If Rowena resented Mark for forcing her into the fight, she didn’t show it; instead, routine began to settle into her life once more, and soon enough she was juggling her life, her job and her training with the ease expected of someone growing up as shadow warrior. Mark’s teaching method switched from testing Rowena to providing her with obstacles to tackle at her own pace. After three weeks, she hadn’t had a bit of firearms training, but she wasn’t overly concerned about that. There was so much to learn about herself, about what her body could do, how to use that strength and poise she’d trained all her life.
Mark watched her progress with growing silence. There wasn’t anything to say, snide or helpful.
On a Wednesday morning, Rowena started her usual training run. Her gi was worn-in now, she’d figured out how to fit the elbow and knee pads properly, and the fingerless gloves on her hands felt right. The first obstacle was a simple waist-high wall - there was no question as to whether it could be overcome, the really interesting part was the how. The choices were legion, and Mark had drilled her on all of them. One could simply jump it, but that required speed and vertical space. Vaulting with hands on the wall was easiest, but required hands in a profession that could ill afford to lose them to such trivial matters. Then, of course, there was the dive, combining a hands-free approach with a low jump-height, but it required a good roll on the other side.
Rowena went for a one-handed vault.
Behind that beckoned a corner, with a reinforced wall roughly opposite to a balancing beam. Still blessed with speed, Rowena headed for the wall, set her left foot against it and skipped onto the beam before flipping off it. Mark had commented that the advanced form of that exercise would be a backflip off the wall and then landing in a stable position on the beam, but he hadn’t managed that one, either. Rowena recalled how she had cracked a smile at the thought of Mark trying that, but after seeing him run the course, it seemed like what he couldn’t do paled in comparison to what he managed despite his bulk and age.
Concentrate.
Her feet touched the ground from the flip; Rowena spun around on her heel and delivered a series of quick kicks to the training dummy in front of her. That done, she put her hands back onto the beam and pumped herself up, quickly walked backwards along the beam and backflipped off it at the end, landing in the eight of the large target painted onto the training mat. Damn, Rowena thought, too sloppy. Still, no time to chide herself; she spun into a semi-crouch and started sprinting up a ramp before jumping off at the edge and grabbing the hanging rope. She had to hang on quietly for a bit while the anchored rope worked out the vibration she had introduced, then hooked her legs around it and started climbing up. Up there, she found a labyrinth of metal beams and poles. She kept her hands on the rope, but swung up her body towards a horizontal pipe and slung her legs around it. Having found purchase, she shifted her hands to the pipe and started climbing along it. Almost done, she thought.
Concentrate.
At the end of the pipe, she let down her upper body and grabbed another horizontal pipe below her, this one 90 degrees offset from her current vantage point. She knew that this could end up being a painful stunt, so she positioned her body correctly and then let her legs slip. She swung down with all her weight, but she used her strength to pull in her arms and tense her body, so she swung up into an upright position. After taking a moment to balance herself, she shifted forward and rolled, then let go to land on the mattress below.
“Good news, kid,” Mark said, and Rowena cocked her head to the side, only now noticing him. “If the secret agent deal goes bust, you can get a gig as gymnast.”
“I died again.”
“Where?”
“The backflip. How’d you put it? ‘Ten is land, the rest is sharks.’ Well, it’s Jaws again for me.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Eight.”
“That’s not bad.”
Rowena could read the subtext from orbit: ...but it’s not exactly good, either.
“You know what’s going to happen when you hit the ten?”
“I get a prize?”
“You get a smaller target.”
Rowena felt the urge to complain rise and then subside, then she noticed herself nodding. When had Mark’s methods started making sense?
“Oh, one more thing,” he said, then opened his coat and withdrew a small box. “A little present.”
She inspected the box; it was heavy, and something rattled slightly within. Rowena tried to open it, but found it held together with a few strategic strips of duct tape.
“Do you have a...” - Mark drew a combat knife from his back and held it out for her to take - “...okay, stupid question.”
Inside the box was a Ruger .22 pistol with two magazines and a screw-on suppressor, as well as a dinky little owner’s manual.
“Anytime you’re ready,” Mark finally said, in a tone one shouldn’t employ when giving firearms to teenagers.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Childhood's End - Chapter 5
The renovation proceeded apace with more enthusiasm than talent for the rest of the day; Mark finished assembling the dinner table twenty minutes after Rowena had left for work, then stood back and admired his handiwork. True, professionals could have assembled the furniture - particularly the small kitchen - in half the time, tops, but the endorphine rush of seeing hard work bear freshly-painted fruit was hard to nitpick away.
