A/N: Stars! Sorry for the wait. I'm back here for a month, which means after this update of 6.3k words, I promise an Adventures of Flight Crew next week, and the two weeks after that, updates on chapter 19 and 20 of Hunter! ^0^/ It's been a long wait, and I thank you so much for being patient. I can't wait to reward you guys and honestly, the wait has been too long. 

I feel like I haven't been regular and it spoils the flow completely and trust me, I've been really guilty about that. I'm sorry if you have lost touch and I can only hope that you have the time/will to re-read a bit ;v; eep. Maybe just a bit. I find myself re-reading backstories a lot, so like Luka's 'Memories' or Vaughn's 'You' and sometimes I'm like 'wait i wrote this hmmmMm' but yes :') thank you for staying.

Enjoy.

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One wouldn't have liked to consider this an everyday occurrence—the headlines of a local paper slamming the number twelve in bold, right beside an image of a dead man's face, who apparently bore a great resemblance to the listener himself. One's initial instinct would have been to search for the papers at once for a glimpse of the truth.

But Vaughn did not know of anyone else who shared a face like his; a jawline so uncanny in its sharpness that was fortunate enough to be paired with high cheekbones and a pointed chin in a way that made him the perfect human blade. Too sharp. And so was his nose: a villain by itself.

Yet, the image of his brother, laid upon a mattress thin, breathing through an oxygen mask, wired to a drip in his still and unmoving state, it surfaced. It was not the kind of thought he should be entertaining on a mission that required his full attention. The idea was foolish and impossible. The real Vaughn Alekseyev was on an island. An island in the sky. In a room. Locked. On a bed. Unable to move.

He couldn't have gotten anywhere near human land. In some rural village. And certainly not in any way dead because he would have needed to walk or at least stand in the first place to, well, get somewhere. And he couldn't. His brother couldn't move.

Nervous thoughts prompted a wandering gaze that knew not where they looked. He'd come to upon noticing Luka's stare. After all, his partner was never one to pay that much attention to anything beyond his realm of concern and Vaughn was so sure that he did not fall within that awful circle. Otherwise, he'd might as well be labelled 'Iolani Tori'.

"Stop star—"

"You do look dead all the time," added the eagle in a tone that was surprisingly contemplative, which his companion thought him incapable of doing. The latter closed his eyes with an exasperated sigh, thanking the vendor for his time and information whilst dragging the grilled-corn-eating-young-man elsewhere. "I can walk."

"Really? I wasn't aware," Vaughn brought him aside and in a swift motion, checked the map wedged between his book. "From the way your mind works, I wouldn't be surprised if you were a toddler learning nursery rhymes like Humpty Dumpty. No more distractions."

He watched his partner toss the cleaned cob into a nearby bin, observing the glassed look in his eyes as though he'd been trying to figure out what Humpty Dumpty was. The sight, albeit intriguing and amusing to watch, impressed upon the vulture the semblance of a fledgling struggling to fly. It was an odd impression; especially if it had been one of Luka Sullivan, the classmate he'd deemed too private with identity.

"You're allowed to clarify terms you do not understand, you know." Well-intended, Vaughn had advised with a turn of his head but it was then that the corner of his eye caught a glimpse of a stand. A newspaper stand, by the looks of it—magazines lining the sides, overlapping one another in a hasty attempt to display ever issue ever sold.

"You said no more distractions." Luka seemed mildly vengeful, voicing his protests under the guise of Vaughn's very own words. A grudge, then. Over what? Corn?

The vulture had his attention split. He'd scanned the counter from afar, noting the chocolate and candy and the comparative lack of newspapers. "Well... yes, but..." No morning papers, as far as he could see. Sold out then. Must have been some news in a small town like this one, after all. With that many people found dead, curiosity was an eventual visitor of the cage.

Luka had heard this all in their established Link, unbeknownst to the owner of the thoughts himself who, unfortunately, remained fairly unguarded and hence, a threat to their identity in an unknown location. You're very noisy, projected the eagle, to which he knew would startle his companion and bring his attention to his lowered walls. They were up again in a mere second.

What he hadn't expected, however, was a word of thanks from the vulture himself. It left a lasting impression on Luka and he'd felt the need to relay this piece of information to a certain sparrow back home. If memory was kind enough to allow.

