Seeing my mom was the last brick needed to put my normal life back together after it nearly crumbled only a few weeks ago. Now things were more or less in order: I had a proper home, I was no longer starving, I was surrounded by people, aware of my “situation”, and my parents could finally sleep in peace at night. Heck, I even started to do homework every day!
My new daily schedule was more or less as follows: get up at 11 o’clock or even at noon (oh, yeah, all vampires are late risers), breakfast, a visit to the Order headquarters. Uncle would leave me with my homework and drive away to take care of business. Then I would train with Rettle until 6 or 7 p.m. and after that loaf about the headquarters until the traditional dinner at 8 p.m. Usually, I would spend this time with Geek and Lee, sometimes with Lumberjack.
The training session with Rettle was the best part of my day. Sometime over my second week in the Order, the coach finally admitted me beyond the mysterious door where he had retreated after every class. What I found there made me excited like a kid. It was Batman’s cave! Not literally, of course. For starters, the place was not a cave but another part of the basement with the same concrete walls and floor. But what it contained might well have belonged to the Dark Knight.
The left side of this quite spacious compartment was a shooting range with a counter and some targets. A pegboard gun rack was mounted on the wall next to the counter – the sort of thing every cool secret agent in the movies keeps in his wardrobe. There hung six different guns, a shotgun, two M16s, and a Kalashnikov – the standard set in any shooter game.
The rest of the place looked just like Batman’s workshop, with impressive-looking machinery, several computer screens, a couple of workbenches laden with gun and rifle parts, and also odd devices and tools like a caliper. Blueprints for weapons of all sizes and types hung on the walls. In a far corner, there was even an anvil with a heavy hammer. This place must have been the holy of holies of the great and mighty Rettle.
Despite his robotic demeanor, Rettle wasn’t devoid of tact. He gave me enough time to examine all this magnificence and even allowed me to poke at everything and answered a million stupid questions like “What’s this?” and “What’s that?” and “What is that for?” The questions were many and foolish, but he didn’t seem annoyed in the least.
Once I calmed down, the coach brought me to the counter of the shooting range.
“Have you ever held a weapon?”
“A shotgun, once.”
“Did you get to shoot it?” Rettle took a gun, ejected the magazine and reinserted it, racked the slide.
“No, sir.”
The Order’s atmosphere was very casual and I could speak like an equal even to the venerable Fleming, but seeing Rettle with a gun made me want to add “sir”.
“This is Glock 22, your uncle’s favorite gun. It’s Austrian-made, automatic, and uses .40 caliber Smith & Wesson ammo. Fairly light, small yet powerful. Excellent for casual carrying.”
Rettle passed me the gun. I took it, thrilled as if accepting my firstborn.
“Lesson one: always watch where you point your weapon. It must never be aimed at people around you and yourself.”
I quickly corrected myself.
“Lesson two: until you are ready to shoot, your index finger must not be on the trigger. Glocks don’t have safety locks, so if you pull the trigger, the gun will fire.”
I corrected this error as well.
“Now stand with your side to the target and extend your arm toward the one in the middle. All fingers except your index finger need to wrap tightly around the handle. Your hand should be a little relaxed – too tight a grip can make you pull the trigger too sharply and impair your shooting accuracy. Look at the target. Now look at the gun. When aiming, focus on the front sight post looking through the rear sight notch. The post needs to be exactly in the middle. In this case, the target will become a dark spot with blurred outlines for you.”
I followed Rettle’s instructions exactly.
“Have you taken aim?”
I nodded.
“Do it again, the nod threw your aim off. Are you aimed?”
“Yes.”
“Shoot.”
There was a roar, the gun jerked in my hand, and the bullet successfully bypassed the target and made a dent in the wall. The shot turned out loud as hell. You would never guess how loud it could be from watching the movies.
“Why didn’t we put on earmuffs?”
“You need to learn to ignore the noise, otherwise, you’ll keep getting distracted and won’t be able to correctly analyze the situation. If you can’t analyze it, then you can’t control it, and it controls you. Aim again and this time fire the rest of the cartridges. Try to adjust the sight before every shot, but keep it quick. Sometimes density of shots is more important than accuracy.”
I exhaled, took aim, and pulled the trigger. Then again and again.
“Okay, enough shooting for today,” said Rettle.
I nodded.
“Go back to practicing your punches.”
I turned around and was about to head for the exit, but something on the wall opposite the shooting range caught my eye. It was a pair of super-cool Japanese swords.
“Katanas? Cool!” I whistled.
“Wakizashis.”
“Say what?” I turned to Rettle and looked at him questioningly.
“Not katanas. Wakizashis.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A katana is a long sword, with a blade 23-28 inches long. Only samurai were permitted to carry them. A wakizashi is a short sword, with a blade 12 to 24 inches long, and they could be carried by ordinary warriors as well.”
“Whose swords are those?”
“Mine.”
“Why did you choose these waki-whatevers over katanas?”
“Wakizashis. First, a short sword is handier in close quarters, and second, I am not a samurai.”
Despite his unchanging calm, the concluding “I am not a samurai” sounded a little more serious to me. Uncle told me that Rettle lived in Japan for some time, so these things must have mattered to him. But I was again full of childish excitement and dared to ask, “Can I touch them?”
I was nearly sure that Rettle would silently escort me out of his sanctuary. But no, he simply took one of the swords off the shelf and handed it over. I took this treasure carefully. The scabbard was made of wood, lacquered black and decorated with twirling golden patterns.
“Can I unsheathe it?”
I was pushing my luck, but I just had to ask.
“Hold the handle tight and don’t touch the blade.”
Rettle pulled off the scabbard.
The blade was perfectly smooth and absolutely black. It didn’t seem metallic, though it did shine, but even this glitter looked too bright for regular steel.
“Ahem… What is the blade made of?”
“Carbotanium.”
“What’s that?”
“Combination of beta titanium alloy and carbon fiber.”
“I get the titanium, but carbon fiber, isn’t it some kind of plastic? How do you forge a sword out of plastic?”
“This is no ordinary plastic, it’s a composite woven from carbon fibers. It’s more durable than steel, so it can be made much sharper.”
“And it glows like this?”
“No. The glow is from the silver dust I added to the plastic. So don’t touch the blade, or you’ll be severely burned.”
“And you know how to use these things?”
Rettle nodded.
“Can you show me something?”
“Next time, when we study cold weapons.”
“Are we going to sword-fight?”
“Of course. If your opponent is within three feet, a sword or a knife is much more dangerous than any gun. Now go practice your punches.”
The coach returned the sword into the scabbard and took it from my hands. I turned around and walked out of Rettle’s “cave,” eagerly anticipating the day I would learn to swing a sword like a real ninja. The Order of the Night Guardians was definitely the coolest organization in the world!
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