The gray woman was having so much fun she could hardly contain herself. It took some force of will to keep herself chasing after the fleeing student, the scent of fear rich in the air. Steel seriously considered just stopping to drink in the odor and give Juniper more of a lead. The longer the chase went, after all, the longer the gray woman could run her nose along the delicious line of fear and the stuttering invigoration that crammed its way into her mind as she snorted it up.

Duty called, though, and that meant not running the student until her legs gave out completely. That might take until morning, and there would likely be a fresh detention slip come morning. Still, a little bit of a delay could be facilitated. Especially for such a spectacle as watching the student willfully go diving off the edge of a cliff! Miss Steel had seen some splendidly ridiculous things in her time, but this was such a welcome opportunity she couldn't resist. Her yellow eyes glowed behind Juniper, weaving back and forth in the darkness, as the spider-creature slowed its scuttling just enough for the student to clear the edge with room to spare.

As Juniper fell, branches rushing up to meet her back, Steel crested the ridge. With the moon against her back, the body of an enormous spider, silvery carapace shimmering in the pale light, came into view. Where the spider's head and pedipalps would be, there was a human head and neck and a pair of gray-skinned arms that vanished into the body of the enormous spider. Legs spanned nearly a dozen feet across the edge of the drop and coiled in tight.

The spider-thing launched itself after its prey moments after Juniper's feet left the ledge. The creature came flying through the air after, legs and arms outstretched, with more of that horrible laughter echoing in the cool night air. If Juniper didn't scramble from the branches slowing her fall swiftly, she'd end up in its clutches. Or crushed on the ground underneath it, if the branches weren't enough to stop such a thing.

Her heart was thudding in a way that had little to do with her physical exertion. Every time she slowed, it was like something gripped her spine, and she wondered if that would be the misstep that got her caught. She shoulder checked a narrow tree, though she managed to bring herself into a spin and properly reorient on the next step. She stepped on a root where she thought there was flat ground and her next step came up short so that she could catch herself. How many mistakes? It didn't matter, she could see a break in the trees up ahead as she swatted a hanging bundle of vines out of her way with a forearm. The home stretch, where the soil got too thin for the tap roots to properly spread out, a narrow band of grass punctuated by veins of rock where nothing could grow.

She didn't want to cut this too close. Every inch of distance was important, of course, but the ledge could be unstable. Jumping wasn't exactly a smart idea to begin with, but falling would be damning. She put her head down. burning up the reserves of her strength in high kicks, churning up the turf behind her as she tried to squeeze everything she could out of her body. And then, when her eyes filled with a view that stretched all the way to the coast, she brought her legs together and jumped forward, air rushing by her ears. Her chest gripped tight, she had to let go and just let things happen passed this step . . . but she couldn't close her eyes, or she might miss her opportunity. She had to just watch the nightmarish ride play itself out.

"Oh shit!" she looked down. The gap had looked a lot narrower from the bottom. She pumped her legs in the air as if it would give her a few more feet, "Shitshitshit" her reaction spun itself into a mantra as gravity started clawing at her. Intellectually she knew she'd complete an arch, but subjectively it felt like she was being pulled straight down. She reached her arms out as her target rushed passed her eyes. "DAMMIT!" her fingers brushed through the branches but she couldn't get a grip of anything to try and control her fall.

"UMPH!" she'd been so desperately reaching she missed it as a branch came out to meet her instead. She wasn't sure how far she'd fallen at that point, but it caught her across the collar, getting hooked under her arms long enough to spin her legs up and around. The impact had dazed her a bit, however, and when gravity reasserted it's hold on her she hadn't grabbed hold properly, her hand instead seizing up reflexively around the knife she was still clutching as her only tool. As she started falling back first now, she caught her first good look at the cackling madwoman who was even now falling after her, chitinous legs spread wide.

Spider! she thought, gritting her teeth before her shoulder hit the next limb down, knocking her into a lazy spin as it brought her momentum down further, God dammit, of course a spider, June! Multiple legs, multiple eyes, dangling puppets! You stupid bint, of course it'd make the jump too, it probably secured a tether with it's spinnerets!

Self admonishment aside, she had bigger problems at the moment. Another branch caught her behind the knee, and for a moment it seemed she might've managed to hook it, but it snapped under the weight of impact. Another hit her square in the back and brought her speed down further, but it broke too. She was getting slower, but that thing was right behind her, and she couldn't seem to adjust her course from just bouncing back and forth like a pachinko ball.

Something thudded against Juniper's head. Something scratched at her thigh. Something blotted out the moon and darkness swallowed her completely.

