"Why the fuck are we here?"

He grinned as he pulled her through the hallways of the school. "Plenty of restrooms, no flammable surfaces, and it seems nobody's here. You know, it's no wonder America got dumb while I was locked up, they're never in school."

He skidded to a halt in front of a display booth. "What year did you graduate high school?"

She replied gruffly, "2006."

"Are there pictures of you anywhere?"

"They probably don't have any more framed photographs of the Science Club and National Honors Society from over five years ago."

"Right, you were a nerd, they don't seem to commemorate nerds like that."

"Why are we here, Kai? Seriously?"

"I can feel the magic oozing out of me, all over the place," he said. "I have too much magic. It's not burning me but it is escaping me without my say-so. I realized, what if I start to Merge with Jo and my gushing fountains of magic reduce her into a pile of goo? Then I won't have a twin for the Merge."

"Wonderful," said Maribel sarcastically. "And how are you going to practice on me if I'm not immortal and not able to heal?"

"That's where the real magic comes in. I'm going to practice hurting you... then fixing you. See if you are right about how even witches have a healing factor if you concentrate your magic on the right area. Do you mind if I turn your blood into acid?"

"If you do that, I will die almost instantly, you'll fry my organs and cause irreversible damage."

Kai groaned. "Oh, you are so dramatic! I'm sure I can fix it!"

"If you really want me alive to leave your Geminis without power, then you can't practice on me."

"Great. So, I guess that means I have to find your mom or your sister, turn them into vampires, and–"

"Wait," she said immediately. "You can't hurt them."

"I can and I will if you don't cooperate," he said pointedly. "Didn't think that needed to be reiterated. You know, for someone so book smart, you seem pretty socially inept."

"Social situations have never been my strong suit."

"Somewhere out there is a psychologist who would mark that as a red flag. Might even call you a sociopath, Maribelly."

"Stop calling me that."

"I'll call you anything I want to call you. That is the kind of power I have."

He tossed her to the floor, but before she could hit, he pumped his fingers, keeping her body floating just an inch above the ground. He tossed her into the lockers, but just as she made to shield herself, she felt her body careen the other way, avoiding a crash entirely. Her body came to a stop in midair, rigid as a board and floating around in a circle so she could face him. She tried to fight the spell, but would never be strong enough to do it. He'd locked her palms against her thighs so she couldn't hope to siphon it away.

"Now that is impressive," he said, praising himself. The lights started to flicker, causing him to set her down.

She had an idea when she saw him standing right under one of the light fixtures. Sparks flew, growing lesser and lesser by the second. She took advantage of being freed by the spell, holding her hand up so the sparks landed on his shirt. "Incendia."

Kai burst into flames. For extra measure, she slammed both hands down, breaking the light fixture off the ceiling and sending it crashing onto his skull. She didn't check to see if it had worked, she just hoisted herself up and began to run.

"Maribelly," she heard someone cooing as she turned the hall, slamming the door shut behind her to at least slow him down. She swept her hands out, moving a shelf in front of the doors to further block his path.

She was already growing weary. How long had it been since she'd eaten? How long since she had a drink of water? Kai had knocked her out, anything she was feeling was made worse by it. How long would she last once she made it out of the school? Where would she go? Where would be safe from him?

She didn't stop to think about it. She ducked into one of the chemistry classrooms, breaking open the door to the storage room and grabbing the first two bottles of hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide she saw.

Strong acids and strong bases are corrosive. They'll eat away at him if I splash them on him... if I manage to get them on him in the first place.

She made sure to grab a bottle of benzene as well, followed by a bottle of imidazole.

Benzene is flammable and will enter the bloodstream. Imidazole is also corrosive and will damage the skin and eyes if inhaled. If the acids and bases don't work, this will destroy him, too.

She exited through another door, ending up in a different hallway and beginning to double back. She didn't remember the best way out, but she knew she'd find a door leading to the outside world sooner or later.

Behind her, she started to let the sodium hydroxide drip. If Kai pursued, he'd hopefully trip and the rest of the base would do the work for him. Even if he didn't, there was a chance the amount on the floor would start to burn through the soles of his shoes. She just had to be careful not to splash it on herself.

"Maribelly."

