Hey everyone! Rather than apologize for the extremely lengthy absence (do people even read these things?), allow me to just thank everyone for their continued support. And other stuff. I've been getting PM's and the like and it's been wonderful knowing that people like my stories enough to see how I'm doing. I am alive! Just busy! THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart (I always imagine hearts with butts when I say this line lol) and please don't bust out your voodoo dolls just yet!

Spotlight

Chapter Twelve: Bloody Redum

Ayaka learned the hard way that any other person holding the title of "floor master" was just as deadly as the man she scarcely knew. But what had she done to incur the wrath of Bryce Copperopolis?

In a matter of seconds, she was sprawled on the nasty hallway carpet on her way to unconsciousness, bleeding heavily from a cut just above her temple. This was nothing like sparring with Zushi. She was going to die. The pain throbbed like a festering blister inside her skull and for the first time in her life, the thought of dying didn't seem all that bad to her.

Bryce hadn't just punched her or whatever. There was something else, nen probably, that made his attack as painful as fire burning her skin. But why had he done it?

During their brief encounter, he had received a text message and then suddenly whispered a curt "sorry" under his breath. Half a blink later, Ayaka found herself on the ground. How he had managed to inflict the painfully throbbing wound on her head without moving from his spot she couldn't quite say.

But that did not matter at the moment.

All she could acknowledge was how terribly weak she still was, how pitifully and hopelessly insignificant her hard work had been all these months… and the startling reality that no amount of training, no amount of time would ever allow her the slightest chance to be on equal footing with Hisoka.

And it stung.

When she came to, she was alone on a small sailboat. Someone had taken the liberty of wrapping her head with sterile-smelling bandages for her, but the pain was far from gone. It took her a little more than ten minutes just to think clearly, and another ten more to brace herself to sit upright. She smelled like sweat mixed in with salt water and it made her want to puke.

As a vulture-like creature flew overhead, she decided it was about time to get up and figure out where she was.

She stood on shaky sea legs as her surroundings danced back and forth along with the miniscule waves that went SWOOSH every time she made a step; had the shore been any less calm, this would have been close to impossible.

There was something burning nearby. A sign of life.

The boat she was on had been carelessly tied to a lamppost and was docked by itself on a private pier. The wooden planks of the dock looked old and worn, the embedded nails holding them together rusty and brittle. Where in the world was she? Squinting her eyes and scrutinizing the floors more closely, she was able to make out watery footprints that led from the boat and into the forest. She glanced momentarily at the sky – the sun was burning bright and hot but the air was thick and humid. Since the footprints hadn't completely dried off yet, there was a big chance that whomever had left them was still close enough for her to catch up.

Or what if they were left there on purpose for her to find and follow? Wing's face briefly flashed in her mind and she wondered what he would have done in this situation, but she didn't know. Maybe she had deluded herself into thinking she and Wing had gotten closer over the last few months.

She hopped off of the boat and took a deep breath. She was on her own.

Instead of sand, the shore was riddled with a variety of colorful rocks and stones, some large, some small, some very sharp. She looked down and found that her tennis shoes had been discarded. What was it with people and confiscating her shoes? First Wing, now Mr. Stranger Danger.

She frowned. Bare cotton socks were not meant for the outdoors and she very much wanted to keep her feet unharmed this time. Wasn't there anything she could use to protect herself? The boat was completely empty save for a small flashlight, which she decided to take with her anyway since it was better than nothing. Whoever had brought her here – and who else could it have been but Bryce? – either did not care about her well-being at all or was a complete idiot who did not think things through.

But the most important question was… how did Bryce know her brother in the first place?

She grabbed onto the lamppost and hopped onto the steadier pier with a loud CREEEAAAK. Then it happened. Before she could take a step further, a blinding force shoved her back onto the boat. BAM! Nen. Oh, this was rich. This place was under somebody's surveillance and now they knew that she was up and about.

It was only then that she realized where she was.

The colorful stony shore.

The abandoned pier.

The smell of something burning…

Burning flesh.

This place had been featured countless times on the Arena's TV screens. It was so popular that it had its own cult following among the more hardcore patrons, many of whom never returned to the Arena because they presumably died. This was the gate to hell.

This was Redrum Island.

Hisoka licked his already moist lips. He had killed everyone on the island except for one particularly evasive nen user whom he had been trying to locate nonstop for the past two weeks – a young man, no doubt. Whoever he was, he was probably really tasty. He could barely contain his excitement.

Ayaka passed through the island's nen barricade after activating her Ten and followed the footsteps. This felt completely different from how she usually passed through Wing's or Hisoka's barrier, though she could not exactly describe how. Still, compared to Hisoka's brick-like wall, this was much easier to swim through.

She had walked about a mile inland before she encountered her first corpse. There was an arrow lodged deeply into the skull's eye socket and another on the chest close to where the heart would be, but the creature was so far beyond the peak stages of decomposition that Ayaka could not tell if it was male or female. She covered her nose and continued on, pursing her lips tightly to reduce the urgent feeling to expel the contents of her stomach. Her time at the Arena did not at all prepare her for a garden of rotting humans.

Maybe she should have stayed on the boat. Besides, the muddy footprints were beginning to thin out and she was sure that if she continued further down, they would eventually disappear. She had just decided to turn back around when someone grabbed her from behind, one hand covering her mouth and the other pinning her arm by the small of her back. She shrieked silently and instinctively raised her foot, stomping on the man's little toe with so much force that he yelped and let her go.

