The red head rigiously brought a towel over her damp locks to dry her hair. She glanced towards Suichi as she started to dry herself, how ironic that the two girls would bump into one another here of all places at this lake. Of course Aegir knew that this had been no coincidence. Yeah, the two had the same idea it seemed and even shared a little time together swimming here but he had actually sought her out.

He used the familiar guise of Ruby to masquerade as in order to lull the other into a false sense of security. All the while he had been probing her brain, learning things as he dug into the recesses of her memory.

See, typically he was fairly benelovent but he had been approached by a pair of scientists that had the idea of recording the human response to fear. Not only that but they had a means that they had been working on that they believed would stimulate the healing process which of course would be of great benefit to the human race. The thing was that they had only marked the curative process in animals and desired to test it out on sapient species.

Apparently this drug caused regeneration, no big deal for him seeing how he possessed that talent already though he could not restore himself if taking electrical damage. Thus, he was curious to see if this drug would work against such damage, and maybe, just maybe, he could benefit from it if the chemical had not been specific to humans. There was only one way to find out ...

That had been the key reason why he had been interested in this matter at all. But to test out the serum he needed to get ahold of a guinea pig and inflict some harm upon them. Thus he agreed to do it. Itonic that the first person he would find would share his fear of electricity.

There had been nothing personal here, Aegir had seen humans as little more than tools to be dealt with as he saw fit.

Ruby gazed at Suichi, her one piece bathing suit had been damp with lake water. "Do you spleunk?"

“I’m done, can i leave the classroom please?”
Suichi asked winking, as she was giving her exam to the teacher. It was the Spanish classes, since it is Suichi’s second language; it was a piece of cake for her. The exam meant to last 2 hours, but Suichi finished in 15 minutes. So she wanted to spend the spare time swimming, and since it was the last class of the day she could take the rest of the day.

As Suichi was on her way to the lake, she had already taken out her blouse, revealing her tight blue swimsuit that she always wears under her uniform. It was a classic model, so there was no shame in her doing so. It covered quite well her chest and half of her back. Once on the lake she finished undressing and after a little run…
*Splash* A perfect jump and the girl was now having her time.

After a couple of minutes Suichi noted someone else was there so she swam towards her. It was clearly a girl, probably another student and since Suichi didn’t have too much friends yet, this could be a good time to make one, and the better if its someone who also likes to swim.

The girl’s name was Ruby, Suichi remembered seeing her at the Spanish exam too. “So Ruby, have you lived on a Spanish speaking country too?”.
“No, i just study a lot” Ruby answered with a wink, and both girls laughed. They kept swimming and talking for over an hour, and eventually went out of the water to rest for a while.
As they were drying themselves, Ruby asked Suichi about spelunk.
"Of course, dont tell me you know a nearby place where we can do that?" Suichi asked with her eyes shining in happiness.

"I lived in Barcelo for a couple of years during high school as part of a foreign exchange program." She answered. But as their conversation continued she nodded.

"Oh, yes, I found this place not too far from here. I haven't gone too far into it seeing that I was alone and all and didn't wish for something unexpected to happen with no one knowing where I was and all. I did collect some equipment though over several months, rope, pitons, flash lights and other climbing gear but never got too far into the cave.

"Most people being amateurs I hadn't gotten too far with them at all. But if you're interested I could meet you back here in say ... an hour or so."

One hour would me more than enough to get to her room, change into a dry swimsuit and some sports gear. “Ok, let’s meet up in this spot in one hour”.
The pony tailed girl smiled at Ruby, clearly happy for the proposal. She just put her skirt on and headed to her room.
On the way back Suichi was trying to remember where she had left all her camping gear. When she finally got to her room her skirt was completely wet. She quickly took her skirt and suit off, and headed to the bath. She took a quick shower and after drying herself she took another swimsuit and slipped her torso into it. The smooth tightness of it always made her skin to feel good.
15 minutes before the set up time, the pony tailed girl was standing at the shore of the lake. Suichi was wearing her black sports shoes, short brown pants that covered all her tighs and a sleeveless red shirt. Under all of it she had a black swimsuit.
After a few moments she heard a noise coming from the dorms way, “Oh good Ruby is here”…

Aegir had no need to go far, seeing that he could just use his illusorary abilities to effect the changes that he wanted. Nevertheless he had pretended to leave but when he had sensed her brain patterns fading away as she departed he came back from the trail that he left by.

