Per Aspera ★ October catch-all ★ Open

[earthborn]

Who: Shepard and various + Open
When: October
Where: Around Cadens and Shepard's Horizon
What: Shooting Range practice & lessons, social mingle, and some planned threads
Warnings: guns, cursing, likely discussion of violence


I. Range at the Horizon
The Normandy loomed over the shooting range, all two-hundred sixteen meters of sleek faster-than-light spacecraft. It was parked, ignominiously, on the dirt itself in very much the way that the real Normandy would only have been if it were trapped in dry-dock for repairs.

Today's occasion is nothing so necessary.

Instead, on the ground-space aft of the cargo hold there's been set up a shooting range. It looks a little makeshift, but it's serviceable enough. The Horizon's ubiquitous wish-fulfillment makes set-up and tidying simple enough, for a start.

Off to the left, there stand a few weapons racks, featuring a variety of firearms ranging from the types of firearms that might be familiar to any member of the Cadens military to a row of oddly-shaped rectangular devices representing weaponry native to Shepard's own home-universe, each gun neatly folded-down and in its place.

There are half-a-dozen shooting lanes with targets of varying distance and sophistication, ranging from holographic figures posed in attitudes of threat, paper cut-outs with zones of deadliness printed on them, vaguely humanoid outlines in plywood, aluminum, and sand-backed paper. There's even a line of bottles perched on a metal crate off to one side: the labels are printed in an alien script, and not all of them are completely empty. The lanes themselves are nothing more glamorous than strips of soil and grass, with an odd mix of gravel, beachsand, and whatever else had come in from the bordering Domains. Shepard had chosen this spot specifically for its position at the crux of several, unclaimed, and unlikely to be contested; all the better for a meeting-place.

In any case, Shepard is on-hand to assist. There's even a sign:

PRACTICE RANGE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
help yourself if you know what you're doing
assistance available upon request



II. Rager at the Horizon
The cargo bay of the Normandy stands open, the wide bay door slid down to form a sturdy ramp, and up in the belly of the ship itself, amongst the crates and spare machinery is... a wet bar? Well, it's a table surface, and there are a variety of options, which may or may not be familiar. Serrice Ice Brandy, Batarian Fire-whiskey... Ryncol? Maybe you just want to stick with a nice beer, or seltzer-water, or maybe someone here should reconsider the combination of guns and alcohol.

Or maybe you should just go home, if you're going to be a coward about it.

In any case, Shepard is there, standing behind the bar, sitting around in the shade having a drink, or just messing around with the equipment. Step on up, and have a go, why don't you? It's hardly a wild party, but it's not as if anyone has anything better to do.



III. October Event
[ TBA ]

Comments

[godshattering]

The instruction Shepard provides reminds him a lot of those given to him as a child upon graduating from training bows and blunt arrows to ones that would do real, actual damage. For good reason; it'd only taken one misfired arrow to remind him of what damage could be done even after growing up watching others use bows and taking that for granted. Having even that relatively small amount of weapon power in one's hands wasn't something to take lightly.

And so, despite his eagerness here in an environment where critical damage is likely to be avoided: Claude pays close attention to each thing Shepard shows him, following along with each step and carefully filing all of that information away to save for later. While he can't picture a gun making it into his day-to-day usage, he keeps a sharp gaze on everything. At the reminder to assume he can do damage with this at any point, intentional or not, he nods solemnly. Horizon or not - and ability to be completely serious or not, as it's often the latter - this much he'll be sure to take to heart.

Soon enough it's time to pick a target and he selects the closest one, mostly because it means not having to take any longer for this experience. There's final instructions and some correction of how he's standing, more things he'll attempt to memorize, and then he's on his own. After one last mental run-through of all of Shepard's advice there's nothing left to do but pull the trigger and when he does, none of it is what he's expecting.

It starts with the recoil like the pistol in his hands is alive, not unlike a hero's relic moving of its own according but entirely more active than those weapons' twitches ever were considering this jolt feels like it goes through his entire body. Then there's the noise which even with Shepard's extremely helpful explanation of this being a small explosion Claude's still not prepared for, and the whole experience means his shot seems to clip the target. Maybe. He's a little too rattled to really properly look towards it since he's now examining the pistol in his hands once more (but not without all those safety measures in place, now even more aware of why they exist).

"Gods," he says when it feels like the shock's worn off a bit. The expression he turns Shepard's way is likely still uneasy but not without curiosity threading through it once more. "I know you said this is well behind what you're used to, but the only comparison I have to make is like I just lit a miniature cannon in my hands." A pause. "In retrospect, I probably should've asked what shooting was like before just... volunteering to try it. Now I really see why you wanted to give lessons to those of us who haven't the slightest what firearms are like."

[earthborn]

"Doesn't take much imagination, does it?" Shepard replies, "Experience is a hell of a teacher; you get the lesson after the test. I'm a lot nicer."

