A/N: Heheheh. Now I have proof for all the people that I take too long to get Serena and Darien together in STC. I just have to show them all the reviews for this story! Thank you to everyone for reading this ridiculous story that has grown more and more inconvenient with each paragraph. It's very different from anything I've written before. Also – in case anyone hasn't noticed by now – please note that this is the most unrealistic story I've ever written (STC's superpowers notwithstanding). Please suspend your skepticism and pretend that parts of Tokyo could be so Gotham-like.

Also, my sincerest apologies, but because of a monstrous assignment (well, several), STC will not be out for at least another month. That's why I decided to hurriedly finish this story and give it to you guys, as an apology. Sorry!

Jade-eye, I would like to deplore the horrible influence you have had on me. A non-homicidal Rei and a yakuza Darien? This story's definitely thanks to you!

Last, BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG language warning.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon or Darien's green jacket. I do own his leather jacket, which is much more attractive, if I do say so myself.

L

Leather and Lockets

Three

L

Seiko was absent from school Monday. Rumors abounded that he was getting facial surgery to repair the damage done to his face by the fight on Friday night. Serena knew that it wasn't possible that he had any more than a broken and possibly very swollen purple nose, but no one asked her. Everyone avoided her. This was not such a large change to her; she figured that this time her exclusion was because the other kids blamed her for Seiko's failure to win the football game on Friday night.

She discovered differently, however, when Rei spoke to her at practice that afternoon.

"So," she said as Serena applied a hasty coat of nail polish to her locket. The exposed gray metal had begun to leave a green spot on her collarbone. "You're dating that gang guy?"

Serena started, nearly dropping the nail polish. "Um! What? Where did you hear that?"

Rei rolled her eyes. "Only from everyone in a fifty mile radius."

Serena said nothing, trying to make sure she could actually speak without squeaking before she attempted.

"Not that it matters to me," Rei said. "But if you weren't dating him, you would probably want to say you aren't so the rumors die down at least a little. Because it's ruining your reputation." She made a face. "What little you had, I guess, no offense."

Serena's face was pretty pink by now. She could guess what kind of insinuations to which Rei was referring. Suddenly the leers from some of the boys in her PE class that morning made sense.

"You are, aren't you?"

Serena looked up at Rei, biting her lip. Then she shook her head at herself, angrily. Dating Darien was nothing to be ashamed of! Any girl with an IQ higher than 2 should realize how amazing he was!

"Yes," she said defiantly. "I am."

Gasps erupted from the changing stalls behind them.

Serena and Rei spun to see Kim opening one of the stall doors. She leaned against the wall, crossing her arms over her uniform.

"So you are dating that yakuza." Kim narrowed her mascared eyes. "Your standards are even lower than any of us thought. Where does he take you for dates, the Makaiju Club?"

Serena's lips pressed together. She stared at Kim.

Kim went on. "And as usual, you're not thinking about the team. What about our reputation? One of our members, dating a gang member? Do you know what people are going to think of us? And who knows what sort of disease we could get from you – "

"Stop it." Serena stood up abruptly. "You don't even know him."

Kim snorted. "Like you do either. What would a guy like that want from you, Serena, except – "

"Stop it!" Serena shouted, her eyes squeezing shut. She didn't want this, this dirty sludge that Kim was hurling at the beautiful mural she had in her head of her relationship with Darien, making the colors and lines run into something obscene and dirty.

"Oh, would you look at that? The little klutz has grown a backbone. Are you going to have your boyfriend beat me up like he beat up Seiko?"

"Seiko was – !" Serena broke off as she looked at Kim, at her hard, taunting face.

'Nothing you say will change her mind,' her brain said. Kim wouldn't listen to reason, she didn't want to, Serena realized. For whatever reason, Kim was determined to dislike her.

"Fine." Serena turned back to her locker. "Never mind."

"No, no, Serena, why don't you tell us? What were you going to tell us?" Kim jumped over the bench to stand very close to Serena at her locker, leaning over her, getting in her face.

Serena stared determinedly into her locker, studiously ignoring Kim's chest right next to her face.

"Hey. HEY!" Rei's crutch swung out, slapping Kim in the hip. "Back off!"

"Ow! Damn it, Rei!" Kim grabbed her bruised side with a manicured hand and glared. "What the hell's your problem?"

"Leave her alone," said Rei. "None of us stuck our boobs in your face when you dated that pothead a few months ago."

Titters filled the locker room as the girls who had gathered to watch the scene exchanged knowing glances with each other.

"Watch it!" Kim snapped. She glared first at Rei, then Serena, and then the rest of their teammates. "If you think this won't affect the rest of us, then you're idiots! You saw what her boyfriend – " She pointed at Serena and sneered. " – did to Seiko."

Now came gasps, and whispers.

"She's dating THAT psycho?"

"OMG!"

"Is she INSANE?"

Kim threw Serena a smirk. "That's what I thought."

"GIRLS!" Coach suddenly appeared at the locker room door. "Is this practice or a quilting bee? Get yours butts out here! Tsukino, what are you doing, painting your toenails? Get dressed!"

L

Serena slumped out of the locker room after practice. There was no doubt that the girls had been much rougher with her than necessary today – "accidentally" slapping her in the face with their pom-poms during routines, tripping her, shaking intentionally when she was climbing to the top of the pyramid.

She'd fallen twice, eliciting frowns from Coach and insistences from the other girls that Serena was heavier than they remembered. She must have gained weight, they said, exchanging meaningful, laughing glances with each other, leading to a whole new round of hissed insinuations.

On top of that, she hadn't seen Darien since Friday.

Maybe she had just imagined that he had wanted her to be his girlfriend. Maybe someone had spiked her drink that night and caused her to hallucinate. And what the point in enduring all this abuse if she'd just dreamed that whole wonderful, impossible conversation with Darien?

Except that she hadn't had anything to drink that night that could have caused her to hallucinate.

She sighed again, rubbing her scalp. Yukino's foot had somehow – 'Somehow!' spat her brain – ended up on one of her pigtails while Serena was in a split, and when Serena had jumped back up from the split, her hair had nearly been ripped from her scalp. She had taken out both buns just because it hurt so badly, and now her hair was a messy tangle all over. It was still sweaty, too, because she'd fled the locker room without showering lest someone "accidentally" steal her clothes while she was in the stall.

Again she sighed, pushing her bangs out of her eyes, and looked up from her feet to cross the street.

Her heart skipped.

Because Darien was right there – only a few meters away. Leaning against his motorcycle, picking at the threads fraying in the knee of his jeans, he looked deliciously delinquent as he waited just outside the school gate.

Distantly she heard her footsteps speed up, distantly she heard her breathing pick up – then she stood in front of him.

And he was smiling at her. The scabbed knife cut pulled at his lips, hitching one corner of his smile higher than the other.

"Hi," she breathed.

His lips were parted as though to say something, but he silently lifted his hand instead. She felt, as light as a breath, the weight of his hand touching her hair.

She continued to look at him until his eyes fells to hers.

"Quite the hairstyle," he told her.

In any other situation she would have bitten her lip in embarrassment, but it was impossible for her to feel self-conscious about her hair when he had just touched it so gently.

Instead she just smiled happily, leaning against his hand like a kitten begging to be petted.

He noticed.

"You're just like a cat," he said. But there was a pleased note in his voice. "I should stop putting up with Buji begging me for a pet and just bring you home instead."

Serena opened her eyes and grinned up at him. "Okay. But I refuse to eat cat food." She paused, considering. "Except tuna."

"Only tuna," he agreed.

His thumb rubbed ever so gently behind her ear, not quite the same way that one would scratch a cat behind the ears. At least, it didn't inspire quite the same relaxing sensation in Serena. Instead it drew a blush up her neck like rose vines creeping up a trellis.

She continued to gaze at him, aware of the fact that her face was quite evidently pink but not quite connecting that fact to the fact that he was right there watching her blush. Not until he had moved his hand from her hair to touch her hot cheek did she realize this fact, and she blushed even more darkly, jumping.

He laughed softly and pulled his hand away. "Are you free?"

Serena thought of the time, thought of her parents, looked at his face, and thought no more. "Yes."

"Good." He smiled at her, that cut pulling his lips up again. He had such very nice teeth. And voice. And eyes. And everything. "What do you want to do?"

Serena blinked, pulling herself out of her contemplation of Darien's various nice features. She had spent so much time agonizing first over whether he liked her and then why he liked her and then whether she'd just dreamed that he liked her, that she hadn't spared a single thread of thought from the tangle to consider what they would do once they were together.

"Um," she said. It was far too early for dinner and a movie, not to mention that she was far too mussed. And somehow dinner and a movie wasn't the kind of date scenario in which she pictured Darien. "What do YOU want to do?"

"I want to go back in time and have planned this better." Darien pushed a hand through his hair, looking half-sheepish and half-annoyed.

"Plan it?" A little frown wrinkled Serena's forehead. "Spontaneity is more romantic," she decided.

"You say that now," said Darien with a quirk of his lips.

"I want to go see Buji," Serena decided, ignoring him and putting her hands together in front of her.

Darien's brows lifted. "No."

Serena froze in mid-breath, shocked by this unhesitant refusal. "Why not?"

"Aside from the obvious reason that I want you to spend time with me and not my little brother – " He was teasing her in an attempt to distract her, and she knew it, and when he saw that she knew it, he gave up. "I only have about an hour before I need to be somewhere, and I couldn't take you to Roppongi, let you visit Buji, and bring you back in that short a time."

He stopped speaking, steadily meeting the stare that she was giving him. She worried at her lips with her teeth, feeling the urge to break eye contact and look at the ground but also an equally strong reluctance to act with him the same way she acted with her father and, until recently, with Seiko.

"Homework," said Darien suddenly.

Serena blinked. Her attention to the current conflict weakened somewhat as the thought of the red-ink-covered chemistry test that she just received that morning wriggled into her mind. She was closer to failing the class than she had been to Darien when she rode behind him on his motorcycle.

"We could work on your homework," Darien continued, his lips curving into a smile as he watched her. "I could help you."

"You know," said Serena, mentally cringing away from her inner contemplations of horror, "Homework really isn't very romantic."

But he had seen her expression. "Oh no you don't! I know that face from Buji. How far behind are you?"

Serena shot him a pained look. This scenario wasn't romantic at ALL. He was acting more like a mother than a boyfriend.

"That look doesn't work on me," Darien informed her, taking her by the arm and leading her back through the school gate, toward one of the picnic tables placed beneath the oak tree. "Exposure to Buji has made me immune to them."

