Alissa wandered around for a bit with an odd looking bag on her back. She wanted to practice self defence, specifically sambo, something she had taught herself during captivity. It wasn't quite sambo, however. She was also rather self conscious about making mistakes, hence why she was wandering around. She wanted to find a safe and quiet place where she could practice in peace without fear of someone stumbling across her position. Alissa also wanted it to be a secure place; wandering away from the main area would be a security risk, and she wanted to be able to see as much as possible when she was practicing.

Eventually, Alissa came to the edge of the main area of the university. She had a building behind her with no windows and a cliff on another, allowing her to focus on observing a small area. This area was a grassy field for about 10m before becoming a forest. Normally not the safest place, but Alissa felt that if assassins did managed to slip past security, they would certainly not be able to come with weapons. After looking around a bit to make sure that everything was safe, Alissa put down her bag and took out bits and pieces that appeared to be replica body parts, very crude replicas. Eventually, she pieced them together to make what would once have been a crash test dummy. Since she could rarely find a sparring partner and due to the nature of what she was doing, Alissa found it easy to practice on this for certain things. It had a good amount of weight to it, almost that of a real person. It would even stand up if positioned correctly. With that settled, Alissa began to practice.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Aegir half opened his left eye and swiveled it in the direction of the sound. He had been sleeping in the tree branches which had been quite usual for him as of late. Beneath him a hiking trail ran through this leg of the forest and while he tended to be further away from the campus today he had some business to tend to with a student.

He was waiting for her classes to let out and dozed off as he waited. Besides few were using the hiking trail at this time and no one that had moved him in such away that he would act.

Being high enough up in the trees he had an excellent view of the surrounding area though his view of the forest wasn't as keen with all the branches in the way. But there near a building he could sense a student and see her practicing some martial art on a dummy, the thumping sound he heard had been her connecting with it.

Visually at first he did not recognize the martial art though with his other senses he knew it to be Sambo as he scanned Alisa's brain as he so customarily did with all sentient creatures he ran across. He watched knowing that his approach would be seen long before he arrived though he could dull her perceptions to get there. He estimated how far away she was, figuring that it would take a human 5 minutes or so to get there so it would take him about twice as long.

From what he could see she was attractive and though that was not necessarily the quality that he looked at first and foremost it did help. He focused on her thoughts tracing her memories to this point in time.

And what he found interested him ... this was something that he could work with, something to quell his usual boredom for the time being. For now he kept a watch on her as he calculated his opening move.

Allisa began to work on work on throws. These generally took a while. Not the throws themselves, but setting up the dummy each time after was rather tedious, and this was a problem. While a prisoner of Pennypacker, Allisa found sambo a way of removing herself from her situation for a brief time. As she would practice or spar, she was focusing only on the task and gave no heed to her predicament. Now, with her always having to look behind her for assassins, she was able to use the practice to forget about all of her worries. However, when she was setting up the dummy, she didn't have to focus as much. It wasn't hard, but it took maybe half a minute or so to set up. Longer if a limb fell off or was pulled off. During this time, everything came crashing back.

After not putting an arm back on properly, the attempted throw caused the dummy to lose said arm and the leg below it. As Alissa knelt down to pick up the leg, she thought she noticed something in the forest. It was as if she heard a small rustle. She looked up but only saw the sea of green that she was before. And she couldn't hear anything coming from the forest either.

Perhaps I need a break. Allisa thought as she sat down beside a wall. She pulled out a bottle of water and gulped it down like she hadn't drank for days. As worry began to grip her, she got back up, set the dummy up and continued her work.

He was going from tree to tree now, stretching out a tentacle to nearby branches, using his elascity when necessary to coil around the tree limbs and swing from each getting closer to her each time. True, from here he could do what he wished but he desired a better look, besides, if he were closer he could get at her easier.

She heard the rustle of the leaves in the branches though as he swung to an old elm. He paused as she turned around, holding as still as possible and allowing his natural abilities to blend in to take effect. She look for longer then most would, an outward sign of her paranoia but then figured that there was nothing to concern herself with.

Mistake number 1, though he did not fault her from making it as she went back to her practice. He watched for a little while longer, taping into old memories before inserting a barb into her mind as he began to alter her perceptions seeing what he wanted her to see.

At first it was nothing, she wouldn't notice the thin line of smoke from behind the building, not at first though when her attention was finally cast to it she would see a cigarette butt tossed from behind the building to the ground where a man stepped out from behind it.

He had black hair and green eyes, a white suit with shiny black shoes and a red shirt, his jacket opened at the front allowing her to see that he was wearing several gold necklaces. There was a white band-aid over the bridge of his nose.

