I have an announcement for those of you who've been waiting to hear about WH: I can't continue it anymore, for reasons I hope will be obvious once you've read this new piece I've foolishly started. If they're not, well... my writing style and the way I portray Kuroro and Kurapika have changed too much for me to bear picking up exactly where I left off. A rewrite would be more possible than a continuation, at this point, and I actually have half of the first chapter rewritten, but I don't dare put it up without the dedication to follow through.

I don't think this will come as a surprise since it's been years, and I'm really sorry it's taken me this long to put up an official notice. I didn't want to disappoint anyone, especially after stating repeatedly that I would never abandon WH. I apologize for breaking that promise, and... I hope that you'll all bear with me while I struggle to work on this one. My love for this pairing is still very much alive, it's just that I'll probably be writing in fits and starts because of time and other commitments, work being the primary consideration, among others.

Anyway, enough of my blather. ;;; This is set around Kurapika's latest appearance in chapter 339 of the manga. The idea to write pesky Kuroro actually came to me as a fic prompt prior to 339 being released, and from there it wasn't difficult to imagine Kurapika staying on with Nostrad and taking advantage of his mafia connections. And then Togashi blew up ovaries everywhere by officially drawing Kurapika in a suit.

Standard disclaimers apply; I do not own Hunter X Hunter and its characters. If I did there wouldn't be any of these distressing years-long hiatuses. I'm also setting the rating at M for fairly descriptive scenes of violence.

Chapter 1
Let Them Come

1

Kurapika was in a meeting with Light Nostrad when he felt something happen to one of the seals linked to his nen. The sensation was highly unpleasant, like a hole opening to swallow his gut whole, and he paled at the feeling of the seal getting twisted in ways it wasn't meant to be. He managed to keep his visible reactions to that one involuntary response, but the warning had come so suddenly, so sharply, and Nostrad had shrewd eyes despite his recent depression over losing his daughter's fortune-telling ability, and he could hardly fail to miss the sudden change in Kurapika's countenance.

"It's fine. I just remembered that Neon wanted to go to an amusement park today," was his immediate, dismissive answer to the old man's concern. He swallowed discreetly. Something sour was trying to claw its way up his throat, and the last thing he wanted to do right now was lose his lunch in front of his employer.

Nostrad nodded uncertainly, apparently not entirely convinced. Or maybe he didn't know whether to be amused or offended that his most trusted retainer would actually feel physically ill at the reminder that he was to chaperone his beloved daughter on a fun trip to the amusement park. After another moment Nostrad shook his head and sat back, seemingly content to settle with feeling amused. He must know that such public places were security nightmares, and even he wasn't so blind as to deny that Neon could be a handful. Couldn't afford to find fault with one of the few Hunters who'd lasted this long through each and every one of her tantrums, now, could he?

"You can take another contingent with you," Nostrad added in a manner he probably thought was kind and sympathetic. Kurapika wordlessly inclined his head—a gesture of gratitude he did not feel, but their exchange was enough to assure the man that all was well, and he continued their discussion as if the interruption had never happened.

This was where Kurapika took advantage of the old man's distraction to turn his senses inward, questing for the source of his discomfort even as he maintained the picture of the attentive retainer. It didn't take him long to figure out what had happened. His own conditions were fine, still wrapped snugly around his heart—amplifiers primed to implode the moment he made a mistake. No, it was the other set of conditions that had gone awry. The link was still there, but where the heavy weight of the target at the other end of the line should have been, only a void remained, like a bottomless well. A dark, bottomless pit, like a hunger that would never be satiated. The conditions could get triggered now and his nen would strike and find nothing to grab at, and disappear, uselessly, into that black pit.

Kurapika came back to himself just in time to hear Nostrad asking him about this month's predictions. His head ached, his eyes itched, and his hands felt oddly heavy as he pulled his phone from his pocket and reached for the sheet of paper the man held out to him. The paper that should be white was stained a pale red—everything was red, and he didn't have to lift his eyes to know that even Nostrad would look like he'd been dunked in watery red dye—and Kurapika blinked and forced himself to concentrate on the short list of names written on it.

"Danelli," Kurapika began with the first name, "has been wanting to expand his territory for a while now, and probably wants to know if it's a good time to start. Of course it's not. We warn him, but hint at the revenue that area generates, let his greed decide for him, and then tip the police off. Karasu—Karasu's been getting death threats again. I'll hire a mercenary through the usual channels and give him his aborted assassination."

Kuroro Lucifer had found a way to circumvent his seal. He was alive, not dead, because the link would have simply disappeared otherwise, and now he was free to use his nen, free to contact his subordinates, and Kurapika wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. They would be coming for him soon, the blond knew. The strange thing was that he felt completely calm—or perhaps numb would be the right word. Fingers flicked through the screen, his eyes skimmed over his notes, his mind detachedly came up with the solutions and his mouth automatically expressed his orders—and Nostrad listened, not once suspecting that his head bodyguard was thinking of murder, even as he rattled off the fake predictions the Nostrad family had started to give out to maintain the fiction that Neon Nostrad was still in possession of her clairvoyant ability.

