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"Alright, let me take this one," Kurapika says, determinedly moving forward to the catwalk.

The two bridges rapidly retreat as soon as both contenders step into the arena, and an intense silence hurriedly engulfs the rest of the room. Decidedly, the prisoner reaches for his cape and harshly yanks it away from his body, leaving the group of wannabe Hunters somewhat stunned.

Kurapika's arbitrarily selected prisoner is rather... odd-looking. The person is a mammoth of a human being with long legs, a firm core, broad shoulders, and a booming presence. (Name)'s eyes dance over his unusual blue skin tone, noticing his ridiculously muscular frame and vastly disfigured face with a missing nose and lacking teeth. Nineteen small, carmine-colored hearts are tattooed on the left part of his chest.

"What an astonishing physique!" Leorio exclaims, visibly disturbed.

"And he's pretty shameless," Killua comments.

"Does his face work differently...?" (Name) mutters to no one in particular, eyeing the metal object protruding from his ear and the numerous cables connected to it.

"Look at this!" He points to the tattooed hearts. "It's the number of people I've killed so far, and I plan to get it to an even number. It'd be a pleasure to meet the 20th person."

Kurapika's smoky eyes take in his contender's aura, fearless. The prisoner cackles maniacally with an ugly tone, dripping with disdain and pride.

"Are we looking at a serial killer?" Leorio questioned, staring in fear at the blue being.

"It would only take a duel to the death to keep me satisfied," The prisoner explained cockily, "I won't accept half-assed challengers. I want blood. I want guts. And I want agony."

(Name) felt her conscience drift on and off as the two talked back and forth about the requirements of the battle and such. Kurapika's weapons clanked against the floor. Unlike Leorio, it seemed as though she wasn't exactly worried about Kurapika or the empty, threatening promises of the blue prisoner.

The sound of rippling flesh snaps her out of her daydream, and she raises her head to find the prisoner aggressively flexing his muscles, mangling with his body in a way that made him look bigger, more 'intimidating'.

"Are you okay with that, Kurapika? That's a formidable rival you got there." Leorio says quietly.

Killua lazily brings his arms up to rest his intertwined hands behind his head, his expression only further confirming how bored he feels at the moment. He sneakily assesses his companions beside him, smirking lightly upon recognizing the same countenance of weary ennui on (Name)'s face. Looks like she, too, could tell the blue guy was just a big-mouthed blockhead.

"I think we shouldn't be worried," Gon reassures.

Leorio shifts his head to look at the kid. "Why not?"

"Because when I look at him, I don't get chills or anything," He responds, crossing his arms.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

As tension fills the air, the blue prisoner abruptly takes to the air with a powerful jump, using his feet to gain height distance between himself and Kurapika before raising his fisted hands toward the blond. Kurapika skillfully manages to dodge the attack just in time as the prisoner's fists make contact with the arena floor, shattering it and sending flying pieces everywhere.

"He broke the floor into pieces with his bare hand!" Leorio exclaims, appalled by the sheer strength of the prisoner.

The blue criminal turns his back to Kurapika.

(Name)'s eyes widen in curiosity, for she had heard countless stories from her elder brother of the people tattooed with a twelve-legged spider, yet she had never actually seen it with her own eyes.

"The Phantom Troupe?"

León nods his head solemnly. "That's right. Their insignia is a twelve-legged spider, and they're the most infamous gang of thieves in the world. You won't necessarily cross paths with them, but still, any aspiring Hunter should know of their existence. If you ever do find them, don't think of mentioning your witch blood or using your powers."

She blinks a few times, processing what he's saying. "Why?"

"The Troupe steals and kills, they revel in whatever spoils they manage to rob, then sell it all again." León explains, looking up from his bowl of food, "Our blood is priceless inside the Mafia world, you know that. Do you know what they could do to you if they find out who you are?"

(Name) doesn't like to be reminded of it.

"I know, León, I know."

