[TartoonHand94]

And nope, no way around this one. Pit had to laugh this time. He couldn’t stop it. It showed unannounced and despite his best efforts to stifle it, it was too late. It was out there in the open and everybody heard it.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just, it's just”
Pit tried to explain amidst his panting attempts to stop laughing.


“It’s just that there’s always, Always one rookie who gets Arrow-Wing on their first day of training!”
He blurted with another bowl of laughter.
“And everybody who’s not a noob just waits to find out which one it is!”
“It’s like a rookie’s “coming-of-age mistake!”
He explained as he wiped a tear.
His childish laughter continued until he remembered He was the one who got Arrow-Wing on his first day of training too.
This seemed to be enough to finally calm him down.
He then offered his hand to help her up like an honest gentleman.


“Okay okay so, here’s how you stop being a wing-noob: Think of your wings.”
Pit clued, finally wearing his serious teacher’s face again.

“They should either be closed like this, ”
Pit turned around to show Arle one safe position for wings to be when pulling back an arrow.
“Or open like this.” He then spread them straight back instead of wide to his sides, showing the position mostly used during flight.
“Like this, or this, or this, or this.”
Pit rappidly flapped his wings back and forth between both poses, possibly just to show off his wing muscles.

[/font][/div]

[Mari]

Arle leered in frustration at Pit. What was so funny about mishandling a deadly weapon? That really hurt! " . . . I don't know what noob means, but it doesn't sound flattering." Arle lamented, awkwardly holding her wing as she watched Pit. She was feeling pretty bitter about these stupid wings of hers. Ugh. There had to be a better way to fly than growing wings. There just had to... And then, just as Arle was starting to get really frustrated with this bow, she turned her head and noticed something nice.

"Oh hey--I hit the target!"

[TartoonHand94]

“...Well I’ll be waxed.”
Pit gasped, impressed to find the Arrow-Wing arrow made its way home after all.

“Well congratulations Arle!”
Pit congratulated with a pat on the back between the wings.

“See what a little posture and technique can do?”
He reminded her as he proudly inspected the arrow in the target.

“That’s just the first of a whole bunch of hits we’re gonna get in before the day’s done!”
He coached with encouragement, handing her another arrow.

“Now let’s see you do that again, on purpose this time.”
“Remember to think of your wings.~”

[Mari]

Arle gently released her wing and awkwardly flexed it a bit. "It's kind of hard not to when they're stinging so much." she remarked rather flatly, daintily curling her wings behind her and once again taking a familiar stance. She held this stance for a very long moment before releasing the bow. For someone so 'lithe', Arle really didn't seem at all hindered by her lack of muscle mass. Those tiny arms evidently possessed a lot of strength. This afforded the arrow a lot of stopping power and more accuracy, once again striking the target dead on, albeit close to the edge. Arle began fitting another arrow into the bow. "This seems a little slow compared to most of the ways I fight." Arle would lament, quietly pondering if perhaps the magic bow would eliminate the relatively long reloading period.

[TartoonHand94]

Pit studied Arle as she took her stance, curling her wings out of the way of her bow string. He looked her up and down, nodding at every little thing that she was doing right. 

There was something captivating about the way Arle held the bow. Watching a girl use a bow wasn’t actually a familiar sight for Pit.
Beside himself in the mirror, he was much more used to seeing squat little Centurions handling bows of various sizes. Some compact, some larger than the wielders themselves.
As light as the arrows were, the bows themselves were often quite heavy.
The stocky soldiers sure looked strong enough to handle them, but it never crossed Pit’s mind if a girl could hold one or not.
Lady Palutena occasionally crafted bows, Pit’s favourite bow happening to be one of them, but he couldn’t recall ever seeing her use one herself in battle.
Then again, Pit knew plenty of powerful women who were nowhere near as muscular as the men he knew.
So by that logic it should have come to no surprise that Arle could handle a bow as well as she did.
But if that wasn’t the surprise, then what was it about Arle that Pit couldn’t look away from? Lady Palutena would probably look just as pretty wielding a bo-

It wasn’t until he heard the arrow hitting his target that Pit snapped out of his contemplation and remembered the rest of the world around Arle.

“Oh uh yeah, that’s true. It is pretty time consuming...”

