“Ah, this should be a good place to start,” Levi exclaimed with a lightness to his voice as he removed a couple of pouches from the trunk, leaving the lid open.

Standing, he was already walking toward Madeline as she was to him.

“We’ll start you out with some throwing weapons,” he began. “Darts and shuriken. I’m sure you’ve seen these before?”

As Levi held up a throwing star, Madeline nodded. Anyone who’d ever seen a ninja movie knew what they were.

“And these bo shuriken are a throwing dart. Either one should make it easy for you to slow down any attacker so you can escape, after some practice anyway.”

He led her over the to the rock climbing wall and started to unbolt some of the hand holds. After he cleared a considerable space, he walked over to a second truck, one that wasn’t locked, and removed a large, thick rubber mat that had one inch holes drilled into it. Taking it back over to the rock climbing wall, he bolted it through the pre-drilled holes so that it now resembled a human sized target.

“Your main goal will be hitting the thighs and lower legs to incapacitate, which will be difficult because your target will most likely be moving,” Levi advised. “Of course you’ll want to be good at hitting the torso too, in case you need to try to kill, but a shuriken won’t do that job. A well placed dart with enough force behind it will pierce deep enough to cause internal injuries.”

“Why don’t we just go with guns?” Madeline asked. “A permit would be easy, and legal.”

“Guns are not a choice,” Levi said with a very serious look on his face. “There’s a number of reasons I don’t use them. The main one being that a gun’s only purpose is to kill, and that’s not the business I’m in. A mistake made with a gun can’t be taken back. Also, there are a lot of us out there that consider using a gun in a fight to be dishonorable.”

Backing away from the wall, Levi prompted Madeline to come and stand behind one of the floorboards that was slightly darker than the others. He had her distribute her body weight in a throwing stance.

“Now, there are two basic ways to throw a shuriken,” Levi began, placing one of the stars in her hand. “And how you grip it depends on how you’re going to throw it. We’ll focus on a vertical throw first, using a pinch grip.”

With a spare shuriken in his own hand, he gripped one of its points between his thumb and index finger.

“Now when you throw, you’re going to bend your arm at the elbow and bring your throwing hand back to about to your ear,” he instructed, stepping behind her so he could lift her arm and bend it into the proper position. “You want to point at the target with your elbow, and when you release it, you should be extending your hand and lower arm straight out so it’s pointed at the target as well. Your lower arm should be the only thing really moving, up and back to aim, forward and down to throw, using your elbow as the hinge.”

Madeline nodded as Levi released his guiding hands and stepped away.

“Shuriken literally means the sword hidden in the user’s hand, so think of being quick and accurate, and please try not to hit my wall.”

Madeline took a deep breath and then snapped her forearm in line with her upper arm, letting go of the star. It stuck into the rubber mat a couple of inches from the edge. It wasn’t exactly where she’d been aiming, but she didn’t hit the climbing wall, which was a small triumph.

“Good,” Levi praised. “And just remember not to be discouraged if they don’t bury in too deep, or they hit but don’t stick. The current goal is to be accurate with your aim and be able to do some damage that will slow down an attacker. After you master that, there are other things you can be taught to use shurikens for.”

“Other things?” Madeline asked as Levi handed her another throwing star. To be honest, she had been pretty sure stabbing people with them was all they were good for.

“Oh you will be amazed at all you can do with these things,” Levi chuckled. “You can trip someone with a well place shuriken in front of the toe, use them as caltrops, take out cameras, redirect lasers, cause noise distractions, smoke screens… and they are cheap, so you don’t have to worry if you can’t retrieve them.”

Madeline threw the next one and got a bit closer to her visualized target, though not by much.

“I want you to practice for a few hours every day getting it to stick in the center of the mat,” Levi said, handing her a third star. “The height really doesn’t matter, just try to get it equidistant from the left and right edge. After you have that mastered, I’ll mark specific spots on the mat that I want you to hit.”

“Can I ask you a few questions about weapons?” Madeline questioned as she took aim and launched another shuriken.

“Sure,” he answered, handing her another.

“What do you prefer? Do you have a specific weapon you think is critical to what you do, something you never leave home without?”

“I prefer throwing weapons, and usually take a few different kinds with me. Kunai, which are knives; bo shuriken, which are throwing spikes; and shuriken. The vast majority of my jobs don’t bring me into physical conflict.”

“But when they do?” Madeline inquired a bit deeper, still throwing the stars he was feeding her.

“I do pretty well using what’s around me, but if I know a fight is going to be unavoidable, I bring my twin wakizashi,” he answered, checking the grouping of her hits. “They conveniently fit into one sheath I carry on my back out of the way until I need them.”

