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In a hypothetical scenario where Babylon landed solidly in the or die trying part of his plan, he wanted to spend his last few days on Earth checking in on all his compatriots and making sure everyone would be able to carry on if he kicked the bucket. In that hypothetical scenario, where he was pretty sure his little sister would awaken as the knight of Babylon in the event of his death, he wanted to make sure that there were people he trusted to guide her and show her the ropes, the way he had for them.

In the real world, though, Babylon still thought that he could pull this off. Against all odds, he was confident that he would find a way to the Cauldron in the next few days. It sort of made sense, he thought, that things had to become a lot more dire before he'd catch a break. That was how knighthood worked. You always had to be at your eleventh hour before things even stood a chance of reaching equilibrium again.

Weird and mystical, thy name is Babylon Knight.

He sped through the night, looking for familiar faces at every turn. Babylon knew there was something odd about his aura, having been told about it some five times already, but now he was venting energy in strange, huge amounts. His eyes blazed bright as fire - like a dying star. Even from far away, it would clear that something was wrong with Babylon knight.

Babylon turned. "Alexandria!" he called joyfully. This was exactly one of the people he'd been looking for, even though his looking had really amounted more to wandering around pitifully and hoping someone asked him what was wrong. But anyway, the point was, he was really happy to see the Mercury page before him.

"Hiya," he said, taking a few shaky steps towards Alexandria. His glamour flickered, sending him back and forth between his powered and civilian forms quickly, and Babylon paused, placing a hand on his forehead. The world was spinning just a little bit.

"Um, don't worry about that. I've got it under control."

It happened again. For the split second that he was Finn, his eyes and fingertips were visibly glowing. Once he was Babylon, his eyes continued to glow.

"Um," said Babylon. "Sort of. I'm working on it."

"Yeah, uh, I'm totally fine," said Babylon, painfully aware of how obvious a lie it was, as well as just in pain in general. "Just got, you know, an extra starseed in my chest. Totally normal side effects." Or at least he assumed. He didn't think anyone had ever attempted this before. Anyway, he wanted to gradually ease Alexandria into the possibility of his imminent demise, so best to be his goofy self. Right?

Right.

"Yo, dude, do not even worry about sounding gay around me," he said, leaning on Alexandria's offered arm. "I am gay as hell. Bisexual as hell." He was rambling. Not good, thought Babylon.

"I, uh, I might be dead in a few days," he said, cutting to the chase. "Because I'm a dumbass. But I'm working hard to fix this! So hopefully no dying. But if I do keel over and leave this earthly realm behind, I'm tasking you to go find Sailor Vindemiatrix and tell him it was a lot of fun and if my little sister shows up as a teensy tiny Babylon Page, I need you to show her the ropes."

That was like, everything, right, right?

"I did it for a good reason!" Babylon hissed back, not completely expecting Alexandria to understand. They'd never really talked about Wonder stuff or whether Alexandria was reincarnated or... Not that any of that was completely relevant right now. "Look, my ancestor was gonna be trapped on that mountain forever if I didn't do something. I saw a chance and I took it."

A sharp jab of pain seared through the space behind his eyes. "s**t, ow," said Babylon, staggering. He looked down at Alexandria and tried to recover. "Man, are you blushing?"

He couldn't think of where to go with that that would not make him sound like a complete a*****e, so Babylon decided it might be better to just skip what was otherwise a golden comedic opportunity.

"Her name's Leah Derouen and she's like eighteen. Blue eyes, freckles, her hair's probably gonna be dyed some horrible shade of orange," he explained, trying to focus. "Just like keep an eye out for her okay? I might've ******** s**t up at our wonder for her by doing all this."

He gave Alexandria a pat on the back that managed to retain at least some semblance of strength. "I fully expect you to rise to the occasion, dude. It'll be like a Bar Mitzvah. Today you are a man."

The bit about the dead kid sounded familiar, and reminded him of another, earlier conversation - and one with someone else. Babylon was momentarily distracted. "Did you, uh, did you know Persephone?"

"Nope," said Babylon. "Had to be my chest." He couldn't explain how he'd known, but instinct had told him that the starseed was too old and too fragile to survive anywhere outside a body, and that it needed to be taken to the cauldron himself.

"I'm a very huggy person," explained Babylon, pointing to a bus shelter with his free hand and doing his best to stagger towards it. "It's how I express how excited I am to see you. Like a golden retriever." He sat and gestured for Alexandria to join him: story time.

"Yeah, she's uh, she's gone kinda nuts," he said, rubbing his temples. "First I saw of her, she was about to launch into a no-holds-barred beatdown on Virgo." Virgo was not innocent there, but still, it had almost gotten bad. "Then she attacked me to try to collect a bounty, and then I ran into her again a few nights ago." He might have gotten those things out of order. His head hurt.

"She said she corrupted because she wanted to forget, but it didn't help at all," he shrugged. "Corruption never fixes any of your problems. It just makes things worse." Word to the wise.

Babylon shook his head slightly, careful of making the street spin. "Not kill me," he said. "She doesn't want me dead." No, Avalon's designs for him were far more thorough and obsessive than that. If she hated him, she'd want him dead, but the general's feelings were quite the opposite. "She wants me corrupted. She was offering a cash reward to whoever could bring me to her alive."

Virgo was... well, he'd had sex with her and he was trying not to think about it and supposed it was probably for the better that he'd been possessed at the time and didn't have to remember it. "Virgo's fine," he said.

"Nah," he said, leaning back against the movie poster behind him. "I think Avalon would probably youma-ify the whole family of someone who killed me." Never mind what would happen if he found a way to accidentally kill himself. She'd already put his father in his grave... Babylon sighed.

"Would you mind helping me get home in a few minutes?" he asked. "I thought I might get something accomplished tonight but now I don't think so."

Babylon rose, letting his glamour shift, and he was Finn Derouen once more, his massive power signature barely contained by his human skin. "I live at Florence Court Apartments in the Historical district," he said, staggering to his feet. "You'd better transform. The landlord doesn't like having superheroes coming and going from the building. It attracts too much unwanted attention."

"She's a senshi," he added, staring off down the street. "Kind of a scary one."

"Anyway, actually, no one's really asked me," he said, turning his attention back to the page at his side. "And if I wanted to be cliche and flat out lie to you, I'd tell you it's amazing and like being full of goodness and light but it's not. I hurt all over and I don't know what I was thinking but I'm already this far in and it's like that Churchill quote about going through hell."

On second thought he wasn't sure Alexandria knew that one. "You're supposed to keep going," he supplied.

Finn leaned against Rene, grateful for the assistance. He was coming to realize that he generally had a good sense for people - and he was glad for it tonight. "I didn't realize it'd turn out so disastrously. I figured good intentions could never steer me wrong."

Which was terribly naive: good intentions had steered him wrong plenty of times.

"Look," sighed Finn. "He's done a lot for me over the years. Most of it was begrudgingly helpful, but I understand where he's coming from now. He's been alone for a thousand years and everyone he knew or loved or whatever has gone and gotten reincarnated and he hasn't and that's like, balls? He's earned a nap. Like, a really good nap."

With his free hand, he pointed. "It's just a right up here and then one more block. The brownstone next to the florist on the corner."