Advanced Weapon Training- Hans and Ellen
It was a reasonably slow day at Goodnight - as slow as days can be when you’re living in a magical refugee camp, at least - when Hans decided the time was right. When he approached Ellen, still walking a little bit awkwardly with the pain of his injuries from their first meeting, the sun had just crested the natural arc of its passage across the sky, and the air was brisk with the lingering chill of winter - but warmer than it had been at any other point in the day.
“Hallo.” He greeted her with a thin smile, the unique baritone and accent identifying him instantly to Ellen as he approached. “How are you doing?”
Clearly he was going somewhere - he had a rucksack on, a medium sized hiking pack in muted olive drab colours, and was carrying a slightly oddly shaped long black fabric back by the handle in his right hand.
Ellen turned towards the sound of Hans’ voice and greeted him with a smile. “Hey!” She stood up from the makeshift table--aka crate tilted on its side-- and pulled her backpack off her shoulder to tuck her cards inside. “Ugh, I’m so bored!” She dragged her hands down her cheeks, pulling the skin awkwardly to emphasize her opinion.
“We’ve been trying to play Bullshit,but everyone I play with hoards the cards they have. I won a 5 of diamonds today, but that only brings me up to like… a dozen cards, so not terribly close to a full deck.” She explained, and stuck her handful of cards in her bag for safekeeping.
Behind her, Ellen heard a groan. “If you’re going to leave, you could at least let us borrow the cards!”
“Nuh uh!” Ellen replied to the whiny guy. “You’ll disappear and next time I see you, you’ll have lost these cards, too. There’s a reason no one lends you anything, Carl! You bet constantly, and you lose constantly.”
“What are you up to?” Ellen asked, eager to follow Hans to...just about anywhere other than here.
“I was coming to ask if you would like to learn more about shooting.” He nodded, taking in the scene she was leaving. “I have come at a good time, I think.” Hans added on afterwards, with a sly grin, as he started towards the rear of Goodnight, expecting Ellen to follow.
“There is a woods, as you know, outside of the shopping centre. A great deal of rubbish has been left in it over the years by people who pass through or camp there, and the trees are dense enough that the foliage masks most of the sound made by shooting as long as a suppressor is used. I remember you expressed an interest in learning more about firearms - and I have an interest in teaching. Shall we go and build a shooting range?”
It was hard to be excited about something like shooting without coming across like an insane person. It wasn’t like she was eager to become a mass murderer or something-- Ellen just wanted to better handle herself in the situations she was likely to encounter. As of late, those situations involved guns. After a few moments, which Ellen figured was suitable for not coming across like a crazy person, she nodded.
“Yea, I’d like that.” Ellen said as she followed him through the building. “The shooting range is where you set up like...targets to practice on, right?”
“Ja.” He nodded, as they headed out of the main atrium and through one of the abandoned storefronts. “It will be a simple thing, finding bits of rubbish and refuse to shoot at, maybe some cans or bottles, maybe something to stand in for a metal plate. The real challenge is going to be finding somewhere safe, with a good backdrop that will catch all our shots, so we don’t put anyone in danger inappropriately.”
They went behind the counter of the derelict store - itself now used as a meeting room, and for storage - and opened the door into one of the employee access hallways.
“How do you feel about guns, at the moment?”
“On the physical front, not good. I know there is a safety, but I’m not sure where it is on each gun and I keep questioning myself like… is red ‘stop’ as in the gun won’t shoot or is it ‘danger!’ as in you will kill someone if you pull the trigger while it’s red.” Ellen felt like there was a lot she needed to learn about the basics of using a gun. “And I guess loading it would be a good thing to know how to do. How many bullets does it hold, anyway?” She knew that varied based on the gun, from her extensive knowledge of random action movies. But those probably weren’t the most reliable sources of information.
“On the… psychological front, I think…” Ellen paused for a few moments to put her thoughts into words. “I think guns are a tool, and using a gun isn’t much different from using our magic. I don’t like to think of situations as strictly ‘good’ or ‘evil’-- though FOE agents thus far have definitely challenged that mindset-- I just think that when you use a tool like a gun or magic, you can use it conservatively, or recklessly, or selfishly, or to try to protect someone else. I’m not… very clever. I don’t think I can come up with fantastic plans that get us medical supplies and food. But this is something I think I can do.” Ellen didn’t think of herself as a shoot-first and ask questions later kind of person, though she certainly turned to using weapons earlier than many others she had come to know at Goodnight. She just didn’t have any major reservations against defending herself and taking extreme actions, as the case warranted. “What is the saying…If you don’t stand for something, you‘ll fall for anything. I don’t want to fall.”
Hans nodded as she spoke, biting his lip and furrowing his brow in mild confusion when Ellen started talking about parts of each firearm being red, and whether that might indicate danger or safety.
“Red means ready. Ready to fire. Or, ‘red, you’re dead’.” They eventually came to a fire door out of the building, left on a latch to keep it closed as the original lock had broken away. Hans opened it, and they started out into the woods. “Also, not every firearm will have a safety indicator. The guns I am going to show you today do not, and they both have similar safety mechanisms - however, a variety of safeties exist. Later, I can show you some other examples.”
