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Babylon didn’t know about all of her powered shenanigans, Arkady had realized just that morning. He had no idea how many adventures she might have been on. Or not been on. She let him continue in ignorant bliss, because the other option was getting him mad at her, and that was definitely suboptimal to her eventual plan of Get ******** Married to Finn Derouen. She had to keep him, uh, not mad at her, if she wanted to do that. Right?

So she was trying her very best to pretend this was the first time she’d gone out as Avalon since her… whatever. Since the White Lady. She even fussed around pretending she didn’t know how to power up for a minute, and then reached out for her apple as fluidly as she ever had. At this point, she was more Avalon than Arkady--the rather forced method of reintroducing her to civilian life was decidedly not working. “I’m okay,” she said, hurrying a few steps forward to throw her arms around his shoulders. “You’re glowing again.” She kissed his cheek, walking more slowly than she’d like so as to avoid running him over. The glow was pretty. The glow was important. She kissed his other cheek, just to see if he would smile.

Her playful good mood lapsed the moment she sensed something bad. Not like poorly done, or anything. But bad like old fruit, too salty to keep in her mouth. She coughed, and tried subtly to wipe her mouth on her sleeve, like that would help. The bad-salt-fruit taste lingered, and the further they walked the stronger it got and Avalon realized, with slow dawning of a memory from Before, that she was afraid. “I sense something,” she said, high and quavering. “Something dangerous.”

But she knew what to do with this danger, she realized suddenly. The memory surfaced with the memory of what that thing was. “That’s Chaos,” she said, and she skirted around Babylon and bounded away, her long legs carrying her quickly away.

"I am going to kill it," said Avalon.

Okay, so it wasn't the BEST plan she'd ever had, so what? It was Chaos. She had to eliminate it. It had to die, die, die. That was her purpose, she was now realizing: she had to purge the chaos from this world, because they were her enemy, and they deserved no mercy--

She could see the source of the Chaos now. It was a man, her height, her hair color, but his eyes were black pits in his face, not eyes at all. He even wore a green coat like she did. Who was this? And. And did it matter?

It didn't. Avalon broke past Babylon and swung a punch at the Chaos man, deadly swift and silent.

The last thing Melanite expected to ruin his night off was an angry redheaded page. He hadn't even done anything half evil, he thought, watching her come at him with an arrested stare, like he was the deer in the headlights and she was the approaching cargo train. If he had expected to be able to weather her punch through some delicate femininity on her part, he expected wrong. Her punch hit him like... Well, like a punch, a solar flare of red pain.

He stumbled back out of her range as she chambered a kick, too fast and fluid to be a novice the way her rank implied. Behind her he spotted Babylon--and through a mouthful of blood from the gash on his cheekbone, he spat, "Control your dog, Babylon Knight, or I'll be forced to do something all three of us will regret."

“I am,” insisted Avalon stridently, shaking out her hand. Speckles of blood flew off it, dusted her target’s face. He winced, and she smiled at him, a rage-wracked expression that twisted every part of her face into something horrifying. “Why not! I am going to kill him. He’s Chaos. He needs to die.” She didn’t want to hurt Babylon, she thought. She didn’t want to cause him any pain at all. But he’d forced her hand, by grabbing her like this, by practically trapping her in place when there was an enemy and she had to destroy it.

In the name of protecting Babylon, she would hurt him. That seemed fair to her. So she stomped on his instep with the heel of her boot and lunged forward, attempting to escape and get to the Chaos source again.

Melanite, for his part, was fully occupied by pressing a hand to his face and trying to stay away from the blood-crazed page. If this was what represented the Knights, he understood why they had to be done away with. “I apologize for my wording, but not the sentiment behind it,” he snapped, pressing his tongue to the gash his teeth had left on the inside of his cheek. “Control her! She is rather obviously with you, isn’t she?”

Avalon went down hard, but she managed to throw her hands up in time to stop her face from taking any major damage. Something in her wrist twinged, but she tried to force herself to her feet again anyway--but Babylon was too heavy, and too strong. A tear escaped, then another, because, because her wrist hurt, and why wasn’t he letting her just do her job and keep him safe? His hand in her hair was calming. It was nice. She went slack beneath him, blinking very quickly to keep more tears at bay. “Okay,” she said, “okay, please let me up,” and when he moved back, she sat up and pressed her wrist against her chest.

