Chapter 3 - Where It All Went Wrong
When Billy entered the room Kurt had indicated, he was surprised to see not just Wade but all of the kids from the mansion. Well, the older group, anyway. The ones that had been around before the bill four years ago. They looked exactly as he remembered them — Chance, Elin, Krissy, Charlie, Sying…. Wade's little girl, along with Dani — all of them were there, safe, playing with Wade.
On seeing there was a new person, though, several of the kids stopped what they were doing and drifted away from the action. When he tried to take stock of them again, it was clear that Elin and the twins were just ... seemingly gone.
Billy gaped at the halfway hiding kids for a long moment in disbelief. They all looked like he remembered them, but this was a far cry from the mobbing he was used to. "I ... uh. It's okay. I'm… Erik's grandson," he offered.
"They're not coming out," Wade called out from the far side of the room, where he was sitting back easily. It was clear he'd been in the middle of playing with them before they'd scattered. "At least... not right away. They need to watch you first."
"Sorry," Billy muttered sheepishly. "I… wasn't trying to scare anyone."
"Side effect of losing their families," Wade said with a little shrug. "A certain little boy will be the first out, though. I'm sure of it. He's the advance scout."
"Last time I saw these guys, they were giving out kisses and hugs like candy," Billy said with a sigh.
Wade laughed at that, though his mirth fizzled quickly. "Yeah, thats … that's not how things operate around here."
"So I've been told." He sat down by Wade with his head tipped to the side. "So, how'd you become the nanny, Deadpool?" he couldn't help but ask.
Wade let out a long breath as if he'd been holding it for weeks. "I claimed them as mine."
"Well… I guess that'd do it," Billy said, though he still had his head tipped to the side.
"They needed someone that could tell them about their parents. You know, someone that knew 'em," Wade said with a wave. "And I wanted to keep them together. Because if the Elf gets his way, the twins will have a new family soon enough."
"What? And separate Chance and Elin?" Billy asked.
"No … that's not the plan," Wade said. "He's trying to get the Howletts back. But it has turned out to be monumentally harder than expected."
"Ah, yeah." Billy motioned with one hand to his face, where the white scars would have been on Kurt's face. "I ... I noticed that. Didn't want to ask. It seemed kind of… self-explanatory anyway." He leaned forward and rested his head in his hands for a moment, running both hands through his hair. "This is just so, so wrong."
"It really is," Wade agreed.
"No, I mean it's wrong," Billy said. He picked his head up, figuring if anything else, Deadpool might understand just how… weird the world felt. He felt like he was going crazy himself. "All of it. Just this morning, I was visiting with Tommy and Erik and — and looking at the pictures of Kamala's baby boy with Kate. And holding Jubilee's hair. She was carrying twins. And — and all of that's gone now. It can't be time travel, because this is still the same day it was when I left. But something went wrong. Somehow." His voice grew softer and softer as he said it, the emotion clear in his shaking tone.
Wade leaned forward. "Well … whatever you came from had to be better than this."
Billy nodded. "It was. I mean, don't get me wrong. It had issues. To me, Tommy was stabbed this morning, and I don't know if he lived or died," he added in a subdued tone. "But… not everyone. The mansion's still up. Heck. There's twice as many kids there as you've got here, and me and Teddy… we were working on getting some of our own. And… poof. All gone."
"Any ladies in the mix? Did the fuzzy Elf ever find a new wife?"
"No, Kate's still around," Billy said with a frown. "They were on elfling number three. She's been wearing a trenchcoat and running her PI business for months. K keeps making horrible Catholic jokes, too.
"Three? Three elfeses?"
Billy started to grin at the gobsmacked look Wade was giving him. "Even Gambit's got a girl. They went down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and then decided to go on a whirlwind world tour that Scott is actively pretending he doesn't know means a crime spree."
"How … how did the greasy swamp rat find love?"
"Oh, just about how you'd expect. Someone was stealing from corrupt, mean, rich people, so he fell in love with the thief doing it. As you do." He leaned forward a little further. "And Kamala and Miles are married, just had a baby. You've got a girlfriend."
"Is it serious?" Wade asked, obviously wide-eyed.
"I think so," Billy said. "She's the settle-down white-picket-fence type, and she loves Eleanor, so… there's a betting pool on who asks who first."
"They started a betting pool on me?" he said, one hand over his heart.
