He made his debut gradually, entering the room first in body and then in presence. This was what the two soldier ants came to know him as: a weight that slowly grew heavier and heavier, till the heaviness could crush the very air from their lungs, and then grew heavier still.

There was already so much that he knew, yet something deep within was already urging him to learn more. Thus, he did not speak, but listened and looked, finding that his senses were apt tools with which to divest his surroundings. And in the other ants, he saw a depth that surpassed the deepness of a rock, or a bone, or a ball of meat. He saw through that depth to the very bottom, and he found there was much to learn from it.

All things considered, Rammot recovered rather gracefully. Sure, he was trembling in his figurative boots, but his broken dreams did not break him, per se. No, there was only one thing about him that was truly changed, one fundamental definition:

I am strong.

Because he'd not known what true strength was, but the weight in the room had taught him it. It taught him that his ambitions would fail like the unfounded, traitorous fantasies they were. One thing led to another, and he came to a conclusion like this:

I can be happy in servitude.

Shaiapouf inspected his left hand—counting all five of the long, slender fingers—and chose his first words to be, "How curious."

"Huh…?"

"That you're only realizing this now."

Rammot raised his head as an expression of confusion, Pouf easily surmised, and his own thoughts began to sour. What a useless ability he must have, if all it did was reveal what was already plain to see.

"M-my Lord?"

"Your existence has always been one of servitude," Pouf elaborated. "To diverge from this purpose would make you no better than the creatures you collect for the Queen—which, as you know, have no use but for their meat."

"Yes, that's true," Rammot breathed. "Yes, I understand, now. I live for the King!"

With a single, elegant flick of his wrist, Pouf decapitated the subordinate ant and caught the head by its long, rabbit-like ears in his other hand. The body fell forward to the ground, aiming the spray of blood well out of Pouf's way. "And you die for Him, too."

To his credit, Peggy did not rush to the body's side, though every muscle in his body did tense up with horror. All he could think of was, why?

"He thought he could become King," Pouf answered as he shook the blood from his fingers. "Besides that, he had an… aura, as you called it. So even without his crime to consider, he's more useful dead than alive; I'm sure he'll repay us in full with his nutritional value."

"Y-you can't mean… to feed him to the Queen!"

"That's exactly what I mean," Pouf confirmed. "You should do so before I decide the same for you."

Peggy's thoughts were scattered, panicky flecks of disbelief, conflicted only when his outrage and instinct for self-preservation collided. No regard for the King at all, Pouf disdainfully observed. He dropped the head to the ground with a squishy thud, and Peggy flinched at the sound.

"By the way, why is there a human hiding underneath that pile of bones?"

"This is the nest?" Gon breathlessly wondered. "It's huge!"

Indeed it was; the brown, lumpy walls peaked as high as any conventional skyscraper and stretched as wide as several suburban neighborhoods. Crouching before it in the forest brush, the irony of "feeling like an ant" was not lost on Kite. He didn't doubt that it had an equally massive underground complex, as well. Finding the Queen was going to be harder than he'd thought.

"Before we go in, I need to make a few things clear," Kite said, watching the two boys straighten their backs in attention. "First and foremost, our goal is to kill the Queen. If we make a scene, we'll be swarmed by ants with no easy escape route, and I don't know if I can kill them fast enough to keep us from being overwhelmed. So we need to avoid getting in fights whenever possible. Use Zetsu at all times, hug the walls, and stay behind me. Chimera ant queens are known to hole up underneath their nests, so we'll look for underground tunnels, first."

They nodded eagerly, wholly undeterred, but this only filled Kite with a more insistent feeling of dread. The nest was eerily silent as it loomed ahead; Ging's advice echoed through his mind, trust your instincts.

But there was no reason to run, yet. Nothing yet that he couldn't easily handle. And with every second delayed, more innocents were needlessly slaughtered.

"I need you to promise me, once more," Kite slowly began, "that you'll leave me behind if something goes wrong."

They both stiffened, but it was Killua who looked to Gon for an answer, strangely enough.

"We can't know how we would react in that scenario," Gon told him. "So any promise we make will mean nothing."

"Yeah," Killua agreed. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Kite knew he should send them back. Tell them that, if that was the case, he couldn't bring them along. But the fact of the matter was that he really, really didn't know if he could handle this on his own. It was the reason he'd let them tag along in the first place: he needed all the help he could get.

"Well, then," he sighed. There was nothing to be done about it. "Let's go."

