His hands were shaking as he pushed open the front door to his apartment. Alaric had stumbled home in a daze: lost, confused, shook. What should’ve been a typical ride back after work had gone… south. And then ******** west and up and sidelong and every other which way until he had literally no idea what even was going on anymore, and he had the distinct and worrisome sensation that this ‘problem’ might be something permanent. That he would have to deal with in perpetuity. Forever. This felt like some bizarre fever dream! It couldn’t possibly be real.

Alaric just needed someone to tell him as much.

He dropped his work satchel right there in the entryway and shuffled toward the hall to the bedrooms. The place he shared with his siblings was spacious, elegant. Fantastic city views. In that moment, he almost wished it was a little cozier- but only almost. It wasn’t like he needed anything else to be strange, just then.

“Mave,” Alaric croaked softly as he kicked a black-socked toe against one of his brothers’ closed bedroom doors, giving him just a shred of a moment to prepare for Alaric’s entrance. The three of them were each other’s only family. Closest friends. For whatever problems surfaced, there were really only two options for Alaric to turn to, if he found the issue insurmountable alone. His brothers, ith him since birth. There was no one else. When there was no immediate response, he snapped more urgently, “Mavain!”

“What? No one’s stopping you from coming in!” Came the barked reply.

Well, excuse him for wanting to offer a modicum of forewarning. See how much Mave appreciated it. Hmph.

Alaric knocked the door open and practically spilled into the room, barely making it the two strides toward the far wall before toppling onto the unoccupied bed and shrieking into the dense down comforter. And, bless him, Mave just let it happen. He could take a guess at what the expectations for this conversation were, but boy was he about to be <******** wrong.

His computer chair, where Mavain had been perched when Alaric entered the room, creaked as he angled it to face his identical brother. “…Well, you were gone longer than I thought you’d be,” he said flatly, as if that explained everything.

It explained nothing.

And Alaric couldn’t say with any certainty how he was going to articulate this… mess.

He didn’t pick his head up from her blankets as he grumbled out a muffled, “Something happened.” Understatement of the century, and he could practically hear his brother’s eyeroll. Could hear him thinking, ’here we go again,’ because Alaric knew what it sounded like! It sounded like he was about to launch into a tale about a work mishap- a dogshit employee or a partner getting too ******** big for his britches.

Mavain didn’t huff or sigh or make a dismissive comment. He just said, quite unimpressed, “Alright, what was it.”

Here it was, the moment he had to explain himself. Alaric lifted his head, drew his hands up to prop against his cheeks. “I don’t actually know?” He was extremely talented at describing delicate situations. “It was so- it was so- inexplicable, like I can’t even properly say, just- Bizarre! There was this creature- I’d never seen anything like it- It just appeared and started making horrible sounds and chasing after me.”

“This is a fun new way to describe- hm, who I wonder? Adison, maybe. He was always quite attached no matter how mean you were to him. I could see him being clingy enough to chase.”

It took him a moment to catch the meaning, then he spat, “No! It wasn’t Adison; I’m serious! A monster-”

“Eliza, then. She was the worst. Definitely full of ‘horrible noises’ and blatantly cruel. I literally dream about how amazing the V must’ve been to put up with her-”

“Mavain!”

He did roll his eyes, then, lips pulled into a little slant of amusement as Mave leaned back and propped his arm against his desk, showcasing his readiness to give Alaric the attention he was after. “Alright, alright. Go on, then. I’m listening for real.”

He scrubbed his hands down his face, emitting a low and rumbling noise of frustration at Mavain’s antics- this was serious! Couldn’t his brother see that Alaric was distraught? And he just wanted to crack jokes about his tempestuous love life… Mave almost didn’t even deserve to hear his story and be his support. …Almost. “It’s a conspiracy- I had to wait for the <******** car like a pleb, when it should’ve been ready for me- Instead, this monster-” Alaric enunciated this word specifically, dragging each letter out on his tongue so that Mave would know he wasn’t ******** around here. “This creepy, huge, lizard monster scuttled-”

“Ah, it’s a lizard, now- Alright, alright!” Mavain had barely even gotten half the comment out as Alaric reared up and snatched the pillow from the head of the bed, then proceeded to smack it into his brother’s face until, cackling, Mave conceded.

