Zhutto places his pencil down and looks back up to Kitsuno. "So, in the end you two along with this Gab and Jake escaped and crossed the border into Druisalle. And those two, who have seen what happened, are off doing their own thing?" Kitsuno nods, "Correct sir. We seperated after we crossed the border. Neither of us know where they are currently." Zhutto leans back in his chair and rests his hands under his chin. "I see. Well with the descriptions you two gave me of those two, I am sure Bernice and Kleau will be able to find them soon enough to bring them here for some questions. The more we know about what Horace and his cult tried to do, the better as I believe this was just a small faction of the same people."
Shade had a slight pained look on her face from having to remember that night. Her hands were gripping the arms of the chair and she was having some difficulty speaking. Kitsuno had noticed this and had a hand on her sister's back to comfort her in a way. "Zhutto, are we done explaining this? I don't know if Shade can handle much more without--" Zhutto got up from his chair and walked over to Shade. She slowly looks up at the tall minotaur before he kneels down to her eye level. "I know it's not great talking about it, I just needed the information so we can try to flush out the rest of them."
Shade stares into his eyes, her own having a burning desire of revenge in them. "So... there is more." Zhutto raises a hand and places it on top of Shade's head before rubbing back and forth. Shade closed her eyes and let go of the chair because of the huge hand moving her around. "All in due time young lady. For now, let's focus on your tasks." As he stops rubbing Shade's head and stood back up, he walks back to his end of the desk and pulled out some paperwork. "For one, you two need to sign some papers. This goes to the town hall to help place your names into the system to make it easier for you to be recognized by other high figures in Sarydia. Another reason would be in case something goes wrong," his eyes wander towards Shade, "Like getting arrested or held for ransom."
He then slides the paperwork and a pen to the girls. "There are a couple lines on the pages that I need you both to sign." Kitsuno takes the pen and starts reading over the documents and signing where her name is needed. Shade does the same, but does hers a little more quickly as she skimmed over some parts that looked ridiculously long.
Once the contracts were fully filled, Zhutto takes the paperwork and gets up. "Alright then. With this, you two are now employed into the Sarydian Mercenaries Guild." The minotaur walks towards the door and opens it. "Come along you two, some introductions are needed." Both of them get up and follow behind Zhutto.
Mally looks back from her seat as she sees her boss escorting the two out. "As you two have met already, this is Mally. She's in charge of the paperwork for the bulletin board. Whether it be on the computer or people coming here in person to ask for assistance. We try to get to most problems we can attempt." Mally brushes her hair aside and looks at Zhutto. "I still think it's not a great idea bringing these two into this Zhutto, but you've made up your mind and I can't fight you for that..." she sighs before looking at the kitsunes. "But yes, I help out with some of the assignments. Though, if I'm not here and you end up getting asked to do something, try to leave a note. We don't want someone going missing because they were escorting someone to Poltskin unannounced."
Her nose twitches a bit as she focuses on the girls. "Ah... I thought I smelled something off about you two. Both of you are in heat, aren't you?" Zhutto had a look of confusion on his face as he looks down at the twins. "Are they? I honestly didn't noticed." Mally shakes her head, "Probably because your nose is broken. You've taken one too many punches to the face Zhutto."
He let's out a laugh, "I'm sure my sense of smell is fine." Shade and Kitsuno were still confused on this as neither of them could tell. Kitsuno looks at Mally, "Uh, Miss Mally?" Mally immediately puts up a finger, "Please, don't call me miss. Mally is fine." Kitsuno nods, "Okay. Now, Shade and I have a question about this... heat. We honestly can't tell a difference."
Mally blinks before looking both of them up and down. "Hmm... I think you two and I need to have a little girl time to understand that more." She turns her attention to Zhutto. "When they are done getting a tour, just hand them over to me and I can get those issues squared off. Can't have our newest recruits getting pregnant on their first day after all."