"Logan bet on you," Billy said, unable to stop the grin.
"He did? My brother bet on me?" Wade was completely floored. "Who was the lucky lady? Was it Jessica Drew? Because between you and me, she has always been a looker."
Billy snorted and shook his head. "No, it's a girl named Lisbet. She's K's big sister. They're nothing alike, by the way."
"Wait. Wait. Wait. What? Are you kidding me? There's two of them? How … how did that get past anyone?" Wade was making all kinds of little noises of disbelief. "Is Cerebro broken — because it seems like that's the kind of thing Cerebro would figure out. Isn't it? It is. I'm sure it is."
"I really wouldn't know," Billy said.
About that time, Chance stuck his nose around the corner, carefully watching Billy with a healthy amount of suspicion, and Wade very slowly raised one finger to his lips. "We need to fix this right away. I mean. All the apocalyptic garbage aside, if I have a serious girlfriend in any reality that's not trying to kill me —" He paused and leaned toward Billy slightly. "She's not trying to kill me is she?"
Billy quickly shook his head. "No, no. She's smitten with you."
Wade nodded slowly, almost thoughtfully. "Alright then. That just needs to happen."
"I need to figure out what the difference was. Or ... or what reality I'm in. Or something. I can do… well. It's sort of a scanning spell. Kind of a cool light show, actually. The fun kind, not the Strange kind. Mine are more colorful and sort of… movie clipshow-like to anyone who can't see it from the inside. At least, that's how Teddy describes it."
"No scareing," Chance said with his hands on his hips, though when Billy looked his way, the little boy took half a step back for a moment before he stood his ground with his chin jutted out.
Billy smiled Chance's way. "Do you want to see it first and tell me if it'll scare the others? I won't do it if you tell me not to," he promised.
Chance glanced first to where the girls were each hidden and then to Wade before he seemed to gain some more courage. He drew in a breath and nodded.
Billy held out one hand. "Onepossibleworld," he chanted. The full spell would be 'all' possible worlds, but a smaller scale would be better to start. And just like that, a sort of tear broke the air in front of Billy, just over his hand, until it peeled away to show a window into another reality. This one showed Chance — maybe because the little boy was here and that's where Billy's focus was — but older and wielding two guns as he ran through target practice in the Danger Room.
Chance just stared at it wide-eyed. "Who was that?" he whispered.
"That's you," Billy said. "That's an older you in a different world somewhere. Looks like you're pretty cool, huh?"
"How come I'm so big?"
"Just because you're so much older," Billy said.
"And a lot like your daddy," Wade said. "He was taller than me."
"Then ... am I gonna be that big someday?" Chance asked.
"Probably, little boss-man," Wade said with a nod. "But you have to keep being a hero like you've been working on. That'll help you be big and strong."
"There's lots of other worlds and other Chances," Billy explained. "That's the light show I was talking about. I want to look at a lot of them at once and see what this one is. I'm from a different one, and I want to go home to that world."
Chance nodded. "So … a whole bunch of those then?" he asked. "Because … I think my sister would want to watch that too."
Billy grinned. "Sure thing. I can put a couple of them aside for you and your sister. When I look at them, it's all really fast, though." He muttered another spell — twopossibleworlds — to try and find something for Charlie, this time stumbling upon a sweet little girl about three years old playing with Gerry — only Gerry was her age instead of older in this universe, apparently.
Charlie came out of hiding, very slowly, and she watched both Billy and Chance as she came a little closer. But after she watched the two children playing next to Chance, she shook her head and fixed Billy with a very serious expression. "Elin won't like this."
"Do you want me to just look at everything fast?" Billy offered. "You guys don't need to see the other worlds if you don't want to. It'll just look like colors to you."
"I'll take care of Elin," Wade promised, and he got up and crossed the room to where the little girl was hiding, only to pick her up and let her hide her face in his chest.
Billy glanced around at the kids before he nodded and held out both hands this time. "Allpossibleworlds," he chanted — and in an instant, the worlds opened up to him. It was like… channel-surfing, but all at once, looking through the different possibilities and trying to find which one was his. He'd done it before, looking for a world where Teddy's mother was alive — though at least this time he knew better than to bring anything back from the extradimensional space he was using to look through reality.
He hadn't expected it to take very long, but the more he searched, the more he realized… he just couldn't find where he was from. The closest thing he could find, in all honesty, was where he was now. But that just wasn't possible. Four years of wrong just… was not his reality.
