2020-12-15 - Pew Pew Practice

Early mornings are good for one thing, and one thing only: bringing a rifle into the woods and blowing through a box of ammunition in the hopes that it'll help your frantic mind find some focus.

There's a solitary vehicle parked in the lot at the mouth of the main trailhead; a blue, newer model Ford. Probably familiar, to those who know the police captain. The man himself has trekked a little way off the beaten path and is armed currently with a modified AR-15, stock braced against his shoulder and a finger grazing the trigger as he sights downrange. He's in a charcoal grey hoodie with the sleeves pushed up over his inked forearms, loose-fitting cargo pants shoved into scuffed boots, and a ball cap to keep some of the glare off his face.

The dense air echoes with the rifle's report as he fires three shots in rapid succession, safeties the weapon, and squints at his placement. Terrible.

Vic has been on edge. She's switched to some earlier shifts at Two If By Sea, in order to keep watch over Alexander Clayton's house from her upstairs window. So far, no one has shown up there in a threatening manner, but seeing his hand smashed all to hell really upset her. He's someone her dad actually likes, and that has solidified him in the 'friend' category for her. He also has been brutally honest with her, like letting her know her dad hired him to put cameras up around her place, so that has won him some points as well for being a damned good neighbor. When she's stressed, she needs an outlet, and target practice is the best one she knows. She moves through the woods, looking for the spot she had set up a while back with hooks on trees for paper targets, hanging hooks off branches for dangling ones, and an old log for setting up cans and bottles on.

The enforcer is dressed in olive BDUs, a black tight Under Armor tee, and an olive canvas jacket that looks like it came from Army Surplus. She has her tactical boots on as usual, and her hair is in a loose, messy braid over one shoulder. She carries a duffel bag that looks long enough for a rifle in one hand, but seems to weigh next to nothing by the manner in which it's carried. She noted the vehicle as she parked her Dodge Ram beside it, which is why she doesn't have any of her weapons in hand as she follows the trail and the sounds of gunfire. She comes upon the Captain as he is inspecting his placement and clears her throat, so as not to startle him into shooting her. "I have a decent little target setup about a click east," she notes. "If you'd like to try it."

He's aware of the enforcer's approach, likely well before she actually comes into view. Perhaps she feels the prickle of those little feelers; the brush of his particular taste of power. Hot and slightly acrid, like an electrical fire that's long burned itself out.

By the time Vic starts speaking, the rifle's been lowered into its sling draped against his shoulder, and the cop's got the stub of some kind of clove cigarette touched to his mouth. His dark eyes skim her frame, perhaps for signs of a firearm, before shifting to her face. "What's the catch?" he wants to know, turning his head slightly to exhale smoke away from her without breaking eye contact.

Vic cocks her head slightly to one side, "You have to spend time with me, horrifying to contemplate, I know. I just really need to do some shooting today, and I'd feel better if someone was there to watch my back and vice versa out in these woods. In case that goddamned mutant undead screaming bear thing decides to make another appearance."

Her eyes move to admire the AR-15. "How is it, we cops and ex-cops are the ones with the biggest illegal firearms collections," she notes with a chuckle. "I brought my suppressed 300 Blackout with me. If you promise not to confiscate it, I may let you shoot her. What do you say?"

The clove is dragged off of once more, twice, and then dropped into the dirt and ground out beneath the heel of his boot. Vic gets a look when she describes spending time with her as something 'horrifying'. "Are you for fucking real?" he mutters, going to fetch his box of ammunition and do one last, quick check of the site to make sure he hasn't left anything behind. Aside from the modified assault rifle, he's got his usual Sig holstered at his hip, which he checks as well before prowling off after the blonde.

"Why would I confiscate something I haven't seen?" he retorts with a chuckle, falling into step alongside. "Anyway, I haven't made any illegal mods on this thing. Though you should see Marshall's collection." He'd have a field day with that, if he decided to be an asshole about it.

Vic begins to stroll towards the East at a leisurely pace, just enjoying the morning chill air, cleaner out here, even though it's likely far more dangerous than the city, Crime Wars or no. This is a place of wild things, of thin walls between worlds where the creatures of nightmare walk. The worst of humanity has nothing on the Veil. Sharp blue eyes bely her apparent ease as they sweep the area for movement with every carefully set foot. She is a wary predator, mindful of there being bigger things out here than the two humans, with sharper teeth and claws.

"Betsy is definitely modded out the wazoo. Though admittedly, she's shit for accuracy. But if you're spraying ammo around from an AR-15, you don't really care about precision so much as coverage." She smiles and seems to be in decent spirits, has been since her father visited. "Dad said to tell you he'll see you in a few months when he visits again. We're trying to make it a regular thing. As long as it isn't more than quarterly. I worry too much time here and the place will get its hooks into him."

