Chapter 8

"You work at a dog shelter Ashley?!" Ethan asked with wide eyes.

Ashley laughed lightly as she replied him, "It's actually a volunteered act, and I don't get paid. Besides, It's only on weekends."

"Cool! Can I volunteer too?" Ethan asked her eagerly.

"Sure! The more, the merrier!" Ashley nodded as she beamed him a wide smile.

"Anyway," Andrew said and all their attentions returned to him.

"That was when Ashley suggested we went to the park to look for clues, I needed to check out some things so I agreed to it. The thing I didn't know was how Sally and Betty took the dog from right under the owner's nose, so I wanted to find out."

Suzanne adjusted herself in her seat. "Wait a minute, you mean you knew all this before we headed to the park and you didn't say a word about it?!" she asked Andrew incredulously.

Andrew shrugged.

"It was a hypothesis. I had to be exactly sure and as I was still missing some things,  I couldn't divulge it as a worthy piece of information," he replied nonchalantly.

"So what happened then?" Ashley asked, still engrosed in his explanation.

Andrew got the duster and cleaned the board as he talked.

"Funny enough there were footprints everywhere, so it was hard to differenciate which was Sally or Betty's footsteps. But then my device statistics showed something had been dragged to the bushes. So I ran a test; that was when Ryan walked up to me to know what I was doing."

"You said you were running a test and when I asked you what sort of test, you replied evasively that it might have little or no importance," Ryan cut in sharply as he narrowed his eyes at Andrew.

Andrew shrugged nonchalantly again.

"Yes, I said it 'might' have little or no importance, and you do know 'might' is used to indicate conditional or possible outcomes so.....," Andrew pushed a lock of his dark brown hair from his eyes.

Ryan looked away.

"Anyway, I knew Sally and Betty had been there earlier on; I just didn't know their present location, so I decided to find the whereabouts of Betty's mother as I knew they would meet up with her eventually," Andrew carried on.

"How'd you know where she was?" Suzanne asked him.

Andrew smirked as he glanced at her briefly. "I have my ways. I had gotten their house addresses earlier on, so it'd be easy to track them down. And also, I had contacted a team of C-ranks to get Sally as we made our way to Linda's house. Getting in was easy, thanks to my device that can open any lock but you know that already; the rest is history," Andrew concluded.

"How did you get that video anyway?" Ethan asked, still baffled.

Andrew looked away.

He had secretly tapped into the Shade's monitoring system as they had hidden cameras everywhere but he wasn't about to tell them that.

"I have my ways," was all he said as he shrugged.

Ryan shot him a suspicious look.

"Anyway, we ought to train," he reminded them as he began to pack his things up.

 "That's right!" Ethan exclaimed, as he left his position. He turned to Ashley. "Hey, Ashley, what's your skill?" he asked her as they headed out.

Ryan also went out.

Andrew put all his packed things into his laptop bag which he slung over a shoulder before glancing at Suzanne.

Suzanne huffed and looked away.

He rolled his eyes and walked out without a second glance.

That means without us Andrew could easily have solved this mission. Suzanne thought as she frowned. She really had to buckle up. She too should be a valuable attachment to the team.

"Oy! Suzanne! We're leaving!" Ethan announced as he returned to the classroom. "Right," She nodded and exited the classroom with him.

~~~

Suzanne's mouth formed an 'O' of surprise.

Ashley aimed her crossbow again at the target.

They were on the training ground in the outer area of the school.

"I'll hit that ring and the three others behind it and then the bolt will curve and hit that apple on the tree," Ashley said with certainity.

"Impossible," Ryan scoffed. His eyes challenged hers.

She tilted her head and looked at him, meeting up to his challenging look. "Don't let me make you a target too, Ryan, you won't like it," she said and smiled smugly.

"Yeah, like you could," Ryan muttered in disbelief.

Ethan sat under a tree for some shade while Suzanne laid on the grass.

Andrew nodded at Ashley. "Alright do it."

"Okay, but first, a minor change," she said and looked at Ryan, determinedly.

"I'll hit those four targets and the bolt will curve round and cut off that lock of Ryan's hair that ever keeps shooting upwards," she stated categorically as she pointed, first at the targets, then at Ryan.

With that she turned swiftly, aimed and fired.

She ran faster than the short arrow she fired.

Ethan stood up as the bolt whizzed high up in the air.

The bolt hit the center of a target and tore through the target's eye and flew on to the next target.

"That thing must be extremely sharp," Suzanne murmured as she also got up as the bolt made its way through the three other targets' eyes.

Then Ashley jumped and turned mid-air, sending a kick at the bolt, making it change direction to where Ryan stood.

"No way," Ryan's eyes widened slightly in shock.

Ashley ran and slid as it whirled above Ryan's frozen head and truly snipped off a small amount of his blue hair, then Ashley turned and caught the short bolt as it whizzed past her.

"Cool," Ethan said in amazement once he and Suzanne got to where Ashley stood.

Ryan patted his hair; he still couldn't believe Ashley's bolt had cut off a few strands of it.

Andrew typed down something on his laptop. "Not bad," he finally said, looking at Ashley calmly.

"Not bad?! That was terrific!!" Ethan exclaimed, extremely impressed. He beamed widely at Ashley.

Ashley laughed, "Thanks, Ethan. It's actually a move I'm not done with yet. I still have to practice. I actually call it 'Roundabout death' and as I caught the bolt I'm supposed to slide and use it as a dagger so that the venom can fill into the enemy's skin but I've not perfected that yet," she explained.

"It's your own move right?" Suzanne asked, as she looked at Ashley in awe.

"Sure! I made it up one day while training!" Ashley nodded.

"So you're the type that deals with poisons and weapons filled with them." Andrew said it in a way that was more of a statement than a question.

"Yup!" Ashley nodded again as she smiled at him. "And I also make cures for 'em too."

"Sweet! With a move like that we're sure to win against CIN." Ethan laughed happily. He looked around his Squad members smugly.

Ashley hurriedly shook her head. "It's not completed yet, It took me a full year to learn just those moves. Maybe in eight months' time I'd have mastered it fully." She winked at Ethan.

"Eight months!" Ethan, as usual, exclaimed in a rather loud voice. "We just have two weeks!"