||: Welcome to Bootcamp :||

After the end of the blood bath I was given a few days break to let myself work over the events in my head. Close to 52 hours later, I had the sudden realisation that I will one day have to kill someone. Was it really worth finding my father over? Even so, I didn't have a choice; it's not like the mafia would just suddenly let me go. I was just lucky they have left me alive this long. If my suspicions are correct, I am alive due to Lovino's efforts. He seems to have taken a liking to me, and I'm hoping to keep it that way. It seems the leaders of the Vargas family are all much more caring than they let on, especially the youngest one. When we got back Romeo apologised to the point that I thought he might end killing himself to make up for it. I said it was fine, but I did warn him to never leave me outside alone again.

A knock came at my door: "Are you awake?" I told the voice to come in, and Stephano opened the door. "How're you doing?"

"Better than I was a week ago. I think I'm okay to start my training now." Lovino had stopped by 5 days after the incident, and told me that once my mind and body was stable enough, I would need to begin the training I needed to stay here. It was then that I had decided finding my father was worth more than anything; I wanted to give my mother some light back in her life, no matter what.

"That's great, I'll let the boss know. He'll be supervising your training."

"Huh? He's not the one training me?" Stephano let out a sigh.

"He may have been exceptionally nice to you lately, but he is still the boss, and he is busy enough already." I downcast my gaze, feeling like a complete idiot. Of course... There's no way the boss of a large mafia group would train someone who isn't even part of the family.

"But since you are ready to begin training, I brought along the two that will be leading your training." Stephano stood up and opened the door to my room. "Come on in you two." Two heads popped in the doorway, one of them with a huge grin, the other waving at me. I stood up to go greet them, but they quickly moved to either side of me and grabbed by arms. They both looked me up and down, looked at each other, and then smiled at one another.

"This one's going to be a lot of fun!"

"I agree, Faustino." The two men began dragging me out of my room. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stephano let out a huge breath, or a sigh. One of the two. This worried me, and I yelped a little as one of them gripped my arm too hard.

"Hey, stop pulling me so hard, I can walk on my own!" I growled at the man to my left, whom the man on my right had called Faustino earlier. They both suddenly stopped moving, causing me to jostle. I watched as they looked at each other, as if they were having a conversation with their eyes before they both looked back at me, then in sync they let go of my arms. Carefully I rubbed, half expecting hand print bruises to be on them in the morning.

"Well then, follow us, ragazza!" The man to my right said. They practically sprinted down the halls and I had to run just to keep up.

"W-wait! Where... where are we going? I still haven't figured out where everything in this place is!" They continued jogging down the halls, but Faustino looked back and answered me.

"We're going to the training hel- I mean hall, of course!" I did hear him right correct? He was about to say 'hell' wasn't he. I began mentally preparing myself for what was to come. I tried to keep up as we ran down a flight of stairs and out into the courtyard. The sun was almost hitting its highest point, so it was quite bright and humid. I felt sick just walking into it. Please be inside, please be inside. I prayed, hoping that I wouldn't have to do all sorts of athletics in this overbearing heat. The two men stopped in front of a large detached building and opened the doors as I caught my breathe.

Slowly stepping in, the inside of it was decorated by all sorts of physical equipment, the high end stuff you might find at an expensive gym. One whole wall to the right of me was covered in every type of gun you could think of, and I took a guess and said the counter in front of it held all sorts of ammo for them. Looking all the way to the other side, a sort of obstacle course was set up, decked out with moving objects and automated weapons to attack and shoot at you. Looking up, I could tell there was a second floor, but not much seemed to be up there, as most of the ceiling was opened up to the first floor. Judging by the shape, it was probably a track or something similar. This must have cost them a fortune!

"What're you spacing off for ragazza? Let's get started!" Faustino grabbed my arm and dragged me up the stairs to the second floor. Turns out my guess was correct, as a neatly draw track laid out at my feet. The other man went over to a part of the track and ushered me towards him; Faustino followed behind me.

"We're going to see how fast you can run a mile! On your mark, get set, go!" Before I had time to process what was happening, Faustino pushed me forward and I started running. I remember having to do this back in middle school, and I never did very well on it. The first lap went okay, but it was half way through the second one that I began to tire out quickly. Faustino had already ran ahead of me; he's probably my measure for how fast I should be. I knew if I tried to keep up with him, I would likely not even be able to finish, so I kept my own pace, and finally finished far behind Faustino.

"Ten minutes and thirty-six seconds... Hm, you'll definitely need to improve that." The other man, whose name I still not had learned, commented. I noticed when he was talking to me, he seemed very... cold. Yet when he was speaking to Faustino, it's almost like a switch was flipped in him.

"Oh come now, Callisto, we've had to train worse than that before! Though many of those ones didn't make it..." My face pales as I listen to him, he notices this. "Oh don't worry ______! You're doing much better than the dead ones already!" It doesn't help calm my nerves, so I chose to ask what's next instead.

"Oh! We'll do some gun control to give you a break and catch your breath!" Faustino cheered, dragging me back down the stairs as the other man, Callisto, followed behind us. Faustino had so much energy, it feels like he just drank several coffees with high caffeine content, and hadn't just run a mile. From what I could tell, he hadn't even broken a sweat yet. He dragged my tired body over to the wall decorated in guns and asked me to pick one out. I glanced around but none of them quite caught my eye. Suddenly a hand came down on my shoulder and a body pressed against my back as they reached over me.

"I recommend you start with this one. I've seen you handle it once before, and it seemed to fit your hands well." A smooth Italian accent made its way to my ears, one I recognised very well after talking with them for hours.

"L-Lovino! You startled me!" I backed away from him a bit as he gave me a small smile and handed me the gun he had grabbed off the wall. I recognised it as the same model of gun that I had taken from the brothers when they had first kidnapped me at my school.

