no suffixes because yolo. freckles!rei because vector is better as an angry miserable ginger obviously. it's a bit fragmentary and messy but i don't feel like editing it into a Legit Fic so take what you get you ungrateful brats.

It's not that hating Vector is new. Everyone hates Vector. Even Durbe, who doesn't hate anyone, hates Vector a little. Even Vector hates Vector; it's basic psychology. Mizael is sure that Vector wouldn't know what to do with himself if he ever met a person that didn't hate him. It's just that somehow, Mizael has the disconcerting feeling that often he ends up being the one hating Vector the most in any given situation, and this makes him stick out and seem overcommitted.

For example, once Vector was being rude and insensitive about something, and it was bothering everyone, but only Mizael had to walk away, fists clenched and shaking, and Durbe even said something to him about it. "He may have a rotten personality, but Vector works tirelessly for the sake of our world," he'd scolded. "He is our comrade, Mizael."

"Yes, but he even more tirelessly works for the sake of himself," Mizael had spat, even knowing, as the words come out, that he sounded petty and childish, a nestling with a grudge. "If he really cared, surely - "

"Don't make this about your own feelings, Mizael," Durbe had said, and that had been the end of it.

Now, Mizael paces aimlessly under the shadow of a crystal overhang. It has been a long time since he's seen Vector. After Vector's defeat to Yuuma, he'd become strange, prone to sudden silences and abrupt appearances and disappearances. Vector had always needed to move around, to agitate things, to be in motion, to not be held down - but this was a level of inconsistent and irrational behavior that he'd never previously shown.

For example, right now, Vector has suddenly portaled in about twenty feet away.

Mizael jumps back, and for a second, Vector doesn't even notice him; he seems preoccupied. He's rubbing his hands together, hard, as if trying to clean them of something, and the wings on his back buzz erratically yet near-continuously (as opposed to the occasional small, short bursts that usually mean Vector is in high spirits or is particularly energetic). "...Vector?" Mizael asks, and Vector whirls around.

"Mizael! Keeping cool?" he calls out jauntily. He sounds just the same, but his hands work against one another, as if he would scrape his thick hide away, and his wings buzz shrilly into the thin air.

"...Cool enough," Mizael says. Talking to Vector one-on-one is usually a frustrating proposition, but rarely has Mizael ever felt so... vulnerable in addressing him, like speaking to someone on the verge of madness. "Where were you?"

"Me?" Vector seems almost thrown off by the question. "I... I was in the human world. Investigating."

"Hm." Mizael steps closer. "How'd that go?"

Vector looks around, anywhere. "Fine. Well. Perfectly. What do you care?"

"I care nothing. Say, Vector," Mizael says, stepping closer. "I was just in the human world, in fact. I encountered Astral and his lackeys. He tried to tell me that we, the Seven Barian Lords, were once human. Have you ever heard such nonsense in your life?"

Mizael expects Vector to react with disgust; he told him the ridiculous tale to perhaps calm him down, focus him on something else, maybe even get him to start taunting Mizael so that things would seem a bit more routine. Instead, Vector stops compulsively rubbing his hands, though his wings still shrill in the air like cicadas.

"Did you ever wonder why we take on human form in the human world?" he says suddenly, and Mizael's brow contracts in confusion.

"Well... the human world has different physics, and our bodies naturally attune themselves to the matter-arrangement of the plane..." he begins hesitantly, but Vector waves him off.

"Forget the matter-arrangement of the plane. Yes, our natural bodily makeup requires an immense amount of energy to maintain in that dull dimension. That's not what I'm asking." His violet eyes glimmer with manic intensity. "Why do we take on human form? Why not a fire? A star? Why not an animal? A predator? A tiger? A dragon?" He adds the last with a pointed nod and a sneering glance. "We have no control over the matrix pattern our atoms attune to when we enter their plane, and we form there as human. Why human?" Mizael has no answer; his throat works but he has no words to even say. "For that matter, the Astral being doesn't need to shift forms on their plane," he adds.

"Do - Do you..." Mizael can't even ask it. Is Vector saying he thinks it's true? That they, the bright-shining, ever-burning Barian Lords could have been...

Vector stays quiet, and then sets his hands at his hips and strolls to Mizael's right, forcing Mizael to turn to follow. "Just something to think about," he laughs. "Maybe we don't take on human form in their world. Why, if you think about it, maybe it's simply that those filthy creatures have evolved to mimic Barian shape! Seems evolutionarily advantageous!"

As Vector passes, Mizael suddenly feels a chill. A strong sense of wrongness, and immense, ancient magnitude. He stiffens, turns to fully face Vector. "Is - ?!" He realizes he began speaking before he even knew what he was going to ask. Are you okay? What's that odd feeling I sense? But before he can finish, Vector is already rounding on him, his eyes wide.

"I'm going to kill him, Mizael," he says, and the shrilling of his wings intensifies, and Mizael realizes he is hovering off the ground so that his eyes are at Mizael's own eye level - something Vector has never actually done. "I'm going to kill the Astral being. And his pet human. It's fine. Don't get in my way."

Vector's sudden compensation for the height difference between him and Mizael gives Mizael the chance to touch Vector's central crystal with a long fingernail -

- a deep and terrible darkness -
- something choking and fever-hot -
- THE EYES -

Vector drops back to his feet and Mizael staggers back, reeling. "What have you done?" he whispers. "What have you done?"