Serena grumbled unintelligibly. Buji was much cuter than her. If his puppy eyes didn't work on Darien, then hers certainly wouldn't make a dent.

"What subject is it? I'm not much good at literature, but if it's science…" Darien's blue eyes fairly sparkled.

Serena swallowed at the sight. Then she resolutely tore her eyes away, sighing loudly to make sure that he was made aware of her vehement disapproval of the situation.

Although…she did kind of want to see that sparkle in his eyes again.

L

Serena ran through the front door without thinking, still blushing madly and with a huge grin on her face. She wanted nothing more than to go and bury her hot face into her pillow again and just revel in the wonder that was Darien Shields. He had been so encouraging, so funny – "Magnesium and oxygen are like you and me, right? Total opposites. Positive charge and negative charge. But they come together and stick – " And he'd grabbed her hand. " – because they're so different. See?" And he hadn't let go of her hand –

"Serena?"

She started, shooting up straight. Dread saturated her body as she realized that she'd just run with a mad grin on her face into the living room right in front of her parents.

Her father stood from the couch. Above his glasses his forehead was creased into a frown. "Explain yourself, young lady."

Serena swallowed.

'Stupid, what were you thinking anyway running in without even waiting to check your hair? You didn't even call them!' berated her brain.

"Well?"

Serena gulped again, peeking up into her father's eyes. He had his arms crossed – and the sight was suddenly superimposed by her memory of Kim that afternoon, standing with her arms crossed as she dripped false venom about Darien.

She hadn't been ashamed to tell Kim and the rest of the squad that she was dating Darien – and they would definitely spread the news through the whole school. If she wasn't ashamed for all of them to know, then she shouldn't be afraid to tell her parents, either!

Serena squared her shoulder and lifted her chin. "I'm dating Darien."

Silence followed her words. Her father stared at her, and she stared back, biting her lip. She tried to keep her courage from leaking out of her as red began to leak into her father's face.

His lips compressed, his jaw very tight as his eyes bored into her. At long last, he said, "He's a friend of Seiko's."

'Tell him that you lied about that, this is going to get out of control – '

"Yes." Serena made one tight nod.

Her father continued to stare at her. It was all that she could do not to squirm.

Finally, he said, "What about Seiko?"

Serena felt the stirrings of anger in her stomach. She hated, she realized, how much her parents idolized Seiko, the pedestal upon which they placed him. He drunk himself senseless, ignored her except when he wanted someone on his arm or his lap, and hit her –

'Don't do it,' her brain warned –

"I don't like Seiko," Serena declared firmly. "He's a jerk."

Her father's eyebrows flew up, and her mother made a little noise behind him on the couch.

"But dear – why? Seiko's such a nice young man!"

"I'd advise you to rethink your options, Serena." Her father gazed at her, his voice calm. "Seiko's been around for you for a very long time. Don't throw away your relationship with him over a little crush."

Her brain bristled despite itself. 'How patronizing!'

Serena bristled herself. "It's not a little crush."

'Well, I don't know about that,' began her brain.

"I like him, and he likes me." Serena's chin jutted out further. "And Seiko will never be a MILLIONTH as good as Darien!"

With that, she spun around and dashed up the stairs, pulsing with the thrill of finally – finally! – speaking her mind to her parents! Why hadn't she started years earlier?

Unheard by Serena, her brain sighed. 'I know why.'

L

After practice two days later – which she was able to endure only because of the prospect of seeing Darien afterward – Serena showered hastily and hurried out to the school gate. With an abrupt sinking of her insides, she saw there were no motorcycles or leather jackets in sight.

Of course she had known that he might not be able to come today, just as he hadn't been able to come the day before. He had told her so, after all, told her that she shouldn't wait for him if she didn't want to. But as always she'd allowed herself to become too dependent on an uncertain hope.

Still…she glanced back at the clock tower that stretched above the main office building of the school. Her mad dash from the locker room had made her rather early…

She would wait, she decided, for a few more minutes.

She made her way to the picnic table where she had sat with Darien two days earlier and pulled out that day's chemistry homework. She had understood at least three-fourths of that day's ionic and covalent bonding lecture thanks to Darien's brief tutelage. And she had – for the first time in a long time – the feeling that she could actually do the homework. Here was fluorine, and Darien had said that she could remember it was the funnest of the elements because it started with an F, so all the other elements wanted to be with it... and here was oxygen…that would go with sulfur…

"BOO!" A pair of hands seized Serena's shoulder.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!"

The scream that tore out of Serena curdled even her own blood. She spun, wrenching away, only to see Darien grinning down at her.

She gaped at him. Her heart felt as though it was a goldfish that had jumped out of its bowl and now lay on the floor twitching.

"Da – ri – en," she wheezed, clutching at the hole where her heart had been before it jumped out of her chest..

"Sorry," he said, the curve of his lips not at all repentant. "I couldn't help it. You were just concentrating so hard."

Serena blushed a little, knowing what a weird face she made when she was concentrating. When she was trying to balance at the top of the pyramid without falling, the other girls always told her to stick her tongue back in her mouth and stop scrunching her eyebrows like an old man.

"I'll give you something hard," she said when she'd regained her breath, trying to hide her embarrassment by shaking a fist under his nose.

Darien compressed his lips as though he was suppressing the urge to laugh, but his eyes seemed to darken a shade. Serena tilted her head, covalent bonds forgotten as she examined them. Then a gust of wind kicked up and sent her worksheets soaring. She squeaked, and they both lunged for the papers before they could blow out onto the street.

"Chemistry?" Darien looked at the worksheet he held.

Serena hopped up to grab it from his grasp and put it in her notebook with the sheaf of runaway papers that she had captured. "Yes."

"Want me to check it for you?"

She looked at him. "You're my…um – " She blushed, averting her eyes for the rest of her sentence, "Boyfriend. Not my tutor." Her eyes flicked back to his, and she felt a panicked urge to add, 'Right?'

But he was smiling at her again.

"I'm very good at multitasking," he told her, as he pulled her closer to him with one hand and took her notebook from her with the other.

They sat down at the picnic table. His right arm was against her back, sneaking around to encircle her waist and hold her notebook in front of them. As she tried to keep from overheating at the warm weight of his arm, she realized that he was left-handed; he traced his progress across the worksheet with a pen in his left hand.

She made another realization, too: he was even more amazing than she had already thought. He was checking the chemistry problems even faster than her teacher did, and in his head.

'He's being wasted in Roppongi.' She didn't know whether the sad thought was her brain's or her own. Perhaps for once they were in accord.

At some point in her musing, Serena relaxed unconsciously, leaning into the cradle created by Darien's arm and shoulder. There was a spot beneath his chin where her head rested and where she could feel the warm, calm pulse of his throat against her temple.

She felt very different than when Seiko held her on the bus. Seiko pulled her tight. Too tight. Like a trap. Darien's arm was loose. A bracelet, not a handcuff. His jacket was a little heavy between them, his collarbone a little sharp, but she liked that because he felt like this because he was Darien. His jacket was practically a part of his body, and he probably didn't eat as much as he should because he seemed like the sort of person who would get so caught up in doing something that he would forget to eat because he was Darien and she liked him because he was Darien and because… and after a while she stopped trying to figure out why it was and just settled for enjoying that it was, watching his fingers trace the pen across the paper.

Too quickly he finished. When she felt him straightening, a sound of protest escaped her before she realized it. She blushed hard and peeked up from beneath her eyelashes to see if maybe he hadn't heard her. She found him smiling that soft, almost dreamy smile down at her again.

"Don't worry," he said, shaking his head abruptly. "You've only got one problem to fix. It's mercury, which is diatomic in this specific case. They're tricking you. See? So it needs to be four hundred and two grams in the denominator instead of two hundred and one, does that make sense?"

He stood up and handed her the pen.

Her fingers closed automatically around it as she looked up at him. "Wait – She swallowed her exclamation point hastily. "Are you leaving already?"

He grimaced. "I have to meet someone."

"Oh." Serena looked back down, trying to rearrange her expression so that her disappointment was not so obvious.

A calloused hand appeared on the bench beside her leg. She looked back up and found Darien kneeling in front of her. Kneeling – why was he kneeling?

And why did his face look so sad?

"Sorry."

His voice was soft. Discouraged. Serena knew discouragement too well herself not to be able to recognize it in his voice. She wanted to take it away from his voice, smooth it away like the crease between his brows.

"I shouldn't have taken so long." He was talking to her knees, his head bowed. "I'll try to come Friday – but I might not be able – you don't have to wait for me – "

Serena leaned forward. Placed her hand on the side of his face and lifted it up. With her thumb she stroked his silken hair from his temple.

His eyelids fell shut. He pressed his head closer against her hand.

Gradually, the pulse in his temple beneath her thumb slowed. Warmth flooded her, she felt so happy and yet she felt about to burst into tears…

His eyelids parted again. He looked at her, wordlessly.

She continued to stroke his hair without speaking. Abruptly, inexplicably, she felt strong. As though she was holding him up.

At last he lifted his hand to clasp hers. He pulled it from the side of his face. She curled her fingers inside his warm calloused ones as he leaned forward and kissed her.

His lips were soft, warm – and quickly gone. Her eyelids fluttered back open as he stood, letting go of her hand.

"I really have to go," he said.

But before even a glimmer of uncertainty could enter her – perhaps she should have kissed him back, perhaps she had bad breath, perhaps he didn't like her anymore – he leaned back down and pressed another kiss to the top of her head.

Then he was gone, the courtyard as empty as her locket, and she heard the roar of his motorcycle down the street.

L

"Most impressive, Miss Tsukino." Hisaya-sensei placed the graded quiz on Serena's desk. "I'm very pleased by the improvement you showed on this quiz. Keep it up."

Serena swallowed the hugely triumphant grin that wanted to break her face in two and smothered it to a polite smile instead.

She slid the quiz, with its large 98% at the top, into her folder to remind her to thank Darien the next time she saw him. Maybe she could even show it to her parents, and they could be so impressed that they would let her go see Mina after all. She'd never gotten such good grades, after all, at least not since she'd made the cheerleading squad…

'Yeah, sure,' thought her brain. 'Keep dreaming.'

Serena was all too happy to listen to it, for once. She sank quickly into delightfully tingly daydreams of how very soft Darien's lips had felt, and the lovely way he teased her and the even lovelier feeling of being able to tease him back –

"Um…Serena-san?"

Serena jumped, banging her desk with her knee, and blushing madly. "Um – um – yes?"

