It doesn't feel like fate, but it should. That feeling, that inevitability that she's read about in books, it doesn't exist here, not as she steps along these streets, each stride bringing her closer to the palace that wavers, in her vision, like a lantern that pierces the gloom.

'Show me,' she had asked, not three minutes ago and Alluka had bent forwards, her eyes dipping into black, 'show me, take me there, but not too far; I want to walk in by myself.'

At this, Youpi's hand had tensed around her own.

'I can-'

'No,' she had cut off firmly. 'I want to do this by myself.'

And now she is here, at the gates, barring the only gap in the wall from the rest of the world. She could hear pacing from around the corner, the small thud of sand being stirred by a soldier's steps so she crouches then runs, leaping up through the air like a cat before her knuckles scrape over the barbed tips of the gate. And then she is free, leaving the worrying sound behind her as she races down the path, no, the road, something that sprawls out like a wide, dirt-filled race track towards a building that has more holes in it than a weathered carcass. She ignores the massive mounds placed beside it, buoyed up with the earth harvested out of the trenches around them in a makeshift moat, ignoring further the unpleasant smell of hurried burial and the bones that poke out from beneath like sticks; for deep below, she can sense the sullen smell of mummified flesh, wrapped down, beneath the weight. For she has no way to know their history, other than the few stories she pried out of Youpi before she came here, stories of a grand 'selection' and the inevitable cost.

But she can't help but gasp at the sudden, sharp burn that thrusts up through her feet as she passes these misshapen tombs. She knows instantly what it means; but doubts anyone else could feel it and the way it clings to cells, pulling, no yanking at the precious blood that threads its way close by.

So she races on, her thoughts too twisted with her own personal loss to offer up anything remotely close to sympathy for all the other lost souls stuck in this place.

Soon she is bounding through corridors, tapestries clinging to the floors rather than the walls, the wind tugging at their corners as it pushes in through more holes than the windows provide. And she stops, touching the crumbling scars these leave behind, seeing the way they expose fine red rugs to the outside elements, enough for their colours to stain, to drift down into a rustic purple richer than the outside skin of a grape.

Beautiful, she thinks, and then freezes, caught in a weird spasm of guilt. It occurs to her, in a way that it has not before, that her mother was blind, barred from witnessing many of the things she has always taken for granted. Would she, Kokoriko, growing up, have had to censor herself? Would she not be able to paint and point things out for fear of hurting her mother, knowing that no matter what, there was no way the human could have offered an objective opinion?

Kokoriko stares down at the tasselled corner she holds in her hands, then with a frown, lets her nails dig in, ripping it into little, streamlined chunks. The loose thread bulges out from around the sharp grey texture of the thorny barbs at the end of her fingers and under this light she is caught by the sudden perception of them being claws. She frowns again. When did that happen? Have they always been able to do that? Or is she simply growing, maturing, turning into something that can cleave through the local ecosystem rather than usurp it entirely?

She sighs and lets the rug drop down to the floor. And with a heart that feels heavy rather than hollow, she starts to wander the floors, head peeking out between pillars, as she catches scrapes of green and marble, small, regulated courts and gardens, fenced in as though her father wanted to guard them jealously and let no one see. With a jolt, she realises that it was no design of her father's that held parts of this palace hostage. No, he had merely come in and taken over the work of another, burying his way into a human habitation in the way Pouf probably envisioned her, or her child, doing one day in the future.

She shudders.

Eventually she arrives on the floors above. The scent of her father and mother have long gone of course, been whipped away by both wind and rain. But there are traces of them left behind. A broken board with scattered pieces, for instance, alongside a half-eaten bread roll, the shape of it worn down by the small gnawing of human teeth. And cushions, their stuffing, spilled or ripped across the floor, littering the nearby stain of blood on the tiles. Probably, she thinks ruefully, her father's work.

Her eyes, as always, return to the gungi pieces, drawn in by their closed off circles of black and white. Some of them are shoved away, hidden under shadows and the low-lying slant of the board. Others are arranged against the floor like fireworks, spread unevenly into dots that form, to the imaginative eye, giant serpentine coils. It is as though a god gathered everything up in one hand and then scattered them, thrusting them down into the ether of the floor.

But some are missing, Kokoriko notices. Even if she wants to, she could not play a game. And it occurs to her suddenly, to wonder if both her mother and father had felt the same magnetic pull to the board, to the game in the same way she did. And if Komugi could not see, perhaps her fingers guided her forward, acting as a dowsing rod against the smooth contours of the pieces. Perhaps, if she had lived, they would have shared a great many conversations after all, not all of them spoken, perhaps, indeed, having them live only through moves reserved solely for the board.

Gungi after all, is not something that can be merely viewed.

