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Finn put on running clothes to head out, because when you were living with a civilian it was always a good idea to have an alibi. He even did some jogging first to get warmed up, so it wasn't strictly a lie. However, halfway through the park, Finn veered off the path and into the woods. He ran off-road for a while, trying to gauge how far he needed to go in order to be out of sight, and when he felt safe, he jogged to a stop and called his lantern and his cloak to him.

Babylon could hear the traffic of Destiny City swirling in the distance, could see the presence of dozens of different order and chaos power signatures moving through downtown like lights moving across the imperceptible space between his eyes. It was so different from being in Fairbanks and being the only knight for thousands of miles.

Raising his lantern, Babylon stepped into the cacophony.

He decided to do a simple circle of the park, see if there was anyone unsavory lurking in the dark. That was always a professional way to start the night and he was determined to seem, if nothing else, like he had some sense of decorum. After all, he'd earned his cape - it was time to act like he deserved it.

A power signature flared across his senses, blazing bright. Babylon whirled around, trying to pinpoint the source. It was close - not so close to be immediately visible, but he could make it there in a minute or two, tops.

Was it not his duty to check an abnormality like that out?

The knight broke into a jog, chasing the echo of the energy flare. It had vanished now, but unless the source was on the move, he ought to be getting close. Rounding a bend in the path, Babylon scoped out his immediate surroundings. Nothing looked out of the ordinary - there was a teenaged girl sitting on a picnic table, playing with her phone. Babylon cleared his throat. "Excuse me, miss," he said. "I don't mean to alarm you, but have you noticed anything out of the ordinary in say - the last five minutes?"

Ask a stupid question, Babylon supposed, when the young woman answered his question with considerable amounts of sass. But then, in an instant, she was tackling him and putting her arms around his torso, and he stumbled backwards because, s**t, they were about the same size, weren't they? Awkwardly, he settled his arms around her shoulders and let her have her moment. Whoever she was, she clearly thought she knew him - at the very least, she knew his name.

"Hey, um," he said, patting her back. "I'm glad you're so enthusiastic about me being alive." It was better than some people, and it was nice to be wanted! Was anyone going to blame him? Really? Okay. But the fact remained that he wasn't sure who exactly he was dealing with, and that was sort of weirding him out.

So, awkwardly, he continued, "Which is why I hate to make this weird, but I'm not sure I know you?" If he'd met her in a powered form, then the glamour would protect her. She looked sort of like a classmate from Sovereign Heights, but that had been so long ago and so much had happened since that he was having trouble conclusively placing her.

He lifted his arms from around her back. "Sorry," he said. "So maybe. Um. Let's start over. I'm Babylon Knight of Mercury, and I have the pleasure of speaking to.... whom, exactly?"

Babylon was confused, and concerned about her taking his picture, and he remained utterly confused until the girl sprouted ears and a sweet getup. "Oh!" he shouted, hugging her with more enthusiasm. "You're that cat! That girl! That cat girl! Zirconia!" He tried to spin her around, which was easier said than done since they were both the same height and probably around the same weight as well.

When that worked out haphazardly, he set Zirconia down and tried to take a step back from her - animal magnetism willing. "Yeah, no, I'm not corrupt and I'm not dead," he said, catching his breath. "You're never gonna believe this and maybe you're gonna hit me, but I was in Alaska. Which is like, not code for anything, it's really where I was." still, her comment about people being corrupted and dead just served to remind him of Avalon and it made him feel a more than momentary pang of sadness.

"Anyway, hey, hey, I'm not worth crying over," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. Should he - should he wipe his cheeks? He barely knew her, and she was a celestial being of untold power. "So hey, how'd you been? What's your index?" Everyone had been so busy without him, and he'd just been sitting around doing... nothing productive.

He pulled her close again, because he could at least try to console her. Babylon patted her gently on the back, squarely between the shoulder blades. "Seriously, I'm okay. I'm not worth crying over. Okay, Zirconia?"

Babylon nodded, although he wasn't quite sure what she meant by Zirconia not talking much anymore. Finn and Babylon were the same person. so he didn't really have any reason to expect there were any people whose powers worked any other way. He'd ask her later, once she'd calmed down some. "Zia, okay," he said. "Hey, Zia, I'm alive and I'm really, seriously, not worth crying over. I'm kind of a flake and a loser and there are people way more worth crying over than me."

"And I was not literally ******** a state," he added, but allowed her to hug him again because she seemed like she needed it. "So how about we, um, go sit back down?" The knight tried, perhaps futilely, to steer her back towards the picnic table. "And we can tell each other all about how we've been, because I want to hear about your index, and I'm sure you'll be bored to tears by my classes but we can still talk about them."

