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All Jude Lawson knew was that someone in this damn city had to be able to listen to him. Yes, "knew". He refused to let himself think he actually meant hoped. Nevermind if it was true or not. Every attempt was met with a choking sensation, and the more he tried, the worse it got.

A man, a woman, he even tried talking to a child.

Choking, choking, choking.

How could he have ever deluded himself into a state of mind that didn't question this as much as he should of? To just turn a blind eye because Hero insisted, and other people insisted was so ignorant. Jude didn't realize what he wanted was not to be one with those overlooking the truth. Not him. He simply wanted to ignore it. It's what he'd always done.

But not anymore.

The night had taken most of the citizens off the streets hours ago, captives to their need for sleep; work tomorrow, school--oh, normal school, what he wouldn't give now. The only people left were those that couldn't help him. Thieves, hookers, muggers, senshi.

Senshi. What a complete ******** joke.

Where were they now? Why weren't they saving them? Jude hated to admit it, but he wondered now if the police reports had been right. Then again, they were helping out as much as usual, too. He'd been out searching for hours, looking for someone, maybe something, and found nothing but yet another horrible truth: There would be no savior for the roster of Barren Pines.

But perhaps, someone would get theirs just the same. Jude heard the scream, and as cold as it made him feel, the only reason he startled in the slightest was because of the unexpected burst of noise rather than what said noise implied. After hearing that woman, everything paled in comparison. The wail of a dying baby couldn't have matched up, he was sure.

It's this whole damn city, Jude thought in a flurry of internal voices, only one of which managed to drown out the others enough to be understood. The whole city is insane! And so he was, because instead of running away, he ran toward it.

It wasn't like his life was going to get any worse.

A hero was the last thing Jude wanted to be. Not that him rushing to the scene of the crime suggested that, but it was more of an impulse--or so he told himself. He did what he felt he needed to only because no one else would. To him, no one in Barren Pines was going to get up and try to figure these things out, so he would. No authority figure--magical or mortal--was going to save anyone here. Stuck with the job, damn it.

It didn't surprise him one bit to see a complete lack of aid for this kid. (Barely any age difference, yet he still called him "kid". Go figure.) Jude, too, suspected drug use of some degree. As if the world would care for such a person. The police protected their precious suburbs and Stepford Wives only. The senshi... He didn't know much about them, but doubted any difference between the two.

The assessment was made absently, and quickly, since only someone so book smart they lacked the more street variety would stand there and muse over the woes of the world at a time like this. Jude was a man of action and emotion. Thought would remain absent until it was too late.

No thinking, just moving. Moving to the would-be murderer of this down-trotted soul. If nothing else, one could at least give him points for being smart enough not to shout out some cheesy challenge. Although his goal was not to take a cheap shot, it ended up as one. He grabbed the fabric covering Obsidian's shoulder and pulled him around just enough to deliver a staggering blow to the jaw. That damn left hook again.

When he finally did speak, it was not to his opponent. "Run, you idiot!" he barked at the man, barely. The ta had just been freed when a punch of equal force connected square in the face. Already, blood pooled around the corners of his mouth.

An epic fight, his only heroic move, and Jude Lawson had bit his tongue. God, this was lame.

But no time to whine about it. Another strike aimed for his ribcage was barely shielded by a directed arm. The other side, however, was not so lucky, and felt the full force of it's follower.

This was not a mild mannered fight with Marcel. Yes, they hit, and damn, did they hurt. But at the end, both would walk out of the ring, and they knew that. When the world was the ring and you matched up with this guy, that was not a promise. For some reason, he knew that, too. It was just like with Hero. There was this feeling of having done this before in another time, maybe another place. As...a different person?

He wondered: Would the "real" him try to save someone at the risk of his own life?

Or was this the real, selfish him after all? The longer the fight, the less selfless it felt. He enjoyed it every time he landed a real, good hit. When Obsidian doubled over? He felt the satisfaction of setting off Hero multiplied by math he couldn't even do. (Shouldn't have skipped that class, Hey Jude~.)

God damn did his hand hurt. He was sure it was broken at first, and stumbled back, forced by the strength of the next hit to his chest. Punch after punch, kick after kick, things got more bloody, more exhausting. Jude himself was surprised to get another lucky shot that sent the son of a b***h literally falling on his a**.

"Not so fun when it's you getting your a** kicked, is it, Red?"

Maybe monologue was okay every once in a while.

A rare, rare while.

Right before he got his a** kicked.

If he had a dollar for every time he was choked today, Jude wouldn't need free room and board from that Hellhole school. Faced against someone clearly psychotic, he expected nothing less. Did it make it less painful, less frightening? No, but, he was prepared for it.

Until...

Until he bit him, and Jude had no idea what to do. As someone part of a boxing circle, he had heard his share of Mike Tyson jokes. Yet, the fact someone would--no, someone had actually bitten him was... Was a word he didn't think existed. Some combination of terrifying, degrading and twisted. The tightfisted, accurate punches became more like desperate, flailing strikes.

He had bit him! He bit him! What the Hell?!

It took a good half a minute, if not more, to knock Obsidian off him. The recovery that would follow was not impressive, cool, or the bounce back of a winner to this fight. The strength advantage the Negaverse agent had, gifted by the Negaverse itself, would not be dominantly responsible for his victory; biting would.

He bit him! He actually, really bit him!