The formerly drab walls were now sparkly white again, although Rowena had already threatened to redo the colors at some point. The Queen-sized bed was arranged as the centerpiece of the room, though Mark insisted that it not be in direct line of sight from the windows. Consequently, Rowena put up a Shoji, cordoning off the bed and nightstand from the rest of the loft - a response that fulfilled the letter, if not exactly the spirit of Mark’s order, though the old man had to admit he’d been outsmarted there. The bedsheets were neutrally white; again, Rowena had expressed disapproval, but Mark wasn’t in the habit of buying sheets patterned with “girly” colors. The desk was a simple Ikea-style affair, with entertainment electronics sitting in a big box next to it and awaiting someone knowledgeable. The telephone, at least, was already connected. Rounding out the place was a large bean bag chair, acquired from a neighbour after Mark had failed to dismantle the couch from storage into pieces light enough for the two of them to carry. It seemed light and inviting, but the lived-in look and traces of Marijuana flavor in its smell weren’t high on Mark’s “like” list.
They’d also need carpets. God, Mark thought, always the damn carpets. He briefly weighed disassembling half of the apartment to install carpeting against the fact that it was late and he was tired, and resolved to table the carpets issue for review at a later date.
He made the executive decision to forgo further self-criticism in favor of basking in the feeling of archievement, then walked downstairs to fetch his contribution to Rowena’s home security: a deadbolt kit, bulletresistant adhesive sheet - the Archer Pact’s weapon of choice for uparmoring ordinary windows - and a “small” stockpile of firearms. He’d deliberately stuck to more common weapons - two 1911s, a Winchester pump-action in 12 gauge and an M-16A2 - in lieu of feeding Rowena’s appetite for more exotic fare. The ammo was easier to get, training on them would be more useful in the long run, and, goddammit, home defense required reliability and firepower far in excess of what Mark could see a dinky microcaliber popgun do.
Installing the weapons package was easy enough: Mark merely slid the lockbox under the bed. He’d have to talk to Rowena to plan and install a more secure long-term storage system, but for the moment it was the best he could do. The deadbolt went in next, another hour of the day given to swearing, making holes and taking off the rough edges with sand paper. As such things went, the adhesive sheet was actually the most difficult to get exactly right. Mark had litle experience with attaching sheets, and spent the better part of fifteen minutes scooping out little air bubbles before he discovered that he’d cut the sheet in the wrong width and had to start over. Finally, he got it right, then went over it with a hairdryer, activating the second stage of the temperature-sensitive glue that bonded the sheet to the glass. With some trepidation, Mark repeated the process for the outside, which was an interesting challenge to his otherwise well-developed sense of balance - the window was hinged horizontally in the middle and only went from about 30 degrees from vertical to just a little beyond horizontal in its range of movement, so this process took place on a shaky little collapsible ladder.
That done, Mark decided it was time for a drink.
Down at the watering hole, Mark ordered a beer and sat back; in response, Trish shot Rowena a nervous glance whenever she served anything alcoholic. Even with the hipster price tags on the bellywash, that was well worth the price of admission. Speaking of shows - rising volume behind Mark gave rise to the premonition that a bar fight was about to get started. He turned his head to survey the situation; two guys in tacky business suits having a little shouting match over a secretary, allegedly the “girlfriend” of both of them.
“She pawned your fucking ring!” Suit A shouted; while Trish shot a concerned look at them, Mark used the distraction to snatch a little piece of ice from a tray, craddled it in his fingers, saw Suit B telegraph his punch and flicked the ice at them. Rowena, who had noticed Mark doing just that but was too slow to prevent it, watched it skip over the floor in slow motion, just like a pebble skipping over a lake.
The timing was perfect. By the time B’s fist connected, the ice was under A’s shoe, and the suit slipped back, knocking his head against the table behind him. It wasn’t enough to knock him out, not by a long shot - it just made him pissed. Mark had read the crowd just right; they grabbed B’s arms and pulled them back, but now that A was really itching for a fight, the throwdown seemed like a forgone conclusion. Rowena shuffled closer to Mark and whispered to him in as loud a voice as she could manage.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Field training.”
Rowena took the clue and vaulted over the bar, then ran towards the scene. Like a soccer tackle, she slid along the ground and tripped up A’s return strike, catching the man by the collar and putting him on his knees before he could slump to the ground.
“No fighting,” she said.
In response, she got elbowed in the guts.
By now, B had calmed down again, and was in turn trying to hold back A, who had completely forgotten about his quarrel with the colleague and was in the process of acquiring a new, scrappier target. He tried to punch Rowena. Big mistake.
His punch went nowhere, because Rowena rolled under it. It was even more painful on the hard floor, but it worked, and Rowena got up behind him, their backs facing each other. Then she did a casual 90 degree turn and sidekicked him. This time, the suit ate Linoleum; Rowena walked over to him, lifted his moaning head from the floor and repeated, “No. Fighting.” The man nodded, with whatever power he still had left. Rowena helped him up, then half-dragged, half-carried him back to B, who by now was actively contemplating patenting a process by which you could bundle your shame to sink into the floor, convinced that there was no prior art of similar magnitude as his own embarassment.
