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Coffee Break || officertakagi

officertakagi:

“Okay.” Takagi said watching him put things away. The office reminded him a bit of Mouri-san’s office though Hakuba’s looked a lot more organized. He returned the smile as Hakuba finished. “Alright.” The detective replied following him out.

The air outside was cool and pleasant. Refreshing from the recent rain storms. Takagi glanced up at the sky and smiled. “It’s beautiful day out today.”

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“Ah, that it is! It almost reminds me of home, in fact. The best days in London are under grey skies and the cover of fog, you know.” Hakuba’s return smile was only barely tainted by a twinge of homesickness, which he covered with a wink. 

“So how much coffee do we need to bring back, exactly? Enough for the whole homicide division, or just for you and myself?”

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Kill me.

Leave a “Kill Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character killing yours.

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It had to be done. There was no other way.

Hakuba watched as the man checked the windows and cursed about the approach of the additional squad cars. They’d been trapped in the warehouse. Set up. Everything was in place to expose the truth, to tell the world what they really were. But what were they? Assassins? Sheep? The Organization saw them as pawns in a dangerous game of blood and greed and nothing more. But what would the Osakan’s family think? Hattori Heiji had been an upstanding individual. Someone who believed in justice, not cold-blooded murder.  Oh, how things had changed. For both of them.

The gloves took little time to slip over his hands.  He didn’t worry about traces of gunpowder – his sleeves would be covered by ash from the fire and the blood from dragging the once detective out of the burning building soon enough. Ignoring the loudspeaker threats from outside, Hakuba considered his plan. He already knew that they were surrounded. That there was no other way out beside the front entrance. It would be so simple, so easy.

The gun belonged to one of the dead men on the floor. One of the people that Janus had killed. It was already loaded, safety already off.  Blaring sirens would cover the sound of the subtle click and the discharge of the gun. He’d fire three shots into his partner’s back  – carefully aimed to hit his lungs and his heart. He knew that Kevlar jacket like the back of his hand; knew exactly where to aim to puncture right through. It had been worn over the years of use. He’d wait for Janus to stiffen and fall before putting the gun back in the dead owner’s hands, then crouch at his lover’s side slip the ring from his finger for safe-keeping, then drench his hands in his blood.

Then it would be the matter of carrying him from the building, pleading for help from the officers. Man down. Hattori Heiji, son of Hattori Heizo, had been killed by those men… he’d fought to defend the Superintendent General’s son. He’d died a hero, not like a dog in the gutter. Not shot in the back by someone who loved him.

Hakuba hadn’t been connected to those crimes. No one had known what he had done. What his part in all of the madness had been. They would believe him. The courts would trust in Hakuba’s testimony that the accusations were false. That Hattori had been framed. Had not, in fact, been part of a criminal organization. Had not slaughtered men and women by their request. Hakuba’s word would afford Hattori an honorable funeral.

His family would grieve over Heiji’s sacrifice. Everyone would mourn the loss of such great potential. They’d give him the respect that Janus had always deserved but never received.

No one would know what they had meant to each other. What they had been through together. It would remain secret, just as Janus had asked. Request finally fulfilled. 

All that Hakuba had to do was pull the trigger. 

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Hospital Hospitality || shsl-queenofcakes

shsl-queenofcakes:

She continued smiling, her heart lifting to see that he’d come to visit her. She’d only met him once, twice perhaps, and he was already apparently fond of her – or her eclairs – enough to track her down to a hospital. Incredible detective work, indeed. One of the girls had probably told him. Traitors.

It was supposed to be a secret, but Karin had to admit she was happy to be getting a few visitors. And for someone as charming and easy to talk to as Hakuba to be worried was actually very flattering. That he was worried about her at all, however, was all she needed to be reminded of the fine line she was walking at the moment. Sighing, and looking over at the machines hooked up to her, she shook her head.

“I don’t want to tell you. And I don’t know who did it, honestly…it was my fault, though, that much is obvious. But don’t break my kneecaps! Not that it’d do any good, they’re already-”

She realized she’d said a little too much a split second later, and clamped her mouth shut, refusing to say another word.

Hakuba blinked. “I… wouldn’t actually do anything of the sort,” he said, mistaking her surprise for actual fear. “Honest.  But, ah, don’t want to say? So was it an accident?" 

The detective then paused, a faint blush crossing his cheeks. "Ah- my apologies, I shouldn’t be asking so many questions; it’s none of my business. I sometimes let the detective part of me get carried away. I hope that you can forgive my faux pas. Please, do tell me, though; will you be all right with proper care and recovery, at least?”

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☮

kurobakaitokid:

☮: A peck on your forehead.

“Ah, Hakuba-san, I trust that you have not been overworking yourself these days?” He stepped closer and lightly pressed his lips to the detective’s forehead before pulling back with a smile and winks.

“Perhaps we should take a break from our… professions occasionally. What do you say to a date, my dear detective?”

