((Not sure if I made this clear, but comments, additions, etc. are welcome. Just, please, don't hurt my characters, and nothing lethal. This is supposed to just be fun.
Of course, Snaptooth, Positron, Valkyrie, and pretty much any character that appears in the standard gameplay of City of heroes is property of NCSoft. That's why this is fan fiction.
But this is fun fan fiction...))
"Is it safe to eat, sir?" the little boy asked the triumphant Cedric Grey.
The tanker reveled in his hard-won victory. Sure, he was a little worried when the Winter Lord had crumpled the hood of the Holiday Hovercar with a heavy one-fist smash, destroying the Maple Syrup Deployment Apparatus, but two blasts from the Honey Bombs finally put the hulking monster down for the count.
The first had sheared the Lord's left arm clean off while it was preparing another ice blast. The second shot went wild, hitting something down the street. The third, however, was dead-on, melting into the Winter Lord's face and disabling the bizarre snow creature.
It didn't take anymore than five minutes for children to start sledding on it and wondering at the nature of its sugar-coated demise. The blonde young man took a piece of candied snow from the corpse of the monster and nibbled a little. It was sweet. Like victory.
"Have at it, kid," he replied, "It's all good!"
"No... No it is not."
Cedric turned to face the party-pooper, only to do a slight double take.
Positron stood there...
Half of his armor was covered in honey.
"Ah-heh!" the tanker chuckled into his fist, "Nice outfit, boss."
"I guess you ARE the one responsible for this," Positron muttered as he stepped closer and inspected the mass of snow in the street and the hero that stood atop it, "Would I be right... Cedric Grey? Grey... Hey, are you-?"
"No," Cedric replied, "No relation to the Lady Grey. My family's dirt poor."
"Oh."
"Cedric!" Sheldon shouted from the Hovercar, "I got it working again! The jetpack on the starboard bow is a little low on fuel, though..."
"Wallace!" the armored blaster shouted, "What is that thing!?"
"A gift my dad wanted me to test out?"
"Bull!"
"Okay, fine," the younger inventor relented, "I threw the thing together with Holiday Jetpacks, some old pieces of plastic, a couple car engines, a snow blower, and random parts I scavenged out of the ruins of Baumton."
"Well," the authoritative hero stroked his chin, "It's impressive... A bit childish for your normal work, but interesting, nonetheless."
"Thanks!"
"Well," Cedric clapped Positron on the shoulder, "Since we're all done here, and there's probably other Winter Lords to vanquish, we'll just leave the kids gathered here to the candied mess..."
"Not so fast... There's still the matter of my uniform's... Condition..."
Cedric removed his hand from the blaster's shoulder and chuckled at the honey stretching along with it.
"I'm sure we've got something in the car to take care of that," He placated and jogged over to the vehicle before leaping through the passenger-side window and assuming the firing controls.
"What are you doing?" Sheldon asked, worry furrowing his brow.
"Oh come on," the tanker laughed, "I'm sure he knows how to have fun..."
Positron had just got his helmet on by the time Grey had squeezed the triggers and launched a volley of rapid-fire snowballs. These were smaller than the snowballs used to take down Snaptooth, and could be fired in bursts of three from the cannons. However, they tended to lack serious impact, their only major advantage coming from the disorienting effect they had.
Positron was buffeted by a relentless stream of tiny white spheres. he was heavily armored, though, and refused to fall down.
That only meant Cedric turned him into the world's easiest snow sculpture.
"Oh yes," he muttered as his suit brought up Cedric's file, "That Grey..."
The File Image showed the young man making a goofy face that involved sticking out his tongue.
"Drive, drive, DRIVE!" Cedric shouted, but Sheldon didn't respond as ordered.
Instead, his jaw hung slack, and he pointed at his companion's prior target. A whirlwind seemed to have wrapped about Positron, and the snow he'd previously been encased in was disappearing. But it wasn't disappearing, it was being drawn into his armor.
"Why would he do that?" Cedric asked.
"I knew I got this experimental stuff out for a reason," the blaster chuckled as he aimed his arms at the Hovercar, "Incoming!"
Cedric dove under the dashboard. Sheldon stared at him, but he hadn't been through boot camp, so he wouldn't understand the artillery drill. What he did understand, however, was that the rapidly approaching wall of white was the very same snow his friend had just fired at the formerly literally volatile hero. Now that the outfit didn't have to be designed for containment, Positron was free to experiment with much more wild designs of machinery. One such device, it seemed, was a solid matter vacuum and redirection unit...
Essentially, a snow blower suit.
The stream of snow smashed into the Hovercar and sent it hurtling through the air. The snow had smashed so hard into the plastic windshield, it had caved it in and forced snow into the cabin. The vehicle's two occupants screamed a lot (when they could), the driver more than the gunner. Cedric actually seemed to be whooping after the first bounce off the pavement. After the sixth bounce, the vehicle came to a skidding stop in front of Valkyrie, who stared at them in shock.
"Are you alright?" she asked as she cleared the snow away from the passenger side.
"It got in my collar!" Cedric screamed and started gripping the neck hole of his armor, "Augh! It burns! How does it burn when it's cold!"
"What were you thinking?" Sheldon shouted from the other side as he crawled from the wreckage, "I'm sure he knows how to have fun... I bet that was real fun! We nearly broke our necks!"
The trench coated hero frowned at the destroyed machine.
"Look what he did to my car..."
"Who?" Valkyrie asked worriedly, "Who did this?"
