It was not anywhere near the first time that Lottie accompanied me back to my place after school, but it was very much the first time she was so quiet. She was very clearly very new at this, Mom probably hadn't trained her for that long, and it was clear she was… unequipped to deal with any of the hard stuff surrounding a secret identity.

Normally, I would have been more active in trying to assure her that things were back to normal, but at some point during the rest of the school day, I’d made a revelation.

See, I had my suspicions something more than just the magical girl business was going on around me already, possibly even involving me directly, pretty much since the beginning, but it wasn’t until Mom inspected me after I was hit that I made the connection – I was able to emit the dark energy, which means that I wasn’t just compatible with it like normal people, but somehow, my body was adapted to handling it.

Normally, I would have just suspected that it was something to do with partially inheriting Mom’s abilities, however, there was the fact that Liana had interacted with me prior to getting corrupted, and after trying my best to remember, I was pretty sure that I had brushed against Stacey when we were leaving a classroom back on Friday.

All of this led to the obvious conclusion – somehow I was the source of the dark energy, and, more than likely, I would just keep corrupting random people until I did something to stop it. Luckily, stopping it was pretty simple, intuitive, confirming it was some part of me I had previously been unaware of – I focussed on recalling how I felt back when I was regaining consciousness after being hit, and after getting a handle on a feeling that I suspected was it, I simply tried to stop it.

And it worked.

I could feel something accumulating within me, but it was rather slow, so I decided to deal with it somehow after it built up.

And that just left the upcoming awkward conversation about secret identities. After spending the trip back home debating with myself, I’d made the decision to not tell Mom and Lottie about my discovery quite yet. After all, I didn’t want them to worry, and I didn’t think it was a big enough deal to justify bothering them.

Mom was, of course, already home (teleporting beats public transit, I bet), and let us in, and Lottie and I proceeded to take the sofa while she took the comfy chair, and upon stopping the movement, a complete silence fell.

“So,” Mom finally started, after way too many moments had passed.

“So,” I confirmed.

“I’m a Magical Knight, both of us are,” she continued.

Oh my gosh, neither of them had any idea of how to do this.

“That I already knew,” I commented. “Let’s start with what that means.”

“We’re the heroes of truth and justice!” Lottie awkwardly exclaimed.

“Okay, but, like, actually, or is it another one of those things you wanted to say because they sound cool?” I asked her.

“No, it’s actually the truth,” Mom responded. “Those are the attributes that every Magical Knight is beholden to, but they don’t mean the same things to all of us, it’s about our personal interpretations of what those mean. Justice doesn’t necessarily mean following the law and punishing those who don’t, or even dishing out our own justice necessarily, it’s just something we strongly believe in, and something we do our best to uphold in the ways we can. As long as we continue to believe in and strive for those ideals in ways that make sense for us, the power to transform will never leave us.”

“Okay, that makes sense, so the two of you stand for truth because you hate lying, not because you’re bad at it, I see,” I said.

“Wait, what?” Lottie asked.

Mom sighed. “That is correct.”

“So… what do you exactly do with this power?” I asked.

“Well, we cleanse ‘corruption’, traditionally. Mind you, we call it corruption in order to make people understand that people affected are not in full control of their actions, but in reality, what the dark power causes is more of an… involuntary release of all inhibitions. It’s more complicated than that, but to put it in simple terms, it causes people to do whatever they want without caring about the consequences or other factors that would stop them, unless they actually, genuinely care about them. But cleansing people of the dark energy is just a part of it, we also strike at the source - the Demon Queen,” Mom explained.

“You mentioned her on Friday, who is she? What does she want, where does corrupting random people get her?”

