A/N
I've only really read the 2013 Young Avengers so my characterisation may be fairly OOC but after becoming fairly obsessed with Billy Kaplan I thought I'd blow off some writing steam.

Just one-shots but maybe with some sort of vague plot at some point? Who knows?

(Jared is my OC)

Jared

I've been in this dimension for all of twenty minutes and already I'm being chased through a sketchy-looking neighbourhood in the dead of night by…

Well that's the problem.

When you come from somewhere as far away as I have, you don't tend to know so much about the people trying to kill you. Unfortunately it's an area that I've become intimately familiar with.

I slip as I skid round a corner, painfully ripping the skin across my knee as I struggle to regain momentum and keep pushing forward. My quick tumble has given those behind me a little too much of an opportunity to catch up for my liking.

Normally, when I'm thrown into alternate Londons, I'm able to orient myself with much more ease - the landmarks rarely change significantly - but this place is completely alien. The streets are too wide ; gridlike, and the air tastes different. I don't
know where to run or hide and I'm tired.

I'm tired of being unhitched from reality every few weeks and thrust somewhere totally new.

I'm tired of running; from militant dictatorships; terrorist organisations; assorted street criminals; well-meaning social-workers.

I'm tired of living like a ghost.

Since… since it happened, I've left no impression where I go - it's like any chance to make a mark on this world was snatched from me, just as I was losing everything else.

As these thoughts fill my mind like leaden balloons, a surge of weariness rises up through my limbs and I let my foot hang a fraction too low as I leap a kerb and go sprawling across the concrete, headfirst. Pain starbursts across my brain as my nose
connects with the ground - making a particularly unpleasant crunching noise as it does so and some broken glass from bugger-knows-where slices into my cheek. I come to a rest feeling like half of my face has been skinned with an arm hanging at an
odd angle and refusing to move when I tell it to.

So this is it, I think to myself, This is where it all ends.

I'm flipped unceremoniously onto my back so my attackerscan gaze upon my face. Since my nose has swollen to the size of a small grapefruit, I can't do him the courtesy of gazing back.

I can make out the glowing muzzle of some sort of gun, though.

Especially when it's an inch from my face.

My fingers twitch in one last-ditch attempt to protect myself but nothing happens. I close my eyes and wait for the inevitable. Only one thought crosses my mind, and I'm happy that my last memory will be of him.

Searing blue light fills my vision and I brace myself…

…and then I remember that the gun was glowing red - not blue.

Tentatively, I crack open my eyes just in time to see a hulking shadow of a man blasted backwards, streamers of blue-white energy trailing from his limp body like ribbons.

Something big and green slams into another of my would-be assassins and a red-blue blur throws one an unlikely distance. I'm thanking whatever Creator of this Universe when I see another burst of blue energy and trace the lines back to its source. My
eyes sharpen as if desperate to confirm what I'm seeing.

My breath catches in my throat.

It can't be.

The man, boy really, is wearing an outfit that looks like it was spun from stars - galaxies woven into each thread. His tattered, red cape flies out behind him and his hood has fallen back st some point in the conflict.

His skin is light, more tanned than mine, but startling against the darkness of the night and his hair. Sweeping over in a breathtaking wave, his hair drags my gaze across his face - his sculpted nose, high cheekbones and soft lips - to his eyes. They
glow with an eerie light of electric blue than sparks in the shadows.

But I know that they are normally brown.

A warm, beautiful, loving brown.

Because I know him.

And he should be dead.

The scream rips through my throat, before I know what I'm doing.

"Billy! I love-"

I see surprise flash across his features at his real name before something hard and painful connects with the back of my head and cuts me off mid-sentence, sending me spinning into the darkness.