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Hyperborea had been kind enough to show him her wonder, and Babylon had promised to return the favor. Tonight seemed as good a night as any for adventuring - he had no duties on Earth tonight and nowhere to be in the morning until ten. Cosmos only knew when such a good opportunity would present itself again - he'd been a fool to pass this up.

Returning home from his evening jog, Finn grabbed his signet ring out of the bowl by the door of his apartment. "Hyperborea," he said into it, "veux-tu aller au Babylon avec moi? Nous pouvons quitter à tout moment maintenant."

(He'd been practicing his French for her.)

"Just returning the favor," said Babylon, turning towards Hyperborea as she approached. "I thought, you know, we had such a nice time at your Wonder? And you might enjoy mine."

Taking her hand daintily, Babylon spoke his oath. The world spun around them, and when it settled, they were standing in the main square of Babylon, the city rising up the mountainside above them. It was about midday, the sun huge in the sky, but under the crackling energy dome it was temperate enough that he at least didn't feel terrible in his coat.

Everything was in bloom - glowing blue flowers at the edges of the square, trees with sprays of purple blossoms on their branches nearly obscuring the blue streetlights and tidy rows of stone buildings. "Welcome to Babylon," he said, turning slowly in a circle to take it all in. "That's Mistral down in the crater," he said, pointing past the city gates towards a valley filled with wildflowers. "Or, it's under the crater, anyway."

Turning back towards the city, he asked, "Do you want to go exploring?"

"They're just, uh, hyacinths," said Babylon, shrugging awkwardly at the flowers. "I think Mistral made them. Or a Mistral, anyway. The purple trees are something the Virgons brought with them from their homeworld. I haven't caught their name." But he knew their story, gleaned from Menachem's memories of the harvest festival and walking arm-and-arm with Aria beneath the branches. Ever since his ancestor had returned to the cauldron, the city had become booby-trapped with memories waiting to bring him to his knees.

"Virgo had a name for the color," he said thoughtfully. "Babylon blue. The glowing is part of the whole transcendence... mess." He wasn't going to get into the fact that they were illuminated, albeit faintly, even in his civilian form. That definitely wasn't normal. Lasting damage from his ordeal, he supposed. "As for it being connected, maybe. I don't know how something like that would work, from a genetic standpoint. Not my major. From a magical standpoint... it's possible."

He'd always known he took after his mother's side of the family, anyway.

"Mistral's brilliant," said Babylon. "Smartest person I've ever met. A real wizard with this magitechnical stuff. I told you she made the ring upgrades, right? And this compass I've got that can tell what kind of knight a Negaverser would be. Useful stuff. We're lucky to have her."

He narrowed his eyes slightly. "Why do you ask?"

"Soldier Virgo," corrected Babylon, semi-automatically. "Captain of the Zodiac guard. She's... yeah. A friend." It was more complicated than that by a long shot, but how did you explain to a fourteen-year-old kid all the ridiculous intricacies of adult relationships? That someone could be your friend and someone you would always care incredibly deeply about but also probably never want to see you again for reasons that were perfectly understandable?

We ********> he thought. I don't remember it. We had a baby that I never met and it died.

He did not need Hyperborea's pity about something so deeply personal. He'd only ever spoken about that with Hvergelmir, and he didn't need the rumor getting around.

"I'm not really sure if that's the cause of the glowing eyes or not," he said, though it was an interesting theory. He'd have to do some digging of his own. "And yeah, uh, that's what we're calling it, but mostly because no one's come up with anything we like better." It was a bit hard to believe that she'd met Penthesilea and not picked up on the terminology, but maybe that had been back before Ida had called them all together to sort things out.

Babylon pinched the bridge of his nose. "Mistral never promised anyone's safety. She also never forced anyone to help her. I think that everyone knew that there would be danger, and that the risk would be worth it. Sarras's experience in the labyrinth was pretty bad, but... I don't really think it's my place to talk about that. You would have to ask her about it yourself. Personally, she's a close friend and I trust her with my life."

Boycotting Mistral and her inventions inventions would be basically equivalent to taking a shotgun, pointing it at your own foot, and pulling the trigger. Why do that to yourself? Babylon hoped no one had taken the grudge that far.

Aurelius Ambrosius

Babylon laughed slightly - he understood where the mix-up had happened. "Senshi does mean soldier," he said, "But most of them use the title sailor, and add ranks in front of it when they power up? The Zodiacs use Soldier as an advanced title. Virgo was Sailor Virgo when she first awakened, but now she's Soldier Virgo, like how someone goes from being Sailor to Super Sailor."

He sighed - being an outsider to the Zodiac, Babylon wasn't the best person to describe how they worked, but he was going to at least try to produce a fairly accurate cliffnotes version for Hyperborea's benefit. "So, the Zodiacs. There's this thing called the Surrounding, right? It's a metaphysical construct encircling the Solar System. Or something. I'm not even sure where it is because it's probably like fifty percent metaphorical? But the surrounding is like this barrier that protects everything inside of it from Deep Space Chaos Monsters and other nasty s**t, and the Zodiacs and Princess Chronos protect the surrounding, and then there are knights of Chronos, but don't ask me about that cuz I'm not one of them."

