So, as usual, anyone who you recognize belongs to JE. And anyone who you don't recognize belongs to me. Unless you're completely unobservant and have forgotten a JE character: then they still belong to JE. You're failure to recognize them doesn't make them mine. (Sad, really. Otherwise I'd write a story about Ranger and give it to someone who's never heard of him. Then he'd be mine :)) Likewise, if you live by some creepy person who happens to coincidentally be the same person as the bad guy in this story or something like that, that doesn't mean they are a JE character. It just means you need to move.

Also, I apologize if this seems a bit strange of a story, or some parts don't mesh perfectly. As many of my stories do, this started because I thought of a line that I thought would be good for a RS fic, and so I wanted to incorporate it, so then I needed to build a story for the line. It also came from the many rants of me and my friend over Stephanie's need to get training. So, there you go. There's my advance apology. Now, enjoy. (BTW, if you somehow didn't get the clue from the first bit of this paragraph, this is a Babe story.)

OH! And there are spoilers up through 12.

Chapter 1

About four months ago, I was shot at by a crazy woman who claimed I was sleeping with her husband. Well, ok, I guess she's not too crazy: if I was married to Ranger and I found out someone else was trying to steal them away, their death would be much more painful and drawn out than a simple shooting. About a month after that, Joe Morelli, who I'd been dating in an on-again off-again fashion for quite some time, came home from work and we had a serious discussion. He'd realized that I wasn't going to stop being a bounty hunter and that if I changed who I was, I wouldn't be the person he loved. But, at the same time, he couldn't deal with me bounty huntering anymore. We decided that we really couldn't have a real relationship with that kind of problem. So, we broke it off, for real this time, and decided to just be friends.

Anyway, the point of all this life history is that now, as I showered off after rolling in the mud with another FTA, my second FTA-induced shower of the week (it was only Wednesday), I sort of saw the benefit of having a normal job. No rolling in the mud. No endless cop jokes. And, I winced as I reached down to turn off the shower, no FTA's falling onto their knees on your ribs after you tackle them in the mud (still not sure how he managed to land like that).

Wrapping myself in a towel, I glanced in the mirror as I walked past it. I was already starting to get a bruise at the base of my throat where the FTA had tried to choke me after falling. If Lula hadn't run in with her stungun, I could have died like that: lying in mud, choked to death by an overweight, middle aged car theif. Not the most elegant death. Not that I can think of any deaths that are elegant, but there has to be at least one out there, and the scenario I just described is certainly not it.

After quickly getting dressed, I grabbed a beer from the fridge, opened it, and then sat down watching TV while I drank it. Ok, so I wasn't actually watching TV, but the TV was on. What I was actually thinking about was the fact that I'd been beat up once again by an FTA. When I first started my bounty huntering carreer, I'd sucked. I was always getting rescued by Joe or Ranger, but at least I was training a bit. I went to the shooting range pretty regularly, and I was getting more comfortable with a gun. Then I'd killed someone with said gun, and since then, everything had changed. Well, ok, I guess very little had changed: I still wasn't very good (I was just lucky), and I was always getting rescued by someone, whether it was Joe, Ranger or, like today, Lula. The only thing that had really changed, I guess, was that I now can't really get car insurance, and my gun stays unloaded and in my cookie jar. Sure, I'd gone to the RangeMan shooting range a few times during the Stiva incident, and I went running when Ranger forced me, but I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, getting trained.

Which means that, unless that changes, my carreer won't. I'll still get muddy, garbagey, and covered in other disgusting substances. I'll still get beat up by my FTAs all the time. And, perhaps the most humiliating, I'll still get rescued by everyone. The list of my rescuers is a long one: Joe, Ranger, Valerie, Sally, various Merry Men who'd pitched in. Even my mom once ran over a crazy rabbit for me.

Well, enough is enough. I'm getting some training and that's that! I flipped off the TV, put down the beer bottle which had somehow become empty, and picked up my cell phone. I was about to call Ranger and then I realized that it was sort of defeating the point. If my goal was to not need him, or any of my other rescuers, anymore, having him be the one to train me sort of seemed like a bit of a...well, I couldn't think of what it was, but it didn't seem right. (A/N: Sneaky, sort of, way of admitting defeat after several hours of trying to think of the word I was looking for :))

I set the phone down and thought a moment, looking at it as though hoping it'd dial itself and the person on the other side would be someone with awesome training, who could train me, and who I could trust completely. Suddenly, I knew who to call. He only fit two out of the three requirements, but I was pretty sure he'd have contacts who could take care of the third. Grinning, I dialled his number and pressed send.