“Your friend, Sir,” Rowena deadpanned, then pawned the half-unconscious A off to his colleague. The two stumbled out of the bar, reaffirming their friendship.
Rowena turned back towards the crowd, then raised an eyebrow. “Show’s over, guys,” she said, and walked back behind the counter. The expression on Trish’s face was somewhere between horrified and impressed, while Mark showed a slight grin and ordered another beer.
The kid had potential.
The formerly drab walls were now sparkly white again, although Rowena had already threatened to redo the colors at some point. The Queen-sized bed was arranged as the centerpiece of the room, though Mark insisted that it not be in direct line of sight from the windows. Consequently, Rowena put up a Shoji, cordoning off the bed and nightstand from the rest of the loft - a response that fulfilled the letter, if not exactly the spirit of Mark’s order, though the old man had to admit he’d been outsmarted there. The bedsheets were neutrally white; again, Rowena had expressed disapproval, but Mark wasn’t in the habit of buying sheets patterned with “girly” colors. The desk was a simple Ikea-style affair, with entertainment electronics sitting in a big box next to it and awaiting someone knowledgeable. The telephone, at least, was already connected. Rounding out the place was a large bean bag chair, acquired from a neighbour after Mark had failed to dismantle the couch from storage into pieces light enough for the two of them to carry. It seemed light and inviting, but the lived-in look and traces of Marijuana flavor in its smell weren’t high on Mark’s “like” list.
They’d also need carpets. God, Mark thought, always the damn carpets. He briefly weighed disassembling half of the apartment to install carpeting against the fact that it was late and he was tired, and resolved to table the carpets issue for review at a later date.
He made the executive decision to forgo further self-criticism in favor of basking in the feeling of archievement, then walked downstairs to fetch his contribution to Rowena’s home security: a deadbolt kit, bulletresistant adhesive sheet - the Archer Pact’s weapon of choice for uparmoring ordinary windows - and a “small” stockpile of firearms. He’d deliberately stuck to more common weapons - two 1911s, a Winchester pump-action in 12 gauge and an M-16A2 - in lieu of feeding Rowena’s appetite for more exotic fare. The ammo was easier to get, training on them would be more useful in the long run, and, goddammit, home defense required reliability and firepower far in excess of what Mark could see a dinky microcaliber popgun do.
Installing the weapons package was easy enough: Mark merely slid the lockbox under the bed. He’d have to talk to Rowena to plan and install a more secure long-term storage system, but for the moment it was the best he could do. The deadbolt went in next, another hour of the day given to swearing, making holes and taking off the rough edges with sand paper. As such things went, the adhesive sheet was actually the most difficult to get exactly right. Mark had litle experience with attaching sheets, and spent the better part of fifteen minutes scooping out little air bubbles before he discovered that he’d cut the sheet in the wrong width and had to start over. Finally, he got it right, then went over it with a hairdryer, activating the second stage of the temperature-sensitive glue that bonded the sheet to the glass. With some trepidation, Mark repeated the process for the outside, which was an interesting challenge to his otherwise well-developed sense of balance - the window was hinged horizontally in the middle and only went from about 30 degrees from vertical to just a little beyond horizontal in its range of movement, so this process took place on a shaky little collapsible ladder.
That done, Mark decided it was time for a drink.
Down at the watering hole, Mark ordered a beer and sat back; in response, Trish shot Rowena a nervous glance whenever she served anything alcoholic. Even with the hipster price tags on the bellywash, that was well worth the price of admission. Speaking of shows - rising volume behind Mark gave rise to the premonition that a bar fight was about to get started. He turned his head to survey the situation; two guys in tacky business suits having a little shouting match over a secretary, allegedly the “girlfriend” of both of them.
“She pawned your fucking ring!” Suit A shouted; while Trish shot a concerned look at them, Mark used the distraction to snatch a little piece of ice from a tray, craddled it in his fingers, saw Suit B telegraph his punch and flicked the ice at them. Rowena, who had noticed Mark doing just that but was too slow to prevent it, watched it skip over the floor in slow motion, just like a pebble skipping over a lake.
The timing was perfect. By the time B’s fist connected, the ice was under A’s shoe, and the suit slipped back, knocking his head against the table behind him. It wasn’t enough to knock him out, not by a long shot - it just made him pissed. Mark had read the crowd just right; they grabbed B’s arms and pulled them back, but now that A was really itching for a fight, the throwdown seemed like a forgone conclusion. Rowena shuffled closer to Mark and whispered to him in as loud a voice as she could manage.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Field training.”