Vector backs up, turns, and runs, and Mizael is already running after him, and he can feel the twisting in the air that is Vector opening a portal, and he reaches out and latches a hand onto his shoulder even as the portal sucks them both in -

to spit them out in the human world, sealed in dull, senseless human flesh over brittle human bones, and Vector gets up again and attempts to make a dash, only to collapse on the ground, panting, his flame-colored human hair clumping to his neck in sweaty spikes. Two trips to and from the human world within minutes of one another? Insane, even for Vector. Mizael wonders if he meant to obscure his intentions by making it impossible to read his light, as they might in their world, by cloaking himself in human skin again.

"You've done something, haven't you?" Mizael shouts. This is the moment he, in theory, has always wanted and waited for: proof of treachery. Vector can only gasp. His human arms are thin and dusted with freckles and shaking with exhaustion. Mizael towers over him now.

Vector manages a shaky laugh. "What haven't I done?" he whispers. "I've given everything. I do everything, for the sake of Barian World." He shoves himself with sudden violence up to his knees. "You couldn't begin to understand what I've sacrificed," he hisses, his teeth clenched and bared. Mizael can't help but feel a slight twinge of disgust and pity: Vector wears his human skin well. He... he seems at home here on this plane, wearing these animalistic faces, working his human mouthparts around words that do not simply resonate from their heads as Whole Things, spitting such words like poison.

"Vector - "

"I didn't want to go in there," he moans, shaking, raving with reckless abandon across subjects Mizael can't follow. "I could feel it," he holds his hands up almost like a supplicant, but instead he is shaking his hands, his wrists, his arms, his meat for emphasis, "in my guts, Mizael. That place was death. And no proud Barian fears death, but I - I went there. I went there anyway. And I..." He starts giggling, insane little tremors. He brings his hands up and covers his eyes, laughing. Mizael falls to his own knees and pries Vector's hands away, seizing his wrists. "It was like a playground," he babbles. "I knew every stone... every link in every chain... It was made for me, don't you understand?!"

"No," Mizael says flatly. "I don't understand you at all, Vector." He grips Vector firmly at his wrists, feeling their thinness, the sliding of his tendons and bones beneath the skin. Mizael's no longer quite so sure that Vector has betrayed them, so much as he has done something that finally splintered his already unstable mind. He's spent too long in human skin, chasing his petty vengeances. It has twisted him.

(And a cruel part of Mizael is almost taking pleasure in seeing Vector finally cornered like a rat, falling apart and showing how weak he always was for all his bluster.)

"You could never understand," Vector spits, and suddenly lunges for Mizael, presses his lips against Mizael's, and this is new, this is not something Mizael has ever done or thought to do in human form. At first Mizael thinks that he is under attack, and tries to fight back, pushing his tongue against Vector's teeth (expecting a bite or even a small concealed weapon, perhaps), but Vector just opens his mouth and allows Mizael's tongue to slide in, moving his own against it, sucking gently. Mizael is confused, and forgets to stop, or move away.

(This is...
not unpleasant?)

Vector's hand, unresisted by Mizael even though he still holds Vector's wrist, moves to Mizael's shoulder, grips carefully as he pulls himself closer. "Mi..." he whispers, as he pulls away, presses his face into Mizael's shoulder, and Mizael hears Vector's voice hitching oddly, "Mizael..." Is he... Is he crying?

"Vector, are..." (He seems so fragile now, and Mizael is confused, so confused, so thrown aback by the kiss and his human body's response, and now this - ) "Are you...alright?"

"Fine," he hears, and Vector suddenly shoves him to the ground, plants a knee into his chest and pins him there. His eyes are indeed wet, red-rimmed, but they glimmer with a manic triumph, and his teeth are bared.

Mizael struggles but Vector's knee is crushing the air out of him. "You...!"

"This is what I'm telling you," Vector says, running one wrist along his mouth as if to wipe the taste of Mizael's lips away. "You hate me. You despise me. No Barian would feel pity for the weak.

"But humans..." He lifts his knee away. Mizael realizes he doesn't mean to attack him. Just to rant some more. Vector's chest still heaves. He brings two fingers to his eyelashes and brushes at his tears, gesturing. "I taught myself to do this. Humans can't tell the difference." He laughs, still shakily. "Humans pity the weak. They want to care for the pathetic, the despicable. Even you, Mizael! You couldn't have been concerned for me, could you?!"

Mizael feels weak, foolish, taken in - but Vector's right, it is these bodies of theirs, not their true selves, that tricked Mizael into letting his guard down. Surely this means they could never have been human before! But Vector still raves: "Humans are so pathetic! Did you know they comfort one another when they fail? They... they'll go out of their way to save a nuisance! They can be tricked into anything! Point in some direction, and they'll look! Shed a tear, and they forget a fault! So easily led." He's laughing now. Maybe? Mizael can't tell because Vector's breathing is so erratic. Come to think of it, his tears don't seem to have stopped, either.

"To think such... despicable creatures have survived this long... why... why, they'd throw away everything to save the most miserable thing..." (Mizael thinks, it really does sound like Vector's laughing, and yet, he keeps swiping his eyes with his arms.) "To think... to think they're such fools..."

Mizael stands, straightens himself, brushes himself off. "Vector," he says quietly, "thank you for your enlightening words. Of course we Barians could never have been human. I'm sure that's what you meant by all this." Vector is still slumped over, cradling his face, laughing. Laughing in little, broken sobs.

Vector isn't a traitor, Mizael thinks, as the portal opens behind him.

He's just insane.