She spun around to answer the voice. Halfway through the spin her embarrassment was eclipsed by anxiety. Who was talking to her? No one talked to her in class since Mina had left…

"Um, I couldn't help but notice…" It was Mizuno-san, the dark-haired girl who sat behind Serena and always made perfect scores. "You got a really good grade on the quiz, and… I was wondering if you knew how to do number 6?"

"Um, yeah!" Serena fumbled her quiz back out of her folder.

A sense of surrealism was sweeping over her: Mizuno-san asking her, Serena Tsukino, for help with science… "Number six – oh."

She glanced at Mizuno-san's answer sheet, where the stoichiometry problem was written neatly out. "Mercury is a diatomic molecule here, so you have to remember to multiply the mass times two."

"Oh!" cried Mizuno-san, eyes lighting up. She grabbed a pencil and corrected the problem on her quiz in neat, small handwriting. "I didn't realize! Thank you, Serena-san!"

"No problem," said Serena, grinning. "It's a tricky question. I totally wouldn't have gotten it if my, um, boyfriend hadn't just shown me how to do it."

"Oh." Mizuno-san's eyes were round. "I didn't know that Seiko-san took chemistry."

Serena's smile faltered slightly. "No, no, Seiko's not my boyfriend," she said, waving her hand slightly. "He doesn't go to this school."

"Really?" Mizuno-san's eyes were even wider. "I'm very sorry, Serena-san! I thought that – um!"

The bell rang, then, and Mizuno-san shot to her feet, hurriedly putting her things into her bag. "Thank you very much, Serena-san, I – "

She paused then. "Aren't you coming to lunch, Serena-san?"

Serena tried to stop the flush from touching her cheeks as she took her sandwich from her bag. She hadn't gone to the lunchroom to eat with everyone since the lost football game for which half the school had blamed her. She smiled at Mizuno-san. "No, I'm going to eat here!"

"Oh." Mizuno-san hesitated suddenly, her hands turning white around her bag. "Then – then…could I eat with you, Serena-san?"

It was Serena's turn for her eyes to widen. "Um – um – yes!" She laughed. "That would make me really happy, Mizuno-san!"

L

"Okay, you can look now."

Serena opened her eyes and pulled the helmet from her head. She looked at the place to which Darien had brought her – the Crown Arcade.

She sat forward on the motorcycle to dig her chin into his shoulder and grinned predatorily at him. "You don't know what you've gotten yourself into."

Darien flashed his teeth right back at her, although he managed to look much more predatory than she had. At least according to the goose bumps that shivered down her spine. "Bring it."

Once the motorcycle was parked, Serena made a beeline through the electric doors straight to the Dance Dance Revolution game.

"Whoah, wait!" said Darien as he saw this. "THAT?"

Serena grinned and made a clucking sound. "Bawk-bawk-bawka…"

"Who are you, Buji?" Darien demanded. "Mortal Kombat first."

"Sailor V."

"Mario Brothers."

For the sake of continuing the argument, Serena wrinkled her nose even though she adored Mario and Luigi, especially because Mario rather reminded her of a mustachioed Buji. "Ping-pong!"

"Air hockey."

"Deal!"

They pushed in the coins and grabbed the mallets. Serena eyed Darien's long arms, knitting her brows at how easily he would be able to reach practically his whole half of the table. 'Never mind that. We can take him,' insisted her brain.

She rolled her shoulders and leaned over the table herself.

"Sure you don't want a handicap with those short arms?" Darien asked, cocking a black brow at her.

"You'll be wishing you had these short arms when I'm through with you," Serena tossed back, unable to keep a delighted grin from breaking through her threatening expression. Trash-talking was so fun! "Bring it on, Bike Boy!"

Darien snorted at this. Unfortunately, he did it at the same moment that he was hitting the puck, and it threw off the force that he had put into it.

Serena swiped up the slow-moving puck and hooked it straight into the slot on his side of the table with one swift motion.

Darien's eyes flicked down to the puck clattering through his slot. Then back at her. He blinked.

"I learned that from baton twirling," Serena told him proudly.

Darien hooked a smirk. "Eye-hand coordination like that and you can't keep from running into candy shelves?"

"Long arms like that and you can keep up with short arms like these?"

The puck was out of the slot, and the game was on again. Darien won the next round, Serena the following one, Darien the one after that, and so on, until twenty sweaty minutes later Serena won, 7-6.

"Mwaha!" she crowed, throwing down the mallet and clapping her hands.

"Are you going to break into a cheer?" Darien swiped the sweat from his forehead with the inside of his wrist, grinning at her.

"Maybe I WILL," she said, striking a pose. She dropped it just as quickly, though, pushing her hair out of her face and wiping her own face. Why did her meetings with Darien always seem to somehow involve her being horribly sweaty? "Except there aren't any words that rhyme with Darien."

Darien set down his own mallet and came around the table to stand beside her. "Yeah, because so many words rhyme with Serena."

The warmth that she felt radiating from his body felt like it was thread hooking through her body to sew her tighter to him; she felt herself leaning toward him ever so slightly. She shook her head and tried to think of something besides hugging him.

"Carrion, ferrying…harryin'?" she wondered hurriedly aloud. She drawled out the endings to make them rhyme with 'Darien' and began to tap her chin as the quest for a rhyme engrossed her. "Larryin', marryin' – "

She stopped and blushed.

"What was that?" Darien cocked a knowing brow at her. He also took a step closer to her.

"Ummm…" stammered Serena; she took a step backward, but as if he was indeed connected to her by a series of stitches, this movement only brought him another step closer to her.

His eyes sparkled suddenly; his arm looped around her waist, and suddenly he swung her up, her feet leaving the ground for a split second, and then she found herself deposited in front of the Ninja Turtle game.

She blinked at the dark screen. Their reflections looked back at her, hers surprised and his sly.

"Rematch?" he asked, lifting a brow with a wide grin.

"How rude!" she declared, rocking up on her tiptoes so she could grab his ear and pull it.

"How would you feel if I picked you up without warning you?"

Darien snapped playfully at her hand with his teeth as she tried to reach his ear. "I don't think that's a scenario we have to worry about."

"Hmph!" Nimbly avoiding his teeth, Serena's fingers darted in and tapped him on the nose.

He grabbed her fingers with his hand instead and tugged her in front of him. He placed her hand on one of the joysticks and covered it with his own. "Donatello or Raphael?"

His chin was atop her head; instead of turning to look up at him, she met his eyes in the reflective screen. "I like Michelangelo."

Darien laughed, tilted his head to muss her hair with his nose. "You would. Too bad his nunchaku wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Would too!" Serena protested.

"We'll compromise." He nudged her hand to the blue button. "Leonardo."

"He's so bossy," Serena complained but pressed it anyway.

Bossy or not, Leonardo's twin swords made quick work of the lowly Foot Ninja. Or maybe that was Darien's speed with the controls. Serena began to jab the jump button over and over again just to giggle at Darien's groans when the impromptu air somersault sent Leonardo into an open manhole.

"Too bad you didn't bring Buji," she observed at one point. She hadn't seen the dark-haired boy since she first saw him in Roppongi, and she missed him and Lita almost as much as she missed Mina. "He could have been Michelangelo."

Darien said nothing. But only a few moments later his hand slowed on the joystick. Serena noticed and began trying to make up for it, yanking it back and forth and pounding the attack button vigorously to keep Leonardo alive. But his lives soon ran out.

She let go of the joystick, feeling his chin leaving the spot between her hair buns. Cooler air replaced his warmth.

"You have to go."

It wasn't a question. In the past few weeks, even though she had only been able to see Darien a handful of times, she had come to recognize the shift in the atmosphere when he was about to leave.

In the screen's reflection he smiled regretfully at her. "Yeah. Sorry."

She shook her head, turning around to face him. "That's okay. I know you're busy..." Disappointed as she was, she had never quite been able to forget the look on his face that day in the school yard, so quietly despairing. If only she could be with him, always keep that look from his face –

"Can I come with you?"

He jerked so violently that his elbow rammed into the game console behind him. He hissed, and Serena thought that it was from pain. But then she saw that his eyes were stabbing into her.

"No," he enunciated through gritted teeth. And there was that look again on his face, suddenly ragged and bare like torn skin –

"Okay," said Serena quickly. She grabbed his hand, pressed it between her own. As though it was a flower that she could preserve, could keep from wilting and losing the color that made her think that it was so beautiful.

A sigh gusted from between his lips, rustling her bangs as she stared at his calloused hand between her own soft ones. He pulled her head into the cove of his neck. The union between his lips and her forehead was a single warm point of contact between them.

He spoke there, against her skin. "It's not safe."

'Not safe,' Serena's brain echoed, but she could not tell if it was agreeing with him or expressing its disdain.

She knew that he was right, that Roppongi was dangerous. But surely if she was with him it would be alright? And even if it wasn't alright…a deep longing chewed on her insides. A longing to be part of the family that Darien and Buji and Lita and Asanuma composed. To see Buji and watch Power Rangers with him. To find out how Lita's relationship with Motoki was. To be made fun of by Asanuma, even. And most of all, to see Darien – if not every day then at least more often than the handful of short visits that he was able to make every few days.

Her fingers tightened around his.

"Please," she whispered against his locket.

For a moment he was still.

Then he slid his head down so that they were forehead to forehead.

She stared bravely into his very close-eyes, refusing to blink… or to be hypnotized by those golden flecks that glowed like stars in his midnight irises.

Slowly Darien closed his eyes. His eyelashes taunted the sensitive skin of her cheeks.

At last he opened them again. "Fine."

Like a wave crashing onto a rock and splashing over it, a grin of rapture broke onto her face. He grinned back involuntarily, his lips quirking upward before he ironed them flat again.

He pulled away and headed for the door, tugging her with him.

"This is only for a little while," he warned her as he twisted around on the motorcycle to rearrange the helmet on her head to his satisfaction. He frowned, regarding her, then shrugged out of his leather jacket and put it around her.

She hugged her arms in close to her sides, refusing to put her arms through the jacket as he held it. "You'll be cold!"

"You'll be cold," he returned, plucking at the thin fabric of her school coat. He glared at her. "I'm not taking you with me unless you wear the jacket."

Serena grumbled and pushed her arms through the jacket. He grinned for a moment, then his face creased into a glare again.

"I'm not going all the way back to Roppongi," he told her. "I have to meet someone."

"Okay," agreed Serena, quite agreeable now that she had gotten her way. She returned his glower with a grin and didn't even bother to be surreptitious as she cupped his jacket's sleeves in front of her nose and breathed in deeply with a little shiver of delight.

