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“Hey Deku, what did you do to your arm?” Urakaka queried, seeing his exposed arm as he washed some vegetables for dinner.
“Hm? Oh this?” He turned over his forearm to reveal a baseball sized bruise in the middle, leaning a bit towards his wrist. It was off blue with bits of yellow and oddly enough there were a few red, vertical marks dotting the crook of his elbow and down. “Hit myself.”
“With what?” She asked again.
“A bow string.”
“Like- like a bow and arrow kinda string?”
“Uh yeah,” he answered, almost embarrassed. “I know it’s not exactly a common sport but I really like it. I was having a hard time tucking my elbow in the other day so the string kept hitting me, that’s what I get for skipping a previous practice.”
“It’s fine to talk about your hobbies, I just didn’t know you could do archery.” Urakaka took a bell pepper from him and started to set up a cutting board. “How long have you been doing it anyways?”
“A good few years. I picked it up when I was about ten. A really fun thing about archery compared to other sports is that you can start whenever. You don’t have to train from a young age or only shoot in the prime of your life. I’ve seen kids as young as four or five shoot great right next to people who are easily grandparents. The sport is pretty inclusive in general. Wheelchair users, those with mobility issues in general, hearing or sight problems, I’ve seen people work around all of those things to practice. There isn’t all that of a disadvantage either, equipment is built to fit the user, it doesn’t matter how fast you can run or how strong you are, it’s a lot about how you angle things.”
He paused for a second watching how Uraraka started cutting while he dried off the other vegetables. “I’m sorry, you probably don’t wanna hear me ramble on about this.”
“No! Tell me more, the only thing I see of archery is from movies and I doubt that’s accurate at all.”
“Gah don’t even get me started. Ya know if your bow creaks like that when pulling it back, there’s probably something wrong. I don’t even wanna talk about the nonsense of loading several arrows at once. I will give them credit for usually being pretty good with foot work but man some movies are just atrocious to watch once you have a basic idea of what to do. I don’t want to comment on it too much though because a lot of films feature compound bows, the compact stuff you usually see in hunting while I shoot what’s known as a recurve bow or a recurve barebow to be more exact. Which just means I shoot one of those classic bows without any equipment to help me aim. No sights and stuff like that.”
“Bows are measured by the shooters wing span so it can fully expand, which is to just say someone is able to pull the string to its max while pulling their arm all the way back.” Midoriya made sure his hands were dry before stretching his arms fully out. “As you might imagine, mine is very large, it’s actually a bit taller than me. It stands around one hundred seventy seven centimeters or about five foot seven.”
Uraka placed the knife down. “Wait, if it's so big how come I didn’t see while we were comparing rooms?” She said, sounding betrayed.
“Well it’s so big that I almost always keep it disassembled. It’s upstairs in a bag right now. Actually all of my equipment is upstairs right now if you want to see it later, not that you have to-“
“Deku,” she said, cutting him off and putting her hands on his shoulders in all seriousness. “I would absolutely love to see an actual bow so you can tell me more about your random hobby.”
There was a beat of prolonged eye contact before he responded with “We still have to finish cooking or Bakugo will probably kill us.”
The two did in fact finish cooking but not until Midoriya answered every question Uraraka asked.
How far do you shoot?
Eighteen meters indoors and fifty outdoors.
What’s the difference?
Indoors is what it sounds like, inside a building. Outdoors or field archery is also what it sounds like, but it has more challenges. In heavy wind or a nasty downpour, the weather doesn’t really postpone a shoot. Indoor takes place in the colder months but once it warms up usually around April or May, people head outside. When it gets cold again, people are back inside no later than December.
The shooting does change a bit. Going from ten ends with three arrows inside to shooting five ends with six arrows.
Please explain what an end is and how does scoring work?
An end just means a single round, you shoot your arrows during this time. Some competitions will double the ends and break up the shooting into two parts, making a group out of the first ten ends, calling it round one and the second round two.
Scoring is really easy, there are ten circles on a target. Going from outside in, you have two white rings, two black rings, two blue rings, two red rings and two yellow rings. Again, from outside in, the rings are worth one through ten. There is technically a third yellow ring which is what most people would call a bull’s-eye, but it’s actually called an X and it’s only brought up in tie breakers because it isn’t worth more points.
Does he compete?
Yes! And he’s not so bad in his own opinion, it wasn’t a very well populated sport in the area so he usually scored a top spot, his best indoor score was even two hundred fifty six! To save her from quick math, be added in that a perfect archery score is three hundred.
The classes dinner was finished but eating didn’t stop the topic and before long the rest or their classmates got roped into the subject of Midoriya’s archery.
“You knew?! And you didn’t tell us?” Kaminari exclaimed at Bakugo.
“Oh course I did! Just like chubby cheeks here, I wanted to know what the marks on his arm were, you should of seen them when he started! He would hit himself all the time and would get these stupid big bruises all over his arm. Besides, the nerd owns a couple of shirts he got from competitions and a few he bought from brands.”
“Then how did we not see them?” Kaminari said, this time whipping around to Midoriya.
He scratched at the corner of his face unsure how to answer. “I mean, you usually see me in the school uniform or my hero costume, not my regular clothes. Besides I doubt you guys would notice me in a shirt with a brand you haven’t heard of.”