He was getting closer. She could hear his voice nearby but she heard no footsteps, sensed no presence.

Too late, she realized he was doing what Geminis seem to do best.

A locker door opened unexpectedly in front of her. She ran into it, crashing into the floor and crying out as she instinctively reached to cradle her bruised nose.

"Smart," said Kai, appearing in front of her completely shirtless. "But do you really think I didn't first make sure to practice my Protective Spells?"

"Too bad it's gone now," she said, hoping the spell would have the intended effect when she held up her hand. The hydrochloric acid burst from the bottle, making a beeline for him. As expected, he was able to stop them, but not before she did the same to the bottles of benzene and imidazole, streams of dangerous chemicals making his way at him from two different angles.

She turned away, covering her eyes and mouth to avoid inhaling anything as she heard him scream. But the next second, she was being hoisted up, dragged back the way they came. The bottles were left behind, and the liquids left behind were mixing without a problem on the floor.

He must have rendered them useless.

There went her advantage.

When they reached the cafeteria, she saw there were chemical burns on him, but not enough to debilitate him. He sat her down roughly, placing one hand on her arm and the other on his wounds, siphoning from her while he began to heal himself. She gritted her teeth, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a scream. Within a minute, he was all better.

"I am starting to see why Damon digs you so much," he said, removing her jacket and putting it on himself. "You are crazy-pants."

"Give that back!" she demanded, tugging at the jacket. "That's not yours, it's–"

"It's your dad's jacket, I know," he said sweetly. "But it's mine now, because you decided to ruin my shirt. That was an awesome shirt, by the way. Really sucks about it."

"What does a shirt matter to you when you're torturing me?!"

"Jealous that an inanimate object means more to me than you do? Oh, is this going to be like an episode of 'Ricki Lane' where I come face-to-face with my demons and change for the better?"

"I'd be an idiot to believe I can change you, or anyone."

"But you did, Beli. You did change me. You could change anything about a person if you really wanted to. You have the brains to alter the very fibers that make a person. Right down to the genetic level you can... you can turn them into anything you want them to be as long as you have an idea and a procedure. I think that makes you more dangerous than anyone else here, even while being a shitty newbie witch."

She figured if she couldn't escape him, she might as well try to get a message out to her friends about where she was. When he went to examine the vending machine, she wiggled closer to the nearest trash can, where the slowly peeling logo of the Mystic Falls Timberwolves was just begging to be of use to her. She peeled off enough for it to be recognizable, making sure not to crush it in her hands as she concentrated, having heard that Bonnie once sent a note to Elena that way.

Be it because of her magical skill or the simple desperation to get away from Kai, something made the piece of sticker vanish from her palms. She'd thought of it arriving to Damon. With any luck, he and a rescue team would be here promptly.

"I guess they wouldn't have Zima at a high school," he said, settling for a can of soda. "This will have to do. Now... what would make Damon the most mad without severing injuring you or killing you? Oh, I know..."

She felt a sting on her cheek, grimacing when she saw him tracing a 'K' in midair, imagining it was being transferred over onto her cheek, marking her as his property.

"I think my self-control is getting pretty good, wouldn't you say?" he inquired. "Now, on your forehead, what should we put there? Let's see how tiny I can write my name..."

Another sting, one that made her eyes water as he tried to fit his whole name in small letters on her forehead. "Stop," she pleaded. "I'm not a vampire, I can't just heal from this, it hurts, and I won't help you torture the Geminis if you do this."

"That's the next thing I want to test out," he said curiously. "Just how good I'll be at making you do what I want. I wonder if I can get in your mind, use you like one would a puppet..."

He abandoned his pursuits of writing on her and hoisted her up, causing her to float in the air, only this time, her arms started to move of their own volition. "Hi," he said, making her wave at him, "I'm Beli. Hmm... good but not good enough. That's not really going to do much for me."

"You need to keep me in one piece," she warned. "No spell will ever get my knowledge transferred over to you. You can control my body but you'll never control my mind. And you're right, Kai, I am crazy-pants. I can make sure I leave myself with brain damage so nobody can ever retrieve that knowledge. And even if you did find a way to stop that from happening, how do you know I won't use whatever lab time you give me to make a poison that'll eat away at you? There's no real way for you to win, Kai. Either my friends destroy you from the outside for having kidnapped me, or I destroy you from the inside because I'd rather fight and die than be your slave, weaponized at your leisure."

