Hugo Keeps Following From the Trees

Hugo did not join My Alchemical Romance so much as continue haunting its edges. Jonah had disrupted his Castro trap, and that left Hugo with one practical conclusion: this disastrous party was now his best active lead. He followed from trees and shadows, watching through a spyglass, close enough to intervene but not close enough to become one of them. That distance mattered. Hugo entered the chapel fight late through a window, helped enough to count, and then continued shadowing the party through the cave-road encounter. He was not a full teammate. He was not an enemy. He was a Castro hunter with a ruined trap and a suspicion that the people causing the most chaos might also be walking toward the thing he wanted. The party had collected many strange allies by now. Hugo was different because he kept refusing the shape of belonging. He remained parallel: watching, following, waiting for the trail to lead back to Castro. Close enough to help. Far enough to disappear.