New Job

Tawny

My routine was fairly simple for most of my life. It was always get up in the morning, say goodbye to Mother, go to school, spend all day at school, come home, and Father didn't come home until late. Weekends were similar; I just went out and played for a while, and Father was actually home.

Then one day, almost right after my twentieth birthday, I came home from a failed job interview and Father was home. "Father, what's happened?"

His voice was sad. "I got laid off."

For a long moment, all I could do was stare. Then I asked, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

He looked so sad…so hopeless…so – was he even trying to plan what he was going to do next?!

Suddenly, I sniffed the air. And I figured I knew why he'd been laid off, and why he wasn't going to try to plan out a new job.

See, Father had a slight drinking problem. At least, it had been slight when I was a teenager. Now, it had clearly gotten severe enough to where it affected his performance at work. And that, was enough that it was noticed.

Suddenly, I realized that Mother had no experience with working, so it had to be me supporting the family somehow.

Of all the jobs I'd tried to get, none of them so far appealed to me. And now, whatever job I got had to be enough to pay my family's bills, where before I'd just been looking for spending money. I didn't have enough experience to get well-paying jobs that didn't involve something…personally unpleasant.

Well…there was one job I could try for, though it required getting a license and the process for getting that license was difficult. I'd joked about it once to Mother when I'd heard of it, and she'd scolded that it was too dangerous. Now, though, I rethought the job.

Let's see…an irregular job in that I can work when I want to and when there's something to do, and it pays extremely well. I think I'll take the job anyway. And I don't think I'll tell Mother or Father. Mother would freak and Father…would tear me apart for being a success on a good day. On a bad day, he might just hit me.

So I went out again, calling back that I had one more job application to try for.

Okay, okay, I kind of fudged my age a little when I went in for the test. It was just as difficult as I figured it would be, but I passed.

"Um…one thing I'd like to request?" I asked as I was standing to get a picture taken for my Sweeper's license.

"What is it?" the man at least decided to listen.

"Don't put my name on the license. If someone found out I was doing this, I'd end up worse than dead."

He cocked an eyebrow at me with a smirk. "And what do you want to call yourself?"

I didn't have to think long. "The Cat o' Nine Tails."

He entered that and then cracked, adjusting the camera, "Smile!"

A few days later, I got my license. By then, I'd finished sewing up my Sweeper costumes. I might as well not have anyone recognize me.

I didn't go as crazy as I could have with them, considering what I'd initially had in mind were cat costumes. I had a whole collection of Maneki Neko figurines on my dresser, and I'd figured I'd do that for my look.

All six of them were skin-tight, and all of them had matching gloves with claws on the fingertips, but they were differently-colored: I had made one white, one black, one red, one yellow, one pink and one lucky tri-color. After all, white represents purity, black wards off evil, and gold brings in money. Red and pink can combat illness or bring love, but they're also said to, in the Maneki Neko, have supernatural powers. If that happens to me during my missions, all well and good – I'll beat the bad guy that much faster.

I'd also braided a whip for myself. It was definitely a "cat o' nine tails," though its handle was longer than a typical such device. I was planning on carrying it, when I wasn't using it, by knotting the handle end around my waist and letting the nine-strand end hang down behind me like a cat's tail. I'd given my whip "claws" as well, so that I could have a decent distance weapon as well as my clawed gloves for close combat.

Now, as long as I didn't get caught with this stuff…

I packed up all the costumes and the whip into a suitcase and took it outside, finding my special hiding place in a tree several blocks down. Hiding it up there, securely tying it so it wouldn't fall, I slipped back down.

My Sweeper's license went into my pocket. I wasn't going to just leave that with my suitcase.

Well, I wanted my life as a twenty-year-old to be more interesting.

A/N: I'm purely fudging the testing process for becoming a Sweeper. I know there is one, but I remember no details and I couldn't find the information again.