León shook his head at his baby sister. "You have to promise to not do anything stupid. The Troupe could kill you. I am aware that you will use magic to defend yourself, but there is a difference between being in danger and being in a threatening situation. You have to learn the difference. I don't want you to end up like Sop-"

The (H/C)-haired girl was brought back to the present when she sensed a significant change in the atmosphere surrounding Kurapika. His once serene presence was engulfed by a cloud of... of bitter, detached rage. The blond remained with his head bent, not letting his teammates or the prisoner witness the change of emotion on his face.

"What's wrong? Are you speechless?" The prisoner taunts. "You're looking at one of the Phantom Troupe's four kings, Majtani! And this was no mere introduction. Now is the time if you want to forfeit. Before I pulverize you to..." He trails off when he sees the look Kurapika gives him.

One of the first things Matjani distinguishes despite the distance between Kurapika and himself is not the way his body tenses under the overwhelming atmosphere, not his seething silence that could battle against a clamorous cyclone, not his blond hair mirroring the yellow of dandelions and the golden flames of the sun.

No.

He sees his eyes.

His eyes are red. Big, red, and full of rage.

His eyes are blood, emotion, fury. Origins and rampageous ends. Scarlet, like the color of love. Pounding hearts and starving lips. Roses, lovers, cherries. Scarlet, like the color of guilt. Crimson faces and scattered blood. Splintered souls and shattered veins. Scarlet, like magic, made manifest. The color of poison, of thorns, of flames. Scarlet, the color of his clan's blood.

Matjani stammers from his place, extending one of his hands lightly. "What's going on? Are you okay there?"

Unexpectedly, Kurapika violently grabs him by the cheeks, squeezing tightly while lifting him off the ground.

Matjani is staring at him with this dumb, shocked look. Like he can't understand what is happening to him. Like his brain can't calculate what the next potential move will be. He looks stupid, his face falling into the form of a gargoyle's, mouth agape, cheeks losing color as if a child has painted across them with white chalk, his eyebrows turning skyward in surprise, his deformed eyes blown wide with pupils as small as specks of dust

The space crackles with unspoken energy. Kurapika stands there in the middle with almost unparalleled radiance, balled up fist, his eyes seething with scarlet rage. His posture is not stiff, it's not slouched, and he's standing as serenely as a mannequin. His grip on the blue individual is solid and firm. (Name) realizes that the power dynamic has flipped, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth.

Suddenly, Kurapika wasn't stuck in an arena with the prisoner. Matjani was the one stuck in an arena with Kurapika.

The blond ignored the prisoner's attempts to plead for his life, and brought his fist down in a ridiculous show of strength, hitting the man into the next dimension. (Name) is slightly startled by seeing Kurapika behave so violently toward someone. Gon and Leorio seem to share the same reaction.

Matjani's body smashed against the ground several times before dropping to the ground, passed out.

Killua whistled, clearly impressed.

No one else seems to catch the underlying sorrow within Kurapika's actions. His entire existence was drowned beneath the turbulent seas of his violent, uncontrollable anger, leaving no room for sunlight behind the suffocating clouds. In the wake of his fury, he completely discarded his general common sense, a dangerous, dangerous trait for an individual like him to have.

"Listen to me," The Kurta talks, his voice a cold contrast against his searing wrath. "Number one, the real members of the Phantom Troupe would have their membership number tattooed on their spider insignia. Number two, they would not bother counting how many people they'd killed. Number three, never say the name of that troupe. If you do, I will kill you."

Surprised at Kurapika's rage, the group kept a heavy silence until Killua decided to break it.

"Well, of course he'd win this one."

As the bridges reappear, Kurapika spares one glance at the unconscious prisoner on the ground before grabbing his clothes and returning to his team, completely unscathed.

"Are you okay, Kurapika?" Leorio asks.

(Name) didn't know what to say, Kurapika's anger had caught her completely off-guard. She wasn't one to hold grudges, so the visual representation of other people's resentment never failed to hit her like a ton of bricks. She wondered what it would be like, to harbor this much rancor inside her body. Her frail heart probably wouldn't be able to tolerate it.

