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So, he'd meant to do this literally ages ago. Like, that stuff with his ancestor had been resolved by the end of June, and it was now October, and Finn was just that much of a bad friend that he never did more than text Zia all Hey, I'm still alive!, followed by Hey, I'm going to the Galapagos for a few months! a few weeks later. "I am so the worst," he said to himself as he set up the Skype call. It connected after about four tries.

Finn leaned towards the camera. "Hey," he said. "Sorry about that. Wi-fi here's a little bit dodgy."

Maybe he could use Avalon as an excuse for not getting in touch sooner? No, there'd still been, like, the entirety of July, and knowing Zia, she would have questions about how General Avalon had become Avalon Page that, frankly, he didn't know the answers to. Better to maybe just not bring it up - Arkady was going to be out for another hour, probably? He could totally finish this before she got home.

"So, did you have a crazy dream about being five years into the future and everything was terrible?" he asked for a follow-up. "Because I'm starting to maybe sense a pattern, but it's not what I actually called to talk about."

Zia... did not look so great, thought Finn, although he was pretty sure that telling her that would end badly. Whatever she was up to in her spare time, he'd written himself out of it by, in her words, going on his completely unfair Galapagos vacay. She'd tell him if she thought it was important - he didn't doubt that it was somehow magical. With Zia, it usually was.

Anyway, it was reassuring to know that she'd had a weird as ******** dream, too, even if he still didn't have any idea what the cause might be. "We can - we can talk about those later, if you want," he said. Personally, he wasn't sure how much credence he wanted to give to such a bleak vision of the future. Like, the war had basically been a stalemate for the last few years - how could it possibly go downhill so quickly?

"No, I called because - hey," he chided. "It's not a vacation. I'm working." Granted, he was spending all his time running around in the rainforest doing biodiversity surveys, but that was work. "I wanted to let you know what the outcome of my whole stick a second starseed in your chest, come on, do it for the Vine adventure, now that I've got a bit of a better idea about what it is."

"Anyway," he continued, hunching a bit towards his webcam. "In my weird-a** future dream, we were all calling it transcendence. I haven't really been calling it anything right now. I figured I just damaged myself permanently or something. Anyway, it does a lot of s**t, and a general tried to stick her hand in my chest and this force field, like, repelled her? And you've got to see this."

He pulled his coat and cape around him where he sat, and, beaming, pointed to his cheeks. "Check it out!" said Babylon. "Sorry I didn't show you in person. My eyes glow, like, all the time? Even when I'm not powered up. It's kind of weird."

He powered back down, now that she'd had a chance to check out his sweet new deal and get the full effect. While she was right that the streets of Puerto Ayora were youma-free, you could never be too careful. For all he knew, the Negaverse had a listening post in the archipelago just in case someone like him showed up. "Well, I haven't really had it for all that long, in the grand scheme of things?" he said, sure that Arkady would have said something if it was messing with her being able to sleep. He slept normally.

"I don't think it goes through my eyelids," he said, trying to give her as much information as he could. Zia was a good friend and an even more valuable resource, and she worked best when she had as much data as possible available to her. It was to his benefit to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. "Actually, I haven't really had anyone notice?" Which was to his benefit. "But I've been pretty careful about wearing tinted eyewear when I can and staying out of low light."

He was sure this would be inconvenient... eventually. So far, it hadn't really interfered with anything - but he'd had a lot of stuff to deal with in the last few months that did not leave a lot of time for catching up on the latest blockbusters.

"Anyway, what I know about it is that I ******** myself up badly enough that I had to go to space and get Sailor Cosmos to fix me - she's basically god? I mean, I'm assuming you've heard of her." Maybe Zia hadn't? Huh. Well, he'd explain more if she wanted to - not that he knew a whole ton. "And now I glow and I had a general literally try to stick her hand in my chest and this crazy force field repelled her, so I guess I am officially beyond people ******** with my starseed or corrupting me, which is cool? And I can give people energy, which is useful."

Speaking of, Zia kind of looked like she could use a boost. It was a pity he was on the other side of the world.

"Anyway, in the crazy dream-future, we were calling it transcendence. But until someone can actually verify that that wasn't just food poisoning," he finished, "I'm not sure how much credence I'd give to it."

