Jamie’s first week on Shokushu campus had been the busiest of her whole life. The young woman had never been flying before, and the terribly long flight had made her a bit ill upon arriving at the school. After settling down in her dorm room, she had slept through until the next morning. The rest proved to be ineffective against jet sickness, and the poor girl couldn’t afford to take any medication.

Jamie refused to medicate herself due to the prerequisite examinations that had to be taken before she could enroll in her classes. The sharp-minded student never tested on drowsy medication. It was better just to be that much more miserable if it meant that her test results would come out more accurately. The examinations lasted for two days, so when Jamie wasn’t testing, she was laying down in her bunk.

After testing, there was the mad rush to vie for the best classes. Jamie slept in that day; she was a freshman, and had no idea what professors were favorable over the others. It would make no difference whether she was among the first or the last to choose her schedule. However, her laziness certainly had an impact. The laziness did not help her sickness much, and her schedule ended up suffering terribly from the fact that she wasn’t able to create one that ran smoothly throughout her week.

Still miserable from her slowly-dieing illness, the pretty little girl somehow managed to survive her orientations towards the end of the week. When she wasn’t in class, Jamie busied herself collecting school supplies and setting up her room. With her physical condition, she didn’t hang around the other students very much. This would later have a huge impact on her ability to form friendships among fellow classmates.

Finally, the weekend did arrive. Jamie awoke feeling her week-long weariness finally fading from her body. Her room felt uncomfortably sterile, reminding her all too well of what she had been struggling with the entire past week. She needed to get out and clear her senses.

After putting on the mandatory uniform wear, Jamie headed outside the dorms. She kind of wanted to hang out with some of the other students, and start forming some friendships. Jamie knew none of her old friends or classmates had enrolled at the campus, so she was going to really have to start fresh in her social network. However, after wondering about for half an hour, it seemed that everyone had already formed into their cliques.

Disheartened for the time being, Jamie turned to seek solitude in the forest that surrounded the school grounds. She had read about many beautiful nature trails available for students to traverse on their spare time. Perhaps some fresh air would rejuvenate the student enough to go back and gain the nerve to approach some of those other girls.

Xokuxuatl was bored, He’d been on this island for three days without so much as a word from that damnable Spectre. Oh, well three down 3,652,497 to go.

The great serpent wove through the trees, his long tendrils flowing back along his body as he twisted and turned. Every now and then, they’d catch the light, causing him to sparkle in rainbow hues briefly, but for the most part he was hidden by the foliage. All the better, since it meant he didn’t have to suppress his presence.

Grr. Imagine, the great Xokuxuatl, fading away to nothing, only to be ‘rescued’ by that Thing in the Beyond. He must be the laughingstock of all the tentacled serpents; or would be, if there were any others. Maybe they all faded away . . . He chuckled to himself. Finding humor in one’s own plight was the best medicine for a sour experience.

But, ho! What’s this? A young woman out on her own in this forest? Xoku thought he could sense loneliness in her mind, and could quite clearly see memories of a week of misery lurking there. All alone and feeling down? He just had to try and cheer her up.

With a grin, he faded from existence. Surely a few minutes wouldn’t hurt, right? Slipping down through the trees, literally undetectable, the flying serpent moved to cruise just a few feet above Jamie. His long, forked tongue flicked out to take in her scent as his keen eyes followed the smooth lines of her tall, slim frame. Interesting. This one should have no trouble making friends, even here on this island with its all-girls school.

Xoku’s grin was the first thing that reappeared as he let reality remember him again. Floating slowly along behind his playmate, he reached out with a tendril to tap her on the shoulder.

“SSSomething, wrong, missss?” he asked, exaggerating the lisp to almost comical proportions.

At first, it seemed as though the forest walk was the perfect remedy for the day. The trail that Jamie had discovered was breathtakingly beautiful. She was a city girl, and had never ventured outside her home town before being shipped off to Shokushu. Though nature wasn’t a passion of hers, the girl certainly couldn’t deny the beauty of the foliage around her.

The ground of the trail was soft, making for easy walking, and the forest canopy kept the sun from blaring down on the student. It truly was delightful to Jamie’s senses. Before she knew it, she had already spent a good twenty minutes wandering deep into the woods.

Here, the forest closed in, the undergrowth became thick. Jamie knew it had to be getting closer to mid-day, but the canopy hardly let any light in from above this far into the forest. As she continued to walk, the lone student became uneasy, as though she were not in fact alone. She began to toss glances to either side of the trail, expecting to notice a deer or a squirrel – something that was provoking this strange chill.