She's not kind, but Shepard does see herself as fair, at least. She'll warn you before she blows you away, even if only the once.

"Modern weaponry is mostly about power and convenience," She gestures down-range, where Claude's shot has taken a chunk off the wooden outline of a human form. She considers the divot with a weather eye; it was only plywood, imaginary plywood at that, but his aim had been pretty good for a first try, "Say you're in a fight, and that's all you've got. Even if you're quick, it'd take at least a minute or two to reload. This, on the other hand..."

She touches the quiescent form of her own pistol, the weapon retracted into its most compact form, not even recognizable as a handgun by anyone who didn't know better.

"...Can fire twenty-four times before needing a pause, and can penetrate armor. Honestly, I usually carry something with a lot more stopping power; even heavy pistols are the small fries," She racks the pistol, one deadly weapon among many, and turns back, "Free Cities military standard issue is a rifle, which you're consequentially a lot more likely to encounter; it's got a real kick to it. Still, it's a shit starting place for a military professional, so unless you got any questions, let's see you hit that target a few dozen more times."

[godshattering]

No, it certainly doesn't take much imagination. And truthfully: even his (half-assed, he can admit, if only to himself) imagining of what the shot would be like was far different than the actual thing. Or the Horizon thing. Maybe the same difference, or possibly even more jarring and worse? Thinking too hard about that threatens to give him a slight headache when there's too much unknown about how 'real' the Horizon can be, and it's a bit too distracting for what they're supposed to be doing here.

Or rather what Claude's supposed to be doing, and he tunes back into current reality as Shepard gestures to the target. To his surprise since he'd been expecting to have not hit anything at all when taking the shot rather messed up the stance she'd guided him into, and equally surprising is how long it'd take to reload the pistol. He's quickly learning he'll continue to be surprised since the mention of how many shots her firearm can take in a row and what it can pierce is startling.

"Twenty-four times - that's beyond my comprehension. I believe you, but thinking about how long it'd take me to line up that many shots by arrow when there's a good chance someone could just continue shooting at me in the meantime?" He trails off there. There's not a need to finish that thought; he clearly wouldn't win in that battle. "Even with this pistol I have here I'd like to believe I could fire a good handful of arrows in the reload time, but still."

Her clarification that the Free Cities' known weaponry is somewhere on a rapidly sliding scale Claude's piecing together is eye-opening, both in what it means for potential use against them and the power behind it. But he also remembers Shepard works with the military so he keeps that thought to himself with a briefly creased brow, instead opting to line up again to take the shots she's told him to take. Now that he knows what to expect, the recoil isn't quite so terrible this time. It takes a bit of fine-tuning in that practice, but slowly but surely his shots become less sporadic and more focused, more likely to hit where they were aimed than far from it.

[earthborn]

Shepard has no real idea how the Horizon works, how it might translate; certainly it seems very solid and real. But how real is it? She knows the Normandy's shape very well, from the angle of the hull to the exact vibrato of the artificial gravity's pulse-cycle. But she isn't an engineer, and if she were to pry up a panel and have a look, would the works underneath make sense? In the battery, certainly, that was and had always been Garrus' Domain, but what about the rest of it?

Shepard doesn't know. But she does know the use and effectiveness of every gun on the table, most of them quite intimately. So in this, at least, the realism is assured.

She hopes.

"Don't lock you elbow," She reminds him, when she sees him forget, watching him as he works. It's a long, slow road to competency, but there's really only one way up. Climb it.

[godshattering]

Her correction is noted, and in his concentration (and many attempts to) in getting those shots to hit closer to where he's tending to aim on the target Claude hadn't even noticed he'd slipped into doing that. All the more reason to take a second to - after setting the pistol down facing away from them - take a second to shake out his hands and arms much like he would with archery. And what he intends to be a short break, it gives him a chance to study Shepard for a second.

"You remind me a lot of... several people, actually," is what he says first. "All of them leaders, and from there they vary from warriors, to mercenaries, to instructors, and sometimes somewhere in between those. And not just because of the quick adjustments." Another grin goes with that, of course. "Though all of them have that in common, too. Maybe it's the military background."

For Teach, anyway, and his combat instructor too. Before he's told to stop dawdling (or worse, give the impression of quitting when he has no intention to just yet), Claude picks the pistol back up and runs through the stance checklist once again. This time he catches himself locking an elbow and avoids it for now, but not without now moving on to holding the gun up to aim and considering where to shoot next.

"I spent most of my time annoying them in various ways and however I could. Hopefully my record's slightly improved from that today."

[earthborn]

"In my experience, people come into this job for a few reasons, and they bring a lot of baggage, myself included," Shepard waits for him to take the shot, before continuing, "In all cases, most of what they bring is pride. Everybody's got his own idea of how things ought to be run, and what's important. But in the military, what you think, what you want, your values... Not relevant. You're not here to represent anything but your capabilities, and pride gets in the way of performance. It's painful, but it's better to break yourself of it as soon as possible."