He made a strange sound, and she looked up just in time to glimpse the small grin on his face before he turned around and started the motorcycle.

Serena's smile behind the leather sleeves grew wider. She wrapped her arms around his waist, content with the fact that his face wasn't desolate anymore and with the confidence that this was a step of progress, no matter how small. She would persuade him to let her come to Roppongi sooner or later.

Preferably sooner.

The trip took fifteen minutes. Plenty of time for Serena's brain to point out to her that she had insisted on following her gang-leader boyfriend along on what was probably an illegal deed for which she would probably be considered an accomplice and put in jail.

But it didn't. Her brain was quiet, speaking up only to remind her that her parents would be even angrier than their current stubbornly silent steaming if she stayed out past sunset. Perhaps her brain, like her, had come to realize that even if Darien was in a gang, he wouldn't do anything truly bad.

The innocuousness of their destination, a shopping plaza on the east end of town, only encouraged this conclusion.

Serena looked around curiously as Darien pulled into a parking space in front of an electronics superstore.

He climbed off, removing his helmet. "Stay here."

She nodded at him, watching his face shutter as he turned away from her. Hugging his jacket closer around her, she slid down the leather bike seat to sit in the valley left warm by his body, and watched him stride across the crosswalk in front of a craft shop.

What could he be up to in a mundane place like this; what could be happening here that could make his face turn into stone like that? She felt a fierce protectiveness welling inside her and found herself looking around again, glaring from behind her helmet visor at the old ladies and bickering families pushing carts across the parking lot, as though they were the ones who threatened him.

Above her, the streetlights suddenly flicked on. She shivered and turned her attention back to the craft store, searching for Darien.

After a breath-stealing moment of being unable to see him, she found him standing next to a payphone, talking to a grungy-looking man with grey-streaked hair.

A hobo? she wondered, but why would his stance be so tense and his face so stiff over a homeless person? Or perhaps it was a druggie… panic filtered through her insides.

'Idiot.' Her brain's voice was faint but audible. 'Have his eyes ever been bloodshot? Does he wear sunglasses? Do his hands tremble?'

No, no, and no. Serena relaxed. How horrible of her to assume such a thing of Darien. Just because he was from Roppongi, because he had a tattoo and rode a motorcycle… she was just like her parents. Just like everyone.

She pulled the helmet from her head. Guilt was so hot in her mouth that she thought she might be sick with it. No wonder Darien hadn't wanted to bring her along. Had he been afraid of what she might think of him, of what she might accuse him? He had known her better than she had known herself…

Her eyes lifted from the asphalt back to Darien and the shady man. Darien's face was even worse than before; his expression looked as hers must have, twisted as though about to be sick. Concern jolted her insides.

Only when a car horn honked behind her did she realize that she was on her feet, half climbing from the motorcycle – about to run and pull Darien away from the man who was making him look so unhappy.

The car horn had pulled their attention to her, too – Darien's eyes met hers. He flicked them quickly away. She rocked back a step, but now the man was looking at her, too,

She shoved herself back down on the bike, bruising her rear end in her haste, and averted her eyes to pretend that she was looking at the flashy silver car cruising through the parking row on her other side. Belatedly she remembered that she had taken off her helmet, and she jammed it back on her head.

She was still staring determinedly at it when a shadow fell over her a few moments later. She looked up and saw Darien. His face still had that look on it.

She scooted back to make room for him to sit, which he did. He started the bike, Serena put her arms around his waist, and they zoomed from the parking lot with a speed he hadn't used since the night of the bonfire.

When they stopped at a red light a few blocks away, Darien finally spoke. "So?"

Serena struggled free of her thoughts. "So?"

"So aren't you going to ask what I was doing?"

"Uuummm…" Serena pondered her response. If only she could see his face. "I would, but I don't think you'll tell me." She tightened her arms, using a joking tone. "Besides, I love you, but I don't want to go to jail for helping you break laws."

"Believe it or not, that wasn't illegal," began Darien. The irony in his voice was so bitterly sharp that it cut through her helmet without losing any of its edge.

But then he stopped abruptly.

Thinking that he had just lowered his voice, not that he had stopped altogether, Serena leaned forward, pushing her chin over his shoulder to hear him. Only then did she realize that he wasn't talking at all, and she looked around, trying to find something that must have distracted him. But she only saw other cars, an SUV, a blue convertible, the silver car from the parking lot.

"What is it?" she asked.

The light changed, and he shook his head as he lifted his foot from the asphalt to press the gas again. "Nothing."

They sped down the street again, ending conversation. Serena furrowed her brow inside her helmet, replaying their conversation in her head –

And suddenly blushed hotly from head to toe.

'Exactly, stupid.' Her brain sighed. 'You said you loved him.'

Serena squeaked.

They pulled up in front of her house, and Serena scrambled off the bike so quickly that her skirt got tangled in the piping. Then she had to stand stock still for five excruciating minutes, her face aflame with mortification under the helmet and growing hotter by the minute, as Darien fought the material free of the gears.

"There," he said at last, straightening up.

Serena spun, wanting only to run into the house and hide for a thousand years, preferably to be reincarnated into a less embarrassment-plagued future self.

But his hand caught hers and spun her back around.

"Hey, don't you think you're forgetting something?" he said, hooking another of his grins down at her.

Serena didn't know how much longer it would be before the capillaries in her cheeks just exploded, they were flaming so red.

"Oh, yeah," she squeaked, pulling off her helmet and hurriedly shaking her hair out so that it would – hopefully – cover her face. She turned –

Only to be caught again, this time around the waist.

"Not what I meant," Darien informed her, leaning down to be level with her face.

She squeaked again and turned it resolutely away.

But then his fingers were on her chin, and the amused atmosphere evaporated from around him. "Serena – are you okay?" Immediately his hand went to her forehead. "You're burning up."

Serena's shoulders slumped. There was no hiding it anymore. She turned her head slowly to face him, looking up at him with her flushed face.

One look at her expression was all it took. The concerned crease between his eyebrows vanished and became a smile again. "Oh, Odango." He let go of her chin and forehead and slid his hands down her arms to her hands, pulling her into him.

Serena's flaming face and racing heart finally calmed as she stood with her temple against that comforting pulse in his throat.

His chin rested on her hair. "You were embarrassed, huh?"

This was not exactly the sort of thing up to which one liked to own. But Serena nodded against his jacket.

They were both silent for a moment, and she felt his pulse against her own in her temple. The pulse was faster than normal, but whether that was her pulse or his she didn't know. Perhaps both. She hoped both.

After a while she felt a kiss against her hair. Her limbs shivered limp. His lips brushed the top of her ear, and the shivers spread, like puppet strings pulling her head up and back.

This second kiss was soft and warm and longer than the first one.

When he pulled away, he murmured, "That's what I meant."

A smile lit Serena's face; it felt goofy and soft as a marshmallow on her lips. How very embarrassing, she thought, trying to pull it from her face, but his soft lips closed around her again. "God, Serena," he breathed against them, and she felt like a marshmallow all over again. Melting, melting…her hands clung to his shirt like goo as her limbs liquefied beneath her.

Behind them suddenly came the sound of a door opening. Serena's fingers fisted in Darien's jacket, annoyed by the interruption; then the shrieking of her brain penetrated her awareness. 'That's your front door! Your front door! Your dad! Your dad!'

Darien's lips had already left hers. His hands had let go of hers, too. She opened her eyes to look up at him for a split second that seemed more like an eternity before she turned around.

Her father stood in the doorway outlined by the light from the living room. "Time to come in, Serena."

Serena's face was as hot as Tabasco sauce, but she turned back to Darien for a minute.

His eyes met hers. Reflected in them she saw her knitted brows, and felt slightly surprised the realization of her own anger, but more surprised by the sad acceptance that shadowed his face.

He nodded toward the house. "You should go."

"I have to tell you goodnight first," she said stubbornly, arguing not only with him but with her brain. She had told her parents that Darien was her boyfriend. She had not been doing anything wrong. Kissing her boyfriend was not wrong.

"So." She found his hand again and squeezed it. "Good night."

If the resignation that had been on his face a moment ago had surprised her, it was nothing to the shocked thrill that ran through her at the pride that was suddenly glowing in his eyes as he looked down at her. All that warm, warm pride, just for her. Her breath caught in her lungs.

"Good night," he murmured back. He squeezed her hand back, then released it.

Reluctantly – oh so reluctantly – she took a step back, and he watched her as he put his helmet back on.

"Oh!" she realized suddenly as she watched him lean over the handlebars. "Wait! I did forget something! Your jacket – "

He turned his head toward her, lifted his helmet visor just high enough for her to see his eyes, still glowing. "Keep it for now."

She smiled as she watched him rev the engine and roar down the street.

Then her father's voice reached her ears, carefully controlled and modulated. "Get in here, Serena."

She tore her eyes from Darien's retreating headlights and forced them to her father's stony face. Darien's jacket felt very heavy and very warm on her shoulders.

Her father frowned down the street, then down at her, at the jacket on her shoulders. "Does he want to wake the whole neighborhood?"

She drew the jacket tighter around herself. "Daddy, it's not even eight o'clock. No one's sleeping yet."

Her father's brows knit together disapprovingly as he followed her inside. "Your boyfriend may take that mouth from you, young lady, but I won't. Go to your room."

Serena almost sighed – then caught it just in time, knowing it would rile her father further. Quietly as a mouse she made her way up the stairs.

'You could have handled that better,' her brain reproached her as she shut the door behind her. 'You should have just kept your mouth shut.'

Serena's shoulders slumped. Yes, she knew that she should have kept her mouth shut. If she hadn't known better than that, her father would have withdrawn her from public school and had her mother teach her at home years ago.

But it was becoming increasingly difficult to go from fearlessly being herself and speaking her thoughts at school with Ami and Rei and afterward with Darien, to being mutely submissive to her parents. To return to the person she had been each day when she walked through the front door was like trying to stuff a butterfly back into its cocoon.

'Then try harder,' warned her brain.

Serena sighed, sitting down at her desk and taking the gold nail polish from her drawer to apply yet another layer to her locket.

L

"Wow, where'd you get that jacket from, Serena? The dumpster?"

"Wow, where'd you get that insult from, Kim? The dumpster that calls itself your brain?" Rei shot back.

A snort of laughter escaped Serena.

On the other side of the lunch table, Ami frowned as Kim made an outraged sound and flounced away with her entourage of cheerleaders toward the football players' table. "I don't see why you insist on goading her, Rei. It just encourages her."