“Okay but enough of that!” Uraraka said before anyone else led the conversation. “You promised I could see your bow and I bet everyone else would also like to see it too!”
“You can’t all fit in my room while I put it together!”
“No, but you can bring it down here and then put it together so we can watch.” Mina piped in.
The room murmured in agreement
“Okay okay!” Midoriya yelled to be heard over his classmates. They all cheered as he headed into the elevator and again when he reappeared with a large bag over his shoulder. It was a tad bit bigger than a backpack, very square and a bright shade of green.
He laid it on the floor in front of the tv and started to unzip it while the class piled themselves along the couch. He unfolded a tripod stand with a handle on top to hold the bow and reached back in the bag.
The class all exclaimed as he revealed the middle part of the bow. He was holding the grip which was centered in the middle of a metal piece that had been painted yellow. It wasn’t solid, but had holes in it the way a brace would. The ends of it had slots fit with metal pegs for the rest of the bow to go. There was a large, ciringical silver weight right below his hand and another metal piece sticking off the right side above the grip.
“So this silver weight is to just add onto the bow weight. The idea is that if it’s heavier, my arm will be steadier. This smaller part is called a plunger, by changing the number it’s set to, it applies pressure to where the arrow is to help direct it to the left or right.”
He sat it down and pulled out one of the bow's limbs, it was curled at one end and the wood suddenly dipped in right at its end for the strings to tie in. It was black on the outside but looking at its side you could see it had a wooden middle. The styled words of ‘galaxy’ read across it in bold lettering. “The outside is carbon fiber, but the center is bamboo wood, it’s very flexible and strong so I can put a lot of force into an arrow.”
Midoriya grabbed the metal center again and slid the limb into one of the slots, a satisfying clunk and click as it locked with the metal peg. He repeated the same with the other. He balanced it on the end of his shoe and true to his word, it remained a few inches taller.
There were a few oo and Aw’s.
“Put the string on!” Kirishima shouted from his corner on the cushion. “I totally promise to not try and shoot it.”
“Please don’t actually, by not using an arrow you can damage the bow which is why people don’t do ‘dry fires’. Plus, I guarantee you’ll hurt yourself, even with an arm guard”
“A what?”
Midoriya was already grabbing the string from the bag, it had a small metal circle put on its center. “A usually plastic piece, sometimes cloth, that goes around whatever arm you use to hold the bow. It’s to protect the skin if slash when the string is released and it hits the arm, that you don’t cut or bruise your skin.”
“Then how’d you hurt yourself earlier?”
“It doesn’t always catch things, especially because I have a smaller one and I just refuse to get a bigger one.” The string went midway around the first limb and its end put on a slit of the other
He reached into the bag again, this time pulling out a tied together string. “This is a restringer, it takes strings off and on bows.” Everyone watched as he unraveled it to reveal one end was tied into a small circle with a rubber pyramid piece that he put a limb through and the other with a cloth pocket that the other limbs end was put in.
Stepping on the string, he pulled the bow upwards, making the limbs bend. The circular string end was put around that with the actual bow string that was left part way on. With the bow pulled like this, Midoriya could slide the string into place at the end of he limb. He took the restringer off, revealing the now complete bow.
“Ta-da! You guys can hold it but please be careful, I’m telling you now that it’s kinda heavy.”
The bow made its rounds, everyone was careful to keep it from scraping the floor or messing with the plunger. As it made its rounds, Midoriya took the opportunity to pull out an arrow.
It was a sleek, dulled silver with a rounded tip. Its feathers appeared sharp with two black and a red. Sticking out at its end was a neon orange plastic piece that he pointed to.
“This is a nock, it’s what connects to the string. The reason there are two different feather colors, which are called fletchings or veins, is that the odd one out is to tell which way the nock is facing.”
“I thought arrows were supposed to be sharper than that, it looks pretty dull.” Bakugo said.
“You’re thinking of broadheads. Those are saved for hunting because of how they can piece flesh. This is rounded because it’s for target shooting and it can be very difficult to remove a broadhead out of targets, especially with how much they tear up. I don’t actually own any, if I did I’d probably show you but could I see my bow for a second.”
It was quickly handed over and he placed the arrow on right below the metal on the string. “The metal ensures the arrow is placed the same every time. You fire by using three fingers right below the arrow, your thumb has to be holding down your pinky because they just gunk up the process.” He took the arrow off before giving the two items to his classmates. “The string carries a lot of tension which can cut your skin so you put a tab on your fingers. It’s a strip of leather that you put around on your middle finger, now some people will use a glove but it’s generally not liked because it can mess with accuracy and often changes your fingers position. You still end up building calluses along the finger joints which makes things easier as you go, especially if you want to increase your draw weight, which is just how much force is behind a string.”
When it was Kaminari’s turn, he took two in each hand and asked “So how are you supposed to fire it anyways? Is there like a set up?”
“There is! It’s kinda more like a checklist. It starts with stance,” he said, mimicking the motions as he said them. “Nock the arrow, hook and grip the string and set your shoulders.” He looked over to see Kaminari following him.
“Bring the bow up, pull it back, anchor your hand against your face, hold, aim and expand your arms before releasing. Obviously you shouldn’t even pull back a loaded string without the intent of firing, especially in here-“
He spoke too late.
Several people were chewed out by Aizawa that night and a new hole in the ceiling was left as their reminder on what not to do.