"Him," the tanker pointed at the approaching Positron.
He looked similar as before, only now he was floating, and his armor had an odd golden crystal growth where the honey used to be. It was still honey, just frozen.
"Do you yield?" the blaster asked as he aimed his right arm at Cedric menacingly.
"Boss! No!" Valkyrie shouted, "Certainly... Wait... How did they get hit by all of this snow?"
"NEVER!" Cedric shouted over her as he reached into the wreckage, balled up some snow and hurled it at Positron.
He wound up hitting him right in the visor. A tiny windshield wiper then rubbed the packed flakes away.
"Figures," the tanker grimaced as he packed another snowball together.
Another torrent of snow slammed into him, but Positron's supply was depleted with one burst. Sheldon, having pulled on his gravity manipulation gauntlets during this altercation, decided on a course of action.
He reached toward the snow that had filled his vehicle and started amassing the largest snowball he could from it. Then, similar to the "Propel" ability others who practiced his field of control techniques, he launched the snowball with enough force to send Positron hurtling away.
He wound up slamming into another Winter Lord, one that was already severely weak from getting pummeled by a few groups of heroes, and finished it off. When he emerged from the mounds of snow, Sheldon already had another ball ready (that Cedric took a piece out of to make tinier snowball with). Before he could throw it, though, one of the heroes who had helped take down this other Winter Lord shouted.
"Snowball Fight!" her cheery voice rang clear as a bell moments before a snowball smacked into the back of the head of her team's tanker. He looked back at her to see she was in the process of throwing another one, this time getting through his helmet's visor and popping him in the face with a cold, powdery explosion.
And once again... It was on...
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
It was strange. Despite the fact that the heroes had to be out there, fighting the criminality of Paragon City, they found themselves drawn to the bizarre snowball war going on in the middle of Steel Canyon. Well, it didn't help that it was such a slow day for crime (hey, the bad guys have families, too), and the heroes and heroines already involved in the snowball fight were on the horn as quickly as they could be to bring friends in to help.
Initially, the sides were uneven, many of the older heroes had sided with Positron and Valkyrie (who had actually been able to call in Synapse, Manticore and Sister Psyche, though Psyche seemed content to simply sit on a nearby rooftop corner and watch), since they'd been in the city longer and had already established working (if not friendly) relationships with the members of the "Surviving 8."
However, Cedric, in a bold stroke of genius (he has his moments), was able to stall for time to shore up his forces. he stated the snowball fight would be better with forts and bases, and his opponents put it to a vote that wound up in his favor.
Fortunately, Sheldon was able to coalesce local snow and ice (the amassed heroes took down a few more Winter Lords easily to supply more snow when needed) into an impressive fortress in a relatively short amount of time. He started with a basic block design, then turned to the ice and fire controllers and blasters to articulate it. It had one central chamber and several side chambers sprawling throughout the streets.
It was a good thing the Steel Canyon director (mayor?) had the police (and some non-participating heroes) cordon off the region from normal traffic.
Suprisingly, it took the Veteran heroes longer to make their fort. they spent a lot of their time debating on what type of structure to make. Where the Rookies were using a sprawl, they decided to use a tower build, and utilized the massive statue in the center of the city as their base.
Cedric took the extra time available to coordinate the lesser-known heroes who'd come to aid their friends and him. Some of the ones he and Sheldon called joined up, too.
"Roland!" the tanker shouted to his archer brother, "It's so good you could make it!"
"Is it too late to join with Positron and his crew?" the shorter, rounder defender class hero asked gruffly.
Unlike Cedric, who took his looks from their mother's side of the family, Roland looked a lot like their father, only about half the size. The young man also was an archer, with odd gizmos on some of his arrows, as opposed to a bruiser (which he could do, too, but he was more familiar with the bow).
"I know you're only kidding," Cedric chortled, "And besides, i'd hate to have to tackle you into the snow."
"You tackle me?" the brown-haired young man quirked an eyebrow, "I'm not twelve anymore, brother. You haven't been able to drop me since."
"Fella's, fella's!" Ashen Roast, a fire tanker and former Outcast, caught them both by the shoulders, "I know you're just kidding around, but we've really got to prepare and organize for this... I don't think there's ever been a super-powered snowball fight before..."
"And this one will echo through the ages," Cedric hopped up on a mound of freshly packed snow, "ladies and gentlemen, I'm telling you, we stand upon the edge of something grand!"
"This is just a snowball fight!" one of the gathered heroes shouted in the midst of building his personal arsenal of frozen light assault weaponry.
"But it's so much more!" Grey retorted, "I'm telling you, this is going to be the most amazing spectacle since... Since... Well..."
"Very little tops the atom bomb, brother," Roland commented, "Or microbursts, for that matter."
"Okay, so this isn't going to be groundbreaking, we're a bunch of super-powered blowhards flinging frozen water at each other, but this is going to be so much fun the gods are gonna notice us! I want you to look at me and yell 'ARE WE HAVING FUN OR WHAT!?' YOU! What's you're name?"
"Blizzard Front," the blue-skinned blaster replied, "you know me, man!"
"Are you telling me you can't feel that!"
"I'm feeling something... I wouldn't say it's enthusiastic..."
"Oh, come on!" the tanker hoisted him up on the snow mound, "Say a few words to encourage the others!"
"Well I've been keeping count and, we outnumber them..."
This actually got a cheer.
"...By quite a few, actually..."
This got a louder cheer.
