Saturday, November 27, 2021 - Irvington, New Jersey, United States

“That was awful. Just awful. In all my days teaching, I have never seen anyone worse. Here, you see this?” The instructor was pointing to a small origami person he had been folding while Ella had run the course, “I could tape a gun to this and it would have been a better run.”

Ella just nodded and trembled a bit. She didn’t say anything.

The instructor continued, “You are too scared of the gun. Even in this stupid simulator. We are going to go to the range and shoot enough live rounds that you get over it.”

Ella nodded and they headed over to a different room. The ear protection barely seemed to mute anything and she flinched at the reports.

They came up next to the stall where Donna was taking shot after shot.

The instructor pointed at her and said, “See how relaxed she is? You said you needed this so it is time to sack up and get over it.”

He cleared and then handed her a rifle and said, “Now this sexy motherfucker is a Swiss B&T APC9 Pro. Way nicer than that shit we keep in the simulator. Way more expensive too. You getting me?”

Ella nodded and gingerly took the carbine in hand. She checked the chamber and slotted the magazine when he handed it to her. She checked the safety. Then did it again.

“Now take your stance and shoulder the stock.” His arms reached around her to adjust her stance and how the stock sat on her shoulder. His breath stunk of cheap cigars, and she was wondering if he had to brush her breasts as many times as he did. She felt a bit gross but bit her lip and ignored it. She needed to be good at this.

“Now memorize this position and go to a normal standing position and come back to this five times.”

She did it and screwed up on her second one. He started the count again. Eventually she got it right.

“Now line up and take your shots just like we practiced. You want to practice tactical style for being on the move: so shoot after you breathe out and then also brace and shoot when holding your breath in. Alternate.”

She aimed down the sight and took a couple of breaths. Then, while at her respiratory pause, took a shot. The recoil jarred her shoulder and she squeezed the trigger again sending another shot well wide of the target.

“Shit. That sucks. Keep shooting. Don’t freak out like that. Bullet should only go out when you want it to.”

“Fuck…” Ella whined as she rubbed her shoulder. Everything was sore but she would definitely be feeling it tomorrow if she didn’t have a bruise.

Donna started laughing and completely — and very intentionally — clapped her hand onto Ella’s shoulder. Then she squeezed, grinding her thumb right into the spot that was sore.

“Ouch, ouch, ouch. Get those huge Franken-fingers off me.”

“Oh quit whining. You need to massage that out like this.” Donna started grinding her thumb in and Ella yelped.

“Anyway,” Donna continued while still digging her thumb into Ella’s shoulder, “I’ll see you tomorrow at the gym. My groupings sucked today so I need to do something easy.”

“Thanks!” Ella said sarcastically as she finally got Donna to let her go. She had spent more time at this place than she had wanted to and more money on ammunition than she wanted to. And the skeezy instructor had gotten more and more aggressive in his leering. She was going to go home and take like three showers.

And yet later that day she was at the gym carrying Atlas stones and her shoulder was just a bit sore. She was looked into doing something like Habitat for Humanity instead to get stronger at the same time as helping people but COVID had prevented that for now.

While she lifted she spent her time thinking through her research topics and prioritizing the work she needed to get done. She had pretty much sacrificed her personal life entirely to fit in training and needed to find a better balance.

She also needed to carve out more time to figure out just what was going on but her leads were thin. Relying on her “sense” had gotten her attacked in a cemetery , which, in turn, had led her at the firing range this morning.

That evening, Jae Young accompanied her walking aimlessly in the snow as she “listened” for some sign of the supernatural. The one small thing they had found had been a strange flower that glowed unnaturally with her second sight and she got the strong feeling she shouldn’t do anything with it, so they left it in the sidewalk crack in SoHo, the snow and wind doing its best to bury it.

“Winds howling,” grunted Jae and they reluctantly gave up.

The next day she walked to the gym, keeping her eyes open. The snow and wind continued and the skies were dark. Her rubber boots with thick woolen socks weren’t enough and she could feel the cold leech into her feet.

Donna smacked her around some and then lost interest since Ella was obviously distracted. “Get your head into the game!” And then clocked her with a vicious hook that Ella staggered from.

“I’m done” Donna backed off and took off her gloves. “You are not here. That punch was telegraphed like David Alter sent it.”

“Who is that? Some boxer?”

Donna gave a rare smile. “Yeah. David “The Demon” Alter. Anyway I’ll catch you later in the week when you are more focused.”

Ella felt a bit bad and was about to pull off her gloves when Craig ducked through the ropes and came in.

She tried to demur, “I am not in the mood.”

“What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood!” and he launched a hard roundhouse at her thigh. She shifted her weight and took the blow with a slight turn of her shin outwards before launching a cross.

They traded blows, Ella intentionally tanking a lot of them and trying to set up for hits. Craig kept upping the power of his hits and by the end she wasn’t sparring as much as going full out. She barely noticed when she stepped into him with a hard hip check catching him off balance, a rabbit punch and heel hook managed to keep him moving back.

“Nice. If I wasn’t double your weight, that would have knocked me. Nice to see that flow… umph!”

Ella had gone for something flashy she had seen someone else do and landed a spinning back kick right in his ribs knocking him down. Something she had only done against the heavy bag before and it hit hard.

“Well fuck. I guess I shouldnt be telling you to be ready and then not be myself.” Craig wheezed a bit as he caught his breath.

He got up again and put her down hard with a quick jab, cross and a sweep / stiff-arm move. She got up again and he just grabbed her and threw her back down.

“You aren’t going to ever be able to take me down. The weight difference is too much.”

Ella smiled while looking down. For the first time, Craig had resorted to throwing his mass around. She held out her hand when he started to strip off his gloves, “let’s go again.”

In the end she stayed for hours and even Donna threw in a “fuck it” and, despite having showered, got back into it when she saw them going at it.

Ella broke down and grabbed an Uber. She was sore and bruised, far too much to fall asleep and she ended up spending her time trying to get her head around a paper on arXiv.1 Then she spent her time trying to do some modeling in software, something she really needed to work on more. Her Python code was a spaghetti mess by the end.

Dawn rose and she felt more relaxed. Hard physical work and mental work had taken the edge off.

And then Jae-Young called and blew her calm out of the water.

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