It was a warm, sunny Saturday morning in Ponyville. There wasn't a cloud in the sky because for once Dash had woken up early. She was glad she did, there was a mix up with the weather schedule and what should have taken her an hour, took almost three as she fought to clear a storm that had no business being in Ponyville. Still, it was good work, and she wasn't going to let the bad start ruin the day. Today was the day of the big tournament after all! She hummed to herself happily as she flew towards Rarity's boutique.
It was just about a year ago when Rainbow had first been introduced to competitive crossbow shooting. Twilight had been looking for something to do with Shining Armor for his birthday and Cadance had mentioned he enjoyed watching archery competitions and suggested she take him to one. She looked into it and found out that there was going to be a small tournament just outside of Canterlot the week after his birthday, so she picked up two tickets asked him if he'd like to go.
Shining had been thrilled, he thanked Twilight profusely and she was looking forward to getting to spend to spend some time with her BBBFF. Unfortunately, the night before the tournament, Twilight got a letter from Cadance informing her that Shining had come down with a nasty cold. He wasn't going to be able to make the tournament.
Twilight was devastated, and she kicked herself for not having spent more time studying healing magic in the past. Still there was nothing to be done now, even if she knew a spell to cure Shining quickly, it would take too long to get all the way up to the Crystal Empire and back again. She decided to go to the tournament anyway since she had already bought the tickets, and since she had a spare she invited Rainbow Dash.
While she was sad Shining hadn't been able to come, she ended up enjoying the tournament anyway, but Rainbow had loved it. Her favorite event was the crossbow competition. In fact she liked it so much that after the competition she snuck into the player area so she could talk to the winner of the 30 yard match, a pegasus by the name of Sureshot.
Fortunately for Rainbow, Sureshot had see her perform the sonic rainboom at the Best Young Flyer Competition and was a fan. He promised to answer any questions she had about crossbow shooting for a private demo of her latest stunts. That suited Dash just fine, and she took to the skies. After the demo, she asked Sureshot about a hundred different questions and ended up picking up a crossbow of her own the very next day.
Rainbow thought back to the first time she had gone out with her crossbow and laughed. She had invited all the girls to come with her to Ponyville's local range figuring they could make a day of it. She hadn't really expected Rarity to show up, figuring the normally frou-frou pony to have no interest in shooting a crossbow which is what made the end result of the day so funny.
#####
Steady Aim looked at the group of mares standing in front of him, the grey unicorn had never seen any of them before.
"So have any of you been here before?" he asked.
"Nope, this is our first time here," Rainbow said.
"Ok, do you know what you are planning on shooting today, and do you need to rent any equipment?"
"Well, I brought my own crossbow, I figured we could all take turns with it," Rainbow said. "But I've never used it before, so if you have any pointers..."
"Sure thing but first let me go over the rules."
Steady Aim took time going over the various rules of the range. Then he walked the group over to the 10 yard range and showed the group how to load Dash's crossbow, how to aim and demonstrated a few shots.
"You girls can start here, once you get the hang of it you can try the longer ranges."
The group stepped up one at a time. Dash managed to get 8 of the 10 bolts onto the target, with the rest of the ponies hitting between 4 and 6. All except for Rarity, she didn't make a single hit. Steady Aim walked over and offered a few more pointers.
"Do you girls mind if I try again?" Rarity asked.
"Go for it Rarity!" Pinkie said with a big smile.
"Good luck" Fluttershy whispered.
Rarity brought the crossbow up, she looked at the target, took aim and fired, missing the target completely. Not ready to give up, she loaded another bolt. She went through eight of the nine remaining bolts and missed every single shot. Frustrated she set the crossbow down and stomped a hoof on the ground.
"I can't get the hang of this silly thing, I'd be better off without it!"
She levitated the last bolt into the air, took aim and tossed it as hard as she could. She turned around and started to walk away, not even bothering to see if it had landed.
"Sweet Celestia!" Rainbow Dash said.
Rarity turned around to see what all the other ponies were staring at. Looking at the target, she saw why. The bolt she threw had landed in the absolute dead center of the bullseye. Even Dash's best shot had been two rings out from the center.
Even Steady Aim looked impressed. He walked over to her.
"Normally we ask guests to not throw anything but that was one heck of a throw. Care to try it again?"
"I guess so," Rarity said with a shrug.
She went and grabbed the bolts and stood back at the firing line. Taking careful aim she went through all ten of the bolts. Ten throws and she got five bullseyes. The rest of the throws were pretty close to center as well.
"Miss, do you by any chance play darts?" Steady Aim asked.
"No, I can't say that I ever have," Rarity said.
Steady Aim explained the game, telling Rarity that the club had a friendly little team dart competition every Saturday in the clubhouse. The darts were smaller then crossbow bolts, and the board was closer but he wondered if she wanted to try it out after the group was done shooting. She accepted the invitation and later afternoon the girls made their way to the clubhouse.