"But we're mostly the low-level guys, so we're kind of lacking in advantage, there..."
"That's fine," Cedric interrupted as he packed up a quick snowball.
He tossed his axe into the air, hit it with the snowball on the flat of the blade and caught the weapon so everybody could see the mark he made.
"With snowballs, everybody cons white..."
-----
In the Veterans' base, things were progressing with less friction.
"So, what's my job?" Synapse asked heartily.
"See the snow there?" Positron pointed, "make several thousand snowballs. Ice blasters and controllers will be by shortly to replenish the raw materials."
"I... aw..." Synapse looked downcast for a moment, but shrugged and got to work, "Good thing I wore my thermal outfit today..."
"What about numbers?" Manticore asked, "A lot of the more veteran heroes either have become too jaded to be interested in something like this or they got involved in their hometowns again, leaving the enforcement effort to the newbies... And they're joining with that tanker kid because... well... He has some form of crazy charm..."
"Why are you here anyway, Mant?" Positron asked, "Aren't you just as jaded? You're always brooding..."
"Shalice thought it would be a good idea for me to get caught up in this," the archer replied as he molded a snowball together and poked two holes and a smile into it, "I don't know, it seems fun enough..."
"Okay... well... I don't know what we're going to-"
A stone tanker ran up to the two and got their attention, "Positron, Manticore! There's somebody here who wants to see you!"
Outside the ever-climbing fortress, near the Cooke's Electronics store, stood a group of massed gang members. They were members of the Outcasts and Warriors. One of the Outcasts, a blue-skinned ice type approached the two major heroes leading the Veterans.
"Sir," he said with an outstretched hand to Positron, "I'm Nor'easter. I... uh... I guess I'm running things among the Outcasts in Steel Canyon today..."
"And?" the armored hero asked as he folded his arms over his chest and regarded the self-admitted criminal.
"Well... I was wondering if we could join up with you guys and share in the fun. I... I just run with these guys because a lot of my childhood friends are in with 'em..."
"Is your record clean?" Manticore asked.
"Everything I've done, I've done my time for," the Lead Freezer replied with outstretched hands and not an ounce of deceit, "I can't vouch so well for my companions, but they're mostly just my crew and crews I deal with, and they're moderates at their worst."
"Come on!" a fire-type shouted to the heroes, "We can see you guys need help! This looks like fun!"
"It is a good change of pace," Valkyrie offered as she directed some ice blasters into the tower to give Synapse more snow to work with, "And the Outcasts really aren't such bad guys, just a little misguided."
"Alright," Positron and Manticore said at once to Nor'easter, and Positron continued, "Just make sure you don't betray us or anything..."
"A bunch of low-grade punks turning on Security Level Fifty-and-up heroes..." the blue-skinned teen gave a sheepish grimace, "honestly, the thought never crossed my mind."
"Good," the armored blaster replied with a chuckle, "just stay out of sight... I want you boys to be a surprise!"
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Despite whatever precautions the heroes (and some rogues, apparently) took, they still stood a good chance of possibly breaking one of the windows of the nearby buildings. Some of the ice controllers had the brilliant idea of simply covering the effective area in ice and snow. Some of the other gathered meta-humans went even further.
"Remember Frostfire?" Ashen Roast asked some of the controllers, "He had those slides all over his hideout... Think you guys could make some of those?"
In half an hour, the whole area was a twisting maze of ice chutes and tubes. Most wound down to the street level, and more ice sheets, or massive soft snow mounds. Some were coordinated between the teams to lead into the bases at varying points and levels.
"This isn't about tactics, it's about fun," one controller explained to a grumbling Cedric, "build a hard enough defense in a game like this, and nobody's going to want to play."
"I know, I know..." the tanker growled, "I'm just ticked I didn't think of it."
Once everything was set, the two teams took their positions. Cedric and Positron worked out the terms in the center of the "battle field."
"How did you come to lead these guys, anyway?" the armored hero asked amusedly, "I mean, I pulled up your records from the F.C. files... You're an exemplary character, but I wouldn't say you'd have the social pull to get all of this thrown together..."
"I don't know, boss," the tanker shrugged, "I just go with the flow most of the time... Sometimes the flow gets rough, other times it's perfectly calm. Either way, I'm having fun. Sometimes people join in. I guess that's what this is today."
"So, what's the game plan?"
"Well, here's what I was thinking... Each team has a snowman in their base. Make it whatever you want it to look like. Now, the objective of each team is to destroy each other's snowman. Sound cool?"
"How about five snowmen," Positron stroked his chin, "And a flag."
"Sounds cool," Cedric reached out to shake Positron's hand.
"What about defeats, rules of engagement, or... Well..."
"All's fair in war," Cedric replied, "Except slush balls, ice balls, rock balls, you know, the ones that hurt. 'Cause, you know, that's just mean."
"Agreed," positron shook the tanker's hand, "Good luck."
The two leaders returned to their armies and explained the details. After the snowmen (and snow women) were made, they were placed throughout the structures. The sculptures took on the appearance of some of the world's greatest heroes throughout history. Once they were placed, the two opposing armies made their move.
It was chaos from the get-go. Wizards, warriors, capes, cowls, armor, light, and a whole lot of smiling faces clashed suddenly amidst a flurry of white flakes that only seemed to grow.
The fact that Nor'Easter's retainers had joined with the Veterans proved to be a minor surprise, and one the Rookies easily changed tactics to accommodate for. Despite their team moniker, the Rookies had quite a few experienced heroes in their ranks, and few among them hadn't dealt with ambushes before.
