Warriorcreed: No, he's letting her heal because it doesn't make sense to teach someone how to fight if that someone can't fully move. Years ago, I bruised my wrist during self-defense training and the trainer told me to come back only when I was fully healed because otherwise, I'd only make things worse and because I couldn't fully use that hand the way I needed to.
Hokie3457: Miss you buddy, hope you're okay.
Enjoy :)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters that appeared in the show.
"So, how do you feel?" Alfred asked the next morning after Penny's ordeal and forced bed rest, having let her sleep until eight and not making her get up at six like usual.
"I can walk again but leaning to either side is still painful." Penny told him.
"That will probably take another day or two until that is healed." Alfred conceded. "Don't worry, someone will come over later to help you with that."
"Leonard?" she asked excitedly.
"No." Alfred shook his head. "Now eat, after breakfast, I'm going to teach you how to use a gun."
"I already know how to shoot, I did it with my dad when I was a teenager." she told him as she sat down.
"Penny, there's more to a gun than just shooting it." Alfred pointed out. "When you shot your father's gun, did you take it apart afterwards to clean it and put it back together?"
"Um... no." Penny admitted. "I just fired them and handed it back to him."
"See?" Alfred smiled. "Your guns are your tools. As such, you need to keep them in working order. The last thing you want on a mission is your equipment failing in any way."
"I understand." Penny nodded, realizing how little she actually knew. "How many guns will you teach me to fire?"
"Several types of handguns, several types of shotguns, several semi-automatic weapons and of course, a sniper rifle." he told her.
"And I have to master everyone of them?" she gasped.
"No, but at least two or three of them." Alfred shook his head. "Nobody is an expert with every weapon. But you need to find out which weapon fits you the most. Some people feel best using handguns, others can do their best work with a semi-automatic one."
"Which is Leonard's?"
"Leonard is proficient with handguns and semi-automatic rifles and can hold his own with shotguns, they he doesn't like that latter because of their recoil." Alfred said. "He is an expert marksman though."
"Really?" she was impressed.
"Yes, he could put a hole into a coin that's three hundred yards away." Alfred said proudly. "And he can hit a human target from two thousand yards away."
"Jesus!" Penny couldn't help being impressed..
"Now, come on." Alfred said and led her not outside, but to the basement door and down the steps.
Penny wondered what they'd do in this clean, but a bit cluttered room when Alfred pressed a light switch in a what looked to her random pattern, with no light going on or off. After the rather long pressing combination, a panel slid to the side, revealing a keypad where Alfred entered a long code so quickly that Penny had no chance of remembering it, even though she was watching him do it.
When Alfred finished entering the code, a tool rack slid downwards into the floor and the wall opened to the side, revealing another set of stairs. He waved her to follow him and she walked down after him until they reached a dark room. Alfred flicked another light switch and the room became illuminated.
"Jesus fucking Christ." Penny gasped upon seeing the room in light.
In front of her was a long hall with targets hanging in the distance, a regular shooting range. The left and right sides of the room were plastered with weapons of all kinds, separated by type, one corner only having handguns, with semi-automatic rifles next to that, the other side housing the shotguns, both manual and automatic and the larger rifles. A separate cabinet even housed a fully automatic machine gun and a six-barreled minigun was hanging from the ceiling on several steel cables.
"Welcome to my playground." Alfred laughed. "Just kidding."
"Which ones will I shoot?" she asked.
"Every one of them except the machine gun and the minigun." Alfred said, pointing to the ceiling before grabbing the first gun, a simple Glock and a magazine from a drawer, handing both to her. "How much do you know about a gun like this?"
"My dad has a similar one." Penny nodded and took it, sliding the magazine into the weapon and loading a bullet into the chamber, leaving the safety on.
"Good." Alfred nodded, then gave her a poignant stare, his face turning angry. "But never... ever, load a weapon again while standing in the middle of this room. IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?!"
"Yes, Sir." Penny actually backed away a step, the sudden change in the older man's demeanor frightening to behold.
"Now, go before the range." he pointed to the stand and let a target paper come down at the end. "Take aim and fire."
