William Joseph "Billy" Batson

"Hey, it's Billy, leave a message or just send me a text like everyone else in this century."

Billy knew all too well how much it hurt to have someone close to you, someone you cared about so much, suddenly disappear. What he didn't know (even after all this time) was how to deal with it. He didn't know how to deal with it himself and he definitely had no clue how to help someone else through it other than to be there, if they wanted. So Billy just offered to be there for Valkyrie if she wanted. He'd tossed out a few suggestions of things they could maybe do and they both settled on some sparring. Billy was pretty sure he was going to end up hurting after this.

They met at the beach, something about the sand making footing more difficult and more of a challenge. Billy was dressed just in a pair of shorts, not wanting to give Valkyrie anything like a loose shirt to grab on to. While Billy hadn't been training with anyone in particular the last year or so he had kept up with what he did know and was at least enough of a slouch that he didn't think he would be boring for Valkyrie to fight so long as she didn't use magic.

But if she needed an outlet for some aggression he was fine letting it be him. He wouldn't take it personally and if that's what he needed to do to help a friend? Well then he was happy to take a few bumps and bruise to make that happen.

"Come on," he said, giving her a smile as he slowly circled her in the sand. She'd just landed a solid kick to his side and it stung badly but he wasn't about to let her know. "Is that all you've got?"

If it had been anyone else Billy totally would have begged off hanging out with them after work that night. He had school the next day and was a little tired but he'd have to be mostly dead before he cancelled on his girlfriend. Even then he'd probably do his best to make it to her, especially with everything she was going through right now. She'd told him to just let himself into her place, which gave him a good idea of how she was feeling.

Sliding off Naga as he arrived at her apartment building he sent the polar bear dog off to do whatever it did when not hanging around with Billy. Eat fish and bother Ellie, probably. Izzy had a lot of black clothes and it turned out polar bear dog fur was kind of a pain to get off of fabric so he figured .

Heading up to her apartment he fought back a yawn as he adjusted his backpack. It wasn't even that late but maybe he could just crash at Izzy's place tonight and head straight to school from here. It would definitely save him some time.

Testing the door he found it unlocked and pushed it open. Anyone else he would have definitely said something about how dangerous it was but if someone broke into Izzy's apartment to rob her then they were totally the ones in danger.

"Babe, you in?" he called out, frowning when the lights weren't on. That didn't seem like a great thing, if she was here with the lights off. "I brought some food from work if you're hungry..."

[ooc: Tag Billy by shouting "surprise" at him or hit him up after that while he's wandering around the party. Feel free to tag each other too.]

The date was getting off to a horrible start. The only good part of it was that Isabelle hadn't arrived yet, so everything up until that point didn't exactly matter. Still, it would have been nice if things had gone a bit more smoothly.

The plan had been for them to make dinner together. Billy was pretty sure he saw that in a movie or a TV show or something and thought it was a pretty good idea. After way over thinking what to make he had settled on calzones, which were apparently just pizza's folded in half. The good part was that you could make the dough beforehand so the "making" part was just filling the dough with whatever you wanted.

The bad part was that dough was really dang hard to deal with. He had ended up getting dough and flower all over himself and the animals. So after his first failed attempt at dough he'd washed all three animals and locked them in another room before trying again. His second attempt at pizza dough was slightly less of a failure but still nothing like pizza dough. The third attempt somehow ended up worse than the first and he started freaking out.

After desperately calling around to three different pizza places one finally agreed to deliver him some crust dough once he explained what was going on and the person on the other line stopped laughing. He had just enough time to get everything set out by the time Isabelle was supposed to arrive he didn't have time to clean up. He thought about running into the shower but was worried that she'd right the doorbell when he was in there.

Fortunately he had told her that it was a casual dinner they'd fix together at his place and then a semi-fancy evening out. He knew enough from dating Steph that it was really important to let a girl know that sort of thing so they could dress accordingly. He had a feeling though that she wasn't going to show up with an apron on and a light dusting of flower like he was currently sporting.

It could only get better from here on out, right? Because no matter what happened at least he'd be with Isabelle.

It almost would have been unfair. Considering how furious Billy was, how much he was hurting and he wanted to make someone else hurt it was almost unfair to the cultists. Except, you know, they were a demonic ninja cult that had summoned up some sort of horrible demon so they totally deserved the ass kicking they were about to get.

Steph was gone. His girlfriend was gone because this stupid city sent her home. Because everyone always left him. Billy tried hard to tell himself that it was worth it, and it wasn't like he would give up his time with Steph so he wouldn't be hurt, but he was tired of always being left. So it was good that he had something to take his anger out on.

The house was on the edge of the city. It didn't look super evil or anything like that. The only thing that was weird was how much property the house sat on. Probably easier to hide the fact that a demonic ninja cult had stuff going on there.

Ideally he would have gotten there before they summoned the demon but he had been in too much of a panic looking for Steph to notice. But her phone was disconnected and she wouldn't just leave the apartment without telling him. She was gone. She was gone and he was angry and he didn't even care how much of the house destroyed and he flew down through the roof and to the basement.

The entire cult of several dozen members was there. Ninjas and mystics and whatever, all bowing to some demon. It was your typical demon, red skin and horns with claws and all that. It was big, bigger than Billy was. He hoped that meant it could take a lot of hits.

