Here's the scene: Ma, yelling, which is normal. Maybe-Da, looking angry and judgmental and like he doesn't understand how kids could possibly think the way they do (had Gaucho ever even been a kid? Or was he just born full-sized and on fire?), which was normal. The Weird Sisters, looking small and fierce and strangely intense about everything, which was normal. And then Mesec, standing quietly on the sidelines with a sad look on his face, wanting to be part of things as his body contorted and he slowly transformed into a shadowy beast of doom, which was norm-

-waaaaaaait.

As usual, Zero managed to miss the lead-up and arrived only when things had gotten utterly, incomprehensibly out of hand. After the enormous excitement of the beautiful tree and the magical turtle, the lightning boy had taken his time carefully examining all the various decorations while just as carefully avoiding the little scene his family seemed to be making. It was pretty annoying, really, and embarrassing, the way his family seemed determined to cause chaos everywhere they went. If it even was his family. Oh, Zero adored his mother, make no mistake, but the more time he spent with other kids, the more he began to resent the certainty they had. Since the day they'd been born there'd been none of the doubt, none of the tension- they were Ampere and Gaucho's, and they were a family, in a way Zero knew he could never really be. And while Zero liked to pretend it didn't matter, that as long as he had Ma he was just as good and it wasn't like they weren't his sisters and it was fine, he was fine, he was beginning to realize that well... maybe he wasn't. Maybe he wanted that.

Maybe even the fighting, when they did it, looked kind of, y'know, nice.

But it was still his family, and he was still their brother, and so he'd still always care.

Zero wandered around the tree, casually trying to keep an eye on the escalating conflict in his little family while pointedly avoiding getting involved. It was embarrassing, really- did they have to do it here? He was getting worried, too, because Ma was not calming down, and the girls probably didn't deserve quite that much rage. Probably.

The boy watched through sunbeam eyes, torn between ducking out and stepping in, tailfeathers pressed against his rump and hooves scuffing anxiously on the ground as tensions appeared to heighten in the group. Desperately he looked for something, anything, that might dissipate the drama - and all at once he was pretty sure he found it, because Mesec was nearby watching and Mesec was always calm and boy, was Zero about to be wrong.

He set toward his friend at a kind-of-casual trot, trying to make sure he was visible to his Ma, too- maybe she'd see him and calm the fuck down. "Hey, Mesec!" the boy cried out brightly, though his concern shone through his carefree voice. "They're loud, huh? D'ya think they're ok? 'M worried 'bout the girls, but they're probably-"

At last Zero saw Mesec's expression, his voice and smile faltering under the evident sadness there. He stopped, suddenly wishing he was instead among his shouting family, that he hadn't said anything, that he could just rewind this entire day. If Zero had never know how Mesec felt about his Ma before, he suddenly and horribly gained an inkling of it now, and what it meant, and how similarly they must feel, looking at Ampere and Gaucho and their little bundles of joy.

But it was too late.

Because as Zero grew closer to the one adult he most admired, the Moon God's sun began to change. It was subtle at first, almost unnoticeable, but fast - so fast - and even as Zekle drew to a stop, eyes flickering uncertainly between his family and his friend, voice rising in a quavering, uncertain, "Mesec?" Because Zero was suddenly concerned for a very different reason, because there was definitely something very wrong- he could smell it, and hear it, and see it in the dangerous glint of the suddenly transformed Mesec's eyes.

Zero stopped and shuddered, deeply, fundamentally afraid. He wished he was with Ma now, regretted deeply that he'd tried to blow his family off- though why? This was Mesec, after all, his friend. "T-that's a cool t-trick," the boy grinned uncertainly, willing himself not to take a step back. "H-how'd y'l-learn t'do that, M-Mesec?"

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OOC;; 'tis the day of long, rambling posts from Charks.
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