Pit agreed, with a shake of the head to break the monotony of his nodding.

“But one way you’ll know you’re getting good at them is being able to reload faster.”

He coached encouragingly.

 

“Thanks to Lord Dyntos, the Palutena Bow-And and the Hawkeye Bow,

and a lot of bows like them are way faster to reload.”

Pit mentioned, embarrassed by the fact that he thought of the Palutena bow before the Hawkeye Bow he was training Arle for.

“But you gotta learn how to reload a normal bow so that a sacred bow doesn’t spoil you.”

He got back into his groove by quoting something his coach told him back in his archery training.

[Mari]

...Arle could swear she felt eyes on her back, but the pain in her wings was distracting her. Normally she'd be more aware of being admired, but ... ah well. "...I guess I should just be grateful I'm being allowed to use gloves then. Those are what's really saving me the pain. I can tell this string would hurt to pull with my bare hands." Arle lamented softly, not quite sure how the strung bow would compare to the unstrung one. She once again pulled out an arrow and fired it, trying to resist the urge to let her frustrations distract her. It was too easy to become distracted when she was in this form, but thankfully it was also easy to tunnel vision in one what she was doing. Arle begins pulling out arrow after arrow and firing them off. ...And she's hitting most of her shot! Given, the target is quite large and she's not quite getting bullseyes, but still!

...And then she went back to reach for an arrow and found herself wanting. She clutched awkwardly at the air for a moment before realizing she'd run out.

[TartoonHand94]

“And speaking of reloading.” 

Pit chuckled in understanding.

“Dingalingaling!~ Arrow break!” 

He announced imitating a school bell.

“Since we… sigh. Still got a while to go before lunch,”

Pit lamented as he checked the time.

“We can get right back to training as soon as you're done picking up all the arrows.”

He proposed, comfy in his place of authority.

“I'll be waiting right here.”

[Mari]

Arle hesitated a moment to consider Pit's words. He --... He wanted her to pick up the arrows she had already fired? She wondered if Pit realized just how exhausting it was to hold this form at all. She glanced up at the sun, just sort of gauging the time of day from it's position in the sky. "...Alright. But uh--I don't know how long I can hold this form. I've never tried to hold it any longer than a couple of hours and things can get ugly pretty quickly when I strain myself in it. " Arle explained rather lamely as she went about collecting the various arrows. She remembered the time she'd violently faceplanted mid-stride after straining herself trying to protect Viridi and Schezo. She'd lost consciousness outright! Power like this ought not to be used lightly, which made her feel concerned about the tedium of their current training. "Y'know, I wonder why more people don't help out around here. This place provides food for all the life sphere, but it seems like Jack's the only one growing anything." Arle then went on to muse aloud. ....Perhaps she could tap some of Viridi's nature magic to get some work done? She couldn't do that in this form though... Maintaining it required far too much of her concentration. Spell speech would disrupt it very quickly.

[TartoonHand94]

Pit meant no harm by this practice.
Picking up your own bow was something Skyworld archers in training had to do since Pit’s days at the academy.
It taught discipline and respect for each arrow, plus it motivated rookies to learn to hit the target.
The fastest place to pick your arrow up from was always the target.
He never got to train a girl, let alone a human before, but he figured if he was gonna, he was gonna teach her the way they taught him.


“...”

But as stern as Pit was trying to be, he wasn’t as heartless as his coaches.
Having dangerous limits on certain powers was a thing Pit could sympathize all too much with.
Watching her bend over and pick up each arrow, Pit’s couldn’t help but wonder if it even was the right thing to make a girl do this work at all.

[Mari]

While Pit was debating whether it was right to put a girl like Arle through the same trials as his centurions, Arle quietly finished collecting the arrows. She seemed to handle it alright, but that was the thing about her transformation. It never got ugly until it got really ugly. An Arle who couldn't maintain something resembling composure was an Arle that was going to violently return to normal form. Arle proceeded to move back to Pit and present the arrows to him rather superficially. "...Alright. I think this is all of them. What now?" she asked rather innocently. The impending threat of disaster didn't seem to bother Arle all that much. It was probably not an immediate risk, needless to say.

[TartoonHand94]

There was something that relieved Pit that they got through that without any fuss.
He couldn’t imagine someone like, say Viridi, picking up even one arrow without a boatload of sass.