Rowena took the clue and vaulted over the bar, then ran towards the scene. Like a soccer tackle, she slid along the ground and tripped up A’s return strike, catching the man by the collar and putting him on his knees before he could slump to the ground.
“No fighting,” she said.
In response, she got elbowed in the guts.
By now, B had calmed down again, and was in turn trying to hold back A, who had completely forgotten about his quarrel with the colleague and was in the process of acquiring a new, scrappier target. He tried to punch Rowena. Big mistake.
His punch went nowhere, because Rowena rolled under it. It was even more painful on the hard floor, but it worked, and Rowena got up behind him, their backs facing each other. Then she did a casual 90 degree turn and sidekicked him. This time, the suit ate Linoleum; Rowena walked over to him, lifted his moaning head from the floor and repeated, “No. Fighting.” The man nodded, with whatever power he still had left. Rowena helped him up, then half-dragged, half-carried him back to B, who by now was actively contemplating patenting a process by which you could bundle your shame to sink into the floor, convinced that there was no prior art of similar magnitude as his own embarassment.
“Your friend, Sir,” Rowena deadpanned, then pawned the half-unconscious A off to his colleague. The two stumbled out of the bar, reaffirming their friendship.
Rowena turned back towards the crowd, then raised an eyebrow. “Show’s over, guys,” she said, and walked back behind the counter. The expression on Trish’s face was somewhere between horrified and impressed, while Mark showed a slight grin and ordered another beer.
The kid had potential.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Delays
Sorry for the lack of activity, I've been busy. Next Chapter is about 50% done and should be up within the week.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Spycraft Master Class: Praetorian
Praetorian
Requirements
Allegiance: Umbrella or Career Level 15.
Base Attack Bonus: +6 or higher
Blend: 4+ ranks
Sleight of Hand: 4+ ranks
Feats: Nemesis Basics, Combat Mobility
The Umbrella sends out a Praetorian when situations need to be resolved with maximum prejudice. They think on their feet and have an uncanny knack for figuring out the vulnerabilities of their target.
Attributes: The Praetorian's emphasis on mobility and outwitting his opponents make Dexterity and Wisdom paramount.
Vitality: 1d10 + Con modifier per level
Class Skills
The Praetorian’s class skills are Acrobatics, Blend, Bluff, Investigation, Notice, Resolve, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand and Streetwise.
Continuity: At Level 1, choose 3 skills that are class skills for any of your other classes. These become Praetorian class skills for you.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier.
Class Abilities
Hamartia I: At Level 1, you gain the Nemesis Mastery feat. Further, once per mission as a free action you may choose any 1 allegiance, which all of your "Nemesis" Terrain feats are considered to apply to until the end of the current mission.
Hamartia II: At Level 4, you gain the Nemesis Supremacy feat. Further, you may choose an additional allegiance your "Nemesis" Terrain feats apply to twice per mission.
Keep Moving: At Level 1, you gain a +2 bonus to Defense for every Standard Move or Bull Rush action, and a +4 bonus to Defense for every Withdraw or Run action you take. This bonus lasts until your next Initiative Count.
Weapon Savant: At Level 2, once per mission as a free action, you may gain a number of temporary weapon proficiencies equal to your class level. These proficiencies last until the end of the mission.
Trenchcoat: At Level 3, the DCs of all Notice/Awareness and Search/Perception checks targeting gear you carry (including weapons and armor) increase by 4. Further, you may take 10 with Sleight of Hand checks, and the time to do so is not doubled.
Dog of War: At Level 4, you gain a competence bonus with all skill checks made as part of a Manhunt equal to the number of action dice you currently possess.
Hard Target: At Level 5, when you take a Total Defense action, choose an Allegiance that your "Nemesis" Terrain feats apply to. Attacks from characters possessing this Allegiance against you automatically miss unless they score a threat.
| | Table GTC.02: The Praetorian | | | | | ||||
| | | | | | | | | | |
| Level | BAB | Fort | Ref | Will | Def | Init | Wealth | Gear | Abilities |
| 1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +2 | +1 | 0 | - | Hamartia I, Keep Moving |
| 2 | +2 | +2 | +2 | +2 | +3 | +1 | 0 | 1W | Weapon Savant |
| 3 | +3 | +2 | +2 | +2 | +3 | +2 | 1 | 1W | Trenchcoat |
| 4 | +4 | +2 | +2 | +2 | +4 | +2 | 1 | 1W, 1S | Hamartia II, Dog of War |
| 5 | +5 | +3 | +3 | +3 | +5 | +3 | 1 | 1W, 1S | Hard Target |
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Childhood's End - Chapter 4
When she got to the bar, Rowena had to make use of her elbows to navigate the crowd and get to Trish. That, as they say in the movies, wasn't good.
