Yume moved as quietly as she could towards the kitchen, peeking in through the window while making sure not to be seen herself. She spotted her target with his back towards her working at a cutting board at the kitchen counter no more than thirty feet away from here.
Slowly standing up Yume drew one of the blunted practice arrows and aimed squarely in the center of her senpai's back, so that even if he moved slightly or a breeze picked up, she would still make the shot. From this close and with the target unprepared, it was an easy shot that any Hunter could have made.
However, this target was no ordinary prey.
The moment Yume started to draw her arrow, her senpai started to lift his arm, and just after she released the arrow he quickly moved the hand holding the kitchen knife to his shoulder, using it to cover the spot on his back that Yume had been aiming for. Yume's shoulders and face fell as she heard the soft dink of the blunt arrow hitting the knife and bouncing off. Her senpai had deflected her sneak attack without even looking around.
"Not a bad attempt. It would have worked on just about anyone else." Her senpai said, turning around to look at her out the window. "Breakfast will be ready in a few. Would you mind waking up the others?"
Yume's lips trembled before she gave a short cry and drew a second arrow. "Yume want her wolfy!"
"Yume is never going to be able to hit senpai, is she?" Yume said as she sank into her chair at the kitchen table.
"Alone? Probably not. I can count the number of people who might be able to get a hit on me in single combat in this city on one hand. However, I don't have unlimited stamina, and I only have two hands. Your chances get better with numbers." Shirou told her.
"Yume just wants her wolfy." Yume whined.
"Perhaps later. I doubt there is any room for it in the dog house. Not after last night." Shirou joked, thinking about how the girls were now shunning the boys after they had tried to peek while the girls had been bathing. It was a good thing that Mimori didn't decide to blow them all to hell. Otherwise Shirou would have just wasted three nights preparing armor for a few piles of burnt flesh. There situation wasn't helped by Ranta's refusal to apologize for his actions.
"Yume wouldn't make Wu-chan stay in a dog house! Wu-chan will sleep cuddled up with Yume!" Yume objected, not seeming to get the joke. Shirou couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the fact that the girl had already chosen a name for her future animal companion.
"It's a little early for yelling, isn't it?" Rin said as she entered the room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her hair was still down, and she was dressed in her dark night gown. A few stray bits of hay were stuck in her hair and on her clothes. Given her tired expression, she was likely there for her morning tea, which Shirou already had waiting for her by the fire. "Is something the matter, you look a little down?"
"It's nothing." Yume said with a small shake of her head. "Yume is just sad because senpai promised her that he would buy Yume a wolfy if anyone could get a hit in on him during practice, but senpai is just too strong for Yume. She tried a sneak attack this morning, but it didn't work. Yume is starting to feel like it is impossible."
"Archer, did you promise a girl something knowing would won't have to pay up?" Rin said, giving Shirou the kind of scowl a mother gives to a naughty child. "I can't believe I was gone for one week and you turned into the kind of despicable person who would tease an innocent young maiden like that."
"It was supposed to motive her." Shirou said, feeling a little awkward about the subject all of the sudden.
"That promise meant a lot to Yume, and know she has to face the fact that you might never even had meant it." Rin said as she walked straight up to Shirou putting her hands on her hips and looking right into his face, forcing him to look away. "You clearly don't understand girls at all, do you Archer?"
"Clearly I don't." Shirou admitted weakly.
"You're impossible, and it is too early for me to be dealing with you." Rin said with a tired sigh. "Where's my tea?"
"It's already prepared. Just let me get it for you." Shirou said, glad for the excuse to turn away from the woman.
He really shouldn't have turned his back on her.
Shirou's world exploded as something hard hit him right in the side. Air was knocked out of his lungs and a pain so sharp flooded through his system that lights started to dance in front of his eyes. He collapsed onto his hands and knees, gasping helplessly as his lungs refused to take in air. Then he felt the blunt point of a practice arrow lightly pushed against his shoulder.
"And that is how you bring down an Archer. You have to come at his with bare hands, or else he will instantly know that something is up." Rin said to Yume as she held onto the surprised girl's arm, guiding a hand holding the blunt arrow.
Shirou mouth continued to move, but no sound came out. "Is senpai alright."
"Archer's fine. He just needs a second to…" Rin started, but stopped when Shirou coughed up a mouthful of blood. "…oh."
"How long are you planning on being a big baby about this." Rin asked after having gotten dressed in her normal work attire, that being the red and black leather armor made from the Dragon Horse hide. She had also returned her hair to its normal twintail like state.
They were all sitting around the kitchen table, nervously picking at their food. Or most of them were at least, since Shirou had very pointedly not served anything to Rin.
The drama between the members of Yume's party had been forgotten in light of the drama between Shirou and Rin. The newest Rookies had never seen Shirou acting so human. Not successfully anyways.
"You broke two of my ribs and punctured my lung, and then you expect me to just cook your meals for you?" Shirou said, scowling at the girl.
"I healed it didn't I? No harm, no foul." Rin said with a bit of a nervous blush.
"No harm? There was so much harm that you needed a [Sacrament] just to take care of it all." Shirou countered with a small huff. Sacrament was among the most powerful healing spells that the Priest's Guild had.
