”Great!” It’s not great, considering the fact that Artist isn’t great at teaching, but she’ll make do! After all, anything to satisfy her boredom right? Plus, some it’s some time to kill which is always good. Artist would shove the boy’s gun back into his hand as she’d carefully manipulate his hand to properly hold the gun. ”Now you wouldn’t think it, but we’re going to start slow ‘n gentle.” Artist couldn’t help but snark. ”This is the proper way to hold the gun, but there’s some variation to it: make sure you’re comfortable with holding it and brace but not too much.”

Artist would gently and delicately adjust the rest of kid’s body - regardless of social norms - into a better stance for firing a gun. ”Of course you wouldn’t do this in the real world, but it’s good to get used to, plus you can also work from here” No longer holding to any part of boy in front of her, Artist would back up with a rather flippant shrug. ”It’ll be a start, so give it a try will ‘ya?”

Hunter shuffles a little bit in discomfort as the weight on his shoulder started to be unbearable. Though, Hunter had gotten used to things like this, especially for sights like this. His beloved partner was cutely sleeping on his shoulder, clearly tired of the toll that the festival had brought about on the two. Noticing the signal to start the next match, the speakers blare to life from Hunter’s voice, albeit softer in consideration of his sleeping wife next to him. ”Welcome back everyone to the Vytal Festival tournament, I’m going to keep it short, sweet, and simple so we can get to the fights, especially since it's the semifinals.” Hunter quickly takes a look at the two combatants coming up and sigh in relief as they’re rather simple to introduce once again. ”We have gravity girl Camelia Sol, who’ll bring down the competition, against Juno Vert. He had a rather impressive showing in the first two fights, but I still think that there’s a lot of compensation. What for? Who knows." Shifting himself into a more comfortable position, Prim would rest well and Hunter would not feel shoulder pain for the rest of the fight. "Anyways, I hope our semifinalists give us a good showing!" While louder than he wanted, it seems Prim was still asleep, which is good.

Starting the spinner from his end, the now familiar holographic image of a lottery machine appears on all sides of the arena. The spinners spun so quickly, making it nearly impossible to make out the passing words. It ticked through the options slower and slower until it finally stopped on Forest and Swamp.

From the arena arose two separate sides that thematically line up with the arena’s choice of environment. On Camelia’s side, large trees cover the entire area. Noticeably, the trees are numerous and encourages movement up and between the trees with lots of trunks that can serve as platforms to fight on, with a singular large tree branching into the middle of the arena. Although abundant, the trees do not provide decent enough cover due to how thin the trunk is, lest you move deeper into the forest. As for Juno, a few trees arose as well, albeit slightly smaller and much more thick with vines. In terms of inconveniences, it mostly obscures vision instead of preventing movement. However, the floor is significantly more wet and murkey. Definitely muddy too, hiding broken weapons that can be used for improvisation, with some swamp houses that can be used as cover and vantage points.

(A coin flip has decided that Camelia will get the first post. The arena size is identical to that of the 1v1 arena in the show, however, it features scaled down biomes to fit the size. Good luck, and may the best combatant win.)

”As a tactical genius, I assure you that this is all planned.” Hunter releases a rather shaky laugh as if he was trying to pass off the error he had made. Hunter turns on the faucet in the kitchen as he would then start moving into the living room to put all his personal belongings back to where they should be. While doing so, Hunter would think about how to turn this into a lesson. Even though he has experience with the idea of damage control (especially considering how he was before), it was hard for Hunter to sort of explain.

Making his way back into the living room, it then looks like Hunter was struck by an idea! The tactical genius reveals himself once again as Hunter had just figured out where to continue with the quick intro to his lesson. ”Though I suppose things like these just occur regardless of what you do. It’s natural to do things on impulse, so mastering the art of damage control would be an excellent thing to learn!”

Unfortunately, Hunter isn’t very good at controlling his impulses. Such as the fact that Hunter is pulling a rather large whiteboard out of nowhere as he starts to write some main points about damage control. ”There’s a few types of impulses. There’s the life threatening impulses, there’s the risky impulses, and there’s the relatively safe impulses!” At rather quick speeds - being the professor he is - Hunter would start write down what he’s saying just so it can be easily noted.

In a rather quick manner too, Hunter would proceed to draw Prim in a rather cute cartoony manner, although since it’s rushed, there’s some obvious tells about some flaw in the drawing. Right after, Hunter would draw small rough cartoon sketches of them both right now, all panicked and scared! ”Right now, this is a life threatening impulse, and to do damage control for those impulses are really tough. Understand so far?”

Artist’s grin widens as the boy shows off his knife throwing skills. It was impressive for sure, but Artist had seen a lot of crazy things before. On the other hand though, it shows the intelligence of the kid to actually branch out of his skills. Though the kid should invest in a better gun to start out with. Artist proceeds to look between the gun and the target before finally returning to look at the kid.

”Pretty impressive, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t make up for your… uh... subpar marksmanship.” Hm, Artist wasn’t sure how to pry the kid open of sorts, since it seems like he’s doing the silent cool kid act with the chunni scarf. Plus, Artist can’t afford to waste too much time… Ah, I know!

