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The dripping tap cried "Sleep no more!" to all the house: the Murphy house lack of plumbing had and hath murdered sleep. Mark Murphy was not a plumber. Charys Murphy was not a plumber. At one point she'd gone into the garage and sifted around listlessly with tools, crescent wrenches and coil wrenches and three other brands of wrench, but even if you had a wrench and could look at a pipe there was not a lot you could do about it. She was not a Mario brother. She stared at it, the wrench, the drip, had a Snackum and gave up. When you put a dishtowel down where the drip would be it did a great job of just making the drip sound as though it were going on a dishtowel.

She couldn't sleep.

Charys kept wandering from room to room, trying to find something that would induce unconsciousness. It never came. She stared at every pore in the mirror, sent six texts to Charlie Boyle that went unanswered, texted I can't sleep to a friendslist and got back a multitude of replies. It was like the Internet, only conveniently beeping right next to your ear. So: exactly like the Internet. But she couldn't sleep, and she had nothing to do and nowhere to be, and inside her was the ticking timebomb of:

-- Do you know what Eternal means, Nerissa?

Astraealuna had stopped even being aggrieved at her and had gone back to being sad. This irritated her in a way she couldn't quite define. After a longer while she'd said herself -- it means I've lived this long?

-- Correct.

¿Qué significa? --

-- It's Eternal. The power is up to you, Lunastraea had said.

Give it to me, L: how many people made it to Eternal, other than me? --

-- Two, formerly.

Formerly? --

-- They both died.

Therefore Murphy should sleep no more. Charys hit the city.

New Sailor Nerissa was much the same as old Sailor Nerissa, except for the Big Bird buttbow that waggled behind her when she walked and the fabric petals that went over both thighs. It pretty much looked like a Christmas Celebration Tinkerbell outfit, but she was used to the uniform: the ribbons streamed out behind her like bike spoke decorations, and now she had to rebalance in all-new heels. Transforming was like being addicted to smack in that you didn't know why you even did it any more, you just did, one moment you weren't and the next you were rolling up a five-dollar bill to stick up your nose --

"Hey!"

Sailor Nerissa usually had a cheery wave for any bypassers who saw her, the one you did when you kept on walking. She stuck to the dusk. But the bypassers were a bunch of kids who all looked like Sovereign Heights students desperate to get drunk, s**t-eating grins on their faces, and they pulled over the car rather than honked at her or hollered that they were going to call the cops. Some people did not take this magical sparkle s**t seriously. Tut, tut. "Hey, wait!"

The car slowed. It was a full-packed Honda Insight. It was a token mix of girls and boys, with a girl rolling down the passenger window to beckon her over as she ambled forward. Nerissa just leant next to the door, because what else could you do? "Hey, are you actually a sailor scout?"

"No, I'm going to a costume party," said Nerissa. When there were a chorus of disappointed groans (and one "I told you so, Carl,") she said, "Just kidding. I'm a magical girl."

They were already drunk, at least in the back. The driver with a youthful pornstache and a Kiss Me, I'm Basque! t-shirt said, "Bullshit. Prove it."

There was something about attention that she'd never been able to not stomach. It was like gum getting passed around. Everybody always took a piece of gum whether they wanted it or not. Nerissa took a thoughtful step backwards, spat to the side, gauged the quiet suburban street, and --

When the small whirlpool opened up in the concrete, unfortunately taking off a piece of sidewalk brick like it was a rotten tooth, the car erupted mainly in hollering and some quiet appreciation. There were clicks of cellphones. And then someone in the back who had had too many wine coolers already said, "Hey, why don't we bring her along?"

Those words were so fatal they came with a skull and crossbones on them. Those words were so fatal that they came with the 0800 number for Poison Control.

Ten minutes later she was squashed into the back and knew all their names: Carl, Heather, Shyarn (wat), Allister, May. May was an undergrad at DCU: the rest, as she'd guessed, were Sovereign Heights students who got way too happy on three wine coolers and for the first time she was feeling fun, she was feeling relaxed, she was feeling like she used to feel when Charys Maureen Murphy owned the world and had chunks of the solar system on mortgage. Like things could be fun again, like things could be fun at all.

She was already wrestling into a top Shyarn-spelled-Shyarn had bought that covered the stupid sailor collar and abandoned daisy dukes that were way too big on her, talking animatedly with a bunch of students two years her senior and feeling the way she'd used to feel when Callum took her to parties. They were calling her Nerissa. They were treating her like this was the coolest prank they'd ever pulled, like she was some kind of amazing exotic pet, and you didn't turn down that piece of gum because you rode that wave as long as you could stay on it.

"Your hair's growing out," said May, who was already giggly on the malternatives. She teased out the fine strands of Nerissa's pale blue hair to get to the mouse-brown underneath, which was meant to be subjected to rigorous blue bleach with a toothbrush once a month but was being neglected. She brushed it back, and used a hairband to hide. "You've got roots."