"Yes." The blond male answers, apparently calm again. "There's not a single wound on me."

"So, is it okay for us to come near you?" Leorio asks, clearly weary.

Kurapika brings a hand to his forehead. "Even I could see just by a glance that he was an idiot. Even the tattoo. I figured out that it was fake. But once I saw the spider, I saw red."

Conflicting with her earlier inner turmoil directed at Kurapika's face, the emotion wrung itself into pity upon staring at the blond's crestfallen face, evidently agitated by his own actions. His pupils wavered in size, alluding to the frenzy swimming inside his insides like a bank of fish in a river.

Leorio straightened up, "Well, I can't blame you for that."

"To tell you the truth..." he began, closing his eyes, "even if I see a normal spider, my mind gets filled with anger and I lose myself."

(Name) feels an awkward look wash over her features.

"You should have told us about that much sooner," Leorio says, partially disturbed.

Kurapika walks past them to sit against the brick wall, mentally exhausted. He sinks down the wall, guarding his face in his arms. "But this also means the sense of vengeance in me hasn't left. I suppose I should be happy."

From the looks of it, (Name) could deduce that Kurapika had lost a loved one to the notorious troupe, which only fueled her sprouting interest in the spider-tattooed people, albeit León's eccentric cautionary tale before she left home. In a way, she could understand Kurapika's grief.

Gon leans to whisper in her ear, "We should try not to let Kurapika see spiders wherever we can."

"I agree," she nods quietly at the mountain boy.

Sometime after Kurapika's awe-inspiring match, (Name) remembered halves and bits from what happened later. Her companions' voices tunneled inside her ears, and she struggled to understand some things they said, her eyes droopy and laced with exhaustion. She distantly remembered Leorio stepping forward to offer himself to the next examiner, readying himself for his upcoming match with the prisoner whose name was Leroute.

Leroute was a beautiful and slender young woman, short in stature. She had laughing magenta eyes with noticeably long eyelashes and disorderly pink hair which was tied with yellow ribbons in two untamed pigtails, leaving her side parts to freely cascade down her chest.

For some reason, Kurapika's inspirational, moving fight had brought her to a limbo-like state, and eventually, she sank down against the wall and inevitably fell into a short yet deep cat nap. Why did the ensemble of voices sound so far away?

Due to the natural loudness of Leorio's match, no one seemed to hear her audible heart palpitations.

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"Yo! Wake up!"

Jolting her head away from her arms with a gasp, (Name) opens her eyes to find Killua standing crouched in front of her, his skateboard still safely clutched beneath his arm. The boy has a raised brow, and his hand is stretched with his index finger pointing in her direction, looking as though he has been repeatedly poking her to rouse her from her profound sleep.

She first discerns that the Zoldyck has been the one to awaken her before instinctively bringing her hand up to rub the remaining sleepiness off her eyes. What time is it? What happened during her nap? Has Leorio's match finished? Is she asking these questions out loud?

Killua almost laughs out loud at her disorientation, the teasing rolling off his tongue like water from a wishing well. "Man, you really sleep like a log."

(Name) yawns, ignoring his good-natured taunts to instead brood at him in jest, "I was having such a nice dream... Were you watching me sleep, Killua?"

Immediately, a light pink dusts the tip of Killua's ear, embarrassment flooding him like a tsunami. His once playful expression quickly morphs into a somehow flustered face, and he abruptly arises from his squatted position in front of her, feeling the bizarre need to defend himself from her harmless gibe.

"Of course I wasn't!" The boy stammers, partly annoyed at her assumption. (Name) hides her laughs behind her hand, successful in her teasing.

His loud voice causes a pair of golden eyes to shift in his direction, and it's not long before Gon buts into the conversation.

"Killua! I told you not to wake her up..."

As if he's been caught stealing candy from a confectionery shop, Killua hastily swivels his body to face the approaching frame of the mountain boy, who has a slight sentiment of bother painted across his face.

(Name) takes advantage of the silence and turns her face to Gon, fighting off another yawn. "What happened?"

