And so it continues ^^
Enjoy :)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters that appeared in the show.
"Here you go." Alfred said and handed her the bottle with the thick liquid.
"Thanks." Penny panted and sucked it down.
It had been a month.
A month filled with cardio exercises, primarily running and swimming and some indoor cycling when the weather made running impossible. After the first day introductions, Alfred had really put her through the ringer daily, starting the day at six in the morning with two hours of stretching her muscles and joints, followed by breakfast and then running until she had to vomit.
After the first time that had happened, she had wondered how she was supposed to do more training after emptying her stomach of the breakfast she had consumed and not digested yet. But Alfred had handed her a bottle with she had thought was juice but had turned out to be some thick liquid that tasted nice and helped to calm her upset stomach.
"It's real food." Alfred had told her with a smile after she had asked him about it.
Alfred had known that she would most likely throw up from the exhaustion, so he had mixed her what was essentially a smoothie consisting of egg whites, some oatmeal, blueberries, bananas and some other things, but despite her misgivings of being able to hold something inside her, she drank it and it helped calming her stomach. This time was no different, the thick liquid going down her throat and settling in her stomach, calming the churning that had led to the expulsion of what used to be in it before.
"Can I ask something?" Penny looked at Alfred.
"Of course, I told you that you can." Alfred nodded.
"Since I got here, you made me do running, swimming, cycling and every other form of cardio exercise." she pointed out.
"Yes. And your question is?"
"When are we getting to the fighting part?" she wondered.
"When you are able to sustain a fight." Alfred explained. "My view on this is that for every minute that you train to fight, you should train three minutes to increase your stamina. I know of many people who lost their lives because they were too exhausted to go on after one big fight they had."
"Did you ever get into such a situation?" she wanted to know.
"Yes, once." Alfred nodded. "I had the job of killing someone who always surrounded himself with his men. His domicile was built in a way that he was in a center room and the three rooms before his were full of his guys, connected by rather narrow corridors. The first room contained twelve of his goons and I had to move fast and wide to avoid getting shot."
"How did you survive that?" she gasped, unable to imagine any way he would get out of that.
"One thing to know when you're fighting multiple opponents is to make them get into each other's way." Alfred told her. "Make them bump into each other and most importantly, make them hesitate to take a shot at you by having their friends between you and them Use them as shields while you shoot them."
"And I guess you yourself have to be in constant motion to avoid becoming a target?" Penny suggested.
"Very good." Alfred nodded proudly. "Always stay in motion and don't become predictable, meaning, change your direction often. This isn't like martial arts movies where the heroes can fight twenty guys and then move on and act as if he didn't just exert him- or herself. Or where your opponents are nice enough to come at you one at a time."
"Also moving around crouched?" she asked.
"That too, if you can sustain it. Keep a low profile, make yourself a hard target." Alfred agreed. "The best solution is to cut the power, making the room dark and use the dark vision goggles that you get from the outfitter."
"But night vision goggles are available on the free market, aren't they?"
"I said dark vision, not night vision. Come with me." Alfred said and led her to a door, unlocking it and retrieving a pair of goggles that looked smaller than the night vision goggles she had seen on pictures or in movies. "Night vision goggles have a huge flaw. When you shine a bright light at the wearer, they get almost blinded by the sudden flash. Not good if you're in a firefight, where muzzle flashes light up spots in a dark room."
"And these ones?" she asked, putting them on.
"They only enhance the light available. If it's full daylight like now, they are essentially just goggles without function. The darker it gets, the more they enhance the light."
"What about absolute darkness?" she wondered.
"Well, you can't enhance what isn't there." Alfred conceded. "But neither do night vision goggles, they also work with passive light. The only part you would retain is the heat vision, if the goggles have that. But then again, you rarely have absolute darkness."
"So, uh... what was the most people you killed during a single mission?" she asked, remembering that he told her she could ask anything.
"Twenty-eight." Alfred said without having to think. "It was a gang of rapists whose leader had connections to local law enforcement and politicians so none of them ever got prosecuted. They terrorized an entire town until some parents cried out for help. I answered."