They bolted through the nest's nearest opening, and the stale, putrid smell of decay hit them like a ton of bricks; Gon literally stumbled, hanging on to Killua's shoulder for support. Their sight was the next sense under siege when they turned the first corner and the moonlight disappeared. The two boys seemed to have above-average night vision—Killua, especially—but Kite could still pinpoint the moment they began to focus on his aura for a sense of direction instead of the path ahead. They walked unusually close to each other, even for two near-blind people, but if that's what made them comfortable, then who was he to judge?

Having En to scout out the area, Kite perceived their surroundings just fine, though he was painfully aware of the risk he took by not activating Zetsu. Even if they couldn't use Nen, many animals were nevertheless able to sense the Nen of others, and there had to be a few chimera ants that'd inherited this ability. All he could do was to mask his En with In and hope it was enough.

Then, Kite stopped in his tracks.

"What is it?" Killua whispered.

"Eight, eleven, twelve…" Kite muttered. "Too many. Over here."

In a silent burst of speed, he leapt fifteen meters ahead into a crossroads of eight more tunnels. The boys got there a second later only to find the area completely empty, Kite gesturing widely at them from behind the leftmost tunnel's corner. They darted to his side just as a horde of giant bugs flew into the room and left through a different opening.

"Okay," Kite whispered when the coast was clear, then turned his focus to the other tunnels. His En was large enough to test the ground for a downhill angle, identifying the path that would lead them deepest into the earth. The lower they went, the closer to the Queen.

So they followed that tunnel wherever it took them. And dodged some more bugs. And followed another. Until they found a hole in the floor that dropped down an unknown distance.

That hole made the dread hit harder, for some reason. Something in the back of his lizard brain screaming: This is a threshold. This is the edge.

"I'll go down first," Kite instructed, scooping up a pebble. "If everything's alright, I'll throw you this rock, and if I don't toss it up after thirty seconds, I want you to flee NGL and notify the Hunter Association."

He jumped through the hole before they could open their mouths to argue; the tension sharpened him, made him quicker to act. Luckily, there was no trouble at the bottom, so Kite launched the Nen-saturated pebble up through the gap in the ceiling.

And as soon as they all walked into the next area, Kite felt it.

"Run," he whispered sharply. Gon and Killua only tensed up, not comprehending the situation.

"Run—GET OUT—GO!"

But it was already in the room. Its character was mostly anthropomorphic—a testament to the Queen's largely human diet, a part of Kite sickly noted—with its main deviations being a pair of antennae and two winglike appendages hanging from its shoulder blades, as far as his En could discern in the darkness. The boys froze when its aura finally caught up with them; the bloodlust was of a meticulous, inhuman vacancy, full of insectoid chittering and clicks, and considering the fact that they'd been in Zetsu, no Ten to shield them whatsoever… Kite was surprised they hadn't passed out.

"WHOOOOAH, YOU'RE IN SOME DEEP SHIT, NOW! LET'S SEE IF YOU FINALLY DIE!"

And in that moment of Crazy Slot's indecision, the creature had already closed the gap, zoomed behind them, and blocked the roundish hole that comprised the room's opening. A truly unfortunate turn of events, that Kite hadn't had the means to force an exchange before the ant could cut off their escape route.

"BRRRRRRRRRRRR—"

And its wings were already unfurled, illuminating the area with a hypnotic, rainbow glow, and a wash of glitter fell over the air.

"THREE!"

His hand was already was poised to grasp #3, instinctively knowing it would be weapon chosen. Prior to this, he had held it only seven times in his entire life. Ging's only comment had been that he should get out more often.

Gon and Killua jumped back from both the ant and, inadvertently, the only exit, while Kite stood his ground between them and the beast.

"Intruders," the thing observed. "Here to ambush the King in His vulnerable state, I assume."

"Huaahh," Gon moaned before toppling over, and then the first wave of drowsiness crashed over Kite's mind, shaking the bearings of his consciousness. Killua was shouting something as he leapt to his friend's side and hoisted him up onto his back, seemingly unaffected by whatever it was that had overcome Gon and Kite—having a resistance to poison…?

Poison. The glitter. Kite reigned in his En to the span of the room and flared it hard enough to blow the specks away, and his head almost immediately cleared but for a lingering, ominous exhaustion at the back of his mind. Gon was still unconscious, and from the panic on Killua's face, Kite knew he understood there was no way out; being underground meant that they couldn't break the walls and expect there to be another room on the other side. Kite decided not to bother telling him to run at the first opportunity.

Pulling the hilt of #3 into striking position, Kite burst into action—

Only for the creature to ignore him completely.

