Surprise!

Her hands were stuffed, hidden, in her pockets as she watched John and his friends face off with the local football star. From what John could see, she was just standing there and glaring at him, but it had the intended effect. He could already feel his heart sinking into a hollow pit in the center of his chest again. Frank, he could have dealt with. Frank was just a piece of shit, without any source of power. After getting killed already, Frank really just felt like a bug to him. He could make John hurt, for sure, but Cassandra...

The moment he had had before when John had seen her under the dark night sky seemed clarified for him now. Everything he thought he had seen, from little tricks of the light, to stuff he might have imagined was reborn before him as tufts of actual snow white hair flailed and whipped about in the air behind her. She hadn't just seemed so dangerously different the night before, she had been different! Her hair was no longer black or really even normal anymore. It was not tinted with any kind of natural color that he was used to but whipped and moved behind her as if these strangely dyed locks had been taken by a gust on a windless day.

She was still clad in the typical Ashcroft skirt and blouse combo when he saw her. The combination of red, black, and white colors streaking down her fit, busty form were actually lit up to John as he stopped in front of the gym. Her body, despite the way people seemed to just walk past her as if nothing was wrong, was now shrouded in the glow of a familiar, baleful light. A flare of beaming scarlet that smoldered within the rings of just one of her irises looked right at him as she began to move forward. Her hands twitched and thumbed at the skirt on her waist, as if she was reaching for a weapon that was supposed to rest there naturally...

...then she actually drew a sword from thin air. A glistening katana made of a wavy black and silver compound slid out from a sheath of actual nothingness at her hip. The air around her other hand began to ripple and shift as she walked; waves of energy poured down off her fingers in a way that actually began to slowly distort the world around her. John's breath caught in his throat as he watched her blade flick out of its sheath so smoothly that it was like it hadn't even been there in the first place.

No... John shook his head. He had to go as far as to remind himself of it. The weapon really had not been there... He had to keep his wits. She had already unintentionally killed him once today from what had to have been magic. He wasn't so keen to learn what it would be like if she actually tried.

With her free hand, Cassandra stopped and looked down at the visible, pulsing power in her grasp. Her breathing steadied, her body straightened, and her hand just began to lift to the open sky. The air around her fist slowly shifted with her movement and changed as she held it up. The energy she had been holding suddenly condensed, as if being **** into a solid state when a random civilian grabbed onto John's shoulder.

How was he even supposed to stop something like that?

Trap Barrier creation detected! Trap Barrier progress at 70%!

"John!" Michel's voice snapped loudly in John's ear as Michel shook his shoulder with the one firm hand, and John jumped at the sound. "Come on, man, you're already la-" the fighter paused upon seeing the look on John's face. "Whassamatter?"

John blinked, and Michel followed his gaze...but sure enough, Cassandra was already gone.

"John?"

"I..." John swallowed and tried to still the shaking in his hands. "I think I'm being followed."

"Followed? By that tall douche of a guy who was here a moment ago?" Michel's jaw ground tightly together as he spoke. It eased the knot of anxiety in John's stomach slightly to see he wasn't the only one who thought that way about Frank. Michel was slowly leading John back into the gym as he spoke. John, in his current state, just let him take him.

"N-no," he stuttered and glanced nervously back at the entrance of the gym. "That was Frank... He-he's just an asshole..."

"I can believe it," Michel joked... and promptly apologized when he saw that John didn't laugh. "Is it just some kind of stalker or something?"

"I..." The gamer paused. Was this something to tell Michel about? Even if he had just covered John's back, it wasn't like that just earned him the right to learn about John's powers. If anything, telling him about that could have not only put John in that much more danger but also put Michel in trouble too... or it would have made him safer if the previous encounter was anything to go by.

In the end, John decided not to tell him. It was too much of a gamble for him, and with the choices he had, he couldn't take it... so he went halfway.

"I-I'm not sure who it is exactly," he lied. "but... I don't think their intentions are good."

"Dangerous?" Michel asked, and the look John gave him apparently told him all he needed to know. "Got it," he said with a short nod. "How about you go clock in and spend some time with the heavy bag...and I will check to see if Dina still has her old taser in the office, eh? Then maybe you have something other than those lightning fists to protect yourself with." Michel flashed him a little grin as he turned to walk away, and John reluctantly returned it, his features shifting into a grimace as the blond man walked away. He wasn't even sure if a taser would have helped him with something like this...

...and what the hell was a trap barrier?