Rowena grabbed a spare apron; Trish shot her a withering glance, but Brandon's daughter couldn't do anything but mouth "Sorry", whip out a towel and start on the dirty glass backlog. It was madness through and through, the Battle of Thermopylae reenacted with shotglasses and soapy water, but after thirty minutes of non-stop crunch time, Rowena finally finished the pile and began to cruise in the much more manageable waters of cleaning glasses as they came in.
"Where were you?" Trish asked while pouring a Touch-Down.
"Got schooled," Rowena answered. "Forgot the time, sorry."
"I like you, sweatheart, really, but if you do that to me again you'll find dirty cutlery sticking out of your spleen."
"Noo!" Rowena cried out in mock terror, cracking a smile. "I need my spleen! It's my bestest friend!"
"I thought I was your bestest friend."
"You and my spleen! We're all one big, happy family."
"Somebody won't get any more vodka."
"I'm just...I'm coming off an adrenaline high. Condition red for three hours does that to you."
Rowena watched in horror as a guy in an alarmingly-bland suit (with "funny" tie, too! - Rowena liked attention to detail) climbed atop one of the tables, raised his bottle of imported Czech beer and shouted "Next round's on me!"
Rowena and Trish just looked at each other. Finally, Trish tossed the nearly-empty bottle of booze in her hands aside and grabbed a new one from beneath the counter.
"Gentlemen - start your engines," she said.
If, by some chance, you happened to be one of the 300 Spartans and got up alive after everything was said and done, would you think it unfair if the Persian Army came back for seconds?
---
The clock was almost but not quite convinced to finally tick over to 3 AM when Rowena slammed the loft's front door shut behind her. This, she could tell, was what total exhaustion felt like - she'd been fired up all day, and now the crash she should've had a few hours ago finally got past her caffeine and socked her one in the stomach. She actually felt sick, violently sick, in that weird neurochemical state where you could just fall down to the ground and laugh yourself into the next psych ward as the saddest person in the multiverse.
Everything evil and wicked, it seemed, disappeared down the toilet. Once more, Rowena was glad she had short hair.
When she got up from the tiled bathroom floor, she was shivering right through her clothes. With her last reserves of power, she hobbled over to the open window next to her bed and closed it, shutting out the sounds of police sirens in the background. Her neatfreak tendencies went forgotten as she threw her dirty clothes onto a big pile, stepped into the bedroll and snuggled in against all the cold air in the room. There was no more sound around her. No other breaths, no whirring security cameras, no footsteps outside.
She was alone, and this was the kind of blow to her lacking emotional maturity that should've made her cry a bit, but she couldn't even muster that. There was too much in her head, all of it screaming at her to work it out somehow.
Her brain cried out for nepenthe. All it got was the figurative flick of the light switch.
---
Rowena had overslept. She never overslept.
There are two ways to deal with oversleeping. One can either rush through the morning hygiene and breakfast, desperately hoping to approach relativistic velocities, or one can embrace the lateness and take it slow that day. Rowena went for the latter; one of the advantages of living in a gentrified area was the sheer decadence of a delivery service for fresh bread. Hey, you could find a delivery service for anything in NYC, right? Why even bother leaving the house?
There was knocking at the door. Rowena wasn't surprised at the least to find Mark there, whose immoveable face was now shaded towards unfriendliness.
"Do you ever check your mailbox?" he asked, walking in as if the sight of a pyjama-clad teenage girl opening his doors was the most normal thing in the world.
"I just got up. Also, nobody knows my address."
"Well, I...oh. No. I mean voicemail."
"I haven't even unpacked my cell phone."
Mark gave her that look.
"Do you want a time-out from the training? Just to get your affairs in order."
"No, I'm fine, I just need a few minutes to..."
Her look fell upon the large cardboard boxes that were stacking up in her living room.
"When the hell did that get here?"
"Yesterday, while you were working."
"Is this Ikea? I swear I'll kill you if it's Ikea."
"Actually, it's their lesser known Romanian copycat operation. All the suck, none of the pretentiousness. Oh, and they have a joke in every package, they call it instructions."
"...fuck."
"Come again?"
Rowena gesticulated wildly, which was not a smart thing to do for someone wearing a pyjama that was, technically speaking, already showing its age in the size department.
"Fuck!" she shouted, went over to the window, opened it, then screamed it again. Oh, and once more, for good measure.
"That settles that," Mark said, arching his eyebrow in that way that indicated a youthfully excessive fascination with Mr. Spock. "You're getting the time-out. We may have rushed things a bit."
"I'm just totally lost here. Coffee?"
"No thanks. How?"
"I'm drowning in the details."
"Hm. Well, maybe we can do some training."
Rowena gave him a strange look, saying both "God have mercy on me" and "That's what I'm here for" at once. Finally, she just took a sip, kept the hot coffee in her mouth to ensure an even burning of her tongue, then swallowed it in one big gulp.
