Here is chapter four and i divided it into two parts so this is the first part and then the second part will come later. After that, I will post chapter five and you'll be caught up to the story so far as i have posted it on my LJ.

Sooooooooo...

Denisen gave me an idea, and i think i should wait a bit before i post the rest of the two chapters, anyways, i think i'll do that thanks Denisen

Disclaimer: I don't own anything so therefore you can't sue me

Natsuki lay on her belly in the narrow crate, rifle extended, ready, with the barrel an inch from a small wooden door she assumed would be opened when it was time to shoot. A strong medicinal scent made it hard to breathe.

The implications of her predicament were clear. She was expected to win. Neither Nao nor Reito could place five rounds in a target at two thousand yards as quickly as she could.

And if she won, one of the others would hunt her. She would have less hornet venom in her system, but the hunter would have a gun. She wasn't sure which she preferred, to be the hunter filled with poison, or the hunted with far less poison. They both sounded like a kind of death.

A sharp pain cut into her neck, and she gasped. This pain had sliced past the wall of protection she'd erected. How?

Panic crowded her mind. She'd felt fear before, and she knew how to shut it down. It had to go first, before she could shut down her nerves. She couldn't hope to hit the target until she'd rid herself of pain.

She disassociated her mind from the pain and let herself fall into a soft black pillow. There she formed her tunnel from the blackness.

Another sting on her shoulder, but this one hurt less. The poison would affect her more than the pain now.

Slowly the sound faded.

Slowly the pain eased.

Then she was in.

She snapped her eyes open and peered through the scope, no longer noticing the blur of insects streaking by. She didn't even know where they were biting her now, only that they were.

She squeezed her trigger finger and sent the bullet away.

Natsuki didn't know how long it took her to fire the five rounds; she only knew that she was finished. And that the crate's lid had been pulled off.

She clambered to her feet and handed Shizuru her rifle. Pain flared through her body. Shizuru was yelling something at the guards. "Two pills only. Handgun, remember."

She placed a knife in Natsuki's right hand, two pills on her left. "These won't help the pain, but they'll minimize the swelling and keep you alive. I will go with you."

She shoved the pills into her mouth and stumbled forward, glancing back at the other two crates. The buzzing inside would cover any sound she made now, but it wouldn't take either assassin long to find her tracks.

She cleared her head, turned to the north, and ran into the compound with Shizuru close behind.

The sun would be down in three or four hours. Nothing matters more than survival. This one thought hung before Natsuki, calling her forward.

She understood less of the world than she once had, but some things she understood better, and one of them was survival.

The other was killing.

Shizuru ran lightly on her feet beside her, trusting her completely. At one time she would have offered her advice, but those days were behind her. She could now survive by instinct.

"Do you have the key to my pit?" Natsuki asked.

"Yes. Do you think-"

"To the door in the wall behind my chair?"

Hesitation. "Yes."

The guns were still booming behind them. Natsuki veered west and ran for her bunkhouse.

"Natsuki, are you sure-"

"We have to get in before they're out. Faster."

They Sprinted the last hundred yards, then flew up the steps and into the concrete barracks. The air was suddenly quiet. One of them, Likely Reito, had completed the task.

Natsuki spun back to be sure they'd left no marks on the cement steps.

None. She closed the door.

"Into the pit," She whispered. They descended the stairs on the fly.

Shizuru didn't need her key for the pit; it was open. But the small door at the back was secured tightly with a dead bolt, which Natsuki assumed could be operated from either side of the door.

"Where's the key?"

Shizuru pulled out a small ring of keys from her pocket. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"I do."

She pulled the door open, revealing a dark earthen tunnel reinforced with wooden beams. She stepped in and pulled Shizuru in behind her.

"Do you know where this leads?" Shizuru asked.

"No. Lock the door."

"There's no light. The door on the other end is locked."

"Hurry, please. Lock it."

Shizuru pushed the door shut, fumbled for the lock, and engaged the dead bolt.

"Is there anything in this tunnel?" Natsuki asked.

"No. It's for emergency evacuation. Leads to the hospital."

"It's a direct path? Straight?"

"Yes."

Natsuki turned and walked into the darkness.

"I can't see a thing. Where are you going? There's nowhere to go."

Natsuki reached back for her, felt her stomach, then her hand. Together they walked into the inky blackness. "Tell me when you think we've reached the halfway point."

She stopped her in twenty second. "Here." Natsuki knew that they were nowhere close to halfway, but she decided it was far enough, so she stopped. Released her hand.

Silence engulfed them. She listened for any sound of pursuit but expected none. Even if Reito or Nao stumbled into her pit, neither had a key to the tunnel. There was no way they could verify her presence here.

"Now what?" Shizuru whispered after a minute.

A tension in her voice betrayed her insecurity. She'd been through training similar to her own, but she didn't know how far they'd pushed her. And she hadn't been in a pit since her coming. Perhaps that explained her fear of it.

"Now we wait," She said. "Please don't talk."

Natsuki squatted and waited.

"How long are we going to stay here?" Shizuru whispered.

