[shadow=darkblue,right]KILLUA[/shadow]

Redemption. He should have known that there wasn't going to be any sort of redemption for him, no matter how far he went in this world. Whether he was going back to his family or simply sticky by the clans themselves. Part of him knew that from the very beginning that his goal of trying to redeem himself for the bad things he had done since he was just a kitten was going to be difficult and probably wouldn't work. He had fed himself his own lies out of spite for the manipulative nature of the rest of his family. The assassin had wanted to at least wonder what it would like if he acted like any other regular clanner, but he also knew that he would probably never fit in like the rest unless he conformed to what they wanted. Which he wasn't prepared to do, because if he let himself fall in line wasn't that the same as letting others manipulate him? Maybe his brother had been right from the beginning. There was nothing in this world that was here for him, he wasn't a clanner, he was a Zoldyck. Probably the furthest a creature could be when in regard to that of a clanner. He had grown up having no morals, growing up knowing that killing was probably an activity that he would be doing the rest of his life. The torture the went through was for the better good, that had been what he was told at a very young age when he was just starting to realize what the world would be like if he ever traveled through it. Being the obedient son he was, he didn't bother to argue with the rest of his family for all the constant work that they put him through. Him arguing would probably end up having him getting punished for even sort of raising his voice toward others. He was taught at an early age how to respect those that were stronger and older than he was, speaking formally to his father and grandfather for the biggest hurtle of his life. He loved his father, his mother had started to get on his nerve at this point, and he wasn't sure what think of his mentor of an older brother. Part of him feared him, and the other didn't mind being around his side. All his older brother talked about was the business and where he would head in life. He had heard the story over and over again. There were times that Killua would sneak out of the castle, and try to find a secluded spot. No butlers. No family. And he would just sit there, gazing at the stars that he would never bbe able to see anywhere but on the mountain that hey lived on. He had already agreed to the thought at that age that he was going to stay at this castle for the rest of his life. What else was he going to do? His family didn't reveal much about the real world other than that power was the way to get through life in the world. He didn't tell them the different cultures that they had and what they believed in, keeping it all secret from him. After all, he was their little toy that was going to be morphed into whatever they wanted. He had no idea what was happening because they had already weaved their black tendrils through his face and mind.

There was no escape once they had him in their clutches, even if he started to second guess himself on whatever they were teaching him. The tortures they put him through had certainly been traumatic and would be for the rest of the majority of his life. There was no hiding it forever. The thought of his family constantly digging its way back up through the depths of his mind. There was no escape for him once he was in their clutches. No matter how much he could try and fight it for the rest of his life or try to find a cure for the curse that haunted him since he left that damned castle. It was around the time that he was near a clans apprentice age that he started to realize that he had been lied too for a majority of his life. At this point, he had been through numerous types of jobs that he was successful in. But during the time in the field, he was able to observe those that weren't part of his mission and were simply walking around. They seemed happy, but what was that reason? Most of his childhood he kept a stoic facial expression, making it extremely difficult to show others how he felt when he confronted them. Unless he was trying to get them on his side. Killua started to study other regular creatures in his spare time. His family didn't know about this because he was experienced enough to go on a mission by himself. He grew confused. They seemed to be treating each other with affection. What were those movements that they were doing to each other? They were holding each other close, the reason was something that Killua didn't quite understand at the moment. There was no redemption to be had no matter how far he did. How many families did he end up destroying? How many communities were overthrown due to the Zoldyck's evolvement? How many faces had he stared at when their life slowly drained itself into the Earth. He was a liar, he played games with other's minds, he was manipulative, he barely had any morals. All of which was a combination of a bomb that was bound to go off when that creature was struggling with identifying exactly what he was. Was he an assassin? Was he not? He had no one around to give him answers, and he wasn't about to go and search for his family for any of them. That's exactly what they would have wanted. He wasn't a good guy and didn't believe that fully, he could ever be the good guy. His paws would be stained with the blood of those that he had killed in the past. The blood of those that were probably innocent, but someone had wanted them dead. All the kills that he made hadn't been anything personal in regarding himself. It was just business. That was all it had ever been. He wasn't in the business anymore. Did that mean that he didn't have to kill anyone anymore? Was that what he wanted though? Some small portion of his thoughts began to contradict themselves. Killua knew that he didn't want to kill for business anymore.

