Welcome to Gaia! ::

Coming to patrol at the waterpark was probably his best idea this week, decided Babylon as he surveyed the world from the top of the HydroDropper. His uniform would be no good soggy, so he had so far avoided the lazy river, and the water to the slides was off at night, but the different scaffolds and play structures made for good practice with his newfound agility. Or, this was his reasoning.

In truth, he was avoiding work.The chances of a youma appearing at a water park in the middle of the night were slim to none - there was no one here, after all, and didn't they prey on people? it would be much more likely to find one here during the day, he figured, which he had not.

So this seemed as good a place as any to practice jumping and climbing without having to actually, you know, fight anything.

Babylon too a step up onto the railing of the jumbo slide. He was going to climb the scaffolding all the way down to the end or, so help him god, he was going to do it until he got it right. Good practice for rock climbing, too.

Trespassing be damned. The Page got a good grip on the bar above his head and pulled himself up. It wasn't like he was hurting anything. Who had to know?

"I've survived worse," grunted the youth in the blue-trimmed uniform, swinging himself towards the next bar. He grabbed it and brachiated over to it. "It's just - what - four stories?" he asked, glancing down. Five stories, natch. Higher than the trees he'd fallen from, but not by too much.

It then occured to him that he should probably see who was talking to him. "Oh, s**t," hissed Babylon, quickly flipping his hands around to face the older knight. He noted his adult-ness, but they looked to be on the same side. The sigil on his belt wasn't of Mercury, but Babylon didn't know enough about astrology to place it.

"Actually," the boy continued, swinging a little. "I've been wondering - just how far does our ability to heal go?" he asked. "Are we talking, like, Wolverine? Or Captain Jack Harkness? Or less? It's kind of hard to test it, you know."

Particularly Captain Jack Harkness style healing. You kind of had to die to find out if you possessed it, which clearly had its hazards - particularly if you were wrong. Then you were dead.

He glanced back down at the ground and wiggled his feet. It occurred to him that he'd been lying earlier - he had not, in fact, survived worse falls.

"I fell out of a tree last week and was fine," said Babylon, but swung back towards the platform anyways. He grabbed onto the next bar with ease - at least all his weekends spent rock climbing were good for something, finally- "It was a pretty high tree."

Not as high as this. Another swing, and Babylon launched himself back onto the platform, rolled once, and landed on his knees. He spread his arms wide and grinned at the older knight. "Taa-daa!" he exclaimed, and got quickly to his feet, dusting off his uniform as he stood.

Tunic properly smoothed and hair properly mussed, Babylon stuck out a hand to the older knight. "I'm Babylon Page of Mercury," he said, suddenly endeavoring to self-consciously make his voice sound deeper and more serious than it was. He was nineteen, but looked all of seventeen, and the fact had never been more painfully obvious to him than it was right now.

"So, uh," he added, "Who are you? Nifhel?" he asked, trying to remember the names the angry talking cat had rattled off at him, the boys he'd said he'd keep an eye out for. "Valhalla?"

When these were not met with any kind of sudden response, he quickly surmised, "None of the above, I take it."

Babylon practically preened at being told 'very good' by the older knight. "Camelot," he nodded. "Like some kind of Knights of the Round Table thing?" He was personally more familiar with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court than any of the classic European versions of the story, and even more familiar with the works of Monty Python, but it didn't seem to stand in his way when it came to getting the basic reference. And the guy certainly looked dressed the part. Babylon had initially, briefly, wondered why his own uniform didn't look more middle eastern... then he'd actually gone to Mercury and realized very quickly that his costume was more than suited to the planet he served.

But right. Where had he heard about Nifhel and Valhalla. Because he supposed it was weird to introduce yourself by inquiring about people you'd never met. "So, like, there was this bitchy talking cat?" he asked, watching Camelot's face for any signs that this was out of the ordinary. Babylon had just gone with it, but now he was having doubts - what if it wasn't normal to talk to cats?

"Zirconia, right?" he added, when Camelot did not look ready to call him insane. "She was a bitchy cat, and then she turned into a bitchy girl and told me to run like the wind, and somewhere in there she mentioned Nifhel and Valhalla. Who I think are other Pages, like us, except she called us mutants?"

Babylon crossed his arms and scowled at the memory of the cat. "She was... actually a really rude cat, now that I think about it."

Although he did not know any cats that were known for their politeness, so this was entirely subjective.