Javier's own mood is a little harder to place. He's never really in good spirits, and something definitely seems to be weighing him down a little more than usual. Could be the same something that gave him those cuts and scratches and slight bruising he's got going on around his face and throat, most of it in some state of being close to healed by now. Or what looks like slightly cut up wrists. Rope burns, maybe. He hasn't called attention to them, but Vic's the sort to notice details like these regardless.

"I wanted precision, I'd have brought my M82 and a tripod," murmurs de la Vega as he trudges along with the slightly taller woman. He too has his eyes and ears peeled, and the occasional beat of a seeking burst sent out around them, in case anything's lying in wait for them nearby. "You'll send my apologies for having missed him, yeah?"

"Course I will. He really enjoyed catching up with you," Vic notes with a small, genuine smile. She is so different, around Walt, than she is here in the Harbor without him. She's more like she used to be, back in Portland, before shit went sideways. She does notice the marks, but it's the ones on his wrists that have her brow furrowing. She doesn't say anything about them, though, not yet. She has some of the same gift, though barely a twinkle compared to his. Her general Glimmer though? It seems to have gotten stronger. Likely her living this close to a thin spot has boosted it, or she's just had to use it much more here and it's strengthened like any other muscle. Her sensation of the Reader gift is twisted, a mingling of something light and something dark, representative of the constant war inside of her, a good person having to do the job of a bad person.

The walk doesn't take them too long, and seems to follow a game trail for most of it, before splitting off at a tree with three slashes in it. Vic clearly marked the way for herself. A few hundred feet from that tree there is a clearing, and in it is the setup Vic has left for herself. There is an old tin washbin beside a log, and under it is a metal box with hanging targets, empty bottles, squeaky toys, all sorts of crap to use as targets. She begins stringing various things up, paper targets on the tree trunks, squeaky toys on the hanging hooks, bottles and cans on a log. There are yellow cloth strips wrapped around thinner trees to mark distances at 15, 30, 50, and 100 yards. The squeaky toys are amusing rubberized ones for dogs to chew on. There is a rat, a squirrel, a duck, and a piggie. The piggie oinks when she squeezes it, rather than squeaks. Irony of cops shooting at a pig? "What happened to your wrists?" she asks, as she hangs the last.

He's noticed, of course. The change in her demeanor, since her father visited. It might even be on the tip of his tongue to say something about it, when they come upon that little marked clearing with the targets set up. He sweeps a glance over the area, curious, and perhaps a bit amused at the squeaky toys. Wachoooo! goes one of them as he prowls over and squeezes it. By the look on his face, he's at least a little impressed at the work she's put into all this.

"Huh?" His wrists. He glances down at one of them, furrows his brows, and moves on. The pig is eyed. Maybe he's caught onto the irony. "Probably better you don't ask, after our last conversation." The rifle's set down, along with the duffle bag containing ammo and a few other miscellany, and he drops into a crouch before unzipping and rummaging around in it. A pair of glasses are dug out eventually, and slipped on.

Vic moves to her bag and unzips it, pulling out her modded AR-15. The suppressed 300 Blackout is a beautiful piece of work, a pretty looking illegal firearm that shoots ugly. It's done mostly in black with some desert brown shades on the bump stock and pistol section. All of it is matte and doesn't glint in the light. This is a weapon designed for doing bad things, definitely. She also pulls out earplugs and safety glasses. She blinks over at him as she slides the latter on, either because of his comment, or because of the glasses? "He bound you?" she asks in a near whisper. She grimaces, she knows how he feels about being tied up. Alexander is implied. She's not an idiot. "It's a miracle he's breathing then, I guess. He...didn't do it to be malicious, I take it?" Because if he did, she may have to reevaluate that friendship thing.

As promised though, she hands Betsy over to him.

When that rifle comes out, Javier's hands still, then slowly withdraw from his bag. He pushes back to his feet, dark eyes fixed on the weapon's sleek black frame. The glasses are definitely a relatively new development; it's entirely possible she's not yet seen him wearing them. His own ear protection's looped around his neck, and he reaches for the modified AR-15. Hand around the barrel, he meets Vic's gaze for a beat, and then another. "Sí. Y por eso, le rompí los dedos. No creo que lo intente de nuevo." Her question gains only a flickered, mirthless smile in response. Like, how should I know?

And then he hoists the rifle up against his shoulder, removes the magazine and checks the clip. It's shoved back in, given a bump with the heel of his hand to make sure it's locked tight, slide racked, almost all in the same motion. Like he could manage it in his sleep. "Call it," is a low rumble, tonguetip run across his lower lip.

