[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/gRmKFQV.gif[/img] [color=ed1c24]Level 8 - EXP 44/80[/color] The Midnight Walk - Christmas Village [b]Word Count:[/b]43922 +5 EXP [/center] [hr] [hr] [center][h3]Snow-Laughing Matter[/h3] Featuring Sandaphlon and The Ace Cadet [b]Word Count: 3922[/b][/center] Unable to contain his excitement, at the beginning of the evening, Tenna had been absent, partaking in Christmas-like festivities. The last the Seekers had seen of him, he charged off to explore the fantastic village as soon as Maeve said the words “Christmas Village”. He went off sprinting into the small crowd of townsfolk mingling in the cobbled streets of Galeem’s festive village, shouting [color=1a7b30]“[/color][color=ed1c24]C[/color][color=1a7b30]H[/color][color=ed1c24]R[/color][color=1a7b30]I[/color][color=ed1c24]S[/color][color=1a7b30]T[/color][color=ed1c24]M[/color][color=1a7b30]A[/color][color=ed1c24]S[/color][color=1a7b30]![/color][color=ed1c24]![/color][color=1a7b30]![/color][color=ed1c24]![/color][color=1a7b30]![/color][color=ed1c24]”[/color] into the distance. Apparently, he was fond of the holiday. Any Seeker who had grown wary of his whereabouts quickly could have their worries set to rest, as the CRT quickly became entranced in holiday games with many of the (possible URL if there's a good one) children residents of the village, who quickly radiated toward Tenna’s child-like personality. Every time a different Seeker came to inquire about the TV host's location, he was always in the same spot, playing a different game every single time someone checked on him. Though now things had grown oddly quiet in the plot of snowy land that Tenna and the children were playing in, save for a steady and repeating “THOOMP!” noise. Now the amount of townkids spending time with Tenna had decreased, as they hunkered down [url=https://imgur.com/JjpPelc] amidst a snow blockade[/url] across from a group of[url=https://imgur.com/W5Nnm7x] festively dressed delinquents[/url] who continued to, way too violently, mind you, hurl snowballs at the opposing fort. The children who stayed no longer looked like they were having fun, and Maeve’s warning about playing safely was ignored. Some of Tenna’s henchmen helped to form a counterattack of snowballs, but were quickly pelted in the face. The leader of the group could finally be made out as he steadied [url=https://imgur.com/DimmTGR] his buzzcut head[/url] and leveled a [url=https://terraria.fandom.com/wiki/Snowball_Cannon] weaponized snowball launcher[/url] that easily left bruises on skin towards Tenna and his henchmen. “Ok. I reloaded. Now hit that stupid TV-Face.” The boy commanded his clique in a stoic and almost careless tone. It almost looked like he wasn’t having any fun doing this, if it wasn’t for the twisted smirk that curled on his face whenever he hit somebody with the snowball gun. It was only a matter of time before the spectacle happened to draw the eye of someone in search of something to do. Of course, Sandalphon had pictured herself assisting with decorations or gift-wrapping rather than engaging in a physical activity in any capacity, but the archangel had a keen eye for the analysis of warfare, be it conducted with swords or snowballs. It didn’t take an expert to be able to tell that the snowball field was in a rather sorry state. With only a couple rudimentary barricades and rather meager caches of snowballs, it reminded her of the dreary public playgrounds scattered among the residential areas of the Sector 08 undercity in Midgar, Detroit. Yet even a playground like this seemed to have its share of bullies. Sandalphon was not experienced with children, but the disparity between the two factions in this frosty conflict was plain to see, and it seemed obvious that this shouldn’t continue. The archangel began to approach, considering what tact she ought to take to resolve this matter. She was also not the only Seeker who had stumbled upon the scene, though this one took a much less calculated approach. Whether it ended up giving Sandalphon a small opening or interfered with her budding plan remained to be seen. [color=salmon]"Hey, Tenna! You want any help?"[/color] the festively clad Ace Cadet called from the edge of the snow arena, opposite the archangel. After making the rounds giving out clothes he'd actually intended to head right back to the village's central workshop, but his return route had taken him by the snowy play-battlefield. It'd been a long time since he'd participated in a snowball fight himself, and while he would have been happy to leave the village kids to it he couldn't help but notice his fellow Seeker among them, with his while group pinned down. Ace cupped his hands around his mouth to shout out again, but ended up having to duck a snowball that was pitched at his head. [color=salmon]"Whoa!"