Juni ponder her options about her leg. Surely, if Aegir was a telpath he might have dulled her mind of the pain flaring through her knee. Could that work? It was not exactly healing but let her play through the pain so to speak if that were the case.

Then there was the issue of tripping things remotely. It was an all or nothing approach. Rena might not even be there when the lock down went into effect. But from here she could switch the sprinklers over then trip it manually too, set off the sprinkler system and the shutters too.

The system appeared to set off all the sprinklers at once when using the holy water set up, which made sense in a way. No real point in having the sprinklers go off when she could just step into a hall, right?

But as she pondered her options and brought up the map she was able to do some comparrisons.

She got things to match up to places on the island. Seven in total spread ouone the island. When she turned the map two of four ways it didn't match up but the other possibilities were likely,

However she turned the map though the symbols matched up to the same places. The center most had been near the location she pegged down as that of the inhibitor undergoing maintence tonight too though the symbols, on closer inspection, all seemed similar. The same route word? It didn't matter for she couldn't read Latin but this had to mean something right?

There were seven symbols too. One in the center six in wilderness areas about the super imosed map.

She thought about tapping Aegir for help with her knee, not for the first time, and dismissed it once again. She didn't want to risk making it worse simple because she didn't know she was pushing it. So long as she didn't push it for the rest of the day, she was confident that she'd be good enough to scrap by three. It wasn't like she'd never had to push through pain before, and as she saw it this fight would be determined in the first few moments.

Juniper tapped the desk a few times as she looked at the map in her hands. If demons were real . . . she had to consider that geomancy and feng shui were similarly real. She wasn't an expert by any stretch, so she was sure that there were elements she was overlooking, but if this isle matched up geographically with Ireland it made sense to her that they'd share ley lines. Given the way the inhibiters were stated to impede magic, it stood to reason that they employed the same power source, and by tapping all the major nexus on the island would logically give them coverage from coast to coast.

Of course, she knew that there were at least seven of these storage warehouses as well. It looked like they were also designed in such a way that she could use the cage match strategy, but they had the added benefits of being private and full of resources she could bring to bear for the battle. She looked at how closely the symbol in the diagram lined up with the inhibitor . . . she supposed it was possible that they were storing the inhibitors in the warehouses. They were hidden and defensible, after all, making them ideal places to put anything of value.

She shrugged a bit, well, she wouldn't find out by sitting around here. Instead of grabbing her uniform top, she picked up her blue track jacket and pulled it on. Before she zipped it closed, she rolled up the bottom of her shirt and tied a knot to cinch it off to one side, and in the fold of her shirt she tucked her collect of home made picks, along with a rolled up length of wire, and her little black thumbdrive. She wanted to make sure that she had everything she needed to poke around a bit.

She zipped her jacket up and snatched up her printed off copy of the map overlay, folding it over and tucking it in the jacket pocket. Doing this kind of thing in broad daylight wasn't at all her style, but time was of the essence. Rena's goon squads had gotten a good look at her in her uniform, she could only hope that the jacket would throw them off as she went about her business. She hit a few keys and logged out, pulling up her hood before she stepped pushed open the door to her room and stepped out, trying to look casual, moving to exit the dorms on the Gym side as if she was just on her way to the track for practice.

“IDIOT! FIND HER!” Rena's voice snapped over the walkie talkie as Gus' crackled with his respond that he had lost her. Rena sighed, tapping her fingers against the desk. This one was annoying her and she figured she would not see the girl tomorrow amonst the other freshmen.

To make matters worse she could not find her in her database when she logged on or had a hard file of her so she was in the process of getting other hard files but it wasn't as if she could get them at a drop of a hat.

She at least had the sketch that Casanova did … she looked at it, distrubted the image around to the available security and waited for results.

And tomorrow she'd be stuck doing these stupid examens that the girl wouldn't be showing up to. She had a list of names of the new students and could at least see which one didn't show, even though it was just a stupid list. She sighed realizing that she had tonight to do most of her work as she seemed distracted, jabbing the needle into the student.