Vic sighs at the admission. "That explains the first beating, the second one was way worse, you again?" she asks, arching a brow slightly. "He didn't know, I take it, about how things like that affect you?" she asks quietly, her look sympathetic. If someone did that to her, she'd likely have snapped their neck. It's not a rational reaction, but it's the reaction of someone who was bound and tortured nearly to death.

When he seems prepared to fire, she nods. "Try the hanging toys first, they move in the wind. Plus there is something utterly satisfying when they squeak," she chuckles softly, putting her ear protection in.

"Nope," Javier replies, tone clipped, as to the second beating. Is he going to elaborate? Likely not. Does Alexander know? His response to that, is to wrap his finger around Betsy's trigger and squeeze. And she answers, vociferously. Perhaps a little too vociferously. That, or he's angry, and doesn't actually give a fuck about hitting his target at this precise moment. His first shot goes wide, as does his second (by a hair), and his third punches through the target with a strangled SQUEEAAK. Snarling, he safeties the rifle and offers it back. Vic might notice that his breathing's a little stuttered, and that muscle in his jaw's twitching. The one that usually goes first, when he's thinking about losing his shit.

She watches him shoot. The gun is about as nice as a modded AR-15 can be. It's nearly silent, with the paff paff paff of the silencer as the bullets fly. Vic sits on one of the tree stumps in the clearing for the show, letting Ruiz do his thing, letting him work out some stuff with a fancy illegal toy. She knows him that well at least. They both speak the language of guns. And they both speak the language of rage. She sees the jaw muscle twitch, and she moves to take the weapon back from him. "If you need to talk, you know I..." she knows that deep, dark, horror of helplessness and anger and pain that is left behind like a festering wound.

She unsafety's Betsy and moves up to try her own hand at taking down the squeaky toys. She is clearly familiar with her own weapon, as the aiming and firing comes naturally to her. Betsy speaks, and the squirrel, duck, and piggy go squeak, squeak, OINK. The safety goes back on.

He knows she what? They have their history, and it's been checkered at best. He's not a talker, and her attempts at getting words out of him tend to end badly. So he's silent, and watches as she handles the modded rifle with more steadiness than he's capable of at the moment. And she knows, she knows he's a ridiculously good shot. Back in Portland, he routinely won top marks in firearms qualifications. Not uncommon for ex-military. But today? His focus is shot. His mind is clearly elsewhere. He pushes his hands into his hair, turns, and paces away from the blonde. Then back again with that taut, agitated prowl. Like it'd take almost nothing for him to snap, and lash out at her. "Just shut up and shoot," he growls.

Vic sets the rifle down by her bag and turns on him. She knows what this is. He needs a fight. He needs a good old fashioned fight to get it out of his system. "Or what?" she asks, daring him to go ahead and start it. She can take it. She can armor herself up and take the blows. She knows this damned well. She's a Mover, like Itzhak, and she too might be in need of a good fight. Her father made her happy, but it also made her desperately guilty over what she is doing now. Sick to her stomach, waking in the middle of the night in tears, wanting nothing more than to go back to being a cop, one of the good guys, and knowing it's not possible. She rolls up the sleeves of her jacket. "You wanna go a few rounds, Javi?"

Or what? Or what? Are they really going to play this game? Javier doesn't have any armour to speak of, unless one counts his thick fucking skull. He also happens to hit like a freight train at the best of times. And he's prowling on in, his power shuddering from him like ice ablating off superheated liquid oxygen tanks. An almost-curl of his upper lip like he wants to snarl at her. "You think you get to call me that." Which, she technically does. By his ridiculous rules. Pop, pop, pop of knuckles as his fingers curl into fists, and then without warning, he does take a swing. A vicious little hook intended to throw the blonde off kilter, if it hits.

The blonde seems ready for it, and accepting of it. Something in her needs this too. Does she need to hurt Ruiz? No, not really. Does she need him to take something out of her hide? Maybe. There is a deeply held guilt in her for what happened in Portland, for selling him out, for not explaining why to him, not making up for it. But she won't let him take it easily. He'll have to work for it. The hook sweeps out and catches her lightly, making her step back, before she grins savagely at him and moves forward to retaliate with a punch of her own.

Maybe this will be his pound of flesh for what she did to him. Has he ever spoken of the fallout that came from that? What happened after she sold him out? Surely Ojeda did not release one of his most ruthless sicarios so easily. Surely it couldn't have been such a clean job, on the Portland PD's end, to get him out of there. Ops like that almost never go off without a hitch. Without delays. Without people being left in the cold, invariably. Then shuffled off into backwater towns when they maybe can't hack it anymore, because undercover work fucked them up beyond the point of normal functioning.