He closed his eyes, and when they opened again he had changed. Long red locks had been tied back in a single pony tail while her attire had changed obviously. She wore fingerless gloves on her hands, had hiking boots, dirty and scruffed up on her feet while in her right hand she held duo thin flashlights.

Ruby's pants were long and khaki colored while she wore a sleeveless shirt of the blackest fabric. On her back was a backpack complete with rope, a canteen of water and miscellaneous goodies of course with a thought he could change the contents if need be.

Aegir saw Suichi coming his way and waved at the other girl turning over a flashlight once she got close. "I grabbed a few extra batteries just incase though the ones in it are fairly new so that should be too much of a problem. The cave isn't far from here, travel on that trail their for a few minutes ... it's on a hill and the mouth of it is hard to see from the trail partially obscured by vegetation, at least from the trail though you can see it when approaching."

“Oh my, just look at you, and i thought i was prepared. You look like an actual explorer” *giggle*. Suichi really liked Ruby, she could be her first good friend at SHS. Although she didn’t know at that time, she was only an illusion.

The road pointed by Ruby didn’t look too harsh. “Ok let’s go!”, Suichi said with a victory motion with her hand.
The two girls started heading towards the cave, the path was quite thick with vegetation, for their luck there were not too much insects there. Suichi was trying to scare Ruby telling her stories about ghosts in abandoned caves. Ruby usually replied with jokes about ghosts. They were having fun.

After a few minutes they arrived to the entrance of the cave. “Wow, look is bigger now that we are here”. Ruby handed a flashlight to Suichi. “Thanks, you will go first right?, just let me tell you that I like to stop a lot to check the rocks or anything curious and I don’t want to be left behind”.

She blushed and made an imaginary curtsey as if wearing a dress. "Spleunking is my thing so I've got quiet a bit of things stored up and invested in them."

The walk appeared short though that was only Suichi's perception of things seeing that Aegir had altered her mind and how she experienced things. The walk was actually closer to an hour with his slow speeds that seemed to be averaged pace with the illusion.

Still, he had been enjoying himself. It had not been often that he interacted with people though he's done more in that respect as of late to deal with people.

Right now the pair had been outside the camoflauged doors that lead into the labs here on the island. He ed his mind to crack open the doors though in the real world they had been arriving at the cave. Ruby peering in as she turned on her flashlight, a smile etching across her face.

"What, scare OOOooooooooooooooooooooo," she moaned like a ghost as she placed the lit flashlight beneath her chin as she looked at Suichi.

"No, really, I'll take point. I've been doing this since, well for awhile now ... I was a toddler back then," Ruby proffessed as she worked her way inside the place, the beam of her flashlight piercing the darkness as she went.

Suichi had no fear for ghosts either, she once met a shaman who commuted with spirits, and he had taught her that spirits or ghosts were harmless for the living people. So she acted like if she was scared, just to play along.
To Suichi’s delusion, there wasn’t any uncommon thing inside the cave, but that only served her to strengthen her curiosity “Maybe we can find something deeper in the cave”, she was thinking to herself.
After what seemed like a few minutes Suichi started hearing some noise. Like if it was voices. There should be no one else here, that’s strange… “did you hear that Ruby? maybe there are ghosts here after all” Suichi said with a low laugh.

Ruby paused her head going straight up as she listened intently to the sound. "No, ghosts," she said with a smile though listened for a moment longer to be certain that she heard correctly. "Water. An underground river."

She headed in that direction, crawling through small passage ways and steeping over narrow fissures in the floor. All odd looking to those that had seen them in the labs but he filtered out the noise that they made, ignoring them for now as he concentrated on the illusion.

After the passage of a few minutes they came to a river, that was nothing unusual save that there was a wooden rope and bamboo bridge that floated on the surface of the water. On the opposite side had been cave drawings on the wall showing people hunting game. Another passage branched off from here, the passage quite small indicating that they would have to stoop to get down it.