There was nothing. Stranger still, there were no sounds. Maybe that was normal for most forests, but Jamie always thought that there was bird or animal calls when one walked through the woods. She hadn’t really taken notice of the fact until she began feeling that eerie sensation at the back of her neck.

With arms wrapping about her chest in comfort, the girl began to consider heading back to the campus. Then there was a sudden tap on Jamie’s shoulder, and a lisped voice surprisingly close behind her. Jamie jumped and froze for a second before twirling about on her heels.

However, when she looked, nothing was there to greet her. Was this a prank? Had she been followed all along by someone with a mind for cruel jokes on the incoming freshmen girls? Suspecting this, Jamie dropped her hands to her side and straightened her back, trying to look a bit more confident. “W-who’s there? Come out,” the girl spoke with shaky sternness in her voice, blushing a little at the cheeks, “Come on, I can use some company more than I can use a ghost.”

Xoku grinned down at the young woman below him. He watched in amusement as she squared herself and called out to whomever it was playing tricks on her, never thinking it might be a giant serpent floating among the trees. Were she to look up, she would almost certainly see his huge reptilian lion’s head peering down at her from amidst the boughs of a tree. His cloak had been dropped shortly before he first spoke.

The serpent hissed a laugh at Jamie’s statement. To his playful nature, it was almost a challenge to a bit of word play; a game of wits one might say.

“Oh, but could you not usssse a ghossssst for company?” he returned, still affecting a severe lisp. In truth, forked tongues did sometimes lend themselves to such speech impediments, but Xoku had long since overcome any he might have had. Now, it was just part of the game.

“Regardlesssss, I am no sssspirit, but perhapssss a ssspook?” The creature laughed again.

The sudden, hissing laughter caught the student by surprise. The voice did not seem feminine in the least; in fact it barely sounded human. Perhaps it was just some recording that someone was using to scare her. At first Jamie had jumped at the sound, but when she thought about it, she clenched her hands into fists.

The girl had never been one for pranks, and she had no patience for them now. Still, no one was coming out of the bushes, pointing and laughing. The effect was beginning to wear on the jittery student, and she began to contemplate simply fleeing from the area in order to avoid further embarrassment.

Despite her, Jamie jumped again when the voice spoke a second time. It was still so close! Dark eyes darted about the forest, her ears trying to follow the source of the sound. Her gaze traveled up, and she gave out a shriek when she saw the giant serpent floating in the canopy above her.

This wasn’t a prank, this thing wasn’t even close to human, and it certainly did look and sound real. Jamie was frozen in terrified shock for a few more moments, but then she bolted. She didn’t know what that thing was, but she felt certain that if she could run back to the school that she would be safe there. The twenty minutes worth of walking distance between there and the school, however, was not taken into account at that moment. Jamie just ran, with fear-induced adrenaline racing within her veins.

“Ah! It ssseemsss ssso,” Xoku answered his own question, speaking mostly to himself, as his dusky playmate was already fleeing at top speed. The great serpent stayed where he was, following the student with his mind.

The path which had seemed so easy to walk before proved a nightmare to navigate while running. Roots and branches Jamie had barely noticed before seemed to reach for her, clutching at her clothes and trying to trip her. She was forced to dodge and weave through the obstacles as Xoku manipulated them with his mystic telekinesis in an attempt to herd the girl off the path in a wide circle that would eventually bring her back to him.

Not long into the run, a large fallen branch snagged the student’s skirt, gripping the hem with strange wooden fingers and holding fast.

When she had first walked the path, Jamie had never had to bend her head down to avoid any branches. Her walk had been a pleasant one until the voice, and that creature. Before, roots did not interfere with the path, leaving the trail relatively smooth for walking, even jogging. Despite these facts, Jamie didn’t initially realize that the forest itself was hindering her.

For nearly a full minute, Jamie ran without thinking. Her mind had switched into a part of herself that she didn’t know existed: an instinctual creature capable of split-second decisions that dealt with extreme emergencies in a very precise manner. Instead of blind panic and tears, Jamie was oddly calm. She was never one for physical activities, at least nothing beyond a light workout at the gym. Now, however, the girl ran to the full advantage of her long, sculpted legs and her fit physical shape.

At first, the instinctual mind didn’t even register the branches and roots that crowded the trail, tearing at her clothes and clinging to her arms and ankles. She would stumble on occasion, but the automatic setting her mind was tuned to ignored this and pressed onward. However, such distractions could no longer be ignored once the attacks became blatantly fiercer.