He tried a sifting spell, weeding out the realities he knew weren't his. Process of elimination. He tried a locator spell, searching for his own magical signature — not the Demiurge ripples that echoed everywhere but his personal, lower-level stuff. But that also brought him back to where he was. He even tried to track down the footprints he hoped David had left — all reality-benders left some. But he could only find traces of it where he was.
Finally, frustrated, he shut down the spell — surprised to find that he had apparently been at it for hours, if the fact that the kids were all curled up and asleep was any indication. Elin was curled up on Wade's chest, and Eleanor had Sying and Krissy on either side of her on the other couch.
It was sweet. Really. But it wasn't right.
Billy sat back with his head against the wall and gently thumped his head against it for a while, simply out of frustration. There was no reason he shouldn't have been able to find a way home. He'd done everything right.
He wasn't time travelling. This wasn't a Gateway problem. Maybe… if he stayed gone long enough Cable might come for him? It was a longshot, but that was how Logan came back, right?
"Gah," he muttered under his breath as he got to his feet and started to pace, his hands tangled in his hair the more frustrated he got.
He found the door to the bathroom and slipped inside, just to get a little privacy, before he looked up at the ceiling. "What did you do, David?" he asked the ceiling.
The ceiling, of course, had absolutely no answers for him, and after another ten minutes or so of grumbling at David — wherever he was — Billy finally had to give up. He magicked himself up a little cot, and he was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, simply exhausted from everything that had happened.
When Billy woke up a while later, he was surprised by the tiny, fuzzy face very close to his. Of course, the second Krissy realized that he was awake, she retreated — but with a little giggle; he could still see her ears poking out from her hiding place behind one of the tables.
Billy sat up a little straighter, and the ears disappeared behind the table again, though the giggles didn't stop, and he couldn't help but smile as he got out of the little cot and down on all fours so he could see under the table. She had her head down on the ground and broke into giggles all over again when she saw that she'd been found.
"Hey, Krissy," he said with a little grin, and she burst into laughter and zipped away, running back to where the others were. A little flirt she might have been, but she wasn't about to talk to the new guy by herself.
He watched her run off to the other kids and then got to his feet to make his way over to Wade, stretching out his back. He hadn't exactly slept well — not because of the cot, since, well, magic cot — but just… because of everything else.
"Breakfast?" he asked Wade. "Or did I miss that already?"
"Nope, it's time," he replied, though Elin was once again half hiding as Wade carried her. "She's a little shy."
Billy smiled at her. "That's alright. My favorite person in the whole world — Teddy? He was pretty shy too when I met him. I don't mind shy."
Elin peeked at him for an instant before she gripped onto Wade tighter.
Billy shrugged Wade's way and sat down to grab a bagel with the other kids. They were all a little shy, though not nearly as much as Elin was. Still, conversation was light with very few of them talking around Billy, so he pulled out his phone and started to fiddle with it. No service — wrong time or dimension or something — but he had pictures and stuff he could look through.
"You won't get much signal in this floating bucket," Wade told him as he tried to tempt Elin with some scrambled eggs. "Something about the electromagnetic field screws with fine electronics."
"Yeah, I don't even know who I'd text anyway," Billy said. "Just… something to do." He pulled up some of the pictures from his phone gallery and was honestly surprised — and relieved — to see that, apparently, his phone had kept everything from where he was from. There was him and Teddy at the nice restaurant they'd gone to for Valentine's… and the beach party he'd gone to with all the old Young Avengers, Kate and Noh and their kids included….
"Anything worth sharing in there?" Wade asked.
"Just the only evidence I have that I'm not crazy," Billy admitted.
"Well, show me. I believe you, but it's nice to see real proof now and again," Wade said with a shrug.
Billy nodded and went back to the beginning of his pictures, glad he hadn't cleaned out his phone in a while, since that meant there were about two years' worth in there. "I… can tell you which kid is which if you want," he said.
"Yeah, because there are some here … I mean I can guess the one with the tail …"
"Kari," Billy supplied for him with a little smile. "She's the worst flirt out of all of them." He pointed at James in another picture. "James encourages her. And…" He pointed out the little redhead in the back of the picture. "Zoe leads them into trouble. She's a Barton, by the way."