Like, seriously, he just wanted to cheer her up, and he was going to employ every self-depreciating trick in the book if he had to. "So, like, here's me. I was studying Wildlife Conservation and Management at University of Alaska Fairbanks, and then Valhalla and Ganymede dragged my a** back here to punch bad guys in the face. My old roommate joined the dark side, so I had to find a new one on Craigslist. How are you doing?"

"Hey, in my defense, I also think my art is stupid, and I haven't done any in like two years," protested Babylon, sitting down beside her. Noting the chill in the air, he draped his cape to wrap around her shoulders. Perhaps it was in his best interest not to mention that he planned to return to Alaska for the spring semester just yet - not with the threat of violence hanging over him as it was.

"She was a knight," he said lowly, missing Tate more than he missed Avalon. "Avalon of Earth." He hoped that Zia wouldn't ask for any more information than that, because he hadn't run into Avalon since being back in town and he was frankly dreading doing so. He'd heard Europa talk about how Sailor Leto was running around wearing her cousin's face but wasn't her cousin anymore - maybe that was how it would be with Avalon.

Zia's recap went pretty fast, but it sounded like she'd been up to a lot more fun things than he had - at least she'd kept busy and relevant, and she'd gotten a lot of good information - which was more than Babylon could say for his time in Fairbanks. "Yeah," he agreed, because he couldn't think of anything to sum up all his feelings on how much respect he had for Zia, for taking a bad situation and turning herself into an asset. "Normal 20-something things."

"So," he added, figuring she might be the right person to ask. "I've been out of the loop for a year and a half. Is there anything essential I need to know? Like, stuff I'll wind up getting myself killed over if I don't know it?"

"Yes," said Babylon, and let Zia hug him again. He wasn't especially ready to show anyone how torn up this whole Tate-slash-Avalon situation really had him, but her sympathy did not go amiss. "Thanks. You know, maybe I had you pegged sort of wrong the first time I met you. You're not so bad." Well, that was putting it lightly. "Actually, you're pretty excellent."

"Your point about the generals is sort of interesting," he said thoughtfully, separating from the hug. He settled his lantern between his knees and fiddled with the handle. Sort of was an understatement. "Do you suppose that Chaos might make people go all... unstable? I mean, I don't think I've changed all that much since I became a knight. I'm more mature but I don't think I'm any more or less sane and reasonable. But the Negaverse and the Dark Mirror, their power is just sort of inherently perverse because it comes from Chaos - isn't it?"

It was a theory he'd been working on, ever since it occurred to him that to become a member of the Negaverse, you had to be corrupted, but knights could awaken on their own. And once you'd tasted it - maybe it was a little like addiction. Lina was Linarite once more, he figured. "Do you think anyone can ever be truly purified?" he asked. "Like, after they've been corrupted. Do you think they can ever come back to the light and stay there? Or is it always going to be easier for them to relapse again than someone who's never been corrupt?"

He didn't expect Zia to have any kind of specific answer, but maybe she'd come across something in all her experience.

Babylon nodded, and placed a gloved hand over hers where it rested against his arm. It sounded as though most of his hunch had been fairly correct, even though his experiences were fairly limited. It made him feel a little better, knowing that however much Avalon or Lina might have valued his friendship, Chaos's pull wasn't something you could lightly elude. "But do you think it's possible for someone to actually overcome it?" he asked.

"I mean," he continued, trying to be clearer. "Lina purified but then she went back. Is it possible for someone who was serving Chaos to purify and stay purified? Or will they always fall again in the end?" He knew that Paris and Chris had both insisted Avalon was still worth saving, and that the rest of the Jovians thought that purification was a worthy goal - but Babylon needed to be convinced. Why go through all that trouble when whoever you purified would just fall again, taking your faith in the universe with them?

He took his hand away from hers, feeling awkward. "A lot of the senshi and knights I know, they think we should purify as many of them as we can. But before we even try that, I want to know if it would even stick, or if it would just be some kind of big dumb wild goose chase waste of energy." Babylon didn't mean to sound like a fatalist, not really, but he wanted to be reassured, and Zia was good at that.

Babylon nodded, watching Zia retreat inwardly. Ares and Zirconia's previous corruptions was news to him, but he supposed it made sense that she'd be uncomfortable about the subject matter at hand. "Thanks," he said awkwardly, glancing down at her hands. "I'll keep that in mind. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable - I mean, obviously you're really solidly for Order and not in any danger of corrupting and I trust you a lot and you're really smart and thank you, seriously." Well, that was one way to go from happy to awful in thirty seconds flat.

"So, clearly I just ruined your night," he said, "And I feel like I should make that up to you somehow. What do you say I drop the Knight shtick for a while and buy you like, a frappuccino, or whatever it is you're into drinking and then I'll pick up my patrol later, because it's not like the forces of evil are going to give up and go home just because I take a coffee break."

Babylon hopped up from the bench and dropped his glamour, blue glow and furs vanishing from head to toe and leaving him in his jogging clothes. "What do you say?" he asked, offering her a hand. "Coffee's on me."