Survival

Cautiously, I picked up the metal object that was known as a gun. Ever since I had first seen one, I had been very anxious around them. It had taken down Arno and killed him. This was the weapon that had hit me twice during a battle. It was dangerous, and I was scared of it. Tobias wanted me to train with it, but I didn’t want anything to do with guns, really.

“Just keep this part pointed away from you, and it can’t do anything to you,” Tobias explained slowly, pointing at the tip where the bullets must come out.

“I really don’t want to do this,” I complained. My hands wanted to drop the gun, but I forced myself to hold on.

“I know, but you have to know how to use one. What if it’s your last option against a human. Life or death situation, and you don’t know how to use one?” he questioned, putting me in an awful situation. And that was exactly why I couldn’t put the weapon down. Just because it was unfamiliar didn’t mean I couldn’t master it. I took in a deep breath and held it closer, getting a good look at it while keeping the end facing away from Tobias and me.

“So what do I need to know?” I asked. Toby’s hands soon joined mine.

“This is where you hold the gun, and this is where the bullets are stored. When you reload, you need to change that piece,” he explained, moving his fingers to point to the appropriate places. “Bullets are forced out this hole, and over here is the trigger which is what you pull to make it fire. Hold it down and it fires multiple bullets continuously. And that’s pretty much the anatomy of it.”

“I still don’t like it,” I remarked with a bit of protest in my voice.

“Take aim at the tree with the blue target. Just pull the trigger once, a nice and short pull,” Tobias ordered, taking a few steps away from me. I took in a deep breath and raised the gun, pointing it in front of my face and aiming at the target. Then I moved it slightly, trying to adjust for the wind and the gravity, just like I did with my arrows. I pushed my finger against the trigger and quickly released it once I heard the loud bang. The shock rippled through my hands and down my arms, giving my quite a shock alongside the shrill noise. It was easy to see where the bullet had gone, as it left an obvious hole in the target. My shot had gone too high and off to the right.

“That’s strange. Why didn’t gravity pull it down, and the wind push it over, so it went straight?” I wondered, turning my head to face Tobias. He chuckled, moving closer to me again.

“That’s because bullets move too fast. That sort of thing doesn’t affect them, so you can disregard it. Just aim directly at your target when you have a gun and you should hit it,” he explained, shifting to behind me. “Here. Hold it back up…” Toby gently touched my hands and raised the gun so it was back to being level with my line of vision. His head was right next to mine, focusing intently forwards.

“Okay, that looks to be straight,” I told him. His finger curled onto mine and we pressed the trigger together. A bullet was released. This time the gun didn’t cause my arms to tremor as much, perhaps because of Tobias’ arms stabilising them or sharing the rebound affects. We lowered the gun slightly and saw the bullet was pretty much dead on with the target.

“Just like that. It’s really easy to get the hang of,” Toby said quietly, his hands leaving mine before he backed away. “Try again.” I did as I was told and fired multiple more shots, all of them hitting around the centre of the target. Then I seemingly ran out of bullets, as when I pressed the trigger, nothing happened.

“I broke it!” I exclaimed with a pout. Toby just laughed as he strode back over to me.

“Don’t be silly,” he muttered. “Now I just need to show you how to reload the gun. All of the guns we have work exactly the same way, and they’re based off the human’s design. If you can learn how to do this, you should be all right if you ever need to use one.” Tobias then grabbed a new casing full of bullets and showed me the quick steps that were required to change it to replace the empty one. It wasn’t that difficult at all, and once I had gotten the hang of the basics, Tobias moved on to more difficult training. Instead of simply aiming at one target and firing multiple times, he wanted me to move between targets, firing only one shot and hitting the bulls-eye. It was very challenging to aim it so quickly. I had to adjust horizontal and vertical positioning, and do it within a second to pretend it was a life or death situation. After I ran out of yet another casing of bullets, I sighed and lowered the gun.

“This is frustrating. I should stick to archery, I’m far better at it,” I grumbled.

“I’ve already told you why you need to know this, so come on, keep going,” Tobias ordered. I reloaded the gun and watched him out of the corner of my eye, seeing he was preparing a gun of his own. After I had discarded the empty casing, I walked back to the line that I had been standing behind and faced the trees again, ready to attempt it once more. “How about we have a little competition?”

“That’s hardly fair. There’s no way I can win!” I countered and Toby’s face broke out into his playful grin.

“All I ask is for a percentage higher than fifty. Do that and you win, and then we play dominos this evening,” he offered.

“Oooh… I like the sound of that,” I admitted eagerly. It had been all business lately, with only focusing on training and never relaxing together, as friends. Having a moment like that might be a nice change.

“But if I win…” he began and I rolled my eyes.

“What could you possibly want?” I sighed.

“Then you have to clean my room instead,” Toby replied with the cheekiest voice ever. I glared at him.

“You’re joking.”

“Just trying to have some motivation for you to do well,” he shrugged, raising his gun and taking aim at a target.

“So how does this competition work?” I asked as I held my own gun up to face the poor trees.

“I shoot a target, and then you have to shoot it straight after. If you don’t hit it, or don’t do it quick enough, that’s a point to me,” Toby explained. “You have to see the movement of the bullet, then aim and fire there too. It’ll test everything.” I sighed a little, knowing this would be very demanding for me. Nonetheless, I readied myself and waited for Tobias’ first shot. It went in the tree directly in front of us which was the one I was already aiming at, so I hit that one straight away. I scanned the other trees, awaiting his next move. Suddenly he hit the one on the far left, so I quickly moved my arms and fired at the low target. I barely missed it. We continued on until we were both out of bullets, and I knew my percentage would be close to fifty. I had lost count as I was focusing so hard, but I knew Toby would have kept track.

“So?” I asked warily as I set my gun down on the tree stump. Toby joined my side and placed his there too before turning slightly to face me.

“About forty percent…” he trailed off and I hung my head. Damn! Now I had to clean his stupid room… “Was the amount you missed.” My head flicked back up and I glared at his mischievous smirk. Oh he was proud of that trickery!

“Jerk!” I said with a grin, shoving his arm as he laughed hard at me.