---

When Juniper awoke, it was to a soft voice singing something that, at first, was unintelligible. Her arms were stretched to her sides and up and pinned under what felt like thread stretched taut over her hands and glued down. Something similar kept her ankles stuck apart, though her feet were comfortably on the floor. The wall pressing into the student's back was warm and slightly moist. Wherever she was stank of soil and something that fouled it, something like old, dead creatures. As her eyes adjusted to consciousness, the thin light of some pale, phosphorescent fungus filled her eyes, letting her see her surroundings. It was a long burrow dug underground, by the look of it, lined with thin, white strands that were definitely not the fungus. The floor was littered with the bones of creatures, largely unrecognizable due to being crunched underfoot by some heavy presence sweeping over them regularly. A single human skull stared back up at Juniper.

"What kind of man builds a machine to kill a girl," the singing continued. It became suddenly apparent that, among the bones, swarms of little creatures scuttled to and fro. "No he did not use his hands like us, my man, he used a tool, but just the same!" The enormous spider thing from before kicked a large bone before it as it scuttled forward and confronted a clump of the little creatures. "How can you question who's to blame?" it sang, yellow-green eyes glowing bright in the gloom.

The creatures rose up on their feet, their own red eyes brightening as they chirped a wordless response.

"Doesn't matter, now listen," the gray creature sang, turning and clambering swiftly up over her prey until eyes slit like a serpents peered hungrily into Juniper's. "The good doctor has to pay!" Human hands clapped once, and the abomination smiled with psychotic glee. "Good morning, Junebug! I hope your nap was filled with only the most delightful of nightmares. Now, I'm afraid," the spider-thing said, reaching behind itself to pull out a crisp white sheet of paper that listed the euphemism for Juniper's crimes forward, "you have the other copy of this." The other human hand dug into the student's pocket and retrieved the crumpled detention slip. The two were quickly matched against one another, then discarded into the refuse on the floor. "I'm afraid because that means you've been getting caught. Good little terrorists don't get caught. I'm going to have to show you what happens when you get caught." The creature turned, one long fang glinting in the low light, and barked an inhuman order at the spiders. They scurried away to obey, and the gray, human face turned back to meet Juniper's. "So, lowly criminal, please tell me how do you plead?"

"Uhn . . ." Juniper stirred softly in place at first. Still half asleep, her nose wrinkled as she tried to take a deep breath through her nose, the strong scent of decaying matter catching in her nose causing her to jerk back reflexively and smack the back of her head against the soft earthen wall behind her. She coughed slightly as particles of dirt rained down over her shoulders, though most of it was packed tightly enough that it didn't shift with her movements or stuck fast with a supportive layer of sticky white thread.

She blinked a bit as her eyes adjusted in the fluorescent light of the glowing fungus, the rolling lyrics catching in her ears the first hint that she wasn't alone down here. The light metallic rasp to the voice and the way her hands refused to move when she gave a hard pull gave her a pretty good idea of who else was in this burrow with her. The bass line from "The Hounds" popped unbidden into her mind to accompany the singing as she cast her eyes around looking for something she could use to her advantage, her eyes settling briefly on the empty eye sockets of a human skull staring up at her from the floor. The floor and it's moving carpet of swaying arachnids . . . so, this thing had an affinity for lesser examples of the species . . . probably how she'd been tracked down so quickly.

She couldn't quite help herself, she tried to shrink back against the wall as those serpentine green eyes peered so closely into her own. Ugh, she hated being called Junebug, it was always what Tom had called her when he thought she was acting like a silly little girl from the 'burbs. Still, she played it quiet, trying to get a feel for the social dynamic at play as she let this creature's cheerful, if unhinged, banter roll over her. She didn't have to wait long, as the creature produced a copy of the detention slip with her name on it and plucked it's mate from her vest pocket.

"Heh, you want a plea?" she said softly, she couldn't help but smirk slightly at the absurdity of it, but her mind scrambled for something clever to say. That bass line was still drumming through the back of her head, thudding away with the beat of her heart as she tried to keep her voice steady.

"I'm going to go with unrepentant guilt. 'If there ever was a time, if there ever was a chance to undo the things I've done and wash these bloodstains from my hands? It has passed and been forgotten, these are the paths that we must take.'" she said, bending the lyrics of the spider's song a bit. "Aren't you the one who said that if my kind is ever going to be free, we need to be willing to take what we need by whatever means necessary?"

The taste of an old psychological wound being prodded was like a jolt wired directly into the gray creature's mind. She couldn't help the tiniest shiver at Juniper's response to the hated name. More poking would be required.

"Excellent! I'm glad you feel you can be honest with me." A gray hand that served as the end of the spider's pedipalp reached out and patted lightly at the top of the student's head in praise. "I'll try to return the favor." The spider-thing smiled cutely, its head tilted to one side, and clasped its hands together before it. "Father would have liked you, Junebug. Pity she's no longer with us." The smile faltered for just a moment as the creature spoke, then returned fully to her face. Long, spindly limbs shifted slightly as she looked over the trapped student. "I suppose you realize by now that, even with a guilty plea, your full sentence will have to be delivered." Cold fingers tipped in sharp claws wrapped into the front of the bound woman's shirt and pulled, shredding their way through the fabric. "And you have a lot to answer for, Junebug, even if you don't truly have blood on your hands." A fistful of fabric came away with a sudden yank, the cool air rushing in and across the exposed skin. The skirt to got the same treatment, leaving Juniper in her underwear and tatters.

