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He’d heard good things about Sailor Gunn. He’d also heard that she was ******** insane, but Babylon had to consider that every genius had a certain streak of madness going hand-in-hand. With Babylon closed to him for another week, he needed somewhere to stash Spinel - leaving him having a tea party with Virgo was only a stopgap measure, no one would possibly believe they were fighting and avoid the area after four hours.

So, he tracked down the redheaded senshi. She was, predictably, exactly where he expected her to be, kicking the crap out of some poor, unfortunate dark mirror senshi. Babylon had no plans to get in the middle of that fight - although he personally didn’t have the stomach for killing, and preferred purification, he knew that some people were simply too far gone.

And there was something beautifully efficient about how Gunn moved against the senshi at her feet.

“Can I talk to you?” he called out to her. “Uh, when you’ve got a free moment?”

Babylon watched her smash the life out of the senshi, relatively unphased. He’d spent a hunting season in Alaska, and slaughter was nothing he wasn’t familiar with. Besides, by Zirconia’s description, DMC-aligned senshi were little more than mindless drones, parasitic souls that displaced the original owners at the time of awakening. They were zombies. They’d been dead a long time.

“I’d say it’s more the Negaverse looks like us,” he replied, feeling clever for the first time in a while. “Considering we’re an ancient order thousands of millennia old and they’re a bunch of corrupt assholes running around swinging swords at everything that moves. We just got a slow start out of the gate this time around. That’s all.”

Well, at least she hadn’t actually mistaken him for a general. That would have been harder to explain. “Anyway, Europa sent me to find you. Something about you having a spa comet sort of thing? We’ve got an acquaintance who needs to lay low for a few days.” On the one hand, he understood why Iris was putting them through this escrow period, but on the other hand - there really wasn’t time. Not when Avalon was probably keen on killing everyone even marginally involved, given the chance.

“You got shot by a cop,” said Babylon flatly. Never, in three years as a knight, had he had a run-in with actual, civilian law enforcement - but then, he was probably just stupidly lucky in that respect, to make up for his crap luck everywhere else. He supposed that was impressive, at least, that the senshi he was currently walking beside had gone up against a firearm and won. It was more than a lot of people who got shot by cops could say.

“Europa might have talked it up a bit,” he said, but he supposed that even having a wonder - homeworld - whatever - that was hospitable was a huge step up from what most people had. He was still working on getting his own to a similar point, and from what he understood, Europa’s early attempts at getting hers to any kind of livable state had resulted in her contracting a near-fatal alien wasting disease. So, like, color him impressed!

He quickened his pace to keep up with Gunn’s longer strides. “He’s a corrupt senshi - Spinel of Bells. He’s been thinking of changing sides for a while, but a few nights ago, he saved me by attacking General Avalon and if the Negaverse gets ahold of him, they’ll kill him. Skin him alive and turn him into a youma or whatever it is they do to traitors. His civilian identity’s toast. We had a meeting with Princess Iris about purification last night, but she’s got him in a holding pattern until next week. The safest place for him right now is off the planet, and I burned through my travel pass this week getting us away from Avalon.”

“The Negaverse doesn’t know how to tell senshi their names, same as they don’t know how to find their own true names as knights,” said Babylon. If he noticed her arrogance (he did), he didn’t comment on it - after all, he needed a really big favor from Gunn, and he wasn’t about to risk that over his need to say something snide. “He’s a senshi, but he was forcibly awakened to their side. He won’t know his real name until he purifies.”

He had no shortage of people who needed to lie low for a while and would have gladly gone to Gunn to babysit, but between himself and Europa, Babylon was more comfortable putting his own name forward. “I’ll go with him,” he said. “General Avalon has a bounty on my head. If I stay here on Earth, I’ll have a dozen negaverser’s on my tail every time I power up. Besides, Spinel knows me. He trusts me.”

You had to be careful when you were working with anything even remotely resembling a wounded animal, or you could wind up doing more harm than good. Sending Spinel to space with Europa, who didn’t have the same rapport with him as Babylon did, rang as an especially bad idea. Besides, he’d left Spinel with the impression that Europa was protecting Tallulah - putting the pair of them in the same room for an extended period of time was just begging for a secret identity mishap. He was going to figure out how to tell Europa that her boyfriend was a repentant serial killer, but it was going to have to wait.

“I’ll be able to keep in touch with you with my signet ring,” he explained. “Do you know a knight who can write back for you?”

Babylon, for his part, was seriously questioning Europa’s taste in friends. Maybe Gunn was one of those people who warmed up once you got to know her! But probably not. “You write a message,” he said, legs dangling helplessly. “Paper works, so to parchment and cloth. Write the name of the intended recipient and stamp it with your signet ring. It disappears and they get it instantaneously. Knights get their mail all the time. Senshi get it whenever they power up next. I’ve never tried writing to a negaverser, but I reckon it works.”

Reckon. God. Who the ******** even said reckon anymore.

“We’ll be model guests,” he said, throat feeling tight from her grasp. “We won’t ******** with anything. I promise. We’ll sit inside and play board games the whole time if that’s what you want us to do, I swear to god. I get it. Please put me down. I can’t breathe.”

Europa had scary friends, he thought, and he was never going to mess with any of them ever again.

Babylon rubbed his neck tenderly, making a mental note to wash it off at his soonest convenience - although with the cloak and dagger nature of tonight, he wasn’t sure when he might next get anywhere near a civilian. Especially if he was about to jet off to outer space - which meant that leaving a note for Vanya was probably a good idea. She’d believe any old story about a camping trip, right?

“Thank you,” he said emphatically to the senshi. “You’re every bit as amazing as Europa says you are.” With that, he hurried off into the dark - he had preparations of his own to make.