"That would almost be an effective threat if I didn't know you'll easily conform if it means keeping your mom and sister safe."

"Well, I think at this point, my friends will know to get them somewhere safe. You can't hurt them, just me."

"That's where you're wrong, Maribelly. I always find my ways of hurting the people I want to hurt. No one can keep them safe once I decide I want to put them in harm's way. Do you really want to test me? Why do you even hate me so much? What did I ever do to you?"

"I didn't hate you at first," she said honestly. "I didn't really care, but I was indifferent, not vengeful, not hateful. You hadn't wronged me. You were annoying but I figured I would be annoying, too, if I'd been in captivity for so long. I was wary as anyone should be of a stranger, of someone who'd been stalking us. But you repeatedly made me and Bonnie uncomfortable, making comments and advances we didn't welcome. Sociopath or not when someone says no or doesn't want to be flirted with, you stop. But you didn't. And then everything turned out to be a trick with you. We couldn't get the truth out of you, you just kept playing games and not taking it seriously which is absurd considering someone like you would want to get out of there as soon as possible. Then you wrecked my lab and kept being rude and provoking all of us, pushing buttons until you really started to bother me. And now you've kidnapped me, hurt me, are holding and torturing me against my will and threatening my family so you can kill yours. In any other circumstance I wouldn't care who you killed but Jo is now part of my life. She was kind to me. I don't want to see her harmed. I don't know the full extent of what transpired in Portland with your family but leave me out of it. Leave us all out of it."

His jaw twitched. "I'm going to go look for a recycling bin," he said tightly, holding up the now-empty can of soda. "Stay here, or you'll regret it."

She remained motionless, except for the nervous picking at her cuticles while she waited for him to come back.

"Hey."

"Damon!" she dared to whisper when she felt a hand on her shoulder. "You're here."

"If you can see us, that means you joined the Jo Invisibility Spell party," he said, smiling at her. "Come on."

"Here," said Maribel, offering her hand to Jo, who looked faint. "Channel me, you're struggling."

"I'm fine," Jo insisted.

"I wasn't asking."

Jo took her hand, and immediately color began to return to her face. "Cloaking two people was a lot harder than I thought."

"As long as we can avoid him, it should be fine," said Maribel. "What are we going to–?"

"You leave that to Ric, Jeremy, Tyler, and Matt."

"You're trusting them? Don't you usually talk crap on them?"

"Well, maybe for once in their lives they'll manage to be useful. And they're with Ric. I trust him."

"How exactly are they going to take down Kai?"

"Leave that to Bonnie."

They didn't let go of each other's hands until they were safely behind Damon's car. "There's no way I'm winning the Merge in a month," said Jo weakly, sinking to the floor. "I can barely hold a Cloaking Spell even with Maribel allowing me to channel her."

"A month is a lot of time to get stronger," said Maribel hopefully. "Though, I have to mention, the better solution is simply to kill him. I know you don't want Luke and Liv to die but if you really don't beat him in the Merge, won't it be better that the leader be someone nice? Or what if they both drink vampire blood during the Merge so that whoever dies comes back a vampire? Or what about one of those Transfer Spells or a Protective Spell, something, anything to make sure the weaker twin comes back? There has to be a way."

"There isn't," said Jo grimly. "I have to beat Kai. Liv and Luke are close, closer than Kai and I ever were. Whoever survives... will be different. They'll never get over it, never be happy again. And whoever dies... they're just kids, they're too young for this."

"I know. But, reasonably, isn't it better they suffer to save the lives of the entire Gemini Coven and whoever else Kai has on his kill-list from here to the Pacific? I know I must sound like a bitch but in this case isn't it reasonable for the sacrifice of the few to save the many? Who knows what Kai will do if he has the power of a leader. He already sucked up the Traveler spell..."

"It's not an option," said Jo firmly.

"Then you risk Kai slaughtering everyone you ever knew. He could become leader and kill himself to take you all out in one fell swoop. You're linked to your leaders, aren't you?"

