Psychology is definitely not his scope of practice, but Jude's pretty sure he's gone crazy. How else can he explain the presence of four extra people in the room when Leia apparently only sees their stripperific leader?

The woman with the floor-length white hair covers her mouth with paper cards, her eyes fixed on Leia. "Oh dear."

"Oi, Meebo." The tiny blonde girl of the invisible group jabs her umbrella into the side of the man's knee. "Can we skip to the end this time where you just do your Thing?"

He doesn't like how their expressions morph whenever their looks shift in Leia's direction. There's an unquantifiable sense of joy when they address him that he can't explain either, but a surge of protectiveness wells up within him when they look upon Leia as if she's a threat even though she can't see them. (Or because she can't?)

"Hey," he snaps at the man, drawing his attention away from Leia. "Why are you here?"

The man opens his mouth, but it's the leader who speaks. "Are you aware," she says slowly, "that you are the first human to bear witness to the Great Spirits in a thousand years?"

…Oh. She's one of those traveling evangelists. His hometown has a small church that infrequently sends its missionaries out to comb the village for offerings. Though usually they knock on the door, stay outside unless invited in, and wear more clothes. (And are human?)

If this was one of Dr. Haus's simulations, the most important thing for Jude to do when surrounded by civilians in a frighteningly new environment is to inspire confidence. He slides into the kitchen, putting himself between the man and Leia. "You broke into my house," he says as pleasantly as he can. "I think I should be the one asking the questions."

"You knocked me over first," reminds the man.

"I apologize, but honestly, it didn't even register to me until I realized you didn't feel like pavement."

"Inviseebo," the girl chortles. The woman hides her smile with her cards but can't mask an unladylike snort of laughter. In a surprisingly childlike gesture, the man kicks at the girl's shin; she diverts his momentum with her umbrella and almost trips him up.

Their leader's quiet tone immediately mutes the growing squabble between the man and girl: "But you, Jude: you have an elemental affinity for water, do you not?"

He blinks.

She flashes his business card at him. "You call yourself a student of healing. Your first conscious spiritual contact just so happened to be with that of the Great Water Spirit Undine. You are able—"

"Undine?" Leia leans across the counter cautiously, though curiosity sparkles in her eyes. "The Lady of the Lake from the fairytales?"

The man wrinkles his nose. Oddly enough, the white-haired woman mirrors his expression. "Earth-dwellers," the little girl mutters. "Can't even keep who's who straight after a few centuries."

"Even if you have never physically witnessed spiritual intervention," their leader presses, "you cannot say that you have not experienced it, Jude Mathis."

There's a sudden lump in his throat that he can't speak around. "I…"

Leia squeezes his unexpectedly sweaty palm. "We haven't," she declares with the confidence Jude wishes he had. "Miss, if you're with the church here, please tell them we, uh, we respectfully decline their services."

"You misunderstand," their leader says, rising from the couch. Leia's grip tightens as the barely-clothed woman approaches. "As the Lord of Spirits, I, Milla Maxwell, have come to request you of your services."

Jude chokes.

Leia pushes him back protectively. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave," she says, almost hiding the tremor in her voice.

The terse silence is broken by the umbrella girl. "Toldya so, Meebo. Humans will never believe what they can't see."

The man's face is hidden by his bangs. "No."

"It's just going to happen again. The moment the earth-dweller gives into peer pressure and loses his faith, he won't be able to see us anymore. Save yourself the heartbreak and do your Thing."

"No."

"We can find Sorey just fine on our—"

"No, we can't. That's the problem, Edna. Two hundred years says that we need humans just as much as they need us." The man rounds on Jude and Leia, his voice cracking. "Please. You're the only one I can ask. I need your help."

Leia knows just as well as Jude himself that this is the ultimatum, the final cinch that seals the deal, the entire reason why he chose a medical profession in the first place. He can feel her bristling, a lungful of sharp rebuttals ready to head him off before he can commit himself to a half-baked proposition presented by complete strangers—but they're both interrupted by a rapid series of taps against the sitting room window.

"Crusade's onto us," says a man's voice. "I'll hold them off, but there's only so much a little wind can do."

The tension in the room skyrockets. Edna rises to her feet, umbrella slung casually over her shoulder. "Moment of truth, Meebo."

"I am requesting your assistance, Jude Mathis," says Milla. Her three spirits flank her, muscles taut underneath deceptively casual stances. "I need an answer."

