Chapter Text
Gon Freecss had a tendency to “overdo it”, as Aunt Mito-san would say. However, this event was of no consequence to Gon’s lifestyle. In fact, it was spontaneous and the only correlation was his shitty, fickle lungs. He spent several days in absolute cramping agony before at last calling it quits—forced to call it quits by Aunt Mito-san, who he had on the phone more often than not to yell reminders at him. If she didn’t do that, he’d forget that he was a functioning human being who needed nourishment.
After checking himself into the university clinic with the vague description of, “A knife corkscrewed into my shoulder blade,” written under the question, “Describe your symptoms.” From there, he dragged himself to one of the cushioned benches where he died for a hot minute before being resurrected by a concerned nurse.
When it became clear that Gon was not, in fact, suffering from a stab wound, he was diagnosed with a spontaneous pneumothorax. Gon didn’t really know what the Lorax had to do with his collapsed lung, but boy did it hurt like a bitch and he had more than a few colorful words to share with anyone who bothered to listen.
“For someone who rations their swear words, I’d say you’ve used them all up,” Zushi said.
It was officially Day Two and Gon’s carefully allotted swear words were dwindling fast. He had used most of them up the day before—before his roommate Zushi drove him to the clinic on Mito-san’s direct orders. Somehow she had gotten ahold of Zushi’s number and yelled at him from several states away to take her Dear, Sweet Boy to the ER.
“I’m at twelve, thank you very much,” Gon said, cracking a bright smile.
Zushi pulled up an armrest chair as he sighed, “Ah, yes, three away from self-destructing.”
“I won’t self-destruct if I hit fifteen,” Gon said. He tipped his head back against the fluffy, white pillows and smiled at Zushi. He felt drunk, like he couldn’t control the muscles in his face as Zushi rose an eyebrow at him. Gon rolled his eyes and drawled, “I’ll just descend into Hell where I belong.”
“You and I both know you’re too good for Hell.”
“Yeah, which is why we both know that Lucifer’s gonna play all his cards to get me down there,” Gon said with a thrust of his fist in the air. By accident, he punched up the exact arm where a hole in his chest cavity was bandaged up. He felt the adhesive on the bandages tug angrily, the ache from the wound turning into searing torture in an instant.
He ground his teeth together, his entire abdomen seizing up. Zushi straightened, eyes wide, as Gon groaned in agony.
“Just say it. Just let it out, dude,” Zushi said.
Gon groaned, eyes clenched shut. He gradually lowered his arm to the tune of a long, drawn out, “Fuuuck, dude. Mistakes have been made.”
“Thirteen, buddy, you’re almost there,” Zushi said.
“Don’t say that like you’re expecting me to curse more,” Gon whined with a pout. His entire chest burned like a motherfucker, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud. It was only Monday, after all.
A spontaneous pneumothorax was a wonderful start to his week.
Zushi unzipped his backpack where it sat between his legs. Gon winced as he straightened up a bit in bed. His bum felt like numb rubber and all he wanted to do was move, but after that punch to the air he was less inclined to experience that ripping sensation in his left armpit.
From within the depths of the backpack, Zushi produced the silver casing of Gon’s laptop. Zushi held it up as if delivering an offering to the gods and, upon resting it on Gon’s lap, he reached back in for another treat.
Zushi swiped up a DVD case.
“Ooh, movie time,” Gon said.
Zushi lowered the case with a dull look. “You and I both know I’m not about to buy you a twenty dollar movie disk. That’s what pirating is for.”
Gon snickered as Zushi unceremoniously tossed the case at him. Gon caught it with a jump and, one hand over his laptop, took a look at the art on the cover.
Truthfully, Gon wasn’t much of a movie person. In fact, he didn’t know the ending of any movie he had attempted to watch because every time, without fail, he fell asleep within the first five minutes. Zushi had timed him on this as well and gathered the trends to determine that Gon’s average movie watch-time totaled five minutes and forty-eight seconds.
It’s so dull to sit still and not do anything, he thought to himself as he furrowed his brow and turned the case over to Zushi.
“Hunter versus Hunter?” he said.
“I figured since you can’t sit through movies, it might be fun to, I dunno… play one,” Zushi said with a shrug. “How long did the doc say you’re out of commission?”
“Just for another day, but I’m dying, Zushi,” Gon whined, slumping against the pillows. He threw his head back and groaned obnoxiously. “I’m not built to sit still for hours! I’ve probably slept for thirteen of them and now I’m too awake.”
Zushi leant over and tapped the game disk cover. “Then let’s set up your account. It’s an co-op game, so I brought my headset for you to try out.”
