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Danny's actually pretty proud of himself for this. Kate's got that gun of hers, but there's a lot of lessons Danny wants to review before she fires it. He wants her to study the medical side of it (wants her to do a CPR course, too, but one of those quick ones and not the lengthy version), and he wants her to understand the assembly of the gun. In addition to that, there's a lot of practical tasks that are associated with the weapon and he's bringing her to New Pemberley to go over one of them today.

"So, the family's not here," he warns. "But I may have contacted a friend, who's been sent ahead," he says, taking hold of one of the water guns he's borrowed from Alistair -- at this rate, it's a whole-island-wide production. "Your job, today, is to clear all the rooms of the house and find the bad guy, me, without me 'shooting' you, first. So, remember what I talked about. When you clear a room, back is always to the wall. You move swift and you follow the edges of the walls to the corner, always keeping your eyesight clear of any blockages. You announce the room as clear the minute you finish it. You move into the house, clearing all checkpoints and ensuring there are no exits behind you, otherwise you need to set down a little flag," he says, wiggling one of the orange flags in his hand, "and we'll pretend that's a uniform to hold down that exit point."

"If I squirt you where a flak-vest goes, you can keep going," he says, gesturing to her torso. "If I get you in the neck, leg, head, arm, or otherwise, then we start over. If you find me, you announce 'freeze' and do not shoot unless there is a clear and present danger of being shot on. Your goal is to find the hostage and get them out without being shot at. Clear?"

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"Yes, boss," Kate answers and she has to resist the urge to salute. Partly because she's pretty sure Danny will go on another rant about the army and cops being totally different and her mouth twitches into a smile at the memory. The whole exercise is kind of fun, too, and she doesn't want to fuck it up right off the bat.

As much as she doesn't say it, Danny's a good teacher. He's come up with some great ways for her to learn, especially how prone Kate is to sometimes starting something and then letting it slide.

"So how long do I give you before I come in?" she asks. "And I even have to leave a little flag police officer in the front door, right?"

"Unless you want me sneaking out the front door, I think that'd be a good idea," he says, giving her a bemused grin. "You'll give me about a minute. Generally, if you're in the pursuit of a suspect, they don't have that much time to acclimate themselves and find a place to hide. So, go find me a hostage," he says, giving her a light squeeze of the shoulder before he heads inside the large house, heading for the top floor. "And don't forget!" he shouts back. "Use your ears!"

Kate's eyebrows lift, but she nods, even though Danny can't see her. It's fun, yeah, but she also has an actual lesson to do there and she runs over everything he's told her while she waits for that minute to go by. Even trying to distract herself, it seems like time slows down to a crawl and after forty-five seconds, she gives up trying to wait and heads for the door.

Back to the wall. That's the said thing he's said, so Kate leans up against the stone wall and then pushes the front door open carefully with the tip of her water gun. There's no one in her sight line, so she peeks around the corner carefully, then places a little flag in the front door.

"Make sure no one gets by you," she whispers to the flag sternly, then slips into the hall, her back still pressed to the wall, as instructed.

Danny presses his lips together to avoid laughing too hard at the sight of Kate lecturing a little orange flag. He takes his time, avoiding the room that he knows Hermione to be in and getting as far as he can. When he's three rooms away, he starts to leave a couple traces -- smudges on the wall, small pieces of lint on the floor -- and when he's four rooms down, he starts to make a little bit of noise, just to give her a hint.

At the sound, Kate looks down the hall, but she still keeps her back pressed against the wall. Danny didn't say anything about the hostage making any noise, so that could be either one of them. Her goal is to get the hostage out, so she pauses, still listening for the sounds, then goes ahead into the next room and sweeps it carefully. There's no sign of anyone in here, so she leaves another flag behind.

In the next room, she's startled to find Hermione. So startled, in fact, that she almost forgets what she's doing for a second and takes a step into the room without checking.

It's a good thing Danny isn't there, though, and she flattens back against the wall a second later.

"Are you my hostage?" she asks quietly. She doesn't want Danny to hear her.