Deeper into the woods they went, away from the broken roofs and gutted frames of Goodnight’s exterior, away from the people and the clamour of it.
“It is good that you don’t want to fall for anything, I like that saying. It’s also good that you see weapons as tools, because like any tool, learning to use it is not as stylish as some people think. I’m also going to teach you the general principles,” he enunciated as he hopped over a ditch, “of firearm maintenance and cleaning, as well as their operation. Ideally, over several lessons perhaps, I will show you how to disassemble and reassemble these guns.”
Some mages went outside Goodnight in order to train their magic without putting anyone in danger. Ellen hadn’t really needed such drastic measures--at least thus far, and she hadn’t been outside properly in days. Ellen followed him, climbing over and around the various detris surrounding the Goodnight. Hans quickly brought up that he would teach her how to maintain the guns as well. It sounded...like a bit of work. But she agreed it was a good idea. “That sounds like a good plan. I only learned the basics of car maintenance, like how to change a tire, and I never even got that far with my helicopter lessons.”
Ellen caught Hans’ glance back at her, and before he could question it, she supplied. “Long story short, I did a few lessons with my dad as a bonding experience. It didn’t work--in terms of the bonding, I mean.”
"You can fly helicopters? That is quite an achievement." He gave her a grin.
“Like I said, I only took a few lessons. I can’t just hover, like they do in action movies sometimes. That is way harder than it looks. But I’ve taken off, flown around a bit, and landed successfully. Haven’t crashed once!” Ellen chuckled lightly. “It’s a lot of multi-tasking. You have to be doing different things with your hands, and your feet… It’s a lot. But please don’t ask me to disassemble and reassemble a helicopter. I only got as far as helping to gas up one, and that was only one time.”
Hans chuckled.
"I have even less experience with helicopters. I jumped out of a few, not much more."
“That takes a lot of balls, though!” Ellen replied. “I always wanted to go skydiving. It was definitely a bucket list thing… just didn’t get the chance.” She shrugged. Ellen seriously doubted she was going to get any opportunity to jump out of a plane in her future, given the circumstances. She could see herself being pushed out--but she wouldn’t likely have a parachute in that scenario.
"Ah they were very close to the ground, we only needed some ropes. Performing a jump out of an aeroplane is quite different, of course, but all it takes is training and discipline." He nodded solemnly, recalling the experience. "Recreationally, civilian skydiving is a lot of fun, quite exciting - but I did it a lot in my job so it wasn't as much of a novelty for me, you know?"
Hans had a point. The helicopter ‘jumps’ tended to be pretty low, and they had ropes. But it still seemed a bit intense. “You did skydiving?! Were you like... an instructor?” She knew there were people who jumped out tandem with skydivers who were new. It was one of the reasons she had postponed skydiving from her list. The idea of being strapped to a stranger was a bit uncomfortable. Could they feel the vibrations if you farted? What if you got sick? “Did anyone ever vomit on you?!”
“I do have the instructor qualification, yes, but no - I was an airborne soldier in the Bundeswehr, a paratrooper. Part of 31st Airborne Brigade, until it was restructured into 31st Paratrooper Regiment. I did quite a lot of things with them.” He scratched his beard for a moment, pausing to survey a patch of garbage next to a ditch, before decided against it as a shooting range site and moving on.
“Nobody ever vomited on me, as far as I can remember. Not in the sky at least, sometimes we would go drinking and that could get messy, naturally.”
“That’s good. It probably sounds silly, but that was my big fear about skydiving. Like, you go for the first time and are harnessed to the instructor and you vomit right as you both jump out of the plane and then you’ve got these chunks falling through the air and it's in your nose and you can smell it. And what if they are a sympathy puker?” Ellen shook her head. “I don’t get motion sickness on, like… boats or jet skis or while skiing. But for some reason I am terrified of puking while jumping from a plane.” Everyone had those sorts of silly fears, right? Similar to having a dream about realizing they were naked partway through their school day.
“We all have to be afraid of something, right?”
Hans stared at Ellen for a moment.
“Of course.” He nodded again after a moment, looking away, trying to take in the emetophobia. “If we ever go skydiving, I will be sure to keep this in mind.”
Ellen noticed the pause, and wondered for a moment if she said something wrong. “Great.” She answered, albeit a bit muted as she returned to following Hans to a good location for their target practice. Maybe he was one of those macho men who didn’t want anyone to know they could get scared sometimes. Or maybe she was reading too much into it, and the pause was more a result of mental translation. English certainly wasn’t either of their first languages.
After a little more walking, and a fair way into the woods, they eventually came to a small almost-clearing in the canopy of the woods. Sunlight was streaming through the gaps in the leaves, casting a lush green glow over the abnormally large dumping site that was left there - a bath, some cabinets, a few boxes of rainwater filled cans and glass bottles, and most crucially a steep hill just to one side of the entire setup.
Hans dumped his bags down, and nodded. This was the place.
“Why is vomit such a problem, though? You know I’m no stranger to fear - I’ve done a lot of things, seen a lot of things, a lot has gone on in my life you know? I was shot twice just a few weeks ago, as you know. A person being sick - even on me - just seems… not very big?”
