Who do you carry that torch for?

[Aldon Huang]

"What? Did I?" Aldon scratched his head, dimly noting that his hair felt... not like his hair. It seemed longer than usual. Or maybe he was imagining things, what with the stress of popping up magically in random places. It sort of made sense; and explained why he was referring to himself in the third person, if he in fact had just done it.

The sound of something toppling outside brought him back into the present with a bump; Aldon physically flinched. "We gotta get outta here Alva," he muttered wildly, starting to look around again for an exit. "I can try to shift, maybe distract them for a little bit. Think you can get yourself out of the building?" That damn chair though... It was clunky and not easy to maneuver.

"Or what if... I take you outside on my back? Think that could work?" He rubbed the back of his neck in agitation. "ARGH! Why am I here and not with Ry?! How did I even get here?!" They were just starting to have a nice little reunion, and now this!!

[Ryland Ren]

Ryland worried the tip of his thumb as he looked around the room. There had to be a way out of this situation and he was so certain that Susumu had the answers. But how did he explain that to this lunkhead? He had always been one of Aldon's dumber friends, in his opinion. Or reckless. He seemed like he acted before he thought, which was exactly how he ended up in hot water so much. How he managed to drag Ryland into it somehow was a mystery but it could be solved later. Right now, he was pretty sure they had to break up that fight before Josh ended up killing Susumu.

"How do I put this--" he started aloud, but then stopped and stared sharply at Rae. "What did you just say? Why you're not with Ry?"

His traitor of a heart! Despite the fact that he was looking at Rae, his heart started beating faster. But... if it was possible for Ryland to be inside the body of his cousin, could it not be possible for Aldon to be inside the body of his friend? Immediately, he tried to leap up to his feet to cross the room to him. Instead, he lost his balance and nearly toppled himself over again. Struggling to right himself, he stared at Rae. The way he talked, acted, moved... It was so uncanny. His heart beat even faster and his mouth went dry.

"Listen to me very carefully, Ald. I am Ry and I think something magic is going on. And there's a witch outside this room who might be able to do something about it... if we don't let Josh kill him." Or whoever was in Josh's body now.

[Aldon Huang]

"Yeah, I was with Ry like ten minutes ago! And then all of a sudden I was here, punching Alva's boyfriend for no reason!" Aldon wrung his hands in agitation, beginning to wonder if this wasn't some kind of terrible nightmare. But then he reunited with Ryland, so... it couldn't be a nightmare. No dream with Ryland in it could be classified as a bad dream.

He let out a startled noise when Alva suddenly tried to leap out of his chair--what was he trying to do?!--but he was too far away to do anything about it. Uselessly holding out a hand, he watched Alva righting himself. Aldon frowned. He was listening carefully! To the sounds of fighting still going on outside! But apparently there was something more important that Alva wanted him to focus on and...

"WHAT?! You're RY?" Then, somewhat stupidly, he blurted out, "Prove it!" before he had a chance to really think about what he was saying. The point about the witch aside (though it was a very good and valid point and all), Aldon wasn't prepared to believe that Ryland was somehow inside of Alva's body. How could that even happen? Was it possible? It wasn't a very good or funny joke, he thought a little in irritation as he scrutinized Alva.

This was seriously not the time.

[Ryland Ren]

He wants to be with me right now. Well. Good. Because that's who he was with. Just... everything was all kinda wrong. Ryland would have vastly preferred being in their own bodies since he wasn't attracted to Rae's body or face or whatever. He was good-looking in that "eh, he's good-looking" way but nothing compared to how he felt when he looked at Aldon. (Infuriatingly enough, even when Ry hated him, he wanted him.) He wanted him so badly before he disappeared. He wanted so badly to wrap his arms around him again and whisper that he missed him. He wanted to curl up in the bed and even if they didn't do anything but that, he could have slept soundly. He hadn't slept soundly since Aldon disappeared.

And now this.

"Prove it?" He stared for a moment, then took in a breath. Now he sorta wanted to smack him. Clumsily, he used the chair to move at ALDON because he knew that it was his Aldon and he reached up and grasped both sides of his face in his hands. He drew him in close, so that they were nose to nose. He looked him in the eyes. How could he not see it? The eyes might be wrong in shape and size but there was just something about the faces he made, the way he spoke, and the way he moved. He was unmistakably Aldon. Definitely not anybody like Rae.