Still, they were all dealing with snowballs, so every new member to the fray was a threat to the opposing side.
As the street level became a cloud of powdery ice, the two armies barely able to tell each other apart, many meta-humans took to the slides, chutes and tubes. One tube, leading from near the top of the the northwest skyscraper, turned out to be a bit of a nightmarish ride and a thrill in its own right.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!" Ashen Roast shouted as he emerged from the tunnel at terminal velocity and started sliding on the chute that gradually leveled out, "OH-MY-GOD-SOMEBODY-STOP-ME!"
"Hang in there, buddy!" Cedric shouted to the orange blur as he skidded along one of the more lateral bridges heading for the Veterans' base.
He had no intention of stopping Ashen. The fire tanker wound up sliding around the Veterans' base himself, but he wound up so disoriented in the snow stop at the end of the slide he wasn't going to be of much help. It was a hilarious spectacle for many of the onlooking crowd though, as he stood, disoriented, and was promptly bowled over by a barrage of snowballs.
"Aw," Grey half-chuckled as he closed with opening to the first floor of his opponents' base, "WOAH!"
A thin sheet of ice covered the opening. It wasn't going to stop the tanker, but it was something he hadn't considered when he started leaning forward for balance. As such, his forehead made contact, and he thanked his lucky stars he had a tough skull.
"Ow!" he shouted as he tumbled into the room, "What the Hell?"
"Get him!" the guards shouted and a big tanker type dropped a mound of snow on top of the blonde young man.
"Oh, wow, that's cold!" he sputtered as he emerged from the pile.
The Veteran guards would have continued pelting him with snowballs and pushed him out the window (to the enormous piles of snow waiting below) if it weren't for the other Rookies that arrived through the same entrance Cedric had used. A small scuffle later, and the Rookies were eventually pushed out, but everybody was soggy.
As the newer heroes pushed out of the mountainous piles at the base of the tower, another group of Rookies approached and pelted them with snowballs.
"Hey! Wai-ack!-phbltbpbp! We're on your side!" Cedric shouted at his brother.
"I know, I was just messing with ya," Roland chuckled, "What're you doin' running away, anyway? I thought the idea was to get inside and get the statues and their flag..."
"Dude, we gotta draw this out, have fun with it, experiment with the possibilities..." the elder Grey sibling pointed to the chute their friend had gone down earlier, "I gotta try that!"
"So..."
"Well, once we finish this, the city's gonna want us to... What are those kids doing?"
They turned to see a group of teens and young children making snowmen. That wasn't so strange in and of itself, but the location they were doing it in was. They had built the ball-type sculptures right on one of the ice sheets of the street.
As a group of Veterans started sliding across, the bigger teens pushed hard on the snowmen suddenly. The crash was so sudden and unexpected, it knocked even the stone tank leading the group off course. He wound up tumbling into a group of Rookies, and his lost arsenal wound up caking a Defender in the crowd.
"Hey!" he shouted, "I'm a spectator!"
"Ladies and gentlemen!" another defender, sonic in nature, announced to the crowd, "If you're in rows one through... seventeen... hundred... You WILL get wet."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
It had come down to the wire. Four statues on each side, decimated by the actions of the super-powered heroes and their various allies as they swarmed the cordoned off streets of Steel Canyon. News crews from numerous media outlets, both local and national, caught the action from multiple angles.
Cedric and his allies coordinated a new defense. Since many of the Rookie leaders had started to act semi-independently (which cost them the first three snow sculptures), they had to organize a situation that made everyone equally responsible for victory. Since nobody knew anybody, no one wanted to back down. It wound up being Roland, Sheldon, and some of the Ice Controllers who decided how the new defense was going to work.
They placed the snow sculpture in the central-most chamber. It had the thickest walls, which was important because, early on, a Rookie Fire Blaster found out that he could just torch his way through the walls of the Veteran Fortress, and serendipitously destroyed the second of the Veteran Sculptures and such incursions had to be taken into account (the first had taken nearly a half hour to get to because of the specially coordinated defense of the Veterans).
The Central Chamber also had numerous vantage points and ice slides for the defenders to utilize in the defense of the last base. The Ice controllers also erected a clear ice dome around the sculpture. This one was of Atlas, which was odd that it was able to support its globe, but the Controllers pulled it off somehow. The dome wouldn't be able to withstand a dedicated smash, but it would be able to weather most errant fire (which was what took out its predecessor, the sculpture of Mustang).
The M1 sculpture was the first to go for the Rookies, decimated in an early raid shortly after Cedric and his brother returned to the Rookie base with their civilian support. They took prisoners from that altercation, though, walling them up in a flimsy ice prison that didn't last to the second raid. That was when the Rookies lost two more sculptures (Galaxy Girl and Dauntless, respectively).
After beating back the Veterans, the Rookies applied a different tactic. They didn't have the versatility (for the most part) nor the coordination for large scale bombardments on their opponents, so they opted instead for small group tactics. With a faux frontal assault led by Cedric and a group of other tankers, the Rookies inserted a number of teams into the Veterans' base and quickly took out two sculptures before they were found out.
The fourth Veteran sculpture was taken down when the frontal assault turned out to be more successful than expected, and a stone tanker teleported himself into it, smashing it to bits with his own body. He was then buried alive by Positron, who single-handedly drove the Rookies out with his own blizzard-like assault.