“... that should numb up the area a bit, next time don't go rock climbing after having a few … you can deny it all you want though I can smell contraband all over your breath and am sending you to Vera for some discipline.” She wrote up a quick script of some pills to help keep the swellling down, gave it to her and saw the terrofyied look in the girl's face. Normally she would deal with punishment herself but she was going to keep tonight cleared for later. Yes, she smirked, later …





Juni was able to sneak out of her room. She still saw Gus looking around but he did not focus on her but the other uniformed students more than anything else, even the pretty girls. He was focused but apparently he simply glossed her over without looking too hard, his attention on finding her she imagined though she was able to slip out of the dorms without any incident so had to focus herself on what she was going to do now ...

As she pushed out the front door, Juniper slid down the banister of the stairs to the ground, making certain to land on her good leg and bounce once before she let her bad one take her weight, smirking to herself. Her clothing change seemed to be working out alright for her so far as she passed Gus's round shape. It seemed that his mistress had really cracked the whip on him this time, he was almost frantic as he swept his eyes over the uniformed crowd, blindly moving in the direction she'd been heading when he'd let himself get distracted, he never even gave her a second glance since the hood was covering her hair.

For a moment, she considered trying to jog, to try and stretch the leg out a bit, but she shook her head a bit at that thought. If she wanted to heal, she needed to keep her weight off of it as much as she cook and give her body time to knit, not go rampaging around undoing the work it had already managed. She sighed a bit, she really could use a proper knee brace, and maybe some tiger balm, but both of those would be found in the Infirmary and that was the one place she couldn't go right now.

She paused at a water fountain to get a drink of water, trying to look around casually before she stuffed her hands in her pockets and broke away from the rest of the student body. It was the first time since the day had begun that she had broken away from the safety of the pack and she was feeling vulnerable as she walked across the field in the direction she'd worked out for her map point. Idly, she wondered exactly what she'd find when she got there. Another equipment shed? A blank featureless wall with a hidden panel? A submarine hatch in the middle of the wilderness?

Dodgint security had been easy enough as she made her way out of the building. Rena must have wanted her bad at this stage and so there was little doubt that she would find her at some point if she shrugged off this appointment tomorrow unless she could think of a good place to hideout. Even so it probably wouldn't be until tomorrow night that she had to worry about it though right now as she broke away from the pack and felt vulnerable it was probably with the knowledge that their were so many things that she had seen in that sketch book, dreamed about or read in files that disturbed her.

But the warmth of her body was picked up by ortix as he lounged about waiting for a “snack” to wander by beneath him but alas none had and nor did she – he had been in the tree for close to two days now so he was a bit ravenous.


Only dimly aware it was thinking that it needed to change it's tactics a little if it was ever going to eat.

Thys the one noted as Blob oozed out of the tree with her passing. The gelatinous creature becoming brown to better match the terrain as it slithered after her. It was quick and like those in the animal kingdom this predator focused in on the injured or those that fell for it's rater simple tricks. Until it ate too much and split in effecte reproducing. That was still a long ways off for he was little longer than a man, just as wife and maybe a few inches in depth but it had an expansion ability that made things most intresting.

Ortix followed, pausing when she did, then moving when she did to mask it's approach. He was not stupid even if his intelligence was minimal. Well, he wasn't too bright but he learned.

There was little accidental about why he was here or exposed to the chemical that would cause him much pain if he went out of the area.

Still it slithered to within 10 yards of her position then “sprined” at her quiet suddenly once it thought that she had been unaware of it. Not so now as it streaked towards her in similar fashion as the ripples of a wave hit someone on the opposite of the pool though the splash behind this was actually going to be felt rather than barely perceive at all.

