"Killua, what do we do about this?" Gon leaned back on the heels of his palms.

Killua scoffed, bringing his hands together. "You sound so carefree when you say that, even though everything we wanted seems impossible now. Kurapika's only killing more and more." There was no need to strain his ears to hear the sounds of mourning behind thick walls. The Spiders were thieves and despicable murderers, but neither of them had wished death for them, not for Kurapika's hands to become further stained.

"Everyone," Gon spoke after a while, "is really sad, aren't they?"

The Zoldyck agreed wholeheartedly with that blatant statement, but he didn't voice it. "Pick a side," he stated, though there wasn't meaning behind his words. He wanted to support his friend, he did. But his methods, his line of thinking, he wanted anything but the pointless responsibility of revenge to be pushed onto Kurapika, a person who deserved better than the path he was pursuing.

His breath was quiet. "I can't pick both?"

Without calling him an idiot or flicking his exposed forehead, Killua merely shook his head side to side, swaying. "Nah."

Their thoughts were in sync, but neither could bring it out to discuss it as they sat on the porch in the quiet, less than an hour since Kurapika had left them all. Unable to or perhaps not qualified to feel as much as the others did, Gon and Killua had stepped outside, softly gritting their teeth and unsure as to what action was appropriate, what they should do.

"Kurapika shouldn't kill, end of that," Gon announced, crossing his arms and plopping his entire body onto the floor.

Killua sighed, and copied him in laying down. "We tried to convince him of that already, and how did that turn out? I can only think of one thing that has the highest chance of working, one way, but..." He trailed off, knowing that Rein, now, would never agree to any peaceful methods that would calm Kurapika rather than hurt him.

Light footsteps came up behind them. "You might want to convince him quicker," Lucky said. There was a wet darkness rimming his eyes and he crouched beside the two, his body relaxed except for his balling fist. "The Phantom Troupe, they... killed the Kurta clan? Well, of course they did, I knew it, somewhere inside. I just didn't... try to think..." His voice became tight, and he ran his fingers back through his mussed raven hair. "I've caused a lot of deaths with my Nen, though I didn't mean to. I don't know whether that means I can judge his actions or not, but..." He went quiet, and his words cracked. "I just didn't want him to die."

"On terms of wanting that, I don't think anyone did. No one. Kurapika only did it because he felt like he had to." Killua tilted his head back, ivory locks falling gently away from his forehead as he tried to look at Lucky. His eyes narrowed. "There's something else, isn't there?"

"Before he left, he talked to me."

"Ah, that stuff about drawing out the effects of your Nen peacefully or whatever? Don't worry, he's not one to lie. Your Nen has the possibility of breaking his chains, so it'll only be detrimental to him if he tries something stupid. You'll be fine."

"No, not-" His tone caught sharp, and Lucky had to swallow to calm himself down. "He said he was going to restore the Kurta Clan if he got my Nen."

"That's good for him," Gon spoke up.

"No, it's not. Remember? Equal exchange. If he gets back a hundred or so people he loved, then who disappears?" He looked the two in the eyes as they sat up, and spoke slowly. "Everyone he's close to now, and a bunch of random strangers to make up for the rest. Most likely more to balance out the factor of not knowing them personally. If he goes through with this... so many people are going to die."

Killua sighed in understanding, and lifted his head towards the sky. "Including us."

There was a heavy silence for a while as they all sat outside. Kalluto came out with the fabric of his sleeves tightly bunched up in his hands, knuckles pale and his head lowered as to cover his expression. But even then, he could not hide his bottom lip, bitten raw. Zushi came out not minutes later and joined them on the porch, lacking his normal enthusiasm. When he sat down, they could see that foreign blood had seeped into the tips of his white uniform, and he raised his head to the clouds as he clamped down on his tongue and added to their quietude.

The sun had passed from noon to past the treetops Rein finally came out, feet slightly dragging behind her as she walked towards them. Her wounds from fighting against their blockade and reinflicted injuries lay bare, all ideas of medical treatment towards herself thrown aside.

They looked to her, unable to speak.

Rein's gaze was pointed emptily at the ground. "He's going to pay," she said simply, her words airy and light. Her words held no direction, no motive. "That Chain User..." She slid herself limply to the floor, eyes a dark void barely outlined with a faint red; a waning light. Her expression was slack. "He's going to pay."