This thought cheers her up. And is, she suspects, what she needs. Proof that she was their daughter. Maybe it would have been clearer, if she had asked to go to the house they made their home, the sanctuary they fled to after the Hunters Society bombed this palace and sealed it off from the world. But here, was where they began. Where the first few moments, that would determine the making of the being known as Kokoriko, came to rest. Everything that happened later, would not have been so without the days her mother crept through halls that dwarfed her with splendour she could not see. Kokoriko can feel it, rebounding in her veins, this certainty that she was right to come here, to walk through the corridors and place her feet into the same places where her parents once trod. It is, she images, what stepping inside a church or temple must feel like, at least to a human.

'Ah,' comes a voice, as smooth as honey and as soft as silk. 'As I thought, I was right to trust my lovely intuition. It never lets me down.'

Kokoriko turns. She is thoroughly unsurprised to see Hisoka there.

'Hello' she offers steadily in return. 'What made you think I would be here? Aside from your...intuition.'

Hisoka beams and steps forward like a giddy child. His boots press hard against the small black lines that divide each tile from one another. 'Step on a crack and break your mother's back,' he half-sings, his eyes laughing at her as the honey in his voice sours and the silk in his tone, what little of it remains, clings to her ears like spider web. 'You should keep more of an open mind. Intuition, superstition, even the ones in little rhymes...they all lead us back somewhere. Sometimes they might even pull us forwards. After all, yours dragged you here, hmm?'

Kokoriko tilts her head to one side. 'Is that your way of saying you don't want to tell me how you really found me?' she asks, though she can't quite mask the doubt in her tone.

Hisoka laughs. 'My, my, you adorable thing. I am a Hunter you know. That title isn't just for show.' He flicks out a playing card from between his fingers out of seemingly nothingness.

Kokoriko scowls. The motion is too fast, too furious, for her eyes to detect little more than a grey blur.

And Hisoka smiles, one lone finger waving at her in reprimand . 'Don't be like that. Spoilt brats who don't get the answers fed to them aren't very cute.'

'You don't want me to be cute,' Kokoriko pointed out. 'You want me to start growing up and lay eggs.'

'Hmm,' says Hisoka.

She sighs. 'You do know that you walked through a landmine of poison to follow me, right?'

Hisoka frowns. 'I heard rumours, yes. But I can detect no real ill effect.'

Kokoriko twists her head to the side. 'Idiot,' she says softly. And she wonders at how Hisoka is so eager for pleasure, so much so, that he would eagerly throw his life away for a simple stalking session.

For she has felt the grips of the poison, of its lingering toxicity as soon as she passed the burial mounds, felt it rise through the earth to taint her skin. And she had felt something beneath rise up and answer, to twist and touch beneath her nen, which rose up, like a white flame, to envelop her body. She has never been, she realises now, truly healthy. There is something inside, in the beat of her heart, in the twist of her cells, stretched out across the lines of her muscles, drawing, like a bridge, from one part of her body to the next. It is poison, death, breathed into her from the cells of her mother and father, trudging alongside her every waking moment.

Perhaps it is because she has lived with it for so long, from the moment of her conception. Perhaps because she shares genetics with one of the most powerful beings who ever lived. But her body resists, not immune, never totally immune, and her nen now grows, racing against the memory of when her cells were just a little bit healthier, but still stronger, far stronger than the average human's, working through her veins, to repair and guide all at once.

It is strange, but she is glad than Palm and the others hadn't been with her too long. She didn't what to see them die from an unassailable cough, a cough she has, once or twice, heard barking out from the lungs of both Youpi and Pouf. A cough she is not sure will ever touch her throat, not until, at least, she is too old and sickly to use her nen anymore.

'I can heal you', she offers, 'it's not too late. It's been months, maybe years, I'm not sure how long. But it's weakened slightly. I can give you back your life; one that will last.'

Unlike Youpi she thinks sadly. He's lived with the toxicity so long it's became a part of him, slowly sapping his strength. She can shove it back, for a few months at a time maybe, but it isn't a cure, isn't anywhere close. Just another small offering for another stretch of borrowed time. How ironic that it took the awakening of her nen for her to see that she is doomed to lose them both, Pouf and Youpi, no matter her actions.

Hisoka stares at her, looking oddly perturbed.

'Fascinating...but foolish. I slew your father and he gave his life gladly, for you and your mother both. He would not make the same mistake you are thinking, of offering to show mercy for an enemy.'

'Mercy?' she says softly. 'No, I am not so sure that it is mercy that I am offering.'

She approaches him warily, fingers outstretched, and to her surprise sees him spring back a step jauntily, rather much like a startled horse. Frowning, she lowers her hand, feeling foolishly like she has a gun clenched within her fist, her fingers itching to direct the nozzle to the ground.