Rarity turned out to be a natural. Her years of using magic to work on dresses had left her with fine control with her levitation abilities. It turned out that Steady Aim needed a new partner, so for the last year, every Saturday Rainbow and Rarity headed to the club, Rainbow to practice with her crossbow, while Rarity played darts with some of the club regulars.
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.
"Hurry up girls, we're already late!" Twilight said, galloping as fast as she could.
The train with Shining and Cadance had been delayed and now Twilight and her friends were galloping as fast as they could, trying to make up for lost time.
"Twilight, you're at the back of the group!" Applejack said.
Twilight looked up, and realized that she had indeed fallen behind everypony else. Even Fluttershy had pulled ahead of her.
"Oh," she said trying to pour on some extra speed.
"Twily, use your wings," Shining said, too busy galloping to facehoof.
"Oh yeah!" she said taking off into the air. She soon caught up with the rest of the group.
"The club is just around the next corner," she said to Cadance who looked like she was ready to pass out.
"Thank Celestia, I really need to start using my wings more," Cadance replied.
The group rounded the bend and hurried over to the entrance. They quickly paid and then went straight to the crossbow field. The competition was already in progress and the bleachers were nearly full. Twilight looked around until she spotted Rarity. There was one empty spot next to her, on the other side was some strange looking creature, she'd never seen anything like it before.
Before she could investigate further, a club officer trotted over to the group.
"The event is already in progress. I can probably fit you in on the top row, but please keep your voices down, the competitors don't need any distractions."
The officer lead led them to the bleachers, Twilight waved at Rarity as they walked by. Rarity smiled back but didn't say anything. They got to the top row and took their seats.
"Next up is Rainbow Dash"
"We got here just in time to see Dashie!" Pinkie said as quietly as she was able.
"Shhh," somepony said in response.
#####
Rainbow calmly walked forward. She took a few deep breaths.
"I can do this," she thought to herself. "There's nowhere near as many ponies as there was at the Best Young Flyer Competition"
She reached her position and set down her basked of bolts.
"Of course that was flying and I've been doing that for years," she gulped taking a glance back at the crowd.
She spotted Rarity and the creature, and then as she looked back she spotted the rest of her friends. Seeing them here supporting her gave her a boost of confidence and she prepared to take her shots.
Rainbow had 20 bolts to shoot. The first 10 would be shot sitting down. Those would be the easier ones, after that she had to take 10 shots standing up. She had to balance on her rear hooves for those shots, using her wings wasn't allowed.
She sat down and loaded the crossbow. She looked down the field at the target. There it was, a 20 inch circle sitting in the middle of the field. The circle was broken up into 10 rings, the outer ring was worth 1 point, each progressively smaller ring was worth an extra point till you reached the inner circle of the bullseye which was worth 10 points.
She took her first shot and it landed in the 9 ring. She loaded again and took her second shot. It hit the 6 ring.
"Drat," she thought.
She loaded up her next shot. Her eyes focused on the target, she gritted her teeth for a moment and then relaxed. She took a nice deep breath and then slowly began to let it out. The beating of her heart gradually slowed as she concentrated.
Twang! The bolt launched out of the crossbow and sped towards the target. It impacted dead center. Bullseye! 10 points. Dash did a little victory dance in her head and then loaded up again. Three more shots later and she had three more bullseyes. She took her last few shots and ended with the top current score, 90.
She glanced back with a huge grin on her face. The crowd stomped their hooves, celebrating her good show. But it wasn't over yet. She still had to take her 10 standing shots. They would be far more difficult.
For standing shots, the rings had the same point value, except for the inner most 3 rings. To reward the extra difficulty of those shots, instead of being worth 8, 9 and 10, they were worth 10, 12 and 15 points.
She loaded up the crossbow and stood up, carefully balancing on her back hooves. She had to resist the urge to flare her wings out to keep her balance.
"I don't know how Pinkie does this so easily," she thought.
A few seconds later she was steady and ready to shoot. She looked at her target, raised the crossbow and fired. 10 points! A great first shot. She went through the remaining 9 bolts, she only managed to get a single bullseye while standing, and ended with score of 102.
Her final total was 192 points which put her in the lead! She gathered up her crossbow and flew back to her seat.
The last three ponies all took their turns One ended with 185 points, the second got 173 and the last pony pulled into the lead with 193 points, just barely making a bullseye with his last bolt.
Rainbow sighed, looking at the final tally of points. She hated losing and coming so close just made it that much worse. The officers started to reset the field for archery, and she walked slowly out of the play area. She headed over and sat down next to Rarity.
The creature leaned over and looked at Rainbow.
"Those were some great shots, congratulations!" he said.