Ellen took the opportunity to lean against a tree as they stopped. She wasn’t out of shape by any means, but the terrain was quite uneven and she had already done some running around Goodnight earlier in the day. As Hans brought up the vomit again, Ellen laughed.
“It isn’t the vomit itself. And it isn’t big... I guess it’s more the fear of embarrassing myself in that way. Like being physically stuck with a person and becoming so...vulnerable?” Ellen shrugged. “It just seems gross to me, like what if I ate something gross earlier, or he is a sympathy puker…?” Ellen chuckled again. “It’s not a fear in the sense of...being rational. It’s just something I dread the thought of. You don’t have anything like that?” Ellen wasn’t trying to pry into his deepest darkest fears, she was just curious if he… was slightly afraid of clowns, or being chased by ducks. They were real fears! Even if they were a bit silly.
He paused, scratching his beard, producing a canteen from his backpack and taking a sip after a moment of pensive scratching.
“I think I know what you mean. Yes, I am sometimes worried that I will shit myself. Or at least, you know, the thought of it makes me a bit nervous - I do not worry about my… anus control.”
A moment of silence.
They both burst into laughter. Raucous, echoing, glorious laughter - the kind that makes you ache, and then takes the rest of your pain away with it when it goes.
“Oh.” Hans sighed, once the idea of anus control had faded. “I did shit myself once, that’s where the fear comes from. It was in Kosovo, during the war - the worst time to shit one’s self. It was very embarrassing at first, of course, and I was laughed at a great deal…” he trailed off, caught in the reverie.
“At least you’ve already dealt with the...fallout--” Ellen laughed again before apologizing and shaking her head, trying to get rid of the giggles. “Sorry. If it makes you feel better. There was this guy on the boat once-- I was a crab fisher, I’m not sure if you knew that-- and he was pretty new. Well he lost a bet with one of the guys and ate some fish guts or something. I don’t know, I wasn’t there for the bet. But by the time I got there, it was all coming out of both ends.” She vividly remembered seeing (and smelling) the outcome of that bet.
Hans grinned.
“That doesn’t sound so bad. He could get cleaned up. After I ate my bad food and started… leaking, we were attacked. Ended up pinned down for eight hours in a firefight. All the time, gunfire overhead whenever anyone moved, and at the same time, I was running out of toilet paper.”
He stifled a laugh.
“A sticky situation.”
Ellen’s expression softened as Hans revealed that he had come under attack while he was still suffering the repercussions of having defecated himself. That was...certainly worse than being sick on a boat with a bunch of drunk idiots around. None of them liked the clean-up process, but it certainly didn’t stop them from making more stupid bets later. Hans’ last joke lightened the mood though, and Ellen grinned lightly. “That sounds… incredibly stressful and horrible. On the bright side, even if you do shit yourself again, it probably won’t be as bad as the last time.”
“So our plan is to aim for those things?” She gestured towards the debris at the base of the steep incline.Not that Hans had to make a plan for aiming, but the words had already come out before she realized it was really just her who had to plan to aim for things.
Hans nodded.
“Ja, but first I’m going to teach you how to handle this rifle. As for the firefight, while I truly hope you never need to find out for real, an extended firefight is very stressful - but it is also very boring. Eight hours is a long time, but I have known soldiers who went through longer - imagine, you would go through two meals, a bathroom break, sometimes even sleep. Less sleep, but sometimes - in fact, I have tried to sleep through artillery fire before.” He continued explaining as he started the process of producing the rifle.
The AR15 - the same one he had brought with him to rescue Ellen, the same one that had seen action in the outback of Australia, and done who knows how much else by now - was in a couple of different pieces in the case, and the way Hans went about slapping them together was the kind of thing usually seen only in fiction. His movements were quick, efficient, almost violent, and the rifle was in one functional piece in what seemed like seconds, but definitely no longer than a minute.
With the finished weapon in hand, Hans looked up to see Ellen’s reaction.
“You better not ask me to do that next.” Ellen said, arching one eyebrow. There was no way she could replicate that process. Maybe if they color coded the ends that were supposed to meet and had them numbered 1, 2, 3, etc… But that was still a MAYBE. He was impressive, but no doubt he needed to be impressive with weapons like these. People who were less capable wouldn’t be alive today to teach airheads like Ellen how to use the weapons.
He grinned, pleased to see her impressed with his display.
“Not to worry, this isn’t so hard - it takes practice, not brains, I am certainly not a genius.”
“Well good. I’m glad there is hope for me yet. Seriously though, why not just color code the bits that go together?” Maybe no one wanted their guns with color coded stripes on them? She could probably scrounge up some nail-polish and just put matching colors on the pieces that connected. She could just imagine the look on Hans’ face if he saw her taking nail polish to any of his guns. Hah!
“Well, that is a good question. Sometimes these parts rely on being well oiled or greased, so the colour would be potentially covered up with the grease - sometimes the parts need to be very…” he searched for the word, clicking his thumb and finger in frustration as it eluded him.