"Like, what?"
"Organisation. I'm the guy for real-life skills, remember? So today we're going to cover some home decoration."
"I guess I could use someone to help me out here. Is that, uh, is that a forte of yours?"
As if in reply, Mark led his right hand to his crotch and tugged on it. "Yep," he added. "Now all we need is a little Allen key and a lot of luck..."
Rowena grabbed a spare apron; Trish shot her a withering glance, but Brandon's daughter couldn't do anything but mouth "Sorry", whip out a towel and start on the dirty glass backlog. It was madness through and through, the Battle of Thermopylae reenacted with shotglasses and soapy water, but after thirty minutes of non-stop crunch time, Rowena finally finished the pile and began to cruise in the much more manageable waters of cleaning glasses as they came in.
"Where were you?" Trish asked while pouring a Touch-Down.
"Got schooled," Rowena answered. "Forgot the time, sorry."
"I like you, sweatheart, really, but if you do that to me again you'll find dirty cutlery sticking out of your spleen."
"Noo!" Rowena cried out in mock terror, cracking a smile. "I need my spleen! It's my bestest friend!"
"I thought I was your bestest friend."
"You and my spleen! We're all one big, happy family."
"Somebody won't get any more vodka."
"I'm just...I'm coming off an adrenaline high. Condition red for three hours does that to you."
Rowena watched in horror as a guy in an alarmingly-bland suit (with "funny" tie, too! - Rowena liked attention to detail) climbed atop one of the tables, raised his bottle of imported Czech beer and shouted "Next round's on me!"
Rowena and Trish just looked at each other. Finally, Trish tossed the nearly-empty bottle of booze in her hands aside and grabbed a new one from beneath the counter.
"Gentlemen - start your engines," she said.
If, by some chance, you happened to be one of the 300 Spartans and got up alive after everything was said and done, would you think it unfair if the Persian Army came back for seconds?
---
The clock was almost but not quite convinced to finally tick over to 3 AM when Rowena slammed the loft's front door shut behind her. This, she could tell, was what total exhaustion felt like - she'd been fired up all day, and now the crash she should've had a few hours ago finally got past her caffeine and socked her one in the stomach. She actually felt sick, violently sick, in that weird neurochemical state where you could just fall down to the ground and laugh yourself into the next psych ward as the saddest person in the multiverse.
Everything evil and wicked, it seemed, disappeared down the toilet. Once more, Rowena was glad she had short hair.
When she got up from the tiled bathroom floor, she was shivering right through her clothes. With her last reserves of power, she hobbled over to the open window next to her bed and closed it, shutting out the sounds of police sirens in the background. Her neatfreak tendencies went forgotten as she threw her dirty clothes onto a big pile, stepped into the bedroll and snuggled in against all the cold air in the room. There was no more sound around her. No other breaths, no whirring security cameras, no footsteps outside.
She was alone, and this was the kind of blow to her lacking emotional maturity that should've made her cry a bit, but she couldn't even muster that. There was too much in her head, all of it screaming at her to work it out somehow.
Her brain cried out for nepenthe. All it got was the figurative flick of the light switch.
---
Rowena had overslept. She never overslept.
There are two ways to deal with oversleeping. One can either rush through the morning hygiene and breakfast, desperately hoping to approach relativistic velocities, or one can embrace the lateness and take it slow that day. Rowena went for the latter; one of the advantages of living in a gentrified area was the sheer decadence of a delivery service for fresh bread. Hey, you could find a delivery service for anything in NYC, right? Why even bother leaving the house?
There was knocking at the door. Rowena wasn't surprised at the least to find Mark there, whose immoveable face was now shaded towards unfriendliness.
"Do you ever check your mailbox?" he asked, walking in as if the sight of a pyjama-clad teenage girl opening his doors was the most normal thing in the world.
"I just got up. Also, nobody knows my address."
"Well, I...oh. No. I mean voicemail."
"I haven't even unpacked my cell phone."
Mark gave her that look.
"Do you want a time-out from the training? Just to get your affairs in order."
"No, I'm fine, I just need a few minutes to..."
Her look fell upon the large cardboard boxes that were stacking up in her living room.
"When the hell did that get here?"
"Yesterday, while you were working."
"Is this Ikea? I swear I'll kill you if it's Ikea."
"Actually, it's their lesser known Romanian copycat operation. All the suck, none of the pretentiousness. Oh, and they have a joke in every package, they call it instructions."
"...fuck."
"Come again?"
Rowena gesticulated wildly, which was not a smart thing to do for someone wearing a pyjama that was, technically speaking, already showing its age in the size department.
"Fuck!" she shouted, went over to the window, opened it, then screamed it again. Oh, and once more, for good measure.