Wade stared at Zoe in particular for a good long while. "Yeah, I can see her daddy in there."
"She looks like her mom in most of my pictures, but I think I have one with her busted lip and bandage on her nose."
"Yeah, but there's enough of him in the eyes …"
Billy watched Wade for a moment. "I really wish they were here."
"You and me both. I never could forgive myself for how that stupid mission went down," Wade said as he handed the phone back. "Leave it to me to lose both Hawks at once."
"Yeah, that's the part I don't understand," Billy said. "Where I'm from, the three of you... Sure, you got captured, but no one died."
"The woman we were there to get intel from didn't show," Wade said. "She was supposed to. It was in her schedule. And instead of this old, super evil Weapon X doctor, we got the freakin' platoon of suped up guards. Didn't have time to search the room — and they didn't warn us before they started firing."
Billy turned his phone over in his hands a couple times. He just… didn't know what to say.
Wade let out a breath and shook his head. "I guess that's what we get for going to Madripoor on business instead of pleasure."
"That's…" Billy frowned. "That's the confusing part. I've heard Kate tell the Madripoor story a hundred times. They grabbed you three, and then Kurt came in all ... well, Kate says all 'dashing demon hero' ... and the next thing you know, you're walking out with globs of data and two hawks with broken wings."
"Demon pirate hero," Wade corrected. "And I crawled out on my elbows. Barely. With nothing. Kurt wasn't there."
Billy shook his head. "Well, I can't figure out what the problem is with this timeline. Or reality. Because everything I did last night… it says I'm in the right place. Right time, right reality." He tapped his phone. "But I have proof. I even have the…." He paused, a disbelieving smile spreading over his face. "I… even have the book Kate and JJ wrote about how they exposed Weapon X. It's on my digital downloads."
"When was that supposed to happen?" Wade asked, and Billy realized that Elin was now watching him without hiding her face. "Did we actually … did we nail them?"
Billy paused, thinking of the raid that, to him, had only happened yesterday. "Well. They're not… defunct. But they were publicly humiliated. Disavowed. Back to operating in the shadows." He sighed. "Where I'm from, they just hit the mansion. But, it's nothing like this."
"They've taken over SHIELD's place here," Wade told him.
"Yeah, there's nothing like that back home. They come out of their hidey holes and hit us every once in a while, but… this is just…" He shook his head.
"It sucks."
"Yes, that." Billy let out all his breath as he thought it over. "And… I think… I think it might be my fault. I just don't know what I did."
Wade frowned and turned his way. "How could it be your fault?"
Billy ran a hand over his face. "Where I'm from, yesterday morning, Weapon X hit the mansion. They grabbed a lot of X-Men, but ... they killed Tommy. Laura stabbed him to death right in front of me and Erik. And I… I wanted to try to fix it." He shook his head. "I was just going to give him five more minutes. Just… long enough to make a difference. Heal him. And then the next thing I know, my own personal guide to extradimensional meddling drops me off on some island in the middle of nowhere for half an hour and brings me back here to this… crazy." He let out a long breath. "I must have changed something. Something on that beach, maybe. Or… been gone when I shouldn't have been. But that thirty minutes… I think it did something to reality."
"What island were you on?" Wade asked with his head tipped to the side.
"I really don't know. Somewhere in the Caribbean. Everyone was dressed nicely."
"Did it smell like charcoal and jerk chicken or unwashed dead bodies? Think hard now; I know there's not a lot of difference sometimes."
"Ah…" Billy stared at him. "I… don't really know what unwashed dead bodies smell like. But I'm assuming it's a bad smell."
Wade laughed and clapped one hand on Billy's shoulder. "Well, Billy-boy, it smells exactly as awful as it sounds. Try to stretch your imagination nostrils if you're not sure."
"It didn't smell horrible. It was kinda ritzy. Like… rich people were vacationing there," Billy tried to explain. "Though one guy stole my wallet when I tried to ask directions, so it wasn't that nice."
"The guy that pickpocketed you — rich looking or dirt-strings for shoes poor?"
"Blonde guy in a suit," Billy said.
"Haiti then," Wade said. "Probably. There was a mission we did down there. We started on the poor side of the island — but the mission was on the hoity toity side. We didn't find anything."
Billy tipped his head to the side and then held up a finger to tell him to wait as he pulled up his digital copy of Kate's book and searched 'Haiti.' "Okay, no, that — that's the mission where you started finding stuff," he said, showing Wade the chapter. "Uh, you got shot with carbonadium? But it set you on the right track for video files."