If the creature focus on the wounded and the sick, Juniper was definitely sending all the right signs. She'd been alright for the quick jaunts between classes, particularly since she had an hour of sitting between each of those jaunts. This was a little rougher, however, and the ground was uneven and soft. At her current pace it was little more than pressure and the occasional twinge, but she was definitely favoring the leg as she made her way forward.

As she kept moving, she stopped suddenly, turning to face back the way she'd come. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up, giving her the impression that she was being watched. She didn't see anyone though, no wandering security guards, or roaming students, or slobbering monsters dogging her step at any rate. She cast her gaze a little higher, checking the lower boughs of the trees for cameras or wildlife. Ultimately she shrugged, unfolded the map in her pocket to reorient.

Ortix's movement was utterly silent, and with his low profile Juniper would've been hard pressed to see him even in the best of conditions, but she kept stopping and looking back, some nagging doubt troubling her. Perhaps it was the way that, though he slithered along her path he was wide enough to flatten more of the grass she left bent in her wake. Perhaps his tone was not quite right, but close enough to be dismissed as a shadow at a glance. Or maybe it was just good old fashioned paranoia. However right her instincts were, she pressed on lacking any compelling evidence that something had indeed caught wind of her.

Finally, she stopped for a moment to catch her breath and reached into her pocket once again to draw out the map. Her eyes trying to trace her steps on the paper, she remained oblivious as the Blob rushed at her from behind.

Ortix was like a shark scenting blood in the water though it had been so long since it's last meal that it would have at least attmpted somehing. As it were that injury allowed it to get nice and close before bursting on the scene, dashing straight at the hapless student as it rumble forward staying low to the ground it rustle the leaves and branches that had been strew out there as it sensed the mass of heat in the area, luscious heat that it sought for it was that heat that gave it what it wanted.

It kept pausing as she did, it being low to the ground and brown like the terrain it was in as it tended to hide well as it's quarry stopped and looked, It stopped in those moments and waited using the others to draw closer to her until it lashed out once it thought it was close enough.

It struck, moving quickly as it closed the distance between the to. Like a lash transversing along the earth it arched out at her, near silent in it's approach.

Ortix would strike at her injured leg first, targetting the obvious weakness that it had perceived in her movemments.

Juniper hadn't heard the thing moving up on her at all. If it had rustled the bushes, or even gurgled, she'd have jumped for the trunk of the nearest tree and pushed off for a bit of extra height to try and grab the lowest bough. As it was, however, the only hint she got that she wasn't alone was a heavy blow to the back of the knee, which was echoed by a loud pop as something moved in a way it really shouldn't have. She didn't cry out, she'd been too surprised honestly. Instead, desperate to get off the leg, she let herself fall sideways, clutching the knee as she clenched her teeth.

"Sookin syn!" she swore, forcing herself to open her eyes and look around to figure out what had taken a cheap shot at her. She wondered briefly if she'd simply tripped over something bored or hungry, or if the administration had set a guard dog of sorts to protect what she was looking for. If it was the latter, she at least had evidence that she was on the track to something worth her while, she just had to figure out how to get away from this thing.

Ortix was a guard dog so to speak given that he could only range so far but the student would find that Ortix, the aggressive dark brown ooze was slithering on the ground, drawing itself closer together so it was smaller now but deeper, dripping it's corrossive slim ass It moved.

The back of the taretted leg had been irritated by this acid thoush the acid did not harm flesh but cloth was nothing, even leather … it could eat through these materials though no organic ones, glass or flesh,

It was forming uo a pseudo pod to smash the very space that she had landed intending to take further atdvantage of her and pin her.

Sticky gope was at the back of her leg and it was hoping to soaller her with more gope and it was about that time she heard a rustling in the brush as somethin approached her position.

Juniper never had been one to give up without a fight, the question usually ended up being whether or not she fought hard enough. She rolled to the side as the pseudopod came down to hammer the ground where she'd been. She could feel a heat against the back of her knee, and as she looked down she noticed that the nylons she'd been wearing were eaten away in a neat hole around where she'd been hit, the skin there red but otherwise fine. That definitely reeked of the kind of depravity she was getting used to from this island.

