Author's Note: Someone in the reviews correctly guessed where I was going with this, LOL. I promise I already had it planned out! This one's a bit long, but it didn't feel right to cut it off in the middle of an important stretch. If you think Barney's being a little out of character at the end, I promise to explain myself in the next chapter! :)
--
Billy was more than happy to check out by 10 AM the following morning. He passed on the continental pancake breakfast – he had a better idea.
What little money he had left bought him a cab that took him close enough to Barney Stinson's apartment. He paid the cab driver and walked the remaining eight blocks to the location he'd written down at the library. He had an easy time convincing the superintendent to let him in, claiming to be Barney and insisting that he must have left his keys at MacLaren's. He learned from that conversation that Barney must frequent MacLaren's a lot because he didn't seem surprised that Barney would be at a bar twenty-five minutes away. He was, however, surprised that Billy wasn't wearing a suit.
"What is with this guy and suits?" he asked himself once the super left. After taking off his hoodie and throwing it onto the couch, Billy decided to take a look around. The apartment felt very empty despite the fact that it had a lot of furniture. He gave himself a tour – no food in the fridge, hardly any cosmetics in the bathroom (and was that a spring-loaded toilet seat?), two bedrooms (one full of suits – seriously, what was up with the suits?), a hallway full of porn, and a life-sized Storm Trooper by the back window.
He sat down at the laptop in the bedroom; the only program currently running was a browser with what appeared to be a blog. Billy smiled to himself – this guy blogged too?
"Yeah, well, Barney Stinson, your blog isn't video, is it?" Billy sneered at the computer screen as he scrolled through the entries, looking for any information that would help him. Most of the blogs were about women and his latest conquests and "being awesome," as he frequently said. Billy hadn't found any reason so far to like this guy. It seemed that all he ever talked about was screwing different women. He was beginning to think that Barney seemed like the polar opposite of Billy himself, who couldn't even bring himself to talk to one particular woman.
Then he came across something a little different. He was halfway through reading what turned out to be a private-locked entry before he realized what it was.
-
September 23, 2008
Telling Lily how I felt about Robin was a huge mistake. I mean, what was I thinking? She can't keep a secret. Moreover, she's a woman, which means she can't mind her own damn business. Last night she tricked me into a date with Robin. It was awkward and nerve-wracking at first, but I did learn a little more about her. Despite the fact that her father raised her like a son, she did most of the cooking growing up. She once dyed her hair pink as an act of teenage rebellion; when that didn't work, that's when she turned blonde and went into modeling, which eventually led to her Robin Sparkles career. She has an irrational fear of going blind. She takes her shoes off when she goes to the movie theatre. She loves the smell of gasoline. She has the chance to go for this incredible job, and I gave her the confidence to go for it.
But it doesn't matter. This whole thing is just a phase. I just need to get back in the game. That's why last night I took home this really dim chick from the bar. Talk about easy; even pretending to be on a sports team seemed impressed her, even though she clearly didn't know the first thing about them. Lily seems to think I'm just afraid of getting hurt in a real relationship, but what does she know? She's been with Marshall for twelve years. They think life is all about love. They're only kidding themselves.
-
"Wow," Billy said to himself once he'd finished reading. That blog entry was so different from the others, he didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't just about "scoring" or "being awesome." Did he have genuine feelings for one girl in particular? "Wait," he said to himself, scrolling back over the entry. "Robin? That was the name of the woman at the bar," he said, remembering that the man had called her that. Barney was in love with her? According to this blog, he was on a date with her, and took some other girl home that night. "What is this guy playing at?"
Since there was no food in the entire house, and Billy was starving, he decided to order a pizza online for delivery using the bank account information Barney had saved on his computer. "It's about taking money," Billy smiled as he happily clicked the "confirm order" button. With that set, he picked up the phone on the desk and dialed his friend again. This time he got through.
"Hello?"
"Moist! Hey," Billy said. "Man, am I glad to talk to you. Listen, I may have done something bad."