"Feiying hasn't explained why his men were seen snooping around the east block. You can refuse his requests until he gives you a satisfactory answer. And Gomez—his wife has been cheating on him. We give him a scandalous divorce and force him to invoke the clauses of their pre-nuptial contract." And coincidentally rip their bank accounts—their secured vaults wide open, giving him the chance he'd been waiting for to dart in and steal another pair of his clan's eyes in the midst of the chaos that would arise from his predictions.

Nostrad nodded and rose, grim light in his eyes as he bent to place another stack of papers on the table between them. The meeting was over, the man could find no fault with his suggestions. Kurapika stared unseeingly at the name, birthday and blood type written on the sheet at the top of the stack. He had a few hours to construct believable imitations of Neon's elaborate predictive poems, and then they'll get sent out to the recipients. Nostrad didn't say anything else as he exited from the room. Perhaps he saw the intensity with which Kurapika was regarding the blank pieces of paper, and felt secure in the knowledge that his retainer was already hard at work composing those priceless poems.

But poems were the last thing on Kurapika's mind. He was thinking about the void in his gut, cold gray eyes unafraid of death, the pair of ghosts now watching him from the far side of the room.

Let them come, he decided. Maybe this time around he'd have nothing to stop him from finally ending it.

2

He could have succeeded, too; he was older now, more experienced, more ruthless and less bound by his moral compunctions, and perhaps the most imporant of all—his rage still burned as intensely as before, but time had surely tempered it so that he wasn't as reckless as his younger self. He could take on any one of them and win if only he could remain calm long enough to leverage his abilities to their utmost—or so he believed.

Of course, that was assuming the Geneiryodan were as eager to confront him as he was to fight them, but they had better things to do, apparently. Kurapika waited, and waited, and seven months passed agonizingly slowly with no further word and no movement whatsoever from his enemies. The height of his anticipation, that period of time where he could have faced them at the peak of his concentration and preparedness came and went, and it reached a point where all he had to show for his initial feelings of fatalistic resolve were frazzled nerves and near-unbearable amounts of vexation.

Kuroro Lucifer finally appeared at his elbow one fine Sunday morning, materializing out of the blue like the phantoms his group had been named after. To add to the ludicrousness of the situation, and insult to the injury, Kurapika had failed to recognize him at first, staring blankly at the friendly smile and scrambling to match the genial face against one of the hundreds of names he'd had no choice but to learn in Nostrad's employ.

"You don't recognize me?" the man asked in mingled surprise and hurt. He tilted his head then, a mischievous, almost coquettish gesture, and then raised a hand to draw his bangs up and away from his face.

Kurapika's hand jerked involuntarily as recognition slammed into him like a sledgehammer to the face. He was vaguely aware that he'd knocked nearly half of his scalding coffee right out of the cup he'd been holding, that his hand stung where the hot liquid had splashed against it, and that the stain was rapidly spreading across the table, but what was a brown blot compared to the red roaring to life, the blood pounding loudly in his ears?

"Black, one teaspoon of sugar and no milk." Kuroro was looking at the coffee he'd spilled. "For some reason I was expecting you to like cream in your coffee." And then he looked up, at Kurapika's eyes, and smiled. "Now that's more like it."

He'd gone without contact lenses for today. They were hard on his eyes, and he didn't think he'd need them on his day off. The blond cursed inwardly as he ducked his head, but the urge to keep tracking Kuroro, the need to check the cafe to see if anyone was paying attention to them soon forced his eyes back up. Alarm shot through him when he realized that Kuroro was moving to stand up.

"What do you think you're doing?" Kurapika hissed.

"Moving." Kuroro gave him a puzzled look. "It's obvious that you won't act freely here. Let's move to where you won't have to worry about an audience."

This wasn't how he'd imagined his long-anticipated confrontation would go. He felt disconnected from his body as it obediently stood up to follow the other man—he'd even snatched up a napkin to wipe his hand with, before carelessly dropping it on the floor. He couldn't be blamed, really; his thoughts had been blown into disarray, and he was barely managing to slap them back into some sort of order. It was a masterful stroke—he felt unbalanced and disoriented, and couldn't have reacted quickly enough, if Kuroro had decided to take advantage of his shock. And if he'd attacked at the cafe, held the other customers hostage—

No. It was no use beating himself up over it at the moment. It didn't happen, and for whatever reason Kuroro was giving him time to recover his wits. Kurapika could feel his mind finally slipping back into that highly-strung state, like standing on the razor edge of a knife, all points narrowing to converge on his target. He only vaguely noted his surroundings changing as they kept walking, the lively commercial district shifting into the bustle of the industrial area, then fading into the seedier ring on the outer edges of the city, all empty warehouses gone to ruin.

