CH13: The Job Offer

Training wasn't so rough that day, but Erol kept eying Ashelin with a glare during the whole time. By the end of class, Ashelin wasn't even tired from all of the extra push-ups. She did them with one hand, by the way.

"I'm surprised with your sudden improvement… did that little cleaning of the cells help at all?" Erol said as she was exiting the room.

Ashelin's heart skipped a beat. Was he talking about the first time she had to clean the experimentation room and cells 3 weeks ago, or the time on Friday morning when Jak was tortured?

"Yes…" She said shakily, guessing that he didn't know what happened the other time.

"Good. Discipline is the key. You made such an improvement that I've put something into consideration. If you get any better, I may offer you to be the Captain of the Krimzon Guard. A step lower from my rank, as you should very well know."

"I'll do it sir." She said, almost enthusiastically.

"Good. Keep up the good work…" He said as he turned his back and walked in the opposite direction.

The next few weeks were cold, as winter was approaching early this year and the fiery-colored leaves of all the trees were falling off slowly. Ashelin had only half a month to go before the KG training was over and before she became a Captain. Being the Captain sounded like a challenge, especially with the alert about a monster running around the city. Even if no one has figured it out yet, it'd still be quite difficult keeping the whole situation hush-hush. Only a few weeks have passed, and 3 people know already that are supposedly alive: Jinx, Mog, and Grim. Life got easier and much more difficult at the same time somehow due to these 'powers', though. So it wasn't a free ride.

Ashelin had still not bought a new pair of gloves yet, ever since she ruined her last pair with her claws, so she headed over to the bazaar to buy another new pair. There were only a few shops open at the time, since everything closes in the evening. There were patches of snow on the ground here and there and on the terracotta-tiled roofs of the mini-markets.

She spotted the shop she was looking for in the back of the market next to a tent that appeared to belong to a soothsayer of some sort. The shop was still open and a man with long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, like Jinx's, was watching the shop with a dazed and bored look on his face. Ashelin walked up and looked at the nice leather gloves that were for display there. Most of them were either black or brown, and there was only one pair of light navy blue left.

Ashelin wanted to purchase the navy blue ones, and lucky her, they were the right size.
"I'll get the blue ones." She said as she pointed to them. The storeowner removed them from the display and placed them next to the cash register.

"Credit or debit card?" The owner said to her as he was typing in things on the box.
Ashelin flashed her Krimzon Guard badge to him.
"Ah, I see..." He said nervously as he quickly handed the gloves to her for free. "Come again!"

"Hold on, do you have a knife or something I can borrow really fast?" She asked him as her attention was focused on the gloves.

"I'm pretty sure I do…" The storeowner started rummaging through all of the shelves and drawers until he came across a sharp shiny object. He picked it up and handed it to Ashelin, who took it immediately and started cutting off the fingers of the gloves. The guy didn't even ask what she was doing to them; he just waited for her to give the knife back.

After all of the fingers were cut off on them, she put the knife back on the counter table.

"Thanks." She said as she turned around and walked away, examining her gloves.