Happy holidays! I really wanted to have this out to you guys by... well, a long time ago (I know. I suck. Please don't burn down my gingerbread house.) However, I have some good news: next chapter, Hisoka will be back, baby! Hell yeah. I've honestly missed him like crazy. Anyway, I hope you guys like this chapter and please review. It would be the best birthday/christmas present if you guys left me some awesome reviews!

Chapter Eleven

"15 minutes," Amori called out, his thumb clicking down on the stopwatch. I let out a long breath, frustration making me edgy. Beneath me, the ragdoll that we were using for our combat sessions thwacked to the ground as I let go of it's sagging head.

"He's dead right?" I huffed out, yanking off my hoodie as sweat dribbled down my back. My eyes snapped to where Umori and Imori leaned against a tree trunk.

"It's taking you too long to get behind him and even long to get him in a position that would allow for a quick death with blunt force trauma to the head," Umori called, scribbling something down in one of his many journals. Probably about how bashing people's skulls in took a surprising amount of restraint and strength.

Amori leveled me with a hard look. "Again."

"15 minutes." I dropped my knife, looking at the place where our combat dummy had been hanging. Umori had been kicking it so that it would keep swinging and I had been trying to kill it with the small daggers that they had given me as a gift.

I huffed out a breath, my fingers shaking, the knife slipping and sliding across my bloody hands. It was hard to keep it still, hard to be able to stab into something without having it slide up and slice your skin clean open.

"You're knife got stuck in his gut too long," Imori rumbled out, his eyes flicking over the small incision at the dummy's abdomen.

He shrugged as I sent him a glare. "That doesn't count. This isn't like real skin."

"If you think your blade isn't going to get caught in the human body - with all those layers of tendons and bones and organs - then you're severely underestimating this whole experience," Umori called, scribbling away at that stupid journal. "Again."

"15 minutes!" I let out a scream, half from frustration and half because I had tried to strangle this stupid dummy and had ended up rubbing my open cuts raws. Strips of meat hung from my hands like chewed up pieces of pork.

I threw up in the bushes.

"AGAIN, MORI!"

15 minutes - such an odd amount of time when I actually thought back on it. In 15 minutes, I could clean my room. I could make dinner for my brothers and I.

And in 15 minutes I could kill a grown man or woman.

"You did that rather quickly," Ichihiro was saying, his smile thin and reptilian as he trailed behind Minoru and I. We had left the inmate trials a little over an hour ago and something inside of me felt almost hollowed out. Like, if anyone hit me they would find that my body was made out of wood and that my insides had been scooped out to accommodate… Accommodate what? My knack for speed? My ability to kill? I couldn't really tell.

"Would you have preferred that I made it slower?" I asked hollowly, working mindlessly at my broken launching system. It was almost fixed…

Ichihiro made a small sound, something like a breath being drawn in contemplation. "You know...I've been watching you-"

Let me kill him, Minoru seethed, his eyes cutting back to the ebony-haired boy. My eyes flicked up to the stone ceiling, the hair at the top of my head whispering across the ceiling from my perch on his shoulders, catching the slight widening as the hallway became a bit larger. That more than likely meant that there would be a room coming up or a turn in the near future. I snapped on the dagger cover, the spool secured.

Ichihiro hadn't decided to act on some of the base urges that he had demonstrated only hours before in the arena. In fact, I hadn't sensed any sort of bloodlust from him since then. Which was vaguely disappointing. It meant that he was easily sated. And also that he was of little threat. If I was able to survive the knife's edge mentality of Hisoka's presence then succumbing to someone like Ichihiro would be pathetic.

"I've seen the way that Hisoka pays attention to you," he mused and I resisted the urge to show him just how much attention I was about to pay him if he didn't shut up. Gritting my teeth, I tightened the launching device onto my arm.

I'm about to claw out his eyes, Minoru snarled, his canine's flashing. He didn't take kindly to people threatening me. Which was basically all this conversation was amounting to: a pathetically veiled threat.

"Still…" he went on. "I think I'm faster than you… Ah, but that match was done in less than two minutes. But then again, I am slimmer than he was. Big oaf didn't even see it coming-"

Shutting my eyes, I tried to block out the overwhelming urge to strangle him. Slower than snapping someone's neck. Slower even then stabbing them to death. But to have one moment of silence - it had to be worth it right?

We need him for the rest of this trial, I reminded Minoru, also reminding myself as well. I flicked my wrist, nodding at the dagger flicked down with ease and I was able to catch it. Besides, I don't want to kill anymore. Not today.

Soft heart, Minoru grumbled, huffing out a breath as Ichihiro chattered on behind us.

"You don't want to know why I attacked you?" Ichihiro called out.

Sighing, I turned to cast a tired eye at him. The truth was that I didn't particularly care why anyone decided to kill me. In the end, what were motives really? Just excuses? All I really needed to know was that they wanted me dead. From there it was only a sprint to see who would get the job done first. So far, I hadn't lost. "I suppose you have a rather rousing backstory?"

Ichihiro face stretched into a grotesque grin. "Nah. I'm just a bad guy looking to make it out of this with a hunter's badge. One less participant in the way seemed like a good option."

I stared at him, taking in the lean build, the limp hair. In another life, we might have been on the streets together. Here though… Here we were all a part of a game that I didn't fully think I was prepared for.

But at least I could respect his motives. Even if they seemed to only be a half-truth. Because if anyone would do then why had he been eavesdropping on my conversations?

Mori. I glanced up at my name, catching the identical doors sitting side-by-side and the flickering tv display. Minoru's eyes ran over it. It says that one door will lead to certain death and the other to the promise land. Our choice.

