It seemed that time was tangible and weighted; holding Killua firmly in place while the jester drew forth one effortless pace after another. Nevertheless, his instincts were peaked and flaring. Anxiety and adrenaline fought ruthlessly against their physical constraints; prepared to, at any given moment, propel the boy into action in spite of his better logic.

But this was no time for thinking.

And sometimes, you just have to 'do' and not think so much, should the situation call for it.

The girl's cinder eyes were glazed, as though she had surrendered herself to a very provocative daydream. She studied the painted face of impending doom as if it were instead the beginning of an intimate romp. Her fingers lightly traced the yellow gauze substance around her neck as she shifted onto the ball of her right foot. The two, yellow snake eyes likewise consumed her image with an expression that she could never rightly match.

"That's a very tempting offer," Hoshii suddenly piped up cheerily in response to seemingly nothing, "but I can't do that. I'm in the middle of a fight right now!"

The very corners of Hisoka's lips upturned and a low, melodic chuckle escaped him.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," he replied with only a hint of traceable malice. "After all, I'm going to be the one to kill him."

The girl giggled as though she had been somehow flattered, fanning herself with her hand. She batted her eyelashes exaggeratedly for a moment or two.

"You're a riot! Really, you are! But the early bird gets the worm, you know! First come, first serve! If you want to kill him, you'll have to fight for the right, sweetie! In that case, come on over here and let's tango!"

Running his hands through his hair and pursing his lips, the magician gave way to a poisonously seductive expression of his own. He studied the girl he had been eyeing thoroughly since their last encounter. She seemed careless and carefree; hardly passionate enough to fill the niche he had planned for her when they had initially met so many years ago. It seemed almost a waste to destroy her now, before she was ready.

Nevertheless, he supposed it would be a terrible pity to lose Gon this way. It might, he decided, do well for him to "wade" a little bit... to indulge just enough to maintain his throbbing urges. At least for now.

Gliding the very tip of his tongue across his upper lip, he asked in an elegantly lethal tone, "Is that an invitation this time...Misaki?"

Gon, who was seated aside on the ground applying pressure to the seeping wound on the right side of his chest, blinked absently. He pointed a curious finger back and forth between Hisoka and Hoshii.

"Do you two know each other?" the boy asked, surprised.

On the ledge above, the final two spectators absorbed the scenario playing out before them. Had he been in a more casual state of mind, Killua would have considered that it was quite sensible that the two had met before, given the circumstances surround the story Misaki had once shared in regards to a contract working in a casino. However, the fear that cradled him hindered any intelligible thought, and instead he simply fought within himself to discover a way to stop the current events from continuing rather than paying any real attention to the conversation taking place.

Illumi was admittedly the one taken aback by Hisoka's words. He had plotted this out so meticulously... Misaki had seemed the choice candidate to carry out the job. It was simple to find her and to convince her to do as he pleased. She was always alone and didn't appear to seek the company of others, excluding their own purely sexual encounters. He had assumed that that was only human, after all, and in fact worked completely in his favor that he was the only one she ever really sought for anything outside of a contract. As long as he had known her, which had been over a decade now, she had been an assassin, which gave Hisoka no reason to ever encounter or know her. And yet...

Illumi tensed, if only very slightly. His calculations had somehow been off. The plan was beyond salvageable now. The key to his undoing was the very girl that should have been the ultimate pick. Misaki was the only one that could properly prove his involvement...

A sacrifice had to be made.

Well aware that "Hoshii" was foremost concerned about destroying Gon, Hisoka made the first move to rouse her. He dashed directly at the girl with incredible speed. As he suspected, she made use of her umbrella to block his advance. This however, left her core quite open and without a second thought, the jester pressed his cupped palm against the thickness atop her chest, sending the girl sliding backwards.

"...I guess it was," the man chuckled in response to his own previous question.

Dusting off her bust, Hoshii simply winked and said, "Fresh!"

Wide eyed, Gon cried out, "Hey! That's not-...!"

"You gotta buy me dinner first if you wanna go there, hunnie!" the girl cut him off.

"Did Illumi buy you dinner? Or is he the type to skip straight to dessert?"

"A lady never tells!"

"Enough talk for now," Hisoka said dismissively. Waving a hand inward, he added, "Come here."