His stream of consciousness snags on Maxwell over and over again; why does the name alone send his nerves into a frenzy, even he can't recall the woman herself? Has he ever met a Mikleo or Edna? Did his father…

He shakes his head. His father has no place in making decisions about his future. "Why do you need me? What do you need me to do?"

"If you can see spirits," Milla says, "then it is my hope that you will be able to locate the seraphim worthy of becoming my missing elements."

"I need you to find Sorey," finishes Mikleo. "I need you to find the Great Spirit of Light."

"Jude, you do remember you have a life here, right? Y'know, like medical school?"

Things are preeeetty serious when Leia is the voice of reason. Like, really cereal. With milk. Because seriously, if Jude ditches school now, he'll have to spend the rest of his life working overtime night shifts at Wild Duck Burger to pay off tuition for the first semester alone while his dad visits every day just to stand in the background and shake his head and sigh obnoxiously. Plus, well, this is med school. Why drop the opportunity of a lifetime to chase after Bazonga Beauty and Her Magical Invisible Friends? (As far as Leia knows, Jude doesn't even like bazongas.)

"I'll leave a message for Dr Haus," he decides after a moment of contemplation. "Family emergency."

"Dr Haus knows your dad personally," she counters. "And then your dad would know. And what you're doing right now? Is exactly what your dad warned—"

"My father has nothing to do with this," Jude hisses, and wow, this is why her parents were so relieved when she changed her major from law to nursing. Bringing Dr Mathis into any sort of argument with Jude is probably the only way to get Jude really, really angry at you.

Backpedaling wildly, she stammers, "N-N-No, I was j-just saying that you should use a way more convincing excuse! Tell Dr Haus you've had diarrhea for daaaays. Something so excruciating that you need to be on or next to a toilet for the next week. And you'd never ever want to pass onto your patients."

Aaand she's already become an accomplice. Has she always been this stupid? (The answer is yes, because this is Jude.)

Buxom Babe tilts her head, as if listening to some ethereal spirit advice. Then: "Yes. Regrettably. But given our current threat level, it would not be advisable to leave the girl behind."

"Don't bring her into this," injects Jude.

Leia bars his advancing step with a straight arm. "Hey, bring me into this!"

"Leia, you can't."

She resists the urge to roll her eyes; however, Bang Bang Blondie cuts in before they can really get going. "Jude, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you gauge the structural integrity of this building?"

He glances at her in confusion. "Well, as long as the central support cores remain standing…"

"Gnome!"

For all Leia can see, no apparent change comes over Bodacious Bonbons. Then the woman slams both palms into the brick wall separating Jude's apartment from the starry sky and Leia abruptly has an excellent view of the city at night. The entire detached wall moves as one gigantic mass of plaster and stone straight outward, dislodging the guys in sneaky black outfits who'd roped themselves down from the rooftop and hung waiting just outside Jude's window.

"Undine!"

A tornado of clear blue water materializes out of nowhere and douses a few projectiles, gathers up building debris and secret agent alike, and whisks them off into the darkness.

"Crusade has seen you with me, the both of you," the woman says calmly, as if she hadn't just… hadn't just spontaneously pulled elemental forces out of thin air. "I cannot guarantee your safety unless you allow me to escort you to the seaport."

"Wha… Y-You just…" Yes, now pull out spiritual freakiness and creepy assassins. Did she just sign up to be the token helpless bystander in a magical girl anime? Leia fights to keep her voice steady as she pulls Jude towards the nearest exit. "Crusade? They're after you?"

Some invisible force grabs onto Jude's front and nearly yanks him out of Leia's grasp, but she didn't spend the majority of her existence to lose hold of him now. "Run first, ask questions later," says Bumptious Bimbo in a voice so monotone that she could read Icha Icha Paradise to children and nobody would suspect her of any wrongdoing. Her tone is so composed, in fact, that Leia barely realizes that she and Jude have been tossed through the gaping hole in Jude's apartment into open air until her stomach shoots up into her throat and stops a scream from passing her lips.

"Slyph!"

A fierce whirlwind roars out of the woman's outstretched hand and cushions their three-story fall. Her feet touch down on the pavement as if she's simply skipped a step and this is the point where her brain decides to take a breather, because why bother marveling at the… magicness of magic… when running for her life is much easier on her sanity?

