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The first time Cristal shoots a gun, she’s just turned 12. Her father’s taken her to the gun range and put a small pistol in her hands, showing her how to wield it safely, because she’s finally not a child anymore.
It’s time for her to learn how to defend herself, he says. More and more men will start trying to approach her now, the wrong sort of men, those who don’t deserve her. That’s the price she has to pay to be famous.
He says that she should get comfortable with the idea of killing, that she should never point her weapon at someone she doesn’t want dead. That drawing a gun is a big responsibility, which she can handle because she’s a big girl. And anyway, those men are not really human. No one will be mad at her for protecting herself from them.
He kisses her head when she hits the target on the first try. Of course she’s gifted at this too, he says, and she feels so very proud. She can’t wait to brag about it to her friends.
Her gun is pink and shiny and pretty, just like her.
When she flees her parents’ house, ready to think for herself, she leaves the gun on the pillow of her single bed.
*
The first time Johnny shoots a gun, he’s just turned 15. His father burst through the door, already raving and ranting, and raised his fist to Johnny’s mom almost immediately.
Johnny should have been at school, but he’s had enough of hearing his mom cry at night, enough of living by the rules of that tyrant. He’s still sore from the last time he tried to intervene. He did get a few punches in, only not hard enough to knock his father out, which only made it worse in the end.
He stole the pistol from the junkyard when he went to pick up his quota for this week's distribution. It was just lying there, and he thought he’d bring it back the next day, that no one would have time to notice, but Marcus says Big Jake was at the school today looking for him, saying Johnny's a dead man if he ever shows his face around here again.
He doesn’t really want to kill anyone, but if he’s going to be leaving anyway, he might as well do some good on his way out.
He throws the gun out of the window of the train as it crosses over a bridge.
When Sadia shows up with cases of weapons for the Etoiles Noires, years later, he makes sure to pick something different.
*
The first time Sadia shoots a gun, she’s just turned 18. Her training instructor is barking orders – one bullet and then gun down, wait. The other recruits are obeying dutifully. They’ll probably make great soldiers, but she’s never been interested in marching in formation.
She empties the whole clip into the cardboard shape on the far wall, tearing its head clean off. The gun feels hot in her hands, alive, and she laughs, exhilarated at the current of power she can feel running up her arms and down her spine. It’s lust at first sight, an instant addiction. She would take it home with her if she could, but it's just a training weapon. It can never really be hers.
She gets a mark on her file that day, the first in a long list – unmanageable, unhinged, unfit. It doesn’t matter. The day she graduates, there’s a man in a black suit waiting for her in an unmarked car, with a mission she alone can fulfill, just as she always knew.
She won’t be supplied a service weapon, obviously; that would be a dead giveaway. But that makes it even better. She doesn't want just anyone's piece.
When she shoots that blue gun for the first time, putting a bullet between some random bitch's eyes, she knows it is the one. It wants to keep going, to be at her service, to take down the whole world for her. She's finally in love – and this one loves her back.
*
The end.