❛ SNAILS NEVER GET IT !

             tommy stared at the girl for a solid few seconds, not even glancing at the map she was trying to show him. a slow blink & he looked back at the city. he wasn’t from here, no, but he lived here long enough & had run up & down every street here & enough & had traveled enough to know one big error in her question.       ❛   uh, yeah . . . i can tell you’ve never been to new york. ------   ❜        he looked back to her, eyebrow arched now.        ❛   ‘cause the smithsonian is definitely in washington d.c. so you might want to try by going there instead.   ❜

@qxcksilver       ( cont. )

              wasn’t sure if the guy wasn’t getting the hint or was purposely playing with him. either way, it brought tommy to narrow his eyes at the other as he shifted to straighten his back & place firsts on his hips. the speed, silver hair, & weird knowledge of quicksilver couldn’t be a coincidence. if quicksilver wasn’t a famed avenger then how else would this guy know of him? ------ at the same time, though, this WASN’T the same quicksilver he had met earlier in his time here.         ❛  ------ well, it’s 2016 here and . . . you’re quicksilver, aren’t you?  ❜

             ❛  you don’t know the half of it.  ❜      tommy’s hands tucked into his pocket & an easy smile curved on the side.     ❛  hey, new universe, new me. maybe i’ll be good here --- but probably not. life’s short !!! you gotta get into trouble sometimes. otherwise it’s no fun.  ❜

             ❛  all universes are kinda a mess. a lot of stuff has happened in mine. might sound shitty but YOURS sounds BORING. plus, if you don’t have the avengers then you never have the young avengers which is where i’m from so that’s crap. if they’re all still learning, even scott --- the dude was pretty confident when i met him. you must know him young . . . what time are you from? well he didn’t have any right to hate me or my brother yet he was all for lashing out at us. even when he has a right to be angry, like he did with the scarlet witch, it doesn’t excuse his bullshit. but --- whatever. old argument, i’m not about to dive back in that. so . . . you’re an x-men? they don’t have any speedsters on their team that i know of. only big speedster hero besides me is quicksilver and he . . . isn’t on the avengers for you. ------ you’re not . . . are you?  ❜

@greencrgrass       ( cont. )

@phoeniixsm   ( cont. )

            ❛  i’m not supposed to be within two hundred feet of a school. or a chuck-e-cheese.  ❜

              ❛  first off: evil mutants. brotherhood of evil mutants. and, yeah, there is. in MY universe. maybe not where you’re from there’s no brotherhood but where you’re from isn’t the only universe out there. in MY universe the brotherhood of evil mutants exists, or it did. i didn’t come up with the name, don’t judge me on that. it was FOUNDED by magneto which brings us to secondly: he’s not such a bad guy anymore now that he’s reformed and all. i met him, he’s cool. he’s even part of the x-men !!! or --- he was. don’t know if he still is. there were some disagreements. point is, magneto’s not so bad now but he WAS evil at some point. he was a kind of a terrorist, even he can admit that. third: his sister is the scarlet witch. she’s one of the most powerful people alive --- she wiped out over half the mutant population with three words. i think she’s involved. in my world, at least. lastly: quicksilver is an avenger where i’m from. wherever you’re from the avengers apparently don’t exist but you’ve got the x-men which sucks because in my world the x-men are dicks . . . or at least scott summers is. they tried to take out quicksilver !!! and the scarlet witch, his sister. and magneto. and me and one of my teammates since, unfortunately, when someone says ‘take out all the maximoffs’, my brother and i are included in that mess.  ❜

            the guy was holding out a paper & asking him a question, directions to be exact, but tommy couldn’t be bothered to look at those. no, the speedster was more occupied in looking at the guy’s face which looked pretty much the same as his own & not in the billy way. his twin, at least, had dark hair to differentiate between them . . . or maybe this was billy playing a trick on him. the guy did have reality warping magic, whose to say he couldn’t turn his hair white. tommy’s eyes narrowed.    ❛  billy? dude --- what the hell, why? i know i’m the more awesome of us but a hair change isn’t gonna make you not the lame twin.  ❜