Jude's feet are a little harder to move than her own, but a sharp elbow into his weak spot elicits that familiar yelp of pain that brings the both of them back to the task at hand: running for the nearest escape route as a soaring wall of flame almost literally covers their backs. Something explodes. Several somethings explode. Hot gravel stings the back of her neck.

"Jude, you have officially ruined big cities for me!"

"Never a dull moment!"

She wants to whack him the back of the head for joking while everything is on fire, but the asphalt beneath her feet abruptly decides to shoot for the sky, a piston of concrete and earth that launch her and Jude like human pinballs. It takes a moment to orient her flight in a way that doesn't involves spinning and flipping and screaming, but by the time Leia has secured her safety upon a nearby rooftop, the entire street they'd been on seconds ago is shrouded within an ominous purple mist.

She's flown a bit farther than Jude and landed on the next building, but Pointed Looks are way easier than Words anyways. The Slightly Shaken But Brave Stare that he returns, violently illuminated in brilliant orange by the abrupt ignition of the previously poisonous vapor, is not what she'd been hoping for. Tonight's last departing ship sounds its final horn a few blocks away, sealing the deal.

All she'd wanted to do was sneak powdered slime glutton into tonight's prickleboar noodle stew without Jude noticing. Where did she go wrong?

They're sort of in a hurry, so Jude throws a fistful of gald at the startled kiosk cashier, points in the general direction of the ship, and follows right on Leia's heels because their escape route is already leaving. Leia's staff actually survives when she uses it to vault onto the boat; Jude, on the other hand, has to settle for diverting all his energy into his legs and leaping.

From the moment his foot leaves the dock, he's aware that he's not going to make it. He's not a very tall guy, okay? Yet another one of many reasons he keeps Leia around to make up for his… shortcomings. This is the part where she's supposed to pop over the side of the ship and catch him. He's already passed the peak of his arc, his fingertips just shy of clearing the bulwark, and if she doesn't appear right now he's going to bounce off the hull with nothing but the chill ocean to—

A gloved hand envelops his just in time. The hand is anchored to a body whose mass fortunately outweighs his; the man it belongs to wastes no time in hauling him onto the boat. No comments from the peanut gallery about dislocating shoulders either—just a lighthearted, "Cutting it a little close there, don'tcha think?"

His foot snags on the railing and, for the second time this day, he full-on tackles another stranger to the deck. The pecs beneath his open palms are broader and sturdier this time around, muscle palpable even through a rough leather overcoat and the sleek silk of a large black scarf. Whereas Mikleo had been lithe and of so little presence that Jude didn't see him till they were on the ground, Jude is acutely aware of this man, of the rapid acceleration of a heartbeat underneath his right hand. A corner of the brunette's mouth quirks upward in a wry smile as he quips, "I'm more used to this kind of thing happening in your bedroom, but out here's just fine too."

Jude's face bursts into figurative flame; he sits up so quickly that he can't keep his center of gravity from shifting beyond his hips and promptly sits in the man's lap—eep. His heart is actively trying to scale the back of his throat right now. People could light cigars on his face.

"Thanks for saving my awkward friend." Leia grabs the back of his collar and pulls him the rest of the way off the man's body. "We owe you one!"

"No problem," the man grins, propping himself up on his elbows. "Just a stowaway helping out his fellow stowaways."

"We paid!" he protests.

"We did?"

"Enough to pay for both of us, plus—Milla!"

The woman herself quite literally flies into sight, borne by a gust of air that gently deposits her upon the ship deck. The moment she touches down, her entire body flashes with light as the Four Great Spirits spring into existence around her. As far as Jude is aware, the manifestation of each elemental spirit is radiant enough to light up the entire deck and reflect off the black ocean all around; however, this is unseen by Leia and the man, who don't even flinch.

"You have now personally experienced what it means to be involved with me," Milla states, her eyes jumping from Leia to Jude. "This is your chance to back out."

You are the first human to bear witness to the Great Spirits in a thousand years. You're the only one I can ask.

From his position directly behind Milla's left, Mikleo's pleading eyes meet Jude's. That's all it takes for Jude to reaffirm his conviction. Ignoring Leia's exaggeratedly melodramatic sigh, he nods.

"I'm staying with you." He smiles as warmly as he can. "Allow me the honor of being the first human to welcome you to the land of Elympios."

A/N: While I started and have been more active on FFN, I am slowly transitioning to AO3. Find this story over there! Same title (All-Divide), same username (inkbender).