#(( gods sorry this is 2050 words it's hardly a drabble anymore OTL ))

[ruinfell]

[DRABBLE] Marksmanship

The void was a dangerous place. It was far from empty, like one may assume, but instead unpredictable; the dark depths held untold horrors that knew exactly how to strike when they were least expected.

Expecting someone did not help ease Tokaku in the slightest, as he waited in the unlit clearing. Why Llyr had not simply extended his influence and made space for them, he did not know, but he assumed that the unease was intended to be instilled. Llyr and his beloved companion – Tokaku's usual tutor – were much of the same ilk.

Men who delved into the darkness and adapted within it, rather than run away from it.

This rabbit did not wait helplessly, as the very nature of their meeting was to be of tutelage. Llyr had spied the moment in which Tokaku's long-forgotten weapon had come to fore, and recognised it, albeit with some disdain, as kindred to his own lost arms.

He clutched more tightly to his rifle, kept it level and readied, as the unease seeped further into his bones. He did not keep still: there was no pacing, but he turned on the spot, looked around, made sure that his back was not facing the same way for too long.

His paranoia served him well when a sudden clamour came from the dark.

The flash of light hit his vision before anything else could, and he tumbled aside, stumbling to his feet and raising his weapon—

"TOO SLOW. Far too slow!"

The sound carried before light reached its speaker, and Tokaku's expression dropped into an all too displeased frown. Llyr had finally arrived, blowing smoke away from the barrel of his pistol, and holding his cutlass at the ready. Its unnatural surface still held the dancing sparks of gunfire, for far longer than it ought to. "I could have shot again already," the rattish man chided, "and you would be dead."

Tokaku had no doubt of that, but it was still a dick move. He just barely restrained his annoyance. "Did you come here to take pot shots at me, or did you come here to teach me something?" He grumbled, firing off a pot shot of his own. He'd feel smug for it, if it weren't a genuine inquiry.

Llyr was not particularly humoured. He was finding it a struggle to deal with his mirror, despite Nero's insistence that he cease indulging his hypocrisy. His blade is sheathed, and he holsters his gun. If Tokaku wanted to be taught, then, he would teach him.

He approached his new student, and began to readjust him without warning. "First off: do not fucking brandish your rifle like a club." His hands are moved about his firearm, repositioned as the smaller of the pair saw fit. Squared his shoulders, angled his arms correctly, straightened out his gun. "It is a vehicle for bullets, but not only that. You must think of it as an extension of your body. And you will treat it with the respect it is owed."

Tokaku kept his protest within, realising that he would get nowhere arguing at this point. He did, after all, ask for instruction. He wanted to remain open, no matter how admonishing Llyr wanted to be towards him. He also had something to prove.

Llyr sidled up, making sure everything was aligned. He stepped away once he was certain everything was how he wanted it, and huffed gently. (It seemed he'd been picking habits up from someone.)

"Perhaps you are not completely hopeless."

Tokaku had to resist rolling his eyes, though it was quite a feat to. Instead, he held his position.

Llyr noticed something. It was he who had to keep his composure then, choosing to frown instead with scrutiny, and narrow his sockets, rather than let himself smirk at all like he almost wanted to. "You at least remember not to put your fucking finger on the trigger if you are not fucking firing. That is something."

He set himself back a few strides, removing himself from Tokaku's view completely, and then casting a hand out before him, as though gesturing ahead.

For a moment, Tokaku was confused… until a few shapes rose from the nothing beneath them. White bones; magic bullets. They arranged themselves at varying distances, and remained stationary in the positions they set themselves in, for now. Llyr was creating a shooting range.

"You apparently remembered well enough how to use the bayonet," Llyr said with no small amount of annoyance, as he believed swords were for swinging, guns were for shooting, and bayonets meant you were doing neither effectively. "Let us see if you remember how to fire it."

It was not something Tokaku remembered consciously. He knew well enough the steps required to fire a rifle, as it was a process of logic having studied the gun and its base mechanisms. He also knew that, logically, guns needed to be loaded. He'd no shot or gunpowder; they were not things he would ever need to possess, he felt, even carrying a firearm. He'd only gotten half way through telling himself that he could not be expected to fire his weapon when he had nothing to feed into the barrel… when the sharp contrast of the bones in the distance distracted him enough from his looping fallacy to remind him of a very simple and helpful truth.

He could just make bullets.

To make that realisation felt like a puzzle piece clicking into place, and all at once the picture made itself obvious. Most firearms of his day had required barrel loading of ammunition; for a musket of this era and design you would expect it to be loaded with a precise amount of gunpowder, then a lead ball as the ammunition. Another, finer gunpowder was loaded into the pan of the rifle, so that it could be struck alight by the flint and frizzen mechanisms. However, all of these mechanisms were completely unnecessary to a monster, because a monster had magic, which could substitute for the gunpowder and the ammunition both. Magic could be a catalyst, or it could be formed into a solid state that could enact purpose, such as inflicting damage when impacting something it is launched at.