Penny was so rattled by the loud rebuke following her mistake that she forgot to switch the safety off, the gun clicking loudly when she pulled the trigger. On Alfred's orders, she put it down and took a few deep breaths, calming herself from his outburst and repeated the exercise, taking aim and letting loose a few shots, most of them hitting the target in the six and seven rings.
"Not bad." Alfred commented. "With a little more exercise, you'll become quite proficient with it."
"How good a shot are you?" she asked.
"Let me show you." Alfred said and let another target paper fall into place, putting out his hands so she would hand him the gun.
Alfred got another magazine and returned to the range. In one fell swoop, he let the empty magazine slip out the gun, replaced it with the new one and emptied it against the target, all ten shots hitting inside the ten ring, almost taking all the paper out of it. What amazed her the most was the fact that Alfred had taken barely any time to aim, just lifting the gun and shooting.
"Wow." Penny chuckled in awe.
"Take these and do it again." Alfred said and put a large box on the small table next to her.
For half an hour straight, Penny shot the gun at the target, releasing the magazine and using the loose bullets from the box to reload them. Part of the exercise was to reload the gun quickly, Alfred showing her how fast she should be, with him holding the gun straight out, dropping the old magazine and in one arm movement, sliding the new one into the gun without ever letting his right arm and the aim of the gun drop.
Penny had trouble achieving this feat, her attempts to mirror what he was doing foiled by her pushing the magazine either past the weapon or against it. Alfred cautioned her that this would take her weeks if not months to achieve it but Penny was determined to make up for her mistake at the beginning of this and learn it quicker.
Even when Alfred left the room to prepare lunch, Penny stayed, promising him not to shoot but only to learn how to quickly reload like he did. Her right wrist was bruised and hurting from all the times she rammed the magazine against it and every time she dropped them to the floor, she winced when she picked them up, her back muscles still bothering her. After a few more minutes, she changed her tactics, using only one magazine, letting it slide out of the gun and catching it, then letting her left arm hang at her side before lifting it up in an attempt to get the magazine back into the gun without moving it.
"YEAH BABY!" Penny shouted excitedly the first time she achieved it.
"Good." Alfred's voice startled her. "Now do it again."
Penny repeated the action, succeeding in roughly a third of the attempts. Alfred looked at it impressed, noticing that Penny used only one magazine but he allowed her that success, deciding to tell her later that she still had to achieve it with two separate magazines, especially when she had to take the new one out of her belt or pockets.
"Alright, come on, lets get to lunch." Alfred said and led her out of the basement. "When we're done with that, you're going to clean the gun and take another one."
"Just how much ammo do you have?" she wondered.
"Let me just say, my arsenal could outfit a company." Alfred smiled.
"Doesn't that become weird if the police ever came to inspect or something?" she asked.
"Young lady, do you really think any of those guns down there is registered?" Alfred chuckled. "Or that I buy my ammo in a regular gun store."
"I guess not." she admitted, feeling stupid.
"I do have a few guns upstairs, bought in gun stores, registered, with ammunition." Alfred told her. "And should you pass all the tests, you will have guns specifically made for you, so they fit you like a glove, so to speak. Leonard's sniper rifle, for example, took almost six months to make, with numerous fittings and test runs until it was like a part of himself."
"Wow." Penny breathed, realizing that she hadn't even scraped the surface of the depth of that world.
"Now sit down young lady, I got some good food for you." Alfred smiled and put a plate in front of her.
"Pasta!" she was surprised, the small mountain of spaghetti covered in tomato sauce with small pieces of meat in various spaces on and inside the mound.
"Since there won't be any cardio training today due to your back, I thought you could use some form of culinary pickup." Alfred said and began eating as well, his portion smaller than Penny's.
"Thank you so much." Penny smiled and dug in.
The first few bites she ate were as much as she could fit into her mouth, though after that, she paced herself, wanting to enjoy this rare event of getting spaghetti. She still was mad at herself for that stupid mistake she made in the basement when she loaded the gun and angered her host and trainer. She felt somehow like she had let him down and Leonard as well and she hoped that it wouldn't be detrimental to her prospects of finishing, especially given the ultimate punishment for not passing the tests.