Killua narrowly dodged its pounce, but the thing recalibrated instantly and worked to attack him from behind, where Gon lie defenseless. Kite lunged between them, swinging out his weapon with no regard to his own safety, but the ant beat its wings to sidestep him entirely—its airborne maneuverability impossibly precise, considering the shape of its wings—and came at Killua again from above. Kite's reach was long enough to intercept, however, and he managed to knock it off course. This time, the ant stuck to him, resulting in a brief, perplexing exchange before the ant broke away to guard the door again.

It was fast, yes, faster than him, but not to the point he couldn't account for the difference. What was more pressing was the way it attacked, with a distinct lack of technique that somehow still took a bizarre, unpredictable pace. It was unlike anything he'd ever fought before, which then helped him to focus on the more novel circumstances that could explain it. Thus, Kite's exceptional battle sense was able to draw two conclusions: this thing has never fought before in its life, and it can also predict its opponents' moves with a clairvoyant degree of accuracy.

When viewing things through the lens of fighting a psychic, the ant's focus on Killua began to make sense. It knows I won't leave without him, Kite realized. It knows that Killua's the only one it needs to chase.

And in the two seconds Kite took to reach this conclusion, his internal timer for the length of a normal lull in battle also went off. Why wasn't the ant attacking? What could it be waiting for?

Shit. Kite knew what it was waiting for.

And then something disturbed the edge of his En—still blazing at an unnatural intensity, the headwinds blowing through the tunnels—and all at once, a pack of soldier ants stormed the room. Kite couldn't move to address them, as the monster would charge the moment he turned his back; Killua couldn't even effectively defend himself on account of his hands being occupied with Gon. All he could do dodge, and the others were getting closer, and the only option was for Kite to end it now.

He had three seconds before the newcomer ants would reach him.

He did not kill the monster in that time.

And he aimed a backwards stab at the first of the ants, spearing it through the mouth, and he roundhouse-kicked the next, transmuting his heel into a blade-like edge that disemboweled it, and he tore out the throat of the next one, and he punched through the chest of the next, and he sliced off the head of another. And that's when the second wave of drowsiness hit him, augmented by the strain of a Ren eighteen meters wide after ten straight hours of a forty-five meter En/In combination. With this and the residual poison draining at his stamina, Kite could not stop his En from slipping.

The shock of the sensory loss was enough to wake him up, however. Suddenly forced to rely on his eyesight, he realized just how shitty the room's lighting actually was—and the monster suddenly knew it, too, closing its wings to submerge them all in darkness. He could hear Killua scream—

Kite seized his aura with all his might and pushed. The scene of the room came instantly—bodies at his feet, four more ants diving at his back, the air filling with glitter once again, and the monster hovering over him, for some reason. Kite raised his hand upward to defend, but the air above was totally empty. So where…?

Gon, lying on the floor. Killua, nowhere to be found.

"KILLUA!" he hoarsely shouted as he dispatched the next batch of ants. The monster left the range of his En; how far did it reach, now, anyways? Six meters? Two?

The third wave of drowsiness, stronger than those previous. He could no longer keep Ren and En up at the same time, so he was breathing in the glitter, again.

"Killua…!"

He tried holding his shirt to his nose, but the particles were small enough to pass through the fibers with ease. Kite fell to his knees and began to cough violently, his narrow shoulders heaving, the scaly flecks forming a sticky crust on the roof of his mouth. No matter how much he tried, he couldn't hold his breath for more than a second.

"Killua…"

Another ant jumped at him; Kite sprang to his feet and tore it in half. His vision spun, and he fought to get a hold of it, and his eyes fell on Gon, just another lump on the corpse-ridden ground. Stumbling over to his side, Kite stooped down and pressed two fingers to his carotid artery—a pulse. Still alive. Another ant came, and he ripped off its head with one hand while scooping Gon off the floor with the other. Ah, but when had #3 disappeared…?

Doesn't matter. He had to get out of here. Where was Killua?

He walked out of the room into the adjoining tunnel. Where was Killua?

Another ant turned the corner and rushed at him. A fourth wave of drowsiness filled his mind with static.

The weight of Gon in his arms, unconscious and vulnerable.

Kite ran away.

The sun was up, he dimly noted as he crossed the threshold of the great tree between NGL and Rokario. Kite collapsed against the side of its colossal roots, Gon tucked under one arm. In gradual increments, he sank to his knees, bent forward, and set the boy on the ground.

They made it.

It was done.

"Hahh," he gasped out, sitting down. The glitter in his throat had only just begun to dissolve, still largely embedded in the pharyngeal walls. It did strange things to his head. It made the bright sky flicker. His skin crawled beneath the dripping of sweat. The shaking in his hands was so slight it was more a vibration than a tremor, like a plucked guitar string.