"Yeah, we don't need that happening." The minotaur turns his head out to the now empty building. "Hmm? Seems Beatrice and Kleau took off." Mally nods before returning to her paperwork. "Yeah, the elves left a little while ago. Ivan came flying in when you were talking to these two, apparently a fire broke out from a truck exploding and Ivan tracked the culprits to where they were hiding."
"Any injured or dead?" Mally shakes her head, "Sadly I have yet to get info on that. Ivan made it quick and to the point so he could fly back and make sure they didn't escape as they aren't far." Zhutto nods, "With those three on the task then those bandits won't know what hit them."
Zhutto then takes Shade and Kitsuno up to the second floor to show them what was up there. "To your right here is everyone's rooms. Word of advice, don't go peeking around someone's room. Especially Ivan's." Shade looks up at Zhutto in question. "May I ask why the sudden reasoning?" The minotaur looks around carefully before leaning in. "Trust me when I say this you two. I've accidentally walked into things I didn't want to see. Ivan still brings it up to me to this day of why his private life is to be respected." Kitsuno and Shade nod.
Zhutto walks the two down to the end of the hall just to stop at the second to last door. "We have two rooms left and it would be these right here. I know you two don't really have anything to settle in with, but here is a start, right?" He reaches forth on the door and open it up to reveal a clean looking room with a dresser, bookshelf, and a cozy looking bed. "State of the arms quality for basic comfort. The rooms aren't any different except for how you personalize them yourselves. Just don't leave it cluttered with too much junk and it'll be fine. Especially if it's sweets. We already had an ant problem before and I would like to not have that happen again."
Shade looks at Kitsuno before looking at the first room and then at the second room. "Mmm... same rooms eh?" Kitsuno wraps an arm around her sister. "Don't worry Shade. It's not like I'll be that far." She smiles and nods.
Zhutto turns around to point out the other doors. "On the other side we have a supply closet for basic cleaning supplies, the main washroom for men and women along with restrooms. Just... try not to get confused where the elves end up. I swear they switch up the game just to screw with people."
The three head back downstairs and walk towards a room that has bookshelves filled with books, much to Kitsuno's delight as her eyes lit up a bit. "Here we have the library. It's not much as it is just some history for combat arts, basic magic spells, survival tactics, and every once in a while you can find a cookbook in here." Zhutto looks up to one of the top shelves, "Though, if I am to be honest. I really have no idea how many books are here that have been touched. Some of these look new, but at the same time if feels like some people come from the public library and accidentally leave the book here."
This just seemed to confused the kitsunes. If some of the books were from the library, and people left it here. Shouldn't someone be coming to look for it?
The group makes their way outside to the back. "And this is our training grounds. Get use to seeing this a lot girls as starting today, you'll be tasked to train with many different styles of weapons to see which ones favor you the most." Shade looks over the open flat grounds as it had training dummies in armor standing in place here and there and with weapon racks hanging on the walls that held various weapons meant for training.
The girls walk over to some of the racks and inspected some of the training weapons. A few of them had nicks and dents in them. Shade then looks at Zhutto, "So... we can use whatever weapon we like?" He nods, "So long as you remember to help keep the equipment maintained."
Kitsuno walked off to another rack of weapons to inspect something else, while Shade picked up one of the dull training swords. She then looks around and sees a wooden shield on the wall and walks over to grab it. The older twin walked out into the training field to give a few swings of the sword around. "Alright Shade. Why not give a few strikes to the dummy there. Do note that it does move and tends to wobble a lot." Shade looks at the dummy and gets into a fighting stance and begins taking some strong swings at the iron plated hay bags.
Kitsuno on the other hand, was still looking at weapons. Nothing was really catching her eye to what she would prefer using. Not long though does she come across some bows and she decides to pick one up. Zhutto smiles as he sees that the younger twin had found something. "Fancy being a ranger there Kitsuno?" He then walks over to Kitsuno as Shade kept swinging hard on the training dummy.