As Zushi popped out the disk, Gon opened his laptop and murmured, “Co-op?”
“Multiplayer,” he reiterated. “You’ll get to meet people, hang out, punch Nazis.”
“Do I really get to punch Nazis?” Gon asked, unconvinced.
Zushi shrugged as Gon’s laptop powered up. “I guess it depends on who’s on the opposing team.”
Gon really didn’t approve of hurting animals, but he could make an exception here.
Eager to have something to do, Gon scooted over on the bed so Zushi could join him. Together, they powered up the game and started an account. They pondered over usernames until at last Gon settled with Freakss since it was available and he enjoyed puns.
“There’s kind of a steep learning curve,” Zushi warned as Gon’s avatar materialized in the game lobby. He was a hulking man with thighs the size of his student debt.
Gon let out a loud laugh, which turned into a whistling cough that sounded more like a flute. Zushi squeaked in alarm and reached behind to press the call button for a nurse. Gon waved his hand, though, letting out another small huff.
“It’s f-fine—It’s good to cough. Let’s just start the game. You said there’s a steep learning curve?”
Unconvinced but ever so trustworthy, Zushi relaxed back into the pillows and put his raised arm back against the pillow behind Gon. “Yeah. The game’s been out for a while so pretty much everyone is either a pro or they’re toddlers with god complexes. I’ve been playing for a while and haven’t won a match yet.”
“Then let’s win one now,” Gon declared. “So where’s the tutorial?”
“There… isn’t one,” Zushi said. Gon rose an eyebrow at him and maintained eye contact as he clicked into the match.
Thus began Gon’s HvsH extravaganza. As expected, his first match went to shit about as fast as his attention span during movies. But, after five minutes and forty-eight seconds, Gon’s blood was pumping and he was eager for another shot at the game. It was just tempting enough to convince him that he could make a kill shot, even if he wasted all his time doing so. Before long, Zushi had to leave to get to class, which left Gon to his own devices and an unlimited supply of people to play guns-and-knives with.
Gon was certain he never would have touched the game had he not been confined to a bed for twenty-four hours. Video games never used to interest him, but now he was a college student yearning for something to procrastinate with that didn’t involve a book or copious amounts of food. And now, limited by the possibility of another pneumothorax, he was hesitant to hit the gym again despite the reassurance from the doctor that he’d be fine to exercise after two weeks.
So, Gon commenced his two weeks of bedrest with plenty of studying material—for HvsH, that is. In doing so, he wound up on a dangerous track to streaming thanks to an entire playlist of videos Zushi shared with him.
“Streaming is, like… watching a Youtube video in real time and you get to talk to everyone watching the video and the person who’s making the video,” Zushi explained. They were in their shared dorm room. Zushi had let Gon borrow his desk where a set of two massive monitors sat over Gon’s dinky laptop. It was such an amazing setup that Gon took a moment to simply marvel at the graphics from the game. His laptop didn’t do them justice.
A window was open off on the other screen and, despite Gon’s earbuds sitting on the desk, he could hear the muffled shouting from the stream.
Zushi pointed to the screen and said, “He’s my favorite streamer. I don’t know if you’ll like him—he’s kind of angry all the time.”
“Oh,” Gon hummed, tipping his head to the side. The right side of the screen was flooded with moving messages. Fourteen thousand people were tuning in, and it felt like all of them were talking at once. All those rapid-fire messages had Gon’s heart humming in his chest. He wanted to talk but he didn’t have any words.
Instead, his eyes honed in on the guy at the corner of the Hunter vs Hunter recording. He was pale all except for his pitch black sweatshirt and purple headphones. His bleach-blonde hair made his crystalline blue eyes almost disappear into his white scleras.
“He’s pretty,” Gon commented, pointing to the guy.
Zushi laughed and said, “Yeah, I guess.”
“What do people call him?”
“Well, that’s his gamertag right there,” Zushi said, pointing to the username at the top of the screen. KILLU, all capital letters. “But his name’s Kill, I think. People just call him by his username, though.”
Zushi leant over and typed in another username into the search bar. He clicked on the username PikaPika. “They’re both on a stream team,” Zushi explained.
“What’s that?” Gon asked.
Zushi propped an elbow up on the edge of the desk and sighed. “It’s, like… a squad of affiliated pro gamers? They tend to stream together and they’re all super good. But Pika and KILLU both live in the AssassiNation stream team house.”
As Zushi pulled up another window to search for the AssassiNation house, Gon chewed his lip and studied Pika’s streaming profile. They were offline, but their profile picture was of a photo of them holding a microphone. They had a scowl on their face, blonde hair wispy and braided to one side underneath a black sweatshirt.
