Half a year has passed since Maximillian’s parents got abducted. Despite Max’s hopes the two of them never returned, the apartment where he used to live now houses a different group of people.
Despite having an adult’s intelligence, life inside Meteor City has been hard on the boy. Using his intellect he’s managed to come up with several tricks and inventions to make life easier. Max considers one specific invention to be the most invaluable - Rope. One that can be easily made using the materials in the environment.
One of the most common things to be found in Meteor city is plastic coming from plastic bags. By cutting the plastic bags into ribbons with a knife and tying them together Max is able to weave ropes which can be used for a multitude of purposes.
The most important of those purposes is the sling he’d made for himself, an ancient but extremely useful weapon.
It has allowed him to hunt the local Pigeons. A disgusting and unclean source of food but a source of food nevertheless.
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Skewering the cut up pigeon meat Max places it over the fire to cook. Trying not to gag as the smell hits him.
‘Pigeon yesterday, pigeon today, pigeon tomorrow… Urgh. Something needs to change soon. I can’t continue on like this.’
Max plays with his bag, thinking about the half eaten ration inside.
‘I’m running out of money. Almost half of the cash I grabbed is gone, spent on food and nothing else. This pigeon hunting stuff has only bought me more time, it’s nothing more than a band aid slapped on a festering wound.’
‘And let’s not speak of what the Pigeons themselves have been sustaining themselves on…’ Max is reminded of the garbage that burst out of the bird’s stomach when he’d accidentally cut something he wasn't supposed to.
‘I’m still growing. I need human food. Bread, eggs, beans. Not this absolute trash. I need to get out of here, anywhere is better than here, even those two shithole countries where the chimera ant arc takes place are a better option.’
‘I have to speed up my project with the transportation trucks. No more time is left for pointless wandering around, from now on I need to act with direction and an iron-will. The garbage trucks are a no go - they just come in, dump whatever they’re carrying and leave immediately after, I’ve seen them. No chance for me to get on board.’
‘That leaves me with the transportation trucks, the ones carrying construction material and food into the city. I need to find one of the less guarded ones and get on as a stowaway, I’ll be playing the dice as to where I end up. It might even be just a factory in the middle of nowhere but I’d rather take that than the certain death that awaits me here.’
‘Alternatively…I can go the criminal route and begin stealing from people. Breaking into properties and stealing whatever they’ve got. That’s what I’ll have to do, I think. Both the truck and this are incredibly risky but what else am I supposed to do...’
‘I can go find a construction site and just beg for work? There’s a couple of those around… blindly hope that people have it in them to take pity on me. Maybe go lay down some bricks or bring people water. I’m small but I can do something at the very least, the pay will be miserable but it’s better than nothing. Then I can move forward and do the scouting on how I can leave this place at a more sedate pace.’
‘God, why did I have to be born here of all places? If I was going to get Isekai’d into Hunter x Hunter couldn’t you have sent me to Whale Island where it’s safe?’
Max turns over the skewers so they can cook on the other side as well.
‘Oh. Not to forget that I’m cooking using wood I just found laying around, soaked in garbage and producing the foulest smell when burned. Urgh.’
His train of thought is cut short when Max feels the ground under him quake.
‘An earthqua–’
Before even being able to properly form his thoughts he is shaken to the core. A wave of sound washes over Maximillian, so powerful that it causes the dust on the ground to jump upwards and form a thin reddish cloud. It makes him instinctively bolt from his spot like a frightened rabbit.
His panic is short lived. He manages to take control of himself and process the situation a few seconds later.
‘That was an explosion! Did they drop a nuke down on the city!?’
‘No, that’s crazy talk. A nuke would be much more powerful. Just a regular bomb then?’
Discarding his campfire Max makes his way out of his hiding spot. Peeking over the rocky and garbage filled terrain he takes a look at where the explosion originated from.
A smoky pillar could be seen forming in the distance.
‘What could cause an explosion that large? It doesn’t look too dissimilar to that explosion that happened in Beirut a couple of years back in my old world… a bomb shouldn’t cause a smoke pillar right? It just blows up and that’s it. The smoke suggests that there’s fire…’
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Max recalls a particular episode in the anime. When one of the chimera ants had made Meteor City its home.
‘It was mentioned that they tried suicide bombers. Maybe one of the explosives factories blew up just now? It’s possible, I doubt the people here are big on health and safety in the workplace - even in an explosives factory.’’
Gazing upon the smoky pillar extending into the sky a sudden burst of desire grips Maximillian’s heart.
‘I want to go and check it out.’
‘It’s not like I’ve got much to do. The pigeon meat can go to hell, it’s military rations for today. I’ll just need to merge with the crowd that would surely be forming and check out what’s up.’
Against his better judgment, Maximilian leaves his hiding spot to go and investigate.
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The blanket covering his body in its entirety, Maximillian cautiously marches forwards. A barely visible slit had been cut into it months before so that Max could see where he’s actually going. He bears the appearance of a cartoon ghost, although brown and covered in trash as opposed to the pure whiteness with which they are portrayed.
It doesn’t take him long to notice that there’s something out of place.
‘Why are there no people here? Not a soul… I’ve got a bad feeling about this, no way that the explosion hasn’t gathered anyone. Not even any buildings, just piles of trash, what’s going on…’
‘Maybe it would be a good idea to leave.’
Maximilian stops and kneels down motionless upon laying his eyes on something really out of the ordinary. It is a maneuver that he’d practiced in order to stay hidden in plain sight. At the moment, he'd look just like a random piece of junk to anyone who laid his eyes on him.
