fandomhigh | Practical Marksmanship | Session 2 | Period 4

Again, the class met in the Danger Shop. This time, when the students stepped in they found themselves on the desolate floor of a long deserted building, several stories up. At one end, there is a large open window and a Barrett M82 sniper rifle with gillie netting around it. The only other furniture in the room are another set of padded benches, and a single table. Price and Ashley stand behind that table.

"Today's class activity is two-fold. First, a brief discussion about assassination. Not being a killer for hire, that is not what we're on about. I personally am a soldier, and it seems many of you are as well. The exercise today, which is entirely optional if you wish to morally object, is based off a real event. A shot I myself took."

He held up a picture of a man, wrinkle-faced and bearded. "This is Imran Zakhaev. In 1996, he is an arms dealer, selling Uranium on the black market. Nuclear material, weapons-grade. A leftenant Price and a Captain Macmillan are given the first assassination order issued by the SAS since the end of World War II. Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists and mercenaries cannot be allowed. Or... so the government thought."

"What about you, students? Do you think a government has a right to execute a man based solely on what he's about to do?"

After the discussion, Price lifted a picture of a mushroom cloud. "This doesn't discount any of your moral arguments, but I want to show you what happens when Zakhaev survives this assassination attempt. This is what happens in 2011. 30,000 American soldiers dead in the blink of an eye."

He sets the picture down. "But now you're asking yourselves, did your teacher refuse to take the shot?" Price shook his head. "I took it. Took his arm clean off. But the stubborn bastard survived and Macmillan and I had to bug out the instant after I took the one shot. We hoped the blood loss would get him, but we weren't so lucky. Now none of you will have to do the daring escape from the various armed bastards in the area that Macmillan and I had to deal with. This is a one-shot, one-hopeful-kill situation. Everybody gets one shot from the sniper rifle. And you'll see that it's not as easy as it seems in the movies. There's a few little things, like wind speed and the Coriolis effect to take into account. If you don't know that is, well, Google it after class. You'll learn something else. If you don't want to take the shot, all you have to do is say why, and you can sit back down."

He then pointed to a student at random.

"You, you get to start."

[ooc: ~~OCD coming up.~~ OCD up, class open!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What does your student think. Speak up, the teachers want to hear.

"Assassinations aren't generally ordered just for fun and giggles," Makita pointed out. "And if you don't trust your superiors to know the line, than you're working for the wrong people."

"Very smart, if I may say so," Price said. He had very specifically not mentioned most of the Russian aspects in deference to Makita, even if she seemed from a different world. "So you agree with the idea that some individuals are too dangerous to await a trial."

If she'd known she got to shoot Reds, Makita would have brought her own guns and gone to town. It was most likely best that Price was glossing things over.

"Trial? What laws are you going to try them under? Yours? Theirs?" Makita shrugged. "A few well-timed assassinations can stop atrocities, if done right. You'll never win a war that way, but you can sure screw things up for the other side."

Price really had picked the wrong audience if he wanted a debate, he realized.

"Oh, you never know. Taking out the right figures can stop a war pretty fast."

He smirked, knowingly.

Wesley cleared his throat. "There are, ah, certain cases in which a carefully-planned assassination attempt can spare hundreds or thousands of lives. As desirable as it may be to try to force rehabilitation, that can be - more dangerous. And a shoddy assassination attempt can be vastly more dangerous than not having made the attempt. Meaning no disrespect to you, of course, Professor," he added quickly. "I meant my comment in regard to - er - someone else."

"Captain," he said. "Not professor. And I'm actually rather intrigued that you think along those lines. What was it again you said you'd been through all that training for?"

"I was training to be a - a mentor, of sorts, to what one might call an assassin of vampires and demons and such," Wes explained. "My official title was to be a Watcher of a girl known as the Slayer, chosen by birthright to kill monsters with the help of supernatural physical advantages. The trouble with training teenage assassins appointed to their tasks by birthright is that they're rather unstable, and with supernatural abilities they are even more so. Typical - er, yrials - would not be at all effective on a superpowered killer who decides to work for the other side."

Something he had kind of had to learn the hard way.

[ooc: er, that "yrials" would be trials. Fail.]

"...you have that problem often, Wesley?" Price said, sort of amazed and baffled at the words the boy had said.

Wesley blushed, hard. "Er, no, sir," he mumbled.

"Assassinations are a highly effective method for securing peace." Duh.

Price just smiled and nodded. "I suppose you lot would all agree on that, wouldn't you?"

Meaning the class at large.

"I don't know. I have encountered a number of other students who don't see how efficient they are." Or have moral principles. One of those two.

"You'll always get the idealists, bless their hearts," Price said. He knew it was a condescending sentiment, but it was pretty much the viewpoint he had.

"What he's about to do?" Katniss asked, thinking of Seneca Crane. "Or what he has done? If there's a precedent -- a reason he can't be stopped peaceably...."

She trailed off, and paused, looking around quickly. She didn't want to say what she was thinking -- that President Snow's assassination would change her entire country, and likely for the better, because she didn't know if she was being recorded, still. She couldn't risk it, and instead, she added, "Aren't assassinations against the law?"

They called them executions where she was from, when the Capitol thought it was necessary, anyway.

"Depends on whose law," Price said. "Assassinations often violate other country's laws, of course. They don't take kindly to foreign powers killing their citizens."

"But shouldn't it be an execution after they're caught by the government?" Katniss wondered. "Not an assassination, acting outside legal boundaries?"

It occurred to her that what she had asked President Snow to do, weeks earlier, was an assassination of sorts. Kill her. Make it look like an accident. Before she could carry out further rebellion.

"In Zakhaev's case, he wasn't even doing business in England," Price said. "And the country he was selling to, well, they wanted the nuclear material. So it may not have been legal, but no police were going to be arresting him."

Katniss warred with herself for a long moment. But even if she was being recorded, she had to reply, "Then it was important that he be stopped. Even if he never saw it coming."

Thinky question made her thinky.

"There are some people that just need to be assassinated," K-Mart decided. "Because there's a guy from my world that, if someone had taken him out, well, my world probably wouldn't have ended up a zombie infested apocalyptic wasteland."

Practical Marksmanship | Session 2 | Period 4 | 7/16/10

Discussion: Assassination

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