ArchivedLogs:Cry Havoc!

Cry Havoc!
Dramatis Personae Alexandrine, Doug, Ezekiel, Jackson, Jim, Lucien, Micah, Nox, Rasa, Sebastian, Shane, Tag, Tatters, Marrow, Spencer, Lily
In Absentia	2013-02-10 Snowpocalypse 2013!
Location <NYC> Tompkins Square Park - East Village
Small but popular, this tree-lined park is a perfect centerpiece to the eclectic neighborhood it resides in. Home to a number of playgrounds and courts from handball to basketball, it also houses a dog park and chess tables, providing excellent space for people watching -- especially during its frequent and often eccentric festivals, from Wigstock to its yearly Allen Ginsberg tribute Howl festival. Snow is no longer falling. It sits heavy and wet in a nearly two-foot-high blanket over the ground, though by the edges of sidewalks and pathways and streets the shoveled drifts have been piled up in high walls that tower overhead in places. And in the center of the park there are other walls -- they tower, too, but they haven't been shoveled and cast aside so much as deliberately built up into a tall hard-packed fort. Multiple tall hard-packed forts, though some are caving in places and some in the process of being rebuilt. There has clearly been /many/ a snow battle here, in the course of this weekend. Jax has staked a claim near a basketball court, its chain-link fence providing fortification for one side of an otherwise dilapidated snow-wreck that, by all appearances, he is attempting to un-dilapidated. Somewhere in this park he has unleashed CHILDREN. Likely he is attempting to bunker down before that comes back to bite him. POSSIBLY LITERALLY, in some of those children's cases. Sebastian has armed himself not with snow but with Brothers. He's marshalling the troops. Crouched behind another wall of a significantly less dilapidated barricade. "Spence, you're scouting. Don't be fooled if he's invisible look for footprints okay? Obie --" He just frowns at the dimwitted beagle. "Uh, sit. Shane, if you put rocks in those I'm throwing them at /you/." Alexandrine is not a child, but is coming for fun. Red hair has been braided back, a black knit head band thing over her ears, puffy black coat, snow boots...she is so ready. She has dragged poor Ezekiel to the park with her for this, picking out one of the snow forts, and working on modifying it to be better than it was. Cheeks are already pink, but she's got a silly grin on her face. She never did /this/ in New Orleans. Dressed in a crimson red parka, new-ish black jeans, a bright yellow scarf and matching boots, Tag runs as swiftly as shin-deep snow will allow him. His clothing makes his face look more flushed than it probably is, and his breath comes in huge puffs of white condensation. Spotting a relatively unmolested snow bank, he speeds up and vaults sidewise into it like a high-jumper. He flails his arms and legs, a snow angel with a halo of rainbow hair. With a high-pitch peal of laughter, he is up again and running, realizing only too late that he has crossed into a no-man's-land in a lull between battles. He makes a beeline for cover, nearly plowing into Jackson as he leaps behind the half-ruined snow fortress. Lily has kept much to herself over the past couple days, and as the gaggle of loftdwellers closed in on the park she slipped off, disappearing off into cover somewhere to send a discrete message on her phone. Calling for reinforcements, no doubt. "How about I /mark/ the ones with rocks and we can save 'em for assholes?" Shane asks, from where he crouches nearby packing a small armory's worth of snowballs. "Then the regular ones for -- you know, everyone else." He's eying the pile like maybe? Maybe he has Too Many regular snowballs. Micah has set up camp on a bench that some industrious individual had shovelled out before he got there. He is bundled up like a Southerner in a snowstorm, all puffy coat and jauntily-perched woolen Jayne hat, with just a hint of face an eyes showing. He has been opening and reading mail from a stash in his messenger bag, sipping periodically from a gigantic Thermos of coffee to maintain a human body temperature. A pair of international orange forearm crutches are propped against the bench beside him, equipped with broad-based, rather nasty-toothed snow tips. "What should I do?" Rasa is excited by this opportunity to play, but it's oh so hard to tell as ze is covered from head to toe in winter protection. Ze has snow pants and a coat and a scarf and a hat and gloves, leaving only hir eyes to express emotion. They are squinted with determination and excitement. Ze's teamed up with the Holland family, hands patting snow balls into formation. "Is it entirely fair that he's all alone? Should I help him?" Nox is here! At