“... flush? Tight. If you painted on, the paint might simply be rubbed away, or it might interfere with the function of the weapon. It isn’t so hard though, really - just practice, over and over. I do this automatically now, like I was born with it.” He smiled softly as he produced a long, cylindrical object from the gun bag.
Immediately, Ellen recognised it as a suppressor.
Hans’ answer about the color-coding made sense. She imagined there weren’t too many ways to put a weapon like that together wrong anyway. She was much more likely to just have a heap of parts if she failed. Ellen saw him bring out the suppressor, which he mentioned before was to help contain the noise. “So are we using the silency thing so we don’t disturb the animals as much with the noise?” She imagined no one else from Goodnight was near here. “Or is it on more because it adds weight so it is a more realistic practice?” As long as he didn’t say it’s so no one hears me murder you and leave your body out here she was pretty fine with it.
“It’s so nobody hears me shoot you and leave your body out here.” He stared at her, completely deadpan.
After a moment, he cracked a grin.
Ellen stared right back confident, well….mostly confident that he was joking. “Well that would be a perfectly dandy way to ruin a date!”
“Don’t worry, she isn’t loaded. No, it is actually in case there is anyone else living or traveling through this forest - but also, it is for us. An unsuppressed gunshot, especially firing a supersonic cartridge like most 5.56 rounds this sort of gun would fire, is extremely loud, and the sound will not only carry for miles potentially, but also permanently damage our hearing. I have some earplugs for us to use anyway, but they aren’t heavy duty enough to simply shoot anything with. There is also an important lesson to be learned here.”
Hans thrust the rifle into Ellen’s hands as he set about loading a magazine with bullets.
“How much do you know about this kind of rifle?”
Hans’ explanation that the suppressor was because the gun was loud was… a bit on the nose, but definitely better than the murder-alternative. Though, he hadn’t specified murder, just shooting. So in theory he could leave her bleeding out here instead...Why exactly was she focusing on this? Ellen shook off those thoughts as he thrust the weapon in her hands, and she shifted it in her hands until she felt like she had a good hold of it.
Heh.
Ellen cleared her throat and looked up at Hans. “Well… the rifle is bigger than a pistol. Umm… It is loud…”
Focus!
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing.”
He blinked at her, clearly catching on to her distraction.
“Are you alright? Did I say something?”
Shit. Shoot. Heh, Shoot…
“No… I mean, yes, I’m fine. You didn’t say anything wrong. I just don’t really know much about guns. They fire bullets. This kind is bigger than a pistol. I think… it goes farther? But it isn’t like… one of those machine guns that shoots a lot.” Now was not the time to be distracted thinking about innuendos. She actually wanted to learn this. Not like when she took those surfing lessons. Those were absolutely just for the eye candy, aka instructor.
“You seem to be elsewhere, mentally. What’s on your mind? It really is fine to not know so much about the weapons - I was not born with an encyclopaedic knowledge of firearms either, after all.” He produced another pack of bullets from his bag, as well as a little stove and a few tins. “I was also expecting to be out here for some time, so I did bring us some food.”
“First you threaten to shoot me, and now you are offering me food? I don’t know… It’s probably poison.” Ellen chuckled. She sat down cross-legged next to him. “I guess… if you got it from Goodnight it could be poison even unintentionally.” She wasn’t a huge fan of the food...but it kept her alive so far, so it had that going for it.
“We Germans have precious few other means of conducting diplomacy. I do not have any beer, so there is only food for now. Are you sure you are alright?” He continued, as he produced a bullet from the other box.
“Ugh… Beer. I miss alcohol so much.” Ellen replied. She wasn’t a big drinker, but she missed the occasional drink and the fun socializing that came along with it. “But yea, I’m really fine. I just… have a very dirty mind and thinking about the guns and shooting… There’s just a lot of innuendo going on because I have the maturity of a twelve year old boy.” It really wasn’t that big of a deal, so it was better to just tell him the truth… rather than continue acting like she had some big secret she was trying to keep.
“Oh.” He paused for a moment, before producing his other weapon - a boxy handgun with a slim profile and a modern looking design. An incredibly stereotypically German looking piece of weapon. “I suppose it is a… big gun.” he nodded thoughtfully.
He checked the weapon, ejecting the magazine and racking the slide, before gesturing with it.
“This one is smaller.” He added.
Ellen wasn’t sure what to make of the pause at first. He wasn’t exactly a young man, but surely dick jokes weren’t that much less prevalent, right? Then he began to poke a bit of fun with the phrases he used and Ellen grinned. “Well… they say size isn’t everything. It’s all in how you handle it, right?” That could be taken totally non-sexually, too! She just meant that you had to know how to aim and fire a weapon! Cough.
“Mm. I agree. I’ve never failed a weapons handling test in my life. Top marks from every examiner.” He reached for the gas stove, but lingered on it, waiting to judge her reaction.
“Oh really?” He wasn’t just placating her. He would have just accepted her explanation and moved on. And this… this was more than just an agreement. “Well, I don’t know if I should trust a third party examiner. Sometimes it’s better to just be a little hands-on. Don’t you agree?”
He grinned wolfishly back at her.