"Did they see you coming?"
"No." Alfred shook his head. "But I made sure they knew why I killed them. And I killed them very painfully. I also hung signs around their necks what they did and I stole information their leader had stored about his connections and sent that to the press."
"Wait, I remember that." Penny interjected. "I remember seeing a documentary about that as a child. It was a huge scandal and it led to dozens of politicians and cops being arrested."
"Yes." Alfred nodded.
"Can I ask? How did you get into this line of work?"
"Well, I... worked for the government, doing the same thing, just different targets in other countries." Alfred hesitated. "They had me kill people you'd ask yourself why they should die. And one day, I just couldn't do it anymore. So I quit."
"I can't really believe they'd just let you." Penny mused. "Wouldn't they have maybe killed you to keep you quiet?"
"If I haven't had contacts to high-placed people, I might have been." Alfred shrugged. "But I was too naive to think that I would be able to find something else to do. My government pension wasn't much, especially when you're just thirty-five, and I never managed to learn another craft. So I started doing what I knew how and became a killer for hire. At least that way, I could choose my targets."
"Ah, now I know where Leonard got his sense of right and wrong from." Penny smiled.
"Yes, my boy also wants to see bad people, who skirt justice, dead." Alfred nodded. "Apart from his first job, where he had to kill an ex-wive of a rich person, after which he also had to kill the rich guy himself because that one wanted to kill Leonard, he has only took jobs that take out bad guys."
"And that's exactly what I want to do." Penny stated.
"We'll see if you can." Alfred looked at her. "Feeling better?"
"Yes, a lot." Penny nodded. "This stuff you make is great."
"Good, because after lunch, we'll start with the combat training." Alfred stated.
"Really?" she was excited. "No more running?"
"Oh, you will still do cardio exercises." Alfred chuckled. "But Penny, do you have any idea what you have done this morning?"
"Um... no?" Penny was confused.
"Do you realize how far you've run?"
"Ah... no." Penny shook her head.
"You ran some of the forest trails today too, right?" Alfred smiled. "I saw you on the cameras."
"I did, yes." Penny nodded.
"You also ran around my entire property at the fence line, except the part with the apple trees and grapevines." Alfred revealed. "Which means, young lady, that you ran a marathon plus four miles."
"Seriously?" Penny gasped. "I ran thirty miles?"
"You did." Alfred nodded proudly. "Which means you have, in fact, the cardio requirements I want to have from someone I train."
"Yes!" Penny whooped. "When is lunch?"
"Thirty minutes." Alfred told her. "It's potatoes with lean steak."
"I'll be there." Penny grinned and even had the energy back to run upstairs for a quick shower and to change.
The diet Alfred had her on was all food that was easily digestible. Chicken, other lean meat, turkey, fish with cooked potatoes, green beans or carrots. She was hankering for some spaghetti but when she had asked, he had told her that if she ate that, she'd vomit a lot earlier when she was exerting herself again. Still, he had acquiesced to her wish, at least to some degree and offered a small portion of spaghetti for some lunch, not too much but enough to sate her appetite for it for a time.
As she swept the towel over her back, she saw the reflection of her naked body in the mirror, something she had never really taken any notice since she got here. She almost didn't recognize the person looking back at her. She always had kept herself fit but there had been some softer parts on her but now, everything looked rock hard. Her skin was tight over her body, she could see the outlines of her muscles everywhere and to her surprise, her breasts seemed a lot more firm than they had been before.
She quickly got dressed and headed downstairs where Alfred was finishing setting the table. The lunch was good as ever, lean meat with potatoes and some vegetables. Once they were done, Alfred cleaned up everything and then led Penny out of the house into another building that turned out to be a gym with a large clear area for combat training.
"Now, the first thing we do is stretching and loosening of joints." Alfred said and led her through the exercises.
At first, Penny followed his lead but when the stretching got into its second hour, she felt as if he was ribbing her.
"Uh, why are we doing this for so long again?" she asked him, since they did a two hour stretching before breakfast.