least, she arrives eventually at some point after Lily's text message. She is in red galoshes and a black trenchcoat, with a floppy-brimmed hat on her head and huge Jackie O sunglasses covering her eyes. She also carries an umbrella; it's opened above her head in spite of the lack of rain or snow. All of these things do little to mask the unnatural charcoal grey tint to her skin, or the dark shadowy hair that snakes down her back and moves unnaturally. The battlefield is gazed upon with muted enjoyment. "What a piece of work is man...oh goodness, someone has made turrets, how clever!" "Shhshhshh get down!" Jackson is /probably/ surprised to see Tag, honest! But in the heat of the moment he just curls an arm around the colourful young man and drags him behind the low wall. "We gotta make this bigger they're not going to mess around." Maybe he expects Tag just to /know/ what he's talking about? "You should get packing. -- Hey, pssssst." He's calling from behind the wall over towards Micah. "Hey. Coffeedude. C'mere." Ezekiel is not a child either. He is tall, broad, and wrapped in several layers of jeans and hoodies, the only waterproof things he's wearing are his leather jacket and gloves. He follows Alex behind over, then begins packing snowballs like a seasoned professional. "You have to press into them, Alex. Cause the snow to melt a little bit, and it'll hold form" There is another cadre of siblings descending on the park, though a few of them already are branching off to /another/ pitched battle occuring between Smaller Beings on the playground. Lucien watches his youngest two siblings take off, not joining in their shrieking. Or, well, so he thinks. It is only belatedly that he notices he's walked /in/ to the middle of another war, his knuckles scuffing against his cheek absently as he surveys the battlefield. "Pffft," Sebastian tells Rasa with a grin, "he's like, the most ridiculously friendly person I know, he'll make his /own/ army. Trust me we need the headstart. Here, help me shore up these towers." He's leaning in to pack snow onto one carefully. "It's a ruse. We're supposed to, like, refrain from knocking 'em over because they look /neat./" Nox is accompanied by a Tatters, a bit more bundled up than normal (she has a proper coat on over her sweatshirt, and winter boots -- at least it's not hard to find shoes that fit someone who can change the size of their feet). Nox had probably /insisted./ With them also is a grumpy looking Marrow, who has that telltale sulk of someone who's been dragged somewhere they don't want to be with assurances that it'll be /fun./ Micah perks at Jax's summons, looking at him a moment to ensure he's the one he was talking to. The Thermos gets packed into his messenger bag, which in turn gets slung over his shoulder. The kid slips his arms into the crutches, using them to swing along surprisingly-fast over the snow. With the wide-base crutches, he has the advantage of not sinking as much as the two-leggers out there. He ducks behind Jax's wall. "Afternoon. Y'all look like you're planning havoc." He manages to offer a lopsided smile over his orange scarf. Alexandrine watches Ezekiel as he demonstrates. There's a little line between her brows as she tries to copy his motions, though on a smaller hand scale. "You're so throwin' 'em. You've /got/ to have a better arm than Ah do. " She flashes him a grin, before she's elbowing him. "Ah've never seen so much snow before." Nox did indeed insist that Tatters /and/ Marrow bundle up. Frostbite takes far too long to heal, it isn't an efficient expenditure of energy. The dark woman twirls the umbrella on her shoulder as if she were a lady on promenade rather than an observer of pitched battle. Hey, it was all the rage during the Civil War days, ladies observing battles. "Do you know what this field needs? Knights," she observes with a soft hum. "There is a decided lack of knights on either side, and yet there are two of you." Jim boldly claims no shelter. He has... press neutrality? Okay, so he has no press badge, but he does have a camera. You don't miss a moment like this in this freaking city. Click. He leans over the House Holland (and Rasa) fortress wall, "So what does the winner get?" "Oh. Okay." Rasa takes hir snow ball and presses it into the wall, starting to pat, pat, pat the wall into a firmer substance. Ze moves around, eyeing the great white mound and presses hir side against it. "I haven't done this in years." Hir eyes crinkle up as ze smiles. "Should we make a window for peeking out?" Ze pauses and stares up at Jim wide-eyed. "There are Prizes?" "We almost never get this much, this fast. The last time I was in a storm like this, it shut down the city for a week," says Ezekiel. "We