“I do. We can teach you to fire a real gun later.”
It was a reasonably slow day at Goodnight - as slow as days can be when you’re living in a magical refugee camp, at least - when Hans decided the time was right. When he approached Ellen, still walking a little bit awkwardly with the pain of his injuries from their first meeting, the sun had just crested the natural arc of its passage across the sky, and the air was brisk with the lingering chill of winter - but warmer than it had been at any other point in the day.
“Hallo.” He greeted her with a thin smile, the unique baritone and accent identifying him instantly to Ellen as he approached. “How are you doing?”
Clearly he was going somewhere - he had a rucksack on, a medium sized hiking pack in muted olive drab colours, and was carrying a slightly oddly shaped long black fabric back by the handle in his right hand.
Ellen turned towards the sound of Hans’ voice and greeted him with a smile. “Hey!” She stood up from the makeshift table--aka crate tilted on its side-- and pulled her backpack off her shoulder to tuck her cards inside. “Ugh, I’m so bored!” She dragged her hands down her cheeks, pulling the skin awkwardly to emphasize her opinion.
“We’ve been trying to play Bullshit,but everyone I play with hoards the cards they have. I won a 5 of diamonds today, but that only brings me up to like… a dozen cards, so not terribly close to a full deck.” She explained, and stuck her handful of cards in her bag for safekeeping.
Behind her, Ellen heard a groan. “If you’re going to leave, you could at least let us borrow the cards!”
“Nuh uh!” Ellen replied to the whiny guy. “You’ll disappear and next time I see you, you’ll have lost these cards, too. There’s a reason no one lends you anything, Carl! You bet constantly, and you lose constantly.”
“What are you up to?” Ellen asked, eager to follow Hans to...just about anywhere other than here.
“I was coming to ask if you would like to learn more about shooting.” He nodded, taking in the scene she was leaving. “I have come at a good time, I think.” Hans added on afterwards, with a sly grin, as he started towards the rear of Goodnight, expecting Ellen to follow.
“There is a woods, as you know, outside of the shopping centre. A great deal of rubbish has been left in it over the years by people who pass through or camp there, and the trees are dense enough that the foliage masks most of the sound made by shooting as long as a suppressor is used. I remember you expressed an interest in learning more about firearms - and I have an interest in teaching. Shall we go and build a shooting range?”
It was hard to be excited about something like shooting without coming across like an insane person. It wasn’t like she was eager to become a mass murderer or something-- Ellen just wanted to better handle herself in the situations she was likely to encounter. As of late, those situations involved guns. After a few moments, which Ellen figured was suitable for not coming across like a crazy person, she nodded.
“Yea, I’d like that.” Ellen said as she followed him through the building. “The shooting range is where you set up like...targets to practice on, right?”
“Ja.” He nodded, as they headed out of the main atrium and through one of the abandoned storefronts. “It will be a simple thing, finding bits of rubbish and refuse to shoot at, maybe some cans or bottles, maybe something to stand in for a metal plate. The real challenge is going to be finding somewhere safe, with a good backdrop that will catch all our shots, so we don’t put anyone in danger inappropriately.”
They went behind the counter of the derelict store - itself now used as a meeting room, and for storage - and opened the door into one of the employee access hallways.
“How do you feel about guns, at the moment?”
“On the physical front, not good. I know there is a safety, but I’m not sure where it is on each gun and I keep questioning myself like… is red ‘stop’ as in the gun won’t shoot or is it ‘danger!’ as in you will kill someone if you pull the trigger while it’s red.” Ellen felt like there was a lot she needed to learn about the basics of using a gun. “And I guess loading it would be a good thing to know how to do. How many bullets does it hold, anyway?” She knew that varied based on the gun, from her extensive knowledge of random action movies. But those probably weren’t the most reliable sources of information.
“On the… psychological front, I think…” Ellen paused for a few moments to put her thoughts into words. “I think guns are a tool, and using a gun isn’t much different from using our magic. I don’t like to think of situations as strictly ‘good’ or ‘evil’-- though FOE agents thus far have definitely challenged that mindset-- I just think that when you use a tool like a gun or magic, you can use it conservatively, or recklessly, or selfishly, or to try to protect someone else. I’m not… very clever. I don’t think I can come up with fantastic plans that get us medical supplies and food. But this is something I think I can do.” Ellen didn’t think of herself as a shoot-first and ask questions later kind of person, though she certainly turned to using weapons earlier than many others she had come to know at Goodnight. She just didn’t have any major reservations against defending herself and taking extreme actions, as the case warranted. “What is the saying…If you don’t stand for something, you‘ll fall for anything. I don’t want to fall.”
Hans nodded as she spoke, biting his lip and furrowing his brow in mild confusion when Ellen started talking about parts of each firearm being red, and whether that might indicate danger or safety.
“Red means ready. Ready to fire. Or, ‘red, you’re dead’.” They eventually came to a fire door out of the building, left on a latch to keep it closed as the original lock had broken away. Hans opened it, and they started out into the woods. “Also, not every firearm will have a safety indicator. The guns I am going to show you today do not, and they both have similar safety mechanisms - however, a variety of safeties exist. Later, I can show you some other examples.”