"Penny, when it comes to combat, you always want your muscles and joints loose, otherwise, you will get injured." Alfred explained. "I took this idea from Muhammad Ali."
"The boxer?" she was surprised.
"Yes, when he trained, he always spent over an hour just warming up and stretching before he even threw the first punch against the punching bag." Alfred nodded. "I've known some of my colleagues to get injured during training because they didn't warm up properly. As equally important is the stretching after the training to avoid sore muscles."
"I understand." Penny accepted, bowing to Alfred's wisdom.
"Tell me, young lady, have you ever fought?" Alfred asked.
"I grew up with an older sister and older brother, so yes." Penny nodded. "And during my... dark years, I had to fight other prostitutes from time to time and sometimes a client or two."
"So, basically, you can do a little street fighting, but nothing concrete." Alfred concluded.
"Yes."
"Alright, so this is what we'll do." Alfred proclaimed. "You attack me for fifteen minutes and I will only defend. If you manage to hit me in the chest or face at least once, I will go a little more easy on you during your training. If you can't hit me, I will go full force with you."
"Okay." Penny smiled excitedly and prepared to attack.
"Help!" Penny shouted after waking up, unable to move, her shout causing the trample of feet as Alfred ran up the stairs.
"Penny, you're okay?" Alfred shouted through the closed door.
"No, help, please!" Penny called back and the door opened, revealing the older man.
"What's wrong?" he asked, seeing her on the bed.
"I can't move." she almost cried. "I mean, I can move my arms but every time I try to get up, I have a terrible pain in my back. And I really need to use the bathroom."
"Come on, I'll help you up." Alfred said and took her arms, pulling her into a seating position, Penny's teeth clenching. "Can you turn your legs?"
"I can, yes." Penny nodded and turned her body so her legs dangled off the bed. "But I can't stand up.
"Come on." Alfred stood before her and pulled, Penny voicing pain as she stood upright. "Can you walk?"
"Oh my god!" Penny groaned and took very small steps, her back ramrod straight. "What's wrong with me?"
"I'll call the doctor." Alfred said as he helped her to the bathroom. "So, uh..."
"I don't think I care about shame right now." Penny said and let Alfred pull down her pajama bottoms, the older man doing it from the side to be as chivalrous as possible, seeing that his son should be the only one allowed to see her like that.
"Can you sit down by yourself?"
"Let me see." Penny said and tried to lower her body, managing only a few inches and more or less falling the rest. "Ouch."
"Okay, do your thing while I call the doctor. When you're done, I'll help you back to the bed." Alfred told her and left the bathroom.
"Jesus, what's going on?" Penny wondered as she relieved herself.
Luckily, the bathroom was built in a way that allowed her to reach the cabinet with her toothbrush and toothpaste from her perch on the toilet. She used the glass to drink some water before brushing her teeth, finishing both and trying to stand up. When she was in a half-crouch, the sharp pain returned and she flopped back down, resigning herself to wait until Alfred returned.
The older man came back a minute later, helping her up and again pulling up her bottoms until her hands could reach it to put it back into place. He helped her back into bed, where she once more just flopped down and let herself fall backwards until she was prone again, her legs still off the bed. Alfred lifted them and turned her body slowly until she was fully in bed again. Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang and Alfred went downstairs to open it, letting the doctor in, who came into her room where he put his bag down next to the bed.
"Penny, was it?" the doctor asked her.
"Yes." she nodded.
"My name is Albert Winston." he introduced himself. "What's the problem."
"I can barely move." Penny described. "When I try to get up, I have terrible pain and when I'm on my feet, I can only move with small steps with my back straight. I can't dip my body to the side and I have trouble pulling my arms to my body."
"Alfred, what have you done with her?" Albert asked the other man.
"Regular training." Alfred shrugged. "Yesterday we swam, then did some dual-handed weapons training."
"Did you hit her in the back?"
"From time to time, yes." Alfred confirmed. "But never against her spine."
"Alright, lets see." Albert nodded and knelt down at the foot of the bed. "I'm going to see if you have feeling in your feet, alright?"
"Okay." Penny nodded.
"Tell me if you feel that." Albert said and pressed something against her foot.