"Cross I gotta bear," she said, still doing up the buttons on her shorts. "Dye costs most of my magical pay packet."

Carl was concentrating on the road. "Is there a magical pay packet, or do you terrorists not contribute to the economy meaningfully at all?"

"I get food creds each perp," said Nerissa, and they swallowed that.

"What I want to know is, what I seriously want to know." Heather was dark and frazzled. The cynic. Or the polisci major. "I've looked at the numbers. This is a government cover-up. They haven't been sending in the FBI, all right? My uncle's a cop." She had intense eyes. "They've been sending in requests for the FBI and no agents ever come."

Ray had taught her the Navyman salute. "I solemnly swear I am on the side of all truehearted po-po."

"But who's behind all this, for the love of God?"

They didn't accept the answer latent evil, and they wanted to argue it amongst themselves. Even though they had living proof in the backseat they somehow came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to give them a straight answer, so when she said "It's aliens from outer space," they just kept on talking about Utah and the moon landing and Roswell until they got street parking to the club.

By the time they were inside and May and Carl had bought her a drink (May and Carl were pretty cute) she was happy again. The bouncer hadn't even asked her for ID. She was at a club in clothes she'd borrowed five minutes ago. She was at a party. When was the last time she'd gone to a frickin' party, for God's sake: when was the last time she'd done this, when was the last time she had been able to roll out of bed and pull something like this off without wondering about the next time the world was going to end for her. She was high on the excitement of being a youma-hunting truant and not doomed to walk these lonely streets alone like Green Day.

She was happy and angry that she hadn't been happy like this since sixteen. She was still angry. The gaping maw inside her still existed somewhere between rib and lung. This made her jittery and stupid: she wasn't usually jittery or stupid either. If there was ever a time she knew to walk, it was when she had to walk away -- but right then Nerissa was happy as a sandboy and headed for a fall.

Screams were usual in a club. Sometimes you got drunken, screamy giggles, but they were the drunken screamy giggles of a bunch of Sovereign High girls who'd just completed some group chug of a Cowboy b*****b. Or the yell of drunken fratboys, sharing a joke. People off-work. People yelled.

She'd been in the press of bodies, dancing the only way you could when every movement made you brush up against someone else: bad dancing. PLURR dancing. Putting your hands in the air and raising them as if you were filled with apathy about the subject, a Zion rave. Deep in her brain there was a spot near a vein that loved this, inherently loved it: Charlie never saw the appeal. Ray had put it on the number line closer to a St. Vitus' syndrome afflicting only under-twenties.

"Come out, come out!"

Aargh.

She'd stuck next to May and Carl and Shyarn-spelled-Shyarn and there was Shyarn joggling her elbow. A massive sword bobbed its way through the crowd. Someone was yelling to call the cops. The DJ was faltering on the music. She was getting told, "You have to do something -- "

"Holy s**t," she said, a little stupidly, because there seemed to be nothing else to say.

Shyarn was joggling her elbow again. A pain. "It's you, isn't it?" J'accuse. "He's looking for you."

There were a mix of expressions on their faces, worried ones, but there wasn't the dominant one she'd expected to see. Sailor Nerissa had pinned expectation, not pity. The anticipation to see a superhero make a superhero move. Their underlying emotion was guilt. It was May who said, "Do something? She has to get out of here," and Charys really really wished she had the gland that produced shame.

"Come out, baby!" The holler again. It cut through the air like a knife. "I'll be gentle, whoever you are!"

There were faces, looking at her. Her palms were wet with sweat. She said: "I have to split," and didn't look at their faces any more.

The crowd at this point were starting to part like the Red Sea, which was when Nerissa made her fatal mistake. She did not run. Only dipshits and fools ran. She started to walk away instead, walk away from the bobbing sword and the yelling, and it was because the crowd parted away from her that Captain Obsidian got his first good look at Sailor Nerissa's retreating back.

The crowd were giving them both a wide berth, a Minesweeper blank space for them to stand in. The music was muted. The DJ had shuffled it to the next song which had turned out to be the MacGuyver theme remixed with techno: this gave the entire situation a surreal feeling, a ******** dreamlike hallucination quality. A terrible trip. The worst. They were surrounded by a circle of onlookers who had fallen silent save for jerky, repetitive mutters, a little like the background of any Street Fighter level. Some had their cellphones out for the police. Some had their cellphones out just to take a video. Shyarn-spelled-Shyarn, May and the others -- where were they now?

Sailor Nerissa jerked her head away from his mouth as though he had mouth AIDs and was trying to transfer it. His wrist jangled gaily, and even under the dim club lights the little clinking chain caught her eye. "Holy s**t," she said, as amazed as she was revolted. "That's my -- that's my nose piercing."

