A sharp crack cut through the air as the pistol kicked in Erika’s hand. Calmly adjusting her aim, she squeezed the trigger in one smooth motion. The blocky, black weapon was some pistol called a F N something or other. Boris rattled off some numbers at her, but she couldn’t remember them. Model numbers just sounded like gibberish to her. The only reason she remembered the F and N was because it kind of looked like “fin” on the manuals Boris handed her to read. She liked it enough that she started thinking of her gun as “Finn.”

  It was the pistol she’d taken from the goon she killed. According to Boris, Pinpoint had brought it to him to check over and ensure it was safe without any dangerous modifications before it was returned to her.

  Finn kicked in her hand again as she pulled the trigger, and another hole appeared in the target halfway down the range. Again and again she fired, keeping mental track of the rounds she had left. 11. 10. 9. … 2. 1. With a final pull of the trigger, she sent her last round down range, holding her shooting stance for a moment before clearing her weapon and setting it down on the booth in front of her.

  Taking a deep breath, she let the smell of spent gunpowder and gun oil fill her nose before slowly exhaling and hitting a button on the table next to Finn. WIth a practiced motion, she slid off the earmuffs protecting her ears to hear the mechanical sound of her target ratcheting towards her.

  It didn’t take long for the sheet to arrive, and once it did, she admired her handiwork. Five small holes in the head, another ten clustered around the chest, and another four in the white around the silhouette marked the paper. Her best performance yet. Pulling the sheet off the rail, she added it to the pile of her practice targets for the day.

  “Acceptable,” Boris grunted, looking over her shoulder.

  Even with a week spent with the man ghosting up behind her at random, she still flinched in surprise. No matter how much she expected him to spook her, he still managed to surprise her every time. At least she hadn’t instinctively shot him this time.

  “Just ‘acceptable?’ I think I did pretty good.”

  “It’s as good as we can hope for in just a week. Clean up and come to the workshop.”

  Erika turned around to look at the man, only to barely catch sight of him slipping out of the shooting range as quiet as a ghost. Great talk, she thought to herself.

  Turning back to the table in front of her, she slipped the spent magazine out of Finn and cleared the pistol a final time before she started cleaning it. As her hands moved with what was becoming practiced ease, she let her mind wander back on the past few days.

  She’d been pretty pissed that Pinpoint just ditched her at the strange man’s house. Part of her kept expecting her sponsor to come back that first day announcing it was just a joke, but she hadn’t. Instead, Boris quietly showed her to a room in his house where she’d be sleeping for the next week.

  At least her clothing problem was resolved for her while he left her to start preparing food. Several sets of clothes in her size had been left on the bed for her, solving her clothing issues for the week.

  They weren’t the most fashionable clothes, but at least it meant she wouldn’t be naked or forced to wear the same clothes she’d been wearing when she arrived. Seven sets of plain t-shirts, coveralls, and underwear, all in a basic grey color were hardly head turning. At least they were comfortable after she took a long shower to wash off the ungodly stink she’d had since the fight with the maned raptors. The only truly uncomfortable thing about the clothes had been getting over the awkwardness of a man she’d just met knowing her panty and bra sizes.

  Boris hadn’t bothered to explain how he found that out, and Erika eventually chose to drop it. He wasn’t one for conversation if it didn’t involve guns. Even when they shared breakfast, lunch, and dinner together every day, the only things he talked about were guns. Shooting them, maintaining them, what the best ones for different situations were. He talked a lot about optimal ranges, accuracy, and load sizes.

  Finished cleaning the gun, she slid a fresh magazine and admired it for a moment. She’d used a bunch of different weapons over the past few days, but more than a few hours had been spent getting to know Finn. Boris had insisted she keep it on her at all times. The gun hadn’t ever been less than a few feet away from her since he’d handed it back to her after Pinpoint left.

  With an almost smooth motion, Erika slid Finn into its holster belted around her waist. Repeated practice had finally gotten her to the point that she could do so without looking. With her gun taken care of, she packed up her cleaning kit, boxes of ammunition, and her spare magazines into a small bag and swept up her spent brass into a bin in the corner before heading to Boris’ workshop.

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  The workshop was attached to the room filled with guns he’d shown her to that first day, and if she’d thought the test room had an excessive amount of guns, the workshop was something else entirely. Guns were everywhere in all sorts of states. Half assembled projects, raw materials waiting to be machined or shaped into parts, and fully completed pieces were everywhere. There were even more bullets. Shelves of commercially available bullets took up an entire section of the room alongside rows of what Boris had briefly explained were restricted items only for military, law enforcement, and superheroes.