It was true, the heroes could have simply made more statues. However, the news crews were insistent on having cameras available to monitor the action. The only things they weren't allowed to monitor were the flags.
"I thought he was a radiation style defender!" one Controller shouted as they organized a plan of attack, "Where'd all those snow blasts come from!?"
"Well, since the second Rikti War," a tanker explained, "He's been going around without his helmet... I guess this is a variant design..."
"Well, I could have used a little warning... He just kept recycling and churning out snow..."
"People, please..." one of the Defenders heading the coalition brought everybody's attention back to the ice map on the table in front of them, "We've got a lot to plan, and not a lot of time to do it in... The Vets will be sending in their own attack promptly, and I want to be ready for them..."
"I say we rush their base," Cedric announced.
"We tried that the first time, and the second time we got lucky," the whited-dressed defender replied, "Third time will not be the charm."
"Precisely!" the blonde tanker shouted.
"We'd do better to hold the bulk of the Vets on the field..." red-armored fire tanker explained as he pointed at the area between the two models of the bases, "They've been doing that respawn thing, where we take people out and they teleport them into the fort and warm 'em up or whatever they've been doing... And crank 'em back out at us. If we just fight them out there, not stun or knock 'em out, we could probably pull off another insertion effort."
"Roland," Sheldon pulled the younger Grey away from the group, "I had my androids working on this... A set of arrows that break through to a dimension of... well... snowballs."
"You really wasted time on this?" the hunter asked.
"Not really, I had access to another pocket dimension and I decided to have the Ryats fill it with snow."
"I see..."
"In any case, I have these three arrows keyed to it... You fire them into the air, and they'll bring a rain of snowballs down on the enemy."
Roland just stared at his friend a few moments.
"See, the thing is-"
"Oh, I get the concept," the pudgy defender interrupted as he took the arrows and slid them into the quiver hanging off his hip, "I'm still trying to figure out how you think this is a relevant use of your time."
The Rookies assembled into groups for the rush. peering out the windows of the southernmost chambers and hallways, they saw that the Veterans were already waiting for them, with Valkyrie at their lead. Among the Veterans' ranks, there was no question as to whom was in charge.
"Well will break their walls down, and plunder their last vestige of resistance!" the golden armored heroine shouted as she waved her sword emphatically.
"What?" asked an ice tanker at her side, his words completely obliterating whatever inspiration her battle cry had been intended for, "What does that even mean?"
"Well, I don't want to actually hurt them," she replied, "And we're working with snow here... Shut up! Get them!"
"Engage! Engage!" the leaders among the Rookies shouted as the Veterans approached over the slick surface, "Don't let them reach the walls!"
The defender that had been arguing with Cedric earlier pulled the tanker aside before he could join the fray.
"Look, I don't know how you got this whole thing to start," she began, "and, frankly, I don't see the point of it. But I've had a lot of fun here."
"Thanks," he replied with a broad grin, "To be honest, everybody here helped immensely..."
"In any case... While I don't think this will make much of a statement, I just can't let all of these young heroes lose to those stuck up jerks..."
"They seem to be having fun, too, you know," Cedric quirked his eye at the girl, "One's veteran status doesn't necessarily convey a particular behavior..."
"Still... Look, I just have a feeling about some things, and since this began with you, I think it will end with you. You need to break into there, climb to the highest point in the tower, and take down their last sculpture."
"We still have to find their flag..."
"Where's ours?" the heroine asked as she looked about suddenly.
"Don't worry about it, I've got it safe."
----------
"You sure about this, Justin?" Positron asked as he looked over the plan his fellow Phalanxer had drawn up, "Seems a little... Easy..."
"Simple," Manticore replied, "Not easy, just simple. But, since it's just ice and snow, I guess 'easy' does apply here, too..."
"I can't believe this has lasted so long," Synapse breathed, "My arms are getting tired from throwing so many snowballs..."
"How are they doing on the field?" the armored defender asked.
"They made some progress early on, but got pushed back when thew newbies got their bearings," the super-fast blaster replied as he peered through the window, "Everybody's just hurlin' snow at each other now or movin' along on the ice slides. Heck, some of the spectators are on the slides, too... That one that wraps around our fort is a big hit apparently."
"Well," Manticore hefted his bow and started making for the exit (which led to another ice chute) and clicked on his communicator, "May as well get this over with... Blasters, form up on the positions you've been designated. I'll be in position shortly."
"Good luck," Positron said to the red-clad archer's back.
"He doesn't need luck," Synapse chuckled, "We've got this in the bag."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
((May as well finish this up....))
"NOOOOOOOOOO!"
Cedric body tackled the screaming Tanker in his way through the ice and snow doorway. It had been a long climb, and he was exhausted. Fortunately, he didn't have much further to go.
Within the chamber, highlighted by the sun shining down on it, was his target, the snow statue of Statesman. The hole in the ceiling was also big enough for Cedric to get through, causing him to give a mild curse at realizing he could have just dropped in through there instead of crashing through a wall and fighting his way to this point.
"Ha!" Synapse shouted before his more witty quip was lost in the buzz his voice became as he started burying the young tanker in snowballs.
"Well done," Positron muttered as he started floating out of the chamber, "Looks like we're about to win this..."
----------
The fire blasters had more trouble getting to positions that would enable them to punch holes into the Ice Sprawl Fortress than Manticore had anticipated. Each time one got a good angle, he or she was barraged by a contending Rookie or would slip on the ice and slide down the slope to the street battle below. Then the process would start all over.
