Author's note at the end. Please read. ^^

Well, for those who didn't like the cliffy… (since there's not going to be much on the fight…)

Adan suddenly appeared before me, his loin-cloth fluttering. He leaned forward so I could clearly hear his whisper, his breath rasping his words into my ear.

'Is light.' My eyes widened. Such speed!

Something stabbed into my back.

With Dusky

'Hey, Sensei…' He looked up from his charcoal drawing.

'Huh?'

'Do you think that…' I fiddled with my fried fish, its googly eyes practically falling out of its small charred head, its mouth gaping wide open to show a neat row of sharp, pointy teeth. I chuckled a bit at my image of what Killua's face would be like looking at the fish ('It's staring at me. IT'S STARING AT MEEE!') and then went back to my original subject, my face growing sombre again.

'Yeah?' He had fully looked up now, sitting straight on the fallen log of his. By now he had realised that I got easily distracted when I talked, and so always waited patiently for me to keep on talking.

'Kurapika's getting more and more depressed?' I asked, while taking a huge bite of my fish and chewing viciously. My eyes watered. So fishy! No salt at all, dry, tough, and a bit squishy too. How can a fish be tough from overcooking while still being squishy from being undercooked? Yet here my fish was, both overcooked and undercooked. It was disgusting. I choked it down and took another huge bite. Maybe if I ate it fast enough the taste will go away…

I looked back up to my teacher. His eyes were sombre too.

'I've seen guys like him,' he started out, his eyes watching our little fire. 'They think about revenge, they want power to get their revenge, but in the end, the power consumes them and they die after they get what they want. Or…'

I had only finished half of the fish, but I couldn't stand its disgusting taste anymore. I gulped a huge gulp of water to wash the taste out of my mouth – for the record, eating something really fast does NOT make the taste disappear – and prompted him.

'Or…?'

'Or sometimes their actions give them horrible nightmares, and their actions haunt their every step. Most of the time, those people who end up like that get haunted for life, unable to move past the horrors of both what they have done and what made them seek revenge in the first place…' He trailed away, twisting his own fish in his hands. I looked down at my own emaciated fish.

'Are there any other ways?' I said sadly. My poor Kurapika…

'Of course there is. Sometimes, when people have had their revenge, they get confused.' I looked up from staring at the disgusting fish and stared at him confusedly.

'Huh? Why?' Sensei had settled in his lecturing position again, his knees wide apart and leaning forward on his elbows leaning on his knees.

'They've thought about their revenge for so long, and it had consumed them for so long that afterwards, they get confused. What do I do now? What can I do now? And sometimes…' He paused a little and continued on. 'They become murderers, thieves, people who deal with the dark side of life, since they've been living in it for so long to get their revenge that it has become part of their life.'

I smiled slightly, twirling the fish around and around. At least Kurapika wouldn't be like that. He had his clan's eyeballs to think about. That's one dark future road crossed out.

'But there's still the scariest path.' I sat up.

'What?' There was more? How could there be so many futures from getting revenge? The others were scary enough, and this one is even scarier? I shivered.

'You know, I once had a friend,' he said randomly. I looked at him in puzzlement. What has this got to do with anything?

'Umm… What has this got to do with anything?'

'Just listen.' I nodded, still confused. He sighed and looked up at the night sky. The moon was red tonight. The stars twinkled, and a breeze started, bringing a wave of coldness. I shivered again, and he started.

'I was really close to this friend. He was my very first friend you know? We played together, ate together, fought together… we did everything together. And he always had this dumb smile on his face.' I nodded. He never looked down from looking at the sky.

'One day, his mother was murdered.' His eyes darkened. 'He loved his mother. When he was younger, he was a crybaby. He cried at the smallest thing. But every time he went to his mother, his dumb smile would immediately appear and he'd just stand there grinning up at her.'

He looked down and leaned forward again, his eyes suddenly shadowed, making the reflected flames flickering in his gaze all the more bright.