Babylon cast another look at Camelot, then crossed back over to the railing. He gave it a testing shake, trying to see how stable it was. In another minute he would have climbed up and used it like a balance beam if he didn't think the older knight would try to yank him down again. "So they're, like, kids?" he asked. "My age? Older?"

He reminded himself that Lina was about his own age - she only seemed older because of her experience. Likewise, Gianfar he knew to be his own age. Zirconia he wasn't sure of, but she'd said she went to Sovereign Heights. So were they all about eighteen or nineteen, then, with Camelot the odd one out? "...How old are you?" he asked.

Reckless may as well have been Babylon's middle name, based on the fact that he was now walking out onto the slide itself. There was a flat spillway at the top, roughly two yards long, followed by a sharp drop onto the ride proper. "Late bloomer, then?" he asked, grinning devilishly at the older knight. It did feel a bit odd, misbehaving as he was in front of someone old enough to be his father, but then... there were no real authority figures here, and age was just a number.

And being paid attention to out of concern was still being paid attention to. So long as he wasn't being flat-out ignored, Babylon was happy.

"So," he asked, walking slowly back towards the platform, "Are there other cats? Or just Zirconia-the-bitchface?" He scrunched up his nose and lips - a demonstration, perhaps, of what a bitchface looked like? He reached the edge of the platform, spun on his heel, and started back towards the drop.

"You know," he called, "The tv keeps talking about girls in miniskirts, but so far everyone I've met have been boys or chicks dressed up like extras from Tron. Or a cat."

We mustn't forget the cats.

Babylon paused at the edge of the drop and looked down. "So, like, girls in miniskirts," he said. "Do they just get all the publicity? Because of the miniskirts?"

"Right," Babylon nodded slowly. "So the cats are the senshi's problem, good to know." News that he didn't have to actually put up with any more crazy talking animals than he wanted to came as a relief. He'd just direct them all to Gianfar and sit back, free of verbally-enhanced felines.

Babylon took a few steps up the slide and sank down onto his bottom, short limbs curving to fill the semi-circle of pipe. "I haven't met any negaversers yet," he said presently, rolling the glowstick between his palms. "I've been mistaken for one, though. And I've fought their monsters."

He tapped his feet against the side of the slide and looked over at Camelot. "How long have you been doing this knight stuff?" he asked, pointing the blunt butt of the glowstick at the older man. "You know, slaying dragons, rescuing maidens, making sure pages don't fall off of carnival rides...?"

He felt like his own newness was written across his forehead in red permanent marker. Even if it had been a month and a half since Easter, he still felt inexperienced. A month and a half, and not a single negaverser! What were the odds?

"Is that what we're supposed to be doing?" asked Babylon, tossing his glowstick in the air and catching it. "Protecting the innocent? Because I thought we were just supposed to be, like, cleaning up monsters or something."

Clearly, Babylon had missed a memo somewhere about the general mission statement of the knights. Maybe it was due to his total uninvolvement prior to his awakening - he had no clear concept of the sides in the war, or even that there was one. Maybe it was this kind of cluelessness that had lead to his ancestor's disappointment...

Babylon paused on that memory very briefly, working the words 'are you what has become of us' over silently in his mouth, and then pushed it away.

"A senshi mistook me for a negaverser," he said. "Briefly. He'd never seen a page before. Um. I'd never seen a page before, either."

Babylon tapped the glowstick against the bottom of the slide, pah-pah-pah-PAH, pah-pah-pah-PAH, and looked owlishly at Camelot. "Well, you know, you just said it - two sides in a bigger war, right? Senshi and Nega? That's their fight. But if we were the same thing as senshi then I'd be running around in tights and calling myself Sailor Sparklypoo and firing rainbows at people. Which, clearly, I'm not."

Not that he had anything against people who ran around in tights. They were fine to fight alongside and admire and he wasn't about to go critiquing his best friend's choice of costume, but it wasn't for him. He was thankful for his pants.

He shrugged at the older knight. "I mean, I'm not really involved with the senshi, I just clean up the mess the Negaverse leaves behind."

He fell silent, save for the drumming of his glowstick against the slide. Pah-pah-pah-PAH. Pah-pah-pah-PAH. Something had been bothering him since his trip to Babylon, something he was slowly beginning to articulate.

"Have you been to Camelot?" he asked. "Like I've been to Babylon. I saw a man there, and he just kept saying 'So you're what's become of us.' Like he was disappointed in me. I don't know what I'm doing, but I don't want to be a disappointment to anyone."