fandomhigh | Improving Your Skills [Friday, 3rd Period]

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improving your skills

Improving Your Skills [Friday, 3rd Period]

When the students arrived today, they'd find the Danger Shop set up with a bunch of targets, training dummies, and a pile of ~~moddable~~ weapons.

"It seems like a lot of folks at this school, and in town, come from kind of dangerous places," Clint said. "Honing a skill requires time, which requires staying alive, and that isn't always a luxury. Today, I want to see how well you guys can handle weapons to defend yourselves, and don't worry if the answer is 'not all that well' because everyone's got to start somewhere. If you've already had some training in this area, and you want to spar with each other, go right ahead because you won't really hurt anyone. Supposedly." It wasn't that Clint didn't have faith in technology, but that part of the Danger Shop's settings still had him a little worried.

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"You look great," Kate said quietly so as not to startle him. "But you have to actually release the arrow." Her tone - and her words - were meant to be encouraging.

"I'm... working my way up to that," Sparkle replied, glancing sideways at the girl before looking back at the target. "You know... making sure the conditions are right, that sort of thing."

It... wasn't like there was wind in here or anything, Sparks.

[ooc: SP and I are best of friends! I'll be grabbing pings around work today, myself.]

She nodded. "On one hand, have to make sure the shot is worth taking...on the other, you'll miss every shot you don't take."

Huh, she'd heard that somewhere.

"You, uh, get that off a motivational poster or something?"

It sounded like that sort of saying, was all, and Sparkle was not exactly used to getting encouraging speeches, particularly from people he didn't know. Not unless they were trying to sell something, anyway.

"Well, it was either that or tell you to stop overthinking it, ya doof," Kate joked. "Thought I'd work up to that one."

"Well, good of you to ease me into it," Sparkle replied, and he couldn't quite help but smirk a little. He took another breath, looked back at the target, adjusted his stance slightly, and then finally took the shot.

... Well, it hit the target! It wasn't anywhere near the bulls-eye, but he'd take hitting the target.

"Big on archery, are you?"

"Yeah, pretty much. It's a hobby," she agreed, grinning when his arrow hit. "Now you have to do that a bunch more times to get comfortable."

No, Kate, not everyone wanted to practice for the next four hours.

Well, maybe not the next four hours, but Sparkle was amenable to spending the rest of the class trying to get that arrow into the middle of the target.

"Yeah, I'm gonna be feeling this in muscles I didn't know I had later if I keep this up, aren't I?"

Kate smirked. "Hot showers are your friends. Also backrubs if you can con someone into ti."

"Dunno about backrubs," Sparkle admitted, wrinkling his nose a little. "I mean, I'd never say no to one, gotta love 'em and all. But I'm thinking hot showers are going to be the way it's going to be."

He drew another arrow, rolled his shoulders a bit, and took aim again.

"Can't win 'em all."

"Dream big," Kate said wryly. She eyed him. "Relax your hands a bit maybe?"

Though really she knew what it felt like more than what it looked like.

Sparkle glanced at her for a moment, raising an eyebrow, and then he shrugged it off and did as he was told.

"Like this, then?"

He actually, genuinely wanted to learn this, which was why he was taking lessons from Alec in the first place. Any pointers anybody had to give, he'd at least give a shot, even if he only tried it once.

"Like that," she agreed, feeling a bit badly. "Keeps your hands from getting so tired."

"Tired hands would probably suck if I had to do this for anything serious, huh?" With the way this island was, it wasn't like he'd even put that possibility out of mind entirely. "How many archers are there, around here? It's like every time I turn around there's someone right there that's handy with a bow."

"That, yeah. Also if you want to write or type or anything this weekend," Kate explained. "It's a really embarrassing reason for not having replied to email or something."

She considered the question for a moment. "I know Alec and Clint. And another girl who said she was learning. But I haven't met everyone so..."

"Could be more?" Sparkle grinned a little. "Between like you and Prof Barton and Alec, you could be training up an entire army of archers. Invasion protection squads up on the roof, picking off, like, I don't know... bears..."

Yeah. Bears was about the best he could come up with, since he was trying to focus on the target again. This time, instead of hanging on for dear life for far too long, he actually let the arrow fly.

Still not a bullseye, but he was getting closer!

She grinned back. "Nice! That one looked good."

"Bears? It couldn't be something cooler like ...rabid wolves or something? Aliens? But we so should do that. I don't know if the school would be okay with a whole army of archers-" she just liked saying 'army of archers.' It sounded awesome. "but I'd be okay with it."

"Oh, come on now. How are rabid wolves cooler than bears? These could be... I don't know... octobears. And then what would you do?"

Bears with tentacles. Yeah, that could happen.

"You stick around the island long enough, you'll stop worrying about what the school thinks about a bunch of people learning how to shoot arrows. Someone must have said something to you by now about how this place gets, right? It's always the crazy-assed students out there fending that junk off, you know."

"Shoot 'em in the eye," Kate retorted. "But octobears would be kind of awesome. Especially if they were giant octobears." How big were normal octobears? Who knew!

"Yeah, I heard stuff. And I know they let teachers teach fighting-" she gestured at this entire class "- but I figured the school trustees were really liberal or something."

Or maybe it was a Montessori school.

She wasn't too upset about fighting things though.

"I dunno. We have, like, classes about being friends. And like half of the students here probably have a body count or something. This place is different."

It was kind of a shame he hadn't been around when the students had their own reserves groups. It would be an excellent example to draw from to help elaborate the school's views on army building.

"People with a body count probably could use classes on friendship," Kate said, unable to resist comment. But she nodded. "Yeah. I noticed the different part. I just didn't realise that also meant octobears!"

Forgive her, she was pondering a bit here.

"And creepy psychotic British witches who like kitten plates and capital punishment," Sparkle intoned, matter-of-factly, as he reached for another arrow. "Who I guess was technically not really here as the god-queen of the island, since someone broke the... timey thing. I dunno what was up with that."

... Pretend that made sense, Kate.

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Improving Your Skills [Friday, 3rd Period]

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