"This is about as far as I've gone. I think the drawings were done by a native American tribe but have no way of figuring that out."

"The hunting drawings must mean they used to prepare their weapons here, and maybe eat too. Amazing!" Suichi took a small notebook and wrote down some of her comments. "Deeper should be the place where they describe their beliefs and organizations, lets keep moving the best must be down there." And the two girls entered the smaller way thatlaid ahead them.

Ruby stooped as they entered into the passage way after nodding as she took a look at drawings on the walls. The passage widened out after 50' or so and emptied into another chamber. The ceiling had been high here expanding upward at least 60'.

Bats hung suspended from the ceiling, a good many of them had been asleep. On the floor beneath them had been several beetles, the bones of young bats that fell from their perches were intermixed with the swarm that existed beneath them.

On the east wall carved into it was a humanoid shape who appeared to be kneeling. Faded was a wolf curled up at his side though it's features were hard to distinguish given the effects of erosion. Before the image was a stone, a stalagmite that had a flat stone on the top of it. An alter of sorts? The stone was not too long being a table than some sacrifical alter.

"We don't want to wake them up, do we?" Suichi whispered Ruby.
But when they saw the carvings on the wall Suichi just let out a loud "WOW"!. Which caused the bats to wake and start flying all over the cave. the two girls leaned back to the wall next to the entrance and just waited there until the bats tranquilized again.
During that time, they were whispering to each other about the drawings they just saw. "That images are confusing, it could mean these natives tamed some animals and helped them, or that they just killed any other living creature than themselves". The flat stone was a mystery too.
The pair discussed some ideas and the bats finally calmed down. Suichi took out her notebook and made some more annotations. After that the 2 girls approached to the stone, to look for any other clue that could help them understand its purpose.

"Quite odd in an interesting way," Ruby chimed as he gazed at the statue. She approached it and ran a hand over the smooth surface of the carving. That close to the statue she could see another passage along side of it.

The passage was small requiring crawling through it. She moved up to it and shone her flashlight into the passage way as if gauging how wide it was. The width of the passage seemed reasonible. In truth the passage was actually the doorway leading into one of the labs. It was white and sterile, in the center of it had been a metallic table with a smaller stand next to it that had tools upon it.

A one way window looked into the room behind which were scientists monitoring their little experiment. All this of course had been masked by Aegir as he got down on knees in this fictious realm.

"Passage goes on further then my beam of light but seems wide enough even if it is not that high horizontally. I'll take point." And with that she began to crawl forward, flashlight moving side to side as if their was something to see outside of the rocky wall of the passage beyond.

"I wonder why they did these tunnels that small, they don't seem practical at all, or maybe we can find an answer further in", Suichi said as she followed Ruby's lead inside the new passage for several minutes.
By that time, Suichi had noticed some strange things, like the freshness of the air while being quite deep in a cavern or the strange sounds she heard before, but she just couldn't figure it out. Would she have been keener, she could have noticed too that their clothes weren't as dirty as they should be after exploring a cave.
To Suichi's bad luck, she failed to notice the truth, and that would cost her greatly afterwards.

"I see no practicality in it, even if they were short unless ..." she paused as she considered for a moment then continued her crawl. "Unless they found it defensible against predators and other tribes, dealing with one at a time from the larger rooms where most people would have to stoop in the passages to squeeze through giving them an advantage."

The passage ended in a large chamber, Ruby pulled herself up to her feet, dust herself off then assisted Suichi up. There seemed to be no chambers or other passages from here though the cave had been quite large. Crystals glittered in the light of their flashlights while a pools of clear water existed against the west wall as water trickled down the wall their collecting in the pool.

"You think that this was used as a sleeping chamber for the tribe?" She asked as she looked around at all the stalagtits and stalagmites her. Then walked over to the nearest wall and inspected the crystal there. Aegir was ready to strike.

He sensed little things working through her mind. The only exit from the chamber had been the one they came through and while the area had been spacious he had considered a plan to cut off her escape.