AN: Sorry for being so late! We had this huge ass storm hitting my area and a few power outages we even had the tornado sirens blaring and everything! But I am also a terribly slow writer, which is why you get two chapters a week. Anyways, I hope you like this chapter! It's 1200 words without this author's note btw.
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*Clunk* Ducking out of the car and shutting the door, I hesitantly stepped back out into the cold wet rain leaving the more tolerable heated driver's seat. Looking over the roof of the car I practically sagged with the added weight of the water and my awful mood. Before us was apparently the hideout we had been skulking around for earlier, and now that we arrived just outside I was getting cold feet.
*sigh* "Can this just end already? It's been what, a week now? I came here as a vacation and get together and I got this…" Staring across the street I looked at the unassuming building, the same one I dreaded raiding. While I had gotten a small power boost and managed to navigate the fights I had managed to get myself into I don't think myself capable of getting out of that building alive.
*snort* "You want to run away right at the end?" Coming around the side of the car, Killua stands next to me with a set of binoculars as we leaned against the car as we staked out the location.
"Tactical retreat, and it isn't anything you haven't done before. If you haven't noticed after running around in circles hours previously, we are way out of depth standing here. Our victories have been won through numbers, luck, or against weakened clones, all of which I don't think we will have in this case. Besides, YOU are not that well versed in Nen only knowing the basics, so you should be the one that's nervous." Wiping the excess water from my face I pressed the eyepiece against my brow as I scoped out the building.
"So you are nervous." Jabbing me in my side, Killua began to snicker having "won" or verbal "Battle"
"No-" *sigh* "Let's not make too much more of a scene, remember we are supposed to intercept an incoming member and afterward help out Kurapika when he gets over here. Honestly, I just think he wants to kill the leader." Rubbing my eyes I winced, having jolted when he spooked me out of nowhere I slammed the eyepiece into my face. Not really painful, but it was just enough to be distracting.
"If both of you are done playing around you can come back inside, for our purposes we can stay in the car or take shifts if we have to outside." peaking her head out from the car, Melody ushered us back inside of the stolen car as we continued to keep watch in the car.
{time skip}
*tap* *tap* *tap* "Ah, ah, there it is!" rapping my knuckles against the window I grabbed everyone's attention as I gestured toward a large delivery van with its lights on speeding down the street a distance away from us.
"Alright, how do you want to do this?" Leaning in from the back seat Killua stares out the windshield as the three of us see the van approaching us at a respectable pace.
"Head-on collision." Without any hesitation, I opened up the car door and got out as I made my way toward the street. All the while smiling amusedly at the shocked expressions I spotted in the rearview mirror before departing.
"And… here we go!" leaping out from my hiding spot in a crook I ran to the middle of the street as the car barreled towards me. A frightening thing for sure, and every moment I continued to run further into the street the more my instincts screamed at me to get out of the way.
"... twentieth-century boy." However, that sense of fear began to vanish as the familiar feeling of my aura washed over me. As my Hatsu began to construct an exo skeleton around my body to protect itself from the imminent car crash I felt an absence of the flight response that was blaring in my mind just seconds prior.
*BANG* getting a first-person perspective as the car deforms and the inner workings of the car fail as the engine collapses spraying fuel and coolant all over the place. Eventually, the car comes to a stop as I go through the engine compartment and rip through the gearbox with my head poking out where the gear shift would usually be.
"... Come here often?" staring up at the large visage of who I knew was Franklin I awkwardly realized I was immobile even if I canceled out my Hatsu and now my head was in a vice grip as he tried to crush my head with a scowl on his face.
"Tough crowd. Huh…" Sweating a bit, I noticed that as all the damage of the attacks was channeled into the ground I was beginning to sink into the ground as it fractured into smaller pieces. Craning my neck up as far as I could with my armor on before giving him a shit-eating grin.
*SLAM* and in return I received a hammer punch straight to my forehead and if the amount of energy that coursed through my armor was to be delivered to my head it would have been stuck between my shoulders.
*creak* seeing something out of the corner of my eye I mentally sighed in relief as moments later Killua clawed into the cabin of the van from the back wall with a vicious coating of Ren flowing through his sharp nails as he clawed at the back of my attacker's neck.
*Grunt* taking out a small portion of flesh with the attack our opponent was distracted enough as he reached backward, giving me the opportunity to dissipate my Nen construct as I slinked out of the remains of the engine block as I readied my formless Hatsu concentrating around my arms and upper body.
*CRUNCH* practically bursting out of the cabin Franklin threw Killua like a frisbee into the side of a building as he swiftly strode toward me, leveraging his larger frame to close the distance in a shocking short frame of time.
*BOOM* When our fists collided, I managed to still his attack initially, but his huge hand wrapped around mine after a moment before his fingers turned into gun barrels.
*Tak* *Tak* *Tak* *Tak* *Tak*
Weathering the numerous Nen blasts that slammed into my face I was grateful for my foresight to make a face screen. Leaping backward I circled my opponent as he stepped forward, allowing me to get a glance at his neck. The wound was essentially superficial with how large his body was built, what would soon bleed a normal man out if given enough time wasn't an imminent threat to his life. Not only that but the injury was a lot less than what I would've hoped for.
'Probably a last-minute shielding of aura, what he used I have no clue… should have paid better attention.' dodging under another fist and running with a trail of bullet impacts just behind me I began to try and close the distance and launch a lot of smaller and focused attacks toward his thighs. It would be best for me to not waste aura on the big attacks that it would take to bring him down in one critical hit. Instead, I wanted to bleed him out by exposing the major artery found in the thighs.