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Mason had, if he was being honest with himself, been running himself a little ragged with the whole 'basically a superhero, if not a very powerful one comparatively' thing. He'd been living fully in the magical world; researching, asking every question that popped into his head (which was A LOT), visiting Blarney, training in both his civilian life and his powered state. He'd been so focused on that, in fact, that even Madeline, who was not exactly the world's biggest fan of his 'extracurricular activities', as she called them, had ordered him to take the night off. She'd gotten him a ticket to the drive-in; normally they went together, but it was playing some dumb buddy comedy that Mason loved which Madeline hated. Or so she said, anyway - he wasn't entirely convinced that it wasn't a poor attempt at jut getting him out of the house and out of her hair for a few hours.

But Madeline had ordered and so he'd obeyed. He'd taken the McMinivan and found a spot, turned the radio to the correct channel for the audio, and settled in. Only for his stomach to growl pointedly as the scent of popcorn, grease and candy wafted in through the open windows.

Well, Mads couldn't get mad at him for indulging when she'd been the one to send him here, right? And if he was getting snacks, he should get them before the movies actually started.

Slightly buoyed by the thought of movie theater popcorn (why was it so much better than the popcorn they had at home?) and not having to share his candy, Mason made his way to the concession stand, just as the sun began to dip below the treeline.

He had to admit - it was kind of...nice, being around normal people. It'd been a while since he had spent any kind of time with anyone who wasn't powered (or wasn't his sister). Hearing the kids laugh and scream, watching them play chase or cops-n-robbers...it made him smile. This was what they were supposed to be fighting for. Normality.

He shook his head to clear it as Mason approached the front of the line. "Hi, can I please have--oh!" Mason interrupted himself as his brain caught up with his mouth. "Nada!" Mason grinned automatically - he knew Nada from school. Everyone at Meadowview knew Nada, or at least of her, on account of her infectious smile and overall fantastic vibes, but he always forgot she worked here until he actually saw her standing in front of him. "Hey!" Mason paused. Had he actually ever--like, introduced himself to her? Or had he and Madeline always just said a friendly hello and scurried back to the McMinivan? He couldn't be sure, but he had a pretty good guess. "I'm Mason. I think we had--like, home ec or something together? I don't remember, but--hi anyway! How're you doing?"

Mason beamed, batting a hand at her in the universal 'oh, stop' gesture. "That's the plan," Mason said, deciding for the moment to simply ignore the growing anxiety that came over him every time he even thought about thinking about college. "We'd never leave this city. What could the rest of the world have to offer that could possibly beat," he gestured all around, then back to her specifically, his smile turning impish, "all this?"

He took his snacks and was just about to turn to go back to his car when he caught - a glimpse. Something dark. Something with tentacles, maybe, disappearing through the shadows of the far treeline.

He froze. His breath caught in his throat, everything in him tensing up. Mason prayed he was wrong, but he knew he wasn't. There were so many civilians - normal people. Laughing kids. Families.

Potential victims.

"Um," Mason said, distractedly. "Can--can I leave my snacks here for a second?" Mason asked Nada, eyes still on the treeline. He had no idea if there were any other powered around; he'd have to power up to tell. And if he wasn't - he wasn't sure if that was worse or better. If he was the only powered person around, he'd have to deal with whatever it was lurking in the forest. If he wasn't, he couldn't very well leave whoever it was out there in the cold.

But god. The civilians. There were so many people.

How was he supposed to power up here? With all these people around? But he had to. All these people...

"Uh. Where's the--the bathroom?" Mason knew where the bathroom was, he'd been coming here all his life, but at that moment, the only things that he knew for sure was that there was a monster in the woods, and there were innocents just waiting to have their nights--maybe their lives--absolutely ruined.

Later, Mason would decide it should've been obvious that they both whipped up a pretty lame excuse at the exact same time that they whipped up a pretty lame excuse for the same reason. In the moment, though, he was more focused on sliding into the bathroom (which was, in fact, surprisingly clean) and transforming into Blarney.

He blasted out of the bathroom, stick in hand, ready to defend against whatever demon was lurking in the woods. And hopefully he would not literally die trying.

Blarney ran toward the noise, grimacing when he finally spotted the horrifying nightmare fuel that was lurking, waiting for dinner.