A video popped up and Gon jumped in surprise at the audio of someone saying, “Hey guys, welcome to my crib—”
Soon, Kill’s face was the size of Zushi’s 32” monitor, leant into the fisheye lens of an expensive camera. He ran a hand through his wispy white hair and winked one of his blue eyes. He leveled the camera with a finger gun and shot it as he stood and backed up. The camera tipped up from the ground, following the motion of Kill putting his hand out in an elaborate gesture to Pika.
“You guys remember this bitch Kurapika—maybe from a few of my streams,” Kill said with a cheeky grin.
Pika shoved him in the shoulder and said, “I recruited you, excuse you. You’re my bitch now.”
“Aw, you love me though,” Kill said. The scene cut to the foyer as Kill’s voice broke through, saying, “As you guys probably know, unless you’re a fake hoe who doesn’t watch my videos—That’s right, I’m looking at you. Hit that subscribe button ‘cause I’m an Assassin now. To celebrate, instead of doing shots like I suggested, I’m giving you the official Ass Ass Nation tour.”
The camera panned to a dull-looking Pika, who said, “If you call it ‘Ass Ass Nation’ one more time I’m going to gut you and feed you to Hatsu.” The camera panned back to Kill, who was smirking with those sharp canines and ghostly complexion. And then, the camera zoomed in sharply to a white fluff peeking out from around the corner of the hallway. When the camera focused, a white samoyed was staring Gon dead in the eyes.
The camera shakily returned to Kill just as the guy said, “Just tell ‘em to bleep it out, I don’t give a shit.”
Zushi paused the video and Gon took that moment to say, “He swears a lot.”
Zushi pushed back up to his feet with a shrug and said, “Warned you, dude. Honestly you could find other streamers to watch, but he’s one of the best at Hunter versus Hunter.”
With that, Zushi returned to the futon to continue his homework. Gon scrolled back to KILLU’s stream just to ensure that he hadn’t, in fact, hallucinated that perfect face onto a complete stranger. When Kill turned up no different than before, Gon settled in for a “brief” watch.
What started as a few minutes turned into an hour, which quickly and unexpectedly spiraled into hours. He only stopped watching when Zushi got up to get ready for bed and he realized that it was nearly midnight. He cursed and floundered to shut off the game.
“Fourteen, buddy,” Zushi reminded him, as if he wasn’t already fully aware of the spike in his cursing lately. It was now only Thursday.
“Right, sorry,” Gon said.
“What’re you apologizing for?” he laughed.
After showering and clamoring into bed, Gon weaseled his phone out of the pocket of his shorts. His armpit was still sore from having the tube removed from his chest cavity, so he kept his left arm on his chest and raised the other to pull up the stream again. He tugged his blankets up, collecting all of the light from his phone with it. He plugged in his earphones and listened to Kill laugh at something his stream partner must have said.
Kill laughed darkly and turned a smirk onto the camera. Someone was talking crystal clear off screen, saying, “If you’re still talking, you aren’t eating pizza right. Whole slice—inserted. Mouth—shut. Ass cheeks? Clenched.”
“You’re forcibly removed from Tony’s Pizza,” Kill said. He glanced briefly off to the side to read the chat and laughed again. “‘Who’s this pretentious asshole.’ Excuse you, that man you’re talking about is my one and only Ikalgo and his asshole is mine.”
“What about my ass cheeks, dude. My pride and joy.”
“Mine, too. Just the whole caboose: Mine. Let’s get into this game, dude, enough chit-chat.”
Gon looked up Ikalgo and found himself directed to another stream. He recognized the guy from a picture of the entire AssassiNation team at an E3 event last year. Ikalgo was short, stocky, and sported a thick, curly afro with buzzed sides and squarish glasses. Against Kill, he nearly made Kill look tall. From other photos, though, of Kill standing angrily with fans, it was clear that Kill was a classic case of a small dog with a loud bark.
The following day, Gon had his earbuds in again watching compilation videos of all of Kill’s headshots from the past month and a half. Some were by his official Youtube account—which was marked with a verified badge—while others were mocked together and uploaded by fans. He was alarmed by the accuracy of Kill’s shots, and then by Kill’s loud, obnoxious shouting along the likes of, “SUCK IT, BITCH. OH, DID YOU SEE THAT?! DID YOU FUCKING SEE THAT?!”
“What’s he watching?” a whispered voice broke Gon out of his trance.
