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Billy, Tommy, and Inu-yasha (guest starring Yana), backdated to Aug 23
The day he arrives, Billy tracks down the guy with his face and, incidentally, his roommate. Tommy is skeptical; Inu-yasha is wary. Then magic happens and suddenly it’s a bit of a brawl…
Oh, and Illyana drops by to save them from all that testosterone.
Maybe it was a little crazy to go stalking around his new school looking for a kid who looked like him. Maybe it wasn't even the guy from the TV, maybe Bobby just thought this Shepherd guy just looked really close to him, that happened sometimes right?
He stood outside the room that he had been told Shepherd stayed in, Room 103, and took a deep breath as he tried to summon up the courage to knock.
His hand froze and he tried to will himself to knock. "Just knock, just knock. Come on, Kaplan. Don't be a wimp."
Two sound knocks and he immediately felt like bolting.
The shared dorm room hadn't been Tommy's favourite place to hang out, but the week since the thing at the facility had left him a lot more rattled than usual. It was easier to spend time in the relative quiet, dicking around with the audio mixer programs he'd downloaded and messing around with the old guitar he'd picked up at the thrift shop in Salem Center.
That was where he was when the knock came at the door, sitting cross-legged on his bed, guitar in his lap, hair flopping down over his eyes and his jeans ripped at the knees. Who was likely to be knocking like that? Bobby? Illyana? (definite possibility.) A teacher would have just walked in by now. "Come in," Tommy called out, resting his arm across the rounded top of the instrument and looking up to see who would answer.
Inu-yasha had been ignoring Tommy as much as possible, as was their usual way, flipping idly through a textbook (a history one, the kind with lots of pictures and mildly interesting contents, compared to shit like math or science). Since Tommy apparently hadn't told anyone about his ears, he'd stopped wearing the bandana when it was just the two of them in the room, so he sent a brief glare toward the door at the knock and pulled it on. He took a pointed sniff of the air, trying to determine if he was about to clear out of the room for a while (if it was Yana, then probably, but if it was Bobby or someone like that, he and Tommy would probably go play video games somewhere else).
Tommy had already invited whoever it was in, but Inu-yasha sat up straighter, calling a warning "Wait--" to his roommate as the door opened. Whoever was on the other side of the door smelled of magic, unfamiliar magic. And that could mean anything. Inu-yasha was half off his bed and in a defensive stance, eyes narrowed on the new kid.
Billy heard a voice give him permission to enter and with a deep breath he turned the knob and pushed the door open to come face to face with a guy who looked really on edge and the guy who he was sure now had been on TV.
What exactly did you do when you found your doppelgänger? Didn't this mean time or something was going to split apart? Or was that meeting your past self when time traveling? Whatever it was supposed to be it felt weird! And the genius plan Billy had was to point at the boy with an accusing finger. "It IS you! Why do you have my face?"
Tommy'd gone on edge with Inu-yasha's warning, but now he only blinked. Fuckers. Things like ‘we ran into a dude with Tommy’s looks and powers during a mission’ didn’t stay quiet for long. He’d half-expected a little more kindness from Bobby and Kurt, but whatever. He probably deserved it; it didn’t mean he had to play along.
“Hah, hah,” he replied, disgust colouring his voice. “Very funny, assholes. Get my face out of the image inducer files or I’ll bribe Kitty to program zits all over Kurt’s usual.”
Inu-yasha was still on edge, but his nose was working overtime. He took a step forward, blatantly sniffing at the newcomer, golden eyes narrowed at him. "The hell is this, some kinda spell?"
"What does any of that even mean?" Billy exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air trying to figure out what exactly was happening here when the other light haired guy in the room started to smell him.
What. The. Hell.
"Okay, dude. What are you doing?"
Tommy narrowed his eyes. Image inducers were one thing, but they didn’t change voices – or accents. And this kid – whoever he was – not only looked, but sounded, almost exactly like Tommy before he’d gotten his powers. The hair and eye colour were dead on (though he sounded like a New Yorker, that definitely wasn’t Jersey, and it sure as hell wasn’t Kurt’s German accent). And there was no way Bobby or Kurt would know what Tommy had looked like before the great mutant bleach job had kicked in.
So if it wasn’t two of the three stooges screwing with him, what was going on here? “You’re not Kurt under a hologram,” he stated firmly. “So what’s the deal? Are you a shapeshifter?” Gar was, but he was always green. This was something different
"You've got a brother," Inu-yasha said flatly, ignoring the stranger's question entirely. He sniffed, stepping sideways around him, looking for any clue about the scents and growling faintly in confusion. "A brother who stinks of magic."
"I would absolutely love if people stopped asking me that." Billy groaned. "No, I'm not a shapeshifter. This is the only shape I have."
He frowned at the bloodhound to the side of him when he stated he had a brother. Well, yeah he had two of them so what? "What do you mean? My brothers aren't even here."
"And I'm an only child," Tommy replied to Inu-Yasha. "I don't have any siblings, never mind a brother. What kind of magic?"
He put the guitar aside on his bed and got to his feet, crossing the small room to stand almost toe to toe with the new guy. The not-Tommy. They were the same height, similar builds... And this close it was like looking in a photo-negative mirror of sorts. What he would have looked like, in another life. His brow furrowed, irritation mellowing out into bone-deep confusion.
"I dunno," Inu-yasha griped back at Tommy, "I just know it's magic. He's some kinda..." What did you a call a male witch anyway? "I dunno, witch-guy." Another sniff. "And he's definitely your blood. Like, you smell totally different on the surface, but under that..."
"Wait. Me? I smell like magic?" Was that what this kid could do? Smell things really well? Billy almost wanted to take a step back when his look-a-like decided to stand in his space, but he wasn't about to back down and show weakness.
He stood up as straight as he could, which unfortunately didn't help since they were the exact same height, and frowned at the boy with his face. He glanced at the other boy quickly, not wanting to lose this weird Mexican stand off with Shepherd, and raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean by blood? You can smell my blood too?"
Tommy glanced at Inu-yasha, unconsciously mirroring the new guy's motion. "That doesn't make any sense; I'd know if we were related." But he sounded a lot less sure about it than he had a moment ago.
Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie, Quicksilver and his sister- Tommy was the only speedster he knew, so far, without a twin. Mind you, the others' twins were girls. And when the hell would there have been time and secrecy enough for his mother to give birth to a second baby, hide it, and then spend the rest of her life lying about it? It hadn't happened, that was what.
A cousin? Maybe? Tommy had an aunt on his mother's side, but she didn't have any kids. Not that he knew about, anyway. He frowned back at the new guy. "What's your name?"
Inu-yasha had sent a pointed glare at his roommate - his nose didn't lie, and these two weren't just related, they smelled the damn same - but he joined in on the questions smoothly enough, growling, "And what the hell are you?"
Wow. Talk about feeling interrogated, but he was the one who stormed into their room and started the blame game so Billy couldn't be too offended. He raised his hands in a defensive motion and waved them a bit.
"Okay first off, my name is Billy, Billy Kaplan. Second off, I'm human! Like one hundred percent and the only magic I have is the card game."
This wasn't really going how he planned, not that he really had one to start with, but he wasn't getting any information this way. "Look, I'm just trying to figure out why my exact double exists and is apparently also a mutant. It just seems too coincidental."
