April 3rd

"Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear Nicole. Happy Birthday to you."

Really, I was touched as everyone finished singing to me. The Seeker office was closed as we all gathered in the conference room for what I thought was a meeting, only for Karen to spring an honest to god strawberry cake with candles on me.

I blew out the mismatched cake candles before looking around. "So, where the heck did you get a cake from? I don't know if any bakeries are open or anything." One of the downsides of the world basically attempting to blow itself up, a lot of the incoming trucks had less and less mass produced goods and more staples and simple ingredients.

"I bought the stuff a few weeks ago." Karen answered. "So it's just been waiting on your birthday. Twenty-one, congrats!"

Mike handed me the first slice of the cake and I looked at the heavily frosted piece before taking a bite. It'd been less than a month since the alien had tried to choke everyone. Less than a week since all the lava started, even if that only took a few days to mostly subside. So Karen getting a cake mix just a few weeks ago made sense. Somehow.

"Thanks." I said, instead of voicing my thoughts.

"Unfortunately, the plan to get you completely drunk fell through as I think every drop of alcohol in the city has already been drunk." Karen continued. "The bars are closed, Sundown is closed, and I can't even get a cheap box of wine from Wal-Mart at this point."

"Can you get anything at Wal-Mart right now?" Ash semi joked.

"So, I know you've been trying to figure out a way to really push yourself, Nicole, to get past the next block." Danny interrupted. "And for your birthday, I think I've got a good method to help with that."

"Oh?" Brent actually started looking interested.

Danny nodded. "Karen brought up the idea of building an obstacle course to me, but I wanted to take it a step further. We still have plenty of those gondola aisles and they support several hundred pounds."

"Wait, what are you going to do with them? Stack them for climbing?" I asked, imagining that dangerous pile.

"No." Danny laughed a bit and shook his head. "No, I did a little research. A gymnast balance beam is four inches wide. The solid cap on those aisles is three inches."

I tilted my head thinking. I wasn't half bad on it, and I knew a few routines. "That's a good idea. The extra balance needed would make me focus more."

"That's the first half. The second half is all that extra room and setting it up so you can go between them." Danny grinned. "Think you can manage eight foot jumps between them?"

"I want to try it now." Melissa answered with a longing look. "Share your present, Nicole?"

I laughed myself. "Yeah, but me first. Thanks Danny."