He grinned, his eyes sliding towards her. "Pennypacker sends his regards." It was Viktor, a Russian immigrant that had a strong enough grasp on the language where he no longer had much of an accent. She knew of him from her days in slavery, Pennypacker's go getter so to speak.

Viktor snapped his fingers and two men, glad in black suits and sunglasses came out from behind the building and rushed forward as Viktor hung back, grinding his discarded cigarette under foot.

Alissa continued to attack the dummy. Now that she didn't have to throw it anymore, she could continue to practice for longer periods at a time, and her paranoia became but a tiny speck in the back of her mind. As Alissa was going, she thought she smelt something; something odd and out of place. Something like smoke.

As she continued to practice, she looked up and saw a thin wisp of smoke as a man in a white suit stepped out from behind a building.

"Victor?" Alissa thought. He was one of Pennypacker's main men. What were Pennypacker's men doing here? Why would the dictator outsource?

"Pennypacker sends his regards." Spoke Viktor in his characteristic Russia accent as two men in black suits stepped from behind the building and rushed towards Alissa.

"Bugger! I'll figure out this mystery later." Thought Alissa as the two men came towards her. The man on the left closer to the cliff reached her first and tried to punch her. Instinctively, Alissa grabbed the man's wrist and before he knew what was going on, she kicked him in the solar plexus. As the man doubled over, Alissa bolted past him towards the forest, making sure to stay as close to the cliff as possible and hence as far away as the second man, and more importantly, Viktor. His face illustrated he didn't expect things to go this way, giving Alissa time to escape.

She had not gone far though her mind perceived her going thusly. It was all perceptions really and he desired her to be in the general area so that he could see her better. Still he directed the illusion and matters seemed as real as possible since he was tapped into her senses making her experience what he desired.

Grabbed and kicked, the first man was still on his knees gasping for breath and clutching at his ribs as she heard a distinct snapping sound when hitting him. Adreniline surged through her and she did not have the luxuary of holding anything back.

He was still on the ground as she made her way towards the forest, the second man rapidly closing though still a fair distance behind her at this time. Viktor casually gazed in the direction that the pair had been running in while he dug in his pants pocket and checked his pocket watch, nodded to himself then shrank away back from the direction he had arrived in.

The trees of the forest grew more and more numerous as they grew thicker. Branches snapped beneath their foot falls, their was a rustling of under brush that they passed through as they went on though she found herself pressing through the bulk of the forest on a penisula of land with cliff facing all around her save from the direction she had come from and there, there was the man in sunglasses, he halted the hint of a grin upon his face as he was well aware that she had two choices here, through him or off the cliff and he doubted that she was going to chose the later.

Alissa entered the forest. After about ten seconds she could hear a second set of feet crashing through the leaves on the floor of the forest. Viktor was not with him it seemed, and the first man wasn't getting up, not yet at least. Alissa couldn't risk to attack the man like he did the first one, this one would be far more careful after what happened to his comrade.

"I can't attack this one normally, maybe I can use the forest to my advantage." Thought Alissa as she looked around for something to use while running. The crunching of dead leaves was getting louder behind her, she wouldn't have much time left. Then Alissa saw what she was looking for. A stand of trees nearby were rather close together, with a small gap to get between a couple of them. Alissa continued running. When Alissa got to the stand, she was starting to hear the man's breathing. She only had a few seconds left. Alissa expelled the air from her lungs and squeezed between the trees. The man reached out to grab her but was too late.

Alissa ran a short distance so that the trees would obstruct his view of her. With any luck, the man would think she had kept running. With this thought in mind, Alissa began climbing the nearest tree.

He reached out and nearly had a handful of her golden locks before she darted forward between two trees forcing his larger frame to circumvent them. By then he had lost sight of her though he froze instead of hurrying on.

Aware of his environment he realized that she could not have pressed onward to far and he did not seem to want her to dash out from behind a tree and wind up behind him, thus negating the advantage that he now had. He breathed through clenched teeth, his hands balled up into fists as his dark eyes darted to and fro scanning the under brush, searching for places that Alisa could have hid herself from his gaze.

So far he had not seen anything nor had he heard anything. He took a few tentative steps forward then paused as he searched for her visually. The bad news was that he was being methodical about all this, the good news was that his gaze did not once rise towards the heavens or give any indication that he believed her to have climbed a tree, perhaps such a simple though had not occurred to him.

He paused, scanned again, then reached to an inner pocket of his jacket where he pulled out a small hand heeld device. It was green and resembled a pineapple otherwise though there was a nice shiny pin at one end of it. A grenade!

"One chance! You can make this easy on yourself or not, come out or the boss will be rather ticked ..."

