Just FYI - I updated the last chapter with the deal that Kurapika makes with Kuroro. I think this makes it much more clear, and allows you to understand more of why Kurapika made that deal with him.

Enjoy!

Gon and Killua left the department store wearing huge backpacks on their backs, bandannas over their mouths and large tinted goggles. And huge smiles, too; they were training again, just the two of them like the good ol' days.

"Osu!" Gon shouted as they left. You could tell he was excited; he pulled the straps tight and buckled all the miscellaneous straps of the backpack, which was stuffed with camping gear and had water bottles hanging down each side. Killua's backpack was the same except that it was stuffed full of snacks.

"Alright, let's go!" Killua shouted, and instantly they began to run, full speed, towards the desert. They zoomed down the street and were almost out of the gate when they ran by Chairman Cheadle, who deftly grabbed both of them by their arms.

"Ah, Gon and Killua," she said as they both fell flat on their backs from the sudden stop. "I've been looking for you today."

She then took out a map the Strathian Continent. The desert area was clearly marked out, as well as the borders for each country.

"It's good to see that you took up my suggestion to train in the desert, but I wanted to make sure you don't cause trouble for the surrounding neighbors. Please train as much as you want within this area." She shaded a strip of desert with her finger; it formed a path between the West Prakin and Natalic Union. "It might take you a couple of months to clear it, anyways."

Killua got up and rubbed his back while looking at the map. He thought it a bit strange that she would request such a specific area; the whole desert was practically barren. But he shrugged it off and looked at the stretch of land she indicated.

"We'll be done with that within a month, Baba - OUCH," Killua said as he got smacked by the Chairman in the head.

"Don't call me an old lady, Killua," Cheadle said, ticked off.

Gon sighed as he saw a huge lump grow on Killua's head. Killua never seems to learn, he thought.

They arrived at the desert shortly after noon with the sun directly overhead. Rolling dunes covered the desert as far as the eye could see.

"Gon why don't you work in that direction and I'll work over here," Killua said, pointing at two different dunes on the opposite sides of where they stood. They each seemed to be roughly the same size, rising about 30 feet into the air and about a thousand feet long.

Gon looked at the area Killua pointed at and nodded. "Osu!" he said, pumping his fist. He shed his backpack and tossed it onto the sand.

Killua did likewise. "Alright, let's see who can flatten theirs first!" He said as they both raced towards their dune, sand flying from where their footsteps landed.

As Killua reached the top of his dune he began to feel uneasy about his surroundings. He looked around, scanning for danger, but he couldn't find anything. There doesn't seem to be anyone else here... should I use nen to scan the area?

A blast from Gon's sand dune shook him out of his thoughts. We're probably the most dangerous thing out here, Killua thought to himself as he activated his ren.

Killua knew that if he wanted to train power, he would have to give it his strongest shot every time. He breathed in slowly, concentrating on gathering as much aura as possible. After a minute of gathering aura, he focused the nen into one point on his fist, and then - SLAMMMMM! - he punched the ground as hard as he could.

The sand below him seemed to disintegrate as it flew in all directions. As the sand cleared, Killua stood in the midst of a large crater on the top of the sand dune. While he was impressed with himself, he was also slightly disappointed that he was still about 10 feet above ground level. He had hoped that he could clear 30 feet of sand in one punch with his current power level; now it seemed like a long ways off still.

Yoshaa! Killua thought to himself as he moved to another spot on the ridge of the sand dune. Let's see if I can do better than that. He concentrated again, gathering nen to himself and focusing it on his fist.

SLAMMMM!

After about an hour, Killua was beginning to get the hang of it. The sand had a funny way of absorbing your force if you didn't hit it correctly, especially if you hit it head on with not enough strength. The best result, Killua found, was when you twisted your arm while punching; the sand blasted away in an even spiral from the point of contact.

He also realized why he felt so uneasy; the rolling dunes provided many places that an enemy could hide out in ambush. He spotted at least a dozen such places from his vantage point, and that was only within a few miles.

He had heard about the history of tension between the two countries on either side of the desert and he began to understand why - any attempts at traveling between the two by land would be easy pickings for bandits and other organized crime. A lack of travel between the two countries would reinforce the distrust of the unknown on the other side.

Killua looked at the large holes he had made in the sand dune already. He could see Gon on the other side of the hole, working down his own dune which had already considerably shrunk. Just having two sand dunes flattened made Killua feel much safer, as he could see much farther already.

Wait, the chairman asked us to do this to all the way across the whole dessert... is she trying to get us to make a land route? Killua thought about it and pieces started clicking together. One of the hunter exams was getting rid of monsters in desert areas close to the city. Another was to dig wells in a part of the desert that was extremely arid. It would make sense if the Republic of Prakin paid the hunter organization to do these things for them.

That crafty old hag, Killua thought to himself as he readied another punch.

By the end of the day, both Killua and Gon were drenched in sweat, but Killua looked the worse for wear. Boy, he was tired! His shoulders sagged, his breath was heavy, and he dragged his feet all the way home.

Gon also looked ragged but was just as cheerful and energetic as ever. He was an enhancer so his body held up better than Killua's, and his hatsu, Janken, was basically the same as what they were doing in their training. In contrast, Killua's combat style conserved his nen and minimized excess power so to use as much nen as possible and to constantly increase the nen amount was very tiring for him.

Killua almost regretted training so hard. Truthfully he should have stopped an hour sooner, but he couldn't let Gon beat him. Gon had finished the first dune by mid afternoon and was working on an even larger one, but it took Killua all afternoon to finish the first dune. That was stupid of me to try to compete with Gon's strength, Killua thought. Gon was already a monster at power; he has probably near double my strength, and he is not even at his peak yet.