* * *

"If he's anywhere by now, he's most likely in the area where I was taken to be killed." Lucky drew a circle on the map as best he could to indicate the possibilities, hand shaking ever so slightly. "He mentioned something about a former boss, meaning that person who brought me there to kill me isn't in charge anymore. But whatever headquarters he had, there's a high chance that the chain user is still there, and that it's nearby in that vicinity." He stuck a pen behind his ear in deep thought. "If he still has that force of Nen-users, it might be tricky."

"They won't be around," Gon asserted simply. "Kurapika likes fighting on his own. He won't have a bunch of people he doesn't even know help him."

"So it's just us against him." Rein sat with an ice pack to her chest, her arm extended while Kalluto wrapped bandages firmly around her new injuries. Some of the color had returned to her, and her eyes held meaning when she looked to Gon and Killua. "I won't ask you to fight." She knew they would refuse if she did.

Kalluto knotted his last bandage into place and leaned back, arms crossed. He'd respected Feitan as a mentor, a teacher, but not only that. As someone close to him, a guardian of sorts, as a figure in his life he should have avenged, someone he should have felt comfortable killing for. But... "I won't fight." Kalluto turned his head to his older brother. "You want him alive, right?"

"Yeah."

Throat tight with guilt, Kalluto made his decision. As a Spider, he should have taken a different path. But first and foremost, he was a Zoldyck who could not make his elder siblings unhappy. Various scenarios had run through his mind, so violent and bloody that he had to force himself to tame his own thoughts as to what he would do to Kurapika when he saw him, perhaps a light gash with his storm of paper rain and nothing else. But he knew himself. Once blood was shed, all else would blur to him as he brought on the full strength of Dance of the Serpent's Bite, and he wouldn't be able to stop until after the job was finished.

It was a bad habit of his, torturing his prey and unable to see his victims as anything other than that until they were ripped to pieces. If he got in one hit, his assassin instincts would consume him and it would become a fight to the death. His loyalty to his brother came first, and as such, he couldn't let himself loose.

(It also frightened him, to a degree. Feitan, who had been so strong, who had made Kalluto feel helpless at becoming the best of the Phantom Troupe by showing him how utterly inferior he was... defeated.)

"There's all this talk about fighting, but I hope you haven't forgotten that our intention is just to go to wherever he is and convince him to take the chain restrictions off your heart." Lucky took the pen from behind his ear and pointed it at Rein when she tried to argue. "I mean it. In your condition, you'll only get more hurt. Think about yourself sometimes."

Rein resisted the temptation to deny this, knowing it wouldn't get her anywhere. "You too. If things start to look bad, bail and go to a place where Kura... that Chain User can't reach you." She glanced around at their young group. "With my chains, your targeted Nen, other connections, the only person who can fight is Zushi."

The boy stiffened.

"There's no pressure. Like Lucky said, the goal is to get the restrictions off my heart." She wanted to spit out bitterly that that was the deal on the outside, a Trojan horse that would let all her angered and negative emotions unexpectedly spill out as soon as she was able, but she refrained. "You don't have to come."

His words came quick, so simple yet not quite believable. "But Feitan-san was killed." His teeth clenched as he gave a slow nod and left it at that.

"Rein," Killua raised his voice, "you make it sound as if only we're going. The rest of the adults are out in town right now, but they should come back in an hour or so." Killua shrugged. "I mean if you're worried about anyone getting attacked and having to take things to the next level, the Spiders would be a lot more useful and trustworthy than us two."

Rein bared her teeth in sudden hostility, hot to the core. "I am not," she hissed, "letting you use them as bait."

While Gon only nodded, Killua sucked in a breath and remembered what his friend had said the first day they'd met at the lodge, why they would be alright in working with members of the Phantom Troupe. "Bait, huh."

Lucky cut in and pointed to the map, tracing his finger across a winding line. "There's a mansion here, led to by a road hard to access. The end of it is around where I was dropped off, and where I escaped."

"Then we know where we're going." Before anyone could react, she strolled over to the large doors and pushed them wide open with the full intention of walking out.

"Hey, hey!" Killua stood abruptly, and she looked back at him. "You're really sure about this? The only plan you have is a peaceful one, and even then you're set on beating Kurapika to bits, aren't you? I'm saying this for your sake. Stop it. It's a horrible idea."

She didn't reply to this argument and instead lowered her voice, determination acting as the pillars of steel holding together what otherwise would have broken down. "This," she said, turning back, "is war."

