"Roy Zoldyck, currently twelve years old. Specializes in swords, possesses extraordinary swordsmanship talent, suspected Enhancement-type…"
"On the Storm, he stood out—once used a storm as training while holding his ground on deck, later drove off a Conjurer–type nen user named Pariston. Ranked first in the points battle…"
"After the Quiz Town stage he encountered the Mad Fox family, conjured a crow–type nen beast, and set a whole mountainside on fire—suspected Emission-type…"
"At the formal exam site, he entered the illusion phase; records are incomplete, we can't confirm what he did there. After that… comes the fight with Botobai Gigante. We have video on that—he showed a mimicry–like ability, able to change into others through contact, suspected Transmutation-type…"
"In summary, I have ample reason to suspect that, in essence, he's actually a Specialist-type nen user who, for some reason, can exert one hundred percent of the power of at least Enhancement, Conjuration, and Transmutation—or possibly more."
On a sea cliff outside the coastal city on Yorbian's west coast, Elena stood in front of her floating blue nen screen, blonde twin-tails swaying as she read off the dossier she'd compiled.
Not far away, a man in a worn hood sat at the cliff edge, stubble on his chin, fishing rod in hand. A red bead was set into the rod just above the reel—clearly nen–reinforced gear.
He listened to Elena's analysis without interrupting.
"Did I say something wrong?" she asked, pushing her glowing blue glasses up the bridge of her nose.
She knew Ging very well. He hated saying things straight. If he disagreed or was unconvinced, he rarely rebutted outright—he'd just go silent and mull over how to phrase it.
"There's nothing wrong," he said at last. "There's just one premise."
The red bead on the bobber dipped—bite. Ging snapped his wrist and hooked the fish. A big flying fish burst out of the waves, flapping wildly, then slammed onto a rock on the cliff and went belly-up, stunned.
Ging eyed its size, satisfied—would make a good fish soup for Vivian later. A gust of sea wind flipped his hood; he caught it with one hand and pressed it back down.
He shushed the wind and said quietly:
"All nen types ultimately point toward Specialization."
"So what you're really saying is…" Elena mused, "Roy Zoldyck isn't 'a Specialist' in a categorical sense, but might just be an Enhancer, Conjurer, or Transmuter who's pushed his specialty to the point that it looks like Specialization?"
"I never said he wasn't a Specialist," Ging replied. He flicked the line back out; the red bead dove toward the sea again.
"Elena," he said, eyes on the sunlit water, voice thoughtful,
"What I'm trying to tell you is:
"It's not the type that's powerful. It's the person."
"You, me, Roy Zoldyck—we're all individuals, each shaped differently. Strictly speaking, that uniqueness is what makes each of us 'special.' In that sense, we're all Specialists."
"We just choose to put the side we're best at on display, and the world divides that into types."
"Interesting theory. Where'd you get it?"
"Can't it be my own conclusion?"
Elena gave him a flat do you think I'll buy that look. Ging sighed, wounded.
"Fine," he muttered. "My ancestor said it."
"Don Freecss?"
"Yeah."
He turned his head away, clearly unwilling to elaborate.
With Don, the New World Travelogue, and that rumored place called the Dark Continent hanging over the topic, Elena swallowed her curiosity. She toyed with a lock of hair instead, letting the sea wind tug at it.
Then, at ten in the morning, a yellow taxi bumped its way down the rough dirt track and came to a stop near the cliff.
Two figures stepped out.
The man and woman on the cliff turned to look.
A boy around twelve or thirteen, black hair down to his shoulders, a pure white katana sheathed at his waist and a staff-sword in his hand; despite his age, his build was closer to a sixteen– or seventeen-year-old's lean height and reach.
Behind him walked a man with a neatly trimmed beard and gold-rimmed glasses, carrying their luggage with a quiet, watchful sharpness in his gaze.
