Day 2:

I wake up to the wood chopping noises outside of the car. Emily was practising swinging her weapons. Since I have other matters at hand, I decided to leave her alone and open up the toolbox and ammo loaders. I then spend my time oiling the weapons and ammo. Strange enough, I have never seen a gun rather from movies and games but somehow based on my instincts, I knew what to oil, what to change and even know how to reuse parts from different broken weapons to make makeshift mufflers and sights.

Emily later greets me and expresses interests in the AKs and ARs. There was a total of 10 firearms that I was able to find, most in pristine conditions but didn’t have much ammo, after scourging every steam trunks and metal boxes I can find around our campsite. I found about 90 rounds of 5.56, 60 rounds of 7.62, 7 12 gauge shotgun rounds, about 4 m1911 magazines fully loaded and a box of melee weapons. Later on, I also found an electronic PDA, no batter left though. I figured that I could have used the Humvee’s solar fuel charger, hook it with the PDA battery and maybe get some info about how these things ended up here.

Emily, later on, help me with loading the magazines, in exchange for me to teach her how to use them. I say yes and so we finish with loading the weapons pretty quickly. I then loaded up an AK47 with the 7.62 rounds and give her some instruction on how to chamber a round and how to field strip an AK in case of jamming or repair which is unlikely since AKs were told to be extremely versatile and hard to break down in combat. I then show her how to aim and let her off with a few practice shots, she misses a few shots and some get daze off due to the recoil of the gun hit her in the face, giving her a red nose that makes me laugh the entire time that I try to bandage it up.

“Ow ow OW!” Emily yells due to the pain.

“Stop wiggling, I can’t dab some ointment on your nose if you keep on wiggling.” I try to hold her still.

“How did you tame that beast so easily?” She asks.

“It wasn’t a beast, it was just the recoil. That happens when the bullet leaves the gun.” I explain.

“Then how do you tame the “recoil”?” Emily asks while scratching her head, rustling around her “ahoge”.

Mitsuha: Just push the stock reasonably hard against your shoulder, aim down the sights and keep your face away from the receiver, like 1 elbow away.

After putting some medicinal ointment on her nose, I then demonstrate how I would shoot an assault rifle. Arms straight, knees bent, relax and I carefully squeeze the trigger.

Brata tat tat

Three-rounds go out of the assault rifle, piercing the wooden body of the target tree. Such recoil, perhaps I should have given Emily my m1911 before giving her an assault rifle. Shifting my sight to Emily, I see her standing in shock and awe of how well I was able to handle the AK.

“You must have been a very talented alchemist to be able to manipulate fire and wind to deal such damage with such instruments. I can barely control that “gun” even though I had followed your instruction well.” In amazement, Emily compliments my skills.

“I understand that the recoil can be tough at times,” I says

I fire a few more shots, as well as helping her to shoot a few shots. I ask her to push her back to me and try to imitate me as much as she can.

“Now grab the gun,” I instruct her.

“Y-yes.” She replies and picks up the loaded AK47.

Seeing that her posing go a little bit limped and tremble, I stand closer to her and fix her pose. I tighten her grip and grab hold of her shoulder.

“Slowly, inhale and exhale. Finger on the trigger. When I say go, shoot!” I give her a mark to follow.

Emily takes in a soft breath and exhales slowly. However, it seems that something is bothering her since I continuously hear frantically beating heartbeats and unusual swallows of saliva.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her.

“It’s nothing…. It’s just that……. you’re too close.” She says.

She continuously tries to hide the embarrassment from saying those words by looking away, but her face is pretty flushed to even trying to hide. The closer I got in on her, the redder her face begin to show. The love flag has been risen, which means that I have succeeded in claiming the heart of the first heroine.

“We’ll stop now.”

“Eh?... Why? Have I done something wrong?” Emily sounds out in confusion.

“No, I’m getting hungry and am somewhat tired, so I’d really appreciate if we can continue tomorrow,” I say.

I give her the ok sign and tell her that I’ll be waiting for her to cook the food. I then check to see if the PDA is charged or not. Turning on the PDA, a static noise filled my head. I scream in agony, getting the attention of Emily who was nearby. She continuously tries to help but to no avail. The sounds continuously torture me till blackout.