Rubber Bullets and Explosive Exits

In a panic, John used the rest of his mana to create a construct to stop Keith’s fist, but Keith either didn’t notice or didn’t care. His gauntlet shattered it as if it were prop glass. Keith’s fist hit John’s head, then John’s head hit the concrete. Everything quickly faded to black as he was knocked ****.

John woke up to the sensation of a mystery liquid sliding down his throat, and groggily opened his eyes to see Keith pouring a potion into his mouth.

Immediately, John’s health shot up from one to full. He felt a surge of strength enter him, and he slowly propped himself up with his elbows against the rough concrete, noticing he had some scrapes across his arms that were quickly healing. His head throbbed dully, and it seemed that his mana was regenerating slower, though he couldn’t tell if it was really doing so, or if he was still out of it.

Keith had since discarded his gauntlets, and they rested on the ground at his feet. He offered John his hand, who took it gratefully, balancing himself on Keith’s shoulder. “You worried me for a sec there lad,” Keith said, and John’s head was quickly clearing up, though it took him a few moments to comprehend what Keith had said.

“That sucked,”John replied, letting out a prolonged groan. He shook his head slowly to clear the cobwebs from it, and felt semi-normal. Stable at least. He noticed that both of his guns were on the ground, and he reached down to pick them up. He slipped them in his holster and strapped them in, looking up at Keith. “How’d I do?”

“Better than I expected,” Keith replied with a an honest grin, “you gave me a run for my money, Jenny was right about you.” John noticed that his accent had mostly left his voice, and guessed that it came out mostly when he was aggressive or in combat. "And I was definitely right about that afterimage spell. The book’s not complete, so I’ll give you this one for free. There’s supposed to be another part, but maybe your powers will make it work.” Keith explained as he handed John a small spellbook from his inside coat pocket.

“How do you know how my powers work?” John questioned, taking the spell book gratefully. He used Spy on it before Keith replied.

Dual Type Evasion Facade Spellbook (Incomplete)
Epic Item. This damaged tome will only give you an incomplete spell to learn. Using it in its current state will erase what pages remain and teach the user Afterimage. If the user finds the rest of the pages later, the second spell may be learned.

“Right. Wasn’t supposed to say that. Jenny told me everything. But I’m helping you, so you shouldn’t really care. And If you don’t tell her that I told you, I’ll give you free potions.” Keith said, unstrapping his bandoliers and belts and tossing them onto the couch with a clatter. “Well go on! Use it if you can.”

Learn Afterimage?
[Accept]/[Deny]

New Skill: Afterimage, level 1, passive
When moving at peak human speeds or faster; brief, unnoticeable bursts of speed combined with sudden releases of light will cause afterimages to appear alongside the user. Afterimages currently appear as stationary.

John hit accept, and the pages glowed briefly before the text faded away. “Let’s see it boyo,” Keith said, and John smiled at him confidently before sprinting the length of the roof, but he noticed that the skill didn’t activate.

“It’s… not working,” John said, looking behind him. Keith nodded slowly as he rubbed his beard thoughtfully. John tried adding improvised acrobatics into the mix, but the skill still failed to activate.

“Maybe you’re not fast enough yet lad,” Keith called over, though he had his doubts if that was really the case. John was moving as fast as Jenny did without her magic, at least as far as Keith could tell. “We’ll see what we can do about that later. Come back! I’m going to teach you some hand to hand combat.”

Though he was afraid of getting knocked on his ass again, John reluctantly came over. “I want you to surround your hands with magic again, like you did when you caught the potion I tossed out,” Keith ordered, and John quickly complied. Getting an idea, he activated the skill in both hands before interlocking his fingers and pressing his palms together, cracking his knuckles and making the gauntlets appear up to the wrist on each hand at the same time.

Keith blinked once in shock once before regaining his composure and going over to the weapon rack. He flipped it around like a white board, and John noticed an assortment of guns were on it, he also spotted a quartet of pistols which glowed with a dull sheen.
“Bought these when I thought I needed them, haven’t seen a reason to get rid of them,” Keith explained, tossing John one. “Found out soon after that guns aren’t really my style, but I think I know my way well enough around ‘em to teach ya what ya need to know.”

Keith tossed John another of the identical pistols, and John caught it too. He used Spy on one gun, and assumed since they were identical, the others had the same enchantment.

Rubber Bullet Gun
Uncommon item. This gun has been enchanted to fire rubber bullets at the cost of an insignificant amount of mana.

