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Post by Linyü on Jun 19, 2020 22:31:13 GMT -6
He didn’t wait long before launching another attack, which Rei evaded once again. And then a third… and a fourth.
So far, so good.
But the fifth strike didn’t come for a long time. San moved around, changing directions, changing his pace. Rei had to follow him through all of it, on constant alert, paying attention to all his movements. He knew what he was doing, and the mental strain it put on her to be in that state, but that was just how it was at the beginning. Eventually it would become as easy as breathing, and she wouldn’t need to devote conscious attention to it at all. Eventually, she would be able to dodge a sneak attack launched at her even when half asleep. The rest of them were all capable of it, though San’s road to that destination had begun with a brutal punch to the gut, and it hadn’t improved from there until he did.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 19, 2020 22:31:30 GMT -6
He sensed her attention flagging for a moment, and chose that moment to strike.
She dodged--- barely. But he could sense that she had been startled, and that it was only the reflexes he had ingrained in her these past few days that had saved her then. And this from an opponent she could see, whom she knew, who was deliberately moving such that she could see his intent well before he struck.
“Don’t lose focus,” he said. “It’s hard, but you’ll get used to it.” That was as much advice as he could really give. She hadn’t done anything wrong in terms of technique; it had merely been a matter of exhaustion. But until it became instinctive, it meant she couldn’t let down her guard, even for a moment.
He let her find her footing again before he resumed, but she was tired out already.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 19, 2020 22:32:02 GMT -6
With that weariness impairing her, it didn’t take long before he managed to land a hit on her after all, at which point San called it a day.
This, even more than the dodging, would be the work of long hours. The speed at which they could progress was limited by how long Rei could afford to pay attention without losing focus, which slowed them further, at least in the beginning. It was, San thought, even harder for her than it might have otherwise been, due to… whatever it was that had happened to her, before she had been introduced to their unit. She was recovering, and was a good deal better off than she had been back then, but it may still have been a stretch to say that she was completely mentally sound.
… But then, he wondered who among their number could make a claim to that status.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 19, 2020 22:32:22 GMT -6
He knew that he certainly couldn’t. He didn’t talk about it, but he still had nightmares--- about his parents, mostly, but sometimes other things. Losing his sister. The people he’d killed. He had no right to them, he knew this, but that didn’t stop them from coming.
Few came willingly to the Watchful Ones.
But progress accumulated, even if it was slow. Rei got better at anticipating his strikes, so San stopped making his intent to attack quite so obvious. Ironically this aspect improved rather faster than her ability to hold out for prolonged periods of time, so it didn’t take long for San to start approaching her with the full extent of his own training in that regard.
From there, San began setting up obstacles in the room again, like he had done when she had been learning to see in the dark and hide from others.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 19, 2020 22:32:40 GMT -6
It was a small space so there was a limit to what he could do, but he wanted to make things less straightforward. With her line of sight broken, it was harder for her to tell where he was all the time. With this setup, he also began asking her to move around herself, to better simulate job conditions. Sometimes she would need to stay still to surveil, but at other times she would be heading towards an objective, and her would-be assailants might have an ambush waiting if that was the case.
With that, more of the full capacity of her previous training came into play. San was gratified to find that she was fairly difficult to ambush to begin with. He almost never found her, adept as she was at hiding, and after a first few run-ins, she began to get a sense for when he was around.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 19, 2020 22:32:53 GMT -6
It wasn’t dodging, but this was what he was looking for too, in a sense: the ability to anticipate where the danger was, and circumvent it entirely.
Not long after that, he decided to introduce another variable into the mix.
“Sometimes we’ll need to work in daylight,” San informed her at the start of one session. “Or even harsher lighting conditions. We’ve mostly been going out at night, but it would be bad if you couldn’t manage when it was bright.” He turned the lights up in the room slowly, to give her time to adjust. The end result was brighter than interior lighting usually was, but not at the level of bright sun on a cloudless day. They would work their way up to that.
Even so, he could tell Rei was discomfited. They had worked in regular lighting as well as low light, and much of the warrens themselves were poorly lit, including the room that Rei slept in.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 19, 2020 22:34:54 GMT -6
She must have grown used to those conditions, and now she was left blinking under the stronger lighting.
“If you can’t rely on sight, use your other senses,” San said. “And if you can’t look at the bright areas, focus on the shadows.” With that advice, he slipped away behind an obstacle, and the game began in earnest.
San moved around a bit, away from his original location, to give Rei time to adjust and begin making her own way through the room. He didn't strike right off the bat, giving her time to get her bearings, since they were trying something new this time, and she had been obviously disoriented. But when he did make his move, he didn't hold back either, slipping out from behind an obstacle to make a dash in Rei's direction.
At once, she flew into the air, dodging out of his path.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 19, 2020 22:37:51 GMT -6
On the surface of it, it might have looked like an effective tactic, and that she wasn't at all impaired by the lights. But in truth, San could tell she was affected. She hadn't been looking in his direction, and a flight straight up was not the sort of bare minimum dodging he had taught her to use to conserve her energy. By contrast, flight took up more resources than running, and he recognized it for the reaction of someone who knew the strike was coming, but not from where, and was pressed for time.
