((ooc: Continued from Wake Up.))

It wasn’t that early. Four, maybe five in the morning—there were plenty of people awake already. The early buses were running. A trash truck, too. Some joggers—he definitely saw some joggers, as they rolled past Central Park. The sun would even be up, in an hour or two.

The lights in the bus were a bland florescent, that flickered every time the driver opened the doors. It didn’t happen often, on the long way from Kingsbridge to 26th and 2nd. He pulled the red cord that ran along the windows; at the next corner, the lights flickered, and Calley stepped off.

All the windows at Future Site were dark. So much for precogs knowing when their customers needed them. Calley wandered up the street until he found a coffee shop, and the ATM just inside its doors. How much did the kid charge for a detailed reading? He couldn’t remember. He’d glanced at the sign the first time he’d been there, he’d maybe busted up the sign and left part of it in their TV screen the second time, but he couldn’t remember what it had said.

Probably a lot. A lot plus some more, given that whole busting up thing. The seer was right—he could have chosen not to trash the place. But how was he supposed to know he’d be needing their help?

When he’d shuffled his way back, shoulders stubbornly set under his coat, there was a light on.

Cute.

Calley knocked on their new front door. It sounded sturdier than their last one.

It wasn't until Jude took a drink of his coffee that he realized the sugar he'd so generously ladled into his cup? Yeah. That was salt.

He had to have picked up Alister's power some time last night because he hadn't been able to sleep very soundly with his own future haunting him. There was a fight brewing. Sometimes with armies behind them, sometimes alone, sometimes it wasn't even Sebastian that Jude got into a fight with. It was some chick he'd never seen before. Some chick that scared the bejeezus out of Svetlana.

Something made the front door bump repeatedly against its frame. The Frenchman splashed water on his face before he looked at the clock. Probably a drunk or maybe a paper delivery? Jude poured out the entire cup of coffee and went back to the pot for a refill.

If it was a drunk, he had better go chase the guy off their stoop. If it was a paper delivery, well, it wouldn't hurt to have something to read since he couldn't seem to sleep.

Jude fumbled some mirrored sunglasses out from behind the register and slipped them on over his bruised nose before he went for the door.

It wasn't a drunk or a newspaper. It was Calley, the jerk cat boy who stole his breakfast eggs, raided his wardrobe and made himself a general pain to a non-mutated Jude child. Only now Jude was a man. "Not open yet." The door started slamming even before he'd finished.

The door was opened.

The door was shut.

Fortunately, being familiar with the ways of doors in places that might be looking to give him a hard time, Calley had already wedged himself half-way inside. Head, shoulder, and foot.

“Woah—hey, wait!—oww.”

The door slammer was older than him: well out of “young man,” and solidly into “man.” Brown hair, in a curly hippie tail. Stubble, like he was trying to go for the rough-and-tumble look. Sunglasses, because he was just that cool at four-something in the morning. And a French accent.

Never seen him.

“Come on, I need to speak to Alistair. You know, the guy who had you wake up early to let me in?” He tried squeezing himself in up to the kneecap. “Listen, I’m sorry about trashing the place, but I need a reading. It’s about that unicorn you’re all up in arms about.”

More importantly, it was about his Ghost. Not that these people cared about her, any more than the police did, anymore than her husband did. He was all she had.

The door would not close. He tried harder despite the ows. This was not a morning when he wanted to deal with this. They'd just gotten the new couches in for goodness sakes!

"Alister iz asleep and he did not warn me of you." He was a wriggly one wasn't he? Also, so not welcome. But the unicorn...

Jude let the door go and took a solid step back. It was that or risk spilling his coffee even more all over himself. Coffee just wasn't in the cards for him this morning. There were little brown rivers of it going down his arm, pooling at his elbow and dripping onto a purple shag rug that looked more anemone than welcome mat. It was like a grape koolaid man vomited all over everything in here.

"Letitia is not decorating next time." He muttered to himself as he transferred the half cup to his other hand and flicked droplets away from himself. If those droplets happened to stain a certain unwelcome person, so be it.

"We don't do readings for free." Jude felt the need to inform him because, well the guy looked like crap. The frenchman at least had the dignity to put on sunglasses.

Why Ghost liked this stupid cat, he didn't know. But she did. So if Jude wanted to find Ghost this guy was a decent chance of being in her future. No matter what cat boy wanted to see, that was what Jude wanted to see.

After Calley paid in full, of course.

"Did you just flick—" Hot coffee at him. Yes. But he had to focus, here. It wasn't like it was his own coat, anyway. It was... whose was it, again? It was kind of tight, and his arms were sticking a few fashionable inches out past its pretty lavender cuffs. And it was a little breezy. From wing holes? Big wing holes. Huh. Note to self: it probably wasn't a good idea to swipe clothing from things that required big wing holes.

Focus.

"I can pay," the shifter said, reaching into a pocket with flower-print lining and pulling out a stack of bills. Five hundred was the daily transaction limit. It was all he had, so they had to take it. Right? "Look, just wake up Alistair, okay?"