He spared a moment to wonder at the ease with which Kuroro was navigating the streets. It was easy to be suspicious and assume that the man had been here for quite some time now, probably memorizing all the important landmarks and routes at his leisure. Indeed, he was blending in quite effortlessly, and nobody was giving him more than a passing glance. The blond had only ever seen Kuroro with his hair slicked back and wearing black leather, too many belt buckles to be practical and the fur-lined black duster, and he hadn't looked too closely at the fake corpses that had tricked the entire mafia community into believing that they'd successfully rid themselves of half the Phantom Brigade.

Black jacket over a plain white shirt, blue jeans and dark dress shoes. No blue bauble earrings, and the cross-shaped tattoo bared for all to see, like some kind of fashion accessory. Kurapika took in all these details, as if staring hard enough could tell him what Lucifer was up to. With his sight entirely taken up with glaring at the man's back, it was left to his ears to pick up the shift in accoustics, the sound of their steps echoing around a vast, enclosed space. He took his eyes off of Kuroro just long enough to sweep them over the warehouse he'd been led to—a floor littered with debris, glass windows smudged with dirt, brown puddles on the floor from where rain had leaked through holes in the corrugated tin roof, and the carcasses of two forklifts in the corner, dead and long-abandoned.

"Well? Is this a fitting stage for your long-awaited death match?"

Kuroro stood waiting for him, arms akimbo and thumbs hooked through belt loops. The presumption he could see and hear in the man's question was maddening. He clenched his fists in reply, welcomed the rush of nen as it flared and enveloped his body.

"As good a place as any," the blond declared, and his voice, high and clear, rang overly loud through the warehouse. Somewhere outside, a rush of wings as birds—most likely roosting pigeons—took flight, disturbed by the echoes of his answer. The sound might as well have been a gunshot, and seven months of waiting finally boiled down to this single moment as they caught, and held each other's eyes, and charged.

3

Kuroro had decided, some time ago, that he wasn't going to kill the chain assassin the next time they met. Not right away, at least; there was the question of what could happen to him if the boy died. Him, and not merely his nen. The seal that had been placed around his heart was nasty, although he'd taken to seeing it as just a mere inconvenience; other people, apparently, had trouble regarding it as lightly as he did. The nen exorcist Hisoka had found for him had taken one look at the hostile nen wrapped around his heart and declared that removing it wasn't going to be as easy as could be hoped.

Long story short, the curse was still being fed power from somewhere, and unlike most nen curses, which were merely slapped on to you like a drive-by poop projectile, this one was almost alive. Something toxic and volatile, clinging to his heart like a demonic watchdog, and connected by an invisible thread (or chain, as the case may be) to its creator. To guard against the conditions triggering, Abengane had told him, his nen construct had to be there as a buffer twenty-four-seven. And if Kuroro wanted to be rid of the construct, he had to kill the source fueling the curse.

Abengane meant well, but the problem with that suggestion was that he'd only seen the seal. Kuroro had already faced the source, and he was dead certain that killing the Kuruta was as good as committing suicide. All that rage and resentment, an aura potent enough to overpower even Ubogin, and a direct line to his heart—it was a recipe for the best death curse story ever. Did you know about the infamous Geneiryodan leader, they'd say: he was strong enough to go head-to-head with two Zaoldyeck assassins, but he was stupid and went after a Kuruta survivor already linked to him through a previous curse. Too bad for Nobunaga's revenge, but even Phinx and Feitan had known to leave the chain assassin alone than risk Kuroro getting killed.

No, there had to be some other way. In any case, he had another more immediate reason for not dealing the final blow, and it wasn't something as logical. If someone were to ask him, now, why he hadn't killed Kurapika yet, he'd say, because. He just didn't feel like it. Kuroro swiped his knuckle over the corner of his lips and fingered the blood that came away, dashed along the side of his index finger. He took stock of his other injuries—his arms were bruised from blocking, and there was a spot on his side that actually felt tender. A sizable cut on his left thigh was bleeding slightly, but it wasn't serious and could be left alone for a while.

The chain assassin, on the other hand, lay crumpled on the floor by his feet.

It hadn't been an entirely one-sided fight—he had the wounds to show for that. He'd even commend the boy for his skill. Kuroro could see now how Ubo had been defeated; he'd been as a force of nature, huge and devastatingly strong, but it was mostly sheer brute force. The chain assassin was the worst kind of opponent for him—flexible and agile, driven, wily, and angry. Ubo would have underestimated that anger, and remained completely ignorant of the real nature of the blond's chains up until the end. That anger, however, was a double-edged sword, and it had another face that someone as straightfoward as Ubogin couldn't have taken advantage of: it was deleterious, as all variants of that emotion tended to become over time. Kurapika had started out strong, and fought impressively well, up until he started getting frustrated and began making mistakes. Still a kid, after all, despite everything he'd been through.

