Two Days

Jude was, all things considered, pretty tired. He'd slept, but he was still tired. He'd vented to Rory. He'd vented to Officer Genovese. But for the most part? He'd tried to keep it business as usual. He didn't want to vent to Alma. He liked her, but the relationship was also too new to dump all his messy emotions on her. It would kill it, he was pretty sure. And there was too much context. Too much... stuff.

So Jude had invited Travis over. Travis was good for talking. And then he'd grabbed snacks, grabbed a spot on his bed, and made sure the door was closed.

Officer Genovese wasn't going to complain.

"Have some," Jude said, aggressively sliding a bowl of doritos over to Kaiju. "I guess I should start at the middle. What do you even know about what happened?"

Alright. Starting at the absolute basics.

"Zora has some people after her. I kind of knew they were, but I thought it was... I don't know. Corporate espionage. Not forty armed men in robes. They didn't even take hostages to start, just shot the place up. They only took hostages after that, and then told Zora to turn herself in or she'd kill them. The whole thing was... like the worst kind of action movie, only in real life. People shooting spells and guns all over the place. And all Broen had was Rory's powers, and there was no chance... their offer was literally 'Why don't you just give up, if you do we will lock you up and torture you for the rest of your life but we won't kill you'."

Jude paused, giving Travis a... well, it was hard to take it entirely seriously. It felt ridiculous.

"So Broen broke the belt. The headmaster's belt. And he became the headmaster. And... I told you about the whole... metronome thing, right? About that feeling it's going to chip away? That was there. It didn't start, but it was like watching someone get the tools ready. And Broen just... he just ruined them. Their guns backfired, their bullets flipped around midair, everything. They didn't stand a chance."

This was the harder part. The too-real part.

"So you remember..." Jude paused. No, wait. He wasn't sure Travis had ever known. So instead he corrected himself.

"I thought Broen's whole... self. Goodness. Whatever--I thought that was destroyed. I thought the crack in my brain was just there. But it wasn't. It was just a... a trick? I guess? And it was there all along. Angelo shot Broen with his magic-cancelling gun and I think it killed the headmaster. I could feel it, even if I wasn't there. The metronome going, and then the crack in my brain suddenly just wasn't there, and I think that's what screwed Broen up. Having all those emotions again, all at once. They headmaster... I don't know. One minute he had his powers, and the next he didn't. I guess the headmaster took them? Or maybe getting shot did it. I don't know."

He didn't want to think about that possibility.

"And that's not even all of it. The whole situation is just... is just a mess."

He'd kind of wanted to just talk about Broen and the situation. Not about him. Because if he talked about Broen then he wasn't talking about himself, and how fucked up it was, and he...

So he blurted it out.

"I shot people," Jude said. "Real bullets. A shotgun. And two of those people are dead now. And I know if I didn't shoot them they were going to kill me, but it's still... it's still fucked up."

He was happy for that. He was happy that Travis wasn't trying to sit him down and tell him it didn't matter. It did matter. It mattered a lot to him. And as far as Jude was concerned, it should have mattered a lot to everyone else too.

Jude actually laughed, but it was a grim, half-hearted laugh.

"One of the guys I shot was a lizardman, too. He's still alive at least."