That had been the first time he'd referred to himself as a mutant and it made him feel a little bit shaky. He was admitting that this was real.
"Tommy Shepherd. But since you came looking for me, I'm going to guess you already knew that."
Tommy reached out and poked Billy in the shoulder, just to confirm that he was really standing there. Inu-yasha would have said something if he wasn't, though; holograms and psychic projections didn't have smells. Did they? He seemed solid enough, and his shoulder was where it was supposed to be -- no demon wings or empty space where a shoulder should have been. Okay, fine. Next option.
And the obvious answer hit him right in the gut and the funny bone at the same time. He smiled, but there wasn't a whole lot of joy in it.
"Assuming Inu-yasha's right -- which, yeah, I trust his nose. Believe me, I've seen weirder things around this place -- then both of our mothers and one of our fathers have a hell of a lot of explaining to do." He glanced at his roommate. “Can your sniffer figure that one out?”
And he let himself dream, just for a minute, that maybe he wasn't half-made-up of good ol' Frank after all.
Inu-yasha sent Tommy a dirty look for sniffer, but he focused on growling at Billy. "Well you're no demon, I'll give you that. But don't fucking lie - I know what magic smells like. I've killed actual demons." Well, one, but this guy didn't need to know that. Especially since he didn't smell like Limbo, not even a trace amount like Illyana. "You try any crazy witch shit, you'll fucking regret it."
Then he looked over at his roommate. "And how the hell did you not know you have a twin brother?"
Billy visibly gagged at the idea of either of his parents doing the do with anyone but each other, which that thought then made him want to gag again. "Look I can like thirty eight thousand percent assure you neither of my parents have ever...done anything like that. Like, my dad's real lucky my mom even went for him."
He frowned at who he now guessed was Inuyasha, fixing him with an irritated glare. "And I can't try any 'witch shit' since I would have no idea how to."
He rubbed at the place Shepherd had poked him, ignoring the urge to be petty and poke the guy right back only harder. "Your friend Bobby said your hair wasn't always white and your eyes weren't green.That is changed when you got your powers...what color were they before?"
Tommy let the staring contest go, backing off a couple of steps. Some of the tension in the room faded, but sure as hell not all of it. "I don't have a twin," he told Inu-yasha firmly. "Believe me, if there had been another kid, and I'd been the only one they kept? I'd have heard about that bullshit every day, all of my life. The only way any of this makes sense is if we've got the same father, but not the same mom."
Maybe it wasn't dad Kaplan, either. There had been Quicksilver and his sister, after all, and their mother would have been someone else again.
But in answer to Billy... Tommy flopped back on his bed, propping himself up on his elbows. "Brown," he admitted with some reluctance. "Exactly like you."
Inu-yasha was staring at the new guy like he'd just grown an extra head or something. He was actually willing to believe Billy didn't know anything about magic after all the dumb kid stuff he kept spouting...
But he snapped out of it to shoot a look at his roommate. "You're not getting me. You're not related, it's like you're the same." Shit, he'd need to talk to Illyana to see if this was some kind of magic bullshit. "But he's not fast, and you're not magic.”
Billy took in everything the two were saying and felt like the world might be tilting a little bit. Shepherd had looked exactly like him before his powers manifested, that meant that Shepherd and him had looked completely the same, like complete carbon copies of each other and Inuyasha was saying they smelled the same.
Shepherd had said he trusted his roommates nose, so that meant that this wasn't a case of oh we just happen to look alike.
Billy put a hand to his forehead to hopefully steady the weird tilting motion he felt, his hands starting to tingle from the static running through his limbs. "I feel like I'm in the twilight zone...I wish someone knew what was going on here."
Billy felt slightly nauseous for a split second, but it passed quickly.
The scent of magic flared, and in a flash of inhuman speed, Inu-yasha had the new kid pinned up against the wall, arm pressed to his throat (not enough to cut off the air, but damn close) and growling in his face, golden eyes flashing dangerously. "The fuck did I just tell you about using magic?! The hell did you do?!"
Tommy wasn't exactly used to feeling like things were happening too quickly around him, but this one, oh man, that took the cake. Inu-yasha had Billy pinned up against the wall, arm to his throat, and in the split-second when Billy's eyes went wide Tommy saw his own face. Another attacker, but his own fear.
Tommy was moving at top speed before he'd decided to do anything at all, grabbing Inu-yasha's shoulder and hauling back. "Get off him!" he barked the order, but the guy was a brick wall and even Tommy's sped-up momentum couldn't shift him. Inu-yasha turned and glared, his arm still up against Billy's throat.
"Don't make me see how fast I have to accelerate you before you blow," Tommy warned, a growl in his voice. Ozone crackled around them, hair raising up on Tommy's arms.
The speed of which everything happened was so fast that Billy's mind couldn't even comprehend what Inuyasha was so upset about before he was slammed against the wall and held there by his throat while Shepherd was yelling at his roommate to let him go.
Billy's mind went into a blind panic, thoughts of being beaten to a pulp again raced through his mind and his fear ratcheted up so that his chest was heaving. He barely had time to notice that awful smell in the air and the feel of something wanting to explode from him before he sent out a rather heavy jolt of blue electricity at both the boys, hitting them both harshly.
Inu-yasha had no idea what happened, just that his roommate went batshit and then everything exploded in pain and electricity and he was on his back on the ground.
He sat up slowly. He was a little singed, but he'd live. His bandana had fallen off, but at least that meant he could hear that the idiot brothers were both still alive. Sitting on the floor between them, one silver dog ear flicking, Inu-yasha just growled, "What. The fuck. Is going on."
The shiver over Tommy's skin turned to pain in an instant, and he hit the floor on his shoulder, skidding hard. He'd been blown further back than his roommate, his chest tight, so tight - he couldn't make his muscles move to breathe for one terrifying instant - before the charge vanished and he could move again. It wasn't anything like his powers, but weirdly felt... familiar?
That didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense. But what he needed to know the most of all-- Tommy pushed himself to his feet. "You okay?" He was asking them both, but he was looking at Billy's face. His face.
After the rush of adrenaline started to fade, Billy could finally calm down and focus to see that he had once again electrocuted other people. He felt his eyes sting with tears in relief when they both were actually conscious and not dead.
His body felt shaky as he nodded to Shepherd's question and turned to look over at Inuyasha, wary of the guy even as he noticed two fluffy white ears on top of the guy's head. "A-are you two okay?"
Inu-yasha was staring, dumbfounded, at Tommy. "You're worried about the guy who just tried to fuckin' electrocute us?" His face turned to an angry snarl, the kind that bared his fangs (and made him look most demonic). "What the hell is wrong with you?"
He looked up at the other one. "Did you do something to him? The hell was that magic?"
Okay, that was it. Tommy had been a simmering ball of pent-up terror and rage for the last week —no, fuck that. The last five months? The last fuck-knew how many years. And now, faced with another impossible situation in a sea of goddamn disasters, he had just. Had it.
He looked at Inu-yasha’s furious face, and all he could see was Frank.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” He snarled back at Inu-yasha, circling to put himself between his roommate and his body double. “You body-slammed him, asshole. What the hell was he supposed to do? I don’t like bullies, and you’re getting on my last fucking nerve.”
