The Journal of Billy Kaplan, a.k.a. Wiccan

It was only slightly surprising when Tommy chose to be a superhero, given the options Eli had offered, and it was only slightly surprising when Tommy's abilities proved to be majorly useful in rescuing Teddy from the Super-Skrull.

It had been a lot more surprising when the people who successfully got the Super-Skrull off their backs via a well-placed blaster shot turned out to be the Kree, and it had been even more surprising when they'd also claimed Teddy as their own. There was a Romeo and Juliet joke just waiting to be made once the threat of a second Kree-Skrull war on Earth was over, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen any time soon.

It had been very surprising when the Super-Skrull turned out to not be dead, and jumped in front of Teddy to protect him from the blast of a Kree warrior's gun, and it had been very surprising when Teddy insisted on taking the Super-Skrull with them as they tried to escape, because he'd saved Teddy's life or some similar nonsense that Billy didn't understand but didn't have time to argue about, because the Vision was ushering them onto one of the Kree warships, explaining that he could fly it once he accessed the mainframe, while Tommy argued with Cassie that it didn't really count as stealing if they weren't intending to keep the ship.

At this rate, Billy was going to be grounded for at least two lifetimes.

( In which Billy finds out more about himself than he ever knew he didn't know. )

[Adapted from Young Avengers #10 and #11. Warning for violence, and for way more telling than showing.]

So, most of Billy's time at home was supposed to be spent with his family, but thankfully, his parents understood that he needed to spend time with his friends too. Especially since they had a very important mission.

"Do you think this counts as stalking?" Billy asked, watching Teddy check the clock on his phone for the umpteenth time as they waited outside Eli's apartment building.

"It's an intervention," Teddy insisted. "He thinks he can't be forgiven for messing up, and he's being stubborn about it."

"Which is a total shock, really," Kate said, smirking from where she was perched against the railing of the apartment building's landing, bouncing rubber bands off the stop sign across the sidewalk.

Billy smirked back at her. "Have I mentioned that you should come visit me at school and meet Hawkeye?"

"Why? So I can take one look at him and burst into tears?" Kate asked. "Unless he's gonna come back with me so he's not dead here? No thanks."

"Anyway," Cassie said sharply, since talking about dead people who weren't her dad wasn't allowed, "it's Eli's own fault that we had to come here. If he'd just answer our texts or our calls--"

"Or Billy's weird emails from school," Teddy suggested.

"Hey! They're not that weird!" He hadn't even mentioned the Umbridge situation, so clearly everyone had gotten off light as of late.

"They're pretty weird, but not as weird as finding you all here."

Eli frowned at the four Young Avengers, who all moved without speaking to stand between him and the front door. It was nice to know that Billy being gone hadn't changed some aspects of teamwork.

( In which Billy breaks a promise to Topher through no fault of his own. )

[Adapted from Young Avengers #9. Warning: contains violence and (secondary) character death.]