"What's going on?" Moist said. "You were acting really strange last night."
"That wasn't me," Billy said. "All right, look, I may have cut some corners in designing the Genetic Vortex."
"What corners?"
"Just some minor coding details," he said, trying to play down the severity. "Long story short, it didn't create a clone."
"Well, then what happened?" Moist asked, now sounding concerned.
Billy sighed, hating to admit to his own faults in such explicit detail. But Moist had to know what was going on. "It must have searched a global database and found someone whose DNA most closely matched my own. Sort of like DKMS or finding a bone marrow match."
"What are you saying?" Moist asked after a beat. "You have a twin or something?"
"No, not biologically anyway," Billy said. "Just... someone who shares my basic genetic makeup and looks freakishly like me."
"Well, I've heard that everyone has a look-alike somewhere," Moist said. "But I never believed it."
"Oh, believe it," Billy sighed. "Because right now, I'm sitting in this guy's New York apartment."
---
Barney told Melanie the next morning that he would meet her downtown for some hippie homeless shelter dedication. She had been nattering on all night about how her best friend Penny had been working tirelessly to blah blah blah, and Barney just needed a quick way to get her out of the house. He had no intention of actually going. Still, he thought, as he pulled a half-eaten truffle cake out of the fridge, there will probably be a lot of women there who would drop trou for any guy who shared her same sensibilities. He considered checking out the scene, but he figured he should probably get home soon. He was already mentally writing the blog in his head as he gripped a fork with his whole fist and stabbed at the cake, shoveling it into his mouth.
-
What a night! I was so upset about work that I went straight to the bar and knocked back six drinks before my friends even ordered theirs. I drank so much that I passed out in the alley behind the bar and woke up somewhere I didn't recognize. Wouldn't be the first time. But this place was like walking into a nightmare, if acid trips could have nightmares. The kid who lived there was so doped, he didn't find my presence there at all alarming. And the Barnacle isn't one to pass up a great opportunity. I used this bizarre place to nail some chick, where ever the hell I was. I just took a cab home.
-
"Good idea," he mumbled to himself through a mouthful of frosting. Leaving the cake out on the table, he grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the comically large chair (where he'd folded it neatly before copulation the night before) and threw it on as he headed for the door, fully intending to just hop in a cab and give his address. But right when he got to the door...
---
"You're in New York?" Moist asked. "This is crazy. How did you figure all this out? Were you expecting it?"
"I had my doubts," Billy admitted. "But it all became clear when I got here."
Billy relayed the entire story to his friend, starting with the strange people at the bar who called him Barney Stinson, the cab driver who told him he was in New York, and all the subsequent information he'd attained on the man at the library.
"What sealed the deal was when I found a criminal record on the guy, mug shots and all – looks just like me. That's when I knew."
"Criminal record?" Moist said, sounding slightly impressed. "What did he do?"
"Urinated in public," Billy said, and he couldn't help but laugh. "Don't know why I never thought of that."
"Yeah, man," Moist said, sharing the mirth. "You'd be in the League by now if you'd done something that badass."
"It doesn't end there," Billy said. "I got into his apartment this morning. Just pretended I was him and told the super I lost my keys."
"Sure."
"This guy is kind of a douche," Billy said, scrolling back over some of the entries. "He keeps this blog –"
"Hey, just like you, Doc," Moist said cheerfully. Billy scoffed.
"No, my blog is cool," he said tersely. "Listen to this – 'February 27, 2006: I did it! I finally nailed Shannon! That's one more I can cross off my list.' 'September 26, 2006: Stole this girl from Marshall last night. Girls are so easy to win over with magic!' – 'July 5, 2007: For the holiday, I banged this broad in a tent and escaped in her truck.' – 'September 23, 2008: Last night, I took home this really dim chick from the bar. Talk about easy.' There's even an entry in here about he had to make a bracket of the top 64 women he'd slept with and screwed over to figure out who could possibly hate him the most."