[/color] "No outside help!" one of the holiday hooligans yelled. [color=salmon]"Alright, alright! Snow easy on me!"[/color] the Cadet yelled back. Rather than leave, which is probably what the opposing snowball forces wanted, he charged into the arena with an arm thrown up over his head to protect from the rain of snowballs that followed. He slid behind the crumbling wall of Tenna's side's fort, shooting the entertainer and his entourage a grin. Tenna nodded to Ace’s offer to help. With many of the leftover kids hunkering down in the safety of the small fort, the resistance against the bully’s barrage of snow was three to five, excluding Ace and the nearby Sandaphlon, who the CRT and the delinquent boy had not yet noticed. [color=ed1c24]“We started having a normal snowball fight but then that teenager started talking to some of those dressed-up bullies about this fantastic weapon he found specifically for hurting people in snowball fights.”[/color] He tried his best to point to the cannon without peaking over his cover. [color=ed1c24]“Honestly, they’re [color=662d91]RUINING THE SHOW![/color]”[/color] Tenna pouted playfully, before using a squash and stretched enlarged hand to ball an oversized lump of snow in his palm. He chucked it over the makeshift blockade towards the rowdy ground at the opposite end, causing a couple of heads to duck down to avoid being pelted. The assault of snow slowed down for a moment as they hid their heads, giving one of the Shadow Guy goons an opportunity to nail the teenage leader square in the face, staggering his aim. “Okay, new rule.” The boy shouted from his fortress. “If you hit me again, I’ll beat the shit out of you later.” The threat seemed empty from the inflection in his voice, but it was pretty clear this kid was the root cause of the snowball fight catastrophes from years prior. Tenna sat back down next to Ace, forming another ball as he said, [color=ed1c24]“I thinks that if we disarm that gun from him, the kiddos can go back to their [color=6ecff6]snnnnnnowwwday[/color]! I’ve been using my employees and Darkner powers to hold them back without hurting anybody…”[/color] The Cadet peeked over the snow mound to see the opposition, muttering a "sheesh" at the ring leader's reaction to a taste of his own medicine. Ultimately it came down to a kid (and his pack of adult underlings?) taking the game far too seriously, so his promised retaliation wasn't intimidating. Taking his advantage away did seem like the best option for getting him to quit the game so the rest could continue more casually though. [color=salmon]"Sounds like a plan!"[/color] he said, packing a fresh snowball in his hands. Still far enough away from the one-sided snowball fight that nobody had really taken notice of her (despite looking even more angelic than usual thanks to her new outfit), Sandalphon paused as one of her fellow Seekers jumped into the action. She’d hoped that Tenna and his mooks would have the situation somewhat in hand, but even the monster hunter’s assistance didn’t seem to be enough to turn the tide against the little hellion and his gang, especially with that snowblaster of his. What really convinced Sandalphon to intercede, though, was the curmudgeon’s threat, especially given his foul language. That evaporated any sympathy the archangel might have had for him and his cohorts, painting them as delinquents in need of correction. She moved in, walking in an arc toward her allies’ snowy citadel. Used to precise measurements in far more dangerous and stressful situations than this, she had all the time in the world to calculate the necessary trajectory as she manifested an icy cluster in the palm of one gloved hand. “All units, prepare for all-out bombardment, targeting enemy emplacement,” she ordered. After a moment, she wound up to throw, her blank face subtly menacing. “Here’s a snowball for you.” With that, she hurled the Frost Lock straight at the bully’s snowball cannon. On contact the machine froze solid, leveling the playing field for five crucial seconds. Her dynamic entrance had Ace and Tenna glancing at each other, and then throwing matching grins the angel's way. [color=ed1c24]“Action time baby!”