Edicius {5SOS;CASHTON&CAKE&MALUM}✔️

Thirteen: "Practice Makes Perfect."

His teeth gritted slightly as he closed one of his eyes, holding the gun up and straightening his back out. The ear muffs on his ear held to his head almost a little too snugly but he didn't pay attention to it too much. He took the safety off and filled his lungs with the chilly air of the large room that was used as a shooting range for himself and the rest of the gang.

He focused in on the thick paper, the one red dot placed at the center becoming his focus as he opened his other eyes only to narrow them both the second later. He pulled the trigger easily, not wasting his time on seeing if he hit his target, he knew he did, quickly moving over to the next one and doing the same.

The sound of a gun firing over and over reverberated around the empty room, the deafening sound reaching Calum's ear but not being able to cause actual harm to his hearing because of his protection.

He didn't stop until the gun was empty, dropping the weapon to the floor and pulling a new one out of the back of his jeans. He checked the barrel, eight bullets, before locking it back in place. His movements were quick, sharp, and clean-a natural instinct that had become just like breathing for him. He emptied the 9mm just as fast as he took it out.

He dropped the empty gun to the floor, going to grab his next weapon of choice but was stopped by a familiar head of dark hair, the color almost a black with how the mixing of dark brown worked together in his eyes. The twenty-one year old crouched down and picked up his used weapons, setting them on the table, before looking to Calum as she waited for him to finish.

His jaw was still locked from what China could see, the grip on his gun like melting iron fusing together, and his eyes set on the target like it was going to shoot back at him. He fired the gun twice, a bullet flying to where a heart would be held if it wasn't a stuffed doll and the second bullet blowing the head off of it, cotton cascading onto the floor. He turned to the next target, hitting the bulls eye directly. He kept hitting it, walking closer to it as he emptied the gun before only clicks could be heard and the wooden disk for darts was destroyed.

"I don't think that there's any more, Cal. Unless they've invented invisible bullets." She said, catching his attention and making Calum look to her with dark, brown eyes.

The boy rolled his amused, dark colored eyes back, dropping the gun on the table with a huff. He laid his palms on the surface, rocking forward slightly as China moved to stand before him with her arms crossed over her chest. It was silent outside of Calum's heavy breathing, China waited for him to calm down, watching him closely with focused, brown eyes. She brushed a hand through her hair and chuckled, Calum looking to her with furrowed eyebrows as he slid the protection on his ears down around his neck.

"You've seriously gotten better at your aim, Cal. Those are direct hits." He shrugged, looking at all the targets she was looking at like it still wasn't enough, "I'm serious. You're a quick shooter. You've got a nice hand on you."

"I guess. I could still tighten up my deliver and have a better grip. I almost dropped the 9mm when I took it out."

He dragged himself down, completely icing out her sincere compliments with his own watered down and self conscious evaluations of what he had done. She only sighed, knowing there was no point in trying to convince him otherwise as he mumbled to himself about whatever he was hung up on, though he did well. He rubbed at the back of his neck as she left him alone, the other woman called to some other duty she had.

He took out Luke's ring from inside his shirt, cleaning it gently with the same cloth he used for the guns he covered in his prints, cleaning the slick silver of the prints like he had committed a murder. He tucked it back in his shirt, sliding the earmuffs over his ears again as he took the now loaded gun into his grasp, shutting his eyes to focus himself again.

He clicked the safety off quickly, opening his eyes and aiming for the target beside him. He shut one eye to focus in on the small, red dot in the middle of the target, shooting once then twice and sending chips of wood in a burst of steel bullets against the thin wood. He turned over, switching hands in a slick motion to fire another bullet into the already destroyed dummy, the silver bullet cutting through the cotton with ease and tearing the dummy up even more with the hole it left behind in the stomach area.

He moved in a pristine action, working around the room and firing down targets and dummies as he had trained himself to do from isolating himself in the room filled with heavy weaponry and endless targets to destroy. He took out his everything on the targets, whether the influx of emotions and dark thoughts were in the middle of night at one or at the end of the day at seven, Calum took it all out in a long session of weaponry usage against inanimate objects, imagining Ashton's face in place of the cotton dolls and red circled targets.

And, when he'd calm down the first time, he'd feel the heavy but light weight of the ring inside of his shirt and he'd pick back up again;and when he got over the weight against his bare skinned, he'd think of what his bare skinned had become, clothed in ugly marks of remembrance of the demon he once loved.

Then he'd think of Michael, and while he still blamed Michael for being the first push down to the hell he lived in, the reason for his entrapment by the clipping of his wings and the giving of pure to vile, he'd still empty the gun of its shells in behalf of the sad replacement that Michael had become.

{~~~~}

So, we meet again? Well, I went to a shooting range for the first time and I think my mum is slightly concerned about how much I knew about guns and how easy I caught on.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Calum's thoughts and what he uses his gun practice to suppress? What he focuses on while he practices?

And, that's all. Au revoir....