"The very same, baby." His grip was a steel bar around her shoulders. When she tested it, he did not move. Obsidian was taller, bigger, stronger, faster, creepier, a Supraman, a Green Goblin. "The very same."

"I want a divorce," said Nerissa, still staring at it. Her head was flung forward as far away as she could manage. It was likely he had tongue herpes, teeth chlamydia. The alcohol in her blood made her dizzy, and being dizzy made her nauseated and afraid. "I want two."

"We can't always get what we want."

She stabbed her heel down as hard as she could on his boot, and then again. He was laughing drunkenly even as he let her go, pinwheeling forward, struggling out of the t-shirt knotted around her ribs to reveal her coral sailor collar. It wasn't kevlar. It wasn't even an embroidered S. They circled each other like pit fighters, the sheen from his Extremely Real That Wasn't How It Was The Last Time The Last Time It Had Been Made Out Of Wood sword glimmering like a seamy promise. He'd changed. She'd changed.

He also had a black eye, a busted nose and looked like he'd been put through a meat tenderizer, and that was the only way she was ever going to get out of here.

"The spark is gone," she said. There were a couple of fire exits. Bar didn't provide much cover. Doorway was thronged with the press of people. "You let other people hit you, we never just talk any more."

There were people all around, live living people whose one sin had been to pick a chintzy rave bar.

She hadn't met Sagittarius but she knew the name in vagueries. Zodiac soldier. She believed wholeheartedly he really had iced whoever Soldier Sagittarius was and sent him to an early, mutilated grave, probably rubbing up against the cold body before he committed it to earth. It was how he got his rocks off. Obsidian was one of life's born serial killers. If he'd never been taken to the Negaverse he would have been an eventual newspaper headline anyway: forty-six decomposing hookers found in man's crawlspace.

"Things I want to watch," she said. If she had been a good person she would have moved towards the man he'd jerked his thumb at and gotten between them both, made some kind of bold movement of you shall not pass! but her feet were obsessed with going the other way. "Let me think, things I want to watch. Last week's Grey's Anatomy. I TiVo'd Blair Witch II because I haven't seen it since, like, the nineties, that's something I want to watch."

He feinted at her again, shoulder launching forward as though he'd take out his sword and run her through. Nerissa did flinch. What the hell did he expect, a non-flincher? She was a flinchamatic, a flinchasaurus, she was no Cavalier Kunzite and she was afraid. All he did was laugh that happy, drunken laugh: Obsidian was barely listening.

"I like watching Spongebob Squarepants." Her mouth was moving of its own accord. "I like watching kids playing on a green lawn, I like watching puppies -- GET OUT WHY THE HELL ARE NONE OF YOU GETTING OUT -- "

Obsidian launched forward again at the man he'd gestured at. Somehow her embarrassingly strangled yell and the undertone of the MacGuyver remix had gotten to them, and the club members were now making to get the hell away -- but he'd gotten the man and had his sword pointed at his sternum, and now there was screaming. "No loud noises," Obsidian said, his voice carrying over the panic. She could see May and Carl now, hovering around the edges. "No movement. I could make all of you quadruple amputees without even trying, sheep. Nobody move and nobody gets hurt. Well, I lie."

MacGuyver drew to silence. So did the mutters.

"Can't you go home and jerk off with my nose chain again?"

"But that's getting old, baby."

"Eugh, confirmation," said Nerissa. "Ew. Ack." She was too penned-in and there were too many people and if she cast any magic she'd injure them all. Too many people. Every breath she drew was a marathon. "All right. Let's play."

Mythbusters had taught her that when you broke a beer bottle you kept your fingers loose, or else the bottleneck would break into your palm instead and make you No-Fingered Frodo. Breaking a bottle and holding up the jagged end looked classy as ********. In reality her bravery had gone away long ago, years ago, to the land of Honalee. She'd never pretended different. Nerissa brandished the bottle at Obsidian and he looked as delighted as though it were a box of chocolates. "Give me your terms of engagement, Zodiac Killer. Can't we go outside?"

It didn't take much to interpret that creepy-a** soundbyte, but what panicked her was getting out of there. What panicked her was that Obsidian didn't bluff. What panicked her as that she didn't have her cellphone and that there were probably more Negaverse goons waiting, because if he'd learned how to split himself in two the world's supply of puppies and babies should have given up then and there waiting to be kicked.

They'd probably called the police. Sailor Nerissa sent up a devout prayer of thanks for the po-po. These days the Destiny City branch of the boys in blue went around in kevlar with riot shields to most callouts, so mathematically if the police were going to be outside with the bulk of the people and she had to pick --

Do you go outside as Obsidian kills the bottleneckers, where you'll either be able to run away or run into his creepy buddies? You dumb ********. Turn to page 39.