Zhutto then takes Kitsuno to the range section of the training area and point over to some targets in the distance. "We have a nice setup here for some accuracy shots. If we want to work on distance, we'd have to go outside of town to the other training ground." Zhutto takes the bow from Kitsuno and kneels down for her eye level to watch as he draws the bow back, "Don't pull back too hard or you'll snap something." He relaxes the draw to reach for an arrow in the quivers latched onto the nearby bars and notched the arrow in the bow to pull back again. "What you want to do is keep a calm mind, breath deep, focus on your target, and then release." He then let go of the arrow and it goes flying into the range to hit one of the targets on a lower section of the rings.
Zhutto then hands the bow back to Kitsuno, "Go ahead and give it a try." Kitsuno nods as she grabs an arrow and right as she notched it into the bow, "Argh! GOD DAMN IT!" Both of them look out into the training ground as Shade reeled back from the training dummy as it had rocked back a bit and clashed into Shade head first. Zhutto makes his way towards Shade, "Shade, are you okay?"
He stopped as Shade growled a bit before she quickly took a step back to slam the shield into the dummy and as it rocked back a bit to end up smacking her again, she raised the sword she was using and slashed down heavily. Metal crunches echo a bit as she had forced the sword down hard where it dented the armor on the dummy and bent it down backwards on its stand. Zhutto paused there as he just witness a young girl bludgeon a training dummy in metal armor with a dull blade.
Shade takes a few deep breaths as she stepped back after letting go of the sword. Her hand reaches up and rubs her head from the impact. "Ugh... I'm gonna feel that one later." Zhutto once again walks up to Shade and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe a sword isn't for you. Doing something like that isn't great for the blade and can lead to many openings for you to be attacked." The sword handle then falls off of the blade and falls onto the ground with a clunk. "Perhaps you should try something much necessary for that strength of yours."
Shade looks down at the sword handle, "Should I go get a new sword to replace that one?" Zhutto thinks this over for a moment before answering. "Don't worry about it Shade. I'll get this taken care of later." The kitsune then goes to the weapon racks again to pick out something else while Zhutto walked back to Kitsuno to see how she was faring.
Kitsuno was drawing the bow with an arrow as she was taking aim. "From the sound of things, I take it Shade broke something?" The minotaur nods, "Yeah. Your sister has a bit of a temper I see. Reminds me of my niece when she was your age." He then looks over to the targets as Kitsuno lets loose of her arrow and it goes flying to hit a bullseye. In her fifth target.
The minotaur rubs his eyes as if he was seeing things. But it was not his eyes playing tricks on him. Kitsuno somehow had perfect shots in five of the nine targets. "How many arrows did you shoot?" Kitsuno turns her head to the quiver she was using before looking up at Zhutto. "Eight. Why?" He looks off into the distance and counts the arrows that had been fired. The one he shot, the five bullseyes Kitsuno landed, and the last three were close to hitting a bullseye. Two were on the same target.
"Have you ever held a bow before Kitsuno?" She shakes her head, "No sir. This is the first time using one." He rubs his head with one hand, "What about other ranged wepons? Like... a slingshot? I know some kids like to get their hands on one to aim at wasp or bee nests." Kitsuno questioned the logic behind that as it was crude and just sounded like a bad time was bound to happen because of that. "No sir. Shade and I never had one."
Zhutto was now puzzled on how Kitsuno had near perfect aim. His thoughts were interrupted as Kitsuno ran off into the training ground. "SHADE! PUT THAT DOWN!" Zhutto looks off to where the kitsune went and soon joined her as Shade had somehow found a huge warhammer and was dragging it around to try to take a swing.
Two hours pass after Shade failed to swing a warhammer that was Zhutto's weapon. She had to have wandered off into another room to pick it up as it was not suppose to be in the training grounds. Regardless, both of them made sure she didn't get ahold of weapons she shouldn't be wielding.
