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Description: There's one thing about Danny the portal accident definitely didn't change. Suggested by beesinmydrawers.
Archery
Danny was terrible at archery.
Always had been, and with every day it looked more and more like he always would be. He could miss even a still target by a wide margin. Forget about moving ones - he was more likely to accidentally shoot himself than he was to hit anything moving.
It was something Sam and Tucker teased him about sometimes. That was fine; he'd teased them about things they were bad at too. They were friends, it was okay.
Unfortunately, it was something that almost everyone who saw him shoot teased him about too. And he was not nearly as okay with that.
Now, Casper Mining Academy's primary focus might have been on, well, mining, but there were still classes on weaponry and fighting. It would be downright cruel to send kids out without teaching them those things. So every day after lunch, the students would file into the gymnasium and learn or practice various aspects of self-defense. Hand-to-hand combat, sword fighting, using surroundings to your advantage, fighting in low light - all kinds of things that would be useful in cave systems were covered. But every once in a while the students would shuffle out onto the lawn in back of the school and practice archery.
Today was one of those days.
Danny had been quietly groaning from the moment their teacher announced that they would be doing archery today to the moment she told them all to "shut up and start shooting!" He picked up a bow and a quiver of arrows as though they might bite him and found a place to shoot in between Sam and Tucker. Maybe one of them would be nice enough to plant a couple arrows on his target so he wouldn't get yelled at in front of the entire class for his "pathetic aim".
But from the smirk Tucker gave him, he guessed that wasn't going to happen.
Reluctantly, Danny pulled out an arrow and fitted it to his bowstring. He pulled back, feeling the string tense under his fingers, and tried to aim the arrow at the target in front of him. Who knew, maybe archery was one of the things he'd gotten better at since the portal accident, like running.
Danny released the arrow. It flew forwards, zooming towards his target - and straight over it, into the woods.
Apparently the portal accident hadn't improved his aim after all.
He loaded another arrow and tried again. And again. The most any of his arrows did was nick the corner of the target, and only barely at that.
"Fenton, you're aiming for the target, not the trees!" the coach bellowed as yet another arrow disappeared into the woods. A couple of the nearby students snickered at that - thankfully Dash was on the other side of the field, sinking arrow after arrow into the middle of his target.
"This sucks," Danny said. His quiver was half-empty now, and he needed to get some of the arrows into the target unless he wanted to become another example of how not to shoot a bow and arrow in front of the class.
"Mind helping me out here?" he asked Sam. She smirked, sent an arrow flying into the almost-center of the target, and said, "Figure something out on your own."
Danny sighed and shot another arrow. This one missed the target by almost a foot and went whizzing into the bushes.
Damn, if he kept on like this, he'd be hunting for arrows in the woods while the others were pulling theirs from targets again.
"What, finally find something your powers can't help you with, dude?" Tucker gloated. Ever since Danny had beaten him at running track after the accident, he'd been looking for a chance to beat Danny at something physical.
Danny was pretty sure Tucker was right; archery was something that being half-Enderman couldn't help him with. After all, it wasn't like archery was something helped by having long limbs, or being able to tell when people are looking at you, or teleporting.
Teleporting.
Danny smirked and pulled another arrow out of his quiver, loading his bow but not pulling back the string. Sam and Tucker exchanged nervous glances, wondering what Danny was up to.
Danny could tell no one was looking at him right now, and a quick scan of the field showed no one likely to look at him; all the other students were focused on their respective targets, and the coach was watching as Dash tried to send an arrow into another arrow already lodged in the target.
Danny focused his attention back onto the target, rolling the wooden shaft of the arrow between his fingers.
With a still-unpleasant jolt, he teleported himself straight in front of the canvas-and-wood target. He quickly jammed the arrow into the canvas target, near the edge so no one would think it was too suspicious, and teleported back to his spot in the line of students. The whole thing took only a second or two, and the only signs it had happened were the arrow lodged in the target and a barely-visible trail of purple particles leading from the target to Danny.
Danny could feel the coach's eyes on him now, and winced. Had she seen? Did she suspect? Silently, he prayed for the trail of particles to fade away faster.
"Fenton!" the coach called out. Danny turned around to face her. A couple people nearby turned as well, eager to see wimpy Fenton get mocked for missing the target again.
"Good job. I hope you'll keep improving like this; who knows, one day you may even be decent at it," the coach said.
The others who had wanted to see Fenton get yelled at were surprised, to say the least. When they looked at his target, and saw an arrow in it, a couple were downright shocked. After all, Danny Fenton was terrible at archery.
Danny himself was smiling. After all, it was pretty clever. But Sam's glare was enough to keep him from attempting the same stunt again, and at the end of class he still had only one arrow in his target.
Still, that was enough to keep the coach from using him as a bad example at the end of class when she told all the students what they could improve on. And that was enough for Danny.
"What were you thinking, Danny?" Sam demanded when classes let out for the day and the trio could talk without being overheard.
"What if someone had seen you, or even just suspected?"
"Well, they didn't, did they?" Danny retorted.
"But they could have. Just because no one saw today doesn't mean they won't the next time you try this."
"Sam, please. I'm not planning on doing this again."
She raised one eyebrow at him.
"Okay, maybe once more. Or twice. But I'm not planning on doing this every time!"
"Yeah, well, ever think it might be a good idea for you to actually practice your archery instead of figuring out ways to fake it?" Sam asked.
"Easy for you to say, because you've never had a problem with it," Danny said.
"She's right, man. What if one day you actually need to shoot something and you can't?" Tucker said.
"Come on, guys. I can teleport - "
"Oh, we sure know that," Sam said.
" - so when would I ever need to use a bow and arrow? I can just pop in, use a sword, and pop out," Danny finished.
"Fair enough," Tucker said.
"Still, you shouldn't have done it," Sam said.
"I know, I know. How about this: I promise to never use teleportation to cheat at archery again."
"Or anything else," Sam demanded.
"You're killing me," Danny complained.
Hi all! I've been busy with a lot of new projects lately, but some of your reviews have renewed my determination to finish up old fanfics I'm losing interest in.
...
...
No, it's not this one. I've been stalling on this fic because I felt compelled to write a oneshot of Danny explaining recent events to Tucker, or honing his powers, and it wasn't going to be fun to write.
But then I remembered, hey, this is a oneshot collection! Following a plotline in order isn't required!
So from now on I'll be writing and posting these in the order I'm inspired to write them - the above is a oneshot I wrote a while ago but hadn't posted because I was waiting until I'd written Danny with his powers in some kind of order, and I don't like to post author's notes as their own chapters.
That said, you probably won't see much in this for a while still. I'm trying to finish up one of my oldest stories, Sparks Among the Ashes, as well as drawing an original webcomic, running an (albeit not-very-popular) askblog, plotting an original novel, writing a long-chaptered fic I coauthor, and, oh yeah, going through another rigorous semester of college. Time permitting, I'll also begin working on a linear and long Danny Phantom/Hunger Games fic I've been wanting to do for a while and will be posting once the whole thing is done.
In the meantime, if you want more Danny Phantom fic, go check out the story Duality (by account DualityAU). I'm a coauthor, and have recently taken over as primary writer a few chapters into Part 2 (we write ahead), and I'm hoping to get it updating again soon.
Thanks for reading!
