Chuckling dryly, Rein lay back down on her bed with a hand to her forehead.

This was her life now.

Somehow, seeing the entire thing twice brought her a morbid sort of peace. Not a tranquility, just... nothing. Instead of that sick to her stomach feeling she'd come to dread, there was only a slow aching in her chest, eating away at the layers of her heart with a burning acid while she sat back and couldn't do anything to ease that pain.

Only her second time and she was already exhausted. Rein lifted her fingers to her ear. The bandage from Machi was there, meaning that while the day reset, she did not. Her memories stayed intact, as did every injury she acquired.

The padding of feet came down the hall as the scent of smoke started to dissipate.

Rein sunk into the blankets for just a tad bit longer. So her Specialist ability created a loop in time, one that was probably activated when her eyes turned scarlet. It brought a relief to her, knowing that if she failed, she could always try her hand at it again. At the thought, she scorned herself. What was with her carefree attitude, as if their lives didn't matter? As long as she could try again, was she fine with letting them go through that? Some savior she would make.

The clock ticked forward, and Rein brought herself upright, going to head out to start the day all over again.

The kitchen floor was already covered in milk, and Machi's bedhead was already pulled into a ponytail. When she entered, all their eyes drew to her, unable to hide their surprise.

"What..." Gon dropped the curtain he'd been pulling open, "...happened to you?"

"I'm fine," she mumbled. "Just a bad night. Bad dream." She knew everything had happened, but she couldn't bring herself to say it out loud. She knew she was just making excuses. She knew that logically, she should tell them. But she didn't want to, didn't want to make things any further of a reality. She should tell them, she should, then maybe they could be spared with warning. But she was afraid, and her tongue swelled, and she could only mutter, "I'm fine."

Even if she notified them on what she knew would happen, what good would it do? She could tell Machi to take care of her hands because at some point, somehow, they would be useless and she wouldn't be able to use her Nen. She could warn Lucky that he would be shot. She could inform Phinks that he would die too. Then what? Would it change anything? Would just the information somehow magically keep it from happening?

Machi's brows were raised. "You three clean up the mess," she ordered, shooing them around the corner and into the kitchen, leaving Rein out of their line of sight. She turned back to the girl with a pursed frown.

Killua walked in with a yawn, his eyes pausing on Rein before casting his gaze casually off to the side and sitting down.

With no leverage to send the boy away with, Machi simply ignored him and brought her attention to Rein for an evaluation. She sat her down and brought antiseptic. With a damp cotton, she started to dab at Rein's scratched arms, face, and her bleeding head, an unsightly bruise forming on it.

As soon as Rein remembered her tumble down the rocky hillside, her head started to hurt, and she winced. As soon as she'd set out early to go save Phinks at least, the fall had knocked her unconscious. Was it just misfortune, or would time only set everything to the way it was? She didn't want to imagine a world where she would never be able to change the future no matter how she tried.

"So," Killua said with his hands behind his head, his look sliding over to her. "Care to explain?"

She didn't answer, only clenching her teeth when the disinfectant stung.

"Good grief," he sighed, and sat himself up straight. "Oi," he told Machi. "There's a wound on her leg too."

Rein hadn't noticed the blood trickling down the side of her leg until now. She suddenly recalled a sword slicing her skirt and grazing the skin underneath.

Her red flannel skirt had become dark with the soil of the forest, ash from the fires she'd lit, and all the blood she'd reached out for. And as Killua pointed out his observations, Machi could finally see the bad condition her clothes were in. "Your skirt is in tatters," she said, picking up a piece of the fabric barely hanging on to the rest of it, worn down even more by the soot and dirt. "You need to get this off your wound."

Rein complied and started to pull off her skirt, disregarding the hiss it had on her deep scrape.

"W-woah." Killua stood abruptly, giving her an insane look before turning on his heel. "Not here, you moron!"

"Shorts." Rein gestured down at herself. "Look closer. I have shorts."

With a peek back, he did just that. "You know," he said, adjusting himself, "people aren't going to have the best impressions of you if you suddenly take off articles of clothing in front of them."

She shrugged, and sat back down to let Machi disinfect the wound on her thigh, letting him know she could care less and that he should too.

"Alright, who's the arsonist," Phinks grumbled, his sense of smell still keen even from the shower. He stepped into the area, rubbing the water off the base of his skull. Phinks halted at the sight of Rein, taking in the dark bags under puffy eyes, chalked cheeks, the blood and grime on her body and her torn clothes. The muscles in his jaw became offset as he ever so slightly tilted his head. He couldn't hold back the simple observation of, "Rein, you look terrible."

