[Locked to Leo]

[badbutsadboy]

Who: Hunter basbutsadboy and Leo faceguy
What: Meeting in Huvrye's Apartment
When: After the Confluence
Where: Huvrye's Apartment
Content Warnings: N/A

[Hunter likes having multiple places to hang out now. It's a strange feeling, after years of spending most of his time in the palace, typically holed up in his room whenever he wasn't on a mission, going through coven trials, or practicing. Now he has the apartment with Eda which is still a little sparse but rapidly becoming cozy.]

[Then there's Jason's. Dylan's house. He's also been welcomed to the Hurly Burly house with its friendly ghosts.]

[And now Huvrye has given him a key to his place. It's a good place to go for some peace and quiet. The Owl Lady has a bit of a rambunctious personality that Hunter sometimes needs a break from. And Eda sometimes needs her "me" time, as well. It's hard to share such a small apartment when one of them is used to a sprawling magical house that's bigger on the inside than the outside, and the other is used to a palace.]

[So sometimes he goes to Huvrye's for peace and quiet - and to let Eda get her own space.]

[So far he's mostly done it while the other teen Huvrye told him about has been at school. Partly so he could have said peace and quiet. Today, he's stayed late though, because he's watching a new (old) human TV show utterly enthralled.]

[Final Frontier. It's about humans in the future who have developed a peaceful society and go out into space on adventures exploring. In special space boats.]

[So far his favorite character is Ensign Zak Torr, someone who is secretly a cloned lackey of Captain Hunt's most hated enemy, who managed to join Spacefleet without them knowing what he is.]

[Leo will walk in to see a sci fi show on the TV with rubber face aliens. Lying on his stomach on the floor, clinging to a throw pillow, completely absorbed, is a blonde human-ish teenage boy. Only human-ish because of the pointy ears and magenta eye color.]

[His left bicep has two scars that are still a little pink from recent healing, entry and exist wounds from a bullet.]

[He is so captivated he barely spares a glance as Leo comes in. When he sees it's not Huvrye, he just assumes it's the other teenager that has a key.]

[He hisses at the screen.]

No, don't take him on the ship! You're ignoring the captain's orders about quarantine procedures!

[He pulls another pillow onto his head with both hands and half hides his face, clearly anxious about what's on the screen. It's not a bad anxiety. It's more like someone watching scary movies and enjoying it, hiding behind their friend at the movies.]

Comments

[faceguy]

[Demons, huh? Sound spooky.]

Nah, my world's pretty similar to this one. Most of the magic stuff is hidden. [Leo takes his phone back, then lounges back a bit on the couch.] There's humans. Most of them don't have any magic powers at all, with the occasional mystic popping up. Then there're the Yokai, who are magic, but they mostly stay separate from humans.

But I'm not really either. [A shrug.] I'm a turtle. I just got mutated into being this way.

Demons though... Think I've only ever seen one of those.

[Does the Shredder count as a demon? He thinks it's close enough.]

[badbutsadboy]

It probably isn't the same kind of demon. I've talked to a lot of humans who seem to think they're something bad?

Back where I come from, the Boiling Isles, there are two types of people. Witches, like me [a lie, but he doesn't tell just anyone he's a Grimwalker] and demons, who can look all kinds of ways. Also, people descended from both.

[There were definitely some witches with demon heritage and vice versa. It was pretty common. People like Steve likely had some demon heritage.]

We're kind of two peoples that don't really see ourselves as a separate...people? If that makes any sense.

[The differences were biological and not even so separate that they were incompatible.]

[So it's always kind of weird. Humans are similar to witches so it's like half the types of people he's used to seeing don't exist here.]

[It's kind of unsettling.]

[There's a pause.]

What's a turtle?

[faceguy]

[This description of demons is pretty interesting, and definitely different from what he's thinking. It reminds him of yokai, if yokai had lived among humans. Or maybe just like yokai and the witches of Witch Town (who are technically yokai themselves, but many of them were more human in appearance).

He's mulling that all over when Hunter asks his question and thoughts of witches and demons and yokai fly out the window because sorry?

Did Hunter just ask him what a turtle is?

Of course, it's not really surprising that with all the different worlds the confluence yoinks people from, there would be some that don't have turtles, but... but seriously. It's just so weird!]

Your world doesn't have turtles? Humans but not turtles?

