Volume 2: Chapter 198 — Teaching

"We should spar again sometime," Connor told Dan, as he helped him into his gloves. "I've been practicing. And not just with this lot, but some of Uncle Cornelius' friends."

"I'd hope so," Dan mused, adjusting his helmet with his free hand. "You can't run with the wolves come night if you spend all day sportin' with the puppies."

Connor rolled his eyes. "You're no wolf."

The Wire wasn't a thing in Dimension A, and the world was worse off for it. Heck, HBO didn't even exist. What a waste.

Dan finished gearing up and willed himself inside the makeshift ring at the center of the gymnasium. Gregoir was waiting for him, smiling broadly. He gestured across the stage to introduce Dan's first opponent. 

"Daniel, meet Doug!" Gregoir said jovially.

Doug was an older teen approximately the size of a small cottage. He was either hopped up on body mods or had secured himself an exceptionally powerful physical upgrade. The young man was almost as wide as he was tall, dwarfing Gregoir in stature if not presence. His arms looked like a pair of streetlamps bolted onto a tree trunk, with watermelons as biceps and bowling balls for hands. He was fitting on a pair of oversized boxing gloves, so large that they could barely maintain their shape, and when he was finished he looked like he had a pair of misshapen shovel plows strapped to his wrists.

"Hey," Doug said, voice cracking as he waved his hand in greeting. The gust of wind the motion produced nearly took Dan off his feet.

"Uh, hey. Doug?" Dan repeated. "Don't you guys have, like, code names or something?"

The young vigilante shifted awkwardly. It was hard to make out his exact expression past his mask—which Dan was pretty sure used to be a beach towel—but his body language screamed embarrassment.

"It starts to sound weird if we use them all the time," he explained. He tried to scratch his head but only succeeded in bouncing his gargantuan glove off his own face. He grunted in surprise, paused, then stiffly lowered both arms to his sides. "We just stick to first names, mostly," he continued as if nothing had happened.

"Uh-huh," Dan said, eyeing what must be thirty pounds of leather attached to each fist. He looked at Gregoir, then gestured between himself and the kid. "Is this safe?"

Gregoir flashed a thumbs-up. "Of course! Doug's upgrade provides him with a remarkable level of durability! I sincerely doubt you could leave any lasting damage assuming you limit yourself to physical strikes."

Dan's tone was dry as a desert. "I meant for me."

Gregoir did not even hesitate. "Learning to moderate his strength is an important part of Doug's training!"

Dan could hear Abby snickering somewhere behind him. He glared at Gregoir. "The kid is basically swinging around a pair of tires. If I get hit, I'm gonna be paste."

"You'll be fine!" Gregoir exclaimed brightly. "I have every confidence in your ability to dodge, and should you not, I will be here to intercept! Besides, you should be able to handle a blow or two. Doug is not nearly as dangerous as he appears to be."

The young man in question did not look pleased by this evaluation. Nevertheless, he fell into a sloppy boxer's stance, facing off with Dan. 

"A few things to keep in mind, Daniel, "Gregoir said. "This is meant to be a training exercise for these cadet candidates. The goal is to acclimate them to a variety of combat tactics and impress both the danger and unpredictability of their enemies. Feel free to use underhanded tactics. It's precisely what they are training to deal with."

"Is he bulletproof?" Dan asked. "'Cuz that's what I'd start with."

"Low-caliber rounds will not penetrate his skin, though I imagine they hurt quite a bit." Gregoir looked at Doug for confirmation, and the young vigilante nodded rapidly, alarm crossing his face. 

"Stings something awful," Doug added in a pleading voice.

"But, this is unarmed combat practice," Gregoir quickly put in. "I'd prefer if you just showed off some very basic tactics that a teleporter or speedster could use against someone like Doug."

Dan nodded. Fair enough. It'd hardly be a spar if he slung an anvil at the poor kid.

"Excellent!" Gregoir clapped his hands and beamed. "Let's keep this simple. The first to hit the mat loses. Fighters, are you ready?"

Doug nodded, and his stance tightened up a bit. Dan shrugged.

"Begin!" Gregoir cried.

Dan teleported directly behind Doug and kicked the poor boy in the gonads. Doug let out a sound like a boiling tea kettle and toppled to the ground with an earthshaking thud. Dan returned to his starting position. He'd wound up the kick in t-space, so the whole thing had taken maybe half a second.

"And break!" Gregoir exclaimed as if Dan was still beating on the kid. Doug rolled back and forth on the ground, moaning softly. Dan just stood there, awkwardly, as every male in the room looked at him like he'd sprouted horns and hooves.

"Really, Newman?" Connor drawled from off-stage.

"What?" Dan demanded indignantly. He gestured to the great lump of a teen whose shoulders were broader than Dan was tall. "Look at him! I'm not fighting that!"

