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Post by Noa on May 21, 2019 22:18:51 GMT -6
As it was, what he was doing was already good enough to dodge attacks in combat, so long as he could see. It was time, then, to begin easing him back into what they had originally been attempting.
She began this by no longer calling out all her attacks by asking him to dodge. This caught him off guard the first time, but once he knew that she was doing it, he stopped paying attention to that cue altogether, and began paying attention to other, less verbal ones. This was a transition he made smoothly, since it was something that he had picked up quickly even in the beginning.
She also increased the speed of her throws, slowly but surely. She wasn’t sure when he noticed, though past a certain point, he must have, if only because he could feel the exertion of how much more he had to move, how much more he had to pay attention.
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Post by Noa on May 21, 2019 22:19:25 GMT -6
And the faster speed did produce slip-ups on the creature's part, but not very many. Having worked up to this point slowly, he was now at a point where he could handle this kind of challenge without faltering very much. Within a couple of days, Rabbit was going as fast as she could reasonably go, and the creature was managing to dodge all her attempts. He did not always do it easily, but he always managed. And in a practical setting, it was results that mattered.
Here, she finally pronounced him ready for the blindfold again.
The day they began anew with that particular tool, the creature was waiting for her again. She could sense his air of anticipation, and she wondered if he had guessed at her intent; she had not told him anything of it the day before, out of a wish for him to rest well, without thinking too much.
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Post by Noa on May 21, 2019 22:19:35 GMT -6
If he had guessed at her intent, then she had failed in that regard. But then, it may only be that he felt himself ready, and would have demanded the blindfold whether Rabbit intended to give it to him or not. She wouldn’t have put such a thing past him either.
Either way, the two roads led to the same place. “Are you ready?” she asked.
He flicked the tip of his tail dismissively, and looked off to one side with a slight huff. The question was not even worth asking, apparently.
Would a human have laughed in this situation, upon seeing his reaction?
The creature turned his gaze back to her, the contempt gone from his expression. Rabbit dismissed the thought as useless, and proceeded to get on with what she had come here to do, which was tie the blindfold over the creature’s eyes. He let her do it, and when she was finished, she stepped back.
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Post by Noa on May 21, 2019 22:19:46 GMT -6
“How does it feel?” she said. He flipped the tips of his wings in a nonchalant gesture. “Very well. Are you ready to begin?”
He did not adopt a ready posture this time, and remained in his relaxed stance. If he was not going to prepare any more than this, so be it. He wasn’t necessarily wrong either; being relaxed would help, and he must have known what he was doing by now. At least he knew more than the last time he had worn this thing.
Rabbit threw the first ball. The creature dodged it. This time, she felt less like it might have just been a matter of luck. It was not as surefooted a dodge as he would have performed if he’d had full use of his vision, but he clearly had an idea of where the attack was coming from, and some idea of where he ought to be to stay out of its way,
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Post by Noa on May 21, 2019 22:19:56 GMT -6
She threw a second ball, and then a third. Rabbit was going easy on him, staying in the same place at first, or very nearly so, and merely varying the direction and speed of her projectiles.
He could probably sense this, and if it annoyed him, she couldn’t tell. It was doing enough to occupy him, at any rate, now that he could no longer see. It was, once again, not detection that was the problem. The longer this went on, the more apparent it became that the real issue was moving with the blindfold.
The creature was, as far as Rabbit could tell, primarily reliant on his vision. He had other senses, and they might have been quite sharp, but he wasn’t used to moving around blind. His sense of how to dodge hadn’t really diminished, but it seemed that it was his sense of balance, or something similar, that was upset.
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Post by Noa on May 21, 2019 22:20:06 GMT -6
He had all the tools now, she thought. It was really down to acclimation now.
They didn’t practice very long on the first day, out of consideration for that. He made it clear that he knew she was ending things prematurely when she stopped and took the blindfold off him, but Rabbit was resolute. She didn’t want to make him dizzy or nauseous with the practice, and he would be able to endure longer bouts as he got used to it.
He subsided, but only reluctantly. At least he didn’t have to worry about Rabbit shirking their sessions. She was back the next day for more of the same, and true to her word, she let him have more time with the blindfold on.
A second day of practice became a third, and the creature’s coordination improved by leaps and bounds. It made sense, of course. He was only relearning what he already knew.
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Post by Noa on May 21, 2019 22:20:31 GMT -6
And it was like he had found some sort of anchor, or some affinity, after stumbling around in the metaphorical dark. Once he had that, everything else fell into place.
Rabbit began moving about, the way she had done when he had merely been learning how to dodge, but it took less time for the creature to catch on and begin evading her with that same ease. Eventually, they worked their way up to the exact same level of difficulty that she had been doing with him right before she had elected to give him the blindfold again.
She would have liked to pronounce him finished with this, but there was one last nagging thought at the back of her mind. She had done as Aster instructed, but would it really hold up outside such a contrived setting?
And thus, she set up one last small test for him--- or rather, she enlisted Aster’s help.
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Post by Noa on May 21, 2019 22:21:04 GMT -6
(End: Danger Sense)
On one of their daily walks, without warning, a dart flew out of the underbrush toward the creature.
He moved almost before he himself seemed to realize what was happening. Judging from the look of incredulity on his face, he hadn’t seen it coming. Rabbit hadn’t either. She had thought that, because he was so well acquainted with her, the creature might be able to read something of what was coming from her, somehow. That was why she had asked Aster to set up the ambush, without letting her know when or where it would happen.