But what about killing outside of the business? Would he be willing to do that? From his experience, he at least felt a little bit of something when he still killed others. He always thought of it as being some sort of challenge for him to overcome. Too much had happened in a short span of time. Killua didn't think that others would know him in a place such as this. So far from the clans that he had actually ended up coming from. But he did end up meeting someone that he didn't remember. He didn't REMEMBER. Why couldn't he remember? Something had to have happened. It was during this time that the voice in his head started to come back to him, causing pain to rupture through his skull. An almost familiar feeling at this point. Killua didn't really know how to react to the other calling him out by name. The other said that he had killed one of her children, which he couldn't remember. Why couldn't he REMEMBER? It made no sense to him. No one could have entered his mind without him knowing. The powers that he had in place for that to keep anything bad happening to him and to keep others from finding out secrets. The other started talking to him about topics that he felt like he should know. He didn't understand, so he called her a liar. That's what he believed her to be after all. Until it all started to link why he couldn't remember certain aspects of his memories. Each time he tried, he got a headache. That headache again. Illumi instructed him to kill her. Which made complete sense. If she knew about him there was a chance that she knew about the rest of the Zoldyck family. She knew too much. But something didn't sit well with the serval, and he forced himself to stop his actions completely by causing himself an injury. An injury that was easy enough for him to hide so others wouldn't suspect anything else happening. Someone had done something to him, and he was about to find out. There was another instance that had trigged him completely. That instance is when a Typhoon member came into the clan and decided to attack London. Killua wasn't exactly sure what he was really expecting, as he knew that he was here to no good. He ended up keeping London from dying at that moment, having a mutation in her blood that kept it from clotting. A feeling that he knew all too well when his older brother usually attacked him with various different forms of poison at his disposal. Killua attacked the creature that had done the deed and realized how easy it was for him. Of course, it was. She was a clanner after all and most of them were physically weak at least compared to himself. But there was something that he felt during the fight. Killua had ended up cutting the female's tendons in her back leg. She had let out a cry of pain. It was there that Killua felt a familiar feeling in the middle of his chest. SATISFACTION. He was happy that he had managed to cause the other pain. It gave him the satisfaction that he still had it in him as an assassin. One that could cause others pain and agony for the short moments that they were usually alive. He felt happy to hear the other cry out in pain for that split second. A feeling that he used to get when he was just a kitten when he went out on missions.

When he was a kitten he was excited to take the lives of others. It gave him a high when he did so. Now though? The feeling had dulled down. But when he realized that feeling came back, the feeling that he had tried to smother to the best of his ability, it still squirmed its way up through his body. It was like a disease, as it would start in one portion of his body and then begin to spread the rest of it. His older brother decided to chip in his head again at this point, telling him to kill the female that was underneath his paws. But he didn't want to kill her. Not only because it partly felt wrong, but also out of consideration that there were two other clanners around him that would see him do the deed. Everything that he had worked up to would be ruined. So instead, Killua had opted to simply beat the shit out of the female in the meantime. Killua's condition had steadily become worse as the days decided to carry on. He did his best as trying to avoid as many clanners as possible. It would only make him controlling his emotions a lot harder to deal with if someone did something to piss him off it could end off in disaster. Killua needed to do something though, anything to keep his mind off of the annoying whispers that were going through his head. At the moment his temper was incredibly short, and since he hadn't been sleeping it also wasn't really helping his case. It was early morning by the time that Killua decided to leave the cave that he had considered to be his own separate den. A small cave that was separate from the camp, by several yards, as he didn't trust those that were in snowbound enough to sleep around them. Or was it the factor that he didn't trust himself enough to be around others? He didn't know the answer. The cold did help to clear his head a little bit, but everything around him put on edge. Thanks to his acute hearing, he would hear something scuttling to the left side of him, causing him to stop completely, his head snapping in the direction that he heard the noise. In the distance, he could see a small snow hare that was running through the grass after having barely spotted the serval standing in the snow. It was just a rabbit. A damned rabbit. He forced his breath to calm himself down as he continued walking, in a particular direction he didn't really care about all that much. The young male didn't even notice that he was walking to the border. Each step his paws took, his body almost seemed to start sinking closer to the ground, his head hanging low in a way that probably showed others where he was emotionally. A emotional facial expression was all that one could see, and each step his eyes grew a couple shades darker here and there. The entire time he walked voices went through his head. The voice of his older brother. The one that had raised him to be the assassin that he was today. No matter what his brother was saying, Killua wasn't even remotely struggling against them. Why should he? He was right after all. He had enjoyed hurting that member and without any remorse. He was almost always begging for battle because that's what he enjoyed. Even if there was a chance of him getting injured, he hunted for the feeling of adrenaline going through his body.