He looked up to find himself sat at his usual dining hall table with all the usual people. It seemed, however, he was the only one oblivious to it. Across the table from him, Alluka had a hand cupped over her mouth after having whispered to Zushi, who was busy shoveling cereal into his mouth.
Gon put his phone down and plucked his earbuds out. “What was that?” he asked.
Alluka dropped her hand innocently to her lap and gave a curt shake of her head. “Nothing. It’s just—you seem preoccupied this morning. I’ve never seen you on your phone for more than a second.”
“Oh, Zushi just got me into streaming,” he explained.
Alluka tipped her head to the side curiously.
Zushi rolled his eyes. “Dude, she’s not interested in that,” he said with a wave of his hand.
“Who said I’m not interested?” she asked all sweetly, smiling at Gon.
Gon melted a little, saying, “No one. You can be interested in it if you want to be.”
Alluka smiled proudly and turned it onto Zushi, who glowered at her and huffed, “Fine. Since Gon can’t go to the gym, I made him a Hunter versus Hunter account.”
“Oh, my brother loves that game,” she said, patting her hands on the table. She leant over and beamed, “So you’re really into it now, huh? Isn’t it addicting?”
Gon gasped and said, “It so is. I’ve been watching videos on it all night.”
“All night?” Zushi murmured, surprised. He abandoned his cereal to ask another question, but Alluka was already interrupting. Her blue eyes were wide and bright, cheeks rounded out by her wide smile.
“Have you found any squad partners yet? I’ve been looking for someone to play with me, but my girlfriend hates the game,” she said. Zushi’s jaw dropped in an instant. Gon watched the exchange with bright, wide eyes.
The prospect of playing with people he knew was almost as exhilarating as hopping into random matches with random people. He gave a quick nod, unable to form words. When he at last could speak, he couldn’t control his volume and wound up screaming, “Yeah! Let’s do it!”
They made a night of it. Specifically, that same night Alluka proposed the match. Gon was too thrilled to wait until the weekend. His heart fluttered in his chest and he hoped to God he wouldn’t pop another lung just from the sheer excitement of cleaning up the dorm room. When Zushi returned from his evening class, it was to the sight of Gon turned Housemaid, folding up blankets and fluffing pillows.
“You should use your setup and I’ll just use my laptop,” Gon said in a flurry, racing from one end of the room to the other to grab his laptop and sit himself down on the futon.
The door shut behind Zushi. After a moment of simply staring at Gon, who stared back, Zushi croaked out, “I, uh… didn’t think I was invited? I thought you two were just playing duos.”
“Of course you’re invited,” Gon said. “We’ll squad up—it’ll be fun.”
Zushi huffed. “‘Squad up’. Look at you, using the lingo and all.” Gon beamed as Zushi reached over and gave him a pat on the head. “Fine, I’ll join you guys.”
Gon threw his fist up in triumph. He learned from last time not to raise his left arm. He kicked his legs out and thrashed about until Zushi shoved him in the arm and laughed, telling him to calm his ass down or risk popping another lung.
Gon straightened up, crossed his legs, and assumed the poise of a studious young man and said, “Right, won’t happen again.”
“As if you can control it,” Zushi huffed with a smile.
And then, a knock sounded on their dorm room door.
Gon lunged to his feet with such vigor, he smacked his head on the underside of the loft. The sound was akin to that of a nuclear bomb going off and it rattled Gon’s brain in his skull. Zushi cursed at his desk as Gon swayed and staggered into the middle of the room. “Shit, dude, are you okay?” Zushi said, about to get up.
Gon put a hand to the bump growing on his head and cleared his throat. “I’m… fine. And I’m not gonna swear.” He pointed a firm finger in Zushi’s direction, but he was off-balance and wound up pointing at the window.
He stumbled over to the door, groaning a little before unlocking it. He rubbed his hair back and swept the door open, slapping a smile on his face despite the ache in his skull. “Welcome to our humble abode!”
Alluka stood in the hall with an eager smile and a game console hugged to her chest. She was clad in baggy sweatpants and a graphic t-shirt that said in bold type, “I don’t give a damn.”
She threw an arm out to squeeze Gon into a gentle side-hug and said, “The day is done and I am ready to fight people. Where do I set up?”
Gon gestured to the TV under his loft. Alluka waddled inside, still beaming. She raised a hand to Zushi, who waved meekly from his desk where he still seemed to be in shock over Gon’s almost-concussion. When Alluka turned her attention to the TV, Zushi pointed to his own head and mouthed, “Are you okay?”