They walked in silence with their eyes fixed straight ahead and implying some form of destination, ridding of possible opinions that they were wandering souls from another dimension. Help was not offered and because the vulture had refused to allow his partner to navigate, he'd been the one leading.

Vaughn was on his fifth glimpse at the map wedged between the pages of his book when they arrived at the stated location, marked out on the parchment paper in Jae-min's barely decipherable handwriting.

The exterior reminded him of a Korean take-out place his step-brother had first brought him to while his mother and Jae's father discussed grown-up matters behind closed doors nearly five years back. Back then, they'd lived on human land for a short three months or so in the latter's apartment, without any other place to put up.

It was only upon entering the store that Vaughn realized his mistake. The menu was inscribed on wooden planks, stuck to the walls and read in a downward fashion, that of a Japanese izakaya's. The interior was far more ordinary than he'd made it out to be in his mind; a store patronised by regular customers on a daily basis.

The attendant (or chef, he wasn't too sure) behind the counter greeted him in a language he couldn't understand but far accustomed to such uncomfortable situations, he put on a front that seemed fairly unfazed.

"Two pigeon hearts, please."

He received a nod of acknowledgement before hearing what he assumed was a repeat of his order in Japanese—a spirited shout that was meant for someone past the doorframe leading to the inner kitchen. The six guests seated at the counter did not turn to pay them any attention; they also happened to be filling the six only seats of the restaurant.

"Please wait outside. We will call you inside when seat is open," said the smiling man behind the counter, eliminating every pre-supposed impression Vaughn had had of an assassin's den. He'd questioned at once: was this the right place?

A glimpse of Luka had him following his gaze to a jar of green paste by the plates of the guest seated closest to the entrance. The established Link was unfortunately a free flow of unwarranted thoughts by his partner which happened to include 'was that ice cream?'

They parted the store-front curtains and exited the izakaya, forcing themselves to come to terms with the gap between expectations and reality. A dodgy basement drowned in shadows and darkness under a building that had its paint falling off in scaly strips under neon lights and yet here they were, out in the sun.

"Broad daylight," murmured the vulture, disappointed in his lack of attention to the time of the day. What sort of den would operate under the eyes of a social environment most alive?

Luka did not bother asking if this was the destination they'd been asked to seek and their Avians, circling above, made no apparent call for danger. They stopped when a young lady emerged from parted curtains; her face painted and her hair done up in an interesting way. Her hands tucked away in the sleeves of her kimono, a wallflower orange that simply did not attract any attention, she asked for them to repeat their order.

"Pigeon hearts," Vaughn said, tight-lipped. "For two."

Her bowed head revealed a jade comb sunk into the back of her head. "The order is ready. Please come in." The pair exchanged a look that had little to reveal, much like the wavering of a petal whose blossom was in the wind or the shiver of the ends of a web that was almost a premonition.

It felt almost like lunch.

And what a thought to be ending one's trail cut so abruptly short upon the sight of an empty room. The maiko had ushered them back into the store whose interior had remained exactly according to memory except that now, the customers at the counter had vanished. In their place were two plates. One each, before a seat. One each, the heart of a pigeon.

The smiling man behind the counter gestured to what some others might have regarded a delicacy. "Help yourselves."

Words, literal. So it hadn't been so harmless, so ordinary after all. Well, why would it have been? Vaughn caught himself sinking at the thought. A disposition so oddly familiar but had, over some time he didn't know when, faded into the darkness only to resurface at present in the shade of a bloodied rose. That, he crushed under his feet as he approached, lingering by the empty seat.

He eyeballed the still red muscle, delicate against the ivory shine of a plate so clean, one could see the fear reflected in their eyes. One swallow.

"Go on," said the chef, hands resting on the kitchen workspace behind the counter as he leaned into the conversation. Eager. "Passenger pigeons. Taste very good."

Vaughn was no amateur when it came to the games of the mind and he needed no second opinion on the single act that would likely reveal weakness and hesitation—not the best traits to exhibit before a group of trained killers. But he did it nevertheless.

A glimpse of his partner's face was enough.