"I did." Penny said and confirmed all the other spots Albert pressed his pen against.
"Okay, now turn around." Albert told her.
"I don't know if I can." Penny sighed and tried to turn.
"Alfred, little help?" Albert looked poignantly at the man and together, they turned Penny onto her stomach.
"Penny, I'm going to put pressure against your back. Tell me when you feel a spike of pain." Albert said.
"Okay." Penny nodded and waited while the doctor pushed his fist against her lower spine and ground his knuckles over it.
"Nothing so far?" Albert asked.
"Apart from the pressure of your hand itself, it's not particularly painful." she told him.
"Okay, lets see." Albert mused and pushed against another part of her back.
"YEAOUCH!" Penny screamed when she felt a sharp pain. "Jesus, that hurt."
"I see." Albert nodded to himself, seeing the problem and pushing against the opposite spot, receiving the same reaction from Penny.
"So, what's the problem?" Alfred wanted to know.
"The good news, nothing is wrong with her spine." Albert told him as they turned Penny onto her back again. "No discs popped out, no nerves pinched."
"And the bad news?" Penny asked.
"Both of your lattissimus dorsi have cramped up severely." Albert revealed. "Probably due to the lack of recovery for them after they took a beating, literally speaking. That's why you can only walk with a straight back and can't dip your body to the side."
"I did stretching afterwards." Penny pointed out.
"Sometimes simple stretching isn't enough when your muscles get beaten." Albert told her. "The best would be an additional ice bath to alleviate the swelling and bruising that occurs."
"I can provide that." Alfred nodded.
"For now, I'll give you some muscle relaxants and pain killers." Albert said and got some boxes from his medicine bag. "Take one relaxant three times a day, after breakfast, lunch and dinner. Take the pain killers only if it becomes unbearable and only one pill at a time."
"What about my training?" Penny asked.
"Unless you can find something you can do from your bed or without moving much, it's on halt." Albert told her. "The muscle relaxants are very strong, you wouldn't be allowed to drive a car or even ride a bicycle when you're on them, so fighting is out of the question."
"So I am bedridden now?" Penny wanted to know.
"For the moment, yes." Albert confirmed. "When you feel the relaxants working, you can try to get up and walk around. But no heavy lifting and no physical training."
"I'm sure I can find something we can do that doesn't involve physical labor." Alfred accepted the doctor's orders.
"Not this morning though." Albert told him. "You should give her body time to let the relaxants do their job so she can at least get up and move around again."
"Thanks, doc." Alfred said to him and led him back downstairs.
"Ugh." Penny huffed, taking one of the pills out and swallowing it with some water from the bottle she kept on her nightstand.
She wondered if this would be a recurring theme for her stay, doing some training and then lying in bed, unable to move. She moved a bit, seeing how manageable the pain was and to her relief, just moving her body around slowly didn't hurt a bit. Another attempt at getting up was rewarded with some more pain but now that she knew it was her muscles and not her spine, she felt better already.
"How do you feel?" Alfred asked as he came into the room, carrying a tray with her breakfast and, to her surprise, a helmet.
"Well, now that I know it's not the spine, better already." Penny sighed and pushed herself into a more upright position by stuffing some pillows under her back.
"I found something for you to do while you're bedridden." Alfred proclaimed and showed her a ball.
"Okay..." Penny hesitated, wondering what this was for while she began eating.
"This is to train your depth perception with one eye." he explained.
"I don't understand." Penny admitted.
"In our line of work, it's possible you get injured in one eye, leaving you temporarily blind on one." Alfred told her. "If that happens, you can't really fight because you won't hit your opponents anymore."
"How does it work?"
"Easy." Alfred showed her the objects. "The helmet's visor can block one of your eyes and you throw the ball against the ceiling and catch it again."
"Wouldn't some goggles be enough?" she wondered about the necessity of the helmet.
"Sure, if you can deal with the ball hitting you in the face from time to time." Alfred pointed out.
"Ah, point taken." Penny chuckled. "But what if the ball flies away? I can't really get up quickly to retrieve it."