Deeper into the woods they went, away from the broken roofs and gutted frames of Goodnight’s exterior, away from the people and the clamour of it.
“It is good that you don’t want to fall for anything, I like that saying. It’s also good that you see weapons as tools, because like any tool, learning to use it is not as stylish as some people think. I’m also going to teach you the general principles,” he enunciated as he hopped over a ditch, “of firearm maintenance and cleaning, as well as their operation. Ideally, over several lessons perhaps, I will show you how to disassemble and reassemble these guns.”
Some mages went outside Goodnight in order to train their magic without putting anyone in danger. Ellen hadn’t really needed such drastic measures--at least thus far, and she hadn’t been outside properly in days. Ellen followed him, climbing over and around the various detris surrounding the Goodnight. Hans quickly brought up that he would teach her how to maintain the guns as well. It sounded...like a bit of work. But she agreed it was a good idea. “That sounds like a good plan. I only learned the basics of car maintenance, like how to change a tire, and I never even got that far with my helicopter lessons.”
Ellen caught Hans’ glance back at her, and before he could question it, she supplied. “Long story short, I did a few lessons with my dad as a bonding experience. It didn’t work--in terms of the bonding, I mean.”
"You can fly helicopters? That is quite an achievement." He gave her a grin.
“Like I said, I only took a few lessons. I can’t just hover, like they do in action movies sometimes. That is way harder than it looks. But I’ve taken off, flown around a bit, and landed successfully. Haven’t crashed once!” Ellen chuckled lightly. “It’s a lot of multi-tasking. You have to be doing different things with your hands, and your feet… It’s a lot. But please don’t ask me to disassemble and reassemble a helicopter. I only got as far as helping to gas up one, and that was only one time.”
Hans chuckled.
"I have even less experience with helicopters. I jumped out of a few, not much more."
“That takes a lot of balls, though!” Ellen replied. “I always wanted to go skydiving. It was definitely a bucket list thing… just didn’t get the chance.” She shrugged. Ellen seriously doubted she was going to get any opportunity to jump out of a plane in her future, given the circumstances. She could see herself being pushed out--but she wouldn’t likely have a parachute in that scenario.
"Ah they were very close to the ground, we only needed some ropes. Performing a jump out of an aeroplane is quite different, of course, but all it takes is training and discipline." He nodded solemnly, recalling the experience. "Recreationally, civilian skydiving is a lot of fun, quite exciting - but I did it a lot in my job so it wasn't as much of a novelty for me, you know?"
Hans had a point. The helicopter ‘jumps’ tended to be pretty low, and they had ropes. But it still seemed a bit intense. “You did skydiving?! Were you like... an instructor?” She knew there were people who jumped out tandem with skydivers who were new. It was one of the reasons she had postponed skydiving from her list. The idea of being strapped to a stranger was a bit uncomfortable. Could they feel the vibrations if you farted? What if you got sick? “Did anyone ever vomit on you?!”
“I do have the instructor qualification, yes, but no - I was an airborne soldier in the Bundeswehr, a paratrooper. Part of 31st Airborne Brigade, until it was restructured into 31st Paratrooper Regiment. I did quite a lot of things with them.” He scratched his beard for a moment, pausing to survey a patch of garbage next to a ditch, before decided against it as a shooting range site and moving on.
“Nobody ever vomited on me, as far as I can remember. Not in the sky at least, sometimes we would go drinking and that could get messy, naturally.”
“That’s good. It probably sounds silly, but that was my big fear about skydiving. Like, you go for the first time and are harnessed to the instructor and you vomit right as you both jump out of the plane and then you’ve got these chunks falling through the air and it's in your nose and you can smell it. And what if they are a sympathy puker?” Ellen shook her head. “I don’t get motion sickness on, like… boats or jet skis or while skiing. But for some reason I am terrified of puking while jumping from a plane.” Everyone had those sorts of silly fears, right? Similar to having a dream about realizing they were naked partway through their school day.
“We all have to be afraid of something, right?”
Hans stared at Ellen for a moment.
“Of course.” He nodded again after a moment, looking away, trying to take in the emetophobia. “If we ever go skydiving, I will be sure to keep this in mind.”
Ellen noticed the pause, and wondered for a moment if she said something wrong. “Great.” She answered, albeit a bit muted as she returned to following Hans to a good location for their target practice. Maybe he was one of those macho men who didn’t want anyone to know they could get scared sometimes. Or maybe she was reading too much into it, and the pause was more a result of mental translation. English certainly wasn’t either of their first languages.
After a little more walking, and a fair way into the woods, they eventually came to a small almost-clearing in the canopy of the woods. Sunlight was streaming through the gaps in the leaves, casting a lush green glow over the abnormally large dumping site that was left there - a bath, some cabinets, a few boxes of rainwater filled cans and glass bottles, and most crucially a steep hill just to one side of the entire setup.
Hans dumped his bags down, and nodded. This was the place.
“Why is vomit such a problem, though? You know I’m no stranger to fear - I’ve done a lot of things, seen a lot of things, a lot has gone on in my life you know? I was shot twice just a few weeks ago, as you know. A person being sick - even on me - just seems… not very big?”