"Yeah, that's a big no little buddy," Wade said, shaking his head.
"So it was me," Billy said quietly. "It can't be a coincidence if I was on that island…"
"Are you saying you did something to blow the mission?" Wade asked.
"I don't know. Maybe," Billy said. "I… I asked people for directions, got pickpocketed, and one guy kicked me out of a restaurant? But that's it. I'm not sure how that would have changed anything, but… it had to. Right? That's the only thing that's different between what I know and what you know."
"Then it … kinda has to be it. But how would that change things?"
"I don't know," Billy said, rubbing his forehead as he thought it over. "As best I can tell, all I did was talk to some civilians and get pickpocketed. So if $50 and an Avengers ID makes a difference…"
"The ID would do it," Wade said with a nod. "No one on that island was on the up and up. At least no one in a suit."
Billy let out all his breath and put his face in his hands. "One wallet — and the world goes to hell."
"Maybe it was what the creep spent the fifty bucks on …" Wade said as consolingly as he could. "Butterfly effect, you know …"
"No, you're right; it was probably the ID," Billy said, still with his face in his hands. "I scared off your biggest lead."
For as miserable as Billy looked over the whole thing, Elin had to do something, and he wasn't looking her way at all when she reached over and rested one tiny hand on his arm.
He picked his head up, eyes shining, and let out a half-choked laugh. "Hey there, Emotional Assassin," he said.
Elin looked up at Wade with a little frown, then scooted a little closer to Billy. When she had gotten halfway to him, she leaned forward to almost hug him. Almost. "No one can hurt you up here," she said very quietly.
"Thanks," he said in a hoarse whisper. "That's… that's really good to hear."
She waited until he sat up a little straighter and then held her arms out so he could hold her for a few minutes — and though he couldn't see it, Wade was smiling widely under his mask.
Billy snuggled into the little girl for a long moment. "You… you're just like my Elin," he said in a whisper. "She gives the best hugs in the world too."
She snuggled in a little deeper for that, and Wade started to shake his head. "She doesn't do that for anyone, you know. Kurt hasn't even gotten a cuddle like that in … months."
"Well, when was the last time he started crying over breakfast?" Billy asked with a little self-deprecating laugh.
"I … was not aware it was part of my duties to keep track of such things," Wade said in a scholarly tone.
Billy couldn't help but chuckle at that as he snuggled Elin a little harder and then let out a breath. "You know," he said slowly, "I think… I can fix this. Put reality back where it's supposed to be. I know where I need to go, right? Where and when… I just need to stop myself from getting pickpocketed."
"Sounds simple enough," Wade replied. "Too simple maybe." He shook his head hard. "I don't know, Mr. Mystic … it wasn't even that easy to fix the rip when America let a whole dimension of teeny tiny flower people into Milan. It was fashion week. So they thought it was part of the whole … ambiance thing. Right up until they started biting tourists …."
Billy chuckled disbelievingly. "That never happened in my reality. I'm kinda sorry I missed it."
"Well, if you were going to Milan and not Haiti, I'm sure some of them are still hanging around … biting people."
"When I fix this, I'm going to make America show me that dimension. It's just… the mental image alone…" Billy chuckled and shook his head before he very gently released Elin and gave her a little kiss on the temple. "I'm gonna go find a pickpocket. But thank you so much for the hug. That really, really helped."
"Don't get in trouble," she said, wide-eyed, before Chance came over to try and pull her to play.
"Don't worry," Billy said with a small smile. "Where I'm going, the trouble is much easier to deal with. It's like those worlds I showed Chance last night, right, buddy? Happy worlds. That's where I'm trying to go."
Chance tipped his head at Billy with a little frown. "Like ... where I'm big?"
Billy nodded. "Yeah, like that." He handed Elin off and got to his feet, figuring he should probably go elsewhere to do his teleportation spell so he didn't scare the already-skittish kids.
As Billy left the group, Erik got up to meet him at the door before he could quite slip away. Billy hadn't even really noticed him until then — he had been so quiet. But then, he'd been watching the whole thing, so he likely meant to be quiet…
"You're very good with her, you know," Erik said as he took pace with Billy. "She doesn't like everyone."