You only feel excited when you take the lives of others.Yes
You don't need to be emotionally attached to anyone. I raised you as such. Yes
All you think about when you meet someone is figuring out whether or not you can kill them or if they are a threat.Yes
You are an assassin and always will be. There is nothing you can do to change that.

Yes. Yes YeS. YES. He knew. Had he always known? Part of him agreed with everything that Illumi said. A family was always right after all. He had committed horrible crimes. Anyone he would tell what he did would look at him at the horror of the things that he had done. He wanted so badly to just belong. Somewhere. Conflicted feelings ran through the albino serval's head over and over again. The voice repeating the same words over and over again as he moved forward. Killua had managed to move in the direction of the border. Well, he honestly hadn't been paying attention to where he had been walking in the first place. The young male had made his way past the border by several feet, and his eyes were searching. Searching for anything that could be around. In his own thoughts, he didn't know what he was searching for, but his body did. The assassin's claws were already unsheathed as he looked up at a tree that was a bit of a distance away. He could hear voices of others. They obviously weren't snowbound, but there were at least two other sentient animals that he could hear. Most likely loners. Killua teleported himself into the tree that wasn't that far away, keeping himself invisible. When it came to doing a job, it didn't matter how many powers he used. He could use them for as long as he wanted. There was no malice in the voices that were coming toward him, directly under the tree branch that he had perched himself on. His eyes didn't look like the eyes that had belonged to a child. There was no longer any emotion in his eyes. Some that saw his eyes often said that he looked like he possessed the eyes of someone that had spent their entire life in hell. They would probably be right because that was all the Zoldyck's had been to him. His body moved with the muscle memory that he had crafted since he was just a kitten. His head turned to look at the two figures that came into view. All of them were adults from the looks of it. One was a feline, and the other was a canine. The other was a full grown male arctic wolf, based on the species specifics of the other's body structure, although it didn't have the fur of an arctic wolf. It almost had stripes of that of a tiger and was covered in some scars here and there. Obviously having been experienced with a battle. Killua then turned his attention toward the other's companion. They weren't close to each other's side from the looks of it. Probably no form of romantic relation. Hell, it was practically impossible to tell with the likes of the clans around as anyone could be siblings and have different bodies. The other's walking companion was that of a black female leopard. A mutation that wasn't really common in said breed, but it didn't matter to Killua what they looked like. He calculated which one was probably stronger, and considered the full-grown wolf to be more of a threat once the battle really started. Would it really be a battle though? Probably not.