Because there was no way he was handing over a wad of cash to a Frenchman whose nose matched his coat.

Jude grunted his apology out just to prove that he wasn't all the regretful. Calley could pay? That money had to be ill gotten. And it wasn't the usual fare, but it was cash. Plus, he had a shot at seeing Ghost.

"You should sit." He waved the purple coated one over toward the purple couches. Jude set his drippy cup on the floor next to one of the legs of a poofy chair so it had less of a chance of getting kicked over. "I'm not waking up Alister." Jude sat, well sank, into the chair that was artfully posed to facilitate conversation. "I'll do it myself."

Was he looking this way? Because Jude was edging his sunglasses down off of his nose.

It was nothing; just his imagination. He stopped with his hand against the wall—

The wooden floor was rough under his back; the bed frame was wooden, and just high enough to let a determined shifter wiggle underneath. It was here; he'd seen it. A black box taped childishly into place. The first step—

The room was comfortable. Covered in pillows and throw blankets and bright balls of yarn. "You remembered," he said. "You remembered the ear holes." He was color blind in this form, but the hat's shade of pale gray seemed to match his vest—

A man walked ahead of him. The tiger crouched low, tail still, eyes narrowed, as the figure continued on, a sunflower in his hand. Suspicious...

Sitting in the back of Spanish class, ignoring boys and girls and teacher in equal parts.
"Heh. Shouldn't that be purple?"
"Shut up."
"Oh, I'm sorry—I meant lavender."
"That's so cute, Calley! Who's it for?"
"Shut up."
The knitting needles moved clumsily between his fingers. The hat was pink, the stitches almost even. He stopped to rub his temples; squeeze his eyes shut for a second. Better. He was almost done, if everyone would just shut up. He didn't have much time—

The funeral. The X-Men were typical: half of them didn't even show up, even though she'd been one of their own. Abyss matched their numbers all by himselves, and he'd brought the rest of the Order with him. Family, huh? She was family. He pulled his purple hat low, glaring at the pink one he saw across the way.

No.

Slate, on a roof. The sky was gray and Slate's scarf was gray and the wind tugged at them both. Calley sat obstinate on the ledge as the other boy just. kept. talking.
"...die. The headaches will keep getting worse. You'll—"
"Why do you even try, Slate? You can't save anyone. You couldn't even save Katrina." He said it because it was the cruelest thing he could say.
Slate's hand clenched around something in his pocket. "That's why we have to live," he said finally, softly, as his thoughts said, Neither could you.

No. No, no—

It was funny. A little. He'd been so worried, but this didn't hurt. He looked down at the sword in his chest; Slate stood over him, his hand on the hilt. Behind him, the black unicorn gazed mercilessly down, its hoof stamping a blue spark from the ground. It wasn't so bad, really. His head didn't even hurt. Slate jerked out the sword; his back arched briefly, then fell back on the shattered pavement. He was just... lying down. That was all it took to—

No.

There had to be a different way. Something. He groped desperately towards it, over mice and wolfhounds, over mirrors with someone else's reflection where his should be, over Zephyr with snow white cat ears, to the place where his future was a brilliant white—

He stepped from behind Sebastian, joining the line of white robes on the church's steps. The hawk on his shoulder spread its wings, its black eye glittering.
"You don't get it, do you?" He said. "We aren't ending the world; we're starting a new one."
The point of his sword was at her throat, but she was there: she was alive. And he was alive, too.

Calley sat down. The purple cushion absorbed the fall, and all the rest of him, up to the hip. He blinked.

"You're not Alistair," he said, when his voice worked again. "How...?" Maybe it still wasn't working so well, yet.

((ooc: Now with Kat illustrations!))

Calley's future was one of the most disturbing he'd seen. There was no Ghost. And Katrina... there just weren't words to express the conflicting feelings about everything he'd seen. Some of it was new, some of it just confirmed his worst fears.

They were doing something wrong. Something seriously wrong. What changed things from here? How did Sebastian degrade so far? Every event seemed so interconnected, Jude couldn't untangle the strings. So he settled for something that he could do.

Jude put the sunglasses back on over his eyes and tugged at the short hairs on his upper lip as he thought through it all. Calley seemed to need the moment too. (To be fair, Jude had told him to sit down before.)

"No. I'm not Alister. I'm Jude Csendes and I copy powers."

"Jude," the shifter repeated, still blinking the future from his eyes. "The police are looking for you. I was going to look for you, too. So you copy..."

Powers.

The purple couch cozily conformed to his sudden stiffness. "So... does that mean you have my power, now?" Not to mention the powers of everyone else in the not-so-little Frenchman's life—like Kat. Alistair. Ghost. Sebastian. Calley certainly didn't know any other age shifters. "Do you just keep them forever, then?"

