SoulXHunter: Glad you enjoyed the chapters. Phinx will have a wonderful time meeting Orion (note the sarcasm). Feitan will have a pretty interesting reaction too. As rival assassins, I'm sure Illumi and Luna don't get along. They've met once in the past, of course, with the assassin exchange day. Except they've already forgotten each other. Feitan would get along well with her, especially after she handed him someone he could torture to his heart's content. I wouldn't make her friends with Paku, though, because it's a little too cruel to a friendless character to give her a friend, and have said friend die almost immediately.

laxusdrayer2324: Thanks! You always say such nice things ^^ I like oxymorons. They're fun to work with, especially when they become quite literal despite the opposite meanings. Haha-Hisoka has a lot of things wrong with him, so I don't know where to start. And I'm not sure 'Feitan' and 'nice' go together in the same sentence...

Juliedoo: Glad you had fun! Anybody who deals with Hisoka needs to have a few screws loose.

Guest (both of you): Don't you think so? The expression Hisoka has on his face in episode 43 when he looks at Chrollo was the perfect inspiration. His thoughts were definitely nowhere near child friendly...


Everybody eyed her strangely before her words registered in their minds, and half of the Ryoudan stared at Hisoka with shock and disgust. Luna could swear that, despite the blank face, Chrollo kind of… twitched at her comment. Her gaze turned to the leader of the Spiders. Surely that didn't surprise him. With all the lustful looks Hisoka sent the man, Chrollo had to know that Hisoka wanted to fight him, screw his half dead body senseless, and then fight him again. Repeat process if both still alive—or if Chrollo somehow dies in the second fight, have sex with the dead body and then, in the next five minutes, forget that Chrollo ever existed.

"The f—" Phinx began.

"Language," Pakunoda warned.

"Luna…" Chrollo said slowly, before he paused, took a deep breath, and proceeded to send the assassin and magician a very disturbed look.

Out of everyone in the room, only Hisoka looked amused instead of disturbed. Luna blinked twice. Oops. Had she said all that out loud? She thought quickly. What had gotten such reactions out of everyone? Hisoka's thought process? Her understanding of Hisoka's thought process? Or was it the things Hisoka was obviously planning to do to Chrollo?

Well, it was definitely not the third one. The Ryoudan was too twisted to be disturbed by something as mild as fighting to the death, violent gay sex, and necrophilia.

Chrollo stared awkwardly at her, for once at a complete loss.

"No, no, no, no, no!" Nobunaga burst out. "That's disturbing enough!"

Oops. Did she say that out loud too? When had she developed that kind of habit anyways? She really shouldn't say her thoughts out loud. If she did that during an assassination she was dead meat.

…She should probably slap duct tape over her mouth for a while. Having nobody to talk to but Chrollo, a cat, and two birds wasn't very good for her mental health.

"Nice tsukkomi," Feitan said.

"How is it disturbing? Feitan does worse when torturing people," Luna frowned. "Ah. I see. You're disturbed that I understood Hisoka's thought process. It's too easy to guess what he's thinking, you know. Everyone knows Hisoka wants to do that to Chrollo… And to all the other 'fruits' Hisoka wants to fight."

Nobunaga gave her a blank look. What in the world made the girl think it wasn't the third reason? Well, Nobunaga supposed that Hisoka's thought processes and the girl's understanding of Hisoka's thoughts was quite disturbing. But that she understood that Hisoka really would think those disgusting, disturbing thoughts that could send normal villains into a mental asylum, and that Hisoka thought those dirty thoughts about their precious, pure, delicate Chrollo, was the worst of all.

…Nobunaga's head ached. He was pretty sure his thoughts hadn't made any sense. The swordsman frowned. Would there be expensive medication at the auction? Because he was pretty sure he would need it if he had to spend more than fifteen minutes in the presence of all the Ryoudan members plus their pet assassin.

Feitan glanced at his danchou, then at Luna, and back to their dazed leader. He didn't understand why everyone was so shocked. He recovered after the first few seconds, and he had only been shocked at the idea that their Chrollo would ever let Hisoka top him. The rest was just a trivial amount of gore, and a bit of fighting. No reason to look like someone dropped a nuclear bomb on Meteor City. But everyone did look like someone killed half the Ryoudan, so Feitan decided that he needed to say something.

