A blue bullet zooms through water.
College-age kids dance at a rave, and a couple make out in the back, passionately. The girl pushes the boy away and throws him up against a wall while the party rages on away from the secluded spot they’ve found…
… The cartoon plays, it is quite erotic, the man continues to watch while eating his sushi: the cartoon seems to have an S&M bent...
… The girl bites the boy’s arm…
… The man continues eating. The woman in the cartoon has long nails and is squeezing and scratching her lover. The man swigs beer...
… The girl’s nail polish glows as she caressingly strangles her boyfriend. He takes her hand and directs her to squeeze harder. The party continues. The girl is biting the boy’s lips, drawing blood. His feet are raised off the floor, the girl is pushing him against the wall, she is immensely strong, and the boy begins to panic…
… Guns blaze in the cartoon, a man orders shots fired, characters are being hit and dying. The man watching laughs...
… The boy is beginning to pass out, the images the girl sees are distorted as the party continues. The boy is trying to stop the girl from killing him...
… The man continues laughing as the bullets fly in the cartoon…
… The boy gasps for air, begging the girl to stop. People continue to dance around them...
… The cartoon grows more violent, and the man laughs again…
… Another blue bullet shoots through the water...
… The boy’s eyes glaze over, the party continues. The girl is feeling at his mouth, looking for a response. She realizes what she has done and screams. She runs out into the party, and rams head first into a pole.
Police at the scene examine the girl, dead on the floor. Vicky is telling Sara the girl had to be moving at least 40mph when she hit the pole, but human top speed is normally 20mph. Sara is astonished, obviously the girl was faster. Danny asks Jake about the boy, was it a homicide, Jake says his trachea was crushed, but he can’t tell how. Sara figures it was sexual asphyxia, and Vicky and Danny grunt agreement. Vicky isn’t sure how or why these kids killed each other, but it was definitely drug-induced. Enter Detective Dean Horner who says if that’s the case, it’s his crime scene. He greets Danny impudently, and abruptly tells Sara and Danny to leave, making a scathing remark that they haven’t solved his partner’s murder. Danny starts to explain they have over 200 cases, but Dean doesn’t want to hear it, he says they’re paper-chasing, and digs, “it’s a fellow badge.” Danny tries to calm him down and Dean gets nasty, yelling at Danny, but staring at Sara the whole time, and Sara makes him step aside with her for a minute. Controlling her temper, she tries to convince him they’re working on the case, but Dean is determined, his partner, Torres, was blown up in his car and they haven’t figured out who did it. Sara attempts to placate him, and he switches tactics: if she’ll do him a favor and loan him Jake for a “buy”, he’ll call it even. Sara starts to protest until Dean makes a derisive comment about Jake, and Sara agrees irritably. She starts to walk away from him, and he stops her, she’s dressed up (she’s in a nice top and fine leather skirt, her hair done), was she on a date? Sara says yes, and Dean says she “cleans up nice.”
At the station Sara is arguing with Danny, Torres’ death was obviously an amateur drug deal gone wrong, they should move cautiously, the amateurs will come to them, and Danny says Sara is starting to sound like him. Sara quirks a grin, Danny only says things like that when he knows she’s right. Danny changes the subject: Dean has a grudge against her? Sara is hesitant – she went out with Dean. Once. Danny gives her “The Look”. He asks her why did Dean want Jake, he could have found someone else, Sara doesn’t know. She suddenly sees a little blonde girl in a glowing, dreamy light, wearing night clothes and holding a porcelain doll with curly hair, and Danny, seeing her trance, offers her water. Sara is uncomfortable.
Jake and Dean enter an alley in a Porsche, and Dean tells Jake to stay in the car; he is derisive about Jake’s rookie status. Dean makes a cell call to someone in Pasaic, NJ, he reassures the guy they’ll be on time. He gets back in the car, tells Jake the buy is “on”. He asks Jake offhand how he wound up in New York, but he doesn’t seem really interested, and is abruptly rude. The “mark” arrives: Dean and Jake hold guns on either side of the guy’s car – it’s the same guy who’d been watching the cartoon, his name is Big Ben. Dean pulls his gun, and tells Jake to pop the trunk – the bag in the trunk is loaded with about $100K. Dean beats up the guy, pulls off his wig – Ben is completely bald. Dean wants to know where the meet is, the guy dares him to shoot; Dean takes out five of his bullets, spins the cartridge, and plays Russian roulette, making Ben really upset and frightened. He agrees to tell Dean where the meet is if Dean will just stop. Jake is shocked.