With a small rush of legs, the gray creature scuttled back. "Do forgive me if I skip the standard fare. I don't think a good raping would really set you straight, you know." She turned as the horde of smaller creatures returned, bearing aloft an enormous bundle wrapped in silvery webbing. "Rejoice, though! Tonight you get to give of yourself to feed a new generation!" The enormous spider turned back with the bundle in her hands and held it out to show the trapped young woman. "There's a species of wasp, you know, that stings tarantulas and then lays eggs on their stunned bodies." Something stirred in the sac, causing it to bulge and ripple ever so slightly. "The eggs hatch, and then the newly-born wasps eat the helpless creature they're host to." A pair of legs dipped down and collected silvery threads from spinnerets along the creature's underbelly. "I figure it's only fair that, in this place, we turn that little trope on its head." Threads stuck what was clearly an egg sac by the appearance of a tiny, metallic spider squirming its way free at the edge to the wall beneath Juniper and between her legs. "Remember, little wasp, that you brought this on yourself."

The first of the hatchlings was free and scurrying across the earthen wall, seeking somewhere warm. It found Juniper's skin and immediately clambered up and onto the girl. Tiny feet stuck into her skin like pinpricks as it climbed over her. It stopped. It wasn't warm enough. It needed something better. With a little shove and a harder pinprick, it disappeared under the student's skin and continued its sojourn, scratching at her from within as it scrambled higher so its siblings would have room behind it.

"Lies only seem to aid your kind out in this place." Juniper said a wave of indignation running through her in the wake of that gentle pat on the head. Combined with the little matter of her despised appellation, it almost caused her to miss the gender discrepancy with the creature's father, or the way it's manic countenance had fallen for just a moment as it's thought settled on it's relative. Of course, that grin came back in full force as she got back to "teaching" Juniper . . . not at all a reassuring smile as sharp claws took hold of the thin cotton of her top and tore it free with a firm jerk. "And I promise, the lack of blood hasn't been from any lack of effort on my part." she added as another hard tear shredded her skirt and left a useless scrap of navy blue plaid on the floor between her feet.

"I'll try to contain my disappointment." Juniper said as she watched her arachnid antagonizer scurry slightly away for a moment. Underground as they were, hidden away from the sun, Juniper shivered slightly as he skin was exposed to the cool damp air within the burrow. Given the enclosed quarters and the size of her hostess, she'd actually expected it to be a bit more hot and stuffy down here . . . but then, perhaps her captor was cold to the couch. Juniper's own body heat might well simply be being sucked into the ground. She had to admit that she was a bit surprised, between the way it had told her that her guilty plea wouldn't reduce her sentence and the way it had torn at her clothes, she'd already been mentally preparing herself for what she was certain was coming next. Ah, but the truth, the truth was far more terrifying on this occassion.

At first she'd quirked her eyebrow at the large sphere of tightly spun silver thread that the woman was cradling in her arms, but she listened. Juni might not have been familiar with the particular species that this thing was talking about, but that didn't mean she was a stranger to parasitic wasps. The ones that caught in her memory, and thus the ones that was conjured up in her mind as she listened to the spider-woman go on, tended to lay their eggs in caterpillars. The young stayed within the caterpillar, growing by drinking his blood until they made up a full third of the creature's body weight, then with little saw-like teeth they chewed their way out from under their host's skin and spun a cocoon to develop into their next stage metamorphosis. The thing was, the same virus that kept the caterpillar's immune system from attacking the parasites got into it's brain, it actually used it's own silk spinners to create a protective covering over it's tormentors, and then stood guard over them until it eventually starved to death, no longer having any sense of self preservation. Nature could be a cruel and twisted bitch at times . . . Juni sometimes blanched at the shit supernature got involved with.

As that large silvery ball was affixed to the wall between her spread legs, Juniper felt a tightness in her chest. She'd actually done it. She'd poked her nose into too many things, pissed off too many people, caused too much damage, they'd officially deemed her too much trouble to keep around. So instead, they were getting rid of her, they wouldn't even have to bury the remains because she was already six feet under ground. She started to twist in her bonds in earnest as that revelation sank, though mostly she just ended up wiggling her hips and arching her back a bit stretched out as she was. She grit her teeth as she felt the tiny little pricks of a hatchling finding her leg after escaping the eggsac. Her eyes went round, looking down to just barely catch a glimpse of milky transparent exoskeleton as the new life acted solely on instinct . . . dammit, it was starting already!? In a few moments they'd be bubbling out of that sphere in numbers she didn't even care to think about.