Immediately, the girl jolted from her position and a none-too-graceful assortment of flailing limbs came soaring through the air towards the man. Finding presence in herself again midway, her gloved hand sharply thrust the parasol downward, forcing it open and using the already existing momentum to redirect her vertically instead. Repositioning the umbrella above her head, Hoshii took advantage of the air resistance in order to delay her fall into her adversary. This unfortunately did little to frazzle Hisoka, and he simply swung the girl back and forth diagonally so that she was unable to at all control her landing. A sideways chop to the lower back found the girl hitting the ground with enough force that she bounced back up again.

Finding her way to her feet, the girl inspected the stretchy pink aura attached to her chest with Gyo.

"Oh, that sure was tricky! Just don't get this sticky gunk in my face! Or my hair!"

"Women are always so particular," he hummed with a grin, drawing forth his last aura-linked finger and removing the bright yellow gauze from the woman's neck, leaving in its wake two rows of evenly spaced, decorative knobs.

"Gah! You can't just undress a woman without her consent! Pervert!"

"You're so fashionably dressed that I'm just dying to know what you look like underneath."

"Play your cards right and just maybe you'll get to see!"

Hisoka opened his palm and from it, produced a small stack of playing cards. He shuffled them with indifference before randomly selecting a few and holding them between his upright fingers.

"Great minds think alike, don't they?"

"Stop."

The older Zoldyck turned to his young brother, inspecting his features wholly. The boy's eyes revealed the truth of his anxiety, but there was a formidable amount of seriousness there, too.

"It's one thing to make her fight me and Gon, but this is going too far," Killua continued, forcing calmness into his tone. "She'll die if she fights him. Aniki. Stop."

The two eyed each other intensely, the silence between them having its own hushed conversation.

"It's inevitable," Illumi stated. "There's no way to save her. I'll find you another girl to have your way with."

Clenching his fists so tightly that the fingernails drew blood from his palms, Killua straightened. He strained against his frustratingly insistent instincts.

"It wasn't an option," he pushed, his voice still deceptively composed. "Stop. Now."

Although she was quick to block, Hisoka easily held the upper hand. Even the girl's attempts to dodge were useless since having Bungee Gum fastened to her body. She was effortlessly repositioned and rerouted. Once she was able to catch on to any sort of pattern or rhythm to avoid the onslaught of the cards which pierced her flesh without mercy, Hisoka simply attached his hatsu to a different limb. Admittedly, Hoshii put up a reasonable resistance. Despite her deceivingly nonchalant attitude, she was however taking impressive damage with little recoil to boast.

Hisoka found himself becoming quite bored with the fight, very aware that the girl's battle sense was notably restricted from its norm. This was disappointing, to say the least, and even swinging the girl about to and fro was starting to lose its charm. Tossing her away a final time, the magician lazily flung a playing card coated with Shu at the back of her skull whilst she was amidst spilling out crimson from her lips, secretly lamenting that this once promising toy had let him down so terribly at her too-soon end.

However, instead of hitting its intended target the card fell to the ground, replicating a metallic clanking sound, and blocking its way was a very unhappy looking Gon. He allowed his aura to flow evenly again, lowering the arm he had covered with Ko to intercept the attack. He eyed Hisoka fervently, showing no open signs of his fear.

"That's enough, Hisoka," he insisted, still clutching the wound at his chest as he spoke. "I can't let you kill my friend."

Considering the extreme lack of amusement he'd gathered from his exchange with the girl, Hisoka gladly revelled in the firm resolve gleaming inside the boy's brown eyes. He bit his lip in an attempt to hold back his pressing urges as his senses sang.

'Gon!'

Something inside of Killua had stirred one too many times, and now it was awake and functioning of its own accord. It began tearing down the wall that he had so expertly built over the course of events, and his filter was thinning. The beating of his heart was venom now, and as the boy inhaled the situation occurring, his body leapt into action, diving off the side of the ledge and kicking off at unrestrained speed. The slightest twitch of the umbrella in Hoshii's hand was enough for him to understand, and without a second thought Killua took an unrelenting swing at the girl, knocking her into and through a piece of rock away from her target.

The suddenness surprised Gon, who straightened and turned to look upon the empty space where Hoshii had been only seconds before.

"Killua...?"

Withholding a response, the former assassin walked steadily toward the bruised and bloody figure of Hoshii, who was propped partially up against the rubble in the aftermath. His eyes hovered at the exposed pins that decorated her neck. He let out a shaky breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Hey there... Killu-tan," the girl sang out weakly. "Came to play some more?"