To be read like an open book was nearly unthinkable for man of rock and moss. Luka could not fathom the opening of anything within or imagine, even, the flipping of pages that he often thought would incur some form of disappointment upon the observation that they were blank. Or even worse—no pages at all. What was a book without its pages? There was no word for that kind of thing. No place for it in a world formed and constituting of memories and history and a past.

The ordinary Self was never perceptive enough to peer into the unconscious; the furtive creature inside, urgently assembling and re-assembling those papers into pages, pages into books. While they had yet tapped into the unopened box under the horrors of his bed, images of the recent were not so difficult to put together and if there was anything, anything at all that his eyes could see and reveal, it was a shade. Dark, curdling crimson, seeped into the soil and tainted on his hands under a moonless night. Square. Warm. Back of his throat.

Stuck.

He nearly choked, aloud, and Vaughn did not miss the cues in his eyes. Eyes that would have seen the very same shade his partner had witnessed and he reacted to it at once—standing in front of the eagle to block their view of him.

"We came with others," said Vaughn, biding for time. "Perhaps we should wait for their arrival. After all, an appointment was made, and we did not come unannounced."

"Your friends already ate," said the maiko standing by the door, and it was only then that he noted how easy it would have been to hide a weapon up those long, wide sleeves of hers. "It is your turn now."

No further option, then. What a test, he thought. Physical determination and mental will, a trial of one's ability to fight against the seeming human instinct of disgust. He posed a question he soon found childish and nearly hilarious, asked if the heart was raw and the response he received reflected his sentiments of the question at once, as though they knew he'd regretted uttering those very words.

"Just a meal," said the smiling man behind the counter. "Harmless."

The vulture angled his torso in a way that had the attention of his partner standing behind him. You have to sit, he projected through their established Link with his head bowed, face hidden by the waterfall that was his hair. I'll get back at Viktor later for bringing you along. I told him it wasn't a good idea and you'll soon come to know that I'm always right. Well I am. Always right.

He raised his gaze and searched the eagle's eyes in a brief sweeping movement. They were void of colour, slightly glassed, and yet, it was Luka who'd made the first move towards the counter seat, choosing the organ that looked a tad bigger than the other.

Vaughn was furious. He swapped the plates at once and sat boiling his thoughts. What a complete and utter moron! Clearly disillusioned, by the likes of it. All thanks to a certain sparrow. And while he'd waited to be handed a pair of chopsticks or a knife and fork, Luka had picked it up with his bare hands.

The sight had struck a horrifying chord in his cage and it trembled, bars and all, in a fit so unbearable that he grabbed the eagle's wrist and made him drop the heart between his fingers. How he'd done this on instinct and so frightfully swift in acting upon the lack of rational thought surprised the vulture himself. He let go.

"And this is the only way we can meet him?"

"Yes," smiled the man, bored by conversation and resorted to sharpening his knives. "And you cannot eat for another guest. No babies allowed." He laughed.

He was aware, then. The easy way out would have been to eat both portions and save his partner the time and danger of haunting memories but alas, that was not an option.

"And we can be sure that this isn't," the vulture paused, unsure if such words should ever be uttered in front of Luka Sullivan. "This doesn't... belong to anyone?"

The smiling man exchanged a look with the maiko by the door and together, they laughed. "You are confusing us with Hunters," said the man. "We are offended, but Kiku-sama said no killing, so we cannot kill you."

For once, Vaughn was rather pale with panic. Stricken with an odd sense of darkness tightening its grip around the bars of his cage, he, too, picked up the heart with his bare hands. Turning to Luka, he saw that his partner had done the same.

"Passenger pigeons," he knew the breed had sounded familiar to him and it wasn't long before he felt it again. The beat of the heart, still and unmoving, between his fingers as though whispering a secret meant only for him. "Once the most abundant bird on earth and now—"

"Extinct." It widened, the man's smile did. An element so sinister, he would never have looked at smiles the same way despite his own being so carelessly similar. In more ways than one, Vaughn could only hope that he did not look like the man when he smiled.

"Hunted for long time. Cheap food, they thought. Five billion, they thought." The sound of metal sliding against metal grew in intensity while the muscle slid down the back of the vulture's throat in a go. "Passing by, they thought."

"They always think we're just passing by."

