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Babylon had elected for one last round of patrol rather than a quiet night in. Who cared if he had to catch an early flight tomorrow? He could always sleep on the plane! Evil, on the other hand, did not sleep, and so brave (or foolish) squires had to practice constant vigilance. Even if those squires were supposed to be up at five AM the next morning to go visit their grandparents in Boca Raton. Which Babylon was. But never mind.

He was starting to think he'd bitten off a bit more than he could chew with this Youma. Any time you found something rifling through garbage cans you tended to under-estimate it, but once it turned around and you became acquainted with its four-inch saber-teeth your thought process had to do a 180 as well. First the brain and then the feet, went the logic, because once Babylon had gotten a clear grasp of what he was dealing with, he'd done his best to back away slowly and let the dogbeast become someone else's problem.

The dogbeast was, however, very firmly Babylon's problem. Two blocks and three thrown trashcans later this was an unshakeable fact. He'd managed to make the damn thing limp a little, but beyond that the squire was feeling pretty failwhale tonight. He was really glad Valhalla wasn't here to see him mess up so badly, or worse, Vindemiatrix, but on the other hand...

...He'd have sort of appreciated the help. Babylon kicked over another trash can and flung it at the encroaching monster. "Stay back!" he panted, waving his lantern in what he could only hope was a threatening manner. The youma was undeterred. "Bad dog!"

This would have probably been funny if it weren't so goddamn pathetic. (Actually, to any sadistic negaverser who might have been watching from a rooftop, it was most likely hilarious.)

"Help yourself!" Babylon yelled back, quite unphased by the senshi's arrival. In his experience, they had a tendency to show up when you most needed them. It was quite nice, really - although he noted that this one wasn't wearing tights. Ergo, he didn't think he was obligated to kiss his rescuer. Still, it was nice that someone else was dealing with dog thing while Babylon tracked down another trash can.

In response to Boreas's attack, the dogbeast yelped and retreated for a moment - but only a moment, before its plaintiff yelps turned into snarls and it turned its attention on the white-haired pretty boy.

Babylon hauled a** to get his trashcan over to where it could do some damage, and hurled it at the dog-beast mid-lunge. "Thanks, bro," panted the squire, circling the creature uneasily as it found its footing. They had it backed up against a wall, but it was still as mean as ever. Maybe meaner - hitting things with trash cans had a tendency to exacerbate the problem before it made it better.

At the very least, it didn't seem sure of who to attack anymore. Both boys had thrown something at it now, and that confused the dog beast on some fundamental level: when you wanted to eviscerate both of your prey creatures, which did you go after first?

Babylon snatched up a lid and held it like a makeshift shield. "Maybe you should, um, use your senshi magic thing while it's confused?"

Speaking made the youma make up its mind. It lunged for Babylon, who threw up his makeshift shield like he had a piece of tin between himself and a shitty way to die. Massive jaws clamped down on the lip of the trashcan lid and began to fold it backwards, and now Babylon was involved in some kind of sick game of tug-of-war. (This would be a really, really shitty way to die, he thought grimly.)

Babylon released his grip on the trash can lid just as Boreas's attack struck the youma, sending it tumbling backwards. He liked how the laws of physics worked in his favor sometimes, potential energy and all that. The squire charged towards the now-shivering (cowering? Or was that just what this senshi's attack did?) youma, lantern blazing, and gave it a good, solid thwack upside the head.

The beast howled.

"Yes, that's what you get," grunted Babylon, hitting it again. "Take it!"

He glanced towards the senshi, figuring the creature was cowed enough now that they could finish it off at their leisure. "You sure saved my a**!" Babylon grinned at the other boy. "Seems to happen a lot, me and getting rescued by senshi," he admitted. "Makes me feel kind of useless- WOAH, HOLY ********."

He'd ignored the beast too long, and it had gotten hold of his ankle and dragged him down to the ground. Babylon flailed around and tried to hit it once more with the lantern - he needed to get his foot out of this deadlock, and soon, or he might just lose it!

Somehow, between Boreas's second attack and Babylon's desperate kicks to the youma's snout, the boys managed to finish it off. With a final, pitiful howl, the dogbeast released hold on the squire's foot and burst into pile of black dust. Babylon wouldn't kid himself, though. It was all the senshi's doing - all he'd managed to do was make the youma mad.

The squire scooted away from the pile of black grit left in the youma's wake and investigated his foot. As far as he could tell, his boot had taken the brunt of the damage. The leather was pitted and slobbered on and even pierced in places, but he still had feeling in his toes and could wiggle them well enough. He flashed the senshi a thumbs-up. "All in one piece, thanks to you!"

Climbing to his feet, Babylon put weight hesitantly on his foot. He'd gotten a lucky break tonight - it didn't seem like he'd taken any lasting damage, but he wouldn't know for sure until he could get his shoe off when he got home.