She had managed to detect him, but not with her sight. And not so well that she could pinpoint his trajectory with accuracy either.
He caught a glimpse of her catching sight of him before he ducked behind something else again. Moving quietly, he circumvented the array of obstacles until he was on her other side.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 20, 2020 19:32:10 GMT -6
He gave her some time to land and get her bearings before he went after her again. On this second attempt, Rei fared a little better; San could see that she was remembering his advice for looking at the shadows if she couldn’t focus on looking around normally because of the glare. The shadow gave him away just enough that she could dodge him more like what she was used to doing, rather than simply launching herself into the air like she had done the last time. “Better,” he said to her, before distancing himself again.
They fell into their usual pattern, with San striking and then retreating, sometimes quickly in succession and then sometimes not for long spans of time. Rei’s mental endurance was gradually improving, and her sense for potential points of ambush and where an assailant might come at her from was improving as well.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 20, 2020 19:32:29 GMT -6
It was only the glare of the light that was new, and she coped with it as well as she could, relying on her other senses where she could manage, and attempting to learn tricks to cope with her compromised vision when she couldn’t.
It would take time for her to adapt to this too, but she was more flexible than San in this respect. Like the matter of seeing in the dark, with enough time, she ought to be able to see some real improvement.
Their first session ended without much incident, despite the introduction of a new factor into the mix. The second such session didn’t show much improvement, but by the third, he could tell that she was beginning to rely on her vision again. It wasn’t as much as she had before, but slowly, she was feeling her way into the light the way she had adjusted to being in the dark.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 20, 2020 19:32:40 GMT -6
As she began to adjust, San increased the brightness of the lights they used. It was a gradual process that took place over several sessions, but after the first initial lapse, Rei adjusted more easily to each increment of brightness. A large part of it was that the tactics she used to cope with it largely didn’t change with the magnitude of the lights, and having already grown used to using them before, she was prepared now for what he was throwing at her.
Before much longer, they had reached the limit of what San could do with her alone.
“We’ll be going into the city next time,” said San. “It will just be Hachi at first. I’ll just be observing from the sidelines.”
Rei was staring at the floor again. San guessed it was probably nerves. “You’ll be alright,” he said. “We’ve practiced enough.”
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Post by Linyü on Jun 20, 2020 19:32:55 GMT -6
He wouldn’t have let her progress onward if they hadn’t. He couldn’t do anything about the rest of it, but she would have to trust him, and trust herself.
Rei didn’t respond, but she did follow him out of the room when he departed. And then, when the next day came, she followed him out of the warrens to the appointed place. It was daylight, and a bright summer’s day at that, but the lights in the training room had been even brighter than this. San didn’t anticipate her having any trouble with that aspect of it, at least. And while the hubbub and general chaos of the city streets weren’t something San could replicate in the warrens, it also wasn’t her first time out above ground.
It would just be a matter of how well she could detect pursuers that weren’t San himself.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 20, 2020 19:33:09 GMT -6
But with Hachi present, and possibly others from the unit monitoring them, San couldn’t offer her much in the way of encouragement. The two of them caught sight of Hachi across the street, just a glimpse and a smile before he seemingly dissolved into the crowd. Rei glanced at San, who gave her a nod, before falling back himself.
From there, the game was on.
The objective was simple enough: Rei had a rendezvous point to reach, while Hachi would be trying to tail or ambush her, whichever he felt best called for in the situation. Giving her too much warning wouldn’t be good training, nor a good test of what she could do. San was on hand to monitor her progress, though it wouldn’t have surprised him if Nana or Roku were on hand as well, unknown to him.
It wouldn’t have surprised him if they were participating either.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 20, 2020 19:33:21 GMT -6
He watched as Rei rounded a corner, staying to shadows and out of sight. In broad daylight, the colors of her wings helped her less, and she had to try harder to avoid being conspicuous. Still, she was managing fairly well, and no one paid her any attention.
So far, nothing had happened. But as she reached the next intersection, Rei paused, and ducked down a different direction than she had been heading in. Sure enough, San saw Hachi lying in wait. The big man wordlessly went down an alternate path.
The next point of ambush was trickier. San, watching from a higher vantage point, could see that Hachi was hiding from a dead angle, where Rei wouldn’t be able to see him. Moreover, Hachi had thrown weapons to hand. They were blunted, but if they struck Rei full force…
Despite everything he had said to Rei, San was the one who felt nervous now.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 20, 2020 19:33:34 GMT -6
But when Hachi threw the weapon, San saw Rei’s ears twitch, and she turned away a moment before impact. The weapon missed its mark, and she went on.
After a few more failed attempts by Hachi to impede her progress, San began to feel a little easier. Rei’s training was holding well so far. The bright light didn’t bother her, and the fact that Hachi was her pursuer didn’t cause her too many problems either.
But just as she reached the final stretch, something bolted out from the shadows--- Roku, San realized. There was another tense moment as he waited to see how Rei would react, but she sidestepped Roku as neatly as she did any of the other attacks.
“Hmph,” said the cat, climbing onto an old crate in the alley that made up their rendezvous point. “Not bad.”
“I take it that was the real test then?” said San.
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