"No, what encourages her is Serena wearing that jacket to school," said Rei, thumping her crutch emphatically on the lunch room tile. Since the brunette had begun sitting with them at lunch, Serena and Ami had sat on the other side of the table in order to give her plenty of room to bang her crutch around, which she did frequently. "I understand you can't help liking the mobster, Serena, but do you have to advertise it?"

'That's what I said!' exclaimed Serena's brain.

Serena traced the ragged silver wolf embroidery that had been sewn to the jacket right over where Darien's heart would be. It was her favorite patch on the whole jacket.

"But it's so warm," she said. Then, after a pause, she added, "And it smells really good."

Ami put a hand to her mouth in a gesture that Serena had learned meant that she was hiding a laugh. Rei snorted outright. Serena made faces at both of them.

"I WAS going to let you smell it," she told them, "but if you're going to make fun of me, I guess I won't."

Ami's hand couldn't contain her laughter anymore; a gale of them escaped her mouth. Rei rolled her eyes, but she was snickering, too, and Serena grinned at both of them, feeling pleasure fill her like warm butter. She had thought after Mina moved to America she wouldn't find another friend to sit at the lunch table and laugh with. Yet here she sat with not one but two.

She snuggled into her jacket and felt like the only thing that could make this moment any better was Lita and Darien and Asanuma and Buji being here, too.

L

Coach blew her whistle. "That's good! We're finished for today. Arina, make sure you ice that knee!"

Serena levered herself back up from her split on the gymnasium mats and picked up her baton, a curl of hair falling into her face. She blew it out of her eyes and began to follow the rest of the girls out of the gym toward the locker rooms, her eyes on her feet. It had been a lonely practice, with Rei at the doctor's office getting her cast taken off.

'There's really not much point in staying today,' her brain reasoned. 'He hasn't come in days, and it's freezing.'

She bumped into someone's back. "Watch where you're going, Serena," said Yuko's voice.

"Sorry," said Serena, looking up with confusion. Why was Yuko standing in the middle of the doorway – why was everyone standing in the middle of the doorway, for that matter? She pushed up on her tiptoes, trying to see what was wrong, but Yuko moved from in front of her suddenly. Serena stumbled forward.

"Ow, Serena!"

"Stop, Serena!"

"What's wrong with you, Serena? Can't you just be happy for Kim?"

"Sorry – sorry, it was an accident." Serena was blushing brightly as she stood back up from where she'd fallen onto her knees, inadvertently elbowing a few of her teammates in the ribs.

Then she realized what the last person had said, and she looked up. "What?"

Then her eyes landed on what had made everyone stop on the doorway, and she understood. Kim was being pressed against one of the basketball hoop posts by a guy. But not just any guy. Serena recognized the number on the back of his jacket. Seiko.

"What's going on here, girls? Let me through – " Coach's voice rang through the giggles, silencing them abruptly. Serena felt Coach push through the girls behind her, stop next to her, and follow her eyes. Then, "KIM! THAT IS NOT APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR FOR SCHOOL GROUNDS!"

Serena shied back. She didn't want to be anywhere near Seiko, not even a whole basketball court away from him. She turned, trying to get to the locker room, but Yuko and Arina were in her way. Arina shot her a satisfied look, and Serena turned away from her –

Only to meet Seiko's eyes, twenty meters away.

He watched her. He was leaning above Kim, his arm propped on the post above her head, half-turned to watch Serena. 'No, you're just imagining it – ' began her brain, but when Serena flinched to the side, his eyes followed her. His nose had healed back to normal proportions now, but there was something ugly in his face as his lips curved up into a smirk.

This time Serena turned and pushed through the crowd, ignoring the "oomphs" and angry mutters directed her way. She walked quickly to the locker room, limbs stuff. Her brain was trying to tell her that she had nothing to fear from Seiko, that he was fickle and he'd obviously moved onto Kim, and that even if he did still feel something toward her, he wouldn't dare act on it after what Darien had done –

Like a speeding car hitting a pedestrian, her fear rammed into the concern that had already been crossing her mind – Darien hadn't come in a week, hadn't answered any of her phone calls. What if something had happened to him? What if he was dead? What if he was lying in a Dumpster-lined alley somewhere with his life slowly leaking away because he'd lost a knife fight? What if Seiko had been smiling because he had filed a report for assault and had him arrested? What if –

Music blared from inside her locker. Serena jumped in the middle of unlocking it and banged her elbow against the wall behind her.

'Calm down. It's just your phone.'

Heart still reverberating like a beaten gong, Serena finished unlocking her locker and rummaged for her cell phone. Her heart leapt all over again when she saw that it was Darien's number. She stuffed her pom poms into one hand and unflipped the phone with the other. "Darien!"

"Nee-chan?"

Serena's eyes widened. Her pom-poms dropped from her hand as she pressed her cell phone closer to her ear. "Buji?"

"The one and only!" chirped the voice on the other end, tinny over a staticky cacophony in the background. "Um, a-are you busy, nee-chan?"

Serena's heart rate was slowing down in a mixture of disappointment and relief. She wished that it had been Darien calling, but she was nearly as happy to talk to his younger brother.

"No, Buji-kun, I'm not busy," she said, her eyes flicking up as the other girls began to trickle into the locker room. Kim was at the head, smirking straight across the room at Serena. Serena turned away, talking into her locker as she cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder so that she could reclasp her locket around her neck. "How are you?"

"I'm okay, nee-chan." He hesitated. She smothered a smile as he said next, with painful politeness, "How are you, nee-chan?"

"I'm doing very well, thank you, Buji-kun," Serena answered, returning his solemnity.

"Oh. Good. Um…well…I guess you're wondering why I called…"

"Whatever the reason, I'm glad you did," said Serena honestly. "I haven't talked to Darien in a while. Is anything wrong?"

"Yes!" burst out Buji's voice, so loud that Serena flinched. "I know something's wrong, nee-chan, Darien-nii's so worried all the time! But no one will tell me anything!"

Serena's insides began to knot themselves again. Something was wrong. And Darien was probably trying to keep her out of it, not calling her or coming to see her because he didn't want to endanger her, treating her as if she were a child like Buji. Anger began to grow in her, for both Buji and herself. Why couldn't Darien understand that being left in the dark made them both worry more, why couldn't he see –

"I'm scared, nee-chan," Buji's voice whispered.

Suddenly Serena realized what the background noise on the other end of the line was – shrieking and honking horns – and was that breaking glass?

"Buji, where are you?" Her voice came out nearly a shout. She realized as the chatter around her quieted that girls had turned to stare at her; she had half-risen to her feet.

She stood up the rest of the way but lowered her voice, leaning into her locker. "Buji, where are you?"

"I – I'm not sure, nee-chan." Now Buji sounded like he was about to burst into tears. The incredible little boy, he'd been speaking to her politely all this time as if nothing was wrong! She wanted simultaneously to hug him and to strangle him. "There's a lot of people, and it's getting dark, and…"

"Isn't anyone with you?"

"No, I – Ikindofranaway." He said this very fast.

She took a deep breath; she could ask why he had run away after he was safe. "Did you call Darien?"

"No." Buji's voice was a whisper again. "I can't."

"Asanuma?" she said, half confused and half frightened.

"I – I can't call them, nee-chan – they're doing something, they can't answer their phones – I was supposed to stay home – "

Serena sucked in a breath. "Buji, can you see any street signs?"

"No, I – I went into the east subway, but I took the wrong train – " His voice dropped to an even quieter whisper, strained and scared. "Nee-chan, I think I might be by the Makaiju Club."

Serena's mouth went very dry. "The Makaiju Club?"

The sound of imminent tears in his whisper was stronger than ever. "Yes. I can see the sign."

Serena knew the sign of which he spoke. She had only learned about the Makaiju Club – both its infamous neon pink, tree-shaped sign and the horrible things that people did there – from hearing about it in the news. Barely a week went past without news of this murder or that rape or this drive-by happening inside or around the Makaiju Club. If the Roppongi ward was a diseased body, the Makaiju Club was the tumor that had blighted it, located deep inside Roppongi and pumping drug dealer and prostitutes throughout the ward.

"Buji, stay there, okay? Stay on the phone with me. I'm going to be there in fifteen minutes, okay? Fifteen minutes."

With shaking hands Serena yanked her wallet and her baton from her locker and threw them into her backpack. She yanked on Darien's leather jacket, then slammed her locker shut, sprinting out of the locker room.

"Do you have money? Do you have enough quarters to stay on the phone with me?"

"Yeah – I think so – "

Serena turned the corner at the school gate so rapidly that she slid on the icy sidewalk and went sprawling. Her butt bone slammed into the concrete hard, jarring the phone from its spot between her shoulder and chin. It went skidding across the pavement. She lunged to her knees, scrambling after it.

"Buji?" She yanked it back to her ear. "Buji, are you still there?"

Only a dial tone.

"No, no, no, no, no," she panted, grabbing the school fence to drag herself back to her feet. She pressed the redial button but received a busy tone, and her heart rate spiked even higher.

She was still wearing her cheerleading uniform, she realized, and outside of the gym and locker rooms her bare legs were freezing. But it was nothing compared to how Buji must feel, did he think that she had hung up on him, that she wouldn't come for him?

She glanced around desperately; where were taxis when you needed them? Her eyes landed on a familiar blue head leaning over the bike racks and her heart nearly stopped with relief.

"Ami!" she shouted. "AMI!"

Ami jerked around. "Serena?" she said, eyes wide.

"Ami!" Serena grabbed her hands. "Can I borrow your bike? Please, it's an emergency, I promise I'll get it back – "

"Of course, Serena." Ami was already nodding her head and unlocking her bike from the rack, tilting her head curiously. "But what's wrong –"

But Serena was already throwing her leg over the bike and pedaling. "I'll tell you tomorrow!" she shouted before flying down the streets.

She pumped and she pumped and she pumped, her blood pumping hard in her ears. Stopping at red lights was pure agony; she wanted to scream at the car drivers to stop and let her go, a little boy was depending on her, but they were all deaf, shut up in their cozy warm cars, sheltered from the cold and the world –

After ten minutes of pedaling so hard that her thighs and calves were a screaming mass of cramps, Serena was flying through the Roppongi Tunnel. She wasn't extremely sure of exactly where the club was, just that it was a few miles down the same road that ran beneath the Roppongi Tunnel.