Properly stuffed, she leaned back, closing her eyes to enjoy the feeling. Alfred gave her half an hour before leading her back into the basement, continuing her firearms training. As he had promised her, the first thing she had to do was to take the gun apart, clean it and put it back together, Penny having trouble doing that even with Alfred guiding her, sometimes having no clue where a certain smaller part of the gun went.
"The key is repetition." Alfred counseled her. "Soldiers in the military, when they are in basic training, have to take apart their weapons and put them back together again and again until every move is so ingrained into them that they could do it blindfolded."
"Could I take the gun into my room so I can practice it?" Penny asked. "I'll take an empty magazine."
"No." Alfred shook his head. "These guns will not leave this basement. But you can take one of my registered guns, I have one of the same model."
"Thank you." she accepted that.
"But I'd advise you not to take too long, because you will need your sleep." Alfred told her. "Tomorrow, we will continue your cardio exercises, you can move well enough again now."
"I don't think I can run yet." Penny hesitated.
"But you can sit on a stationary bike." he pointed out. "If you wait several days, most of your gains will be gone."
"What does Leonard do when he's on a mission?" she wondered. "I mean, he can't do cardio every day, right?"
"Unless he's sleeping in the field somewhere, then he can. The hotels that are affiliated with us have gyms and every one staying there uses it in the morning. And even if the town or city he's in doesn't have a affiliated hotel, Leonard usually frequents hotels that also have gyms."
"I see." Penny accepted. "Leonard was attacked by another one from your business, so what would happen if the two had met in the hotel gym? I doubt they have weapons on them."
"That wouldn't happen." Alfred shook his head. "In our business, there are several unwritten rules of conduct. Some are more like guidelines but a few are strictly enforced. One of those rules is that the hotel property is neutral territory. Absolutely no fighting on hotel grounds."
"And what if someone breaks that rule?"
"If they're not caught by hotel security right away, he or she will have an open contract on him." Alfred said. "They would be hunted down by every other assassin in the world. Nowhere would be safe. So far, nobody has dared to challenge that rule."
"Well, this Caspar certainly tried." Penny pointed out.
"Yes, and look what happened to him." Alfred chuckled. "If you really want to break a rule, you would need to make sure that nobody else knows about it. Had Caspar succeeded in killing my boy, he would have killed you and your family and then the crew he had hired so they wouldn't talk to anyone and nobody would have any idea what had happened to Leonard."
"Interesting." Penny nodded, the world she wanted to be a part of truly complex. "Or rather, frightening."
Penny put the gun back together for the last time and Alfred gave her a semi-automatic rifle. This time, she only loaded it when standing at the range, putting it up to her eye the way it felt natural to her. When she pulled the trigger, she was surprised by the hard recoil, the barrel moving up after the three shots had exited.
"Quite the difference, isn't it?" Alfred chuckled. "This weapon has three fire modes. First is single shot, which means only one bullet comes out when you depress the trigger, even if you hold it down. Second mode, which you just did, is a three shot salvo. Third mode is fully automatic, which simply means that when you depress the trigger, it'll shoot until you run out of ammo.
"I guess single shot is best for targeting purposes." Penny said.
"Correct." Alfred nodded. "The three shot mode is good for stopping power since the lift of the barrel hits several points in a target. The full automatic mode is never advised unless you wanna suppress your enemy."
"Automatic would make me run out of ammo pretty quickly, though." Penny stated.
"It would." Alfred confirmed.
For the rest of the day, Penny shot various guns, took them apart and cleaned them. When dinner time came along, Alfred had her clean up the area, sweeping the spent bullet casings and throwing them into a trash can, the bin getting pretty heavy as it filled with metal casings. Alfred gave her a light dinner of cold cuts and bread, Penny wolfing it down greedily before helping him to clean up. When the doorbell rang, Penny perked up, thinking that it could only be Leonard coming but to her surprise and disappointment, a diminutive Asian woman entered the house, bowing to Alfred who bowed back.
"Penny, this is Lee So-young." Alfred introduced her. "She will do a deep-tissue massage of your back."