On the boy's head, a rather round "fat chicken" squatted—it took Elena a second to process that it was a crow-type nen beast, not a bird gone wildly off its diet.
One boy, one butler, one fat golden crow. The people they'd been waiting for had arrived.
"Caw–oh."
The crow cried once, voice as round as its belly.
As Roy's physique had grown, so had little Jin. If you parted its glossy feathers carefully now, you could see its third leg sticking out much more clearly than before.
[Goldie: Three-Legged Golden Crow]
[Stage: Juvenile (15,000 / 100,000)]
[Rank: S+]
[Manifest Nen: C (9,640 / 100,000)]
[Potential Nen: ?]
[Racial Skills: Chasing the Sun (locked)… Control Sun-Flame: Lv2 (5,410 / 10,000)… Sun Chariot (locked)]
[Notes: Growth-type nen beast with limitless potential]
"Roy Zoldyck."
"Ging Freecss."
Before either took more than a dozen steps, the boy and the man locked eyes across the rocky ground and called each other by name.
Gotoh, arms full of luggage, narrowed his eyes at Ging and leaned toward Roy.
"Young master, that guy… doesn't seem simple," he murmured.
Ever since his own physique had risen from D to C, his instincts had grown sharper. Even without nen, you could get a read off someone: the weight of their presence, the way space bent a little around them.
Gotoh could tell this was no ordinary man.
"Relax," Roy said.
Staff-sword in his right hand, Snow-Walk at his hip, golden crow on his head, the boy walked forward to meet Ging.
Elena stepped aside, giving them room, and joined Gotoh off to the side—two support pieces taking their places automatically behind their kings.
"We finally meet," Ging said, standing and tossing his rod into a crack in the rock where it stuck upright like a spear.
"Truth is, you didn't have to wait for me," Roy answered, stepping past him to the cliff edge and sitting down cross-legged.
He flicked his staff-sword out like a fishing rod; a pale nen thread whipped from its tip down into the sea far below.
Without a hook, entirely with nen—his control was so fine that it looked effortless.
[Notification: Nen Shape Manipulation — Lv2 (584 / 1,000)]
[Note: Minor attainment]
Compared to his swordsmanship, which had already brushed the edge of Bankai–tier Iv4, however, it was still some distance behind.
"As you are now, you didn't need help with Razor," Roy said lightly.
Ging sat down next to him and smiled.
"Hookless fishing, huh? Good way to refine nen."
He pressed his hood down against the sea breeze and glanced at the boy from the corner of his eye before flicking his line again.
"But you don't understand," he said. "I've never liked doing things alone."
"Humans are social. We're not beasts. Running around solo…it's boring."
"Your son Gon doesn't think so," Roy replied casually.
That landed like a sucker punch.
Ging turned his head, startled, then grinned when he realized where the comment had come from.
"Sharp En," he said. "I thought you were just using it to locate fish. Didn't expect you to be able to read hearts with it too. The Zoldycks' reputation is deserved."
"Heart reading…"
Elena, in the back, felt that gentle nen brush past her and quietly shuttered it out.
"Using En to eavesdrop on thoughts isn't in any of our intel," she thought.
Her eyes grew more serious as she studied Roy—and, incidentally, gave Gotoh a little more weight than before. The butler stood behind his master like a slab of stone: expressionless, but somehow emanating the sense that he missed nothing.
"If my old man heard you say that, he'd be annoyed," Roy said. "He told me not to throw the Zoldyck name around when I leave home."
Ging chuckled.
"Which one?" he asked. "The 'Never Retire' old man, Zeno, or another one?"
Roy didn't answer. He just jerked his staff-sword and yanked something out of the water.
A huge, round-headed fish burst from the sea like a boulder, soaring up to cast a vast shadow over them before crashing back down.
"That's a Glutton Whale," Ging said. "Not an easy thing to see in the shallows."
The fish's bulk blocked out the sun for a moment, casting them in shade.
"Can you eat it?" Roy asked.