Gon waved his hands dismissively as if to say, “Don’t worry about it,” but inside, he felt like he was dying. At least my lung didn’t collapse again, he thought, realizing he had one fear, and that fear was the Lorax poking a hole in his right lung this time.
Alluka plugged in her Xbox and, popping open the game case, inserted the disk. When the television was on and the loading screen spiraled in, she hurried across the room with a little, excited squeal before taking her place beside Gon on the futon. She wiggled with anticipation, saying, “Yay, I’m so excited to play with someone on my level. I’m not very good, so bear with me.”
“Are you saying I’m not very good?” Gon whined.
Alluka patted him on his hurt head and said, “Aw, no, I’m just saying you’re a newbie.”
Zushi leant between the spokes of the loft ladder and said, “I dunno, I looked over once and Gon was kicking ass.”
“Really?” Alluka said, shocked. She put a hand to her braid and hummed. “I don’t know how I feel about that. I suppose we’ll find out.”
“What classifies as ‘bum-kicking’, if you don’t mind me asking?” Gon said.
Alluka snorted and giggled, “Bum-kicking.”
“He only has one swear spot left,” Zushi said.
“Wow, you’ve already made it to fourteen?” she said. Gon smiled weakly and turned to glare at Zushi. Zushi shrugged. It seemed that their entire floor knew about Gon’s aversion to swearing. “I’m impressed, Gon. You’re part of the Big Boys Club now.”
“I haven’t made it to fifteen yet,” he muttered, shifting uncomfortably. “Let’s just start the game.”
Alluka brought together the party that consisted of Gon, as the hulking fella with thighs as dense as a black hole; Zushi, as a sci-fi cyborg, and lastly; Alluka, as a busty, Tomb Raider-esque woman with long black hair and red accents. Gon recognized the costume from videos, but Zushi was the one to put it to words.
“Dude, no way! You have a limited edition skin!” Zushi said.
“Skin?” Gon repeated, raising an eyebrow.
Alluka pouted and whined, “Don’t say it like that… You make it sound like I play a lot…”
“That’s not what I’m saying! I’m just saying it was only in the store for five minutes and you just happened to be playing at that time?” Zushi said. He slumped back in his seat, hands pushed up to his headset as he groaned. “If I had that skin, I’d play as her all day, every day.”
“I didn’t know skins were a big deal,” Gon confessed, turning to Alluka.
Alluka was still pouting. She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, knees pulled up as she said, “Yeah, I mean, playing without a skin basically means you’re a newbie ‘cause you haven’t bought an actual skin.”
“But you have to pay for them? Are there perks?” Gon asked, and Alluka shook her head. “Why would I pay for something that doesn’t improve gameplay?”
“Status, I guess,” she said. She shrugged as she twisted her braid around her fingers and added, “And I didn’t even buy it. My brother gifted it to me.”
“You can gift skins?!” Gon screamed. “Holy mackerel, that changes the game. I want to gift skins—”
Alluka straightened up, floundering to stop Gon from getting too distracted. “Not now! We need to play!”
Before they could do that, however, Zushi leant over his chair, pointing to the top left corner of the television screen. “What happened to your friends list? It says you have 99+ pending.”
Alluka scratched weakly at her cheek and said, “Yeah… I’m convinced they’re all spam. But enough about that! I want to play, dammit!”
They hopped into a match and within two minutes of Gon yelling, “Let’s spawn at the Palace!” and Zushi yelling, “Dude, no, I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again—that isn’t how you win,” they spawned at the Palace and Alluka was taken out by a headshot from the rooftop. Alluka screamed, gasping, and breathed, “Oh, thank God, at least the real me is still alive.”
“I shall avenge you, Princess Alluka,” Gon declared.
“I’m not avenging shit,” Zushi sang, wiggling in his chair.
Alluka leant back to glare at Zushi from around Gon’s head and said, “At least Gon is a gentlemen.”
“I’m a gentlemen!” Zushi said, voice cracking. Immediately after, he gasped and yelled, “Oh, shit—”
Gon was on the rooftop looking like the star of Die Hard with his beefy man body and slightly militaristic outfit. He poised his rifle and aimed at the sniper who chucked out Alluka. He stilled the crosshairs on the guy’s head and pulled the trigger. Beside him, Alluka gasped, amazed. “That was great! Okay, okay—try with that guy over there. He’s not moving.”
Gon aimed the rifle at the opposite tower in the castle. It was a farther shot, but once the crosshairs tuned in, he got a second kill on his board.