"C'mere, Ugly," Blarney muttered. He jumped toward the thing, aiming to whack it with his stick. It had worked before, hadn't it? Maybe it could work again, even if he wasn't jumping off a building for extra oomph. He collided with the creature but the blow was glancing, not enough to make it go poof. He rolled away with a grunt, glaring at the thing with increased intensity as it snarled at him, attention completely diverted from the hundreds of tasty morsels that just wanted to watch a movie.

"Yeah, that's right, Ugly. Focus on me."

Blarney blinked as - giant...popcorn kernels...? appeared?

Blarney blinked and shook his head. Looked again. Yep, they were still there. He glanced over his shoulder to see where they had come from, and was both further surprised and deeply relieved to see what appeared to be a Senshi, all pink-n-white and...dishing out popcorn-flavored (haha) attacks.

Blarney blinked one more time as his brain tuned into what the Senshi was saying, and he grinned and nodded, rushing forward to give the slithery nightmare a solid, existence-ending thwack on the head with his stick. It was not very big, but size didn't matter if you knew what to do with it, and Blarney was starting to figure that part out.

"--a good knight!" Blarney said as he attacked the creature, grinning in satisfaction as it disappeared into thin air. He looked back at the Senshi, not even minding that he was getting a little covered in butter himself, for his close contact with the monster. "All part of a balanced diet, huh?"

Blarney laughed as he high-fived the Senshi. "Yeah we did!" He'd been so scared just a few moments before, worried about all the attendees of the movie and for Nada's sake--

Nada.

Crud.

Blarney looked around, smile fading slightly as he scanned the nearby area. "Um, you didn't see--a friend of mine works concessions, you didn't see where she went, did you?" Maybe 'friend' was putting it a little strongly, since the twins didn't really have friends, but it was impossible to not be friends-ish with Nada. If she was around, if she'd seen him transform or put it together somehow...he understood that there was some kind of magical protection around identities, but honestly he didn't know how far it went, and how much common sense it interfered with. He was pretty sure, though, that Nada was not supposed to know about him, or the whole magical world in general, which meant he needed to escape and power down as quickly as possible, lest he bump into Nada and spoil the whole thing.

(Nada did not strike him as the type to keep a secret, if he was being honest. Then again, he figured, he himself didn't seem like a great secret-keeper either, and usually he wasn't, if he was being honest. But he was keeping this a secret...

But still. Better safe than sorry, right?)

"She...is," Blarney agreed, giving Monch a sort of strange look before he joined her in looking over his own shoulder, to see if Nada had returned from wherever she'd run off to. "She's really great. I didn't want her to get got by this thing," he explained, gesturing vaguely at the area where Ugly had been just a few minutes before. "But I didn't see where she went."

Blarney looked back at the Senshi after a moment or two. "I'll find her though, don't worry about it." Blarney paused, then shook his head and gave her a sheepish smile. "Sorry, I'm being totally rude. Thank you for your help with that thing, I've never seen magic like that before. Popcorn, huh?" Blarney grinned and held out his hand. "My name's Blarney, Page of Earth. Have you been doing this long? I'm still pretty new, so...if you're not and you've got any pointers, I'd love to take notes!"

Blarney whipped around and almost missed the reveal, because he was sure that she had actually spotted Nada, but--

But no.

Oh. That was Nada.

Wait.

Wait, what?

Blarney stared, then laughed in spite of himself. He took one more glance around, making sure nobody was looking in their direction before he powered down too.

"Me Mason! I mean," Mason said, blushing brightly - some day he would manage to string two sentences together, but today was not this day. "It's Mason! I can't believe you're--that we're both--" Mason laughed and ran a hand through his hair, now free of flower-crown.

"You were awesome, dude. You coulda knocked me over with a feather when there was just - popcorn suddenly?? Like, that's so freaking cool!" Mason grinned, then shook his head and said, in a Charlie-Brown kind of voice, "I got a stick."

Mason laughed. "Gross!" He gave a playful shudder. "What if when you level up you have to kiss them with tongue. Or, like, tongues because they're terrifying monsters and probably have more tongues than should be allowed," he said with another laugh. "Gross. Now I'm gonna have that image in my head all day, thanks."

Mason shook his head. "Let me buy you some of your own snacks, as a thank you," he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder back to the concession stand. "We can swap stories and I can help you clean up so you don't get in trouble for, yanno, secretly saving everybody's life."