048: Snowball Fight: Sister vs. Younger Brother 1

November 2, 2020 - 9 minutes read - 1760 words

“Well, I’m cold. I’ll definitely catch a cold.” Thor

“What are you saying? Thor isn’t fast enough to catch a cold.” Asmo

“I agree” Al

Thor is walking down the road, shivering.

Asmo and I were walking behind him, retorting to him.

“Well, if I don’t, it’s because Al made an instant bath to warm me up.” Thor

Thor didn’t catch our joke. Asmo and I were joking that his brain was slow so he couldn’t catch a cold, but then he missed the pun. It’ll be funnier if we keep quiet.

Thor managed to splendidly dunk himself in the river during winter. You would have thought Asmo was the one to get wet, but I put a magic shield under him. Thor was angry at first since I didn’t help him, but when I made a bath using Earth, Water, and Fire Magic, he forgave me. He’s only cold now since he’s a bit damp.

Some villagers can use simple magic, but the number of people who have enough magic to make a bath are few and far between. Water is normally drawn from a well or river, but that takes effort and time. However, magically creating significant amounts of water is difficult.

In the end, most people don’t have a bathtub even if they wanted to draw enough water for a bath. The common practice is to pour some hot water into a large bowl and use that to wipe your body. Thor seems happy that he was able to take his first bath in a while. I just can’t imagine it, does wiping yourself make you feel clean? Does he want me to setup a bath for Emma next?

I’ve thought about moving the bath I made to a location with a nice view of some scenery, but it would get cold. I’d rather just have a bath at the mansion.

When we returned to the village square we found the trio of Eleanora, Emma, and Sheila. What’s happened?

Looking around the villagers look uneasy. As we continue forward, Eleanora starts to speak.

“Al, what is with these ice sculptures?” Eleanora

Huh, oh the ice sculptures we made earlier.

“Oh, yeah. We made those. It took a while to get the details correct.” Al

Eleanora, Emma, and Sheila looked at each other and nodded. What are they nodding for? Who else would have made those sculptures?

“I told you!” Eleanora

“Oh, this is looking bad” Emma

I can hear some groans from the villagers.

“What’s wrong with the ice sculptures?” Thor

“What’s wrong? Can you really look at them and say that?” Eleanora says while pointing at the sculptures.

They should have been beautiful sculptures we spent time creating, there shouldn’t be any major issues.

The sculptures have been vandalized by adding insulting proportions. Bellies are enlarged and torsos have strange muscles. It’s like a mischievous child came by after we left. Eleanora’s sculpture was untouched, except for an enlarged chest section. Maybe the vandal wanted to flatter Eleanora, but drawing attention to that area is sure to bring out anger.

“No, that’s not the case.” Al

“What do you mean? You said you made them yourself, right?” Eleanora

Eleanora angry response is followed by a rain of snowballs. We avoid the snowballs and duck behind a nearby house. Damn, I shouldn’t have been so proud in my speech. I wish I could go back in time and slap myself.

“It wasn’t us!” Thor

“Oh, but I saw Thor messing with the Emma ice sculpture.” Villager A

“Both of us saw Thor shaving off the chest with a grin on his face.” Villager B

Thor tries to shout an excuse, but was drowned out by the villager’s voices. Those guys are talking about moments that only looked bad.

“Hmm, so was it all Thor’s fault?” Emma prepares a snowball while talking in an emotionless manner.

“Hey, I didn’t mean that! I’m just…” Thor

“Shut up!” Emma

Snowballs are being thrown again and Thor is forced to withdraw.

“Hey, Sheila? Unlike Thor, I didn’t do anything? So you don’t need to bring me into this?” Asmo

Asmo is attempting to persuade his sister to let him off. What a turncoat, is he planning to save himself?

“Eh? I don’t really care. I just want to have a snowball fight.” Sheila

Sheila has a magical smile on, she’s a dangerous existence, but different from the dangerous existence that is Eleanora. Asmo has grasped his situation and is hightailing it back to where Thor and I are hiding.

“What are we going to do?” Thor

“I’m not sure we can do anything to fix this.” Al

“Sheila has no interest in doing anything” Asmo

“Don’t hide and come out!” Eleanora

There’s no sign the snowballs will let up, so we discuss our options.

“Do you want to go on the attack?” Al

I don’t see us convincing Eleanora to stop, she doesn’t stop once she gets into a mood like this. I look between Asmo and Thor to see if they’ll share my determination.

“Oh, sometimes it’s good to make your sister pay, we can show Eleanora the cold of winter.” Thor

“I don’t want to start something, but we’re the ones being attacked.” Asmo

“Asmo, will the fleet-footed fatty be with us?” Al

“Can I sell you guys out then beg for my life.” Asmo

“It was just a joke” Al

The snowball salvo stopped at this moment. When I peeked out, I found the sister trio was mass producing snowballs. They’re working at a terrifying pace and snowballs are piled up one after another. Sheila seems especially talented at making them, does she like that sort of work?

