Doppelganger

End!

"Hey! Put the chocolate sauce in the fridge, do you know how hard that stuff is to find?"

"After I'm done eating."

"No, bratface, now."

Alec crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at Quip's short little ponytail that was poking up over the back of the couch. She slid down out of view, growling.

Rolling his eyes, he grabbed his own stack of pancakes and a mug of coffee before heading over to the living room. There were half unpacked boxes scattered around, most of them looking as if they were barfing their contents up at random. Neither of them had much experience with unpacking. It wasn't as if Manticore moved them around very often.

Putting his plate and coffee on the makeshift coffee table (plywood on a couple empty paint cans), he raised an eyebrow at Quip. She had dropped down to the floor and now had her plate under the table. Most likely she was hiding the ridiculous amount of chocolate she had used on her pancakes.

"Go put up the chocolate."

"But it's the good part," she said, glancing over to the movie on TV. Massive cockroach monsters were attacking a cartoon city. He liked cartoons, but he had watched so many in the last month after officially adopting Quip that he felt like he saw cartoons in his sleep. She was mildly obsessed.

"Go during a commercial," he said, sitting down on the couch.

"Fiiiine."

Alec stabbed his fork into a pancake, taking a second to glance down at his watch. They needed to get a move on. He could be late to work, but Quip couldn't be late to school. Maybe school was a stretch of the term, but there was a lady on the way to work who taught kids in her apartment and that's where Quip went while he was at work. She didn't ask questions about why Quip read books teenagers would struggle with and why she knew multiple languages. Ms. Carson simply assessed her abilities and gave Quip work at her level.

He tugged Quip's ponytail as a reminder when the next commercial came on. "Don't give Ms. Carson grief like you give me grief."

"I like her," Quip said, getting up, leaving her plate under the table.

"And you hate me, got it."

She made a face at him and climbed up to the back of the couch before dramatically jumping off. Her landing was silent. Once an X series, always an X series.

While she went to put away the chocolate sauce, Alec slammed his last pancake into his mouth and rescued her plate from under the table. He nearly choked on pancake goodness.

"Quip!" he yelled, mouth full, "Your pancake is freaking swimming, you little monster."

"That's my food, stop looking at it! Look at your own food."

"Your teeth are going to rot out of your head," he said, dropping her plate onto the coffee table before taking a gulp of coffee.

"Then don't look at them either," she said. She walked out of the kitchen and blurred over to him, launching herself over the back of the couch and wrapping her hands over his eyes. "There, now you can't see anything."

"I can still smell—" He chuckled as she pinched his nose. He tickled her side, and she skittered away with her own giggle.

She frowned, still unused to laughing too much, and grabbed her plate, using a spoon to ladle up her chocolate pancake soup. "Did you wash my hoodie?"

"It's hanging up on the balcony," he said, nodding toward the little balcony of their new apartment. It wasn't much, just a square of space that hung out over the alley, but it was sort of nice. Quip liked reading there. "Those paint stains aren't coming out."

"They're cool, I don't mind."

Good, because she would probably wind up with more of them and he had no idea how to get them to come out of her clothes. She often stayed with Joshua when he and Max were out doing spy stuff. Or stealing stuff. Or Manticore stuff. There was too much stuff. But Quip preferred staying with Joshua over Caleb. Surprise, surprise.

"Finish your breakfast and go get your shoes," Alec said. He grabbed his coffee.

"You're rushing me."

"And you're going at snail's pace," Alec said.

He down the rest of the coffee, rolling his shoulders. They needed to finish unpacking at some point. Maybe he could convince Max to come over and help. Maybe then she would chill on the whole 'You stopped her from living a normal life' grudge she was holding against him.

Quip hadn't wanted to go to Canada. It should've been completely obvious to him, he shouldn't even have needed to ask, but it had at least given her the choice. When he had asked if she wanted to go, she had hesitantly responded with no. And he had unhesitatingly told her she could stay with him. So now he had a little sister kid and life was moving on. Was he good at the whole raising-a-child thing? No. But Quip was luckily pretty good at managing life on her own. He was just making sure she had a roof on her head and didn't get involved in anymore criminal activities or wind up as a science experiment or anything else that could happen to an X8 on her own.

"You put my hoodie up too high. Go get it."

"Go get it...?"

"Please," she spat out the word.

Alec handed her his plate and mug to put in the sink while he went to go get the hoodie. He plucked it off the drying line. Huh, it didn't smell too much like city. Quip blurred over to him, shrugged on the hoodie, and then blurred to the door. She tugged her backpack off the floor and slung it over on shoulder before looking at him expectantly.

"Oh, now you're in a hurry."

"You're that one who called me a snail."

"I said you were going at snail's pace. There's a difference."

They were still arguing as they went down the stairs, avoiding the broken elevators. The apartment building was one of the more decent ones for squatters, but it certainly wasn't perfect. His street bike was hidden in half-crushed parking garage beside the apartment building and rigged with an anti-theft taser system that he had found on the black market.

Turning off the system, he climbed on and smirked as Quip grabbed his jacket as she hauled herself up behind him. "You need to grow faster, if you're so determined to be quick."

"I'm working on it," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist.

He took off, winding through the city, heading toward Jam Pony and a long day's work as a messenger and delivery person. Unless he got dragged along on a dangerous Max mission, he was planning to take Quip out for some combat training. Nothing big, just defense stuff, to keep her skills up. Even though she was a kid and Logan and Max wanted her to act like one, she wasn't. Not entirely. And she would be happier with training.

Once he stopped at Ms. Carson's building, Quip hopped off, backpack straps dangling. She grinned. "I think we're going to learn about Egyptians today."

"Maybe we'll break into a museum." Before she could get excited, he held up a hand. "I was kidding."

"Mean..."

"Go on, you're going to be late. And then Ms. Carson will want to kill me." And he didn't want to get on that woman's bad side.

Quip started for the building then turned around, wavering. She raced back, hugged him, and then dashed for the apartment, the lights on one pink sneaker flashing.

Alec shook his head and revved the street bike's engine. Kids. So sentimental.

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OH MY GOSH, I FINALLY FINISHED IT!! Sorry it took literally years. ^_^ <3 Thanks for reading along!!