"That's what the cord is for." Alfred showed her a long, thick cord. "You wrap the end around your wrist or a finger and the other side comes around the ball. If the ball flies through the room, you can simply pull it back. The cord is long enough to not impede its flight to the ceiling."
"That's brilliant." Penny nodded impressed and quickly finished her breakfast.
"Alright, let me help you." Alfred said and tied the cord around the ball to make it impossible for it to slip out before doing the same with her wrist, using a wristband to avoid tying it to hard around.
After Alfred had left with the tray, Penny put on the helmet, adding the blocker for her left eye and began throwing the ball to the ceiling. Alfred's insistence on the helmet proved to be justified when the ball hit several points on what would have been her bare head and face, bouncing off the material. She regularly switched the blockers, training her left and right eye at the same rate.
Sometimes, the ball landed on her body, the blanket covering her taking the brunt of the impact but in some spots, she could feel it, like in her abdomen or once when it hit her directly on her right breast. The ball also flew freely through the room, once almost making her nightstand lamp fall down but she managed to catch it and put it under the bed to protect it. A few times, it caused her pain when it hit her fingers or arms but other than that, it was fine using it.
She spent several hours doing this, taking a few breaks in between. Alfred brought her a light lunch at some point, enough since she wasn't really moving and watched her a bit throwing the ball. She had to admit, while at first she could barely catch the ball, misjudging the distance often, she got better, able to catch it regularly.
"Impressive." Alfred commented. "You learn quick, it took Leonard three days until he was able to catch half of his throws."
"Really?" Penny beamed, happy to hear that. "Can you tell me where I stand right now, I mean in general?"
"Well, your combat technique is still a little stiff but you have the moves down." Alfred described. "You need to be a bit more spontaneous in your move set, right now you always to the same order of how I taught them to you."
"Is that why you beat me up that much?" she asked.
"Yes." Alfred nodded. "Remember, it's also because you didn't hit me."
"Ugh." Penny groaned, remembering the first day of combat training, where she had been unable to hit him even once, the older man either evading her attacks or blocking them.
As Penny had trained with the man, she had been marveled at his flexibility and mobility. For a man his age, he could move extremely well, doing flips, kicks, punches and even splits. A full split was something Penny had never managed to do before but now, she could do it do once Alfred had been through with her.
That part had been extremely painful. He had bound a rope to her ankles and sat behind her, his back to her back and then slowly pushed on the rope with his feet, spreading her legs until he felt the resistance of her tendons. But then he had kept pulling until she had voiced her pain, keeping her legs in that position until she had gotten used to it before pulling a bit more.
They had done this for sixteen days straight, only broken up by cardio exercises, eating and sleep. Her legs had felt as if every tendon had snapped but after those sixteen days, she could do a full split without problems, jumping up and doing one or letting herself flop to the ground in a split, which had hurt badly the first time she did it because an uneven patch of grass below her had hit her hard in the vagina.
For some reason, her first thought after achieving this had been about Leonard's reaction to it, especially if she did it for him naked. That thought had brought home how much she missed him, his calming presence and just the ease she felt around him. His dad kept her occupied enough that she didn't think of him every day, her head full of the training stuff and her free time, as Leonard had predicted, filled with showering and sleep, the exhaustion simply too much.
But now that she was in bed, unable to get out and throwing a ball, it gave her way too much time to think. She asked herself if she wanted to be around Leonard even if it didn't lead to carnal pleasure and she could admit to herself that the answer was yes. She wanted him around her, wanted him close, even if he was just sitting next to her, cleaning his guns while she sharpened a knife. And would she say no to sex? Of course not.
"Listen, as soon as you can walk again, I'm teaching you how to shoot." Alfred broke her train of thought about Leonard. "At least until you can do combat training again. And once we start that, I'll have you take an ice bath afterwards."
"Not looking forward to that." Penny shuddered already, imagining stepping into a tub full of water with ice cubes.
"You'll live." Alfred smiled and left the room to let her throw the ball some more.
Well, a small part of her training done. Who knows what Alfred will do to her next ^^
Review please :)