Welcome to Gaia! ::

He scrutinized her stance momentarily before moving to help her adjust. "Lower your arm just a bit. See over here?" He pointed to three raised areas on the gun, one closer to the holder and one at the end of the barrel. "These are called sights. You know you're dead-on when the center sight is right in between the other two." He pushed lightly on her arm to lower it to a height at which the three sights would align, feeling simultaneously completely at home and completely foreign to the role of the instructor. It was strange - the memories of leading training exercises existed, but he scarcely felt like an active participant in them.

"Another thing you might want to do is bend your supporting elbow," he noted, pushing away his strange thoughts of detachment. At the moment, he was a teacher, regardless of what he had or hadn't done in the past. "You'll absorb more of the force from discharge that way. You can fire with both arms straight if you like, but never lock your elbows. Makes for uncomfortable firing."

He hooked his free hand into his pocket, lowering the gun barrel toward the floor. "I think your stance is pretty solid. You wanna try loading it?"

"Sure, as long as you think you're ready," he said, grinning still. "The important thing about working with guns is to be confident. Wary, but confident. It's good to keep in mind that they're dangerous, but if you're hesitant with them you're more prone to make a mistake." That said, he moved towards another storage cabinet and retrieved two boxes of ammunition and a pair of thin strips of metal, one for each of them to use. He then proceeded to a nearby table, gesturing for Isadora to follow. He set one of the boxes and metal pieces for her to use.

"This," he held up the flat metal, "is a stripper clip. We can load our ammunition onto this to make it easier to load into the gun." He demonstrated, emptying the bullets in front of him and sliding them vertically onto the clip one at a time. "Then we'll open up the magazine and position the clip," he did so as he spoke, "and push the bullets into the magazine with our thumb. It's easier if you keep the tip of your thumb closer to the clip." One by one the ammunition disappeared into the firearm. "And then to finish it off, we close the magazine back up. For most missions we'll probably be using guns with clips that are prepared in advance so you can just load it into the magazine and be good to go, but it's good to know the processes too."

He nodded as he watched her repeat the process. A bit of clumsiness was to be expected, considering it was her first time working with firearms. Repetition and practice would give her both skill and experience, though Lucas sincerely hoped Isadora would never find herself in a position where she needed these skills. It was unavoidable in their line of work, sure, but that didn't mean he couldn't hold on to optimism.

"A little gun etiquette first," he said, taking his own weapon into his hands. "A loaded gun is dangerous. Keep your finger parallel to the barrel and away from the trigger and keep the barrel pointed downward and away from anything that can bleed. Common sense type stuff, really, but I guess I feel obligated to mention it," he explained with a shrug. Isadora didn't seem like the type to point a barrel at someone just to look cool, but it was a lecture that was ingrained into the lesson from years of delivery. "Now we're gonna shoot things."

He proceeded to the shooting range's stalls, motioning Isadora to step up to the counter.

Her protective gear in place and her stance ready, Lucas deemed she was ready to shoot. He hit a switch on the side of the stall and adjusted the target so that it was at a comfortable distance. "All right then, here you go. Try emptying the clip. There are fifteen shots in it." He took a step back to give the psychologist a little more room and to put himself at a safer distance.

He watched as her finger, trembling, tensed on the trigger. There was no helping it - everyone was at least a little frightened the first time they fired a gun. She'd have fourteen more opportunities to grow accustomed to the sound and the kick. The gun's report, however, derailed all of Lucas's thoughts of teaching, the bullet ripping a wide hole through the barrier in his memories that spilled forth countless missions. 'Targets' suddenly became much more than flat, marked things to fire at in a shooting range. 'Targets' had faces, so many faces - they had voices, emotions, lives all their own...

When Isadora looked to Lucas, she would find him as wide-eyed as she, his complexion slightly pallid and his hands quivering mildly. It took several moments before his mind could register he had been asked a question, and he fumbled with a response. "Ah--" What had she asked? His attention was skittering between her words and the weight of the gun in his own hand, a little piece of metal that suddenly seemed so much terrifying. "Uh, that..." He brought a hand to his face, consciously attempting to calm his breathing. For the world he could not remember what he had just been asked...

He managed to return his breathing to a normal pace, though the trembling only began to subside once he set down his own weapon, attempting to do so carefully despite the awful shaking of his arm. That done, he leaned backwards against the wall of the stall and attempted to sort out the things he suddenly knew.

"Assassin." The word escaped almost of its own volition and did little to inform the listening party, but, to Lucas, it was a terrible word nonetheless. His activity in Galactic, his collaboration with the weapons department, Morrison's claim that he was lucky not to remember any of their missions - all of it fell neatly into place. He made an attempt at elaboration, "I was-- So many missions. I killed... Damn it." He gritted his teeth as the thoughts took form in his voice. Progress towards assuring Isadora that there's nothing to worry about: Negative. By a lot.

Liselle, similarly distraught at her human's behavior, licked Lucas's cheek with a quiet "vui." She didn't know what this 'assassin' word meant, but if it was such a terrible thing then she was determined to make it go away the only way she knew how: cuddles.

Isadora's reaction seemed to validate Lucas's dread, and he didn't register the presence of the reassuring hand when it was returned to him. It was a cold, lonely sensation that twisted his stomach. The psychologist's words brought his attention back to her, though, and the threat of tears visible in her eyes pushed him to move past his initial shock. Damned if he was going to watch a woman cry because of something he'd done for a third time. Seizing all the emotion that had gathered, he turned and engaged in man's favorite coping method - violence towards inanimate objects. His fist collided with the wall of the booth, leaving his knuckles bruised and the thin barrier significantly dented. s**t, that would probably come out of his paycheck. With a sigh, he leaned his forehead against the cool surface of the barrier, clawing at his thoughts to clear them away.