"That settles that," Mark said, arching his eyebrow in that way that indicated a youthfully excessive fascination with Mr. Spock. "You're getting the time-out. We may have rushed things a bit."
"I'm just totally lost here. Coffee?"
"No thanks. How?"
"I'm drowning in the details."
"Hm. Well, maybe we can do some training."
Rowena gave him a strange look, saying both "God have mercy on me" and "That's what I'm here for" at once. Finally, she just took a sip, kept the hot coffee in her mouth to ensure an even burning of her tongue, then swallowed it in one big gulp.
"Like, what?"
"Organisation. I'm the guy for real-life skills, remember? So today we're going to cover some home decoration."
"I guess I could use someone to help me out here. Is that, uh, is that a forte of yours?"
As if in reply, Mark led his right hand to his crotch and tugged on it. "Yep," he added. "Now all we need is a little Allen key and a lot of luck..."
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Childhood's End - Chapter 3
An hour later, Rowena and Mark met again on the practice mat of the Umbrella dojo, deep underneath Staten Island. Rowena was sporting a relatively light outfit - training pants and a tank top -, but Mark was fully kitted out, his ensemble of joint pads and guards much more visible under his gi.
What followed wasn't, strictly speaking, sparring. Rather, Rowena found herself hauled off her feet with startling regularity and thrown onto the ground for the express purpose of learning to hit said ground correctly. Thanks to the mats, it didn't really hurt with every impact, but she soon began to regret that she hadn't asked for more padding - by the time they stopped, her arms and legs were sore, her skin was burning from the repeated scraping against the mat's fabric, and there was an uncomfortable burning in her shoulder that was just getting started.
While she laid on the mat, Mark walked over to her, watched her squirm a bit and then finally offered his hand, pulling her back up to her feet.
"You had twenty minutes for prep," he said. "What did you do?"
"Get dressed. And some warmup."
"Well, this is going to take longer than I thought, so you're getting fitted for protection next time, with a proper suit. How did you warm up?"
"Couple push-ups."
"Raise your right arm, please."
Rowena did.
"Further. Further. Now reach behind your back."
Rowena did.
"I said further."
Rowena didn't.
"I can't," she finally said. "It hurts."
"Let me see that," Mark said, then moved behind her, grabbed her arm and gently pulled it backwards. Rowena gave off a sharp hiss from a sudden breath - obviously, this wasn't the most pleasant thing she'd ever experienced.
"Congratulations, kid. You've got a shortened tendon. Probably in your other arm, too. Let me guess: lots of weight work, no ballet lessons?"
"Yes. So, is that bad?"
"Depends. If you hadn't noticed yet, you've got normal mobility. But I try to stay...flexible."
"Anything I can do about that?"
"Yep. Stretching. Lots of fine, not-quite-painless stretching."
"Great...so when do we get to the shooting part?"
"I'm going to let you in on a little secret," Mark said. "There's a reason I'm still alive, and it's not because Kevlar makes me bulletproof or that everybody I ever fought with is a bad shot. The secret is that it's easy to shoot a target that's just standing there; heck, even if it's your first time on the range, when you understand how a gun works, you can hit a man-sized target at a reasonable distance. Make a gun finger."
Rowena made a fist of her right hand, then uncoiled her index finger.
"Good," Mark said. "Now shoot me."
Rowena brought her 'weapon' up in a textbook Weaver stance, but Mark turned away to the left, dodging under her field of fire. She whipped her arm around to follow him, but he was already crouched down and rolling towards her. When her arm went down, he slapped it to the side and stuck his own gun finger'ed hand in her direction.
"Bang!" he said.
"How the hell do you move so fast?"
"Practice," Mark said, then got up from the ground. "Most people have an instinctive fear of kissing dirt, that's why they prefer to run. It's not a bad idea - if you're fleeing the scene. In a CQB situation, predictable is bad, but running beats standing still. Nothing is more predictable than just standing there and trying to plug the guy like you're skeet-shootin'."
"It looks like...John Woo."
"It works, kid. That's what counts. Nobody's gonna know if I plug you lying on my ass. What matters is that I shot you first."
"Doesn't seem like a good idea to restrict your options like that in a firefight."
At that, Mark offered a smile.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. 1 on 1 tactics for now. Do whatever it takes to disrupt your opponent's shot. Fling stuff at him, take cover, rip a mean fart, it doesn't matter - but the most important rule of all is that combat is dynamic, and you need to be, too. You stop, you die."
"Got it."
"I want you to keep practicing your falls. You're going to be ducking, rolling and jumping a lot. You need to learn how to keep from getting hurt."
While Rowena pondered that, Mark slouched towards a small bag of medical supplies. When he returned, he was wielding ice spray - and after a short fix of Rowena's shoulder, things were looking up again for Brandon's daughter.
"So...class dismissed?" she asked.
