It was so still. Juniper was a city girl, she was used to the sounds of people echoing through her surroundings night and day, the chattering sound and oppressive press of life as people strained against the tiny boxes civilization seemed intent to stuff them into. She'd never been the sort to go camping when at home, but the descriptions she heard from other people or read in books weren't at all like this. It was silent as a tomb beneath the leafy canopy of the island's interior, there were no mating calls, or the sounds of heavy bodies moving through the underbrush in search of prey, no golden eyes flashing at the edge of her firelight. Just the crack of burning wood, the babble of the river, and the mournful moan of the wind passing through the trees overhead.

Juniper tossed another dry stick into her rudimentary fire pit. Sometimes it seemed like the only way Juniper knew how to deal with life's problems was to run from them. Oh, sure, maybe she drew some blood before she took off, but how many of the big confrontations had she really seen through? She'd run away to the gang rather than trying to reconcile things with her parents, she'd ditched the gang to escape the threat of an intimacy she wasn't prepared for, and then she ran away from Bristol to a boarding school to try and find herself instead of dealing with the fallout of her "journalistic integrity". And, of course, since she'd come here she'd done her fair share of running as well. Ever since she first bumped into that . . . thing in the infirmary, she'd dashed recklessly from one bad situation to another over and over again, and for what? A desperate search of a way off this island, just looking to run away again. That thought was punctuated by the dulls scrape of stone over wood.

She still had it with her, of course. The neatly printed yellow slip of paper was crumbled into a ball, but tucked into a pocket in her vest for her to take out and look at again and again. Detention, for "Disruptive Behavior". They hadn't had the stones to put it in writing, but Juniper knew her rap sheet well enough, theft, destruction of property, tresspassing, assault on administrative staff . . . barely the tip of the iceberg. The room designation was simply a letter, a room in the basement. No doubt about it, they were intending to put her through some "corrective action", hoping to beat her back in line. She'd looked down the concrete steps that lead their way down into darkness for a moment, and imagined she heard the swing of a rusty iron gate yawning wide to accept her. Suddenly, adding truancy to her list of offenses didn't seem like such a bad idea.

She had a narrow window to act in. Her detention wasn't technically supposed to begin until after her classes. No reason to jeopardize her education, right? Well, she'd just have to skip those courses, instead she bolted back to her room. Dumping her school books out onto her desk, she stuffed the satchel with whatever food and supplies she could manage and climbed out the second story window, hanging by her finger tips for a moment before she let herself drop and take the fall gracefully. Then she'd taken off for the island's interior, just looking to put distance between her and the school until the heat died down.

The first day, that had been all she'd done. Run. She'd been a dilligent member of her track and field team back in Bristol, and while cross country hadn't been part of her training regime originally she'd done some self-training since comming to Shokushu. She went hours without stopping, hopping dead wood and skirting along gullies, she'd dropped down into a shallow stretch of the river and followed it upstream for a while in the hopes that it would further obscure her trail in case anything was looking for her. Finally, when her body would carry her no further, she'd collapsed and fallen into a fitful sleep. Any other place on Earth and she might have chided herself for that . . . but in the time she'd been enrolled in Shokushu she hadn't seen a single animal, not even the croak of a frog or the scurrying of ants.

Now it was the end of the second day. Without her books, or her research, Juniper had to find something else to keep herself occupied. At first she'd just kept walking deeper along the island's interior, roaming in the general direction of the mountain. But then, she'd recalled some advice she'd recieved from a woman who did not truly exist. She had to believe that someone would be after her eventually, they hadn't gone through all the trouble to craft an inescapable prison just to have some child go feral out in the interior. She was going to need tools . . . and while Gigi might've suggested a hammer, Juniper instead took a pair of rocks and used one to beat the other into the rough shape of a knife. It had taken her a few tries, she was an amateur in such matters, and her clumsiness caused her to break a few blades before she finally got one that met her satisfaction. And then, she'd gone out to gather wood.