Ellen took the opportunity to lean against a tree as they stopped. She wasn’t out of shape by any means, but the terrain was quite uneven and she had already done some running around Goodnight earlier in the day. As Hans brought up the vomit again, Ellen laughed.
“It isn’t the vomit itself. And it isn’t big... I guess it’s more the fear of embarrassing myself in that way. Like being physically stuck with a person and becoming so...vulnerable?” Ellen shrugged. “It just seems gross to me, like what if I ate something gross earlier, or he is a sympathy puker…?” Ellen chuckled again. “It’s not a fear in the sense of...being rational. It’s just something I dread the thought of. You don’t have anything like that?” Ellen wasn’t trying to pry into his deepest darkest fears, she was just curious if he… was slightly afraid of clowns, or being chased by ducks. They were real fears! Even if they were a bit silly.
He paused, scratching his beard, producing a canteen from his backpack and taking a sip after a moment of pensive scratching.
“I think I know what you mean. Yes, I am sometimes worried that I will shit myself. Or at least, you know, the thought of it makes me a bit nervous - I do not worry about my… anus control.”
A moment of silence.
They both burst into laughter. Raucous, echoing, glorious laughter - the kind that makes you ache, and then takes the rest of your pain away with it when it goes.
“Oh.” Hans sighed, once the idea of anus control had faded. “I did shit myself once, that’s where the fear comes from. It was in Kosovo, during the war - the worst time to shit one’s self. It was very embarrassing at first, of course, and I was laughed at a great deal…” he trailed off, caught in the reverie.
“At least you’ve already dealt with the...fallout--” Ellen laughed again before apologizing and shaking her head, trying to get rid of the giggles. “Sorry. If it makes you feel better. There was this guy on the boat once-- I was a crab fisher, I’m not sure if you knew that-- and he was pretty new. Well he lost a bet with one of the guys and ate some fish guts or something. I don’t know, I wasn’t there for the bet. But by the time I got there, it was all coming out of both ends.” She vividly remembered seeing (and smelling) the outcome of that bet.
Hans grinned.
“That doesn’t sound so bad. He could get cleaned up. After I ate my bad food and started… leaking, we were attacked. Ended up pinned down for eight hours in a firefight. All the time, gunfire overhead whenever anyone moved, and at the same time, I was running out of toilet paper.”
He stifled a laugh.
“A sticky situation.”
Ellen’s expression softened as Hans revealed that he had come under attack while he was still suffering the repercussions of having defecated himself. That was...certainly worse than being sick on a boat with a bunch of drunk idiots around. None of them liked the clean-up process, but it certainly didn’t stop them from making more stupid bets later. Hans’ last joke lightened the mood though, and Ellen grinned lightly. “That sounds… incredibly stressful and horrible. On the bright side, even if you do shit yourself again, it probably won’t be as bad as the last time.”
“So our plan is to aim for those things?” She gestured towards the debris at the base of the steep incline.Not that Hans had to make a plan for aiming, but the words had already come out before she realized it was really just her who had to plan to aim for things.
Hans nodded.
“Ja, but first I’m going to teach you how to handle this rifle. As for the firefight, while I truly hope you never need to find out for real, an extended firefight is very stressful - but it is also very boring. Eight hours is a long time, but I have known soldiers who went through longer - imagine, you would go through two meals, a bathroom break, sometimes even sleep. Less sleep, but sometimes - in fact, I have tried to sleep through artillery fire before.” He continued explaining as he started the process of producing the rifle.
The AR15 - the same one he had brought with him to rescue Ellen, the same one that had seen action in the outback of Australia, and done who knows how much else by now - was in a couple of different pieces in the case, and the way Hans went about slapping them together was the kind of thing usually seen only in fiction. His movements were quick, efficient, almost violent, and the rifle was in one functional piece in what seemed like seconds, but definitely no longer than a minute.
With the finished weapon in hand, Hans looked up to see Ellen’s reaction.
“You better not ask me to do that next.” Ellen said, arching one eyebrow. There was no way she could replicate that process. Maybe if they color coded the ends that were supposed to meet and had them numbered 1, 2, 3, etc… But that was still a MAYBE. He was impressive, but no doubt he needed to be impressive with weapons like these. People who were less capable wouldn’t be alive today to teach airheads like Ellen how to use the weapons.
He grinned, pleased to see her impressed with his display.
“Not to worry, this isn’t so hard - it takes practice, not brains, I am certainly not a genius.”
“Well good. I’m glad there is hope for me yet. Seriously though, why not just color code the bits that go together?” Maybe no one wanted their guns with color coded stripes on them? She could probably scrounge up some nail-polish and just put matching colors on the pieces that connected. She could just imagine the look on Hans’ face if he saw her taking nail polish to any of his guns. Hah!
“Well, that is a good question. Sometimes these parts rely on being well oiled or greased, so the colour would be potentially covered up with the grease - sometimes the parts need to be very…” he searched for the word, clicking his thumb and finger in frustration as it eluded him.
