Disclaimer: Hunter x Hunter and all characters (except Lucy) and some dialogue belong to Yoshihiro Togashi.

I apologize for all the changes in point of view since I know they're annoying. I must say that I get quite annoyed when people constantly switch point of view on me... but I'm clearly a hypocrite since I'm doing it myself. Also, at the request of my sister, I don't have the changes of PoV labeled in this chapter. I got told to "be professional" and not label them, since they aren't labeled in books.

Special thanks to Cookie Krisp, Sofia10Soccer, Snowy-Sonya, AcPa xox, 1412 karasu~

The title of this chapter reminds me of Kingdom Hearts... but no, sadly, Kingdom Hearts has nothing to do with this story.

Lelute x Lie x Heartless

Leorio walked off the field triumphantly after administering the antidote to the bald man. There was an air of confidence in his step. Lucy looked at the way he was walking off the field and decided he was even stupider than she had thought he was. Yes, using the poison was smart. But there was no point in leaving the man alive. He should have just killed him.

That said, the next opponent unveiled herself – a fox-faced woman with green eyes and reddish hair tied into pigtails. Although Lucy didn't think it was particularly odd that their opponent was a girl, it seemed as if Gon, Killua, Leorio, and Kurapica did.

"Can I face her?" Gon asked.

"Sure," Leorio said.

"You guys are pathetic," Lucy sneered as Gon walked onto the field.

"What was that?" Leorio shouted.

"You're pathetic," Lucy repeated, shrugging.

"How so, you stupid Mop Head?" Killua demanded irritably.

"You all think she's weak, just 'cause she's a girl," Lucy said. They probably thought she was weak too. How pitiable.

"Do you see any muscle on her that I'm not seeing or something?" Leorio shouted, angrily pointing towards her.

"You clearly have the intelligence of a fish," Lucy said. This woman could easily be use a similar strategy to Leorio's. Strength wasn't everything in battle. Shalnark had emphasized that point to her on many occasions. "Ever heard of strategy? You were using it just a lil' while ago."

Gon happily pranced onto the platform in the center of the room, and the lady smiled at him. Gon wasn't sure what to think of this girl, but she didn't give off any particularly disturbing chills, like Hisoka did. On that note, he had felt similar chills from Lucy and Killua at times… He knew why he felt them from Killua but wondered why he got them from Lucy as well. But either way, it seemed this lady wasn't a killer.

Lelute had been observing all of the people on the other team since they had walked in to the room. She could tell that the tall black-haired man valued his friends but often made rash decisions. The blond haired girly guy also valued his friends, but he was more cool-headed than the tall black-haired man. The silver-haired boy looked tricky and whimsical… but there was something about him that bugged her.

It was the same for the auburn-haired girl. Although she seemed like a normal kid at first glance, she was somehow eerie. When the black-haired man had said he had given the bald man a deadly poison, the girl's expression had seemed completely uncaring, as did the silver-haired boy's. The short boy with the fishing rod had looked a little worried. But then, when the black-haired man had given the bald man the antidote, the auburn-haired girl seemed to frown. In contrast, the silver-haired boy still didn't seem to care, and the fishing rod boy looked relieved.

Lelute was glad that she hadn't gotten the silver-haired boy or the auburn-haired girl as an opponent. They would be harder to ensnare in her psychological traps. But she had gotten lucky – her opponent was the fishing rod boy. Out of the group, he was definitely the most naïve and innocent. Lelute knew exactly how to take advantage of that.

"So," Gon asked. "How are we going to fight?"

The lady sorrowfully lowered her eyes to the floor.

"What's wrong, Onee-san?" Gon asked, forgetting his original question.

"I… I don't really want to fight," the lady replied in a meek voice. She coughed painfully.

"You don't?" Gon asked, confused. How was he supposed to fight someone who didn't want to fight him?

"I'm scared…" the lady said, collapsing to her knees and holding her head. "They… they…" the lady coughed again, more violently this time. "They… my family… they…"

"Your family?" Gon asked. What had happened to this lady's family?

"I… I just wanted to help them," she said, her voice quivering. "I didn't know things would end up like this…"

Gon didn't know what was wrong with this lady or what had happened to her, but she didn't seem like a bad person. "What happened?" he asked.

Lucy was totally unimpressed by the fox-girl's lie. In fact, Lucy had thought that the only place such far-fetched sob stories happened was soap operas. She couldn't believe Gon was falling for it. Gon was far too gullible. It was probably a miracle he hadn't been offered a lollipop by a random creeper and gotten kidnapped.

Sob, sob, cry, cry, whine, whine, cough, cough. Even if the fox-girl's lie was the oldest and most cliché lie in the book, she had read Gon well enough to know that it would work. Shalnark had warned her that the most obvious lie to one person may seem like an absolute truth to another. If a person was sly… conniving… cunning enough, they could see through which lies a person would and would not believe. This woman was quite the actress, with all those crocodile tears that she cried.

"Gon!" Killua shouted. "Don't fall for it! She's lying!"

So Killua had caught on too? Well it wasn't a huge surprise… he seemed to be pretty quick to catch on to things. Kurapica, on the other hand, was biting his lip nervously, as if he recognized that the fox-girl was lying but wanted to believe that she was telling the truth. How silly. Maybe he was overly vulnerable to stupid lies like this because of the slaughter of his clan… Who was his clan anyways? Lucy couldn't recall him telling her. Oh well.