'You aren't frightened of me,' she murmurs, 'so why do you move away so fast? I can't hurt you.'

'Can't you?' asks Hisoka, equally as soft. 'I rather think you can. I don't know the restrictions of your ability, but if you heal, you might also be able to hurt.'

She grins. 'Oh yes. That's true. But if I leave you here, you will die, much quicker than you'd like. Where's the fun in that choice, Hisoka? Where's the pleasure?'

Hisoka pouts. 'It's true. I'd rather die with a hand in my chest, someone's fingers clamped against my twisting heart. The sonata of my pulse, the rhythm it would strike...it's enough to send me into a tizzy.' His grins widens into a leer and Kokoriko tries, pointedly, not to remember the way his eyes danced over Gon's form, not five hours back.

'That death might fit your character,' she says conversationally. 'But this one will too. Trust me. The nen that soaks through this poison, it is like malice incarnated within the ground, within the very air. I don't know the people who made it, but I feel that the intent behind those atoms that chip away against the bloodstream, is dark. Savage. Cold. Like snow building up over a corpse. I rather think you would understand those kind of emotions.'

Hisoka makes a face. 'It works a little too slowly for my taste. I can be patient, but only when the final result burns brilliantly. A little, I suppose you could say, like a firework.'

A firework, thinks Kokoriko, yes. I can make a firework.

'If you don't want my help...' she trails off loftily.

'Oh no.' And Kokoriko blinks suddenly, as Hisoka appears in front of her, crouched over so his face hangs before her own like a cloud blotting over the sky. His hands rest sullenly over his knees, relaxed enough so that the material of his trousers flows beneath, unhindered by tight creases. His nails, she suddenly notices, are tightly shorn into points, like tiny claws. And to her eyes, they glint.

'No,' repeats Hisoka, 'I am rather interested in what sort of punishment you would design for me. What sort of revenge.'

She flinches. And Hisoka lets out a knowing smile.

'Oh yes, I took away your Pouf, mother-murderer he may be. But it doesn't wipe away everything you felt for him...' he narrows his eyes slightly. 'Does it?'

She shakes her head, mute.

'Come on then,' he coos, 'let's see what you've got.' And then with all the casualness of a viper, he grips hold of her hand, and with a force so strong that she is jerked forward slightly, he shoves her fingers against his cheek.

She blinks. She doesn't understand him. Is he really so confident that he can survive her? Or...her heart freezes slightly as she remembers Alluka cheerfully telling her about her healing abilities. Or rather, Nanika's. Does Hisoka know about that? Will he try to threaten her into healing him? Or are there other people out there, people he knows, who could work up a feasible antidote to whatever she chooses to run through his system?

In that case...

She breathes. Remembers the books Pouf had sometimes forced her to read, his long fingers delicately pointing out passages he had found of interest.

'A monarch should be well-read,' he informed her, his nail tapping on the inky curve of a low-lying letter. 'Knowledge helps eliminate risks. Teaches you caution and prevents you rushing into traps. Makes you less gullible.'

Ah, she thinks fondly. You weren't always right, Shia-pouf. Here is someone who knows far more about the world than I do, and yet he rushes headfirst into my poison-stained fingers. He is so confident that he will either survive, or else what I put him through, will be worth the experience of learning, no, of feeling.

So she closes her eyes and concentrates, this time drawing on her memories of printed ink and fancy words, remembering the tap of Shia-pouf's finger as he read out each word in his clear, no-nonsense voice, imagining the grand flourish of each word as his excitement shone through his tone, transforming boring jargon into something fresh and new. His dramatics could sometimes rend dullness into drama, becoming a play he acted out with a hand across his brow, flicking away sweat, sometimes onto Youpi's very disgruntle side. He made her laugh, forcing the moment into something unforgettable.

And she is glad of it now, now that she can see into Hisoka and trace out the wry elements that bubble beneath. She can see the poison that spreads throughout his body, see it coiled up within his lungs like a rubber spring, ready to expand and strike. Gently, her nen touches it, stroking it so that it melts like a pool. Then, as though forming an imaginary fist, she grabs hold of it, dragging it away with a careful jerk, ignoring all the memories within the cells she swirls it away from, all the instincts that tell her that they remember what it is to be whole and undying. She leaves them ruined, torn, like blotted welts beneath the skin as she grips the toxicity and drives it home, into the bones, treading it down, deep down, into their very cores. And she watches as the marrow softens, trembles, more jellylike than ever before.

She takes time for a quick breath before she coaxes the poison into a baser form, for the first time instructing the cells within the poison itself to remember what they were, how they were separate elements before scientists brought them together in a beaker. Some were once closer to acid than venom and they start to eat, to paste bone and marrow together as they melt.