Alluka clapped her hands like they were playing golf. “Brilliant. Wow, your aim is impressive. Try that guy over there? Oh, he’s running—”
Gon made quick work of it. It took three misfired shots before he nailed his opponent in the chest. It wasn’t a kill shot, so he jumped from the roof and went ahead to finish the job. After finishing off the kill, he gathered up a new collection of loot as he apologized, “Sorry for robbing your dead body, old buddy, ol’ pal o’ mine.”
Alluka giggled beside him before gasping and waving her hand at the weapon in his midst. “Take it! Take it! That’s a good one—ooh! So is that one.” Gon did as she said before regrouping with Zushi, who was hiding at the Palace gazebo, petrified.
Zushi’s cyborg character crouched down and wiggled around as Zushi cried dramatically, “Dude, there’s too many! We can’t take ‘em! It’s over for us!”
Gon brought his beefy character super close, so that Zushi’s crouched cyborg was at eye-level with his character’s crotch. “Don’t worry, dude, we’ll survive this.”
Zushi waddled forward so his character’s head glitched through Gon’s crotch. “Oh, thank God, my savior.”
Alluka stared dully at them on the couch. Her feed on the television was from Zushi’s perspective in the game, so the image was in 4k beauty. “You two are ridiculous.”
They escaped the Palace by the skin of their teeth and a cumulative count of 100 health points lost to Gon’s attempt at making friends with the enemy. Zushi led the way across the mountains to Whale Island, where, supposedly, they’d find more loot and healing supplies. They built a bridge from the bluffs to the island which… may have been a terrible idea, but at least their health was back in time for the enemy squadron investigating the remnants of their bridge.
Gon shot out the bridge so it steadily collapsed and sent two enemies falling to the ocean. Zushi shouted, “Take that, you whores!”
“Gon, Gon, try sniping them from here,” Alluka said.
“You’re able to snipe from this distance?” Gon said, switching his guns. He put the scope on and zeroed in on an enemy from across the chasm. Through the scope, he saw that his enemy had the same idea.
In a panic, he fired. A second spanned in which the bullet whistled across the ocean and to the bluff where it sunk in with a satisfying chime. Another kill on Gon’s roster.
“Holy shit,” Zushi gasped.
Alluka scrambled to her feet, running to the TV where the image was bright and large. Their enemies were building rapidly to block Gon and Zushi from land. She pointed to a person on the top of the makeshift castle and said, “Shoot this person?”
“Yeah right!” Zushi scoffed.
“Okay,” Gon said.
Zushi stammered and floundered before saying, “D-Dude!”
He took aim and waited for the person’s head to appear. He raised the crosshairs just so, just enough to account for the descent of the bullet. He fired and watched as the person rose as if to meet his shot—which allotted him one more kill.
An alert blared on the map at the top right corner. A red circle enveloped the map and it was closing in fast. If they stuck to Whale Island, they’d be annihilated by the hellfire that was the Red Zone. They wouldn’t make it back to the bluffs if they were caught by the Red Zone here.
“Dude, the circle’s shrinking,” Zushi said.
“Hot dog, we need to move,” Gon said, to which Zushi muttered teasingly, “Hot dog, indeed.”
“You’ll never make it back to land with the enemy there. You have to take ‘em out,” Alluka said, waving her arms like mad.
Gon went back to his position, crouched behind a half-wall and preparing to strike. A misfired shot took out the wall next to him, and another flew over his head. He tracked the stream of the shot back to a sniper hidden behind the wall. He waited a second before firing and moving on to his next victim. The shot hit home as Gon aimed again, fired, and moved on. His kill count racked up to the double-digits.
“Okay, let’s move,” Gon said. He was already laying out planks to get back to land. Behind him, the cyborg remained in his idle position as Zushi stared at Gon’s profile through the spokes of the loft. A grin spread across Gon’s lips and Zushi snapped, “Oh, come off it!”
“Let Gon have his high horse!” Alluka shouted, jabbing a finger in Zushi’s direction. “I don’t see you repping double-digits!”
“Five kills is an admirable number,” Zushi whined.
They ran like their lives depended on it across the ocean and back to the bluffs. Gon’s heart was racing in his chest—this was the high he was here for. It was—dare he say it—better than a post-workout high. Aunt Mito-san would be clutching her pearls if he heard him say such a thing. As if there would ever come a day when Gon loved video games more than working out.
Since they were on the outskirts of the circle as it closed it, they didn’t have to worry about the enemy number count at the top right corner of the screen. Eventually, though, they’d all be stuck in the same small battle zone. Gon was on high alert, looking rapidly this way and that through the trees. He felt like he was on the cusp of some great adventure that involved kicking ass and punching Nazis.