Balling his still tender hands into fists, he said simply, "Stop."

Calling upon what little strength she had left to grin wickedly at him, the girl replied, "Oh, you're so serious, Killu-ta-..."

"Misaki. Stop."

"I told you, it's Hoshii-cha-..."

"Enough!"

For a moment his fists tightened further before they loosened back into open palms at his sides.

"Misaki..." he whispered, voice wavering. He gathered the strength to look her in the eye despite his watery vision.

"Ho-sh-ii-chan."

The cracking part of him that had control now threw his arms around the girl's weak body. He instinctively angled his chin down to avoid eye contact. The thin stream of liquid stretching down his cheeks was warm initially before turning cold and uncomfortable. When the girl said nothing, he hugged her more tightly.

"Please... Misaki..." Killua exhaled, and his breath vibrated noticeably. "Remember what you said? You said that you respected me..."

He gritted his teeth for a moment to hold back the full weight of himself before continuing.

"You said the reason you couldn't kill Gon was because you respected me... Misaki... I know you don't want to do this. Please... come back."

"You're sure... a weird kid... Killu-tan-..."

"Shut up!" He panted heavily for a few seconds to level himself. "I know that I... didn't do things right, okay? I know that I'm confused about what I..." He paused, securing her frame more firmly against him as his voice became more aggressive and his body trembled. "I don't know what to do! Sometimes you act like you like me and then it turns out you-...! Then you go and tell Aniki that-...! Misaki! I'm sorry, okay!" His shoulders skipped softly as he repeated in a soft, rumbling whisper that lacked all the ferocity he'd unleashed moments ago, "I'm sorry... I have respect for you, too... I just wasn't strong enough..."

The pale boy's blue eyes widened as a flow of water separate from his own dripped down the length of his forehead. Arms encircled him, drawing a small gasp from his lips. Working up the nerve to face it head on, Killua glanced up at Hoshii's tear-stricken face. Her features had softened.

"Killua..." Misaki's voice responded as she dug her fingers into the knobs surrounding her neck. She let out a pained wheeze as she struggled to remove them, and as the high pitched clinking of the pins hitting the rocks below met the boy's ears, her body went limp in his grasp.

He crouched down on one knee to steady his grip and shift his hand positioning to better support her. It was then that he noticed, sticking out of the yellow band around her arm and the boot-top by her knee where the material had been severed in battle, two more needle heads. Furrowing his brows, he hastily removed the material. Just a little too quickly to assume any proper control of himself, he grunted and savagely wrenched out the pins, tossing them carelessly around in handfuls, hoping in his madness that Illumi was still watching.

When he glanced at her face again, a wave of relief washed over him. The last bit of fleeting sunlight left a single, slender line on her cheek bone- Misaki's cheek bone- highlighting a small smudge of blood. His blue eyes scanned the comfortingly familiar features- the gently pointed chin, the purple hair, the slightly larger bottom lip (bathed now in the leftovers of her life's liquid), the slightly too long nose- and a small, almost undetectable smile dominated his mouth. He lowered his ear dutifully to her chest, and was grateful to hear the (albeit slow) beating of her heart. Her right hand was squeezed shut, and a small bit of black cloth protruding from her curled fingers caught his stare. Using his thumb as a lever, he pried open her palm and inspected the article in front of him.

"Her bandana? How did that get there?'

Wiping the residue around his eyes and cheeks with his sleeve, Killua slipped the dark fabric into his pocket and stood. Misaki's limbs dangled clumsily in his arms.

Without looking up, he announced, "Gon, we're leaving. Climb on my back."

The green clad boy approached his friend, wanting to protest, but Killua was prepared. Using his hip for leverage, he managed to roll his injured friend onto his back.

"Take good care of them for me," Hisoka's voice called out deviously as Killua activated Godspeed.

Hisoka smirked as the trio disappeared from sight. To be honest, he found it beneficial that both Gon and Misaki were able to be spared. After all, he knew that girl would be a better fight and kill someday... both when she had matured and refined her abilities a bit more and when she wasn't being pushed to lose by a third party.

As the shadows of night began to set in, the jester's features turned all too serious and grim. He pivoted to face the cliff edge, where he knew Illumi was still watching, and shot him a look that could only be described as lethal as he allowed his blood lust to show freely...

A/N: Sorry if this was underwhelming. -_- We haven't quite approached the climax yet... but soon. Anyway, thank you for reading, reviewing, following, and favoriting. :)