Feeling weight at her words, the others shuffled out behind her, not quite sure what would be ahead, yet a feeling of wariness deeply pitted in their stomachs all the same. One by one they got up and followed Rein, who knew the path to where Lucky had been by heart. They would go there, find the building where Kurapika was, and the things that followed would be what was fated to occur.

Zushi was the last to leave, shutting the thick doors with a thud that triggered his memory. They'd all left like this; Zushi had closed the door, and they'd gone off to rehabilitate Rein with no idea as to what horrible event could have happened while they were gone.

Only a few hours before.

The click of the lock catching vibrated through his entire being and sent a shiver down his spine.

Zushi took a few steps out before turning around curtly, and bowed deeply with his hands at his sides. "Thank you, Feitan-san," he stated respectfully at the building, quiet so as not to let the others hear. As time silently ticked away, his fingers dug into the sides of his pants, and his breath shook. "Feitan-san, I really appreciated getting to know you. Feitan-sa—!"

His sentence cut off as a teardrop fell to the ground.

The boy bit on his lip, but he couldn't stop them from trembling, and he struggled to keep his composure, to be strong for everyone's sake like the Spider had taught him to be. But he couldn't keep it up. The rigidness in his figure left him as he bent over and made a small, meek cry.

"Feitan..."

* * *

They traveled as fast as their legs could carry them, as fast as Rein's weakened form could keep up. She shut her eyes at any dark splotches in the dirt as they passed, and they steered her clear of the waterfall as they made their way to where Kurapika most likely was residing. They sprinted through the forest, hesitated as Lucky attempted to pinpoint where he'd been and which way he'd been led before he escaped, and carefully but swiftly made their way up a narrow, rocky path, praying Lucky's Nen wouldn't act up and send them all tumbling down the steep mountainside. All too soon, they were met with the sight of a large mansion, imposing iron gates separating them from the pathway winding up to a grand building of carved white marble, adorned with towers and story-high windows.

Every pulse of her blood burst in her ears. Rein held out a hand and pushed through the locked iron gates with a loud screech and a clang, the bars bent and warped from where her aura had made contact with it.

No one else around, no hidden forces deployed, she determined that it was indeed only Kurapika they were up against and stepped onto the grounds.

"Come out," she muttered under her breath as they approached the mansion. The faraway door grew closer before her eyes, gold accents shining so brightly it reminded her of his hair. "Come out," she growled, impatient. They'd arrived at the entrance before she knew it, and though she thought she'd been gentle, the doors slammed open nonetheless. "Come out already!" she shouted.

"I heard you." He emerged from the top of the staircase. "I heard you ever since you ripped through the gates."

Her blood went hot at how casual his tone was. "Then why didn't you come out earlier?"

"It..."

His voice was soft, soft and quiet and gentle and kind and all too wrong.

"It felt wrong," Kurapika said slowly, and her eyes widened when he'd used to same word, "to me."

She despised him.

"Kurapika," Killua spoke when she didn't reply. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Rein is here to get the chains on her heart removed." His words were pointed, deliberate, a hidden message to her to take matters no further.

"You'll listen to her, right?" Gon piped up. "Rein seems to be scared of them, and we don't want her to die, right?"

"Oh, I'd forgotten." Kurapika started to descend the stairs, his hand running down the railing before he reconsidered and brought his arms behind him in a respectful manner, though he would have to reach out later to withdraw his Nen chains anyway. It was clear that he was bothered, offset, but Rein didn't care. His suit was neat and clean, and his black shoes clicked lightly on the floor when he reached the bottom of the staircase. It wasn't his traditional garments like how it had been before, and though she knew she was mistaken, in her hate she couldn't help but wonder whether he was getting dressed up just to exterminate the Spiders.

He approached her, dull grey eyes meeting with a pair barely able to keep holding onto an agitated brown.

There was no way he could have missed it, how her eyes were moist and lined with red, how her fist was tightened to such a degree that her entire arm nearly shook from the tension. But even so, he raised his hand, and a taut line of aura formed from his ring to her chest. It crackled as he slowly pulled it back, links clinking together as the small blade at its end flicked into the air.

And with that, a single chain was withdrawn from her heart.

Thank you for sticking with my "I can't write action so I'll write drama instead" chapter :)

Me: Let's be nice to Rein.
Also me: So first she's going to have horrible burns and fall off a cliff, almost drown, and then she'll have a fever, have nightmares, lose her Specialist Nen, and just when she starts getting happy, we're going to make circumstances anything but. Let's also add 'danger of dying' to the list to top it all off.

(...I love it when I call myself out)