neutral_omens | (no subject)

Date: December 20, 1999
Setting: The grounds
Status: Public
Summary: War starts a snowball fight.

There’s all sorts of speculation on why wars break out, and though not many say it, most of it is due to boredom.

War had been bored. She had been bored in 1812 and re-fought on the sea a conflict that had already been settled on land. She had been bored in 1914, and had succeeded in getting millions of men to sit in miles and miles of pestilential ditches and shoot at each other for no good reason. There was nothing like a good bloody battle for light entertainment.

And she was bored now, and had had no way of relieving the ennui of the tentative, resentful peace in the Manor. An all-out skirmish would not be permitted, at least here, so War had designed the next best thing to ease the passage of a tedious day.

She was propped up on the edge of a tightly-packed fort on an incline on the lawn. She smiled a smile almost as cold and biting as the air around her, and her breath rose in thin tendrils of steam as she packed snow into a hard icy ball. She examined it, tossing it to herself a few times: it was heavy, sculpted into almost a perfect sphere, and about as aerodynamic as snow could be. Her smile sharpened. This baby was going to sting.

War wrapped her mink-trimmed coat tighter around her, kneeled to peek over the top of the snow-fort’s walls, and lay in wait for prey.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Uriel turned his head at the sound of Michael's voice, mildly annoyed at the disturbance. "Normalcy is overrated!" he yelled, then threw a snowball at Michael. Well. At Michael's mouth. Which was conveniently open, even. How absolutely splendid.

Giggling triumphantly, he then continued his running towards War and Famine.

Michael coughed and spluttered as he suddenly found a large snowball in his mouth. As he was pretty much at his nerves' end as it was, he now felt the last bits of self-control he still somehow possessed slipping away.

Oh, heck. If that was the way Uriel wanted to play. He knew what he was getting at, pissing off the head of Heaven's army. And he would pay for it.

A quick glance around revealed two men with their feet frozen at one spot on the side of the nearby hill. That was obviously Uriel's doing. Waving his hand, Michael thus melted the ice. Anything that worked against Uriel's intentions was fine with him. "What are the sides?" he yelled, starting to form snowballs between his hands. "And whatever they are, I'm not on the same one with him!" he then added, pointing at Uriel.

War screamed as she was simultaneously pelted by Uriel's ice balls and Famine shoved snow down her shirt. She responsed by leaning closer to Famine to get out of range, tightening her legs around his arms, and shaking the snow out onto his face and chest. "Then don't be!" she yelled to Michael. "He's not playing fair anyway."

The marquis bowed deeply at the newcomer. He had been laughing at the red-haired man's attack on the angel, despite being covered in snow from the assorted snowballs and the snow fort that had hit them, despite his feet being frozen to the ground.

Well, now they were free. And most of their enemies were busy, it seemed. Things were working out quite well.

"Us," the marquis gestured toward himself and Wednesday. "The angel is on a team with him," a sweeping arm towards the man still quite pinned by the warrior woman, "and she and he," a graceful arm towards the remaining man, whose actions seemed to make him more and more familiar, "are allies."*

*...It is very, very awkward only knowing one out of six characters' names.

Michael nodded, satisfied with the explanation. "Would you care for another ally, then?" he asked while moving nearer to the two men by the hill, raising an eyebrow in question. "I'm defnitely not going to team with my apparently-not friend there," he pointed towards Uriel, "and I hardly think those two need any more help." At this last statement, he nodded towards War and Destruction. The two certainly could do on their own in a battle.

"...May I ask for your names?" he then asked. He noticed that the man had omitted the names of everybody. Most probably he didn't know them. Well, he could help a bit with that, being very well able to identify both the angels and personifications currently present. "I am called Michael, 'the angel' is Uriel, she's War, and the two remaining men are Famine and Destruction as far as I know."

As yet another person decided to join the battle, he added, "...Though I have absolutely no idea about her name."

Bouncing a snowball on his hand, he asked, "So, what do you say?"

The marquis nodded his head, thinking quickly over the names given and their options. "I have no problem partnering with you, but I fear that is up to Mister Wednesday." He grinned, waving a hand at Wednesday. "As for names, that is his, and I am the marquis de Carabas."

War and Destruction... well, they wouldn't need any help, then, would they? No wonder he looked familiar; Mad Hettie had introduced them, and they had spoken once or twice.

Three personifications and an archangel... and his partner, a god. De Carabas's smile widened. "What do you say, Wednesday? Is he a friend or foe?"

Wednesday sized up the stranger with one eye. "I'm not overly fond of angels. They tend to be poofy wimps, in my experience..."
A burst of flaming sword cut him off mid-sentence. He distinctly felt a bit of eyebrow smoldering. He finally recognized the bearer "... but, on second thought, the Captain of the Host would certainly be a valuable ally." He bowed in front of the archangel, an overly-serious smile on his face. "Shall we take the hill, gentlemen?"

Michael smirked and nodded, satisfied with the answer. Of course, he hadn't expected much else. He then willed his sword to disappear again -- after all, this was meant to be a snowball fight, and using a sword of fire would have kind of defeated the purpose, right?

"Oh, definitely," he said, glancing around to make sure nobody was coming after them at the moment. Glancing then up the hill, he added, "You know... Once we make it up there, it should be easy to rebuild that fortress. That'd give us even better grounds." With these musings, he then started to run up the hill.

De Carabas only allowed himself to be startled by the appearance of yet another angel for just a moment, before he turned to Wednesday with a grin. "Let's approach from different angles," he suggested. "Unless they work together, they can't get at all of us."

"Sounds good." He smiled at the Marquis in as fond of a way as his mouth was capable. He was quite glad that the Marquis had come to the manor. "Head up there, I'll cover your progress." He stuffed a few already packed snowballs in the crook of his arm and let them loose.
He hated to admit it, but this was quite fun.
If only there were some Valkyeries for after the battle.
Oh well.

The marquis did not even pause to agree, or thank. He merely bolted up the hill, at an angle different from Michael's, zig-zagging to make himself a more difficult target. After all, time was of the essence, and they could cover Wednesday's approach as soon as they were up there.

Wednesday watched as Michael and the Marquis gained the hill. For a second he felt like pulling a Loki and attacking them both, taking the hill all by himself, but with a deep breath he reigned in the impulse. He wasn't Loki. He had to remind himself of that. And he and the Marquis had a pact, and while a little deception in a snow-ball fight wasn't the end of the world, he figured it wasn't probably the best idea. To take his mind off of the whole notion he peppered snowballs at the thin man in black, just for the hell of it.