  Erika found Boris waiting for her at one of the workbenches that held a newly assembled project. “It’s done?” she asked as she joined him, a thrill of excitement running through her. The weapon on the table in front of them was a boxy looking thing with a massive barrel, a pistol grip, and fancy looking buttstock.

  Boris looked at her like she was an idiot, but it did nothing to quench her enthusiasm. “It is. Modeled after the Keltec series of shotguns, but custom designed as requested. The original models are pump action and forego a gas system to allow for a system of dual internal magazine tubes. At your insistence, I kept the look you called ‘cool’ while custom designing it to allow for semi-automatic and pump action firing.” The look of disgust on Boris’ face as he said “cool” warred with the professional pride in his voice. The professional pride won as he continued to highlight the weapon’s features.

  “I’ve added a modified gas system to allow for your desired features, but this sacrificed the internal magazines.” Picking up the gun, he flipped it over to show a rectangular hole in the buttstock before slipping in a short magazine. Once inserted, the magazine barely extended out at an angle away from the pistol-style grip. “Twelve gauge, three inch shells. Each magazine holds seven shells. I’ve made you three magazines, but if you need more they will be extra. As agreed, it's five grand. How are you paying?”

  Erika had been expecting the question ever since Boris mentioned he custom built guns for clients. She’d learned that Pinpoint had paid him to train her for the week already, but that didn’t cover any weapons she might want to buy. She was on her own for that. The frugal side of her had just wanted to buy the cheapest weapon possible, but the money she’d deposited at the Bank had been burning a metaphorical hole in her pocket.

  Other than the rent for her apartment that she’d paid a few days before, she hadn’t had a chance to spend any of the money she got, so she splurged on the custom build. Five grand hadn’t seemed too bad when she first placed the order, but now…

  “Can you do card?” she asked, trying not to grimace as she pulled out her debit card.

  Nodding, Boris held his phone out for her. A single tap of her card on the phone, and she felt much poorer.

  “Pleasure doing business with you. I’ll pack it up for you.”

  ***

  “Let me get that for you,” Keoni said as he opened the back of the SUV up.

  “I got it,” Erika snapped as she hefted her luggage.

  With a shrug, Keoni moved out of the way.

  Erika slid the matte black case holding Kelly, her new shotgun, inside before tossing the duffle containing the clothes and other things she’d been given throughout the week. Part of her wanted to keep Kelly with her, the expensive weapon easily the most valuable thing she owned, but riding back to town with the case on her lap seemed stupid.

  “Have a fun week?” Pinpoint asked as Erika jumped into the SUV next to her sponsor.

  Glaring at the woman, she buckled her seatbelt, Finn only slightly getting in the way from its position strapped to her waist and partially concealed by her jacket. She was finally back in her own clothes that Boris had washed and fixed for her at some point during the week.

  “You could’ve warned me you were ditching me here for a week.”

  “It was hardly ditching. You needed training, and Boris happens to be a fantastic firearms trainer.”

  “Communication is important!”

  “It’s not like you were left without a way to communicate. We’ve been texting all week.”

  Pouting, Erika chose not to respond as they started to move. Pinpoint seemed content to let her stew the whole way back.

  ***

  A couple weeks passed by in a flash after her stay at Boris’ farm. Erika resumed her daily training with Pinpoint, only now her sponsor had added disarming techniques, trigger discipline, and hours at a shooting range to refine what she’d learned. It didn’t take long for her to get used to the new routine, but like everything else since she’d met the hero, things changed with little warning.

  The second weekend after her return, Pinpoint actually gave her the day off from training to relax. Saturday had been spent sleeping in before meeting up with Mary. She wasn’t sure what her friend had been up to, and she’d been pretty tight lipped.

  “I got a new job, but I can’t tell you what it is,” Mary said over brunch.

  “What? Why not?”

  “It’s a secret. But anyways, tell me more about this Boris guy. Is he cute?”

  ***

  Sleeping in on a Sunday was something precious for someone used to working all the time. As Erika laid in bed, luxuriating in the feeling of the new sheets she’d splurged on the day before, someone knocked on her door. She wanted to ignore the knocking and stay in bed, but the past few weeks had illustrated that ignoring it probably wouldn’t end well. The last thing she wanted was to have someone replace her door again.

  Getting up, she padded barefoot to the door and peeked through the peephole, only to be surprised at who she saw waiting for her to answer. Opening the door, she let Pinpoint in for once, instead of her sponsor breaking in while she was asleep.

  “Put this on,” Pinpoint said, handing her a duffle.

  Sighing, Erika took the duffle bag without complaint and headed into the bathroom to change. Whatever this new thing was, she knew that trying to resist her sponsor was an exercise in futility. But opening the duffle bag to see what was inside, she couldn’t help but swear. “Are you fucking kidding me?”