She gave a short little peep at that hard prick along her thigh, narrowly swallowing down a scream as her heard began thudding in her chest. With her clothes so torn and ragged, it was an easy thing to see the muscles on her arms and legs stand out tightly as she tried to just muscle her way to freedom, blind panic threatening to kick in at any moment as she could now feel it moving around underneath her skin but still climbing higher.

"This is fucked up! What the hell is wrong with you!?!" she said, a frantic tone creeping into her voice as she felt the eggsack brush against her inner thigh as she tried to twist to one side and affect her own rescue.

Every once in awhile, a student came up with an idea better than what the gray woman had planned. Without fail, that idea would give off a rush of fear that slammed through Steel's veins and rocked her mind for a moment, threatening to eradicate reality once and for all before the bliss subsided. She'd never had a hit like that, though. Not one that bent her plans so cleanly. Well, at least, not in a very long while.

More little spiders were starting to scramble out of the eggsac, working their way quickly over the cool earth and into Juniper with erratic stabs in ones and twos. The gray woman wanted to drink the fear flooding the room, but she had to shove it off, let it settle away from her mind. The new, mechanical lives needed to eat first. Which is why Juniper's comments touched a nerve more raw than normal.

"Wrong with me?!" the gray woman snarled, slamming a fist into the soft earth beside Juniper's head. As the student squirmed against the unyielding bonds, she brought her leg against the pile of spiders. A half dozen hard stabs were her reward. "Have you seen what your kind does to cows? Majestic creatures, and you slam spikes into their brains, keep them locked in boxes, and flood their bodies with hormones, and not even in that order like would be proper." The things were crawling haphazardly for various end goals. One seemed to have settled contently over the girl's heart, where the lump under her skin was steadily growing as the thing fed in its warm resting spot. "This is ethical! This is fair and just! You were found guilty and now you're being punished." Others of the creatures were squirming out along Juniper's extremities, apparently convinced the trapped and struggling hands would be best to settle under. Ever tiny step under her skin was a little itch she couldn't scratch. Each step, the things grew ever so slightly. The one over Juniper's heart was bulging out obscenely, what was initially as wide as a pin now looking like it was as wide as a dime.

"Junebug, you didn't listen earlier. You're food." Miss Steel smiled, eyes glittering in the dim light. "Free range, ethically grown. Your life is nothing compared to the thousands you'll feed tonight. They deserve a chance as much as you." The eggsac was spilling the things faster now, and they seemed to be happy to follow trails the others had laid out before them. At least, until they got to Juniper's skin, at which point they seemed to delight in taking meandering, insane paths that went back over themselves and never repeated. "If anything, they deserve more. They know how not to get caught."

Juniper writhed in the grips of mortal terror as more and more she felt those hard, stinging pricks against her skin followed by the grinding feel of tiny needle-like legs pulling her clean wounds open just wide enough for another tiny bug to squirm it's way into her flesh. Juniper wasn't like most of the girls who fought here on the island, she didn't try to strangle her fear in constricting layers of self control, nor did she try to mask it with bravado. No, she clung to it tight, felt her brain chemistry ticking over for fight or flight. Fear kept her sharp, kept her fast, kept her aware . . . you'd have to be insane not to be scared in a place like this.

Juniper winced a bit as the fist pounded into the soft earth next to her. Juniper had seen that look on her face before she had though, that pleasant, glazed expression, almost like chemical bliss. "AGH!" she gave a pained shout as the creature pushed a leg against her, the hatchlings caught between them instinctively biting and scratching at her flesh in a bid to protect themselves, just stabbing their fangs into her instead of the shallow incisions the others made. When she let up the pressure, Juniper blinked at the tears that had gathered in her eyes . . . but something was starting to click together in her head. This thing . . . in controlled the lesser spiders . . . she needed to keep it talking for now, desperately search for some kind of leverage to make it want to stop.

"Ethical?" there was a soft titter to her voice, "Fair and just?" that titter was building into a kind of mad giggle. She felt like her skin was swimming around her now . . . how many of these things were inside of her now? She could feel them under the tight skin of her fingers, tiny claws stabbing along her wrists, hips, or spine, wherever bones came close to the skin. "Don't try to piss on my leg and tell me it's raining!" she snapped. Oh, well, she could also try flailing at the bars of her cage while her sanity fractured at the edges, that might work too.

"Justice doesn't exist in this place! You things tore it away, replaced it with baser laws! Those of predator and prey. That bullshit the school's peddling doesn't matter, it's a veneer of civilization, a safety blanket! It doesn't protect us, it shackles us, makes us victims, and prolongs the agony over four fucking years while bringing new prey to your drooling maws!" she twisted her arms, her heart fluttering a bit as the spiderling suckled a bit too hard near her beating heart, swelling grotesquely in proportion, "How could I do anything but stand in open contempt of that!?"