"...do you have any post-it notes...?"

[Aldon Huang]

...welll... something about that Unamused Stare was awfully familiar. The face was Alva's but the stare was Ryland's all right, there was no mistaking that. Aldon gulped. He looked at Alva hard, trying to superimpose Ryland's face over Alva's. All it did was to give him a headache and he stopped trying to be clever once Alva started moving towards him. A small part of him expected to be hit; most of him looked as confused as he felt as Alva pulled him down close. Or Ryland pulled him down close. God, he hoped it was Ryland in there. He'd have a hell of a time explaining to Ry why he was within kissing distance of Alva.

"P-oh."

Post-its. Aldon grinned, unaware that he probably made Rae's face look extra stupid. He was so focused on Ryland being in Alva's body that it never occurred to him that he could have been inhabiting another person's body too. "Heh. Post-its. Right." That was something only he and Ryland would know, unless Ryland went blabbing it all over town. Somehow, Aldon doubted that.

He reached up and cupped Alva's face. Ryland's face. It was really hard to imagine Ryland inside of Alva, and he still felt like a rat fink for touching Alva's body, but... if that was Ryland in there, then he had every right to touch him. Maybe. "We gotta get out, Ry. Maybe some other witch can fix this... whatever this is." They didn't have to depend on the one outside, did they? The one grappling with Josh? Although it was now suspiciously quiet outside, and the sounds of fighting had suddenly died down. Slowly, Aldon shifted away so that he could look at the door. Somebody jiggled the handle cautiously. He let out a low, slow breath and steeled himself to take on whoever was out there. If he shifted, he could distract Josh long enough for Ryland to wheel himself to safety, hopefully.

"Get behind me Ry."

[Ryland Ren]

Ryland wrinkled his nose and grimaced slightly. While that signature dopey smile was cute on Aldon's face, it wasn't quite as cute on Rae's face. Probably because Ryland wasn't even remotely attracted to Rae and he really, really wanted to see Aldon's face right now. Just when he got him back, too. Now he was stuck in a body that didn't work with Aldon, who was also stuck in a body that didn't work. Well. It worked. Just... you know, not for Ryland.

Or maybe that was just Alva's body. Alva's body... Ryland slowly looked down at himself. How disconcerting it was to look down at legs and feet and not be able to move them. It made him feel almost like he wasn't real. The feeling unsettled him the more he tried to move the useless legs and he thought for once, he could actually relate with the terror his cousin must have felt the night he was attacked. His heart throbbed painfully and he cleared his throat. Ryland was angry after that happened and he was indignant for Alva but he never knew just how much Alva lost until he felt the loss himself.

They used to run and play together. Everywhere. They were mischief makers together, bounding through tall grass and flying through the woods at speeds that toppled them when they tripped. Alva couldn't do it after the attack and of course, that saddened Ryland and frustrated him and angered him. Still, it was nothing compared to being the one that could no longer do those things. After all, Ryland could always play and run and make mischief with others. Alva, though...

Ryland blinked, his face cupped in Rae's foreign hands. He almost moved back out of sheer shock. Then he remembered, of course, that it wasn't Rae.

"Maybe," he said dubiously. A witch to help. But if the one out there wasn't the one who did it... Ryland frowned slightly, then looked down at the wheels of the chair. Slowly, he wheeled himself behind Rae, trying not to run him down the way Alva always threatened to. And he wondered as they approached the door, what happened to the people whose bodies they inhabited? And... what happened to Josh and Susumu... because it was awfully quiet outside the room, aside from the door handle jiggling. Then there was a knock.

"Hello?" an unfamiliar voice called. "Anybody in there?"

[Aldon Huang]

"That doesn't sound like Josh," Aldon muttered confusedly, looking back at Ryland as if Ryland would know who the stranger was at the door. He shuffled nervously toward the door. Did somebody call the cops? What happened to that witch guy and Josh? Who won? Was this a trick? There were so many questions running through his head!

"Who is it?" he called out suspiciously as he took another tentative step forward, fully prepared to shift and spring. "What happened to the wi--the people outside?!"

