Welcome to Gaia! ::

After all the recent mayhem in his life, it was unusual for Babylon to take a night to patrol all on his own. Still, tonight had found him wandering alone, and there was a certain tranquility to be found in solitude. His new uniform was made of some sort of smart material that was more breathable and lightweight than his old furs, which made patrolling during the summer far easier - shortly put, he was enjoying himself.

A cry rang out through the night. Babylon sensed no powered signatures nearby, whether friend or foe, but he did feel a fairly strong youma. The scream had been human. There was a civilian in danger nearby, he deduced, springing into motion.

Luckily, he'd been close by when he heard the cry, and he found both youma and victim in short order. Leaping from the roof, Babylon slammed into the youma, rolling with it for a meter or two. It was - s**t, he realized, twisting to avoid one of its tails. It was huge!

"Better get back!" he yelled to the civilian, rolling out of the way of the second tail as it slammed against the ground. Babylon pulled himself to his feet and called his lantern to hand, swinging it like a mace. Surely this youma had some sort of weak spot - right?

Oh, to be equally as agile as a chaos monster from deep within the rift! Babylon, however, magical powers or no, was only human, and he could only recover from throwing his weight at a youma so quickly. The beast, on the other hand, wheeled around, ready to strike.

Babylon had no idea what kind of vision this thing had, but he was going to count on it at least partially relying on it. He brushed his fingers over his signet ring, and his appearance became staticky. Then, he did his very best to dodge, the youma crashing to the ground awkwardly behind him. Babylon turned on his heels, lantern raised for another attack, when he heard the clatter.

Out of the corner of his eye, he aw the pair of scales hit the ground by the civilian. Page, he thought, realizing exactly what he'd stumbled into. "Pick that up!" Babylon yelled. "It's like - loot!"

And then he turned back to the youma, readying his lantern for another swing. As he lunged forward for another strike, he could only hope the boy did as he was told.

Babylon let out a possibly-premature whoop of victory and leapt backwards from the youma. Its claws scraped through the cloud of pixelation that surrounded him, but fell just short of hitting the knight's actual body. He darted quickly backwards, giving himself some time and space to maneuver in, and tried to think of how to reach a killing blow. Had the eyes been weak?

The appearance of a new power signature told Babylon more or less all he needed to know, although he did not know exactly who he was dealing with until the page of Mars charged past him, scales swinging.

The attack connected solidly, with a mighty thunk, and the youma stumbled backwards as if concussed. Though still ferocious, it seemed to be weakening. "Awesome!" Babylon yelled. "Great hit!" He revved up his own weapon, spinning his lantern in circles on its chain, and charged forward again. Hitting the head and the eyes had worked so far - so that was what he aimed to do again.

The youma shattered to dust, and as it did, the tension eased out of Babylon's posture. Should such a day come that youma could re-form themselves on the spot, they'd all be ********, but so far dissolution always meant the fight was over. "Yeah, it's done," he said, dragging the back of a gloved hand across his brow. Turning to the page, he added, "Good job for your first night out."

Encouragement! It made the world go round.

Anyway, brand new page. He'd dealt with this a couple of times - enough that, by now, Babylon was feeling decently confident that he could handle all the primer stuff. If three years on the job didn't qualify him for that, then he had no idea what did. "So," he said cordially, "I'm sure you have some questions and I think I can go through them in order. So, that was a youma. It's pure, concentrated Chaos energy wrapped around something so warped that it's human the way gelatin is an animal byproduct. They cause trouble, and destroying them is a kindness."

"You're a page, I'm a knight, we serve Order, and it's basically the light side of the Force. I'm sorry, but there's no undo button. You can power down to your civilian identity but you can't ever get rid of the magic completely," explained Babylon, rattling through all the things he wished someone had pulled him aside and told him as a newly awakened page. "Your uniform's in the style of Mars, so that's where your Wonder will be. Have you, by any chance, got a sense inside your head of what your name is right now? Like, not your legal civilian name, but your Name? Like, I'm Babylon, pleased to meet you."

"You're Glitnir, then," said Babylon with a nod. The words of the oath were as familiar to him as breathing. Maybe, he decided, he'd gone a little too quickly through the explanation - but there was a lot to cover and doubtless the page would pick some things up on his own through experience. Everyone else had, after all. "We don't use our civilian names in the field. It's dangerous. You have a magical glamour keeping anyone from recognizing you."

He hated to bring terrorists into this so soon, but he realized it might be the only point of reference Glitnir had. "I'm sure you've heard about the terrorist menace plaguing our city?" said Babylon, trying to retain some levity. "Well, that's us. But it's okay, because we're the good guys! We've just got, like, super bad press." Seriously, it was the worst.

"Anyway, we're Order, we fight Chaos. The Negaverse and the Dark Mirror. You can tell they're bad news bears because they have names like cartoon super villains." Seriously, nothing good ever began with the prefix Nega.

But he'd sort of skipped a major question. Wonders! Babylon loved Wonder talk. "Your Wonder is the source of your power. It's a place that, in the past, you would have been sworn to protect. I'm Babylon of Mercury, so my Wonder is a city on Mercury. You're Glitnir or Mars, so yours is a something on Mars." He couldn't presume to know what, exactly, but he could at least tell Glitnir how to get there.

"If you focus and say that oath you repeated just now," explained Babylon, "It will take you there. You'll just sort of - feel it pulling. It wants you to find it."

Babylon shrugged haplessly; there was only so much he could explain in so many ways before it just became old hat. Glitnir would pick up more from experience than he would just from standing here talking, and at least as far as combat was concerned he was off to a good start. "None of us choose our names," he told the page. "We're just... some of us inherit them from our ancestors. Some of people carry them over from past versions of themselves. It's complicated."

With regards to wonder visits, he added, "You should definitely go check it out, and while you're there, look for a ring sort of like this one. And as for losing the getup, just visualize yourself letting go of it and you should go back to normal. It's a voluntary muscle, you just have to find it. When you need the outfit back, reach for your scales. They'll be waiting just past the corner of your vision." Or that was the best way he knew how to explain it.

If they lingered here too long, they were going to draw exactly the wrong kind of attention. "Right now," he said, "You should go home, and I'll send you a message tomorrow with this." He tapped his ring. "And give you more information, okay? Right now if we hang around, we're going to attract trouble."