"I've been here before / I've stood where you stand" Juniper sung softly to herself, trying to break the pressing silence of the night as she dragged the knife over a length of green wood, "They called me a hero / the Hero of Man" she turned the stick over in her hand and drew the blade over it again, "But why should we save them / when they stand for nothing" she passed the blade over the wood again, pausing this time to raise the tip and expect it, "If they deserve life / let them stand for themselves" she repeated and tossed another stake onto her meager pile, picking up the next length of wood to start again, "We've given everything we can / there are no heroes left in man" >scrape<

She'd had a bit of a brainstorm. Maybe the Inhibitor Fields would tie her hands in a head to head confrontation, but how would they fair against strictly mechanical action? She might not be John Rambo, but if Ewoks could use field craft to defeat a superior foe, she had nothing to lose by trying. All she had to do was convince whatever was comming after her that there was easier prey to be had . . . surely, even monsters were deterred by pain.

The island sees. It doesn't see with its own eyes, but its residents are always watching, always waiting. The labs can scan every centimeter of the place and tell you where each student is in a matter of minutes. Silent, ephemeral creatures stalk outside of knowable space, appearing and disappearing as they need to, watching through walls and stalking prey that will never fully understand them. Silent spies rest in the crook of trees, rocks, even the water itself watching, waiting, knowing. The island knows. It tracks its inhabitants, all of them, in microscopic detail. Escape only happens because someone made a temporary error in judgement. Or because someone wanted it to happen.

---

The gray woman let the cup in her fingers clatter softly onto its saucer. Even that little bit of noise seemed to unnerve the disturbingly-lifelike automaton standing before her. "I know she's run off," Miss Steel said flatly, her eyes glaring at the empty cup for a moment. "She should have been here by the end of the first cup. I've gone through a whole pot. I'm not simple."

"I'm- I'm sorry," the Hunter-Seeker drone mumbled. Steel hated that they made them so grossly human, "my sisters are fetching her back right n-"

"They will do no such thing." The gray woman was on her feet, glaring down at the little creation. "I don't want your kind meddling in my affairs. You give me slips, I do what I need to. Call your sisters off and get out."

The machine nodded quickly and scampered from the furnace room, its skirt fluttering as it went.

The gray woman sat back down and sighed, head resting in her hand. She closed her eyes and started activating old servants. Miss Steel didn't want to find out what the administration would do if she let this task linger too long.

---

For the first time in two days, Juniper heard the presence of another life as a tree at the edge of her little camp rustled. "They'll watch you die to save their lives," a soft voice said, picking up the song, "they will not stand here by your side." Something brown fell down and landed in what looked like an awkward heap at the edge of the firelight. Dark eyes glittered under darker hair as the top half of a human face looked up to meet Juniper's gaze. What at first looked like a haphazard bundle resolved itself into a cloak over a small woman, tan skin weathered from exposure. The single break in the fabric, running up the woman's right side, was open just enough to reveal that she was wearing nothing aside from the cloak and some soiled bandaging across her chest. Dirt was crusted on every inch of the woman, and twigs and leaves clung to her cloak and in her hair.

"Hello. I think that's my song, not yours. You're just starting." The girl in brown sat at the edge of the camp crosslegged, her cloak billowing out with the sudden loss of support. "Are you going to stay out here? There're edible roots and some berries along the edge of the mountain, and a proper flint quarry a bit higher. It gets lonely out there. But you'll get strong. It's hell, this place, but the hottest fires forge the hardest blades. Oh, here, you're probably thinking I'm one of them pretending. Here, here, a gift." A small handful of flint knives arced through the air and landed in a clatter next to Juniper. Even in the dim, wavering light of the fire, it was obvious they'd been made by a much more practiced hand. "Harden the tip of the spear in the fire," the strange, feral woman continued, nodding sagely. "I never thought to do something with reach. That's clever. Here, make you a deal. Lemme share your fire tonight, and I'll tell you anything you want to know. The wisdom of a veteran at your disposal. Anything you want." The filthy woman's face was still half-obscured in tattered and mended and torn and re-mended fabric, but her eyes showed a soft, welcoming smile on her lips.

Juniper shifted forward as she heard that rustle in the trees, getting her feet under her and settling into a low crouch as she tightened her grip on the makeshift blade. It seemed like something had caught up to her before she'd had a chance to set up her little surprises. Something familiar with the song she was singing, at that. She'd brought the blade down and her other hand up when the ragged heap of dark colors dropped from an overhanging branch, planning to use the stick to parry any incoming lunge hopefully giving the blade an opportunity for good, deep thrust.

In the flickering orange light, it took her a few seconds to work out exactly what it was she was looking at. When she did, however, her eyes softened a bit and her jaw unclenched. It seemed she'd been mistaking in assuming that the faculty wouldn't permit any feral students to wander the grounds free . . . or that she'd managed to find the one person on the island who'd managed to slip their leash on the island.