But even as her voice cracked, lashing out emotionally, the analytical core of her brain was ticking away under the frothing surface. However she might feel about the creature's idea of ethics, she'd had a point, and an important one. Juniper wasn't listening, not the way that she did when she was pushing and pulling at Aegir or most of the other intelligent creatures on this place. Not dissecting the words said, and considering those unsaid, not prying for the truth, for the motive. She had to stop thinking like a victim, and start thinking like a reporter, like a survivor.

She closed her eyes, trying to screen out her surroundings, and almost instantly regretted it. She didn't realize how much she was babbling just to clutch tight to sanity, this living nightmare echoed too many she'd had when she'd first come to this place, seen her first victim of this place and soon after her first creature. Every writhing, stinging set of feet marching erratically over her body threatened to send her mind spiralling out of focus, and there were hundreds, maybe thousands of the things. First fact, she was food for these things, that much was immediately reinforced by another snapping bite a bit higher up along her flank. Secondly, she was still alive . . . while it was possible that was solely for the sadism of it, she sincerely doubted it. Thus, whatever these things were feeding off of required her alive . . . what did she offer as a warm body that she didn't as a corpse? Body heat . . . yes . . . pumping blood, though with this many little spiderlings if she didn't eat it wouldn't be long before they drained her away to a weakened husk . . .

That might be enough for the little ones, but what about Not-Sayuri? Why stick around, her children were provided for, why watch them eat? Why engage her in conversation if she were going to be dead soon . . . loneliness? Mmn . . . maybe, it did seem to pine for it's missing "Father". There had been that glazed, euphoric expression on her face before she'd snapped her arm forward in a punch . . . what could have caused that? Was it in her head, getting drunk off her emotive spectrum, chewing on her desperation as she frantically scrambled for something she could use? Or . . . was her life actually in danger? It had never intimated as much. She was going to give of herself to feed a new generation, not just give herself. For all that she was "guilty", this thing had never told her that she should be good, should straighten up and fly right. But it had repeated one virtue . . . "Don't Get Caught".

Her bottom lip trembled as she whimpered piteously, tossing her head to one side to try and throw one of the creatures that was crawling up along her neck at the moment. The eggsack was splitting wider, disgorging a greater wave of creepy crawling little beasts, and all she had at the moment was speculation which wasn't doing a thing for her state of distress.

It was hard not to feed alongside the spiderlings with fear bubbling so clearly from the trapped woman's psyche. It was like wine, cool and crisp, in front of a dehydrated alcoholic. Steel grit her teeth and dug her fingers into the earthen wall. The little ones needed a chance to establish themselves first. A lot of work went into building them, and she wasn't going to waste the effort for something she could have again later.

The ethical debate was a good distraction.

"Hah! And what are you but prey?" the gray-skinned creature snarled, all eight of its yellow eyes, rounded and bulbous, flaring in the gloom. "Do you think the chicken you had last week felt as you do now?"

A bit of soil bounced off Juniper's neck and shoulder even as she tried, fruitlessly, to shake of a creature that wasn't on her neck, but rather under the skin of it. It climbed higher.

"Do you think the animals your kind keeps penned and fattens for slaughter, on their way to their doom, consider their attackers monsters?" The yellow light of the spider-woman's eyes reflected on long, curved fangs beside her head that shook slightly, itching to plunge themselves into human flesh. "Or is that just life? You're not the apex predators anymore and suddenly life isn't fair. So you fight and scream and claw your way against us, and for what?"

There were more and more spiders flooding under Juniper's skin. They seared and itched and bit and fanned out across the full of her body. Some came to rest in hands trapped and squirming under what could only be web thick as rope and hard as steel, leaving her fingers uneven and aching. Juniper's feet weighed harder in their bonds as well, misshapen by a pair of colonies of the hungry monstrosities. Her legs and arms were less filled, though things continued to trek back and forth across the length of them, clawing with miniscule feet along muscles and skin, as they sought somewhere comfortable to stop. The plain bra the school issued didn't fit any longer for the swarm of things dotting under the skin of smooth, soft breasts.

"What if all your squirming just gets you sent to slaughter sooner? Is that a victory, little Junebug?" The fangs twitched slightly again, so hungry for what was before her but must be left to the mechanical aberrations. "What if you can't understand the cage we built for you, and there's no way out? What does the lamb do then?"

The one spider climbing higher was inside Juniper's cheek, in the thin wall of flesh between the skin and where her tongue could reach. Its legs scraped their way higher. Her skin bulged slightly to accommodate it as it passed up over her cheek bone. She could feel it beside her eye. Terrible scratching echoed in her skull as the pinpricks passed up and into her temple.

And then that one source was gone. A psychic urge tried to burn its way into the helpless student's terrified mind, the flaring of the one life inside her skull reaching out instead of drawing in. If there were maternal instincts, it wanted them active. These weren't predators feasting on her blood and fear. They were her children. They needed a small sacrifice. A fair sacrifice, from a good mother.

"Do you accept the cage, or do you make your shepherds pay for every drop of blood they spill of your kind?" the spider-thing intoned softly.

