It's been a week since Elise's last encounter in detention and she's been.... restless. There has been a persistent, unidentifiable nagging in her brain, an anxiety only compounded by the upcoming prom, an event her friend Nique has been aloofly ominous about, an opportunity El knows might give them an unprecedented chance to fuck with the administration at the school. But still, that nagging. So she's thrown herself into her work. Most notably, these rumors of a specter in brown have tugged at her mind. They've been around as long as she's been at the school, a collection of murmurs about a brown-cloaked figure that haunts the halls, varied and ludicrous. That she's a former student gone crazy, hiding in the dungeon and hunting girls for sport; that she's a ghost and spirit of vengeance, gang raped and left for dead by a vicious gang of former students; the forgotten and abandoned spawn of of a teacher and a monster; a project unleashed by mad scientists occupying the far flung oil derrick off the coast. Each is more ludicrous and absurd an urban legend than the last, and any rational girl would consider investigation a fool's errand, but Elise persists, for reasons she can't quite vocalize. At worst, she rationalizes, it will be an opportunity to see how effective her newly organized network of contacts really is. She catches leads quicker than she thought, a name first - Sayuri - and then eventually, a lead. There are rumors of an apparition seen, odd noises heard, around the fire escapes and rooftops of the Riley dormitory.

It's already night by the time she has a chance to investigate. While all the sightings seem to happen after dark, she would have liked an opportunity to scout the roof out during the day, when it's safer, but it was not to be. Her vicious sadist of a math professor held her for hours after class and... Suffice to say, she's in a dour mood as she pops the lock on the service entrance to the rooftop, nimble jump, hefting herself over the ceiling. She's in uniform still, all the way down to the ill-fitting skirt, a steak knife tucked into the hem. Over it, a bomber jacket, obviously not her own, a few sizes too big. She hugs the jacket around herself as she braces against the whipping wind. It's dark, the moon barely a crescent, the skittering sound of leaves over the untended surface of the roof as she carefully creaks across.

It was barely a day ago that Sayuri had fled the basement. The insane chained woman had done something particularly fucked to the small woman's body. Her left wrist itched with the sickening new growth. She kept poking at it like it were just a strange bugbite and not a smooth bone handle poking out and hidden under the seamless leather loop she always wore. Not by choice, of course, but because getting it off meant slicing off a thumb and it was a lot harder to kill blue-sashed traitors without both your thumbs.

Sayuri couldn't remember where she'd heard certain stuff. She just knew that the ones in blue sashes were working with the oppressors, the rapists, that they'd sold their bodies to them for comfort and fake liberty, and they all had to die in the most exquisitely gruesome way she could manage. She'd even snagged a mop on her way through old stash points so she could get some really good messages in blood going if the opportunity provided itself. Fingerpainting was some seriously immature shit, if you asked her, though not so many women were keen on the finer points of killing an enemy and leaving a messy warning for the others.

She also couldn't remember where she'd learned to tie threads around a nest for warning, but Goddess had a cock if it wasn't working well. One of the threads keeps nagging at her little silent alarm, and she ducks out into the wind to follow it back to the gaping doorway and a strangely unthreatening figure fluttering in the blowing wind. Sayuri has insane luck tonight. She's perfectly downwind of the... She sniffs at the air like a bloodhound... woman, or maybe two women, though at least one of them reeks of bad old chalkdust and...

Sayuri buries her body against one of the evenly-spaced air conditioning units set up on the roof to cool the building in the Summer. The woman, or women, smell like freshly-forged chains. It's a relatively old smell, a few days at least, but strong, very strong, like that bitch was marking territory or something. The small, brown-eyed woman pants and hides, running through options. She fingers the pockets lining her mismatched cloak and slowly draws a blade. She waits, watching the door's alarm line tremble in the hissing cold.

Elise isn't a clever enough tracker to notice the makeshift alarm she had tripped. Maybe if she had gone hunting with her Dad when she was younger, she would have spotted the signs. But she never had the heart to shoot at big, soft, adorable creatures and besides, chances are pretty good she would have "accidentally" blown the bastard reverend's head off. She does, however, check the carpet of leaves lining the rooftop, sinking to a squat to inspect. They haven't been cleaned in a long time, which makes the trail left behind noticable. Ruts are dug into the thick layer of leaves, broken and smashed in places, gray concrete showing through at others. Someone's been up here recently, certainly. Fingers tighten on the dull knife as she licks her lips, eyes trailing the surface of the roof in the distance, but dark as it is, all she can see are the looming shadows of the air-conditioning units.

