"You've been gone all day," Tanner comments when I approach where he and Ali are training, Ali floating fist-sized pieces of rubble as Tanner tries to shoot them with a paintball gun. "Where were you?"

Has she shot him with them yet? These ones are a form of simulated ammunition in terms of speed, impact, and use. They don't really penetrate or kill, just burst on impact, but they pack a pretty hard punch even through decent padding. Even normal Sigil-Bearers would need decent protection against them.

"I told you," Ali says. "Nick's spent way too much time with you, me, and the school. He's not really gone and done his own thing, so he probably just spent the day wandering about, playing with the wolves."

"Playing with… the wolves?" Tanner asks.

"I think?" Ali responds uncertainly, before giving me an odd look for a moment. "I'm not actually sure what he does when he does his own thing, to be honest. But he has a way with the wolves in the area, so I assume he's playing with them. Anytime he visits me after doing his thing, he smells like wolves."

Tanner approaches me, then sniffs a few times.

"Yup," he says. "Wolves."

I hung out with wolves for a little bit after leaving Jay, partly to remove the smell of his zone from me, partly because they're fun to hang out with. They don't fetch or anything, at least, not the way a dog would. They're undomesticated, highly intelligent wolves with a little power of their own.

They know how to play and have fun.

"You just walk up and smell him," Ali snorts. "Impressive, Tanner. Going after a taken guy?"

"Working on multi-target shooting?" I ask.

"Yeah," she answers. "Figured we can do both and you weren't around."

"Makes sense," I say. "So he's using the green shots?"

"Yeah," she answers.

"I'll go get blue," I say. "As a handicap, I'll shoot with my left eye closed and from a further distance."

"That's not exactly fair," Tanner says. "I mean, you've been shooting for six years, you've got a lot more experience than me."

"Actually," Ali says as I head towards the parking garage. "We give ourselves handicaps all the time, it's not for comparing to you."

"Oh," Tanner says.

I make my way up to Ali's area and equip myself with a paintball gun and blue shots, then head back down and out to where they're training. Ali's hovering around thirty chunks in a fifty-foot radius from her with their storage buckets at her feet, and Tanner's standing about ten feet outside of the boundary. I move thirty feet away, then take aim and begin shooting, targeting the chunks in a random order.

Well, at first. After I've managed to successfully shoot them all three times, I start shooting them in the order Tanner's attempting. He's not targeting one of them more than once every five shots, and he's missing four out of every five shots.

But it's easy to figure out which ones he's targeting, so I aim at them and shoot at them. There's no way he hasn't figured out what I'm doing even though I'm missing a few of them, too, but he's not commenting on it, just focusing on being able to shoot the chunks.

They're smaller than what we had him practicing on this past week, and his aim wasn't the best then, either. After all, he's a complete amateur at this who has only a few hours of training. It's unrealistic to expect him to be able to hit objects no bigger than his fist from that far away already.

We do this until Tanner's out of paintballs, then I shoot the last few of them at Ali, who doesn't bother trying to dodge, just takes them in the chest and stomach. Once I finish, she gives me an unimpressed look.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Tanner exclaims, looking at me in horror. "You can't just shoot people with those! Ali demonstrated, and-"

"That's the difference in power between us," Ali states. "I'm powerful enough that they're more of an annoyance than an injury. Though if he hits me a few times in the same spot, I'll bruise."

At least I've confirmed that she shot him. I load up another magazine.

"Nick, no," Ali rolls her eyes as Tanner gives me a worried look. "I'd mentioned they were different from regular paintballs, and he didn't believe me, so I shot him once. With his permission. He's already healed up, anyway."

Even though Tanner's not particularly powerful as a Sigil-Bearer, it probably wouldn't have taken more than an hour for his bruise to heal completely.

Ali begins pulling the chunks towards her one at a time, dropping them into the buckets at her feet once they reach her. Once she finishes, she picks both of the buckets up, then the three of us head up to her space and put the guns down. I start reloading the magazines and Tanner collapses onto the ground, his back against a wall.