'His family owned an orchard, and every day after school we'd go to his house and just run around playing games in his orchard for hours. One day, we ran to his house as usual and opened the door, just to see her lying on the floor with a knife plunged into her heart. In that instant, he changed. And he never smiled that dumb smile again.'

I twisted the fish on my stick slowly, listening hard.

'He thought no-one did his mother's murder case justice; the police gave up too soon, everyone stopped trying to find the murderer too soon, although they had searched for the guy for two years. I supported him of course, searched through old police records with him to try and find the guy who killed his mother. But after three years, I reached my limit.'

I nodded, and stared past the fish into the fire.

'I told him to give up, to stop searching and get over it, to try and live again. He didn't listen, and thought I had betrayed him instead. And one day, he found the murderer. And he tracked him down. And he killed him.' Thought so.

'But afterwards, he realised what he had done. He had found revenge, but he didn't feel anything. No satisfaction, no happiness in his action, not even the self-reassurance that what he did was correct, was the right path. He became haunted; he was tormented by his fears and doubts. Taking a life… is never easy.'

'What happened?' I asked tentatively.

'He was slowly driven mad… He suicided a month later.' I looked down.

'I'm sorry for your loss.'

'Me too, girl, me too. And I couldn't do anything about it. Revenge gets you nowhere, remember that.'

I nodded, and at that moment, Kurapika stumbled into the circle of light created by the fire.

'Dusky! You're here!' He was holding the glass in his hand and smiled tiredly at me.

'You didn't overwork again did you?' I asked, as I took the glass out of his hand and ushered him over to the fire and sit. My motherly instincts had kicked in. After taking care of Wind for so long, this seemed to have become a habit.

I drooped.

Does that mean I'll be taking care of people for the rest of my life?

He smiled at me and took my offering of fish, grimaced a little but ate it.

'So, when are you going to do the leaf on the water test Dusky?' I sighed and sat next to him, staring into the little fire.

'I haven't even got a calm steady nen to do it, it keep fluctuating doesn't it? I can't do the test thing until I have my nen controlled.'

Kurapika laughed a little at my forlorn expression and ruffled my hair a bit. I had cut it short, like boy short, when trekking through the bush with shoulder length hair started to get annoying.

'You'll get it soon.' He stood up and yawned. 'I'm sleepy… I'm going to sleep now, see you tomorrow!'

'Aww… already?'

'Yes.' He smiled at me and walked towards our little camping spot. Sensei and I lapsed back into silence.

'You know,' my teacher started. I tried to look alert. Sitting next to a fire always made me sleepy.

'Yes?'

'He only smiles around you.' I blinked.

'Huh?'

'It's true. Whenever it's just me and him, he has this serious expression on his face, and never minds his manners.'

I gasped. To Kurapika, manners were life! Then I paused. Wasn't this shown in the anime somewhere? Yeah…

'But when you're around…' He paused again.

One thing I had found about my teacher was that he paused a lot. He contemplated about stuff, and sometimes stopped in the middle of a sentence to gather his thoughts before starting to speak again, although he acted a bit childish at times.

'But when you're around, he seems to be a bit happier, and he smiles, and even laughs sometimes. You lift his mood a bit.' I grinned, and was happy that it was night, because the firelight made my face red anyway.

'Really?'

'Yup. Are you two going out or something?' I started waving my arms around.

'No! Nonononononono, we're not going out yet!' His eyes took on a gleam.

'Oh… What's with the yet?' He emphasised the yet. I growled and inwardly cursed him in my brain. I could understand why Kurapika wasn't as respectful to Sensei as he was supposed to be.

'Brush off. I like him. So what?' He grinned.

'Nothing. Come on, we need to sleep as well.' He threw sand over the fire, and then threw a bucket of water over the fire to guarantee that the fire was truly out (we wouldn't want to wake up in the middle of the night to a bushfire now, would we?), let our eyes adjust to the sudden darkness and then dragged me off towards our camping spot. Then he unrolled his blanket and promptly fell asleep.

