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“I really don’t understand why this is necessary."
Vinestaff had found herself glaring straight at a target Shuriken had brought out for her, after watching some video recorded in the streets earlier this morning.
“Because Crossroads is dangerous, and you’re our only cashier!”
Raising an eyebrow back at that nonsense didn’t help, based on the look of agreement Slingshot gave him.
“Look— can you imagine if someone tried breaking into the café? What would you do?”
“Cry and let them?”
She’d intended for Slingshot to understand the sarcasm and laugh, but his face morphed into worry instantly.
Yikes, her jokes really wouldn’t land with them today.
“Vine! You could get yourself seriously hurt.”
Shuriken didn’t get it either? Really?
Giving a soft sigh didn’t lighten the load of concern they’d begun pushing on her, seeing how Slingshot’s brows furrowed.
“Between the two of you, I think I’m the strongest—”
“Strength means nothing when you can’t throw a good punch,” Slingshot retorted before letting her finish, adding, “I may have good aim, but Shuriken could easily overpower me with a good technique. That means I’d have to resort to fistfighting.”
“You’d lose,” Shuriken coughed out, laughing to himself before straightening up to focus on her.
“But seriously, if someone tries to mug us, it’d be over for you.”
“There’s not really a lot of money to rob.”
“You think they care about that?”
Man, one measly news report had screwed up her next few hours in an instant.
The exact context was that one Inphernal had gotten robbed two blocks over. Neither of them cared much about those reports before; whenever Shuriken realized the attacker had tanked a full ‘fight’, this sudden concern sprouted.
“Robbers care about power, and you gotta give ‘em none.”
Slingshot was walking to her side, gesturing toward the head of the target before looking at her.
“Try giving it a good punch.”
With an overdramatic sigh, which included rolling her eyes and a soft groan, Vinestaff gave a light tap to the target with her flesh arm before saying, “I’m a healer; I shouldn’t have to do this.”
No one else looked entertained.
“Seriously?”
“As serious as a heart attack,” Slingshot retorted.
Shuriken looked over her form before critiquing it, “You’re not using the right arm for this sort of thing, and you’re not putting any force behind your punches.” he began to mimic what she was ‘meant’ to do.
“Ideally, you gotta just—” He wound his arm up, giving a small stretch before punching the figure so hard it fell over.
“Something like that.”
“And even then, Shuri has a pretty weak hit.”
“No, I do not!”
“Well, in comparison to me, you do.”
She could only watch with a blank face as Slingshot walked right over to it, pulling up his sleeves and all.
“You know if you do bad, I’m making fun of you?”
“My sister is my biggest hater.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
He did that same wind-up before punching it so hard she could’ve sworn there were splinters. She knew carrying around his gear did something, but not all that!
“I feel like you two are just underestimating me,” she muttered, grabbing Slingshot’s hand and examining it afterwards.
With his hand in hers, he stretched all his fingers, clenching and unclenching his fist while talking, “There’s a rate that Coil guy seriously picks a fight.”
No injuries.
Good.
“And you two would be there to stop it.”
“But what if we’re out?” Slingshot asked, with that being the one paranoid question that annoyed her.
“Or I could be asleep!”
Both of them went quiet and stared at Shuriken, a mutual ‘shut up ’, before the real conversation continued. There wasn’t any real harm in what they were doing.
By the time she let go, she was already preparing to use her wooden arm on the test dummy instead.
“I think we just all have different fighting styles.”
“Vine, you just don’t have one.”
“I do!” She could see the exchanged look upon hearing her say that, making her frown, “There’s no way you think I’d live out there without one.”
“Well,” Slingshot was continuing in that voice, the one he used before saying something he knew would sound rude:
“It’s not like either of us sees you do anything other than healing.”
And then Shuriken was on damage control.
“Not that it’s a bad thing, Vine!” He was giving her a sheepish smile, trying to motivate her to tolerate more of their little ‘training’, “It’s great you’re good at healing! And handling your plants. That’s an achievement in itself.”
“So, remind me why I’m doing this?”
And there they were again, back on that typical concern route.
“You could really get hurt.”
“Yeah, the crime rate in our city is too high for—”
They were talking over each other, not even paying much attention to her deadpan expression anymore.
Living in the archipelago of Thieves’ Den meant she had no room to be absolutely helpless. She knew how to strangle animals, which plants she needed to live, and how to get by in day-to-day life with nothing except a few sticks.
There was no way for those two to understand how hard that was, so she wouldn’t blame them too much.
But she did blame them for all this yap over it!
Even more so when the two of them had begun arguing with each other. She had no clue where their conversation regarding her safety had gone while she zoned out.
“I could run games around you, Shuri!”
“And you’d lose because I’m faster, so then what?”
“Do you need that?”
Right.
She only blinked at the two of them before looking back at the practice dummy. Wood on wood wasn’t an ideal matchup, considering it’d weaken her base strength trying to brute-force it.
There wasn’t a set weak spot in place for her to hit, but based on what she’d seen in nature, chances are, hitting the gut would work fine.
As the beginning of their wrestling match began, Vinestaff wound her wooden arm back up before slamming it in the stomach. Punching didn’t work as well on getting a dummy down, and a blunt shove directly to the chest had to hurt as much as a full punch would.
Vinestaff waited for a slight wobble, maybe even seeing the dummy on the floor, only to open her eyes to be met with a completely different image.
When she heard the crack, she’d assumed one of them had broken something.
Not that the dummy had completely broken itself open on the floor.
The two of them had paused solely to look at her, and the most she could muster up was a sheepish:
“That wasn’t— uhm, on purpose.”
“Vine, you can’t just do that!” Slingshot wasn’t one for the dramatics, but in her eyes, breaking that dummy had flicked his switch on.
“Yeah, that’s just-” Shuriken walked back over from where the two of them had pushed each other, only staring at the debris.
“You’ll get murder charges for that, not self-defense ones.”
“You said I need to learn how to do that, though.”
“Don't kill someone!”
“Maybe we need to switch to teaching you lighter hits.”
They wouldn’t let her hear the end of this, would they?
There weren’t any other immediate training dummies, and both of them comprehended the problem immediately.
And what was their way of tackling it?
Arm-wrestling on the floor, sat in front of her, and agreeing that whoever won would be strong enough to take the beating.
Neither of them was trying to win.
It would be one long day.