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[freecssofnature]

Name: Kira
Livejournal: tinwateringcan [blogspot]
Contact: PM or tinwateringcan on AIM ~
Other Characters Played: Sanae Hanekoma, greatcuppajoe
Are you 18 or over? Yup.

Canon: Hunter x Hunter
Character: Gon Freecss
Timeline: As he's waiting for Neferpitou to finish healing Komugi, after chapter 275
Personality: Passionate, direct, and charismatic, Gon frequently gets himself compared to a diamond in the rough. He reacts straightforwardly and honestly to everyone, never hiding his feelings: nonetheless, despite his open and honest nature, he doesn't always bother to explain what's going on in his head. It's easy to make the mistake of thinking that means there isn't anything going on beyond what he reveals, and it doesn't help that Gon thinks of himself as not being very clever compared to most people he knows; nonetheless, there's a surprising amount of complexity lurking under the sunny exterior.

It's not – mostly – that he deliberately conceals things he's thinking (although he'll occasionally be stubborn about explaining his plans if he expects to be mocked for them). It's simply that Gon's determination, besides being unshakable and absolute, is also something that comes only from within himself. He makes his own decisions, and he does not think to ask other people for input into those decisions – in fact, he rarely asks for advice unless he's completely lost, and he often forgets to count other people as potential resources. For instance, when Killua challenged him to come up with a special ability to show at the Greed Island player selection event, despite being completely at a loss for ideas, he didn't think of asking Kurapica about his special ability, or calling his master, until both options were suggested to him. Gon will gladly work with others, and he's happy to receive help and guidance, but most of his decision-making seems to reflexively follow the path: “There is something I want. I will make it happen.” Other people may, as far as Gon is concerned, do what seems right to them, and he will gladly help them with their goals; but his plans will rely on him. The more important his own goal is – the more he wants the end result – the less likely it is that he'll rely on anyone else. He's actively offended by the group of players in Greed Island who announce that the dangerous, bloody game should be ended through mass cooperation. Firstly, that's an insult to his father, who created the game! -- and secondly, that's cheating and he wants to play it fair and square.

This tendency may come from a childhood spent without much, if any, companionship his own age; Gon grew up playing with wild animals and dealing with adults from the town and from the ships that stopped there. He loves his second cousin Mito, who raised him, as a mother, but although he respects her requests he doesn't let her make decisions for him. In her turn, Mito, recognizing his diamond-tough will, knows better than to try. Gon may only be 13, but he has the independence of an adult, and clearly has for years.

Despite that independence and refusal to rely on anyone else to make his decisions or control and protect him, though, many elements of Gon's personality reflect the fact that he's only 13 – and 13 with less than two years' experience of the world outside his tiny home community. He has a special brand of naivete. Gon sees the world as though it were a forest: he expects that some things, and some people, will be dangerous and murderous by nature, and that doesn't bother him. Gon will accept serial killers and mass murderers without a qualm, taking appropriate caution to make sure they don't kill him and his friends, but not displaying any concern about their actions. What does startle and upset him is the complexity of human choices – the nature, specifically, of evil. When he faces the Genei Ryodan, criminals who casually and constantly murder for the smallest of reasons (and whose victims include the entire clan of one of Gon's close friends) Gon doesn't seem upset about their crimes. He only becomes angry when he realizes that they are capable of caring about their friends and reacting emotionally to the deaths of people they care for, yet are still willing to kill strangers without a care or even a motive. It's not murder that upsets him; it's the fact that they are capable of better but don't want to do better. Gon can accept people acting in their nature, and he's always happy to see people do good things, but when people deny their better nature in order to do evil it infuriates him.

Despite the fact that Gon himself has good moral instincts, loves to help people out, cares about his friends and instantly trusts almost everyone he meets, he is remarkably nonjudgmental. He trusts his instincts to determine whether strangers are dangerous, but if someone isn't openly hostile, he automatically assumes that they're dealing fairly with him. If they are openly hostile, he'll fight, but he won't be angry or upset. That often startles people, because Gon takes that lack of negativity surprisingly far: Hanzo, for instance, literally tortures him for hours in order to try and force him to forfeit a fight he couldn't win, and not only did Gon refuse to forfeit but he did not show the least bit of anger, fear or resentment towards Hanzo for his actions. When he and Killua train against a serial killer by fighting him for ten days straight – with the killer under threat of death from their master if he retreats or loses – Gon expresses honest gratitude to the man, untainted by disgust or fear.

Toward the majority of people he meets, his attitude can be summed up as, “I understand who you are, I accept it, I don't want to hurt you and you cannot defeat me – so let's be friends!”

Of course, he's not able to fight evenly with everyone he meets, and not everyone acts in ways Gon can accept. In the former case – when he faces someone whose power he can't cope with – it upsets him, but it also fires his determination and his desire for battle. Gon loves to fight and he loves to win. He doesn't always define winning in the way a normal person would, though; he's merely driven to succeed based on his own definition. When fighting Hanzo, he could not physically win the battle, but his definition of success was “I will not say that I give up,” and he was in control of that. He was perfectly willing to die in order to achieve that “success,” because death would not represent a loss. When he and Killua were training in the Celestial Tower, he entered more than one fight he could not win, but he was not upset about the losses because he defined his goals as something other than “I will win the match.” The rewards for a conventional win were meaningless to him. Against Guido, he wanted to test himself and develop in a battle against a nen user; because he succeeded in anticipating the movements of Guido's tops and advanced in his understanding, he considered the battle worth it despite his loss (and his master's anger.) Against Hisoka, his goal was to return the punch that Hisoka dealt when Gon was genuinely unable to fight him; once he had succeeded in dealing a clean blow, he was emotionally satisfied despite his eventual loss.