Alissa managed to quietly get to a branch above the man pursuing her. He wasn't looking up, just around. He was taking his time, but maybe that was a good thing. She thought about jumping down on him like a drop bear. But if she misjudged it, she would not live long enough to regret it. Alissa just continued to observe, to try and find a way to leave. She can't move, or he'll look up for sure. But if she stays, it's only a matter of time before he looks up, for whatever reason.

Things stayed the same for a moment, and then the man reached into his pocket and brought out an object. Alissa looked and nearly gasped. He had a grenade.

One chance! You can make this easy on yourself or not, come out or the boss will be rather ticked." The man yelled into the stand of trees. Alissa panicked. Without thinking, she started moving away. She was trying not to make too much noise. She had gotten back to the trunk and began to move to another one. She stood up to move to a branch on another tree close by. As she put her foot down on the next branch, a small twig coming off the branch snapped. This mistake in itself would not have been very big; the man was moving around, the distant snapping noise could have easily been mistaken for his own movements. However, a flock of birds in the tree and the surrounding trees suddenly took off, making as much noise as they possibly could.

He glanced toward the birds, his head jerking in their direction as they took flight. Fortunately for her he had yet to look back at the area they had roosted at. It was more that the initial sound had startled he and now that he had confirmed what it was he had been disinterested in where they had come from.

A smaller man may have come to the realization that something spooked them into acting and perhaps he may have investigated the matter further when she luck out yet again, his attention whirling to the area of underbrush ahead of him as he heard something rustling in the bushes.

He pulled the pin on the grenade and tossed it that way. She had already been warned and he wasn't about to tell Pennypacker that he messed up, that Alisa got the better of him. KA-BOOM!

The grenade went off in an explosive detonation. A spray of earth, leaves and branches rained down to the earth as the man came out from behind a tree that he took cover behind and sprint off in that direction expecting to find the remains of the student scattered about the terrain.

More birds joined the others in the sky, then silence or was that the ringing sound of the grenade in her ears?

Alissa was sure that she would have been discovered. But, she wasn't.

"No more mistakes." she thought. The accident had snapped her back into concentration. Alissa looked over her shoulder at the man below. He was shifting around a bit. She moved slowly and steadily. As he moved however, Alissa quickened her pace somewhat. She then saw, too her horror, that the man pulled the pin out of the grenade.

"Stuff keeping quiet! Alissa thought as she scrambled away, snapping twigs and scraping leaves off which fell to the forest floor. She thought she was making more noise than a woodpecker but put that to the back of her mind as she reached another tree.

The man threw the grenade into the gap that she had just been a second ago. Alissa knew that if he didn't find her remains in that stand, he would immediately suspect the trees, and it would be all over. Alissa scrambled down the tree, making sure to have the tree between her and the pineapple. She heard a massive boom. The trees sheltered her from the blast. As the explosion went off, Alissa dropped from the tree and bolted away. She figured she might have a couple of minutes before the man picked up the trail and continued pursuit.

Alissa looked up and saw more birds than in that Hitchcock movie "The Birds". But strangely enough, she couldn't hear them. There was no collective squawking of birds. Just a strange ringing. She panicked for a moment. Alissa thought she had Tinnitus. Then she pulled herself together, the gravity of the situation keeping her down.

Alissa looked for the best avenue of escape and she headed deeper into the forest.

If I can run around him, I can get back to the university and hopefully back to security. Alissa spoke to herself. She had to talk for hearing herself think was impossible.

The man had heard movement in the direction that he tossed the grenade in, which was expected to flush a target there out into the opened but his hearing was temporarily supressed with the ringing sensation in his ears so he no longer heard her as she moved about.

He rushed forward to the blast sight, eyes scanning, looking for a body or signs of one which allowed Alissa to navigate behind him. She took off, having about 2 minutes head start for when he was unable to find a body or pieces of one his attention swung to the trees, looking over them quickly, seeing nothing, then realizing that he was dubbed.

Fortunately he was fast as Alissa already knew. He nearly had been selected for the Olympic track team, losing out to another competitor that got the last spot on the team. But still, he was fast. He quickly cut her lead down in half, she could hear him rustling through the dry fallen leaves and hear the occasion snapping of brances under foot.

But she was nearly through this portion of the forest, nearly back to be within sight of the campus. One minute now, she had that much of an advantage that she could suspect would dwindle to nothing in another minute. Could she make it back by then? That was the risk of course. Running she might be able to accomplish that though she was unaware if he was armed either and would just get a clear view of her before shooting her.

He did say there was one chance, that he already displayed that he was willing to end her life as evidenced by the grenade. Her hearing was returning now though there was a loud ringing to it.