Billy was dumbfounded by the fact that Shepherd was actually defending him, the guy who busted into his room pointing fingers and then electrocuted both him and his roommate. But here he was, standing between him and Inuyasha, who didn't look very happy, and was standing up for him.
Oh god. What if he had wished for help! Had he? Shit, what if this was his stupid powers job and now they were going to tear into each other. Billy struggled to stand up and quickly tried diffuse the situation. "Wait wait! Let's calm down."
He turned to Shepherd. "Look, Tommy. I'm fine it's all good."
Completely ignoring Billy, Inu-yasha was shouting in Tommy's face. "He was supposed to stop using magic on us!! He might've just brainwashed you, idiot! He's the one barging in here and using magic and fucking electrocuting us!"
Tommy went cold. “And choking him out is going to fix that? Back off.” Tommy raised his closed fist in front of him, felt the power trembling through his fingers. “Unless you really wanna go.”
"No! No. He does not want to go." He was glancing in between the two, worried about what exactly was going to happen if a speedster and whatever the hell Inuyasha was went at it in a small room. "Just let's calm down. I'll leave alright?"
He felt like he was talking to a rock and a wall cause really neither of them were paying attention to him. He wondered if maybe he should run and get Bobby? But Bobby was Tommy's friend so would that be worse? "Ugh!"
“You don't scare me, Speedy," Inu-yasha shot back, cracking his knuckles. "I don't care what he did to your head, I'll beat it in anyway!"
The warning bells were going off loud in Tommy's head by now, the whole 'he could put me through a wall and not blink' awareness of Inu-yasha's powers from the Danger Room sessions screaming to the forefront. Still, he couldn't back down or life in 103 would be fucking unbearable afterward. And Tommy was not a coward. He just had to be smarter about it.
"Oh yeah, big talk," he scoffed. "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out after that, asshole. You think anyone will believe that you beat the shit out of two other students because one guy smelled funny?"
"Jesus H, you two! We get it, you both are big men who can fight, but that doesn't need to happen. Especially when the two of you have powers that could probably do more harm than good!"
He eyed the door and prayed Bobby was in his room otherwise he had no idea what to do.
Inu-yasha snarled at Billy without taking his eyes off of Tommy. "Stay out of it!!"
He took another step forward, right into Tommy's space, and this time his growl was lower, but no less intense. "I was fucking defending you from-- whatever the hell he is," he spat, golden eyes flashing dangerously. He didn't do that for just anyone - another few seconds and he'd never do it again for Tommy.
"Ten seconds ago you were telling me he was my twin brother," Tommy shot back, not moving. If Yasha pushed it too far he was in the perfect spot for the kind of super-speed nut-punch that would lay Yasha flat and get Tommy expelled, and he wasn't about to give ground. The heat in his blood was settling, slowly, his white-hot panic and fury shifting to sheer bloody-minded stubbornness. He dug in his heels. "And unless there's more to you being a demon than your bad attitude, if he's using magic, flattening him against the wall doesn't mean shit. So back the fuck off already."
Practically nose to nose, Tommy didn't register the knock on the door the first time, or maybe even the second time.
Right. There were voices inside - irritated voices, no less - but no one was answering. Illyana sighed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, considering her options. She could just go, and leave Tommy and Inu-Yasha to whatever it was they were fighting about. Or she could go in.
She caught the last few words of what had been said, and sighed. Yeah, going in. She didn't really want either of them dead, and if Tommy was delivering ultimatums, Inu-Yasha was entirely capable. She opened the door and, without preamble, walked in.
"What the hell are you -" her eyes fell on the one non-combatant in the room, and her jaw dropped. "Another one? How many brothers do you have Shepherd?"
Billy froze and turned to see a small blonde girl in the doorway. Well, she wasn't Bobby but maybe she would be able to help. He turned to her quickly and gestured widely to the two who looked like they were ready to kill each other. "They won't listen to me and I don't know what else to do!"
Though what she said made him pause and he frowned. "Another one? There's more?!"
That broke Inu-yasha out of his stand off with Tommy. "Watch him," he snapped, warning her, "He's got magic and he's already used it - Speedy here might be brainwashed or somethin'."
And great; another person diving into the clusterfuck of what had started out as a perfectly reasonable afternoon. Tommy stepped back -- not to get away from Inu-yasha, but to make sure he could see Illyana's face as well. "If I had been brainwashed, I'd have nut-punched you instead."
He raked his hand through his hair, pushing his bangs back off his face. "And for the last goddamned time, I don't have any siblings. None. Not as far as good old Frank and Mary were concerned, anyway. What Mary got up to in her off-time, mind you-" he barked a harsh laugh. "I'm starting to wonder."
Illyana rolled her eyes and grinned crookedly at Tommy's observations about...well, she was guessing he meant his mom, anyway, but then shook her head and turned to Inu-Yasha, her forehead furrowing. "I'm not sure that not nut-punching you means much; I'm pretty sure he'd do it even if he wasn't brainwashed. But he sounds okay. Does the other guy really have magic?" She glanced askance at him - he looked exactly like Tommy, other than the hair and eye color. "Are you sure he's not a shapeshifting demon?"
After all, Tommy'd made her show him Limbo, even if that hadn't been exactly his intent. He could deal with the rest.
Oh that was it.
Billy threw his hands up in the air with a frustrated scream through tightly closed lips, eyes rolled upward as he tried to ask God what he ever did to deserve this chaotic hell that was happening. "That's it! You guys figure this out on your own. I'm tired of being asked if I'm a demon or a shapeshifter. This is my face, it's stuck like this forever."
He turned on Inuyasha. "And I'm sorry if I smell like magic, but I honestly don't know about it so back the fuck off about it."
...actually, Inu-yasha was kind of impressed with the new kid just then. But it didn't change that he was a threat. Inu-yasha growled, glaring at him, but talking to Yana. "Not a demon. Human-- mutant, whatever, with magic. And some kinda electricity, which he also fucking used on us - and your boyfriend is taking his fucking side like a fucking moron!"
Oh, great. Now Illyana was going think that Tommy was calling her his girlfriend, which was the absolute last complication he needed on top of everything else that had been going on. Whatever; Tommy was in enough shit. He let that one lie for now.
And yeah, Tommy's skin was still tingling from being zapped, but on the other hand, he couldn't exactly blame the kid for doing exactly the same thing Tommy would have. Except Tommy would have shaken things up a hell of a lot more. "Pardon me for not wanting to stand by and watch you use my face for punching practice." The ridiculousness of the statement was not lost on him at all. Tommy smirked, no humour in it. "I'm not a big fan of the way it looks bruised."
Ignoring the bit about Tommy being her boyfriend (she was going to smack the shit out of Inu-Yasha herself if he kept saying stuff like that), Illyana sighed impatiently and turned to look at the new guy. "Right, fine. You're not a demon," she'd check that one for herself at the first opportunity, but for now she'd trust Inu-Yasha's nose. "You're not a shapeshifter. You're a mutant with electrical powers who happens to look exactly like Tommy. And magic. Does that sum it up?" She turned to Tommy. "And would you please stop threatening Inu-Yasha? He's trying to help."
