The Cloak Guard

Aftermath, Part 4

"Hey Pete! We've got two more orders of sausage rolls!"

"What?" came the reply.

Aunt Janice muttered something under her breath about hearing aids before marching into the kitchen. Personally, Franklin thought the hearing issues stemmed from the constant yelling but when he'd tried bringing it up, they'd both yelled at him that they weren't yelling. It was hard to believe they'd been married over twenty years. What wasn't hard to believe as that Franklin's cousin Javicia had moved to England for university. Was probably the only place she couldn't hear them.

"Was Uncle Pete always like this?" Franklin asked as his mom finished up an order.

"Oh no. When we were kids, he was much louder. I think Janice mellowed him out a little over the years."

"This is him toned down?" Franklin asked in disbelief, watching his aunt and uncle arguing in the kitchen. If one didn't know better, they'd think the two were about to kill each other. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise Franklin at this point.

He was about to say something else when Angie appeared, bringing in some fresh rolls of bread. Franklin quickly made himself busy organizing the muffin display even though he'd already done that to the point where they couldn't possibly be any straighter.

"Ok seriously, what is going on with you two?" his mom asked.

"Nothing!" they both said.

"Really?" Franklin winced at the tone, knowing she was giving them both 'the look' at the moment, making him work on the muffins even more. "You haven't spoken to each other in weeks. That doesn't seem like 'nothing' to me."

"It's his fault," Angie said.

"She's the one doing it," Franklin said at the same time. They both shot a glare at each other before looking away.

Their mom sighed. "Alright, if you two can't behave civilly, then maybe it's best if you separate. But mark my words, this little tiff you have going on with each other is going to end. For now, Franklin take a break. You've done enough work for today."

Franklin took off his apron without a word and left, grateful. It had been almost four weeks now and Angie still barely said a word to him, just shot glares and looks in his direction. And honestly, after what she had said, he wasn't really in the mood to talk anyway. Instead, he spent most of his time in the basement, training his powers.

The punching bags didn't last long thanks to his strength. He'd tried packing them with rocks instead of sand but the bags just split open faster. So he'd just gotten a boulder and tried punching that. A few seconds later, it had turned to rubble so that was also out.

It had taken him a little while but he'd finally figured it out. Most of his life, he punched hard to increase his strength and durability. But he didn't need to do that anymore. In fact, he was aiming to not do that. So, instead, he put up the old punching bags again and focused on holding back enough so that he didn't put too much power into each swing. From then on, his training regimen had been easier to plan out. Instead of giving it his all, he began training himself on holding back. He got a large block of wood and began punching that as well, but made sure to only hit it enough that a small dent appeared. It was still a work in progress as it was hard to find the right stuff to train with. He'd had no idea what to do with his normal weights since he could lift all of them at once now with no problem. He eventually settled on using them for throwing, hurling them like Frisbees. The first one he'd used at max strength and it had smashed through a couple trees before lodging firmly in a third. From then on, he limited his strength with that as his baseline.