Hisoka trembles. She springs away. And stares as the hand, the hand he reaches out to strike her with, slows and crumbles, the flesh flopping into something mutated. The bones twitch, break, and flow like water within, and Hisoka's skin ruptures, wrinkling like a decompressing balloon. For he is a mess on the inside. A mess that forces him to slowness, slow enough for her to walk away. But not him. No, he'll have to crawl. Or slither. Like the snake you are, she thinks grimly. Look how I've made you finally fit your frame.

He chokes, dexterity lost as he fumbles, half-groping for a card.

'Goodbye,' she says. 'Perhaps I am more like my father than you thought. Worse, even.'

He cannot even reply.

Kokoriko turns, ready to leave the room. But before she can, a rich curve of brown catches her eyes. So she walks over and leans forwards, lifting away the thin slice of rock crushing its frame. A brown violin lies before her, its bow cast away and snapped against the smaller stones nearby.

She doesn't know why but she brings the instrument close to her chest, feeling it dig into the bones beneath. The wood jutts into her ribs as though in offense at how they mirror, even slightly, its own curved frame.

And then she cries, unsure of why.

Youpi is waiting for her, his feet solid and heavy against the ground outside the gates. He is kneeled, his back curved as though in solid prayer, as the ball of his thumb rests on the neck of a patrol soldier, pressing into the dip of his throat. The brown beard above touches his red skin, flirting with the brash colour as the wind gathers and draws it down, chopping into the sand-like waves.

Kokoriko sighs.

'You shouldn't have wished.'

'I didn't,' he says, 'the little girl told me I could ask. And she, or the other little girl, the one with dark eyes, could send me there.'

'Ask,' Kokoriko murmurs. 'Oh.' She feels foolish, as though she has failed some unseen test, one with an obvious answer. 'I-I never asked. I demanded.'

Youpi snorts, lifting his thumb from the human's throat. And, after one harsh, unbelieving moment, Kokoriko hears the man let go a shaky wheeze.

'You are the queen. You demand. It's what you do.' Youpi sys this calmly, with the air of someone for whom the world has fallen into its rightful place again. It is as though he has not done the impossible, and spared a witness to the foolish, sentimental trip to a place that holds meaning for them both.

'I think she would have liked it if I had asked,' Komugi says quietly. 'Then it would have been a favour. And if it's a favour...she can use her power as if it's something she wants to do. Rather than what someone demands of her.'

Youpi eyes her, then rolls his shoulder with an audible crack. 'If you want to 'ask' me to take you somewhere now, I'll do it.'

Softly, carefully, like a flower tentatively unfurling, a smile spreads against Kokoriko's lips. 'I'd like that.'

And, as if it were really that simple, Youpi's hand closes over her own.

Morel grits down on his pipe, pushing down with his teeth so hard that it almost cracks. Palm, at his side, stares down at the floor. At least, she thinks wryly, there's no blood on the carpet.

Meanwhile, Killua wraps another bandage around Alluka's wrist, his gaze set stonily on the cushion beside her. Yes, indeed, no blood had fallen onto the floor. Instead it has slipped down from Alluka's skin to flood the lining of the cushion she has set beneath it. But now it slumps against her side, the corner hanging against her sleeve like the slumped droop of a despondent puppy ear, and she is left to fight sniffles as Gon hovers over her, staring straight into her eyes.

'You granted a wish,' he said, 'and then you paid the price.'

Alluka nods. 'Youpi said he'd do it. But I said no. I...needed to know if I could pay the price for other people.'

Swiftly, Killua's hand lands on her head. And tenses, the fingers digging into her hair.

'That was stupid,' he says lowly, 'stupid and very dangerous.'

'I know, Brother.' Alluka smiles, something both sweet and sad in her expression. 'But I needed to know, just as I know that you would never have let me, had I asked. And I think the cost was softened slightly. Nanika really hates it when I cry.'

Killua looks at her wrist, at the way the joint forces itself into a screaming twist and then at the ball of her shoulder, and the way it's been forced into an eruption of bruises. He draws her hair back softly, enough to reveal the blotted purple of her ear. And feels the anger in him rising, in a sad, cold emotion that clouds his mind, the way it did back when Gon used to rush off and leave him behind.

'Alluka...' is all he can think to say.

'I'm sorry I hurt you Brother,' she says. 'But I couldn't let any of you hurt that girl.'

'She might hurt other people,' Morel says calmly, though everyone in the room can hear the red-hot strain beneath, that turbulent temper that rolls beneath and leaves his tone icy and composed.

Alluka smiles bitterly. 'So might I. That's a danger that will never go away.' She breathes in deep. 'But that never stopped Brother from setting me free.'

Sometimes revenge is not pre-planned. And sometimes it runs cold instead of hot. That's what Kokoriko learnt today.