Trying to help my ass Billy thought darkly but nodded begrudgingly at the girl's description of what was basically happening. He pursed his lips and moved a little more towards Tommy, for some reason feeling a little better closer to him than the other two.
"I didn't mean to electrocute you guys. I apologize for that, but you shouldn't have shoved me against the wall and held me there by my freaking throat. That was uncalled for."
"You used magic on us!" Inu-yasha snarled, but managed not to push him against a wall again. His fists were so tight that his claws pricked his skin. "You might as well have fired a fucking gun!"
"Not all magic is bad," Illyana snapped at Inu-Yasha. "And he obviously didn't fire a gun, so calm down already. I get why you freaked but he's not doing anything now, and if he does, I'll pop him to Limbo." She turned back to the new guy. "You're probably not gonna get an apology," she said practically. "You're lucky he didn't stab you, and I'm not sure I'd blame him if he did. I may not be able to smell it, but even I can tell someone did something here, and it wasn't me. What kind of magic did you do?"
Billy was pretty sure he might have a stroke.
"Okay." He pressed his thumbs into his eyes until he saw nothing but white, taking a deep calming breath before he pulled them away from his face and turned to look at the girl. "Again. I don't know what I did, if I did anything I don't know it. My powers include lightning and levitating like five feet off the ground. I don't know magic, I've never used magic so I'm sorry but I can't help you."
"Oy, how was I supposed to know what kind of magic it was?" Inu-yasha complained petulantly at Illyana. Now that she seemed to be handling the magic shit, he was clearly less on edge.
With the heat (and attention) off him for a bit, Tommy was able to calm down to something half-approaching rational (and let go of the deep-seated desire to wring his roommate's goddamn neck). He took some time -- only a few minutes, really, between one of Illyana's words and the next -- to try and figure it all out.
1. There were other kids around his age in the world, obviously related to him, that he'd never heard of. This Billy kid wasn't the first, only the most recent. Whatever the issue was, he didn't know any more about it than Tommy; less, even, considering Tommy had met
two of the others already.
2. Inu-yasha and Illyana both agreed that magic was involved somehow, which also made the whole thing feel more plausible rather than less. Limbo was a thing, after all. Add in cloning magic or what the fuck ever? Why the hell not. The world was upside down and inside out as it was anyway, why not add one more fucked-up thing to the mix.
3. Billy had just been dumped into the middle of something excessively weird, and looked like he was losing his mind a little. Tommy could sympathize with that.
4. Tommy and Billy needed to have some serious conversations, and stat. Whatever he knew, he might be able to put some more of the
pieces together.
5. Even so, 'brother' was putting way too intimate a label on something that was probably just more fucked up mutant shit. Tommy, as far as he was concerned, was alone in the world. Why mess with something that worked?
"Whatever he did," Tommy broke in to the conversation, arms folded. "And sorry, dude. I know you think you didn't, but these two-" he glanced at Illyana, unable to read anything from her expression "-know more about it than you. But whatever he did, it didn't do
anything. Unless it was an 'aggro the kid with fangs' spell, and no-one even tangentially related to me would be that dumb," he added
as an addendum, his eyes glittering and sharp.
"I'm not so sure of that," Illyana grumbled, but her annoyance was directed at Tommy, not the newbie. So, she was still holding a bit of a grudge, whatever. She took a breath - how had she become the responsible one here, anyway? - and exhaled. "Fine, you don't know what you did. And you," she turned to Inu-Yasha, "couldn't have known what he did, and I already said I didn't blame you. But..." She pushed her hand back through her hair. Magic, here, was bound to draw Belasco's attention, eventually, even if it wasn't her doing it. Maybe especially if. For all she knew, he was looking for a new apprentice by now. She turned towards Tommy, as the most likely to object who knew what he was objecting to. "We need to find out what he's doing, and how. And I can't do that here."
Billy was regretting all of this. He should have just stayed in his room with his comics and only come out when it was time to eat, this first day was pretty much the worst. "What exactly are you going to do and who are you anyway?"
Was it lame of him to want his mom? Someone he actually knew to be here and tell him that it was going to be alright. Billy shifted more towards the door now, kind of nervous about what the girl had in mind to 'find out' what he had done.
Had he even done anything? Everything still looked the same, everyone was still okay and nothing seemed weird. But these two were convinced he had so maybe...Billy gasped and grit his teeth.
Noooooooo. Had he done the weird thing again? The wanting something and getting it? Was that magic? Shit. What did he want? Uuuhhhhhhh....
"No." Tommy put his foot down. "She's not going to do anything. No Limbo, no fuckery, no more assault and battery," he pointed at Inu-yasha when he said that. "Billy came in here to talk to me, not deal with an episode of American Horror Story." He looked over
when he said that, and spotted Billy inching toward the door. And frankly, Tommy couldn't blame him in the slightest.
"Come on." He gestured toward the door. "We're blowing this joint."
"Don't be an idiot," Inu-yasha growled at Tommy. He looked over at Yana, totally unimpressed. "You sure he's not brainwashed?"
"I'm sure. He's just an idiot," Illyana said, unimpressed by Tommy's American Horror Story reference. Ignoring Tommy, she looked over at the new guy. "It's not safe to use magic if you don't know what you're doing. You could end up being source material for the next season, and then Tommy won't want anything to do with you, either. But hey." She smiled, a big, fake one, "Have a nice day."
Billy was all to willing to go with Tommy if it meant leaving the room filled with weird magic girl and pissy dog boy. He frowned at what the girl said to him, not quite sure what she meant, but also not liking the sound of it one bit.
He glanced at Tommy, not sure exactly why the idea of him not wanting anything to do with Billy felt weirdly uncomfortable, but he nodded and quickly headed towards the door. He ducked out with out even saying good bye.
"For fuck's sake," Tommy growled, and he slammed out the door, following Billy. "Girls," he said pointedly, once they were alone in the hallway, "are not worth it." He took a moment, let out a breath fast enough that Billy probably wouldn't even notice the pause, and got himself centered. "Come on. We'll talk in your room."
Inu-yasha's ears flattened to his head as the door slammed, leaving him and Yana alone in the room. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Keh. See if I save his ass next time that witch-guy does something to him..." Then he glanced over at Yana. "What do you call a boy-witch anyway?"
"A warlock," Illyana replied promptly. She made a face at the door, then went over and plopped down on one of the chairs. American Horror Story. She'd remember that. But whatever. "Or a sorcerer, depending."
Right, neither of those were words Inu-yasha was gonna be able to remember. Fuck it. One ear flicked and he scratched at it, turning toward her. "Well whatever he is, you'll keep an eye on him, yeah?"
"Well, duh. I don't want a rogue magic user around any more than you do. Probably less." Illyana eyed him curiously. "Y'know, if we popped off to Limbo, we could maybe figure out what kind of spell he tried to hit you with. Or at least watch him and Tommy in the Mirror."
"What? Are you crazy?!" Inu-yasha rounded on her, flabbergasted. "Why do you always want to go running back there?"
"So you don't want to know if that guy cast a spell on you?" she countered, ignoring his question.
That brought him up short, and he scowled. Another moment of glaring, then he said, "...fine. But just for the magic stuff, I'm not fucking spying on them."