A rough yank at the student’s short blue skirt and the sound of tearing cloth brought the girl’s mind back into focus. She turned and gasped to see that her skirt had caught on a large, fallen branch. As her long, delicate fingers tried to swiftly pry the cloth from the clinging branch, Jamie’s eyes widened as she the nearby foliage reach for her.

Jamie’s scream was loud, panic finally setting in. She was fast becoming aware that she was stuck in a nightmare that she could not wake up from. Her desperate fight for the hem of her skirt was proving futile; it only held her in place while other wooden limbs began to grasp at her thigh and shoulder. The girl bolted, hearing the skirt tear but no longer caring.

She half fought for her clothing, and half ran as she pried herself away from the constant barrage of clutching, grasping branches. Far too scared to pay attention to where she was going, Jamie was too distracted to notice that she was being goaded into the forest. Once there, it was an easy task to ‘guide’ her path back to the waiting monstrosity. The girl was forced to give up her skirt and her jacket as she fought through the undergrowth, determined to reach ‘safety’ at whatever cost.

Within just a couple of minutes, Jamie stumbled back out onto the clear path, right before the monster that had hissed at her before. Her face was flush red with fear and panic, her cheeks stained with tears and what little clothing she had left was now torn and ruined. At first she didn’t even notice the creature lurking just above her.

In her exhaustion, Jamie collapsed to her knees, taking the moment of peace to catch her breath. In her foolishness, she began to believe that she had made it to the edge of the forest, and that the soft dirt beneath her would lead directly up to the campus grounds before her. Instead of surveying this sight, Jamie clutched her face with one hand, covering her eyes and trying to hold back any more tears that threatened to overwhelm the girl. She shouldn’t collapse now; she told herself she had to get up, and lock herself in her room. Once there, she could dunk herself in a warm bath and try to make the memories of what happened go away.

Xoku smirked, despite his intense concentration. Jamie apparently knew this game well. The calm precision of her instinctual defense mechanism was a challenge her tormentor had not expected. But then the realization that the very forest was reaching for her shattered that shell and panic seized her mind.

After that, it was much easier to manipulate the terrified girl with careful coordination of the many reaching branches and roots. Yet still, the great serpent concentrated intensely. He was cautious as he used the grasping limbs to tear her clothes away bit by bit. After all, a serious injury could hamper his fun, and it would by a terrible shame to scar such lovely flesh.

Soon enough, she stumbled back onto the path in front of him, her skirt and blazer gone; her shirt tattered and torn. She collapsed before him, completely unaware of his presence, indeed thinking she had made it back to the campus.

For a moment, Xoku just watched the disheveled student as she kneeled and panted below him. Her naive thought that she was near safety was almost cute. Of course, she would find in due course that nowhere on this island was truly safe. But that was in the future.

The flying serpent spiraled silently down toward his tearful playmate, surrounding - but not actually touching - her with his coils. Around and around he went, using the moment Jamie spent trying to control her tears to completely enclose her in loop after loop of his serpentine form.

“Have a nicccce run?” Xoku asked quietly, moving his head close to hers so that his breath would tickle her ear.

There were so many emotions, and so many questions, swimming through the girl’s mind at that moment. Jamie tried to gather her composure; this wasn’t the time or the place to break down and let her feelings run unchecked. She had to get up and hide herself away in her room before any of the other students saw her in this condition. If anyone saw her, there would be no way she’d ever get close to anyone else on campus for as long as she was here.

There was a shadow, then, moving over the girl. She could feel the coolness of its shade, but there was something else – another noise that seemed out of place from the quiet of the forest’s edge. The vile serpent’s voice suddenly hissing in Jamie’s ear sent the girl jumping startled, away from the creature’s face. However, she only went a couple of feet before her back hit the wall of coils that surrounded the helpless female.

Jamie turned to see the row upon row of serpentine flesh blockading her in. She shuffled away from the scaly skin that she had bumped into, only to stand and turn right back into the horrific face of her captor. Jamie jumped again in fear, having completely forgotten the creature had just whispered in her ear. Her dark brown eyes were wide as saucers as she gazed helplessly at the thing that surrounded her.

The girl wanted so badly to run, but there was nowhere to go. This thing shouldn’t exist, she knew this and her mind kept telling her that monsters didn’t exist – that this creature could not be real. Yet, it was real, and there was nothing Jamie could do now to escape the creature or the fact that it existed. The instinctual side of the girl began to wane when there was nowhere to run, and the conscious, thinking Jamie took control of herself again.

The monster had spoken to her several times now, so it was obviously intelligent. However, beyond this, Jamie didn’t know anything about the creature. She assumed that the creature had manipulated the forest to attack her, or had manipulated her mind to make her think that it had attacked her, but otherwise the creature had not really hurt her. The young student put a small, delicate hand on the side of her head, trying to think as she stared at the monster.