The entire set-up is a bit strange, if Hermione's to be honest. Of course, she's not a teacher, and times like this, she wonders if that might not be for the best. She remembers other practical lessons that she's had over the years, perhaps those held by Remus Lupin best of all. Everyone loved those courses, everyone retained the knowledge so much better than they did for most other classes, aside perhaps from Charms or Potions, for those who pored over the texts to keep from earning Severus Snape's ire.

And something tells Hermione that this is just Kate's type of thing.

She nods nervously from where she stands. "But I have very little idea what's going on," Hermione murmurs in return. "I think Danny wanted me to be as clueless as... an actual hostage would be, I suppose."

Danny makes sure he's got a good and clear vision of the front entrance before he starts to make his way down the side-stairs, putting deliberate weight on the stairs so that she knows where he is in the house. He knows that Hermione is in there, he knows that they're going to talk, and he knows that he needs to keep moving instead of giving her a head start.

"Well, come with me if you want to live," Kate says, then grins, unable to help herself. Maybe she's not quite the pop culture nerd that a lot of people on the island are, but she can't resist that one.

"I mean, stay behind me," she warns, heading back to the door after she checks the room once. Somewhere in the house she can hear Danny moving and she pauses in the hall, her gaze drifting toward the stairs. At this point, she isn't sure if she's supposed to get Hermione out first or find Danny, but either way, she places a little flag in the door. "Come on, he's not here."

Danny takes his time in the rooms he's in, making his way into one of the ones that she has to go through, staying half in the doorway as he waits for Hermione and Kate to make their way over. "What happens if you see evidence of movement, Kate?" he calls out to her. He's blocking her exit, which means that she's going to have to either find an alternate or fire on him.

Hermione chews on her lip thoughtfully throughout the course of it, keeping behind Kate, and keeping quieter than anyone might expect a bookworm like her to be capable of doing, but this type of thing isn't new to her in the slightest. Sneaking around, trying to keep from using magic when it'd be traceable, Hermione remembers all too well what it requires to escape the enemy's notice, and although the stakes aren't quite so high here, she won't be the one to let Kate down in her lesson.

So when Danny calls out, she simply looks to her friend, keeping her lips pressed tightly shut and glancing over with a curious look.

Kate looks back at Hermione at the sound of Danny's voice, almost as if she expects an answer. Until this point, Danny's been with her during her lessons, walking her through it, there to answer her questions if she has any, but suddenly he's the bad guy. She's on her own.

"I..." But she isn't sure what she's supposed to do and she realizes suddenly that she's forgotten to announce all the rooms clear when she finishes with them. It's too late to go back and do that now, though, so she just tries to remember what to do now.

"I tell you to freeze," she says finally, then raises her water gun and gestures for Hermione to follow her carefully as she edges along the wall toward another room.

Danny agrees with a nod of his head, holding up the gun as he debates just how far he's going to go with this. "Yeah, but I don't want to listen to reason and you've got my hostage," he points out, testing out the flex of his knee in case he wants to run and make her chase him down. "Back to the wall, make sure all exit and entrance points are clear. You don't want to be surprised -- not with this."

"And what happens," he says, staying still in the room nearest to the window, cursing Steve because he's pretty sure he's about to do something stupid, "when your suspect runs and you need them or your case falls apart. What do you do?"

In spite of herself, Hermione finds the whole lesson interesting to sift through from a third-person perspective. She watches Kate closely, following after her as smoothly as she can manage, not knowing precisely where Danny is. And although Hermione knows that there was no way that the two of them could conceive of every different scenario that could occur in this type of hostage situation, even having some idea of the guiding principles surely helps in the long run, she thinks to herself.

The next question's probably the most interesting one yet to Hermione. Do they try to catch the culprit to prevent further harm? Or is it more important to make sure that immediate victims are somewhere safe? She glances over at Kate, curious to see how the other young woman responds.

Kate pauses only to put a little orange flag down in the door they've just come through, then stands again, making sure to keep herself between Hermione and the door, but also making sure to keep her back against the wall. The answer she wants to give Danny is probably not the answer he's looking for, but she thinks Steve might appreciate it.

