Fandom High Dormitories

The gun club had gotten handwavey notice to meet in the Danger Shop today, sans weapons.

If Makita and Triela looked positively gleeful, well, it was not their imaginations.

"Using a gun is about more than being able to shoot. You have to know when to shoot as well. You can't do either one properly without the other. And while the range is great for learning accuracy, you need something different to learn to pick your targets." That, and this was going to be fun.

"You also have to take into account the terrain, which you can't do on a range," Makita agreed. "So today, we're going hunting. You'll have to evaluate who is a target, who is not, and what to do in each case."

"On top of all that, ammunition management matters off the range. Knowing how many shots you have before you need to reload, knowing how many reloads you have left... All of that matters." Triela grinned. "So for this exercise, you're going to have to take all of it into account."

"The 'Shop will be providing us with everything we need," Makita continued. "Firearms, ammo, and if you 'die,' your gun won't work anymore. If you shoot and kill civilian, you're out. So try not to do that."

Triela nodded. No failing! It would make her look bad. "Just like in the real world, the bad guys don't come with giant flashing signs, but there are ways to pick them out." Especially these particular bad guys. "So trust your judgment out there."

"Any questions?" Well, if there were, too bad. TIme to get started!

As usual, Triela had brought a lot of her own gear to the range today. But some of it was new. Specifically, she had a small stack of wooden cut-outs that were shaped like pistols, but were clearly props. "Today we're going to do something a bit different," she announced with a small smile. What? She liked changing things up on people.

"Today, we're playing Keep-Away!" Maki, don't smile at people like that, it's disturbing. "Or, 'what do to when the other person has a gun and you don't.'"

"Most of you are going to be new to this, so we'll be practicing. And that means no live guns. So everyone safe and stow your weapons." Triela wasn't about to risk someone getting shot during an exercise because they were waving a live gun around. "And then come collect one of these," she added, holding up one of the wooden props.

"Do not hit each other with your fake-guns, either." It needed to be said. "Now, to be honest, the best thing to do when someone else has a firearm is to get the hell out of there. Call for help, head towards a crowded area where they may be more hesitant to fire. Don't be stupid, and don't be a hero. But sometimes, that is not an option."

"Exactly. You've all been around guns long enough by now to see how much damage one can do, so if you can disengage and find cover, that's the first choice. Sometimes, though, it's not an option. In that case, the first thing you need to understand is that you only ever get one chance to do this right. Mess up, and you'll get shot for your trouble. So we're going to practice this, and Makita and I are going to be very, very picky." No screwing around!

"The wrist is small, so unless you have very good aim, try to hit them in the shoulder or elbow to loosen the grip on the gun," Makita continued, pointing out weak spots on her own body. "Get above them and drop something, or hit from behind. If you can knock them out, that's better than just disarming."

Triela nodded in agreement. "And in the absolute worst case scenario in which they get the drop on you? The most important thing to do is control where the gun is pointing. It takes practice, which is what we're here for today, but if you're fast enough you can control the angle of a gun even if the person you're up against is bigger than you." She cocked her head. "Quick demonstration?" she suggested to Makita.

Makita did not have a wooden gun; Makita had a tiny squirt pistol. Because she was an organizer and she said so. "We'll do this in slow-motion a few times, so that you can see what we're doing," she said, taking aim at Triela.

The squirt gun got an amused little eyeroll, but then Triela moved. "Remember, the most important thing is to control which way the barrel of the gun is pointing. That means you don't just knock it out of the way, you have to grab something." She turned, her body twisting to bring a hand toward Makita's wrist. "Don't just grab someone's wrist. It doesn't actually control what matters." She paused for a moment to let Makita demonstrate the fact that someone holding your wrist just made it hard to aim at them, not impossible.

Whatever, Triela would get to use it in a few minuets. She could roll her eyes all she wanted; Makita was going to pull the trigger to demonstrate that aiming was harder, not impossible. "She'd be better off striking up, under my chin to force my head back," she offered, firing at her co-instructor. "Or, really, any number of things except grabbing my wrist."

