It was Pobble that convinced Daisy to write her resume in 16-point Bookman Gothic, but it was Daisy who turned off the spell checker, 'on account of it don't work right'. She's carrying a sheaf of half-crumpled resumes under her arm. The first entry reads '2006-2007 Superviser: McDonalds.'

The weather is awful. Hiro is miserable.

The weather is fine. Hiro is whining.

"It smells like someone shit on the sidewalk,"

Hiro complains, pausing in mid-step to examine the sole of his sneaker - pockmarked with fossilized gum, but otherwise unmarred by inter-city fecal matter. "And this motherfucking fog." The complaints do not cease. "It's Thursday night. What the fuck are we doing here, again?"

Daisy's fine. Daisy's peachy. Daisy took two tabs, both blue, out of Hiro's dresser this morning. Daisy doesn't know they were Aleve.

She's not trudging. She's almost skipping, though not quite; she's got to keep some measure of punk dignity. "Fucking fog," she either agrees or echoes. "Like, I've gotta get another part-time job 'cause there's this sweet system on sale down at Best Buy. I'm thinkin' Zumiez wants me. Either that or, like, booth dancing."

Hiro knew they were Aleve. Hiro couldn't find his fucking Aleve this morning.

Last night, he was speaking to God. This morning, the walls were bleeding.

"We have a m'fockin system. Hand-tooled and digitally mastered. Synchronized with the music of the spheres. We can produce a bassline that sounds like Jupiter, and you want a sony motherfucking boombox."

Hiro scuffs at the sidewalk with the toe of his sneaker, frowning into the glare of neon and halogen. He's come to a dead stop in the middle of the sidewalk, squinting up at some seedy dive's stand. "Why don't you just get a job as a waitress or somethin'?"

Not that one. Daisy counts out a dozen steps, stops, and turns left. Through the fog, she's a black outline floating in orange neon. Strips of duct tape at the backs of her knees glint silver.

"You think you can convince J.T. to spin some fucking Ramones every once in a while?", she asks, rubbing at her nose. "You got your system all tied up with techno bullshit, and all I want is to hear my man Dee Dee every once in a while."

Hiro's pace picks up by half a click, closing the gap induced by his lagging behind. He nearly collides with a prostitute; scowling in her direction as he falls back into step beside Daisy. "You got any idea what a pain in the asscrack it is to match the fucking ramones up to another track? You can't mix the Ramones, Daisy. I mean, it's all four-four, right, but it doesn't soun' right." Hands get wedged, straight-armed, into the side pockets of his labcoat. "The fuck we goin'?"

Paksenarrion gives the pair a curious glance as she passes thru, continuing westward. Her long strides carry her past at which point she offers a polite 'Evening..' as she passes.

Music talk makes Daisy flatline. Her forehead wrinkles into nested chevrons; she folds her arms underneath her breasts, taps her foot, waits for Hiro to catch up.

"The fuck do you care?", Daisy asks, pawing through the central pocket of her hoodie. No smokes. No pills. Not even the Valium she kiped from Keene. Then, suddenly wheedling: "Yo, Hiro. You got a smoke?"

Incongruous -- or, perhaps, entirely congruent: Hiro flashes a smile, and a casual 'V' of index and middle fingers, in the direction of the woman hailing them. If kid's on a mood swing, the thing has a diesel engine. Hands unfold from his pockets; he comes to a dead stop again, offering a crumpled packet of Marlboros up to Daisy. "You got my lighter?" he asks, patting himself down.

Yes, Daisy has Hiro's lighter. No, he lent it to her. No, she hasn't pawned it yet. No, really. Zinc-plated Zippo. No decorations.
Wordlessly, she holds it up, flicks it against her thigh, and makes fire, turning a patch of fog bright orange.

Hiro gives Paksenarrion a flat, blank look, attention swinging back to Daisy. "Fuck was that?" he asks her, as if she'd know. "Quebequoithehell?" He slots two marlboros between his lips; leans forward to flare both to life, and plucks one free to offer to the younger girl. "I thought Toronto was supposed to be the friendly city."

Daisy half-shrugs; a roll of her shoulders that conveys that she doesn't care enough not to care. She puffs on the Marlboro, complains about the mythical fiberglass in their filters, complains about it being Thursday and her being Monday, complains about Keene stacking the deck so he always winds up as the Sabbath, and exhales. By the time she finishes her protracted rant -- during which you're not allowed a word in edgewise -- she's mostly finished with her cigarette.

Hiro is used to this. He nods helpfully -- or, perhaps, helplessly -- at appropriate intervals, finishing his cigarette somewhere between complaints regarding 'Monday' and '...grilled cheese sandwiches'. Hiro hates grilled cheese: he comments on this as an afterthought: "Butter shouldn't be brown." He discards his butt in the gutter, showing an environmentally conscious soul.

