Shooting Ground

The nearest and only shooting ground of the city was owned by the police and, thus, was situated next to their main office.

Thanks to the Nahas headquarters being in the center of the city and all the main buildings of the city also being built the nearest possible to the center, going to the shooting was a 15 minutes walk.

Once there Al only needed to show his citizen card and an authorization personally written by Sophia to enter the building. There he was accompanied to the ground and proposed different type of guns but in the end he decided to stay with the one given by the Nahas.

Bang ! First shot was a miss. 

Al looked at his gun, his hands were trembling. The picture of the blood coming out of the citizens that he shot during that night at the Millepertuis hadn't left his mind since then.

At first he didn't really care about it, those citizens hadn't died and were healed right after by Marianne. But after seeing those bodyguards die from the same kind of guns then his, he realized that he could've killed the men and women.

He had never killed someone and just the thought of it gave him nausea. He had seen death multiple times and faced it even more times, but the death never came from his own hand.

When he shot at them, he was in such a hurry to block their path that the bullet could have hit their head. They could have died, actually he was lucky that the bullet hit their legs. In reality, Al wasn't that great of a shooter he was just lucky.

During his years as a mercenary he had learnt to hunt, though he had tried the rifle at that time, he was way better at setting traps and predicting the movement and behavior of his prey. In the end it was always another man who would shoot the beast.

Al had acted all mighty since his arrival at Eden. Though it was the right thing to do in order to survive and obtain answers and opportunities, he would be soon discovered as a fraud if he was not able to get as strong as he pretended to be.

But he did not fear to be discovered, he feared more the possibility of not being discovered. If someone found out about his lack of abilities he would be fired and start his life as a mercenary again. No harm would be done.

But if he wasn't and happened to wound someone or at worst kill them, he would never be able to forgive himself. 

Since he arrived, everyone had been so welcoming of him, some more than others and some others in their own way. But in the end, everyone in the Nahas had accepted him, trained him, supported him.

Maybe for some people what happened to him wasn't that incredible but to him it was everything. He had people caring about him, who would try their best to help him instead of ripping his profit or steal his missions. 

To protect them he needed to get better. His hands gripped the gun tighter.

Bang! Bang! His shot rang in the training ground for a long time. Refills emptied one after another and second ticked on the clock.

"Hey, it's been a long time since I've seen someone training that hard, it's gonna cost quite a lot to your employer". Al put down his gun and saw the pile of refills standing next to him. It has been an hour since he started to train.

Shoot ! I didn't realize that I've used this many bullets. Al looked at the man on the lane next to him who was preparing for shooting. He was a policeman in his late thirties ; on his uniform were pinned two medals.

From his lesson with Sophia, he remembered that medals were a way to distinguish yourself in the police. The more you had the higher you were in the hierarchy. 

Each medal had a color showing the reason for the promotion, the man had one green and one yellow. Though Al didn't remember what each color stood for he was still impressed.

"I'm sorry I didn't realize how long I've been here."

"I've figured" The officer frowned. "You're also the youngest man I've seen here since forever. You're from the Nahas aren't you ?"

"How do you know?" The officer laughed at how startled Al was.

"It's not that complicated, we are not allowed to hire underaged boys like you compared to the Nahas who can obtain special permits when dealing with special cases. So what can you do?"

"First of all, I am not underaged, I am nineteen. And second of all, who are you ?" The officer tried to hide his laugh to not anger the frail boy in front of him but to no avail.

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to anger you. I am Raymond Delacime, Police officer." 

Delacime ? Family names were rare. One would get a family name if his deeds were so important that his descendents would have the merit to be born from this person. 

In Eden only the founder of the city and important military chief that accumulated some incredible feats had obtained one. In other cities like Carnival family names were more common, but still only reserved for the highest spheres.

The man stretched his hand toward Al, waiting for him to shake it.

"I'm Al, from the Night district team of the Nahas". Al took his hand and reluctantly looked at the grin on Raymond's face that said I knew it.

"So you haven't told me, what can you do?" Seeing that Al was hesitating to answer he added. "At my rank every policeman knows about the Virus so you can tell me."

"I have visions of the future." 

"No way ! really that's so cool. I would've loved to have super powers like you."

"Well for now it only makes me throw up all of my meals so it's not that cool but I do have some really cool colleagues."

"We all start somewhere." Al nodded and looked at the clock. It was already 7pm, he had to go to work.

"I'm sorry but I have to go to work."

"Don't be, I hope to see you soon at the shooting ground again Al."

Al smiled and cleared his lane before walking out of the building.

~~~~

After the daily meeting he went out with Marianne for his first patrol. There, she explained him the basics of patrolling and showed him important places where deals and other crimes frequently happened.

The job didn't look extremely hard but, with a first experience like the Millepertuis, he knew that it could easily turn sour.

The patrol went out smoothly, with nothing special happening but a group of drunk workers bothering the owner of a bar. Marianne quickly took care of them and made them come back home.

Thanks to the night being calm, Al could be formed in a lot of situations. He still needed to be trained with them and the amount of information made it hard for him to memorize more than half of it, but it still was a very productive night for him.

Tired of his very long day, training, theoretical formation and stressful first experience, he crawled back to his bed and instantly fell asleep.