When Gon loses by his own definition, though – something that happens very rarely – he's deeply shaken and upset by the experience. Especially if his opponent looks down on him as an inferior, he will become driven to gain the power to succeed and force them to acknowledge his strength. More, if he's failed in a way that has serious negative consequences, he takes the blow exceptionally hard and, in order to overcome the blow, he needs to fight back and somehow overcome and atone for his failure. At the point I'm taking him from, his usual unshakable cheer has been badly damaged by Kaito's capture and apparent brainwashing by the chimera ants. Gon genuinely expected Kaito to be okay, and he willingly fled with Killua in the belief that Kaito didn't need his help – and when he found out that Kaito was not okay, he blamed himself for abandoning him. He's utterly focused on the goal of defeating the chimera ant who is controlling Kaito in order to force her to bring him back to normal. To him, that is the only way to atone for his failure, and a second failure would be unbearable.

Gon has quite a temper, especially when he's upset. Although he's willing to forgive most offenses, he'll hold a lingering grudge over someone disrespecting him until he can prove his worth; he'll be righteously angry over someone betraying their better nature in order to do evil; and he'll get angry when someone seriously hurts a friend of his. When he's upset enough, his usual strength seems to increase, and his usual awareness and compassion tend to decrease; Gon's not an unreasoning berserker, but if you make him very mad he will do a great deal of damage before he calms down. He also has a very bad habit of immediately provoking battle when he's upset. Although he's always honest and straightforward to a fault – Gon is the guy who will instantly respond, when a large group of unbeatably overpowered enemies captures him and asks him to join them, “Never! I'd rather die!” – he's capable of getting downright bloodthirsty when he's mad enough. Reason and caution (what he's got of those two qualities, which ... isn't a lot) go right out the window.

Gon has nearly infallible emotional intelligence, despite his occasional naivete, but he's downright terrible when it comes to anything that might be classed as “academic.” He'll come up with surprisingly good plans and solutions, he loves to learn about practical things and he'll beg any expert he meets to explain whatever it is that they do (and, crucially, he's excellent at retaining that information; when the Greed Island game came to an end, a multiple-choice quiz about tiny details of the circumstances to obtain every one of the important 99 cards was the final hurdle, and Gon scored the highest of any player on the island.) Gon is also unable to multiply by two and starts counting on his fingers when you hit him with addition or subtraction. He's not all instinct, but he sees himself as being all instinct, and he has great respect for people who are experts in their field. Anybody who displays knowledge he doesn't have will immediately have Gon's respect and his full attention. The moral dimensions of that knowledge really don't signify. He's just as thrilled to hear an ex-forger explain how to fake antiques as he is to hear a biologist talk about the rare species he's discovered. In general, though, Gon really doesn't care about morality as long as you are not at that very moment trying or planning to try to hurt his friends.

And yes, it is “his friends,” and not himself; it's not that Gon is particularly self-sacrificing, but he automatically assumes that he's capable of taking care of himself. If he dies, that's okay, except insofar as it will hurt the people who care about him. (If he loses or fails, that's not okay, and if it comes to a choice between death and failure Gon will probably always prefer to die trying.) The people who he cares about, though, are immensely important to him. Gon makes friends easily and swiftly, he's surprisingly caring and thoughtful (and even romantic when he needs to be; he comes up with a bouquet made of fireflies to offer to the 22-year-old yandere he goes on a date with, and casually mentions that he's been on dates with some people who happened to come to the island on fishing boats, liked younger guys, and “taught him all kinds of things”... yes, he was 12 when he left home, no comment) and he would go very far out of his way to help any one of his friends. Mostly, though, Gon will assume that they are all just as capable as he is of handling themselves. His instant faith in people tends to bring out the best in them, and because of that, it's rarely been challenged.

Oddly, he doesn't mind going in different directions from his friends, even though he considers them very important. Gon isn't self-centered – the opposite, in fact! – but he also unthinkingly trusts that other people will be okay and unblinkingly focuses on his own goals, and so he's never sad to say goodbye; he expects, with that same flawless faith with which he faces most of the world, that they will meet again and be just as good friends as always.

This of course only applies if they've left of their own free will. If someone forced them to leave or kidnapped them – as Killua's family did to him after he defied their wishes to leave home and participate in the Hunter Exam – Gon will stop at nothing to save them. If their goals draw them in different directions, though, it doesn't bother him to say a temporary goodbye.

Background: Gon is the son of Ging Freecss, a professional Hunter in a world where Hunters – people who scour the world pursuing rare or dangerous things in which they have an interest – are some of the most powerful and exceptional individuals on the planet. Ging left his idyllic childhood home on tiny Whale Island when he was only twelve years old to become a Hunter, and he hardly ever returned home after that point until he appeared one day carrying an infant. He refused to explain where the child had come from, and his cousin Mito took charge of the baby Gon, eventually suing for custody. Gon grew up with the same kind of peaceful life his father had had: exploring the wilderness, making friends with wild animals, developing his natural talent for speed, strength and endurance as well as his senses until they were as keen as any animal's. When he was still very young, he was caught between a fox-bear and her cub in the forest and barely saved by the Hunter Kaito, who killed the mother bear. Gon pleaded for the life of her cub, promising to take care of it, and Kaito recognized the resemblance to his master Ging in the boy. He told Gon about his father and left a Hunter Card with him before moving on from the island. Kaito was trying to track down Ging himself, which he said was the “final exam” of his own training, so he was unable to tell Gon where to find his father.

Gon, however – keeping the entire incident a secret from Mito, who he knew would be upset – decided that he would take the Hunter Exam himself and pursue his father.

At 12, the minimum age for enrolling in the Hunter Exam, Gon asked permission from Mito to take it, and eventually won her over. She told him that he had been abandoned by his father in favor of being a Hunter, but instead of being hurt, Gon responded simply that a job worth abandoning your own child for must be a really important one.