Rainbow didn't response for a minute, but then she turned and smiled.
"Thanks! I did my best."
"I really did do my best," she thought to herself. She'd only been doing this for less than a year and she took 2nd place in her first competition. She really did hate losing, but she decided right then and there, she wasn't going to be a sore sport about it. Besides, now she had something to work at beating.
The officers finished setting up the field for the 100 yard archery event. The scoring system was similar but the targets were 35 inches in diameter instead of 20 and everything was done standing. The bows were too big to shoot sitting down.
Dash watched the competitors file into the play area. Sureshot was among them.
"Oh look, it's Sureshot!, I didn't know he shot bow also," Dash said to Rarity.
"Who?"
"Oh, you weren't there at Canterlot, she said, not noticing the creature's eye shift at the mention of Equestria's capital. "Twilight and I met him after the tournament last year. He's the pony that got me into this."
The sounds of talking died down as the competition was ready to start. The ponies filed in one by one and took their shots. At the end of the event Sureshot was tied a pony named Maple Leaf for first place. Since ties weren't allowed, they were each given 1 arrow and sent back to the range.
Maple Leaf nocked her arrow drew it back and released. The arrow flew towards the target at high speed, landing 1 ring outside of bullseye. Sureshot stepped up next to her, he turned and they bumped hooves. He picked up his arrow, took a deep breath and prepared to take his shot.
He pulled the arrow back, and released. The arrow flew true and landed right next to Maple Leaf's arrow inside the bullseye. Sureshot had won the 100 yard competition. A huge thunder of stomping hooves rose up as the last official event of the day ended.
Steady Aim walked to the front of the crowd and waited for the applause to die down. Some other club officers ran out into the field to switch targets.
The bleachers slowly stared to clear as a number of ponies got ready to go back to town.
"Thank you everypony for coming here today, and big thanks to our competitors. Everypony did great this year!" he announced.
"Now before everypony leaves, we have one more event. The 100 Yard Open! Remember everypony, this unofficial event is open to all, but due to time constraints we can only take the first 10 competitors. So if you want to compete, step forward now."
A few ponies started to walk towards the play area. Most of them were carrying longbows, but there was one pony with a very large crossbow.
"Is this really open to anyone?" the creature turned and asked Rainbow.
"Yep!"
The creature stood up, hefted his large backpack and walked over to Steady Aim. Just as he got to the field, Twilight made her way down the stands and over to Rainbow and Rarity.
"Great job Rainbow!" she said, giving Rainbow a hug.
"Thanks Twi. I'm a bit sad that I lost, but I did my best, I'll do better next year!"
"Do you know that... uh, large creature sitting next to you? I'm not really sure what it is," Twilight asked.
Rarity's face reddened with embarrassment.
"In all the excitement of the tournament, I completely forgot to ask him his name," she said, feeling foalish.
Rarity and Rainbow took a few minutes to explain to Twilight how they had met the stranger.
"He looked so lost," Rainbow said. "I didn't want him getting more lost trying to find Ponyville, that i just invited him along."
The friends continued to chat for a few minutes while the club finished preparing the field for the final event of the day.
#####
A bored looking club officer glanced sat at a table off to the side of the play area. He was running the check in process for the 100 Yard Open, but he really just wanted to get going. He had been at the club half the day, and it was a long trot back to Ponyville. A large being of some kind, the officer wasn't quite sure what, stepped forward as he reached the front of the line.
"Hello, I'd like to participate in the event," he said.
"Well, this is the last slot, so you're in. Bow, crossbow or other?" the brown earth pony mumbled.
The creature set down his pack on the table, he unzipped the side and folded it open. He pulled out a strange looking device that had what looked like a crossbow stock at the end. It had a shiny brass section in the middle, followed by wooden forestock. There was an octagonal metal tube on top, and a smaller round tube on the bottom.
"Magical?" the officer asked.
"No"
"Then you can use it."
"One more thing. I'd like to shoot these," he said, pulling two round metal plates out of his pack. He then pulled out two shepherds hooks to hang them on.
The larger of the two plates was half the size of the 50 yard target. About 10 inches across. The smaller one looked to be about 6 inches. The officer's disinterest slow melted away as he looked at the plates again.
"Are you sure?"
"Yep"
"Hey Steady Aim! Come here a minute."
Steady Aim flew over to the line.
"This guy wants to use these as targets for his turn"
Steady Aim looked at the metal plates.
"Normally I'd say no, but this is an unofficial event. Do you mind if anypony else tries to hit them?"
The creature shrugged.
"Sure, they won't damage them," he said.
"Ok, I'll go get them setup right now."
Steady Aim grabbed the targets and hooks with his magic and trotted down to the end of the field.
#####
The 100 Yard Open is ready to begin! Steady Aim announced.