"Wow," Moist drawled. "You know, that would explain why last night he asked me where the nearest bar was. I thought that was weird 'cause, you know, I thought he was you."
"Listen, I'm going to need your help," Billy said, putting on his work voice. "I've lost valuable time due to this whole fiasco. I have to get back to LA immediately, fix the Vortex, and get my plan off the ground before Bad Horse finds out how royally I've screwed up again."
"What do you need me to do?"
"You've got to get this Barney Stinson to work the machine from his end," Billy whispered, although he didn't really know why. "I don't exactly have enough money to hop a plane. I spent the only money I had on me on cab fare and this really dingy hostel. Man, New York is the dirtiest, most expensive place on earth. When I rule the world, it's gonna be the first to go."
"You can count on me, Doc," Moist said proudly with a lofty superhero-like pitch. "Hey, that big homeless shelter thing is going down today. You gonna go?"
"Are you kidding?" Billy asked, making a grotesque face that his sidekick could probably hear in his tone. "You think I want to sit through some bullshit ceremony and watch the whole town praise Captain Brainless for all his hard work? No thanks."
"Penny will be there," he pointed out.
"Yeah, well, I'd rather not watch her twirl her hair around a finger, giggle at his baritone, stroke his biceps, and fawn over him like he's some kind of saint for accomplishing the most pointless act of futile charity ever."
"Your choice," Moist said. "But it would probably mean a lot to her if you went."
"Tssh, I've got a better plan to win her heart."
---
"Moist!" Barney said leaning against the door frame, giddy for the chance to return to this charade. "I was just installing the jumper cables on my new gravity –"
"Drop the act, Stinson," Moist said impatiently, brushing past him and into the room. "We know who you really are."
"We?" Barney asked, pulling his fingers through the air to make quotes. He looked into the hallway to see if anyone came with the kid. Then he looked back at him and noticed the sweaty countenance. "Ah, we," he said slowly, almost sympathetically. "Say, Moist, how many people are in the room right now?"
"I'm talking about me and the doctor – the real doctor."
Moist proceeded to explain the whole situation to Barney in as vague detail as possible while still conveying what happened and what Barney needed to do to put it right.
"You're trying to tell me I traveled through time and space all the way to California," Barney asked when he finished his story.
"Not through time," Moist said, regarding him as though he were a particularly dense third-grader trying to understand quantum mechanics. "But yes. Why, you don't believe me?"
"If I believed everything a stoner ever told me, I'd be telling you about the time a unicorn flew out of my –"
"You look like a wealthy businessman," Moist observed, nodding his head in a glance over Barney's expensive-looking suit. Barney's mouth turned up at the corner as he made a show of fixing his tie.
"Why, thank you."
"Let me see your phone," Moist said, holding out his hand with a sweaty palm face-up.
"No way," Barney said. "You'll probably just sell it in the streets for meth."
"This isn't New York," Moist said derisively, "and I'm not on drugs. I can prove it to you, if you just give me your phone."
Barney looked at him skeptically, but he pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and put it in the kid's hands.
"Careful!" Barney shrieked when it almost slipped out of his hands. "I scored 212.6 yards on Ninja Ropes on that thing." Moist struggled with the touch screen, constantly pulling his hands over his shirt to try and keep them dry. "And quit sweating all over it," Barney said.
"Here," Moist finally said, holding the phone out with a GPS application running. "You tell me where we are."
Barney narrowed eyebrows as he reached out and took the phone back. He wiped it on his pants and squinted down at the screen while he watched a map of the United States zero in on the west coast.
"What the..."
"Now do you believe me?" Moist asked impatiently. "I don't really feel like taking you out to prove it."
"How much did I drink last night?" Barney whispered harshly, pushing a thumb into his temple.
"Are you going to do this or what?" Moist asked, pointing to the Vortex.
"Hell no," said Barney. "If what you're saying is true, then I'm not going anywhere."