“I’d like that very much, Kaitou-san… if you find that you can spare the time, of course.” The detective managed a smile for him, head tilting curiously. “I understand if you have obligations and, ah, reservations. I’m not the easiest person to get along with, even in the best of circumstances.”

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Realistic Writing II

slitheringink:

Handguns

We’ve all seen it in movies, comics and anime: the bad ass hero or the sexy heroine toting two handguns with barrels bigger than their forearms.

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It looks cool, in both the design of the guns and the ability to blow orange-sized holes in the bodies of opponents. But is that even realistic?

Properties of a Handgun – Stopping Power

To answer that question, I need to talk about a few different things. First is the point of a handgun. As the name implies, a handgun is a weapon that’s meant to be both portable and concealed with relative ease. In order to have these things, a trade-off occurs between them and stopping power. Stopping power is the ability of a gun to cause an injury that would incapacitate a target, regardless if death occurs or not.

Compared to other ballistic weapons, like rifles, handguns suck at this job. Their rounds are weak and bullet-placement (not having shitty aim) has a much greater effect on target incapacitation. It is in this way that stopping power is also a reflection of the shooter. If you are not accurate with your shots, then your handgun is going to have less stopping power.

If you haven’t heard of the terms “knock down power” or “one stop shot”, then I’m sure you’ve at least seen them in an action flick somewhere. You know the scene where the righteous law-man shoots the outlaw in the chest with one shot and then the bad guy is knocked flat on his ass? This is a myth propagated by Hollywood. There isn’t a handgun that can stop a man with one shot nor is there one that cause you to fall backwards. The energy of a bullet fired from a handgun is pretty low and simply doesn’t have the power to do either of those things.

Caliber

I don’t believe you! Those incredibly large guns look pretty powerful. They must be high caliber, and high caliber means more power, right?

Perhaps. Let’s take a look at what high caliber really means and then we can see the effect that it has on stopping power.

First, caliber is the internal diameter of a gun barrel. The size of the round is determined by what best matches that diameter. In terms of damage to the body, a bigger bullet is generally a better bullet. Higher caliber bullets have leave a larger permanent cavity, which refers to the hole left by a projectile. In research done with ballistics gel presented by Dave Spaulding (see sources below), the larger caliber bullets (.45 cal) did 15-20% more damage than smaller caliber bullets (9mm). Now that sounds significant but, that 15-20% was measured in millimeters. So, even if the larger bullet is better, it’s not going to make up for the shortfalls of the shooter.

But what about those orange-sized holes where you can see through the body of the victim?

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Yeah those!

I’m sorry to tell you guys, but that’s not realistic. I asked Teye, my former Marine and source of all things pew pew, what he knew about this. I was informed that the entry wound, (where the bullet enters the body) would be the size of the projectile, regardless of the caliber. If you shot someone at point-blank range with a .45 or a .50 caliber handgun, then you would probably see the exit wound (where the bullet exits the body) be of a significant size. That means you’re just not going to see the kind of through-and-through depicted above in a real world setting.

Alright then, what about explosive rounds?

Explosive rounds for handguns are fiction, pure and simple. They exist in the real world for heavy machine guns, anti-material rifles and other large weaponry. They’re called HEIAP (High Explosive Incendiary/Armor Piercing Ammunition) or SAPHEI (Semi-Armor Piercing High Explosive Incendiary). If you want to use smaller versions of these for handguns in your storyverse, then by all means do so. Just make sure it fits your world!

Let’s Talk About Recoil

Yeah, recoil gets its own section. Recoil, also commonly called knock-back, kick-back or kick, is the backward momentum of a gun when it is fired. The recoil is going to match the forward momentum. In terms of a handgun, the momentum is going to be transferred from the gun, through the body of the shooter and to the ground. Generally larger caliber handguns will generate greater recoil because the projectile is larger so it requires a greater force (and more gunpowder) to move the bullet. Larger caliber handguns also tend to be a lot heavier to accommodate larger ammunition.

When choosing a handgun for your character it is very important to keep in mind the amount of recoil that gun is going to generate and whether or not your character can handle it. Their level of experience with handguns as well as their weight, and strength are all factors to consider.

My protagonist, Kyu, was taught how to shoot by her grandmother, so she has range firing experience with handguns. The problem lies with the fact that she’s about 110 pounds, so giving her a weapon with a high kickback would be silly. She likely wouldn’t be able to handle the recoil from something like a Desert Eagle and might get whacked in the face.

Case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIHotBcp0l0

And just to be fair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-M7FgKedUk

Even considering the fact that both people in the videos are likely not experienced, you can still see the power behind a large caliber hand gun like the Desert Eagle. In both cases neither were expecting the recoil. The thing with recoil is you can learn to prepare for it and get used to it. My character has never fired a large caliber handgun before so the result certainly wouldn’t be smooth.

The gun I decided to use for Kyu was a Glock 19 since the Glock model is widely used by security and law-enforcement (the 22 and 23 are both used by the FBI). The 19 specifically is a compact model with low recoil and 9mm ammunition that I felt she would be comfortable handling. It’s also not nearly as loud as larger caliber models. Being comfortable with a handgun in all aspects generally leads to higher accuracy with the weapon. It is important to know what to expect from your gun, even when you don’t know what to expect from a situation where you have to use it. The less unknown variables you have to deal with, the better.

