ic Ain't Going Back

[alderwitch]

Content Notice: Violence (Holographs)

 

Talya stood in the center of the empty concrete room, incongruously dressed for her barren surroundings. Her heels echoed as she took a step towards the simple folding table in the center and the weapons laid out on it with military precision. It would be a significant amount of time before she had managed to have all the alterations made to the Interceptors Headquarters knocked off on her list, but at least they'd hollowed out the concrete cavern that would be filled with advanced technology eventually. It was sturdy enough - and sound proof enough that Talya felt comfortable moving her exercises down to the space.

 

Picking up the familiar Browning in her manicured grip, Talya checked the chamber with the comfort of long practice before loading the clip into the holster with a soft 'click'. "Vince?" The cultured, clipped tones broke the silence. There was no need for a response from the AI, the click of the thick door was answer enough. Talya took her live-fire exercises very seriously. Solid light holograms were well and good for targets but at least to Talya's senses, they didn't feel quite right. It was akin to the difference between practicing with a wooden blade versus the real thing. There were differences, small and slight, but enough to throw off her muscle memory if it was all that she practiced with.

 

The gun slipped into the holster hidden by her carefully tailored suit jacket, in the waist band of the skirt. She shifted once to adjust to the weight against her spine before concealing the rest of the weapons, all equally lethal, all the former tools of her trade; blades, garrote, and one exceptionally thin, wicked stiletto hidden as jeweled pin along the brim of her hat. Once every weapon had been concealed, Talya quickly closed up the folding table to store it against the far wall of the concrete room. The last thing she wanted was to bang into a real object that was obscured by the holograms as they static'd into existence. The tech was still rough, very much in the 'working the kinks out phase', much like the room itself. It would provide Talya with both necessary exercise as well as needed calibrations to fine tune the program and technology for its final installation.

Edited August 26, 2017 by alderwitch

[alderwitch]

The room around her fuzzed and faded, the holograms were clearly holograms and not the seamless reality that the final product would be. Gingerly, Talya sat down on one of the hard light chairs; it was a bistro she'd visited on many occasions, halfway across the world from the West End but familiar enough, her legs crossed and one hand absently curling around the handle of a tea cup as she gazed at the scene. There were many good shooting galleries in Freedom City, any number of which would allow her to practice advanced targeting, but none quite as complete as these sorts of scenarios where the variables were entirely controlled by VINCE through the software. She did, after all, have decades of enemies to draw from. 

 

She was watching for people, but the van swerving in towards the crowd of holograms was certainly easy to spot. Less easy to address as the crowd began to scream and scatter. 

 

The table reacted to her kick like its real world counterpart would have, clanging over onto its side to provide meager cover from the solid light slugs shot from the passenger's side. Talya steadied it from rolling with her off hand as she drew the fire arm from behind her jacket. 

 

Thirteen, twelve, eleven...

 

A Browning hi-power held thirteen bullets in its clip, and the first three slammed into the windshield on the driver's side driving through to hit holographic flesh. Blood on the windshield confirmed the hit although Talya wouldn't mark the target off the list until the kill was confirmed. Until then, the driver remained an active threat in her mental list even as she made a mental note that the hologram did not extend to baffling the sound. The gunfire was loud - ever so much more loud than movies made it out - and her senses registered the reverberation in the concrete room rather than the open plane of the simulation. Dropping her shoulder behind the adhoc shield, she automatically scanned behind her for further threats as she waited for the passenger to get out and present a target not shielded by glass. 

 

Ten.

 

She squeezed off the shot, taking the passenger out with one bullet as he moved to swing a snub nosed automatic weapon in her general direction. It was lower than she'd have liked - Talya was more rusty than she'd thought - but the bullet caught him square in the t-zone; where the skull was thin enough to ensure that a bullet would be swift and lethal.