And there would be no going back, no second tries. It was over and behind him, now. He could not change the fact that it was him and Gon leaning against this tree, and not the other one they came here with.

Was it arrogance? Ignorance? Over-optimism? Stupidity? What exactly was it that brought him to this point? What brought him to the callous, revolting refusal to consider the fact that these two were children, it was children whose lives he was risking, children who he was sacrificing on the altar of his incompetence?

When the delivery truck slowed to a stop in front of him, he didn't look up. He only opened his eyes when the footsteps surrounded him.

"Nice to see you, Kite," Knov offered.

"Oi, is this the kid that was stuck to Ging's heel, all those years ago?" Morel inquired, following behind him. "Time sure does fly. Maybe you should've chased after him a bit longer, though. You look like shit."

"He's good, Morel," Knov informed. "This just means the enemy is quite formidable."

"Hm. If you say so."

"So what are we up against?"

He could say monster, but that implied precedence of a physical power over a mental one. It was an amalgamation of hundreds of NGL citizens, the essence of human intelligence extracted, refracted, and optimized into a frighteningly superior variant. Genetic curation on a level hitherto unseen by natural selection. A chimera ant Royal Guard.

"… Nen user. Poison specialist," Kite quietly rasped.

"Is that what's up with the kid, over there?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of poison we talkin'?"

God, he didn't know. The kind that suggested organ failure in tandem with overwhelming drowsiness.

"Airborne," he whispered. "Some kind of sedative. Basic filtration doesn't work, but Ren can blow it away."

Morel gave a boisterous laugh. "If that's the case, then I'll have no problem."

"But that's not all," Kite bit out through his teeth. "It can read people scarily well. And its aura… is something serious. It can probably do more than it's shown."

"Yeah, well, so can we."

"Do you still want a part in the operation, Kite?" Netero asked, speaking up for the first time. "We have room for you on the team."

Kite looked up at the truck's windshield, Spin and Stick watching anxiously from the front seat, the Chairman's impressive presence most likely the only thing keeping them from jumping out.

"… No," he eventually said. "No, I'm done."

"For the best," Morel approved.

"What about Gon, do you think?" Netero asked again.

"Gon?" Kite echoed. "He'll want to, sure. His friend's… still in there."

One way or another.

"Oh? Zeno won't be happy," the Chairman muttered to himself. "Well, I'm willing to give him a chance. You too, if you change your mind."

With that said, they walked through the checkpoint tree, and Spin threw open the truck door.

"Kite," she gasped as she crouched awkwardly at his side, unsure of whether or not it would be appropriate to touch him. "What happened?"

"I made a mistake," Kite answered flatly.

"What—"

"Let's just go." Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to his feet and staggered over to where he'd left Gon, picking the boy up by one arm and pulling him over his shoulder.

"W-wait; I can carry him for you!" Spin called out, but Kite ignored her, touting Gon to the back of the cargo hold and shifting him off on the carpeted floor within. As he lifted himself up onto the bench beside him, Kite met her worried eyes and sighed.

"Sorry, Spin. We'll talk later."

"… Right, of course," she nervously concurred. "You probably want to rest, now. Feel free to pass out."

But after the door shut and the truck took off across the wasteland, despite his heavy, drug-induced fatigue, Kite couldn't fall asleep.

Sunlight streamed into the inn's small room, and chirping outside the window was a bluebird—Sialia currucoides, his mind supplied. The doctor had just left with good news: no lasting damage, should regain consciousness in two or three days. Kite sat on the end of the boy's bed, having decided to stick around until he woke up.

It was the least he could do.

Monta, Spin, and Stick had elected to stay as well, though there was nothing here for them to do. Mostly, they just hovered around nearby and whispered concernedly behind his back. Kite supposed he should do something to reassure them, but he couldn't bring himself to care. There were only two or three days left.

"Where's Killua?"

But Gon didn't care to wait that long, it seemed.

"I left him behind," Kite answered.

Gon sat up a little straighter, no trace of lethargy in any of his features, almost as if he'd been awake the whole time. His eyes were bright and alert, in tune with the world around him. Clear days like this were meant to hold his gaze, Kite distantly mused. It was surreal.

"So he was out of reach, or something?"

"I couldn't find him," Kite muttered. "And I was almost unconscious. So I ran."

"Ah. I see," Gon hummed.

Kite breathed in deeply and said, "I'm sorry." Not so hard. "Because of me, Killua—"

"It's okay," Gon interrupted. All that changed in his expression was the resurgence of a can-do spirit, that indomitable cheerfulness Kite had come to expect from him. It was almost as if everything was okay.

"Killua is definitely alive."