"Sorry, didn't know I had an audience." she said, a bit defensively. It was weird, usually she could get a pretty good read off of people, turn their expectations back on them and try to twist the encounter around in her favor. Not with this girl though. She couldn't tell if she was supposed to be unnerved by her sudden and disheveled appearance, comforted to find another human being this far out, or just intrigued, "I already did The Will of One, but if you'd rather hear something closer to a beginning I do a decent rendition of Breaking Out." she said, waving the tip of a blade in a small circle as the girl sat across from her and she dropped her defensive posture. It was a light probe, she knew the source material well enough, but had she been here long enough to miss the release of Act II?

She settled on her haunches a bit and nodded as she listened, the edge of her blade biting into the wood as she shaved a long curl of wood off of one side. Roots, berries, ready access to flint, and the tip about searing the tips of her points . . . it was all valuable information in her current situation. She'd even mixed in a compliment and some gifts. If Juniper didn't know better she'd think she was being welcomed to the neighborhood.

She set her stick down to pick up one of the blades thrown at her feet, turning it over in her hands. Definitely better than what she'd managed, the blade was longer, but the center of it hadn't been chipped away as hard either so it seemed like it was less likely to break off with a bad stab. Juniper pressed her thumb to the tip, not hard enough to slice herself open, but enough to get a feel for the sharpness. . .she must have ground that edge in, it was smooth along the sides and much sharper than her own attempt. The handle was a nice touch also, set into a wooden grip and then lashed in place she got full use of the stone edge, whereas Juniper's blade simply had a length of vine wound tight around the blunt bottom half of the rock. She'd definitely have to see about reverse engineering the technique.

"That sounds . . . rather generous, actually." Juniper said, gesturing that the other girl could move closer if she liked. Ah, but where were her manners? She reached over and grabbed her satchel, opening the flap and rummaging about inside for a moment. Finally, she found the small bag of golden wrappers and pulled out a handful, passing the butterscotch hard candies over to her guest. "It's not quite as practical as your gift, but I get the impression it's been a long time since you've had something sweet."

"Let's start with something simple, what's your name?" she asked, picking one of the shorter stakes she'd carved first and thrusting the sharp end into the fire. "I'm Juniper." she said with a nod.

"'M afraid I dunno Breaking Out, but we've got two, so if we get back to singing, let's pick up at Sons of Fate," the feral woman said, "though I'll do Proto." She grinned as she scooted closer to the fire, her hands reaching out to warm themselves at its edge. The offered candy disappeared under the cloak for a moment, then one piece of butterscotch came back out unwrapped and disappeared into the former student's mouth.

"Careful you don't overheat that," she said, pointing to the spear. "You want to bake the water out, not char it." She made a strange, animalistic noise of pleasure as the candy started to melt properly on her tongue. "God, it's been so long since I scared some girls off a picnic for things like this." She sighed, looking wistful, and shook her head to clear it. "I'm Sayuri. Thanks for the fire and the food, Juniper." Sayuri's hands hung out near the fire again, soaking up its heat. Something in the air over one arm shimmered for a moment, looking like a tiny strand of thread, but she didn't appear to notice. "Oh, and keep those knives safe. Some of the creatures here will take anything they think is a weapon from you," Sayuri said. "Which one are you training to kill?"

"I guess it's fortunate you came along then. I'd have sounded like a daft loon trying to do that duet by myself." she smirked a bit, turning the wood as she watched it closely in the fire. She was trying to make sure the heat would settle in evenly, but also using the opportunity to check the color of the wood, she was hoping that the heat would cause the capillaries to close and "shrink" the wood into a harder point. As Sayuri said though, she didn't want to get the wood so dry that it caught fire. She nodded a bit when the girl spoke up and took it as a sign that it was time to inspect her work, pulling it back and giving it a moment to cool off.

"Thank you for the pointers. You've probably already put me a day or two ahead." she said, tapping thumb and forefinger to the tip. Sure enough, the flex had gone out of the wood, if jabbed that into a man it would hold until all the force from the blow was behind it. Much better. "Don't worry, I'll keep these nice and hidden, they're a little too good to risk carrying on a uniform that'll just get shredded or in the dorm of a known trouble maker. But they'll definitely help me get the quality of my more disposable edges up to snuff." she nodded a bit and grabbed a longer stake, holding it over the fire like the first. She paused a bit when Sayuri asked her question.