Eventually, the crimson-clad hero realized he had to maneuver the heroes into position and explain exactly where they should fire. The heroes complied and eventually there were several holes poked through the fortress walls.
Unfortunately, there was no sign of the last Rookie Snow Sculpture.
"Damn it," Sinclair growled as he skulked through the outskirts of the battle, "Where are they... No... It couldn't be that easy..."
He fired two arrows in succession. The first was a Sonic Disruption Arrow, and weakened the ice dome placed in the top of the central chamber. The second was a light explosive, and upon exploding, it shattered a small hole into the dome.
As Manticore sought out a proper vantage point, a black hole appeared in the sky. Some of the crowd gasped at the thought that perhaps it was another dimensional invader...
Then the snowballs started falling through, and raining down upon the combatants in the street below. Roland nodded curtly at the success of his friend's invention. If he could make a more lethal version, one utilizing the same "Arrow Space" pocket dimension his quiver was keyed to, he'd likely have a very effective weapon against the villainy that currently plagued the city... But such thoughts were outside his concern at the moment.
"Roland!" he heard from his communicator, "Manticore just blew a hole in the Main Dome! He's about a second from ending this!"
Turning, the backwoods hunter caught a glimpse of the red-clad Veteran commander sighting in on the Sculpture of Atlas. He didn't want to, but he knew the best chance he had of stopping his opponent.
As Manticore let another arrow fly, a second hole opened in the sky and a rain of snowballs descended. Justin Sinclair glared down at Roland Grey and growled. It was a little unsettling to see arrow tricks being used against him like that.
The arrow he fired streaked through the air, however, descending here, deflecting there, even piercing through a few intruding snowballs. The barrage wasn't enough, and anyone observing was surprised to see the arrow plunk into the ice dome surrounding Atlas.
-----
Cedric burst from the snow mound with a gasp and didn't stop charging toward the sculpture of Statesman. Suddenly, a blur was around him, and when it was gone, he was turned around and dizzy.
"Wuh-oh-woah..." he moaned as he stumbled to get his footing back, "I-"
There was another blur. When it cleared, Cedric was walking into an ice pillar.
"Ow!" he muttered as he rubbed his forehead while sitting on the icy floor, "That wasn't so nice..."
"Aw, here," Synapse said as he walked over and extended a hand to the tanker, "Let me help you up..."
As soon as Steven had Ced standing, he was a blur again. Despite the speed of the spin, Cedric's moan of disappointment was still clearly audible. When Synapse stopped this time, he wound up throwing the Tanker into the wall overlooking the street below. Thick cracks split across the ice and Grey landed hard on his back.
"Ow," he groaned, "Good lord, man..."
"Did I hurt you?" the tights-clad hero asked genuinely.
"Nah, I'm lyin'," Cedric chuckled as he started picking himself up, "Buddy, it doesn't matter what you do to me, I'm gonna..."
He looked up to see the blue blur ringing him again. This time, however, Synapse was keeping about a meter distance between them.
"I know what you said through all that buzzing you know," the tanker set himself for a charge, "You said that you're not gonna let me win this, that I don't have the cajones to do what I'm about to do, and that this is crazy, and-You know what, I've heard it all, and it doesn't matter who says it, I'm still gonna do what I'm about to do..."
With that, he charged into the blur, and he and Synapse collided. The two of them were sent sprawling into the corner of the chamber just as Manticore's explosive arrow tore open the dome on the Sprawl Fortress.
After a few seconds, Cedric started chuckling.
"What's so funny?" the super-speeder groaned, "I think I cracked a rib..."
"Oh, I know I cracked a rib," Cedric still chuckled, "Maybe two or three. It's just... I thought it was really funny, the look on your face as we hurtled through the air... You were all like 'NO!' and I was smiling and laughing... Then grimacing and groaning..."
He looked to see the Veteran glaring at him.
"And here we are," he finished.
"Buddy, things that are fun aren't supposed to hurt like this..."
"What? You've never played football?"
"I've played football," Steven grunted as he pushed himself up, "Oh.. Good... Nothing's broken, just hurt... In any case, when I was able to play the game to any appreciable capability, I, well, thought it might raise a few eyebrows... you know, someone who could clear the field a hundred times over before the ball even left the kickstand..."
"God, I wish I could see that," Grey replied, "Can you imagine it? Super powered professional sports..."
"Look, the thing is, this isn't how things are supposed to be done. Having fun isn't supposed to hurt, and super heroes aren't supposed to be having impromptu snowball fights... Regardless of how spectacular it may be... You think this is happening in the Rogue Isles?"
"Yes?"
"Well it's not! They're plotting every day of their lives how to make innocent people's lives miserable, and it's our job to keep that from happening!"
"Dude," Cedric was unconvinced, "I've run into a lot of those guys, and aside from a few truly disturbed freaks, most of them are like me and a lot of the heroes down there, just trying to get by in a mad world... Wait-a-minute... you're just distracting me, aren't you!?"
"Well..." Synapse scratched the back of his head.
"GAH!" Cedric started charging for the sculpture of Statesman, but the electric blaster was on his back in a flash.
They were spinning again, but the tanker had enough of that game two seconds into the first time. He'd been working on a way to counteract it, and he thought he finally had it. Crouching slightly, he grabbed Synapse's left hand, kicked one leg behind himself for the other hero to trip over, and gave him a light-but-sharp elbow to the ribs with his right arm to release the other hand.