"I am Gibborath the Undying!" it roared, the people in the room cowering at the sound. All it did to Billy was piss him off more. "I will make your city rain blood! I will enslave your people, there will be rivers of sorrow! I will- "

"Shut up!" Billy screamed, startling the demon. "Shut up! Why do you get to be here? Why do you get to be here when GOOD people keep getting taken?!"

The demon blinked, apparently confused about how to answer that.

"I... am Gibborath the Undying?" it said, glancing around at the equally stunned cultists. "I will make your city- "

"Shut UP!" he screamed again, this time lunging forward to punch the demon in the face. His fist smashed into the demon and sent it flying backwards. As if it were some sort of signal, the cultists jumped into action, coming at him with swords and magic.

Good. Billy wanted a fight.

[Help Billy fight a cult of demon worshipping ninjas! And also a demon. You can have whatever reason you want for showing up at the house.]

Billy was a lot less nervous about letting Isabelle in on his secret than he was Alec. Maybe because Alec hadn't given him any reason to regret it and it had turned out so well. Well, as well as he could expect it to he supposed. He didn't know how he had expected it to go but Alec had been cool about it and had even told Billy he wouldn't have even told Isabelle about it. Still, Billy thought it was kind of shitty to expect someone to keep a secret from their sister when they were so close to them.

It was late in the evening with the sun just setting when he got to the park. Freddy, Seymour, and Naga were with him. Two dogs and a polar bear dog were a pretty good excuse to be at the park any hour. Earlier he'd realized how dumb it was to make the only door to the cave here in the park and had added one at his apartment too.

Whistling to the animals they bounded over to where he was standing and he gave them all a scratch behind the ears and treats from his pocket. Glancing around he wondered how much longer Alec would be and what his friend would have told his sister to convince her to come with him. One thing for sure was that Isabelle was probably going to give Billy the biggest "I told you so" when he proved he wasn't actually a normal kid. Was it too late to change his mind?

Billy had been struggling what to do with the magical crown and trident he had ever since he got them after helping defeat the giant sea witch. He'd just been keeping them under his bed, which probably wasn't the safest place for them to be. The only problem was that he wasn't sure he trust his own magic to keep them safe. Maybe some day he could do that but not today. Which meant talking to someone else about it and that wasn't really something he was comfortable doing.

But when he found the other staff, the one that had belonged to Jack, he knew he had to do something. Fortunately he knew someone that was something of an expert on magic. It would be even harder to deny to Hermoine that there was anything magical about him if he showed up at the shop with magical artifacts needing some sort of special container, but there wasn't anything to be done for it.

Billy stuffed the trident, crown, and staff into a golf bag- careful to not let them touch- before heading off to the magic shop. The entire way there he tried to come up with a convincing lie to tell Hermione before deciding that she was his friend and so he wasn't going to lie to her. He just wasn't going to tell her the truth.

When he got to the shop he took a deep breath, glanced around, and then ducked inside.

"Hermione, are you here?"

Billy had been nervous when he went to meet Steph at the train station. Not quite as nervous as he had been when he asked her out, but still kind of nervous. It was close to sunset since they had to be at the soon in the evening to feed the bats, but it was still nice enough out that he didn't need anything more than jeans and a hoodie to keep warm.

He was a little more nervous once he met Steph there but it took maybe five minutes for him to realize this didn't feel any different than when they normally hung out, even if it was officially a "date". Then he got nervous because he wondered if maybe it was supposed to feel different. What if she thought it was boring, just having things be like normal? If it was just normal did they really need to go on dates? If it was supposed to be different did he want to do something that might make it weird?

Ugh, it all kind of sucked except for the part where he was having a fun time with Steph so he tried to concentrate on that. It was pretty effective.

"Okay, so we're not going to the normal front entrance," he told Steph as they got off the train. "Since it's closing anyway, it's one of the side doors for employees."

It had been about a million degrees lately, so Billy had decided it was time to brave the beach. He and his dog had gone there fairly early hoping to avoid the crowds but it seemed like everyone else had the same idea. Billy had managed to spend about twenty minutes in the water before deciding that it wasn't worth it and he and his dog left.

Going back to the apartment didn't really appeal to him either. It was summer and school was out, he wanted to spend it doing things he normally wouldn't be able to during the day. Which mostly meant eating food cart food. He'd gotten a few hot dogs for his dog and some sort of messy burrito thing for himself before heading to the park.

The burrito was almost overflowing and tricky to eat while walking, which is why he didn't see the girl until he bumped into her. Billy had to do a sort of awkward dance type thing to avoid spilling the burrito or knocking the girl over and he credited his lessons with Korra to his ability to not make a mess or hurt someone.

"Oh crap, I'm sorry," he said, turning to the girl. "I was, uh, paying attention to my burrito."

Billy had figured that if he was going to get serious about this hero thing they he should probably start patrolling more. At least, that's what the other heroes seemed to do. He was pretty sure that just fighting magical attacks was the only thing in his job description but there were pretty much zero of those.

So tonight he went patrolling, which meant flying around. Just... flying around the sky, looking for crimes being committed. It was really, really ineffective. It was kind of hard to spot crimes while just zooming through the air, even if he you didn't go fast. It's not like criminals carried signs stating what they were doing.

That and a lot of people just sort of ducked inside when they saw him up above. He didn't blame them, even if they weren't doing anything wrong it was still weird to get spied on by someone. Hopefully criminals were deterred just knowing he was around.

It was super boring though. After a few hours he flew to the top of the tallest building and just sat on the edge. Yup, being a hero was boring if nothing crazy was going on. Sighing, he propped his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands and just waited for something interesting to happen.