Sayuri nearly shouted for joy when she found the open window. Of course, she didn't shout because doing so would have alerted something unpleasant to her presence, and that would ruin everything. She'd been scouring the chemistry rooms for weeks - or was it months now - hoping to find some way in so that she could get the things she needed. With the window left slightly open, she'd found one.

Once she'd pilfered the room on silent feet for the ingredients she required, she spent the rest of the night first spreading them out, and then adding a new layer to the unmemory game she'd developed. She'd already managed to lock away the locations of her caches of equipment in strange little compartments that would only open to mental triggers. This made any surface scan of her mind blind to the things. Now that she was hiding vastly important things in them, things more important than the crude cleaning chemicals that would make for something deadly in a pinch, she'd taken up the practice of playing a shell game in her broken mind to keep the specific locations of specific ingredients lost to her. It would slow her down later, for certain, but if it saved her from exposure, she figured it was worth it.

In any event, when she left that first night, she'd taken gentle steps to break the latch, then thought better and also wadded a bit of spare fabric into the window to prevent it from closing properly. Sure enough, the third night, the latch was fixed by the cloth was still in place.

By the third night, she was now taking seconds and improvising recipes in her mind. The room seemed to be restocked regularly, which was an incredible boon, but it also made her careless. Small things vanished into her cloak fast enough that their absence would surely be noticed. The feral girl wasn't even giving a second thought to most of the things she was grabbing. That vial of sodium, for example, was effectively useless except as a crude source of flash. Her eyes lit up as they fell on a large jar of red phosphorous that she'd missed the past few times. She gently pulled the thing out and held it up to the tiny sliver of Moon that shone through the windows.

Not far away, a sentient maelstrom of psychic electricity lurked just below the deceptively calm surface of reality. Tempest had been following Sayuri for several days, carefully masking his presence even as he hid in the ether. He knew well her instinctive ‘sixth sense’ and took steps to counter it, blotting out even the slight ripples his psychic presence produced in the veil of reality. The crazy woman had at least seemed not to ‘smell’ him as he followed her through her daily rounds, sneaking and thieving her way around the campus.

Tailing the mad girl as she scurried about working on various aspects of her precious list gave rise to a plan. It was a wickedly malicious plan to torment an already fractured mind. The psychic storm could have put his plan into action at any time, but he wanted to let Sayuri achieve some small measure of success. He would let her taste of victory and perhaps experience a glimmer of hope before he took it all away with a vision of utter failure.

Thus it was that Tempest was the one that arranged for the open window on that first night. He was the one who made sure the wad of cloth she put in the window remained to allow her access after the latch was fixed. He was the one who worked behind the scenes to ensure she could conduct her larcenous raids undisturbed.

He had done it all to lead her to this moment - this time when she had already gathered all she needed for her plans, yet returned anyway, pressing her luck. And now, he would put a sudden end to the winning streak he had fostered.

What are you doing, Sayuri? The monster sent his query to the young lunatic’s mind from the ether, no longer masking his presence, though he remained hidden in a deeper layer or reality.

The girl's head snapped up and around at the sound of the voice and the sudden strong sting of the smell of ozone. It only took her a moment to recognize that specific scent, though it was odd without the rotting wood smell of the jellyfish-like thing that had first brought it to her. Instinctively, she scampered to the far end of the room and snapped a pair of knives into her hands as she stared back at the apparently empty room and finally answered its question.

"Baking. I need more ingredients," she said coldly into the nothingness. A strange idea began forming in her mind as memories of the creature returned slowly to her. "Can you help me carry them? You have more hands than me." She sheathed the weapon in her left hand back in its rough, stitched pocket, brushing her fingers over the new, expansive stretches of mending. What was once a somewhat cohesive garment was starting to show its age and wear as it began to look more like some Frankensteinian nightmare. "If you help me carry, I'll feed you again, but only after you help me, okay? Fair? No fighting?"

