Settle down, miscreants. Class is in session.

Today’s lesson concerns the finest supercomputer ever assembled… the human brain.

Its hardware, the grey matter, is issued at birth. Some, such as myself, are granted superior processors. Others make do with… budget components. A brief glance around these halls suggests supply-chain issues were rampant in your generation.

But hardware is only the beginning.

Within that grey matter lie billions of neurons. The circuitry that receives, processes, and transmits signals. Alone, they are sparks. 

Together, they form pathways. 

These pathways dictate thought, behaviour, instinct. Even the most dim-witted among you can ignite a few circuits long enough to assemble a sentence.

Neural pathways are forged through repetition. Every thought, every action lays an electrical track across the mind. Use a route often enough and it strengthens, accelerates, becomes automatic. Neglect it and it withers. So when a once-promising mind deteriorates, the fault is rarely defective hardware.

It is the wiring one chose to reinforce.

Master Siniestro. Legally speaking, you are a criminal. A very naughty boy. Yet your mind was not born irreparably flawed. You were not issued a broken processor. So we must ask… what happened?

Was it the absentee father? The overwhelmed mother? The lack of education? The poor exposure to positive opportunities?

*Tut-tut*

The answer is all of the above. Each influence nudged you toward the path you ultimately embraced, the life of a hired gun.

Every poor decision surrounding your childhood led to the first time you held that weapon. To the moment you aimed it at another human being… and pulled the trigger.

And in that moment, a pathway formed.

You learned that power could be condensed into a single motion of your finger. That fear could be silenced. That control could be claimed. For a frightened boy, that lesson was intoxicating.

Each repetition strengthened the circuit. Trigger. Payment. Silence. Again and again. Amateur became professional.

But while that pathway flourished, another decayed. Your morality.

No one reinforced the value of a human life within your circuitry. People became numbers. Targets. Transactions. Each execution further insulated you from remorse, from empathy, from critical thought. Obedience replaced reflection. Efficiency replaced conscience.

You became proficient… but intellectually dull.

Violence was normalised. Emotion compartmentalised. Your mind moulded into an order-following machine.

And yet, beneath that conditioning, the original hardware remains. The neglected child. The frightened boy whose parents never loved him, acting out of fear. 

Instinct masquerading as strength.

I pity you, Master Siniestro, for what you have allowed your mind to become.

You may be a killer. But in my classroom, violence is not tolerated. I see only an unfortunate child, a delinquent shaped by poor circumstances.

And delinquency must be corrected.

Perhaps it is not too late to reroute those pathways. To weaken the circuits forged in fear and strengthen those long ignored.

Your re-education begins at Slam. For the first time in your life, you will step into a proper classroom.

Mine.

It is time to uninstall the lies, dismantle the faulty programming, and learn discipline.

My discipline.

Class is in session.

And this lesson will hurt.