need to pick our target. Find the ones most likely to break the peace, and lob our first volley when they do. We never want to be the ones to fire first." "The winner gets /honour/. Loser gets death." Neutrality, pah. Shane lobs /his/ first snowball (no rocks!) right /at/ Jim's leaning-over face. "But, I guess, death with honour." Wide-eyed and maybe almost serious, Tag snap a rather sloppy salute at Jax and starts piling snow onto the crumbling ramparts and packing them down with huge black mittens. "Shouldn't we also stockpile some snowballs?" he asks softly. "You know, for purely defensive purposes?" Then, to Micah, "Havoc? Wow, I sure hope so! If it's the good kind of havoc, I mean. Not the crying kind so much." He peers up over the newly reinforced wall, dark brown eyes bright with glee. "There are a /lot/ of people here! I mean...can we maybe just...preemptively defend a little?" "Heyheyhey. You too. Melinda's friend." Jax is summoning Lucien now, too. "Yes, you," he adds, cheerfully, to Micah. "Hi. Havoc's already been /cried/, there's a war on. You've just been drafted so I'm glad y'came equipped with your snow-eaters," Apparently, what crutches are now called, "cuz our opponents are fast like freaks. We're gonna need ammo. Strong walls. And a lot of speed. PSST ALEX. Join the /right/ side." Yes, he's spied his neighbor. Neighbor(s), even if he doesn't know it yet. He's waving them over. "There's a war." Lucien repeats this almost solemnly, to -- Nox and Tatters, because they are nearest at hand. "I saw your sister the other day," he is adding to Tatters, mildly bemused but just kind of Going With It. "A war certainly does need knights, though. I think I have just been conscripted. But I am no knight." He looks at Tatters Expectantly. Then at Jax's half-solid snow fort. Alexandrine glances at Ezekiel. "Wanna go join forces and ally ourselves with Jax? He's been here longer, maybe he knows better how to make proper snowballs." She kinda feels bad. Ezekiel should so get a ...handicap or whatever, like in golf, for being stuf with her. "/Three/ of us." And so there is: Lily steps out from behind Tatters on cue, grinning over her scarf as her sister continues. "And there are three sides. We're not beholden to the decadent surface kingdoms, are we Marrow?" The younger girl, flattened bangs of pink hair poking haphazardy out from under her hat, responds with a 'meh' and a shrug, though she doesn't look /terribly/ displeased as she surveys the battleground. Maybe this'll be fun after all. Ezekiel nods and says, "This might attract a lot of fire. Grab some ammo and run like hell!" He stands up, and keeps pace with Alex as they run across the field to Jax's fort. He tries, likely in vain, to put himself between the southerner and the incoming snow projectiles. Bag and crutches get plopped out of the way as Micah sinks into a crouch. "Yessir!" He salutes Jax smartly. "I'll start on the ammo. Y'all are lucky my limb differences camp took some ski trips, or I wouldn't be any use. Most of what we got back home was ice...and more ice. And broken trees. And power outages... Not so much of the pretty white stuff." He chuckles, starting to pack snowballs and build them into piles like cannonballs waiting to be fired. "I'm Micah, by the way." Back in the city, at last! Doug is doing what a lot of residents of the area do, which is to say cutting through the park to shave some time off his trip home. The blonde is bundled sufficiently for the cold and snow, hand jammed firmly in his pockets. But...the park has people. A lot of people. A fair few of which he actually knows. He pauses on the fringe of the battleground, watching the armies prepare with a red-cheeked grin. He's not dumb enough to actually wander /into/ the potential fray, but the show is entertaining. At least until he's spotted. "One may become a knight," Nox murmurs, though she lowers her head and turns it away from Lucien--of reflex, that symbolic withdrawal. "Oh, Lily! Are you warm enough for a war, sweetheart?" How easily distracted the den mother is. She rounds on the Flower Night and reaches with a gloved hand to pluck at the girl's scarf, securing it around her neck and rosy cheeks. "Thank you for the summons," she whispers after tipping in close enough to be heard. "Shall we declare ourselves an autonomous collective and show them what for? Tatterhood? Marrow?" "A window? Can you do that without it collapsing?" Sebastian looks intrigued by Rasa's suggestion. "Cuz yeah, visibility is key." His little brother has disappeared through all this -- literally, simply vanishing from their fort -- but he seems phenomenally unbothered by this. "But remember, with pa you can't really trust what you're seeing /anyway/. HEY. I