"Ha ha, there it is!" a laugh bubbled out of Juniper's throat as she threw her head back, tears were steaming down her face freely now, staining her cheeks and dripping from her chin to dabble across her grotesquely swollen chest. "That's the bitter truth of it! There is other life out there, higher order life , and the same sovereignty we wielded so casually in our own backyard works against us out here!" she swayed a bit in her bonds, trying to make a fist, but her knuckles were too swollen.

"No pretty words like "justice", just the natural order of things." she let her head sag from her shoulders for a moment, her body still shaking softly, half laughing, half crying. She felt like her body was on fire. She opened her eyes for a moment, and she almost heaved as she watched countless hatchlings crawling over each other under the soft flesh of her bosom. Her bra cut cruelly against her skin, she felt heavy and light-headed, even thrashing about uselessly was getting more difficult. "Ah, or is it? You're certainly impressive . . . but look at this place. So many lies, so many tricks, so much effort to isolate and weaken us." she giggled softly, "You're strong . . . but you're few, and your agendas don't align. We human beings learned a long time ago . . . there are no bystanders in the fight for survival. I wonder if you're scared of us, if that's what this petting zoo is all about."

Her ruminations ended with a groan as she leaned forward. Something . . . something was wrong. Reflexively, she'd tongued along the inside of her cheek and closed her eye as that loan spider crawled it's way up along her face. There was a . . . kind of pressure in her head, something different from the fat, wriggling masses that stretched at her skin and made her want to scream. Something was prying under her temple, looking for something.

"It would be a release . . . " she gasped, raising her eyes to look through he bangs at the twitching mandibles that seemed primed to sink into her throat, "But not a victory. The human race won't fade quietly into the night -- I won't fade quietly! I'm not a lamb . . . I can study, I can understand, I can learn. I'll find a way out . . . and I'll leave the door open for the rest of them."

Something was definitely coming loose in her mind. Juniper was not stranger to things tampering in her mind, but actually shielding it from invasion was something she hadn't worked out just yet. Some things were locked off from active recollection, others were simply backdoors or elements that had been teased into place, but what the probing spider was seeking out was far older than any of that damage. Little things came bubbling to the surface . . . a doll she'd had as a child. Times she'd played with smaller children. Cooing over a baby in a stroller, times she'd worked as a babysitter, daydreams she'd had about an idyllic family life. Anger seethed and bubbled under an ocean of congealing nightmare fuel, she could recognize the manipulations happening, but she seemed powerless to stop them.

"And if, somehow, there is no escape," she choked out, "Then I'll just have to kill the gatekeepers . . . and make it my own." she glared back into the glowing orbs that appraised her imperiously. An errant thought bubbled through the back of her mind, something she'd said time and time again since realizing what this place was. If you can't dwell in heaven, reign in hell.

The spider-thing's eyes dimmed slightly as it laughed, placing gray-skinned fingers over its lips to politely hide the gesture. "You're precious," it said, reaching up to pat the squirming, writhing young woman on the cheek. The tiny spider in her mind was dragging the memories and associations faster now, wrapping them all together. "We fear you the way the spider fears an ant." With a careful spike of electrical signals, all the maternal associations, all of those things buried deep in Juniper's instincts, were associated with the small lumps distending her skin and the glittering, metallic creatures underneath. "Meditate on that before you're completely gone."

The enormous spider stepped back into the cramped tunnel and clambered away. The edge flavors leaking off the little ones were far too tasty to ignore any longer. She needed to escape the temptation. As long, spindly legs diminished into the low light down the way the fully grown brood of spiders had come from, the smaller ones stepped forward. Their legs rubbed against one another as they moved, filling the air with a symphony of broken violins. The swarm built up around Juniper's feet, watching the irregular, growing lumps under her skin skitter and clamber in a disarray of clawing, itching pain. Uneven pinpoints of burning red light stared patiently up at the writhing, pain-wracked young woman. The things moving under her skin stopped in place at once.

The swarm stirred again. As one, they rushed up over Juniper. Like Lilliputians, they spun webs in quick, arching paths that stretched up over her skin and stilled her writhing and pinned her completely to the earthwork that was eroding under her struggles. More strands, strong as the steel across her wrists and ankles, stretched and built on one another across her arms and legs, over her torso, and even began to clamber up along her neck. The lumps were still underneath pale skin, leaving it warped and hardly recognizable, as if disease had taken horrid root in her body and distended it with hives. As the larger spiders moved in a whirling cacophony and dizzying swirl of red lights, their feet pressed into Juniper's skin, clawing now at her from the other direction and leaving fresh pinpricks of pain on her. The webs entombed her body fully in a matter of moments, then finally began to build up the rest of the way along the student's neck and over her head. Sticking strands were laid haphazardly into her hair and over eyes and nose. By mercy or by chance or by design, the creatures did nothing to obstruct Juniper's mouth, aside from occasionally drag a razor-sharp leg over her lips just hard enough to itch and threaten.

