Jeez, there are so many people there. The parking lot for school is actually full for once, many of the people from out-of-town who use cars in this day and age taking them rather than using their feet. It's ridiculous. Walk the half-hour from the hotel rather than be lazy. Or take a bus. I'm pretty sure we had a couple running through town just for graduation.

A fair portion of the town probably turned out for it, too. They'll be hosting it in the gym, which makes me wonder how many guests will be standing. It can seat two thousand people in the bleachers, and the graduates will be sitting in chairs on the court.

So it won't be a huge portion of the town, just a decent portion, more than what would be proportional to the graduating students and their families.

Having only walked this way just to see the turnout, I turn and make my way towards the ruins. There's no purpose for me to attend graduation, so why go?

The first thing I do after entering the ruins is lose my tail. The fact that it only takes me a few minutes to do so informs me that they're not a Sigil-Bearer with the ability to track people, and that confirmation is reinforced when I don't detect them following me again even after an hour has passed.

Or were they given instructions not to follow me too far into the ruins? After one person jumped the gun, they probably want to be more cautious now. Whoever is now running things dealing with this area is using a brain, after all.

Now that I've confirmed I'm not being tailed, I strip off everything and check it all for any potential trackers. There's nothing, so I pull everything back on, then resume my trip. Thanks to a spell, I can't be tracked directly and a tracker who creates a tracker by touching something can't track my stuff, either. It takes someone putting a tracked item on me to track me.

For the morning, I just travel through the ruins, enjoying the view of nature reclaiming the old society, of the smell of the soil and the plants. From time to time, an animal looks at me, then either remains or flees. Rabbits, deer, foxes, wolves, and more. Birds chirp and caw and chatter from their perches in trees and buildings and old signs.

When lunch draws near, I stop by a creek and watch the fish swim by. Picking here for lunch, I pull off my backpack and over shirt and set them down, then remove my boots and socks as well before wading into the water. Dressed in shorts today, there's no risk of getting my clothes wet, the creek stopping a few inches before my knees, even with me standing with my knees bent, ready to snap my hand out.

Stilling with my hands ready, I wait for a fish of the right size to swim by close enough. The first one that does has blue and red scales, and I time my strike. In a flash, I've got the fish in my hand, and in the next moment, I've snapped its neck, killing it quickly and efficiently.

I toss the fish onto the shore, then wait for the next fish to swim by. This never takes more than a few minutes, as the water tends to return to normal and they think it's safe once more. It took me more than a year to manage to catch fish like this, and another year and a half to be able to break their necks this quickly and efficiently. Until then, I just resorted to the rock method.

Once I have three fish caught, I leave the water and look up at the sky. It's pretty cloudy, so there's going to be rain. By my guess, I have hours before then, though, so rather than taking my catches to a building, I pull a pair of ice packs out of a bag in my backpack and place them on top of the fish, then place a thick cloth over them, using rocks to weigh down the corners. That should keep any wild animals from coming after them in this next stage.

I walk around the area and gather up sticks and small branches that have fallen from trees, then take them back to my spot near the shore and build a fire. As it heats up, I scale and gut the fish, then start grilling them.

After eating, I add a few more sticks and branches to the fire, then wander around a little more, collecting berries, herbs, and veggies that are growing in the area. On my way back to my fire, I spot a rabbit, just what I was looking for.

I flick my knife at it, missing a little bit. Rather than embedding in the rabbit's neck, the knife cut through the back of the neck. While the attack still killed the rabbit, I click my tongue in annoyance. My aim was off. I was having a good day with the fish catches, too.

Whatever. I collect my knife and rabbit, then begin cooking the second part of my meal, using the herbs I gathered as a rub and grilling the vegetables along with the meat. After eating, I put out the fire and wash off my hands and feet, then dry them off and pull my socks and boots back on, before pulling on my over shirt and backpack once more.

By my guess, I still have probably five or six hours before the storm begins, so I make my way to my usual training area for when I train solo. It's the ruins of a building that used to be a senior center. The back half of it, the roof is gone along with part of the walls, and the front half just has some cracks in the walls and floor.

There are a few wooden training dummies here, along with a salmon ladder, a rope with knots hanging from the ceiling, a rope without knots hanging from the ceiling, a balance beam, and various other things I use for training. In a room that's still intact are my training weapons for this space, while the area that had the ceiling and walls collapse, then removed later for me to use the space, are my shooting targets, more wooden dummies. After stripping down to my shorts, I walk over to the salmon ladder and begin using it.

After going up and down the ladder a few times, I switch to striking at the training dummies, before moving to the rope without knots and scaling it. Once I touch the ceiling, I drop down, landing in a light roll to ensure I don't hurt myself, then I walk to the balance beam and run across it. After reaching the other end, I do flips on it, before practicing martial arts while attempting to maintain my balance.

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Only on the last one do I fall, slipping off and landing on my ass. Keeping balance on a thin space isn't easy, especially when moving around and performing strikes and kicks. I don't do this often because it's something I've only recently added to my routine, but I'm in the mood for it today. Training like this probably isn't an actual thing, but it does help me focus on my balance and centering for martial arts.

Twenty minutes and eight falls later, I grab a pair of guns and equip the magazine belt around my waist, before beginning to shoot at the targets, moving little as I aim at them. There are fifteen of them, set at various distances and heights. I make sure to not shoot any individual target twice within three shots.