Melanite let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding as the page stopped struggling. Now that she wasn’t an angry whirlwind of motion, her face jarred something--a memory. She looked like… “Do I know you,” he asked, taking a cautious step backwards to put a little more space between him and the Page. “You look… familiar, to me.” The woman offered no response, but stared at her knees instead, shoulders occasionally shaking. She was crying. Had Babylon hurt her? It seemed unlikely, due to her sheer vitality, but he wasn’t the page, and he couldn’t be sure.

Where did he know her from? It would come to him eventually, he was sure. “What’s her name,” he asked, flicking a glance to Babylon. “Is she your lover? You’re disgustingly affectionate with her.”

Avalon? … that name was familiar. “General Avalon is dead,” he said, but the image had taken root in his head now--and been rejected. He had never seen General Avalon; she had already been dead by the time that he’d been corrupted. This girl… he knew her from somewhere else.

It was of no import. “This happens to be the fastest way home from my assigned patrol route,” said Melanite. “I was no more ‘lurking’ than you. And perhaps, rather than threatening, one should consider that at some point, if you keep getting in my way, I might be able to figure out exactly where you live and cause you some very real trouble.” He regarded the woman again, who had leaned abruptly sideways into Babylon’s grasp. Avalon. He frowned and examined the deep red blood on his hands. At some point, it had stopped, although trickles of it still disappeared into his sleeve. He somehow didn’t doubt he’d have a fantastic black eye in the morning. “Not that I would do such a thing, if I weren’t pressed to it.”

She tucked herself against Babylon’s side, trying to quell the hurt that had taken deep root in her chest--not the hurt in her wrist, but the one in her chest. Why wasn’t he going to let her protect him? She loved him. That was her job, to protect Babylon. Now he was talking to this stranger, this Chaos-man, like they were friends. And they weren’t. Chaos was the enemy. Chaos needed to, it needed to… She sniffled, and hid her face in Babylon’s shoulder. “He’s mine,” she mumbled, “my Babylon. You can’t have him, no one can have him but me.”

Melanite frowned. No, that was... That seemed odd. He did know names weren't repeated. Was it possible that Avalon Page had been somehow... Reversed? Brought back from corruption? Well, either way, he doubted his superiors would believe him. He just would keep it to himself until he knew exactly what was going on. "I saw one several blocks east," he said, tone as casual as he could make it. "It was feeding on an old woman. If nothing else you should do her some good and let me go home, Babylon Knight."

His eye was already puffing up. He probed it gently with a finger and hissed.

Avalon let Babylon pull her to her feet, because he had hugged her tight and kissed her head and maybe he wasn't mad at her? She clung close to him, distrusting gaze locked on the Chaos person. "What is a youma," she asked, still gingerly favoring her arm--but the other she tucked around Babylon, between him and Melanite. "That is a weird word."

Avalon followed him towards the monster, keeping her eyes on the horizon for whatever monster they were looking for. Yes, the real one was behind them, and rapidly fading from her awareness, but if Babylon said they had to let the Chaos one be, then she would let the Chaos one be and kill this monster. “I don’t understand why we have to let that one live,” she said. “They feel just the same.”

They found the creature looming over the body of a fallen woman, a blue-violet ball of energy in its fanged mouth. That rage from the moment she’d seen the Chaos man bubbled back up and, disregarding her injury, Avalon hurled herself forward and slammed her heel into the massive thing’s torso. “I can do it,” she said, when Babylon moved forward to assist--and she punched the monster again, and again, and again, until it stopped trying futilely to move, until the familiar energy burst on the ground as its fangs went slack.

She stopped, breathing hard, blood and black Chaos goop splattering her hands and up her arms, flecks on her face and tangled in her hair. A deep red flush spread across her face, a drop of sweat trickled down one temple and over a sharp cheekbone. “They’re both monsters,” she said, as the monster turned to dust beneath her. “They’re both monsters.”