Artist turns to the controls to bring the target closer once more, taking each knife out and placing them back into the kid’s rigging. She figures she might as well be polite considering what she’ll be doing next. Sending the target back out, Artist swiftly turns to swipe the revolver from the kid’s hands.

Giving the revolver a little spin (making sure that it won’t go off accidentally), Artist proceeds to quickly load the firearm. Once it’s fully loaded, she takes aim at the target in a swift and methodical matter as she puts a bullet into the target’s forehead. Artist’s shiteating grin grew larger as she turns back to the boy in a… menacing manner? ”Lucky for you kid, I know how to shoot things real good, and I also happen to be bored. Wanna learn?”

While Iron listens to what Isabelle seeks to obtain from their expedition to the mall, Iron also took the time to go over any materials he wants to pick up himself. He verbally agrees with Isabelle on getting clothing with a grunt, as it’s necessary for some further integration for combat. On the other hand, it would be a good idea for him to look into additional alternatives for his projects and testing.

Again, Iron seems very non committal about their current plans, and seems to be more focused on how to get by for the rest of the day. Hopefully it passes by without an excessive amount of boredom.

---

After some amount of time of idle chit-chat with a mix of peace and quiet, Iron and his leader finally arrive at the rather elegant mall. Opening one of the many doors at the entrance and shuffling Isabelle through it, the two finally find themselves in the rather large mall that’s filled to the brim with all sorts of people.

Quickly taking his place by Isabelle’s side and looking at all the stores around them, Iron looks at the faunus with a questioning gaze. ”You said Lucina will be here?” Iron frowns  as he realizes how large scale the mall is, ”I hope we don’t have to attempt and find her. That would be less than pleasing.”

Iron smirks at the rather surprising amount of cruelty hidden within the faunus in front of him. Though surprising, it still pleases Iron nonetheless. With a flick of the wrist, lightning no longer runs through his gloves as he proceeds to effortlessly take them off and return them to their spot within his coat. While doing so, Iron starts to move in the direction towards the mall he frequents. Once again stopping, Iron turns his head to look back at Isabelle with a blank stare, especially since he was supposed to have responded earlier when he made his way next to his leader’s side.

”You’re welcome, and do keep up while we make our way over there.” With that, Iron’s gaze returns to the direction he’s moving in, with a rather nonchalant manner as well. Presumably when the girl catches up, Iron felt the need to make a comment or two, ”Your control of your emotions was slightly impressive by the way, though it could use some work. Much better than some of our other teammates however.”

”Well, I believe I don’t have anything to do after this, so I’ll follow along until something else requires my attention.” Iron sounded slightly more accepting of team bonding activities, though there was still some sort of displeasure evident. Otherwise however, the two would have idle chit-chat as they continue to use the range for the next half hour or so

---

With the half hour up, Iron picked up his scroll and put it away. As he retrieves his arrows, Iron notes that the stadium is now a lot more busy with people using it to practice and work out. Also grabbing Isabelle’s arrows, Iron starts to move to put away their equipment while gesturing his leader to follow along. Arriving at the lockers, Iron began to put his equipment away and put his lab coat back on. With everything returned to where they were, Iron turns to Isabelle to grab her bow.

While doing so, Iron notices a few fellows glaring at his faunus leader, almost seem like they’re getting ready for some form of hostile action. With a scoff at their stupidity, Iron would coldly glare at them in return, making them turn away in fear. Some people that were spying the interaction seemed to be impressed by what looks to be Iron’s “protectiveness”. To be more accurate, Iron is simply just fulfilling his obligation to the girl. Not only that, but his previous run in with those same fellows ended up with him demonstrating why exactly Iron is a particularly dangerous individual. Iron had no time for foolish people.

With that, Iron’s gaze returned to Isabelle as he waits for her to handover the archery equipment.

”Indeed. Now that I think about it, I must commend you for your bow skills. I’m sure I never made my praise clear whenever we worked together in combat scenarios.”

It wasn’t too unusual for Iron to compliment someone, but it wasn’t common either. In any circumstance, Iron feels a little weird about doing so, but that’s probably just because he’s trying his best to follow his leader’s suggestion to a certain extent. The draw signal rings out clear again, which leads to Iron setting up the shot once more for it to land true on the target.

X-10.

Iron knows he can hit the 10 ring, but hitting the dead center circle is rather rare for him. Iron gives a little smirk to Isabelle before time quickly started to pass in a rather comfortable silence between the two (in Iron’s opinion anyways).

Buzz

Thud

8.

It repeats again.

9. 8. 7. 8. 7. 8.

At his last shot, Iron knew something was off, but he wasn’t sure what. It was just the feeling he got from his stance. He never truly realized what was wrong until the arrow was let loose. Cursing under his breath, Iron starts to extend and contract his arms as it seems that his bow arm wasn't straight, and his other arm was too high. He didn’t even need to look at the target because he knew that the shot was bad. Unsurprisingly, the shot was bad and it landed in the 5 ring.

Then, Iron patiently waits for Isabelle to finish up her last few shots for the round and sort of appreciates her form.