In the Hunter Exam, despite his young age, Gon excelled. He joined up with a small group of new friends early on: Killua Zoldyck, a boy his own age, as well as Kurapica and Leorio, older candidates who traveled to the Hunter Exam on the same ship. The Hunter Exam proved to be made up of a series of smaller tests, and during the first test (a marathon through twisting underground tunnels and across a marsh infested by man-eating monsters) one of the true dangers of the Exam appeared: their fellow candidate Hisoka, a strange man dressed in clown's clothing and makeup who had been disqualified the previous year for killing an examiner. This year, Hisoka is trying again... and he takes the opportunity to attack the other candidates, murdering dozens of them using his razor-sharp playing cards. He corners Kurapica, Leorio and another candidate in the misty marsh, and Gon runs back to rescue them. Catching Hisoka by surprise, Gon distracts him from killing Leorio by striking him with his fishing pole. Hisoka realizes Gon's potential and immediately becomes interested in the boy, because Hisoka is obsessed with fighting and killing opponents who are powerful enough to truly challenge him.

Claiming that Leorio “passed” his test, Hisoka knocks him out, picks him up and carries him to the place of the second exam. Gon uses his nose to track Leorio's aftershave, leading Kurapica to the end of the trail; he admits to Kurapica while they run that rather than being afraid of Hisoka, even though he saw the bodies of all the candidates the “magician” had murdered scattered on the ground, Gon only felt excitement at the possibility of facing him down.

The second test initially appears unbeatable: two “Gourmet Hunters” first ask for roast pigs, and then sushi – when only one person in the entire group of candidates knows how to make sushi, and the Gourmet Hunter insists on it being up to her exceptionally high standards. After the whole group fails, though, the Hunter Organization's President, Netero, appears and insists on a re-do. This time, the candidates have to leap blindly into a dangerous ravine, collect the eggs of the Spider Eagle from their dangling clutches along spider-silk ropes, climb back up the side of the ravine, and boil the egg to precise doneness.

This test our heroes all pass with ease.

While President Netero's blimp carries the remaining candidates to the place of the third exam, the President challenges Killua and Gon to a game of ball: if either of them succeed in taking the ball away from him, he promises to immediately grant them Hunters' licenses. Both of them try for hours, but Killua finally begs off – not because he's lost hope of succeeding, but because his killing urge has grown so powerful that he feared he'd try to murder Netero in order to get the ball back. As he walks away, he reflexively slices two candidates who bump into him in the hallway into shreds. Gon, however, keeps trying, and although he doesn't get the ball back he succeeds in forcing Netero to use both hands and both legs to keep it... which had been his goal from the moment Killua pointed out that the President had only used one arm and leg in the competition so far. Pleased with his success, Gon passes out.

The blimp arrives at the top of the Trick Tower the next morning, and the remaining candidates are challenged to find their way to the bottom of the tower within 72 hours. Climbing down the outside exposes them to attack by vicious harpy-like animals, and the only hope is to find their way through the internal labyrinth. Gon, Killua, Kurapica, Leorio and Tompa, a candidate who has made a hobby out of destroying the dreams of rookies taking the Exam for the first time, end up on a trail called the Path of Majority Rule. The five of them each have wristbands that they can use to vote Yes or No on a variety of challenges that face them on the way down, and the choice taken by the majority will always prevail. Their first major challenge is facing down a group of criminals who fight one-on-one to defeat them, with the group that wins the most matches being free to move on. Tompa gives up immediately in his fight; Gon faces a mad bomber in a challenge using rigged candles, and wins by blowing his opponent's candle out; Leorio faces a twisted psychiatrist who tricks him into betting away 50 hours of their remaining time; Kurapica beats his opponent senseless, and Killua rips his opponent's beating heart out of his chest an instant after the beginning of their match.

50 hours gone, they barely manage to clear the pathway by finally facing a choice only Gon sees the way through: they're forced to choose between a path that allows only 3 of the 5 of them to clear the tower, and a path that takes so long that none of them will succeed. At Gon's suggestion, they choose the longer path and spend most of their remaining hour breaking down the stone wall separating the path they chose from the short path that allows them all – barely – to arrive on time.

The next trial is a hunt, with each candidate drawing the number of a fellow candidate in secret. To win, six points are required; their own number badge is worth 3, their target's is worth 3, and any other candidate's is worth only 1 point. Gon draws Hisoka's number, and heads out onto the island where their hunt will take place with the intention of tracking Hisoka until he thinks up a plan for stealing his badge. Finally, after a full day and night of tracking the 'magician' without being spotted, he decides to use his fishing pole to snag the badge from Hisoka's chest at the moment when the man is going after his own target.

Hisoka runs into Leorio and Kurapica while he's hunting for badges, and they successfully negotiate with him for a badge they don't need and their safe escape; Hisoka, worked up by the encounter, succumbs to his overwhelming urge to murder and sets out to slaughter the next candidate he meets. Gon, forcing himself to continue despite his fear, successfully snags Hisoka's badge off his chest as he goes for the kill – and as he's desperately fleeing the pursuing magician, the man who was hunting him uses a poisoned dart that renders him unable to move and steals his number plate.

While Gon is lying helplessly in the meadow where he was shot, Hisoka approaches casually, wearing the bloodstained hat of the man who shot Gon and carrying all three badges: Gon's, Hisoka's and the hunter's. He hands over both his plate and Gon's, since he has enough points to pass, and when Gon – furious at the condescension – tries to give them back, Hisoka punches him in the face and tells him that he will refuse to take the plate back until Gon can return that punch.

Gon spends the next day overcoming the effects of the poison and of his own unhappiness at being unable to defeat Hisoka. Finally, he decides that since he couldn't win the badges he needed with his own strength, he'll help his friends in order to overcome his failure, and he goes to find Killua, Kurapica and Leorio. Killua has the badges he needs; Kurapica and Leorio are hunting for the plate of Leorio's target, a young woman who fights using chemicals and poisons. They discover that she's been trapped in a cave with the dead body of her target, a snake charmer who was allergic to the bees that protect her; the snakes, after their master's death, are obeying his final order to attack anyone who approaches him or approaches the entrance to the cave. Leorio is bitten trying to warn Gon and Kurapica of the trap, and the two of them rush into the cave to save him.