[/color] [center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfUKZ3_se3M&pp=ygUScGh5c2ljYWwgY2hhbGxlbmdl[/youtube][/center] The mean teenager looked at the malfunctioning gun in confusion, not suspecting the support from Sandaphlon. The tides of the struggle had been leveled out more, now that the crew had an opening to counterattack! Tenna and his henchmen began rapidly forming and throwing snowballs towards the clique, forcing them to duck and weave while throwing in messy succession. After her tampering with the snow-launcher, the group seemed to be aiming mostly in her general direction now, seeing her as a threat to their troublemaking. “My launcher may as well be useless with her protecting them!” The leader shouted over his holiday henchmen. Tenna knew that once the Frost Lock ended, the cannon would be aimed at Sandaphlon. [color=ed1c24]“Doesn’t this bully have a parent to reel him back in!”[/color] The CRT complained under the cover. The henchmen had managed to land a couple of hits on the henchmen. Even before the freeze ended, Sandalphon could tell from how the gunners pointed their weapon that she could expect a cold-hearted reprisal for her interference. Rather than try to join in her allies’ barrage, or attempt to defend herself with her strings, she made for their snow fort as fast as possible. Unfortunately it was slow going, and with neither the strength nor speed to push through the powdery drifts, the archangel would probably not reach cover in time… which meant her allies would have to find a way to protect her from the horror of being pelted with packed snow. Even in his holiday outfit, there were some things that Ace wasn't going without; his pack with all of his equipment for one, the scoutfly cage for two, and of course third was the trusty slinger. Though he would be able to pull Sandalphon with its chain... Tenna could probably reel her in the same way he'd done for the Cadet in yesterday's battle, and it would be a much less jarring experience versus being yanked with the hunter's own clutch claw. Ace patted the television-headed man on the shoulder and suggested it. [color=salmon]"Think you can pull our commander in? I'll try and draw some fire- actually, I guess draw some ice!"[/color] It took Tenna a moment to connect Ace’s train of thinking; the cadet wanted the CRT to divide again into a Tennaling rope to retrieve Sandaphlon, though it seemed like she had some sort of intent to charge toward the enemy fort. [color=ed1c24]“You got it! Just give me a small opening and lasso me on over there!”[/color] If Ace could remove even one attacker, that would distract the foes for long enough to retrieve their commander. Tenna waited nearby, now a stretched-out rope of miniature Tennas linked hand and feet to one another. Though Ace'd just been throwing normally before, now he pulled the catch of the slinger back to manually adjust it, loading it full of snowballs from the fort's slowly dwindling stash. Using the sling shot mechanism wouldn't have been considered cheating back in his world, and considering the bullies were using even stronger propulsion, he wouldn't have felt bad about doing it here even if it was. Ace rolled out from behind the snow fort opposite the side Sandalphon was approaching from, coming to rest in a half kneel with the slinger raised. It fired a snowball at the gingerbread-faced delinquent, nailing them square in the nose. The hunter did play fair - no rocks or chunks or ice in these snowballs, and with the gear's power tuned a little lower it wouldn't be any more painful than just getting struck by someone just chucking them. But it was fast and accurate, the second snowball already following up the first. It burst against the same underling, the next two aimed at the sock headed guy right next to him. [color=salmon]"You guys are pawsitively out-chilled!"[/color] he teased, swinging the slinger's aim to the next in line of the opposing forces. With two of the snow-hurling neirdowells disposed of temporarily, Ace then had a good chance to wrangle Tenna by the midst of his makeshift self-rope and swing him towards Sandaphlon, whom he grabbed and quickly wrapped around her arm to reel her back towards the group. [color=ed1c24]“Whoa there! My! Aren’t you popular!”[/color] The CRT quipped. [color=ed1c24]“But seriously though, if you have a plan, you gotta speak up!”[/color] While the three huddled in the safety of the snow fort, the boy on the opposing side had managed to get his snowball cannon functioning again, the steady rhythmic noise playing against the battlefield again. With that gun in commission, they weren’t going anywhere, and while Sandaphlon had tried to take initiative in disarming the annoying boy, the opposing attack’s focused effort proved too dangerous. Piecing himself back together, Tenna looked at his teammates. [color=ed1c24]“If you need a distraction, I make an excellent one!”