"I shoot them in the leg?" she calls back, holding her arm out to keep Hermione safe behind her as she inches toward the room she's pretty sure Danny is in. "Or the foot or something non-essential."

That's probably not the right answer, but it's the only one she can think of right now. It's probably the sort of answer that makes the whole case fall apart because of police cruelty or something like that, but she's nervous and her heart is suddenly racing.

Danny winces at the answer, mostly because it's a natural jump when they're using guns, but it's definitely not the one he wants her to come away thinking of. "Guns are an absolute last resort and you should never fire unless fired upon. You need to subdue the suspect. You need to chase them down, knock 'em down, get them handcuffed with a reasonable amount of force."

Hermione presses a hand to her lips, distracted as she mentally runs through the course of action she would have taken back home, were magic still available to her. Naturally, the best options were the quietest ones. Stunning spells, for instance, or even a Full Body Bind, spells that didn't give the other person time to react and wouldn't allow them the chance to try and seek someone else to help them out of their predicament.

But there wasn't really an equivalent to that in the muggle world. Nothing half so fast.

"What happens if they're faster than you are?" Hermione murmurs softly, mostly to herself.

"That's when you shoot them in the leg," Kate guesses, although she's pretty sure that's not the right answer either. She doesn't understand the point of even having the gun if she's not allowed to shoot it and she's about to ask, but then she peeks around the corner of the room and there's Danny.

"Holy shit," she says, surprised, then raises the water gun, keeping herself still half hidden behind the door. "Freeze!"

And to Hermione, she hisses, "Stay there. I found him." If she's not supposed to get shot with the water gun, she's fairly certain that if she gets Hermione shot, she's lost the whole game and they'll have to start over again.

Danny's a good shot. If he wanted to, he could easily hit any target he wants, but this isn't about that. It's about testing her instincts and getting her accustomed to clearing a room. So, when he sees them in the other room, it's Hermione he shoots for, aiming the water straight at her foot before he abandons the gun and bolts, right out the window, sliding for the eavestrough and to the ground, praying -- oh god, praying and praying and praying -- that his knee doesn't give out on him.

Now, it's up to Kate to prioritize.

Both accustomed to catching glimpses of movement and of dodging them entirely, Hermione jumps out of the way quickly enough to avoid getting splashed— and fortunately, one shot seems to be all that Danny tries to take, turning around directly after and scrambling out the window. Blinking, Hermione quickly calls out to Kate, unsure that she's supposed to take any initiative of her own.

"Am I supposed to wait here?" she asks. "Do you want me to take here?"

"Shit!" Kate curses, looking from the window to Hermione and then back again. "Shit, shit, I don't know." There's a lot she's realizing she doesn't know and even though this is just fun right now, even though it's only Danny she's chasing, if she ever wants to be serious about this, she has to know. She has to learn.

"You... shit!" She turns, then, heading for the stairs and calls to Hermione. "Come with me!" Maybe she's supposed to leave her with one of the orange flags -- they're supposed to be other cops, after all -- but that doesn't feel right. If they were really in a situation where Hermione's life was in danger, Kate wouldn't be able to leave her behind.

Danny's running like his life depends on it, making sure he leaves a couple of traces that he's going in this direction before he makes a stand on high ground, breathing in and out carefully -- he's gone out a few times with Steve to keep in shape -- and once he's up there, he settles on his elbows and stomach, gun pointed at the incoming path through the shrubbery and leaves.

"It wasn't in the lesson?" Hermione breathes, before darting quickly to catch up with Kate, wheezing to make sure that she gets enough oxygen in her lungs, however painful it might feel in the meantime. She makes a mental note to go over whatever texts or guides that Danny's put together later on, if only because she's never been one for practical learning, never as a foundation. (She thinks about what Remus would say, were he of the proper age, and almost sighs in exasperation at herself.)

"Where is he?" she hisses, still keeping behind Kate, if only because it feels like running on ahead would defeat the purpose of the lesson and inevitably confuse the both of them.