Swords were out as Shade tried another blade, one slightly thicker and longer than the first one she broke. While a double handed blade was a little more effective in her hands than a one handed one, she still managed to put a dent into another training dummy with it. Thankfully she didn't complete break the sword, aside from giving it now a little extra on the edges from the metal armor that stuck to it.
Next that she was given to try were gauntlets. Zhutto set up three targets for her to use as practice. Shade got a little eager with said targets and cracked the handle in her right gauntlet after getting it stuck in the target. Zhutto sighed as this girl was going to be a handful if she can't control her strength that well.
Kitsuno offered to see if Shade wanted to use a bow, and while Shade thought about it, she did say it was best if one of them was more of a shield for the other. Zhutto was a little confused by this, but he got the idea that she meant she wanted to be the wall to protect her sister. Kitsuno, however took the hint that she knew she already had her ranged attacks. That being her magic, to which she was doing her best to not use it in front of the minotaur.
One of the last weapons, before Zhutto forced her to stop, was a spear. Shade had full grip on the polearm as she used it to jab at some targets before raising it in the air for a downward strike and then spun around to slam the edge of the spear into the dummy. Before she was about to deliver another blow, Zhutto grabbed her by the shoulder. "I... think that's enough Shade."
She blinks before lowering the spear. "Aw... really? I was just getting warmed up." The minotaur reaches for the spear and takes ahold of it as Shade let go of the weapon. He then ushers her to follow her sister as he escorts them out of the training ground. "Tomorrow is another day for training. But before we start with that, we need to get you both outfitted with some proper armor and clothing."
The three make it back into the main reception area and Mally perked her ears up as their footsteps grew closer to her desk. "I take it the girls are done training for the day?" Zhutto nods, "Yep. I have some things I need to figure out so we can continue things. But for now, they are in your hands Mally. I'll handle the rest of the day myself."
Mally gets up from her seat at the desk and walks around to the gate to open it and stops right in front of the twins. "Alright then. Come along you two, let's go get you some clothes and some special perfume to mask up your heat. Just stay near me the entire time okay." Kitsuno then nudges her sister. "This means no wandering off to where your nose wants to go sis." Shade looks at her sister with accusation, "Come on... it's not my fault the bakery smelled delicious. It was blueberry lemonade sweetrolls."
"How are you even sure it was exactly that? I know I smelled blueberries as well, but it couldn't have been that specifically." Kitsuno jabs at her sister again before hugging her and looking at Mally. "Maybe we can stop by the bakery to curb my sister's sweet fang while we are at it." Mally giggles at the two. "I am sure we can arrange. I know which bakery Shade's talking about. Maybe we can find something you like there as well Kitsuno."
The three ladies then head off as Zhutto watches them leave. He stays there a moment before walking back to the training grounds and evaluate the carnage Shade had done. Several training dummies were smashed, a few swords broken or stuck in the dummies. An axe that she used was impaled into a wall that had a target, which was now splintered on the ground.
He walked up to it and gripped onto the axe before forcing it out with ease. "That girl... what is she?" He does a double take on the entire training ground. "I get some of the young ones are full of energy, but she is definitely something else." The minotaur then wanders over to the archery range and walked over to the targets. As he reaches for the arrows however, he noticed that the ones Kitsuno fired were deeper than the one he shot.
As he watched over her sister, she went to take some more shots. A lot have impaled close by to each other and each one of her shots were halfway through the targets. "How... how far back is she drawing her shot?"
"Zhutto? You around in here?" Someone calls down from the corridor. "I saw Mally wasn't at the front desk and the others aren't around. Someone...." A boar walked into the training ground and his jaw dropped as he saw the carnage that had occurred. Zhutto walks out from the archery range and waves. "Hey Maurice."
"Zhutto... what happened!?" The minotaur looks around the place before shrugging. "Training."
