Forgotten (2018 Open Novella Contest/LoT Fanfic)

Chapter 4: Ancient Mysteries

A few more days passed with nothing too interesting occurring, besides Jasmine uncontrollably shapeshifting into deadly and vicious animals as a result of not wearing her totem. Leonard had hidden it and she had to admit that he had hidden it well—she had gone through his entire room when he wasn't in there and had only managed to find empty containers of booze, most likely left behind by Mick.

Also in the past few days, Sara and Amaya had decided that Jasmine needed to be trained, so the majority of her time was being taken up by training sessions. Jasmine was still pretty peeved at Amaya for taking away her necklace, which may or may not have been why she kept transforming into random deadly animals during training. She was trying to control it, but it was imposible to get a close hold on her abilities because of her emotions.

When Jasmine wasn't training with Amaya, eating, or sleeping, she could be found training with Sara, who still slightly intimidated Jasmine. After all, Sara could easily kill her at any moment.

"What's the point of even doing this?" Jasmine had asked one day during training. "Like I said before, I can take care of myself without my powers. So why am I here?"

"So you can prove it to me," Sara said, tossing her a bo staff before smirking at her. "And remember—no powers."

"Can't promise that considering that Leonard hid my totem and without it, my powers are out of control," she said under her breath, but lifted her bo staff and sparred against the ex-assassin anyway.

***

A day or two later, Sara had asked Jasmine during training a rather jarring and disturbing question—one that she was not at all expecting.

"Have you ever killed anyone?" she had asked out of the blue, looking over at Jasmine. The girl was about to ask if that was some sort of cruel joke, but one glance into Sara's eyes told her otherwise. Jasmine stood still like a deer caught in the headlights, not saying anything.

"So you have," Sara remarked, looking at her with an arched eyebrow.

"What makes you say that?" Jasmine answered defensively, crossing her arms.

"Your reaction," she stated simply.

"Maybe I have. Maybe I haven't. What's it to you?" she asked aggressively. She mentally slapped herself for being so obvious.

"Well if you're going to have to kill your own doppelgänger, I need to know that you're capable of it," she pointed out. "You're a decent fighter—I'll give you that, but quite frankly, you don't seem like a killer." Before she could think of a response, the resident pyro was talking.

"Did someone say killing?" Mick asked, appearing from what seemed like out of nowhere.

"We're not killing anyone, Mick," Jasmine replied, her voice dripping with annoyance. "I'm sure you and Leonard will be the first to know if we need anyone dead."

Mick nodded and shot her an amused look before taking another swig of his beer.

"Unlike you, I'm not a former assassin," she added darkly, turning back to face Sara. "I don't... I don't want to think about the deaths I've caused," she stated quietly, more of an afterthought than anything else. Unfortunately for her, the assassin and the kleptomaniac heard her.

"Oo, someone's not as innocent as she pretends to be," Leonard remarked with a smirk, joining his partner and the others in the room. Jasmine suddenly got very aggressive.