"Whew," he exhales. "Today was exhausting. Fun, but exhausting."

"Are you sure your power isn't something I can help you train?" Ali asks him.

"No," Tanner tells her. "I'm not going to tell you what it is, Ali. It's kind of private, could you please stop trying?"

"I'll cut you off," I state.

"Fine," Ali groans. "It just bothers me, knowing there's a Sigil-Bearer right in front of me, as a friend, and I don't know his ability when he knows mine."

"Yours was also public already," Tanner points out. "Everyone who's heard of Alison Smol knows her ability let her make things float. Literally only Nick and his boyfriend know mine, and Ian only knows because it was necessary to try to find out… stuff."

"Can't blame a person for trying," Ali says. "I don't like mysteries."

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"You're friends with Nick."

"If you knew of even half of the mysteries surrounding him, you'd find it even more confusing."

They're talking like I'm not even here. Oh, well, let them do that. It's pretty harmless, and it's not like they'd figure out anything I don't want them to know.

As I continue refilling the magazines, I think back to Jay's 'new trick'. It's much more interesting than the gossip going on a few feet away from me. He figured out how to turn dirt into crystal, and he created a small crystal wolf to demonstrate this technique, a figure which now rests in a pocket hidden on the inside of my jacket. Tanner won't find it.

Once I finish refilling the magazines, I look over to Tanner and Ali, who are in the middle of an argument.

"Hey," I say. "Does it really matter?"

"Yes!" They both answer at the same time.

I let out a heavy sigh to let them both know the argument annoys me. Tanner can probably sense it, too, though I'm not sure if he's got me in his range or not, he's about seven feet away. Knowing how much he hates his ability, he probably shrunk it down to the minimum.

"Forest green."

"That is not what I was expecting," Tanner and Ali say in unison.

"Yeah, I got that from the argument," I look at Tanner. "You thought it would be dark blue," I look at Ali. "While you thought it was grey. No. It's forest green. My favorite color isn't that relevant."

"What if I wanted to buy a cake for graduation?" Tanner asks. "Your favorite color is extremely important."

"I was going to skip graduation."

"Seriously?" Tanner asks. "You'd skip that?"

"Yeah."

"No," Tanner says. "You're attending."

"Don't wanna."

"Why not?" He asks.

"It's school," I say. "Why would I want to go to some special ceremony that says I made it through school?"

"Well-"

"Leave it, Tanner," Ali snorts. "You won't be able to convince him. Now, if you could contact Ian, there might be a chance of it, but it's doubtful if even Ian could get Nick to attend graduation."

"Yeah, no," I say. "Ian wouldn't bother asking me. He knows my answer. Let's head back home, Tanner. I'm sure you're starving, and we both need showers."

"Yeah," Tanner stands and looks at Ali. "Thanks for the help."

"No problem," she says. "Shame I can't help you with that power, though, but oh, well."

"See you," I wave to Ali, then Tanner and I leave.

Our walk is quiet at first, Tanner probably thinking about something, but when we aren't too far from town, I notice something for the seventh time.

"Did you guys come over here earlier?" I ask.

"No, why?" He asks.

"I've just been noticing tracks," I tell him. "Someone walked through this area today. This afternoon sometime."

"No," he looks at the ground. "Tracks? I'm not seeing anything."

"You're seeing them," I say. "You just aren't someone who's tracked before. I've had years of experience. There are tracks there, there, and there."

I point at the tracks.

"They're only slight disturbances," I say. "But they're there. We've come across them a few times. Not anywhere near enough to pose a threat to Ali, it seems like a couple of people are wandering the area. A male and a female, based on the steps."

"You can tell that?" He asks. "I thought that was something that was only in fiction."

"Yeah, I can," I answer. "Might just be a couple of curious people, the wolves didn't let me know that people were wandering around. They didn't go too far in, and it's the Saturday before high school graduation, a few people are probably already here to visit the soon-to-be graduates."