A rustle in the trees had Gon whirling around, his gun pointed directly at Zushi’s forehead.
“Whoa, dude, just me,” Zushi whispered.
“Sorry. Did you see anyone?” Gon said, just as hushed.
“Why are we whispering?” Alluka whispered from the futon between Zushi’s set up and Gon’s laptop.
Gon glanced at Alluka and, likewise, Zushi scowled at the back of her head. As if sensing his animosity, she put up her middle finger to him and smiled sweetly at Gon.
He leant close and said, “It’s getting serious.”
“Oh, okay,” she whispered.
And then, someone was firing like mad at them.
Zushi cursed and flew up, gun swinging and letting bullets fly loose. Gon ducked behind a tree, but suffered damage—a whole fifty points of damage. He would have cursed had he had any swear words left. “Oh—poo, for Pete’s sake—” he cried, switching guns and chugging health potions.
“Don’t do that when you’re—Gon, behind you!” Alluka screamed, lunging up from the futon. Zushi was yelling and Gon was in a fit. His health was shot down to a mere 10HP. Alluka pointed to the sniper off in the distance and Gon stilled, poised his gun, and aimed where Alluka’s finger touched his screen.
When the sniper was dealt with, Gon relaxed back on the futon with a huff. “That was a close one,” he sighed.
“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Zushi whined, pouting in his seat. Gon looked at the top left corner where his squad members’ names were. ZushiRoll’s gamertag was greyed out.
“Oh no! You died?! When?!” Gon cried.
“Five seconds ag—”
“NOOO!” Gon screamed, holding his laptop up as he got on his knees and sobbed at the ceiling. “God, why have you forsaken me?!”
Alluka gave him a pat on the shoulder and said, “It’s fine—there’s only five more enemies left. You can take ‘em.”
“Not without ZushiRoll,” Gon sniffled, clutching his laptop to his chest. “I can’t go on.”
“Bro, you have to carry the team,” Zushi said. “Go on without me, I would have wanted this for you. I would have wanted you to win that battle royale for me, bro.”
“Bro…” Gon sniffled, eyes closed, pure agony ripping at his chest. He held his hand out to Zushi—the arm fully attached to his bad armpit so the agony in his expression was real—and Zushi reached out to him. Their fingers touched, just barely.
“Bro… You can do this,” Zushi said.
Gon got back onto the futon and gave his head a shake. He slapped his hands on his cheeks and groaned. “Okay, I can do this. But don’t you guys wanna play? We could start another match—”
“No,” Alluka and Zushi hissed, and it was about the only time Gon ever saw them so in sync.
Alluka twisted around to stare at Zushi, who scowled at her and said, “You stole my line, you coward.”
“Me?! What about you?!” she cried.
Gon charged onwards as Zushi and Alluka bickered back and forth. They may have been dead in the game, but sometimes, the beefy man could still hear their voices saying, “That’s your fragile masculinity talking.” “Fragile?! Why I oughta—” He was in the center of the circle before long, simply waiting for it to close in with the other four enemies on the horizon. The circle would bring them to him, he was sure of that.
He chugged a few health potions as he waited. His health would never make it back to 100, but for now, 86 was pretty good. His fingers felt numb, his hands jittery, and he worried that he’d choke at the last second and be unable to do ZushiRoll and Nanika’s spirits justice.
This was it, the final battle, and the first gunshot was fired—in Gon’s direction.
Gon parried to the side and ducked behind a brick wall. A bullet nicked the corner edge nearest his shoulder—so it seemed he wasn’t the only star shot in this match. If he showed himself now, he’d be gone for in an instant, no questions asked. Instead, he hurried ahead and bounded up to the rooftop, where, as discretely as possible, he searched for the sniper.
Bingo, he thought as he pulled the trigger once, twice, three times to finish the job.
The enemy count dropped to three, and quickly diminished to two.
“Over there!” Alluka shrieked, pointing to the far side of his screen. He spun around and jumped down from the roof just as someone shot at him from afar. He took fall damage, but it was worth it considering how close he came to being taken out in the top three.
Gon waited, patiently, until he saw someone skidding down the far hill on the cusp of the forest. He honed in on them with his sniper rifle and pulled the trigger. The shot grazed his enemy at the same exact moment he took a hit from behind.
“Fish sticks,” he hissed, swapping guns and peppering the ground with bullets as he arced over and tracked the motion of his opponent running for cover. He ran after them, still firing away with his dual pistols. He approached the open door, only to stop at Alluka’s warning.
“Don’t go in there. He probably set a trap,” she warned.
“What do I do?” he asked.