"Tonight? Tonight it's a bit of a mystery roulette, just preparing a little surprise for whoever it is they send after me." she said, her eyes so focused on her work that she missed the shimmering tip that they'd already caught up to her, "From what I've observed, these things don't coordinate on the hunt, so it'll be by itself. The inhibitor fields don't seem to effect the clientele, so I'm thinking that they're pushing some kind of mental limiter tuned to human brainwaves . . . which won't mean a damn thing to a trip wire, a deadfall, or a covered pungii trap." she chuckled softly, "What do you think, decent plan?"

"But, ultimately, who is it I want to kill?" she paused a bit as if mulling that over, snatching the stick back before she forgot about it, "I haven't really decided. Whoever hurts the school the most." she said with a bit of a shrug, "This place, these things, they've seen fighters. Girls like Dupont, Sterling, or Kite? They're practically a niche product, they make up such a small percentage of the overall student population, but they all end up in the marked ten percent. If I bump off whoever pisses me off, I'm just going to end up with two of these things on my ass. The one who just found out I can put up a real fight, and the one who wants the rep of breaking a blooded student." she shook her head a bit.

"No, if I want out, I need to strike at the school, not the people it caters to. And that means honing my edge, picking my targets carefully, and going in with the deck stacked as far in my favor as I can manage." she picked up the next stick and spun it through her fingers before holding it out to the fire, "It's . . . a bit ahead of schedule, but the plan was always to make a go of it out here. You can't win a fight against someone when you have to eat out of their hand between every round. The dorm is useful, but it also means they always know where to find me. The cafeteria is convenient, but who knows what they put in the food? No, I've got to get independent."

The feral woman smiled sadly at Juniper's question. "It's a start, but I've seen things take a blade in the eye and laugh it off. I've seen things that don't seem to follow the laws of physics," Sayuri said bitterly. "Hell, a lot of them just sort of float. The little ones can be dragged down, but there are things here that see us the way we see ants." She settled back to listen again, nodding solemnly at the rest of the plan before speaking up again. "That's why I got out. You can't trust the food here. I had one of the monsters offhandedly call me and some friends a meal. I think that's where the disappeared girls go off to." Sayuri leaned closer, a somewhat crazy gleam in her eye. "I think..." She stopped and looked cautiously around, as if they might still be being watched. As she did, another little thread glimmered in the air. It looked like it was tracing a thin line up and back from her head and into the darkness above. And then the fire wasn't catching it just right any more and it was gone.

"If you do go back, never, ever eat the meatloaf. That's all I'll say," Sayuri finished, sitting back again. She tapped her chin thoughtfully, musing. "But how do you hit the school? You could hit the faculty, I suppose, but figuring out which members of the staff are human and which aren't is like playing a shell game." Her face hardened as an idea came to the feral girl. "What we really need is to get the other humans to stop supporting the system. Maybe if we kill the blue-sashed traitors..." Her voice trailed off, and the edges of her eyes turned slightly hungry.

"Heh, yeah. I've seen some of that as well . . . malevolent smoke, sentient water . . ." she clucked her tongue is irritation, "Still trying to figure out how to even fight those. Thought about trying to separate the puddle into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis . . . still haven't figured out how to pull that off yet though. Maybe try to dilute him with holy water? I mean, I find it hard to believe that something like that would be naturally occurring" she shook her head a bit, eyes still focused on the fire as she turned the point of her makeshift spear "Better a bad plan than no plan, I guess."

"Eugh!" Juniper stuck her tongue out as the other girl made some unpleasant insinuations about the meatloaf, "I really don't think --" she started, but then she trailed off. Why not, really? She didn't know what happened to the graduates and dropouts, after all, would they really just get rid of them after they were no longer the age range that appealed to their customer base? It was one way to tie off the loose ends at least . . . and even if not the students, what about the failed clones she'd read about in the system? Why leave all that as waste?

"I'll take that under advisement." she said, probably looking a little pale. She was lucky she hadn't had all that much to eat today, trying to stretch her supplies out as long as she could . . . she felt sick. Mercifully, the topic shifted over to her work, and the great puzzle that it represented.