             ❛  ------ you’re telling me that earlier you were talking about how you yourself don’t really come out of your own building? i’d be more impressed but i’ve already met like --- all of the avengers. i’m part of them. the avengers.  ❜      in the blink of an eye there’s the smallest gust of wind then he’s standing behind her, hair now just slightly windblown.     ❛  speed of the young avengers, at yours.  ❜

             tommy tossed the ball up in the air & caught it again before looking at the other. must be multiverse stuff. wasn’t everything these days in this place? it was a headache. tommy much preferred the linear timeline thing.     ❛  yeah, i’m a hundred percent certain. what’s quicksilver in your universe? don’t tell me he and his dad and his sister are still trying to wipe out humanity in the brotherhood of evil mutants.  ❜     a name tommy always found a bit much but he’s pretty sure most will agree with him in saying his grandfather had a flair for the dramatics.    ❛  you guys don’t even have the avengers? damn, it must be one shit show where you’re from. they’re earth’s mightiest heroes. the most well known team of superheroes there is. with iron man, captain america, hawkeye . . . you guys have none of this?  ❜    

              there’s a pause that he leaves before responding. he’s processing quicksilver’s words, something that, to him, seems long but at the rate his mind runs it seems to the rest of the world only about three seconds.    ❛  is wanda as lame as billy?  ❜     the jab would be more fun if he smiled but tommy’s expression was very blank on his features & it fell rather cold. in another zip of speed he had disappeared from his spot on the couch & into the small kitchen area where he peeked through the pantry.     ❛  you know, you don’t have to play loving-family for me. you can drop the act, i don’t care. i think we both know you don’t really like me. just ‘cause i’m the lost soul of your nephew or whatever doesn’t mean you’re obligated to bother with me.  ❜     because wasn’t that all he was? an obligation. he didn’t want to force the care of yet another family. pietro felt he had to get along with him because of all this, right? so tommy tried to put that at rest. he didn’t need pity family. he didn’t need family at all !!! billy grew up with his loving mother & father, he had a standard for families, but tommy? tommy grew up to the sound of yelling & teaching to comfort himself in his room & walking home from school because his dad forgot to pick him up again & the disapproving looks from his dad’s girlfriends. he didn’t know what a caring family was like. he zipped to the counter, rice krispy treat now in hand to munch on.     ❛  billy’s really sensitive but i couldn’t care less if you act like my uncle. i’m used to it.  ❜

              a chuckle of a breath leaves his mouth. he must have sped up during his rambling at some point --- he did that sometimes without realizing. she wasn’t looking at him like he had just grown a second head so, hopefully, he wasn’t going too fast. it was slow enough that it still sounded like words. being a speedster was great but at the same time it was one of the hardest things in the world. you had to constantly remember to go slow for the sake of all the snails in the world & it was maddening. you got used to it, sure, but it sure as hell doesn’t mean you ever end up liking it. when you babble on it’s quite easy to pick up pace without realizing it & soon enough you’re spouting a whole book at a mile a minute.      ❛  real fast breaths, that’s the key.  ❜     he says it as a joke but it’s actually pretty true. tommy’s entire body was wired for speed beyond any other’s capability. what seemed like a long stream of babble to others was easy paced talking to him. the quick breaths were just normal for him.        ❛  hey, it’s just three guys murdering people at a shitty motel in the middle of nowhere together. maybe they get off on it, there are some weird people in this world so you never know. i don’t know the complete history of the motel and the murderers. maybe one day they’ll make a prequel including emotional backgrounds for everyone. if they do, i’ll find you. we can see it together.  ❜      he’d weirdly be alright with that, actually. not the prequel thing but seeing a movie with her. seeing her again somehow. she could hold a decent conversation &, honestly, was pretty fair in the looks area. maybe he’d call her lame for calling out the errors in horror movies --- she wasn’t completely shitty about calling it out so he could appreciate that.      ❛  no, i mean like superheroes. like --- the avengers. captain american and iron man and spiderman . . . all those guys with super abilities or gear that run around protecting the world from evil. the police can deal with the little stuff, robberies n’ all, but when the big stuff comes they can’t handle comes? like alien invasion or --- or a supervillain robbing a bank? they get mad at the superheroes who come in to save the day ‘cause they feel like they’re stealing the show. and that --- that’s stupid !!! you were just saved. why do you have to be an asshole about it?  ❜    tommy threw up his hands, exasperated. the young avengers had had their fair share of dealing with police. it was even worse for them as they were so young as well, tommy thinks.    ❛  whatever, though --- at least you have people who are alright. did you find out who it really was, by the way? what’s that make you? some kinda young super sleuth? got a gang and a talking dog i should know about?  ❜