Summoning and Gunfire

For Rin, learning to Summon was an accident with all the hallmarks of a proper recipe for disaster. He'd never managed it in the beginner class, under the watchful eye of an experienced exorcist, nor did he ever think to pursue it on his own time with the instruction of someone who knew what was what. Summoning was what Shiemi and Izumo did, and they were both brilliant at it. Rin could bash things in with Kurikara's scabbard and hilt and, if the fight went badly enough, he could slice a threat in two with the flaming blade of his heart instead.

He'd never needed to be a Summoner.

Then again, a fight had never yet gone quite this badly before.

The first thing to go wrong was the initial attack itself; they had been taken by surprise, a group of esquires alone and cut off from their teachers and exorcist superiors and not really expecting anything to leap out at them from behind a dustbin, a tree, the patch of shadow left by a burnt-out streetlight. It was, perhaps, thanks only to Rin's superior senses that nobody was slain in the first strike against them; there was just enough time between his uneasy declaration of a wrong feeling and the sudden eruption of chaos to sharpen their focus and, in some cases, begin to reach toward weapons.

It helped, but it hadn't been enough. Not really.

There were too many demons – dark, glossy-shelled creatures like the cross between a lobster and a beetle, blown up to the size of medium-large dogs and faster than a greased nekomata avoiding a bath. Worse, they were working together, and before the little group of esquires knew it, they had been separated into smaller groups, herded and harried apart from one another until they were out of eyesight and backed into corners, ensconced in their own fights yet worried for the lives of their unseen friends.

Rin hadn't waited long to pull his sword. There was no Konekomaru to strategize for him, no Bon to growl and grouse and scold him for jumping in too early; only Izumo and her twin kitsune spirits lashing out against the dozens of thrashing, clicking sets of claws and mandibles with spells and rites and the blessed alcohol the foxes seemed so fond of.

They seemed to be doing rather well at first. For a while Rin actually thought this might be easy, that they were mere moments from breaking through the swarming barricade of lesser demons and rushing off to rescue the others...

And then Izumo shrieked, short, sharp, and surprised. He whipped around just in time to see her collapse to the ground, slips of summoning paper scattering from her hands and pocket. The harvest gods dispersed in patches of pale, misty smoke, and the demon which struck the knockout blow loomed above her fallen form.

As per usual, Rin didn't stop to think. He hurled his sword at the threat, impaling it and setting it alight with blue fire at once. It staggered back, squealing at decibels generally not heard by human ears, and Rin pummeled his way to Izumo's side with Karikura's solid sheath.

And then the sheath was caught in a hooked claw and jerked from his grip, and his sword was still in a dissolving demon body which had flailed its way further yet from his reach, and Rin stood over an unconscious Izumo with nothing but his bare hands and a dangerous, burning power he could not yet fully control or trust.

His foot rustled something on the ground. He risked a glance, saw the slips of paper, and was hit by an inspiration which, were a wiser individual present and privy to his thoughts, would have been dubbed even more foolish than just letting his flames loose in the cramped confines of the alleyway corner and trusting them not to harm his friend or destroy anything too important.

There was no wiser person present, however, and so Rin felt no inhibitions whatsoever in reaching down and scooping up an alternative to the power said wiser persons constantly reminded him not to throw about so foolhardily.

The realization and decision took less than a second. It was mere moments work more to swipe his fingers across a thin graze on his cheek, smear the blood on the paper, and look up to see the armored demon-bugs bearing down on himself and his friend.

Though Summoning students were encouraged to find the words of their summons themselves – even to make them up on the spot or in experimentation – they were told never to do so in a panic, and especially never to do so in an uncontrolled situation, alone. In these kinds of situations, they were taught to stick to the summons they knew, those that were tried and true and which they surely could control.

Rin had never summoned so much as a coal tar before.

Between his lack of preparation and the sheer sudden panic of the situation, it was no wonder he screamed the first words which came to mind, heedless of what they might or might not draw out.

"GET YOUR SORRY TAIL OUT HERE AND HELP US NOW!"

