A few tattered pages, found blowing in the wind outside Acehigh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ rive really did start acquiring a personality. It does have tea with contestants. Offstage. No records kept.

But that's a very limited role. Sessine, early in his career as a Joker, started wondering what else the Drive might be up to when it's not having tea or covering people in Improbably Burny Fire. Moreover, he likely wasn't the only one. This is Improbable Island. . . when Jokers start wondering about something, things often change. The Drive got curious enough that it decided to play at being human.

Not a contestant, of course. It had no interest in that; it knew all about those confrontations. But there are others on the Island. Guards, for instance.

Along about that time, Sessine hired some guards for his cottage. And, if you'll remember, one of the guards turned out to be Improbably Good at cooking. There was something strange about him. . . even Sessine could never remember his name, except that it began with H. After a while, when he finally noticed that he was getting it different each time, that's what he started calling him: just H.

Why Sessine? Who knows? Perhaps because Sessine was one of the ones who had wondered. Or perhaps the Drive tried other guard contracts first, and Sessine was the only one who bothered to interact with his guards in any sort of interesting way at all; everyone else treated them like so much furniture.

In any case, the Drive soon found that being a guard was too boring; finding ways to please people with cooking yielded more interesting results. He quit and started a catering business - - and catered quite a few SPOON parties. That's stopped; he had learned what he wanted to know.

Sessine gradually figured out who this H. really was. He kept the secret, though he did occasionally slip, but luckily, nobody noticed. When Sessine wanted to recreate the fastness from his memories, in an AceHigh mansion, he asked H. if he would help.

H. did. And that's why Hermein's scientific experiments aren't going to yield any useful data. On the other hand, when Sessine got himself into this trouble with the wind. . . H. wasn't going to take any overt role, but he wasn't above administering a slight nudge here and there. And the fastness will be what ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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