"The wrist isn't necessarily a bad grab, but only if you can get another hand in to control the gun itself." Triela reached around with her other hand and wrapped it around the gun. "That way you control the weapon. You win if you keep control, and you win if you can incapacitate your opponent without getting shot. Those are your only two options. So everyone pair up and try some things out." Her smile was a bit cold. "Makita and I will come give you some pointers."

Triela had come in early to put up new targets for this week. Full-body silhouettes, with legs and everything. Someone wanted to talk about disabling people.

Which was fine with Makita; it gave her a chance to show off her aim.

"Salaam!" she sang once everyone had arrived. "Sometimes, you cannot shoot to kill. Sometimes you have questions, but a person, they seem to think running away means they do not need to answer those questions! In these cases, it is best to shoot to disable."

Triela grinned. "It's important to remember that no matter what you aim at, guns are potent weapons. You can kill someone pretty easily, even if you're not trying to. But! There are a few things to keep in mind if you want to keep people from running away or fighting without actually killing them." Hospital, not morgue. She had one of the targets up front for illustration purposes. "First thing to know, if you're trying to keep someone alive? Don't shoot them anywhere in the torso or head. Chances are you'll do something bad if you do. Arms if you want them to drop some sort of weapon, legs if you want them to stop running away."

"I like the shoulder," Makita suggested. "It's usually painful enough that they'll drop, and you can apply pressure to slow or stop the bleeding, which is harder to do in the arm or leg. Also, if they are running, it is easier to hit than a limb in motion."

Triela nodded at Makita, then shrugged. "Like I said, there's no guarantee that someone will live just because you hit them in the arms or legs. There are major arteries in there, after all, but it's more likely than if you shoot them in the head."

"If you've got any questions, ask. Otherwise, get to practicing."

Most of the time Triela found spending time on the shooting range to be quite good at focusing her attention. Not that focus was often a problem. Training, inclination, and Conditioning all combined to keep her from becoming too distracted most of the time. Which, really, was a good thing on the range since guns were not toys.

But she was still distracted by her most recent trip home, and that meant that while she was at the range and needing to focus, she was obviously distracted. She showed up early, which wasn't unusual, but then she leaned back against the wall and stared off into space. No special activity, or even tea today.

Unless someone else brought them, which would be cool.

"I know you're all familiar with them by this point, but I'm still going to talk about pistols today." She drew the one from her shoulder holster. "Pistols are small, portable, and quite deadly. They don't have the range of a rifle, or even an SMG, but it turns out that most firefights take place at ranges so short that a pistol is plenty effective. The low weight, quick handling, and ease of concealment mean that no matter what else you're carrying, you might as well carry a pistol too."

"Yep. That's pretty much it. I won't bore you with all the reasons some people prefer them as primary weapons. Suffice to say that for quite a few situations a pistol is the best choice."

Triela grinned. "So it's a good thing you're learning to use them, huh?"

This week Triela's hair was back up in its usual pigtails and her suit had pants. She seemed much more comfortable. Though part of that may have been attributable to the fact that she had two good eyes this week. In fact, it didn't look like she'd ever been hideously injured in the first place.

"We talked about submachine guns last week," she said without preamble. "This week we're going to focus on some rifles. The word 'rifle' covers dozens of different specialties, but today we're going to focus on two of them."

Triela walked over to a pair of open rifle cases. "This," she waved at one, "is a Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle, and this," she waved at the other, "is a Heckler and Koch G3 battle rifle. Notice that they look extremely similar to one another. They are both designed by the same company and use many of the same design principles. In fact, battle rifles are often misidentified as assault rifles for this very reason."

"But in use they're very different." Triela grinned and picked up a pair of bullets, one in each hand. "Assault rifles fire smaller bullets than battle rifles, which is the major point of differentiation between them. The bullets are still bigger than those of a pistol or SMG, but when it comes to rifles the size does matter."