She proceeds slowly, the leaves crackling loud underfoot, even through the din of the sweeping wind, dancing leaves lapping at her ankles, skirt dancing high against toned thighs. Why does she suddenly feel like one of the poor cops in First Blood all of a sudden? She's trembling as she slowly approaches on the towering shapes of the A/C units, and it's not from the cold. As she comes closer into Sayuri's line of sight, her frame becomes visible, petite and certainly little more threatening than a kitten tangled up in yarn.

This is new. Very new. A student actually willing to wander the dark parts who smells like the monsters, so she knows the score. Or it's a trap. Fuckers and their traps. Always. Never come at you honest-like, all roaring and waving soft, fleshy things around to get snicker-snacked off, no, gotta pretend to be a student or a wall or a Goddess-damned puppy. Sayuri isn't going to fall for any damn trap. She takes a step away from her hiding spot and slides the dagger out from under he cloak. No agent of Bloody Chains is gonna get the drop on her, not in her own lai-

Sayuri grits her teeth and clenches her eyes shut. No, no, she can't keep this up, she's getting paranoid again. Smelling things maybe even. She smelled all sorts of monster on that one woman and all that poor wretch had done was scream and run away with a cut hand no no no no no. No!

The cloaked woman pants softly, the sound lost in the wind, and rethinks her position. She's behind the trespasser, who seems to be following the path in the leaves. Sayuri bites her lip hard enough to draw blood so she'll remember not to fuck up like that again. The intruder is out in the open, though, and hasn't noticed the trembling fishing line at her side, and doesn't seem to have picked up a scent or tried. Sayuri's behind her, right, right, and upwind...

Shit. Shit shit shit. Right, cover's blown, screw it. Cautious, smart, that's how she's playing this. Sayuri takes a step back into the shelter of an A/C unit and crouches down, then flips herself up and onto the metal with a loud clang. She spins, her cloak fluttering in the wind, and strikes as confident of a pose as she can.

"And what, exactly, are YOU doing here?" Sayuri shouts, her voice rough with dehydration and forced aggression. Yeah, that's it, play it like one of them would, keep it scary and strong. If it's just a lost student, Sayuri will scare her off and leave it be. If not, well, the brown-eyed woman had been practicing wind-blown throws before she went below and her muscles remembered how to put a knife in someone's eye at this range with this sort of tail wind.

Something is off. It's intuition, really, that feeling of a presence, despite smelling, hearing, seeing nothing. Then again, it could just be the paranoia fostered by Shokushu. No matter where you are, chances are pretty good something is there with you, whether you know it or not. Nowhere is safe, sure, but the flip side of that is, no place is sacred. If she's just as likely to suffer victimization in her dorm room, El rationalizes, what is there to fear from the dark corners of the campus? Still, that doesn't stop her heart from beating double time, the hackles on the back of her neck from raising. She pauses, bent down as she hefts a pebble, little rocks thrown up onto the roof by idle girls below, amassed over years of disuse. It spirals through the air, clattering against the vent of the A/C hood.

No response.

She creeps on further, and as she's already stepped between the two A/C units, she realizes she's possibly made a mistake, let herself be flanked by higher ground. Is that silly? She should have paid more attention when her dad would watch westerns and war mo--*CLANG!*

Oh fu--(Her body spins on heel, knife tightened in grip, eyes raising alertly)--wait.... wha?

She squints up at the other girl. No, her knife is no use here. The other girl's glints like it might actually do some damage and the height gives her an advantage, and Elise can make out the sketch of wiry but firm muscle framed in the brown cloak, but... Is she supposed to be afraid, or.... Well, damn, she doesn't even know how to verbalize what the alternative response would be. One eye is squinted, the other raised, as she tips her chin upward to the theatrical Sayuri, posed like a superhero. (I am the shadow, I am the...)

"Freezing my tits off, apparently." What else is she going to say? Her expression is befuddled.

The knife in Sayuri's hand hisses through the air and slams itself into the ground at Elise's feet, then clatters into the leaves and debris harmlessly.