And of course, he could only ask the question that had been bothering him for a while. "By the way, why is there food staring at us?"

Luna blinked at Feitan, before she realized just what he was referring to. Her eyes widened, the girl startled that Feitan would even think about eating her precious pets. "Orion, Huginn, Muninn."

The cat walked into the moonlit area, the two ravens perched calmly on his back.

More than a couple members of the Ryoudan leapt back at the sight, weapons drawn. Orion took the chance to growl at Phinx, baring glistening fangs at the idiot who dared punch his mistress.

Hisoka raised an eyebrow. The cat had grown. He had just left for a short time, to take the hunter exam and stalk his new little apple, and the creature had grown to the size of a small bus. Orion was already bigger than his mother, if the corpse had been any indication. He glanced at his cute little assassin. Luna probably hoped Orion wouldn't grow any more. It would be very hard to feet Orion if he got any bigger.

"What the hell is that?!" Phinx half yelled, a fist flying out towards the oversized cat.

Fangs snapped, and Phinx quickly retrieved his hand before the sharp—and very large—teeth could permanently detach it from his arm.

Phinx liked his fists attached to his arm, thank you very much. Very hard to punch someone with no fist. And Phinx liked punching people. They kind of go crack and splat and thud.

"It tried to eat me!" Phinx yelled.

It took two seconds for Shalnark's eyes to light up. "A panteron! This is amazing. They're almost impossible to find, especially outside their habitat. And an adult sized panteron…"

Even as Shalnark sighed with awe, Luna let out a faint sigh of relief. So the cat wouldn't grow any bigger. It was already eating three cows each day. Thank goodness she was hired by a band of thieves. Otherwise she would actually have to buy food for the cat, and that would bankrupt her in days. At this rate she would have to feed Orion humans.

What? There were seven billion of them. Eating dozen or so a day wouldn't hurt anyone.

Well, except the ones eaten.

Luna sighed. As food, the Ryoudan was off limits. "Orion, don't eat Phinx."

"Yeah. Don't eat me, stupid cat!"

"He's an idiot," Luna continued. "You are what you eat, so if you eat Phinx, who has no more than two brain cells, you'll become stupid too."

"OI!"

Feitan snickered. Huginn and Muninn mimicked the sound, and the Ryoudan could see Phinx growing angrier and angrier with each millisecond.

"Oi!" Phinx repeated. "You wanna die?!"

"Tch. As if you can kill me," Feitan retorted.

"Phinx," Chrollo said, finally regaining his senses. "We all know you are as smart as an amoeba. Settle down."

"Thank you," Phinx huffed with satisfaction.

Chrollo blinked. "Point proven."

"Danchou, what are we stealing this time?" Uvo asked eagerly, taking the hint that they were back on track.

"Things from the underground auction."

"Which ones?" Shalnark asked.

"Ancient texts? Danchou likes books, after all," Machi said.

"No, it's probably games," Feitan cut in. "The most expensive ones in the world are for sale."

"Shouldn't it be gold and jewels?" Nobunaga drawled. "It's the basics."

"There's a lot of expensive art for sale," Luna suggested. She frowned, thinking for a long moment. "A lot of human parts too. Eyeballs, livers, hearts, body fluids…"

"What the hell are we going to do with body parts?" Phinx sneered.

"The same thing we do with everything else we steal. Admire them for a few days, get sick of them, and sell them," Luna retorted.

"Admire body parts?!"

Luna shrugged. "They're pretty interesting. Body fluids are quite colourful and pretty to look at, as long as you don't have to smell them."

Feitan smiled with satisfaction. Finally, someone understood him. There was a reason he became a torture expert, you know. Well, other than the part where torture could satisfy his sadistic desire to inflict as much pain as possible on a person. Before Phinx could recoil in disgust, Chrollo stood and interrupted him.

"Everything," Chrollo smiled. "We're taking everything up for auction."

"Kill everyone it is," Luna said.

"What did you expect? With everyone gathered, there's no way people stay alive," Feitan said.

"But then simply slaughtering everyone is a little… simple?" Luna said. "They won't be hiring anybody strong. Everyone's going to be so weak that we don't need to put in any effort."

"You have my permission," Chrollo said. "Kill them. Kill everyone who gets in our way."