A hot breeze stirred the tropical air of Shokushu Isle, causing the boughs of the trees to sway lazily and setting the bits of sunlight that escaped their reaching leaves to dancing on the ground below. All around her, tall knee-high grass rose and fell like green waves, even as it caught at the edges of her short skirt causing it to flutter and reveal the curve of her thigh all the way up to the hip. Reflexively, she brought her hand down to push the hem back down before the playful breeze could show anything more private, clucking her tongue in irritation. A lone student, off the beaten path once more, the white and blue uniform of the school clung tightly to her athletic figure, only aided by the light sheen of sweat that the late afternoon heat had brought out on her skin. Black leggings fit smoothly over her long legs, and elastic band hugging her toned thighs as she tried vainly to preserve a bit more of her modesty, and in her hair she wore one of the local brightly colored flowers pinned in place with a metallic clip. Over her shoulder she carried a small black carry bag, she'd found that when exploring the island it paid to be prepared.

Juniper Modnar, itinerant trouble maker and aspiring journalist, clucked her tongue in aggravation at all the movement around her. The path was hard enough to keep track of as it was. Only a beaten dirt road to begin with, she imagined it hadn't taken long to become overgrown once it had been abandoned, but there was still a trace, an irregular gap in the high grass that lead a curving path beyond the neatly groomed region of the campus. Juniper didn't consider herself much of a student of history, but she was driven to seek out more and more about the environment she found herself entrapped in. It had been Heather's story that had lead to her nosing her way around the archives, trying to find proof of her "Katie", of an era where the inhibitor fields were, if not absent, at least less effective. Instead what she'd found was evidence that the campus had once been larger, references to an old shrine beyond the current borders of the school, and a second single-story dormitory. Apparently it had once been used to house the school's grounds keepers, and occasionally as student overflow if too many students had been admitted for a semester. It had been abandoned, however, in favor of expanding the current dorms upwards, leading to the current mish-mash of styles that she'd seen over there. And, of course, now the campus was maintained by less conventional means, and so the old structure had been left abandoned.

Juniper had smirked to herself at the time, it was a rare and potent discovery. They'd used the renovations to the main dorm to cover the installation of . . . whatever it was that kept putting the place back together, and the extensive surveillance measures the faculty used to keep tabs on their cattle. If the place still stood, she might have found herself a safe place to hide and store the fruits of her labors, assuming it wasn't too far gone. But, she found herself wondering, why hadn't the place ever been employed by Elise and her black market conspiracy? If there was an official record of which of the island's predators was doing what to whom, Juniper hadn't found it, she'd had to settle for making inferences from the other records. There was references to the place being haunted hidden about the school's intranet, idle gossip between girls for the most part, but some of it smelled like a cover up for a series of monster attacks. Something seemed to have taken a shine to the place . . . though it had been a long while since the last report. Perhaps the creature had moved on once food stopped delivering itself to his door.

So, Juniper pushed her way through the brush and crouched low as she finally came to the clearing that had once been so much better groomed. The sky was rapidly turning shades of violet as the sun retreated over the horizon , casting deep shadows, but it seemed like the building still stood. A long, squat structure with a peaked roof, a dingy stone facade that was cracked and peeling in places, and windows that seemed to be thoroughly boarded up from this side, though it looked like the glass behind them had been removed or broken years ago. A pair of solid metal doors stood with a rusty chain entwining the handles to keep them from being pulled open . . . however, she noticed that the lock seemed new. After she'd waited a few moments and everything remained as still as an open tomb, she made her way to her feet again and began to approach the building, looking to see if any of the last class's explorers had, perhaps, left an entrance she could make use of before she had to make her own.