"Goddessdamnit, that's not fair! If one of them did that you'd be defending yourself and swearing and worried they might actually cut you! Fuck!" Sayuri curses and hits her forehead with the heel of her palm, then snatches another blade from her cloak and points it at Elise. The sharp edge glints in the low light. Sayuri doesn't realize it, but she's just pulled one of the butter knives she scavenged during more desperate times and slowly ground into something resembling a pointy spike. It's rough and jagged and totally imbalanced.

"Alright, enough shit, what're you doing here? Nobody that smells like two women and two monsters runs around rooftops, 'specially not in a fuckin' uniform. You ain't up here to get away from it all and you ain't up here to kill yourself. B'sides they catch you if you jump off the side." As if to demonstrate, Sayuri falls forward in a flutter onto the ground and begins walking towards Elise, crude weapon still at the ready. The wind drags and rips her cloak in a whirling torrent, snapping at the air hungrily.

"I tried. Oh, Goddess, how I tried."

For what it's worth, Elise does jump when the knife comes flashing at her, heart skipping before it sinks into the carpet of leaves at her feet. But she covers well, frosty brow rising even as she twists the knife nervously in her grip. "Chick, I know the game here. They can't slice or stab you. Can't rip off limbs or organs." She shakes her head. Fingers pinch the bridge of her nose as Sayuri yanks out a butter knife. And here Elise thought she came underprepared for a fight. She resists her urge to back away, instead standing her ground, doing her very best to maintain a defensive stance. For all the intimidation she's doing, she may as well be a husky puppy in an engineer's cap driving a toy train.

Great... So the "secret weapon" she's been hunting for is a delusional schizophrenic with suicidal tendencies and an arsenal of blunt cafeteria silverware. Thanks a lot, subconscious! But she's certainly enthusiastic, and Elise can see the ripple of wiry muscle underneath the makeshift outfit. "Well, fuck me. I was looking for the Spectre of Shokushu. Jill the Monster Killer. Bloody Guts Sayuri. Looks like I stumbled across the crazy old cat lady instead..."

Sayuri freezes. Bloody Guts? She'd been out of reality too long. She'd made her own mythos. This is beautiful, perfect, wonderful. But this tool is goading her. Sayuri knew it now. A stronger woman's jacket over the normal uniform. Some silly ghost hunter playing at being strong. The cloaked woman lifts her weapon to her eyes, stuffs it back into her cloak, and draws an evenly-balanced flint point.

"Y'know what the crazy cat-lady doesn't do? Spend weeks carving her own fucking weapons because they don't give you any good ones here." Sayuri strides closer to Elise and holds up the stone weapon. "She doesn't spend a year in the Goddess-cursed basement of this Hell witnessing the truth of those rules you think will protect you. Y'wanna see what all that bullshit about not harming us means when you're alone in the dark with something that's half-forgotten it's even in a controlled environment? Y'wanna know what those FUCKERS do when they know they can stitch you back together?"

The small, wiry woman turns the weapon and licks the sharp edge in a twisted parody of a porn-star's miming seduction. Teeth close on the tip of the blade, and Sayuri leans close as a she-wolf's challenging growl rumbles in her throat.

"Now you've seen your fucked-up oddity so get the fuck off my roof before I teach you that I don't follow their stupid rules," she inserts into the vocal challenge, teeth still pressed to stone.

As Sayuri's voice and words grow more aggressive, more unstable, frankly more dangerous, a lean, sharp smile creeps across Elise's face. Ah, yes. This is more what she had in mind. Her eyes roam over the weapon, not so much wary of it as, inspecting. Aeria had just been goading her about the general sloppiness of their homemade utensils, and access to a more substantial cache would be crucial. She trembles, sure, but it's not from terror, unflinching as the obviously unhinged woman waves the makeshift knife around. Tongue touches lips. "Girl, I can only imagine... That's not something I want to see, but..." She shrugs, daring, mischievous glint of eyes. "When you play with fire, you take the responsibilities of your actions into account, mm?"

