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But at the very least, Jercash certainly had his eye on him now. Karkash had already made a solid first impression on him back in Kavia, when Jercash’s men finally tracked his little group down.

Apparently, the kiddos were the ambitious sort. Which wasn’t exactly abnormal, of course. If you weren’t ambitious, you didn’t have a place in Abolish as anything other than a slave--or something equivalent to one without the label.

But it was still a rare thing to see someone enacting such risky plans without much apparent firepower to back them up.

Karkash and his little buddy--Desmond or something--had gathered a ragtag bunch of maniacs in order to start targeting locations that prominent Vanguardians were known to have some connection to.

A common enough tactic, historically, but Jercash had admittedly not seen it used in a while. Mostly because the Vanguard had cracked down on it extremely hard the last time. These youngsters wouldn’t remember that, of course, but that was no excuse for their reapers. It made him wonder if the sneaky buggers were concealing that tidbit of knowledge from them.

Part of him hoped so. It’d be amusing. Plus, he didn’t want to open his big mouth and destroy their dreams. Abolish needed that type of eagerness.

And whaddya know? So far, they’d surprised him. If they kept this up, he’d have to promote them soon, regardless of their ages.

Not that they’d told him how young they really were. He could just tell. They had that air about them. That dark naivete.

And their auras weren’t exactly up to snuff, either. But perhaps that was a different matter.

With the opening that their unexpected success in killing Carson had provided, Jercash’s plans had been thrown off. With the benefit of hindsight, that was obvious, but at the time, he hadn’t realized what a precarious situation he had been put in. That youthful eagerness had infected him, hadn’t it?

Because naturally, with one of the three big names down, the other two would be looking for revenge, right? Which would make them overextend themselves, right? And of course, their overall might would be at its lowest since the war broke out, right? Therefore, the best course of action was to change tactics and start pushing forward in order to take advantage of a weakened, disorganized enemy.

Right?

Wrong, apparently.