“Alright, first I’m going to demonstrate what you will be doing,” Keith said, and thought mostly to see if I can actually do it. “I want you to point the guns at me up close and shoot. I’m going to be knocking them away and striking you. You need to learn to shoot and block.” Should just be like Sticky Hands. I may not be a martial artist, but I know the basics well enough.

“Simple enough,” John replied, and thought he’s way too slow to deflect most of my attacks, this’ll be a cinch. The problem will be knocking his aim off when its my turn. He’s way stronger than me. John pointed a pistol at Keith, and almost had it knocked from his hand before he could pull the trigger. He levelled both at Keith at once, and Keith knocked one away with each hand before grabbing one of John’s wrists and twisting it, causing him to drop the gun. Luckily, John was fast enough to break out of Keith’s grip and pluck the gun out of the air. In a flurry of blows, John and Keith’s wrists and hands collided multiple times, but John couldn’t land a single solid hit, or any bullets. Keith stopped when John’s gloves from Mana Construct shattered. They didn’t last very long, but they didn’t seem to hinder his dexterity at all like regular gloves probably would.

“You’ve got the basic idea of it by now,” Keith said, panting slightly. Though if Keith was getting fatigued, John was utterly winded. Endurance is definitely my top priority now. What was I thinking putting those points into Strength? John thought as he handed Keith the pistols back. “Now its your turn. These rubber bullets shouldn’t hurt too bad.” Keith said, shooting John in the forehead once.

“Hey! I didn’t know we’d started!” John complained as he rubbed his forehead, though quickly got over it as he knocked Keith’s next attack away. Keith was slower than John, but his strength advantage clearly showed when John’s deflection budged Keith’s aim less than half as much as Keith had been able to skew John’s aim. Keith grinned menacingly at John, and they resumed their struggle, John moving twice as fast but Keith moving with twice the ****. John copied Keith’s disarming move, twisting his wrist with one hand and knocking away his other gun with the other. He even succeeded where Keith failed by grabbing the gun after Keith had let go of it.

Not too bad, John thought as he snatched Keith’s gun out of the air, but felt a rubber bullet hit him in the chin the second he did. “Getting your opponent's weapon won’t matter much if you die in the process lad,” Keith laughed as he pat John on the shoulder. “Still, that was good. Now go take the remaining two guns from the rack, this time we’ll both be aiming at each other and knocking each other’s aim off.” Keith broadened his stance and sunk slightly as he got into a fighting stance.

John tried to copy his stance and they ran at each other, arms practically flailing as they aimed at each other while knocking each other’s guns away. It was an imprecise, ugly way of fighting and there was absolutely nothing graceful about it, but it was fun and it worked.

They kept going for an two hours, taking two breaks to drink potions to replenish their strength, and Keith made an idle comment about how training John would put him out of house and home, but laughed as he said it. One such break was an eye opener for John.

“I’m tellin’ ya, that ability of yours has one big downside that ya haven’t considered. Let’s say a papercut does one damage to you right? Then you could die from papercuts while in reality being totally fine, yeah?” Keith asked, and John was put deep in thought. He didn’t know what happened when he was reduced to zero health. He guessed that Keith knocking him out was the closest he had gotten, but he couldn’t be sure if that had actually taken him below zero.

“I guess… I’ve never really thought about it. And no, I don’t want to test it!” John cut Keith off when he noticed him open his mouth to say something, and apparently guessed what he was going to say right. Shortly after, Keith cracked his neck, and John drank a mana potion, as maintaining the gloves was a lot of work.

“This’ll be the last round. We shouldn’t have too many potions at once. They’re minor ones, so we shouldn’t overdose off them even if we have them twice as often as we’ve been having, but I’m getting tired anyway.” Keith explained, rushing at John and firing both pistols. John noticed that the rubber bullets seemed to fire much slower than normal bullets would. This meant that if there was space between him and Keith he could usually move out of the way in time.

He brought his right leg up in an attempt to knock Keith off balance, but again failed to budge him much. Then again, maybe strength is more important than I thought John thought as he blocked Keith’s shot while landing his first successful rubber bullet on Keith’s torso.

Apparently, this prompted Keith to stop holding back. He launched an all-out ****. A flurry of blows that John was fast enough to block but not strong enough. Each glancing hit accrued damage until he was on the edge of the roof. With one final hit Keith knocked John off of the roof…