Then, their work finished, the swarm left Juniper alone in the dark. The spider-things under her skin were still motionless, waiting for a signal. Down at the far end of the tunnel, the gray-skinned woman idly stroked a chelicera and waited as well for the sort of scream that would mean she could proceed.

"Tch." there it was again, that gentle dismissal that raked against her self esteem like a cruel lash. She tried to twist her arms a bit, pull herself off the wall even by a few inches, "Don't tell me you're getting squeamish now . . . " she tried to taunt as she saw the grey face pulled back, long legs scuttling back along the narrow passage, "After all the trouble you went through to get me here, you could at least have the decency to see things through." as she fell back against the wall, watching that bristly gray abdomen moving out of the dim fungal light, there was a slight echo of despair in her thoughts that betrayed her real motive readily enough, Don't leave me alone . . . not like this . . .

Of course, she wasn't really alone, as the encroaching wave of smaller spiders rushed up to remind her. Their harsh symphony of slender metallic limbs creating a discordant strings melody that made her teeth hurt as their eager scrambling filled the small cave with it's sound. She tried to pull back, press against the soft earthen wall, but she was fixed fast in place by the webbing that had already covered her hands and feet. She groaned softly as the children under her skin (ugh, she was calling them "children" now) seemed to respond to her mounting panic by going a little crazy themselves. She hissed her next breath through her teeth as their tiny needle-like legs dragged them under her flesh, hurting where the swelling children moved, but itching where they rested, causing her to twist and writhe under the glaring red light of countless beady red eyes. Without warning, all at once, the children grew still inside of her, settling into place . . . and the other swarm moved in.

She didn't scream. She didn't know how she'd kept her self control, some angry, bitter little kernel of herself refusing to give any of them the pleasure. But she was hardly a rock either, she whimpered and winced as her soft skin was worked over and over with hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny needles. Their "webs" weren't exactly the sticky silk she might have expected, it felt more like piano wire as the trailing mechanical webs set to work fixing her fast in place, taking away even her ability to squirm and wriggle as the webwork constricted tightly along her body, forcing her to take shallower breaths. She kept her eyes open, it would've been easier to close them, to try and mentally escape what was happening as they methodically worked, worrying their cute little mandibles all the while. ARGH!-- no!

She tried to tilt her head back, a vain effort to keep them away from her face but they clambered up over her neck and through her hair, securing her in that position with her chin up . Little red eyes looked back into hers before prickling feet drew the first length of silvery metallic twine across her vision. Soon enough, eyes openned or closed, her world was replaced with darkness, the webbing over her ears muffling the sounds of the world around her, even the musty smell of earth and decay was replaced by the metallic tang of webbing pressing her nost flat against her face. She was trapped, her body felt like it was burning, already flushed with fear and the press of new life inside of her, the tightly constricting webbing only trapped that heat in with her, making her feel like some kind of human furnace. Or, more likely, an incubator.

It was just her, and the children now. She'd have shuddered at the thought, had she enough slack in her bonds to manage it. Instead, she'd whined piteously. She still had her thoughts, at least . . . and another riddle to muse upon, at least until she was "completely gone." How did spider fear ants? Well, they didn't, exactly, a lone ant scouting about was never much to worry about. However, ant colonies were another matter entirely. When an ant was killed, it released a kind of pheromone into the air that screamed "danger!" to any other ant who so much as caught a wiff of it. That warning would, in short order, alert the whole hive who'd send out soldier ants to deal with the interloper, who'd use numbers and use their own venom to poison and kill the spider before the workers dragged it back home for the swarm to eat. She supposed that made a sense, a single human wasn't much danger to these things . . . but the inhibitors implied they weren't entirely immortal either. "Soldiers" with the right equipment could probably kill them . . . and if young women started returning home babbling about rape monsters it'd only be a matter of time before people started poking around. A confrontation would be almost assured.

But then, this wasn't a "colony". The school was more of an "ant farm", there were no soldiers, no queen, such a bushel of worker ants whiling away their time building tunnels until they expired. Which took four years out here, by her estimation. Idly, she pondered if anyone had ever shaken the ant farm here on Shokushu, just to see what would happen.

She decided she'd watched too much National Geographic growing up. She still didn't know what to do about the children who'd worked their way into her body. She supposed they were gaining nourishment in their own way . . . she certainly felt heavy from their added weight, but how was she supposed to care for them? Did they even take anything from their "Mother"? If they did, what would they take? Her recklessness, her futile anger, her inquisitive nature? She supposed as long as they grew up strong it didn't matter . . . they were spiders, after all, it's not as though they'd be writing books or hatching revenge schemes. Ah . . . but there was one thing . . . when she'd first come to, hadn't the big one been singing? She felt the sharp end of a leg prying at her lip, and she responded by trying to bite the errant spider's leg and pull it into her mouth for a few hard crunches before spitting it out, helpless, but not yet out of fight.