“Sheila is good at making snowballs. She gets fired up with simple repeatable tasks.” Asmo

“My sister says I’m similar. I can’t concentrate for very long.” Thor

Eleanora is watching from a standing position instead of making snowballs. It’s like a school student daring the other team to target them with a dodgeball.

“Ok, let’s win this. Let’s prove that little brothers can take on their big sisters.” Al

“Oh!” Thor & Asmo

Our spirits were lifted while we devised a strategy.

“Then let’s go!” Al

“Yeah!” Asmo

“I’ll start making snowballs” Thor

Now that we’re done planning, we step out from behind the house.

“You’ve appeared” Eleanora

Eleanora throws a snowball as if she expected us. It flied past my cheek and hits a house behind me with a crushing sound. I peek at it and the impact location looked like it had been hit by a blunt instrument.

“Augh, my house’s wall!” Villager A

“Leave it for now, Herman can fix it.” Villager B

I heard a sad voice from the crowd, but I don’t have the time to worry about it.

“Aw, I missed…” Eleanora

“Al!” Thor

“Watch it!” Al

If a person was hit by a fastball like that, they’d be out immediately. It’s a little earlier than planned, but we need defense right now.

I shouted “Ice Wall!” as I placed my hands on the ground and activated Ice Magic. Multiple ice walls are created to protect us. Instead of a large row, they’re created at regular intervals, that way we can move forward without having to endure the full brunt of the enemy’s snowballs.

“Magic?!” Eleanora

“It’s amazing, there’s so many.” Emma

“Why does my younger brother exert his power in the most useless ways?!” Eleanora

The ice walls have an immediate effect as the enemy’s snowballs can’t reach us anymore. We smile as we duck from behind the walls to throw snowballs back.

“Dang! Eleanora, the ice walls are blocking our snowballs!” Sheila

“Haha! My sister can’t hit me!” Asmo

“Hmm, Asmo is clever!” Sheila

“Not so sure about that!” Eleanora

As far as we can see, we’ve grabbed an advantage over our sisters.

“Oh, now this is interesting. Which group do you think will win?” Villager A

“Wouldn’t it be Alfred at this rate? I mean, he can use so much magic.” Villager B

“It’s one of the village’s seven mysteries.” Villager C

“Even then, wouldn’t Eleanora win?” Villager A

“I put a bronze coin on Alfred!” Villager B

“I’ll put two bronze coins on Eleanora.” Villager A

It looks like the observing villagers are now betting on us. As the word starts spreading and more villagers are showing up to watch. I haven’t spotted any women other than girls today, are they all working together or something? I’m worried something bad is going to happen from this.

While I was thinking, Eleanora’s voice rings out.

“If they make a wall, we should just go around!” Eleanora

Eleanora smashes through a wall so she can fire snowballs at us from our flanks…

“I put a pitfall there…” Al

“What?” Eleanora

“Haha, I expected that Eleanora would choose that strategy!” Al

When I made the ice walls, I also made pitfalls behind them disguised with Ice Magic. I needed to touch the ground to make the pitfalls, not make the ice walls. They should be deep enough to buy us some time.

“Thor, Asmo! It’s time to attack!” Al

“Yeah, start throwing!” Thor

We’re now dealing with three versus two, so we have the upper hand. Sheila and Emma withdraw behind a house.

“Hah!” Asmo yells as he takes an opportunity to throw a revenge snowball.

It flew right at Sheila’s chest, she wasn’t moving fast enough to escape.

“Ah!” Sheila

“The snowball bounced off!” Thor

“Oooooohhhhh!” Villagers

What elasticity! Asmo’s snowball should have hit Sheila’s chest, but instead it bounced off and fell to the ground, like some soft cushion has absorbed the impact.

“You did it, Asmo!” Thor yells.

Sheila takes advantage of Asmo’s celebration to send a snowball back. Asmo tries to jump back behind a wall, but he had moved too far forward. The snowball impacted on his left abdomen. Usually snowballs will scatter the snow around…

“The snowball disappeared?!” Villagers

“No, the ball was buried in Asmo’s heft!” Thor

I can hear the villagers buzzing about this turn of events. How horrible! Sheila is terrifying in her feud with Asmo.

“Al! Well done, let’s go at it!” Eleanora says as she crawls out of the pitfall.

It looks like she got out by wrapping her legs and hands in magic power to get some grip. Unfortunately, there’s a pitfall right in front of the one she just crawled out of…

“Al, how many pitfalls did you make?” Thor

“A bunch, they’re everywhere I didn’t walk.” Al

“Wha?” Thor