Work... It's all just work...

Thankfully, Cassandra and her lackeys weren't waiting for John by the time that he left the barrier. Nobody was waiting for him, actually. In the midst of the darkened school hallways, John was left alone, standing in the same locker he had disappeared from with no signs of physical marring on its surface. The locker was suddenly spotless. There were no breaks or dents, not even from the small, simple things that the students might have put in it before. It was just perfect now.

After taking what might have been a little too much time checking to see if the coast was clear, John set out. He didn't bother stopping anywhere to get his missed schoolwork or anything like that; he just continued on with his schedule. It didn't matter that he might just run into his enemies later along the way by sticking to the same schedule; he was just more worried about being caught alone in the place where he had already seen them. He already knew that the school wasn't safe.

He was even more fortunate during his jog to work and, somehow, didn't come across any of the armed individuals he had seen before. He wasn't sure if it was because of the fact that he was so late and his schedule had been thrown off course or if the group just didn't care about him anymore after he abandoned the book to them again, but... as long as he was safe, it didn't matter too much. He just had to get to work.

"There you are, I wanted to ta-" Michel started saying as soon as John walked through the door. The large, blond man didn't even hesitate to approach the young gamer to talk with him, and unfortunately, he wasn't the only one. The second the front door closed behind John, both Michel and Grace were already walking in the same direction towards John. Michel was fruitlessly biting at his fingernails long before he reached the gamer, or rather, he was attempting to. The boxing gloves that both he and his fellow fighters used prevented that from actually happening, so all Michel kept actually doing was lifting his hands up to try and succumb to his nervousness before he had to stop and settle for rubbing his chin or his mouth. He didn't actually get any time to talk to John before Grace was between the two of them.

"Later!" she barked at the martial artist before suddenly grabbing John by the arm and physically yanking him back outside. He didn't get a chance to catch back up or greet the other members of the gym; she didn't even allow John the chance to officially clock in for work. She just pulled him to the side and let the door loudly bang shut behind them before she suddenly exploded, "A fight?! Are you fucking kidding me?!"

There was a small pause as John opened his mouth to speak in the moment between hearing her actually yell at him and recoiling away from her as she did. It was a small pause that ended abruptly with no purpose or objective fulfilled before Grace was screaming at him again.

"I agree to go running with you and you turn around and use the situation to pick a fight with my boyfriend?! Are you crazy?!" There was a split second where she stopped to inhale briefly, but it didn't last. "You could have been hurt! You actually did hurt Chad! You nearly put him in the hospital and for what?! A chance to feed your fucking ego?! You..." Her last word trailed off again as the olive-hued Indian woman stepped up to John and suddenly shoved him once. Her hands thumped against his firm chest as she angrily pushed him once. "...stupid..." Twice, Grace shoved him in front of the entrance to his new job, with her eyes suddenly overflowing from out of nowhere. The wave of emotions somehow crept up on the both of them, and every last little bit of pride that John had gotten from breaking Chad's nose vanished at the drop of a hat... or rather a tear. Grace's voice cracked as her pushes got considerably weaker and weaker after the first one, but she wasn't going to back down. Even when John raised his hands in a **** bid to try and calm her down, Grace just pushed forward, shoving at him one more time with a final surge of strength that all but threw John away from her before he could even touch her. She clearly didn't want his arms around her, she didn't want some hug, she just wanted all of the fighting to end. "... idiot!"

For a long, drawn out moment the two of them just stood there with nothing else to give voice to the rest of the world other than the angry huffing that Grace failed to hold back as she struggled to regain her own composure. The two of them stared at each other and waited as John struggled to find his own voice in that moment.

"I was ju-" he didn't get very far into his own rebuttal.

"I do not need your help!" Grace didn't give him the chance to explain himself before she was yelling at him again. "I do not need someone to come and beat my boyfriend to a pulp, and I certainly do not want or need them to be doing it for me!"

"I-I'm sorry." There wasn't much else for John to say.