“Who she is, I have no clue, I only know that she is a natural source of the dark energy, and that she reincarnates, returning every once in a while. After you said back then, I don’t think it’s her we’re dealing with, since as far as I know, she didn’t die and come back again, and the version of her I dealt with back when I was a teen… When I defeated her in our final showdown, she said she would give up on her plans and live a normal life instead, and my powers responded strongly to the sincerity in her words. She could have changed her mind, but I have no clue why…

“She wasn’t evil, she didn’t want to hurt anyone, she had her reasons to do what she wanted, and even if I disagreed with her, I also respected her. She simply wanted to create a world where nobody would have to live a lie, where everybody would be free to be the truest version of themself, even if that meant some people would be horrible. She never stated it, but it didn’t take me long to pick up that she was a fellow queer woman, and given how things used to be… still are a lot of the time, really… I could never blame her, even if I believed that she was in the wrong for trying to force the world to be a place she wanted it to be. It’s not like I can say it wouldn’t be better if she succeeded, and I knew enough history even back then to know that some change does need to be forced, but… Our final fight wasn’t just for who won, it was, at least to me, about who was right, and given how she reacted to losing, I’m pretty sure it was the same to her.”

I couldn’t be a reincarnation of the Demon Queen, right? I mean, I would know! Not to mention that she was a woman, a queer woman, and I was just some painfully unqueer boy!

And speaking of unqueer…

“That makes sense, and… you’re right, I also don’t think it’s her now that I know this. But I was curious… Where's Dad in all this?” I asked.

“Your father is as far away as he possibly could, and as much as I want to be honest with him, I’ll be keeping it this way, I already feel awful enough including the two of you in this. I’ve never seen him at the scene as the Magical Knight, so he had very little to suspect me by, and I have no intention of drawing him in and putting him in danger, especially after all these years. He does not know,” she said.

I thought about it for half a second before suggesting the obvious.

“Well, he doesn’t know as far as you know at least. He has acted pretty suspicious during the Friday conversation, so I have a feeling something more is going on here,” I said.

“Really? But… No, it doesn’t make any sense, why wouldn’t he just tell me?” Mom asked, panic in her voice.

“You know how he gets with you, Mom – he’s going to let you have your way even if he knows it’s a terrible idea because it’s you. Not to mention that you’re more than bad enough at lying to figure out despite the magic, I pretty much put together you were the adult magical girl during the Friday conversation because of how awkward you were, and if you were doing it for… however long you were doing it back when the two of you were in school, there’s very little chance he didn’t pick up on it,” I explained.

“Oh my goodness, you’re right, he would just let me lie to him if it was clear I wanted to, and for two and a half years, too, I’ve been kidding myself, there’s no way he wouldn’t put two and two together… And once he’s decided on something, he’s stubborn enough to keep at it until he’s slapped on the face with a brutal wake up call… That absolute dummy!” Mom lamented.

“Mom, we’re both sixteen, you can just swear,” I said.

“Fuck! Shit! Fuck!” Mom exclaimed, got up, and started pacing around the living room.

“Uhh… is she going to be okay?” Lottie asked.

“Yeah, it’s not that big of a deal,” I responded.

“Not that big of a deal? I’ve been fucking lying to my husband for years and now that I know he knows, I have to come clean, but he’s gonna hate me because I’ve lied for so fucking long!”

I sighed, got up, and grabbed Mom by the shoulders, which was easy, given she was tall enough for me to be on the eye level with her.

“Mom, relax, please. You’re not the only one at fault, remember? He knows you hate lying, and yet he didn’t stop you from doing so for years, even though he could have. He’s just as much at fault as you are at this point. The two of you are going to have a ten minute serious conversation, and then you’ll be back to normal, because you’re huge dorks who can’t help but love each other very much, okay?” I said in my best attempt at a soothing voice.

“Yeah… Yeah, you’re right. I’m so sorry you had to see me like that, Lottie,” Mom said.

With Mom calmed down and my questions answered, it didn’t take long for us to devolve to our default hangout mode, with Mom and Lottie being competitive in whatever game they chose, and me looking on and occasionally joining only to be demolished near-instantly.

I felt bad about not telling them the truth about me, but I simply needed to figure out what was happening and preferably solve it.