“S-S-So,” Jamie stuttered, gathering every ounce of courage she had in her to not only speak but to keep herself from feinting, “wh-what are y-you?” She gulped before asking her next question, her knees quivered visibly without so much as her short skirt to hide behind anymore. “What do you w-want with me?”

The monster’s scales were cool, smooth and dry, despite their glistening appearance. The coils gave slightly when Jamie bumped into them, but otherwise did not move at all, save to flex from time to time. The young woman’s snake-flesh prison was almost as high as she was tall and had an inner diameter that was just large enough for her to stand or sit without touching the ‘walls.’

Xoku grinned at his captive. It was, perhaps, surprising how easily this beast conveyed human facial expressions, but he was hardly a normal serpent. He was a bit surprised as to how rationally Jamie considered her situation despite the obvious fear.

“I jussst wanted sssomeone to play with,” the creature replied, ignoring the girl’s first question for the time being. “It getsss ssso lonely out here all alone . . . “ Xoku pushed his snout closer to the student, staring into her large, dark eyes with his own golden snake-like ones.

He directed a few of the tendrils from his flowing mane toward Jamie, using them to smooth down her hair and stroke along her jaw line, tilting her head up slightly as he did so. His tongue flicked out, almost - but not quite- touching her cheek.

“You have been sssuch a good sssport,” Xoku said after the near-lick. “And now you sssmell ssso good . . . “

“S-Someone to play-“ Jamie’s question cut short as the monster pushed its snout up to her face. She stood there, frozen like a deer in the headlights as the two beings stared into each others’ eyes. Even when the tendrils from the monster’s mane reached out and touched her, the girl remained rigid. Jamie had no idea what the monster meant by ‘play’ but she was convinced that this was not an innocent response.

The monster’s touch reached into her dark, silky hair, stroking it like a lover. Other tendrils reached out and gently cupped the girl’s jaw; their touch was so gentle, and so alien, that Jamie didn’t even flinch as they made contact with her skin. Her face was raised, but she remained cooperative and very still. However, when the creature’s tongue darted out, nearly touching her cheek, Jamie gave a small yelp and flinched.

When the serpentine voice hit her ears again, Jamie felt shivers run up her spine. For a moment, the girl closed her eyes and allowed a couple of tears to stain her light brown skin. Her mind interpreted that last message, and Jamie felt that she finally understood her ultimate purpose for her capture. “So,” she spoke, her voice a soft whisper and her eyes slowly opening to stare into the monster, “you’re going to… eat me?”

The girl seemed strangely calm then, and she visibly relaxed. It was like a lamb laid upon the altar: it may have struggled at first, but now the time for struggle was gone, and the point of no return had been reached. If she had to die, she didn’t want to die screaming and wailing like an idiot; she’d die with her dignity intact, and perhaps this might grant her peace beyond death.

Perhaps, though, Jamie was actually being very clever. If the creature did intend to devour her, then it was in no hurry to do so. If the monster, in its confidence, wanted to chit chat with her, then maybe it would get too relaxed for its own good. Perhaps another opportunity to escape would present itself. However, if she struggled, Jamie knew that all it would require on the part of the monster would be the tightening of its massive coils and the girl would have no chance.

Whether it was doomed peace, or cunning guile, Jamie’s composure seemed relaxed and calm despite her situation. Her fear was clearly visible, and she made no attempt to hide her emotions. Nonetheless, there was an odd rationality to the girl, something that overcame her fear that she didn’t collapse to her knees and rock back and forth like someone might in the face of so terrifying a creature as the one wrapped around her.

Yes, indeed; the student’s assumption made perfect sense. In fact, it had been the serpent’s intention to suggest that very misconception with its last statement. The best part was, now that she had made the assumption, Xoku could use it to torment her right up until the point at which it became obvious they were talking about two different actions.

“Hmm . . . eat you? Yesss, I believe I will . . . “ Xoku replied nonchalantly, with the easy confidence of a predator about to make the kill. The sudden calm that came over Jamie surprised him little, however. It was not uncommon in the animal world for a prey species to behave in exactly that manner.

Often a mouse would appear dead long before the cat had finished playing with it, having realized its plight was hopeless. And such catatonia sometimes even allowed for a miraculous escape - though, often the cat was also only pretending to have lost interest, so that the game could commence again . . .