Tokaku followed through the steps carefully, writing and then reading through instruction in his head as though he were speaking it aloud to his instructor as explanation. (Llyr could see the cogs moving, even.) A charge of magic was laid within the muzzle of his musket, and a round magic bullet rested up against it, all without Tokaku moving from his carefully adjusted position. He loaded just enough magic into the pan, cocked the hammer back, moved his finger to the trigger, lined his sight up with the nearest white bone, took a deep breath, and—

BANG.

Tokaku's careful positioning had been broken, but not before a flash of light pierced through the empty blackness and right through the nearest white bone, dead center. The bone shattered outward, and its shards dissipated upward. He was stunned, staring at what had once been a bullet in some disbelief that he had been the one to break it.

Llyr let himself smile just a little this time. It disappeared as soon as Tokaku looked back at him, but the void had eyes enough to have bore witness.

"So you do remember how to fire it. We will actually be able to get somewhere. Now shoot the rest down, and do not be so dramatic about the recoil, will you? You built the bloody thing, it is not going to blow your arm off."

Tokaku fixed him with a look. "How do you know I built it?" He didn't know that. He knew the gun was his, he felt it was, but he'd no idea where it came from, other than it evidently having been in his possession upon his death and erasure from reality.

"Because," Llyr answered, "how else would you know how it works? It is exactly as my pistol, which I built. Magic-fed, because it gives the advantage of not having to faff about reloading in the thick of battle. We are fucking alternates, you fool." A fact he at least told himself he was loathe to accept… but maybe he did appreciate it a little more now than he did before, seeing how quickly Tokaku remembered, and how finely his arm worked. And how much easier it made teaching and explaining things, when he could draw on latent experience and knowledge, and had a rough idea of what his student was capable of if he actually put his mind to it.

It also helped that Tokaku was a surprisingly open-minded student, at least now. He had been a very close-minded man before, and Llyr had not forgotten the way he spoke to him, his friends, and his partner. Yet, Nero lended his aid readily, and Tokaku took his lessons on board with little to no resistance. Llyr had seen for himself the horned man's graduation from quivering mess on the floor to, maybe, a passable swordsman.

He kept a close eye on him, now, as the rifle lined up with each target before blasting it into the nothingness. Some targets became a challenge, as Llyr began to move them: in very specific patterns at first, but becoming less like a pathed movement, and more like a dangling carrot with the last few.

Tokaku shot down each one with care in his precision. He took his time with this task, recognising it well enough as opportunity to familiarise himself further with his bonded weapon. With each shot he could feel how the magic flowed through it, and study the mechanisms, not just through sight, but through sensation too. He became quicker with each shot, until the last few were fluid twitches and motions that seemed as natural a motion as turning one's head.

Llyr had gotten lost in the dance of it all, evidently, as, when the final bone shattered and the music ended, he found Tokaku was staring at him in a great manner of confusion.

"Why do you look so pleased with yourself?" He almost sounded offended, but he was a bit past taking offense with the look on Llyr's face. He was often just unreasonably smug, he'd noticed, and it wasn't intentionally provocative. His face was just stuck like that.

This time there was definitely a reason, and Llyr felt a little embarrassed for being caught out.

"... Well," said Llyr, finally managing words, but not liking how his face lit up a bit with the first sound that left him, "maybe I am a little pleased to see a firearm handled properly."

There was another moment of Tokaku being stunned… before he began to laugh. Not a mean or condescending laugh; a sound made by someone who was quite relieved to realise that a rather intimidating person was not nearly as scary as they had tried to make themselves look. It was not the first time he had had this experience, and he was sure it would not be the last. Llyr's embarrassment at his honesty was very much from a place of not understanding his feelings, and, for Tokaku, seeing that was like looking in a mirror.

Llyr truly had not wanted to let go of his distrust and disdain for Tokaku, and, now that he had been forced to, he had been left vulnerable — not to Tokaku, but to himself.

"You said it yourself!" Tokaku barked through his laughter, "We are alternates, you fool!"

Llyr didn't feel any less embarrassed to hear his words parroted back at him… but the humour with which his mirror took such a thing, did make him feel a little less awkward.

He just about regained his composure, albeit notably lacking in threat now. "Enough of that, you tittering twat. One more round of targets and then you can fuck off and eat carrots or whatever it is you do when you're not running away from swords. I am tired of you." The jabs came a bit thicker, but they had noticeably much less sharpness to them now.

Tokaku's laughter tapered off, and he leveled his rifle up to the forming target range once more, with a renewed determination.

#{}{} V: MAIN #{}{} LLYR #tokcku #ruintale #(( gods sorry this is 2050 words it's hardly a drabble anymore OTL )) #(( this happened between the training session where toki stabbed nero and the thread with toki showing audio his gun i just hadn't wrote it #posting it to this blog first bc more followers tbhhh ))