Dark blue-grey smoke – no, not smoke, clouds – erupted between Rin and the demon horde and, with a rumbling sound like hundreds of massive taiko drums beat in discord, searing white forks of lightning struck out against the walls and ground. Rin's hair stood on end and the tuft on his tail bushed out like a cat's, and he dropped to the ground with a yelp as a crackling arc of electricity passed over his back.

"WHO DARES SUMMON ME WITH SUCH IMPUDENCE?" boomed a deep baritone voice, rolling and echoing between the close, high walls of the alleyway. Lightning continued to dance in wild arcs around a hulking dark form, and Rin could smell something strong and sharp which one of his teammates might have identified as ozone for him. Though Rin didn't realize it immediately, the lesser demons had all backed away and were milling about in chaos, caught between their determination to kill the young exorcist trainees and their justified terror of the deadly power crouched between them and their goal.

"Uh, yeah, that'd be me," Rin said, standing up and dusting his knees off and wondering if this was such a brilliant idea after all. "Hi."

The clouds seethed, roiling up into the air like a time-lapsed video Rin had seen once in a science class, and the lightning arcs grew more numerous and erratic, though none jumped out at him again.

"WHAT?" the voice boomed again as its owner shifted. It was turning around, Rin realized; he had been looking at its back the whole time. "A YOUNG THING? A CHILD, A WHELP, NOTHING BUT A—"

The demon then got its first good look at Rin, and abruptly froze. The clouds stopped churning, the sparks stopped flashing, and the demon stopped talking. Rin, for his part, was feeling pretty awed. While looking at its back, he'd gotten something of the impression of a mountain or a lump of rock, hulking and dark and a little hard to make out past all the bright flashes of light. Looking at it head on and without all those distracting arcs of brilliance dancing about, it hit Rin how very much not like a lump of rock this summoned demon was.

It was an eagle.

A massive eagle, twice as tall as Rin himself, all shiny dark blue-grey feathers and glowing white eyes and gleaming sharp talons and harshly hooked beaks...and, yep, two heads.

"Wow!" Rin exclaimed at last, grinning open mouthed and unconsciously lashing his tail in excitement. "You are so cool!"

The eagle seemed even further taken aback for a moment, but then it composed itself, and the lightning sparks began to flash across its feathers again.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, young prince, especially after the terms of your summoning." Both of its heads spoke as one so that the two voices melded seamlessly into a single strand of sound, still thundering even though the demon wasn't bellowing for once. "I am powerful, of a high echelon. Do you truly believe you can master me?"

"Do I have to? I mean, can't we just call this a favor or something?"

"If you want to live," the eagle said, bending closer and ruffling its wings up, "and if you want my aid...then yes."

Rin closed his mouth and narrowed his eyes, glaring with all his will straight into the eagle's doubled gaze. His tail stilled, and the fire on his forehead burned brighter than before.

"All right. Fine. I'm Okumura Rin, I'm half-demon, I'm gonna be the greatest Exorcist ever, and if you don't help me and my friends out of this spot I swear I'll kick your tail feathers myself."

Overall, after the hordes were demolished and everyone accounted for and injuries patched up and Ganda dismissed, an exhausted yet very self-satisfied Rin declared his first foray into summoning a roaring success and that perhaps it was more interesting a discipline than he'd initially thought it to be.

Yukio, newly arrived on the scene with other Exorcists determined to save everyone they could from the battle only to find it already over, declared him a roaring idiot and that he wouldn't be summoning anything without supervision for quite some time to come.


As it turned out, Rin and his friends weren't the only ones to be attacked by a sudden swarm of unusually coordinated minor demons. Little simultaneous strikes had sprung up all over Japan – indeed, all over the world – mostly concentrated in Exorcist hotspots. Academies, regional headquarters, even locations of historical import to the True Cross organization came under fire at the same instant, throwing command centers into temporary panic and uproar. Though the attacks were eventually beaten back on all fronts, there had been casualties – quite severe in some areas. The Esquires of Japan's True Cross Academy hadn't been the only group of trainees to fall under fire, after all; they had merely been one of the most fortunate despite their lack of rescue.

