"I didn't expect you to actually show up," Valentina said, taking a sip of water from her personal flask.

The Gretchen Machfield Memorial Park was truly a beautiful place. The albino-white trees set a stark contrast with the vivid red grass, and the holographic butterflies that flitted playfully through the air only completed the rustic picture. As Valentina watched over it from the bench she was sitting at, it was filled with civilians enjoying the scenery. Picnics, pets being walked… no shortage of fun to be had.

For a moment, she glanced at a toddler babbling along with his family, and her heart ached. Would Angel have been that old, now, if he had lived?

"You're not very talkative today," she continued, glancing up at the new arrival. "That's unlike you."

Eli Masadora seemed very much unlike himself. The entire time Valentina had known him -- and from what she'd been told afterwards -- he'd always had a somewhat eccentric style of dress. Fur coats, open chests, that sort of thing. Now, however, he looked like any other tourist: a black polo shirt, a pair of shorts with sandals, and a hefty pint of beer that he sipped as he watched over the park next to her.

"How much would you know about what's like me?" he said bitterly, not looking at her. "It's been almost twenty years, V."

Valentina tightened her hands on her lap. "Valentina, if you please, not V. Let's be adults about this."

He snorted ruefully. "Adults. Sure thing, love. And what can this adult do for ya?"

"I --"

"You know," he sniffed. "If you were any other Oliphant bastard, you'd be dead where you stand."

Valentina took a deep breath. She was confident in her ability to defend herself, but she knew that the King of Killers specialized in eliminating people who thought just that.

"I'd like to make you an offer."

"And what sort of offer is that?" Eli took a deep gulp of his beer, downing nearly the whole thing in one go.

"First off, I need some information from you. How much is my sister paying you?"

A smirk played across Eli's lips. "What makes you think your sister is paying me?"

Valentina barely resisted the urge to attack him right then and there. Her brother was dead, her son had lost an arm -- the doctors weren't even sure the Panacea would take, given how long it had taken to bring him in -- and this man was here playing games?!

"Careful now," Eli muttered -- and from the casual adjustment of his stance, Valentina knew he was ready to kill her at any point, too.

The artificial wind whistled around them, punctuated only by the playful growling of a nearby domesticated bear. Valentina stared steadily at Eli from the edge of her vision, and he did much the same.

"Whatever Carla is paying you," she said carefully. "I'll double it."

He blinked. "Triple it."

"Done."

"No."

"No?"

"Ya see," Eli took a final swig of his beer before tossing the glass over his shoulder, uncaring of it as it landed in the grass. "There's more to life than money. Sometimes, you've got to stand by your principles, love."

Valentina gritted her teeth in frustration, and as she tightened her hands, a stray spark of purple Aether danced across her fingers. "And what principles are those? Murdering my family because we hurt your feelings years ago?"

Eli looked down at her, and his eyes were ice. Even with his hands limp at his sides, it felt as if he was seconds away from reaching for a weapon. A chill ran down Valentina's spine.

"Do you ever wonder how things would have gone?" he asked quietly. "If we'd made different choices, back then?"

Almost every day.

"I don't have time for things like that," she replied haughtily. "If you're not going to take this seriously, there's no point in us talking any further. I'll simply take my leave."

Eli chuckled, but the sound was full of sadness. Even as he turned to walk away, the slouch of his shoulders and the downward peek of his head radiated utter dejection.

"Right you are, love," he mumbled. "Right you are. Be ready -- we won't talk like this again."

For a few seconds, Valentina just watched him go, watched him shrink off into the distance -- but V from so long ago couldn't just let that happen. Despite everything, she found herself calling out.

"If you loved me!" she cried. "If you ever loved me, just listen! Go! Nobody will come after you, nobody will want revenge, so just go! Just make it all stop here!"

Eli stopped walking for a moment, hands stuffed into his pockets. He never turned back to look at her, not once -- but in the moment before he left, Valentina heard him speak, just a few words like the tolling of a death bell.

"Sorry. But now… I think I hate him more than I probably loved you."

And with that, he was gone.

"Hey, kid," Roy said quietly, staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling of his hospital room. "When was it we got so weak?"

Scout was sitting at his bedside, and he looked up in alarm from his script as those words left his father's mouth.

"You ain't weak, Pa!" he said earnestly, like the very idea was ludicrous. "You -- we -- got caught off guard. It happens. You still won!"

Roy reached up to the light above the bed, the sterile white panel that bathed this room in its glow. His hand was bandaged while the stimulant paste did its work, prompting his body to replace the burnt skin with fresh stock. Those bandages covered maybe half his body now, and the spiking pain beneath them was nearly indescribable.

It had been a long time since he'd found himself injured. How long? How long since he'd been in a position where he could get injured?

"Nah," he muttered, smirking to himself. "I've gotten weak. When I first started in the family business, you wanna know something?"

Scout nodded, ever the dutiful son.