Her brow lifts, vaguely bemused as Sayuri tongue kisses the blade. Her head is cocked ever-so-slightly to the side. "Not the sort of risk I plan on taking. Not the sort of risk I can afford to take for that matter. Too much at stake, right? But you. Oh yes. What a vicious little hellraiser you are. Gnashing your teeth and hiding in your little nest. You'll probably be the last thing standing when the Apocalypse comes, yeah? Quietly hidden away, some little survivalist preparing to inherit this scorched little island when it's all said and done. Yeah. You're a loose cannon alright, a rogue agent. You don't play by anyone's rules, not even your own. Self-made little Jean Rambo you are." Her chuckle sounds genuinely amused, goading. "Gotta admit though, girly, the whole violent psychopath schtick's practically got me wet between the thighs over here." It's intended as a taunt, but as soon as the words are out of her mouth, she realizes it's the truth. There's a roughness to El's breath, a faint flush to her cheeks that could possibly be passed off as a reaction to the cold wind, even though she knows it isn't. God, El, what is this place doing to you?

Sayuri pulls the weapon away from her mouth and glares more sharply than the weapon at Elise. The flint dagger winks into a palm and vanishes under the cloak in a shuffly, and a small hand shoves a crumpled, refolded piece of paper out into the taller woman's face.

"I ain't waitin' for shit! I have plans! See!" Sayuri barks, holding out a copy of her to-do list for the interloper. She shoves it into Elise's hand and disappears back under the tattered cloth. "I'm just having trouble since my stashes got fucked while I was... away. B'sides, I can't seem to find the right ingredients for my recipes." The copy of the list feels old, and the central part, the list of names, has been rewritten numerous times, though two jump out at Elise for being overwritten at least three times in thick black ink: Niceman and Dawn Portman. "Anyway, keep that copy. Now," Sayuri says, a new glint stealing across her eyes, "if you're starting to get wet we should go do something about that. Nothing like good fucking to get away from how fucked we all are by bad fucking fucks' fucks."

Sayuri nods and closes the distance between herself and Elise in a single swift, fluid stride. Strong hands grasp at the coat over the pale woman's frame to try and pull her into a hard kiss.

Her hands are buried in the deep pockets of the heavy coat, wryly and tolerantly amused by this loud little creature. She winces as Sayuri practically shouts in her ear, shoving the dirty, crumpled wad of paper into her hand. Eyes briefly skim over the list before stuffing it away in the coat. riiiiiiiiiight. Well, at least they've got an enemy in common. "Look. Girl, not to be rude. You're a fucking lunatic. But you're a dangerous, violent lunatic, and that's something we can use to our advantage. But the way you're running things now, the best mercy you can hope for is to be chopped up and turned into Tuesday meat loaf for the cafeteria."

She makes a mental note to explain proper and meaningful diction to the girl. But that can wait for another time. "But for now let's talk abou--mmpphh!!" She doesn't catch the meaning of the girl's last words until she's already in Sayuri's grip. That distance between them is covered in a split second and Elise is no match for her vise-like strength as fingers close on her arms and yank her forward into a kiss, stumbling against the stronger woman's body, El's words suffocated as Sayuri's forceful tongue invades her hot mouth. Eyes shock wide, clenched against the girl's warm body, the knife tumbling from her grip and hitting the blanket of leaves at her feet.

Sayuri's eyes immediately flash to the knife. She's off Elise like a good habit. The smaller, stronger woman snatches the blade and makes it vanish into her cloak, then stands back up and turns around to look at the raven-haired woman before her.

"What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, my list. You have plans? You actually think we can stab our way out of here too? I... I need to know how," Sayuri rambles, apparently oblivious to her own interruption. "Ever since Evy went missing the last part of my list stopped making sense, and there's gotta be a way to do it that involves not learning to kill the big ones." She bends up and kisses Elise quickly on the mouth again. "Come on! This way!"

Sayuri's off across the rooftop, bounding along and glancing back like a hound leading someone new home. Her leathered feet grip the roof like runner's shoes until she reaches a small alcove nearby where one of the A/C units rests tight against the exit to a stairwell. The small woman ducks into what, on closer inspection, is a haphazard sort of nest made of old sheets and blankets nailed and duct-taped to the walls.

"In, in! It's warm here! And softer. We can talk and fuck," Sayuri says hurriedly as she ushers Elise into the strange little hovel. Within, there's a bag full of dry rations, a massive water jug, and attachments to strings for all the various trap lines set across the nearby portions of roof. At the far end there's a thicker pile of overused blankets clearly meant as a makeshift bed.

