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October got cold very fast in Destiny City, a lot faster than she had experienced in Westchester County. Which was weird, because DC was a little bit south of New York. She'd think it'd be warmer, especially as it was a bit farther from the coast here. But apparently not, since she had to bundle up already--in scarf, jacket, and boots to keep her toes warm. The night sky overhead was a perfect midnight blue, and the weather for tonight was supposed to be impeccable for outside activities, like the concert she was going to attend. She'd been looking forward to it for a while, since before she bought the tickets--this particular show was classy, glitzy s**t, new age instrumental s**t.

Except then it began to snow--or it seemed like it, anyway. Tiny, glowing spheres--she'd walked into a field of them, bobbing about her at about chest height. That wasn't snow, she realized after a moment, and she was abruptly glad for the headphones she'd kept on. These floating things gave her the shivers, in a bad way--the way that precluded a youma attack. She ducked into an alley, ignoring the way the little lights shoved her back towards the street; in a moment, most of them had been consumed by Super Sailor Gunn's impressive transformation.

For a moment, she stood there, puzzled; she tugged her bolero a little tighter over her chest, adjusted the headphones over her ears, and then ventured out of the alley. The little light-things were gathering again, and starting to bob off in one direction.

She turned the volume up on her iPod and started to follow them.

The floating spheres really were leading somewhere. She could tell; youma tended to flee in certain ways as they were pursued and that was usually towards people, like they had a sort of understanding that senshi didn't want to harm civilians. Civilians were protection and food for the youma. A double win situation, she supposed. With a beat of any kind pounding in her ears, these thoughts came easily to the forefront of her mind. Didn't someone write once that you think better when you hear bass notes?

Nevermind.

One thing the headphones didn't help was perception. She didn't have eyes in the back of her head, so she missed Themis for a while. When she stopped, though, and he made to zip past her, her arm whipped out to snag on his coat. Negaverse, was her first thought, and the words of her attack were on her lips before she realized the boy was wearing a tiara. And there was a sailor collar, if she looked. "Gunn," she said, tugging her headphones down around her neck. "Super senshi of Wildfires. Who're you."

Themis. She whipped out the cell phone from subspace, scanned him in; it was routine, it was easy, and she could still hear whatever the hell she'd been listening to so she didn't have to worry about the civilians drifting past. "Kay. Got you." And away the phone went, vanishing from her palm like a parlor trick.

"I agree," she said; she felt conspicuous and exposed here, so after a moment she grabbed onto Themis's sleeve. "This sets my teeth on edge. Do you have a lighter or anything?" There wasn't any way for her to bring along matches, since the catch-all of the top of her bolero was gone; in fact, her bolero had been entirely replaced by some kind of shoulder-covering and cleavage. Whose idea was that? Well, she'd find another way to do the same thing. She could, she knew it.

Up came the headphones, she settled them on her ears a bit cockeyed so she could still hear Themis. "If you don't, you're in charge of firepower. C'mon. Let's find out where this party is going, okay?" Gunn grabbed onto the taller senshi's sleeve and started after the tiny will-o-the-wisps. Once they were moving, she called over her shoulder, "What do you think they're made of?"

"******** our lives," she said blandly, loudly over the beat of the music in her ears. They might as well quit now. No fire, no offensive attack, and all they could do was hope to... what, crush the youma lights in their hands? She thought about testing this theory; the minuscule monsters didn't seem to be aggressive. They didn't hurt if you ran into them. They just drifted around you, like water around a rock. It should be really easy to just grab one in your hand and crush it to nothingness.

(But what if she was wrong? What if they were just weaving some kind of spell, some kind of illusion?)

The crowd of civilians was thicker, harder to dodge through, and all of them following the will-o-the-wisps. "We're getting close," she said, and she broke through the crowd to see the tiny youma's destination.

It was... a man. Or it looked like one, it certainly actually wasn't one, and if it was a human it was long dead. The flesh was putrefacted, green-tinted, slipping off the face, the bones. It dangled from a fire escape by a rope around its throat, and between its hands was a dim glow. But it was breathing, drawing what might have been rattling breaths if she could hear. The sockets of its eyes were filled with burning coals.

"That's no human," she said, "it's drawing the civilians towards it! Can you block them?"

She shook her head. "No, don't bother." By the time he got back the monster would have already consumed some of these people, and that was not permissable. Gunn would have to commit suicide or something from the dishonor, and she was just... not suicidal. At all. In any way.

"Try it," she said, "I'm going to try crushing them."

So she did, clenching a hand over a light. What she got was a feeling of nasty electrical shock, and she barely smothered a scream. "Oh, ******** this experimental bullshit," she shouted, and she leapt up to grab onto the monster's dangling feet.

She would squished her hands over her ears, but she was holding onto the monster's feet. This, the headphones still over her ears, didn't help--she half-shrieked, pulled them away from her head a bit so she could still hear it, but couldn't quite discern the effects of the attack. She landed on her a** on the ground, but--ugh--The lights dispersed, and Gunn was pleased to see it. But they didn't stay away. The monster exhaled more of them.

"Gunn Wildfire Voracious Propagation," she howled out of frustration. The new lights ignited, the old ignited; the civilians jolted awake, and fled screaming about the arsonist senshi. The monster jerked, but didn't scream as it died in white flames.

Gunn rolled to extinguish the flames on her uniform, looked up to Themis. "You're on fire," she said.

Gunn's expression was sheepish as she looked over at Themis; he looked rather flustered, which was appropriate, especially consider that she'd just set his fuku on fire. This, by any account, was rather a b***h move, and she shifted to stand up and offer him her hands. He was a nice guy; a safe one, she thought, not annoying like Euterpe or patronizing like Zephyr. So safe enough.

"Sorry. Can I buy you a snack or something to make up for it?"

As she got up, hands hooked together behind her back, she reflected that Themis really was a man apart among menshi. Why were they all assholes? "Yeah," she agreed, "still! It could've been your actual self." She had done that before. With herself. She had the burns to prove it.

"We'd have to drop our transformation to go get something at Apollo's, but most convenience stores are okay with senshi patrons, if you don't want me knowing who you are in the waking world." The fight was over, at least for now; she pulled her headphones off her ears and gave him a skeptical look. "How new are you, anyway? Terribly so?"