Still, she fidgeted with her knife and watched the still, dark window at the far side of the room. If this was really Driftwood-Ozone, what had happened to the Driftwood stink? Maybe it was just having a different sort of day, like when Evy got stuck as Kim or vice versa. She desperately hoped it was still friendly.

It was likely that Whisperer would have jumped at the chance to feed on a willing woman. But much of the nourishment Tempest desired was produced by the struggle rather than the violation. Besides, he had something special in mind for this crazy girl.

Baking . . . Tempest reflected satirically, ignoring the proffered agreement for the time being. And what sort of recipes call for ingredients such as sodium or red phosphorous?

As he ‘spoke’, the living storm monitored Sayuri carefully. He knew from the memories that he had inherited from Whisperer that she was wild and unpredictable, but also quite cunning. Luckily he could detect and react to her thoughts as quickly as she formed them.

She had to be careful. She had to be honest. If she lied to the thing, if it was really the same creature, it would know and it would take the answer anyway. Better to just give it the truth.

"Bombs. And other little troublemakers," she said, her voice slightly trembling.

If the creature wasn't Driftwood, she'd effectively doomed herself with that admission. There wouldn't be an easy way to escape punishment, she suddenly realized, with the wall and the locked door at her back and the window at her front. Then an idea formed in her mind. She slipped a little flash she'd crafted the last night from its pocket and held it gingerly in her left hand, ready to smash it against the ceiling and use the distraction to flee, depending on how Ozone responded.

Though he was aware of Sayuri’s plan, Tempest made no move to intervene. Such a tactic could only work through surprise; the sapient storm’s psychic senses could hardly be addled by a simple flash. He found it slightly amusing that she suspected he could read her mind yet still contemplated such a foolish course of action.

Ah. Explosives. Tempest’s ‘tone’ was mild. And what do you plan to use them for?

Of course he already knew the answer, having seen it in her mind many times over the past few days. He was merely curious how much she would admit before deciding to act.

"Killing. Freedom." There was no hesitation. The logic of a mind-reader had turned over in her mind, and she wasn't resoning things out any longer. Raw instinct ruled her actions, and lead her into a low, ready crouch. Unfortunately, that left her entirely honest and thinking vaguely about her long-term plans. "Blow up the auditorium, first. Stop them spreading the lies. Stop the silence. Get us all to admit what's happening. Then we can band together and do something. Kill you all. Cut off your balls. Filthy animals should be neutered." She growled softly and tightened the grip on her knife. "You can help. You're not like them. We'll feed you. Help us."

The irony of a violent, feral woman declaring that ‘filthy animals should be neutered’ amused Tempest greatly. Certainly, he knew she wouldn’t see it that way, but he couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly.

It’s a tempting offer . . . Tempest let the sentence trail off as though mulling over the idea. Meanwhile, the ethereal monster positioned himself to cut off Sayuri’s escape route. But I’m afraid I must decline.

With that, Tempest surged into reality. He burst from the ether to suddenly fill the area just in front of the open window with his flashing electric mass. Lightning-bolt tendrils spread out to either side, further securing that half of the room.

Sayuri cried out in shock as the creature appeared before her. Immediately, the blade flew from her hand out at Tempest's body with a heavy flutter of her cloak. The fabric fled away from her bare skin as it trailed her left arm, and her feet were moving before her fingers even released the weapon. She shuffled to her right without thinking about it, a mistake in its own right as she had to hop up onto a desk to keep from stumbling over a chair.

As her bare, dirty foot touched the well-lacquered desk, the weapon finally reached the edge of the cloud. The feral woman watched for the results intensely in the ensuing few moments, feeling time stretch out before her as the adrenaline pounded in her veins.

Tempest was in no danger from the bladed missile, but what he had planned required that he deceive Sayuri into thinking he was vulnerable to such. He shifted the bulk of his body to the side and brought up a tentacle to deflect the incoming knife. The blade passed harmlessly through the fringe of the psychic storm, trailing sparks as it continued on to crash through a nearby window.

The electric creature moved a handful of his tendrils in front of the heart of his ‘body,’ shielding the brightest part of the storm. He wove the flashing limbs about defensively as though guarding against another attack.