Kuroro paused in his musings. The blond was moving, trying to rise—and failing rather miserably. It was impossible, of course; he couldn't even breathe properly, not with lungs pierced in several different places.

Well, all right, maybe he had struck to kill, with the assumption that his opponent would be able to block or counter his attacks, but he hadn't expected the boy's self-control to have deteriorated to this extent. Kuroro crouched, folded his arms over his knees, and regarded Kurapika bemusedly. The kid was lying on his side, breathing laborious, a wet, rattling sound. The chains were gone, the face bloodless and white from shock. Red eyes glazed with pain shifted to look up at him.

How curious. And how utterly enchanting, the accursed color of those eyes. Every time he met them was like getting a little reminder of how he'd ordered the destruction of an entire clan over eyeballs he'd eventually lost interest in and disposed of—like finding scraps of notes pointing to things that had fallen into disuse, just because he'd nearly forgotten that he owned them in the first place.

"Hey, you'll drown in your own blood if you don't heal yourself," he remarked after another moment's contemplation.

The boy's eyes shifted again, as if to dismiss his observation, but Kuroro wasn't fooled. It was a move meant to avoid meeting his gaze. Kurapika had defeated and killed Ubogin, had come out of that fight completely unscathed, which wasn't possible unless he had prodigious reinforcement capabilities—which should be impossible given the fact that he was very clearly a conjurer. Remove that restriction, however, and things suddenly began to make a lot more sense, and the chain assassin had shown himself to be the kind of individual who'd seize any advantage made available to him. And he had five chains, two with very distinct abilities, three more which could be anything with his strange aptitude in hatsu he shouldn't even be able to use to any great effect.

Kuroro cocked his head. He felt more amused than puzzled, now that he'd figured out another part of Kurapika's abilities. "You can, can't you? Here, I'll even help you—"

He pushed the kid to lie on his back, grabbed his right wrist and pulled that hand over to his chest. It must have been agonizing; the blond gasped, and half-slitted eyes opened wide, but it was probably more from fury at being touched, than from pain at being jostled so roughly—scarlet eyes burned bright red, brighter than a few seconds ago, and Kurapika forcefully pulled his hand free of Kuroro's grasp. If he'd had more strength left he'd probably have resorted to slapping, but the hand, trembling with the effort of being held aloft, lowered and settled over where Kuroro would have placed it if the blond had let him.

What he'd said was true, though: the last Kuruta was going to die unless something intervened. And Kuroro saw the moment when the blond understood, and resigned himself to revealing how he'd save himself from that fate; the chains reappeared, and the one on Kurapika's thumb detached and wound itself around his body, under his neck and out on the other side.

Kuroro smiled to himself and blinked once, quickly, in preparation. He wasn't going to miss this for the world, not with his physical sight or his nen-enhanced one; he kept gyou running and watched very closely as the cross-tipped chain blazed with light, and a massive surge of nen engulfed the boy's body. It was thickest around his torso, the damage there the most severe. But seven seconds passed, eight, nine, and ten—like watching a process that should have taken months fast-forwarded and condensed into the span of a brief, fleeting moment. As fascinating as watching Machi work; not as graphic, but more morbidly eerie for that lack of any visible assistance—cuts closed of their own accord, swollen and reddened flesh shrank as the splintered bone and shredded tissue underneath pushed themselves back into the correct places and knitted together. Color suffused Kurapika's face once more as he started breathing normally, slowly at first, and suddenly more deeply, through his mouth. Eyelids fluttered shut in relief—or maybe exhaustion. One couldn't expend that much nen for such a vital purpose without getting hit, hard, by the aftereffects.

Only the blood remained to show that he'd been injured at all. It really was amazing—and almost regrettable. The kid was helpless; one didn't need gyou to see that he wouldn't be able to continue fighting, even if he'd healed himself. Kuroro could force him to divulge his other abilities now, and try to grab them for himself. But he wasn't going to. Or it was more correct to say that he probably couldn't.

A puzzle. The chain assassin's abilities were a puzzle, and there were very few things more interesting than a good puzzle. He had all the time to solve it, too, there was no need to rush. Kuroro exhaled—a sigh of contentment, as if he'd just finished reading a satisfying book—and stood up.

Kurapika's eyes flew open and locked on to him. Waiting, anticipating his next move, mustering strength he shouldn't have anymore to get up and leap away in the event of a new attack.

Kuroro grinned down at him. And then he turned around and walked out of the warehouse.

4

Of course, it was too much for him to hope that nobody would see him sneaking into the mansion and into his quarters. He hurt, even though he'd healed himself completely. Perhaps it was his physical exhaustion, and the shock of having so many bones broken and reset in the span of just a few minutes. Or maybe it was the fact that he'd lost, and yet had been allowed to live; the humiliation was a kind of agony he'd never experienced before, acute and pervasive and suffocating.