“Waka-what?” Madeline questioned.

“Wah - kee - zah - shee,” he clarified. “The name classifies the length of the sword, more or less. Wakizashi blades are roughly between one and two feet long.”

“But you didn’t bring those when you came to get me.”

“Because I knew I wasn’t going to need them,” Levi answered, walking over to the mat and retrieving the throwing stars. “I researched the location beforehand, so I knew who I was dealing with. Maiming fae isn’t an attack you can bet on, so I left the blades at home. Not to mention when you are fighting fae you want to go with what you know and what you can trust. Which, in that case, were my fists.”

Sauntering back to where Madeline stood, Levi handed her the first shuriken on the stack he retrieved from the mat, and she began taking aim again.

“So what do you do with the weapons when you have to travel?” she asked.

“That depends on a lot of things,” Levi responded. “Like the distance, I have to travel and what kind of job it is. All of my gear can be packed in a checked bag for air travel, and I can modify some of it to be acceptable in a carry-on if I really need to. But like I said, I don’t normally bring obvious weapons with me. Technology is a more important tool on the job; in fact, it’s essential.”

Madeline finished up another round of throws and was pleased with herself that she didn't miss the mat at all. Her groupings were all over the place, but they all landed somewhere on the mat which was about fifteen feet away. She managed to get some praise out of Levi before he started to walk her around the rest of the equipment she’d be training with. As they approached the mat, she thought he was going to go over some tips to throw more accurately, but instead let her know that after practicing throws daily, she would work on climbing the rock wall. He explained she didn’t need to focus so much on climbing high right now, but more of maintaining a strong grip and balance. She’d find herself in a lot of situations that required scaling walls and fences and whatnot, and on occasion, she might have to hang around longer than she’d planned.

“None of this is going to be exciting, but I can make it that way if you start to get bored,” Levi said, giving her a roguish grin.

Lifting his well-worn, gray t-shirt over his head, Levi shook out his black mane and headed to the climbing wall. With as much effort as it took for him to stride over to it, he climbed about ten feet off the ground, clinging to a single hand hold, toes resting leisurely on outcroppings below. He made it look as natural as sitting in a chair.

“Well, are you coming up?” he asked seductively, running his free hand through his hair.

Gripping the nearest hand hold, Madeline started to slowly ascend up the wall toward him, but found that she quickly ran out of holds.

“Planning is part of the journey,” he teased. “Start over.”

Madeline released herself and dropped a couple of feet to the floor.

“This time, check your path first. In the real world, nothing lines up most of the time, so you need to be creative. Use all your resources.”

Starting out a bit more to the left, she got about two holds higher and then couldn’t reach anymore.

“Don’t be discouraged,” Levi coached. “Look around at all your resources. What else is within your reach that you can grab that will get you to the next grip?”

Her toes were actually starting to shake a bit, precariously balanced on the grips below. She told herself it wasn’t because she was out of shape, but rather that she wasn’t used to standing like this. She had never done this, and the muscles required to do so just weren’t up to the task yet. Looking up and around, she didn’t see any other place to put her left hand that was within reach. There was a grip above and to the right, but she would never reach it without making another push up to the left.

“There’s nothing there,” she grimaced, frustrated.

“Are you sure?” Levi purred. “Nothing at all that you can grab that’s within reach?”

She glanced the wall again. There was simply no hand hold, only Levi looking down, bare-chested and clearly entertained by her struggle. Then it dawned on her. She could reach his leg pretty easily.

“Well there is your leg,” she said.

“Is there now? How interesting,” he mused playfully.

She reached for his leg, tentatively at first, then wrapped her fingers around his ankle and pulled herself up to the left.

“This doesn’t hurt does it?” she asked. It certainly couldn’t have been comfortable having her grip him so.

“You’re fine,” Levi answered, amusement still brightening his smile. “Continue.”

She was able to grab the right hand hold that was out of reach previously but then found herself in the same predicament once again with no hand hold to the left. Just Levi’s body.

“You planned this,” she stated, releasing her grip on the wall and landing in a controlled fall to the thick mat below. She wasn’t about to start body climbing him.

“Perhaps,” he said, keeping his sly grin.

“So what’s next,” Madeline asked, looking around the loft and trying to take her mind off the cramping of her toes.

“Dinner I suppose.” Levi let go of the wall and landed softly, and silently, on the mat. “Just remember that right now your daily regimen so far consists of accuracy training, and hugging that wall. We’ll get into some sparring tomorrow and I’ll teach you how to start some beginner exercises on the wooden practice dummy over there.”