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Finn found Leah loitering outside a twenty-four hour deli, looking jumpy and perturbed and wearing far too few clothes. When she got into the jeep, he could smell the alcohol on her breath - fruity and sour, 4lokos for sure. "Just drive," she commanded. Finn bit his tongue and did so.

Leah rolled down the window and leaned out, staring at the lights of passing shopfronts. Finn chewed his lips to keep from saying something to her, but the fact that his fifteen-year-old sister was sitting in his passenger seat in fishnets and a micro-mini skirt was distracting. She rolled over in her seat and gave Finn a devilish grin. "That was the most epic party before the cops busted it, ********."

"You know that you're fifteen, right?" asked Finn, giving her a sidelong glace.

"I mean, it was seriously ******** awesome." She didn't seem to have heard him. "You never go to parties, do you?"

Finn kept his white-knuckled grip on the wheel. "Not high school parties, I don't."

Leah considered this for a moment. "Ooh, what about gay bars?" If his fingers had not become one with the steering column, Finn would have smacked himself in the forehead.

"No, Leah," he groaned. He'd tried. He'd gotten his fake confiscated and ripped to shreds. A hundred bucks in the toilet. End of story. Leah didn't seem satisfied with his answer; she gave him a thumbs down.

"Lame." She put her Doc Marten's-clad feet up on the dashboard. "Lame lame lame lame lame. What's the point of having a f** older brother if he never does anything fun? Finn, we should stop at the deli on Fourth Avenue on the way home. They never card. I'll get you plastered!"

Finn did not want to go into all the things wrong with her previous statement, but he was going to start with the part where she called him a f**. "Who gave you the idea that you're allowed to toss that word around?" Did his ears deceive him? Had he been dragged out of bed at three AM to get slurred at by his little sister, who was absolutely wasted (and fifteen)?

Oh, hell no.

"What, f**?" asked Leah.

Finn made a sour face. "Leah," he proposed, "How would you like it if someone called you a c**t? Or a k**e?"

"Finn, I call myself those things," she replied, tapping her feet against the dash. Finn blanched. His parents were paying crystal academy tuition so that Leah could swear like a sailor? What a rip off.

Finn focused on the road, not sure of how to respond to that. Leah appeared to give it some thought, though in her drunken state, it was hard to tell what she was thinking about. Eventually, she opened her mouth again, and what emerged wasn't pretty. "So queermo," she said, "Can we go to a gay bar? Make it an all-nighter?"

Now, at this point, they were all of about three blocks from their parents' house and the weather wasn't terrible. Actually, it was pretty nice out, and the street was well-lit. Finn looked both ways and pulled the jeep up to the curb.

"What?" asked Leah.

"You're walking home," said Finn. If she was going to be a bitchy drunk he wasn't going to have her in his car. Not to mention she looked like she might vomit. "Hoof it."

With a final protestation of "Lame," Leah got out of the car and stormed off down the block, looking for all the world like a junior prostitute. Finn banged his head gently against the steering wheel. Served her right.

Moments later, he was roused from his stupor by a shriek in the night.

Finn snapped to attention. That was Leah. That was definitely Leah, he'd heard her shriek enough times to be certain of it. He fumbled with his seatbelt and flung himself out of the car, transforming as he went, and dashed off down the street after her. Brat or not, she was still his sister! What had he been thinking, sending her off drunk and alone like that?

Big brother of the year, Babylon was not.

The scene the page encountered was like something out of a bad dream. He'd never seen a negaverser take energy before, was just vaguely aware that they did it, really, and he had no way of knowing what was really happening to his sister. She wasn't moving... this looked bad. This looked really ********> the page thought to himself, skidding to a halt and brandishing his glowstick for all it was worth. "Hey!" he screamed. "Get away from her!"

The negaverser was armed with... paper? It took every ounce of self control Babylon could do not to snort with laughter despite the seriousness of the situation. Who fought with paper? Even he had a better weapon than that, and he had a glowstick, which was less weapon and more rave accessory. What was he negaverser going to do - papercut him to death? That seemed unlikely, even in a worst case scenario.

"I didn't know there was an anime convention in town." He tilted his head to the side and took a steady step forwards. All Babylon wanted to do was check if Leah was even breathing - and he couldn't do that with this fool in his way. Clutching the glowstick, he advanced towards his sister's still form.

"What did you do to her?" the page demanded lowly. The answer didn't matter. Any way, there would be hell to pay. It was easy to talk about the negaverse being scum when they were killing anonymous people in the streets - but this fight had just gotten personal. "I'm gonna pound your face in!"

Good luck doing that with a glowstick, Babylon.