Glock 19 vs. a .45 fired by someone with more experience. You can still tell the difference in recoil from the slow motion shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5782pVYrwU

Gun Barrel Length

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The longer the barrel of your gun, the more time your gunpowder has to burn when you fire a shot. This allows for a greater pressure build up, which will propel your bullet at a higher rate of speed. This will cause your bullet to hit harder, and in terms of trajectory, have a flatter shot (meaning it doesn’t or has less of an arc, think of when you hit a baseball).

A gun has two sights, a rear sight and a front sight.

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Say you were looking at a target at a firing range. You line up the rear sight with the dot on the target that you want to hit and then adjust the front sight so it intersects that dot. The longer the gun barrel, the more accurate the shot because your front sight is going to be closer to your target than it would if your gun had a shorter barrel. There is going to be a smaller margin for visual human error when aiming.

The only issue with large barrels is that having one severely decreases the portability and concealability of your handgun.

Shooting Two Handguns at Once

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It’s possible, but the human eye cannot aim two guns at once so your accuracy is probably going to suck. Those pinpoint shots you see in movies are bullshit. With two guns, you’re going to be stuck using point shooting, which relies on instinctive reactions and is often used in life-threatening situations when you simply don’t have time to aim a shot. You’re also going to have to deal with holding two guns at once, having one arm to support the weight of each and their recoil, so if you’re character isn’t strong, they may have a hard time pulling this off.

Since dual wielding is inaccurate, your character will probably empty the clips of both weapons just to make sure he killed whatever he’d been shooting. Handgun ammunition capacities have a pretty extensive range. Revolvers tend to be either 5 or 6 rounds while other handguns (pistols) can be modified with extended clips of about 30 rounds or drums to increase their capacities to about 40. There are ways to extend this further of course, but that dips into serious modification territory and I question why you wouldn’t just switch to an Uzi (32-round standard, 40-50 round extended, 22 round for the micro version) or another submachine gun at that point.

Regardless of what you use, reloading is going to be an issue. Reloading a weapon is meant to be quick and since you no longer have a free hand while dual wielding, you’re character is going to have to waste time setting one of the guns down and putting in a new clip. He’s also going to have to do it again. In that time whoever he’s fighting is probably going to kill him or find a way to get around his cover. So unless you can come up for a realistic solution to this problem (and don’t use the infinite ammo cop-out), dual wielding handguns is just going to end up being silly.

Well what about in Underworld or Resident Evil where they have ways to quickly reload spent clips from their belts or holster straps?

Yeah those sorts of things don’t exist right now. There is some liberty with reloading methods if your story takes place in a futuristic setting, but if your story is in modern times, you’re SOL.

Fun with Tropes!

Mythbusters tests out the dual wielding trope. They hit the targets but if you compared the dual wielded shots to using a single weapon, there wouldn’t even be a contest when it came to the overall accuracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HhY2xQr0zw

TV Tropes Page (I’ll never see you guys again D:): http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GunsAkimbo

Conclusion

What you’ve seen in media is lies, liiiieeees.

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But, just because Hollywood, comic books and anime tend to embellish the truth, doesn’t mean that they’re portrayals aren’t awesome. You can feel free to modify the way handguns work with your characters and your world, as long as you remember the real concepts behind them. That’s what being creative is. 🙂

-Morgan

Sources:

  • My boyfriend Teye, a former Marine.

  • The work of Dave Spalding, a 28-year law enforcement veteran who retired at the rank of lieutenant, and then went to work for a federal security contractor. He’s currently a trainer for law enforcement and his website can be found at: http://www.handguncombatives.com/.

  • The work of Jeff Cooper, a former Marine. He is considered the father of “the Modern Technique” of handgun shooting.

  • The first three images are from Hellsing by Kouta Hirano.

  • The image in the dual wield section is from the film Equilibirum.

  • I did pluck the recoil definition from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recoil). I rarely use Wiki directly but that information was actually solid.

External Links:

Side Note: I’m not picking on Hellsing with this article. I love Hellsing. It’s just the only example that came to mind when I thought of oversized handgun, unless you wanted me to use this:

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What, he’s using one hand. It totally counts, right? Curse you Superman at Earth’s End (which belongs to DC).

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OOC – status report

I’m going to try to knock out a ton of drafts today (as I always say), but will try to space out their postings. I have drabbles and angst week posts to finish, too… as well as the next segment of The Call of the Raven (aka Epic Conan Fanfic) to write. Clover (kaitomagic) is over at the moment so I will be slow to respond.

Also, I only got 2 requests to sing so coupled with other stuff I’m just going to call it a wash and forget about it.

Further, if you send in an ask for a meme I didn’t reblog (usually because I specifically did not want to participate for whatever reason), I’ll probably just delete the ask. Sorry, guys; hope that’s all right.

Thanks.