Either way, Xoku found the situation highly amusing. On the one hand, perhaps the young woman had accepted that her fate was to die, which she would soon come to realize was not true (and possibly even preferable). While on the other, the thought that she might be able to make good an escape during a moment of weakness was so unlikely as to be ludicrous. Even is she did escape from his coils, what made her think she’d get any farther than she had before?

Xoku’s eyes twinkled with mischief as he looked up and down Jamie’s long, lean form hungrily. He doubted very much that she would find his toothy grin reassuring. He flicked out his tongue again, this time traversing the trail one of her tears had formed.

“Now, do be a good girl and take off the ressst of thossse clothesss,” the serpent said lightly. “I’d hate to get anything ssstuck in my teeth.”

When she heard the monster confirm its true intentions, Jamie tried her best to keep her composure. Her body continued to scream for her to run or fight, but her mind kept control, and told herself again and again that such action would be fruitless now. The monster itself seemed rather certain that the girl was doomed.

Ever since first approaching its prey, this monster had never shown the slightest concern or anxiousness that one might expect in a man-eating predator. It was fully in control of the situation before Jamie was even aware of the thing. Even when she had turned and ran, she was already doomed. The creature was highly intelligent, and capable of things that Jamie could not begin to explain; now she could fully appreciate her defeat. She didn’t know what this thing was or why it ate humans, or how it did what it did, but she figured none of that would matter soon.

As Jamie turned her eyes back up to the monster, she caught its eerie gaze traversing up and down her shamefully exposed body. Unconsciously, the girl tucked in her legs close together; she wrapped one arm about her chest as the other tugged down on her shirt. She blushed a little, thinking how silly it was to try and be modest in front of a flesh-eating lizard…thing.

However, the nubile student was caught off-guard by the monster’s request to strip naked. “I-uh…pardon?” Jamie stuttered, backing away from the creature’s face and bumping into the coils at her back again, “W-Why should I do anything for you? If you’re going to eat me, I’m not so inclined to do you any favors.” She fought the urge to spit out, ‘And quite frankly, I hope you choke to death on my bones!’ The thought of dieing while cursing and swinging seemed as distasteful as dieing in the fetal position, whimpering like an idiot. Besides, this was part of the game: stall time, don’t piss off the toothy-grinned monster, and maybe a miracle will happen.

“Hmph. Choke on your bonesss, indeed!” Xoku responded to the girl’s unspoken thought, adding another strange ability to the list of advantages he had over her. “Victimsss today! No ressspect for their eldersss!”

The serpent hissed a plaintive sigh, shaking his head slowly. His glittering golden eyes met his captive’s dark ones again, catching her in a stare that might seem as if it penetrated her soul. Then he sighed again.

“Ssstill, under the cccircumssstancccesss, I sssuppossse I can’t blame you . . . “ Xoku’s eyes almost gleamed as his sentence trailed off, a manifestation of the power he was summoning - the mystic power to bend matter to his will as he had done with the trees of the forest.

Immediately, the remaining shreds of Jamie’s clothing seemed to melt and run off her lovely body like liquid. The strangely fluid substance dripped off the helpless girl, only to turn back into scraps of cloth that fluttered to the ground.

The process was short and painless. The flowing cloth was not hot or acidic, in fact, it was still quite solid (for a textile anyway), it merely moved as though it were water, flowing down Jamie’s sleek form to drop in a pile at her feet. The last to go were her shoes, which spread out like a puddle and seeped a few inches away where they reformed exactly as they had been on her feet.

Jamie certainly was a victim - a victim to this monster's cruel sport. She was utterly helpless, unsafe even in the private thoughts of her own head. If the thing could overhear her thoughts, then it certainly knew that she had been trying to stall time for some tiny chance at salvation. It was then apparent, however, that the creature knew exactly what it was doing this entire time. She had played right along with it every step of the way, but really there had been no choice, no chance, from the very beginning.

The girl gave a surprised yelp when she suddenly noticed that her clothes were melting! She watched, frozen in awe, as the material of her clothing ignored the normal laws of physics, changing their state not once, but twice: going from solid to liquid, and then back to solid again at her feet. Slowly, Jamie shook her head, unable to wrap her mind around the undeniable fact that this was reality she was experiencing.

Painfully exposed, without even her own mind to hide her thoughts, the lovely girl crossed her legs modestly, and her arms wrapped tightly about her perfectly-proportioned chest. She leaned heavily into the coils at her back, unknowingly letting the monster feel the exquisite shape of her backside curves and the addictive softness of her clay-brown skin. Jamie let another couple of tears roll down her cheeks as she stared back at the monster, completely unprepared for what was to come. "Wh-What are you," she asked sincerely, as if the very answer would rationalize all the unexplainable events that she had suffered under this creature.