The invisible serval would move into a standing position on the branch, not bothering to listen to the conversation that they were having. Closer. Closer. Closer they came. Usually, when it came down to situations such as this one, Killua would end up killing those that were up to no good. Meaning him killing someone was actually justified to a degree. These animals, however? He had no background information on them, and if he did any, he would have figured out that these animals had done nothing wrong their entire life. At least nothing worthy of being noted as a crime anyway. Time ticked by before they finally came underneath the tree, their paws crunching in the nearby snow. No noise was made when Killua let himself drop down onto the next branch, that was almost near neck level with the tiger stripped arctic wolf. Bunching up the muscles in his back legs, the wildcat burst forward, his metal claws unsheathed. Gaining enough speed for any sort of attack could deal a large amount of damage once the attack actually landed. In a split second, the ivory-hued serval could feel his claws sink deep into the neck of the animal that he clung to the side of. Blood splattered onto his face and arm, showing signs that he had hit the artery that he had been looking for. Removing his paw from the canine's neck, the wolf would drop down onto the ground and would convulse for a couple of seconds before it could no longer provide blood to the rest of its organs. Killua had turned off his invisibility at this point and turned his attention toward the female leopard that was looking at him in shock. She was a lot bigger than he was, and he doubted that she would be willing to fight back all that much. The assassin stepped off of the quickly cooling corpse of the canine and walked silently toward the female, gauging her moves, but it was obvious that she would receive no mercy from him. "P-Please!" The female screamed as she backed up against a tree, having Killua approach her even quicker. A cornered animal was bound to show some sort of violence, and he was right in that regard as she lunged forward to try and snap her jaws around his smaller head. Killua sidestepped her action, and in the middle of her pounce, the wildcat had raised his left arm, and let the leopard run into his paw. It did knock him to the ground along with her thanks to her momentum, but the damage had been done. As soon as she landed on the ground with his paw sticking out from the bottom of her neck, he made sure to use his other paw and sink his claws into the side of her neck as deeply as he could. His metal claws were sharper than that of a sword, and he felt no resistance against her flesh. He listened to the gurgling sound that she emitted as she tried to breathe, but without any luck. No other cries for help escaped the two individuals, and Killua got off the corpse of the leopard. The two corpses were fairly close to one another, and the blood seeped into the snow, the contrasting colors easily visible. Killua wasn't an idiot though, he didn't want to make it seem like nothing had happened after all.

Emotionlessly, he listened to the voice that was in his head, raising one of his paws and sinking his claw into his own left shoulder. Killua felt no pain, well, if he did he definitely didn't show it on any of his facial features. Mixtures of blood merged together. Moving toward a tree, he would rub his body up against it, as it makes it seem like he had been thrown against the tree. Killua moved toward the body of the leopard as blood dripped down his left leg, using his right paw, he would step down onto the tendons that made it so that the feline would unsheathe her claws. Flipping the paw so that it was pointed upward, Killua dragged his side across the female's claws, this way if anyone wanted to search between the other's claws for his fur in an investigation they would find it. Killua knew that he still needed to be careful with his injuries, as he was a young serval after all. He could die from blood loss if he wasn't careful. Blinking his eyes he looked at the scene that was around him, before moving toward the dead wolf that was on the ground. Opening the other's jaw, he would remove one of the others teeth using his metal claws, and managed to stab it into an adjacent tree. To make it look like the other had lunged at Killua while he was cornered at the tree, only for Killua to move out of the way and for the wolf to lose one of his canine teeth. There were enough tracks in the snow for him not to need to make tracks in the snow to make the scene acceptable. Now it looked exactly like he had been attacked by the two animals and he killed them in his own defense. Anyone around would be drawn to the blood scene. Killua's own wounds dripped down onto the ground, but it wasn't anything that was life-threatening. He had maybe thought that he would have felt something by killing these animals. And now as he looked up at the sky, the assassin felt nothing. In fact, he felt even more empty that he had before. Only a portion of his mind felt proud that he was actually able to accomplish the kill without any issues. There was no emotion as he looked up at the sky, knowing it was only a matter of time before others came to him. He killed innocent creatures. He felt nothing. Had his brother been right?

snowbound -- apprentice -- male -- 8 moons