Taking his time to find the words was getting nowhere, so he smashed his way gracelessly through the rest of the tale. “It scuttled after me, and I <******** ran, because what else was I supposed to do? Expect someone to protect me? And then this cat came and spoke to me and did a… magic? Dance? Gave me a weird device, and then there was like this magic ******** nonsense where I turned into a sparkly golden angel, and I beat the lizard with my briefcase until it died- it literally. Died. Just dissolved into nothing. So no one could even, like, see that I did it. That there was something there, that-”

Mavain stared at him long and hard. Alaric could see his brother’s mind working, could see him trying to make sense of what was inherently nonsense, and a huge part of him wanted so badly for him to just say, ’Bah, I wouldn’t worry about it.’ Not that those words wouldn’t come with their own complications, but Alaric needed something, anything to stabilize him, to make the moment seem farther away.

Finally, Mave let out an exaggerated sigh and shook his head sadly. “Oh, I wondered when the delusions of grandeur would come for you. Honestly, you fended them off longer than I expected, big brother. But it feels so true that you were never meant to toil among the likes of us lowly mortals- No. Peasants? Is that the word I want? Holy Angel Alaric.”

He jolted off the bed and to his feet. Alaric’s face burned with something close to embarrassment. He didn’t want to be delusional, just- He didn’t know. He didn’t even know what better his brother might have said than just brushing him off- maybe to make sense of what he’d said, rather than make him sound like a psychopath. “This wasn’t a delusion, you condescending witch,” he bit out softly.

Mavain clicked his tongue, still blasé and unaffected. “Prove it.”

The thought had never even occurred to him. He could. Alaric could prove it, even if he didn’t have the lizard body to put on display. There was still a soft whisper of something in the back of his mind, a delicate little graze of power murmuring in sweet tones that he did have the power to ‘prove it.’ He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, and blinked at Mavain with widened blue eyes, until, “Fine! …Fine.”

Fine. He could see how delusional he was. He could see if walking away from that monster had actually done anything. He could see how real that whisper in his thoughts was… Alaric just didn’t know if he wanted to see. It might be preferable to pretend-

Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything to Mavain. Maybe he should have ignored it…

But it was too late now. He’d already started this process. Alaric still felt just a tiny bit ridiculous as he stood in front of his sister, cheeks tinged red from embarrassment and fingers curled into unhappy fists around… the pen. If he willed it hard enough, spoke this bizarre phrase of power, he would change. He wouldn’t be Alaric, anymore. That’s what the talking cat said, though Alaric was almost desperately hopeful that he’d be standing here straining his thoughts just to achieve nothing, and-

Oh, there it was. It did not actually take any particularly strenuous thought at all.

Alaric’s… fuku wasn’t that wild of an outfit. It certainly wasn’t anything he’d typically wear: heavy, baggy shorts with a trillion zippers, some kind of glittery feather shawl, sashes, bows, feathers, a little silver tiara, midriff on display. It was flashy, and it appeared on him in an instant, replacing his relatively formal work attire in barely a blink.

“Holy <********>.” He hadn’t noticed how sharply Mave stood. How abruptly he stepped away. But Mavain’s chair had toppled over with the sound of spinning wheels, and he was staring at Alaric- Bäl- as if he had three heads. …Or as if Mave wasn’t sure this new thing was his brother.

So Bäl’s answering small smile to the abruptness was more a means to placate Mavain, rather than any genuine happiness. “I know, right?” He laughed softly. Nervously.

His wild eyes flicked from the chunky yellow boots up to Bäl’s face. “How did you do that?”

“How did I do- What?” His tone ticked up, almost into hysteria. “Magic, obviously! You think I’m just hiding all this in my skinny jeans?”

“…Magic isn’t real.”