“... flush? Tight. If you painted on, the paint might simply be rubbed away, or it might interfere with the function of the weapon. It isn’t so hard though, really - just practice, over and over. I do this automatically now, like I was born with it.” He smiled softly as he produced a long, cylindrical object from the gun bag.
Immediately, Ellen recognised it as a suppressor.
Hans’ answer about the color-coding made sense. She imagined there weren’t too many ways to put a weapon like that together wrong anyway. She was much more likely to just have a heap of parts if she failed. Ellen saw him bring out the suppressor, which he mentioned before was to help contain the noise. “So are we using the silency thing so we don’t disturb the animals as much with the noise?” She imagined no one else from Goodnight was near here. “Or is it on more because it adds weight so it is a more realistic practice?” As long as he didn’t say it’s so no one hears me murder you and leave your body out here she was pretty fine with it.
“It’s so nobody hears me shoot you and leave your body out here.” He stared at her, completely deadpan.
After a moment, he cracked a grin.
Ellen stared right back confident, well….mostly confident that he was joking. “Well that would be a perfectly dandy way to ruin a date!”
“Don’t worry, she isn’t loaded. No, it is actually in case there is anyone else living or traveling through this forest - but also, it is for us. An unsuppressed gunshot, especially firing a supersonic cartridge like most 5.56 rounds this sort of gun would fire, is extremely loud, and the sound will not only carry for miles potentially, but also permanently damage our hearing. I have some earplugs for us to use anyway, but they aren’t heavy duty enough to simply shoot anything with. There is also an important lesson to be learned here.”
Hans thrust the rifle into Ellen’s hands as he set about loading a magazine with bullets.
“How much do you know about this kind of rifle?”
Hans’ explanation that the suppressor was because the gun was loud was… a bit on the nose, but definitely better than the murder-alternative. Though, he hadn’t specified murder, just shooting. So in theory he could leave her bleeding out here instead...Why exactly was she focusing on this? Ellen shook off those thoughts as he thrust the weapon in her hands, and she shifted it in her hands until she felt like she had a good hold of it.
Heh.
Ellen cleared her throat and looked up at Hans. “Well… the rifle is bigger than a pistol. Umm… It is loud…”
Focus!
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing.”
He blinked at her, clearly catching on to her distraction.
“Are you alright? Did I say something?”
Shit. Shoot. Heh, Shoot…
“No… I mean, yes, I’m fine. You didn’t say anything wrong. I just don’t really know much about guns. They fire bullets. This kind is bigger than a pistol. I think… it goes farther? But it isn’t like… one of those machine guns that shoots a lot.” Now was not the time to be distracted thinking about innuendos. She actually wanted to learn this. Not like when she took those surfing lessons. Those were absolutely just for the eye candy, aka instructor.
“You seem to be elsewhere, mentally. What’s on your mind? It really is fine to not know so much about the weapons - I was not born with an encyclopaedic knowledge of firearms either, after all.” He produced another pack of bullets from his bag, as well as a little stove and a few tins. “I was also expecting to be out here for some time, so I did bring us some food.”
“First you threaten to shoot me, and now you are offering me food? I don’t know… It’s probably poison.” Ellen chuckled. She sat down cross-legged next to him. “I guess… if you got it from Goodnight it could be poison even unintentionally.” She wasn’t a huge fan of the food...but it kept her alive so far, so it had that going for it.
“We Germans have precious few other means of conducting diplomacy. I do not have any beer, so there is only food for now. Are you sure you are alright?” He continued, as he produced a bullet from the other box.
“Ugh… Beer. I miss alcohol so much.” Ellen replied. She wasn’t a big drinker, but she missed the occasional drink and the fun socializing that came along with it. “But yea, I’m really fine. I just… have a very dirty mind and thinking about the guns and shooting… There’s just a lot of innuendo going on because I have the maturity of a twelve year old boy.” It really wasn’t that big of a deal, so it was better to just tell him the truth… rather than continue acting like she had some big secret she was trying to keep.
“Oh.” He paused for a moment, before producing his other weapon - a boxy handgun with a slim profile and a modern looking design. An incredibly stereotypically German looking piece of weapon. “I suppose it is a… big gun.” he nodded thoughtfully.
He checked the weapon, ejecting the magazine and racking the slide, before gesturing with it.
“This one is smaller.” He added.
Ellen wasn’t sure what to make of the pause at first. He wasn’t exactly a young man, but surely dick jokes weren’t that much less prevalent, right? Then he began to poke a bit of fun with the phrases he used and Ellen grinned. “Well… they say size isn’t everything. It’s all in how you handle it, right?” That could be taken totally non-sexually, too! She just meant that you had to know how to aim and fire a weapon! Cough.
“Mm. I agree. I’ve never failed a weapons handling test in my life. Top marks from every examiner.” He reached for the gas stove, but lingered on it, waiting to judge her reaction.
“Oh really?” He wasn’t just placating her. He would have just accepted her explanation and moved on. And this… this was more than just an agreement. “Well, I don’t know if I should trust a third party examiner. Sometimes it’s better to just be a little hands-on. Don’t you agree?”
He grinned wolfishly back at her.
“I do. We can teach you to fire a real gun later.”