Some people show up a week early, for whatever reason. I suppose because of the expense of the trip and two-hour drive from the city nearby? Whatever their reason, it baffles me. Some of them even stay in the hotel here rather than with their family, especially if said family is only a student living in the dorms. They stay at the one hotel we have at the moment, and it's not that cheap because of the low use it sees.

"So are you really not going to go to graduation?" Tanner asks.

"No, I'm not," I answer. "I don't see a point in attending it. I've skipped most of school. And the guy who's regularly fucking me being there isn't enough of a reason to attend, either, even as a spectator. We're friends with benefits, not boyfriends."

Tanner sighs in defeat, though I get the feeling he's going to try again as we get closer to graduation. He doesn't speak again until we're in town and on our way to the dorms.

"So," he says. "Do you know why no one's been able to find out things about stuff like the family and homes of the Sigil Gods? I know the Federation is good, but how are they so good to completely hide that? I'd have imagined that someone would have leaked it by now. Or a really good investigator. I mean, yeah, we don't know their last names, but still. I find it difficult to believe no one's found their stuff, especially since they don't even bother hiding their faces."

"You'd think, right?" I snort. "Ian's security network prevents it. Then there's the fact that the Sigil Gods don't go by their real names."

"They don't?" He looks at me in surprise. "I mean, that shouldn't surprise me, but it does."

"They go by their middle names, actually."

"Sort of like you," he says.

The tone of his voice tells me he's back to thinking I'm a Sigil God again. There's no Sigil God of Destruction, Tanner. I know this for a fact, so stop trying to suspect things that aren't true.

"Yeah," I nod. "And before you get any ideas, Tanner, I started going by Nick after my parents died. I'm not a Sigil God, and nor am I a Sigil-Bearer. I've told you before that I was never born with a Sigil. They go by their middle names as an alias, it was just easier than picking out something else to go by."

He can tell I'm being honest here, so I hope it gets through his head that I'm not a Sigil-Bearer in any way, shape, or form. I've never had a Sigil, not even in the womb. I am simply Casimir Nicholas Wade, a badass who can pull off miraculous survival experiences and who is dating everybody's favorite technokinetic.

"You did?" He asks. "Start going by your middle name then, I mean."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because," I sigh. "I liked my mom, and she used my name a lot. She was always calling out to me. I hated being called it after realizing she'd never call it out again. So I insisted on going by my middle name. Now, only my coworkers for Myths and Sigils call me by my first name."

"But didn't you meet after that?" He asks. "Why would they call you it?"

"It's complicated."

Extremely complicated, and I really don't want to get into the details of it with him.

"And don't think you can," I tell him. "Call me Nick. That's what I go by, and only the others at Myths and Sigils can get away with calling me Casimir."

"Does Ian call you Cas?"

"Yes."

"That's cute."

"Do you want to eat my cooking tonight?"

"Sorry," he looks away. "No need to get hostile, Nick."

"You pushed a sensitive topic for me," I state. "Expect it."

"Sorry," he mutters.

Let's change the topics. Maybe to something he seems to enjoy talking about?

"Is anyone coming to town for your graduation?"

"Yeah," Tanner answers. "My parents are."

This is the first time he's mentioned his parents, and his tone doesn't suggest he's on bad terms with them. How did they react to him wanting to come out here?

"When will they be here?" I ask.

"Friday night, I think," he answers. "My sister's school doesn't let out until next week, so they'll probably wait until after she gets out on Friday to come out so that she doesn't miss any."

"How was their reaction to you coming out here?" I ask.

"Not bad," he shrugs. "I didn't tell them why, so they were a bit confused. Kind of hard to when I haven't even told them my ability."

"Well," I tell him. "Tell them you came out here for training opportunities. And why are you fussing about me going to graduation? You'll be spending the day with your parents."

"Part of it," he shrugs. "Not all of it. I'll probably be back at your room Saturday night."

"Sounds like it'll be fun."

We reach the dorm building and enter, and I flash a peace sign to the security guard. I'm starving. Should I cook something or place an order? Or I can cook us something smaller, to hold us over until food that we order arrives.

That sounds like a plan.