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It was a fairly quiet evening at the indoor shooting range, and that was just how Prudence liked it. There were maybe a couple other people here, no-one she recognized from the Militia thankfully. Ed had introduced her to some of them the last time he'd brought her here to practice, and they had been so fervent and full of hate that it almost made her second guess her involvement with the group. But there were monsters and other bad things running around Destiny City, some of them wearing the mantle of "saviour" and "protector". It was a good idea for her to be able to take care of herself regardless of whether she actually joined up with the Militia or not. So here she was, with her handgun and two loaded magazines, ready to pretend to shoot bad guys and youma.

Prudence had already taken some time to practice aiming and dry-firing the pistol to get herself settled before actual live fire. Putting on her ear and eye protectors, she slid a magazine into the slot at the bottom of the grip and pulled the slide back to insert a bullet in the chamber. Then she released the safety. There, ready to go, she thought, taking a deep steadying breath. She was still a little nervous and uncomfortable with the weapon, but that's why she was here: to become more familiar with it, so she could use it without thinking if the need arose. And it almost certainly would arise, sooner or later.

She concentrated as she raised the gun like Ed had shown her, arms straight, both hands on the grip, and aimed down the range at the paper target. Pressing on the pedal to start the target moving, she fought back the urge to flinch or close her eyes as it advanced on her. She did as Ed had told her to do: visualize the target as a monster coming at her.

BLAM. BLAM BLAM BLAM.

Prudence meticulously went through the post-shooting safety routine as she'd been instructed: eject the magazine, clear the chamber, set the safety, put the gun down on the small shelf in front of her with the barrel pointing down range. Sliding the ear protectors down to her neck, she pulled the target down to assess her work. To her disappointment, she'd only gotten four shots off, and they were all over the place, though a couple were pretty close to the heart area. "s**t," she sighed to herself with a slump of her shoulders. "I'll never get the hang of this."

"Eep!" Prudence squeaked, nearly jumping out of her skin. The last thing she was expecting was a man's head to pop out from the next lane over. He seemed harmless enough, though, from the cheerful grin to the tone of his voice. She couldn't help but find him slightly disarming.

"Oh, no, this isn't my first time," she corrected with a shake of her head. "It's my third. A friend showed me how to shoot and proper gun etiquette and everything. This is my first time here by myself, though. He was busy and I wanted to practice." She glanced at her paper target and gave the man a wry smile. "I guess I really need it, huh?"

She nodded. "Yeah, the recoil is the hardest thing. It's not much of a recoil -- like it's not jerking my hands back or anything -- but the gun keeps wanting to pull in an arc and it's really hard to control. See?" She pointed to the bullet patterns on the target as evidence. "Um, do you have any advice?" she asked, guessing that he was a more experienced shooter than she was.

Prudence might have blushed a little, the redness rising beneath her freckles. "Thank you! I guess my friend is a really good teacher." She studied his face, all warm grin and friendly twinkle in his eyes, and decided that she found him strangely charming. Most of the other guys that she'd met around the range were nice enough to her, truth be told, but they did tend to get a little condescending with her. And that triggered her basic well, I'll just show THEM nature, to prove that she was just as good as they were despite -- or because of, as far as she was concerned -- the fact that she was a girl. Bunch of losers.

This guy, though, was treating her like a person and not some poor helpless little thing. That won him instant brownie points and a return of his sunny grin. "I'm here for more than the bang-bang," she replied with a laugh, pushing her shaggy orange-red fringe off her face. "I want to be able to- well, defend myself if it ever came up." Her expression grew suddenly serious. "There's a lot of weird s**t in this town, and I sometimes keep late hours at work. I want to be able to protect myself at night."

She reached for her pistol and held it out to him, careful to keep the barrel pointed down range. "Here you go. It's a-" she paused as she tried to remember the full name, "-an FN Five-seven USG. My friend said it's a good beginner's gun, and his friends said a lot of cops use it."