______________________

Waking up was the reverse of doing so. It felt to Vaughn very much like the draw of a dream in which were waters deep; drowning in the depths of darkness until all of blue turned a little red. His mind prompted the workings of movement and he soon felt the swimming consciousness of his anchor while all the other half could remember was the fall. The shade of scarlet beyond the surface of the waters he was drowning in or rather, part of, took on the shape of a lantern. Closer and closer to breaking out as his consciousness was, the gulping breaths of water made way for a musky scent that filled the back of his head.

"Hey."

Something gripped his shoulder and he turned to see that it was a hand. Following that which it was attached to, he found the face of his partner—the glow of red lights cast upon his face. He struggled to bring his guard up and gather every bit of his attention onto a single point of focus but they continued to float; quite as though he'd left them behind on the surface of the red waters.

It was the pigeon heart, then. They'd put something in it. "We must be here," the vulture took in the hardwood sofa underneath his back before sitting up, observing the lanterns, the wallpaper, the embroidered cushions, the carved antique mahogany furniture and the red, red glow cast upon it all.

"Awake?"

At first, Vaughn was under the impression that it was the same lady from before—the maiko who'd called for them into the restaurant—but upon closer inspection, it wasn't. Her lips were the shade of aged wine, nearly black under the lanterns that had everything else in its grasp turned into the colour of the heart. A string of coral beads dangled from her bun but otherwise, her kimono was an exact copy of the maiko from before.

She presented a tray, holding it out between their separate hardwood sofas. "Tea?"

Both were hesitant, and unsurprisingly so. The young lady was careful in placing the tray on the floor upon their delay, personally handing the cups of tea to each of them respectively. "It is not our policy to put poison in tea," she seemed to reassure. "It ruins the taste."

"Really," he tested. "So where does poison belong, then?"

"Nowhere," said the lady. Now smiling. "Respect is killing by hand, looking him in the eye. If one is not willing to put their life on the same line as the one they intend to kill, then they do not deserve the power to take a life."

A brief but groggy evaluation of her argument, again, blindly fishing in his sea of scattered thoughts, the vulture vaguely understood her intentions. He glanced at Luka and for a moment, felt slightly glad that he wasn't alone.

"Well, you certainly wouldn't want to be killing your clients but surely, there are certain states you'd prefer for them to be in," said Vaughn, well-versed despite a clouded mind. To think muscle memory could ever be a valid explanation to a tongue so carefully sharpened over the years.

"The heart?" She bowed. "It belongs to the common pigeon. Passenger is us—serving any cause that has right to revenge. And should I drink from your cup or are you going to waste your tea?"

"You drugged the pigeon hearts then," Vaughn was not letting this slip. "Very clever. How would I know if this doesn't contain the same thing?"

"It contains the antidote," she explained patiently. "You will feel better after drinking the tea. Not letting you know where you are and how you got here will protect both you and us. I will bring you to see your friends when you are done."

Luka held his cup out towards the lady. "Okay. You first." She took it in her hands and tipped it back, gulping once. Twice. She handed it back to him.

Somewhat convinced, the pair began with sips of the tea before observing the effect it had on the drowning depths and musky clouds. The dark interior appeared increasingly visible to the naked eye and what felt once like water in his lungs and up his nose parted to reveal the scent of rich chocolate. A deep, smoky fragrance with rounded notes of height that filled one's cage to the brim. Nothing too sharp. Almost, inviting.

Luka had his eyes fixed on the lanterns above that looked as delicate as the fine red paper used in its crafting, filling the room in a shade that reminded him of the inside. The inside of his cage where it housed the creature, beating. He could almost hear it. The beating. The beating in his ears that grew louder with every sip of tea and quite as though he was, literally, in the heart of a Passenger Pigeon.

The aesthetic, however, was clear to Vaughn at once. He could piece together what was happening; where, and why the place might've been furnished in such a manner and lending a clue to who the lady might be.

"This is a brothel."

"Well," the young lady had her head tilted in thought. "It isn't every day that the Winged have someone they want to kill. Something else must fill our empty bowls."

"Brothel." Luka had turned to him with a stare blank as a sheet. Far from a face of inquiry it was but under the context of his earlier offer (that the eagle could, as much as he liked, clarify terms that he did not understand), it did not take him long to interpret the meaning of a single word, repeated.