"From the glass twenty stories high / I have watched this city burn
If everything that you say is true / then there's no chance that they will learn
But if I staaaaaaaaaaaaay here with you / I will never know the truth

Do not say this is how it has to be,
You do no better than the fools of this burn-ing ci-ty"

It started softly enough, and she'd altered the tempo a bit to give it the gentle lilt of a lullaby. If her mouth was the only thing she had to express herself with, then it was what she'd use. It was better than the numbing silence . . . and maybe it would give the little darlings nestled with her something to remember her by. Puppet or no, Sayuri had implied that this song suited her better . . . if so, it seemed as good a thing as any for her kids to come into the world hearing . . . and as good a note as any for her to leave it from, if that's what it came down to.

((For those of you reading at home vaguely disturbed by this thread so far, you should probably stop reading now))

Seeds were taking root in Juniper's mind, and the gardener knew it was time to leave them be for a bit. The tilled soil of the student's mind would help them take root in the fertile ground, fed with blood and fear.

Darkness ruled her little world as she sang the hopeful lullaby to her children. They softened under its influence. The sharp points dulled and flowed more easily. They were her blood, why shouldn't they pass through her body as easily as that? The warmth collected in the darkness. It spread through her skin. The steel webbing holding her down and blinding her became a warm, woolen blanket pressing her back into the vertical bed. The blanket rested sharply against a belly that swelled as it filled with warmth from hundreds of tiny, half-itching things invading her body. The bed of soil softened. Gravity pulled her softly down into the hard mattress. A soft beep kept rhythm with the lullaby, distant and faint.

Even here, it is not safe.
Even this grave has been defaced.

Warm, powerful fingers curled into Juniper's hand, squeezing it softly and shifting away the blanket covering her.

Someone has written on this stone
In some angry hand,

"Hope rides alone," sang another voice, familiar and unrecognizable, like Tom's but not quite, its rougher tones trying to harmonize with Juniper's. Another hand pulled softly at the edge of the blanket. Light burned into Juniper's eyes. "It's time, sweetie," the voice cut in. "I'm here for you." The light refused to let her see anything other than fuzzy outlines around her. Someone broad-shouldered and tall was still squeezing her hand reassuringly. Another head, wreathed in long, disheveled hair pulled back into a bun and needlessly covered in a surgical mask blocked the light for a moment.

"We're going to have to do a couple little cuts. You shouldn't feel a thing," the doctor said. Her voice rasped like metal drawn over a whetstone as she sat back. Cold, slender hands wrapped in surgical gloves helped Juniper's feet into colder, metal stirrups. The blanket was pulled completely away, and she could see the swell of her belly underneath the mint-green medical gown. The swell of her children, warm and squirming within her. Twins. The doctor's hand brushed a metal tray covered in sharp metal things. The glint of a scalpel left a spot in Juniper's vision. Something pinched ever so slightly through the anesthesia.

How much blood she'd lost, she'd never know, entombed in those tightly constricting wires as she was it was a struggle just to keep from panting each hot breath from her boiling body. Her head felt light, each thought wrapped in a thick layer of cotton as it struggled to push it's way passed her low, lilting rendition of The Will of One. Her grip on the reality around her slipped through her finger tips as the brood of children nestling inside her began moving more harmoniously within her body.

Thin strands of steel drawn tight enough to bite into her flesh became a warm, thick blanket, if perhaps a little scratchy in places. Squinting against the harsh white light that met her as the blanket drew back from her eyes, she didn't question the way her equilibrium shifted as she rested atop that firm mattress, no, she focused on keeping that song rolling softly over her lips. The line blurred in her mind as to whether the monitoring device nearby was accompanying her, or if she'd originally used it to set the tempo. Her arm hung loosely over one edge of the bed as she let her eyes trace their way down over her full, distended belly just barely covered by the blanket as it was.

Warm, rough hands collected her lost and dangling one, fingers interlacing with hers as another hand cupped the other side. It was hard to get a clear look at him through the soft focus of her eyes, but she recognized the feel of his presence, that comforting, experienced feeling that he carried with him everywhere. Her heart ached to remember it, the way she'd fucked everything up between them so long ago . . . but a faint smile graced her lips. The horse's ass always had been there for her when the chips were down.

"I know." she said, more than a bit weakly as not-Tom informed her that it was time, with the instinctual certainty of any expecting woman on the day. She had that feeling . . . one that something was yearning to be born. Then that other voice spoke up, professional and disconnected . . . that rough, scraping tone that reminded her of nothing so much as a blade being honed for a sinister purpose. The gleam of a scalpel caught in her eyes under the harsh white light, and Juniper closed her eyes tight, as nervous around blades as she'd ever been though she endured for the sake of new life. She pressed her lips together hard to silence a whimper as she felt that light pinch that she new signified her flesh giving under the pressure of the blade, the sound brought on more from nerves than from any true pain.