Senritsu was waiting for him, standing guard right at the entrance to his room. Kurapika stopped at the end of the corridor and wondered if he could turn around before she could spot him, but it was too late—she'd probably heard his heart stuttering even as he'd crept over the outer wall and into the main estate. Her horrified gasp sounded like a gunshot in the dead silence of the hallway, and he sighed and resignedly padded over to stand in front of her.

"T-that blood—"

"Is mine. I'm all right. I healed myself."

Two truths and a lie. He wasn't all right, and eyes made unnaturally large by a demonic curse stared up at him reproachfully.

"I'm all right," Kurapika repeated, as if by the force of his insistence alone he could deny the bloodstained state of his clothes as firmly as his hatsu had healed away all traces of injury from his body. He reached out to grasp the doorknob, half-expecting Senritsu to stop him and demand for an explanation right there and then, but she stepped aside. As a concession to her patience he waited for her to walk ahead into the room before closing and locking the door.

He'd meant to head straight for the bed and sleep for a week, but in the closed confines of his room the reek of his own blood was suddenly unbearable. He was crossing over to the bathroom, pulling off his torn jacket and shirt before he could consider that Senritsu probably wouldn't like seeing him undressing right in front of her, but—he'd just have to apologize to her later. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see her turning away, color high on her cheeks, and then he was closing the bathroom door, grabbing a garbage bag to dispose his ruined clothes in. They were beyond saving—he was going to have to burn them.

Taking the shower was a bad idea. Kurapika emerged from it shivering and weak-kneed ten minutes later. He'd pushed himself past his limits, and the backlash of using his eyes had begun to set in. Senritsu was sitting on the couch now, and still waiting. She looked up, face pinched with concern, and Kurapika fought off the wave of guilt that washed over him. That preternatural hearing of hers would have kept track of the deteriorating state of his health as accurately as if she'd been watching someone succumb to a grave illness. Through the haze of fatigue he saw her mouth move to ask what he'd done now, and he shook his head in reply.

Where should he start? The coffee shop, that surreal walk to the warehouse district, the disastrous fight, or his painful crawl back to the Nostrad estate?

"Kuroro Lucifer," he intoned after a pause, and just as he'd hoped, the name itself was explanation enough. His friend's eyes widened even more, the worry swiftly giving way to shock and fear—he remembered how listening to the man's heartbeat had upset her so badly, and wasn't surprised to see this kind of reaction from her now.

"He found a way around my seal. A nen exorcist," Kurapika continued. "He caught up to me at the cafe at the corner of Fifth. We moved to the outskirts after, so I don't think anyone saw us..." He was suddenly glad that it was Senritsu he was talking to and not anyone else; her sensibilities probably wouldn't let her ask for all the details of what happened after. He was nearly dead on his feet and the bed beckoned, surely he'd be allowed to rest before he had to go into further detail?

Senritsu understood, he knew. He could sense her hesitating, torn between the need to know and what she already knew—that any second now he was going to keel over and pass out, bed or no bed. But she had one last question, it seemed, one more question she couldn't resist asking.

"Kurapika. How are you still alive?"

Good question. Why was he still alive?

5

It took him a week to fully recover, which was about as long as the last time he'd been bedridden after overusing his eyes. Senritsu covered for him, telling Nostrad that he'd come down with a nasty case of the flu, complicated by a hitherto-unforeseen weakness in his nen. It was a ridiculous thing to say, because nen protected its users from catching most of the usual illnesses, but for some reason the entire household accepted her explanation and almost cruelly refused to have anything to do with his quarters for the rest of the week.

It was just as well, because Kurapika wouldn't have trusted anyone else to come near him in his weakened state. He wasn't completely incapacitated this time around, and was able to crawl between his bed and the bathroom and take care of his own needs, but Senritsu brought him his meals and kept watch over him. Knowing her, she'd probably decided to act as his sentry, as well. She'd pull a chair to the middle of the room and sit there for hours on end, eyes closed and breathing light and easy, ears casting far and wide for a heartbeat only she could hear and recognize.

Such a seemingly flimsy screen to protect him from the danger that now loomed large over him, but he had complete faith in her sensory abilities. Her hearing was as good as an en shield, as far as he was concerned—or even better for its sheer breadth. Kuroro Lucifer wouldn't be able to set foot within the Nostrad estate without her knowing. Then again, the man had already shown him that there wasn't much of anything he could do in a straight fight, but at least he'd have time to figure something out should Senritsu sense Kuroro approaching.

But the first day passed without anything happening, and then the second and the third, driving his stress to intolerable levels and forcing Senritsu to resort to playing her flute just to keep him from breaking. A man with Kuroro's cunning and resources would have found out where he lived by now, and it wasn't as if Kurapika had been keeping his association with the Nostrad family secret. Actually, he was starting to wonder why he hadn't... gone underground instead of simply going back to the first place a pursuer would think to look.