know you!" He's calling this over his wall to Tatters, who is apparently now got /two/ upworlder teams trying to recruit her. Piff. Jim doesn't even flinch when Shane's snowball explodes against his face - when it crumbles off in a white cascade, the skin beneath looks considerably flakier and drier. "Dunno about knights," he calls loud enough to be heard over in Lucien's court, "But a lil armor helps." He pushes a hunk of SNOWY WALL in on Shane (and anyone else unfortunate enough to be collateral damage), and then ducks down and makes a break for it. Destination: Team Jax. Squaring her feet, Tatters raises a hand grandly and points towards the battlefield, preparing to give orders, when Lucien catches her attention and she belays her commanding to greet him in return. "Hoy." From behind Nox Lily waves cheerfully, though and Marrow just gives the trio a confused look. "Who the fuck's that guy?" "Oh, um. Lucy, this is Marrow, Nox. Guys, this is Lucy, some guy I met at the library once who aparently has a nice apartment." And then someone /else/ is calling at her, and gets a shouted reply. "NO YOU DON'T. IT'S A CLEVER RUSE." Alexandrine giggles wildly, gathering up as many snowballs that she can carry, nary leaving any behind. At least Ezekiel doesn't have to go slow, the redhead can run until she ducks into Jax's snowfort, sliding in on her knees and letting the arm full of snowballs roll down her thighs to the ground. "Hi Jax! Hey! " She smiles brightly at Tag with a wave, then nods to the others around. "Jax, meet your new neighbor, Ezekiel." "Jax," Jax introduces himself to Micah in a puff of frosty-white breath. His lips are blue already, though this is more by dint of a frosting of glittery lipstick than cold. His hair is vivid blue to match, where it peeks out beneath his purple cap. "An' this is Tag an' Alex an' -- oh, gosh, I'm sorry, honey-honey," he is telling Ezekiel apologetically, "I know I met you but I done forgot your --" Saved by Alexandrine! "Ezekiel! Wait. You live in our building now? -- Good timing! If you see anyone whose skin's as blue as my lips, pelt them /without mercy/." Thus is his commands to The Troops. "Yeah, no, we totally do. Water. Reservoir. Inflatable breathysaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah," Shane is answering Tatters' denial when the wall comes crashing down on him. He /bursts/ out from the avalanche to throw, uselessly, a handful of unpacked snow at Jim's departing back. More usefully, a /packed/ snowball at Tatters. FOR LYING. Still safe on the perimeter, Doug is a man who takes no chances. While other scramble to safety and into the early stages of battle, the blonde merely crouches, pulling his hands free and casually starting a pile of his own ammunition. Maybe he's planning on being a free agent in this skirmish. "Anyways," Tatters nods to Nox and returns her attention to the paired forts. "Giving them what-for is def the idea." And then a packed snowball poofs against the side of her hood. "Starting with THAT guy. Marrow: 'sic him. Lily: flank." Tag cranks out snowballs--smallish, because his hands are tiny and his gloves a bit too big--and adds them to Micah's pyramid. He flashes a wide grin as he scampers aside to make room for the new recruits. "Hi, everyone. Oh, hey, pretty flame-haired girl!" he cries, waving at Alex. Then his eyes snap to Shane. "Dradis contact!" he announces, launching the snowball in his hand in a graceful arc across no-man's-land at the blue boy. "I dunno, I think he's got the right idea, givin' you a snow in the face." Marrow is typically uncooperative, squinting across at the designated shark kid. "Why don't I--" Tatters glares at her, sternly. Marrow glares back. "Blue Man Group is the enemy, yessir!" Micah nods to each new person being introduced in turn, hazel eyes sparkling and nose bright red from the cold. "Nice to meet y'all. Apologies if I don't pass the name quiz later on account of /battle/!" This kid is incredibly quick with the snowball-making. Team Jax is not running out of ammo any time soon. "They got /Cylons/ out there now?" he adds in response to Tag's comment. "Lucy? A pleasure, sir." Nox's acknowledgement is genuinely pleasant, if difficult to hear over the CHAOS OF BATTLE. It's also an oversight on her part--when chatting, one's wards get assaulted. This cannot be. Behind the sunglasses, her eyes narrow and she advances to swing the umbrella down to guard their general. "Marrow, dear, who else is going to have the ability to take him out? They're dug in. Literally." "-oh, shit!" Jim is suddenly RIGHT THERE, sliding into home in Jackson's fortress. "I don't know who those guys are," he peeks over the edge of the fortress wall at Tatters and her