"Class dismissed," Mark replied, and turned to walk away.
With his footsteps fading into the distance, Rowena took a last look at the mat, figured that her skin was already burning anyway, and threw herself onto the mat one more time. With a lightning-fast shift of weight, she landed on her left shoulder and made a full roll before coming to a crouched stop just at the edge of of the mat. When she got up and turned towards the exit, Mark was still there, watching. He gave her a nod, then turned and walked out for real. Rowena smiled, then caught a glance at a clock mounted on the dojo's wall and sped off in slight panic.
First day on the job, and I'm already late...
What followed wasn't, strictly speaking, sparring. Rather, Rowena found herself hauled off her feet with startling regularity and thrown onto the ground for the express purpose of learning to hit said ground correctly. Thanks to the mats, it didn't really hurt with every impact, but she soon began to regret that she hadn't asked for more padding - by the time they stopped, her arms and legs were sore, her skin was burning from the repeated scraping against the mat's fabric, and there was an uncomfortable burning in her shoulder that was just getting started.
While she laid on the mat, Mark walked over to her, watched her squirm a bit and then finally offered his hand, pulling her back up to her feet.
"You had twenty minutes for prep," he said. "What did you do?"
"Get dressed. And some warmup."
"Well, this is going to take longer than I thought, so you're getting fitted for protection next time, with a proper suit. How did you warm up?"
"Couple push-ups."
"Raise your right arm, please."
Rowena did.
"Further. Further. Now reach behind your back."
Rowena did.
"I said further."
Rowena didn't.
"I can't," she finally said. "It hurts."
"Let me see that," Mark said, then moved behind her, grabbed her arm and gently pulled it backwards. Rowena gave off a sharp hiss from a sudden breath - obviously, this wasn't the most pleasant thing she'd ever experienced.
"Congratulations, kid. You've got a shortened tendon. Probably in your other arm, too. Let me guess: lots of weight work, no ballet lessons?"
"Yes. So, is that bad?"
"Depends. If you hadn't noticed yet, you've got normal mobility. But I try to stay...flexible."
"Anything I can do about that?"
"Yep. Stretching. Lots of fine, not-quite-painless stretching."
"Great...so when do we get to the shooting part?"
"I'm going to let you in on a little secret," Mark said. "There's a reason I'm still alive, and it's not because Kevlar makes me bulletproof or that everybody I ever fought with is a bad shot. The secret is that it's easy to shoot a target that's just standing there; heck, even if it's your first time on the range, when you understand how a gun works, you can hit a man-sized target at a reasonable distance. Make a gun finger."
Rowena made a fist of her right hand, then uncoiled her index finger.
"Good," Mark said. "Now shoot me."
Rowena brought her 'weapon' up in a textbook Weaver stance, but Mark turned away to the left, dodging under her field of fire. She whipped her arm around to follow him, but he was already crouched down and rolling towards her. When her arm went down, he slapped it to the side and stuck his own gun finger'ed hand in her direction.
"Bang!" he said.
"How the hell do you move so fast?"
"Practice," Mark said, then got up from the ground. "Most people have an instinctive fear of kissing dirt, that's why they prefer to run. It's not a bad idea - if you're fleeing the scene. In a CQB situation, predictable is bad, but running beats standing still. Nothing is more predictable than just standing there and trying to plug the guy like you're skeet-shootin'."
"It looks like...John Woo."
"It works, kid. That's what counts. Nobody's gonna know if I plug you lying on my ass. What matters is that I shot you first."
"Doesn't seem like a good idea to restrict your options like that in a firefight."
At that, Mark offered a smile.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. 1 on 1 tactics for now. Do whatever it takes to disrupt your opponent's shot. Fling stuff at him, take cover, rip a mean fart, it doesn't matter - but the most important rule of all is that combat is dynamic, and you need to be, too. You stop, you die."
"Got it."
"I want you to keep practicing your falls. You're going to be ducking, rolling and jumping a lot. You need to learn how to keep from getting hurt."
While Rowena pondered that, Mark slouched towards a small bag of medical supplies. When he returned, he was wielding ice spray - and after a short fix of Rowena's shoulder, things were looking up again for Brandon's daughter.
"So...class dismissed?" she asked.
"Class dismissed," Mark replied, and turned to walk away.
With his footsteps fading into the distance, Rowena took a last look at the mat, figured that her skin was already burning anyway, and threw herself onto the mat one more time. With a lightning-fast shift of weight, she landed on her left shoulder and made a full roll before coming to a crouched stop just at the edge of of the mat. When she got up and turned towards the exit, Mark was still there, watching. He gave her a nod, then turned and walked out for real. Rowena smiled, then caught a glance at a clock mounted on the dojo's wall and sped off in slight panic.
First day on the job, and I'm already late...
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