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If something big had gone on that night, Finn wasn't aware of it - he'd been working late at White River, his signet ring locked safely in his employee locker where it was free to shout distress calls into the void; the void would not answer. He'd only put it back on as he was packing up for the evening, and by the time Hyperborea's message reached him, Finn was already home.

Which was, probably, for the better, as it gave him a home base to work out of.

"Uh, yeah," he said to the tiny holographic representation of the squire. "Where are you?"

He glanced out his kitchen window. Apparently, the answer to that was the alley. "s**t," said Finn mildly. "I see you. Power down. I'll come get you."

He hurried down the stairs and flung the back door open. "What's wrong?" he demanded, looking Ciel over. "Are you hurt?"

This... was not really a conversation that Finn wanted to have standing in the alley, and he swooped an arm around Ciel's shoulder and nudged her into the building. "Ah, s**t," he said, taking in her story as best he could - he could fill in the blanks.

What needed to happen here, as best Finn could tell, was that Ciel needed to be convinced that the senshi's corruption wasn't in any way shape or form her fault. That was easier said than done, seeing as Finn had trouble convincing himself of that sometimes, and he was a five-year veteran of the war. Explaining that to an actual, literal child was just another thing entirely. Her brain was still forming connections and stuff like that.

He was definitely going to text Laney later.

"They had a general queen, yeah?" he asked. If the senshi had been corrupted on the spot, they must have. "Or king. Once one of those is in play, the fight's gone nuclear."

There was nothing you could have done. Or anyone.

"I lost a page a few weeks ago," he said softly. "Some captains snatched her right in front of me, teleported before I could stop them. I can only assume what they did to her, but - we've all been there."

Not a good answer, he thought. Certainly not the most reassuring thing he could have said - but at least it established some kind of common experience. That was important, right?

Finn nodded. "Yeah, they do that," he said, brow furrowing. Teleportation was a dirty trick, if you asked him - or perhaps no one had ever taken the time to figure out how to effectively combat it. It would require an entirely new fighting style - and it was hard to practice against something that could only be done by people who actively hated your guts.

"From the sounds of it," he sighed, "They had their end goal planned from the start. Could you have grabbed the senshi? Sure. But you likely would have wound up dead or corrupted yourself. It sounds like you had your hands full as it was - you're lucky you got out alive from a matchup like that."

Was that patronizing? He was trying to fall more heavily into encouraging, but it was a hard balance to hit - especially with someone so much younger. His primary instinct towards Hyperborea was, and remained, scooping her up, wrapping her in a blanket, feeding her soup, and telling her not to go anywhere, because she was just a baby, damn.

He could have gone on to tell her they were fighting an enemy who was stronger than them, better organized with them, and with the distinct advantage that corruptions could occur on the fly - but it seemed like she'd already gotten the message. "It's not all bad," he said, after considering the question for a while. "We - we don't win them all, but that doesn't mean there aren't purifications and fights that we do win, civilians we save."

He couldn't make her adopt his reasons to fight - she had to find her own.

"I believe that someday, someone's going to come up with a battle plan that hits the Negaverse so hard that it turns the tide of the war," he said, trying to sound optimistic. "I'm not that great a strategist, so I've just got to keep fighting to hold back the tide until they get here."

Best not to mention that the Negaverse had an incredibly firm hold on Europe... and everywhere else.

Finn hesitated. Then, he reached out and put a hand on Ciel's shoulder in what he imagined was probably a fatherly fashion, not that he was like, any authority on that. "You've already pushed yourself plenty," he said. It wouldn't do anyone any good if Ciel sank back into her no-eating no-sleeping all-fighting all-the-time mania, least of all Ciel. "You're doing fine, and you can't hold yourself personally accountable for this. s**t... s**t happens." That was really where he had to leave it, right?

"I'd be irresponsible if I sent you back onto the streets after a night like this," Finn added, after a moment. "Can I give you a ride back to your dorm?"

Finn went faintly pink around the ears - she'd found his one weakness: sincere thanks. "Euh, de rien," he said, digging his car keys out of his pocket. "Anyway, let's go, yeah?"