"Uh-uh." Prudence shook her head, her long ponytail wagging, as she took her gun back. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't help but stare at the bigger weapon the blond man showed her; compared to her FN, his pistol looked much more powerful and deadly, like it could do a lot more damage. She didn't ask to handle it, though, not sure of the etiquette of such things -- she figured if he thought it was okay, he'd hand it to her. The way he talked about guns made it sound like he must be a collector. Or a cop. Or both. Either way, he was definitely quite knowledgeable on the subject. Now she was getting curious about him.

"No," she reaffirmed, "I haven't been attacked yet, but I figure it's only a matter of time." Clearly he'd been around Destiny City long enough to at least know about the youma attacks, and the people going missing or turning up dead. "That's why I want to protect myself. There's only so much the cops can do. They already have their hands full." There, that was a roundabout way of possibly finding out if he was a cop without inadvertently insulting him.

Then it occurred to her that maybe a name would be a good place to start with him. "Oh, I'm Pru by the way," she offered, sticking her hand out toward him.

"Nice to meet you, Nick. I mean Detective Nick." So he was a cop! A detective no less! Prudence felt a little excited hop inside her over the fact that her hunch turned out to be correct. Not an uncommon occurrence -- she'd often turn up right in the end with her guesses, after some poking and prodding and nosing about -- but it never failed to secretly thrill her just a little bit.

Her face flushed again as she realized she'd been too caught up in her own curiosity to remember to put her pistol down on the shelf. Talk about lack of gun etiquette. And in front of a cop too! "Sorry," she apologized sheepishly. "I guess I was just… I dunno. Distracted. Bad thing to be at a shooting range, huh. Guess I need more practice at that too. Not being distracted, I mean."

Speaking of practice… "Um, could I ask you to do me a favor? Could you watch me shoot and see if you can tell what I'm doing wrong? I don't need you to hold my hand or anything, just like watch over my shoulder." She looked up at him, turquoise eyes hopeful.

Prudence flashed Nick a happy smile. "Okay," she nodded. "Thank you so much, Nick." With that, she put a fresh paper target on the line and sent it back down to the end of the lane, then carefully went through the routine of loading her gun. She replaced her hearing protection over her ears and took a deep calming breath, trying to ignore the presence of the man behind her, before setting the target in motion toward her and taking aim at it, once more visualizing a monster coming at her.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM

Clearing her gun and setting it back down on the ledge, she removed her ear protection and pulled the target down. "See? It seems to arc to the left," she said over her shoulder to Nick as she showed him the target. "Like it's pulling or something and I can't control it." She studied the bullet pattern again. "Six rounds. At least I hit it each time. Guess that's not too bad."

Prudence half-turned and watched Nick study the target with a seriousness she hadn't seen in him yet. There was clearly more to the detective, she decided, than his casual charm and flippance. She couldn't figure him out. Did he just take his job seriously? Or was it just shooting? She took shooting seriously too, because frankly she was still a little afraid of her gun, but she was determined to learn how to shoot it correctly and effectively, and Nick was apparently more than willing to help in that regard, for which she was quite grateful.

Lost in thought, she didn't even have time to register shock, nevermind indignance, as Nick then grasped her shoulders and arranged her like she was a doll. When he released her, she turned and stared at him -- then his words registered with her. "What? Y- yeah," she started, thinking about work, where she was on her feet all the time working on motorcycle engines. "I guess…" She relaxed her stance, as she'd been told to do by Ed, and sure enough she felt her right hip buck out a bit. "That kicks up my left shoulder then, doesn't it? That's why you pushed it down." She looked up at him, impressed. "And yeah, my lower back does get knotty if I stand too long. How did you know?"

"Um, I've been to the range three times now, though this is my first time alone," Prudence nodded. "Usually my friend Ed is here to help me -- he's a pretty experienced shooter too, or at least he knows his way around guns. But he had to work late tonight on a project -- he's my co-worker, see -- so I came here on my own."

She had no idea why she was suddenly babbling at Nick. Maybe she felt she could trust him, being a cop and all, and he seemed to be a nice guy, not using his detective status to be pushy or a bully. Or maybe she felt intimidated by him because he was a cop. Nice guy or not, doing anything illegal or not, cops were still cops. At least she didn't babble anything about whether she owned the gun legally or not.

"You've been shooting since you were a kid? Wow." Prudence smiled up at Nick. "That's a long time. You must be pretty expert at it by now."