It was summer time, and one of the linchpins of summer was camp. Rebecca never went to camp as a kid; summer was soccer time, which was the closest to camp she ever came. With so many new opportunities in her life, Rebecca wanted a camp experience, so she would settle on an overnight archery camp.

Archery was always an interesting idea to Rebecca, but the chance to learn it never came up. She would probably never use it, (since the X-Men already had a resident archer in Mirror, and Rebecca was getting the hang of shield-wielding,) but as a recreational activity, it would be a fun way to spend two days.

The bus ride out of the city was pretty uneventful. None of the other Mansion kids decided to go with her, so she quietly enjoyed her iPod near the back of the bus. She did not mind keeping to herself; Brave just came out, so if many people heard her Scottish accent, she was in for a never-ending stream of references and jokes.

Once they reached the camp, everyone left their belongings in cabins and made their way to the range. There was a basic introduction: parts of the bow and the arrow, how to string a bow, how to fire an arrow, and the rules of archery. Rebecca tried her best to pay attention; last thing she wanted to do was leave an arrow in someone's arm by accident.

With instructions out of the way for the moment, the campers were told to pair off. Everyone at the camp was at least over seventeen, but Rebecca was still relatively sure she was on the older-side of the group. She found another girl around her age quickly before anyone could snatch her up. "Wanna be my partner?"

The first time Allison had attempted to learn archery hadn’t been entirely intentional. Her elementary school sent every fifth grade class to a week long “educational camp,” which offered classes in everything from canoeing to building a shelter and starting a fire to identifying water bugs through a microscope. The kids, of course, didn’t get to pick; the camp randomly split them into groups, and assigned each groups to two morning and one afternoon class each day. Allison had, by chance, one day ended up in the archery class.

She’d failed miserably, of course. Fifth graders weren’t really strong enough to use bows or hit targets intended for athletic teenagers, and particularly not one of the slightest and shortest of those fifth graders. She had, however, kept the arrows relatively straight--they’d at least stayed in the section of grass in front of her, and not in front of any of the kids near her, like many of those other kids’ arrows ended up, even if she never got them more than a third of the way to the target. She’d enjoyed it anyway, though; the idea that she could, essentially, fire a weapon by posing (and relaxing) was at the time the best thing she’d ever heard: dignified, potentially effective, and with so much potential for awesome.

Allison hadn’t actually managed to practice archery any more since then, though she’d continued to want to. There hadn’t been time, either to learn or to find an opportunity, and when there had been time, she’d found other things to do first. Since moving to Sanctuary, though, she’d had significantly more time, and so when she saw an advertisement for an overnight archery camp, it wasn’t a particularly hard decision to go.

The instructions were dry and loaded with dire warnings about What Could Go Wrong, which Allison didn’t quite remember from when she was ten, but which were interesting. Slightly amusing at times, when the instructor got into particularly melodramatic warnings, but useful; her memory wasn’t that good, even assuming that the instructions hadn’t changed at all in the last twelve years.

The direction to find a partner was… slightly less fun. Allison didn’t do too well with finding partners, not with the ink that spiraled or flowed all over her face every day. The people who didn’t guess it was related to a mutation tended to still object because tattoos, which left a fairly narrow range of people who were happy to get along with Allison.

Fortunately, the issue was solved for her. Allison grinned at the girl who’d approached her. “Sure! Is this your first time?”

Looking over her new partner, Rebecca noticed the obvious tattoos on the girl's face that she had not seen from behind. It was certainly peculiar, but Rebecca was not going to hold the girl's choice against her, especially now that they had both accepted one another as partners. As a mutant and a bisexual and a comic book fan, Rebecca was working hard on avoiding judging anyone, regardless of reason.

Whether it was a guess or Rebecca was so clearly new to the sport, the girl nailed it on the head. "Great! My name's Rebecca! And yes, it definitely is."

Rebecca chuckled, cheeks slightly pink after admitting her newness. "Ah hope you dornt mind an inexperienced partner. Is it your first time?" It would not be terrible having a partner who could show her the ropes.

“I’m Allison.” If Rebecca wasn’t going to use last names, Allison had no inclination to use hers. She wouldn’t have anyway, really, but it was easier to avoid questions if no one used their last names.

“Nah, I don’t mind. This is only my second time, too, and it’s been a while since I’ve done it. So we can learn together?” Allison automatically turned the comment into a cheerful question, but didn’t truly intend it as one. Learning together was the point of the camp, after all, wasn’t it?

So Allison had tried archery once, which was reasonable; it was the sort of activity people at least tried once. She seemed chipper enough, so Rebecca gave her the benefit of the doubt before jumping to regretting her partner based on odd choices in self-decoration.

"Good tae know. Ah was a little nervous." Rebecca slipped one end of the string onto the recurve bow, and placed the bow in a stringing position. She pulled on the string as the bow began to bend, and after some strenuous effort, the second loop on the string locked in place. "Wow... is it s'posed tae be that tight?"

In an attempt to start conversation, Rebecca decided to compliment her partner. "Um, your markings are pretty." In an abstract way, they really were intriguing.