“Break down the wall instead,” she said.
He did as instructed, which left him vulnerable without a weapon on his person. The enemy was gone, anyway, only to reappear from up above. Gon switched to his pistols in an instant and took them for 20 damage, 40, before at last dealing the final blow—a headshot from close quarters.
“The other guy is still over there,” Alluka said in a panic, shrieking as she jumped to her feet and watched, hands clasped over her mouth, as Gon went in search of his prey.
He stalked the edges of the forest with his gun at the ready. He reloaded his ammunition, heart pounding, massive, body builder calves clenched. The map alerted him to the next ring of the circle closing and, with it, came the blast of a gun not far from his person.
Somehow, it missed, and somehow, Gon tracked the trajectory and fired without thinking. He took only twenty damage off of the person, but it was enough to dematerialize his opponent.
And win the entire match.
Gon startled by the shrill scream from Alluka and the incomprehensible yodeling from Zushi. Shakily, Gon rose to his feet and was immediately tackled by Alluka squeezing him into a hug around the neck, careful to avoid his fucked-up armpit. Zushi threw his headset off and joined the party. They bounced around the middle of the dorm room and Zushi started sob-singing, “Weee are the chaaampions my frie-ends.”
When the group hug was over, Gon was dizzy, delirious, and in disbelief. Sure, he had won a battle royale before, but that was just on his own with no one to protect. He liked having a squad to win with, especially if it meant group hugs and celebratory, off-tune singing. He was smiling so wide, he was certain his face was stuck in that position forever. He didn’t care, and he didn’t mind the ache in his cheeks as he pushed his hands against the sides of his face in an attempt to calm down.
Alluka gasped, hands slapping her sweatpants. “Gon—We should see if my brother’s playing. I could get you into a game with him.”
Alluka talked about her brother a lot, but the more she talked about him, the more questions he had about the guy. From what he remembered, his impression of Alluka’s brother was that he A) dropped out of college to B) play video games. He had an image of tubby fellow living in her parents’ basement and he couldn’t dispel that image from his head.
“I mean… I guess?” he said. He didn’t want to be rude—besides, Alluka spoke highly of him more often than not. He wanted to make a good first impression.
As Alluka tapped away at her phone, perching herself on the edge of the futon, Zushi pointed to Gon’s laptop, which he abandoned on the futon. He ended the match then, crouched in front of the futon. As he waited, he pulled up Twitch, quieting the volume as he scanned his list of followed accounts. He made an account for the sole purpose of keeping tabs on KILLU, Pika, and Ikalgo, two of which were online now.
Alluka put her phone to her ear and Gon could hear it ringing as he opened up Kill’s stream.
Kill went fullscreen and Gon’s heart leapt to his throat at the sight of Kill’s sharp, blue eyes glaring at the camera. He heard Kill say the following five lines enough times in the last two days to know what he was saying even without the audio: “Everyone, shut the fuck up.” He held a finger up to the camera to take a quick phone call, leaving his gamer chair spinning behind him as he walked away.
“Killua!” Alluka said, voice bright and smile even brighter. “Are you busy? I didn’t interrupt you, did I?”
Gon had already lost all motor function at the sound of her brother’s name. He never heard it before that moment, but it was too close to KILLU that Gon found himself turning to Zushi, who was clutching the loft ladder and staring between Gon and Alluka’s sweet smile.
Alluka rubbed her finger up and down the stripes on her sweatpants as she said, “Yeah, everything’s fine here. I just found a Hunter versus Hunter squad but we need another player. No—They’re dorm friends. I’ve told you about them—Oh, come on, quit being such a wuss. It’s Zushi and Gon.”
She fell quiet for a moment, chewing on her lip. “Zushi’s got one. Hang on—I’ll ask Gon. Hey, Gon, do you have a headset?”
“No,” he confessed, but his voice squeaked because this couldn’t be a coincidence.
“I can’t talk—Gon, you take my headset,” Zushi cried, shoving it at Gon.
“What? No, I can’t talk either—” Gon whined, trying to shove it back through the ladder spokes. Alluka started slapping his arm to shut him up. She hung up on her brother and pouted at them. Gon had his arm stuck through the ladder and Zushi put his hood up and tugged the drawstrings as tight as they could go.
“I’m not gonna do this if you two are gonna keep acting like a bunch of children,” she snapped at them.
“Your brother—what did you say his name was, exactly?” Zushi squeaked from the dark protection of his hoodie.
“His name is Killua and I’m inviting him to our party,” she said, resolutely. She turned back to the TV, braid swishing. “I want him to see Gon play.”