He was not paranoid at all. Especially not about having a second unicorn shifter running around. One with black hair. The Oracle kids seemed dead sure a unicorn was going to start the apocalypse; but had they stopped to ask which one?

"So. Why'd you run away from home?" And where was he the night Ghosty had been—had been temporarily misplaced from visions of Calley's future?

"Ze police are looking for a twelve year old." He couldn't figure out how to remedy that without the possibility of getting deported or passed off to a foster family. He would get it straightened out soon as he figured all that out, of course.

"I don't have your power, I have Alister's." Duh. Otherwise they wouldn't have seen the future they would just be looking at each other and both of them would be stupid cats. "Keep zem...? Don't be stupid." Keeping the physical mutations past his copy date was bad enough. Juggling multiple powers would be an absolute nightmare.

> "So. Why'd you run away from home?"

"Why do you never stay home?"

And why wasn't Calley out looking for Ghost? Jude was disappointed. "I sought I would see Ghost in your future." Jude frowned with his whole face.

"Ze police are looking for a twelve year old."

Deceptive.

"Keep zem...? Don't be stupid."

Confrontational.

"Why do you never stay home?"

Evasive.

And now Calley knew why Jude hadn't gone to get Alistair: it wasn't because he could do the job any better than the Oracle (Calley had already slipped his money back into his purple pocket as a hard-earned refund), it was because this guy had been expecting to see Ghost. Expecting to spy on Ghost, locate Ghost, through him. It was a diabolically genius plan: of course the First Retainer's future would be tied up with her noble Master's.

So why wasn't it...?

Ghost wasn't dead. She wasn't. Therefore, there was only one other logical explanation for why she was missing from his future: someone was protecting her.

Someone who knew better than to trust facial stubble on twelve-year-olds.

The shifter narrowed his eyes. "So you're Jude," he said. "Prove it."

Jude had been avoiding his family for weeks. Who was to say there wasn't a reason for that? A reason that involved complete strangers, and them not being able to tell if they had a counterfeit on their hands?

It wasn't that hard to fake a French accent. Jude's hadn't even sounded real.

Uh-uh. Oh no. Jude was being nice giving him a moment to collect himself, but he saw that cash going back where it came from. "Pay up. If Alister really expects you, zen he'll expect ze money too." Assuming it wasn't one real bill and the rest was monopoly money, Future Sight needed that cash. They needed that cash because someone trashed the place.

"Anysing I know about you is anysing anyone at ze Mansion could have told me. Or Kat." Jude wasn't sure how he could prove that he was himself. It was just as easy to prove that he wasn't, he supposed. He huffed a sigh. "I'd love to hit you for all the sings Ghost let you get away withs, but I'm sure zere are plenty of people who want to beat you up." He frowned and waited with his hand out for the cash.

"What could I possible do to prove it?" Jude was hoping he chose the punching option.

"I specifically remember asking for a reading by Alistair," the shifter said, lofty in his purple coat, on his purple throne. "We had no agreed business transaction." Come to think of it, paying to have someone rape your future really wasn't a smart idea. Good thing he'd figured that out; the only thing worse than learning you were going to die, die, or hold a sword to an illusionist's neck would be paying to learn it. Really, what kind of moron did that?

The Jude he'd known was twelve, and a psychic-to-be. The little white cat had certainly heard that enough to know it. (The associated threats of what a psychic could do to a feeble animal brain, both implied and specified in quaintly broken English, had left the poor thing sitting in Ghosty's lap oh-so-scared as she petted one of them and scolded the other.)

This Jude was doing nothing but digging his own pseudo-hole deeper. There was only one way the foreign sunglasses commercial could prove himself.

"Give me your sock," the Italian said, with great conviction. "Now. And don't try anything funny."

His… sock? "Trade money for sock." He countered smoothly. At least, he felt it was smooth. Calley wanted something from him, he wanted something from Calley. It didn't matter that no one in their right mind would pay 500 dollars for a used sock. This was a... how did they call it again? Mutually beneficial transaction?

And surely Calley didn't expect to get away without paying anything. Especially since Jude hadn't seen Ghost at all in this useless cat's future.

The frenchman extricated foot from sock and wriggled it out of Calley's reach. Tempting offer, no? "You wanted your future. I gave you zat. You can't call technicality because you didn't like what you saw." Alister still made people pay and he showed people all kinds of horrible things. The difference was that Alister was smart enough to collect the cash up front.

Calley handed over the cash and snatch-pocketed the sock. Just so long as they were clear: he wasn't paying five hundred for that so-called reading. He was paying five hundred for a slightly used sock. Clearly the better quality option.

Satisfied with this transaction, the Italian rose, and smoothed out the front of his purple coat.

"I'll send you my dry-cleaning bill," he said, and headed out.

Busy day ahead. He had to see a Loope about a hyperosmia, and break into a crime scene. Find a Ghost. Learn to use a sword (and to knit, apparently).

Oh—and he had to join a unicorn, and become a god.

((ooc: Continued in Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.))