"Fine." Illyana got to her feet and stepped in closer. A moment later, a stepping disk appeared, and a moment after that? They were gone.
Oh, and Illyana drops by to save them from all that testosterone.
Maybe it was a little crazy to go stalking around his new school looking for a kid who looked like him. Maybe it wasn't even the guy from the TV, maybe Bobby just thought this Shepherd guy just looked really close to him, that happened sometimes right?
He stood outside the room that he had been told Shepherd stayed in, Room 103, and took a deep breath as he tried to summon up the courage to knock.
His hand froze and he tried to will himself to knock. "Just knock, just knock. Come on, Kaplan. Don't be a wimp."
Two sound knocks and he immediately felt like bolting.
The shared dorm room hadn't been Tommy's favourite place to hang out, but the week since the thing at the facility had left him a lot more rattled than usual. It was easier to spend time in the relative quiet, dicking around with the audio mixer programs he'd downloaded and messing around with the old guitar he'd picked up at the thrift shop in Salem Center.
That was where he was when the knock came at the door, sitting cross-legged on his bed, guitar in his lap, hair flopping down over his eyes and his jeans ripped at the knees. Who was likely to be knocking like that? Bobby? Illyana? (definite possibility.) A teacher would have just walked in by now. "Come in," Tommy called out, resting his arm across the rounded top of the instrument and looking up to see who would answer.
Inu-yasha had been ignoring Tommy as much as possible, as was their usual way, flipping idly through a textbook (a history one, the kind with lots of pictures and mildly interesting contents, compared to shit like math or science). Since Tommy apparently hadn't told anyone about his ears, he'd stopped wearing the bandana when it was just the two of them in the room, so he sent a brief glare toward the door at the knock and pulled it on. He took a pointed sniff of the air, trying to determine if he was about to clear out of the room for a while (if it was Yana, then probably, but if it was Bobby or someone like that, he and Tommy would probably go play video games somewhere else).
Tommy had already invited whoever it was in, but Inu-yasha sat up straighter, calling a warning "Wait--" to his roommate as the door opened. Whoever was on the other side of the door smelled of magic, unfamiliar magic. And that could mean anything. Inu-yasha was half off his bed and in a defensive stance, eyes narrowed on the new kid.
Billy heard a voice give him permission to enter and with a deep breath he turned the knob and pushed the door open to come face to face with a guy who looked really on edge and the guy who he was sure now had been on TV.
What exactly did you do when you found your doppelgänger? Didn't this mean time or something was going to split apart? Or was that meeting your past self when time traveling? Whatever it was supposed to be it felt weird! And the genius plan Billy had was to point at the boy with an accusing finger. "It IS you! Why do you have my face?"
Tommy'd gone on edge with Inu-yasha's warning, but now he only blinked. Fuckers. Things like ‘we ran into a dude with Tommy’s looks and powers during a mission’ didn’t stay quiet for long. He’d half-expected a little more kindness from Bobby and Kurt, but whatever. He probably deserved it; it didn’t mean he had to play along.
“Hah, hah,” he replied, disgust colouring his voice. “Very funny, assholes. Get my face out of the image inducer files or I’ll bribe Kitty to program zits all over Kurt’s usual.”
Inu-yasha was still on edge, but his nose was working overtime. He took a step forward, blatantly sniffing at the newcomer, golden eyes narrowed at him. "The hell is this, some kinda spell?"
"What does any of that even mean?" Billy exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air trying to figure out what exactly was happening here when the other light haired guy in the room started to smell him.
What. The. Hell.
"Okay, dude. What are you doing?"
Tommy narrowed his eyes. Image inducers were one thing, but they didn’t change voices – or accents. And this kid – whoever he was – not only looked, but sounded, almost exactly like Tommy before he’d gotten his powers. The hair and eye colour were dead on (though he sounded like a New Yorker, that definitely wasn’t Jersey, and it sure as hell wasn’t Kurt’s German accent). And there was no way Bobby or Kurt would know what Tommy had looked like before the great mutant bleach job had kicked in.
So if it wasn’t two of the three stooges screwing with him, what was going on here? “You’re not Kurt under a hologram,” he stated firmly. “So what’s the deal? Are you a shapeshifter?” Gar was, but he was always green. This was something different
"You've got a brother," Inu-yasha said flatly, ignoring the stranger's question entirely. He sniffed, stepping sideways around him, looking for any clue about the scents and growling faintly in confusion. "A brother who stinks of magic."
"I would absolutely love if people stopped asking me that." Billy groaned. "No, I'm not a shapeshifter. This is the only shape I have."
He frowned at the bloodhound to the side of him when he stated he had a brother. Well, yeah he had two of them so what? "What do you mean? My brothers aren't even here."
"And I'm an only child," Tommy replied to Inu-Yasha. "I don't have any siblings, never mind a brother. What kind of magic?"
He put the guitar aside on his bed and got to his feet, crossing the small room to stand almost toe to toe with the new guy. The not-Tommy. They were the same height, similar builds... And this close it was like looking in a photo-negative mirror of sorts. What he would have looked like, in another life. His brow furrowed, irritation mellowing out into bone-deep confusion.
"I dunno," Inu-yasha griped back at Tommy, "I just know it's magic. He's some kinda..." What did you a call a male witch anyway? "I dunno, witch-guy." Another sniff. "And he's definitely your blood. Like, you smell totally different on the surface, but under that..."
"Wait. Me? I smell like magic?" Was that what this kid could do? Smell things really well? Billy almost wanted to take a step back when his look-a-like decided to stand in his space, but he wasn't about to back down and show weakness.
He stood up as straight as he could, which unfortunately didn't help since they were the exact same height, and frowned at the boy with his face. He glanced at the other boy quickly, not wanting to lose this weird Mexican stand off with Shepherd, and raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean by blood? You can smell my blood too?"
Tommy glanced at Inu-yasha, unconsciously mirroring the new guy's motion. "That doesn't make any sense; I'd know if we were related." But he sounded a lot less sure about it than he had a moment ago.
Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie, Quicksilver and his sister- Tommy was the only speedster he knew, so far, without a twin. Mind you, the others' twins were girls. And when the hell would there have been time and secrecy enough for his mother to give birth to a second baby, hide it, and then spend the rest of her life lying about it? It hadn't happened, that was what.
A cousin? Maybe? Tommy had an aunt on his mother's side, but she didn't have any kids. Not that he knew about, anyway. He frowned back at the new guy. "What's your name?"
Inu-yasha had sent a pointed glare at his roommate - his nose didn't lie, and these two weren't just related, they smelled the damn same - but he joined in on the questions smoothly enough, growling, "And what the hell are you?"
Wow. Talk about feeling interrogated, but he was the one who stormed into their room and started the blame game so Billy couldn't be too offended. He raised his hands in a defensive motion and waved them a bit.
"Okay first off, my name is Billy, Billy Kaplan. Second off, I'm human! Like one hundred percent and the only magic I have is the card game."
This wasn't really going how he planned, not that he really had one to start with, but he wasn't getting any information this way. "Look, I'm just trying to figure out why my exact double exists and is apparently also a mutant. It just seems too coincidental."