"I don't know," Kate answers in response to both questions. It might have been in the lesson -- her mind has a tendency to wander, which is why she thinks Danny is going this kind of lesson more often -- but she doesn't think it was. It seems like the kind of thing he'd do just to catch her off guard and teach her something. And it's working.

She has the water gun raised as she exits the house and she stops running when she hits the path, holding one arm out to keep Hermione behind her, even though she doesn't think she needs to. "I think he went this way," she says softly, inching along the path, keeping the gun raised. There are no walls here, but she stays as close to the side of the path as possible.

Danny keeps waiting, until the moment that they wander by. He needs to prove a point and shooting isn't going to do anything, so he tucks the gun in his belt and waits until they get closer to him, popping out of the bushes and clearing his throat. "So!" he calls over to her. "Would you like to dissect what happened back there?"

Hermione blinks in surprise when Danny strides out, as though it isn't any trouble at all. On some level, Hermione knows that it's only natural for her own skills to be far less effective in a non-magical environment, but it's not until now that she feels just short of terrified of how behind she is.

Although she steps back to let the other two talk, Hermione tilts her head in sharp interest, waiting to hear the chase parsed out.

Kate, though, doesn't want to dissect what happened. She wants to finish the job and so it's with that thought in mind that she tackles Danny around the middle. She might not be particularly big, but she's taller than he is, even if he's way stronger and she's at least halfway convinced she can overpower him.

Which is probably wrong, but she has to try.

"Is it wrong to make the hostage help take down a suspect?" she shouts, still trying to knock Danny off his feet.

He knows it's probably going to get him smacked, but the minute that he hits the ground -- falling in the way Steve taught him to take a hit, he's practically choking back mild amusement as he winds the water gun lightly under her ribs, outside the vest, and squeezes just hard enough that the wet pressure will stain her shirt.

"If you break my knee before my wedding, I've got a giant Navy lunkhead at home," he reminds her.

For the first time since the lesson started, Hermione cracks a bit of a smile at the sight of the two roughhousing a bit, even if she suspects that Kate's sudden tackle just now means that she has a fairly long way to go yet.

"And your heart might be broken by a postponement," she adds in Danny's direction, knowing how much he's wanted this, to tie the knot and make it all official. "Maybe we should be easier on him, Kate."

"I got shot anyway," Kate answers, sitting up with a grin, then rolls to the side to show Hermione the water on her shirt. She hadn't expected it to work, really, but it was worth a try and she's glad that she's done it anyway.

"But I get points for saving the hostage, right?" she asks, figuring the lesson is pretty much over. At least for the time being. Maybe she's let the suspect go, but she managed to get Hermione out of the house without either of them getting shot.

Danny slowly sits up, groaning as he tries to crack his back. He's sore, yeah, but it's not so bad. "Well, yes, but if you wind up in the path of a crazed criminal who isn't as nice as me, you'd both be dead. So, you need to tell me. What's your priority when something like that happens?"

Hermione's almost tempted to point out the fact that she's been caught in the path of crazed criminals before, that she's come out of it somehow whole and intact, though she's suffered torture at the hands of an enemy before, but she keeps her lips pressed shut. What she'll allow herself is the belief that she knows well how to operate in spite of fear. She's a quick thinker.

But perhaps she needs to better learn how to use her body instead of always thinking back to spells that are easily cast with an incantation and a wave of one's arm.

"Keep the hostage safe?" Hermione guesses with a slight shrug. She's pretty sure Kate would get that answer, anyway.

"Keep the hostage safe," Kate echoes, pointing at Hermione. "I mean, if the guy's gone, then he's gone, but at least I got Hermione out of the building without him shooting her or me. So... we'd probably make sure she was taken care of before coming after you."

Which means she was supposed to leave Hermione with one of the little orange flags, but it doesn't seem fair not to include her in any of it. She's playing along, after all.