And who’s a filthy animal now? Tempest taunted the girl using her own words. Always thinking of hurting and killing . . .but then that’s why you were exiled here in the first place, isn’t it?

As he sent his barbed question, the monster snaked another tentacle out along the floor. He hoped the motion of his ‘guarding’ limbs and the sting of his taunt would divert her attention from the slithering menace long enough for it to reach the desk she was standing on.

The girl snarled as she watched her weapon shoved away. The desk clattered and tipped off two legs as she turned and reoriented herself to face the creature. Tempest's ruse slid rapidly through the engine of Sayuri's mind, which then immediately choked on his barbed question.

She wasn't fighting for no reason. It was always for a cause. It was always for freedom and to punish the wicked and to end all of the madness in the world, all the horrors visited upon her and her sisters. Unfortunately, that didn't quite make it through her lips.

"Fffuck youuu," she snarled. Her eyes briefly clenched shut as her other hand snapped down and threw the flash hard onto the floor. She completely missed the tendril slipping towards her desk, but the image of those other ones defending a glowing core gave her purpose, and she leapt forward as she drew two fresh knives and held them point down, intent on slashing her way into Ozone and destroying him.

It had been even easier to goad the wild woman into attacking than Tempest had thought. The reckless headlong charge she began was precisely what he wanted her to do. Even better, her use of the flash gave him a perfect excuse to allow her within his defenses. She didn’t know that it had no effect on him, so it should not seem suspicious that she would find his guard down.

Still, he didn’t make it too easy for her. The effect would be ruined if she discovered it was a trap. The tentacle he had been sliding toward the desk snapped back and up, narrowly missing her as she leapt over it. A split second later, he sent the ‘guarding’ tentacles to intercept her, but he used his telepathic abilities to anticipate her motions and make certain she would dodge them, if only just barely.

With his ‘defensive’ tentacles overshooting Sayuri, she had a clear shot at Tempest’s supposed weak spot. And, since they were converging behind her, she also had no avenue of retreat.

If there was any magic to Sayuri's strength, she would have glowed a fiery, bitter red with the rage and self-loathing. As it was, she simply snarled and roared wordlessly as she slid through the air towards her target. The daggers came down hard into the core of the creature, dragged rough and fast down, then swung back up to lead a bouncing, snapped kick at the tempest's center.

In that passing moment, her mind screamed with a victory that wasn't going to come. She saw potential splaying out before her: a body to drag out and string up in the quad, where no one could deny that the creatures existed, a slew of fresh recruits as the women banded together to defend themselves instead of skittering back and forth on their own lives, a way out of this terrible place.

It was good that Tempest had no lips with which to form a wicked grin, for such might have tipped Sayuri off that something was not right. Then again, given the nearly berserk rage he felt within her, perhaps not. Regardless, he didn’t have any such parts. He didn’t even have the trunk-maws that the Fool possessed. He was nothing but a continuous storm of some strange form of psychic lightning.

And that was precisely what Sayuri’s attack encountered when it pierced to the core of the beast - electricity.

In that instant, the bizarre creature seemed to explode. Powerful shocks surged outwards, enveloping the wild girl. Such an attack could easily have stopped her heart, but this one was regulated carefully to only make her feel like she had been electrocuted. It ‘merely’ caused terrible searing pain that would cause her to lose consciousness.

And in that next moment, all victory and joy and hope were smashed in front of Sayuri's eyes. Instead, she saw Evy tortured, the school impervious and strong, and a thousand glowing eyes watching her. The pain seemed to tear her body into a thousand pieces and rend her mind into shreds. Muscles spasmed and went limp in a brief flicker before all light vanished and the feral woman crumpled to the floor.

Before she lost consciousness, a single word burned itself into her mind, one she was intensely familiar with, one that had never done her much good: 'no'. She fell forward in a heap, unmoving, with her cloak spilling out on the floor around herself. Anyone wandering in at that moment might have confused the scene and thought she was kneeling before Tempest's might.