Kaatje rubbed her arm when she finally made it back into her bed. The burn stung, of course, but Neosporin was soothing, and it made sure that she wouldn't get anything too terrible inside of the injuries she'd sustained during that night's fight. It had been pretty harsh--one monster after another, one of which breathed fire, another which gave godawful migraines--like the one that Sailor Europa had had to save her from. This time she'd had the sense to have a matchbook, and she had stood a much better chance all around than she had the first time through. Of course, she had taken some pretty harsh damage. Scrapes all down her back from when an octopus monster had dragged her across some gravel, and then of course her burned arm from the fight with the pink-haired Negaverser just kept getting compounded and compounded by some beast or another. Or even, in the one case, another sailor soldier--that goddamn killstealing Sailor Scylla.

Ugh.

Still, she really couldn't do this much longer. Her body was running down and she was starting to get the worst cramps when she even thought about going out at night to patrol. The monsters seemed to seek her out, policemen periodically interrupted her battles, and to make matters worse she still didn't really have someone she could depend on. Luke was shaping up to something worthwhile, and Europa seemed willing to back her up when it was necessary. But that didn't make everything all right. That didn't make her safe.

What she needed, she thought as she plucked and tugged her blouse off her torn-up back, was something to distract her. A device that would provide white noise. She rarely used her ears in a fight--maybe she could get a hands-free device and Skype with her friends online, or something. That would be distracting, but it would also be risky. Stupid. They'd find out she was a sailor soldier. So no, it couldn't be a two-way communication; it had to be something from elsewhere to her. But what?

Anyway, what was even the good out of being a pretty-suited sailor soldier of love and justice? Couldn't she just quit? It seemed like a good idea at first, until she thought of that tainted human's hand slipping under that man's shirt. Into his chest, taking his starseed...

So she had to fight. She definitely had to be prepared to keep tempting arrest, to continually and often add to her warrant. She had to do her best to keep people safe, to justify the ones who had died. That decision had been made ages ago; she should just tattoo it onto her forearm. Someday she would actually get a tattoo, but 'remember to save people, because you promised' wasn't going to be the best.

As she tugged her nightshirt on over her poor, scraped-to-hell back, she cast her mind around for other ideas. Couldn't text in a battle, that was asking for death. Couldn't monologue, she'd run out of breath. The only thing that was really left was--

An idea popped into her head, one that she would have never considered if she'd never started reading those damn zombie books. In World War Z, someone had listened to Metallica to get pumped up for fighting zombies. They'd listened to it while fighting zombies. So why shouldn't she try that? She had headphones, her phone could hold music if she wanted it to--she'd just have to remember to put in her earbuds before leaving to patrol.

This, she thought, could be a good idea.

A great idea.

As she lay down in her overlarge bed, a blanket over all of her but her back, she closed her eyes and started to make plans as to which bands she'd listen to first. She wasn't big into the music scene; she really wasn't. There was music she appreciated, and then there was music she didn't mind. She didn't like or hate any particular bands. But it seemed like the louder and more grating a band got, the better it would be to prevent her from actually concentrating on what she was doing, which was what she really wanted, right? So she'd buy some heavy metal, maybe. Metallica--what else was metal? If her phone were within reach, she would have just googled it, but. No point at all. Not tonight.

All she wanted to do tonight was sleep.