Your Snow Against Mine

Denny regretted staying out for a second shot as an especially painful snowball cracked against his skull directly afterwards, causing him to fall over just like his nemesis had. Katie gasped before laughing. She’d accidentally made one with a token inside it from Moonfall.

Crawling behind cover, she smacked Frankie back to life.

“Wake up, silly! We’ve got a war to fight!”

“I can’t do it, sarge, I can’t…”

“Tell that to our parents! Tell that to the girl you met in Eagle Frontier!” She dramatically grabbed at Frankie’s powder-covered coat.

The little sister grit her teeth.

“Gimme another ball. Actually, make that more than one.”

Wilton was about to make his own shot, planning to arc it past their cover, but his aiming was interrupted when Frankie leaned out from the cover and started laying down suppressing fire. With Marston pinned, Katie stood with one ball in hand and waited for Adams to show himself. But she wasn’t ready for the man’s impressive quickdraw.

Not only did she throw hers, but he tossed his own the instant he got up again. And unlike Katie, his aim was true. Where hers pelted uselessly against the wall of their bunker, his clocked her square in the nose.

He thought he’d ducked in time before Frankie’s onslaught could turn to him, but one came through the hole he’d shot from and just barely fell down to splat against his thigh.

Does that… count?

Screw it, he thought. Nobody had to know. It might as well have not happened.

Out of ammo, Frankie went back behind the base. Their supplies were dwindling. They couldn’t afford to make a play like that again. Counting the well-constricted balls, they only had two left, though Katie was forming a reserve of softer, less-effective ones.

In contrast, behind the boys’ shelter, they were more than spoiled for choice. Wilton lifted his favorite creation- one he always made at least one of whenever he’d trounce his friends back in the Massachusetts Snowglobe, made all the better by Kidney’s more accurate artificial snow. It was less of a ball and more of an elongated missile that you threw like a football, capable of penetrating barriers and collapsing entire bases. He called it Father Christmas.

Their defenses didn’t stand a chance. He lugged the Winter WMD at the hidden sisters’ short wall like a torpedo, exploding it into white misty chunks in an instant.

“Crap…!”

Denny rose to the occasion, picking up armfuls of balls to start swinging towards them now that they were out in the open just behind the dusty snow particles of the destroyed hub. He sprayed mercilessly into the cloud into he was out of ammo, peeking through the white to see who he got. But to his surprise, neither one was standing there.

Until suddenly, Katie stood up from underneath the thick snow! With just a few flimsy snowballs in her palms she surprised the sharpshooter, finishing him off with two clean hits. He tried to duck at the last second, if only to make it look like he wasn’t actually touched, only for a pointless third shot to hit him right between the eyes.

Wilton wasn’t going to let this risky play go unpunished, however, peeking out to deliver his own flurry of five small projectiles launched from his larger-than-average hands. The snowy shotgun blast eliminated Katie, four of the pellets connecting. When she surrendered, he noted the calm expression on her face as one still sure of its own victory even after her individual defeat. He knew to look out to the side of his cover, ready for the other to appear at any moment…

But wait as he did, she did not come. The terrorist was completely absent from the playing field, at least as far as he could see. He didn’t know what trick she was playing, but with all three of his hits still remaining, he wasn’t that scared. He was more than safe behind his massive, perfectly constructed wall, so tough even his Father Christmas couldn’t possible hope to punch through its multi-foot-thick design.

“Ey, someone keep your eyes on the goods.” He motioned to his comrades who watched the match, not a single one knowing where Frankie was either as they guarded the stolen travel bag. “Come on, skid. Where are ya? Show yourself! Or are you too afraid? Olly-Olly…”

Wilton inhaled sharply as the entire front wall of his base came crashing down on him.

Atop his belly and covered in snow, the red, wet, freezing Frankie took her last remaining handfuls of fluff and pelted him over and over again until not even the most biased of onlooker could argue that Marston had not been disqualified. 

Panting, finally able to breathe, she looked up to the sky above her tackled victim, and let out a primal scream to the entire park.

“Frickin’ hell, kid… it’s just a snowball fight…”

She grabbed the idiot by his extended collar.

“OUR LIVES WERE RIDING ON THAT…!” She heaved, her snow-soaked head bobbing up and down. It had finally hit her, the second their base came crumbling to the ground. Absurd though it may have been, if they didn’t win this, they posed the risk of imprisonment. Only someone that determined would be willing to bury themselves half to death crawling across and into the opponent’s very front wall. She slammed his collar back down, still panting. Katie ran up and hugged her.

“Don’t worry. We did it.”

As the entirety of the rest of the marketing team despaired, having failed once again and for the final time, Wilton only grumbled. It occurred to him then. He didn’t really care about what this kid had done. Not as much as the others did. He just felt like winning a snowball fight.

Denny growled at the sisters, hoping so badly that the others wouldn’t hold up their end of the bargain in giving the bombers back their coins. He couldn’t have been more enraged as Marston immediately stood and offered a hand to the one who defeated him.

“Good game, kid.”

Confused at first, Frankie nodded to her opponent in fairness, in spite of how unfair the situation had been to begin with.

“Now screw! I don’t wanna ever see your faces again… Tch.” He adjusted his vinyl jacket as he walked back to his team, nodding to a sobbing Julie, who then approached the winning sisters.

“You don’t deserve this… but here.”

She plopped the bag back in its rightful owner’s hands.

“…Uh-huh.” Frankie replied. “Yeah, good game to you, too.”

The sisters didn’t look back as they walked off into the white, sharing a fist bump on the way out.

Atop the houses above them, someone was very, very unhappy with this turn of events.