Hunter X Hunter: Nen Feaster; Part 1: The Boy and the Burden

Chapter 9: Honor

          

Eli was in the courtyard where the massive trees were, a week after his interaction with Pitou. He was drawing pictures in his journal. He was trying to draw the courtyard with all of the trees. He wasn't great at it, but he still tried. Before long, he heard someone coming up behind him. He turned around to see them. "Youpi? What are you doing here?" Eli asked.

"We think we might have come up with a method to separate Shroud." Youpi said.

"Really? You have?"

"Yes. We are going to a village where a powerful nen exorcist lives." Something about that seemed a little suspicious to Eli. He still went along with it though.

"Okay... wait, we? As in you and me?"

"That's right. The King asked that I come in order to protect you." Youpi said.

"Well... where is this nen exorcist?"

"A village not too far from here. We'll ride there in a truck."

"Okay... lead the way."

They both went into a tunnel system underneath the palace. Eli was taken to a truck and was put in the back with Youpi. The truck was being driven by one of Pitou's puppets; a soldier, with no life behind the eyes. "Who is this nen exorcist?" Eli asked.

"Huh?" Youpi asked.

"The exorcist, who are they?" Eli asked again.

"O-oh. It's a human that we've located."

"Oh? How did you find them?"

"Oh, Neferpitou felt a strong nen presence and we did some investigating and found out there was a nen exorcist." Eli knew that Neferpitou's en range was two kilometers.

"Where is this village? How long will we be traveling?" Eli asked.

"Oh, uh... it should take us an hour to get there." Eli doubted there even was a destination at all. He wasn't sure what Youpi was trying to pull. He assumed Youpi wasn't the mastermind behind whatever was going on. "No offense to him, but he's not smart enough for that. It has to be one of the others." Eli thought.

"What's the exorcist's name?" Eli asked.

"Huh? Oh, uh... Hinata." Youpi said.

"Hinata?" Eli replied slowly.

"Yeah. That's what I heard their name was." Eli could tell that he was getting nervous. He was a terrible actor, and he was an even worse liar. Especially with the fact that he always said, "oh," when he was lying.

"How exactly did Nef find this exorcist?"

"Oh, with their en."

"When did you discover this village?"

"Oh, about a month ago."

"A month?" Eli asked.

"Y-yeah." Youpi said, his nerves beginning to boil over.

"When did Nef leave?" Eli asked.

"What? What are you talking about?" Youpi asked.

"Nef's en only stretches for a maximum of two kilometers. That's not far enough to find this village if it's an hour away, so Nef would have had to have gone out to find it."

"Oh, yeah. The King sent them out to do some scouting."

"Why not send some of her puppets?"

"Well... because the King wanted to keep them for soldiers, and they couldn't detect nen as well as Pitou could anyways." Youpi said with a nervous smile. Eli stared Youpi down for a moment, and he could see small beads of sweat forming. Youpi had barely managed to stumble into a useful alibi, so Eli felt like he couldn't outright accuse him of anything yet. Eli silently opened up his journal and began writing.