That had been the first time he'd referred to himself as a mutant and it made him feel a little bit shaky. He was admitting that this was real.
"Tommy Shepherd. But since you came looking for me, I'm going to guess you already knew that."
Tommy reached out and poked Billy in the shoulder, just to confirm that he was really standing there. Inu-yasha would have said something if he wasn't, though; holograms and psychic projections didn't have smells. Did they? He seemed solid enough, and his shoulder was where it was supposed to be -- no demon wings or empty space where a shoulder should have been. Okay, fine. Next option.
And the obvious answer hit him right in the gut and the funny bone at the same time. He smiled, but there wasn't a whole lot of joy in it.
"Assuming Inu-yasha's right -- which, yeah, I trust his nose. Believe me, I've seen weirder things around this place -- then both of our mothers and one of our fathers have a hell of a lot of explaining to do." He glanced at his roommate. “Can your sniffer figure that one out?”
And he let himself dream, just for a minute, that maybe he wasn't half-made-up of good ol' Frank after all.
Inu-yasha sent Tommy a dirty look for sniffer, but he focused on growling at Billy. "Well you're no demon, I'll give you that. But don't fucking lie - I know what magic smells like. I've killed actual demons." Well, one, but this guy didn't need to know that. Especially since he didn't smell like Limbo, not even a trace amount like Illyana. "You try any crazy witch shit, you'll fucking regret it."
Then he looked over at his roommate. "And how the hell did you not know you have a twin brother?"
Billy visibly gagged at the idea of either of his parents doing the do with anyone but each other, which that thought then made him want to gag again. "Look I can like thirty eight thousand percent assure you neither of my parents have ever...done anything like that. Like, my dad's real lucky my mom even went for him."
He frowned at who he now guessed was Inuyasha, fixing him with an irritated glare. "And I can't try any 'witch shit' since I would have no idea how to."
He rubbed at the place Shepherd had poked him, ignoring the urge to be petty and poke the guy right back only harder. "Your friend Bobby said your hair wasn't always white and your eyes weren't green.That is changed when you got your powers...what color were they before?"
Tommy let the staring contest go, backing off a couple of steps. Some of the tension in the room faded, but sure as hell not all of it. "I don't have a twin," he told Inu-yasha firmly. "Believe me, if there had been another kid, and I'd been the only one they kept? I'd have heard about that bullshit every day, all of my life. The only way any of this makes sense is if we've got the same father, but not the same mom."
Maybe it wasn't dad Kaplan, either. There had been Quicksilver and his sister, after all, and their mother would have been someone else again.
But in answer to Billy... Tommy flopped back on his bed, propping himself up on his elbows. "Brown," he admitted with some reluctance. "Exactly like you."
Inu-yasha was staring at the new guy like he'd just grown an extra head or something. He was actually willing to believe Billy didn't know anything about magic after all the dumb kid stuff he kept spouting...
But he snapped out of it to shoot a look at his roommate. "You're not getting me. You're not related, it's like you're the same." Shit, he'd need to talk to Illyana to see if this was some kind of magic bullshit. "But he's not fast, and you're not magic.”
Billy took in everything the two were saying and felt like the world might be tilting a little bit. Shepherd had looked exactly like him before his powers manifested, that meant that Shepherd and him had looked completely the same, like complete carbon copies of each other and Inuyasha was saying they smelled the same.
Shepherd had said he trusted his roommates nose, so that meant that this wasn't a case of oh we just happen to look alike.
Billy put a hand to his forehead to hopefully steady the weird tilting motion he felt, his hands starting to tingle from the static running through his limbs. "I feel like I'm in the twilight zone...I wish someone knew what was going on here."
Billy felt slightly nauseous for a split second, but it passed quickly.
The scent of magic flared, and in a flash of inhuman speed, Inu-yasha had the new kid pinned up against the wall, arm pressed to his throat (not enough to cut off the air, but damn close) and growling in his face, golden eyes flashing dangerously. "The fuck did I just tell you about using magic?! The hell did you do?!"
Tommy wasn't exactly used to feeling like things were happening too quickly around him, but this one, oh man, that took the cake. Inu-yasha had Billy pinned up against the wall, arm to his throat, and in the split-second when Billy's eyes went wide Tommy saw his own face. Another attacker, but his own fear.
Tommy was moving at top speed before he'd decided to do anything at all, grabbing Inu-yasha's shoulder and hauling back. "Get off him!" he barked the order, but the guy was a brick wall and even Tommy's sped-up momentum couldn't shift him. Inu-yasha turned and glared, his arm still up against Billy's throat.
"Don't make me see how fast I have to accelerate you before you blow," Tommy warned, a growl in his voice. Ozone crackled around them, hair raising up on Tommy's arms.
The speed of which everything happened was so fast that Billy's mind couldn't even comprehend what Inuyasha was so upset about before he was slammed against the wall and held there by his throat while Shepherd was yelling at his roommate to let him go.
Billy's mind went into a blind panic, thoughts of being beaten to a pulp again raced through his mind and his fear ratcheted up so that his chest was heaving. He barely had time to notice that awful smell in the air and the feel of something wanting to explode from him before he sent out a rather heavy jolt of blue electricity at both the boys, hitting them both harshly.
Inu-yasha had no idea what happened, just that his roommate went batshit and then everything exploded in pain and electricity and he was on his back on the ground.
He sat up slowly. He was a little singed, but he'd live. His bandana had fallen off, but at least that meant he could hear that the idiot brothers were both still alive. Sitting on the floor between them, one silver dog ear flicking, Inu-yasha just growled, "What. The fuck. Is going on."
The shiver over Tommy's skin turned to pain in an instant, and he hit the floor on his shoulder, skidding hard. He'd been blown further back than his roommate, his chest tight, so tight - he couldn't make his muscles move to breathe for one terrifying instant - before the charge vanished and he could move again. It wasn't anything like his powers, but weirdly felt... familiar?
That didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense. But what he needed to know the most of all-- Tommy pushed himself to his feet. "You okay?" He was asking them both, but he was looking at Billy's face. His face.
After the rush of adrenaline started to fade, Billy could finally calm down and focus to see that he had once again electrocuted other people. He felt his eyes sting with tears in relief when they both were actually conscious and not dead.
His body felt shaky as he nodded to Shepherd's question and turned to look over at Inuyasha, wary of the guy even as he noticed two fluffy white ears on top of the guy's head. "A-are you two okay?"
Inu-yasha was staring, dumbfounded, at Tommy. "You're worried about the guy who just tried to fuckin' electrocute us?" His face turned to an angry snarl, the kind that bared his fangs (and made him look most demonic). "What the hell is wrong with you?"
He looked up at the other one. "Did you do something to him? The hell was that magic?"
Okay, that was it. Tommy had been a simmering ball of pent-up terror and rage for the last week —no, fuck that. The last five months? The last fuck-knew how many years. And now, faced with another impossible situation in a sea of goddamn disasters, he had just. Had it.
He looked at Inu-yasha’s furious face, and all he could see was Frank.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” He snarled back at Inu-yasha, circling to put himself between his roommate and his body double. “You body-slammed him, asshole. What the hell was he supposed to do? I don’t like bullies, and you’re getting on my last fucking nerve.”