"An excellent tactic!" Gregoir agreed. He faced the crowd of gawking teenagers, hands fisting at his hips and elbows jutting wide. "Your opponents have no reason to fight fairly, so you should not expect them to do so! Always be prepared for the worst! And, always—"

Gregoir hopped out of the makeshift ring, ducked beneath it, and emerged with a giant plastic bag filled with...

"—wear a cup!" Gregoir finished, brandishing his bag of ball protection. The blonde officer stepped into his crowd of students and started passing out cups like this was a perfectly normal activity. Dan watched him for a few befuddling seconds, before walking over to Doug, who had only just stopped moaning.

"You alright?" Dan asked the quivering lump.

"Owww," Doug replied. So, it looked like he wasn't quite done moaning yet.

Gregoir eventually finished passing out his goodies and returned to the ring. He examined Doug for a few moments, then lifted the giant teenager up over his shoulder to bring him out of the ring. He laid him aside to recover, dropping one last cup beside the incapacitated teen, then returned to the ring. 

"Thank you, Daniel, for an excellent demonstration!" Gregoir exclaimed with a clap of his hands. He faced his recruits, gesturing broadly. "So, what happened?"

"He kicked him in the nuts!" a voice from the crowd accused.

Gregoir waved it off. "Yes, yes, but how many of you actually saw it happen?"

Three hands went up. Two of the women, and one of the skinnier men. Reflex enhancements, Dan assumed. 

Gregoir nodded, as if expecting this response. He motioned to Dan. "Mr. Newman's upgrade does not enhance his speed in any way. His swiftness was the product of nothing more than repetition and training. Any first-year officer could've at least followed the blow. Your problem, my green cadets, is a lack of exposure. Teleporters like Daniel are rare, but not unheard of. Speed enhancements are much more common, and therefore much more likely to get you killed should you encounter them unprepared. Today's lesson is thus: You will become acclimated to being attacked suddenly and without hesitation. You will take the first steps towards directing a perfectly natural panic response into something useful. Now, come on up, one by one, and take your beating."

There was silence in the gymnasium.

Gregoir eyed the crowd and challenged, "Or, you could prove me wrong, and win. Either way, you'll each experience what it feels like to be assaulted by a teleporter." He clapped his hands, and the sound was like a gunshot. Everyone flinched as he announced, "Next!"

They obeyed.

The bouts were universally brief, proving Gregoir to be an adept judge of his pupils. Dan got the impression that most of the would-be vigilantes were made more of enthusiasm than skill. To their credit, each teen came without hesitation into the ring. They were just dreadfully lacking in experience and lateral thinking. Their upgrades were universally straightforward, mostly strength or durability enhancements. Vigilantes needed these traits by necessity, as they lacked the expensive armor most cops wore. The ability to deal with guns was paramount for anyone roaming the streets looking for trouble. Doug was the most outlandish of them in terms of sheer physicality, but they were all unreasonably strong and tough.

None of it mattered. They sucked at fighting, plain and simple. Each opponent was Dan's physical superior, but it hardly mattered when they were completely unprepared for him to blitz them into the mat. None of them ever came close to being injured—they'd all adjourned to the locker room to put their cups in—but that wasn't the point. It was a shock to their systems, an injection of pure adrenaline, to have Dan appear suddenly within their space and take them to the ground. No amount of mental preparation could substitute for the actual experience.

When it came time for the reflex upgrades to take the ring, Dan changed up his strategy. He appeared above, instead of behind or to the side. His full weight dropped onto the waif of a girl, who had lashed out behind herself in a vicious roundhouse. She crumpled to the ground with an undignified yelp, and Dan blinked himself back into his starting position before he could squash her.

The crowd let out a groan of disappointment.

Gregoir laughed uproariously. "A good attempt, Miss Stacy, but also a terrible gamble.  Never sacrifice your own defenses on a blind prediction. Not without a great deal more knowledge on your opponent, or enough durability to endure the consequences."

"Yes, Officer Gregoir," Stacy groaned from the floor.

The other two reflex upgrades fared no better. They simply lacked the experience to respond appropriately. It was easy to see them forming complicated plans in their head as they stepped into the ring, but as Mike Tyson once said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Panic would inevitably set in the moment he blindsided them, and everything went downhill from there. 

Dan understood why Gregoir was so pleased to have him here. These students were too used to seeing their enemies lumber at them. Big, obvious threats like Gregoir and Connor were not the things that got people killed. It was the unassuming ones, the underestimated ones, and the unseen ones that were really to fear.

Finally, the last vigilante hit the mat. Gregoir broke them all up into groups to practice with each other, and tasked Dan to randomly assault his students. Dan had a lot of fun picking out slackers and tossing them around. By the end of the session, most of them had stopped screaming in surprise. Some were even managing to stick the landing.

Dan felt unreasonably proud of the little buggers.