"Good to see you boss!" Both Faustino and Callisto said in unison, saluting Lovino. He tilted his head at both of them gave a quick glance at me before turning his back on me.

"I apologise for being late, paperwork took a little longer than I thought." Faustino shook his head quickly.

"No problem boss! We both know you're a very busy man!" Faustino said cheerfully.

"And we only just started about 10 minutes ago." Callisto added. I couldn't tell what face Lovino was making, but I guessed it was a polite smile to go along with the nod he gave them again. Walking off to the side, Lovino stood out of the firing range about halfway up the staircase to the track.

"Alright, please continue." With the handgun Lovino picked out for me in my hand, Faustino led me to a piece of tape on the ground and then Callisto pressed a button. A slot on the wall opened and a paper target was on the other side.

"Just try your best ______! We know you're common folk, so we're not expecting you to be very good." I know Faustino probably meant well with those words, but they kind of stung. I held up the gun with both my hands and closed one of my eyes, focusing on where the gun was aiming. As I did so, I noticed that my hands were visibly shaking, and only when I noticed this, did fear begin to overtake me. It dawned on me once again that I might have to actually kill someone someday once I learned how to use a weapon. A hand was suddenly on mine, and I looked up to see Callisto steadying my shaking hands. I whispered a thank you to him and calmed my breathing. Focusing again, I finally pulled the trigger; the recoil was much different that I thought it would be, I was expecting my arm to hurt a lot since I was inexperienced, but there was only a slight thud that I felt in my shoulder, but other than that, I didn't feel much.

"Hm, that's not too terrible for your first shot. You actually hit the target!" Faustino cried, a big smile on his face, however, I didn't even hear him. I was looking at the gun in my hand, a little shocked and scared at how natural that felt to me. It was a very similar feeling I had felt when I fired a warning shot back in my principal's office. Callisto patted my shoulder and pointed to in front of me. Faustino was there, holding up the target I had just shot. In the bottom left corner, just below the outer edge of the furthest ring, was a hole through the paper.

"I- Did I...?" Faustino's grin grew impossibly wider.

"You hit it; first try!" Despite my unwillingness to fire earlier, a smile broke out on my face at how I had actually hit, even the paper, without any training. I looked over to Lovino, looking for something, encouragement or approval maybe? But I wasn't even given a glance, rather he was busy writing something down on the paper and clipboard he had brought in. Stephano's words came back to me, and I looked away, the smile falling from my face. Faustino noticed this and attempted to cheer me up.

"Oh cheer up ______! You hit it! And I bet if you try again, you'll hit even closer to the target, maybe even right on it!" He stepped closer to me, making sure to block my line of site to Lovino. He leaned in close and in a hushed voice said: "Don't worry about Boss too much, he's had a lot on his mind lately. And I'm sure he's writing down how well you're doing already!" A small smile came back to my face and I thanked him. Even though I highly doubted his words. "Well, let's continue. I want you to empty the magazine before we move on!" Faustino cheered loudly. I cocked my head to the side, and gave him a questioning look.

"Wouldn't that waste ammunition though? I don't see why you would waste it on me." Both Faustino and Callisto broke out into a giggle before Callisto answered me.

"I think you've seen enough of the grounds to know that we can restock on ammunition easy enough." And now that he pointed it out, my comment seemed stupid. I let my head fall in embarrassment before a slap on my back got me to focus again. I aimed the gun up again at the target that Faustino had put back, closing one eye again, I was about to pull the trigger when Callisto placed his hand on top of mine again, stopping me.

"The one-eye trick works better for long range weapons. With handguns like this, open both eyes and focus on the target in front, lining up the gun without focus on it." Taking his advice, I did as he told me to, and focused my vision on the target, moving the gun to line up with the middle at the target as best as I could, I pulled the trigger and let it fire. Working some feeling back into my shoulder, Faustino ran over to the target. I was expecting him to say something again, but he seemed to freeze there for a second, before taking the target off and running over to Lovino. Knowing how cheerful and peppy Faustino usually was about things like this, I began to assume the worst.

Callisto walked away from behind me and went over to his colleague and boss were on the stairs. They talked among themselves for a little bit, so I set the gun back on the counter in front of the gun-wall, and sat in a chair not too far from there. As I began to get lost in my own dark thoughts, Faustino came running up to me, grabbed my hand, and without a word, dragged me over to where Callisto and Lovino were.

"Um... guys? What's going on?" Lovino held up the paper target and what I saw almost made my jaw drop. There, right in the very center of the target, was a small hole that looked like a bullet went through it. I looked between Lovino and the target he was holding, before asking another dumb question. "Did- did I do that?" Faustino broke out into a chorus laughter, Callisto covering his mouth, likely trying to hide the grin that had broken out on his face.

"It seems you have more potential at this than I first thought." Lovino commented, handing me the target. I continued to gawk at the fact that I had hit a target in the center point on only my second (technically third) shot with a gun ever. Slowly a stupid grin crept across my face and I turned to Callisto.

"Thanks for the tips Callisto. It seems it helped a lot!" He wasn't expecting thanks, so when I did, he turned bashful for a second and turned away from us, muttering a quick "you're welcome" before walking back down the stairs. Faustino slung an arm over my shoulder and gave me a quick noogie.

"Awww, you made him embarrassed!" Faustino and I shared a laugh as Callisto seemed to glare at us from far away. From behind me, two olive eyes bore into my back, burning with a kind of jealousy that the young boss of the mafia had never felt before; however in my teasing of Callisto, I didn't notice. Faustino turned back around and Lovino quickly wiped the look off of his face. "Shall we continue boss?" Lovino gave a curt nod, waving us both back down with a flick of his hand.