"Yeah, that's the million dollar question, isn't it?" Juniper said as she shifted to the next stake, this one was smaller, and it had a point on both ends, apparently having been crafted to fit into something larger, "I'm still trying to pin down a lot of how the place works. Like, why you can't hear anything from classrooms or adjacent rooms anywhere in the school? I mean, I've stepped out of my dorm while blasting the radio and the silence is utter when that door closes. Where the heck are the grounds keepers and the janitors? What's the real power structure here? I kinda doubt that the Headmaster really has the influence to boss these things around, like you say, we're barely pests to some of them." she paused a bit, mulling something over, "Unless, of course, he's just another one of them. Maybe with a bit of a harem kink, it'd explain the Headgirls well enough."

She paused what she was doing a moment as she saw Sayuri's face harden up, wondering what had crossed the other girl's mind for a moment. She turned the stake over in her hand to start baking the other side, though she had to grab hold of the wood where it was still uncomfortably warm to keep her hand out of the fire while not touching the hot tip to her skin.

"Maybe." she said noncommittally, "Race traitors probably shouldn't get off any easier than the monsters themselves. God knows they'd be a lot easier to take off the board. No inhibitor protection, familiar anatomy, most are non-combatants . . . in goes the knife, out comes the life." she paused a bit to hug herself against a chill that had nothing to do with the night, "Still, I don't think I'm ready to shiv my own kind yet. Fighting for survival is one thing, but . . ."

"There are ways of control other than force," the feral girl said, still looking a bit overly stern and distant. "Maybe the Headmaster pays them to be on good behavior or something." Sayuri shrugged and sighed, then looked confused, deeply, deeply confused, at Juniper's discomfort around murder.

"It is for survival! They're the gatekeepers!" she said emphatically. "They know things that are kept from the rest of us. Your kind will never be free until you're willing to take what you need, by any means necessary." She glared across the fire at Juniper. "Don't be afraid to kill a person. Never doubt that. It's not so hard. As you said, knife goes in, life goes out." The glare softened, turned hungry again. "Besides, there's nothing like watching someone's eyes go dark. No love is as pure as that." The feral girl sighed and sank deeper into her cloak, happy and content with old memories it seemed. "You should practice, some time. It's good for ya." Sayuri went silent for a minute, just reminiscing as she watched the fire.

Suddenly, she sat up sharply and smiled at Juniper across the fire. "You could start with me!" Sayuri said, bubbling with enthusiasm. "I was just considering going back and throwing myself off a building anyway! Knowing you're here to carry on the fight, I feel a lot better about it all. I won't even put up a struggle, so you'll know it's what I want." The small, dark-haired woman actually wriggled slightly with excitement. "And when you're done, you can have my cloak! There's all sorts of useful stuff in here. You'll be up to speed in no time! So, how about it? Will you kill me?"

"They're lap dogs! Pets, toys, and secretaries!" Juniper responded, making a slashing motion with her hand through the fire, "They didn't know how, or they were too scared to fight, so they took a deal!" For her part, her brown eyes glared right back at Sayuri. The worst part was that she didn't disagree with the girl, exactly. This place respected only the rule of strength, she'd already accepted that she was going to have to do things that would've made her balk even in the Bad Old Days if she ever wanted to see another free sunrise. But that did not mean that she'd thrown the veneer of civilization away just yet.

"I'm not afraid!" she snapped, "But there's a better way! Like you said, they know things. If someone can just show them how to fight, that it's not madness, they'll turn on their masters!" she said, planting the stake in the ground "One on one we'll never win, but we outnumber them like a hundred to one! If we don't hang together, we'll surely hang apart." Of course, she was picking apart her own argument in the back of her mind. A hundred to one, sure. A hundred scared children, a hundred delusional art and history majors, a hundred sheep who'd crack and break and take any deal after a night with one of these monsters. She wasn't a leader, she didn't trust them any more than she trusted the faculty on this rock.

And then Sayuri sat forward with that manic light dancing her her eyes. She was practically bubbling, giddy with the promise of an end. An end with meaning, to her twisted line of thinking. Still settled on her haunches, Juniper rose to her feet, but not before taking up one of the blades the girl had tossed her before.

"Come on, Sayuri," she started, hoping she could get through to the girl, "Don't be like that. Our lives are the only currency with value, don't you think you can spend it on something greater than this?" she swept her left hand at the surrounding wilderness, "No audience to your final words, no definitive battle with your nemesis, no last gasping reach for freedom!? What did you suffer for this long!? What were you fighting so desperately for!?! You're just tired . . ."