From then on, hardly a day went by without news of multiple incidents or unusually strong or relentless attacks somewhere in the world. Initially their cram school classes were cut back as teachers were almost constantly on call; more than once they barely got five minutes into a lesson before the professor's cell phone jangled off an alarm and he or she rushed out, sometimes tossing a reading assignment over a shoulder on the way, sometimes saying nothing but an abrupt "class dismissed."

Rin slowly became accustomed to his brother's cell phone going off and the light suddenly switching on in the middle of the night; it was on these occasions that Rin thought the situation must truly be dire, since the Exorcists were technically calling on a high school student on a school night.

Yukio never let him come along, no matter how he badgered and begged.

After a couple of weeks, they entered a cram school classroom to find not one teacher waiting for them, but all of them, including the Headmaster himself.

"The Order has called for an accelerated training program," Mephisto told them, sounding entirely too chipper about the whole fiasco. "It is an emergency protocol put into effect across all academies and training facilities founded by or allied with True Cross. Professors will work on a rotating schedule to ensure your competence in all the basics, followed by an apprentice system where you work with the teacher of a particular discipline directly in the field. You will be expected to keep up in the intensified classes as well as study and practice extensively on your own. Classes deemed superfluous to survival, such as histories and philosophies, have been cut for the time being, and your regular schooling has been put on hold under a variety of official excuses, to be resumed once the crisis is averted. We expect you to make your first true rank as an Exorcist in a single discipline within three months, so work hard! Later!"

The demon disappeared in a puff of purple smoke, leaving students and teachers to stare at each other across the room. All at once a number of phones erupted in alarms and most of the ranked Exorcists present dove for them in a cacophony of groans, sighs, and annoyed tuts, squeezing out the doors behind the Esquires and taking off down the richly decorated hall beyond.

Those few remaining exchanged glances and nods, and thus began one of the most hellishly rigorous gym lessons of Rin's life. He all but dragged himself back to his dorm, tufted tail scraping the ground behind him, propped himself up against the sink long enough to brush his teeth, and collapsed into bed. Dimly he registered Yukio's bunk as still being empty despite the late hour, and assumed that yet another emergency had cropped up, or the first one was running long – it wouldn't be the first time Yukio returned long after Rin started snoring. He would just have to complain to his brother about this new accelerated program and its effects on muscles he usually didn't worry about in the morning.

When Rin woke up, it was to a knock on the dorm room door. Yukio's bed was still empty and as crisply made as it had been the previous night.

An Exorcist Rin only vaguely recognized as a teacher in the Academy stood outside. Rin took one look at the man's face and knew he wouldn't like whatever was about to come out of his mouth.

"Okumura Rin? I'm sorry, but your brother has been severely injured in the line of duty."

Rin's mouth went dry.

"He has been hospitalized, and is in a coma."

His throat closed up.

"The doctors are uncertain when...or if...he will wake up."

And for a moment, just a moment, Rin could swear his heart stopped. Beating. Completely.


Rin skipped the morning session of cram school and didn't care. He even forgot the aches and pains inflicted by the previous afternoon's session – at least, he forgot them as much as he was able, limping a little awkwardly as he was down the sterile black-and-white tiled hallways of the special Exorcists' ward of the True Cross Hospital.

It didn't take him too long to find Yukio, and when he did he stood stiff as a board beside the bed, staring until the image was imprinted on his retinas, showing up as fuzzy blobs of glowing negative colors every time he closed his eyes for longer than a blink.

Yukio had always been the calm one, the one in control of himself at all times. Yet for all that, he'd always slept...well, not as wildly as Rin, who could in the course of a night's sleep tie his sheets in veritable knots. Yukio never quite managed the mouth-agape-limbs-spread-eagle positions Rin usually found himself in, but he still showed some life in his dreaming. He twitched his arms and legs, rolled from side to back to side, wriggled into more comfortable positions, sometimes even murmured nonsense in his sleep, much to Rin's amusement when he managed to catch his little brother in a nap.