Did this person just invite himself into the penthouse suite? Or was it maybe the building manager? Aldon definitely didn't trust them, whoever they were. At least with Josh, he knew what he was dealing with. He could manage Josh, though that was sometimes a Herculean task. The witch guy had also proven friendly before--plus he was dating Alva, so he obviously wouldn't go and attack Alva, even if it was Ryland inside Alva's body.

[Ryland Ren]

"Maybe it's Josh in another body." Although his tone was wry, his heartbeat was jumping a mile a minute. Ryland looked around the room for anything to use as a possible weapon. Maybe he could run the person over with his chair. Alva used it as a threat often enough (and it wasn't fun--Ryland had been run over a few times in their history). No, no. That wasn't serious thinking. With his heart still thumping hard in his chest, Ryland wheeled the chair over to a closet and tried to find something like a baseball bat. Ryland had one behind his bedroom door. Ever since he moved to a place alone, he had to make sure to keep precautions. He'd never had to use it but it was there. Unfortunately, it seemed like witches didn't need baseball bats because all he saw were rows of expensive clothes and shoes.

Outside the door, the knob stopped jiggling.

"My name is Amory," said the timid voice. "I live downstairs." There was a pause and a shuffle. "Did you do something to Mr. Shimizu?"

[Aldon Huang]

"Don't say that! Now we can't trust anybody!" Aldon hissed hysterically, as he put up his hands to do... something to the stranger in case he busted into the room. Karate chop a guy. Punch them. Hey it worked for Rae! He went in swinging all the time and people gave him a pretty wide berth. (People gave Josh a wide berth too, but for very different reasons.)

Just as he was about to pick up a chair to defend them, the knob stopped wiggling and a voice spoke up. Didn't sound like Josh--not even Josh pretending to be somebody else to lure them out. Aldon's grip on the chair tightened, then loosened as another voice--a different voice--joined the one outside. It had a foreign accent that Aldon thought might be vaguely British.

"Hey Ams... Are they okay? Should we call the police?"

"No don't call the cops!" Aldon flung the chair to the side and went to open the door. These didn't sound like Josh playing tricks or the witch guy. He poked a cautious eye through a crack in the door, and then eased it open wider. "We didn't do anything!!" he cried out, which was the first thing anybody guilty would say after committing a crime.

[Ryland Ren]

"Well..." Could they, though? Trust anybody? They could look or sound like people they knew but they might not be. It was even scarier thinking about strangers. How could they possibly know if those voices out there belonged to the people they belonged to? Not the voices. The words. The voices were theirs but... Ryland ran a nervous hand through the back of his hair. This thing was getting to him, he thought. It was scrambling his brains and his nerves. And he couldn't even use his legs, which was still highly disconcerting.

"H-hey!" Ryland watched as Aldon threw a chair aside like it was nothing. He winced as it hit the wall and there was a crunching sound. Aldon didn't seem to care, he was too busy peeping at their visitors. Cautiously, Ryland wheeled over. Normally, he would have been right on top of Aldon to get a peek or to at least put an arm around him to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. Now he felt useless, not accustomed to just wheeling himself around. He felt incredibly short this way, too. He couldn't see barely anything around Rae's body.

"Who are you?" the voice outside asked, and in a quieter tone it sounded like he was saying, "Yes, maybe call them." Back to them, he said in a slightly louder tone, "What happened here? There's blood everywhere..."

[Aldon Huang]

"What?! Blood?!" Aldon cried out in dismay as he finally flung the door wide open, to the sight of two strangers. One of them looked like a definite push-over. The other one looked like he could be good friends with Rae. Both of them were definitely thinking that he and Ry were some kind of psycho murderers, judging by the looks on their faces.

And the guy was right. Blood stained the floor and furniture. Aldon stared at the carnage, mouth slightly agape. Then he made a dive for the scary-looking guy holding a phone to his ear with a yell of "NO NOT THE COPS!" If the cops came here, they'd for sure think that he was a criminal and lock him up! (Ryland not so much, since he was inside of innocent-looking Alva, and wheelchair-bound.)