The squire gave the senshi a sheepish salute. "And my rescuer is...? So I know who to send creepy anonymous flowers to, obviously." After tonight, he was pretty sure an Edible Arrangement was in order. One of the nice ones, with chocolate, or else a cookie bouquet. (Did they still sell those?)

Babylon laughed, only half uneasily. "Hey, lucky shots all around," he assured the other boy. Lucky shots seeming to be how anyone managed to survive anything half the time. One could argue that Babylon didn't take his knightly duties seriously enough, but then he didn't take much of anything seriously, and this more than most.

"If you want to call me Handsome then I'll answer to Handsome," Babylon replied with what he could only hope was some measure of suaveness. Especially since inwardly he was wondering if Boreas was mistaken. Him? Handsome?! Was there some other squire here who Boreas was talking to and Babylon was just in the way? Of course, it would figure that for every Chris Gallo out there who described him as a hobbit, there would be someone who decided that short, freckly, with a broken nose and terrible haircut was their type.

Or maybe he just needed to relax and take the compliment without over-analyzing it too much. There was at least one other person on the planet who found Babylon attractive enough to want to kiss him, after all, he reminded himself. And present company wasn't exactly hiding the fact that he used his night job to meet people.

"But if you change your mind about the whole Handsome thing," he answered, "Babylon works, too. Babylon of Mercury." Not that the Mercury bit wasn't obvious - he only had an enormous sigil running up the side of his leg.

"Not that I would want you to change your mind about the whole handsome thing," he added awkwardly. Because having someone else decide to mock his height would just be six kinds of terrible. It was just the principle of the thing! Hopeless addiction to monogamy aside, ignoring the fact that someone was hitting on him for a change and Babylon wasn't in a position to do anything about it, it was just nice to have someone acknowledge to you that they found you attractive. He didn't get told as much nearly often enough.

"The eternal gratitude's implied, right?" he asked, after a moment.

The description was familiar enough to Babylon that it called to mind the stern earth knight who'd stopped him from breaking his neck. "Yeah," nodded the squire, "I know who you mean." As for all the knights being lookers, well, even the girls he'd met were pretty. Hesperis was more intriguingly androgynous than anything, but he had to hand it to Lina that she was beautiful. (Not being into that sort of thing didn't mean he couldn't appreciate her for what she was.)

"Didn't you hear?" cracked Babylon. "Being beautiful is a pre-requisite for super-powers. I've yet to meet an ugly senshi, you know. Though you're the first boy one I've met who wasn't wearing tights." Or at the very least the first to stand out in his mind. He was nearly certain he'd met others, but none of them had made much of an impression. Large meetings had a tendency to get Babylon a bit distracted - you couldn't expect him to remember the names of everyone in the room.

Sweet, bashful, and straight?

Babylon, who did not believe in Gaydar, gave himself an imaginary point on the 'I am not a stereotype' scoreboard anyway. However, it didn't seem fair to not let Boreas know that he was flirting with someone who, under different circumstances, might have accepted the offer. Running a bemused hand through his messy hair, Babylon objected - "I'm going to have to contradict you. Sweet? Debatable. Bashful? Certainly."

"Straight?" He let the word hang in the air, a smirk crossing his freckled face. "Never in my life. Taken, but never straight."

Unlike some people, Babylon didn't find any sense of relief in being mistaken for a heterosexual. "So, I mean, it's not going to happen but not for the reasons you assume." It wasn't a matter of orientation - it was that Babylon was hopelessly devoted to monogamy."

There were a lot of people who, if they'd overheard that question, would shudder and spit over their shoulders. One Babylon was bad enough, but two of him? Perish the thought! The squire laughed jovially. "If you knew me better," he assured the senshi, "You'd be singing a different tune. One of me is more than enough for most people I know."

Rocking on his heels, Babylon smirked at Boreas. "I'm fortunate to have stumbled into a costume that's both flattering and functional. The short shorts, I agree, are egregious. It's getting cold out - and can you imagine the chafing?" He was so glad those wardrobe malfunctions were someone else's problem and most certainly not his.

Having cockblocked himself to the best of his abilities, something that Babylon would almost certainly regret an hour and a half from now, he fired a jaunty salute to the senshi. "Thanks for the help with dogface," he declared, and would have indicated the dead youma but it had all but dispersed onto the wind. "I'll see you around, beautiful," he continued, gingerly testing his ankle. It wasn't so bad that he couldn't make it home. "Got an early flight to make or I'd stick around and chat."

Babylon felt a distinct warmness in his face that only could have been accompanied by blushing beet red. He wasn't used to the attention, the knight admitted to himself as he limped towards home. Maybe Boreas had had a point, although Babylon wasn't in the right state of mind to start wondering whether he actually was an attractive person or not. Thus far he'd been compared to a hobbit one too many times to feel particularly handsome.

Then again, Elijah Wood did have a successful acting career, so maybe there was something to be said for looking like a hobbit. You never knew.

At any rate, it was certainly a night to remember.

[Fin.]