The call came in while she was on stream.

There were few things that could make her pause one and pick up the phone, but her mother's name on the call log was one of them--she rarely phoned, and she was aware of Hina's stream schedule, so she wouldn't have called unless it was an emergency.

(Unlike their father, who was all too happy to tell her that she was a stupid slut wasting her life, her mother was quite proud of her work.)

"Gotta pause, guys," she said, and she took off her headset and picked up the phone. "Yeah, 'kaa-san?" She asked, voice light.

"Hina," her mother's voice was ragged, panicked, "you have to come help, please--your father, he's threatening your brother with a knife, and I don't want to call the police, they'll just make things worse."

It was like ice water in her veins. Malachi was always ready to snark back at their father, and she admired him for that; he had a way with biting comments that she was fairly certain she would never be able to match.

"I'll be right there," she said, and she kept the line open, even as she darted back to her desk.

"Sorry, guys," she said, "gotta cut things off early. Family emergency." As she shut down her stream, she could see some supportive, worried messages in her Twitch chat--it was sweet, actually, how worried people seemed to be.

But that wasn't the point, right now.

She turned on her heel, and booked it for the door, only taking a moment to throw a hoodie over her crop top as defense against the coming autumnal chill. No time to hesitate, no time to second guess, no time to think, really.

The entire way to her parents' house, she kept her mother on the line--on Bluetooth, while she was driving her motorcycle there--so she was fully abreast of the situation.

It was, it sounded like, pretty bad--Malachi and their father were screaming, and Dad had pulled out a knife. That was already way beyond what Hinata was ready to deal with, but she had to do something. She couldn't leave her brother to be stabbed.

From what her mother had said, the fighting wasn't active anymore, and their father was simply holding Malachi at knifepoint, which was...an improvement, she supposed.

She pushed the door in, glad it was unlocked, and went straight for the living room.

"You can't just threaten people to get your way!" She heard Malachi shout, and then there was an angry roar she knew all too well.

"You shut your ******** face, you ungrateful little s**t," their father bellowed. "I've done so goddamn much for you--"

"You did the bare ******** minimum," Malachi snapped.

"Malachi, Albert, please," their mother pleaded, and Hinata ducked into the room.

Mal was tiny--he always had been, even after his second-puberty growth spurt. Their father, on the other hand, was a massive man, hefty and tall, and he was the one with the weapon.

"What's going on here?" Hinata asked.

"Your s**t-faced, worthless brother," their father waved the knife in Malachi's direction, where he'd pressed himself back against the wall, "has bene insinuating that I don't treat any of you well, which I think is a bold goddamn claim, with all the garbage I let you two and your sister get away with."

"Oh, please," Malachi rolled his eyes, "you can never shut up about how much we disappoint you, old man. Which is ******** rich, coming from a drunk that hasn't done s**t since he got discharged."

"You shut your worthless ******** face--" Their father lunged, and Malachi's eyes narrowed.

"Almene power, make up," he said, voice like ice, and in a whirl of ribbons and green mist, her brother disappeared.

Replaced by a Senshi.

A Senshi in white.

Hinata gaped, and she watched him dodge out of the way with magical speed and reflexes. The knife drove into the wall, and stuck, and Albert was stymied for a moment.

"What in the hell," he growled, and he tugged ont he handle once, twice, three times--and the wall cracke,d and it came free, and this time--

He didn't go for Alkmene.

He went for their mother.

"Lilith power, make up!" She shouted, and she leapt forward, because she could only think of one way to stop him--and so she interposed herself between her father and her mother, and snapped her hand out--

And pulled her father's starseed.

He gasped, and crumpled to the ground, hand going slack on the knife.

Malachi/Alkmene stared at her, in open, wide-eyed shock. He had to be taking in her dark uniform, and the ease with which she'd extracted their father's soul. She was almost surprised to find that it looked like other civilian starseeds she'd taken--when draining drunken creeps wasn't enough, when the anger bubbled up too far and they were too like Albert Jaeger, and they died for the crime of reminding her too much of her father.

He'd been a better man, once. He'd taught her Morse code and how to write secret messages and how to crack a cipher. But he'd gotten into a drunken brawl, and he'd been discharged from the Navy and left an old, broken man with no purpose in life, and all he'd had was the drink--and it had changed him. Poisoned him, until they were all left with a monster where their father used to be.

And now....

Now he was dead.

Because Lilith would not be putting that starseed back.

"H-Hinata?" Mariko-mama's voice made her turn, and she gave her mother a slightly wide-eyed look. "What...did you just do?"

"Magic," she said simply, as if that explained it.

"Hina saved us both," Malachi admitted. "But....Dad's dead."

There was a long moment of silence. Then, Mariko Yukimura Jaeger took a breath, and stood up, and straightened.

"Both of you," she said, "leave. I will call the police. Will tell them he collapsed while he was coming at me with a knife. That I think it might have been a heart attack, please send 911. We will tell Tomoko..."

"She knows," Hina said quietly, "about the magic."

"....You will tell her what you need to," Mariko said, and Hina nodded. "Now go."

Clutching her father's starseed close to her chest, Hina beckoned for Malachi to come with her. He did, with little prompting, and they left their home.

"We need to talk," she said, simply, and he nodded.

"I know," he said. "Let's...find somewhere private, yeah?"

"Here," she said, tucking the starseed into subspace and shoving her helmet at him. "We'll drive."

"Do you have an extra?" He asked. She nodded, and beckoned.

"Let's go."

[1118 words]