Disclaimer: You can figure out what I own and what I don't. Gordon is mine.

CH14: New Gloves

Ashelin slipped on the new gloves over her hands. Without the fingers on them, she wouldn't have to worry about them ripping, as there was nothing to block her claws. She wouldn't have to remove them for wall-climbing either. They were really the kind of gloves that made getting the job done easier. When she got back to the palace, she would take the old red armor from her tattered gloves and attach them to the new ones. They looked nice and snazzy too…

…Ashelin felt an extremely sharp pain on one side of her neck. She fell to the ground on her knees that had collapsed suddenly, not knowing what happened. She felt the left side of her neck and pulled out a sharp pointed metal object and clenched it in her hand. Her vision was blurring dramatically, but she could see that the object that had penetrated her skin was a dart of some sort. She held it closer to her face, and saw a small amount of black and purple oil-like liquid drip from its point; dark eco. Her hearing faded to where she could barely hear anything, and there was a bad ringing in her ears. Her arm holding the dart went limp, and soon enough the rest of her, and went unconscious.

She was on the floor… half-awake. The floor was cold and had a metallic feel to it… She opened her eyes a little more. She was in the fortress experimentation room next to the cells… Her vision was distorted badly so it was hard to tell. She got up groggily, feeling her way around carefully until she felt a box or crate of some sort to sit on. She was really wobbly until she sat down. She was nauseated and had a horrible headache so she put her hands over her head. Her jaw was filled with an aching sensation also, which didn't make her feel much better. There was a jolting pain, not ache, in her fingernails, so she took her hands off her face in sudden shock.

And then her vision came back better than before. She looked at herself to see what was causing the pain.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

She saw that her hands were turning a light blue and razor-sharp black claws where growing from her fingernails. She tried shaking her hand in a feeble attempt to rid of the unfamiliar look of them. She got up, not knowing what to do and instinctively turned around to look for a place to run and hide. She saw her reflection on the rusty mirror-like metal wall behind her.

Her skin on her face was changing to a light blue color, and her eyes were completely black like her pupils; no iris, no whites, just black.

"Holy. Shit." She said in kind of a quiet voice as she was feeling her face, completely freaked out from the transformation. Her hair was becoming frizzy, and was turning a dark gray color replacing the red. She noticed that as she spoke, her canines had become more pointed and sharp, like short fangs. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see anything more.

"Please… oh, Mar…"

I swear to my father that I'll never spy again… But that was a few years ago before he threw me in here… that bastard…

She backed off slowly into a corner and sat back down. She tried to calm down and was breathing heavily.

I'm fine, I'm fine… no I'm not.

I have to get out of here now. She thought to herself as she grabbed her coat that was laying on the ground near her feet and put the hood on over her head and rolled down the sleeves to where her bare hands couldn't show.

She ran over to the elevator and got inside. The elevator went up to the fifth floor, the KG training center. The door opened and she rushed out into the crowd of people, knocking into them and pushing along quickly as she ran along. She turned left and came to a dead end of the hallway with an open window. A small ledge was sticking out from the bottom. She looked out of the window and saw the cars below and the slummy houses on the half-destroyed street. She backed away from the ledge and looked behind her to make sure no one was watching. She put the hood down on her coat and tried to flatten her hair a bit in frustration, and failed.

She took a deep breath and concentrated on the four-story building out side of the window. She went into a run and ran straight towards the ledge and jumped at the edge, pushing against the corner of it with her hands and feet. She made a nearly impossible leap and was coming down straight at the roof the building. She landed on it with a small thump with two feet and a hand. Her balance was practically perfect while landing too. She had actually made the jump... that was either luck or…

She started to feel like everything was fading… going black… then getting lighter again…

Ashelin opened her eyes. How long had she been unconscious from the dart? More importantly: where was she? She looked around and saw that she was in a lab of some sort… not like the fortress lab, as this one was much cleaner and most of the things were made from stainless steel, glass, and plastic. The lab in the fortress had rusty metal that was so dirty that you wouldn't even be able to identify it, and not much else. It was kind of a small lab compared to the Krimzon Guard fortress. It seemed to be about 500 by 600 square feet and had two doors with the standard 8-foot ceiling. She got up from her slouching position and then noticed that she was being contained in a large vertical glass tube. She tapped her finger on the glass and noticed it was blue and had the claws retracted to only two-thirds of an inch, not the way it was when she was holding the dart. Then it hit her: the dark eco on the dart must have caused a reaction to make her change again.