"Really?" Penny was surprised. "Cool."
"Don't think this will be a breeze." Alfred chuckled. "Her deep tissue massages are quite painful but they work amazingly."
"Where do you want to do it?" the small woman asked with a heavy accent.
"My room, maybe?" Penny suggested. "I mean, her bag looks quite heavy, so if you have a room down here we could use, that might be better."
"You can use my study." Alfred nodded and pointed to a door at the end of the hallway, the woman nodding and grabbing her large bag, pulling it to the room on its wheels, Penny following them.
"Please take off your shirt and bra." So-young said after Alfred had left.
"Um, okay." Penny felt a bit steamrolled but acquiesced, removing her upper body clothing and lying down on the massage table, her face looking through the familiar hole in it.
"Mister Hofstadter has told me that your upper back muscles are the problem, is that correct?" So-young asked as she began gently kneading her back muscles.
"Yes, they completely locked up, so much so that I as unable to get up without help." Penny confirmed.
"Okay, I will concentrate my efforts on those areas." So-young said and continued, pushing harder. "Feel free to curse, if you need to."
"OH SHIT!" Penny yelled in sudden pain when the little woman dug her fingers into Penny's back muscles. "FUCK FUCK FUCK!"
True to Alfred's words, the massage was painful to the core, Penny feeling as if being tortured. She'd happily tell that woman everything she wanted to know, if only she asked her some questions. But without saying anything, that petite woman continued to brutalize her with her massage for minute after minute, Penny even trying to alleviate it by biting her hand. She wondered how this was supposed to help her but finally, after forty-five minutes of sheer torture, the Asian woman stopped and proclaimed the end of the massage.
"Bloody hell!" Penny gasped once she managed to get up.
The pain in her back was mostly gone, her body able to bend to the side once more. She bent forward, pushing her fingertips to her toes and managed to do it without problems, doing a few side bends and feeling only slight pain, not enough to be bothersome. On one hand, she was glad that she was feeling better once more, on the other it meant that from tomorrow onward, Alfred would beat her up during combat training again.
While she got dressed, she wondered was Leonard was doing right now.
"Gracias." Leonard said and handed a stack of thousand-peso coins to the boy, him and his friends running off to wherever they could spend it.
"So?" his contact asked him.
"He'll be there tonight." Leonard said, keeping as quiet as possible. "I will go on foot when it gets dark and return the same way. When I knock on your door later, you drive me back to the airport."
"What if his men seek retribution?"
"I'll take care of that." Leonard promised him and left him alone, moving to a secluded area and taking out his phone, dialing a number he hadn't used in years.
"Si?" a male voice answered the call. "Quien es?"
"Es John." Leonard used his cover moniker, hoping his broken Spanish was enough. "Es bueno saber de ti, Javier."
"Ah, John, your Spanish is still atrocious." Javier laughed. "But it's good to hear from you too. What can I do for you?"
"Are you aware of the guerrilla cell near La Cenizosa?" Leonard asked him.
"I am, yes." Javier confirmed. "What about it? Did they commit another massacre?"
"Their leader will... uh... go into early permanent retirement tonight." Leonard told him. "How fast can you get some forces here to protect the town from retribution?"
"Can you guarantee that he stop being a problem?" Javier asked.
"Yes." Leonard replied courtly.
"I can have a unit with vehicles there in three hours." Javier said almost breathlessly, Leonard hearing buttons of another phone pressed.
"Send a notification to the phone I called with when they are in place. The guerrillas will come from the north." Leonard told him. "When I have it, Jorge Gonzales will retire for good."
Leonard left the town and began walking, the sky already darkening. He kept to the brush, his cameoline suit making his body blend in with the brush, with only his head visible, making him look like a floating head from afar. A few times, he heard vehicles in the distance, going to the ground to hide in case someone was coming.
The approach to the compound remained uneventful, some animals scurrying out of his way when he approached. When he had reached the target area, he saw the few buildings housing the guerrillas, a few patchwork bungalows, several tents and a central tower, the remains of an old military airfield.