[What a sad existence!

Leo somewhat dramatically slides off the couch and into the floor, brandishing his phone. One second while he looks up videos of red-eared sliders.

Like some turtles enjoying some watermelon.]

These are turtles!

[badbutsadboy]

My world, the Demon Realm, is attached to a version of the Human Realm, but you have to go through a portal to get there. So we know what humans are, but our world's very different.

One of my friends back home is a human, though. Who came to the Demon Realm.

[He looks at the turtle video and smiles a little.]

Oh, I think I've seen one of these before. [In passing in a nature documentary.] But not back home. All our animals are different. You...mutated from this?

[Weird. (Also interesting.)]

[He suddenly realizes that these might be considered too personal questions. He wishes he always knew where the lines where. It's not like he made many friends his age before Luz and the others.]

Sorry. If I'm asking too many questions. It's just... it's weird not seeing the people you're used to seeing, you know? I've gotten used to all the humans, but to be honest, it's kind of nice to talk to someone that would fit in so well back home.

[Which just made him curious how a demon-like person had come to be in a version of the human realm.]

[faceguy]

[He's getting a better idea of how Hunter's world works. Human exist, but they're slightly off from where Hunter is actually from. Like a different dimension but not so different as this one. Not quite the same as the Hidden City, which is just underground, but similar enough that he understands the idea.

He's about to answer the question when Hunter apologizes, and to that, he shakes his head.]

Hey, don't worry about it. I love talkin' about myself!

[Which is true, but he also just doesn't want Hunter to worry about it. Sure, he doesn't really want to answer just any question about his life, but he's pretty open about these parts of it, anyway.

And, well, Huvrye likes this guy, enough to give him a key to the apartment, so the last thing Leo wants is to scare him off.]

Kinda cool that you think I'm someone who would fit in. [He grins.] Of course, I know it's hard to believe that a face as handsome as mine wouldn't be welcome everywhere, but back home we had to hide, or at least go out in disguises, or... I dunno. Maybe Dad was worried we'd get carted off to some government lab or locked up in a freak show.

[Or just killed. That was likely too.]

...Uh, but, yeah. I started out as one of those- [He nods at the video.] -and then my dad's human DNA turned me into this.

[badbutsadboy]

[He at least knows what DNA is now. He's been reading a lot.]

[He looks like he clearly finds the idea upsetting, that someone who is perfectly nice, and answering all his questions, and just, like, chillin' would be dragged off to a...freak show?]

[What even is that? He makes a mental note to google it later but not now. Not mid-conversation with someone who apparently had a parent fear it.]

[He has a feeling it'll turn his stomach.]

I was going to ask why you're not accepted, for like, half a second, but I already know some humans are just like that. My friend Luz is a good person and so are a lot of the humans I've met here.

But another human that wound up in the demon realm...wasn't. He didn't like anyone that was different.

[That sure is a dark expression. It fades as Hunter looks at him with some concern.]

The humans are being nice to you, right?

[This is said in tones of "they had better be" because he would in fact go fight somebody if someone Huvrye cared about was not being treated well by them. They would have words. Especially if it was a situation where Leo didn't want Huvrye to get angry and go off on a tear himself.]

[It is fully said with solidarity. Hunter is decidedly not human and despite looking similar clearly doesn't consider himself to be one. Even if he has some biological similarities due to who he may have been modeled on, he's a magical creature at his core, and a witch culturally.]

[faceguy]

[He notices that dark look. And he can imagine what might have happened.]

Ah yeah, one of my best friends back home is human. [Not to mention his dad. So he agrees that plenty of them are great!] Some of them are jerks, though. And in big groups they tend to be dumb.

[He keeps his voice light, because he knows that tone. But he doesn’t need Hunter stressing about it. So some of the natives say rude things or don’t want to talk to him at school unless he’s wearing his disguise? It’s not like it matters.]

But uh, yeah, the ones at school are pretty cool. I’ve never gone to school before, so it’s been… different? Not in a bad way, I guess.

[badbutsadboy]

You go to the meta school, right? What's it like there?

[He's curious now, especially from the perspective of someone else who's never gone.]

I've never gone to school before either. I snuck into one once and tricked them into letting me play on one of their sports teams for a match, but I never went to any classes.

That's how I met some of my friends back home.