She evidently agreed because Rein announced, "I'm going to take a shower."

Her clothes shifted when she started to walk, and Machi held her back. "There's a tear in your shirt too."

That had happened the first time around, hadn't it?

The woman sighed, and brought Rein's skirt with her. "I'll fix them both while you're in there."

*     *     *

When your joints are cold, a hot shower melts all those away with a tingling feel, and Rein found this comforting as she simply stood and let the water hit her back.

Though the minutes had seemed to pass quickly, Rein knew there were more than four hours from the time she woke up to when they left to where Lucky was. But the trek there, no matter how rushed she'd tried to make it, had stretched out over another full hour. For such a long time, she couldn't possibly remember all the twists and turns they'd taken. Even if she forced them all to leave around five when she woke up, meandering for the right path wouldn't do any good.

She needed the map. She would need to know how to read it, memorize every obstacle, and get there as soon as possible to find Lucky before his attackers did. Then maybe, she could avoid cruel fate.

Rein had to act efficiently. To turn things in her favor, she couldn't waste time just like last time where she'd been frantically running around while waiting for Shalnark to show up. (Her rationality almost scared her now. Why so level-headed? Had she numbed that quickly?) Even a single second could not go to waste.

But to do that she had to prepare, and bring both herself and her Nen ability even stronger. Not her Specialist one, though she prayed it would hold up. Her Conjurer ability was the one she needed to work on. It took too long to conjure a certain type of stone she needed because this power was new and rough, nothing like the smooth and sanded masterpieces the other Spiders held.

She had one set stone, where if someone's Nen interacted with it, she would know their Nen ability. For other stones, she had to choose on her own from whatever traits they held. For example, flint could make a spark, which explained how she could set fires. Labradorite could reflect light and if honed, she could potentially blind her enemy. Hackmanite could... the possibilities were endless, but that wasn't the point. The important part was that a weak sapling ability wouldn't help. She had to get stronger.

And she needed time for that, time she...

(Had? Didn't have? She wasn't too sure of the answer and didn't want to know.)

The question came suddenly from the other side of the door. "What is this?"

Rein faltered for a bit, wondering what Machi could be asking about. "Oh, the phone? I got it from Shalnark. Looks ridiculous, doesn't it?"

"That could be an understatement." A pause as Machi examined it. "Rhinestones?"

"Shal said making it unbelievably sparkly will help me remember I own a phone or something like that."

"Though we both know this will do nothing to help the fact that you still don't know how to use technolo-" A loud yelp and crash echoed down the hall, and Rein could make out the swift rustle of fabric indicating Machi had stood quickly. "Luck...!" The sounds of Killua loudly crying over spilt milk and the laughed apology from Gon and Zushi soon filled the air afterwards, harmless banter and chatter. Machi quieted, and the thump of her back hitting the bathroom door echoed as Rein turned off the shower tap.

"He's not here," she stated.

"I know," said Machi, holding back a 'but'. "I know."

Rein started to dry her hair with the towel. "Are you worried?" There was every right to be. She knew better than anyone how fragile a person really was.

"No." A pause. "Yes. I don't... know." Machi wasn't usually eloquent. If anything, she was a woman of little words. But in those little words of hers, she didn't like to be contradictory, redundant, or useless. Every phrase would hold its different meaning to get her straightforward point across, and she was used to this kind of speech, the speech that let nothing go unseen or overlooked, yet now, her words held nothing of value. "I'm not sure."

Rein nodded absently, though she couldn't see her on the other side of the door.

"He's," Machi finally started, "like a baby. Like a helpless, destructive baby I should take care of. Yet somehow he's fine on his own. He's survived well." There was a shallow exhale. "But the circumstances are different now. I don't... know. I'm not sure."

Her uncharacteristic redundancy reached Rein as well. Rein cast the damp towel over her shoulders as memories from the past days—or today and its previous retry—came back to her. "Do you like Lucky?"

"Of course," she replied, though her words flew quick. "He was accepted by Chrollo, and tries to train hard under Feitan despite his unruly Nen. He's admirable."

She paused in drying herself off, and asked, "Is that all?"

"Do you like Lucky?" Machi returned.

Rein almost felt the corner of her eye raise at whatever ploy the woman thought she was pulling. "Yeah," she replied, trying to keep the doubt out of her voice.

"Exactly. Everyone likes him," said Machi. "It's understandable. He's the likable sort, I suppose. He may have rubbed people the wrong way with his aura at first, but he makes up for it in varying ways. After Pakunoda's death, he helped you. Despite being in his own difficult situation, he still decided to aid you. It's..." She repeated her words from not a minute before, but this time they carried a slightly different air: "He's admirable."

