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“He will be,” said Avalon, turning his starseed over in her hands. Technically she wasn’t supposed to steal starseeds, except to keep on her for a quick energy boost. Luckily for her, this whole situation fit neatly inside that technicality, in that she had recently run out of her backup energy, and now she had to get more. It didn’t matter that she’d half-wanted this man dead, this man who looked like Babylon Knight enough to be him. It disappointed her that he wasn’t Babylon after all.

She turned to face the little annoyance at the mouth of the alley, the obsidian sword appearing in her hand. “I’m going to give you one chance to get out of here, girl,” said Avalon, pocketing her ill-gotten gain. “You’ll gain nothing by fighting me except a quick death.” To punctuate her point, she lifted the longsword and set the tip against the man’s chest, between two ribs. Without perceptible effort, the blade slid in--and then out again, pale pink frost marring its mirrored surface.

“He certainly doesn’t need his starseed anymore. And neither do you.”

The page was terrified and trembling. In her hand there was a pitcher, a page’s weapon if Avalon had ever seen one, and the trim on her skirt bore the symbol of a planet that was not Mercury, nor Earth, nor Jupiter. It didn’t matter. This purple-haired child would be dead soon. “Dear stupid girl,” said Avalon, as the page stepped backwards. “I don’t think I asked if you thought you needed your starseed.” She didn’t walk the space between them.

She teleported, and by the time she flashed into view again, the sword in her hand was drawn back to thrust into the heart of the Page, a hand reaching out to the girl’s shoulder to hold her in place for the skewering.

The purple light ******** burned, and Avalon stumbled back a few steps, but she kept her hand on her sword. She kept her hand on the hilt of the ******** sword, shielded her eyes, and waited for it to pass. Attacking would be juvenile. Attacking would be pointless when she couldn’t see the person in front of her, and so Avalon did not bother. When the light faded, the girl before her wore a different uniform, held a slightly more ornate pitcher, and Avalon bared her teeth in anger. Of course! Of ******** course. Every Knight but Avalon had it easy when they moved along to their different life stages, as they gained more power. Their Wonders simply reached out, required nothing more than a threat.

“You think that’s going to help you,” she asked, because this girl in front of her was no Knight. “Why don’t you tell my your name, little girl, so I’ll know what to call you once I’ve made you a monster?”

“Great. I’m so terrified.” She lunged across the space between them, slashing horizontally now--no desire to leave a neat corpse, just a desire to take Megiddo’s ******** head off, and use her corpse to create a monster. That was revenge. That was ******** art.

She’d known someone who played at being an artist, once. She didn’t remember who.

The pitcher didn’t deflect this blow. Someone--a senshi--an Eternal senshi--intervened, catching Avalon’s wrist in her hand. “Megiddo,” said the redhead, as she applied tremendous pressure to the delicate bones of Avalon’s wrist, twisted her arm in such a way that Avalon went to her knees and dropped the sword. “I would like you to either miraculously produce a source of flame or get the ******** out of my face. We will talk about your obvious desire for suicide and your fancy new pitcher later.”

The eternal senshi paused. “Actually, can you get the General’s sword? Keep it out of her reach, as it were. Then you may get the ******** out of my face.”

Avalon tried not to laugh, because that would certainly piss off the senshi. Instead, a few tears leaked from the corner of her eyes; the angle her wrist was being held at hurt, and Avalon didn’t know how to get free of this without breaking her own arm. Which… she didn’t know. Maybe she would do it. This senshi didn’t look like many of the others. She looked colder. Not sharp beauty, but classical beauty, hardened by something crystalline pure inside her. Avalon wanted to corrupt her. Corrupt what she was sure was a righteous sense of justice.

Or else, you know, she just wanted the senshi dead and away from her sword arm. Avalon tried to flex her fingers and found that she couldn’t. “Don’t be a p***y,” said the senshi, sighing through her teeth. There was a loud clatter that Avalon started to turn to investigate, but there was nothing to see except a white burst of pain that left Avalon panting and half-laughing.

“Knock her out,” said the senshi, and Avalon panicked for a moment before she realized there was a way to minimize that kind of damage. She took a deep breath. “We’ll burn her. But I don’t want to deal with the screaming tonight.”

There was something funny about the way the General went limp, Gunn recognized, but she wasn’t sure what and either way, the woman was down. Gunn kept a hand on the woman’s wrist to get a good look at her face; aristocratic in the old school, she thought, like a Russian boy she’d known growing up. All angles. She was pretty, Gunn decided. A shame that she was evil, because, you know, Gunn would do her. If she weren’t evil.

This one was familiar through description: Avalon.

Gunn sighed. “Well, at least Oenone’ll sleep easy tonight,” she said, dropping the General’s wrist. Whatever weirdness and uncertainty Gunn about the way Avalon had taken the hit vanished with the way she flopped limply, indelicately, to the ground.

Except then the General’s hand flexed, the sword reappeared in her hand, and then she vanished.

Gunn took a deep breath. And then another. “I swear to ******** God,” she said, “Teleportation. C’mon, Megiddo, let’s go look at your hands.”

She guided Megiddo to the fountain and settled them on the rim of it. In the light from the streetlamps, Megiddo’s hands looked… kind of horrifying, actually, like someone had burned the pattern on the hilt of Avalon’s sword into the Squire’s palms and fingers. Gunn closed her hands over the Squire’s and pressed them together. “That doesn’t look normal,” said Gunn, ignoring the topic of who was to blame for Avalon’s escape. It was both of them, really--but mostly Gunn, for ignoring her gut instinct. Gunn would yell at herself later, once she knew Megiddo would be alright. “We’re going to go see Babylon. He’s dealt with this before.”

Gunn hauled the Squire up. “Congrats on the upgrade,” she said. “Just this once, I will give cookies for doing your job, with the understanding that they are being immediately taken away for being a moron.” She turned her brilliant-blue eyes on Megiddo for a long moment. “I trust I don’t need to tell you why they’re being taken away for being a moron?”