[You know. When he kidnapped them.]

[faceguy]

You snuck in and they let you play? [Leo's eyes are sparkling over this information.] Wow man, respect.

[He's snuck into April's school a few times, but he never actually engaged with the people or their activities - he just watched from afar. Actually making it all the way to playing sports is pretty slick, in his opinion.]

As for school, it's... well, TV sure didn't prepare me for it. [In some ways, the cliques and the social nuances and the hierarchies are about what he expected, in other ways it's all a lot less dramatic than he was led to believe, and it general there's a lot more monotony.]

Class is boring. [Though he still likes when he does a good job in it, but he's not going to admit that because that's Nerd Behavior.] And I thought there'd be more... drama. But it's kind of cool to be around a bunch of other people my age. I... never really had that, outside my brothers.

[The opportunity to make friends is something, if he gets nothing else out of it. Though the fact that the native humans can be dicks puts a damper on it.]

[badbutsadboy]

[It actually had been impressive. His flying had been so good that Willow had wrapped him in vines and dragged him over to ask him to join the flyer derby team.]

That sounds nice. I wasn't around many kids my age growing up. Well, more like none. Of them.

[Not a single one.]

And right now, my...I guess she's my guardian? And I? Don't really trust the guild system. It's too much like the coven system back home, which was used to control people.

So I'm doing my studies at home.

But I'm hoping that maybe back in my world I can go to Hexside after we fix some things. That's where I snuck in. It's one of the schools for Magic and Demons.

[He doesn't have magic but Luz doesn't either and they let her in. He has the magic from Flapjack and he's been figuring out glyph magic.]

[faceguy]

Hexside? Yeah, that sounds like a magic school.

[Leo wonders if a yokai school would be like that. Probably. If he ever gets home, maybe he should sneak into one, just out of curiosity.

A thought for another day! First he has to find out if he can even get home.]

I don't blame you for wanting to stay out of the guilds, though. [Leo shrugs.] I was gonna rough it, myself, but... uh, rooting through dumpsters didn't sound super appealing and when Huvrye invited me to stay with him, well, I wasn't gonna make him pay for everything himself, so...

[So he didn't have a lot of options. What was he going to do, get a real job?]

[badbutsadboy]

Yeah, it's not appealing. Trust me.

[Luckily, he was more prepared this time when trying to survive alone. He'd used his guild card to buy and cache supplies around the city.]

[But the first time, when he ran away from Belos and was hiding at Hexside, he was picking food out of the trash.]

You probably made the right choice. If the guilds do eventually do something bad, Huvrye won't let them do anything to you.

And it's not easy living on the street. Before one of the adults from back home, Eda, showed up here and I went to live with her, I tried and it blew up in my face.

I would've gone with Huvrye after that, but I didn't know him as well then, and I didn't want to live with someone that needed to be involved with the guilds to get by.

[Since he'd struggle to hide his wings.]

It all worked out anyway. Eda is good at hiding from the eyes of the law because she used to be the most wanted criminal on the Boiling Isles.

[Now that Hunter is not basically a cop, he can appreciate that about her. Enough to enthuse about her a little bit, because it is kind of cool getting to live with a criminal. Even if she's a lot less impressive when you see her shuffling around in her slippers.]

No one was able to catch her, even though we all looked for her.

[faceguy]

[The whole "being obviously inhuman" thing is another factor. It's not like Leo hasn't already been dealing with that his whole life, but it was easier when he had a whole group, a dad who had managed to keep them safe and relatively well-fed, a brother who started figuring out how to leech off power grids and build water purifiers by the time he was walking. Leo doesn't know how to do those things, so trying to make it in the sewers by himself would have been rough. It would have been a lot of scrounging and a lot of stealing.

It would have been lonely.

So he thinks he made the practical choice. Even if it makes him feel slimy.

Though he likes to think he can protect Huvrye just as much as he can protect Leo, thank you very much!]

Hah, so you're living with some kind of epic criminal mastermind? That's pretty cool, actually.

[Assuming she's not the "destroy humanity" kind of criminal. And okay, Leo knows that if Raph were here he'd frown on Leo endorsing other, more mundane kinds of criminal behavior, but he can't help if television has made it look glamorous.]

Pretty lucky that someone like that showed up. Especially if you're trying to dodge the guilds.