Crew, "But they mean business. Hi." That's to Tag. He's scrabbling for a mini-me snowball. "Pleasure's mine, I'm sure," Lucien is saying, and his nod to Nox is courteous, really. But then he's dipping behind Jax's wall. Grabbing a snowball. Throwing it -- towards Doug. It doesn't seem /right/ that someone is not yet embroiled. "They're knights," he tells Jim. Seriously. "Aughpffft," Sebastian is shoving large armfuls of collapsed snow back to shore up what used to be a wall and is now a slope. He grabs what he can from the stockpile of snowballs, shoving a few into Rasa's arms. "No more time for defense," he says hastily, "just assume if they're not with us, they're against us." And so: Snowball, heading hard back over the middle ground , high enough to arc over Jax's fortwall. With his head bowed over his snowball making (a HUGE lapse in military readiness), Doug misses the volley lobbed at him until the snowball explodes against his wool cap, showering his face with snowy shrapnel. He looks up, then, with eyes narrowed, attempting to pinpoint the source. It's clearly Shane, of course, since he threw the first shot. And so, one of Doug's carefully packed snowballs is launched in the teenager's direction with as much precision as a bulky coat and /mittens/ will allow. "They might be Cylons, no guarantees," Jackson is saying grimly, plucking a pair of snowballs from the pile with a nod of thanks to the AMMUNIFIERS. "Until further notice treat them as hostile." Case in point: SNOWBALL. Flying down onto his head with a scattering of snow everywhere. "-- Hostile and with good aim." He lobs a snowball back -- presumably /towards/ the twins. There might be a Nox inadvertently en route. "Hiya," Alex says to Tag. "Nice to see you're still hale and healthy." There's a hint of amusement in her drawl, working on stacking snowballs that she takes from Micah's growing pile, in easy reach of the combatants. "Should Ah work on shoring up the fort, sir?" She drawls at Jackson, amusement clear in her tone. "Ezekiel was lookin' for a place, and Ah was lookin' for a roommate, so he'll be movin' in." "Fffff, FINE." Marrow rolls her eyes and rolls up her sleeves, and with a flex of concentration her left forearm sprouts a curving, scooped buckler of bone. Tatters does something similar, pushing her coat up past her elbow and morphing her arm into something broad and flat that grows over the back of her hand. Both dip down to the snow and scoop up a snowball's worth of material, packing them in their hands as they advance: Tatters around Nox's defensebrella, towards Team Jax (henceforth known as 'The Jets') walking slowly and deliberately, and Marrow towards Team Twins (henceforth 'The Sharks.') in a sideways scurry. Marrow looses her snowball first, at Shane. Nox can only do so much with the umbrella. Tatters is shielded but that leaves her own head and shoulders exposed. The snowball thrown by Jackson connects with her hat and knocks it from her head. Surprises causes her to lose her glasses immediately after when she briefly phases out but recover is rapid, the umbrella resecured to protect The General. "/No/ lethal projectiles," she counsels Marrow. "Knights like Jedi or knights like Round Table?" Micah questions in response to Lucien's overheard response to Jim. "They got the Blue People, Cylons, and Knights. We're going to need to up this arms race." He takes off one of his inner-layer of gloves (yes, he had two sets on) and fits it over the arm cuff of one of his crutches, locking the cuff in the "up" position as he does so. It comes out looking like a really goofy lacrosse stick. A snowball is placed into the glove-hand. Micah uses the improvised weapon to hurl the snowball out experimentally, at no specific target. The snowball /sails/ and slams into a tree, earning a giant, evil grin from Micah. "Now we're cookin' with gas!" "Um." This is a good question, apparently. "Hey!" Lucien calls back, over the wall, "Knights like Jedi or knights like Round Table? -- That," he adds, quieter, to Micah, "is handy. Can you hit the bony one?" He's nodding towards Marrow. "Whoops!" Tatters skids to a halt and looses her own snowball, trying to arc it over the top of Jax's fort, and steps back to retrieve Nox's hat and glasses, handing them back to her with a smile. "Um, I appreciate the thought, but you should protect yourself first! I'm pretty impervious to snowballs." "NOOOOOO, Shane!" It's a very DRAMATIC sort of noooo from Sebastian, when Shane undergoes the Dire Fate of hit with snowballs. And in response to Tatters claiming snow imperviousness, he launches himself over the fort, too. To tackle her. Shane's teeth bare. Grin, probably, perhaps grimace; he's weathering snowballs like a champ and