"A quota?" scoffed Babylon, squaring off with the Negaverser. He tried backing them away from Leah's prone form - if they were going to fight, it would not be on top of her. "So what, you assault defenseless teenaged girls?" This was an exaggeration: Leah's boots were as vicious as they were hot pink, and were she not drunk off her as she could probably have given her attacker a run for his money. However, her blood alcohol level being what it was... absolutely not.

It had been stupid of him to kick her out of the car in this state - a momentary lapse of judgement that he was paying for karmically now. She looked defenseless lying on the sidewalk... it was almost enough to make him forget how pissed he'd been with her minutes previously, or even how much of a brat she was all of the time.

"Guys like you make me sick," the page spat. He honestly wasn't sure which would have been worse - a negaverser or a rapist. Somehow superhero-ing had done a number on his moral compass, and he was now trying to decide whether it was worse to be a super-villain murderer or a gang banger and drawing a blank. "So, it looks like you're not going to make your quota."

Babylon slapped the glowstick against his hand like a police baton and planted himself firmly between the negaverser and his unconscious sister. Defiant gleam in his eye, he demanded, "What are you going to do about that?"

Leah probably wasn't going to remember any of this in the morning, which was probably for the better. She was out cold.

"Space pirate?" sputtered Babylon, who was already thrown for a loop by the news of quotas. That was just sick! It was like some kind of horrible parody of traffic cops! If the Negaverse didn't include people who were just plain psycho (for example, ******** Painite), Babylon wouldn't have been able to take them seriously. But as it was, this twerp had attacked his sister and that was one drunk girl too many.

Wait, flippy sparkle powers? That sounded a lot like... "You think I'm a senshi?" the page asked incredulously. Wow. How dense did you get? He stared, baffled by this spastic negaverser... who was apparently postponing their fight to have a spaz attack.

And then he got punched in the solar plexus and tumbled backwards. Served him right for not taking this seriously! "******** s**t!" gasped Babylon, somersaulting backwards involuntarily. He crashed into a pair of trash cans and sprawled across the pavement. The glowstick escaped his grasp and tumbled down a storm drain.

Babylon blinked for a moment, then struggled to his feet. He absolutely wasn't having good luck with his weapon lately: first broken, then lost! "I'm a knight," he clarified, rushing at the lieutenant. Proper ranks be damned. "Totally different!"

That... that... that douchebag thought Babylon furiously from where he'd fallen. He was better than this! He was better than being hit with a lucky punch and then covered in paper stars! Was he going to sit there and let some s**t-for-brains drain his little sister's energy? Babylon gritted his teeth. Was he going to sit here, and watch some over-caffeinated brat basically, metaphorically rape his sister? This reeked of frat boy with a packet of roofies.

Hell no, Babylon was not going to sit here and watch this. The page struggled to his feet once more and tried to rip his weapon through the air. It was lost and it was difficult and he needed it - the glow stick was like a security blanket, and he was going to prove just how dangerous it could be.

Except the weapon he called back was not the glowstick he had just dropped down the storm drain. It was a lantern, and it looked metal and it looked dangerous. Babylon grabbed it from the air and felt power rush through him. Although he'd been attached to the glowstick... this was infinitely better.

"Not on my watch," he declared, stomping over to the uppity lieutenant. He hefted his new weapon in his hands, and then gave it a solid swing.

WHAM.

"Back away from the drunk girl!" exclaimed Babylon Squire.

The lantern was surprisingly effective. Babylon gave it a wondering look for a moment, then stalked the lieutenant over to the rubble heap where he'd fallen. The page was spitting mad, and he wasn't going to let the brat off the hook without a good talking to - although, wary of Europa's wrath, he wasn't going to inflict any more harm unbidden. "I hope you learned a lesson tonight," he snapped.

Hefting the lantern, Babylon decided that this kid didn't look terribly bright - he ought to fill him in on what that lesson was supposed to be. "Don't victimize teenaged girls."

The squired's opinion of the negaverse had sunk to an all-time low, but at least he had a reason to hate them now. Before, it had seemed to him that they were just pointlessly violent. Now after tonight's display, he thought of them less like some kind of military and more like a gang of hooligans, determined to rule Destiny City (and the world) based on terror and shadowy tactics alone. And attacking drunk girls, alone on city streets at three in the morning? That was just the lowest of the low.

"You do it again, and there's going to be hell to pay." He tapped the crooked bridge of his nose. "Smash your face in, make you match me, huh?" Confident that the lieutenant was not going to get up from the trash any time soon, and might even still be there for the garbage men to find in the morning, Babylon turned and scooped his sister up.

He sighed as he jogged back towards the car, Leah's head bouncing limply against his shoulder. Between the bump on the head and the likely alcohol poisoning, it looked like he was going to be making a trip to the ER tonight.