Confident that the snake charmer must have been carrying the antidote to his snakes' poison somewhere on his body, Gon approaches the corpse, ignoring the hundreds of poisonous snakes that instantly lunge out to clamp their fangs on his flesh. He succeeds in finding the antidote, as well as the man's number plate, and both he and Leorio are saved; then he offers to trade the man's number plate to the poison user if she can knock out the snakes to get them all free of the cave. She says she has a sleeping gas, but someone would need to hold their breath for several minutes in order to avoid the effects of the gas and get them all out of the cave. Gon, whose record for holding his breath is nearly ten minutes, volunteers, and carries all three of the others safely free.

Then he takes the medicine user's badge as payment for the escape, gives it to Leorio, and leaves her with her target's badge (because that's what they agreed.)

The final test is an elimination fight, in which the only way to lose is by admitting defeat. Gon fights Hanzo in the first match, and despite being badly physically overmatched, he refuses to admit defeat while Hanzo beats him, nearly deafens him, and breaks his arm. Finally, unwilling to kill him – because killing his opponent would end in his own defeat – and realizing that there is no way for him to force Gon to surrender, Hanzo forfeits the match and moves on.

Killua, however, is shocked by the realization that one of the other candidates is his older brother Illumi in disguise. Illumi brainwashes Killua during their match, and Killua immediately murders his next opponent – eliminating himself from the competition and automatically passing everybody else. Then Illumi brings him back to the home of their family, a group of legendary assassins who live on the top of a remote mountain.

Immediately after getting his hunter license, Gon sets off to rescue Killua, with Leorio and Kurapica in tow. They discover that the family home is protected by legions of deadly “butlers,” as well as a massive mindless guard dog who sucks the flesh right off the bones of intruders, but the gate guard takes pity on them and invites them in far enough to train to open the front door (which weighs several tons.) Gon, Leorio and Kurapica all succeed in training their strength enough to open the door, and Gon's determination to see his friend overcomes the resistance of the butlers – particularly Kanaria and Gotou, who are fond of their young master Killua. Between that, and a moment of compassion from his father, Killua is granted permission to leave the house and travel with his friend.

Kurapica leaves to pursue the murderers of his clan, and Leorio heads out to study for medical school entrance exams, while Killua and Gon go to the Celestial Tower in order to participate in battles, earn money and train their strength there. They all agree to meet in York Shin City on the day of the Auction of Southern Peace, a massive and exclusive event where anything in the world can be had... for a price.

At the Celestial Tower, the two of them swiftly advance toward the highest levels. They meet a young boy named Zushi, who despite his lack of physical strength seems unusually capable of fighting evenly with them and the others they encounter. His master, Wing, explains that he uses a special kind of power called “nen” in order to achieve results far beyond the capacity of the human body, but the explanation he gives them is deliberately false. When they reach the 200th floor, Hisoka meets them with an impassably terrible aura, and in desperation, Killua and Gon go to Wing for advice on how they can defeat that strength.

He admits that he lied in his previous instruction, and forcibly awakens their native potential for nen; with the new power protecting them, Killua and Gon are able to finally sign up on the 200th floor of the Celestial Tower. There, they have a wait of a few months before they will be forced to engage in battle. Wing orders them not to fight until he's had a chance to train them enough to truly face the enemies they'll meet there; Gon, defying his orders, signs up for a fight and faces a man who has turned his body into a spinning top. He loses the battle, but he successfully analyzes his opponent's technique, and spends the next month forbidden by Wing to practice anything other than the meditative techniques that contribute to using nen. When he's finally allowed to use it again he discovers that his powers have increased significantly. Finally, after he and Killua defeat a plot by a few of the other fighters on the 200th floor to force them to lose, Gon decides he's ready to face Hisoka.

Hisoka defeats him, but Gon successfully lands several blows... including a punch to the face that mirrors the attack Hisoka struck him with during the Hunter Exam. He returns Hisoka's number plate, which only feeds the obsession Hisoka has developed with fighting and killing him – Hisoka, however, feels that he must wait in order for Gon's powers to develop to their true limit, and so he allows Gon to survive the battle.

Triumphant, Killua and Gon head back to Gon's home island in order to tell Mito everything that's happened – and also because Gon wants her to meet his new best friend. There, she gives him a strange box that his father left for him, one that turns out to be possible to open only with a combination of nen and the Hunter's license. Gon, who has both now, finds that the box contains a tape, a ring, and a data card for a JoyStation gaming system. The tape has Ging's voice on it, telling Gon that he understands if Gon wants to find him, but he'll do his best to hide – it's a hunt. He offers to tell Gon about his mother, but Gon stops the tape at that point, because he sees Mito as his mother. As soon as it's stopped, the tape immediately rewinds and records over Ging's voice, unstoppable and protected by Ging's nen, leaving them with only two clues: the ring and the data card.

The card turns out to carry information about a game called Greed Island, made by a mysterious company, with only 100 copies of the game ever created. Conveniently, several copies of the game will be on sale at the Southern Peace Auction, and so Killua and Gon head there in order to meet up with their friends and pursue the game that holds the only remaining clues to Gon's father's location.

In the time since they last met him, Kurapica has become a member of the bodyguard of an up-and-coming Mafia man's fortune-telling daughter. She's a famous body collector, meaning that she has built an extensive collection of the body parts of famous or unusual people – something that includes the scarlet eyes that Kurapica's clan was known for, and for which they were all murdered and butchered. Using her connections, he hopes both to find the criminals who murdered his clan and the remaining eyes, in order to lay his comrades to rest.

The Genei Ryodan, or the 'Spiders' who killed Kurapica's clan, are at the auction too: they plan to steal all of the objects for sale. Hisoka is among them, impersonating a member of the Genei Ryodan in order to pursue their leader, a man named Kuroro Lucifer, who Hisoka desperately wants to fight. Hisoka's passing Kurapica information about them in order to try and maneuver Kuroro into battle. Using Hisoka's information and the special abilities that Kurapica has wagered his life to master, Kurapica is able to kill one of them, a man named Ubogin; Gon and Killua, who with Leorio are desperately trying to earn billions in time to spend it on a copy of Greed Island, find out about the massive bounties that the Mafia have put on the heads of any Ryodan member and track two of them back to their lair. Unfortunately, the two lead them into an ambush, and Gon and Killua are captured by a Ryodan member who recognizes Gon's reinforcement power and wants to recruit him into the gang in order to replace the lost Ubogin. Using a trick Gon learned from an art forger who's helping them earn money through buying and selling in York Shin's famous markets – breaking out through the side of the 'sealed container' while the Ryodan member guards the door – they barely manage to escape their captivity.