throwing back a steady one-two-three in quick succession over the wall of The Jets' fort. "If they're Jedi, we're so screwed," Tag opines. "Except I don't think they're with Blue Team." He pauses to unload his latest creations onto the ammo pile and steal a glance at the battlefield. "Nope, we're still screwed." Observing Micah's maneuver, he whistles. "Then again, we have /siege weapons/!" With belated recognition, he turns to Lucien, colors brightening, "Hey, aren't you the--" One of Shane's snowball interrupts him in the face, eliciting a squeal of laughter and an "Aiya, I'm hit!" In response, a faintly shimmering prismatic shield sprouts into place just over the fort. Low enough to catch the remaining of Shane's snowballs. High enough to still lob some of their own out from under its eaves. "And ROUND TABLE. We're from SEWER NARN--" Tatters cups a hand around her mouth to shout back, but then a sharkboy is jumping at her and she has to enact Defense Measures, raising a hand and trying to plant it on Sebastian's head to keep him from bowling her over. "Just leave them, dear, I--" Nox doesn't get a chance to finish because a small blue tackling shape blurs before her on a course to Tatters. The woman gives a little cry and poof, like that both the umbrella and the jacket fall to the ground. The shadow is /unleashed/! It drops to the ground as well and laces dark shackles around Sebastian's ankles. "Oh no you don't, little man!" "Cheater!" This comes from /behind/ the fort, where Spencer has reappeared, now, with his own armload of snowballs. "Yeah, cheater," Shane echoes with a laugh, "Daaaad /I'm/ calling the /cops/ on you. Oh holy shit Bastian you're gonna get EATEN! Where Ian come fr-- wait that's not Ian." Well if /they're/ cheating... Lily steps out from around Jax with a /very/ wide smile and gives him a snowball to the face. And then she /bolts,/ scrambling to leap over the fort wall and disrupt line of sight. Micah snorts at the /nooo!/. "I'm guessing Jedi. I think I just heard Vader in the distance." He peeks over the wall to see the 'bony one' indicated. "Target acquired." Snowball added to stick. "Locked and loaded!" He pops up like a prairie dog and the snowball gets chucked at Marrow, generally aiming at the stranger's chest as Micah isn't sure just how much of a wallop these things pack yet. Meanwhile Marrow stands agape. "Wait, we can /do/ that?" She's referring not to the force field, but to Sebastian's flying tackle. With a laugh and a manic grin, the bony youth charges and leaps into the air, taking a snowball in the chest but aiming a flying drop-kick at Shane nonetheless. "Ghhah!" Jax yelps. But he's laughing. With a face full of snow. "Tag, I think these snowballs could be more colourful. Easier to see where /we've/ hit." His snowball launched at Shane (and lost in the volley of other return fire), and a fair supply at hand, Doug makes his move. That is, he scoops up the armload of snowballs he's crafted, and barrels for Fort Jax, springing a somersault over the low wall, and spilling snowballs around himself. "I knew I should have just stayed on the subway until our stop," he says to his neighbors. "New York parks are dangerous." Cheating time is definitely upon them. Jim's face is considerably rougher now, standing up behind his fortress wall and just /taking/ whatever snowball punishment comes his way like a treetrunk. Someone knocked his hat off - he puts it on Lucien's head to get it out of the way. "We're doing it!" Bastian has been commandeered by the ankles but his wiry arms are clinging /tight/ to whatever bit of Tatters he can grab. "Yaaar! Careful of my brother," he cautions Marrow, "he bites!" Shane's eyes widen, body turning aside to take the kick somewhere around his shoulder instead; he's grinning fiercer as he turns back, hand coming down to CLAMP on that leg before it can find purchase again on the ground. His teeth chomp, but it's more amused than threatening as he /tugs/ at Marrow's leg. Ezekiel fires one from the hip at the opportunist who pelted Jax, then focuses his gaze on the new threat, Doug. "I'll show you a siege weapon," he says, and unleashes a professionally aimed barrage at the man running towards 'The Jets' base. "Whosawhatsit?" Micah sputters as he notices the force field. "Now /that's/ handy. Where'd that come from?" Unfortunately, he's also forgotten that he is standing in clear view of the opposing team. A snowball hits him full force in the side of his head, sending the Jayne hat flying. "Oomph!" is his elegant retort, before he hits the deck and crawls after his hat. "Hah! Drop 'im, Nox, I got this." Gritting her teeth, Tatters grabs Bastian by the collar and lifts the kid with surprising strength, dragging