But after only a few minutes she began to feel the bike vibrating. The reverberations grew stronger and louder, resolving themselves into roaring, pounding music; the bass shook the asphalt like an earthquake. People and cars and smoke began to choke the run-down street; the spicy smog made Serena dizzy and nauseous as her pedaling slowed.

Through the smoke, a glowing green neon tube in the shape of a tree loomed up out of the fog. Serena braked the bike with a squeal, narrowly missing a woman standing on the street corner in a skirt and little else.

She climbed off Ami's bicycle, stumbling slightly into a broken streetlight's post. She let her forehead rest against the icy, rusty metal for a second before she forced herself back up. With numb, clumsy fingers she unzipped her backpack and took out her ridiculous, glittery cheerleading baton. Then, gripping Ami's bike with her free hand and wishing it had training wheels as she began to list to one side, she began to wheel it down the crowded sidewalk, looking for a pay phone or for Buji's shiny dark hair.

Along with the uncomfortable, disconnected sensation with which the spicy smoke had filled Serena, a sense of déjà vu was invading her. She felt greedy eyes on her, heard footsteps following her. She tightened her fingers around her baton, walking more quickly, wishing quite desperately that she had been intelligent enough to change out of her short cheerleading skirt, at least. God, please, you have to let me find Buji first, don't let anything happen until I've gotten Buji safe –

"Are you looking for someone?"

The voice that came from right beside her ear made her jump. She picked up her pace, trying to outrace it, determinedly not looking at it, but she heard his pace matching hers.

"Look, leave me alone," she said in a voice as close to Lita's as she could manage. Should she threaten him with her baton? "I'm looking for my brother."

'Your brother? What made you come out with that?'

Serena wasn't sure; it had just popped out. She was very stressed and rather detached from her sense of logic at the moment. Her fingers were sweaty around her baton.

"Please leave me alone," she said in a voice that didn't shake as violently as she had expected it to. Nor, though, was it very audible over the music thumping from the club across the street.

The voice spoke again; she couldn't distinguish what. She mustered a glare to glance over at its owner – her eyes were on him just long enough to see that his hair was dyed an ashy color – then, through the din, she heard the fleeting fragment of a familiar voice shouting.

"Buji!" she gasped, whipping around. She nearly lost her balance, the music thudding in her ear drums, then caught herself against Ami's bike just in time. She broke into a weaving run toward where she had heard his voice, her fingers sweaty around the bike's handlebars.

First she saw the graffittied, dented pay phone first, behind a lady with lots of piercings, then Buji. He was still there, standing with the phone in his hand, just like she'd told him, the dear, dear boy – then she saw the two people in front of him, cornering him and riffling through his battered Pokemon backpack, and fury erupted inside her.

"Get away from him!" She bowled into their midst. Ami's bicycle fell with a crash behind her.

She could feel her baton in her hands in front of her, hear Buji's gasp behind her, and see the shadowy faces of the two people leering at them, a man and a woman.

"Nee-chan!" Buji was definitely crying now; his voice was a sob, and the face that he smushed into her leg as he latched onto it was wet. "Nee-chan!"

"THIS is your nee-chan?" sneered the woman holding his backpack. Her voice was so shrill that it was easy to hear her over the music.

Serena squeezed her eyes tightly, then re-opened them again, but the sight in front of her didn't grow any less frightening. The woman, though she looked about Serena's age, had dyed pink hair streaked with blue, a skin-tight red outfit, and the front teeth in the smirk she shot at them were filed to points.

"You were trying to threaten us with her?" Now it was the man talking. His hair, Serena saw blurrily, was dyed blue with pink streaks. "That's a joke, kid. But a funny one, because now we'll have BOTH of you to have fun with."

He leered at Serena, and she flinched.

Then she glowered. She wasn't going to be intimidated by a man with a pink streak in his hair!

"I told you to get away from him!" She shook her baton warningly at him, fingers white-knuckled around the grip. Her mouth felt a little bit like it was full of cotton, and her words sounded like they had clumped together a little like cotton candy, but she was pretty sure that at least her threatening tone had been clearly conveyed.

"Oh, isn't she cute, Anne?" The man grinned. "She sounds high as a cloud. And look at that nice locket…"

"Stay away from her!" Buji yelled, but Serena barely heard him, because the boy was reaching out to grab her necklace. She saw his fingers about to close around her locket, then she blinked, and suddenly her baton was spinning in the same movement that they had rehearsed in practice just that afternoon.

She heard a thunk – a sound that she was used to hearing from when she hit herself with the baton, not someone else – and knew from both the thunk's volume and the hissed curse that followed it that the impact had been a painful one.

A little bit of the fuzziness dissolved from her brain. She twirled her fingers faster, making the baton hum in the air, and looked at the boy holding his wrist and glaring at her.

"You should have listened to me," she told him loudly. Her voice was surprisingly steady considering how fast her heart was beating, as though she was still madly pedaling Ami's bicycle.

"Fucking bitch," hissed the woman. She lunged forward, clawing for Serena's baton. Serena took a step backward, right into Ami's bicycle. The bike crashed to the sidewalk in a racket of metal and gears behind her, and Serena crashed backward against the pay phone, fireworks exploding behind her eyes.

A rough weight threw itself into her, crushing her against the rusty metal. Hot, harsh breath panted on her face. When the white sparks faded from her vision a few seconds later, she was staring into red-rimmed, huge-pupiled eyes centimeters from her. Her own eyes stared back at her, wide and scared.

"That baton hurt," the man growled into her face.

A groan escaped from between Serena's clenched teeth. One of his hands was squeezing her wrist so tight her skin was grinding against the bone, and his other arm was pressed against her neck, digging into it until her throat closed. She felt herself gagging.

"Does it hurt? Does it? My arm does. Maybe I'll keep going…or maybe I should break something else so we can have some fun. I was thinking I'd just take that nice locket of yours, but maybe I'll have you instead…"

"S-st– " Terror was a white water rapids roaring through her limbs, pounding the air from her lungs. She couldn't breathe. "St – stop – "

"We don't need your fingers for that, do we? I'll break those instead – " He snatched her fingers, began to bend them backward, backward, his eyes and breath still hot on her face –

"Stop it!"

Something crashed against them. Pain shot through her throat as the man's arm was shoved harder against it – then the pressure he was gone; he was stumbling away from her.

Serena nearly fell to the ground, caught herself on her hands. She scrabbled for her grime-spattered baton from the sidewalk, then fought back to her feet. Her eyes whirled in a crazed panic, looking for Buji.

She found him hanging from the man's arm with his teeth clamped into his skin.

For a second, Serena hesitated – she took a step back, toward Ami's bike – then she darted forward and swung her baton with all her strength.

The impact shook her arms up to her shoulders. She heard a muffled cry above the roaring music. Something black crossed in front of her vision. She blinked, saw Buji's dark hair, and grabbed for it. Half-blindly she seized him in her arms. His hands grabbed her jacket, her hair; she held him as tightly as she could with one hand and kept her baton up with the other.

The man was glaring poison at her. Blood streamed down his lip. The side of his face was an angry red welt. He was lunging like a chained dog, snarling something at her, but she couldn't hear it. She stared uncomprehendingly at his lunging movements and then followed the line of his shoulders to a hand gripping the scruff of his shirt.

She followed the hand to a barrel-chested man with a blood-red hair and fierce tattooed biceps protruding from his shirt sleeves. His lips were moving.

Like a radio being brought into reception, the sound from her surroundings finally resolved themselves in Serena's ears.

" – atch it, buddy!" the huge man was saying.

"Let him go, you asshole!" The girl was screaming, and her brother was snarling in the man's grip.

"You know who that is?" The big man had a loud, contemptuous voice, and Serena saw with dim awareness a patch on his sleeve that read Makaiju.

'A bouncer,' her brain whispered.

"She won't be anybody when I'm done with her!" growled the man, his eyes burning into Serena's. Serena gripped Buji tighter. Her brain was screaming at her to run. But her lungs were empty as a vacuum.

"You gotta be kidding me," said the Makaiju man in disgust. "How long you been in Roppongi, bitch? You don't know Darien Shields's fucking jacket when you see it?"

The blue-haired man froze. His burning eyes dropped from Serena's to the jacket she wore.

Over the deafening music and her thudding heart, Serena couldn't hear what he said, but she saw his lips move: Shit.

"Yeah, that's what I said." The Makaiju man let him go. "Ain't every day I see somebody stupid enough to fuck with Shields' girlfriend." He laughed hard and rough. "I suggest you start running!"

"I – I'm not stupid," said the man loudly. His eyes were still on Serena's jacket. She held Buji tighter. "No way she's his bitch. Shields wouldn't go for a little girl like here – "

"MORON!"

The shout came from just below Serena's ear. Serena's heart jumped so violently that it almost popped out of her mouth. She looked down wildly to see Buji had twisted in her arms to glare at the man.

"You think a girl like her would have my nii-san's jacket if she wasn't his girlfriend? Or are you stupid enough to think a little girl could steal anything from the Wolves?"

"Ain't nobody in Roppongi THAT stupid," said Makaiju Man. Then he grinned down at the man. "Nobody who's still alive, anyway."

"Anne!" The man shouted, spinning suddenly and grabbing his sister. "Come on! We're getting the hell out of here."

They both turned and took off into the smoky fog, toward the neon Makaiju sign. Just barely, Serena heard the familiar sound of a motorcycle roaring to life, and then a single headlight cut through the fog and dwindled away in it.

"Yeah, that's right!" Buji yelled after the retreating motorcycle. "Keep running! You SHOULD be scared of my nii-chan!"

"Buji." Serena's voice could have belonged to a corpse. "Don't…"

She didn't say anything more; she thought she might throw up. In addition to the Makaiju man still standing and watching them, a crowd of people were loitering on the sidewalk around them, cigarettes and joints dangling from their mouths and hands as they watched.

"Don't worry, nee-chan." Buji looked up at her with his big eyes and then glared around at the people who watched them. "None of them'll touch you. Those idiots were the only thugs in Roppongi stupid enough not to recognize my nii-san's jacket."

"He's right about that," said Makaiju man. Serena's eyes flicked up to him.

"Ah…ah…" she said faintly. "Thank you."

The man uncrossed his arms and hooked his thumbs in his pants. "Ain't good business to let the girlfriend of somebody like Shields get fucked on your doorstep, you know? Who knows what he'd do?"

"Rubeus!" A voice floated through the fog from the direction of the club.

The Makaiju man grunted and half-turned. Then he turned back to look at them. "Diamante's coming to see what all the noise was about. You better get moving."