One of the doors opened. Then she saw a man in a white tunic, brown pants, and short black hair walk in and close the door behind him. He grabbed a clipboard and pen off of the counter to the left-side of him and walked over to her. Ashelin tensed up and growled at him. She didn't take her eyes off of the man as he circled her, taking notes on the clipboard.

"Will you finally stop that?!?" She said in agitation when the man finally looked like he was going to stop observing her like some sort of kid's science fair project.

"You are capable of speech?" The guy asked her calmly taking more notes on his clipboard.

"Brilliant observation!" She said sarcastically. "What do you think I am, some sort of animal?! I'm a person, so of course I talk you dip-shit! Just let me out of here and-"

"You're too dangerous to be let out of there."

"Do you really think I look 'dangerous'?" Ashelin said as she crossed her arms.

"You're staying in there, and you're not going anywhere."

"I'd like to see you try…" Ashelin said to him in a threatening tone.

"Nothing can break through tha-"

She had clenched her hand into a fist and drew it back. She bared her teeth in anger, and prepared to strike the glass container. She thrusted her fist at it, yelling in fury; and broke the glass effortlessly. Pieces shattered everywhere and fell onto the ground. She took her fist again, satisfied with the last result, and plowed it into the other side of the glass with even more force than the last blow. The glass on the whole container shattered completely.

Ashelin hopped out of the remains and onto the little shards of glass on the white tiled floor. She looked at the scientist and flexed her claws menacingly. It was easier with the new gloves on, so she wouldn't have to worry about tearing them. She glared and walked up to him carefully watching where she was walking, not even making the slightest attempt to be intimidating. The man dropped his clipboard and put his pen away in his shirt-pocket.

The glass crunched and crushed under Ashelin's boots as she neared closer to him. She saw a flash of movement that appeared to be the man's arm heading to a light switch on his left right above the counter. The lights went off and the room was pitch-black.

"Wow, that was a smart move, genius. On your part."

She walked over to him and grabbed him by the shirt collar, then picked him up and slammed him against the door. Just then, the other door next to it opened and the light went back on.

"What in the hell is going on?" Said a voice from the person that stepped out from the door.

The man was tall, really skinny, and had kind of a long face; which had tattoos on it, by the way. His hairstyle was the same as Ashelin's, except the color was more of a red-brown and pulled back a little more. His eyes were blue and stern, but when he saw the situation the scientist-dude and Ashelin were in, his eyes were more full of confusion more than anything else.

"TORN?!?" She yelped and dropped the guy from her grip. She changed back into her normal self within two seconds without even noticing and her hand was still frozen in the same position as it when she was choking the scientist-guy.

"Ashelin?" Torn said more quiet than her in a really confused tone. "What are you doing here, and what was that all about?"

"I'd like to know the same too." The scientist said in a witty voice.

"Shut up, Gordon," Torn said to the scientist, then looked back to Ashelin, "Now tell me, what is going on here? Why are you here?" He looked at Gordon. "Why is most of the equipment destroyed? And Gordon, where's the new recruit you said was on the way? You have three seconds to explain."

"She's right infront of your face. And she turned into a creature of some sort and tried to kill me." Gordon stated, which was pretty much the whole summary of what just happened.

"When you said you were going to get a recruit, you could've gotten someone besides the Baron's daughter. Hold on, run that other part by me again? There's no way in hell that she's it." Torn said to Gordon.

Ashelin kept quiet and didn't bother saying anything, knowing that 'it' was referring to the Dark Eco Freak.

"Don't believe me?" Gordon responded to Torn.

"No, as a matter of fact I don't. Show me evidence, first of all."

Gordon got up and pointed around the room at the broken glass on the floor and the container thing, and other broken objects on the counter next to him.

"And if that's not enough for you, we can go check the surveillance camera recordings."

Torn didn't say anything for a while, it appeared as if he was thinking.

"Show me the tapes." He said finally. "Someone once taught me that dangerous is useful."