Do you stay inside with Hester the Molester where you can't run away or use your attack but at least have him in sight? You dumb ********. Turn to page 15.

She suspected that on either page it was going to be:



There was no sign of May and Carl any more. Maybe they'd left for the streets. Everybody was pouring out except for the brave few hovering, eyes on the man whose eyes were strangled shut as Obsidian licked at his ear. It suddenly struck her: she had definitive proof that Captain Obsidian was a homo.

"Okay."

All she had to do was wait until the police showed up. All she had to do was get his interest. When his interest was piqued he'd follow her, not stay around playing Life or Death with drunken scared twentysomethings. "We can dance if you want to," she said. If she talked fast and brightly she'd show no fear. "We can leave your friends behind. Let the guy go."

He was grinning, as though he was saying give me a reason. The man let out another tight, low noise of pain. One of the people surrounding said, "s**t."

"Let him go. I pick you." Obsidian's interest was getting peaked, she knew it, but her palms were slick with sweat. She had such a non-interest in dying. When the police got there she could run away as long and as far as she had to, run away from being Nerissa in the first place. She was almost full on flight missions. "I'm your man."

One thing Nerissa was good at was adaption. There were a lot of things you had to adapt to with Obsidian. For one thing, he was basically unadaptable on account of being the American Psycho -- unadaptable, but unadaptable in a predictable pattern. He had his wants. He wanted to make the red water come out. She had her suspicions that upon her dying he would take her body home like a Sexy Loser and eat what flesh he didn't make a wife out of.

He also had, item one, a metal sword; item two, WHAT THE ******** WAS THAT

People were screaming now. The massive youma was crashing through tables and widened the doorway by force, its long bony fingers bordering either side and pushing until a flick of its wings brought plaster crashing down. It sounded like a teakettle. Unadaptable: he really hadn't been bluffing. All of her blood changed immediately to antifreeze, and then her blood changed to a mixture of adrenaline and a deepseated wish to not die today, Megatron.

Maybe that was what he drank off her: the cocktail of fear and bravado, unsurety and rage, panic and fight. The broken bottle in her hand sailed wide past his head and he didn't resist the urge to see exactly what she was throwing at since it wasn't him -- Sailor Nerissa had grabbed a barstool and was rushing him, trying to remove swinging distance. His reflexes had improved. The sword cut through the legs of the stool like butter, and it fell in one shitty aluminium half to clang on the ground. He was laughing.

She threw the rest of the chair now. Obsidian caught it on the end of his sword and tossed it over his shoulder as though it was featherlight, ignoring it, advancing towards her. The screams were now fainter but more widely ranging: more people were screaming. There was a huge crunch from outside.

"Holy s**t," she said, her amazement tinged with dread and her dread tinged with more dread. Only senshi reflexes let her drop underneath the testing sweep of the sword and dance back, and he laughed again like she'd told a funny joke. It was indecent how much more rusty she was than when she'd fought him the first time, when she and Sid were fighting every night and moving seemed easy. "I got allergies. A skull monster is a big commitment."

His stance was still easy, playing, testing. He'd backed her up against the bar: the bar was a solid granite slab like a nice kitchen countertop, steel panelling beneath it. "I like your new sword," she said. "It's making this all a pretty Freudian metaphor."

It came down. Things had all happened very quickly. Unlike him, her babbling pace was bright and frenzied: the sword crashed down into the granite as she spun away and latched on to him from behind, because she had one battle theory and she stuck to it and that was as God was her witness she was not going to die in a swordfight. Both of their reaction times were pent-up, hair-trigger, both arms wrapped around his sword arm as she dug her fingernails into his fingers.

His dropping the sword was the signal to go to town on him. Nerissa was bucked like a bronco as he rubbed her up against tables, pillars, chairs, caught her hard on the calf and scraped his boot down in what was pure agony. She wrapped one forearm around his neck and jerked his head back, trying to crush the windpipe with skinny arms as he continued ramming her back into the wall.

But he'd dropped his sword. It was hard to tell whether this was Obsidian being cocky, suicidal or stupid. Or all three. You never knew. When he shook her it was like being put in the spin cycle of a washing machine, and she was pretty sure most of the skin had been rubbed off her shoulders from repeated grazings and bashings. He swivelled his head and sunk her teeth deep into her arm with obvious satisfaction, the soft nerve-filled part just above the elbow. His mouth was literally dripping blood as she finally slipped, rolling between two upset tables to rest in a mess on the floor.

"s**t, s**t, s**t -- "

His youma was screaming. Other people were screaming. With her good arm she yanked her cellphone right out of its little magical pocket and did the only thing she could do: started desperately scrolling through her contacts list to call for backup. This was done completely too late.