Like it was really flattering that people assumed he was a font of accurate information, but it was also just... patently untrue.

"Penthe has definitely heard of it," he said, "Seeing as she was there when we came up with it."

Babylon tried to suggest with body language that they move on from the main square - there was a lot to see at his wonder, after all. "So, the system here is sort of complicated," he said, gesturing to the energy dome above their heads. "The dome protects the city, and the lamps power the dome. If they're not maintained regularly, the dome goes out. So, my Ancestor was protector of the city. He maintained the lamps, rescued people who were lost up in the mountains, did some diplomacy, made friends with other knights... We were a powerful family. His sister was a knight of Mistral, as was their mother before her."

Babylon frowned briefly. She'd moved onto subject matter that he was only vaguely familiar with - certainly not enough to speak with any kind of authority. Actually - he was sort of interested to know where Hyperborea had even heard about something so old and, honestly, irrelevant. "The cavaliers are, uh, ancient history," he said. "I'm not totally sure what their deal was - they were way before my time. You'd have to find someone who was around in, like, 2009, and ask them. I wouldn't worry about it too much, though - it's just trivia. Not anything worth keeping yourself up at night over."

Knowing won't help us defeat the Negaverse.

He dropped the subject, as he was more than happy to keep talking about his wonder. At least he could present himself as an expert here.

"Knights were definitely important members of the community," he said, wishing he'd asked Menachem more about it before his departure. Finn had memories to go off of now, though, and those were the next best thing. "But they were definitely part of the community. I don't think Babylon would have accepted a knight that wasn't from here originally." Though, as far as he was aware, it had all been one family straight through.

Slipping into tour guide mode, Babylon said, "so, there's the central square, which you saw, and some civic buildings up that way - a courthouse and stuff. That road heads into a marketplace. If you can see all the purple trees up the hill, that's the Virgon quarter, and up the stairs on our left is a really swanky neighborhood. My ancestor had a house in there. I've got access to his workshop down on the square, too - those are kind of my home bases."

"Anywhere you want to check out?"

Babylon didn't say anything more on the subject of cavaliers - Hyperborea was entitled to her opinion, as much as he thought it was likely to be a waste of time. There would likely never be any more information than was already out in the world - and it wasn't as though they were currently floating around to answer questions.

He decided right there that he was definitely not going to mention Kurma, as that would just confuse matters even further. Maybe it would even make Hyperborea's little head explode with wonder. He would hate to be responsible for that.

"I think so," he said, turning down a side street so that they could backtrack to the square. "I expect that they were a fairly communicative group, needing to be organized for the protection of the planet and all that." He knew for certain that his ancestor had known Lina - but he wasn't in the mood to talk about his disgraced mentor right now.

"It's through here," he said, showing her into a back alley between two of the buildings that lined the main square. His ancestor's workshop was built into the mountain, where it was warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and the lights on the hallway wall lit themselves as Babylon passed with Hyperborea.

The study was a small room, lit in blue but also warmer, yellow light. The walls were lined in cabinetry. At the center of the room was a wide table, covered in maps and correspondence and old books. "I haven't really had it in me to straighten up since he left," said Babylon. "I - I keep thinking that he might have left something important behind and if I move it I'll never find it again."

He laughed. "I'm probably being silly. He only left because he said he didn't have anything left to teach me. Or because he was getting impatient. Six of one, half a dozen of the other."

"The knights are for the protection of the planet," answered Babylon, without even having to think about it very long. "It's in your oath. You know, the bit about how I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine? You're asking your wonder, but you're also asking the planet. Or nebulous geographic construct, in your case, I guess."

"I mean," he added, "I'm sure these places all had standing militaries, but the Silver Millennium was a golden age. A Pax Romana kind of deal, but with magic and space ships. No one expects to need a huge military in peacetime."

Maybe, he thought, messing with a splinter on the edge of the table, that was how the rebellion had overthrown it so quickly.

Anyway.

"Yeah," said Babylon, "It's close by."

He lead the way. His family's ancestral home was the largest of a row of three townhouses on the east side of the square, and while the front windows were boarded up, a blue lamp glowed invitingly beside the front door, and there were flowers blooming in the window boxes.

Babylon pushed the front door open, leading Hyperborea into the foyer. A set of stairs extended upwards, the dust on the runner marked with several sets footprints (Babylon's, naturally). To their left, an archway opened into what had clearly once been some kind of formal parlor but was now entirely cleared out.

"The windows blew out at some point in the last thousand years," said Babylon. "I've got the replacements sitting in my garage at home, just need to bring them up here. Furniture was a total wash, though. Snow isn't good for upholstery, apparently."