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The Apprentice

Shout out to Idk35. May you randomly kill an invisible sombra in your next game. 

General POV:

Trigger and his group raced towards the secret exit. It was nice as the building sat on top of an underground tunnel and exited about a block away. Trigger didn't expect any of those guys to successfully be able to take down Mamoru. He'd danced with Mamoru before he rose to the position he had now, luckily, he had survived that encounter on dumb chance. So, he knew firsthand the seemingly supernatural way that Mamoru moved and fought. 

No, those men were mere distractions to enable him to safely get away. These three were just in case Mamoru didn't fight those guys, and they would distract him on the exit. He was enjoying the lifestyle of being a mid-level gang member of Hashimoto. He wasn't planning on ending it tonight. 

As they reach the door, one guy sticks his head out the door. Seeing that he didn't instantly just die, he carefully ran across the street to the car. Trigger breathes a sigh of relief as the car doesn't blow up as soon as the guy cranks it. The rest of them begin heading out the door.

'Mamoru is getting sloppy. He didn't even know about this exit. I'll live to see another day.'

Then, his instincts screamed for him to duck, and he wasn't one to ignore them, as they helped him to get where he was today. Over the sound of the pouring rain, he could hear three silenced shots as he ducked, and he could see the two guys next to him drop to the ground. Rushing ahead, he dives into the car.

"GO!" He screams at the driver, who wasn't doing anything. After a couple of seconds, he peeks into the front seat only to find the driver with a bullet in his head. He heard three shots and assumed that the third had missed, but the real target was his driver. Meaning whoever it was, wanted him alive. Maybe he could talk his way out of this. 

Exiting the car, he looks around for his assailant. The intense rain and the lack of streetlamps hinder him from seeing anything. 

"So, you have my attention. What do you want? Money? Revenge?" Trigger shouts out to the rain.

"Information." A voice sounds out across the parking lot. He watches as a figure in a well-tailored suit comes out from the shadows wearing an oni mask. The moment he saw this figure, so soon after an attack from Mamoru, he knew this had to be his supposed apprentice. Wasn't his apprentice a kid? Heh, Mamoru sent a kid to do a man's job.

Getting a bit cockier as he now knew what he was up against, Trigger responds, "You should have shot me when you had the chance kid. Want to know why they call me Trigger?"

Before he let the apprentice respond, at lightning speed, he pulls Shi no Ganbo from its holster and fires a bullet within the same second. His smile takes up half his faces at how easy it was taking out Mamoru's so-called protege. His smile fades when a flash of sparks goes off, sending everything into silence save for the sound of rain.

'What just happened? Did he learn the same techniques Mamoru did?'

After he faced Mamoru, he tried to learn how to deflect bullets with a blade much like him, to no avail. If the apprentice could do it, that meant it could be learned. So when they captured Mamoru, they would force him to teach them the technique. 

Trigger calmed himself down as losing his cool now would spell his doom for sure. As astounding as the technique looked there were counters to it. He didn't have any way of obstructing the kid's vision, and lacked the ammo to overwhelm him with bullets, so his only choice was to outsmart him with his shoots. 

Trigger regains a serious face, revealing nothing as he stands imposing against the mysterious apprentice. Neither exchanged words with each other, as their weapons were going to be doing the talking. Through the raging rain, Trigger raises his weapon, firing a shot directed at the apprentice's heart. This time, he paid attention to his opponent's actions, in an effort to counter them in the future. He manages to see him raise his own arm and the same flash of sparks before the bullet falls to the ground. 

Trigger stands there, as he couldn't believe his eyes. 

'Did he just deflect a bullet.... with a bullet?'

Refusing to believe what he just witnessed, he fires three more shots at the apprentice, who in turn fires the same back at him. Three sparks collide in the air between them followed by the pings of bullets hitting the ground. He aims towards the building just to his left and the bushes just to his right in an effort to see if he could bait a reaction out of him. To his surprise, the kid remains still, not bothering to deflect those. 

Trigger hides his smile as he realizes he has what he needs to kill him. Aiming at the ground, he takes a shot, knowing that he won't deflect it. He wouldn't see it as a threat to him, therefore he wouldn't bother with shooting at it like those that were heading at him. But should he not deflect it, the bullet would ricochet off the ground and into his head. 

He watches as the bullet hits off the ground, but the kid steps to the left, and it passes by him harmlessly. Seeing this, Trigger throws all sense of logic out the window. Pulling up his weapon again, he fires continuously at the kid, hoping that any bullet would hit their target. In return, the kid fires back at him as well.

Through the rain, in the space between the two, repeated flashes go off as bullet after bullet collide with each other. With each passing second, the terror within Trigger grows as he realizes just how helpless he is against his opponent. As the flashes stop, he can only look at the monster in front of him with horror. A voice sounds out over the pelting rain.

"You want to reload and go again?" The apprentice asks.

Trigger realizes that he was still trying to fire at him, even though there were no bullets left in his gun. He throws his gun at the apprentice and dashes back to the car. Throwing the dead body out of the front seat, he goes to drive off, but the feeling of cold steel against his neck stops him.

"Try it, and we will just find what we're looking for with someone else." The voice warns.

Breathing heavily, he slowly takes his hand off the steering wheel. As he gets out the car with his hands up, only one thought passes his mind.

'Yeah, I'm fucked.'

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