[Closed]

[alphaspider]

Characters: Kuroro, Kurapika
Location: Egypt
Rating: PG
Time: January 14, morning
Description: Kuroro and Kurapika go on a mission to test their resonance after the rather turbulent month they've had.

Comments

[ih8spiders]

If Kurapika had his way he'd stay at the city and make himself available for as long as it seemed to him that things between Sasuke and Naruto hadn't been completely resolved yet--or perhaps it was his sense of responsibility, of knowing that once he'd begun, he must remain that anchor until an anchor wasn't required anymore. His actions two days ago had broken through Sasuke's defenses, and he wasn't going to remove himself from the scene until those defenses had been rebuilt properly. He could turn irrationally overbearing, perhaps even suffocating, with this mindset, so it was probably a good thing that Kuroro had other plans. Besides, that debacle he'd witnessed at the park earlier during morning training--as alarmed and distressed as he'd been to see it at first (when he'd suggested that Sasuke should apologize he'd only meant a verbal apology, delivered in private, much like what he'd done back in September, not a full-blown kowtow in public)--he eventually came to realize that Naruto couldn't fail to acknowledge Sasuke's

[alphaspider]

If Kuroro knew what Kurapika was thinking (which wasn't unlikely, given how Kuroro liked observing his partner), he'd probably laugh at the blond's fussiness. In his experience, people like Sasuke or Kurapika, who had some great and terrible pain loaded on their shoulders, didn't do too well with overbearing fussing. It worked the first day or so, but long term was a problem given the way their thoughts seemed to go

[ih8spiders]

Stepping out into the warmer Egyptian weather had been sufficiently distracting, at least. The sun was no different here, and it leered down at them with the same huge grin - or perhaps with more vigor than back in Death City, which was still struggling to regain its post-winter desert temperatures. Now, here was a proper desert clime, arid and depressingly yellow, and Kurapika would immediately hate it if not for the structures he could see out the windows of the building that housed Shibusen Egypt--interesting architecture, the influences visible even in a seemingly secular compound such as this one. A stray thought, disjointed, about Sasuke possibly benefiting from a mission to a place as radically different from Death City as Egypt was floated through his mind even as he eyed a bust of an Egyptian pharaoh long dead.

"Where do we find this kishin egg?" he asked distractedly. The eyes on the colourless, flat-faced bust stared back at him.

[alphaspider]

It was a lot more interesting seeing the place up close than on books. The stone structures were quaint, and there was a hint of the famed sphinx in the distance. Idly, he wondered how people managed to construct this without technology or nen, and if Kurapika would have an appreciation for such details. Possibly. He was a Hunter, after all, even if he was a blacklist one.

"It'll find us," he answered with a grin. "Borrowed a little something to help us with the tracking part."

Now all they needed a good place to turn his borrowed meister ability on. It was a low thrum at the moment, necessarily active for Kuroro to keep it through the trip to Egypt. It would be no problem to fuel it with his soul wavelength to call the kishin egg over, though Kuroro's next problem was how to make sure that only their target came, not a flock of them.

[ih8spiders]

"So you said," Kurapika replied steadily, with no hint of the brief flare of irritation he felt whenever he thought about the skill Kuroro had promised would make this mission quicker. It was so like Kuroro to continue talking to Saralegui despite knowing that Kurapika disliked him intensely at the moment due to certain recent events. Although... he did have to wonder just what Kuroro thought of his siding with Sasuke. He would have tried to remain fair and objective towards either party, but he was a judgmental person by nature, and easily formed impressions of people that were difficult to change once set, and Saralegui, unfortunately, had dealt a bad card right from the start.

"... We should get away from these buildings," the blond suggested, after he'd torn his eyes away from the sandstone bust. This was almost worst than fighting in the Eiffel Tower--the tower had been made of steel, at least, and not made up of stone sculptures and brittle antiquities, and therefore not as easy to destroy.

[alphaspider]

It was probably because Kurapika disliked Saralegui was why Kuroro continued talking to him. That, and Kuroro liked harrassing the long-haired blond about the more personal details of his life. Their initial meeting aside, the two had clashed most agreeably after, to the point of almost working together. Although it was interesting, because Saralegui probably disliked Kurapika as much as Kurapika disliked him. They were both too smart but too judgmental for their own good, and Saralegui was blessed with the sort of arrogance customary to royalty and a mouth to match it.

He gazed at the area around them before leading the way out of the maze of squat buildings. It was sandy and dusty in the street, and Kuroro immediately regretted wearing pants and a black shirt to the place. "I think I prefer the cold," he muttered, dusting at his shirt. The heat didn't bother him, but the sand did. "The mission board said the kishin eggs ask questions and riddles."

[ih8spiders]

"And I suppose they'll attempt to eat us should we fail to answer?" He was starting to get interested in spite of himself. An intelligent monster right out of a myth from this world, capable of using cunning rather than the brawn of most kishin eggs; this felt like hunting back home more than anything else he'd done since getting dragged here. That was as far as his interests went for the moment, though. His only overt reaction to the sand and the dust was to squint his eyes against the wind and hunch his shoulders lower, head ducking into his neck as far as he could manage, although to be honest he was starting to hate the dust as much as Kuroro did. He disliked extreme heat as much as he disliked the cold, although he was better-equipped to at least suffer through heat quietly, while cold tended to turn him into a miserable ball interested only in seeking the nearest warm corner.

[alphaspider]

"I think it eats us regardless of how you answer it," he shrugged. It would be a foolish kishin egg to let any meal go, but it was interesting that there were those who liked to play first before simply devouring their prey. A monster's level of intelligence was usually in direct proportion to its power, wasn't it? That was what he had observed in any location, here or in their world.