But even as she made her appeal, gesturing with her left hand, her right hand was at her side, fingers tightly gripping the stone blade. She remembered how the girl had sighed longingly as she fondly recalled the way that life drained from human eyes. Juniper may not have been the first to try this gambit out in the woods . . . and that meant she might not have been the first to meet Sayuri out here either. Had she tried to press them into this as well? And when they refused . . . had she tried to push them to it, giving her that visage purer than love?

"You don't understand," Sayuri said sharply, rising up on bare feet at the edge of the fire. "That's exactly what I want to prevent! I go back, they graduate me. I'm overdue! I'm expired! My time is finished!" Her eyes were getting wider by the moment, and her hands shifted under the heavy, tattered cloak. "I might make it up the dorms and back down, but that's a long shot. They won't get my life! They already took everything else. I had plans!" Her hand came back out with a crumpled sheet of paper, tattered and frayed at its edges, with 'TO DO' emblazoned across the top. She threw it in the fire with disgust. "It was worthless. All my enemies just left. Up and left! Didn't come say goodbye, didn't get in one last parting blow, just left!" She seethed, breathing hard and shaking where she stood. "They even took," Sayuri continued, her voice trailing off into a small sniffle, "they even took her and left me to rot in this place! There's nothing left here for me now." Something glittered in her hand as it came back out from the cloak. Slowly, she drew a metal steak knife, probably filched from the kitchens years ago by the rust on its edge, and growled down at Juniper. "But you! You have fight in you. You have time before you're ready for slaughter. And you won't even kill a traitor! You think you can turn them!" The blunted edge of the knife pointed accusingly across the fire. "You're too weak to stand against them. You're too weak to even kill someone who wants it. We can go to God together, then."

In a fluid motion, the feral woman fell back into a fighting crouch, weapon out and forward. Down low on the ground as she was, threads were more apparent in the air above her as they caught the flickering light. They seemed to trace from the tree to her head and hands.

"God dammit, Sayuri . . . " Juniper grit her teeth, but she didn't say anything further. Tom had taught her better than to waste time talking when someone had a weapon drawn on her. When someone threatens your life, you take theirs first, that was the only rule of engagement. Still, Juniper was a journalist, and with their strict gun control legislature England was no stranger to knife fights. She knew that Sayuri was probably right. Most knife fights ended with both participants bleeding their life into the ground, survivors were more a result of speedy EMTs than any skill on the fighter's part. They were both far, far away from the infirmary, and no one would know to come for them.

I'm the last, she thought, bringing her stance low and reaching out with her open hand, Whatever happens to me, I'm putting this bitch in the ground. she thought, bringing the sharp stone tip of her blade up as she did so. She didn't know much about Sayuri, but she knew enough. She'd been on this island for years, enough to graduate, she'd gone through hell and managed to keep enough heat in her heart to fight the whole duration. She was going to be a better fighter, faster, meaner, and she knew the reach of Juniper's weapon as well as she knew the beat of her own heart. It wasn't an accident that she'd kept the steak knife, it was better, sharper, longer. She'd go for slashing attacks, as low as she was to the ground, probably go for a hamstring and then cut her throat while she lay screaming and prone. The only advantage Juniper could claim is that she wanted to live. It would have to be enough.

That desire, that need to survive is what pushed her forward. With everything that the other girl had on her side, she couldn't afford to hand her initiative as well. Using every sprinter's instinct she'd ever inscribed in her body with years of effort, she was like lightning off the mark, closing the distance between the two girls with an eagerness that one would normally use to escape an armed lunatic. Her eyes were focused, it was hard to judge the length of Sayuri's arm when she was crouched under her cloak, but she couldn't tip her hand too early or this would never work.

Just as she reached the forward arch of the feral woman, Juniper jumped, picking her legs up and hopefully over the snaking counter-slice that was likely comming her way. It was a distance leap, the kind she'd planted into a hundred sand pits over the years, but this time she was hoping to plant her heel in the other girl's nose instead, let the weight and speed rock her head back and stun her.

Daze her, pin the knife arm, put her down before she can recover . . . it sounded so simple.