[/color] Having not engaged in a snowball fight before, Sandalphon was taking this a little too seriously as well–from her expression and labored breathing, one could easily believe she’d just narrowly escaped real machine gun fire. She held up her gloved left hand and stared at it until her fingers stopped shaking from a combination of numbing cold and nerves. Then an idea occurred to her. Floating overhead, her halo served as a beacon to reveal her exact position to her opponents, so any move she made would be betrayed to the opposition in advance. Even now, snowballs pelted against her halo’s metal, causing powder to shower down onto her head. And even if she could get a good angle on the delinquents’ position, it would take twice as many Frost Locks to freeze the cannon again. With her new power, though, she need not poke her head up from behind cover. Sandalphon narrowed her eyes, extended ethereal ergo strings from her fingertips, and then angled her left hand downward. The luminous wires dove down into the snow, burrowing like worms. Her mental snapshot and previous calculations should be enough to guide her strings toward the teens’ emplacement. “In approximately ten seconds, I can disable their machine again,” she informed the others. “I’ll try and knock it down, half-bury it in the snow. The rest is up to you.” It wasn't a lot of time to come up with a plan, and she'd left the details up to team members that maybe weren't the most well suited for doing that in the first place. Wartime strategy, even if just for pretend, was definitely outside of the Ace Cadet's wheelhouse. Then again, it wasn't like the stakes were all that high. In the middle of packing more snowballs he glanced at Sandalphon, noting her rather serious demeanor, and then peeked over the fort again. His eyes slid over the enemy position, the open the field, and then back to their own base. Then, he glanced back at the rest of his allies with a smile and a shrug. [color=salmon]"How about the rest of us charge in, then?"[/color] he suggested. [color=salmon]"I bet they won't be expecting that! Plus when they see us coming, without the snowball cannon they might get cold feet and abandon their fort."[/color] Such was the way of a lot of these kinds of bullies after all. Not long after, ether strings sprang up from the snow around the snowball cannon on the other side of the field. They quickly wound around the weapon, pulled taut, and then yanked it downward as Sandalphon tugged on the strings with all her strength. It wasn’t much, but with the element of surprise, it was enough. With the pull of her threads the signal, the archangel's troops jumped into action. Ace vaulted the short snow fortress wall with one arm laden with snowballs, the other with a freshly reloaded slinger that pelted the opposing team's fort and its defenders while he charged. And when it inevitably ran out of ammo, well, his pitching was still pretty good. Tenna remained at the ready for her signal, divided into twelve miniature clones of himself once again, this time for better evasion. The tiny CRTs scattered wildly, dodging any attempts to hit him with thrown snow, and with a three-person charge, they could easily rush the fort. The leader boy frantically attempted to retrieve his weapon from the clutch of the strings dragging it into the snow below. Once Tenna had surrounded the foot of the bully’s defenses, he waited for Ace to group up with him, offering a valuable distraction to disarm the wintery weapon by climbing up the sides of the fort, drawing any immediate fire. In panic, one of the bully’s teammates turned toward a nearby snowman. It was an odd-looking sculpture, especially the head, which had what looked like gossamer ears poking out the top, a couple beardlike strands sticking out the bottom, and a single hole in the very middle of the face. The teen pulled it off, then lifted it up to hurl at Tenna like a giant snowball. As big as a soccer ball, it definitely had enough mass to knock him down if its thrower hit his mark. Unfortunately, he never got the chance. A moment after the kid raised it up, the snowman head popped, revealing a fluffy flea hidden inside. It let out an excited babble, then zipped away with a playful “Awoo!” Taken aback, the teen was a sitting duck - and quickly covered in snow as the mini-army overran that side of the field. As expected, once it became clear that they no longer had an overwhelming advantage the majority of the team of bullies turned tail and ran, less they ended up becoming snowmen themselves. It left only their stubborn ring leader to defend the base, but the odds were not in his favor. At some point the deluge of snowballs from the Seekers' side had resulted in the bully releasing his grip on the tangled cannon to shield himself with his arms, and when he turned to look for it again the weapon was buried under a half-crumbled wall