So they were at this impasse. In all fairness, Bälhad witnessed more and he still didn’t really believe it. Mavain had just seen a clothes swap. He didn’t blame the doubt. He had it too. He couldn’t say why this had happened or what it meant, it just was, and he’d sought his brother out for comfort because he didn’t have anyone else to turn to. Yes, the clothes- very cool, very weird- but he’d done something scary. There had been a creature that he’d just run into out in the ******** wild.

A breath sucked in through his teeth, and it stuttered out in a mockery of a laugh, tipping precariously close to a sob as Bäl dropped into a helpless sit back onto the bed. He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. It had really only been an hour, but it felt so- So- Unreal! How was this life? And if Mave didn’t believe it or wanted to ignore it or even if he wanted Bäl to stay away from him, Bäl wasn’t sure he could oblige. He needed his siblings, needed Mave to console and stabilize him or something!

Because this was weird and new and inexplicable, and he needed him, he needed him, he needed him-

A weight dipped down at his side, fingers trailing lightly along his shoulder as Mave settled close to him, arms around him. “So you fought some monster, huh?”

Bäl sniffed. “Yeah.”

Mavain’s head hit his shoulder. He kept a quiet tone, but his sigh was tellingly dramatic. “…And you figured the best course of action was to come right home and immediately show off to me? Aren’t you supposed to keep these things secret in case of… I don’t know, the government or something? You wouldn’t make a great superhero.”

“Iron Man didn’t keep his powers secret,” Bäl retorted in a grumble. He peeled his hands away from his eyes to look at her. “And I’m not even packing missiles like he was. Just all of this-“ He crammed his hands into two deep, zipper-lined, chain-draped pockets. “-********. Hardly a threat the government would need to get involved with.”

Mave barked out a laugh, but Bäl wasn’t blind; he could see some kind of uncertainty on his brother’s face. He was here because that’s how it had always been. But Mavain’s typically-more-stoic demeanor had shifted. He was unsure too, but wouldn’t profess it as easily as Bäl did. Mave would probably ponder it much more than he had before Alaric had brought this directly to his sibling’s doorstep. Mave would give him direction that he was too blinded to see. But not at this second. Right now, he had to be easy with Bäl. He had to be the reassurance the new Senshi needed. “Oh now you’re Iron Man, are you, angel? I see we’re setting unreasonable standards…”

Another round of uncomfortable laugh-sobs. And then the pretense of finding it funny dropped entirely, and Bäl was openly crying into his brother’s shoulder. “I don’t know what this is, or why,” he admitted in an unhappy rush. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.” Or even if he was supposed to ‘do’ anything. “But there was something that attacked me… And this magic made me strong enough to beat a monster out of existence…”

“I… I really don’t know what to tell you,” Mavain admitted. “Just… Can you take it off? It’s actually a little distracting, seeing… all this sparlkle around your usually-dour face.”

“Oh, of course.” The thought to dismiss this ensemble and return to his normal clothes was no more complicated than it had been to pull them on. Being ‘Alaric’ felt- it was something different in his soul, and it was weird to think that it wasn’t necessarily more comfortable to be back as he was. It was just standard. And Bäl felt welcoming in its own way. That was something he’d have to try and describe to his brother at a later date.

His fingers played idly with Alaric’s long hair, doing his best to soothe the older man, though he was obviously disconcerted as well. “We’ll just do some research, yeah?” Mavain offered eventually. “Maybe there’s others with a similar experience. We’ll find them if we look. We have technology.” And decades upon decades of sci-fi and fantasy material to reference for hints about weird tech or alien magic or whatever else it could be. “And I hate to even suggest it, but if you wanna know what to do with it, wellll… You changed when you saw a monster, right? Is there any chance you’re supposed to find them and fight some great evil, O Chose-“

“If you’re about to suggest I go off on a journey to eradicate a great evil and save the world, I suggest you take your entire fist and shove it in your mouth,” Alaric bit out not-quite playfully.

“Alright, alright, fine, whatever, you act like you haven’t watched any tv, ever. Spoilsport.”