There is no spoon

"Again!"

A youth with dyed black hair picked himself up from the ground, staggering slightly once he made it all the way vertical.

"Remember, speed and precision. Those are the key components of assassinations. One hit, one kill." Harold reset the practice dummy. "You must be able to at least take down this piece of wood before you can take down a human being."

Peter stood there panting, covered in mud and wondering how his father expected him to 'kill' a practice dummy. After trying all afternoon, he was almost ready to give up. The only thing keeping him going was the idea of not disappointing his real father. Peter did not want to do anything that would give Harold the idea that he was not enough.

Panting for breathe, Peter reset himself into position behind the dummy. He didn't know what he coud do differently this time around, but for damn sure he was going to keep trying.

"I'll give you a hint. Stop going for the obvious and think about your surroundings." Harold folded his arms and tilted his head back, waiting. They had been in his personal training courtyard for over a week and while Peter had a good understanding of hte basics, almost no progress had been made for two days. Peter understood that the pointy end went into the target but thinking beyond the obvious seemed to stemmy him.

Peter stopped himself from launching towards the targets back, like he had been doing all afternoon, and took a hard long (lol hard and long, that's what she'd like) look at the dummy itself. It was a basic stick figure attached to a mechanism that made it twirl when hit. The obvious areas to attack, like the back of the neck or the kidney area, casued the dummy to whirl faster than it should and 'attack' Peter. There was nothing obvious about the immiediate area around the dummy so Peter focused beyond the dummy.