Ging shook his head.
"Meat's too tough. Chews like rubber."
"Mm."
Roy released his nen line and let the whale drop. It smashed into the water with a booming splash and, a second later, fled in a panic.
He turned his face back to the horizon.
"My little brother's about to be born," he said. "Before I left, my father told me to come back quickly. So let's cut to it."
"Got a name yet?" Ging asked.
"Killua."
"Killua, huh? Same age as Gon. Maybe they'll be good friends someday."
"Or maybe," Roy thought, "they'll spend half their childhood playing 'find my deadbeat dad.'"
He remembered the original timeline: Killua and Gon searching high and low for Ging, scraping through danger after danger. Sure, the old man called it "training," but there was more than a little sadism mixed in.
Roy gave him a sideways look that needed no translation.
Ging scratched his cheek.
"What?" he asked. "Did I say something wrong?"
Roy let it slide.
"Let's talk jailbreak," he said. "What do you need me to do?"
"Elena."
The twin-tailed woman stepped forward at Ging's signal and laid out the operation they'd prepared, step by step, without hiding anything.
In short:
"You just need to keep Ginta busy and buy me the time to beat Razor," Ging said, standing and slinging his rod over his shoulder.
"Can you handle that?"
Roy rose as well, staff-sword planted in the rock.
"Whatever fallout comes from breaking him out," he said quietly, "you'll clean up."
He extended a hand.
Clap.
Their palms met, the wind off the sea tugging at Ging's hood and Roy's sun-shaped earrings.
"Pleasure working with you," Ging said.
"Likewise," Roy replied.
At 6:47 p.m. that same day—
On a road heading to Tbilis Maximum Security Prison outside Weibus, a van marked with the kanji for "detention" shrieked to a stop, tires carving twin black scars into the pavement.
Inside the transport, a man sat shackled hand, foot, chest, and back—bound in heavy cuffs and chains.
Opposite him, a bigger man with a massive afro, face simple and honest, had been dozing until the sudden jolt.
He blinked, peered out the windshield—and gunshots rang out.
"Eyes on the prisoner! We've got a jailbreak!" someone shouted.
The side doors of the lead and tail vans on the convoy slammed open. Armed guards poured out, forming a loose perimeter.
In the central van, Razor opened his eyes. His narrow eyes slit even further as he felt nen gather wrong on the road ahead.
Outside, Roy and Ging's team blocked the way.
A thin gray mist passed over Roy's pupils.
[Yin: "Dream Bind" — project sleep via gaze or whispered words]
He spoke softly:
"Sleep."
Guard after guard met his eyes or heard his voice, and each time the same thing happened:
A wave of exhaustion crashed over them, dragging their consciousness down into a bottomless sea of sleep.
One by one, they rolled their eyes back and dropped to the pavement like fallen dominoes.
"Dream manipulation? Or deep hypnosis… Whatever it is, that's not just En," Ging thought, lengthening his stride.
"Let's go," he said aloud. "There are three left."
Razor. Ginta. And one more.
As he spoke, a sheet of blackness billowed up around them, rising from the asphalt like smoke. It ballooned, then snapped down like an overturned bowl, engulfing the vans, the road, and everyone on it.
A barrier ability—someone's nen.
"Young master," Gotoh said quietly, already drawing the Infinite pistol from his coat. With a click, he racked the slide and brought it to readiness. "This one's a Controller-type."
"He's yours," Roy replied, as two silhouettes stepped into view at the edge of the half-sphere of darkness.
Beyond them, a third figure sat calmly in the van, narrow eyes half-lidded—Ginta.
Roy drew both blades with a ringing shing.
Red bloomed along the steel; heat surged; twin jets of flame roared from the swords as he charged the larger of the two men—an enormous, simple-faced hulk who only grinned and stepped in to meet him with a fist.
The man's punch swelled mid-swing, arm bulging as it grew to several times its original size…
~~~
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