At that speed, the Veteran was sent flying through the air. Steven Berry crashed into the same snow pile he'd barraged onto Cedric only minutes earlier. The explosion of snow blanketed much of the room, and Grey got back to trying to smash through the sculpture.
Synapse wasn't beaten, however, and, yelling a heroic "NOOOOOO!", attempted to tackle the tanker away from his task. Unfortunately, that was exactly what Cedric intended. As Steve got close enough, Grey planted his feet, crouched and slammed his shoulder into his oncoming opponent, deflecting the blaster into the snow sculpture with a triumphant whoop.
-----
At the same time as Synapse's crash into the Statesman sculpture, however, Manticore was pushing the button on his remote detonator, which caused the small explosive on the arrow he'd just fired to do the work it was meant to do. The protective dome and the sculpture were shattered in an instant, and the news cameras covering the event clocked it as happening at the same time as the Statesman crash.
With a draw, the snowball war was over, except for one thing...
Positron was on the ground, congratulating the heroes and civilians on the event, and organizing a detail to start melting down the more intrusive structures so business could get back to normal. He was hoping his worthy adversaries would forget the last detail for victory so the event could end.
His hopes were dashed. Cedric came swinging into the center of the battlefield, shouting "WAIT! WAAAAAAAAAIT!"
"What is it?" the armored defender asked nervously.
"We're not done here!" the tanker shouted, "We've still got one more thing!"
He reached into his armor's collar and produced a bright red rag. The Rookie flag.
"We've still got these to get! And good luck getting... it off... me... Where's everybody going?"
"Ah jeez," Positron slapped his forehead, "Look, Cedric, this has taken nearly all day to deal with... It's been fun, yeah, but we really need to clear things up now."
"But..." the tanker was disheartened, but he couldn't ignore the fact that everybody seemed to be packing up and heading home or wherever it was they wanted to go at that moment, "The ice slide..."
"Yeah, I know," Positron commiserated, "I wanted to go on it, too."
"Really?"
"Yeah. But it's out here in the middle of everything, so it's gotta go..."
"Well," Nor'Easter piped up, "It's not exactly in the middle of everything... With some careful and crafty engineering, we could probably clear the roads and leave a lot of these slides up... At least for a few days..."
"Well?" Cedric turned hopefully to Positron, "Can we?"
"Well, on one condition..."
"You get to slide first?"
Positron tapped the portion of his visor where his nose was underneath.
"If you beat me there!" Cedric shouted as he leapt into the sky and started making his way for the entrance to the Big Slide that Ashen Roast still hadn't recovered from.
And so ended the Snowball War. Nothing was accomplished, and many things went right back to where they'd left off, but everybody seemed to have a lighter heart. Perhaps that made it worth all the trouble.
As a side note, Positron beat Cedric to the Big Slide. He simply buried the brash younger man with the excess snow he had stored in his suit on the way to the entrance.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
((OOC)): Aww! Great story! ^_^
Yar. This be a very enjoyable read. 
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
Oh, thank you.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"Explain to me again why we're living here instead of there?" whined Mini Bot as the drone looked up from the TV where news of the Paragon City Snowball War was just finishing up.
"Magic," answered Toy Dispenser as he quickly slid from his seat and started walking away hurridly.
"But-!"
"Magic!" Toy shouted as he fled, Mini Bot chasing after him and waving its arms in the air.
Silence reigned in the LMOUSVEV base for a few seconds, broken only by the echoes of Mini Bot's high pitched voice carrying on a one sided conversation with Toy.
"Explain to me why he's a high-ranking villain again," muttered Atomic Firecracker, one of the lower ranked members of the mercenary group.
"Magic," replied Combat Toy as it dropped a heavy hand on the five foot tall corruptor's head and then walked off.
OOC: Randomness, lol?
Statesman said let there be heroes, and there were heroes.
Lord Recluse said let there be villains, and there were villains.
NCsoft said let there be nothing, and there was nothing.
Fun story. I like to think that stuff like this would happen in a real-life Paragon City.
Oh, yeah. <Homer>Mapllllleeee Cannnnnndyyyyy! Mmmmmm! Arglarglargl....</Homer>
((Uh... I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to do here. I just wanted to tell some humorous stories with a tertiary relation to the Winter Event and the holidays. If anybody would like to join in, that'd be cool.
For clarity of characters, and it's hard for me to imagine descriptions for them when I feel the greater part of the story is more important...
Cedric
Sheldon))
"Sheldon," Cedric said from the co-pilot seat, "I never would have guessed you could do something like this."
They currently sat inside what appeared to be a red sports car made of plastic. Instead of wheels, however, it bore four devices commonly known as Holiday Jet Packs, jingling merrily as they held the vehicle aloft. Another pair mounted on the back were utilized for when an extra boost of speed was required, but they currently weren't active.
Mounted on the sides of the "Holiday Hovercar" were a twin set of strange looking cannons. They had big rubber tubes running from an apparatus that took up the backseat.
However, the workings of the machines weren't of any concern to the tanker and his friend, the inventor, Sheldon Wallace. They were on patrol for one particular individual...
"See, there he is!" the tanker shouted, "Not a day after Christmas, and he's already on another scheme!"
Snaptooth tore across the courtyard of the Steel Canyon University campus, a gaggle of Recaps trailing behind him. They each had sacks over their backs, and Cedric had a bad feeling about what they might have been stealing.
"Lock on and fire!" he shouted.
"Alright, alright," Sheldon sounded bothered, but he actually grinned as the HUD popped up on the windshield, "Target..."