I unrolled mine too, next to Kurapika's, lied down and stared at him, his forehead slightly creased even in his sleep.

'Stop Kurapika from turning too emo ok?' Wind grinned, slapping my arm. I scowled.

'That hurt!'

'Well, you can take it.' I glared at her.

'Just don't let Kurapika go too emo. That's all.' I grinned back at her, my eyes gleaming.

'Of course! Who do you take me for? I'm going to be Kurapika's future wife!' Wind sighed and slapped her palm to her forehead.

'So self-obsessed… How could I have such a friend?' I slapped her in the arm hard. This time, she scowled.

'What was that for?'

'What?' I asked innocently. She glared at me until she suddenly stopped.

'Hey… I just thought of an idea.' She lifted those bandaged arms and pointed at me. 'Hair! Catch on fire!' My hair caught on fire, and I stared in shock at my burning hair.

'WINDFAREST SANI, I'M GOING TO KIIIIIIILL YOOOOOOOOOOU!' I yelled as I doused my head in water. She grinned, pulled an eyelid down and ran away.

I grinned at the memory, but stared at Kurapika again.

I had been so confident then. But now… but now it didn't seem so easy.

Sigh… Kurapika, what do I do with you?

With Jeb

'Rosemaryyyyy!' Jeb sang as he got out of the transporter. His girlfriend came out of the doorway.

'What? Out of prison already? That was quick.'

'Yup! How are you Rosemary?' He ran up to her and hugged her. She looked the other way.

'Well, I didn't miss a certain idiot that's making my hair messy right now.' Jeb stood a little ways back, grinning widely.

'Oh my, I did make it messy!' She glared at him and held out a hand. Jeb stared at it blankly.

'Uhhhhh, what do you want me to do?' She tapped her foot impatiently.

'My souvenir of course! What else?' Jeb gulped.

'Sorry Rosemary… I forgot to get souvenirs.' She glared.

'You got a free trip to the upper universe and you DIDN'T BUY ME ANYTHING?'

'Ehe…hehehehehe…' Jeb chuckled nervously. 'Well… I better get back to work!'

'When did you ever think about work? I SAID COME BACK HERE!' But Jeb had already flown away, laughing madly.

Rosemary stood there, watching her boyfriend's quickly diminishing figure, listening to the echoes of his laughter, following the trails of light that streaked behind him, and smiled softly.

'I'm glad you're out. I missed you.'

Hello people!

This is colbub's sister speaking, because colbub is currently too tired to type colbub's own author's note (more like unbothered). Anyway, here is what colbub would like me to say:

"Thank you for reading! I'm sorry for the cliffy in the last chappie and not doing anything about it in this chappie!"

That's all colbub wants to say today. And colbub has given me permission to say whatever I want! So here's some background on colbub :D

colbub is an annoying, stubborn person who likes arguing with me more than listening to me D: colbub is uber lazy most of the time, and waking colbub up is like waking up a log, very different to Dusky and Wind when they wake up because they at least wake up, even though they yell/punch or whatever. Usually colbub just glares at me, or mutters incoherently at me, and then rolls over and sleeps again D: colbub also has very bad grammar :/

However, colbub is so imaginative ^^ colbub's ideas are so awesome that half the time it's hard just trying to catch up to colbub's train of thought :] colbub is also a very nice person, a bit dysfunctional when it come so socialising, but treats everyone equally and with a healthy dose of colbub's unique brand of humour. Which is hilarious, if you haven't noticed ;D and colbub is very VERY talented at all things musical :]

I LOVE YOU COLBUBBBB! XD

And that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed this peek at colbub, the person ^^

Nice meeting you all too :D

colbub's sister

colbub: … That's embarrassing you idiot. And you've forbid me from deleting this and peering over my shoulder to make sure I DON'T delete it so I won't… Please ignore her people.

colbub's sister: NOOO *voice dwindles off into the distance*

colbub: =="