This Yukio obviously wasn't sleeping, flat out on his back with dull arms laid too perfectly at his sides. His eyelids weren't twitching, his lips weren't moving, his head wasn't turning to the side as he sought a more comfortable spot in his pillow. An IV dripped clear liquid into his arm from a nearby stand, and a breathing mask fed him a steady stream of oxygen. White bandages, stained pink in faint spots here and there, wound around his head and peeked out from underneath his pale blue hospital gown.

By the time Rin returned to the dorm it was noon. He listlessly fixed himself a tasteless and frankly overcooked lunch, more to appease the noisy rumbling of his stomach than out of an actual desire to eat.

Then he found himself back in his room – his and Yukio's room – and there he felt more truly lost than he had at Yukio's hospital bedside.

He purposely mussed up Yukio's covers, hoping it would make him feel better.

It didn't.

And then, very suddenly, a thought occurred to him. It was a thought born of loss (for while Yukio wasn't really dead a coma he might not ever wake from was practically the same thing) and thus perhaps not the most logical or well-structured thought one could have, but it was powerful and possible (far more possible than simply telling Yukio to wake up and seeing it immediately be so) and so he embraced it fully.

Rin rifled through Yukio's cupboards and desk and drawers until he found what he was looking for: a cardboard shoebox, heavy and clanking. This he set on Yukio's bed and opened up.

Ammunition greeted him first. Dozens of spare clips, lined up and stacked neatly in the box, always ready to restock the stash Yukio carried on his person whenever he wore the black coat of an Exorcist. These Rin shoveled almost carelessly out of the way, dumping metal cases across the rumpled blanket in search of what he knew was stored beneath it all, out of the way but still available –

There. One spare black Exorcist's pistol, less fancy than Yukio's current guns (the guns kept with Yukio's other things by the hospital) yet of the same general make. Yukio kept it for its sentimental value, for it had been his first true gun and a gift from Fujimoto.

Rin turned it over in clumsy fingers, exploring the lines and levers of safety and trigger and the empty slot where a clip would be inserted – things he had seen Yukio operate dozens of times before, but had never paid much attention to himself. Still, he thought he understood the basics: insert bullets, point gun, pull trigger. Bam. Easy as 1-2-3.

With a lot of fumbling and a few false starts, Rin had a clip loaded. He stood up, grim-faced, shoved a few more clips and the gun into his bag, and headed out the door.


Shura wasn't slacking, exactly – she just figured that she wasn't really necessary in the afternoon Esquire super-training sessions. They may have been focusing on close-combat weapons – the domain of a Knight – but their more regular instructor had things well in hand. The only student there with any potential as a knight was the pink-haired kid, and she could always hammer him into the ground another day, after he got the bare-boned basics of block and counter-attack drilled into him this time.

Besides, her favorite student (not that it was much competition really) hadn't shown up in class that day. Shura was willing enough to give him a single freebie due to the circumstances, but tomorrow he'd join his classmates if she had to drag him in by the tail herself.

She was wandering the halls, just considering paying Yukio a visit (lackluster company though he may be at the moment) and seeing if she might run into Rin there, when an out-of-place noise drew her attention. It came from the indoor firing range, a loud bang even as it was muffled by padded walls and some distance. Her thoughts immediately flew to Yukio, but just as immediately she knew it wasn't him. That was definitely a pistol's shot, but even if Yukio had managed a miraculous recovery and hit up the firing range without bothering to tell her (she wouldn't put it past him some days) the silence afterwards stretched too long. Yukio always fired off bullets like they were going out of style – even when he practiced with a single gun rather than double the shots were nearly continuous, and the pauses to reload brief.

And so, curious as to who might be firing a pistol when the only people in the building should all have been in the gym getting their butts handed to them by sword and staff, Shura took a quick detour to the long room where she had so often competed with a certain young bespectacled Exorcist.

The image that greeted her eyes was so strange that she couldn't help but stare.

