Guns

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

A few days later Alice comes home from school when Tony walks out of the office.

“Alice just who I wanted to see.” He says spotting her, as she walks through the door.

“Hey, whats up Tony?” She asks curiously. Tony gestures for her to follow as he walked off and she quickly puts her school bag down, following. She jogs to his side reaching just a few steps behind him.

“Seems like I’m going to have to train you.” He says shooting her a sideways glance. She pauses in her footsteps her eyes wide.

“Who told you?” She asks. It wasn’t rocket science to know what he meant.

“Who do you think? Alice, your’e under MY care and I have just been to see him. He is not happy. Anymore fights, I don’t know how much longer I can convince him to not be hard on you.” He sighs tired, as he stops in his own tracks and turns to look at her.

Despite the lack of expression on his face, Tony was worried for her. She sighs softly before looking off to the side. “I-..they started it Tony, what am I meant to do?” she spoke softly, almost a whisper.

“i expect you to ignore them, walk away and not get into fights.” He answers in a slightly raised, angry voice.

She looks at him and goes to open her mouth, but before she could even protest. Tony raised a hand and silences her. “I know you won’t be able to, well for one your hair. You have a temper worse then a bull and not to mention that pride of yours. So I managed to get Mikhael to agree, if you do as you are told, that I can train you in how to fight properly. Sound good?”

Good? Alice thought that was a fantastic idea.

“Yes, of course I will! Thanks Tony!” She grinned from ear to ear at Tony. She wraps her arms around Tony’s waist and hugged him tightly. He chuckles softly patting her head as she smiled up at him.

“Come on lets get started shall we?” He pry’s her off him and holds her at arms length so he could get a good look at her. She tilts her head pulling away taking a step back.

“What start? Like right now?” She asks slightly confused.

“Mhm, right now are you deaf or something?” He chuckles at her. She scowls and he laughed, a deep throaty laugh at her expression before it broke into another smile.

“No, come on, lets go.” She starts tugging on his arm.

Tony and Ren, were the only two people in this family she could rely on and trust. She was ecstatic that Mikhael allowed Tony to train her and is eager for this to start.

Tony lead her to the gym area which was based in one of the many basements rooms, some being a shooting range and other rooms which was out of bounds for her. Ren had told her, he heard it was rooms where Mikhael did his ‘Punishments’ and she shudders, hating to think what sort of stuff he would do to people. The gym was built to keep mainly the male members within the family as it were fit and strong for certain tasks. Such as terminating a target.

Inside the room it would be as you would expect from any old gym, it had; bikes, treadmills and rowing machines. There was weight machines and in one corner, the floor was covered in matts. Small martial art equipment was set up for hand to hand combat.

Tony walks over to the matts and tosses her boxing tape to go around her hands.

“Whats this for?” She asks catching them.

“To protect your hands from damage, now come here.” he says gesturing her to give him her hands. She does as she is told, placing her tiny hands in his adult sized ones.

He takes one of the boxing tape and hooks the looped part over her thumb of her left hand. “Watch closely.” He instructs, as he wrapped the tape around her left hand.

He begins wrapped the tape around her wrist three times, before looping it around her hand and then back crossing over her hand before looping around her fingers. Finally he finishes off, attaching the two velcro together and he nods in approval.

“They fit your hand alright.” He comments as she flexed her left getting the feel of the tape around her hand.

“Remember how I did your left hand?” He asks to which she nods. “Good now show me.”

She hooks the loop around her right thumb and begins to wrap the tape around her hand, like Tony did to her left. After she was done, he takes her right hand and inspects it. His eyebrows raised in surprise at how quick she learnt and gives a satisfied nod.

“Okay now follow me.” He motions for her to follow him to the punching bags and he stood behind it. “Stand here.” He instructs next pointing in front of the punching bag.

She does what she is told and moves to stand in front front of the bag. “Okay now.” He says as he hits his hand flat on the hanging punching bag. “What I want you to do is punch this as hard as you can.” Which was the next instruction.

She nods flexing her hands, shaking out her body, before parting her feet into a stance and balling her hands into fists, pulling them up towards her face. She pulls back her right hand throwing the punch, hotting the punching bag with enough force she could muster, considering the injuries she has.

“Come on, my grandmother can punch harder then that.” Tony mocks, taunting her with a smirk. Alice frowned at him and clenched her jaw, she used this anger hitting the punching bag much harder then before, it swings but was caught by Tony.

Tony watched every move she made, her posture, the way she held herself, she was a good fighter and Tony could see that but he saw she lacked guidance, and discipline.

They trained like this for two hours straight with ten min breaks every so often. Alice took a swig of water which Tony had bought moments earlier.

“You’ve got the strength but you lack discipline and control when you throw your punches.” Tony comments giving her feedback from todays training.

“With guidance and enough training you could be an exceptional fighter.”

Alice fell back on her behind and sat on the mat with her elbows leaning on her thighs. “You think I have what it takes to be able to at least defend myself?”

She wasn’t going to lie, she loved fighting, she loved the rush of it all, the hunger for blood, the need to break someones nose that ticked her off not that she would ever admit it. She already felt she was messed up enough in the head, she didnt need to admit she loved fighting and to see her opponent bleed.