Maybe it was because he knew, somehow, on some subconscious level, that he was in no danger of being outed or harmed, at least while he was still recuperating. If Kuroro wanted to kill him, he would have done so from the start. He wouldn't have walked away after urging Kurapika to heal himself. And he wouldn't have looked so pleased, like he'd just found an interesting new toy to play with.

It rankled, and Kurapika spent the fourth and fifth days brooding, stewing in his own paranoid thoughts. On the sixth day a sort of calm overcame him as he started feeling significantly better, like an intense anticipation that helped him focus his thoughts and quickened the recovery of his nen. He considered his options and immediately discarded anything that had to do with him running away. He was being obstinate, and foolish and reckless, but he was determined not to let Kuroro Lucifer unravel all the threads he'd woven so painstakingly after a year of working with people he disdained.

A call from an unknown number came to him on the morning of the seventh day. Kurapika looked at the vibrating phone on his bed with a frown. He slowly shrugged his shirt on, mentally tried to match the caller ID against numbers he remembered, and came up with a blank. He decided not to answer it. The nature of his work dictated that it would be foolhardy, indeed even dangerous, to accept unfamiliar calls, and soon enough, his phone stopped vibrating and lay still.

Only to start up again a minute later.

Well. It probably wasn't from any of his nameless enemies from the other families. They'd figure out after the first failed call that he was too cautious, and would know that it would be pointless to try again. A prank caller, perhaps? Not on the secured line he'd obtained for his personal use. Or maybe it was from one of his friends, even though the number wasn't any of theirs—god knew how many times they'd tried to call him even after getting rebuffed again and again.

The call rang fourteen more times before stopping. It was almost mesmerizing, watching and waiting to see when the unknown caller would give up. Whoever it was wasn't so easily dissuaded, however, for a third call came in. Kurapika sighed and picked up the phone. He thumbed the key to accept the call, but didn't say anything, a mute invitation for the other person to identify themselves first.

He shouldn't have bothered. "Oh good, you finally answered!" came the last voice he expected—or wanted to hear, and his resolution to keep silent fled in the face of shock and outrage.

"How did you get this number?" Kurapika demanded.

A pleased hum, the sound reminiscent of the way Kuroro had looked at him a week ago. "From one of your men." One of his men? His blood ran cold at the thought that the Geneiryodan might have a spy in the Nostrad household, and then hot with rage that he might have been betrayed—

"No, no, it's nothing like that!" Kuroro laughed. "Your pregnant silences are so expressive, I can actually hear you thinking of conspiracies. No, I met some of your security detail at a bar. I lifted one of their phones and copied your number while they were busy getting drunk."

Kurapika cursed under his breath and vowed to raise hell with the idiot who thought it would be a good idea to bring his work phone with him to a bar, of all places.

"Did you know that most of them think you're attractive?" Curiosity this time, although he was suddenly having a lot of trouble processing the inflections in Kuroro's voice through the horror he felt at hearing what his subordinates apparently thought of him. "They're afraid to approach you, though—I'm not surprised. Coming down with a highly virulent nen-induced super flu, really—"

"What do you want?" Kurapika growled, finally snapping out of his stupefaction to get to the heart of the matter. Someone like Kuroro Lucifer didn't just make calls to chat with his enemies, although he was starting to get this niggling feeling that the man might actually be shameless enough to do exactly that.

"Your seal. I want you to remove it."

Repeatedly getting thunderstruck seemed to be the order of the day. Something at the back of his mind was scrambling to slap up shields against further shocks, because any more and he was probably just going to go blank.

"No!" Kurapika finally managed to exclaim, that single word containing all of his flabbergasted incredulity. That Kuroro would just come out and ask it of him—ludicrous, preposterous—and to make matters worse Kuroro didn't even react with the anger he'd been expecting to receive at his denial.

"I thought as much," he said amiably, and the blond could actually imagine the man nodding at the other end of the line. "Well, that's it for now. I'll talk to you again," Kuroro added, as if they were friends, as if he hadn't beaten Kurapika to near-death just a week ago.

The blond sputtered, feelings of fury warring with confusion—he felt out of his depth, and he had no idea what Kuroro Lucifer was trying to do here. "What are you planning?" His voice sounded a bit too high for comfort, and Kurapika fought to squash the panic that was making it so.

"Me?" Surprise, an injured note-most likely feigned. "Nothing. Well, maybe something. Nothing you need to be worried about. But I'll be here for a while. Just as a tourist, though."

"A tourist," Kurapika echoed dumbly.

'Yes, a tourist. I happen to enjoy sightseeing. Speaking of, there's this tour I want to catch that's starting in less than ten minutes, so I'd best be going... Later!"

And Kuroro hung up before Kurapika could get another word in. He stifled a shriek of rage as he pulled his phone from his ear, and then he had to struggle to restrain himself from dashing it against the wall—a disgraceful, childish tantrum despite how immediately satisfying that would be.