Meanwhile, the Ryodan set up a fiendish trap in order to steal the goods they've been targeting from the beginning, and Kurapica manages to sneak their leader right out from under their noses, using a combination of a clever plan and his own powerful abilities. Unfortunately, the Ryodan capture Gon and Killua again in revenge, and Kurapica arranges a hostage exchange. Before letting Kuroro go, Kurapica ensnares him in a powerful nen compulsion: if he ever tries to contact any member of the Ryodan again, or uses his own nen, he will die. The member who brought Gon and Killua to him for the hostage exchange, Pakunoda, is compelled never to tell anyone what she knows about Kurapica on pain of death.

Paku, however, has an ability that allows her to transfer memories using bullets made of nen, and she fires a bullet containing everything she knows about Kurapica into each of the surviving members of the Ryodan... sacrificing her own life, but passing the information on safely. Kuroro sets off to find someone who has the power of erasing nen and can remove the compulsion Kurapica placed on him. Gon and Killua, although they weren't able to earn nearly enough money to buy a copy of Greed Island, find the billionaire who's been buying every copy and ask him to allow them to play it. He tells them that there will be a selection process in a few days, and anyone who passes it will be allowed to play... and the leader of his bodyguards warns them that, with their abilities in their current condition, there's no way that they'll be allowed to join in the game.

They have four days to improve enough to pass the test. Killua suggests that they develop “hatsu,” or special abilities; he has one in mind for himself already. He turns his own aura into electricity, using his long experience with receiving powerful electric shocks to train him as a child to withstand pain. Gon, after spending a day completely confused, finally calls Wing on Kurapica's suggestion. Wing tells him that he doesn't need a special ability, because reinforcement nen users have the best balance of offense and defense, but that he should try using “everything at once” in order to pass the test. Gon's briefly stymied by that advice – how can he stop his aura from escaping and force it to its greatest extent at the same time? -- but eventually he realizes the trick. If he focuses his power on a single body part, amplifies his aura, and stops it from escaping everywhere else, he's capable of increasing the power of any attack he delivers by thousands of times.

Killua uses his electric power to pass the exam, and Gon blows a hole in the wall to demonstrate the strength of his punch. They both pass. Meanwhile, the Ryodan, including Hisoka, have stolen a copy of Greed Island and entered the game.

Killua and Gon meet a group of players who have developed what they claim is a flawless plan to win the game and claim the billionaire's reward: they will work together in order to monopolize every spell card on the island and then, using those spells, steal each of the 100 cards that are required to win. Gon is infuriated both by the fact that they insult his father's game – they call it a bloodbath – and by the fact that they're planning to cheat to win. He walks out, with Killua, and the two of them are trailed by someone who appears to be a cute young girl. Killua and Gon initially disregard her, but after they're set upon by a dangerous player, she reveals her true strength, saves them, and takes them on to be trained. Her name is Biske, and she was Wing's teacher; she only appears in the form of a young girl because of her special nen abilities. She forces them through a grueling training regime, first fighting for a week and a half against the man who tried to kill them, and then traveling to a nearby city, first by running marathons there and back, and then by literally digging through every mountain and rock outcropping in their way, using nen to reinforce their strength. After a few months of training, the two of them have reached a remarkable peak of ability, and Gon has come up with his special attack to match Killua's electric eel routine: it's a power based on jan-ken, or rock-paper-scissors. His 'rock' attack is a short-range punch using all the reinforced power of his aura concentrated in his fist; 'scissors' is a medium range blow in which his aura transforms into a blade, and 'paper' sends a ball of power flying from the palm of his fist in order to attack a distant enemy. 'Rock' he masters almost immediately, but scissors and paper are very much a work in progress by the time he and Killua begin trying to truly beat the game. During their training, Killua leaves the game for a few days to head back to the Hunter Exam and swiftly receive his certification... by knocking out literally every other entrant in the first round and presenting all of their number cards to the examiner.

The group of players who once invited Gon and Killua to join them have been betrayed by one of their members, who turns out to be the mad bomber who's been murdering players across the island. He steals all of the cards they've collected, putting himself in a dead heat with Tsuzugera, their employer's bodyguard, to finish the game.

Gon and Killua, who have managed to collect nearly 50 cards in their few months in Greed Island, are invited to team up with the other groups who have nearly beaten the game in order to stop the Bomber from winning billions. To their surprise, they discover that one of the few cards that no one has yet discovered, called “One Yard of Coastline,” can only be found by a group of 15 players... and their number is exactly 15. They are asked to face a “pirate” and his group of 15 “devils,” who have been holding a seaside town in thrall – in reality, the “pirate” is one of the Game Masters, an old associate of Ging's, and the devils are all nen-controlled mannequins. In order to force the group to leave the town in peace, they must defeat at least 8 of their opponents in one-on-one battles using various sports... sports that their opponents will control somehow with nen. Their first group is swiftly defeated.

With Biske, they head off to recruit enough powerful players to make a real attempt for the prize: they team up with Tsuzugera's group, as well as – against Killua and Gon's better instincts – Hisoka, who is in the game using the player name “Kuroro Lucifer.” With that kind of strength on their side, as well as a number of weak players to round out their number to 15, they head back to make a battle for it.