Billy was dumbfounded by the fact that Shepherd was actually defending him, the guy who busted into his room pointing fingers and then electrocuted both him and his roommate. But here he was, standing between him and Inuyasha, who didn't look very happy, and was standing up for him.
Oh god. What if he had wished for help! Had he? Shit, what if this was his stupid powers job and now they were going to tear into each other. Billy struggled to stand up and quickly tried diffuse the situation. "Wait wait! Let's calm down."
He turned to Shepherd. "Look, Tommy. I'm fine it's all good."
Completely ignoring Billy, Inu-yasha was shouting in Tommy's face. "He was supposed to stop using magic on us!! He might've just brainwashed you, idiot! He's the one barging in here and using magic and fucking electrocuting us!"
Tommy went cold. “And choking him out is going to fix that? Back off.” Tommy raised his closed fist in front of him, felt the power trembling through his fingers. “Unless you really wanna go.”
"No! No. He does not want to go." He was glancing in between the two, worried about what exactly was going to happen if a speedster and whatever the hell Inuyasha was went at it in a small room. "Just let's calm down. I'll leave alright?"
He felt like he was talking to a rock and a wall cause really neither of them were paying attention to him. He wondered if maybe he should run and get Bobby? But Bobby was Tommy's friend so would that be worse? "Ugh!"
“You don't scare me, Speedy," Inu-yasha shot back, cracking his knuckles. "I don't care what he did to your head, I'll beat it in anyway!"
The warning bells were going off loud in Tommy's head by now, the whole 'he could put me through a wall and not blink' awareness of Inu-yasha's powers from the Danger Room sessions screaming to the forefront. Still, he couldn't back down or life in 103 would be fucking unbearable afterward. And Tommy was not a coward. He just had to be smarter about it.
"Oh yeah, big talk," he scoffed. "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out after that, asshole. You think anyone will believe that you beat the shit out of two other students because one guy smelled funny?"
"Jesus H, you two! We get it, you both are big men who can fight, but that doesn't need to happen. Especially when the two of you have powers that could probably do more harm than good!"
He eyed the door and prayed Bobby was in his room otherwise he had no idea what to do.
Inu-yasha snarled at Billy without taking his eyes off of Tommy. "Stay out of it!!"
He took another step forward, right into Tommy's space, and this time his growl was lower, but no less intense. "I was fucking defending you from-- whatever the hell he is," he spat, golden eyes flashing dangerously. He didn't do that for just anyone - another few seconds and he'd never do it again for Tommy.
"Ten seconds ago you were telling me he was my twin brother," Tommy shot back, not moving. If Yasha pushed it too far he was in the perfect spot for the kind of super-speed nut-punch that would lay Yasha flat and get Tommy expelled, and he wasn't about to give ground. The heat in his blood was settling, slowly, his white-hot panic and fury shifting to sheer bloody-minded stubbornness. He dug in his heels. "And unless there's more to you being a demon than your bad attitude, if he's using magic, flattening him against the wall doesn't mean shit. So back the fuck off already."
Practically nose to nose, Tommy didn't register the knock on the door the first time, or maybe even the second time.
Right. There were voices inside - irritated voices, no less - but no one was answering. Illyana sighed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, considering her options. She could just go, and leave Tommy and Inu-Yasha to whatever it was they were fighting about. Or she could go in.
She caught the last few words of what had been said, and sighed. Yeah, going in. She didn't really want either of them dead, and if Tommy was delivering ultimatums, Inu-Yasha was entirely capable. She opened the door and, without preamble, walked in.
"What the hell are you -" her eyes fell on the one non-combatant in the room, and her jaw dropped. "Another one? How many brothers do you have Shepherd?"
Billy froze and turned to see a small blonde girl in the doorway. Well, she wasn't Bobby but maybe she would be able to help. He turned to her quickly and gestured widely to the two who looked like they were ready to kill each other. "They won't listen to me and I don't know what else to do!"
Though what she said made him pause and he frowned. "Another one? There's more?!"
That broke Inu-yasha out of his stand off with Tommy. "Watch him," he snapped, warning her, "He's got magic and he's already used it - Speedy here might be brainwashed or somethin'."
And great; another person diving into the clusterfuck of what had started out as a perfectly reasonable afternoon. Tommy stepped back -- not to get away from Inu-yasha, but to make sure he could see Illyana's face as well. "If I had been brainwashed, I'd have nut-punched you instead."
He raked his hand through his hair, pushing his bangs back off his face. "And for the last goddamned time, I don't have any siblings. None. Not as far as good old Frank and Mary were concerned, anyway. What Mary got up to in her off-time, mind you-" he barked a harsh laugh. "I'm starting to wonder."
Illyana rolled her eyes and grinned crookedly at Tommy's observations about...well, she was guessing he meant his mom, anyway, but then shook her head and turned to Inu-Yasha, her forehead furrowing. "I'm not sure that not nut-punching you means much; I'm pretty sure he'd do it even if he wasn't brainwashed. But he sounds okay. Does the other guy really have magic?" She glanced askance at him - he looked exactly like Tommy, other than the hair and eye color. "Are you sure he's not a shapeshifting demon?"
After all, Tommy'd made her show him Limbo, even if that hadn't been exactly his intent. He could deal with the rest.
Oh that was it.
Billy threw his hands up in the air with a frustrated scream through tightly closed lips, eyes rolled upward as he tried to ask God what he ever did to deserve this chaotic hell that was happening. "That's it! You guys figure this out on your own. I'm tired of being asked if I'm a demon or a shapeshifter. This is my face, it's stuck like this forever."
He turned on Inuyasha. "And I'm sorry if I smell like magic, but I honestly don't know about it so back the fuck off about it."
...actually, Inu-yasha was kind of impressed with the new kid just then. But it didn't change that he was a threat. Inu-yasha growled, glaring at him, but talking to Yana. "Not a demon. Human-- mutant, whatever, with magic. And some kinda electricity, which he also fucking used on us - and your boyfriend is taking his fucking side like a fucking moron!"
Oh, great. Now Illyana was going think that Tommy was calling her his girlfriend, which was the absolute last complication he needed on top of everything else that had been going on. Whatever; Tommy was in enough shit. He let that one lie for now.
And yeah, Tommy's skin was still tingling from being zapped, but on the other hand, he couldn't exactly blame the kid for doing exactly the same thing Tommy would have. Except Tommy would have shaken things up a hell of a lot more. "Pardon me for not wanting to stand by and watch you use my face for punching practice." The ridiculousness of the statement was not lost on him at all. Tommy smirked, no humour in it. "I'm not a big fan of the way it looks bruised."
Ignoring the bit about Tommy being her boyfriend (she was going to smack the shit out of Inu-Yasha herself if he kept saying stuff like that), Illyana sighed impatiently and turned to look at the new guy. "Right, fine. You're not a demon," she'd check that one for herself at the first opportunity, but for now she'd trust Inu-Yasha's nose. "You're not a shapeshifter. You're a mutant with electrical powers who happens to look exactly like Tommy. And magic. Does that sum it up?" She turned to Tommy. "And would you please stop threatening Inu-Yasha? He's trying to help."
Trying to help my ass Billy thought darkly but nodded begrudgingly at the girl's description of what was basically happening. He pursed his lips and moved a little more towards Tommy, for some reason feeling a little better closer to him than the other two.