Senritsu found the state of his temper unchanged when she came in to check on him half an hour later. She gave him an odd look, and he shot her a grateful, almost despairing one in return as she reached under her coat and pulled her flute out.

"Are you sure you want to continue working here?" she asked dubiously, repeating a question she'd raised a few days ago in light of his new problem.

Kurapika nodded tightly, mouth set in a stubborn line, and as he waited for her to start playing he made a mental note to assign his subordinates on Neon watch for the whole week.

6

Coming up with new and more and more inventive ways to vent his displeasure with his subordinates under the guise of work sated his frustrated anger for all of two days—there was only so much satisfaction to be had in watching his stupid, stupid underlings labor under the young boss' unreasonable demands for company and entertainment (all of them horrifyingly feminine pastimes like shopping and doll-making and dress-up and the occassional revolting retrieval order for this or that famous body part), and on the morning of the third day, Kurapika's patience ran out.

He went Kuroro hunting. The city was too large to make any sort of manhunt manageable, let alone a manhunt conducted by himself, but he was far too irritated to care, and also quite confident that he knew enough of Kuroro's type to have an idea of where he might find the man. An erroneous assumption, which, to his delight, was validated (by coincidence, and not by destiny as he'd thought at first) when he stumbled across his target, hiding in the first abandoned church of the first abandoned residential block he checked.

"I am going to kill you," he declared without preamble, and with a flick of his wrist shook out his Dowsing Chain. In the silence of the condemned building the sound of the dropped chain echoed gratifyingly, lending its weight to his verbal threat.

Kuroro merely blinked at him in reaction. The man was perched on a high ledge directly under a great stained glass window, which was, unbelievably, completely whole and undamaged in contrast to the devastated interior of the rest of the building. Weak sunlight shining through the glass threw a confusing mosaic of colored light over Kuroro's black coat and onto the floor of the church between them. Kurapika stopped right at the edge of this circle of light and waited for the other man's move.

Unfortunately for his already-short temper, it wasn't an attack. Kuroro closed his book with an audible thump and carefully set it down beside a large candle—a candle! As if he'd been anticipating having to wait in this dreary and drafty building until night set in. The nen construct perched on Kuroro's shoulder—hideous, horrifying, gaping mouth with broken teeth like a giant, bloated tapeworm—writhed and shuddered at the movement, and if Kurapika concentrated his nen around his eyes just a bit more thickly he could actually see the thing sucking at the conditions he'd forced around Kuroro's heart, drawing away the energy that would otherwise kill the man if the conditions were violated. He was now wasting his nen powering a set of conditions that had been rendered useless.

Kurapika tore his eyes away from the construct just in time to see the edges of Kuroro's lips turning upwards in amusement—he'd been staring unashamedly, his annoyance at the measure Kuroro had found to combat his seal too obvious for the man to resist reacting to it.

"You can try," Kuroro pointed out mildly. The audacious correction struck like a physical blow, the resulting surge of rage like a blinding sheet of white over his eyes, and Kurapika was momentarily unable to act or respond. "I'd rather talk, you know—it'll be more productive in the long run."

Kurapika couldn't remember what he'd snarled out in reply; he was moving, the speed of his lunge checking his breath. His eyes burned red, and for the shortest, smallest moment he thought that he'd taken Kuroro by surprise: the man stayed seated, guileless gray eyes wide and staring, and in the next second he was gone, and the wall was suddenly, terrifyingly close, three feet, two feet, no space for him to change direction or do anything to stop from smashing himself against unforgiving concrete—and too late Kurapika realized that in his fury he'd completely neglected to shroud himself with ken before charging. He twisted his body at the last second, futilely trying to position himself to land feet-first, but he didn't have enough time, not even to put up a proper shield; his side and back took the brunt of the impact instead.

Kurapika dropped to his feet, breathing hard. Broken pieces of the wall pattered against his back, falling to the floor around him, and he didn't—or couldn't feel them against the greater pain radiating up and down his side. His left arm wouldn't move properly, and there was a vise constricting his lungs—broken shoulder, maybe, broken ribs, again—

"Just so you know, I wasn't even fighting you seriously the last time." Kuroro's voice was light and conversational, deceptively gentle, completely at odds with the force he was just beginning to show. He'd stood up, and Kurapika realized with a start that he hadn't even moved—the candle was still there by his feet, the stained glass window framing his head. He was holding his book in his right hand, cracked open in the middle—no, not the pocketbook he'd been reading. It was a thicker, leather-bound book. Kuroro closed it, and the book disappeared from view, and Kurapika stared unseeingly, knowing on some level that the man had used a skill on him, but unable to understand what had happened or how Kuroro had gotten him to speed up and change direction—

... A spatial skill, perhaps. If he had time to think he could figure it out, maybe, but Kuroro was finally going on the offensive, edges blurring, moving with a speed Kurapika was barely able to keep up with—those gray eyes were suddenly inches in front of his, Kuroro having closed the distance in the time it took him to blink.

