Mwuahahaha they love it!...clears throat

I'm glad everyone who read it thinks its great, the feedback i'm getting is great...so far. anyways please continue reading i'll be posting the rest of the chapters throughout this whole week (except on saturdays and sundays) so on with the story and be expecting chapter 3 tomorow- O.o did i spell that right?

Disclaimer: As always, i own nothing...


Two days or maybe ten days ago-she'd lost her sense of time completely-that light had been the murder of two people in the W hotel. But she'd extinguished that light, as Shizuru had asked her to. She had learned long ago that if she didn't erase certain memories than, Youko would, and she didn't favor her methods.

Now the light at the end of her tunnel was survival.

She sat cross-legged on the metal chair, making her flesh that was in contact with the chair to stay cool, sitting perfectly still so that the rest of her skin would not be scalded.

She had slowed her heart rate to fifty beats per minute to compensate for the heat in the same way that she increased her heart rate to compensate for extreme cold. She did not drink or pass any waste. These were the easiest functions to control. More difficult were her emotions, that seemed to rise in offense at such treatment. In the worst conditions, she resorted to turning her emotions to Shizuru. To her Crimson eyes, which were pools of kindness and love. The only such pools she knew.

Natsuki was so used to the torturous conditions of her pit that she no longer thought of them as torment. They were simply the path to the light.

Youko had asked her recently whether she thought she could ever step outside the mental tunnel.

"If your tunnel protects you from threats, could you not deal with those threats offensively rather than just defensively?" She had asked.

"I am offensive," Natsuki replied. "My aim is to survive."

"Yes, and you achieve that aim very well. But have you ever tried to deal with the threats more...directly?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"You ward off the heat by controlling your mind and changing the way your body reacts to it...Have you ever tried to change the heat itself?"

Was she suggesting her to try to lower the room's temperature? It was stupid and she politely told her as much.

"Is it? What if I were to tell you that it has been done?"

"How? When?"

"In many documented cases studied by science. The pH balance of water, for example, can be significantly raised or lowered strictly through focused thought. Waves of energy, not particles, form the foundation of the world we know. It is possible, Natsuki, to effect these waves. They are connected to your mind."

"I can push an object with my hand and make it move," She said.

"I can't do that with a wave from my mind."

"Because you don't think of the wave as an object." Youko retorted.

"If you were to stand on your island-your mind-and send out a large wave toward another distant mountain in the sea, could you destroy that mountain? Or at least move it?"

"I suppose you could."

"With an idea the size of a mustard seed, you could move a mountain," she said. "It's all a matter of prospective. When you first tried to see the light at the end of your tunnel, what did you see?"

"I closed my eyes and saw nothing but blackness."

"And what did you feel?"

She hesitated. For some reason the memory of failure had never gone away. The first time they had inserted a needle through her shoulder, she screamed until she passed out.

"Pain," She said.

"But you found a way to construct the tunnel by pushing through the blackness of the light."

"Yes"

"Maybe you should try to punch a hole in the side of the tunnel and push back the sea of heat. Change the heat instead of just protecting yourself from it...it's theoretically possible."

It wasn't easy to take even a fraction of her focus off the light. The light was her survival, her comfort, her life. She had become very good at giving it her complete attention.

What if she could form a second tunnel to punch through the first one?

The thought took her by surprise. The light faded, and for a moment she thought the tunnel had collapsed. But it remained straight and true, and the distant pinpoint of light came back into sharp focus.

She considered this new thought. Maybe a second tunnel of focus could break through the walls she'd made.

Shizuru Fujino sat at a round metal table in the main laboratory watching the monitor as the lines of numbers ran by. Natsuki's vitals had held rock steady since she'd gone deep nearly three days ago now. In terms of controlling her emotions, she was better than Reito, who, although the more accomplished killer, seemed to have less control over his mind, which could in time make him the lesser of the two. Then again, Reito had appeared on the scene a full month after Natsuki and was already well ahead of her.

On occasion she couldn't escape the vague notion that he was far more than who he said he was. More than even Ishigami or Youko sensei knew. A puppet master who was only playing games here while he waited for his true purpose to reveal itself.

'Ishigami fears the man,' she thought.

All three had full control of their vitals and had developed nearly inhuman Thresholds for pain, although how Reito and Ishigami managed so well without mastery over emotion was still a bit of a mystery to Shizuru.

On the other hand, maybe there achievements weren't really that much of a mystery. Training methods perfected by Youko sensei were all founded on the guiding principle that had yet to fail: the appropriation of identity. The assassins thought they were surrendering their memories, but Youko sensei wasn't concerned with erasing memory as much as erasing identity.

Identity was the key.

Altering a person's identity allowed Youko sensei to manipulate the memories associated with who a person was and what he had done without altering his knowledge of how things worked.

"No change?" Youko sensei asked.

It was a rhetorical question, to add some noise to the room. "None," Shizuru had said. They returned to the silence.

"What is this?"

Shizuru looked at Youko sensei, who was staring at the monitor. She glanced back at Natsuki's vitals.

"What's what?"

"Her heart rate," Youko sensei said.

Shizuru saw the numbers blinking on the screen. Natsuki's heart rate had risen from about fifty beats per minute to ninety. They stared, caught off guard by the sudden change.