‘An asphalt road? A really nice one, I don’t see any cracks on it and it’s still black in color. Asphalt tends to become whiter and whiter the more that time passes… this looks like it’s been laid down this year.’
‘There are a couple of roads in Meteor City, some that even lead directly outside the city, stretching into the horizon, but those are nowhere near as nice as this. They’re filled with potholes and cracks.’
Max looks at where the road is leading. Conveniently it leads to the place where the explosion originated from.
‘Walls…?’
In the distance he could see buildings, tall ones, and from what Max could gather they are in pristine condition. However all of the buildings are surrounded by what appears to be walls.
What grabs Maximillian’s attention is one particular construction.
‘A Water tower... a Water tower!? What! Doesn't it mean that the people there have plumbing and running water. Not to mention, that implies that they have electricity as well…’
‘Suddenly my theory of an explosives storage facility seems very plausible.’
‘Huh?’ Max hugs the ground tighter upon hearing an odd sound, to the point where his chest is almost touching the dirt. He realizes that it is the sound of engines rapidly coming closer to where he is laying.
‘Just stand still, they can’t see you, you’re practically invisible.’
A single black car rushes past. It moves at such a wicked speed that the only thing Max manages to perceive is a blur. Two cars rush past next going at the same speed, if not faster. Then three, then four, it goes on until there is a continuous stream of cars all roaring past, their screeching so loud that Maximillian’s ears begin to hurt.
It takes about a minute until the last of them passes, they leave behind a cloud of dust and the smell of burning car tires.
“Jesus Christ…those were the Mafia’s cars right? That must have been a hundred vehicles that just zoomed past me at least.’
Quickly retreating from his spot once the danger has passed, Max makes some distance between him and the road.
‘I need to stick close to the trash piles or I won’t be able to hide quickly and effectively.’
‘This is Mafia territory, no wonder there’s nobody here. Still, I want to at least check out the place just a tiny bit more before I leave. I’ve gotten really curious now that I saw the water tower.’
Max cautiously stalks forwards. Every step taken is soft and slow, he has his ears strained and eyes peeled for any sign of danger.
It takes him a short while but he does eventually get within a satisfactory distance of the walls. Hiding on top of a mound of junk several meters tall and covered by his blanket, he observes.
‘The walls appear to be around thirty or forty feet tall and topped with barbed wire, constructed from concrete, I believe? They’re in perfect condition as well, no cracks or anything to be seen, not even any discoloration or dust.’
All of the rocks, garbage and debris in proximity to the wall has been cleared out. Leaving only flat, rocky earth.
Not moving from his location Max spots a Jeep driving along next to the walls and moving along their length, it kicks up a cloud of dust behind it as it moves.
‘Patrols? I guess it makes sense, it would be pretty hard to keep intruders out otherwise. All you’d need is a ladder and some bolt cutters for the barbed wire.’
‘These guys must be stacked to the brim with resources if they can afford a car to patrol like that, I’m so envious, no need to worry about food and water. But then again, this place is so heavily fortified it might as well be a military base.
Max remains still for a while, trying to spy out something else of importance. Nothing happens other than a second patrol passing by along the walls.
‘I better leave, I’ve overstayed my welcome here. I’ve been pushing my luck as is, no need to tempt fate.’
His curiosity and need for adventure sated, Max prepares to leave.
However, just as he’s about to turn his head away from the walls something catches his attention. An object moving in the corner of his peripheral vision.
‘A rag on the wall?’
Eyes fixed on the movement, it doesn’t take long for Maximillian to realize that it’s not caused by something as simple as a plastic bag or a piece of cloth being caught on the barbed wire.
‘Wait…that’s a person?! What is that crackhead doing?’
A human in what appears to be a suit shows themselves. Max watches, cringing when he sees the individual grab the wires with their hands. They proceed to haul themselves over and, unsurprisingly, get caught in the wire.
‘It doesn’t appear to be that evil barbed wire they use in prisons… the one that literally sticks to your skin with hooks. More like the wire commonly used for cattle, but it’s still barbed wire my guy...’
He winces as he watches the person begin thrashing around in an attempt to untangle themselves from the grip of the wires.
They succeed, tumbling off the thirty to forty feet tall wall down onto the ground below and landing with a thud that Max is able to hear even as far away as he is.
‘Did he snap his neck? He’s not moving.’
Maximillian simply observes from his hiding spot with bated breath.
Ten seconds pass.
Twenty seconds.
Thirty.
A minute passes.
Only after the second minute passes do they begin moving again, probably just coming back to consciousness.
‘He’s crawling on his hands and knees, desperately from the looks of it. Probably broke his legs in the fall’
The person is moving away from the wall in a direction that is close to where Maximillian is hiding.
‘He knows that there are patrols, he’s trying to move as far away as he possibly can and hide in the garbage piles before it arrives. He most likely decided to jump the wall directly after he heard the patrol passing by so that he’d have time. But he wasted too much time unconscious, he won’t make it.’
Max notices the dust cloud approaching in the distance, still mostly hidden by the curve of the wall. Another patrol.
‘Can I help him? Should I help him?’
He focuses on the crawling form approaching him.
‘This might be what I’ve been looking for, an opportunity. If I save them… they might be willing to return the favor and help me out. I hope... It’s a risk, but so are all of my other options ’
‘The patrol is fast approaching, no time to hesitate.’
‘Fuck it. If they catch me I can play the too young to understand card. It’s already gotten me out of a couple hairy situations.’
Max unstraps the bag from his shoulders…
…and sprints ahead as fast as his little child legs could carry him.