I'm almost done with the last magazine when I sense someone nearby and spin, aiming a gun at them and starting to pull the trigger. I stop the moment I recognize Ali, the only reason she doesn't get a paintball that acts as simulated ammunition to the chest. Or boob. That would be painful, even for a Sigil-Bearer of her strength.

"Jeez, Ali," I drop my arm back down to my side. "Haven't I warned you not to sneak up on me while I'm training here?"

"Nick," she says. "I literally just stepped into view of the door. You noticed me before I could warn you, unless you wanted me to sing as I approached."

"Sorry," I take a few moments to catch my breath. "Just pumped with adrenaline at the moment due to the training. With the current situation putting me on edge, I'm a bit more jumpy."

"You're good," she tells me. "I can understand that."

"It's not often you track me down to here, Ali," I say. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah," she says. "I was actually hoping to use your salmon ladder."

"I thought you hated it?" I ask. "That's why I didn't build one for you."

"I do hate it," she says. "That doesn't mean I don't come out here every couple of weeks and use yours."

"Okay," I say. "Let's spar after."

I return to shooting, and Ali pulls off her shirt and boots, leaving herself in a sports bra and her shorts. After a quick warmup, she uses the ladder. Once I run out of paintballs, I put my guns away and check my targets. Perfect score. Targets like this aren't a problem for me anymore, that's why I much prefer shooting pieces of rubble Ali's launched with her power. They're much more difficult to hit and I don't earn perfect scores every time.

Ali finishes up, then we begin sparring. There's a significant difference between us in strength and speed, and while Ali does reduce the force of her hits, they still hurt. My advantage is having several years of martial arts training on her, especially since she doesn't train her own as much as me. To deal with a stronger and faster opponent, I focus on predicting her moves based on how her body's moving, then using her momentum to escape her strikes and trip her up or flip her down.

Unfortunately, she has trained against me enough to know that I use this when fighting a Sigil-Bearer who's not fast enough this won't matter, so she still puts me on my ass a few times. After ten matches, I have two wins and she has eight.

"You're getting better," I say as I grab her outstretched hand.

"You're getting better, too," she pulls me back to my feet. "You might be losing more, but it's getting harder for me to win. I'd pit you against a weaker Sigil-Bearer any day."

"Yeah, well, my normal plan is to avoid being in a melee fight against a Sigil-Bearer," I say as we start pulling the rest of our clothes back on. "That's why I also train with guns. And in running."

"I bet I could beat you in a race," she says.

"You most definitely will," I say. "I'd have to cheat to win. You didn't pull your punches as much, Ali. I'm sore."

"Aw," she says. "Need me to kiss your boo-boos? That might make them feel better before Tanner sees them."

"Why do you think Tanner would be seeing them?" I ask.

"Oh, please," she rolls her eyes. "It's obvious you two are banging, even though you've got a boyfriend, Nick. Considering you aren't the kind of guy to cheat, I'm guessing it's with Ian's permission?"

So she knows? And she hasn't pestered us for details?

"Yeah, he knows," I tell her, then decide to admit something, even though I know she'll want the details. "He's comfortable with it to the point that we had a threesome when he came out out here this last time."

"Really?" She takes a step closer, eyes wide open. "Wait, that means you've slept with Ian before, too? When was your first time? How was the threesome? Do you bottom or top? Who took the other two in? How-"

"Ali," I interrupt her as I pull on my backpack. "Not today. I want to get home before the storm starts, and I'm not going to discuss my sex life without the permission of the people involved."

"But-"

"I'll bring you some gay erotica next time I come visit you."

Ali laughs, but drops the subject, and we leave. I'll have to remember to let Tanner know that Ali knows about us doing it and that she wants the details and will probably press him for them the next time she's alone with him. At the very least, he can prepare a response instead of being caught off-guard by it.

We part ways soon after leaving the training place, with Ali heading back to her place and me heading back to town. As I'm walking through town, I check my messages. Tanner's let me know that graduation went well and that he'll stop by my apartment around eight this evening. He also invited me to come to the small graduation party with his parents, but since I wasn't in range of the towers, I didn't see the message. Based on his next message, he figured that I was probably in the ruins.

More than a little hungry from all my training and the journey back to town, I stop by a grocery store. I'm low on food and the shops have stuff they normally don't due to ordering them in an effort to make things better for our guests and celebrations.

I spend twenty minutes buying enough groceries to fill the rest of my backpack and both of the durable cloth shopping bags I keep in this backpack, then check out and being the walk home. I'm halfway there when the rain begins, but I don't rush. I'll be soaked either way, and so will my groceries.

When I reach the apartment, the first thing I do is strip naked and quickly dry myself off, and the second is dry my groceries and put them away as I decide on what to do for dinner. I bought some stuff to make a cake for Tanner to celebrate graduation too, just because I'm feeling in the mood for that.

Deciding on chicken, I pull out the package with two breasts and open it up. I can marinade them for half an hour, then cook them and serve with rice and a salad. The marinade time will give me time to dry myself off the rest of the way, put my stuff out to dry, and start the first phase of the cake.

What flavor should I make the cake, though? I bought several different ones because I couldn't decide.