It was difficult, but he managed to define it in the simplest, most euphemised terms. Vaughn also did not hesitate to add that he'd much unfortunately adopted the terrifying imbalance in knowledge that Iolani Tori possessed.

"Kiku-sama­ will see you now," said the lady after collecting their empty cups of tea. "Your friends are already inside."

They rose follow her through the doorway that was low and required them to duck, trailing after the lady's back and eager to re-join the rest of the team or at least be in the presence of more familiar faces. Their escort had the obi of her kimono secured at the back in the shape of a bow and it was only under the light of a dozen more lanterns that a pair of eyes knowing what to look for found pigeons embroidered all over the cloth around her waist.

They passed a duo of girls, giggling and speaking in Japanese as they made their way down the hallway. Appearing fairly unfazed by the presence of Vaughn and Luka, the girls, clad in the exact uniform donned by the lady leading them to her employer, bowed their heads with a playful smile. Waving.

"I don't mean to sound interrogative or rude," the vulture began as soon as they were out of earshot. "But those girls are clearly underaged."

"Oh you are concerned," the lady brought them to the end of the hallway where another door had to be slid open, Japanese style. "Those girls run errands only. Kiku-sama is the oiran. Maiko work for their oiran. And these girls are learning to become maiko at sixteen."

Vaughn could see how this would give one reason to be slightly relieved, but he instead narrowed in on the term 'learning' and found that equally disturbing. After all, he was once the scavenger fledgling learning to feed on the miseries of another—all for the sake of survival.

His partner had positioned himself unusually close to him; gaze appearing to search their surroundings for the source of an intoxicating cloud wafting throughout the den and filling their insides. There was no sign of incense burners, candles, tobacco and the like, leaving him unable to pinpoint any exact location or substance producing the sinful seduction: a fog of undoing.

The knighted pair were stopped before a final door—a panel of large mahogany frames holding together a lattice of bamboo, a shoji—and something almost poisonous snaked in the air, thick with invitation that tripled at its opening, slid aside to reveal a tatami-lined room.

Three familiar backs seated closest to the door turned upon its creak, a cup of tea placed before each of them on a separate coffee table as they remained still and unmoving on the floor. There were five in total, placed side by side in a way that seemed to expand the host's enjoyment of having an audience. A crowd to please.

Red lanterns cast the same scarlet glow onto a shoji screen at the far back of the room, illuminating the enlarged silhouette of its user. The shadow filled the entire screen and remnants of it were projected onto the wall behind it, covered in lengths of luxurious silk decorated by the same embroidered motifs except that now, they were in gold.

Viktor gestured to the empty cushions on his left, to which their escort did so as well, pouring them each a cup of tea from a boiling kettle on the stove in the middle of the room. This, she'd done after speaking to the person behind the shoji screen, bowing in front of it and speaking in Japanese. There came a musing laughter from behind it—so soft and gentle that it was almost dangerous and with his attention on the translucent rice paper and the silhouette moving behind it, it was then that Vaughn observed the need for a divider.

The person behind it was naked.

Undressed, the shadow left nothing and yet so ironically, everything to imagination and the boldness of such a move both terrified and stunned the new guests into awe. Vaughn had turned to Viktor in silence, lips thin with doubt. His step-brother's face remained as it was but the faces of Zijun and Caiteng said it all. The host had been making them watch.

"Hello."

The lilt in his voice was a startling texture of velvet in the shade of wine. Luka was so determined to look away that he'd kept his eyes trained on the tatami floor but Vaughn had reacted to the sound before anything else and looked before thanking the skies that their host was dressed.

"Please, sit. Make yourselves comfortable."

The escort had removed the shoji screen in an alarming instant and behind it was a creature so frightfully stunning that the vermillion silken robes he had on seemed unworthy of its owner, lounging on a hardwood fainting chair in a way that made his legs the center of attraction.

"Good afternoon. Or is it evening already?" His laugh was light and smooth. "I never know." The remnants of it left a smile on his lips that had its history of distracting one from the pipe, a kiseru, between his long, slender fingers—the source of the wafting scent throughout the den. The fragrance was strong and heavy, capable of wearing one down and removing all the weight of every burden at the same time. Vaughn was more than intrigued by this point.

The fact that his step-brother had been acquainted with an enigma of a person back in his days of schooling came to him as a surprise. After all, Viktor never really talked about his classmates back in school.