Rein cracked open the door. "Can I get my clothes?"

Machi realized her hands had stalled in their work. She quickly wrapped up the job on the spot and slipped Rein her mended outfit.

As she changed back into her newly fixed shirt and skirt, the tears and gashes from before impossible to detect, she thought about many things. Not words, exactly, that was almost too much for her fatigued mind. But ideas, such as the one of Machi with someone, in that way Rein didn't have much experience with. No one in the Troupe talked much of such things; feelings. And less had much knowledge of it, as far as she knew.

There were still stinging scratches on her body, but the aching under her eyes had ceased when Rein stepped out of the bathroom, a towel still over her shoulders to keep her hair from dripping further.

When she tried to walk down the hall, she collided into the woman who had just been standing there idly. Rein cradled her nose. "Machi?"

"I seem," she said, a tentative hand at her forehead, "to be a bit feverish." Indeed, she seemed to be—Her face was softly aglow with the same shade as her hair. Machi moved her hand to her chest, over her heart. "My organs also feel strange. But I'll still go on the mission. I haven't gotten sick in years, so it's most likely just a common cold."

With the bleariness gone from her eyes, Rein could finally see a bracelet on Machi's wrist. She quickly realized it was the one she'd asked Lucky to make with the woman, to help her feel better like he had helped herself. A bracelet of colored strings and loose ends that dangled freely, and Machi's eyes seemed to be fixed on it as she contemplated whatever illness she had.

Despite being much younger, Rein had an inkling of what those symptoms meant, and she almost wanted to break it to her already.

*     *     *

In the hours before breakfast for the third time, Rein studied. Pulling out books at the lodge and testing around on her phone, she'd been able to find various articles and pages upon pages of tedious writing, all on the makeup and atom anatomy of rocks.

To improve her Conjurer ability, she had to be able to conjure whatever type of rock she needed quickly, and branch out on types.

Shalnark was right. Making her phone so visually obnoxious had actually gotten her to look at and use it. She still needed some help, but she was improving. She'd been able to remember her password, and could open search engines with minimal help from Phinks.

She still couldn't quite wrap her head around it. It wasn't a dream or hallucination. Phinks was indeed there, grabbing the phone out of her hands and telling her which button to push, and messing up her hair after he'd done so. He was present and there.

Rein continued to study, flipping through pages as the sizzling of a pan filled the air.

It wasn't until Zepile sat down opposite of her that she began to take notice of her surroundings. The auctioneer had been so quiet until now, and after the hit on her head she'd nearly forgotten that she saw he and Zushi die together, he in a futile position to protect the boy from getting shot at from all sides with someone's Nen. Pain spiked through her skull, and for a guilt-strickening moment, she wished she hadn't recalled it at all.

"Zepile," she mumbled, her voice suddenly quiet. "Don't... don't follow after us."

It wasn't until he spoke up that Rein noticed he'd sat down right next to Zushi. "Hey, kid." He hadn't heard her at all.

"Yes?"

"Did," his tone was reluctant, "Phinks tell you about you and... me?"

Zushi gave a slight nod. "Yes."

All attempts at conversation ended there. The man looked away and so did the boy, unsure as to how they could possibly continue. Rein had heard about their relationship on the day Lucky went missing; Father and son. But for the moment, in all their worry, it seemed they both couldn't quite deal with the information.

On the side sat Phinks with his arm arrogantly over the sofa, looking at the two with his knee bouncing impatiently. Still, nothing more was spoken.

They ate breakfast (Rein had to admit she was getting tired of redo pancakes) in the heavy silence as Rein flicked through pages upon pages of the quartz content of granite. Though her clothes were restored to their former feel, there was no mistaking the new scars on her skin, and the bandaging here and there. They all eyed her with curiosity and suspicion as she read through swaths of information and waited for the call.

Machi's phone rang, and the woman was once again the first to pick up. "Where are you?" she demanded, and put it on speaker.

Q: Why did you decide to make Lucky and Machi a thing?
A: *straightens tie* it was through a careful consideration of both their character traits and comparing the dynamics and compatibility of-
Q: It was because their ship name would be Mucky, wasn't it?
A: shut up.

Alternative, funnier take on events that occurred with skirt (we're going to pretend there's no trauma):

SO: I'm waiting to publish next chapters until I've written past the part where everything gets fixed (Because you all need to be happy and honestly? Me and Rein too.) Short delay, but thanks for tagging along so far 😊