Hunters X and X Heroes

Not X Yet

Gon was very annoyed upon discovering the secret behind the trick that Gotoh pulled on him. Shichi would sometimes pull little things like that on Rukei too, and Rukei would get mad for not figuring out and end up loading Shichi's plate with her hated asparagus for dinner.

Shichi.

"I need to call Shichi-oneesan," Rukei blurted aloud, drawing their eyes to her. She hurriedly reached into her bag to grab her cellphone, that luckily still had some battery to run on. She walked a little bit farther away from the group while listening to the series of beeps run through the phone.

"Hello, this is Shichi Tsujou."

Rukei let out a small smile at her sister's antics and her voice, "You should look at the caller ID before picking up."

"Holy sh- Rukei?! Where the hell have you been?!" Shichi yelled, and Rukei pulled away from the phone a bit, "The Exam ended weeks ago! Do you know how many times I tried to call you, idiot?!"

That wasn't quite the reception she was expecting, but Shichi had a point, her little sister did run off after the exam without saying a thing, but it wasn't like she meant to... "I'm sorry," the girl replied and if they weren't separated by who knows how many miles, Shichi would have smacked her across the head, "Some stuff came up and I forgot to call you."

"You? Forget?" Shichi repeated. It seems like her sister accepted the apology with a light laugh that echoed through the phone. The brunette realized how much she missed it, "That's rare. Congratulations on passing! How's it feel to have a license in your hand?"

"Thank you-," Rukei paused, blinking, "I didn't tell you that I passed."

"You didn't," her sister reaffirmed, "I checked with the Association and a couple other sites to make sure you were alive."

The younger girl inwardly flinched at the stressed word. She must have really worried Shichi. Glass and Crimson too. "I see... But this means I can work with you now, right?"

There was a very long silence from the other end, and Rukei was about to move to see if it was just bad reception until Shichi spoke. "No."

What?

The girl couldn't find her words at first and tried to collect her thoughts, "But you said-" she stopped and tried again, "Shichi-oneesan, you said that if I became a Hunter you would let me work with you. I remember clearly."

"Nen."

"What?" Rukei didn't know what her senior was saying but she was very serious about it. Not like that would stop her. "Shichi-"

"So you don't know what it means," her sister cut her off, "As I thought. Listen to me very carefully, Rukei. Right now, you are a Hunter in license only. You're not strong enough to work on field."

"But-"

"Rukei!" She immediately shut up at her sister's iced tone.

What was Shichi saying? Shichi said that if Rukei became a Hunter they would work together. Why hadn't anything changed?

Her sister continued on, "I agreed to work with you 'when you become a Hunter'. Do you know what that really means?" Rukei had a feeling that she didn't. "When you understand what that means you can work with me. Until then, your job is to find out."

Rukei didn't want to give up. She wasn't going to give up. "But-"

"That's an order, Rukei!"