"I only hit you so hard because I needed to make sure you would go down. It's your own fault for being so hard to bring down in the first place." Rin insisted. Shirou didn't respond, just turned his head away and continued to eat his breakfast. "Archer, I'm sorry, okay." Rin said with an exasperated sigh.
It took a moment for Shirou to respond. "You know it is hard to believe you when you don't even use my real name."
"Is that what this is about?" Rin said, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'm sorry, 'Shirou'. Now will you stop being such a big baby."
Shirou threw the girl another scowl, but she already had her victorious smile on her face. He knew damn well he wasn't going to get anything more out of her. So with a sigh of resignation, he handed her his plate of food and went to prepare another one.
"Thank you very much, Archer." She said, picking up the fork and taking a bite. Shirou did his best to keep the annoyed look of his face. "Hm… you've improved in the short time I've been gone." She then gave him a look, as if to say that she knew exactly what Shirou had done to bring out the food's flavor.
"Sorry if this is rude of me to ask but… are you two dating or something?" Haruhiro asked them.
"No, we aren't." Both Rin and Shirou replied in unison, earning them some looks.
"So, you six are the newest group from the tower, correct?" Rin asked them, in an attempt to change the subject.
"Yeah, that's right." Manato said with a short nod.
"I'm sure that Shirou has given you something of a rundown about how things work but let me just add my own little two cents, just to make sure you get it." Rin said calmly, pausing for a second before delivering the gut punch. "I don't know what the Commander told you, but the average rate of survival of Volunteer Soldiers over the course of the first five years is around thirty percent. Even with our help getting set up with full armor and giving them advice on how to set up their parties, out of the forty-two individuals to come out of the tower in the last three months, sixteen of them are already dead because they thought that they could handle stronger hunts."
The brand-new rookies all looked shocked at those numbers.
"I'm not telling you this just to scare you. You need to understand that if you push forward in search of glory, you are risking getting yourselves killed. Don't take unnecessary risks. People are going to try to pressure you into hunting stronger and stronger enemies, they will insult you and bully you, you will feel the urge to press forward, and I am telling you now to ignore it." Rin said them all. "Survival is more important than anything else in this world. If you really are desperate for money, just ask us for help. And if you aren't desperate, then there is no reason to push yourselves. Don't get killed for a stupid reason. Understood?"
The newbies all nodded their heads.
"Alright, moving on, you're first objective should be saving up enough money to purchase your next set of skills. Until they learn their first real spell, Mages in particular are basically useless. However once Shihoru learns some shadow magic, you will find your fights becoming a lot easier. [Shadow Echo] can paralyze targets and because of the way it travels it has almost no risk of friendly fire or missing the target." Rin explained to the group. "However, It is a spell that works directly on the enemy's body, so you will be fighting against their magic resistance, increasing the cost of the spell and limiting what it can be used on, but you will find it is more than a match for most, if not all, goblins. Pick up the spell as soon as possible."
"Y…yes. I understand." Shihoru said with a quick nod.
"It will likely take you two or three days to learn the spell. But while your doing that, Yume can get that 'wolfy' that Archer promised her." Rin said, smiling at Shirou.
"You're really going to get Yume her [Animal Companion]?" Yume asked, her eyes seeming to shine as she trembled with excitement.
Shirou nodded. "I was always planning on doing so regardless whether you got the hit on me or not." He said, scowling a little at Rin. "A new bond has to be made with a pup, so it is best to form the bond early so that they have time to grow. Even after you form the bond, you won't be able to bring them out with you into combat for a least another month. I was simply waiting until your party had decided to take a day off to train and you would have a chance to learn the skills required. In the meantime the goal would have kept you motivated to improve. There was no need for Rin to sucker punch me while I was fetching her tea."
"I thought we were over that." Rin said.
"I can still taste my own blood in my mouth and it is currently ruining breakfast for me." Shirou grumbled.
"What, is it somehow different when it isn't the blood of your enemies?" Rin teased as she took another bite of her breakfast.
"I don't eat my enemies raw and bloody. I have always properly cooked everything." Shirou objected.
Rin froze, her fork in her mouth. "Don't you mean… you don't eat your enemies?" She said, giving Shirou a worried look as the boy didn't respond. "Archer, what exactly have you been feeding us?"
Shirou looked away, a small smile on his face.
Sara dropped her utensils and clapped her hands over her ears. "I don't want to know. I don't want to know. I don't want to know!"
Shirou stood back up as there was a knock at the door. "That must be Mary. I'll see if she still wants to join us for breakfast."
"Archer, you get back here right now and tell me what you've been feeding us, or I swear I will break more than just your ribs!" Rin shouted as she got up to chase after him.
With the two of them out of the room, the rest of the inhabitance all looked down at their plates of beacon and sausages. "You… you don't think its goblin… do you?" Haruhiro asked, poking at it.
"Don't know." Niko said between mouthfuls, not in the slightest bit disturbed by the idea of eating sentient creatures. "Don't really care. It still tastes amazing."
Ranta gave a loud huff before he too returned to eating. "It's fitting for a Dread Knight to feed upon his enemies." The boy reasoned.
"Just stop talking about it." Sara said with a shiver. "After he started cooking with Dragon Horse meat, I decided that I simply didn't want to know what he put in our meals."
"Mmm… Dragon Horse." Niko said with a sort of longing tone. "It tasted so good."
Shorter chapter, but I felt like it would be funny.