Hmm… Lucy glanced over towards Leorio, who was staring at the fox-girl intensely, as if he was analyzing her. He looked worried and anxious. She wondered if he was feeling that way because he was falling for her lie or because Gon was falling for her lie. She seriously doubted it was the latter. This guy seemed to be decent at coming up with his own plans, but he couldn't see through another person's lie for his life.

"It's alright!" Gon shouted in reply to Killua. "I don't think Onee-san is lying!"

…Which was exactly why Killua had been trying to tell him that the fox-girl was indeed doing just that.

The lady wept as she told Gon about how her family had been poor, so she had been stealing to get food for them. One day, someone saw her while she was stealing something. She was too scared. She didn't know what to do. While trying to simply knock him out so that she could get away, she accidentally killed him. A few days later, a Black-List Hunter came to arrest her.

"It's okay, Onee-san," Gon comforted her, wondering what he should do about his situation. "Just give up if you don't want to fight."

"But but…" the lady said tearfully. "The other prisoners said they'd kill me if I did that…"

"Hmm…" Gon thought. He really didn't know what to do.

Suddenly, the lady was coughing furiously. She covered her mouth with her hand. Her face was distorted with pain.

"Onee-san?" Gon asked. "Onee-san?"

"I – " the lady began. Then she collapsed, her hand falling away from her mouth. Blood was splattered across it…

Gon stared at her in disbelief. What could he do for her?

"Leorio!" Gon shouted urgently.

"I'm on it!" Leorio said. "Open the bridge!"

Nothing happened.

"C'mon! Open it! This is a matter of saving someone's life!"

"Vote for it!" the ex-mercenary shouted. "Choose 'O' to let him treat her and 'X' to leave her! If you choose 'O' though, twenty hours will be deducted from your time, and you will forfeit the match!"

Gon looked back at his friends. They would certainly choose to save this lady right? They couldn't just leave her there…

"You guys aren't seriously considering pressing 'O' are you?" Lucy asked incredulously.

Killua sighed. He was frustrated that Gon wouldn't believe him. "That girl's faking," he said.

"What are you talking about?" Leorio yelled. "This isn't the time for that!"

"I agree," Kurapica said. "There's a slim chance that that girl's telling the truth… What if she dies because we choose not to believe her?"

Lucy shrugged. "I don't see why it would matter to me if she died or not."

"What's wrong with you?" Leorio demanded. "Do you not see the value of human life?"

"I simply don't see why I should care about someone who isn't part of my family. Someone who I don't even know."

"How can you be so heartless?" Kurapica asked quietly.

Killua stood there, staring at the floor. If that was 'heartless' then…

"'Heartless,' you say?" Lucy asked coldly. "Nah. I'm just not as goody-goody as you guys."

"But that girl might be innocent!" Kurapica objected.

So what? Killua wanted to say. Passing the exam was so important to Gon, Leorio, and Kurapica. Why would they lower their own chances of passing for the slim chance that the girl was actually telling the truth?

"Why should it matter to me?" Lucy asked smugly.

All Lucy was doing was voicing exactly what his thoughts were… he had been killing all his life. He was the son of the Zaoldyeck family. What was the big deal about the life of a single person that he didn't even know?

It wasn't a big deal. He was raised to kill people after all…a natural born killing machine.

"Grr…" Leorio growled at Lucy.

No. No! It wasn't like that. Killua didn't want to be that way… That was why he had run away. He had wanted to escape that kind of lifestyle. That kind of lifestyle where he would kill anyone for money. That kind of lifestyle where someone else controlled what he would do. He didn't want that…

"The more we argue, the more that girl's life ticks away," Kurapica said, bringing Killua back to reality.

"Damn it," Leorio cursed. "This isn't the time for this…"

Lucy glared at him irritably. "Whatever," she said.

They all placed their votes.

Lucy pressed 'X' even though she knew it was futile. Gon, Kurapica, and Leorio would all be voting for 'O'. She had wondered what Killua had voted for, until the vote came up 4 – 1. She had thought that at least he, who understood that the girl was lying, would have voted with her.

Not that it mattered. Even if Killua had voted with her, they would have still been the minority. Lucy sat against the wall. It wasn't just Gon – every single one of them, except maybe Killua, was naïve and ignorant. To be fooled by such a transparent lie so as to waste twenty hours… how pathetic.

If she had been with the Spiders, they would all have agreed with her. None of them would have chosen 'O' in that vote… they wouldn't even have proposed the idea of helping the girl. They weren't like these people, who couldn't even grasp some of the more basic concepts of life: Do whatever you can for friends and family, but it wasn't worth it to do things for people you didn't even know. Friends and family were more important than anything. A stranger – like that girl – was worthless.

Shortly after that, Leorio was cursing again, saying that the girl really had been lying… They had lost twenty hours of time for no reason.

Okay, I gotta say... everyone was way too gullible. But I made Leorio win, so someone else had to lose. I can't go around having everyone winning... that would be boring D; Sorry!

If anyone wants me to label the changes of PoV again, don't be afraid to tell me so.

Review please~ Con/crit is highly appreciated =)