With a smooth motion, she pulled the track jacket off of her body, grabbing it at the shoulders. It was shades of the same maneuver she'd tried to pull on Rena during their first meeting, this thing was tricky to evade because of it's defuse nature. If she could just contain most of it, even temporarily, it'd give her the window she needed to make for the trees. She doubted it could slither against the force of gravity with quite the same proficiency it moved along the ground. Narrowing her eyes, she tried to track the thing's movements, the next time it made a lunge for her she'd catch it in the coat and pull the parachute cloth around it. The way it had eaten through her stockings, she didn't doubt that it could eat through her jacket as well, but hopefully it would give her enough time to move.

Her eyes flicked to the side as she heart a rustling in the underbrush, gritting her teeth. She could only handle one problem at a time, but that didn't mean that her troubles couldn't dogpile her if she let them.

"Come on! What're you waiting for!?" she tried to goad the dark brown slime into rushing her head on again, so hopefully she could disappear from sight before whoever that was made it's way on the scene.

The pseudo pod smashed down on the earth where she was, slime splatterin everywhere then began to draw back to the maind body as it returned to it, the thing slithered toward her as she moved, tracking her movements as she wrenched off her jacke. It lunged at her and she made it's move as ot lunged forward as if going to engulf her,

She was correct in both assumptions it could not move against gravity yet the jacket was already sizling as another one of these things emereged from the brush though it was the same sie and probably split off from Ortix as some stage.

In fact it was Ortix … his consciousness in it as well. There was a third and forth though they were too distant to do much. Brown remained stationary but tne nex psuddo pod, Green, emerged from the brush steaking towards that warmth as it sought to assist the first shooting a sticky pseudo pod at her back as it attempted to enguld her. It's slimy texture the same as the original, the only difference was it's color for that slime had the same consistancy as the first and sought to take advantage of the situation as the firstcontinued to dissolve the jacet, steams of steam waaiving off of It.

Juni watched as the brown shape rolled and warped inside the jacket, the cloth was already starting to steam and pull apart as it tried to pour it's mass through one of the sleeves. She'd been speckled with bits of the creature when it had splattered against the ground, and already they had burned their way through her cotton top to cling hungrily to her skin, she was pretty certain she didn't want the whole mass of that creature catching her. She turned on her heel and made for the nearest tree, but her eyes caught rapid movement pushing it's way through the under brush as she reoriented.

Go, Juni, go! she thought as she pushed off from the ground. She made three smooth steps, adrenaline helping her push through the pain of the second step before she felt a heavy mass slam into her from behind. It wasn't like being punched or kicked, not nearly as focused, it was more like being tackled by a rugby player. She tried to roll with the impact and keep going, but unlike a rubgy player the creature was sticky. All she managed to do was pivot before she fell on top of the mass clinging to her back, the impact splattering it out a bit though not enough to break her free.

She reached and tried to sit up, but she could feel the thing spreading over her as it gathered it's mass back. Dammit! Come on girl, not like this,THINK! Large scale single-celled organism, membrane, no visibile nuclei so no "organs" to target. Need to rupture the cell wall or dehydrate it's mass . . . salt? Soap? Didn't Gigi say something about her Blob and electricity!? Of course, none of that helped her escape it's clutches at the moment.

Green had brought down the quary, sticky portions of it clung to her as it's contact burned against her skin, not painfully but it was like scrumbing down in sanitizer, it tingling the skin as it swept over her, dssolving the fabric of her clothing as it washed over her as it ate away at the material.

She thought as the gelatin mass washed over her legs , chest and portions of her arms as brown finally sizzled through the jacket and slithered over, it's form ripple over the ground. Vegetation seemed fine in it's wake as Juni ticked off all those helpful things bbut had none of them as this gellatin substance bot larger, brown attaching to green as it changed it's color to green.

