A/N: Sooo….Hi. First I ran out of ideas. Then I decided to finish up EarthBound to clear my head (awesome game by the way). Then summer school happened. Now school is back in session. Anyway, a few things here. After going back through my previous chapters, I decided to make a few slight edits and additions since my writing felt a bit too stiff for my liking. Second, I added the friendship genre as there's friendship somewhere in all the torture Robin goes through. xD
Asset: HP
Flaw: Skill
Robin groggily lifted his head from his work table as the sunlight filtered in through his tent.
It had been another long night drafting strategies. One of several in fact. In a row.
Robin sighed as he rubbed his eyes to clear his vision. This was one of the necessary sacrifices he had to make to keep the shepherds alive. Of course, this didn't mean he didn't hear about concerns over his health from the others. Chrom and Lissa in particular were insistent that he not overwork himself like this. Robin smiled a bit as he remembered Lissa demanded he take a break before she took him and Frederick to do "lazy training." He also remembered how Chrom forced him to settle some dispute or other between him and Vaike. For some reason, he couldn't remember what happened after something was shoved in his face.
Still rubbing his eyes, Robin exited his tent, intending to head to the practice area to wake himself up.
"Comin' at ya Robin!"
Instead he got a practice axe to the face that knocked him to the ground with little more than a bruise on his head and tears down his eyes from the pain.
"Gar har har! Robin, if you want to be the Vaike's pupil, you gotta do better than that!"
Robin decided to humor Vaike. "Oh darn. I guess I'll never be able to live up to the standards of the great Teach. Guess you'll have to stop trying to scout me." Robin sighed and shrugged dramatically to emphasize his point.
Unfortunately, Vaike, having the sensitivity of a rock at times, didn't catch the hint. "But that's what Teach is here for! To take potential pupils under his wing and train up up Vaike style so they can become almost as great as the Vaike!" Vaike punctuated the last part by proceeding to do several different flexes that Robin was sure he practiced in the mirror. "And you have a lot of potential my friend! Most people would be rather dazed after that hit, but you seem just fine!"
"Er…right. But ah…" Robin didn't have time for this. He had too much to do today. "I wouldn't want to take up all of your time. I mean, you're so great that you should teach your wisdom to as many people as possible. The more great pupils of the Vaike, the better right? In fact, I hear Donnel recently picked up an axe. Why don't you go give him a few pointers?"
Without another word, Vaike gave a nod of thanks and ran off to find the villager.
Robin resolved to apologize to Donnel later and make it up to him somehow.
With all the excitement with Vaike boiling over, Robin's vision was still rather fuzzy. He proceeded to jog to the training grounds in an attempt to wake up his body.
Arriving at the training grounds, Robin found Miriel burning some practice dummies with some excess tomes.
Robin walked up to Miriel with a hand lifted in greeting. "Hey Miriel! Are you up for a bit of sparring practice? Gotta wake up the ol' body!"
"Ah greetings Robin. Excellent morning is it not? In regards to your question, I find the engagement in combat simulation to create the sensation of muscle memory related thereof to be most agreeable."
"Er, that was yes right? G-great! Let's get started then."
Miriel however, would not an opportunity for knowledge go wasted. "Hold a moment Robin. What precisely did you mean by "waking up the ol' body"? Last I recalled, the status of your body was neither old nor aging. Could there, mayhaps, be another meaning to this particular phrase that I am not aware of?
Once again, Robin had to move things along due to lack of time. "Er, right. Listen, I'm in a bit of a rush today, so how about I tell you about it later?"
Miriel straightened her glasses and gave a curt nod. "That is acceptable. Promptness for a pre-planned engagement is of the utmost importance. Very well. Let us commence."
As the sparring match between Miriel and Robin dragged on, two thing became extremely clear…
Robin's aim was off and Robin was starting to feel like the bear meat they had last night. He was just lucky that he could take so much punishment.
After reeling from a particularly rough dose of fire magic, Robin called a halt to their sparring session.