The Game Master, seeing that their group has the potential to win eight battles against lesser opponents, suggests a game of dodgeball to decide the match. Winner takes all... unfortunately, his powers do all of them significant damage, and Gon is forced out. He uses his one “back” to return to the playing field, and he, Killua and Hisoka team up to stop the ball. They use a combination of Gon's unstoppable “rock” punch and Hisoka's ability to transform his aura into a sticky, stretchy gum to beat the Game Master: Gon punches the ball at their opponent, and Hisoka pulls it back with his aura. Triumphant, they are attacked by the Bomber and his two henchmen; Tsuzugera lures them away for a few weeks to let Killua – whose hands were badly pulped in the dodgeball fight as he held the ball Gon was punching – heal. He discovers that the billionaire who has funded their participation in the game, and who was offering billions as a reward for completing it, has canceled the competition. The woman he loved, who has been lingering in a coma for years, and who he hoped to heal using the winner's reward from Greed Island, has died.

Finally, Tsuzugera's diversion ends, and the Bomber and his comrades head back to attack Gon, Killua and Biske. It's a difficult battle, and Gon is critically injured fighting the Bomber. An item called the “Archangel's Breath” heals him – and each of the other people hurt in the battle – and he takes the final cards.

At last, the final card turns out to be accessible only by getting the highest score in the game on a quiz about each of the cards they've obtained; Gon succeeds, scoring in the 80s, and he becomes the game's first ever winner.

He talks to the game master about his father, and receives a binder that can take three cards from the 100 out of the game. Biske gets to choose one slot, which she uses for the special jewel she's been seeking; Gon and Killua put two strange cards in the other two, to the game master's surprise, but their plan is revealed the moment they leave. One of the cards was a disguised version of a spell card, which will allow them both to go anywhere in the world, to the location of a certain place or person, with 100% accuracy. Gon plans to use the card to take himself and Killua to where his father is.

When he activates it, though, it takes him not to his father's location but to Kaito, who is in a wilderness area with a group of biologists categorizing mysterious new species. They talk deep into the night. Meanwhile, a man-sized queen chimera ant – a creature that can spawn offspring resembling any creature it's eaten – washes up on the beach of a nearby country. While Killua and Gon help Kaito and his friends search out unknown species, the queen heals her wounds and begins to spawn new, man-sized monsters to protect and feed her... and her favorite food is human flesh.

Another part of the queen's body washes up on the shore of the country that hired Kaito and his friends, who are asked to identify it. They realize it could only have come from a giant chimera ant, and immediately begin searching for the country where the queen might have ended up. Meanwhile, her soldiers begin to slaughter nearby townsfolk and feed them to her while she focuses on her final effort: breeding the king who will leave the hive to carry her perfected genetic mixture to new places.

Kaito realizes that the queen's body might have landed in the NGL, a country that deliberately eschews modern technology of any kind in order to live “at one with nature,” and that in such a place her killing spree might go unnoticed. He, his friends, Gon and Killua head to the NGL in order to track her down. Several other groups of Hunters had the same idea, including two of the people who passed in Gon's Hunter Exam (Pokkuru and Ponzu.)

Unfortunately, the chimera ants are growing in power too quickly. They slaughter most of the groups of Hunters pursuing them. One of Ponzu's pet bees reaches Kaito with a message, and he, Gon and Killua set off on foot to the location where she found the ants' nest. They find a deserted village and some animals that had fallen victim to one of the soldier ants, and Killua and Gon briefly battle the soldier before it's rescued by a division commander. Tracking the ants by the trail of human corpses they leave behind as they move across the landscape, the three come across a deserted narcotics factory – the “hidden side” of the NGL, where drugs and guns are freely trafficked. There, the queen has established her hive.

The three advance, fighting against soldiers and division commanders as they go... but the first soldier they fought had the potential for nen ability, which was forcibly awakened by Gon and Killua's attacks. Since it's still alive, its power develops swiftly, and it passes that ability on to the other soldier ants. They take Pokkuru, who was captured alive, and one of the King's new guards, Neferipitou, forcibly interrogates him to learn more about the strange power. She proves to be of the specialization class, with a horrific aura capable of instantly subjugating even the other chimera ants.

After having Pokkuru butchered and fed to the Queen, Pitou heads out to battle Kaito, Gon and Killua. Kaito, feeling her aura approaching, orders Gon and Killua to flee, but at the moment she arrives she slices off his right arm with a single attack. Gon is enraged and about to attack, but Killua knocks him out with a blow, grabs him, and flees. Kaito is left behind to face Pitou.

Reinforcements in the form of Chairman Netero and two other powerful Hunters arrive; they castigate Killua for fleeing the battle and offer him a chance to prove he can help them against the chimera ants. If he and Gon can defeat a couple of fighters they've left in the nearby town, then they will be allowed to join the group; if not, they will be left out.

Finally, Gon regains consciousness, and after thanking Killua for stopping him from acting on instinct, he declares that he's convinced Kaito is all right. They decide to face their unknown opponents... but meanwhile, Pitou has killed Kaito and is cradling his disembodied head.

Gon and Killua meet up with a strange young woman named Palm, who brings Biske back to help train them to a level high enough to defeat their two enemies. Unfortunately, they seem to be barely strong enough to face them... and even Biske's training isn't enough to bring them along at the speed that would be necessary. Palm grows more and more homicidal as the time passes, while the two boys daily battle against one of their opponents without result. Meanwhile, Netero and his two companions approach the Queen, battling viciously against her commanders. Biske tells Killua that his greatest weakness is that he gives up too easily: he assumes the worst case scenario and flees whenever his opponent is powerful... and if he cannot overcome that flaw he has no right to remain by Gon's side, because he will abandon him at the worst moment.

However, at the last moment, Gon is defeated by his opponent's special ability: a loan-sharking nen robot that attaches itself to Gon's arm and drains all of his power the moment that the “interest” on his aura matches his overall potential. He's rendered unable to use any of his powers for a full month. He tearfully begs Shuuto, the man who defeated him, to get Kaito back, and remains behind with Killua, devastated by having been forced to admit his own weakness. Killua, who was unable to truly fight, decides that he will remain with Gon for the month he's punished by Shuuto's ability, but that he no longer has the right to stay near his friend and will leave once the month is up.