"Why have you gone so quiet all of a sudden?" The secretary bird shifted his legs and the slit in his yukata parted further up that tended to make one focus every bit of their energy on keeping their eyes on his face. Like his Avian, Kiku had around his eyes and specifically above his lashes a splash of colour—strawberry red. "You were getting to something about Hunters."

"This is Kiku," Viktor found himself having to snap out of a certain trance. The scent was toying with his attention. "The contract killer I was talking about. We were in the middle of discussing matters, giving him an overview about what's been happening on our side."

How the rolling of eyes could look so elegant and practiced, Vaughn felt that it was a skill he needed to learn. "Jae-min thinks I'm a contract killer but he's making it sound so nice," Kiku directed this at his most recent guests with a disarming smile and an exasperated shake of his head. "I'm a high-functioning criminal. I murder people. That is me. Hello."

Okay who is he and why do I like him already? The vulture had his mind in knots and this was worrying; him finding himself mildly (or immensely, for the matter) taken by the look in his eyes and the odd combination of rotten beauty. He was in need of thorough reassessment, and a break from this intoxicating fog of undoing.

"Yes, okay, but we're here for information. Not to have someone killed," Viktor sensed the jittery workings of those to his sides, hoping that the kids would somehow have an effect on their host.

"Oh." Slender shoulders visibly fell and it was only after having stared at his face for such a long time that Vaughn began to realize that the colour around Kiku's eyes was not a result of makeup but the actual colour of his face; a birthmark.

"Well, can't say I'm not disappointed but," Kiku lifted a foot and began to turn the pages of a folder placed at the end of his fainting chair. "People do seem increasingly fond of taking matters into their own hands these days. They don't seem to mind the blood as much as they did in the past. Business has been poor."

His face had not been in any way painted or altered, allowing the raw, strawberry redness around his eyes to roam free and passionate against pale skin and his lashes, what Vaughn had thought of as a product of miracle mascara formulas, an exact copy of his Avian's.

"We were hoping you could identify the victims in this folder," Viktor was careful with his words and polite to say the least. "Or let us know if any of it had been the work of Passengers."

"No, my pigeons are better," dismissed the secretary bird without batting an eye, light and casual in his tone. "Not our work. Not with cuts like these. They were tortured. Very unethical, so that puts us far from our policy, let alone my own."

Patient, the Andean condor did nothing to rush their host. The latter himself did not appear to have the slightest interest in the bodies of those already dead. He closed the folder, again, with his foot.

"Jae-min," he sighed and even the wisps of smoke that escaped his lips ensnared a dark desire within. "I like being in demand but you introduce me to everyone and forget to do so in return... I'm disappointed."

Vaughn was familiar with his step-brother's limits and Kiku was the first who dared test them so brazenly and in such an effortless manner. While patience had never been one of the condor's core values, he was old enough to understand the difference between having an upper hand and allowing someone else to have it. He glanced to his left, catching an eagle's eye.

"Sullivan," was the start and end of his personal introduction, efficient yet clearly absent of proper information. Viktor did well to choose him first; Kiku found himself immensely entertained. He held the amber gaze of what he could tell was an attractive young man, lips curling slightly into a smile.

"Of the golden eagles?" Kiku was starting to see how these kids were picked. Hand-picked for a reason. Luka blinked with a pause, unsure if the other adult in the room had somehow revealed their personal information before their arrival. Still, his name would always seem to yield some form of reaction from the generation before his and Kiku's was no different.

"Laura always wanted a boy. She wouldn't stop talking about it, back then," he placed his pipe on the coffee table before him, resting the mouth on a tray of what looked like ash. "Two girls and I thought she'd stopped."

"Kiku." Viktor did not bring his students here to be tortured and it did not take a genius to know how Luka Sullivan felt about having a past he could not remember repeated back in his face. At present, he appeared blank.

"But your mother was very kind to me. She took me in even after I was expelled and thinking back, she was the one who taught me how to attract the attention of others. My sex, of course." He'd glanced over at the condor for a glimpse of his reaction and, satisfied with the results, moved on to the vulture seated quietly beside.

"Hello. Hi. Yes, you." Mischief tugged at the corner of his lips upon the meeting of their eyes. Black and grey. "Oh I'd hire you for sure."

