brow, hardening his expression even as his face turned dark red.

“If that’s okay?” Kite asked tentatively.

“Whatever,” Ging said with a short shrug. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot and kept readjusting his arms. A smile spread across Kite’s face as he realized that Ging was embarrassed.

“Okay,” he said, feeling a deep ache of happiness in his chest as he marked down the day he’d met Ging as his birthday.

A small silence settled. The old man kept squinting at him and Kite couldn’t help but glance toward the end of the hallway where Ging had disappeared. “Um, who are you?”

“Ah, I forgot to introduce myself!” The man chuckled again and leaned down into Kite’s face. Kite stiffened and leaned back. “I am Isaac Netero, Chairman of the Hunter Association.”

He stopped and stared into Kite’s face. Kite tried to look sufficiently impressed.

#ficxprogress #took a few late nights but it's DONE #and I am satisfied #good yes #hm... now that chapter two's done that's almost all the Cute Shit out of the way until chapter eight...

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mimzilla · 8 years

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Blurrghhhhhhh it’s important to me to try and keep up with the deadlines I set myself on this fic bc the more I write of it the more I realize that I have a shitload left to write and not a heck of a lot of time??? But on the other hand a) I need to sleep at some point probably and b) I really don’t want to have it be rushed and sloppy.

#ficxprogress #ksdgha;ld i'm like two scenes awa yfrom finishing chapter two......#I wanted to have it done by today but my weekend was devoted to finishing up my grant app #which was quite good so it was worth it #I'll probs have this done by Wednesday at the latest #that's my new goal #@god why did u make us wit h such an inconvenient need for sleep

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mimzilla · 8 years

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I fuckin cranked my ass the past eight days writing approx. 1500 words per day _〆(ﾟ□ﾟ*) _〆(ﾟ□ﾟ*) _〆(ﾟ□ﾟ*) and discovered that for some reason, 1am is the golden time for me to start working on fic. My sleep schedule is slightly fucked, but more importantly than that--

I hit my goal of breaking 50k words like a wEEK EARLY OOOOOHHHHH ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و

Current count is 51,105 words and in celebration I’m putting two excerpts of cute bits from chapter 2 “Clothes Make the Man” behind the cut. ♥（ﾉ´∀`） The story’s not 100% high octane suffering. Just 60%.

Ging shrugged and tossed him one of the key packets, a paper envelope with an ornate design with a stiff card inside it. Kite turned it over in his hands as they walked through the halls, confused by how a card was supposed to be a key. All cards were shaped the same, so wouldn’t any card open all of the locks?

His question was answered as they arrived at a pair of doors and Ging slid his card into a large box above the handle. A green light flicked on when he pulled it out and he opened the door, holding it with his foot and glancing back at Kite expectantly.

The first time he tried it, putting the card carefully into the box, a red light and a buzzer came on. It was the same the second time, and the third. He looked to Ging for some kind of explanation, but Ging just watched him silently. Kite had the distinctly tense feeling that he was being tested on something. Before he tried again he recalled what Ging had done differently, frowning down at the card before he slid it in and pulled it out more quickly.

The green light flicked on and Kite smiled proudly, opening the door a crack. He looked left to Ging, who was grinning; he’d passed, whatever it was he was supposed to be proving. Kite’s shoulders dropped with relief and he opened the door a little wider, peeking into the room.

The sight drove the test out of his mind entirely. A thin hall led from the door into a spacious room, where there was enough space between the side of the bed and the wall that if Kite lay down lengthwise between them they wouldn’t even touch his shoulders. The bed itself was as wide as he was tall and much thicker, laden with pillows and covers. Opposite from the door, a crystal-clear window without a single smudge on it opened up onto a view of the nearby park. To his left a closet with a folding door standing slightly ajar had an unbelievably fluffy robe hanging in it; to the right was another door. Probably a bathroom, Kite managed to think through his shock. Probably the fanciest bathroom he’d ever see in his life.

“You can go in, you know,” Ging commented dryly. “It’s your room.”

Kite opened his mouth to protest that that wasn’t possible but Ging leaned over and shoved him forward so that Kite stumbled into the room. He immediately spun and caught the door, holding onto it like a lifeline. For a few seconds nothing happened. Kite wasn’t sure exactly what he was waiting for. To wake up, maybe. But nothing continued to happen and little by little he eased away from the doorway. The sound of Ging’s door closing with a click bounced through the hall and a second later there was a knock from behind Kite, just past the closet.

“These doors unlock,” Ging called through, “so when you’re done having an existential crisis open up your side so we can decide what to do next.”

Kite wasn’t sure what an “existential crisis” was, but he did spend a few minutes just letting hot water pour over his hands from the bathroom sink and Ging eventually got impatient and knocked again.

Kite quickly got dry enough to tie his hair up again and curl up in the fluffy robe. It was significantly softer and cleaner than anything he’d worn in years and he buried his face in the collar for a second before sitting on the bed and pulling out the pieces of clothing one by one, laying them out in front of himself.

Most were plainly colored and made of smooth, stretchy material; clothes that would be easy to move around in and clean. There was a long coat similar in color to the torn-up one in his bag and that had a small pocket on the inner left side. None of them had the fancy adornment that had so caught his eye in the store, but he didn’t think he would have felt comfortable wearing those anyway. They seemed more delicate than could survive for long in the dirt. Not to mention that as he caught sight of the price tag on the coat he felt slightly lightheaded and decided that he couldn’t hope for more than what he’d been given. The coat alone was more expensive than anything he’d ever touched, let alone worn. He wasn’t about to push his luck.

The matter was more or less resolved anyway when, at the bottom of the bag, he discovered the sleek skirt he’d eyed on the rack.

It was tall enough that it would fall almost down to his ankle and on one side a slit would reach up to the knee. He stood and held it up with awe. The only skirts in the slums were stitched together out of scraps of other fallen-apart clothes, and only people who could through one means or another protect themselves wore them. Skirts like the one in his hands were for people who lived in houses, who went to restaurants.

Putting it on felt slightly scandalous and he giggled privately to himself as he spun around and felt it curl around his legs.

#ficxprogress #I'm taking a b reak from creativity now #next goal: finish chapter 2 by the 15th #then I'll have 3 out of 11 chapters fully written

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