Solo #1

Tom slowly walked out towards the archery targets, wiggling his fingers a bit in anticipation. He had been neglectful of his training. Ever since the bayou, he hadn’t even touched his bow. And even before that he had only gone once to the range. He had been lucky in the bayou in a sense. He hadn’t needed to use his bow at least since he was turned into an owl most of the time while the attacks were taking place. However, he knew he had to do better once he came back to the Prytaneum. He couldn’t continue to do practically nothing.

He was still trying to figure out what he wanted to do here but had come up with nothing. He was actually starting to feel a bit resentful about all of this and didn’t see why he was here. Sure, Apollo had… “chosen” him, though it felt more like a recommendation, and… that was it. Nothing else had happened that had made him think “I belong here”. It seemed that the only time the gods communicated with the chosen, excluding Hestia, it was just to choose them. He couldn’t blame them of course, they were probably busy doing other “things”, but he could at least get a sign that told him how he was doing, even if Apollo was disappointed in him.

And so because of this, around the Prytaneum he had pretty much become known as the ‘moper’. He hadn’t meant to, if you could see Tom outside of this setting you would think he was a completely different person. But inside he felt annoyed that he had even accepted at this point. He hadn’t done anything of note and could barely hold a longbow much less use it. And the fact that there was so much training needed made him wonder why they were sent out into the field so quickly. Shouldn’t they have like, a year or so before going out and having to fight if they had no fighting background?

At this point he couldn’t really say he had helped all of that much on their missions. He had done some patching in the Alps, and then had just sat around in the bayou. He was pretty much a dead weight to the team right now.

So he hadn’t spent much time in the Prytaneum since then. He went there for exercising as it was quite quiet and he didn’t have to fight anyone for the equipment, but otherwise his room was kept clean and empty while he continued to live in his apartment where he had his computer and his cats and contact with the outside world. Something to make him feel as though he wasn’t just waiting and twiddling his thumbs until something happened.

And now he had finally gotten a job in January so that he could actually use his medical knowledge to help others. And luckily it had also been at a private practice though his hours were longer than most of the other doctors. He didn’t mind though, he was new and needed the practice. After a year or so they would eventually be able to even out his hours. He was staying even less in the Prytaneum now, especially since he actually lived in San Francisco so he wasn’t dealing with the snow and cold like in Michigan.

But… it was a new year, and this year he promised to do more. Even coming and meeting fellow chosen to get to know them and going to the Prytaneum to do at least a little combat training. He had decided to stop studying for a bit there, he was looking at his medical textbooks at home more anyway, and decided that what he really needed to work on was using the longbow. As much as he would have preferred a more modern bow, this was what he was stuck with.

He finally got to the range and was glad that they didn’t leave a ton of snow lying about there. It would make it a bit easier at least since he was already starting to freeze. He hoped a bit of training would warm him up. He had decided to use the outdoor one, because he knew that he would eventually need to fight in different types of weather that were different than “nice and sunny”. Sure, he had tried to fight a bit in the Alps, but he hadn’t been able to do much before being sucked into the snow and unable to really move around. He would have to learn how to move and how to use his bown in snow and rain and other sorts of weather, though he probably wouldn’t run into the other ones until the mission came up containing them.

He sighed, placing his bag down and grabbing a few arrows, hoping he could land a few.

WC: 814