"Well..." he begins, supporting his head with his arms behind it, "Leorio was pitted against a prisoner in a gambling match, and he lost both the round and fifty hours of our time."

That seems to completely bring (Name) out of her dazed state, and she palms the ground beside her in search of her flower hat while staring at Gon as though he has started spouting nonsense in a whole different language. However, her surprised expression soon returns to its usual, peaceful countenance.

She can't shake off the slight feeling of discontent at the loss of their valuable time, still, maybe Leorio's contender was more than meets the eye. She swoops her hat from the ground and carefully places it over her head.

"I see..." She arises from her seated position and stretches her extremities, swirling her head to find the glass-wearing young man leaning against the brick wall. "What was the game?"

Killua's face screams pure exasperation as he, too, glances at the suited teenager who's deprived the team of fifty entire hours to navigate through the maze inside Trick Tower. It's not like he cares that much, but it's annoying to think they had lost two days' worth of time.

"He lost in Rock paper scissors..." he says, glaring in contempt before joining the line beside Kurapika. (Name) salvages what is left of Leorio's pride by not continuing the conversation, knowing damn well she's in no place to talk when she herself is more than used to losing her matches at Solitaire.

Now, the score is at an alarming 2-2. One last win and this nightmare would be over. The team of wannabe Hunters stare at the prisoners on the other end in hostile defiance, patiently waiting for the next prisoner to make themselves known.

"Alright, I'll be back soon," Killua announces, walking to the catwalk.

"Killua!" Leorio stammers, appearing to have remembered something really important.

The Zoldyck gives him a weird look. "What kind of reaction is that?"

"This is bad! I should've won the last round." The black-haired teenager says to himself a little too loudly.

"I think it's a bit too late to regret your poor decisions," (Name) reminds with a smile, much to Leorio's chagrin.

Gon quickly places himself between Killua and Leorio, acting as some kind of shield as Killua points a finger at the older teenager.

"This guy is pissing me off."

"Ignore him," Gon attempts to intervene.

"Don't give up yet since we don't know what kind of contest it will be. But if it's doing math in your head, I'd totally surrender." He mutters the last part under his breath.

(Name) prays to each of her ancestors to fight back her upcoming snort.

"Right! It depends on the opponent." Leorio's mood suddenly lightens, staring at Killua with a smile. "We might still have a chance at winning."

A sudden crack from the other side of the room snaps everyone out of the current conversation. From the shattering bricks landing on the ground and the muffled but surprised gasps of the other convicts, Killua's opponent must have crushed the wall, with his bare hands. Once in front of the catwalk, he unmasks himself to reveal a tall, muscular man with unkempt blond hair and piercing blue eyes.

(Name) hears Leorio gasp beside her, an amalgamation of pure horror and surprise taking over his face.

"That guy is..."

"Do you know him?" Gon asks.

"We should just take the loss," Leorio states. "Don't fight that guy, Killua!"

"Why not?" The Zoldyck gives him a confused look.

"Johness the Dissector. He was the most notorious killer in Zaban City. The people he killed were all chosen at random. A total of 146 victims, young and old, men and women. They all died miserably in his hands. The bodies of the victims all had one thing in common. They were all killed with his bare hands. A special trait of the guy is that he has an extremely strong grip. The power of his fingers!" Leorio reveals.

"After so long, I can finally hunt for human flesh again," Johness' voice has a deep tone to it that (Name) would have otherwise found comforting were it not for the chilling tinges underneath.

"There's no need to fight that psychopath. There's always next year's exam."

Killua's expression remains unreadable, and he merely advances forward while ignoring Leorio's protest. There is a nonchalance in his movements, and that alone brings (Name)'s meager worries to a complete stop. If he were another person, this indifference against a dangerous opponent could be fatal, but this was Killua we were talking about. If anyone knew his own limits, that was him and him only.

"Did he even listen to anything I just said?!" Leorio exclaims angrily.

"Leave it to him," Kurapika defended. "Maybe he has a plan."

(Name) and Gon share a glance, then remain in complete silence.

"How would you like to