"How long?" Youko sensei asked. "Where you watching?"

"It was fifty less than five minutes ago. It's been fifty since I came in half an hour ago. Did you check the logs from the last twenty-four hours?"

"Yes. She's been static for more than forty-eight hours. Something's happened." Youko sensei hurried over to the computer and punched up her record. "Less than a minute ago. The rest of the indicators are steady."

Natsuki's pulse steadied at ninety-one beats per minute. Shizuru watched for thirty seconds. The rate changed again.

"It's dropping."

"So it is."

"What do you think caused that?" Shizuru asked.

Youko sensei watched as Natsuki's heart rate fell to sixty, then held steady.

"We're not dealing with the known here," Youko sensei said. "It's amazing enough that Natsuki can alter her vitals as easily as she does."

"A simple break in concentration could be enough to cause this."

"True, but she's not given to simple breaks. I would guess that it was emotionally induced. Natsuki is the first candidate we had that has the ability to control her receptor cells"

The chemical reactions of emotions were one of Youko sensei's primary areas of research. Because emotions were in essence chemical reactions in the brain, science had long accepted the fact that it was possible to manipulate the chemicals and therefore the emotions. A number of drugs on the market did this. But for a person to exercise control over his brain's chemicals was a different matter.

"You know she's progressed in other areas," Youko sensei said.

"Such as?"

"Her marksmanship."

Shizuru knew of her latest scores-she'd overseen the testing herself.

Her involvement with her was primarily to manipulate, and she was playing her role well, building her trust, earning her love so that her power over her would be unchallenged. Her only weakness was her and it was a weakness by design.

But lying awake late at night, she wasn't sure that all of her emotions were as calculated as they had once been. She couldn't tell Youko sensei, of course, but what if Natsuki was now becoming her greatest weakness?

Impossible. But if it became true, Ishigami would eliminate her.

"Why doesn't Ishigami trust Natsuki?" Shizuru asked.

"Who said any such thing?"

"No one. I see it in his eyes. And he's called up another ten recruits."

Youko sensei nodded absently. "A woman like Natsuki presents certain risks. Frankly, her relationship with you could become a concern. Has she asked about her mother since the last treatment?"

Shizuru blinked. "It was your plan that we bond. And yes, she has said she couldn't remember who her mother was."

"Yes, my plan, but I'm not sure the bond is strong enough. If her bond with you is ever compromised, she may become obsessive about knowing her origin, this mother figure of her."

"You want me to strengthen her bond with me?"

"I didn't say that. If the bond is too strong and something happens to you, we may lose her. It's a tenuous balance."

"With Natsuki as my guardian, it's unlikely anything will happen to me. Right?"

"Regardless. With Natsuki going on her first mission in two weeks, we need a new recruit."

"Two weeks? So soon? You have the mission?"

Youko sensei turned back to the monitor. "We've had it for a long-"

She froze, eyes on the monitor.

Shizuru scanned the stats. "What?" For the second time in ten minutes, something about Natsuki's situation had changed. This time it had nothing to do with her vitals.

"Did you change the room temperature?" Shizuru asked.

"No. It should read 150. You did nothing?"

"Nothing."

The temperature was now 140.

"It must be malfunction," Shizuru said. "It's happened-"

"The control hasn't moved. How could it be a malfunction?"

The same system that regulated the temperature in Natsuki's pit fed a small closet that was measured by separate sensors. In this control, the temperature was still 150 degrees.

"Then the thermometer has malfunction?" But she knew three were down to 138.

Youko sensei grabbed the phone, called Ishigami, and then promptly hung up.

"It's going back up," Shizuru said.

They watched as the temperature rose and finally settled at 150.

"How's that possible?"

The door behind them opened, and Ishigami stepped in. He approached them, expressionless.

Youko sensei handed him the report. He glanced up and down, then eyed her. "What is it?"

"The graph showing room temperature."

"We didn't change it." The fire in Youko sensei's eyes betrayed her passion. She was a scientist, not easily excitable, but at the moment, no matter how she tried to hide her feelings, she looked as if she might explode.

He glanced at the chart again. Studied it in silence. His eyes lifted, but he did not lower the paper. "You're suggesting that she did this?"

"Do you have another idea?"

He obviously didn't.

"When is she scheduled to come out?" Ishigami asked.

"She has an afternoon drill with the others," Shizuru said.

Ishigami set the report on the table. "Bring her out now."

Youko sensei had talked often about the quantum physics behind the brain's ability to affect its surroundings, but Shizuru had never seen evidence of it. The notion that Natsuki had actually managed to control the temperature in her pit by affecting the zero-point field was altogether earth-shattering. It may have been proven that empty space between atoms was filled with large amounts of energy, but she wasn't sure she was ready to believe that Natsuki could affect this field.

"Put her on the range," Ishigami said. "Let's see what she can do."

"She'll need a few hours to normalize and eat."

"She shoots before she normalizes."

"Every person has their limits."

"We've broken her limits many times."

"The drill she faces this afternoon will test her shooting in an optimum setting before stretching her to her limits," Shizuru said. "I suggest we wait as planned."

Ishigami looked at her, and the darkness in his eyes made Shizuru regret her suggestion. But he didn't object, he simply turned and left the room.


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