Hi people how's it going? The author of Down Hill and Maple Story Book 1 is here to bring you: something else! Right, so this story is told in the first person and whatnot.

I don't own Maple Story or any titles, characters or microwave able dinners that belong to Wizet. Some people in here I own, but the NPCs mentioned in this story belong to Wizet.

I nocked an arrow into my bow and aimed at my target. Lining the arrowhead with the center of the target I let it go. Not hard enough, to say the least. My arrow stuck a god three inches from the bull's eye.

"You're never going to become a hunter with that kind of aim, you know." Someone said behind me.

"Shut up, Serah" I said as I turned around to face her. This would normally be the time to describe the girl standing before me, but no. I don't think I have that good an attention spa-.

"All I'm saying is that we are in the same class being taught by Athena Pierce, and I can hit bull's eye on the smallest target." Serah said.

"Maybe if I practiced all day like you I'd be able to as well!"

"Maybe if you practiced period, you'd be able to as well"

"Would you just get out of here? How am I supposed to improve if you're standing over me all the time?"

"You need to focus, and you nock the arrow too slow. I use a crossbow and I'm faster than you, Kyle. Kyle, are you listening to me?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah."

"Ugh! I give up!"

It worked.

I nocked another arrow and tried again.

"If you are going to survive in the world, you will need to be able to nock your arrows, aim, and shoot all in the same motion," Athena Pierce said, "to help practice this I bought a herd of captured stumps for you to fight. I want you to try to hit the stump in its eye, only taking four seconds to launch the arrow."

"How are we supposed to do it so fast?" my friend Artemis said.

"Don't believe it can be done? Ha, I'll show you!" Athena said. She did all that in, like two seconds or something. I wasn't really counting. "And to motivate you, you can't have lunch until you get it in at least six seconds. And you won't be going home until you master getting four" That jerk

A bunch of wooden fences had been erected to make rows for each of us to practice. We would stand at one end while the stump monsters slowly walk toward us from the other end. Luckily the animated stumps are only a little faster than regular ones.

On my first try I messed up and hit myself in the chest. The second time I lost grip of my arrow and it... sorta… kinda hit someone's foot. Of course Serah got it in five seconds on her first try, and hit the stump dead in its eye. I would be mad, but it was pretty funny watching the monster throw itself on the ground in pain and groan as it bled all over the place. I didn't even know stumps had blood, but you learn something new every day.

My third try went about as well as you'd expect, meaning I hit myself in the head as I went to nock my arrow. Long story short, I would have starved through lunch if it not for some dead guy being found in the stump pen. While all the other people were screaming about seeing a dead body, I was wondering who would be stupid enough to jump into an enclosed space filled with angry monsters. You know what, don't answer that.

You know what I just realized? Fruit baskets are awesome. I mean, if you just mail somebody a bunch of apples they'll be all "What the?" but if you put those apples in a basket they'll be like "Wow, that's nice" I think I'm gonna mail Serah an orange or something. I should like, hide behind a bush and see what she does. It'll be funny. Where was I? Oh yeah.

So this dead guy was apparently Athena's boyfriend or something so she was all freaked out and stuff. She must have been pretty shocked because she asked me to tell Chief Stan about this. Now, if you haven't gotten the picture yet, Chief Stan is the head leader of Henesys, where this story takes place. You probably figured that out, huh? I don't know, took me a week.

So I get to Stan and he asks me whom it is that died. I realized I had no clue. So I run back to the training ground to ask Athena. She said "Taze" through hiccups. I run back to Stan and he asks me to tell him what I know so he can write it down in an official document or something.

"Cause of death?"

"Stumps."

"Time found?"

"I don't know eleven twenty sevenish?"

"Name?"

"Kyle"

"No the body's"

" I knew that. Taze"

"How do you spell that?"
"Um… T-A-R-Z-E"

"There's no R in Taze"

"Uh… sure there is… it's a silent R."

"I'm just going to write T-A-Z-E okay?"

"Whatever suits you."

Here I'm going to insert a cliffhanger, just because I've got better things to do than write this. I don't really care if that was a really bad cliffhanger, if you were going to keep reading this in the first place a cliffhanger wouldn't really make a difference. Okay, I'm going to go do stuff now.