Because they're both hanging by the thinnest thread, and there's not a whole lot of difference between them, if one ignores the fact that he happens to wear a badge.

He takes the incoming hit with a grunt and swings again, and again. Left, then right, then left again. He swings until something lands, until he manages to stumble her. And then goes for a handful of hair or clothing, and attempts to shove her up against the side of a tree, and drive his fist into her gut.

Vic sees the blows coming, and her shield takes some of the brunt of it, but as he moves with the adrenaline in his veins born of a righteous anger, he's faster than she is. The first swing is dodged, but the second tags her in the shoulder, and the third staggers her in the jaw. She is grabbed and slammed bodily against the tree trunk, blood trickling from her nose and the corner of her mouth, before he slams his fist into her abdomen. She doubles over, her breath escaping her and her body refusing to take more in for a long few moments. She tries to charge into him from the bent position and use her shoulder to send him to the ground with her if she can.

He's brutally fast, for a man pushing fifty. And he hits hard, to boot. What he doesn't have is reach, which likely explains why he prefers to do his fighting up close and personal. The scent of blood, the sensation of her body buckling under him, she can practically feel the pleasure carve through him. That broken circuitry in his brain that made him so very good at hurting people, ending people; he's a sadist, after all, through and through.

Her charge knocks him back just enough to cause him to lose his footing, and down they go. There's a tussle once they hit the ground, with the heavier Mexican doing his best to try to gain the advantage and maneuver around so that he's pinning her beneath him. He's bigger by a fair bit, but she's wilier and has those annoyingly long legs to contend with.

The tussle is a long one, but in the end, he's heavier than she is, and though she's nimble, she's lost the advantage of leverage. She's pinned beneath him, though one leg is trying to wrap around him to attempt to drag him off of her. She's growling, vicious, angry in return, because once she's blooded, she too descends into something more primal. It's only tempered by that guilt, that need to pay for her sins, and that may be the winning factor in this fight. She tries to bite him, because she's past most rationality now.

It's smeared on his hands his throat, his clothes, her blood. And subduing her is enough of a fight to have left him panting, dark eyes glossed with the remnants of rage and twisted pleasure. The bite only gains a backhand cracked across her face, hard, in response. Because if anyone's going to be biting here, it's going to be him, damn it. "Are we done here?" he snarls, shoving his face in close, nostrils flared, breath coming in short, sharp huffs.

The crack across her face snaps Vic's head to one side, and she seems momentarily dazed by it. The question, filters through the haze of rage and guilt, and her eyes clear very slowly. "Are we? You feel better now?" she rumbles back, her voice thick, her ribs are cracked and she knows it, her nose isn't broken at least, but she's going to have a black eye to go with the split lip and some body bruises. Her face is streaked with blood from nose and mouth and one eye is already starting to swell shut.

If he has any compunctions whatsoever about beating the shit out of a girl, and one a decade his junior to boot, he gives no indication. It's getting cold out here, and quickly, as the sun starts to sink below the horizon. He's shivering a little despite (or perhaps because of) the slight sweat he's worked up. Dragging an inked forearm across his forehead, he releases her eventually and pushes off her prone form, and back to his feet. A flick of his eyes to check the treeline, a crunch of dirt under his boots as he shifts and holds a hand out in offer of assistance. No words, but when has he ever been fond of them?

Vic's breathing is ragged, but her eyes are sharp again. She lays there a few moments, taking internal stock of her various injuries, and determines nothing needs a hospital visit. The hand is looked at a moment, before it's accepted. She lets out a pained grunt as she gets to her feet. The ribs are gonna suck for a bit, but that is the worst of it by her estimation. She doesn't say anything either, just wipes the back of her jacket sleeve across her face to smear some of the blood away. Her hair is no longer braided, having escaped the elastic during the fight. She looks downright exhausted.

No apologies, either. Not for the pain he dealt her. Not for enjoying it. She knows him well enough to be perfectly aware of his proclivities; she knew what she was getting into, inviting him to hit her.

Once she's on her feet, her hand's released, and Javier goes to retrieve his rifle and bag, dabbing at his cheek where he himself is going to have a slight bruise come morning. "You going to be okay to drive?" he asks eventually.

Vic moves slowly, packing up her own things. She didn't get to shoot as much as she'd planned, but a fist fight trumps shooting for releasing all that energy. "I'm fine," she says quietly, the faintest quirk of her split lip for a half second in what is almost a smile. She doesn't ask if he's ok, he came out on top after all. "See you around," she notes, before she heads off back through the woods, moving a bit more gingerly than when she came in.