TW: Guns

Sapphire POV

One month later...

Sapphire arrived at the Swordfighting classroom. All three teachers were here, which was kind of unusual. She watched other students enter the classroom. Some were a little surprised, but most of them were whispering to each other excitedly.

Sigils stepped forward and waited for the whispers to die down before speaking up.
"As you might know, every couple months or so we do a special month where instead of doing sword fighting, we do something else. This week is guns and gun related things,". The classroom exploded with whispers again.

"For health and safety and hopefully legal reasons, we will only be supplying these pistols," Biffle said, holding up one.

Henwy coughed. "They will also be shooting blanks if you're practicing on a dummy and these stick on darts if you are practicing against someone else. Nico's spell will still be working but this is just a precaution."

"For the first half of the lesson, we will be going over gun safety. For the second half it will be free learning, and we'll be coming around to help," Sigils said. "Everyone, please pick up a pistol now."

Sapphire did.

"One rule of gun safety is to always treat a gun as if it is loaded. Basically, don't point it at anyone and don't try jumping in front of a gun because you think it's empty," Sigils said, glancing at his phone.

"So don't be stupid, got it," Biffle said, giving a thumbs up. Sigils glared at him.

"However, never load a gun until you're ready to fire. That includes these guns," Henwy said.

"You also have to keep your safety on until you're ready to fire," Biffle mentioned.

Sapphire carefully listened to their instructions. She hadn't ever used a gun before, and a trip to medbay didn't seem like a good introduction to them.

About 25 minutes later, Sigils announced that, "The actual gun safety portion is now over. We will now go over how to shoot someone non-fatally,"

"First obvious thing you want to do is avoid shooting the head, for uh- obvious reasons," Henwy stated.

"Something that might not be so obvious is not to shoot them in the stomach. I mean, it'll work if you need to hit something. But if you can, try to avoid the torso. Aiming for the chest might hit their lungs or heart, and it turns out the stomach/digestive system is super complicated and being shot complicates things. So try aiming for the arms or legs," he continued on.

"This is obviously trickier, but remember we aim to disable, not to kill. We hope not to use these, but-" Sigils cut himself off suddenly. Sapphire watched him quietly grab Henwy's hand. She internally raised an eyebrow at the motion. Had Henwy's death (and presumably revival) been caused by a lack of gun training? She vaguely remembered a one week mandatory gun training camp back at FwF.

"Better safe than sorry, you know?" Biffle cut in, attempting to smile, though it came out as more of a grimace.

Henwy shook himself free from Sigils, before clapping his hands together. "ANYways, we have target blocks and target silhouettes for practice. The protection enchantment is still on, but please don't aim at anyone. Blanks hurt and also we aren't up to that section of the course yet".

With that, the students started lining up for the different target areas. The teachers helped correct their stance and aim, as well making sure no one was doing "dumb stuff", as Biffle had coined it.

She examined the pistol she had received carefully. It was smaller than the gun she had been given for the training at FwF. It would no doubt feel much different once she started actually shooting it.

She decided to start on the target blocks. She wanted to hone in her accuracy before trying to hit human shaped things.

Her first few shots completely missed the target. She grit her teeth. Had she sucked this much back at FwF?

"Bring your foot a bit closer," Henwy suggested. Sapphire flinched away, falling over.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I'm good. Just didn't, uh, see you there, that's all," she said, avoiding his eyes. She waited for the yelling about how she should just know how a gun works and could she get on with it? Her ranking would go down if she didn't figure it out.

Instead, Henwy carefully took her handgun from her, showing her the correct stance.

Carefully adjusting the position, he said,"Keep your arms locked, but make sure your knees aren't. Makes it better for recoil".

Sapphire nodded, quietly taking back her gun and trying again. To her surprise, she managed to hit the target. It was nowhere near the centre, but she had actually managed to do it!

She glanced up at Henwy, grinning. He opened his mouth to say something, but another gun fired, causing him to flinch away from it.

"Did you get shot? When you died?" she asked, putting another round into the gun.

A brief flash of panic. "When I- OH you mean like in the musical thingy Ian makes us do. That's just exaggeration, don't worry about it. But no, I didn't get shot."

She nodded, unconvinced. All of the teachers felt very on edge, which felt out of place on their usually carefree attitudes. She supposed it could just be the loud noises, but that didn't explain most of the strange behaviour from them.

She shot again. This time it was closer to the centre.

"There you go! You've practically got it now. I'll go to help the other students now. Keep working on your aim," he said.

She watched as he walked away, before turning back to face the target block.

As she practised, she fell into a kind of rhythm, watching as her shots crept closer and closer to the centre. Sapphire tuned out the various other noises, and only focused on making sure both her stance and aim was good.

By the time the teachers announced the end of class she was hitting the centre or the next ring every 2 out of 3 shots. Smiling, she returned the gun, before listening to the final talk from Sigils, reminding them that this whole month would be focused on the weapons. Sapphire thanked Henwy for helping her and then left the classroom.

A/N: I don't like the ending but whatever I guess

Anyways, the stance Henwy is teaching Sapphire is called the Power Isosceles. Website I found it at: https://www.shootingillustrated.com/content/top-five-shooting-stances/. I've never shot a gun so excuse me if anything about the guns seems inaccurate. Also, 1k words! Yay!

Did anyone get the chapter title reference?