"Well, it's going to take all of us to set this up today, so consider it a group present." Danny held up his own slice. "But first, finish cake."

~~~

"How do you want to do this then?" I asked, looking over the forty or fifty aisle shelves we had left even after framing out the other areas. We weren't likely to get a whole lot of materials anytime soon either.

Danny waved a hand into the empty area behind the receptionist area. "Make a cross with four of them, then space the crosses out with anywhere between five and ten feet between them. That way you've got long runs and jumps and whatnot."

"Can we set one up, make sure this works how we think it's going to before we do more?" Ash asked. "In case we need to set up it differently."

"Easy enough."

We pulled a few of the units away from the wall and set them up. I kicked off my shoes and climbed up the lower shelves and stood on the top shelf and then stepped onto the thin metal beam. It wasn't too different from a normal balance beam.

From above, the cross made the primary run around twenty feet long, but there was a three foot gap if I wanted to go in a ninety degree turn.

"Stable enough to stand here." I noted, before starting to walk, one foot tightly in front of the other to check movement. Six feet up in the air, it wobbled slightly but nothing I couldn't adjust for. "This isn't bad at all."

Leaning down, I discovered a missing inch made it a lot harder for hand placement. I could almost grab it like a bar rather than pivot on my palms. Still, I adjusted and slowly lifted my legs into the air. No real shake. I let my legs back down and came to my feet again. Then tested a full cartwheel with ease.

"Going full out?" Melissa called from where she was watching.

After all the different falls I'd been practicing in the past few days trying to push myself, I didn't really fear falling just six feet. I seriously doubted even landing on my head would even fully concuss me if I could absorb the blow with energy instead of my skull.

"Yep." I backed up to the beginning of the beam and eyeballed the distance. Twenty feet wasn't much longer than a normal beam, but the fact that it was two different units could throw it off a bit. Full out.

Full speed cartwheel, solid landing on the beam. Bounce once as the beam shakes a bit into a single flip, land as the beam stabilized. Hands go out forward and back to balance before I jump hard, clearing at least three feet up and able to do splits in the air and then come down almost on pointe with time to spare.

I get to the center, one foot on either side of the two parts and consider. Going to either side would require either a jump or a long step at almost two feet. Turning and barely standing on my heels I cycle my dantian and do a twisting flip off the beam with it rocking back and miss the side aisle. I end up hitting a shelf, crashing off of it, and back onto the floor. Even as I fell, I could feel the push as I basically bounce off.

I started laughing as everyone ran over to me. "That's great. We probably need to anchor them a little better though. I wasn't expecting the thing to not have enough weight to support my jump."

Mike offered a hand then pulled me to my feet. "Scrapes, bruises?"

"Nope. But I could tell it required more focus to stay up there, so it's going to be good. Can we go ahead and set the rest up?" I smiled at everyone.

"Yeah, yeah." Melissa said, eyeballing the aisle. I wondered about the possibilities of parkour, and if we could all do this soon.

About twenty minutes into moving the rest of the aisles Mike's phone went off. He gave it an odd look before answering. "This is Mike." He paused, listening. "They've said every month there's pretty much nothing to do. And we're activating now? Christ."

Another pause, longer this time as Mike nodded slowly to his conversation. "Damn it, alright. I have to let the station know, I'll leave in the morning unless it's an emergency.

"Fuck. Alright, give me two hours then. It's still another almost three hours to Whiteman though." Mike listened for another moment then hung up while we all looked at him.

"You wouldn't happen to know why the Missouri Air National Guard just got called for Title 32 activation with immediate report in, would you?" Mike looked at Brent. "I'm fairly certain we're not flying anything anywhere."

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"No." Brent said slowly. "I know President Robertson and what's left of Congress declared a state of emergency at the start of the eruptions, but I haven't heard anything about Missouri that would make it necessary for any national guard to be federally activated."

"Well, we were. And now I've got two hours to get my shit together and head out. I'm low man on that recall roster too, so lots of people have probably already been called." Mike looked at me. "Sorry it's ruining your birthday and doing this."

"Not much of a choice, huh?" I gave him a worried look. "It's probably bad, but I hope it's not catastrophic."

"Yeah, I didn't get a reason, just a come in." Mike scowled. "Sorry guys, I'll keep you updated."

I gave him an uneasy hug goodbye and everyone else said their goodbyes as well and Mike left.

Brent watched where he left for a moment before turning back to the rest of us. "I'm going to go do some research. Nicole, please manage that breakthrough? We're somewhat using everyone here as a litmus test for how long these take. It only took you two days to go from your first to your second, and while Melissa and Ash took longer, I don't want to suggest we may already be in the window of the alien managing to do the earth's second breakthrough."

I paled slightly at that thought. Maybe that's why the guard was being activated, in preparation rather than a specific issue.

It was with quiet energy we finished putting everything together. In the end, there was a quite an almost maze of aisles with the longest stretch being probably a hundred and twenty feet with increasing large gaps. The last one had a full twenty feet and while I knew I'd vaulted further before, it still looked pretty intimidating to try to land on a three inch shaky beam after a long jump.

Which, really, is what we were going for.

Melissa easily pulled herself up onto what was going to be the starting point instead of climbing, not straining herself with her own two breakthroughs. She whistled, looking over it from the higher vantage. "I hope we have everything lined up perfectly. That's a couple of really, really long jumps over there."

"If I fall, I fall. I get back up. Short of beating the hell out of each other, I think we're pretty well outside scrapes and bruises by the second breakthrough." I replied, even though Karen and Ash watched with a little trepidation. Tasha stood further back, to keep an eye on the front door but still able to watch us.

Melissa hopped down with a bit of a smirk at me. I took that as the challenge she offered it as, and jumped the six feet straight up to the beam, sticking the landing on it.

I judged the landscape in front of me, taking in the straight run and the random offshoots that were the rest of the crosses and where they led to. If we could actually keep balance up here with multiple people, that'd probably be great stress for pushing blocks. Something to think about.

I then judged myself. I had plenty of energy to push my cycling with. The energy flowed easily from my dantian through my breakthroughs and back. Each one leading to the next, but I couldn't get a feel for where the next one really would be. Would that point go up into my skull, into my brain? Would I need a brain scan to see another ring impossibly sitting up there? How about down my spine?

I didn't know, and that's why I wanted to have to exert myself. It just seemed easier to be able to flood past that line of demarcation in my body and find that pool to clear, if I also had something focusing me externally. Melissa had easily done her second breakthrough as had Ash, but they had me and my scans to be able to tell them where to push to.

I plotted out the path I'd take, saving the long run for last. Hopefully we'd set everything up right.

I treated it more like a floor routine, just on tighter lines, holding tight to my sense of placement. I jumped forward, landing and rolling into a one arm cartwheel, balancing on my hand. My foot came down and I pushed off, leaving the aisle rocking slightly as I made a ninety degree turn and landed correctly this time on the next beam over a two foot gap.

I danced forward, leaping the next gap in grace and maneuvering myself in a fairly big circle though a series of cartwheels, flips, and dance moves. I slowly built up the pressure on myself as I cycled energy through me, pushing out of my dantian, through the cleared blocks and flooding myself with energy. Between one jump and another I skipped over half the beam, landing back on the floor between aisles, twisting into a backflip that planted me right back up where I should be.

I finished moving through the circle, half giddy over the power flooding me before I pulled it back a bit from my head, having not found anything there. The edges of my vision blurred again, and I hadn't even noticed them getting crisper until the effect of my power was diluted once more. I pushed lower into my body even as I got back to my original starting point for this new routine.

There was almost a double ache in my back, like it split and I had to pick a path. I gritted my teeth as I started the long run, ignoring choice as I did a double flip over fifteen feet, landing across the first gap. Sweat was building on me now as I cycled harder, faster. Pushing at those spots, demanding to know what was behind them.

A handstand into a backflip and my footing came down well as I arched backwards, building up speed in my flips. I hit past the pain on both paths, and suddenly my power was flowing into two separate pools, two blockages. A fission of fear went through me, did I have enough to clear two at once? Why two? I was already committed though.

I came off the second piece, purposely rolling to the ground and then coming to my feet. I used the momentum to jump and vault back onto the second to last aisle. Energy cycled through me. Flowed through me. Thundered through me. I dug deep into myself cycling as fast as I could to generate more power, desperate to not come up short. Both blocks were nearly clear, nearly added to my own.

I charged forward, not even tumbling on the beam now. The twenty foot gap and I was going to make it, even without a vault. One last push.

Something tipped. Gave. Released. Both blocks gave way at once and an absolute rush of my own power bounced back into me as I stared into myself. Something glimmered, a shape of me but greater, angles going off in impossible directions. A form I was building of my dantian.

I blinked and missed the step, tumbling off the end of the aisle beam. My hands flashed out in front of me, power surging through five breakthroughs as it flowed directly to my shoulder blades and I pushed. Upside down, I saw everyone from the height of the ceiling before I slowly spun and gravity reasserted itself and I came down.

Landing beyond the last aisle I'd been trying to jump to. I raised both hands in an ending salute for a routine, before I dropped to the floor. Wondering what I'd seen.