There's a brief, startled look as the little savage breaks from her to scramble for the knife. She briefly considers tangling with her for the ineffective weapon, but the thought passes as quickly as it came. She doubts she'd be a match for the scrapper. She'll just have to trust that Sayuri won't skin her and wear her like a snug winter coat. Still, she's mulling over how painful it would be to be skinned by something that dull as her hands smooth down her back and the girl springs up just as quickly, startling her into a kiss, brief and lingering, left dazed as she bounces back off.

Elise follows at a more leisurely pace, teeth held together to keep them from chattering, puzzling her way through the bipolar antics of the Tex Avery creation before her. A brow is raised cooly, an insecure shrug as she examines her surroundings. "Quite a palace you got here, girly..." Her words cold enough that they should be freezing icicles to her lips. She sinks to a seat, back to a makeshift wall. Arms cross under her chest as she examines the other girl. "Negotiations first. Then maybe we fool around. Maybe." Sure, she's adorable. Like a puppy with a razorblade. Perfect material to mold a loyal hound. Feed her, play with her, and she'll be putty in her hands. But girls like this need discipline, so she keeps reserved. "Hell no. No way we're going to take down the big monsters down. This is a guerilla war. We're going to need tact. Not just running around waving butter knivfes and asking for the administration to clamp down on us. If you want to run with my people, you're going to have to play our rules. Understand?" She reaches out, thumb and forefinger pressed to pulse, tipping Sayuri's chin up.

The first quip earns a brief middle finger from the dirty woman, though the lack of another blade proves she's doing her best to be playful about the experience. Sayuri sits across from Elise and listens intently to the blue-eyed woman. She grins stupidly at the word 'maybe'. 'Maybe' meant yes where Sayuri came from. 'Maybe' not yet but soon. 'Maybe' Elise will resist a little but she'll give in. Sayuri loses herself for a heartbeat in the other woman's eyes during a pause in speech.

Ice blue eyes. Blue eyes. Blue. Blue hair. Evy... NO. No no no. Evy's gone. Stop thinking about her stop thinking her name forget her forget her forget forget forget what Dawn must have done. That blonde bitch will pay in blood and tears for weeks. Paint the walls and leave a warning so big no one else will ever dare betray their sisters again. Make the whole school look like something out of a George Romero movie, towards the end, when the last son of a bitch is looking out across the wasteland of death and gore and viscera and- and she's talking again wake up. Sayuri blinks, her face showing nothing of the rapid internal monologue, the rending stream of consciousness. Her mind isn't healed, but it's got some exciting new coping mechanisms at least.

The dirty young woman grins hungrily at the word "guerilla". She'd been working that for years now. Big splashy terrorist bombing if she could ever get her recipe down. Make McVeigh look like a child with an M80. The grin fades. No big splashes? That's not any good. How do you get friends if you don't make a nice bi-

Sayuri's eyes go wide at the hand on her throat. They settle on Elise's and get lost again. A soft, submissive whine vibrates Elise's fingers. The throat in her grasp presses forward in offer.

"Y-yeah. I'll run your way. I'll follow your lead. I'll even blend if you want me to," the stray mongrel says, eyes fixed happily on her new Alpha.

This isn't like Elise. Even she knows it. She's a smart girl, a tough girl, but this sort of aggression just isn't like her. That's why she recruits muscle. She rationalizes to herself that this place must have changed her but it's more than that... Ever since that encounter in the Basement, she's changed, like there's been a monster lurking on the fringes of her subconscious. Big blues are locked on Sayuri. It seems she's lost the girl for a moment. Disassociation? Delusions? But like that, it's gone.

Fingers tighten against Sayuri's throat at the submissive response, unaware she's even doing it, her own breath hoarse and excited despite herself as she slowly squeezes closed the feral woman's windpipe, bringing little black dots swimming in her vision. "I hope I can trust that. The last thing I need are liabilities, feral little girls getting them caught in the Head Girl's bear traps and singing like songbirds. You need a shower first, and I'll decide what to do with you from there. We may need you to enroll with the school again. Do you understand?" Any sense of assertion may not even be possible at this point, as little El casually chokes the other girl, fingers firm on pressure points, seemingly unaware of the fact.