She closed her fist around the smaller bullet and held out the larger one. "The larger rounds fired by a battle rifle give it increased range and damage potential, but at the cost of higher recoil and weight. Most battle rifles hold only two thirds the ammunition of an assault rifle. Now, you might think this is a fair trade-off, and for years weapon designers did. But as combat moved more and more into cities it became clear that no one needed the extra range of the battle rifle because no one was firing from out of range of the smaller assault rifle. And while an assault rifle does less damage, it still does enough damage to take out a target, so the battle rifle has generally been phased out of general use as being more powerful than necessary, which is a big deal when it also has less ammo."

"Like last week you're welcome to borrow either of these to get a feel for them, or you can just do what you usually do." Triela looked around and smirked ever so slightly. "And if any of you need help adjusting your stance because Fandom is screwing with you today, let me know."

Someone just might have shown up for club over an hour early. That might just be because someone had missed gun club. Quite a bit.

Triela had already posted the rules and readjusted them until they were juuuust so. And she'd checked all her guns. Twice. She'd even gotten out her private tea stash and brewed some. People had better appreciate that.

People needed to hurry up and show up. Eventually, they did.

"Welcome to Girls with Guns club!" she announced brightly. "Some of you have been here before, but for those of you who haven't this is club is all about guns and teaching you to use them. Whether you've got a lot of experience and just need some practice, or you're brand new and want to learn more about the things, this is the place for you."

"Today we're doing the meet and greet thing." She waved her hand. "Yeah, yeah, I know. You're all tired of it. But we're still going to do it. So everyone introduce yourselves and give us some idea of your experience with guns. Remember that 'none' is perfectly acceptable."

"Then we'll get down to business and do some shooting. If you need to borrow a gun, or want a demonstration, you're welcome to ask me or one of the other experienced people."

"I guess I'll start with the introduction thing. I'm Triela, and I'm an expert with most military small-arms. Back home I'm an assassin, and I specialize in short range engagements. If you ever need to borrow a gun I'm generally willing to help out with that."

"Who's next?"

The weekend had been weird. At least that's how one might put it if they were prone to understatement. It turned out that Triela was, in fact, prone to understatement. So weird was going to be how she put it.

But it hadn't been stressful, and she'd managed to get her report off to Hilshire. She had half-expected him to call her about that expenditures list, but it really wasn't his style. Since he hadn't responded yet she didn't have replacement ammunition, and that meant she was extremely low on 12-gauge rounds. So today there were no shotguns in sight, just her usual stack of pistols and SMGs.

"Okay people," she announced when enough people had arrived. "Nothing fancy today. Just shooting." She flashed a grin. "I suspect we've all had enough excitement for the next little bit."

After the field trip yesterday Triela had most definitely needed some stress relief, so it didn't even occur to her not to go to the range today. In fact she went early because today she had a lot of gear to bring in. She had a dozen different shotguns in a stack and a huge crate labeled "Property of the United States Government".

She wasn't even thinking about other people showing up today, but she really, really needed to shoot some stuff. She pulled a box labeled "FRAG-12, 100 count" and started loading her shotgun.

Bless those gun-happy Americans and their apparently burning need to design grenades that you fired from a shotgun.

Triela looked mighty pleased with herself. After all, the field trip had been quite a success. And if she kept flicking amused glances at her club's advisor? Well... there was no reason to suspect that they were amused at his expense.

Really.

She was doing a pretty good job of looking engrossed in her guns, so maybe no one would notice...

[Late due to the company, and I'm off again, but other people might want to have fun!]

It was good to be back at school where she could have a club meeting. Because a club meeting meant an excuse to shoot things, and shooting things was relaxing.

She also needed to talk to Mr. Algren. There were final details to be worked out for the laser tag trip. Which probably explained both the subtle (somewhat uncharacteristic) smile playing around the corners of Triela's lips and her oddly distracted air.

Or there could be some other explanation. It was Fandom, after all.

Triela looked almost happy enough to be whistling merrily when she arrived to set up for club today. She wasn't the whistling sort, so of course she didn't actually whistle, but she still looked like she might bust out at any moment.