The queen ant finally gives birth to the king, who claws his way free of her body and critically injures her in the process. Heedless of her shattered form, he takes his three powerful guards – Pitou, who killed Kaito, and her two comrades – and sets off to form a kingdom of his own. Meanwhile, most of the remaining ants leave their dying queen and set off to reproduce on their own. Only a few of her most loyal children stay with her, and one of them, Koruto, goes to Netero's group to announce a truce and beg him to save her life. The king's birth rendered her incapable of reproducing again, and so saving her would not endanger others. Netero agrees and calls in a transplant specialist in order to try and save her in exchange for all the information that the loyal ants can give them. Unfortunately, despite all they can do, the queen dies.

The king, meanwhile, arrives in the country of East Goruto, where he immediately takes over the palace of the tyrant who had previously ruled there, slaughtering every human in the palace and devouring their brains. Netero's group recovers Kaito, who seems to be under the control of the chimera ants, and brings him back to where Gon and Killua are waiting. Meanwhile, Gon goes out on a date with Palm, but he tells her that he can't give her time for just the two of them: he has to train as hard as he can in order to become strong enough to defeat the chimera ants and help Kaito return to himself.

Their date is interrupted by a chimera ant, and Killua, sensing the approaching aura, heads off to kill it before it can threaten Gon. He's injured fighting, initially unable to resist the compulsion to flee an overpowering strength, but then he realizes that Illumi embedded a tiny needle inside his brain, forcing him to run away whenever he tries to face a superior fighter. He pulls the needle out with his bare hands and slaughters the surprised ant, then has to rescue Gon from an infuriated Palm. The others, after hunting some of the escaped chimera ants, return with Kaito, who is badly scarred and apparently unable to reason. He beats Gon mindlessly for a few minutes before Gon embraces him, revealing the power of the nen that controls his mind and body. Gon vows to Kaito that he will save him, and walks away, his fury increasing his power far above its previous limits.

The king plans to use his own power and his attendants' in order to awaken the abilities of the populace of East Goruto, in order to produce nen users, who he considers to be the best possible food. The process itself would kill 99% of the population, and he would devour the survivors... in other words, millions would die. Using the dead king of East Goruto as a puppet to conceal their plans, the ant king orders every human to arrive at the capital for “sorting” in 10 days. Netero sets up a plan to be executed at exactly midnight on the night of the planned gathering, and Gon and Killua accompany Netero's companions, Morau and Novu, and their apprentices to East Goruto to prepare for battle.

As soon as the month expires, Morau demands that Gon demonstrate his current power; Gon, emotions fired by the memory of Kaito's shattered face and the chimera ant who did that to him, goes into a cold rage and prepares to attack Morau with a level of power that might well have been fatal. Killua stops him, and Gon apologizes, horrified by his actions; Morau laughs and accepts him into the group. They split into three groups; Gon and Killua are assigned to go after Pitou.

They discover that the ants' true plan is to gather around the borders of the country and put towns through the “selection” process individually, concealing the corpses in mass graves in order to hide their actions; Killua sets off to destroy the people who are being controlled by Pitou to run the selection, and he orders Gon to remain concealed while he fights, not to take part in battle no matter how many people he sees being killed. After all, their objective is Pitou, and saving a few victims won't make a difference if she survives to kill all of them.

Killua approaches the capital city, battling more and more ants as he grows closer, while Gon evades the chimera ants' constant attacks in the wilderness. A group of ants lures Killua into an underground lake trap, and although he easily defeats the first one who attacks him – Ikarugo, who has the form of an octopus with a gun for one arm, and who is capable of controlling corpses – he is badly injured by the special abilities of the second pair who attack. They use a nen game of darts to stab through various parts of his body, finally targeting his forehead – where Killua manages to anticipate the blow before it kills him, and feign death until they get close enough for him to defeat. Unfortunately, the blood he's lost from all of his injuries has weakened him too badly to stay standing, and he's only saved when Ikarugo, who was moved by his kindness, drags him away to an underground hospital.

Gon, meanwhile, meets a rogue ant in the form of a chameleon, who offers his help. His special ability allows himself and anyone he touches to remain utterly imperceptible for as long as he can hold his breath.

During the time that the Hunters slowly close in on the capital city, the chimera ant King occupies the time by playing board games with their masters in the kingdom. He easily conquers shogi (chess) and go, with the go master hanging himself in his room rather than succumb to the king's punishment when he inevitably loses. Then, the young blind grandmaster of the kingdom's particular special board game is brought in; it's gun-gi, a game that combines elements of go, chess and checkers, allowing pieces of different abilities to be placed in stacks on the board, controlling different territories and possibilities. Unlike the others, she is fearless, and she manages to outthink the king at every turn – more, she is joyful and deeply moved by the chance to constantly battle against an opponent of such power. The king becomes enthralled by her strategic ability and her lack of fear.

Meanwhile, Morau faces another of the king's personal guards, defeating him in a series of underground tunnels near the palace. Novu sets a series of entrances to the nen structure that serves as his own special ability in the king's palace, approaching the central staircase. Palm disguises herself as a prostitute hired by the one human remaining in the palace, the minister who was kept alive in order to maintain the facade of normality, and infiltrates in order to use her clairvoyance to track the location of the king and his guards.

After two days of unconsciousness, Killua revives and has to call Gon to be bailed out of the hospital (which won't let him go without proper payment.) He and Ikarugo head out to meet everyone, with only three days left to go before the final attack. Unfortunately, Palm is not responding; she's vanished, and they're forced to assume she's been captured by the chimera ants... and she had already decided that if she was captured she would immediately commit suicide instead of risking their being able to extract information about the plan from her. Gon is worried about her, and wants to plan for her rescue, but Killua insists that they need to proceed as if she hasn't been captured – worrying about the possibility will only set them up for failure.

The king, meanwhile, is utterly distracted from events by his budding fascination with the gun-gi champion; one of his guards, Pufu, grows convinced that she's a danger to the king and must be killed. He stays his hand for the moment, though, in deference to his king's wishes.