From the children in town, who had overheard guerrillas getting food supplies from there, he had learned that the commander of the cell had installed bulletproof glass in his office on top of the tower, fearing exactly what Leonard was about to do the man. Leonard produced a monocular from one of his pockets, putting it on his eye to look at the compound.
He saw multiple guerrillas on guard duty, most of them standing in a slouch that told of boredom while others played cards or drank or ate. A look through the window showed the commander sitting in his chair at his desk, two subordinates in front of him but still leaving Leonard's line of sight unimpeded.
Leonard put his backpack down and waited, pulling his cloak over his head to hide from any prying eyes. The sun disappeared beneath the horizon and one hour later, it was almost completely dark, only a few patches of light sky visible, with cloud cover blocking the light of the moon and stars. A few minutes after eleven, Leonard's phone buzzed and upon checking it, he saw the message that the guarding forces were in place.
Nodding to himself, Leonard took his backpack and opened it, producing several rolls of cloth. Each roll contained part of his weapon, a sniper rifle he had custom-made for him to his exact specification. Howard had done amazing work, every part made to perfection and Leonard quietly slid them in place, his moves ingrained from years of repetition.
He slid the scope into place and looked through the monocular again, the advanced piece of technology showing him the distance to his target, or rather, the distance to the bulletproof window separating his target from open air. He eyeballed the extra distance and added it to the distance shown on his monocular, nodding to himself and setting the scope to nine hundred and twenty-five feet.
Leonard looked at his target through the scope. Like he had learned from his dad, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds and releasing, then opening his eyes. His aim had shifted slightly so he aimed true once more and repeated his breathing exercise, doing it three more times until his aim was still true after breathing out. His gloved finger depressed the trigger, which caused a chain of reaction that in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases resulted in the death of the target.
The ammo he used made the usual protections of bad people obsolete. The barrel, made with his own exact specification was a hair's breath thinner than the bullet. Half a dozen flat panels running the inside length of the barrel sheared off the excess width of the bullet, the panel alignment causing the bullet to start a fast rotation, which guaranteed a stable flight.
The bullet exited the barrel point zero six seconds after depressing of the trigger with an exit velocity of two thousand, eight hundred and fifty-nine feet per second. Since his target was only nine hundred and twenty-five feet away, the bullet reached it in less than a third of a second. The flash was bright enough to be seen by Jorge Gonzales and any guard looking into Leonard's general direction, but with a flying time of less than a third of a second, his target had no time to react at all.
During its flight, the bullet lost speed and height due to gravity and air friction but the scope was adjusted to compensate for that. When the target was in the center of the cross hairs, the barrel targeted a point about fifteen inches above the target. At a shorter distance this would have led to him missing the target but the scope was preset to exactly nine hundred and twenty-five feet.
What a lot of people, Gonzales included, didn't understand was that bulletproof glass was not really bulletproof. Glass could be made thicker or harder but it wasn't different from any other armor material. It was subject to the same laws of physics and those laws didn't allow the existence of an immobile object which was the glass and an unstoppable force which was the bullet. Bulletproof glass was designed to stop or deflect the most widespread forms of ammunition that was used worldwide by hit men, terrorists or homicidal maniacs.
But a high caliber bullet or specialized ammunition could destroy or penetrate it. His bullet, like his rifle, was made to his exact specifications with a core made of a small amount of cesium, surrounded by a tungsten mantle formed like a needle with the whole thing encased in a lead sabot.
When the bullet hit the glass, it transferred its kinetic energy to the transparent material. The glass, which in reality was an extremely viscous liquid, bulged inwards but when the strain of the impacting force became too much it began to buckle. Microscopic cracks appeared at the point of impact which spread outwards like a cobweb.
These cracks were proof that the glass was doing its job because the formation of those cracks used up a lot of energy. The glass buckled in a very concentrated area but ultimately, it did its job and stopped the bullet. The rest of the window held and the thirty-three grams of lead were flattened by the impact without penetrating the glass.
The hard tungsten needle wouldn't be as easily stopped as the soft lead. The three millimeter needle with the bulge at the end shed its lead hull and broke through the weakened glass. It covered the distance to Jorge Gonzales' head in the blink of an eye with the uneven, cracked structure of the glass impacting its flight stability.