Usually her first order of business was normally to go through her gun cases, but today things were a bit different. Before anything else she hung up a poster. It was an extremely precisely drawn (if thoroughly boring) two-column affair. "Paint ball" and "Laser tag" were written neatly at the top with a line drawn between them and plenty of space under them.

"Write your name under whichever activity sounds more fun to you," she told people as they began to arrive.

Yep. Someone looked a bit smug.

The unexpected trip back to Rome last week had, surprisingly, put Triela in quite a good mood for club. Being around Hilshire was stressful, as always, but it'd been good to see the other girls and there was a nice sense of purpose that the conditioning brought with being at the Agency.

And she'd gotten to go on a mission. It had been easy, of course, but it was nice to shoot outside the context of club.

Which was why she had her pistol broken down and was cleaning it carefully as people started to arrive.

Triela was not her usual grinning self today as she arrived nearly ten minutes late for gun club. She glanced around, hoping that no one had showed up and left.

She had a killer headache, so she sat down immediately and proceeded to rub lightly at her temples.



[ooc: Zomg! Apologies for the late. Thank goodness for wifi on the bus, huh?]

It was the first gun club meeting of the semester, and Triela was excited. To say the least.

She showed up early, humming Beethoven, and started setting up her gun cases. It was odd to realize that she hadn't actually shot any of them since she'd gotten back to Fandom. Well, at least she could fix that today.

As people showed up she handed out nametags.

"Some of you are new, some of you were here last semester. Either way let's do some quick introductions." She grinned, "And then we can get to the part with the guns."

[ocd on the way has arrived]

The rules got their usual check, it wouldn't do to have them missing if a newbie showed up, after all, and then Triela sat down to clean her guns and hum happily to herself.

The paint ball game had been pretty successful. She hadn't had a chance to talk to all of the participants, which was a shame, but she hoped to remedy that today. Maybe they could do it again sometime. She'd like that.

After quickly ensuring that the range rules and all the other preparatory work for the club meeting was taken care of, Triela sat back to wait with a grin.

Once she judged that enough people were up she cleared her throat. "I've got a little announcement, so if everyone will listen up for a moment?"

She looked around, eying the assembled club members. "While next week we'll be meeting here where we usually do, in two weeks we'll be meeting somewhere else. I'll get you the specific details later, but I wanted to give you a heads-up. In two weeks we'll be having a little fun. I'm getting some paint ball gear and we'll be having a little exercise."

"I'm telling you now for one very important reason," Triela smirked. "We're not going to have official teams or anything like that. The rules will technically be 'every girl for herself', but if you want to work out some alliances then go ahead. Just remember: there can be only one winner at the end, so be careful who you trust."

"That's it! Back to what you were doing!"

[Wait on the OCD Sorry about being late with this one]

Today Triela was, perhaps, a bit overexcited. She laid out her cases as usual, because some people were still borrowing them, but she kept getting distracted by excited glances at a nondescript box she'd picked up at Wellspring Arms on Monday.

She hurriedly checked to make sure the range rules were still up before grabbing her M97 and her shiny new box and stepping up to the firing line.

As she opened the box and loaded her shotgun Triela decided that Fandom was a pretty cool place. After all, it wasn't like she'd be able to play with prototype military ammo back home. She chambered a round, aimed at a target downrange, and pulled the trigger.

When the target in question caught on fire she grinned broadly. This was going to be fun.

[OCD in the making all done.]

Triela arrived at the range nearly an hour early to look things over and set up. She also needed the time to go over the four cases which held her own guns to make sure they were ready if anyone needed to borrow one.

She then posted a set of range rules which she had printed neatly using crayons handwavily obtained from her roommate. Who knew that crayons were so useful?

( Range rules )

Then she sat back and waited for people to arrive.

[Up early because I'm feeling *gasp* productive today. OCD on the way has arrived. And I'm going to be out for a couple of hours, but will HAVE return! (wow this is getting long)]