He squeezed the triggers on his steering wheel and the twin cannons started firing. Inside the weapons were gravity matrices that instantaneously turned the snow being fed into them into perfectly spherical snowballs. Which was really helpful when they were sent sailing at the Holiday Hovercar's targets.
The Redcap lagging behind was taken down first. It only took three snowballs. They were rather large, each one about the same size as an average person's face. They were also pretty dense.
As soon as the bag the recap was holding hit the ground, a rainbow of glittering dust escaped and vanished into the wind. Cedric pointed and slapped the dashboard.
"Man, I knew it! He's still stealing Holiday Spirit!"
"I wonder why," Sheldon asked as he brought the vehicle around to pursue the others, "It's not like he can make an effect like you were talking about, earlier."
"Maybe he has some sort of evil magic machine that converts it into pure disappointment," the tanker grumbled, "That eh then shoots at people..."
"That sounds about par for his reputation," the inventor winced, "Whatever he intends, let's shut him down."
He squeezed the triggers again and the automatic targeting cycled through targets, taking out Rascals and Hooligans with ease. After a few blocks, Snaptooth was friendless.
"This sucks, man!" Cedric whined, "Can I shoot some?"
Sheldon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel before flicking a switch on the dashboard. What would normally have been an airbag deployment system opened up to reveal a firing control station. The tanker made a strange "glee" sound and grabbed a hold of the control sticks as he stared into the targeting computer.
Snaptooth turned, saw his goons weren't with him (he'd thought those "paff" sounds were heroes hitting other heroes with snowballs), and noticed the vehicle following him. As he made a lewd gesture, the cannons fired, and the Redcap leader was bowled over like a pin. Like the others, as soon as his sack hit the ground, the Holiday Spirit locked inside was released and dissipated on the wind to return from whence it came.
"Augh!" the ugly little man shouted, "It never fails! As soon as I'm just within success..."
He glared up at the vehicle and hissed. Drawing his knives, he waited for the next assault. Each incoming snowball this time got sliced apart. However, both sides knew it couldn't keep like this.
"Dammit, Snap!" Cedric shouted out the window, "Either you take your whoopin's like a man, or I'm gonna have to come down there and give you whoopin's like a man!"
"Agh! It's that guy!" Snaptooth turned to one of the nearby large gift boxes that had materialized around the city and started mumbling to his knives.
"What's he doing?" Sheldon asked, "Oh, wait, some kind of spell..."
"Well I'm not letting him finish!" Cedric squeezed the triggers again and the cannons blasted the Red Cap off his feet.
"I'm really starting to hate that guy," Snaptooth grunted amid the piles of snow, "That guy in particular..."
Unfortunately, his incantation had been completed. He threw one of his knives at the gift box and it neatly popped the lid off. He then went to toss one of his Mini-Red Caps from his Basket o' Stuff at the Holiday Hovercraft. The Red Cap was intercepted halfway to the machine, screamed about the gunpowder getting wet, and started complaining about his back after hitting the ground.
"Oh well, he was just a distraction anyway," the bigger gnome grumbled.
"Cedric, look!" Sheldon pointed at where the gift had previously been.
There, standing twenty feet tall, was one of the Winter Lord monsters that had been terrorizing teams of heroes across the city. They were big, they were tough, and sometimes it took more than one group to take one down.
"What've we got to take it down, man!?" the tanker shouted.
"A Maple Syrup Cannon and Honey Bombs," Sheldon replied.
Cedric looked back at the inventor, his face a mask of stunned disbelief (and a little disgust mixed in). The driver calmly reached over to the weapons control, flicked a couple switches and pressed a few buttons. The older man continued to stare at him, dumbfounded.
"You've gotta be freaking kidding," Grey finally said as Sheldon leveled the vehicle at the monster.
Unfortunately, Snaptooth escaped into the sewer, his purpose not yet completed. Cedric cursed himself a fool for not being more specific with the promise he'd elicited from the husky goblin.
"Cory keeps telling you, you have to go into the details with magical creatures," Sheldon explained, "Be good? For how long? Five minutes? Seconds? He probably waited until he was all healed up before getting back to his normal routine."
"Yep," the blonde tanker sighed, "So... Maple Syrup?"
"It's a jet of the stuff," the inventor explained, "Fired from nozzles that flank the grill. The Honey Bombs are launched from the cannon on top, but we'll have to reload those manually. Be careful, we've only got three rounds..."
He indicated the two clear flimsy plastic spheres next to the machine behind them.
"Don't worry, it's a special polymer that doesn't melt. It's tough to break under standard handling, too, but being fired out of a cannon? Uh-uh."
"Water balloons full of honey," Cedric frowned, "You've gone quite mad, haven't you?"
"Using our own super powers, weapons, magic and science is fun and all," the younger man replied, "But to be truly effective, you must utilize weapons your enemy is truly vulnerable to. By the time we're done with this Winter Lord, he'll be little more than a tasty treat. Of course, that's all dependent on you PULLING THE TRIGGER!"
To further illustrate his point, the Winter Lord hurled a few chunks of ice at the Holiday Hovercar, crumpling the hood a little and securing some curses from the vehicle's occupants. Once the shouting was finished however, a thin jet of amber fluid escaped from the front of the machine, almost as if it were a test. When the Maple Syrup hit the giant snowman, the monster recoiled in shock and pain.
"I'm never doubting you again, man," Cedric said as he prepared to launch another, more powerful burst at the monster.
It was on, now.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.