"There should be fine," Kuroro added, gesturing to the expanse of desert immediately outside the town. Good of Shibusen to have an outpost situation on the outskirts of city, unlike the disaster that was Lucerne. It was also possible that they had built close to Shibusen after they had set up base there, in which case Kuroro was of the opinion that the population probably had it coming to be eradicated like that. Silly.

[ih8spiders]

"I don't like that skill," Kurapika muttered in response to Kuroro indicating a spot where they could plant themselves and draw out their target. Too many risks to using themselves as bait, too many things that could go wrong, when there was no surefire way of pinpointing it and making sure that they wouldn't attract too many of the enemy and get swamped. But maybe that was the point of it, the restriction, or the penalty of the ability--he just found it laughable that it would come from Saralegui, of all people, who wouldn't know how to fight his way out of a blitzkrieg and would therefore be dead should he ever lose control of his own meister ability.

But Kuroro wasn't Saralegui, and the outskirts of town would be better for fighting than inside it, and so he followed his partner's lead, every step making him increasingly aware that he was drawing close to that moment where they'd know if something had changed in their resonance.

[alphaspider]

"I like it a lot." Naturally enough, the amount of skill required to control it and the necessary risk of using it was attractive to him. A lot of things could go wrong, but at the same time, it was a great benefit on the field, especially if the meister was particularly lazy or time was of essence. What he did want to try was to use it as a distraction in the company of others, if he could stop a kishin egg bent on attacking someone else. How powerful could it go? How could it be used for traps?

There were more things that he had to worry about first, however. If their resonance failed before the kishin egg or while it was on top of them, they were going to get very, very inconvenienced. "We should resonate first before I pick it up."

[ih8spiders]

Kurapika stopped and looked at Kuroro's hands, and felt his stomach churn unpleasantly in apprehension. Nearly three weeks had passed after China had gone and left them - he hadn't realized that it had been that long already. Kuroro had stopped going to training since the one reason why he'd even bother with it was gone now, and they hadn't taken a single mission after Greenland and Liechtenstein. Would three weeks of neglecting their training have affected their resonance? Not to mention the repercussions of his and Kuroro's actions the past week. He still remembered the kiss Kuroro had given him (that very light touch of lips against the corner of his mouth), his partner covering his eyes. By now he had almost come to understand that something had changed in the way they saw each other, but he couldn't exactly identify what it was, and he was mostly unwilling to find out just yet. He hadn't talked about his nightmares as of late, either, and once again he was afraid of placing himself in that link, that intimate link where Kuroro

[alphaspider]

He stopped walking after a moment, turning to look back at Kurapika. What an expressive face, he mused, tilting his head to the side to wait for what the blond had to say. Doubts, probably. Apprehensions about their resonance after almost a month without and the strange conflict that had beset them.

"Don't think too much about it," he advised. Was it a bad idea to let Kurapika listen to things that Stein said? He was always so easy to influence, his partner, and probably took things way too seriously for his own good. Failure was sometimes a self-fulfilling prophecy, after all. He wasn't too worried. Besides, they had already been at the point of difficult resonance when they started. There was always a way to shove it right back into order.

[ih8spiders]

He didn't really have anything to say, or at least, he didn't have anything that would be suitable for normal conversation. He couldn't just come out and ask, for example, what Kuroro thought whenever he looked at him, even if it was for the purpose of indulging his curiosity, this damnable want to find out if Kuroro's worldview had shifted as drastically as his had. It probably hadn't changed much since Kuroro claimed to have never hated him even from the start, while in contrast, he'd gone from hating the man's guts to finding him a relatively tolerable--or even a good (he'd missed his partner, he'd admitted to missing his partner after that tiny window of a week) companion in the span of just six months

[alphaspider]

And catch Kurapika he did, reaching out with a hand to almost casually take a hold of the hilt of one blade. He didn't really know what to expect -- the possibilities were numerous and one couldn't prepare himself for everything. It was best, in situations like these, to take things as they came and adjust accordingly, to fill in the gaps Kurapika left or leave gaps for his partner to fill in comfortably, and to be an anchor if it was needed

[ih8spiders]

His initial impression was that it felt like coming back to something comfortable and familiar, like dipping into a warm pool on a cold day, and Kurapika's gut slowly unclenched as the dissonance he kept expecting would happen didn't come to pass after the first moment, after the second and third long breaths. Then that long moment passed and he nearly recoiled, shying away from the prospect of resonating and the consequences of engaging in a deeper link now, of falling further into a trap that had long since closed over his head, but Kuroro's hold on his weapon form was firm, a presence more solid than all the doubts and mental turmoil plaguing him, and he eventually managed to check his retreat.

Don't think too much about it.His partner's soul was waiting up front and center, harmless and reassuring, a hand extended in welcome. There was the promise of security in that grounding wavelength, of some wordless emotion that felt... nice, almost enticing, and Kurapika recalled his limitations, the very likely conclusion that the success

[alphaspider]

He understood, then, what Kurapka's conflict was. Kuroro had observed it before, noticed in passing the possibility, but he lacked the capacity for any true empathy to comprehend just what his actions meant to the boy. Kurapika's identity, drive, and goal in life -- Kuroro had upended these by being who he was and what he had forced them into, and Kurapika was liking it and destroying himself with worry and the insistence that he should be resisting the entire thing. Here it was, the proof of his long-predicted but uncertain victory, two blades in his hands and a line of chain as delicate as his partner could be himself. If he could feel guilt, maybe he would have felt a pang, but he wasn't and he didn't. Instead, he wondered a little, curious and a bit awed, not exactly flattered but still pleased because this partnership had ceased being about him as a Spider and Kurapika as a Kuruta for a while now, and Kurapika was catching up