Sara goes to Talismaniac. Gabe offers her coffee, and tells her what the two kids were doing is called asphyxophelia. He explains to Sara S&M goes back centuries; in the 1700’s, the Marquis de Sade wrote in his book about “Justine” about Clervil, who hangs her lovers so they can “do things better”; William Burroughs’ also wrote a book about it called “Naked Lunch”. He shows Sara cartoons online of S&M; when she picks on him for subscribing to porn sites, he tells her it’s his work. He asks her, “Where is the Twitchblade?,” and Sara says it’s by the bathroom sink, but Gabe stares at her until she admits she has it. Putting the blade on her wrist, she gestures with her coffee cup to Gabe, and as he goes to get her a refill, Sara sees the little girl again. The girl says, “Wanna play today, Sara?” Sara asks Gabe if he knows anything about designer drugs, he tells her there is one created about three years before, causes “wicked hallucinations,” but that’s about all he knows.
In the trunk of his car, Big Ben is screaming to get out.
Ian sits before the fire in the drawing room, his eyes closed, remembering Sara’s fight with Irons. He sees her slice off Irons hand, and he jumps up, knocking the chair over. He drags a sword point down along the floor heading to Irons sitting in a chair, only it’s just a painting. He flashes to a time as a boy when he wore a cowboy hat and asked when he would be allowed to fight. He sees himself when he screamed at Irons, “I am nothing but what you made me!” He sees when Irons strikes him for not retrieving the Witchblade outside of Arnold Buck’s house. He sees Irons pulling the blade into his throat. He approaches the painting with the sword, and Irons appears to flash his teeth in a tiny smile: Ian slices through the eyes, hacking at the portrait madly until he falls to the floor, spent, the sword still buried in the ruined canvas. He leans back, experiencing “a little death.”
In a sushi bar, a chef slices fish, and Dean pours more sake for a protesting Jake. Deans says Jake should go to this buy as something less than clean-cut. As they wait, Dean criticizes Sara, Jake says she’s cool, but Dean says he’s doing a favor keeping Jake away from her, he doesn’t like her; he says he wants to get her back, and Jake asks for what, but Dean doesn’t answer. They are served Fugu, a blowfish that is toxic if not prepared correctly. Jake tries to refuse, but Dean forces it on him, he eats at this place often, they treat him well, Jake is not going to embarrass him. Jake gripes they tossed someone in a trunk after threatening him and took his money, but Dean says now they have the flash money, they can make the buy. He goes on that Big Ben, has killed numerous kids with drug sales, so he deserves a night in the trunk of the car. He goads Jake into eating the fish; Jake gets a rush from the poison, breaking out in a sweat, he’s confused, uncertain what he’s experiencing, and Dean tells him, “That’s death, Baby! The trick is to feel the poison and not die!” Jake relaxes finally, getting a high from it, and Dean encourages him to keep drinking and eating.
Vicky gives Sara and Danny the report, the drug is a new psychotropic that acts directly on the base brain, specifically the centers for fear and pain: it eliminates them. It’s called “Bob”, because it acts fast and makes your head “bob”. It also releases massive amounts of adrenaline, so Sara concludes it made the girl kill her boyfriend and then make a 100-yard dash in about nine feet – crushing her head in.
A boy walks along a dark street, coming up against a bus, he takes a blue pill (from a bag full of little blue pills), the pill quickly runs through his system and he stands in front of the bus, shrieking defiance as it runs him over.
At the scene, Dean picks up the bag of pills, sees Danny and Sara approaching, and asks why they’re there. Vicky says she invited them, she’d agreed to call them if there was a similar death to the party. Dean asks Sara gruffly why she’s there, and then he whispers to her she looks great. Danny says the girl at the party did strangle her boyfriend, so it’s a homicide. Dean says she killed herself, afterward, so it’s case closed, what do they think this is, a pre-meditated bus stop? Jake quips it’s an unscheduled stop and is praised by Dean. Sara looks at Jake closely, he looks terrible; Dean tries to be funny with Danny, but Danny isn’t interested in playing. Dean takes Jake away, and Danny shakes his head at Sara: they don’t know what’s going on, but neither of them likes it. Sara sees the little girl again, her doll’s head is broken, she backs away, and the Witchblade glows.
In the morning, Sara and Danny approach the station. Sara sees Ian in the shadows, and she waves Danny to go ahead. He hesitates and she explicates: she wants to check into Dean’s finances, she thinks something’s rotten in his story, and Danny goes in. Sara goes to meet Ian, the blade hums at her, and Sara curtly asks Ian, “Do you ever not lurk?” He smiles sweetly at her, and she asks what he wants – Ian replies he wants to feel safe, and Sara agrees with that. Ian says she has nothing to fear, after what he witnessed, but Sara is mistrusting his manner; he reminds her about when she killed Irons, and Sara says she defended herself. Ian quickly agrees – he says she “freed” him, and he tells her, trying to reach for her hand, he wants to be friends with her. He offers to protect her, she denies the need, and he says, “One day…” Sara turns her back on him and Ian disappears.
Continued on next page
David Chokachi as Jake McCartey
Anthony Cistaro as Kenneth Irons
Will Yun Lee as Danny Woo
Eric 'Kaos' Etebari as Ian Nottingham
Kathryn Winslow as Vicki Po