Juniper had almost anticipated Sayuri's movements accurately. It was accurate enough that Juniper's feet weren't on the ground when the ragged edge slammed into the soil where her next step would have landed. With an animal snarl, the feral girl hit the ground to keep her face under the boot aimed at it. Juniper sailed clear over and had plenty of clearing between herself and the tree Sayuri had been hiding in to land safely.

Except something was wrong. Something had broken with a sharp tang, like a guitar string plucked for the last time. Sayuri rose up, but her head didn't move right. It lolled forward limply as the feral woman turned awkwardly and took up a loose, defensive stance. Her whole body shook once, causing her head to loll about where it hung on her shoulders.

"Gods be damned," another voice said, hidden up in the trees. Sayuri's body lifted directly into the air, hauled up by strings hanging from her elbows and wrists and knees and feet. Her body went limp and splayed out awkwardly, looking like a marionette hung up for the night. "Well, now you've gone and done it," the strange voice continued. It sounded a little like Sayuri's but also, unnervingly, like the sound a blade makes as its drawn across a whetstone. "Now I can't just let you off with a warning and some blood on your hands. I suppose this won't be as sporting as you deserve." The leaves parted above the limp body of the feral woman, and another woman's face, gray and with yellow eyes that glittered in the firelight like a cat's, hung in the air beside the strings. "At least we can make it interesting." The leaves parted father under gray hands. Hair like steel wool was pulled back in a tight bun, revealing six smaller eyes over the creature's smooth forehead and a pair of spider's fangs along her jaw, coiled and waiting. "Run, Juniper."

Fuck, Juniper thought as she passed clear over the other girl. It could've been worse, she could've sliced vertically, taken the hit but still drawn blood. Still, Juniper stuck the landing smoothly, her more recent gymnastics training taking hold as she tucked into a roll and kicked one foot up in an arch to reorient. Still in a crouch, her eyes settled on the woman across from her.

Okay, when she lunges, step into the swing, try to get your free arm inside the arch and then -- wait, what? her train of though derailed noisily as she watched the other girl's head roll listlessly with the movement of her shoulders. Her eyes flicked upwards as she heard the curse, and she rose up to take a step back as the broken pupper was raised up to the dark canopy overhead. That dull, scraping voice made her wince ever so slightly, the pitch causing a curling twinge in the back of her mind like a scratches on a chalkboard. It was like listening to someone try to play a record using a nail instead of a needle, it still sounded like Sayuri but there was a rasping sound to it as the track was gouged out of the vinyl a bit more with each word.

Run, the creature had barely had to speak the word. Juniper's blood was already screaming with the adrenaline pumping through it. Fight turned to flight with barely the stutter of her heart to seperate the two gears, turning on her heel and leaving her supplies behind as she made a jump over the underbrush and back into the woods. She'd considered making a break over the open ground in the other direction, wading the river and making for the mountain again, but she'd never lose this thing without visual cover and if it had any kind of ranged attack she'd be plucked up in no time. Instead, she crashed through the brush with an arm curled in front of her face, practically blind as the leafy canopy overhead cut her off from the light of the stars and moon.

There was the hollow "thunk-thunk-thunk" of her footsteps as she ran along the fallen trunk of an old tree. She remembered it well enough, she'd cut the best limbs from it's bulk for firewood back when she'd still had the daylight. Her eyes were still readjusting to the darkness, so she had to rely on her other senses and her memory to guide her. Her toes landed on the edge just as the trunk split in two directions. She adjusted herself slightly left, took two steps, and then jumped with her arms stretched out overhead. The branch she'd been reaching for banged against her wrists, but she caught hold and braked herself before she dropped straight down into a dry steam bed, running on crouched legs with one hand following the side of the gully. She blinked a bit . . . she was starting to be able to make out shapes as she moved.

That was . . . wierd. The creature had been talking . . . but not really to her. It was more like it had been musing to itself about her. The thing had clearly meant to manipulate her . . . but to what end? She'd been mislead before, of course, but usually with an eye towards moving her to a more physically vulnerable position. Not like that, not twisting her emotions and prying at her morality. And nothing had seemed to care one way or the other about what she "deserved". She'd have to dedicate some time towards sussing out it's motives . . . once she'd managed to give it the slip, anyway.

