Chapter Forty-Nine - Mondays

  It was Monday morning, which meant another day at the range.

  We arrived bright and early, unloading from an auto-taxi with a large duffel bag that I sat in so that Sharp could carry me about without much fuss. Being that it was so early, I might have expected the place to be closed, but Clemus wasn't that sort of man.

  "Oh-hoh, so you're back," the old man said. He was sitting on his rocking chair, cane across his lap. "Well, here to plink a little more?"

  "Yeah," Sharp said. "If you don't mind? I think I was getting somewhere last week, but I feel like I could be better!"

  "That'll always be true. Well, an hour at the range is worth ten in the field. C'mon, the range is in use already."

  "Already?" Sharp asked.

  Clemus grinned, showing off a gap in his teeth. "Some folk take their jobs seriously, kid."

  "I'm not a kid," Sharp said. "I'm legally an adult in... a certain percentage of the states and corporate territories around here."

  "Kid," he repeated with a chuckle before he climbed up onto his feet with a grunt. "C'mon."

  I settled into the bag while Sharp followed Clemus. For all the weight the man put on being early to things, he certainly didn't walk with any amount of alacrity. That was fine, I supposed. The rate he charged for the use of his range was very respectable, and I trusted him more than most commercial ranges when it came to keeping information to himself.

  We were practicing with a new set of weapons today. The basic rifle, shotgun and handgun of last time were good to set up a baseline, but if I wanted Sharp to be competent, then she'd need a relatively wide range of experience with more than just a few basic examples of available guns.

  We were packing a submachine gun, a machine pistol, a revolver and a compact assault rifle today. And ammo. A lot of ammo.

  These were the kinds of guns that chewed through bullets. Honestly, we were going to burn through more money's worth of ammo today than Sharp would likely make this week.

  I knew being single and childless was worth it. Just one teenage girl was costing me a fortune. And we hadn't even gone to her first martial arts or magical arts classes.

  "Here ya go, same box as last time," Clemus said as he stomped into the barn. The range was as empty as last time, which is to say that only one of the slots was in use at the moment.

  Sharp slowed down for a moment to stare. It was the same young woman as last time; a tall, long-legged blonde, wearing tights and a sports jacket. She was fiddling with the sight mount on a compact rifle. Adjusting it with a tiny screw-driver, then holding it up to her eye and scoping downrange before making another tiny adjustment.

  "Got everything you need?" Clemus asked.

  "Huh? Oh, yeah!" Sharp said. "Thanks! I'll pay on the way out again?"

  "Yeah, you will," he said before nodding and waddling off.

  Sharp set her bag down and I hopped out of it and up onto the counter. She started to pull out guns and boxes of ammo and magazines that still needed to be filled. And then she pulled out something for me.

  "Okay, don't fuss now," Sharp said.

  "I'm hardly some stray cat. I won't fuss about protection," I said as I allowed Sharp to smush my face in. We had bought a cat-hat. It was an all black, rather warm, piece of stretchy cloth designed to fit around a cat's face, squeezing in the ears and allowing a discerning owner to attach all sorts of hats to the top.

  Mine had come with little flowers embroidered all around it. It was very cute.

  Of course, we weren't going to stop there. I'd ordered some noise-cancelling earbuds online. Good ones, with decent range around them that were meant to be worn around the back of human ears but which ought to work for me as a cat.

  Sharp and I had spent the evening sewing some pockets into the cat-hat to fit them in.

  "Alright, here goes," Sharp said as she pulled out a phone. A moment later I heard... not too much of a difference, really, as she activated the noise-cancelling via bluetooth. "Does it work?"

  "We'll find out once you shoot a few times," I said.

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  Sharp nodded quickly, then started loading up the rifle's magazine. We'd brought two, so that she could practice rapid reloading. Having her manually reload every one after emptying them would be a chore, but we would be here for a few hours, and it was good for her to learn how.

  If she was ever caught in a firefight and needed to reload mid-battle, I'd want her to know how.

  Plus, she cheated by pulling out a load assist from a pocket and slotting it over the magazine.

  Once it was loaded, Sharp went to the edge of her booth and shouldered the rifle. I sat next to the controls for the plinking targets and tapped my paw against the ten metre marker, making it spring up down range.

  "A little more forwards. Move your right leg back a tiny bit. That's right. You'll want to feel the recoil and imagine it travelling through you and down your leg."

  Sharp took a shot, then glanced at me.

  I nodded. The noise-cancelling worked. Her aim didn't. She kicked up dust a few metres past the target.

  But that was fine. I was having her use nothing but iron-sights for now. They were better at helping her understand the entire concept of bullet traversal. Fancy sights were for people that needed to compensate, didn't have good training, or who needed that extra bit of accuracy. Not that I'd fail to use them myself. Any tool for the job.

  I had Sharp run through aiming drills until she could hit the target nine times out of ten, then it was quick reload drills between full-auto bursts. Her aim worsened there, but not by too much. She was getting the hang of it.

  So I shifted to her aiming as if there was a wall in the way. Lean fire, firing on one knee, and eventually I added a second target at the twenty-five metre mark and had her switching between the two.

  Then we ran out of rifle ammo, and it was time to switch over to something else. I chose the revolver. It was lower and one-handed, which would throw her off before we tried something like the SMG.

  "Urgh, this thing sucks to reload," Sharp said. She stuck her tongue out between her teeth and fiddled with the catch that allowed the cylinder to slide out. Then she fumbled some bullets into place.

  "Yeah, revolvers are like that. I'm surprised that anyone would still practice with them."

  Sharp jumped, and I carefully turned and glanced up at our interloper. The blonde. She had a bag slung over one shoulder, and her booth was cleared out. I hadn't noticed her finishing up, which was careless of me.

  "Oh, uh, hi!" Sharp said.

  "Hi," the woman replied. She grinned, then reached over and turned her hand palm-up close to me. "Nice cat. Well-behaved... I think? Is he... she friendly?"

  "Sometimes," Sharp said.

  I wanted to roll my eyes, but that wasn't what a normal cat would do. Not that there was too much hope in passing off as entirely normal already. Normal cats didn't stand quietly in the middle of a gun range like I'd been doing. Or had clothes on.

  I sniffed her hand, then touched it with the side of my face, which was incredibly awkward. The woman's smile grew and she started to stroke my back. "Aww! You must be some sort of warlock, then?"

  "Uh," Sharp said.

  "That's cool. I saw you here last week. Is old man Clemus taking on a new apprentice?"

  "Oh, no," Sharp said with a shake of her head. "I'm just, well, trying to learn how to defend myself?"

  It was a lame excuse. Someone learning self-defence didn't show up with this many guns and this much ammo.

  The girl raised one eyebrow at that, then shrugged. "Good to see someone around here in any case. Old Man Clemus gets lonely. Though, uh, don't let him know I told you that?"

  "You know him well?" Sharp asked. "Is he your grandpa?"

  She laughed. "Great-grandpa, more like! Nah, we're not related by blood. At least, I hope not! I'm his former apprentice."

  "Oh! So you run your own range?"

  "Uh," the woman said. "Yeah, something like that."

  "You moron," I said. "Clemus is a retired sharpshooter-for-hire. If she's an apprentice of his, then her job is to put lead in people's heads for cash."

  "Oh," Sharp said. "So, are you an edgerunner? That's so cool!"

  I sighed. This idiot.

  ***

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