"She's always been a good kid, even where I'm from. She likes to take care of people, that's all," Billy said with a shrug.
"Yet she needs someone to take care of her," Erik replied. "I think she'd stay with you if you asked her."
Billy looked taken aback. "I…" He trailed off, entirely unsure of what to say. Just days ago, he'd been saying he wanted a little girl, and here was Elin without her parents anywhere to be found… He just didn't know how to explain that he didn't want to get his wish that way.
"I'm not nearly as optimistic as Mr. Wagner," Erik said softly. "I don't believe that her parents are reachable, frankly, and as enthusiastic as Mr. Wilson is ... "
"Well, if I can fix this, you won't need to worry about it anyway. She'll have her parents and her little brother."
"And if you can't? Would you care for her?"
"Then…" Billy sighed. "No, I can fix it. I'm more powerful than my mom; I just… don't use it. I don't like using it. But I can." He gestured around at Avalon. "Wouldn't it be better if we didn't need this place? You can't tell me you want to just… let this be the way things are forever."
"Yes, I'd much prefer an alternative," he admitted. "But I could also end this war with Weapon X if Kurt would simply allow me to do so."
"X-Men don't kill if they can help it," Billy said quietly.
"Yes, well. Then explain to me why Charles recruited Wolverine to begin with," Erik pointed out. "It wasn't for his diplomacy."
"Yeah, but... " Billy sighed and shook his head. "Some people … they deserve it. Where I'm from, that's people like… like Mr. Sinister. Or Kurt's stupid dad. But not X-Men. Not Avengers. Not people who are being used. Even Logan could've killed my friend Noh for trying to take K. What's the difference here?"
"The difference is that there are no X-Men anymore and Wolverine and his wife are working for Weapon X. Openly and without any controls we can find," Erik replied. "Of course, Kurt won't hear it, even if it is the truth."
"Because it's just not right," Billy argued. "I mean, when I first got here, the girl trying to take me in was a junior X-Man where I come from. They've got people working for them that I know would never do stuff like that. Ever."
"Then I wish you luck finding the proof if you can't find a way to fix it," Erik replied. "My door is always open to you regardless."
Billy nodded. "If this doesn't work, I'll be back, I'm sure. But I'm pretty sure it'll work." He held out both hands and closed his eyes, then paused and peeked one open before he threw his arms around Erik. "Don't think I'll see this version of you again, so I just… thanks," he muttered into Erik's chest.
Erik looked surprised at the gesture before he returned the hug — hesitantly and then in a rush of warmth so that Billy was standing there for a lot longer than he meant to be. When he did take a step back, he couldn't even look at Erik as he closed his eyes, muttered his teleportation spell, and reappeared in Haiti a moment later.
It was the same beach as before, definitely. Practically the same spot, too. And it looked to be the right time of day… Billy glanced around but didn't see himself. Though… maybe that wasn't how this worked. Maybe he was just back — and all he had to do was not get pickpocketed.
He checked his back pocket — no wallet. So the other Billy had to be around somewhere, right?
He went up and down the beach at least three times but still didn't find himself. Or the pickpocket guy. Or anything that would give him a hint. "Come on, David. I get it. I do. I get it. Don't screw with the past. Joke's over," he muttered as he leaned against a nearby tree, frustrated at not finding anything. Again. He glanced over both shoulders and took a deep breath, holding his hands out in front of him to do a quick scanning spell.
He was only partway through the spell, though, when he felt a strange tickling sensation — and he went to slap at what he thought was a mosquito crawling up the back of his neck an instant before the whole spell collapsed out from underneath him as, once more, he felt the cold metal of a collar snap around his neck.
He hadn't even seen anyone coming. He turned to try and spot his attacker, but what he saw instead was a large gloved hand that shoved him face-first into the sand.
The fingers of the huge hand wrapped around him, and then Billy felt his body lift up off the ground as his attacker picked him up to turn him to face her — and he recognized Cassie as she tipped her head to the side. "We thought you were dead," Cassie said with her lips pursed in a frown, though she still hadn't put him down. If anything, she was pressing his arms against his sides tighter.
"Hey, Cas—"
"Shut up," she said sharply, and he was so shocked by it that his jaw snapped shut. She frowned at him for a moment before she turned to a comm at her shoulder. "Mutant for pickup," she reported before she simply started to squeeze until Billy felt the breath leave him and he blacked out.