"Just..." John watched as Grace's hands suddenly cut through the air between them, waving and crossing like a giant pair of scissors being snapped shut. "...leave me alone, John," she said under a heavy breath and then promptly turned and walked away. The physical trainer didn't go back inside after that. Grace simply just began walking down the street, moving away in the opposite direction of John. She left him there, standing silently by himself and wallowing in the wake of her scolding until someone finally came outside to get him.

Thankfully, they gave him a few minutes before going to get him.

"You're already late, you know?" Michel grunted softly when Grace finally disappeared from sight. "Dina excuses a lot, but you really shouldn't test the limits of a person."

"Yeah," John replied and struggled to clear his throat of the sudden blockage that he could feel stuck there, threatening to block off his breathing. He knew nothing was there, there was no trouble to his health, but it didn't change how he felt that presence. Finally, John turned to go and start the work day...

...until Michel grabbed his arm instead, stopping him just before entering the gym.

"Are you going to chew me out, too?" John cocked an eyebrow at the larger man, and Michel smiled at him. A smile that didn't last for very long.

"No. I just..." he stopped, and his features paled as John looked up at the blond. "You know that thing you told me yesterday?" The look John gave him must have given Michel his answer because upon seeing John's expression, he continued talking. "The thing about..." he trailed off. The two of them stood there, waiting for Michel to find the right words for what felt like a whole minute before John spoke up again.

"This got awkward a while ago when everyone inside heard Grace yelling at me; you can just let it out." John said, and Michel stared at him. He didn't even get a laugh this time or a break in the new, serious expression hardening the fighter's features.

"The thing about people following you?" Michel said, and after a couple seconds, John gave him a little nod. It was hard not to remember that after running into the group of armed women at his school. His brow furrowed slightly as Michel spoke, but he let him continue. "Well... after you told me about that, I think uh... I think I saw someone following me too, John..."

The street fell silent as Michel finally waited for John to say something in response to that, but both conversations left him stunned. One after another, John was struck by the surprise and repercussions of two vastly different scenarios, and he didn't even know how he was supposed to react to either one.

"W-what?" He wasn't sure if he heard that right at first. Someone followed Michel home too? "W-who was it? Did you get a good look at them?"

"No. I-I don't know! I just saw someone first in the parking lot out by my car last night and then... again outside my house an hour later. Th-they had a gun, John!" That stopped everything. Work could wait. Before either one of them could finish walking back into the gym, John was closing the door again and turning the both of them away from it to try and get some privacy. "Just what are you involved in, man?!"

"Can you describe them? What did they look like?"

The conversation didn't go very far from there. John tried helping Michel along with the physical descriptions of whoever it was that might have been following him, but even with the little clue drops that John gave him to try and help him remember something about the mystery person, Michel couldn't confirm anything about what the person may or may not have actually looked like. It had just been 'too dark out' for the Martial Artist to actually see anything other than the gun and the laser it had on it for aiming.

More than that, getting information out of Michel wasn't easy after what he had seen. The blond just wanted to walk away from the situation, and John didn't blame him. He wanted to walk away too and would have if he had been able. There were many moments in their conversation from then on where Michel just tried ending whatever friendship and conversation they were having and tried stepping back into his normal life for his own safety, but John kept trying to talk to him.

At the very least, John wanted to try and confirm that it was someone from Cassandra's group who had gone after him. It was the only thing that made sense, and thankfully, after a long, awkward conversation and a lot of convincing, John managed to get Michel to take Dina's taser for himself. He managed to talk him into agreeing to at least keep an eye out for John. He wasn't going to get personally involved in John's problems anymore, but the fighter did say he would try and watch and avoid calling the cops in the future. It turned out the local police department was equally displeased when Michel said that he somehow wasn't able to make out anything other than the gun when he saw the person standing outside his house.

Fortunately, that kind of trickery sounded like something that John could identify someone with. If they were using magic, then it wasn't that hard to believe that Michel couldn't see specific details. It all could have just been hidden.

It also meant that, if they were using magic and doing all of that because of some book that John had stolen from them, they had no problems with the idea of going after John's friends and other innocent bystanders.

They would have attacked anyone, and that couldn't go on for very long.