"Kai won't win the Merge. I won't allow it."

"That sounds nice, Jo, it really does, but is it realistic? He's not a normal witch, he's a siphoner, that skill even without his powers would overwhelm you. Unless I alter him genetically to not be a siphoner, I don't see how it could work..." her jaw went slack. "Unless..."

"What are you thinking?" asked Damon, knowing she had an idea. "Come on, Beli, tell me what those gears in your head are saying."

She started to pace. "He wants me to figure out a way to leave the Gemini Coven powerless. But what if I could minimize his power instead? Make him barely a witch so that Jo is guaranteed a win? Take away his ability to siphon, manipulate his genome so that he's like me... an ordinary witch from no special bloodline. I could make the substitution, I could mutate his gene so it would be as if he was born without much natural power... Jo will easily overwhelm him. He won't be able to win the Merge. Jo will become the leader and the twins will be safe. I could even try to do my best to alter his genes in other ways... do my best to change those parts that make him a sociopath so when she absorbs him, it won't risk him taking control of her psyche and causing a problem from within."

"If that's possible," whispered Jo, "if you could guarantee I win the Merge..."

The doors of the school opened. Alaric and Tyler were carrying an unconscious Kai, while Bonnie, Jeremy, and Matt followed carrying crossbows and what appeared to be a used syringe and needle.

"I used the pentobarbital you gave me," said Bonnie when they saw Jo. "We'll get him to Alaric's apartment to rest. Then, I'll guide you in getting all that magic back from him, Maribel."

Once he was hooked up to several machines and in a medically-induced coma in Alaric's living room (with a Timberwolves t-shirt instead of her dad's jacket), Bonnie showed Maribel how to take the magic he'd siphoned from the Traveler spell and place it in an empty grimoire that she would be using to figure out the spell to work on people's minds and make them forget they'd died.

"Maribel," said Tyler, stopping her before she could leave the apartment with Kai's blood samples to begin their work. "I wouldn't ask if it wasn't completely urgent, but... it is. Come with me."

She'd wondered why Caroline, Elena, and Stefan had been notably absent from the rescue mission. Now she had her answer.

"Liz has cancer," she whispered, eyes wide as Tyler showed her the medical records Caroline had given him. "Glioblastoma, a lesion on her brainstem, mets to the spine... inoperable, and may not respond to chemo because it's growing too fast...."

"Caroline is insistent on trying vampire blood," said Tyler. "Stefan advised her against it, but she's stubborn. She thinks it will work. They're looking at a patient in similar condition today, Elena updated me a little while ago."

"No vampire blood," came Meredith's voice behind them. "I just heard–" she pulled her sister into a hug, then immediately got to business. "Trust me, I tried using vampire blood on cancerous cells. Never on the patient, but I would try it on samples and the blood always accelerated the cancer. Whatever you do, don't let her use vampire blood, it won't stop the cancer, especially not a glioblastoma. Mar... is this something you think you can handle?"

She stared at the scans again. "I'm not a doctor of any kind, I hardly think this is my area of expertise..."

"But you edit genes, you could change an entire person's state of being if you wanted to. You could... you could make the T-cells kill the cancerous cells, couldn't you?"

"I-I suppose I could try to undo it little by little, try to train the T-cells to recognize and kill the cancerous cells without hurting Liz. A modified and far more dangerous version of Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy. Like... coding a machine to do a different command. It would probably severely weaken Liz's immune system and it could make things worse if you can't quickly strengthen her again, but it could get rid of the cancer. But there could be more terrible side effects than that. This is festering in her brain and spine,I know nothing of neurology, I could leave her paralyzed and is paralysis going to be any better? I... I won't go as far as to promise that I can undo the damage but I could try a mutation to keep the cancer from growing. At least that can work as a starting point to try chemotherapy."

She stepped away, rubbing her head. "I have so many new projects to undertake. Making Kai not a siphoner, curing cancer– which, I should mention, was years away on the path my research ran on before I died– all while trying to find a way to wipe people's memories of my funeral and curing Ripper vampires, holy fuck. I'm never going to get a moment of rest. I... I'll be at my lab, I guess, trying to figure this out..."