With how fast I’ve been figuring these things out, it couldn’t be that hard, right?

~~~~~

In my genius plan, I’ve forgotten to account for one crucial thing – I couldn’t figure anything out if I felt like shit.

It wasn’t like me to swear, even in my thoughts, but there was simply no other word to describe how I felt by the time Friday evening rolled around. My dark energy whatever tank was filling up faster than I predicted, but I could tell it was half full at best, so I could tell it wasn’t what was bothering me, not to mention I wasn’t feeling like bursting with energy – quite opposite, in fact, it felt like something was draining me completely. Best I could tell my discovery on Tuesday unlocked something within me, but whatever it was, I didn’t do it, I just accessed the ability to do so, and not doing it was clearly detrimental to me.

I collapsed on the sofa after getting home, not having energy to do anything else.

Something was truly, deeply wrong with me, even more than usual. I could tell that much. The things that had felt wrong felt wronger, sure, but more important than that, the feeling that I was missing something, several somethings, was at an all time high, like I was not just not this ugly teenage guy thing, but like I was a different species crammed into an ill fitting, oversized human body.

At some point, Dad came back home from work, and I think I greeted him, but it was all blurring together.

You could tell it was getting bad because I was getting too tired to blame myself for all of my problems – I mean, come on, who could ever think that anyone would be comfortable being canned inside a stupid human body, especially this one? How was it fair that I had to go through all this? Sure, I was an awful person, but making awful people suffer wasn’t exactly helping with those reoffence rates if the modern prison system was anything to go by! And I was just sixteen, I surely haven’t done enough horrible things to deserve being punished that much, right?

With that conclusion, I decided to commit a radical act of total selfishness – asking someone for help.

Good thing Dad was here, because if he wasn’t, I’d need to go find him otherwise. I wasn’t sure why, but in this delirious state it was increasingly clear to me that he was the only one I should trust with whatever this was.

Surely, being filled with dark energy that stripped people of all their inhibitions has never led anyone to making a bad life decision…

“Hey Dad,” I stumbled over to the kitchen where he was, which had greatly concerned him to the point he ran up to me to support me.

“Whoa, what’s happening, are you sick?” Dad asked.

“No, not sick… I think. It’s something to do with the whole magical girl dark energy thingie I guess, but also not… I feel… wrong,” I explained, to the best of my abilities given my state.

“No, no no no, don’t tell me it’s happening to you too…” Dad said, worried.

He raised one of his hands to my face, and it began to glow intense purple.

“Ow, my eyes… It sure is bright for so called dark energy… heh…” I chuckled weakly, clearly losing it even to my own delirious ears.

“Listen to me closely, I know you’re out of it, but this is very important,” Dad started.

I did my best to focus and make a focused face.

“I’m going to do something, and then I’m going to need you to do the same, but you need to pay attention so that you know how,” he explained.

“Okay.” I nodded.

Just like that, my rather short Dad disappeared in a blaze of purple energy, only to be replaced by a tall demon woman with raven black hair and purple eyes.

“Ah… That makes sense…” I muttered.

The Demon Queen continued to hold me.

“I know this is a lot to process, are you okay honey?”

Oh, this was a lot to process indeed. I didn’t actually have a Dad – it was apparent that the Demon Queen, a woman, was my parent.

Apparent parent…

“Hehe, apparent…” I giggled weakly.

“Sweetie, please, you need to focus, this is important, I need you to transform, please do it now,” my second Mom spoke.

She was right, you know? My eyes were closing from the fatigue, I was about to pass out, and I could tell that if I did that as I was now, something bad would happen.

“Please tell me you know how to transform!” She sounded like she was so far away…

How to transform? It’s simple, you just take that little feeling on the inside that tells you why it’s your body is all so wrong, and then you grab it, and pull it o–

The last thing I remember before passing out was my every sense being enveloped in a bright, purple glow.

Rainbow

I am realizing that perhaps I should have pre-written these author's notes as I wrote the chapters, like, what can I say? Lore drop? Epic reveal? Two Moms for the price of one? Okay, that last one is not that bad, but you get my point... One thing is certain, and that's that a transformation in a Scribblehub eggfic has never been proceeded by any gender feelings, not at all...

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