“Ah,” she said. “That’s good. It worked, then. I hoped it would.”
The creature looked at her questioningly, but she merely shook her head. “I will explain once we return to the barn,” she said. The deed was done, and for the moment, that was what mattered to her, given that the scale of the undertaking was much larger than anything she had ever tried before.
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Post by Noa on Jun 13, 2019 20:39:03 GMT -6
(Start: Run, Endurance)
Their training in getting the creature to dodge an incoming attack had alerted Rabbit to a need for change in their gym training regime, and she had made the appropriate adjustments. But gym training took time and a great deal of effort to come to fruition, and in the meantime she did also have other things to teach the creature, if he was willing to learn them. He had shown at least a passing interest in this topic, and Rabbit had accepted the fact that she was essentially making things up as she went. If he seemed interested, then they would try. That was what it had come to.
“I can teach you other ways to avoid a strike, if you would like,” she said. The creature was now well rested from his morning gym session, having taken a meal and spent the intervening time as he liked. She could see from his languid posture that he hadn’t exerted himself in the time made available to him.
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Post by Noa on Jun 13, 2019 20:39:14 GMT -6
She didn’t chastise him for it. These days, they were working quite closely, and quite often as well, so there was enough for him in the way of exercise even without him devoting himself to the task.
Of course, it was also convenient that he was doing his exercise when and where she could watch him. Having once found him injured in the barn from his own attempts at… testing his own strength… Rabbit did not entirely believe that he would do so safely. Perhaps she was being unfair to him in this assessment, for the incident had happened not long after his arrival here, and his state of mind at the time had been much more turbulent than it was now. She did not think she had ever seen him relaxed in that first week, or perhaps the first two weeks. But he was relaxed now, and actually quite sensible, generally speaking.
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Post by Noa on Jun 13, 2019 20:39:24 GMT -6
Now he looked up at her, paying a lazy sort of attention, and flicked an ear. Rabbit took that as her cue to continue, though she couldn’t know for sure whether he had meant it as one. “Thus far what I have taught you is evasion against smaller attacks, using minimal movement. But you can avoid larger strikes by putting on a concentrated burst of speed, to take yourself out of the range of their strike before it can make contact.”
There was no response. She wondered if he was waiting for her to offer further explanation, but there was none coming. The concept was simple enough that it didn't bear much explaining, and all the fine details regarding timing and the exact speed required were better learned through practice. There was only so much she could say about the idea of running out of the range of an attack, after all.
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Post by Noa on Jun 13, 2019 20:39:49 GMT -6
"Would you like to try it?" she said. If he was waiting for some cue for them to begin, she would oblige.
He seemed to consider this for a moment before rising to his feet, shaking out his wings slightly and walking out to a wider stretch of grass, a little further from the barn. Rabbit watched him do it, and thought about his wings--- one had been broken in his mishap in the barn some time ago, but it must have been more or less healed by now. And yet, he did not use them.
It was not, however, on the agenda today to investigate that issue. She could see, at least, that he did not seem to be moving with pain, and for the moment that was good enough for her.
She approached him where he now stood in the grass. The spot that he had chosen was good for the exercise that she intended for them to undertake.
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Post by Noa on Jun 13, 2019 20:40:32 GMT -6
The grass was of a widely variable length throughout the property because Aster was for the most part content to let it grow as it liked; he disliked the work of mowing it, and preferred a more natural appearance. But this particular area was home to a low, scrubby covering of grass only. Most of it was moss or clover or something else altogether.
"Do you remember the warm ups we did at the gym? Not the stretches, but the slow running," Rabbit said.
The creature's ears went back in an expression of disapproval at her choice of words, however. He raised a claw and pointed to himself, and then did it again as if to emphasize that fact.
Rabbit considered the motion, then said, "My apologies. The warm ups that you performed." It was true that she had not joined him, as she was not the one endeavoring to improve herself through exercise.
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Post by Noa on Jun 13, 2019 20:40:45 GMT -6
In the same vein, however, she doubted that things such as warm ups or gym training would have done anything for a robot such as herself. "But I would like to ask you to do that again. What we will be doing is not unlike the running that we have done before," she said.
The creature gave a rather dramatic sigh, but he made no more protest than that, and began to walk in a wide circle, probably in recollection of the track that he had run when he had been working on his endurance in the gym. He began slowly, but his muscle tone and energy reserves were no longer so meager as they had been before, and before very long, he was going at a steady jog.
The jog itself was something that he could keep up for some time, but for the purposes of what Rabbit wanted to teach him, it wasn't quite fast enough.
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Post by Noa on Jun 13, 2019 20:40:59 GMT -6
She waited until he was done with this, now trusting him enough more or less to decide for himself when he felt sufficiently warmed up. They spent enough time at the gym that she had had plenty of opportunities to observe him, and in the end, he knew best how his own body felt. She was still inclined to be concerned with him overexerting himself when it came to real, strenuous exercise, but warming up was such a mild and unexciting thing that there was little chance of overdoing it anyway.
When he was ready, he slowed and came back to her. Rabbit nodded. "Very well, let us begin. I have prepared something for this," she said. What she brought out resembled a large toy gun. It was a children's toy, if an expensive one, though that wasn't why Aster had acquired it, and that wasn't why she had it now either.
(7)
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