"It's like you're taking after Steve without even being Steve," Danny says, giving Kate a sharp look. "You call for backup and you wait for backup," he says, leaning forward to flick her ear slightly. "Little orange flag men, Kate, you have to use them. Otherwise you get shot, your hostage gets taken again, you lose your suspect, your case, and possibly your life. This is serious," he says sharply. "If your suspect runs and you've cleared the building, you put her with one of your backup so as not to endanger the situation."

Lips parting for a second, Hermione presses them shut again, before curiosity gets the better of her. "But what happens if you know that this individual is simply heading to a place where they can easily capture more hostages? I realize that I might be playing devil's advocate, but is there ever a case in which you might trust your hostage to be capable of retreating if there's no easy way for the criminal to double back without passing by you first?"

"Yeah, good question," Kate agrees, glad that Hermione is here. It's hard for her to come up with questions like this, especially during the lesson. She's never been particularly great at school and it's good to have someone else with her to ask the questions. "And what if you have no back up?" she asks. "I mean, what if I didn't have any orange flags with me? Then what?"

"You call it in," he says, looking at Hermione and then Kate in turn. "I'm serious. No matter what you think you can accomplish on your own, you always call for backup and you always make sure that someone knows the situation at hand. Never take the hostage with you. If you want to pursue on foot, your partner has to be aware and they should call it in to whatever head office you're working for. The safety of your person, your partner, and your hostage matters more than the suspect. They inevitably screw up again or a witness comes forward. Generally, criminals? Not that smart. Supervillains don't really come around that often."

"And, even if you do have a couple of genius criminals on your hands, there is always some way they slip up. Always. And it's usually something wholly minor, like something they bought or someone they pissed off," he advises, tucking the water gun into the back of his jeans. "Backup," he reiterates. "Love the word."

Hermione parts her lips, but closes them again, glancing over in Kate's direction. There's a sharp difference between being a police officer and simply someone caught in the fray, she thinks now, and it's only the fact that Danny's training Kate to be the former that stays Hermione's tongue. Because no matter how true it may be that keeping to Danny's limitations could have potentially kept them from winning the war when they did back home, Kate isn't training to be the girl who fulfills a prophecy.

And a job on the police force really ought come with some amount of structure.

Pressing her lips together, she nods instead, chewing on her lower lip. "Understood," she reassures Danny, stifling the desire to ask if he's ever broken away from that rule before. Or if he ever would.

Kate, on the other hand, doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut and she's curious. "Steve breaks that rule all the time, doesn't he?" she asks, although Steve isn't the one training her. "I mean, I'm not asking in like a 'Steve does it, so why can't I?' kind of way, I'm just curious." And she's curious as to why he does it. She knows he's not a cop, not in the same way Danny is, but they've worked together back home.

"Have you ever done something like that?" she asks, pushing on. "Gone on without backup?" Maybe there's a reason he's trying to instill this in her so firmly. Maybe it's a really good reason, too.

"Not until I met Steve," Danny says, pressing his lips together as he tugs his collar away from his shoulder and shows off the scar on the upper arm. "And that? That is from going in without backup. My back ached a hell of a while, too, and I tore my ACL again. That's what happens when you go in guns blazing. And yeah, he breaks it all the time. He's better now by virtue of him not being a cop anymore."

"You know, I couldn't always wait for backup either," Hermione says at last, lips pressed thinly together as she hears more about Steve, and the habits that he once had. She wonders if she wouldn't be able to better identify with the choices that Steve's made. There's a good chance that the Ministry's inaction in the past is responsible for it, but sometimes, Hermione feels that she better understands the choices of the ITF than she does the IPD, that she'd join the former sooner than the latter, though she's learned to appreciate both. "I don't... I don't know that I'd be here if I always waited to act by the book. I used to, before I realized that breaking the rules was necessary in certain situations."

"Aren't there always exceptions?" Kate asks. "Basically by virtue of, you know, being alive? I mean, not everything can be that cut and dry, right?" Hermione has a good point and Kate's pretty sure that all rules have to be broken sometimes. Maybe this is right for her training, for learning the basics, but she's sure that can't be the final line on everything, no matter what.