"Until I've rested and have the advantage," Natsuki said aloud, thankful for the dirt walls that absorbed the sound of their voices.

She could hear Shizuru moving toward her. Only now had Shizuru realized that Natsuki had moved away from her during the last hour so that she could hear above her breathing. It occurred to Natsuki that she was her protector here. In the tunnel, she was the master and Shizuru was the student. It made her proud.

"Why did you move away from me?" Shizuru asked, closer now.

"I wanted to be able to hear," she said standing.

"And?"

"They entered my pit, walked around, and then left."

"This is like your mental tunnel," she said.

"Yes."

For a long while they stood in silence.

"When do you think you will have the advantage?" she asked.

She shrugged in the darkness. "A day."

"A day? That long?"

"Patience is always-"

"I know about patience. I thought you that, remember? But how will a day help you?"

"Do you want to leave now?"

"I'm only the observer. I stay with you."

"Maybe it'll be less than a day," she said.

Natsuki really was in complete control, not only of Shizuru's safety, but in some ways of how she felt. Shizuru settled to the ground and she joined her.

"Do you mind if I touch you?" Shizuru finally asked. "As much as I hate to admit it, the darkness is a bit disorienting."

"Okay," she said.

Shizuru felt for her knee, then found her hand. "Okay?"

"Okay."

They held hands in the dark for a while.

"Do you know what's so special about you?"

Natsuki didn't answer.

"Your innocence. You're like a child in some ways."

A child? Natsuki wasn't sure what to think about that.

"But there's a woman inside, waiting to be set free," Shizuru said. "I'm very proud of you."

Her statement confused her, so she said nothing.

"Do you remember Nevada?" Shizuru asked.

"Yes."

"I've always wanted to go to the desert. It's so vast. Uncaring of the rest of the world. It's just there, no matter what else happens. Golden sands and towering rocks. Coyotes that roam the land, free. When this is all over, I think I'd like to go to the desert in Nevada."

"When what is over?" Natsuki asked.

She didn't answer for a while. "It's just a fantasy," Shizuru said.

"Something stuck in my head. I can imagine you and I walking into the desert like this, hand in hand, away from all of this. Do you ever think about leaving?"

"To the desert?"

"Not necessarily. Just leaving this place."

"I can't leave."

"I know, but if you could. If you didn't have the implant, would you go?"

"I don't know. It's not so bad here."

Another long stretch of comfortable silence filled the tunnel.

"The final test will be very difficult. If you fail, Ishigami will kill you, assuming the challenge hasn't killed you already. Ishigami doesn't want anyone to succeed-it's his way of making sure only the best enter the field."

Shizuru tightened her grip on Natsuki's hand. "But I want you to succeed."

"I always succeed," she said.

"If you do, you'll be leaving this place."

"But with you. And then we'll return."

"Yes, with me. Always with me."

"Will I always be in training?"

"Is there any other way to stay sharp?"

"Do you enjoy hurting me?" she asked.

Natsuki had no clue where the question had come from. She was talking without really thinking. Half of her mind was still in the darkness, focused on the current objective, listening for any sound of approach. The other half was asking this odd question.

Shizuru wasn't answering her.

"I know that your hurting me leads to strength," she said, ashamed that she'd asked. "You're helping me be strong. I'm thankful for that."

Shizuru removed her hand from hers. She'd hurt her feelings! Shizuru was upset with her. She wanted to shut her emotions down now, but she wondered if she really should. She wanted to comfort her heart. She was Shizuru's protector, every part of her, which meant she could only protect her emotions with her own.

It was the first time she'd thought of her role this way. But she felt powerless to do anything, so she just sat in the darkness and let herself feel uncomfortable.

Shizuru started to cry. The sound was very soft, a sniffing followed by a nearly silent sob.

Natsuki reached her hand into the darkness. When she found her, she realized that she'd rolled over to her side and had curled up in a ball.

She lay on the tunnel's dirt floor, sobbing softly.

But why? Didn't Shizuru know that she loved her? Maybe she didn't. Natsuki rested her hand on her hip, frozen by awkwardness. She couldn't remember her ever being so hurt.

It made her want to cry.

Natsuki laid her head on Shizuru's lap. Before she could stop herself, she was crying with her. She didn't know why.

Shizuru cried harder then, which made her feel an even deeper sorrow. A flood of anguish gushed from the darkest place in her soul, and she couldn't stop herself. She began to shake with sobs.

It must have lasted for a full five minutes. Strange and terrifying minutes.

Shizuru sat up and wrapped her arms around her. She cried into her neck. "I'm sorry, Natsuki. I don't want to hurt you. I hate myself for hurting you. I just..." Her voice was choked off by sobs.

Natsuki sat back against the tunnel wall like an emptying sandbag, still unable to stop the flow of unidentified grief. She loved Shizuru. She loved her so very much. The pain she was feeling was her fault. How could she have done this to the only person who cared about her?

They held each other for a very long time until their crying finally subsided. Then stopped. Then they sat in silence.

And Natsuki began to forget the way she had felt. Reito was out there somewhere, waiting.