“Right.’ Tony finally said, happy with Alice’s first training.

“I think we’ve done enough today lets call it.”

Alice nods as she began to do some cooling down exercise, stretching out her sore muscles and took a large swig of water from her water bottle. Cleaning up the gym, she leaves the gym and heads back to her room not feeling hungry.

She heads through to the main stairway and heads up to the third floor, where her room is along with Ren’s. She walks long the corridor until she comes to her door. Opening the door she steps inside her room and dumps herself on her bed, laying back letting her legs swing off the side. All over the floor was her clothes, her desk was covered with scrapes of paper with writing on it and CDs scattered everywhere, and it even covered her laptop which was buried under the mess.

She drapes her arm over her eyes as a yawn escaped, she was exhausted from waking up so early and the intense work out she had to endure. She had no energy for her music either, normally she would tune and practise her guitar every morning.

She almost drifts off to sleep when a knock sounded at her door. “Yeah?” She replies.

“It’s me, can I come in?” Renkai’s voice called from behind the door.

“Yeah, doors open.” She says while heaving herself up and sits on the edge of her bed.

Renkai opens the door as he leans onto the doorframe, crossing his arms. “hey haven’t heard you play today, just came to see if you were still asleep or something.”

“Oh, er yeah was sort of falling back asleep. Tony got me up early to do some training of his to well get Mikhael off my back.” Alice shrugged as he pushed himself off the doorframe.

“Oh yeah, I did hear about that. How was it?” He asked as he walked into the room and grabbed her chair, sitting on it.

“Speaking of, written any new pieces?” He asked curiously as he looked over at the piles of papers on her desk.

“I am working on something but its not finished yet.” She yawned leaning forward on her elbow and resting her chin in the palm of her hand.

Renkai nods before grinning. “We should play together again soon.”

A smile formed on her tired features as she nodded tiredly. “Yeah, of course we jam well together.” She chuckled lightly.

She began to notice that Renkai wasn’t smiling his usual smile, it didn’t seem to reach his eyes when he did and he seemed to be shifting around a lot too.

“You’ve not only just came by to check up on me have you?” She asked as she sat up a little straighter.

Renkai sighed as he smiled sadly. “No, I’ve come to say bye, Mikhael is sending me on a job.”

Alice clenched her fists as she stood up. “He’s now taking my only friend away?! What the f**k!” She exclaimed angrily.

“Hey Alice, this was going to happen. It’s part of this life, we have no choice when he says to do it, we do it. No questions asked.” He gets up to try and calm her down.

Alice steps back shaking her head angrily as she glares. “No this isn’t fair or right, you’ve barely turned eighteen…”

Renkai looks at her sadly, not wanting to leave but he knew he also didn’t have a choice.

“How long will you be gone for?” She asks quietly not sure if she wanted to know the answer to that.

“I don’t know, however long it takes for me to get the job done.” He answers honestly with a sigh.

Alice had been friend’s with Renkai for years, she was only Ten when Tony bought Renkai home with him nearly six years ago.

“Alice!” Tony would yell entering the small apartment, with a scrawny looking kid.

Alice got up from the carpet in the living room and came to the hallway where Tony was calling her from.

“yeah?” She says looking at Tony then at the boy.

“This is Renkai, he will be staying with us for now on, in hopes you will make friends eh? Lord knows you need to work on your social skills kid.” Tony would saigh shaking his head at her fondly. Alice would glares at Tony in response and he would ruffle her hair, chuckling gruffly.

The boy standing beside Tony seemed to be of eleven years of age and of Asian descent. He had jet black hair and hazel eyes, he looked rather beat up at the moment to ten year old Alice. He had bandaids on his face and some cuts, he gave her a slight smile despite his injuries.

“Hey.” He said.

Hi.” Alice said quickly and shyly, as she avoided eye contact.

“Wanna play?” He soon grinned and Alice looked at Tony for a moment.

He nods at her in approval and pats Renkai on the shoulder.

“Sure.” Alice nods a shy smile forming and Renkai takes her hand, pulling her back into the living room.

She later learnt that he was Japanese and he had a bad start in life, fighting for his next meal and having to kill at such a young age.

She snaps out of her daydream and looks at her best friend who is now eighteen. He was still the smiley eleven year old she had met six years ago.

“I know, I know.” He would smile at her his usual gin and reaches over to give her a hug.

She hugged back and tightened her arms, but soon regretted it. “Ow, ow, ow..” she grumbles pulling away.

Renkai laughed softly and ruffled her hair pulling away from the hug, heading to the door.

“See ya Ali.” He would say, waving goodbye before leaving the room.

She sighed watching him leave, she missed him already and she suddenly felt this huge hole in her chest. She was going to be lonely without him, her best friend.

She sighs softly and sits back on the bed, laying down and rolling onto her side, curling up. She winced slightly, feeling mentally drained from the recent events leading up till now. From being beat up to the delivery she had to make as punishment, then being told that by her best friend that he had to leave for who knows how long. Alice wasn’t sure but she felt something was going to happen and it didn’t feel good. Her eyes slowly began to close, falling into a deep sleep.