Something crashed through the woods behind Juniper. At first, the trees swayed, leaves shuffling and branches cracking starkly under the rushing, heavy movement of the pursuing creature. There came a louder snap, the thud of something enormous landing in soft soil, and a shrill cry of fury and rage that ripped among the trees. Once she was down in the bed, staccato footsteps crunched through the remnants of the hollow log behind her. The sound of splintered wood scattering against the trunks of other trees chased her down into the dark, dry creek. Laughter, insane and rasping, echoed from the trees along the bank behind her, reverberating around the twists and turns that blocked sight forward or back.

"Run, run, run!" the not-Sayuri voice from before cried out above the scattering of rocks and the steady, uneven rhythm of too many footsteps for a human pursuer. "I hunger!" More laughter filled the otherwise still night. The sounds left the thin rocks and sped up. Wood crunched and splintered. A thin tree shook and fell off to Juniper's right with a heavy shaking of leaves and the groan of its trunk cracking under pressure. Whatever it was was gaining on the student and didn't seem slowed by the heavy foliage that forced her to twist and turn to keep at speed. Another tree fell, its branches barely reaching out into the stream bed, and the inhuman voice roared in triumph, "run, coward!"

Well, at least one of us is having fun, Juniper thought as that first peal of mad laughter echoed out. She was starting to make out a bit more of her surroundings, the gray fingers of light made their way through the leafy canopy, shafts of moonlight picking their way through the leaves wherever they could penetrate. It wasn't nearly enough for Juniper, the ground was uneven and soft, roots and rocks threatened to trip her with every step , she was quick but half blind and on this terrain she didn't think she was appreciably faster than any other girl on campus, she could just keep going longer. And that wasn't going to help her in this race.

Some people were said to have a laugh like bells in the wind, but the sounds trailing her instead came to a chorus more like a lengths of chain whipping in a storm, wrapping around each other one moment and then coming apart to flail and strike whatever was in reach. Stones scattered passed the lip of the ledge overhead, brush was annihilated by inhuman might, whole trees were felled in the mad dash to pressure the student on. She heard the groan of a full tree beginning to tilt overhead, and by then Juniper had had enough. She dove out of the gully, one hand in front of her face as her body crashed through a brush, branches and thorns scratching her skin and tearing at the thin material of her uniform as she bounded heedlessly through, taking an awkward hopping step as she stepped around a short tree to get a trailing length of bramble vine out from around her stocking-clad ankle, though not without taking a scrap of bloody nylon as fare.

Keep your head together, she thought, ducking a low branch as she poured on the speed, the possibility of slamming face first into an unseen tree having been weighed as preferable to being too slow to outpace the thing dogging her heels, She's not just having a ball out there, it's more mind games. She wants you running scared and blind, which is exactly what you're giving her, Junebug. We need to keep our composure and figure out a plan

Whoa shit . . . Trying to get a little more data to formulate a scheme around, Juniper broke the first cardinal rule of running for your life and looked back. She couldn't make out any clear details in the dim light, but she could see those bobbing eight green eyes glowing balefully in the moonlight as she rocked back and forth with the furious scuttling motion of uncounted blurring legs, snatching claws held just far enough out for Juniper to make out in the darkness. Snapping her head back around forward, she vaulted another fallen log, a shock running through her legs as she swung them through a protruding branch she hadn't seen when she'd made the jump. She stumbled on her landing, but she kept running, adrenaline masking any pain from the impact Okay, fuck composure, it's time to get crazy.

Since she'd left the school, Juniper had always been moving deeper towards the interior of the island, using the mountain as a guide stone. That meant she she'd also been gaining elevation over the course of the last two days, moving further and further away from sea level with each step. That elevation difference was not always gradual, she'd seen a few sheer rock cliffs she'd had to walk around on her way up. There was one near here she could recall, the drop-off was steep, maybe fifty feet or so, but at the foot of the drop was a dense treeline. If she could just clear the gap caused by the incline, she could land in the branches. Weight and momentum would break them under her impact, of course, but there were enough branches she'd probably come to a stop before she hit the ground, while the dead weight would keep falling. With any luck, the creature would think she'd plummeted all the way to the bottom . . . maybe she'd give up the chase, maybe she'd go to look, but either way it would give Juniper time to make her way from tree to tree for a while until she could find a safe place to drop down.

Of course, to even attempt it, she was going to have to complete the 400 meter dash from hell and still have enough strength for the jump. It was a tall order by any stretch. She just hoped the living ghost of Juha Väätäinen would approve of the attempt. She wanted to hurl an insult back at the thing chasing her, but every breath, every stretching muscle, every thought was focused on moving forward.