Rin. Rin in safety goggles and a headset. Rin standing in front of a simple stationary target lane, hissing curses as he struggled to reload a handgun, his fingers so clumsy and shaky that Shura knew they were going numb from the recoil. Spent clips were scattered in a little pile on a nearby bench, further proof of how long Rin must have been going at it, yet for all that, Shura saw only a scant handful of marks near and in the outer rings of the target.

Kid had sucky aim, she concluded, and then she saw why, for Rin had finally managed to load the gun properly and raised his arm to shoot again – his left arm.

"The hell ya doing?" she demanded, very loudly, striking a pose in the doorway with her feet spread at a balanced shoulder-width and her fists planted firmly on her hips.

Clearly some of her voice had gotten through, for he glanced briefly over his shoulder before performing a classic hand-in-the-cookie-jar double take. His eyes widened behind the goggles and his jaw dropped, and all in all he looked rather like that photo Fujimoto once showed her, the one of him being caught on camera with a dirty magazine spread open in his hands.

Shura flicked a hand toward her ear. Rin got the hint, reaching up to remove the headset and knocking the side of the pistol against the hard ear covering while he was at it.

"At least ya used those things," Shura said, moving further into the room and allowing the door to swing shut behind her. "Wouldn'a thought you'd be smart enough to."

Rin scowled.

"There's signs and posters everywhere," he muttered mutinously. "I can read, you know."

"Oh, so we just need a few more signs. Don't teach yerself to shoot unsupervised, or how 'bout Don't teach yerself to shoot with yer non-dominant hand first!"

"Everybody's busy, and I can't use my right."

Shura eyed his hand, but saw no injury or indeed any reason why firing a gun with it would be impossible.

"Why not?"

"Cause that's where Kurikara goes."

"So what? Ya think yer gonna run around shootin off one hand and slicin with the other? What in hell're ya thinkin?"

Rin shrugged mulishly and eyed the target off to his side, most likely in a bid to avoid Shura's gaze. She let him, taking the opportunity to get a slightly better look at the gun he held.

"That Yukio's?"

"...yeah. An old one. Well, old-er, I guess."

"An' what, ya just decided today that ya'd take it on a test run?"

He shrugged again and mumbled, "something like that."

His attitude, Shura realized, was much like that of many teens: a front for emotions he didn't really want to acknowledge in front of another person. And knowing this while knowing him, she thought she'd gotten something of a sense for just what those emotions might entail.

"You wanna do this, yer gonna work yer butt off for it, got me? Now c'mere, yer not holding it right."

Rin's response was to gape gormlessly at her.

"You wanna feel like Yukio's still with ya, fighting, right? If that's so, I can't stop ya. I ain't gonna try, either. But I can at least get ya properly started. Now take your stance an' we'll start fixin' up the mess ya make of yerself."

Shura was a swordswoman and a knight herself, but Fujimoto had once taught her the basics of working and caring for a variety of guns, perhaps in the hopes she'd follow his lead into the field of a Dragoon. However, gunmanship, like medicine, had never truly gripped her interests, and so she knew little beyond those basics. Once she had corrected Rin's grip and given him a few generalized pointers on aiming, reloading, and dealing with the recoil, he would mostly be on his own. Nevertheless, she managed to keep up a more-or-less steady stream of advice and instruction, as well as warnings meant to keep his expectations from soaring too high.

"Chances are, you'll never be the sort of crack shot yer brother is, especially working with yer off-hand an' dividin' yer attention between this and a sword, an' that's not even mentioning the years training he's got on ya. So don't expect perfection. Just get good enough to give yerself an' yer teammates a chance, an' that's good enough."

"I know; I'm not a genius like him. He's got bullets...I don't even know what they do." Rin paused to steady his arm and fire; the bullet clipped the far left edge of the target. He huffed and adjusted his aim. The second attempt went into the top right corner instead.

"Keep it to the standard stuff, then. Lead, iron, holy water. Listen to that little guy, the one with the glasses and brains – he'll tell ya what and when to shoot or slice or stand back and let the Arias and Tamers deal with."

"I can summon stuff—"

"Real Tamers, who focus on it an' know what they're doin'. Ya wing summonin' like yer tryin' to wing shootin' and like ya've always winged everythin' else. Bad ideas all around, kid; it's a wonder yer not already dead."