"Money, power, all that stuff? Didn't care about it one bit. I started doing this because I liked beating on people. Slamming my fist into smug-ass faces. It was all I wanted -- mostly because I could imagine those smug-ass faces were, uh, other smug-ass faces. The only reason I got stronger was so I could keep doing that."

"So… you are strong, then, Pa. You just said so."

"Nah, nah," Roy repeated, slowly shaking his head, hair spread out on the pillow beneath him. "I figured it out. There's a point you get too strong, I think. A point where you're strong enough that nobody wants to mess with you anymore, and all the smug-ass faces stop showing themselves. Once that happens, all that's left for you to do is slowly waste away."

Scout's eyes were filled with sadness. "And… you think that's happened to you, Pa?"

"It's happened to all of us. Once upon a time, maybe we were strong, when we were taking down all the competition back in the day. I still remember the fights against Pandemonium -- Y, that was a hell of a time. But once we reached the top, that was it. No need to be strong anymore. That's how we ended up like this." He sniffed, taking in a deep breath. "This… is a wake-up call. I just wish we didn't have to lose so much to the alarm clock here."

Suddenly, he lurched up out of the bed, half-a-dozen monitoring tools being ripped out of his body as he stood to his full height. He left the bandages where they were, making him look like some kind of mummified lion, but as he cracked his neck he seemed ferocious all the same.

Scout got to his feet too, hands held out as if he was going to try to push him back into bed, but a single look from Roy put an end to that.

"Pa," he whispered. "What are you gonna do?"

"What I've always done," Roy grinned, cracking his massive knuckles. "Get strong and try my luck."

Rico looked wistfully at the stump of his arm, resting atop the sheets of his bed. Last he'd heard, the doctors were timidly whispering about the viability of Panacea treatment at this point. He vaguely wondered what he'd see the next time he looked at his arm: flesh, or metal? Or perhaps still nothing at all. That too was a possibility.

Even if he had a hand, what would he do with it? This was where trying to be a fighter had gotten him: pummelled by a creature that was better at hurting people than he'd ever be. Would anything be different, if he kept reaching out with the intent to kill?

His Teacher had once said something to him, hadn't he? About growing tired of hurting people. Well, Rico certainly felt tired. He felt exhausted.

Vaguely, his remaining hand reached out to retrieve the canister of Bubble that he'd managed to sneak into his person. It had been hell hanging onto it while they were changing his clothes, but he'd been driven to do it all the same. Why? Did he like this stuff that much?

Everything felt distant. For some reason, here, brought low, he felt as if he could see everything objectively. You could only appreciate how deep a pit was once you were at the bottom.

His thumb flicked over the cap of the canister, again and again, as he considered it. He liked the way Bubble made him feel. He liked the way his anxieties vanished, the way he felt the kind of assurance he'd only experienced as a naive child. In the end, this stuff was just another path to run away down, with the sharp stones of dementia and blood poisoning only increasing as he ran.

How long would it be until he couldn't make this decision anymore?

Tiny Garden.

A moment of thoughtless bravery, an impulse he didn't quite want to restrain. The canister disintegrated in his hand, the liquid Bubble evaporating into gas that was quickly neutralised into little more than water. It drifted up like a raincloud, vanishing into an air vent. Rico flexed his now-free hand, and it felt as if a heavy weight had eased on his shoulders, if only just slightly.

Now he'd grown bored of hurting people, most of all himself.

Carla Oliphant stared at the black screen of her script, as if staring into its depths would impart some kind of knowledge to her. Was she on the right track? Would she achieve her goals? Only the dark knew.

At what point had all this turned from a fantasy into a plan? She couldn't even remember anymore. All she could recall were the dreams that floated through her brain every time that abominable father opened his mouth.

Useless. Burden. Girl. Every word that came from Abraham Oliphant's mouth felt like an insult. She had never been able to use the Aether he so coveted, had never been good enough to do anything but follow his orders… but the time to pay all that back was coming. It was coming so very soon.

Artificial rain buffeted against the window of her motel room, wiping away all the grime and filth that a day of city life accrued. To wash things away… yes, that was what she wanted. That was how she wanted to do this.

She'd show Abraham Oliphant the remnants of his dream, the corpses of the dynasty he'd invested everything into building. She'd show him that, in the end, his entire life had amounted to nothing. Then she'd kill him too. She couldn't wait. Oh, she simply couldn't wait…

One day left, only one day, and then all of this would finally end. Once Abraham Oliphant was dead, and everything else gone, her life could truly begin. She knew where he'd be arriving on the station. She knew he'd never run away from her: his pride simply wouldn't allow it. He'd be there waiting for her.

Her cards were in hand. The remaining family members would come together to present a united front, which would entice the participants of the Hunter Game. Her two cards, Cottian del Sed and Eli Masadora, were ready to act on her command. So long as she played them right, she could win.

How would it feel, she wondered, when the rest of her family was gone? It had taken her hours to stop shaking after eliminating Keiko, but even so…

It felt awful to kill her family.

But it felt fantastic to have them be dead.

Just one more day.