An Archer Adrift: I Don't Have An Arrow For This

KingZephyr commissioned the opening scene of the meme Clint quest. 

X x X

Clint bent over backwards to avoid a swipe that would’ve torn out his intestines, before returning the favour and carving the four-armed-mutant-dog-looking-thing from hip to shoulder.  Shimmering red light cloaked him, and the Chitauri that was about to skewer him in his moment of vulnerability instead found itself holding a melting weapon, shrieking in pain.

“You’re getting slow,” Wanda called out to him, standing atop a nearby piece of wreckage.  There was blood at her temple, staining her hair.

He put a dart through the eye of the insect person lining up a shot at her back.  “I knew you had it,” he said, trying to regain his wind.  “Do you think you could finish up here?  I forgot my bow, and my sword is getting blunt.”

Wanda flicked her hands out, like one might when shooing away bugs, and motes of red streaked out to strangle and twist those it hit.  “Cardio is good for you,” she said, but her words were without heart, and her eyes were roving the chaos of the battlefield.  “Can you see him?”

He didn’t have to ask who she meant.  “Not since he killed half his army trying to escape you.”

A sound rang across the battlefield that felt like burning shivers crawling down their spines, and a wash of purple light followed it.  Clint and Wanda shared a glance, and then they were off, rushing towards it in a breathtaking display of lack of self preservation.  One of the space whales saw and sought to make a meal of them, but found itself crumpled and crushed, even as Clint cut down three Chitauri that rushed Wanda in her distraction.  They reached their goal and took in the scene, just in time to see Tony push himself up, armour battered and ruined.  Six ominous lights shone on his gauntlet.

“No,” Clint said, full of denial.  “Not again.”

Lightning flashed, and Thor descended from the skies to land beside Tony.  A moment later, Cap limped out from the shadows, joining them.  Clint couldn’t help but laugh, the sudden relief he felt a fire in his heart.

“What are they doing?” Wanda hissed.  Red energy twined between her fingers, but she hesitated, unsure.

“They’re being all dramatic and shit,” Clint said.  “It’s over.  We’ve won.”

Then Tony snapped his fingers, and things went sideways.

X

Clint blinked, sitting up straight in the cushioned chair he found himself in.  All around was whiteness, a bright room without end.  He squinted instinctively, but realised it wasn’t hurting his eyes.  He blinked, and there was a flimsy office table in front of him, groaning under the weight of paperwork.  He blinked again, and a man in a cheap suit was sitting on the other side of it.  He had no face.

“What the fuck,” Clint blurted.  He reached for his sword, but its sheath was empty.  His quiver was still on his back, but its lightness told him it too was empty.

“Mr Barton,” the faceless office drone said.  He was doing paperwork, rapidly signing and stamping reams of paper.  “Thank you for joining me here today.  This won’t take long.”

“You’ve got about five seconds to explain what’s going on before I climb over that table to get at you.  Five.  Fo-”

“That little dustup you had has drawn the eyes of my superiors,” the being said, speaking casually as some unseen force silenced Clint, his vocal cords refusing to work.  “Dimensional walls thinned and in need of repair, reincarnations knocked off course, unauthorised crossover events…generated quite a bit of paperwork, too.  Terribly inconsiderate.”

Whatever hold was on him loosed.  “How awful for you,” Clint said.  The smooth skin that stretched across the thing’s face left him unsure where to look, and the muscles underneath it that still formed expressions left him disquieted.

The faceless man nodded, acting as if he had been serious.  “Part of the job of a celestial bureaucracy, but still, tiring.”

“People died.”

“Yes, but no one important stayed dead,” the being said.  “My point is, we had to put in quite a bit of overtime on this one, and upper management put in a request for entertainment as a sort of ‘thank you’ for all our hard work.  We were hoping for that plucky arachnid kid, but you’ll have to do.”

“I will put an arrow,” Clint said slowly, “so far up your-”

“You’ll be returned to the moment you were taken, and we’ll add five healthy years to your lifespan to make up for the time you missed with your family.”

The archer shut his mouth, but only for a moment.  “What do you need me to do?”

“Excellent!  We had hoped and planned for a harem comedy, but we’ve had to step quickly now that you’re here,” the faceless man said.  He continued to stamp and sign paperwork at a rapid pace.  “Still, we were able to repurpose most of our preparations to suit you.”

Clint had a bad feeling about all this.  “I’m married,” he said.  “Very married.”

“We’ve transitioned into an underdog sports drama instead,” the being continued, ignoring him.  “All you must do is coach a high school archery team to victory in the regional final.”

“...what’s the catch?”

“No catch,” the being said, far too cheerily.  “You just need to take a group of Japanese teenagers, caught up in the throes of puberty, and teach them how to use a deadly weapon.”

“Wait, no one said anything about Japa-”

The faceless man stamped the final page before themselves with a sense of finality.  “Everything has been taken care of.  Good luck.”

The brightness of the room began to increase, growing so bright that Clint could see nothing but painful white light.  He closed his eyes against it, the flicking of pages grew loud in his ears, and then he stumbled as he was pulled up onto the sidewalk, out of the way of a speeding white truck.

“You should watch where you’re going,” a man said, speaking Japanese, letting go of his shoulder.

Clint looked around wildly, disorientated by the sudden shift in his surrounds.  The featureless white room he had sat in so briefly with the faceless man was gone, and now he stood outside the local school, about to start his first day at work.  It had a tall, dark grey concrete wall, sparse greenery planted along it, and a road around it.  He blinked, as he remembered things he had never learned.  He knew where his apartment was, where he hid his spare key, the route he walked to get to where he was now.  He remembered waxing the string of his bow, packed away in the soft case slung over his back.

“Are you ok?” the man said, watching him with concern.  He was dressed in a suit, balding, and had a plastic pocket protector in his breast pocket, coloured pens in it.

“Yes, thank you,” Clint said, dragging his mind back on track.  “I was just distracted; it’s my first day here.”  Subtly, he pretended to scratch his temple, and his fingers came away unstained by any of the grime and blood he had been covered in what felt like only minutes ago.

The man brightened.  “Oh, you must be Barton-san!  We were told you were coming.  I am Nakamura Ichiro, mathematics teacher.”  He gave a slight bow.

“Cl- Barton Clint, gym teacher,” Clint said, returning the bow.  Something about the interaction sat strangely with him, but his time in Japan hadn’t been spent in the most polite of company.

There was a beep, and Nakamura glanced at his watch.  “Excuse me, I’m running late.  Good luck with your first day!”

Clint watched as Nakamura hurried on, walking through the gates and into the school proper.  On the wall beside the gate, in shiny plastic lettering, was a sign.

ノーブランド高校 the sign on the wall read.  Nōburando High School.

The archer, adrift in some strange world, set his shoulders and walked through the gates.  If that creepy supernatural office drone was telling the truth, all he had to do was teach a bunch of teens to shoot and he’d get back the years he had been robbed of with his family.  Easy.

Inside the gates was a large courtyard, lined on the other sides by three story buildings.  A large tree dominated the centre, casting shade over most of it.  He did not have long to inspect his new workplace, however.

A shriek of surprise came from behind him, and he turned.  On the same road that he had nearly been run over, a school girl had been sprinting towards the school.  She had tripped on the curb, messy purple hair sticking up in all directions and a panicked look on her face as she barreled towards him, arms pinwheeling to keep her balance.  The piece of toast she held in her mouth completed the picture.

Time seemed to slow as Clint noticed the arrows sticking out of the bag on her back, and he moved to react.  Well, there were worse ways to meet a prospective student.