They finally reached their hotel, and Killua wanted nothing more than to collapse onto a nice fluffy bed. The elevator seemed to take forever, and finally they arrived at the twelfth floor where they were staying. Killua fumbled with the keys, managed to get the door open, dropped all his equipment on the floor, and flopped onto the bed with a loud 'OOMPH'.

Ah... Killua thought, as he finally let all his sore muscles in his back and neck relax. It can only get better from here... He was about to close his eyes when a bit of movement next to his bed caught his attention.

He turned his head and ended up face to face with the young girl from the hunter exam. She had on a neutral expression, as if she was tired and bored of waiting for him all day. Killua blinked, twice, and then fell backwards off the bed, scrambling backwards on the floor until he hit the wall behind him.

"YOU!" He shouted at her, his ears turning red with anger. She was already half emerged from her hiding spot beneath his bed, and she yawned lazily as she dragged the rest of her body out from under the bed.

"Oh, Ema chan, welcome!" Gon said as he noticed her crawling out from underneath the bed. "Congratulations on passing the exam!"

"Oh, Gon san, Konbanwa. Can you help me to get Killua san to tell me how to pass the hidden exam?" she asked, standing up and dusting herself off.

"Oh, you know about that already?" Gon replied. "Ma... Killua isn't the best teacher - "

"She knows how to hide her aura and she doesn't even know about nen!" Killua exclaimed to Gon, pointing at her frantically. "What is she some kind of wild animal?"

"Ma, Ma, Killua, calm down. She's had a lot of your kind of training - "

"And she snuck up on me - " Killua interjected, his pride a little hurt. This little girl? Catch me unaware, and twice too?

Gon replied curtly - "That's cause she makes herself appear weak to you so you would block her out of your consciousness. It's her specialty; she did it a lot during the hunter exam."

Killua paused. Come to think of it, Gon was right. It wasn't that she had snuck up on him; rather, he had passed by her like she was a squirrel in a tree or a pigeon on a rooftop. She made herself appear totally harmless and to a hunter trained to spot danger, it was as if she wasn't there at all.

"Hmmphhh," Killua said, leaning back against the wall. "Well, you're way too much of a brat for me to teach you anything."

"Killua," Gon said, his tone pleading at whatever trace of compassion was left in Killua's heart. "She was raised an assassin like you and she wanted to escape that life and be a hunter."

"Gon, we don't even know how to awaken nen besides the way Wing san did it," Killua said. "It's dangerous and we've never done it before."

"I'll do it," Ema said with a serious, determined tone. "Please?"

Killua looked at Ema, her face full of determination, and then at Gon, who wore his heart on his face. It was completely obvious that Gon felt sorry for the girl and wanted Killua to help her. He sighed.

"Alright, Gon, we'll get Wing San to come over," Killua said with a tone of resignation. He took out his cellphone and dialed a number. Gon's face lit up.

"Hello, Wing san?" Killua said into the phone. "It's been a long time! How's Zushi doing?"

Gon was dancing around Killua ecstatically. "Say hi to Wing san and Zushi kun from me! Are they still training together?"

Killua waved Gon to calm down. "Oh, that's great. Hey, how would you like to come and do some further training with us here? We can spar with Zushi and help him develop his nen. Uh huh. Yes! That would be great? Great!"

In the background, Gon was shouting, "Yoshaaa! Zushi is coming to visit! I can't wait!"

"Truthfully," Killua said, raising his voice to try to drown out Gon's, "we have another potential disciple for you to train. Could you take a look when you come?"

There was silence as both Ema and Gon looked at Killua, who was listening intently to the phone.

"You will? Great! Catch the next flight over to the Strathian Continent. We'll see you soon!" Killua hung up, dropped his arm to the ground and gave a contented sigh.

"Ok, Ema chan, we'll get you a teacher for the hidden hunter exam," Killua said to her. "Now get out of here and give me some rest!"

Ema got up and bowed deeply. "Thank you so much!" She said and then ran out to the door.

In a dark assembly hall of one of the tall skyscrapers of Yorkshin City, dangerous people gathered. They were called there by the thought of bounty, thrill and revenge; five years before in the exact same location, hundreds of mafia members were slaughtered by a group known as the Phantom Troupe during the Yorkshin Auction. That incident caused a massive loss of wealth, power and control for the mafia community, and it had taken five years for new powers to rise, for wealth to start flowing in again, and for the mafia to once again govern the underground in Yorkshin City.

Their first order of business now that everything was back to normal - to get their revenge on the Spiders.

Sawada pushed the door open and went inside cautiously. He had managed to ditch Ursa his butler, but if he stayed too long, Ursa would get suspicious and start looking for him. He walked to the front of the room, past men with scars down their arms and giant weapons on their backs, until he reached the front stage. There, a man was sitting at a desk with a piece of paper in front of him.

"Hey, boy!" Someone grabbed Sawada by the shoulder and spun him around, inspecting his build. "You're too scrawny to join in the hunt. Come back when you're older, ok?"

"No, let him join," the man at the desk replied. "Even if you can't fight, you can be valuable for recon and other missions. Sign up here."

Sawada took the pen and stared at the contract. Killua's voice was ringing in his head, mocking derisively. You're ten thousand years too early to take on the Spiders!

I'll show him, he thought. With a surprisingly steady hand, he put his name down on the form and signed it. He looked up at the man at the desk.

"I'm willing to do anything," he said, his eyes cold and serious. After all that the Phantom Troupe had taken away from him, he could only see one thing in his head - their destruction.

The man at the desk smiled a knowing smile. "Me too, my friend. Me too."

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