The name Diamante triggered a faint alarm of recognition in Serena's mind, but she didn't have the leisure to wonder why. She began to back away from the bouncer, eyes flicking among the people that still watched them, suspicious and scared despite all of Buji and the bouncer's reassurances. Gradually she was becoming aware of how much her throat hurt to breathe, of the pain in her hand. Of how close she had come to –

Buji wriggled out of her tight grip, landing on the sidewalk. "C'mon, nee-chan. Hold onto me, okay?"

Serena's fingers curled into the soft warmth of his hood. Her baton hung listlessly from her other hand as she followed Buji, her eyes suddenly hot and wet. Deep in the safety of her mind she began to wonder drearily why she didn't just drop the baton.

'What the hell are you doing?'

She almost spun, almost cried with relief. Lita, Lita was here, she'd come to save them –

'No, she hasn't.' The road around them was empty of tall, well-endowed saviors. Only lit cigarette ends and curious eyes followed them.

Serena had never been so disappointed to hear her brain.

'You're not the only one who's disappointed. What the hell are you doing?'

Serena blinked back the cooling tears from her eyes, looked around her again. She was following after Buji, her fingers curled tightly into his hood as he led them down the sidewalk. His arms were stretched up to hold the handlebars of Ami's bike as he wheeled it along with them, the gears clicking as his head turned to and fro to scan the street.

Immediately she understood. Shame and self-loathing swept through her. Her hand dropped from Buji's jacket.

He turned around quickly. "Nee-chan?" His eyes were huge, pupils dilated. "Are you okay?"

Serena bit her lip, hard. "I'm fine, Buji-kun. Thank you for…" She hesitated. "For being the adult."

Buji smiled at her. A bruise was beginning to darken his cheek, just below his eyes. He'd gotten that from saving her.

"You were really brave, nee-chan."

Serena's eyes flicked from his bruise to his eyes, almost guilty. Buji didn't know how she had hesitated, how she had almost run away and left him.

She said only, "I'll take the bike now, Buji-kun."

Her hands were still shaking, but she managed to lift him into the wire basket that Ami had on the back of her bike to hold textbooks. Then she climbed on herself, keeping the baton balanced in one hand, and she began to pedal.

Unexpectedly, Buji wrapped her arms around her waist to hold on. She flinched so violently that the bike almost tipped over.

Buji pulled back, but she said tightly, "No, it's okay, Buji-kun." And she tried to erase the memory of that man's body crushing against her by focusing on the feel of Buji's chubby little-kid arms pressed against her stomach.

Even after they were blocks away from the pumping music of Roppongi, Serena's eardrums throbbed. She shook her head as she squinted through the fog, studiously avoiding the eyes of all the people on the sidewalk through whom she wove on the bike. Once she felt her baton clip someone, and she immediately poured even more speed onto the pedals, frightened of retaliation, but true to Buji's word, nothing happened. People stared at them, but no one chased them.

But the agitation churning inside her did not abate. Even when the vague outline of the Roppongi tunnel finally loomed out of the foggy darkness, Serena's heart continued to pound frantically. With the question of how to get out of Roppongi's center district set to rest, she was now faced with the question of where, after leaving it, she was going to pedal to.

She smelled like cigarette and marijuana smoke, bruised and scraped. Her house was obviously out of the question. She couldn't show up on Rei's doorstep like this either; he dad was a policeman and would recognize the smell of joint smoke on the spot. Ami's apartment was an option because her mom often worked off hospital shifts, but if Dr. Mizuno was home, she would recognize the smell too, and Serena couldn't get Ami into trouble like that.

And another worry churning inside her – what would Darien do when he got home from wherever he was and found Buji gone?

"Where are we going now, nee-chan?" Buji's voice behind her was sleepy. His arms around her waist were loosening inch by inch, the memory of the man's fingers on her skin returning.

"We're going home," said Serena firmly, determined not to let him see her uncertainty. He'd been through enough tonight. I just don't know yet where home is.

She didn't realize that she had mumbled this out loud until Buji yawned, "Home is where Darien is."

Then he straightened abruptly against her back. "No!"

Serena's surprised flinch nearly threw them into the wall of the Roppongi Tunnel. She gasped and righted them.

"Sorry!" Buji cried out. "But you can't take me home, nee-chan! I ran AWAY!"

Serena's legs were tiring; she slowed down her pedaling, letting momentum carry them through the rest of the dark tunnel, out onto the dimly-lit street. For a stab of a second, as her muscles cramped angrily and the memory of the man snarled hot and foul inside her, she wanted to yell at the little boy, to shake him and demand what he had been thinking, running alone into the heart of Roppongi? She wanted to scare him, make sure he never did it ever again –

"Buji – " Desperation wasn't an undercurrent in her voice, it was a white water rapid roiling her words. " – why did you run away?"

The chubby arms around her waist tightened. She heard him take a breath –

Then a motorcycle roared wildly around the corner and sped straight toward them, its single headlight blinding in the dark.

Serena's heart leapt into her mouth. She scrambled from the bike. She caught Buji before he could tumble into the road; Ami's bike crashed to the curb.

Serena gripped her baton and grabbed Buji by the shoulders, tightly.

"Go home," she told him, her voice so tight that it seemed to choke them both. She could see her own eyed reflected wide and scared in his for the instant that she took to stare at him.

Then she spun around, for the roaring was very close, and held her baton shaking but ready, waiting for it to stop.

And stop it did. With a scream of brakes, the motorcycle arrested its motion so suddenly that it spun nearly parallel to the icy street, then crashed into the slush that lined the curb as its helmeted rider sprang from it to grab Serena by the arms.

She cried out and swung her baton hard. The memory of his weight burned on her abdomen –

The man doubled over with a choked exhalation. Breathing raggedly, Serena whirled for a split second to make sure that Buji was far away –

He wasn't.

He stood right behind her, staring at the man behind her.

"Buji!" So help her, if he was going to shout insults at this man, too – she felt an inch from tears again; her voice came out shrill with disbelief and despair. Was this how Darien had felt, trying so hard to keep them safe when they refused to cooperate? "RUN!"

"Nee-chan," Buji began, but at the same time the man behind her rasped something. She spun back around, baton gripped tight –

And saw, as the man tore off his helmet, an unmistakable scarred face.

Like a butterfly alighting on a flower to die, her trembling hand found Buji's shoulder. Distantly she felt herself sinking to the icy pavement.

No sooner had her bare skin brushed the frozen cement that hands caught her beneath the arms. She jerked, lurching, back to her feet, away from the touch. Her fingers curled more tightly in Buji's hood.

"Nii-san," she heard Buji's voice distantly.

Then Darien's, as tight and angry as she had ever heard it. "Buji, get on the motorcycle."

Then Buji's: "No!"

Then her own, faint: "Darien, he's had a long night – "

"He's not the only one!" Darien's voice was sharp and tight now. A chain that wrapped and choked like a noose. "Do you have any idea what I – we got home and you were gone – "

"Shut up!" Buji shouted. Serena's hand was knocked from his coat as his hands flew up to cover his ears.

"Shut up! You don't tell me ANYTHING!" He was crying; his eyes were squeezed up in his grimy, wet little face. "You leave me alone at home and I don't even know where you are, and I don't know if you'll ever come back, you might DIE – "

He sucked in a mucus-choked breath. Serena knew instinctively that he was about to splinter into sobs, and she reached for him. ("Stop it," she vaguely heard herself saying. "Buji, stop.") He did, but not before he managed to blubber out, "I HATE you, Darien! I hate you! And Mom and Dad would hate you too if they knew what you were doing because you're breaking your promise!"

Only then did he let Serena's hands draw him into her arms. He cried noisy tears into her neck, his chin grinding her locket into her skin, kept sobbing "I hate you, I hate you" even as she felt him limpening gradually into sleep.

Only when Buji was silent and still in her arms did Darien speak.

"Give him to me."

Serena didn't move. She only held Buji tighter.

"Where were you?"

"Serena." His hand entered her vision. "Please. I'm sorry you had to come here – "

"Stop it!" Serena spun. "That's not why I'm mad!"

His hand fell down again. He held his helmet in front of him, as though he wanted to put it back on. Then he asked, with weary obedience, as though he was humoring her, "Then why are you mad?"

"You left him." Serena pressed Buji's head closer. Her voice was trembling. "You left him alone and didn't tell him anything – "

"I did that so he would be safe." His voice was flat and cold, the way it had been that first night when he left her on the sidewalk in front of her house. But beneath it throbbed a horrible artery of pain, fresh and bloody like a knife wound. "Everything I'm doing right now, I'm doing so that he'll be safe – "

"How's he supposed to be safe when he's worrying about you?" Serena lashed out. "You never tell him anything – "

"He doesn't need to know!" Darien snapped. "This is almost over! If he would just listen to me – "

"WHAT is he supposed to listen to? You telling him to stay put and be safe? Or do you just walk out without even telling him you're leaving and leave him to wonder where you are for days at a time like you did to me?"

Darien jerked.

For a split second, she thought he was about to hit her. Then, as he put his helmet on the sidewalk, guilt filled her for even thinking that he would do such a thing.

As though he knew what she had been thinking, he reached out and, not even looking at her, not even brushing her hands with his own, took Buji from her slack arms into his own.

The small hands dangled over Darien's bare arms. For the first time Serena noticed that he wasn't wearing a jacket. But before she could say anything –

"Give me your cell phone."

Automatically Serena pulled it from her pocket.

Darien took it with his free hand and pressed a series of keys. Then he handed it back to her. "There's Motoki's number."

"Why…?" Dread was filling her as she watched him swing a leg over his motorcycle.

He set Buji in front of him on the bike, put the overlarge helmet over the child's sleeping head. Without looking at her, he said, "Call him and tell him to come get you and take you home."

Serena had been out in the freezing temperatures for hours now, with nothing to cover her legs or her face or fingers. She had grown as numb as anyone of the brink of frostbite can become.

But his words, slapped her like ice water being thrown into her face, knocked the breath from her as though she had risen from in front of a toasty fireplace to walk into a blizzard.

And all she could think was, 'You knew it was coming. You knew it was coming. No one ever lasts.'

"Serena." Finally he looked at her. His scarred face was twisted, as though it pained him even to have to touch her eyes with his. "Please."

Fumbling, Serena's fingers found the 'delete' key. She pressed it, erasing Motoki's number.

The phone screen blinked, switched to show a message: 8 MISSED CALLS. CALLER: DAD CELL. She held her thumb down on the disconnect key until the phone shut down with a chime; the screen turned black. In it she could see her reflection, paled and tired and weak. Weak weak weak.