"There's a difference between a life-saving action and not waiting for back-up when you haven't even inserted yourself into the situation," he warns, slightly worried about the road they're walking down. "The bad guys don't know you're there unless you get involved. You don't get involved until you have the scenario assessed, have a plan in mind, and you have people there to help you." Danny shoots both Hermione and Kate a worried look. "Do you guys understand the difference, here? I'm not talking self-defense. I'm talking about situations that you don't have to be in. There's always a choice in those."

In that moment, so much of what Danny tells both of them sounds like the words of wisdom offered by members of the Order, and Hermione can only think of how she, Harry, and Ron had decided to go against the desires of some of the Order's members. Repeatedly, even. And Hermione's not sure that she'd behave any differently if given a second chance, because while she knows that the three of them probably could've lived safely for some time to come if they simply avoided the fray of the war, she would never have been able to live with herself, knowing that she gave anything but her all.

Strategy always plays into it, but necessity is such a gray line that Hermione isn't sure that she's able to walk it at all. When does it become necessary to step in? When is it reasonable to step in for the purpose of trying to save a life?

Her gaze skirts slightly to the side. It's not that simple, she thinks to herself.

"So if I'd brought a flag with me it would have been acceptable?" she asks, because it's sort of tough to practice with having backup when the only real back-up she has is the flags. She hadn't thought to bring one with her while chasing Danny down for that reason alone, but if that had made it okay, then she'll have to do it next time.

"Because, if I've got this right, you're basically saying that I chose to follow you and put myself in danger, which yeah, fine, I did. But if I'd brought back-up with me, because I already had back-up back there at the house, it'd be okay?" she asks. "Next time can my flags be real people?"

"If you'd brought three flags with you," Danny corrects. "One to watch the perimeter, one to keep an eye on your tail, and one to go for requested aid, if needed," he cites, as if he's back in the Academy. This is his bread and butter, the stuff he lives off and loves. He doesn't foresee ever getting tired of this. "You can go after the bad guy, but don't do it unprepared," he lectures.

"And yeah, maybe next time, we'll use real people." He's already thinking about the activity. "I'll have to recruit specific types, though."

"Okay, I— mm," Hermione sighs, pressing a hand to her lips as she glances over in Danny's direction, her gaze thoughtful. "As much as I love the idea of always having three people nearby as backup, or the idea that there would be three people at all to call and wait for, there may be situations in which we don't have that many people. The island's plucked us out of our everyday lives before and dropped us in the middle of dinosaur territory, how, I don't— I'm the last person who wants to go against the book, but I'm having a difficult time seeing how it's possible to always adhere to it, and I'm sure that people more passionate or who act on the spur of the moment could do with some guidelines, at least, some way of judging the risks before blowing them out of the water because the feel the need to do something."

"Yeah, doesn't the IPD require that you patrol with just one other person?" she asks. And at this point she isn't doing it just to push his buttons or make things tough on him, she's genuinely curious about this. "How's it possible to make sure there are three people with you when you're only sent out with one?"

She knows there are call boxes, but even those aren't everywhere.

"And that's where good instincts are gonna come in," Danny advises, offering Hermione a proud smile. "Look, would I love to say that I followed the book every single time? Yes, but, that's not true. I've gone on a limb, I've been hotheaded." He shoots them each a wry look. "No smart comments. I've been doing this for a long time and I know that I need to make sure someone's aware of my whereabouts and capable of enforcing what I'm doing. Nothing's ever going to be perfect, not ever. Instincts and judging the risks are key, they're critical. I just want you to realize that you need to be safe. You need to make sure you make the best possibly choices for your situation."

Breathing a small sigh of relief, Hermione nods at Danny's next words, shooting a small smile Kate's way. To be told that there are occasions when going against the rulebook is acceptable calms Hermione somehow, because she's never really known herself to learn well from a teacher who demands such an unbreakable amount of order. Hermione herself already struggles with the ability to know when to peel away from instructions, tending to err in the favor of sticking to the rule; she's pretty sure that she doesn't need any more pressure in that direction.

"I understand," she nods again, shifting until she stands closer to Kate's side, the smile on her lips slightly wider than before.

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