I gritted my teeth. It was annoying to not know the exact way that had been said. Deep frustration made my head beat with a vague headache, my stomach tightening. It was becoming more and more apparent that maybe my inability to read was going to be a problem. My finger's tightened in Minoru's fur. God forbid if I ever separated from him.

"I don't particularly care which way we go," Ichihiro piped up, his hands slipping into his pockets as he grinned up at us. "You two are the majority anyway so the decision is yours."

I frowned. Great. Just peachy. What was I supposed to say to that? Thanks? You've made my life so much easier with your lack of commitment and overall douchiness? Disgusted, I turned to Minoru, catching the critical way that his eyes were running over the screen.

I have no clue. I blinked. Not the answer that I was expecting. The stupid board doesn't give anything other than what I told you. No clues.

I mulled that over, staring at the odd shapes on the screen. Shrugging, I glanced at Minoru. I've always liked left over right.

For a moment, the giant bear stared at me, his face impassive.

Finally, he tipped his head to the side, sighing. Sounds good to me.

Without another word, we both pressed down on the left button on our watches, Ichihiro tapping a random button on his watch. Slowly, the slab of metal that made up the door slid out of the way, baring the dark ebony of the room beyond to our eyes. My gut tightened.

Silence, deep and full in the darkness of the chamber beyond, pressed out at us.

"Oh, spooky," Ichihiro mused, his head tipping to the side as he inched closer. "What do you think it is?"

"I'd guess that route that leads to hell," I said, my lips curling in frustration. Having it harder might make you feel more accomplished in the end, but I would have been perfectly happy if we had gotten the easy way through. So far the rest of the paths had been a mix between mind-numbing boredom and silly tricks like a hall of mirrors or floating floors that collapsed under you. This had to be the last stretch. Already we had wasted about 10 hours and I was starting to get really pissed off.

Ichihiro grinned up at me, edging closer to the threshold of the door. Not to mention that being with him made my skin crawl.

I'm not going into a dark room with this psychopath, Minoru snorted as I jumped down from his shoulders, my daggers flicking into my hands.

"It's either stay here and stare at the walls or get this mess over with," I muttered, glancing towards Ichihiro with a sharp smile. "Rodents first."

"Ah, my heart," he yelped, his hand clawing at the material of his shirt for a moment before he was slipping into the darkness of the room. "Words hurt, little mouse."

Blood boiled just beneath the surface of my skin. I hated the way he said that. I hated that he was using it as a way to demean me. Anger beat through me like a serpent slithering through my veins, biting at my organs. I would kill him before this exam was over.

"They're here," a high pitched voice whispered, almost giddily, his voice echoing off the walls.

"They're here," another deeper voice echoed and my heart sunk as that whisper was echoed seven more times. Beside me, I felt Minoru dropped onto all fours, a low rumble working through him.

I stopped where I was, the daggers in my hands growing heavy as I waited. I couldn't hear Ichihiro's steps anymore. He had drifted away somewhere along the line.

But I did hear the shuffle of other feet. Nine other people were moving in the darkness around is. If one of them just stepped into the shaft of light created by the door-

A low rumble made my head snap around, a whispered curse echoing through the air as that door slid shut, the excited of murmur of the people in the shadows filling my ears.

Where the fuck is Ichihiro? Minoru let out a roar, his sides expanding as the inmates around us whispered excitedly to us.

My feet spread a little bit further, my mind sharpening as the smell of sweat and dirt and unwashed skin forced its way into my nose. There was only a small sliver of light now, just enough to see behind us. But that would be gone in seconds-

"If we kill them then we'll be free by tomorrow," an excited voice gasped and it was so close to my side that I would feel the air. I stilled.

Kill them, Minoru snarled. Kill them before they kill us.

Ichihiro-

Is going to watch as we bleed out, he bit out, letting lose another roar as the inmates drifted closer to us, ghosts in a sea of darkness. He might even already be dead, lying somewhere in this room.

He was right. I shut my eyes, my ears and nose sharpening. If we didn't start fight now then they would be on us in seconds. Once that sliver of light was gone, I had a feeling that it would be open season. I also had a feeling that they were able to see a lot better in this darkness than us. Fuck Ichihiro.

The warm splash of blood, bathed my stomach, seeping through the cotton of my tank top as I drove dagger to the side.

"SHE CUT ME!" that high voice shrieked and I yanked out my dagger, dancing to the side and driving my dagger once more into the exposed side of my opponent. Distantly, I heard the intake of breaths and then the thud of a body at my feet.

They could see in the dark but there were other ways to know if someone was attacking you if you didn't have your eyes. I crouched, feeling the soft stone beneath my skin as the other inmates surged towards me. The stank of them was enough to make me thankful for my nose and even more thankful for my ears. I was a better listener than most people knew and already I could tell that three of them were coming up to my left and that they were going to try and get me tied up in the fallen body of their friend.

Just across the room, I heard Minoru give another roar, some poor schmuck slamming into the wall so hard that a chunk of stone came off. Darkness didn't matter to animals. Minoru could see in the dark, no problem.

Tensing, I waited. Five paces away… two… I snapped out, whipping to the side and sending my foot into an exposed calf before I turned again, catching the one beside him with the hilt of my dagger into his chin. Blood sprayed across my face as they sunk into the vulnerable underside of their throats.

"Holy-" the last inmate breathed and I slid into a crouch once more, driving my daggers into his knees.

Hell wasn't a place in some tower. It was a person. And right now, Minoru and I were going to be that for them.

Please review and follow/favorite if you like this story.