Her lips pursed; for a second she wavered on the brink of mortal terror that she was about to tumble into tears. Humiliating, weak tears.

"Good night." She remembered the glowing pride in his eyes when she held his hand in front of her parents. Remembered her stabbing desire to see that glow again. Not only to see it, but to deserve it.

Her trembling lower lip steadied. "I'm not going home yet."

"Yes." His jaw was granite. "You are. You shouldn't be here."

Serena's heart slid to her toes.

"I'll never be able to repay you for bringing Buji back." Darien's voice was low, the throb nearly contained. "But you shouldn't have had to. You never should've met him. You shouldn't be here."

Never should've met him?

The hatred that Serena had felt toward the man and woman in Roppongi was like tepid water compared to what scalded through her now. It burned the tears from her eyes, the nerves from her lips, his face from her vision.

All she could see was his eyes – the eyes that had glowed in pride for her defiance of her father – now glaring at her just like her father's had.

"I never should have met him?" she repeated, with those numb, unfeeling lips. But with each syllable that trickled from her lips, she felt something inside her melting, heating. "I shouldn't be here?" Flaring. Searing. "Nobody should be here! Nobody with even the smallest piece of a heart should be in this horrible place where even people as incredible as you get turned into – into – into horrible blocks of ice who make other people feel like they're not human beings!"

For a moment, silence filled her ears. There was nothing but the sound of her own rough breathing.

And for a moment, hope began to grow in her that he hadn't meant what he had said, that he was going to say, 'You're right, Odango,' and sigh with relief and stop looking so stony and shadowy and unfamiliar –

"You are a human being, Serena." His voice was low. "But I was stupid to think that this could work. Please call Motoki to take you home."

Serena's fury trickled away.

So did her silence. Insults, shouts, kicks, hair-pulling – all of those she could tolerate in silence.

But this rejection, this rejection with a "please" as though she was powerful and he was weak – she couldn't stand it. Tears began to quake her ribs, to escape from her face, from her nose, from her eyes, from her lips.

She swiped at them and climbed onto Ami's bicycle, and if he made a sound behind her she didn't hear it. She pedaled until she couldn't feel her legs, until Roppongi and Darien were blocks and blocks behind her, and she recognized through her tears the streets down which she was streaking on Ami's beaten bike, but all she could hear was Buji's voice, playing over and over, Home is where Darien is, until she was crying even more loudly than before and the people on the familiar, well-lit streets looked at her askance and grimaced and frowned or looked away from her.

The house was ablaze with light as she turned wearily into the front drive, careful even in her bone-tiredness to avoid her mother's prized azaleas lining the driveway. She slid from Ami's bicycle and propped it against the side of the garage, then trudged up the walk to the front door.

Only then, as her eyes landed on her parents sitting stiff and silent in front of the eleven o'clock news, did she realize that she hadn't answered any of her dad's eight phone calls, that her cheerleading uniform was wet, filthy, and pasted to her bare legs, that she smelled like marijuana smoke, and that she was still wearing Darien's black leather jacket.

"Get out."

The television was on mute, she realized, as she watched a deodorant commercial full of flowers and rainbows dance across the screen.

With that realization came another: Oh. That was Dad talking. And a third: He was talking to me.

"What?" she said then, stupidly.

He stood up, and either he was trembling or the water in her eyes was making the world shake. "I said get out. You're not my daughter."

Serena's brain gave a tight, half-hysterical laugh, and so did she. 'This isn't happening.'

Now her father was taking a step toward her. "You think this is funny? Get out!"

"Dad – Dad – " Serena wasn't laughing anymore. "I don't – I can explain – "

"Oh, you can explain? You can explain why Seiko's mother called and told us that Seiko saw you in ROPPONGI?"

Serena was going to throw up.

"And you can explain why Seiko's mother said he doesn't know anyone named Darien except a Roppongi gang member who assaulted him up at a bonfire?" he roared.

"Kenji," said Serena's mother.

"Mom," gasped Serena, relief filling her –

"Do you know what you've done, Serena?" Her mother's eyes were filled with tears, running in neat little trails down her smooth cheeks. "Do you know what sort of reputation you've given to your team, much less just you? I didn't – I didn't raise you to be this selfish – " She gasped a little, plucking at her dress, and Serena's father put an arm around her. "We may have spoiled you, I know, we gave you everything you wanted – "

"MOM!" Serena's eyes screwed up, and her voice unscrewed from her mouth, rusty and crumbling like a screw left in wood for too long. "Stop it! Stop!"

"We supported you in everything you wanted to do, all your cheerleading – "

"NO!" Serena cried; she covered her ears, sick of it, sick of listening to lies and agreeing with them. "That's NOT what I wanted to do! That's what YOU wanted me to do, Mom!"

Her mother stopped plucking at her dress and looked up at her. "Serena, that's not true. You've loved cheerleading since kindergarten – "

"No! I went back then because it was something you would actually let me do. The only thing you let me do! And then I went because it was the only time you let me see Mina outside of school, and then when she moved I kept doing it because you told me that if I quit cheerleading it would break your heart. I kept going for you!"

"Stop," snapped her father. "You have no right to speak to her like this – "

"Like what?" Serena was still crying, and she hated it.

She hated showing how weak she was because when they saw that she was weak they would offer her a way back into a fold, they would say with soothing voices that if she promised never to do it again she could be part of the family again, and she was such a coward that she would accept it, she would bend and lie and cry and promise –

"Good night." She wanted so badly to be proud of herself, for once.

She scrubbed the tears from her eyes. "I'm not doing anything wrong." She lifted her eyes, fastened them onto her mother's. "I'm not being disrespectful. I'm just telling you how I feel."

"I don't care how you feel." Her father stepped in front of her mother.

Disbelief and pain lanced through Serena. She stared at her father's cold face. Suddenly she could see the difference between Darien and her father, and she didn't see why she had ever though that they looked alike, for Darien's stiff mask had belied how stricken he was, shown that Buji's words had pained him, affected him – all her father's showed was boiling, hateful anger.

She swallowed, gripped the locket at her throat. Pulled it tight, the chain biting into her skin. "You should care how I feel, you're my dad – "

"GET OUT!"

Serena flinched.

Her shoulder blades hit the front door with a bang. Beside her, the vase on the front table toppled off and shattered around her feet.

She flinched again, hand scrabbling behind her for the doorknob, her mouth, her nose, her eyes, everything wet, and she wanted them all to stop running, but she wanted Mina to be here and Darien to still love her and her parents to not hate her, and none of those wishes were coming true either. In fact, Kenji was shouting something behind her, and then she was finally grasping the doorknob and stumbling, tripping down the front steps, running, running, running, because yet again she had tried to stand her ground and she had fallen.

L

'You should have brought Ami's bike,' said her brain at last.

If she had had any breath left over in her burning lungs, if it hadn't hurt like a punch and a stab to inhale the freezing night air, Serena would have laughed. Or sobbed again. Of course she should have brought Ami's bike. Of course she shouldn't have run out into the streets in only her uniform and Darien's jacket. Of course she shouldn't have walked inside the house without thinking of her appearance. Of course she shouldn't have forgotten to call her parents. There were a lot of things that of course she shouldn't have done. Not been born was one of them.

She couldn't feel her toes anymore. At first they had screamed horribly in the cold as they were slapped again and again against the frozen pavement in only her thin practice shoes. But now they were silent, and she wished the rest of her body would follow their example. Her legs still prickled painfully every time her slushy skirt slapped against them, and so did her face, and her fingers, and everything except her chest and arms, tucked inside Darien's jacket.

Her foot skidded yet again on the icy pavement, and she went down hard. Her teeth snapped together as her chin scraped across the wet concrete.

She let her body go limp, just lying on the sidewalk as the cold crawled up through her wet clothes. Her locket was pressed beneath her cheek, and against her skin she could feel the rough nail polish flaking away again. She almost laughed as she remembered that the man in Roppongi had though it was valuable…

It was the sound of sirens in the distance that finally pushed her back up on her elbows. Vaguely she wondered if they were for her, if her parents had called the police and sent them looking for her, and uncertainly she wondered if she wanted to be found.

She pushed herself the rest of the way up, felt brief pressure on her neck, and then heard a snap. She looked down. Her hideous locket sat on the sidewalk, the golden chain from which it had hung lying in two pieces beside it.

Serena looked at it for a moment. Then she climbed gingerly the rest of the way to her feet, leaving the locket on the ground behind her.

But a few slippery steps away she stopped. She turned and looked at the locket. It lay there, gray on the cold gray sidewalk. Abrupt fear gripped her like bruising hands, squeezing the breath from her throat: if she left this locket behind, her parents would never take her back. She would be alone –

Hurriedly, nearly slipping on the icy pavement, she crouched to pick the locket up. But her fingers were numb, clumsy; the locket slid away from them. Rocking forward, her bare knees hitting the icy concrete, she reached for it again. It skittered away once more, slipping over the edge of the curb. Her eyes widened, and she lunged after it, scrabbling.

Like a scene from a bad movie, the locket slid to the edge of the grate in the street and teetered there.

Serena's eyes snapped right and left. The road was deserted. No one was coming from either way. On all fours, lest she slip on the ice and jar the locket through the slats in the grate, she crawled onto the street.

Her numb fingers brushed the metal of the locket, then air as the locket slid away, and she shot her hand after it – straight through the hole in the grate.

Her eyes widened in horror as she looked down at her arm. The locket was in her numb grasp now – but her arm was trapped in the grate up to her elbow. She tugged. Pain lanced up her arm, but nothing loosened.

And now, suddenly, the sirens in the distance were being joined by a much closer sound. The grate around her arm began to vibrate ever so slightly.

She twisted her head. With a sick sense of déjà vu, she saw headlights careen around the corner.

The approaching car's engine growled ferociously as it zoomed crazily down the street toward her, its speakers blaring – and even as she threw up her free arm, trying to make the driver see her, she recognized the deafening music. It was the same heavy rap song that she had been able to hear playing on Seiko's ear buds the day of the game against Minato.

She yanked desperately at her arm. She felt her bone grind against the metal, felt her skin rip, felt a sob tear from her throat. Heard the snarling engine, heard the blaring rap music, heard the screeching brakes –

and then nothing.

L

A/N: I am begging you to leave a review for this chapter before moving to the next one. It contains possibly the most rewriting I've ever done, and I really want to know if it paid off, especially in terms of the characters, their conflicts, and interactions.