“….This darkness… What happened? Why does my brain feel like I was in a car wreck?”

Riku tried to open his eyes feeling a bit fuzzy minded.

[BOOM!]

Instantly Riku's eyes opened wide as three thousand volts of electricity surged through his body.

“Yay! he’s awake again”

Nakita celebrated and Riku stood up clumsily.

“Oh I remember now, we were sparing and that cunt of a teacher gave me the upper cut of a lifetime!”

“Let’s go again!”

Okeeve sat up from his bench and drank a bottle of water before stepping off.”

Riku felt like some primal instinct took over his body and fired his guns.

The moment Riku fired his feet seemed to move on their own and ran to create space between the two.

Okeeve bobbed and weaved to close the distance between the two literally dodging his bullets at almost point blank range.

Okeeve eventually caught up with Riku and sent a tiger paw strike directly to his sternum.

The palm connected and once again Riku was sent flying into the wall this time with the air knocked out of him.

Moving is good but when your shots are literally fired to an internal rhythm they become even easier to dodge.

Okeeve tried to explain as he saw Riku slip out of consciousness.

Okeeve looked over to Dante,

“How many times is that now?”

Nakita looked at her little notepad she had taken out and added another stroke to the page.

“That makes twenty one times now professor”

Nakita looked at her fingers and nodded.

“Well he is learning,

but it seems this method is a little too much trauma for the brain.

Poor guy probably tried to delete his own memory to save himself the agony.”

Dante watched as the fights went on.

Once again Nakita revived him with the defibrillator and the cycle continued.

Riku jumped up again

“Begin!”

Riku fired his pistol at Okeeve. This time Okeeve’s feet looked as though he was dancing to some unheard song as he bobbed and weaved to avoid the bullets.

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Riku dashed to the side to avoid Okeeve that was closing in while still firing his pistols.

The bullets fired in an irregular pattern this time forcing Okeeve to focus more on Riku’s finger movement rather than the rhythm of the rounds.

It was normally hard for the average person to break out of the habit of firing guns and a regular rhythm. Afterall it was normal for trained marksmen to learn to fire rounds between breaths and even between heartbeats to increase their accuracy.

But in the assassin world even the slightest margin of predictability meant that your attempt was literally useless.

To dodge his shots at point blank range Okeeve could watch his breathing and dodge between breaths.

If that didn’t work Okeeve would normally sink his heartbeat with the opponent by watching their breathing. This allowed him to know when his opponent was between breaths and would normally fire. To add another layer of predictability to that the human mind hated chaos and randomness and would often unconsciously fire at a rhythm.

But the final layer of predictability was the most obvious, it was that tiny flinch before a shot was fired. The flinch caused by the expectation of the recoil of the gun was one thing and after enough practice was easy to curb. But the flinch caused by simply pulling the trigger with one's finger was the hardest one to remove.

Normally students would spend a whole semester trying to understand and see these movements and another semester trying to get rid of it within themselves.

This training was one of the major gaps that made it so impossible for a first year student to defeat a second year student.

At Okeeve’s level of training all of these factors added up making it seem like he was some beyond superhuman machine able to dodge bullets like it was a movie.

And although he really did have those abilities he had purposely been holding back most of his speed and even more of his raw strength to really teach Riku how predictable his moves were.

He had to admit Riku’s ability to learn on the fly was impressive but he was still too static.

It was most likely due to his body's physical capacity being so low but he had to try nonetheless.

Okeeve had to break him out of the habit of firing from a static position with a steady rhythm.

At this level it was the same as being a sitting duck.

BAM!

Once again Riku was slammed into a wall and Nakita ran over with the defibrillator and tried to revive him.

“How many times is that now?”

Okeeve looked at Dante who was sitting on a bench to the side sharpening his sword and asked,

“I think that makes thirty times now.”

Dante responded nonchalantly.

*sigh*

“Okay that’s enough for today anymore and he might suffer permanent brain injury.

We will continue this tomorrow.”

Dante nodded and got up and threw Riku over his shoulder.

He only had three more days to get Riku to understand the gaps between the years.

He knew Okeeve was holding back and fighting at the standards of a peak first year student while using the abilities of a second year student to teach Riku.

He saw Riku fighting and could tell he didn’t stand a chance. They had to spend the next few days sharpening him up as much as possible.

Dante certainly didn’t expect Riku to understand what was going on over night but he just needed him to get a feel of the situation.

-

“Is he awake yet?”

Dante and Jose looked at Riku as they hovered above him.

Riku’s vision was a little blurry as he jumped up.

“Okay i’m ready this time! my jaw won't get slapped so easily!”

Riku was standing with his arms out holding air guns.

A look of realization took over and Riku looked around.

“Wait, how did I get here?”

“You were knocked out for a couple hours.”

“A couple hours!?”

Riku looked at the time and his eyes popped out.

“Crap! I'm going to be late for Miss Debeers’ class”

A pale look over took Riku as his life flashed before his eyes and he grabbed his bag pack and stormed off.