She falls quiet again, waiting. It wasn't that she didn't take pride in her work, it was that she was willing to subsume her opinions under someone else's will, someone else's vision. Respect, you might call it, or obedience, but the word that most ended up on was Service. You could have opinions, and even express them, but what you did was not about you, unless you were the one being asked to make the call.

And even then, that wasn't about you; you'd been put in that position by someone else, for a reason. The mission, the results were what mattered.

"...You're not so bad. But I'm an actions-before-words kind of girl. So, being mouthy is hardly a cardinal sin."

[godshattering]

Shepard's explanation of the military she knows is enough for Claude to lower his weapon slightly with his focus turning from the shot he'd just taken to listening instead. What she describes isn't the same experience he knows - not entirely, at any rate - and he considers this for a few seconds.

"Sounds both the same and different from what I used to know, in some ways. I can't speak for everyone who joined, given some battalions were asked to join by their regions and that asking was generally not voluntary. But if someone didn't want to take up the causes we represented or disagreed with some part about them, that was also an important piece of how I ran things. All of it was worth hearing to make sure I was making the right decisions, especially if asking someone to put their life on the line for what I decided even if I was out there doing the same right beside them."

It's not solely being a soldier alone that he knows, though truthfully: the longer he thinks about it, the more it does sound like they have in common. There's only so far the idea of free thought can be stretched into being the truth; the reality is that of course there was the setting aside of any number of thoughts, hopes, dreams - anything in between to take up the one they were directed. It's not the first time he's thought about it that way, but it's sobering to be presented with it yet again.

Which is exactly why he pivots back to something lighter for time being. "I think what you're saying, though, is that by 'not so bad' there's a good chance that does mean some level of annoying. Unfortunately, that's not so different than from when I was in charge since I think my commanders would've also preferred less talking from me now and then. Helped break up the action side a bit, though."

[earthborn]

"Y'know, I think your standards for what's annoying, and mine, are very different," Shepard tells him, openly amused. If he thinks this is what obnoxious sounds like, he's certainly never had to listen to a pair of squadmates bicker their way through a mission, usually right in Shepard's ear. The magic of modern commlinks, "So you were a soldier."

It's a question, or perhaps more of an offer.

"Where you from, Claude?"

[godshattering]

"Or, as a counterpoint, you haven't witnessed me be truly annoying just yet. It's all about scaling it back when appropriate."

Maybe he's teasing, maybe he isn't - he'll never tell. Or, more accurately, he'll probably put it into action at some point later on when he doesn't run the risk of annoying his instructor out of teaching him a bit more about the weaponry she has around.

For now, Shepard's question isn't wholly unexpected. It'd been part of what he was fishing for with those small reveals so he lowers the pistol, attention now fully away from the target as he considers both her and his next answer.

"I'm from Fodlan. I was a military commander there along with being a soldier, though I've learned we're far behind where many others come from. Even if it may not mean much given we all seem to have different calendars, the year was 1187 for me. And just a guess based on what I've learned, but I'm betting you're from somewhere far in the relative future based on," with a gesture to those unfamiliar weapons again, "all of this."

sorry for the long delay! I hope late tagging is okay

[earthborn]

"I've been told that 'behind' isn't the right term, but..." Shepard gestures at the gun-rack with a wincing grimace. There's people, and then there's technology, and no one is going to convince her that black powder and flintlock are anything but the ancestral form of a better weapon, "No comment."

You don't see anyone born in Cadens visiting other stars.

"So you were an officer. I'd like to hear what kind of command you led. Big unit? Lots of conflict?"

no worries at all, and absolutely!!

[godshattering]

No comment gets a wide grin from Claude since that really does sum it up, doesn't it? "For what it's worth, I won't be taking offense if you do say we're behind. It's rather true for Fodlan, even if some of the advances turned out to be intentionally suppressed. Regardless, there's lots we have yet to learn of given what I've found here."

Some of that is a distraction because Claude needs to consider how to answer Shepard's next question. Normally - what with he's already told others here and there in different ways - it wouldn't be a question that'd give him any pause. But there's still the issue of what he'd rather the Free Cities not learn about him; even that operates on the assumption they don't already know something from bringing him here. The gun in his hand is studied again while he weighs options back and forth before eventually looking up with his answer ready.

"I was. I was in charge of tactics and strategy and I planned what was to be done and when. It was a rather sizable army so needless to say it also involved a lot of coordination and dealing with some... interesting personalities." There's a bit of a grin with that since that's an understatement. "Mostly from afar, since those I worked with directly were far less combative even when rightfully disagreeing with me."

He'll leave it there unless Shepard has other questions about that admittedly vague answer, if only because he's also curious. "What was yours like?"