At the last moment, Gon, Killua, and the other attackers break in. Novu, who is crippled by fear after his exposure to the king's aura, is unable to join them. The king ordered Pitou to extend her aura only around the outside of the palace in order not to disturb him with it, and so she, up on the roof, is distracted by her realization of the arrival of Netero and Zeno, Killua's grandfather from above, riding on an immense nen dragon.. The dragon splits into countless tiny dragons, raining down indiscriminately on the palace and sowing death in their wake; meanwhile, Gon, Shuto and Killua are facing Yupi down on the main staircase, while their chameleon accomplice hides Knuckle and races around their opponent to target the king. Gon immediately attacks, realizing that the invisible pair might have been struck and killed by a dragon without ever returning to visibility; as the staircase collapses, they briefly spot their two comrades, and realize that they are indeed safe.

However, the dragon rain did take one victim: Komugi, the blind gun-gi master who the King cared for. Pitou races toward the palace in order to turn aside the assassins planning to attack the King, and so is the second to realize that she was fatally injured by the attack she had no way to anticipate or defend against: the first was the King, who she finds crouched over the dying body. The King orders Pitou to use her special nen ability to repair the damage to the frail human, and she crouches there, healing the injuries, while the King heads out with Netero for a final, fatal battle.

Knuckle and Shuto battle on, while Gon and Killua pursue Pitou to the tiny room where she's trying to heal Komugi. Gon is blinded by fury, but Killua realizes that she's trying to protect the broken human body behind her; she desperately begs Gon for time enough to heal Komugi's worst injuries. Gon is overcome by fury and lashes out verbally at Killua (who tries to explain the situation) and at Pitou. Finally, he manages to quell his rage enough to grant her a single hour to take care of Komugi's most critical wounds, after which she will come with him to restore Kaito to his normal self. Gon sits down across the room, watching her, full of fury and desperation.

Abilities/Additional Notes: Physical: Gon has remarkable natural powers of sight, hearing and particularly smell, which enable him to do things like distinguish individual monsters at a glance and track people across unfamiliar wilderness by scent. The last time his strength was measured he was capable of pushing open a two-ton door, and given the training he's done since, he may be currently able to handle up to 32 tons. His speed and endurance are superhuman, though not exceptionally so among his peers (...it's a Jump series, “superhuman” just means “named character.”)

Special: Gon uses a power called nen, which is a kind of ramped-up version of the martial arts concept of ki (spirit force). Using this power gives him abilities including:
- Ten: the ability to concentrate his aura around himself, reinforcing his physical capacity and ability to resist damage.
- Ren/Ken: the ability to expel a much greater quantity of aura than normal, significantly boosting his defense and attack power. (Ren is the expelling of aura; ken is the ability to sustain that state throughout a fight.) With the ability called ryu, he can adjust the level of his expelled aura in different locations, coordinating attack and defense with his movements.
- Zetsu: the ability to erase his presence, allowing him to stalk or hide from enemies without being detected.
- Gyo: the ability to concentrate his nen in his eyes, letting him see the auras of other people. Using this, he can detect their presence (unless they are using zetsu), predict their movements, estimate power levels, and identify people who have the ability to manipulate nen.
- Shu: the ability to extend his aura around tools he's using, increasing their powers as well (for instance, a shovel might become capable of digging through rock as though the stone were butter.)

His special nen technique is based on rock-paper-scissors, and he calls it (sort of accidentally) “jajanken.” “Rock” is a short range attack in which he concentrates all of his strength in his fist, causing massive damage to whatever he strikes. “Paper” is a long-range attack that fires a ball of energy at his enemy (it is significantly weaker than “rock.”) “Scissors” transforms his aura into a blade around his hand, cutting his opponent at medium range. His particular talent is “reinforcement nen,” which means that he's capable of strengthening his aura immensely; his “rock” attack relies on reinforcement ability, and is thus the most powerful of the three. “Paper” is based on emission nen, and “scissors” on transformation nen, which are the two secondary abilities of a reinforcement user.

Sample Journal Post: [The video snaps on to show Gon, at close range, with his eyes dark. He stares for barely an instant before the video blurs and refocuses on his cheek as he speaks into the receiver.]

This is how I talk to you, right? I don't know where you are yet, but I'm coming to find you right now. You'd better come out and fight me.

All I have to do is beat you, and this place can't last... right?

I'm gonna find you, and make you send me back, because I HAVE TO BE THERE RIGHT NOW--

[The PCD creaks as his hand tenses, and the feed dissolves into static.]

Sample RP: His hands rested, utterly still, on his knees. Measured breaths marked the time: in, out, focusing on the power he couldn't generate.

In, out; in, out-- he could feel it not doing any good, and Gon let out an explosive sigh and flopped back on the bed, arms out to either side. The mattress creaked. The nen creature clutching his shoulder didn't budge.

Two more weeks. Knuckle hadn't used that power before their last fight so that Gon wouldn't be completely out of it for their month of battle... but now, he'd been too weak at the moment when it really mattered. And he couldn't fight at all while the others were really fighting. They were facing the ants right now. He was waiting in his bedroom. And he couldn't do anything at all—

His hands clenched into fists on the bedsheets, and there was a tiny ripping noise.

“Aah!”

He sat up abruptly and opened his hands, watching the shred of sheet fall from the fingers of his right hand. He'd really messed up the bed. Palm was going to be really mad. What to do, what to – there was really only one thing he could do, right? He'd have to fix it before anybody found out.

Moving as carefully and quietly as he could, he slipped to the door, vanishing out into the hallway. There was a sewing kit downstairs in the closet near the kitchen, and Palm was in the kitchen making dinner, but he was in zetsu until the effects of Knuckle's power wore off. All he had to do was be really quiet, and maybe she wouldn't notice. And then he could darn the sheet!

Gon's plan worked perfectly for nearly three days. On laundry day, everything fell apart.

“What is THIS!?”

The lumpy darn caught the sunlight as she stretched the sheet between her hands. Gon swallowed and started thinking fast.

Maybe it would have been a better idea if he'd learned how to sew....