"You said the Ripper cure was practically made, right?" Meredith tried to soothe. "It's okay to put that one off, I'm sure Stefan would rather you focus your efforts elsewhere. As for making people forget you died, I'm sure Bonnie can figure it out so your attention is not divided. But the curing cancer bit and making Kai not a siphoner..."

"That does fall on me," muttered Maribel. "Nobody else knows how to do it."

"Maybe we could compel you a research team..."

"I don't have time to teach a bunch of young researchers everything I know, I don't have time to walk them through my equipment and my lab... I'm used to working alone, I can't force anyone to conform to my crazy lab schedules or procedures, nobody can go inside my mind to understand this, it has to be me. And I can't trust these people won't just steal my work the way Wes did. No, if anyone could have helped me, it would have been him. And I never would have let him because I know what kind of person he is. It's gonna have to be me in the lab by myself. But, it'd be a big help to me if you could at least help Jo monitor her condition and get the blood samples. I can't do that, I'm not a doctor and I don't understand chemotherapy the way you guys do. I'll do my best on the genetic end to find a solution but her treatment can't fall on me."

"That's okay," she replied. "We can treat her as long as you can find a way to stop the cancer from spreading. Though, she will live a few more months. This doesn't need to be rushed. Focus on taking away Kai's ability to siphon. Liz will be stable for a good several weeks. As soon as Kai isn't a siphoner, that ups Jo's chances a lot, right?"

"It does, but I also need to weaken him. He's still plenty powerful as is, I need to mutate his witch gene so it's more like mine. That'll take probably a week."

"Liz can wait. We'll keep her comfortable until you're ready to start working on her. Don't worry, Maribel... we got it for now. Focus on Kai."

"Okay." She turned to Tyler, "Keep Caroline from feeding her any vampire blood. Tell her I'm going to figure it out. She won't believe it and she'll probably bother me for a week but... I understand her frustrations. Somehow, some way, I willhelp her. This is what I wanted to do with my life. Now I just have to actually do it... even if I'm nowhere near ready for it."

Damon brought a McMuffin and a coffee for her the next morning when he found out she'd spent the night in the lab, refining a procedure and testing theories to first rid Kai of his siphoning. With this, at least, she wasn't at a loss. She needed only to modify the procedure she'd done previously, and hope the change stuck.

"It should stick," she muttered after thanking him with a quick kiss on the cheek. "The body should want this defect cured, it won't fight me, it better not. If it does, we have a problem. So long as I can make the siphoning go away, then I don't have to worry about encountering resistance when I mutate the witch gene. If I fix that before the siphoning, it probably will keep itself from being weakened."

"I'm just happy Kai is in a coma, where nobody has to hear him talk," said Damon encouragingly. "Here, drink water, too, you may be brilliant but you're not going to help anybody if you're dehydrated."

He turned the straw he'd placed in her water bottle toward her, patting her head as she drank to further encourage her. "Hey, listen, if I could compel you not to be sleepy, I totally would, but you still need rest. Take a quick nap, I'll wake you in a few hours, how about that?"

"I can't sleep until I do this," she insisted. "It won't take me that much longer, probably could be done with it and ready to test it out by the end of the day. I'll sleep then so I have time to dream and think up a few ideas for how I'm going to get his Parker witch genes to turn into my Fell witch genes."

"Fell witch doesn't sound as cool, if I'm being honest."

"Which is precisely why it needs to happen. I'm nowhere near as strong as Kai or Bonnie, and I never will be. I am naturally weaker, left without a large bloodline of dead and living witches I can channel, and without a born talent for magic. I need to weaken him as much as I can. I need to make him me."

The door burst open, nearly making Maribel throw her burning coffee in the face of the person who'd interrupted them. Damon caught her hand in time when he realized it was Elena.

"I put a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door," said Maribel pointedly. "Elena, you know I care about you, but I don't work well with a bazillion other people in my lab."

"Not here to work," said Elena meekly. "You know how you told Tyler to make sure Caroline didn't give her mother vampire blood?"

Maribel shot up from her seat. "Don't you dare tell me..."

Elena gulped. "Then I won't say it. But you need to come with me."

"It's like everyone wants me to turn into a homicidal maniac!" muttered Maribel as she followed after her. "This is why scientists go fucking crazy!"