The needle started to spin slightly and hit Gonzales right under his left eye. The skull density further changed the trajectory, the bullet core ripping through the brain matter and shattering apart. The cesium reacted with the brain fluids in the same way every element in the first column of the periodic table reacted with water.
Violently.
The small explosion fractured the back of the man's skull, the pressure pushing the brain matter into the direction of the fracture, spreading the insides of his head against the wall behind him. Before Jorge Gonzales' body had came to rest of the floor, Leonard was already dismantling his sniper rifle and packing it up into his backpack. As shouts of alarm went through the compound, Leonard silently moved away from the area, keeping to the shadows as searchlights illuminated the spot he had just vacated. He took out his phone and dialed the number he had been given.
"Mission accomplished." he spoke into the phone.
He ended the call as quickly as he had made it and took out the sim card before breaking the phone apart, letting the parts fall down around him. He took out a small plastic bottle, unscrewing the cap and dropping the sim card in it, the hydrochloric acid inside the bottle dissolving the small electronic chip quickly, the only trace of its existence the elements of the material it was made of. He capped the bottle again and stowed it inside his bodyglove before moving on with a brisker pace.
He heard the sound of engines and quickly dropped into a ditch, crawling under the brush and stopping any movement. Several vehicles drove past his positions, searchlights going over his hiding place but the properties of his outfit that was not covered by brush hiding him from their prying eyes.
The lights moved away as did the sound of the engines. Leonard counted to sixty before getting up again, resuming his walk back towards the town. He hoped that his contact in the Colombian DNI had been successful in sounding the alarm bells and there were enough forces to protect the people of the town he had used as a base of operations from the retaliation of the cell's members.
As he walked, he heard the familiar sounds of gunfire and he increased his pace to reach it in case the civilians were the targets. He could discern semi-automatic rifles and some handguns, everything the guerrillas were using but when a sudden deep whoomph reached his ears, followed by an explosion, he smiled to himself.
He slowed his pace again and walked with his regular speed for the next hour until he saw the lights of the town in the distance. Fires were burning in front of it, the remains of the vehicles the rebels had sped past him with and several figures walking around, using fire extinguishers and hoses to turn out those fires one at a time.
He put his monocular over his eye and looked at the people moving around, seeing the uniforms of the regular military forces plus the special forces of the national intelligence service. To his surprise, he even saw several tanks, two six-wheeled Cascavels with their standard thirty-seven millimeter cannons in their turrets as well as four LAVs, large eight-wheeled vehicles carrying a twenty-five millimeter chain gun, which he knew would have easily chewed through the guerrillas forces attacking the town.
A vibration in his pocket made him aware of a phone alert. He took out the device and checked it, seeing the money deposit arriving in his accounts. He smiled and chuckled, thinking about how many of his colleagues used bank accounts in the Cayman Islands to avoid the government from seeing it. His dad had thought him one of the most overlooked aspects of the Internal Revenue Service. As long as you paid your taxes on your income, nobody would look too closely at your returns.
He knew that most of his associates who hid their money did it to avoid paying most of it but Leonard was fine with losing almost half his income to the various levels of government if the result was that he'd never have to live in fear of being found out. So his tax statements would list contract work as his income, separated into several payments to avoid detection.
He walked around the town, staying away from the military and law enforcement personnel. He knocked on the door of his contact in town, the young man opening up and nodding when he saw who had disturbed him. Without a word, the man came out of his house and unlocked his car, Leonard getting into the passenger seat and the man driving, moving away from the town and towards the small airport twenty miles away where Leonard's plane waited.
Now that his job was done, he looked forward to spend a few weeks at home, missing his dogs immensely. Maybe he could convince his dad to give Penny a day off so he could spend it with her and maybe he'd be able to figure out if he truly felt more for her than just physical attraction.
The words of his dad about her feelings swirling in his head, he closed his eyes and slumbered while the man drove.
And done with this chapter. Leonard in action, what did you think? ^^
Review please :)