“Excellent. Back to work then.”
Pit commended with a stretch.

“Let’s see, we’ve gone over Stance, Arm Position, Arrow Wing,
...Say I don’t think your friend over there has had a shot yet.”
Pit turned his attention over to Archan, whom he had just remembered was even there.

“Hey um… Sorry what was your name again? Archie?”
Pit called over to Archan
“Wanna take a turn to learn?”

[Mari]

"Zzz... All o'ver the place..."

It seemed Archan was still asleep. Arle looked over to Archan, "Oh yeah--She likes bows, but she didn't think you could shoot one without a string. I guess she wanted to be proven wrong." Arle explained, moving over and nudging Archan with her foot, rolling her over in the process. The smaller girl's eyes fluttered open. and she hopped to her feet, brushing herself off. "Huh?? What are you doing?" Archan demanded. "It's time for you to shoot. C'mon..." Arle requested somewhat impatiently, folding her arms. Archan looked to the target and then back at Arle and Pit, smirking knowingly. "...Booooring. I'd rather play target practice with you~" Archan remarked, pulling up her bow and taking aim. Arle raised her arms combatively. "Don't you dare." Arle warned in annoyance. " . . . Yeah, whatever. It's a lot funnier when you're not expecting it anyway~" Archan relented, though a note of mischief was left in her tone. She moves to take aim at the target and promptly popped off a couple of shots, each one hitting with extreme accuracy. It seemed effortless for her. " . . . "

[TartoonHand94]

“Hey hey! Knock it off you two!”
Pit ordered, getting in between the bickering girls.
“Save it for VS mode! This is Training.”
He said with a straightened face.

“Look, we’re all here so I can teach you two how to use the Hawkeye Bow.
And before I can start that, I need to teach you how to use a regular bow.”
He reminded them in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Because there’s nothing more dangerous than such a sacred and powerful weapon being wielded by someone with no experience or fundamental understanding of how it-”
Pit continued to lecture before being cut off by Archan’s bow bulls eyes.






“…Works for me.”
He shrugged.

[Mari]

Archan promptly spun around and pointed a bow right between Pit's eyes with alarming accuracy. "I was born knowing how to use a bow! But I can show off a little more for you if you want~ What as that about a versus mode~?" she remarked rather sassily. A thoroughly annoyed Arle leered at her in response. "Stop showing off. This is going to take forever if you keep scaring everyone by pointing bows at them." she remarked, earning a rather smug sneer from Archan. "It must feel bad, getting shown up by a little girl like that~" she remarked. " . . . At some point here being stupid is going to start hurting you." Arle remarked rather flatly.

[TartoonHand94]

Pit flinched before reassembling a stern stance toward Archan’s bow.
He had dodged countless turrets of enemy fire in his day, and remembering that was the only reason he hadn’t cowered behind Arle.

“Just like Pitoo, this one.”
He rolled his eyes and lolled his head.
“Welp it looks like you’re both up to speed on basic archery.”
Pit shrugged, rummaging through his things.
“But I’m not really sure if Anarchy-Archan over there‘s ready for this next part.”
He warned as he pulled out another bow.
It looked like a modern bow with pink padding to it except curiously enough, this one lacked a string.


“It takes a lot of patience, meditation, a heightened sense of spirituality and other big words like that to harness the power of a sacred bow.”
He advised as he held his bow with solemn reverence.

After a meditative pause to focus, Pit broke the silence with a quick trick spin of the bow in his hand.
Stopping the bow in place on a dime, He pulled back across the neck of the bow and an arrow illuminated into existence.
Along with the arrow, a luminescent bow string now became visible.
Pointing the arrow at the target using all the tips he gave to Arle on full demonstration, he let the arrow loose at the target.

The arrow zoomed straight toward the target and…wait, not straight… it began curving! Upward!
The arrow changed direction into an upward arch upon leaving Pit’s bow, narrowly missing the target.
The pointed trail of light formed a looping arch across the sky before coming down teasingly close over Archan’s head and impacting bulls-eye on the target.
All that was left of the arrow was a burn mark on the target.
After clenching his fist in satisfaction as if he himself was impressed that fancy trick worked, Pit smugly glanced back to Archan, believing he had made his point.