Jude couldn't get over it. He was a whole new level of furious; too angry to even reason he couldn't figure out just why that was. Did he feel demoralized somehow? Was he, in a way, insulted by it? Maybe and maybe. Or, maybe, it was those feelings he just felt for reasons he couldn't remember. Probably all of them.

"Did you just bite me?!" he screamed in outrage. Stupid question, but couldn't help but blurt it out. Not expecting an answer, and not giving time to provide one regardless, Jude charged forward with an assault that would have surely left most men their size unconscious if only it had hit correctly. It hadn't. He missed horribly, and missed the next one, and even the one after that. The increase in temper had a chain reaction that caused him to suffer in ways that went beyond a stinging where the teeth marks indented themselves on his flesh. The next hit to the side of the head had him falling down, down, down and landing with a sickening thud on his back.

Jude was losing, and he knew it.

People lived in a world of harsh realities alongside distracting fantasies. Jude truly believed that they wanted to trust this sugar-coated dream was the real world, or at least, the right one. No matter what he said, what he did, he wanted to share that conviction, cling to that hope. To live in a dreamland where even if he was never really fit to be a savior, those who were didn't die slow, painful deaths by the hands of murderers. That's what he'd wanted.

From an intensely morbid standpoint, it was funny. Twisted, horrible, but funny. Hours ago he'd considered Hero's wooden sword being pointed at him a joke. Now, he'd be killed by another. This should be the part where he summoned inhuman strength, passion, everything he needed. Good should win. Bad should not. That's how it should have went, but it wasn't how it was going.

Jude, like everyone, had heard the rumor about near death experiences. Your life flashes before your eyes, they said. His didn't. A horrifying revelation hit him, one that caused an anguish equal to that of the weapon rearranging his insides, pushing them up and around to places they were never meant to be. There was nothing worth remembering for him; he'd been robbed of it. A portion of his life that was the most important, most miserable, most everything was gone. He couldn't think of his, so he thought of theirs: Hero, Serenade, Marcel. Their lives. He thought of those faces he recognized in ways that seemed supernatural. He loved them and he hated them, and wasn't sure it would have made sense with or without his memories.

"Not so fun when you're getting your a** kicked, is it?"

The echo of his own words shook that cage his true self had been locked up in. He might have said it was like a bad movie if the blood snaking up his throat had not silenced him. But if that was the truth, he'd not be dying. The good guy didn't die, remember? Between them, he was the good guy. He had always been the good guy, hadn't he? The name was no where in his flickering memories, but the eyes he recalled, and the voice; the words, the smell, all of it. This person was someone he'd met before.

The fog in his head drifted across his eyes. The him who was not him, who knew the Hero who was not Hero, shouted from so far it was like a whisper.

Sagittarius.

Jude held his hand up. Reaching for the moon and his princess? Reaching for Heavens and his God? Perhaps, or maybe he was doing what instinct told him and trying so uselessly to say the word. There were more, but he felt if he could just say this one thing, the rest would come. He could save himself and save them this time.

This time.

The voice in his mind sounded more like him than the whisper that came from his lips. Blood ran from the corners of them, down his chin, neck, and the only sound was a hiss, and eventually, a broken "sa". Why did he have to be so mortal? So afraid of the dead woman who had fallen in front of him? So attached to helping these people even though all he wanted was to be free from everything? He did care, and he was paying for it.

Sagittarius.

One word. He begged himself to just say that one word. The weapon twisted, back and forth, and Jude would have rolled with it had he not been forced into one position. The growl of excoriating pain was unmistakable, but Obsidian would get nothing else; a man with a mouth full of blood had no other noise to give. Accepting your death was something mere words could never describe. It was merciful that people usually didn't come back. How could you have ever told someone this story? He'd find out. One day.

One word.

Sagittarius..

One word he couldn't say.

Jude's arm collapsed to the ground, glassy eyes glaring up at his killer with all the hatred of this world he was being too quickly forced out of. A final cough sent a cascade of red decorating the sidewalk. His eyes shut slowly not because he was dead, because he knew he would be, and he prayed that God would spare him seeing this b*****d unworthy to walk His Earth any longer.

Obsidian was gone when Hero came.

Her suspicion had been greater than her desire to follow Jude's instructions (minimal). She did not scream or faint or throw up when she saw the mangled corpse, lying broken and untidy in the commons; she simply slowed her pace and approached it from a point of caution. Ambush. Danger. There was a dead body. There was a cause and effect at work here.

She dropped to her haunches next to the body that had once been Jude, left dead on the concrete -- he'd been put here, that much was certain. There was a trail of blood. He stared sightless up to the sky, expressionless, his face not twisted in pain or surprise; she found herself brushing away blood-soaked, crackled pieces of hair from his forehead, as though that would help him see.

Jude Lawson was dead.

His mouth was hanging open. With a sharp stab of revulsion she realised part of his mouth had been ripped off, revealing the teeth -- why had she not seen that before? Her mind was partly shutting down as though in brownout. It would have been better to have Aurelia there. As though Aurelia could be logical in the face of this; as though anyone could be logical in the face of this --

"Mr. Lawson," she said, a little wonderingly, "what did you find?"

It was at that point that she was hit very hard over the head.

*

Hero Barrett woke up alive, unlike Jude.

She woke up in the commons in the spotted puddle of blood where his body had lay, staring up into the night sky, her head throbbing.

They were already re-zipping up Jude into his body-bag. There was nothing she could do, and somewhere out in the night Obsidian didn't even give a damn.