of the snow fort. "Dorks! Cowards!" he called after his fleeing crew. "Hafta do everything myself. Alright, my turn now." He scooped up a hand full of snow and roughly shaped it into a sphere, pitching it like normal at one of the multitude of little TV heads running around. As they were quick and small he ended up missing, but rather than trying in vain to take out the Tennalings he instead aimed his next shot at the larger target. Ace was in the fun-having mind set, so when he turned to catch a snowball right in the center of his chest -one not launched by the snowball cannon and instead by the boy's own arm- he blinked once and then a grin split his face as he dramatically flopped over onto his back in the snow. [color=salmon]"Aaah, I'm hit!"[/color] The bully paused, evidently not having expected that reaction at all. And was that a little satisfied smirk that formed on his face after a moment, rather than a cruel one? He formed another snowball, but he was still alone and surrounded, and the simple stick and cloth flag of his base was sagging where it had been stuck into the snow. Ace’s performance was commendable, especially to the optimistic TV-host, who effortlessly dodged the mean kid’s last-ditch barrage of quickly crafted snowballs, scaled all twelve miniature copies of himself to the top of the snowy building that the bully hunkered himself down in. They rematerialized into the TV’s full glory, now posing dramatically over the boy as he glared down at the half-snow-submerged weapon, half-tempted to make a last attempt to retrieve it from Sandaphlon’s Ergo Strings. Tenna stepped down from the ramparts of Jimmy’s snowy base, now face-to-face with the cause of so much sourness on a jolly occasion. The TV-host reached down with a gloved hand, grasping the weapon by its stock, and would signal for Sandaphlon to release her strings from the weapon by snapping his fingers over the barricade. Once they had detached from the gun, Tenna was quick to toss it over the fort and towards Ace, whom he trusted would be ready to receive it. As it was flung over, the hunter's arm reached up to snatch it from the air before flopping 'lifelessly' back onto the ground with a poof of white flakes. [color=ed1c24]“Your reign of terror is over, you little [color=fff200]MAGGOT.[/color]”[/color] The boy scoffed at his fun being foiled, disappointed not only by that but also by his group of delinquents bailing out on him. Children began to emerge from the fort, ready to pelt the poor sport who tried his best to play nonchalantly. “Whatever, man. You people are a bunch of freaks.” The boy flipped the trio off before spitting on the ground and storming off at a brisk march towards a nearby [url=https://imgur.com/9LRdrt8] caroling performance[/url], where he proceeded to heckle the man’s terrible singing. [color=ed1c24]“Well… At least he isn’t bothering the village kids anymore.”[/color] Tenna sighed dramatically, looking back at Ace and Sandaphlon. [color=ed1c24]“Now then! Would you two be interested in learning the proper rules of the game?[/color]” Sandalphon, having been watching the conclusion of the curmudgeon’s saga from the sidelines, considered the proposal. Her talents would be much better used elsewhere, efficiently pursuing the maximum possible contribution toward the upcoming festivities…but from what she understood of Christmas and the ritual’s goals, being part of this holiday was about more than fastidiously working a job. If enjoying oneself was part of the point, then it would be counter-productive to work herself to the bone. And if nothing else, maybe a proper snowball fight would broaden her horizons in terms of strategic possibilities. “I would like to participate,” she confirmed, her pupils shaped like carets. The Cadet sat up and brushed some of the snow out of his hair, his face touched red from the cold but otherwise still feeling fairly merry. Though he hadn't known Tenna for long he knew the strange man was good for a lively time, but he was particularly pleased to see the team leader having some fun. [color=salmon]"I'm game too,"[/color] he said, already forming yet another snowball in preparation. With the battleground reclaimed for the participants who would play more appropriately, Tenna would show the two how to build a snow barricade, gathering up groups of snow to wall off from oncoming threats. Once the two were more familiar with the game, the show began, as snowballs flung through the air. After the game had finished, Tenna and Sandaphlon returned to where Maeve had been checking off tasks they had completed! After reporting the bully to her, they handed in the weapon, trusting that the pixie could return it to its rightful owner.