Over to the side, the Andean condor had reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, shielding half of his face from sight. Vaughn was unsure which of the two career paths Kiku had ben referring to but either way, neither was any less criminal than the other.

"That would be disappointing," tried the vulture who never missed a beat. Except when it came to Iolani Tori. God, he could never beat that annoying little chirp. "I had my future planned out, and it includes being fortunately unemployed."

It worked.

The secretary bird laughed and in the dark depths of his eyes surfaced a swirl of mirth. "I'd allow that if it includes leeching off your brother for the rest of his life."

"Deal," committed Vaughn at once before catching himself. How did he know about Jae-min? And it was at a point like this that he began to see a little more of the picture than before, even after the birthmark, the confidence, the sheer power in the way he simply did not seem to care. Kiku was leaning into the conversation, clearly invested.

"He's gone very quiet since you two arrived," he sat up and rose from his seat, taking his time to retrieve the kettle in the middle of the room and every step demanded the drawing of a gaze to his legs. "It was either you or Mr. Golden eagle, so with the latter ruled out, I've got an easy task... and Jae-min's the role model kind. He likes to be the adult."

The rare smile he had on was troubling for Vaughn despite his very own experience with a human being who was for some reason attracted to disregarding the rules of conventional conversation and henceforth did not allow for the kind of manipulation he was used to executing. Added to that their odd acceptance and even welcoming of sin... it was strange even for the vulture's shades of grey.

Kiku poured himself a cup of tea, meeting Viktor's gaze before taking a sip. "You're looking for amateur killers. They should belong to two different parties. I cannot tell how many of them, from these pictures. So let's divide them by cut-ear and no-cut-ear, how about that?"

His audience regained some slither of vigour in their eyes, glad that they were finally getting somewhere.

"And the victims?" Given a taste, Viktor searched for more. "Hunters or just, predators?"

"I see both," hummed the secretary bird before going back to his fainting chair and lounging on it. "You could ask them. Eat their hearts and you'll know." He laughed.

And that was it. They'd reached the end of the bargain and Vaughn could at once tell that the contract killer was not willing to give up more than what he'd already done and yet, he couldn't seem to rid of the feeling that his step-brother had more up his sleeve.

There were two left.

The miniscule flame stove that kept the kettle steaming cracked once, slicing through the air like a sharpened blade that soon fell upon the shoulders of the quiet. Kiku had turned to the pair seated on Viktor's right, expecting to be mused further. Nothing came.

"Mm," he hummed as a prompt. "I'm waiting."

Both Zijun and Caiteng were staring at the leading member of the team, unable to grasp the current situation and, like their host, waited for some form of an instruction. Viktor's head turned, angling right to return Zijun's gaze.

"Uh, my name? Is, uh, Ye Zijun...? And he is, uh, Xu Caiteng," he enunciated ever syllable with utmost precision that took him nearly too long to get everything out. Kiku did not appear to respond as keenly as he did towards the two other students—his eyes, visibly guarded. There was more. In fact, he was almost certain that these two were Jae-min's last resort; something dangerous enough to deal at the final hand.

"We are belong to the feng," Zijun glanced in panic at his partner seated beside him, nudging the other for help. "Feng is, uh," he flapped his arms. "Red fire chicken... thing."

"Phoenix."

"Ah, ya that," the poor boy finished lamely, flashing a stiff smile and hoping he'd done his job sufficiently well. Whatever role he was to be playing in Viktor's game, he and the rest of the team were clearly unsure. This meant that it would have to be something only Kiku would understand and already, Vaughn was seeing thunder clouds in the distant.

"I don't know the phoenix," said the secretary bird. Careful. "And I don't see how..." Mid-sentence, he'd turned to the man in the middle and at once, a chord was struck. The bars of his cage trembled at the remnants of the sound, leaving the creature within fairly fazed.

His lonely pipe lay abandoned on the coffee table as he stood for a closer look at the pair and their faces. They hadn't been able to bring their Avians inside and Kiku never would have thought he'd have to demand the identification of a client's Avian. He needed to see.

"They look nothing like him." His gaze alternated between confused faces, calling upon a reinforced cage for the monsters inside.

Viktor had not wished to deal the card. Winning the game would be losing long term.

"Just ask."