Insert Training Montage Here

She really wasn’t kidding when she said we were going to fix my inability to use guns. Very next day, 330 drove us into a forest in the middle of nowhere and gave me an impromptu lesson on firearm use and safety, complete with a hastily made firing range.

“Aren’t I supposed to go to official classes and get a license before I do this?”

“Are you? Huh. I never did. Hasn’t been much of an issue for me.”

Starting to pick up the lessons on maintaining, disassembling, and handling a gun, but I still haven’t gotten really comfortable with actually firing one. And not just because the recoil of even that little pistol 330’s had me using was much worse than I expected. It just feels… weird. You watch movies and read books about people using them, but it always feels like something that’s in the world the world of fiction. Then I find myself holding one. It’s a heady feeling. When I fired that first shot, completely missing any of the bottles 330 had set up, it really hit me that I had something that could actually kill another person. And I’m not entirely comfortable with the giddy rush that followed that revelation….

More in my comfort zone, 330 offered to teach me self defense as well. Can’t say much for my abilities at it, and sometimes I doubt her encouragement that I’m getting better, but it’s actually surprisingly fun. Closest I’ve ever come to a sport, barring 330’s sadistic obsession with “raising my aerobic threshold and strengthening my core.” I’m pretty sure that the point of all of this is so that I won’t be completely useless the next time we get involved in something.

The bright side of this regime I’ve been undergoing is that I’ve found that 330 is much more talkative after she’s spent a few hours running miles or punching things. Managed to drag a few stories about her past out of her. I’ll confess, she isn’t a very good storyteller. Has a tendency to tell things out of order. Yet she makes up for it with sheer enthusiasm; when she talks about chasing someone over the rooftops of Victorian era London, she throws herself into the whole thing, gesturing, making sound effects, and throwing in the occasional commentary about how stupid past her was. The impression I’ve gotten from this is that 330 considers anything she did more than 5 minutes ago in the past to be a rash and idiotic decision, which in no one discourages her from making further rash and idiotic decisions in the present. Still have yet to get anything out of her about her personal life: how she became a time traveler, what she was before that, if she has a name apart from I-330, where she was born, etc. Maybe one day I’ll get that out of her; if three miles of running can get her talking about cursed Egyptian dig sites, maybe ten miles will get her spilling all of her darkest secrets. Until then, I can content myself with these tales of adventure.

On a darker note…. The Slender Man. Almost forgotten about him. That time I saw him was such a panicked, shocking moment. Then… he disappeared from my life. When 330 described him as such an unstoppable, monstrous hunter, I imagined I’d be running for my life from him. Instead, months passed without me seeing him once.

He finally appeared while 330 and I were having lunch at an IHOP along the road. Looked up from my plate and saw him standing right by the window. Jumped out of my seat, knocking my food over, and was about to run away before 330 said, “Oh, sit back down. It just wants attention. Ignore it and it’ll go away.”

What?

Did sit down again, not without a cautious glance at the faceless figure by the window, and 330 explained. The Slender Man is, she said, an unstoppable, monstrous hunter that will try to kill its victims inevitably. Eventually. “It likes to play with its food first. Tries to break their mind before it goes in for the kill. Which usually involves a lot of stalking and silently observing, cause most people tend to get really nervous when a faceless tall thing keeps popping up to stare at them.”

Which…. Really doesn’t sound all that bad. I was assaulted by a man with glowing red eyes in an alley, chased by an enormous monster dog, shot at by the CIA, and fought a massive swarm of malevolent insects. Being watched by a guy without a face doesn’t really seem to compare. I know 330’s the expert on this, but I’m not sure why she’s taking something which, relative to everything else, doesn’t seem as big a threat, so seriously.

-Lisa