//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: The Tournament // by CORACK //------------------------------// Rainbow walked into the boutique and looked around. "Rarity, I'm here! Are you ready to go?" she asked. "Just a minute Rainbow," Rarity said from the other room. Rarity trotted into the main room of her shop, a small box floating alongside her. "I'm ready to go when you are, I just had to grab my darts," she said. "Let's get going then. I don't want to be late for the tournament," Rainbow said. "Are the rest of the girls meeting us there?" Rarity asked. It had been one year ago that Rainbow had gone to the tournament with Twilight and it was time for this year's event. This time it was being held in Ponyville. Rainbow had been practicing for the last year and she felt she was ready to try out in the Intermediate 50 yard event. "Yeah, but they won't be there till later. They have to meet Shining and Cadance at the train station and then they'll head over." The two mares trotted out of the boutique and headed off to the club. While it was called the Ponyville Archery Club, it was actually a few miles outside of the small town, in the northern section of the White Tail Woods. The trot over would take about an hour. They were a bit over half way there, when they heard a noise in the woods. An odd looking creature, dressed in what looked like sturdy traveling clothes and wearing a large vertical saddlebag on its back, stumbled out of the woods muttering to itself. It kept looking around, as if completely lost, not even having noticed the trail it was walking into. Equestria was home to a number of different species, and if you left the country, that number just went up, so while surprising, running into a species you had never seen before was not totally unheard of. Rarity had learned an important lesson after the incident with the poison joke. Strange looking creature or no, she wasn't about to assume it was some sort of monster. Besides it looked so lost and confused, it clearly needed help. "Hello? Are you alright?" Rarity asked. The creature jumped nearly a foot in the air and turned around. It looked at the two ponies, its eyes went wide, then it looked around again. Rarity got a good look at the creatures face. Whatever it was, the scruffy looking beard confirmed that it was male. "Are you alright?" Rarity asked again. "Are you lost?" This time the creature just stared at her for a moment, before shaking his head. "I... yeah I am, I'm trying to get back to town," he said slowly, still looking rather confused. "Oh, I can show you!" Dash said, hovered into the air. "But we gotta fly!" Rarity wasn't sure how, surely she thought, there must be some maximum level of confusion that a face could express. If there was, the look on the creature's face when Rainbow took off, shattered the previous record. "Rainbow, if you go back now, you won't make the tournament. We're already running late as it is, remember you have to check in or you won't get to compete." "Tournament?" he asked. "Yep, heading to the Archery club, they're doing a big tournament today," Rainbow said, nodding to the crossbow on her back. Noticing that the creature looked interested, she pulled it off her back and let it have a look. "You know, why don't you follow is to the club? You can watch the events and after we're done we'll show you back to town." The creature shrugged. "I guess that will work." "Then yeah, you should come with us, don't want you getting even more lost," Dash said. They resumed their walk towards the club. The creature didn't say anything for a few minutes, but then it looked over at Dash again and spoke up. "May I see your crossbow?" he asked. "Sure," she said, hoofing it over. He spent a few minutes looking at it. Dash had splurged when picking out her crossbow so it had very finely detailed woodwork. He commended on the quality of the stock and design of the crossbow and then gave it back to the blue pegasus. Dash stared talking about the tournament and going over the event she was going to be competing in. The creature listened intently, and then asked about the different events that would be taking place. "Well, I'm shooting in the 50 yard intermediates. There's also a 70 yard advanced, and a 100 yard for the long bows." "Oh it's not just crossbows?" "Nope! Actually this tournament has pretty much every type of ranged weapon there is. There's an axe throwing contest, a javelin toss, crossbow, longbow," Dash said. "Oh," he said, looking a bit disappointing. "They've even got an open event after the main competitions, 100 yards, but they use the 50 yard targets. Anything goes as long as it's hoof portable. It's mostly a bunch of stallions huge bows but sometimes you get some pony with a giant crank up crossbow." Dash said. The creature perked up at this. "Hoof portable?" he asked. "Yeah, though I heard that one year some unicorn launched a javelin nearly 150 yards. Completely missed the target, but it's the record for distance as far as I'm aware. Magic is all right, as long as your just throwing it, any sort of guidance spell, or making it self-propelled would be cheating." The creature just shook his head at this. "But you said it's open?" he asked. "Yep." The creature looked at Rarity and for the first time, noticed her dart box floating alongside her. Its jaw dropped, it blinked a few times and then looked again, tripped over a root in the path. It jumped back up, face turning bright red. "I'm all right," he said. "Are you competing as well?" "Oh no, not in the tournament," Rarity answered. "The owner of the club, Steady Aim, runs a regular dart game. It's getting pushed back a bit today, because of the events, but it didn't get canceled. These are my darts," she said, pointing a hoof at the box. The group continued walking down the path while Dash continued to babble excitedly about her upcoming match, until they reached the club. Large groups of ponies were walking around as the club officers finished setting up the archery and crossbow ranges. Dash headed off to check in, while Rarity and the creature walked over to the entrance. While they were standing in line, Rarity pulled out a small coin purse from her saddlebags, and pulled 2 coins out. "Oh, is there an entrance fee?" the creature asked. "Yes, it's 2 bits." "Bits? I uh, I don't have any bits," he said sheepishly. "Maybe I should just try to find my way back to town, can you give me direction?" "Oh, nonsense. I'll pay for you," Rarity said, slipping another 2 bits out of her purse. He blushed and then thanked her. The two walked around for about an hour, watching the other events that were already in progress, before they heard an announcement. Fillies and gentlecolts, the Intermediate 50 Yard Crossbow match will start in five minutes "We should head over and grab a seat, or we'll miss Dash compete," Rarity said. "I wonder where the rest of the girls are, they were supposed to be here by now." "That would be great, this backpack is pretty heavy," he said pushing the pack around a bit on his shoulders. The two headed over and found a seat on the bleachers.