Leaving Luke’s room turned into leaving the house all together. And leaving the house turned into trying to leave Earth entirely. Pacing along a roof in his fancy little hat and tights, not even bothering to cover up with sweats, trying not to curse, really curse, when nothing happened except a sense that he was straining muscles that didn’t even exist. And that moment, frustrated and helpless, rapidly snowballed into the real issue, the biggest, stupidest, and most frustrating issue. The keen and constant sense that his brother was going to be in danger, and there was nothing he, as Jason or Halle, could do about it.

And so began the tears, messy and gross, with his face scrunched up like a withered apple and snot running down his nose. It wasn’t like him, he shouldn’t be crying! He should be doing! And making plans, and taking control! Find a way to make Luke take things seriously, make sure mom got a good guard dog, find out more about this new life and death situation. He had a lot of…responsibilities! He needed to be better and he needed to be calm. But calm wasn’t coming and every time he tried to shake himself out of it, yell out at himself stopcryingstopcryingSTOPCRYING it just turned into rapid, heaving breaths and a choking cough, rolling forward and down into more stupid tears.

It took…

It took a talking cat to shock him out of it. Half of what it said was scrambled by Halle’s mix of bleary upset and startlement, the other half was just plain inscrutable. Mauvian what? Upgrade? Holograms? When it asked for the blueprints and his ring, rather than his typical questions and caution, Halle found himself just dumbly handing them over. It chatted as it worked and he distantly realized he was being given a pep talk from a talking cat. And so he found himself laughing, still frustrated and helpless, but it felt better than crying.

He realized he should take this chance to ask questions, but all he could come up with in the moment was about why he couldn’t make it to Halle right now. Only once every three weeks. They…no he, would be able to go more often once he got stronger, once he ranked up into a Squire, and eventually a Knight.

He laughed again. Leveling perks. Of course. Halle wondered if he had to fight x number of monsters, train x number of days. Was there some magical currency to earn? Treasures waiting? Normally the thought of that would be satisfying, knowing there would be a tangible reward for hard work. But tonight he just felt tired and far away.

When the cat was done, it explained solemnly, paw on his hand while talking like an elder, that the upgrade to his ring would allow him to check a database, and see who some of his new enemies were. And, once a second upgrade finished downloading, he’d be able to see who his allies were as well.

The cat left him with the reassurance that he was not alone. That help would only ever be a call away from now on. And Halle managed to wait until it was out of sight before breaking down once more. This time out of relief.