Catching his breath for a moment, Robin surveyed the stretch of land that was unfortunate enough to be their battleground, Robin could see several smoldering piles of land that he'd have a great time explaining to Chrom and, more terrifyingly, Frederick. Despite the great knight's odd fondness for fire, he had zero tolerance for any sloppiness of the shepherds. Some form of punishment would probably be coming and coming from Frederick and that damning smile of his, that was an extremely scary thought. Flashes of mountains and mountains of weapons to shine with Frederick smiling the entire time flashed through his head. Robin shuddered involuntarily.
Having taken no damage during the entire session, Miriel was the first to speak up. "Robin, reviewing the flow of our sparring session shows that your attacks, while having superb timing and execution, shows an extremely underwhelming result in their accuracy. Is there something that ails you?"
Robin quickly collected himself. "Ah, it's nothing really. Just a bit of blurred vision from being overworked so much. It's been like this since this morning, but I'm sure it'll go away in time."
"Fascinating. Your explanation for your accuracy is that you are fatigued and your eyes need more time to revert to normal conditions, correct? However, observations of the other shepherds have yielded results that suggests that this condition fades upon the first few minutes of activity. This requires further testing and observation." Miriel then proceeded to ignore Robin and mutter to herself.
Listening to her muse to herself for a moment, Robin could hear the words "Trials" and "variables". This gave Robin a bad feeling, but he had to push those ill tidings away and get to the rest of his work for the day. "Thanks for the sparring lesson Miriel. I've gotta get to my work for the day. See you around." Seeing Miriel had become lost to the world, Robin shrugged and walked towards the war tent for a strategy meeting with Chrom and Frederick.
It had been a long day. Not only had Robin had to finish the huge mountain of work he had that day, but not only did he have to shine the weapons due to punishment for destroying the training area, but he also had to remove every pebble around the campsite; particularly those around Chrom. To say that this was exhausting was understatement. It was bad enough that he had to do the task in the first place, but to receive instruction on "the proper handling and disposal of pebbles" with the usual Frederick charm was a bit overkill in his opinion.
Robin sighed and entered his tent, ready to just flop onto his bed and forget about the events of the day.
Instead, he found several copies of Frederick's morale posters plastered around his tent.
"Gyaaah!" Robin could have sworn he felt his heart stop as he fell backwards in terror at the sight before him. Hyperventilating, Robin attempted to control his breathing.
"Fascinating results. Reaction to intensive enugh stimuli produces the expected reaction." Miriel emerged from behind Robin's tent writing in a notebook. "Enlighten me Robin: how many of the posters could you see clearly in the vicinity of your tent?"
"Miriel! What the heck did you do my tent?! How did you even get all of those posters anyway?!"
Miriel adjusted her glasses; completely unfazed by Robin's shouting. "Irrelevent. But since you inquire as to how I ascertained this poster, I stored it upon my discovery of the objects in my tent for use in possible experiments. More importantly, your response was very enlightening. Plural use of the word poster indicate multiple viewings. Further testing is required on the extraordinary condition of your eyesight."
Sighing, Robin just shook his head and steeled himself for the monumental task set before him. He was too tired to deal with Miriel at the moment and hoped that this would all blow over soon. Hopefully without any danger to his life; mentally or physically.
Unfortunately for Robin, this was Miriel he was dealing with.
Over the next couple of days, Robin was bombarded with several of Miriel's experiments that he could swear shaved a few years off his life every time it happened. Robin decided to draw the line when Miriel proceeded one day to throw figs at him (for some reason, this was the one that bothered him the second most) and went to the healers' tent to get his eyes checked like he should have done in the first place.
Waiting for him at the entrance was Lissa.
"Hey Robin! I heard about your recent...time spent together with Miriel and why you're here!" Despite Lissa sounding concerned for his well-being, It wasn't difficult to hear her doing a very poor job of holding back her laughter.
Due to the events of the past few days, Robin could only nod tiredly and walk into the tent.
As Robin sat down into the examination table, Lissa proceeded to get ready to do a checkup of his body.
"Oh, by the way Robin. Do you know what these are?" She proceeded to show Robin two small plastic circles balanced on her fingers. "We found them by your tent and holy wow are they amazing! They can make everything huge!"
A/N: So here's a super long chapter to make up for the long absence. I hope that it was up to the standards of my other chapters and that I made a decent portrayal of Miriel. Admittedly, I didn't know what direction this chapter would take, but it was a lot of fun to write! Anyway, any constructive criticisms are welcome as always!