Kurapika managed to react and slap up a hurried defense this time; it turned a kick that would have scythed his body in two into something that merely felt like he'd been hit head-on by a battering ram. The kick flung him to the side and back; he twisted in midair to get his feet under him, and skidded along the floor the rest of the way in a low crouch. He wasn't—wasn't!—going to fall to his knees, or squeeze his eyes shut against the agony exploding in bursts up and down his back, the kick aggravating the fractures he'd surely sustained from crashing headlong into the wall—

Movement at the corner of his eyes made him look up, and he had to throw himself to the side to avoid the fist bearing down on him. Kuroro tore a crater in the floor where he'd been just a second ago, sending a ring of dust and debris exploding outwards. Kurapika rolled to his feet and pushed off, and caught Kuroro in the act of pulling his arm up. He swung his uninjured arm around, little finger extended, and sent Judgment Chain snaking forward, fully intending to sink it into Kuroro's chest, but the man was too quick and already knew the trick to his materialized chains. A jerking block, crude but effective, tangled the chain around Kuroro's left forearm; his hand had grabbed hold of the blade-tipped end.

Rather than dematerialize the captured chain Kurapika seized the opening afforded by one of Kuroro's arms being occupied so, and he pressed forward, gritted his teeth, and forced his left arm to move. He was successful, his clenched fist struck true, and there was going to be a lovely bruise on Kuroro's cheek after another hour—but it was a small injury. Maddeningly, infuriatingly insignificant, and while he was paying for recklessly throwing a punch with his injured arm, Kuroro was already retaliating: a knee to his gut, a backhand that sent his head ringing, and Kurapika released his nen and shoved Kuroro hard.

The push forced them apart far enough, gave him enough breathing room to feel the effects of that last combo. There was damage, too serious for his hatsu to heal quickly, and he turned his head and spat—blood and bile, at once metallic and sour—and swallowed the rest of it. The effort left him reeling—or maybe that was the concussion Kuroro had given him, on top of everything else, or something equally alarming—

Kurapika locked his knees and forced himself to look up. His vision was swimming, but he could see Kuroro advancing. It was happening again, he was going to lose, the difference in their levels of power too great in spite of all his effort. It couldn't be helped, he'd revealed his cards too early, years ago, and Chain Jail wasn't going to work twice now that Kuroro knew what to watch out for. Kurapika could see the film of nen coating Kuroro's eyes even now—the man had activated gyou even before the fight had begun. He'd be able to track a single chain easily even if Kurapika cloaked it under in.

But what if there were too many chains to keep track of? He'd win if only he could get just the one right chain around the man. Kurapika held his hands out at his sides, fingers splayed out threateningly, and Kuroro stopped, perhaps sensing that he was about to do something. His entire left arm felt like fire and ice, alternating burning and stabbing cold—he forced it to stop trembling, and pushed, heard the telltale clinking of metal links as a second set of chains materialized on his left hand.

Kuroro raised his eyebrows in a rare expression of surprise. Kurapika didn't stop to savor it, but threw both of his hands up in front, as if he was underhandedly lobbing grenades forward. Ten chains shot up into the air above them, striking the ceiling and then bouncing down to the floor. Kuroro skipped back to avoid getting hit—and Kurapika focused, eyes flaring—the chains disappeared under in and started zipping around the room every which way, faster, faster, as he bent his aura to the task. Stone cracked and exploded as invisible objects pinged and ricocheted off the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the debris all around them, stained glass broke, the window unfortunately too large for it to be spared the onslaught for too long, and Kuroro—Kuroro danced, effortlessly avoiding every chain Kurapika sent after him.

But the room was quickly getting clogged: another moment and Kuroro wouldn't be able to maneuver without running into something and getting entangled. Kurapika began to hope, viciously anticipating that moment, but then Kuroro turned and lunged for him, for the one small space in the room where he might be able to avoid the chains. The blond choked on an enraged yell as Kuroro's greater mass bore him down to the ground. Kuroro's hand was on his neck, the other gripped his left arm, tightening, hampering his control over his chains—Kurapika refused to desist, and jerked his right hand, bringing Chain Jail around in an arc. The others didn't matter now, Kuroro was right on top of him, and if his nen would kindly hurry up and wrap around the man—

And then the world spun, sickening pain breaking his concentration as Kuroro rolled them to one side to avoid getting caught and forced under zetsu. All his chains disappeared, and he was left drained, on his back, and unable to draw breath.

"Creative, but wasteful," Kuroro noted from somewhere above him. It was the last thing he registered before he passed out.

Happy new year? :'D

One last thing—I will be posting a synopsis of the rest of what I had planned for WH. It's the least I can do to offer some sort of closure for those still hoping that I'd continue writing it. Please watch out for it and... don't freak out when you get an email alert about a new chapter being published.