A Wild Halcyonite Appears

Back when he'd first come to Manta Carlos, Jude had registered for notifications. If anyone was picked up by the scouts and said they were from Halcyon city, he got a notification. It had worked for Travis and Rory. It had worked for Broen.

And now it had worked for someone else.

He didn't have any other information, but it didn't matter. It could have been Calliope herself and he'd have been happy to see them, because one new person meant possibility. It meant chance.

Jude had borrowed Officer Genovese's car and taken it down to the docks, and now he was just waiting, sitting on the hood. He'd considered bringing his suit just to make himself more recognizable, and settled instead for one of those signs like you used to pick people up at the airport with. He didn't know who he was waiting for, so his just said HALCYON CITY.

A part of Jude had been worried it'd be a random stranger. Someone he had no idea about, who'd stumbled across dimensions by sheer chance. Seeing an all too familiar costume made his heart soar, and he shoved himself off the car, dropping the sign to the ground as he headed straight for Clarence.

This was not a time for handshakes and politeness. This was a time for reunions, and Jude immediately pulled Clarence into a tight hug, squeezing him close. He was alive. Which meant others were alive. And maybe, just maybe, everything wasn't so bad.

"God," Jude muttered into Clarence's shoulder, "I thought they were wrong. That maybe it was a mistake or something. But you're actually here. You're okay." He pulled back, quickly flicking his eyes up and down. Mostly unharmed. A bit ruffled looking, but that was probably the hug.

The letter. He hadn't been stupid enough to think that the letter wasn't involved in someone from Halcyon showing up, but he couldn't help but feel that it was a bit... arrogant of him to think so. But it had been delivered, and he owed the gods... well, a lot.

A part of him was afraid to ask who it was delivered too.

"We... I think we all pretty much thought it was gone already. The thought that it would still be going after so many months... well, it was a pipe dream."

Jude took a moment, reaching up to wipe at his eyes, scrubbing them quickly. He wasn't crying, but it was emotional, and he was maybe tearing up a little bit. He just had to get himself together.

"What happened? Wait, hold on," he said, digging his phone out and shooting off a quick text. "Sorry. I just had to tell the others who it was. Most of them are in school."

Days? That... Jude's own eyebrows sfurrowed, but he didn't have any mask to hide them. Days. It sure as hell hadn't been days, but the realization dawned on him just as Giltenn whispered into his head.

"No," he said. "The timeline's off. I think they... they're running at different speeds. For us, we've been here for months. We got here in July, and it's October now. The Alexandrian..."

And then DeadManSwitch. The Alexandrian was an entity more than a person in Jude's mind. They'd once been Rory's father, but they certainly weren't anymore. Faced with the manifestation of multiple Gultha, it was almost inevitable that the Alexandrian would die. But DeadManSwitch?

"He..." Jude trailed off, lost in horrified thought. It had felt like an all or nothing thing. Like either all of them had gone, or none of them. He'd never really considered the possibility that some might be gone.

"Oh."

He'd come through with others. Jude didn't even know who the others were, but he wanted to find them anyway.

"Manta Carlos has a whole team just for finding people in the wider world. And depending on who you came through with, they'll be... well, maybe not easy to find, but it shouldn't be too hard. It's nice here. Normal. Like, it's pretty different from home, but..."

Well, home had been eaten.

"I didn't mention the letter to the others," Jude said after a moment, not wanting to think about home. "I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. The whole team's here - and Paragon, if you remember him. Uh, Valiant."

God, Clarence had a lot to tell him, but he had a lot to tell Clarence.

"The headmaster's dead. The one that ran Abernathy."