Disaster

Jude was envious. It was hard not to be. He'd never had a friend like that growing up, never had someone he could say he was thick as thieves with. His closest friend had been Rory, and that had imploded in the most awful manner. Now he had... Travis? Broen? But neither had been friends for even two years. There was nothing in his life like what Diego was for Gabe, and he felt a swirl of something unpleasant and green.

But it faded when he expected the absolute worst, watching Gabe's tear-streaked face turn towards him. He'd died? He'd died. He'd di-

He'd been shot in the dick.

Jude threw his arms up with a groan of exasperation.

"Oh my god," Jude said. "That's your best friend? The guy I accidentally shot in the dick? It was one time!" He was never going to live it down, was he?

"He might have had to check in to the hospital," Jude pointed out. "There were a lot of those that came through the portal. People who were banged up or injured in the last while. One guy came through the portal with a broken leg, for example. So he might have been healing up here. Things are still a bit disorganized as they check names and stuff."

Manta Carlos had none of Halcyon city's infrastructure. There was no telling how many people had given fake names, reinventing themselves now that they had the chance.

"Nope, it's too late. Now all I can think about is the fact that you just used the term electro-neutered. For the record, I was going for a torso shot to disable him so we could get on the roof and figure out what you were doing inside. Then he started to fly, and... oops."

Jude cringed. He cringed so hard.

"That whole situation was an absolute mess from the word go. I thought Travis was going to give the whole thing away because he was cringing so hard."

"Honestly, at the time it was horrifying, but in retrospect it was fine. Rory could see through rats eyes, and she was watching what you guys were doing for us. Then you opened one of those boxes and it's a bunch of weapons and I swear the gears in my head were audible and I just had to look at everyone and go 'guys, I think this place might be owned by my dad'. It was awful."

Jude let out a groan of exasperation, but his mood soured at the mention of Dani.

"You can't hide it from her. It's too big. Someone has to have already explained what dying means to her. So we just have to... to tell her that. That her brother died. That he's gone now, but she has other people." Maybe. Just didn't know. He felt in over his head more than anything right then, because he'd been trained for disasters, not what came after. It wasn't the job of a Junior Sentinel to sit down in a hospital room and check if someone was okay.

"You almost got killed for it," Jude said almost offhandedly, trying to distract himself from Dani. He obviously wasn't the only one thinking that same thing, because Gabe was quick to change the subject.

"Coworkers to start. I walked in on Rory changing in an alley into her suit, so we started working together. Then Travis and Janelle ra- actually, that's a story in itself. Me and- Rory and I intervened in an operation down by the docks. Not too far from where I met you the first time. We were just watching, but then the group busted an undercover cop, and they were going to kill him. We leapt into action, and so did Janelle and Travis at the same time. The cop got us out of trouble and basically officiated us as a thank you, and we ended up being a team after that. Decided to work together."

He couldn't stop the grin from sneaking onto his face.

"Guess who owned that warehouse?"

"Totally was. Didn't realize at the time, though. Didn't realize until waaaaaaaay after. I wouldn't be surprised if he relocated from the one we were at to the one we met you at."

That made sense to him, anyway.

"There's also Blade," Jude added. "She joined us later. She's got her own stuff and she's having a harder time then most adjusting, but she's doing okay."

And then the topic turned to Broen, and Jude gave a sympathetic wince.

"Well, we weren't, is the short of it. At least not on Halcyon. We fought like three times there, but when Edmund made the portal to here, we went through it, and... Paragon followed behind. We all got scattered, so when he showed up we thought it was Blade. I wasn't exactly happy to see him at first, but... he grew on us. For a long while, he was the only person here who was from Halcyon."