"I didn't mean to electrocute you guys. I apologize for that, but you shouldn't have shoved me against the wall and held me there by my freaking throat. That was uncalled for."
"You used magic on us!" Inu-yasha snarled, but managed not to push him against a wall again. His fists were so tight that his claws pricked his skin. "You might as well have fired a fucking gun!"
"Not all magic is bad," Illyana snapped at Inu-Yasha. "And he obviously didn't fire a gun, so calm down already. I get why you freaked but he's not doing anything now, and if he does, I'll pop him to Limbo." She turned back to the new guy. "You're probably not gonna get an apology," she said practically. "You're lucky he didn't stab you, and I'm not sure I'd blame him if he did. I may not be able to smell it, but even I can tell someone did something here, and it wasn't me. What kind of magic did you do?"
Billy was pretty sure he might have a stroke.
"Okay." He pressed his thumbs into his eyes until he saw nothing but white, taking a deep calming breath before he pulled them away from his face and turned to look at the girl. "Again. I don't know what I did, if I did anything I don't know it. My powers include lightning and levitating like five feet off the ground. I don't know magic, I've never used magic so I'm sorry but I can't help you."
"Oy, how was I supposed to know what kind of magic it was?" Inu-yasha complained petulantly at Illyana. Now that she seemed to be handling the magic shit, he was clearly less on edge.
With the heat (and attention) off him for a bit, Tommy was able to calm down to something half-approaching rational (and let go of the deep-seated desire to wring his roommate's goddamn neck). He took some time -- only a few minutes, really, between one of Illyana's words and the next -- to try and figure it all out.
1. There were other kids around his age in the world, obviously related to him, that he'd never heard of. This Billy kid wasn't the first, only the most recent. Whatever the issue was, he didn't know any more about it than Tommy; less, even, considering Tommy had met
two of the others already.
2. Inu-yasha and Illyana both agreed that magic was involved somehow, which also made the whole thing feel more plausible rather than less. Limbo was a thing, after all. Add in cloning magic or what the fuck ever? Why the hell not. The world was upside down and inside out as it was anyway, why not add one more fucked-up thing to the mix.
3. Billy had just been dumped into the middle of something excessively weird, and looked like he was losing his mind a little. Tommy could sympathize with that.
4. Tommy and Billy needed to have some serious conversations, and stat. Whatever he knew, he might be able to put some more of the
pieces together.
5. Even so, 'brother' was putting way too intimate a label on something that was probably just more fucked up mutant shit. Tommy, as far as he was concerned, was alone in the world. Why mess with something that worked?
"Whatever he did," Tommy broke in to the conversation, arms folded. "And sorry, dude. I know you think you didn't, but these two-" he glanced at Illyana, unable to read anything from her expression "-know more about it than you. But whatever he did, it didn't do
anything. Unless it was an 'aggro the kid with fangs' spell, and no-one even tangentially related to me would be that dumb," he added
as an addendum, his eyes glittering and sharp.
"I'm not so sure of that," Illyana grumbled, but her annoyance was directed at Tommy, not the newbie. So, she was still holding a bit of a grudge, whatever. She took a breath - how had she become the responsible one here, anyway? - and exhaled. "Fine, you don't know what you did. And you," she turned to Inu-Yasha, "couldn't have known what he did, and I already said I didn't blame you. But..." She pushed her hand back through her hair. Magic, here, was bound to draw Belasco's attention, eventually, even if it wasn't her doing it. Maybe especially if. For all she knew, he was looking for a new apprentice by now. She turned towards Tommy, as the most likely to object who knew what he was objecting to. "We need to find out what he's doing, and how. And I can't do that here."
Billy was regretting all of this. He should have just stayed in his room with his comics and only come out when it was time to eat, this first day was pretty much the worst. "What exactly are you going to do and who are you anyway?"
Was it lame of him to want his mom? Someone he actually knew to be here and tell him that it was going to be alright. Billy shifted more towards the door now, kind of nervous about what the girl had in mind to 'find out' what he had done.
Had he even done anything? Everything still looked the same, everyone was still okay and nothing seemed weird. But these two were convinced he had so maybe...Billy gasped and grit his teeth.
Noooooooo. Had he done the weird thing again? The wanting something and getting it? Was that magic? Shit. What did he want? Uuuhhhhhhh....
"No." Tommy put his foot down. "She's not going to do anything. No Limbo, no fuckery, no more assault and battery," he pointed at Inu-yasha when he said that. "Billy came in here to talk to me, not deal with an episode of American Horror Story." He looked over
when he said that, and spotted Billy inching toward the door. And frankly, Tommy couldn't blame him in the slightest.
"Come on." He gestured toward the door. "We're blowing this joint."
"Don't be an idiot," Inu-yasha growled at Tommy. He looked over at Yana, totally unimpressed. "You sure he's not brainwashed?"
"I'm sure. He's just an idiot," Illyana said, unimpressed by Tommy's American Horror Story reference. Ignoring Tommy, she looked over at the new guy. "It's not safe to use magic if you don't know what you're doing. You could end up being source material for the next season, and then Tommy won't want anything to do with you, either. But hey." She smiled, a big, fake one, "Have a nice day."
Billy was all to willing to go with Tommy if it meant leaving the room filled with weird magic girl and pissy dog boy. He frowned at what the girl said to him, not quite sure what she meant, but also not liking the sound of it one bit.
He glanced at Tommy, not sure exactly why the idea of him not wanting anything to do with Billy felt weirdly uncomfortable, but he nodded and quickly headed towards the door. He ducked out with out even saying good bye.
"For fuck's sake," Tommy growled, and he slammed out the door, following Billy. "Girls," he said pointedly, once they were alone in the hallway, "are not worth it." He took a moment, let out a breath fast enough that Billy probably wouldn't even notice the pause, and got himself centered. "Come on. We'll talk in your room."
Inu-yasha's ears flattened to his head as the door slammed, leaving him and Yana alone in the room. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Keh. See if I save his ass next time that witch-guy does something to him..." Then he glanced over at Yana. "What do you call a boy-witch anyway?"
"A warlock," Illyana replied promptly. She made a face at the door, then went over and plopped down on one of the chairs. American Horror Story. She'd remember that. But whatever. "Or a sorcerer, depending."
Right, neither of those were words Inu-yasha was gonna be able to remember. Fuck it. One ear flicked and he scratched at it, turning toward her. "Well whatever he is, you'll keep an eye on him, yeah?"
"Well, duh. I don't want a rogue magic user around any more than you do. Probably less." Illyana eyed him curiously. "Y'know, if we popped off to Limbo, we could maybe figure out what kind of spell he tried to hit you with. Or at least watch him and Tommy in the Mirror."
"What? Are you crazy?!" Inu-yasha rounded on her, flabbergasted. "Why do you always want to go running back there?"
"So you don't want to know if that guy cast a spell on you?" she countered, ignoring his question.
That brought him up short, and he scowled. Another moment of glaring, then he said, "...fine. But just for the magic stuff, I'm not fucking spying on them."
"Fine." Illyana got to her feet and stepped in closer. A moment later, a stepping disk appeared, and a moment after that? They were gone.
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