Luke walked up to this week's meeting spot for his small freerunning group, beside a relatively small dam with guard rails at the top for people to walk across the small sidewalk on top of it. It was still much larger than they were, just small for a dam. Something they could reasonably climb up with a bit of effort and skill. The youngest two were already testing their abilities on the obstacle, doing casual running jumps. Nothing like what they are truly capable of when they try, just something to keep their minds and bodies active.

Now that he'd thought of it, Luke didn't actually know the names of anyone here. Not that they'd needed them, since they were not talking about their lives, but still something he realized in the moment as he'd only thought of them as "jerk," "jerk's friend," "camper," and "coordinator." He guessed that, to the rest of the group, he was probably "old man," from jerk calling him that day one.

"Eyyy, the old man's finally come back," jerk's friend said.

"Been a while, old man. I think you said you were training, let's see how much better you are. Maybe you'll actually get second to last place some time today," jerk said, prompting his friend to slap the back of his head.

"Yeah, I've got as strong as I need. Now, my progress will slow down significantly as I focus more on endurance, the training for which will take longer. Can't train endurance without long training sessions. Still not used to my new strength, but it's not like I'm ripping doors off their hinges or breaking my cups or anything, just a bit above average," Luke responded.

"You joining a marathon or something?" Jerk asked.

"No," Luke said, "though doing one would be a decent marker for my training. Don't think I could do one yet, or even probably for another few months. I might in the future, we'll see."

"Still can't do magic yet?" Camper asked.

"I cannot, yeah. Can't really track the progress on how that's going the same way you can for physical training, though, it's all or nothing. Should I be the one to set the first horse, so we have an easy one to start with, or does someone else want to go first?" Luke asked.

No one spoke up to take first place, so coordinator said, "Go ahead. Show us what you've got."

After inspecting the wall and the surroundings for a bit, he went to near the river where there was a bench made to look like a log set not that far from the dam. He Ran beside it before jumping onto it for a bit of extra height, jumped up the wall, planted one foot on its smooth surface for whatever extra height he could convert from his horizontal speed, and barely managed to grab a vertical bar of the railings up above.

The others copied him, his height advantage meaning nothing in the face of the higher confidence and athletic ability of his comrades. While he was almost definitely stronger, they'd been pulling stunts like the one he just did for months at this point, making his strength not that much of a factor. His increased weight from muscles not optimized for jumping was often a detriment, even.

Camper seemed distracted while they went on with their games, as he was performing significantly worse than usual. No one commented, though, simply being glad that they had significantly less hard feats to perform for their games of horse. Jerk had the most improvement from last time Luke was here, even including himself, matching his friend's ability almost beat-for-beat where he fell noticeably behind last time. Coordinator rarely failed any round as usual, though his somewhat lack of creativity lead to his feats being the second easiest to match behind Luke's.

Overall, the day was going well, people were hyping each other up when they did something impressive and making jokes at the expense of those that failed to perform on their first try. The group had seemed to get a bit tighter and friendlier to each other in Luke's absence, which was good, in his opinion, even if he wasn't sure what they'd gone through to make that happen. He hoped nothing bad, just school or simply more time with each other. This group had only existed for a few weeks before Luke joined in, after all.

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Almost an hour into their games, with Luke actually managing to perform some of the feats his group sets for their games of horse, coordinator screamed, "JAKE!"

Everyone turned to look at what was going on, and camper was missing. Coordinator had already pulled up the arena feed, showing camper - Jake - already tied up in vines with his fraxion opponent closing in for the kill.

Luke opened up his own feed. A small screen appeared in front of him a few seconds before jerk and his friend opened theirs. On it, Jake was wrapped up in vines and maybe 8 feet from a fraxion, which was rapidly closing in on him. It had scars from the extended period of battle it had endured up until now, having killed who knows how many humans at this point, taking small injuries over that time.

The vines peeled back as Jake extended his hand out toward the charging fraxion.

The charging fraxion brought its hand toward Jake's neck, intending to impale it with the spiked on its wrist.

Before its blow could land, Jake's hand started rapidly turning black and seeming to decay; an obvious sign of someone channeling too much magic for their bodies to handle.

Jake's neck was impaled, sending a spurt of blood out, though the impact was not enough to fully decapitate him. Coordinator put his hand to his mouth.

A large gash appeared on the fraxion's side, armor plating ripping off, revealing soft skin underneath having been decimated. It was like someone had peeled someone's fingernails off before scraping the skin underneath with a rock, bloody and with a deep, uneven cut through the middle of the injury.

The fraxion reacted by pulling the spike out the front of Jake's neck, partially in flinching back from the pain, partially pushing through it, but opening a massive, definitely fatal gash in his throat.

The magic overdraw on Jake's arm extended up his arm and through his torso as the fraxion was thrown back hundreds of feet, into one of the many trees surrounding the clearing all fights started in, slamming the exposed skin directly into wood.

The grass around Jake erupted into vines and pulled off his decaying arm, causing blackened blood to splash on the earth below, before grabbing Jake. Some went around his torso, some went for his head.

Jake was able to keep his remaining arm out of the vines and he pointed it at the fraxion. It rapidly turned black as another large gash ripped the armor from one side of the fraxion's mouth and ripped some of its teeth out, the force of the telekinetic blow whipping its head to the side.

The vines ripped Jake's head from his body as a few inches of the fraxion's left hand decayed from magic overdraw.

In the few seconds Jake had before he died from the decapitation, Jake's entire head rapidly went through magic overdraw. The fraxion's front right leg bent backward at the knee and snapped in the middle of its shin.

Jerk and his friend cheered, with jerk's friend saying, "Way to go! Out with a blaze of glory, let's go man! Most damage from a single guy I've seen in a while, woo!"

Coordinator's face was locked in a bitter mix of grief for loss of a friend and pride at his friend's accomplishments.

Luke wasn't really sure how to feel. He was sad that someone else he knew had been thrown to the meat grinder, but the damage he was able to do inspired him. It made him even more determined to succeed in his plan.

If this was the damage some young adult could perform with just telekinesis, how much could they do if given the time to properly learn magic? How many fraxions could camper - Jake, he corrected himself - have taken out if given enough time to properly train his magic?

He closed the feed as another person came in to - hopefully - finish the job on that fraxion, even if they were to immediately die after to a fully in tact and rested fraxion.

Jerk and his friend stopped celebrating their friend's achievements as they saw the saddened looks on Luke and coordinator's faces. "Come on, guys, be excited. We're all going to die some day, at least he had a large impact before going down. Can't say as much for most scrubs who are thrown to the reapers."

Coordinator just silently shook his head as Luke sat in thought for a few seconds before saying, "I'm not going to say his accomplishment was for nothing, as it wasn't. It got us most of one fraxion closer to victory. But still, we should go have a drink or something. Did he have any place he liked to eat? We could go there, one last meal in his honor before the official funeral."

"I know just the place. Not something to eat or anything, but somewhere he liked to hang out," coordinator said. "I don't know if he'd want us mourning him there, but it'll be a decent place to go to remember him. I'll drive."

From there, they all got in a car and drove a few miles further out of town, to some dirt road near a river. They walked down a rough trail for a few minutes before coming to a large tree on the bank of the river. A tire swing hung empty on one side of the tree with an almost new - though dirty - rope on the other side, hanging a few inches out over the river.

"It's a bit out of the way, but he put those up all by himself. He would bring me and a few friends out here every week to just hang out, back when it was first made. Ended up just being me and him as that friend group drifted apart. It's not much - heck, it's very little - but it was his own little place to be with friends."