"I know, I know, I already got this lecture from—"

Rin stops, grits his teeth, and fires very wide, ruining his streak of shots that actually hit the target somewhere. His next two attempts also go wide, and when the trigger releases nothing but an empty-sounding click, Shura stops him from reloading.

"How long ya been in here?"

"Dunno," Rin says, looking around for a clock. "What time is it?"

"When I got here? 'Bout four, little after. Can't be too much later'n that."

"A few hours, then."

"S'plenty for now. Pack it up, short stuff; ya got emergency field medicine tomorrow followed by mass memorization of some broad-purpose chants. Gotta get yer brain some beauty sleep; God knows it needs it."

Rin groaned deeply.

"I hate that stuff! Can't I just skip out to practice more in here?"

"No," Shura said firmly. "Ya skipped today, an' that's bad enough since it was close combat sessions, what with that bein' yer focus, scatter-brained as yer gettin' lately. 'Sides, field med's important stuff; gotta know what t'do when there's not a Doctor in sight an' yer buddy's bleedin' out or comin' up all poxy. Panic or do the wrong stuff, and he's dead. Do it all right and quick like they'll be teachin' ya, and he might live. So ya better pay attention!"

"Yeah, I get it."

"Then after lunch I'm yankin' ya from the chantin' class for some quality Knight an' Flame trainin' time. Seein' as it's a miracle you've memorized yer own name an' address as is, I see no point in tryin' to force psalm an' verse into yer concrete noggin. Sides, ya owe me remedial work an' lots of it."

Shura's grin actually made Rin momentarily question whether he was supposed to be happy about missing Aria class or not. Being forced to memorize and recite nonsense on demand might actually be the lesser of two evils.

The next evening, Rin truly believed this was so, though it was too late for anything but regrets then.

Within a couple of weeks, Rin and Shima, as Knights in training, were more often in the field with Shura and other fully-fledged Exorcists than in the classroom, and Rin found himself learning more about demons and what killed them than he'd ever managed to remember from reading assignments and tests. One day, a month into their accelerated apprenticeship, Rin purposefully set fire to the very tip of Shima's staff at will, and quenched it the same way once the massive Ghoul they were fighting was dead. It wasn't until the next morning that Rin remembered how he'd struggled to light and control a candlewick's flame, and for an instant he wondered if he recognized himself anymore.

He later wondered if Yukio would recognize him.

Probably not, he decided as he gripped the hilt of the sword sheathed over his shoulder, firing at an oncoming rush of hobgoblins and actually managing to hit about as many as he missed (their numbers and close proximity to one another helped, to be honest). They drew closer yet and for once Rin anticipated Shura's command, holstering the gun, drawing his blade, and igniting Shima's staff as the three of them stepped up in front of the two Arias and the Tamer/Dragoon of the group. Weeks and weeks of rushing here and there as a Demon Attack Response Team had ground a few basic tactics into Rin's brain, though he still wasn't really leader material. He didn't rush ahead on his own, didn't do anything too stupid or cocky (often), and flailed about far less than he once did while wielding his sword.

No, Yukio probably wouldn't recognize him when he woke up (and he would wake up).

But maybe, hopefully, he'd be proud of how far his big brother had come.


AN: This started off as something very brief and fairly light. Then it just expanded on me, and I couldn't stop it. It was inspired by a thought that occurred to me recently: Rin's stated long-term goal is to become the Paladin. Now, assuming they don't just give him the position for raw heroism in whatever grand plot the manga is heading for (which just sort of seems like a bad idea overall) and assuming he's actually meant to have a chance at making it (somehow, after a lot of growing up most likely), there's one little requirement he's going to have to fill: the Paladin must have mastery in at least three of the five disciplines of Exorcism.

I cannot see Rin taking on Aria or Doctor, given how much book-learning goes into each, unless something changes drastically in canon.

As such, this is my wildly-off-the-wall interpretation of how he just might start learning two other disciplines in addition to the Knighthood bit.

Cheers, all!