"Well, yeah," he said lamely. Not being dead was secondary to his original goal, but once it had become clear to Finn that he'd bitten off way, way more than he could chew, not dying became something of a priority. Not that he hadn't accepted what might happen to him - he had a feeling that, in a way (a very Harry Potter-ish way), being prepared for death might have been what saved him when it was all said and done. His service to his ancestor had been selfless. If he'd gone into it looking for personal gain... it wouldn't have worked out the way it did. "Not being dead is definitely the most positive outcome I could have hoped for at the time."

But she was - she was showing him cell phone pictures from the moon? Finn leaned forward, squinting at the screen in a way he was sure was very funny to watch from the other end. Video calling was so useful... but also sort of inconvenient, in that it revealed all the embarrassing faces you made when you were trying to look at tiny s**t over the internet.

"Okay," he said. "So there's a magical mirror portal on the moon that goes to another dimension." He was pretty sure he was catching her drift. Zia's magical parasite, he knew, while the source of her magical powers, was also an entirely unwelcome presence in her head. The fact that she was no longer dormant... and there was a portal available to her...

Either ET was going to phone home, or ET was going to bring on an actual alien invasion. You know, these things could go either way. "So if there's a portal and the portal's open and she's awake," he said, "Is there a way to send her back through it? Or is this going in a more sinister direction that I don't really want to consider the full implications of?"

Except, by virtue of trying not to think about an alien invasion, he sort of already was. And Finn was pretty sure he did not welcome their new mirror alien overlords.

Finn wasn't really sure that taking a magical artifact that you found on the moon and putting it in your basement was going to work out too well in the long run - he was getting some Space Odyssey vibes, after all - but Zia was the resident expert on Mirror stuff and he, well... anything he knew about the matter had come from her. So if she thought that putting it in her basement was a secure place, then hey, he wasn't going to argue with it.

"Well, good luck with that," he said. He'd be a bit sad to see Zia lose her magical powers - but he also knew how desperately she wanted to just be a normal person again and how much she'd given up for the sake of being Zirconia. He did have one concern, though. "It's not - no one's going to come through it, right? Like, from their side to ours?"

Because, if he recalled correctly, people coming through mirrors was how they'd gotten into this mess in the first place, and while there was probably not another Ares on the other side, there was probably at least one psychopath kind of similar to her with their eyes set on world domination. "Or is that why we're trying to keep the Dark Mirror from finding out? Because my lips are sealed. I don't even talk to literally any of them."

Actually, he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually even seen one of them on more personal terms than a massive ******** fight.

The parallel cauldron was fine. Huh. Babylon bit his lip. "Well," he said, "Good to know that on top of them all being lunatics, they're lunatics that we have no logical explanation for." He was sure that one of these days, they'd get a decent explanation for how do you even spontaneously corrupt and take your whole court with you, seriously, and then they'd all feel foolish, but today was not that day.

He understood her desire to wash her hands of all this weirdness - she'd already poured enough of her life into this, and she had a chance to get out, but the rest of them weren't so lucky. "We can still be friends, right?" asked Finn. "Even once you're a bona-fide human being again?" Which was her phrasing, not his, so he didn't think she'd get mad about it.

"I mean," he added, "I'd understand if you didn't want to be." He didn't wish to be normal anymore... but he'd spent a long time nursing the sentiment when he was a bit younger.

And - it wasn't a beach trip! He shot her an indignant look. "It's great," he said. "I'm working a lot. We're doing biodiversity surveys."

Finn, knowing what he did about Barren Pines (which was not much), was not sure that he liked her hyper-evolved youma idea, and he'd definitely need to keep it away from Virgo. Still, he was pretty sure that starseeds were supposed to glow, so the evidence for something weird as s**t being up was compelling. (Like, on top of that whole spontaneously corrupted thing being weird as s**t.)

"I'm glad you're planning to stick around," he told her, smiling. "We'd all be totally ******** if you decided to cut and run. Who would we have to play intrepid reporter and tell us all the things we needed to know if not for you?" That, he thought, made it sound like he only liked her for her index - and there was so much more to Zia! "Also, I'd probably kill myself without your amazing sense of humor."

Hyperbole, much?

He definitely understood her concern that this was another Alaska - and Finn wanted to do as much as he could to assure her it wasn't. If word got around that Babylon had up and left town again, well, that would be disastrous to his reputation. (Like, it was a wonder that anyone trusted him at all in the first place, anyway.)

"I'm definitely coming back," he said. "The program ends and my visa expires at the end of December. The plane tickets are already bought. I'll be home in time for Christmas parties and whatever zany, holiday-themed energy draining scheme the Negaverse cooks up this year."