"I can explain!" he gasped as he grappled with the stranger, managing to flip the phone out of his hand. "It's not what it seems! We're just visiting and then..." He couldn't continue, knowing that he would be selling out his friend. Never mind that Josh was the one who always threatened to 'make him extinct.' He trailed off miserably and looked over his shoulder at Ryland with a desperate plea for help in his eyes.

[Ryland Ren]

"E-excuse--!" The timid looking one stepped back as Aldon started wrestling with the guy that definitely could have been in Rae's stable of unsavory looking friends. Ryland eyed him suspiciously but it didn't look like he was going to knife Aldon. Or... well. The body Aldon was in. Still, Ryland quickly wheeled himself out, then waved his hands ineffectually.

"Hey! Hey, we didn't do anything! We..."

He trailed off. The timid one--Amory, he said, from downstairs--grabbed the phone off the ground and held onto it for dear life. But it was past him that Ryland was staring. There was a lot of blood and it looked bad. Real bad. Swallowing hard, he took in splashes of blood and then the unmoving leg of a body slumped against the wall. There was an open cupboard full of weird looking bottles and ingredients. Witch stuff. Shit. When he looked up, Ryland saw that Amory saw it, too. There was something odd in his eyes when he spotted that cupboard.

"This wasn't us," Ryland said. "All this happened when we were in the room."

[Aldon Huang]

"Y-yeah!" Aldon was semi-grappling with the gangster-looking guy, who was trying to get at his phone. Unfortunately his friend got to it instead and shielded it with his body, while Aldon pawed ineffectually at the other stranger whose name he completely missed in the heat of the moment. "We're innocent!" he repeated, somewhat desperately. "We just got here!"

It was then that he noticed the leg--or rather, a jutting foot. Aldon's eyes popped wide open and, completely missing the significance of the open cupboard, he let go of the stranger and ran over to the couch. "Josh!" he cried out in surprise, dropping to his knees. He felt across Josh's body but he looked fine--if bloody. Completely out of it, though, and there were weird marks on him like burn marks.

"It's Josh! He's knocked out!" Aldon looked over his shoulder at Ryland-in-Alva. "Where's the other guy?!"

[Ryland Ren]

"I don't see him!"

Ryland looked wildly around before he wheeled himself closer to the carnage. Yeah, Josh was out cold and it looked like he'd seen the bad end of a spell if those weird burn marks were any indication. More curses? Ryland narrowed his eyes. He loved his cousin but he was becoming more and more afraid for him the more he saw of this Susumu guy. While Aldon attended to his old friend, Ryland frantically and clumsily wheeled around the big apartment, trying to spot where Susumu might have gone.

"SUSUMU?" he called out, hoping that his voice--Alva's voice--might lure him out. But if he was in the apartment, he wasn't responding and the whole place wasn't exactly wheelchair friendly. He couldn't try the steps that wound up to who knew what, maybe the rooftop. He came back to Aldon and Josh. The timid neighbor was kneeling by the cupboard, peering at a bottle. When he caught Ryland looking at him, it looked like he almost dropped the bottle.

"Oh, I was just..."

"You know what that stuff is, don't you?" Ryland insisted as he wheeled closer. "And you know Susumu. You're a wi--"

"I-I don't know what you're talking about. I was just curious." Amory quickly put the bottle back into the cupboard. He turned to his friend and held out his phone with both hands. "You should call."

[Aldon Huang]

"EEEHHHHHH!" Aldon jumped when Ryland suddenly yelled out, almost cracking his elbow on an inconveniently placed end table edge. He leapt to his feet and looked around too, as if Susumu might appear from behind a lamp. No such luck. If he was still alive (which Aldon hoped he was because while he didn't trust the guy, he didn't want him stone cold dead), he was nowhere to be found.

His attention diverted to the bystanders next and he, too, finally took notice of the potion ingredients. Why'd the guy cut Ryland off like that? Rude. Aldon peered closer. Looked like Susumu grabbed a lot of ingredients with a lot of haste; many bottles were spilled or on their side, their contents scattered messily everywhere. He watched the scary-looking friend take the phone and then eye him warily, like he was afraid Aldon would tackle him again.

"So those are what witches use for potions huh?" Aldon remarked carelessly and loudly, while the strangers were distracted by the phone.

"Witches? Potions?" The scary guy looked slightly incredulous.