Without turning back, she darted towards the trees away from the paved road, only to be captured by another man who had jumped down from one of the thicker branches.

"Aya, stop! It's me!"

The voice failed to register as she grabbed the flashlight and hit him on the side of his head, not once pausing to see the damage she had done. The man groaned, a few droplets of his blood finding their way on her face as she ran past him.

"Aya! I said… stop!"

In an instant, she felt her eyelids shut like she had been possessed by the demon of sleep, and being unable to see the large tree root in front of her, she eventually tripped herself and fell face first into a puddle of mud.

Her ears rang as she struggled to breathe, watered down earth gurgling into her mouth and forcing her to gag. GLUG! GLUG! A few seconds later, someone had grabbed her shirt and pulled her before she drowned in the dirt.

"Aya! You're okay. Shit, he probably heard us. Bryce, cover us, will you? We'll meet you down south."

"Don't tell me what to do!"

"Just do it! Or we'll both be dead before sundown!"

Beating heart,

I'm still alive

Air in my lungs,

The last breath

Ryuu brought her to a cave the size of a janitor's closet. Sleeping bags, electric lamps, and food wrappers littered the floor.

"Sorry about this, Aya," Ryuu muttered as he ushered her into the small space beneath what looked like a small hill. His voice bounced off of the walls and it was chilly inside. "Here. You can sit right here. Don't run away, okay?"

Ayaka scoffed. "Ryuu, this is ridiculous. This is Redrum Island, you know? Redrum Island! What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?" As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt an immediate alteration in Ryuu's mood. She pursed her chapped lips and regretted lashing out. It's been so long that she had forgotten how to act around him, though seeing the way his face had darkened forced her to remember everything like it was yesterday.

She stiffened and fell silent.

"I need your help, okay?" he said firmly as he gripped her shoulder and dug his nails into her skin, making her wince. "Hisoka's going to kill you. Sure, he's here right now, but he plans to do it after he's been crowned the Redrum King."

The Redrum King. Winner who killed all.

He looked out the cave like the man in question was right there, and she couldn't help but look out as well, just in case. There was nobody there.

"What?" she blurted out. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Ryuu. Let go of me."

Ryuu's nails dug in deeper. He was really angry.

"I said, let go!" She shoved him aside and sat on the opposite side of the cave, caressing gentle fingers over the newly broken skin of her shoulder. Ryuu's bloodshot eyes were riddled with disbelief as the realisation set in, but Ayaka knew exactly what was going through his abnormal mind. "I'm not the same anymore, Ryuu," she said gently, taking care not to offend him in his delicate state. "I'll fight back. Whoever it is, I'll fight. Even if it's you."

After a few controlled breaths and a hard punch to the cave wall, Ryuu sat back down, allowing his anger to subside and the lines between his brows to un-crease. He rested his face in his hands. The space was so small that their knees were almost touching. "Sorry," he muttered. "Sorry."

Ayaka clenched her fists, unable to relax despite his apology. In the past, things would have gone differently. She would have apologised instead, assures him that it was okay, maybe even insisted that it was her lack of control and intelligence that caused their predicament, but she didn't. She couldn't do any of that.

"So… care to explain what's going on?"

Before Ryuu could supply an answer, Bryce had landed noiselessly by the mouth of their hideout. He was carrying a small dirty lunchbox, which he promptly tossed to Ryuu. "I found this. Should last us a few days." Ryuu cracked it open and spilled its contents onto the dusty floor.

"Ten bars of NutriPro. Good job, Bryce. Where'd you find it?"

"Up north by the boat. It was in some dead chick's backpack."

Ryuu distributed three to each of them, putting the last one back into the box as the emergency ration. Ayaka's mouth went dry. She was hungry, very hungry, but she wondered if the "dead chick" Bryce stumbled upon was the same corpse she had seen on her way there. She was going to eat a dead person's food supply, and somehow it felt wrong.

"You look confused," Bryce said as he tore the wrapping paper and shoved the whole protein bar into his mouth like it was air. "Ryuu, your sister looks confused."

"That's because she's wondering how we know each other."

"Oh…" Bryce chewed twice and swallowed. "It's easy. We've known each other since we were kids. Uhh, well, we're Hisoka's children."

Hisoka's students.

Ayaka remained silent.

"Uhh… Oh, also, Ryuu asked me to look after you while he went on a clown hunt, which was why I was invited into the Celestial Tower. But recently he learned that Hisoka apparently wants you dead, so… Ryuu asked me to bring you here. He's been texting me non-stop. See?"

Bryce presented his log of texts, which were full of stupid details like what Ayaka had eaten for dinner or how much time she had spent with Wing that day. Ryuu's spelling and grammar were horrendous, but that wasn't important.

"You were spying on me?!" she blurted out. Bryce shrugged in response. "Not exactly. I hired a hitman to do most of the work. You met her, right? Machi?" Her jaw dropped. Machi. No wonder there was something so off about her!

She sank down into her stone stub of a chair and sighed. "All right. Okay. Sure. So… If Hisoka wants me dead, and I'm not saying that he hasn't already tried to turn that into reality, why bring me here? Why deliver me straight to the devil himself?"

The two boys looked at each other and responded in unison.

"This is the last place he'll look."

End of Chapter!

Short but sweet.