A pseudo pod smashed up against her face, the plast of sticky fluid like substance coating her lips and nostils, trying to work into her throat. While there was the instinct to hold her breath once she could no longer do so she would find that she still could breath this thing in as if it had been drawing air from around it and pushing it straight into her lungs.

It was burning away ner panties and bra now, her other clothes long since gone. Now after so long it was going to feast.

Don't panic! she repeated in her mind, her clothes already dissolving from behind her as she brought her outstretched hand down to her improvised pocket, You already knew you couldn't win the short game, play the long one. Save what you can't replace. she pulled out the thumb drive, turning it over to gently kiss the cross in apology before winding up and throwing it clear. Whatever this thing was, it didn't seem to be much of a threat to living matter, but she didn't trust plastic and aluminum to hold out against it.

She gave a little "eek" as the brown blob flowed into it's green brethren, the increase in mass sliding a cushion under her and lifting her slightly off the ground, while also giving the creature enough volume to reach around her with greater ease. Her body was getting red and tingling from the passing of it's sticky mass, shreds of clothing slipping off of her and quickly vanishing as they were drawn into the main mass. She saw one long pseudo pod extend up from between her legs and gave it a dirty look. Which it responded to by bashing her in the face. Not big on finesse, this thing.

Stars danced in her eyes as she sputtered, thin stringy lines of goop flailing unable to overcome her sharp exhale. The main mass of the smear on her face, however, began to slither and slide it's way into her mouth and nose. Her eyes widened a bit as she shook her head vigorously, trying to hold her breath. Unfortunately her sputter hadn't left her with very much air to hold on to, she only made it a few seconds before she was forced to inhale through the creature. She took some dim comfort in the fact that, at least, she could apparently breath around it.

She fought against the stuff gripping her arms, trying to reach up and claw the stuff from her face as she realized she was down to only her undergarments. Straight forward and utilitarian in design, she wore a simple black sportsbra that hugged her breasts close with white piping running along the supports, and a pair of black boyshorts with a small floral design on the left legging. Though, she supposed, neither garment was long for this world now.

Juni tossed the flash drive away not trusting that it would hold. Flesh and vegetation seemed fine, the earth too but her cloths burned away as easily as she would sweep cobwebs aside with a hand. She had to play the long term role here, mot the short term and she felt her hand being pinned down to the ground by sticky strands.

The thing was not intelligent, well it was sentient but nowhere near her level of thinking. It had seen the motion though it was not an attack as it perceived it pressed her arm down only because it was free. Pushing against her lips the pseudo pod attacked there was attempting to press into her throat and dispite how fiercely she attempted to press her lips closed it was like sand at the beach finding a way into each crack the creature easing into her throat tasting like pancake syrumps though it's texture was thicker like jello.

An effect of the goop was that it was cooler than it's surrounds and thus the piercings in her arms flared a chill through her, generating it within her chest and forcing her nipples to form into sharp peeks.

It was stripping her away, this rather simple beast. It's hunger called to it, she was here and she would do. It was that simple as the goop began wwarming it's way into her other holes in it's endless quest. That tingling sensation now in her ass and in her pussy, burning against her in that tingly way that made it so that she could ignore her presence.

Enzymes of the creature went to work as a portion of the ooze bubbled up within her stomach. It could not dissolve organic matter on it's own, not really but partially digested materials it couold dissolve and that was what it was doing, that enzyme mixing with the contents of her stomach before breaking down her food further, absorbing it, the enzyme was mild poison in that it triggered a case of indigestion but this never harmed his victims overly much.

The goop had long since dissolved her under garments by this point and the goop was incredibly sticky. She reached for th glop on her face though her arms didn't quite reach it as sticky strands upon them snapped them back to the earth that she was anchored to.

She could not determine if it were strong or had a great advantage because it was so sticky. It ate though even partially dissolved objects took it a bit of time to absorb.