Daisy flicks the cherry of her cigarette with the tip of her fingernail until it finally gutters out and pockets the butt. "Fuckin' butter," she acknowledges, turning to face the door next to her.

Orange neon announces that this fine establishment is RUMP SHAKERS and that it has been OPEN SINCE 1983. It is a NIGHTCLUB.

"Maybe I should get a webcam," she muses, staring at RUMP SHAKERS neon symbol: what appears to be a crude Algonquin pictograph of a stripper.

Who is Hiro to crush the hopes and dreams of an aspiring star?

His smile is something one receives in the laundry room at the state pen.

"I told you, Daze, there's money to be made on the internet." He made a point of plucking his zippo from between Daisy's fingers while she took her cigarette: no telling when, otherwise, he'll get it back. The lighter gets dropped into a hip pocket of his cargo pants. "I've already registered junkho.org." He pronounces it 'junkoh-dawt-oarg', so as to obfuscate the spelling.”

Daisy's eyes narrow to small and suspicious slits. She stares at you dubiously, face utterly flatline.

"Or maybe I'll just take s'more quarters out of the till," she says uncertainly. It can't be that she's figured out your con. "I've got to start that shit over, though, on account of I nearly got arrested on account of some of the states the quarters are from don't even exist. The fuck is 'Mu'?"

"'sa city in Kentucky," Hiro fires back automatically. Like he'd know anything about Mu -- that's Jesse's territory. Doc Eon and the Voltraz on the Sunken Continent! Doc Eon volume five, issue 63, part 4. The pig-boy stops dead in his tracks, blinks repeatedly. "I'm out of tune," he says, blandly. He checks his watch -- "What day am I, anyway?"

"Malkhut."

Daisy's Hebrew accent is worse by far than the Mockney bullshit she affects when she's either high or thinks she's high. Sure, she can manage the hard, gutteral 'kh'; what's amazing is that she can hold it for nearly a full second.

And never mind that Malkhut isn't a day anyway.

"'least you're not Monday. You'd be stuck doin' shit for the Sabbath's dumb ass all day. And when the Sabbath is Keene, you know how bad that gits?"

"Yeah -- that's what's wrong. Let's find a place with a bathroom." Nearing the corner, Hiro looks up; nudges Daisy in the ribs. He inclines his head towards a pair of black doors crowned by a neon blue microphone. "Drop off an application. I gotta tune in wit' saturn. Maybe they'll give you a job. Nuh - holdin' the microphone, dig."

"No shit. Saturn's my favorite planet. I get to go in the K-hole," Daisy says. Kether-Hole. The Dissasociative Hole of the Supernal Crown. The sheaf of applications get folded and jammed sideways into her pocket, and she ghosts through the fog, on toward Whiskey Saigon.

Hands wedged firmly in the bottoms of his pockets, Hiro ghosts through the door Daisy-first: scanning the establishment over her shoulder. Bathrooms, bathrooms -- yeah. There. "I'll be right back, he comments, extracting a digit to thump the girl in the shoulder, and immediately abandoning her. He's making a beeline for the men's.

The blacklight highlights in her hair, not quite washed out after the last of Kid Sinister's parties, glitter green-gold. The orange and violet and shock-blue buttons on her backpack shine like spotlights. The horn-rims of her glasses glitter with spatters of day-glo orange. Even the spent glowstick dangling from her bag sputters back to life, shining green.

Cutting through the crowd, shoulders skipping off the early-evening dancers, it's obvious that she's heading for -- yeah. There. Got it. The bathrooms, right behind Hiro, whistling as though she's actually being nonchalant.

She disappears into the men's room just after he does.

A short time passes: low voices arguing, someone colliding with a stall door, and then - then, suspicious silence. A handful of minutes passes, the possibility of a bathroom quickie steadily diminishing. The door's propped open with a white sneaker, and someone -- Hiro, as he emerges -- says: "Yeah. I'll get you somethin'. Hurry up." He's replaced his spectacles with a pair of mirrored lenses nearly matching their predecessors, regarding the club with slow, wordless langour. His emergence comes in relative slow motion; nonetheless, a straight line for an out of the way booth, painfully conscious of near-collision with other patrons.

Black, of course, reflects no colour, not even ultraviolet; not even blacklight. Daisy's hoodie has been worn to asphalt grey, but it shouldn't be reflecting any light. The quarter glows green. Her name, picked out in white, glows pale violet. Those, of course, should be glowing.

But what are those tiny violet motes, scattered like flour across the front of her hoodie, falling to the ground as she walks -- conspicuously straight-shouldered-and-even -- behind Hiro?