The first pony, a blue unicorn stepped forward. He drew his bow and fired five shots at the distant target. The first two missed, but the next three all hit fairly close to the center. Since this was an unofficial event they weren't shooting for points, just for hits, but still, he was happy with the shots. He then took careful aim at the larger of the metal plates and released the arrow.
CLANG! The arrow bounced off the plate. The plate barely even wobbled, but the loud noise clearly indicated a solid hit.
He took another shot, this time at the smaller of the two metal plates, but missed.
He fired his last three arrows at the standard target, all three stuck in.
One by one, the ponies took their turns. All of them had managed to hit the larger metal plate at least once. The last pony managed to land all ten shots. Seven on the target, two on the large plate and the first successful hit of the smaller plate during the event. Finally it was the creature's turn.
Rainbow watched intently, curious as to what the creature was going to do.
He stood up from his seat and walked over to the field. Setting his pack down he unzipped it and pulled out his weapon. She had no idea what the strange looking device was, it looked sort of like a crossbow stock with two tubes sticking out of it and some metal bits. He then reached into a side pocket of the back and pulled out a small cardboard box.
She watched as he picked a small brass colored cylinder with a copper colored tip out of the box. He then pushed the cylinder into a small metal flap on the side of his weapon. He proceed to do that 9 more times.
He grabbed a pair of glasses out of his backpack and put them on. He then pulled what looked like a pair of Vinyl Scratch's headphones out of another pocket and put those on as well.
He stepped forward to the firing line, then he turned and looked at the group of ponies watching him.
"You might want to cover your ears, this is going to be loud," he said.
Rainbow put her hooves up to her ears, wondering what the heck was going on.
The creature turned back around and looked at the distant targets. There was a small metal loop on the bottom of the weapon, he slipped his hand into the loop. CHK-CHIK, he pushed the loop down and pulled it back up in one smooth motion. He raised the weapon to his shoulder, just like Dash would with her crossbow.
BANG!... CLANG! The larger steel plate swung back and forth.
Dash wasn't sure exactly what happened, the creature had raised the device to his shoulder, he looked like he was taking careful aim, and then a very loud noise erupted from the device. She saw Rarity jump at the loud noise, but she was distracted, trying to figure out what had happened. It didn't help that she had forgotten to keep her hooves on her ears, but thankfully part of a pegasus' innate magic protected their hearing. Good thing too, while this wasn't as deep or loud as a thunderbolt going off at point blank range, it was close.
What puzzled Dash the most was she had no idea what had hit the plate. She didn't see anything fly down range.
CHK-CHIK. BANG! CLANG!
CHK-CHIK. BANG! CLANG!
CHK-CHIK. BANG! CLANG!
CHK-CHIK. BANG!
Before Dash could even figure out what had happened the first time, the creature had taken four more shots, only missing the last.
The creature turned around and looked at the crowd.
"I've got five more shots... so keep those ears covered."
By now the crowd was completely silent, nopony had any idea of what was going on. Even Steady Aim looked thoroughly confused.
The creature cycled the loop on his device again. Rainbow noticed when he did this, one of the small brass cylinders flew out of a hole on the side.
He took steady aim at the smaller of the two plates.
BANG! He missed.
CHK-CHIK. BANG! CLANG! A hit!
CHK-CHIK. BANG! CLANG! Another!
CHK-CHIK. BANG!
CHK-CHIK. BANG!
CHK-CHIK. BANG! CLANG!
Two missed, but he managed a hit on the last shot. Not the most number of hits during the match, but the more than anypony else on the metal plates.
Steady Aim made his way to the front of the field.
"What a way to end the day! Thanks for coming everypony! For those of you visiting today, we hope to see you again. For the regulars, we've got a dart game in the clubhouse in about an hour."
The creature bent down and picked up the brass cylinders that were on the ground. He stuffed them back into the box, packed his equipment and headed over to where Rainbow and Rarity were sitting.
"Wow, that was some great... shooting? I think? What is that thing? What's it called? How does it work? Question after question flew out of the pegasus' mouth. Rarity stepped in front of the babbling pony and looked up to the creature.
"Rainbow, one question at a time. Besides, I think we need to correct a mistake that was made when we first met," she said.
"I'm terribly sorry about this, but in the rush to get to the tournament, I don't think we ever properly introduced ourselves."
"I'm Rarity, and this is Rainbow Dash."
She pointed at a lavender pony sitting next to her.
"And this is my friend Twilight."
"Hello," Twilight said. "I don't mean to be rude, but I've never seen your species before, what are you?"
The creature looked at the three ponies and set down his bag.
"At first I thought I was dreaming. Then I thought I was hallucinating, I'm still not sure that I'm not," he said. "My name is Jack, I'm a human, and this is the biggest understatement of my life... I have no idea where I am."