him along as she bonds across to Fort Jax, pulls herself up the wall with the aid of her scoop-arm, and swings her weight to strike at Jim with an armful of sharkboy. She can't spare a look to her fellow Sewer Knight, but she /does/ shout a command of "NO BITING." "Hey!" Doug protests as he's pelted with snowballs, and he holds up his hands to bat ineffectively at the missiles. "I'm on Jax's side! JAX'S SIDE!" He lobs a few back at Ezekiel, with less professionalism. "Save it for the shark twins, dude." Bastian twists around with a surprising amount of strength of his own, sending one leg flying towards Tatters's gut. Nox does as told, releasing Bastian to the tender mercies of the Sewer Knight. Left to her own devices, she opts to take up guerilla warfare by skipping along the ground from shadow to shadow--the day gathers on and these are lengthening. As Tatters seems to have things well in hand--and she doesn't necessarily trust Marrow to behave--she flows towards the Sharks' crumbling fort. Shane's shadow suddenly animates and begins to push against the remaining towers to fell them. Alexandrine flinches, before she sees it's Doug, smiling at her blond neighbor. How did she end up surrounded by adorable guys, again? "Hey, Doug. Sorry, your new neighbor is just enjoying himself." She helps brush off snow from Doug's shoulder and arm, before she's lobbing some snowballs of her own. "En taro Tassadar!" Tag cries, shaking snow out of his rainbow mane and laying his hands on the ammunition like a priest bestowing a benediction. The roughly pyramidal snowball pile bursts into a patchwork of colors, their boundaries indiscriminate. He launches the first one himself, a bright red projectile that bursts apart mostly white against the ground when it misses its mark--if it had a mark at all. Then, for good measure, he reaches up and touches the force field. A long, iridescent serpent shimmers into being on its surface. "/Gong shi fa tsai!/" he cries, lobbing another round, this one magenta with a wisp of royal blue. "S'a dangerous city we live in, can't trust nobody no matter what side they say they're on." Jackson's /cheatyface/ shield stands up to MayorBullets; it certainly stands up to snowballs being pelted its way. He leaves its protection, though, to grab at Sebastian with a rather /alarmed/ expression. "Hey! My /kid/ is not a /battering ram/! -- Even if he might be a Cylon!" Oh, crap, it's a shark! "Wait-wait-wait!" Jim is sort of trying to defend himself, sort of trying to /catch/ Sebastian. For a little game of Tug-of-War. Over the LandShark. Marrow fights rabidly, gnashing her teeth and growing them into sharp, tearing fangs until Tatters' directive reaches her ears. "OKAY, THINE." That doesn't slow her down much, as she squirms around and tries to clamp a hand over Shane's face, swatting his own hands away with her shield-arm. Ezekiel , seeing the Tatter/Bastian ball headed their way, he moves to protect his distracted comrade, Micah, from the avalance of people falling into Fort Jax. "New neighbor?" Doug seems confused, but the heat of battle is no time for proper introductions. There is snow still flying! He grabs up a couple of snowballs, and pops up over the wall, lobbing them in the direction of Fort Shark. He may or may not see Jim in the way. "Ooff." Tatters' gut is dense and leathery, and she feels quite a bit heavier than someone her size should be. She releases Bastian as she strikes, allowing Jim to pull him away -- that is, if the boy isn't still trying to keep a hold on /her./ And so she totters, half-perched on Fort Jax's battlements, and shrugs across at Jax. "Cylons are the /best/ battering rams!" Micah crams his snow-covered hat back onto his head, auburn hair sticking out from under it in all directions. He has been reduced to sitting in the snow, rubbernecking at all of the rainbow snowballs and shark-shaped projectiles and shimmering sky-snakes. "How hard did that thing just hit me in the melon?" He looks like a cat at a tennis match. Alexandrine scoops up a snowball, aiming it square for Tatter's chest, and throwing it as hard as she could. She could probably use some form advice from Ezekiel, but at least she doesn't throw like a girl. Fort Jet's battlements are slowly collapsing under the assault of too many snowballs and too much sharkboy battering ram. Lucien is scrambling backwards. Maybe into Ezekiel and Micah. "That -- is the most colourful snowball fight I have seen." He sounds amused. Impressed. Also /oofs/ as he collapses back into the growing pile of People+Snow. No biting didn't mean no /claws/ right? Shane doesn't bite. But his claws are growing longer as Marrow swats at them. Not exactly attacking. Just disincentivizing swatting. Sebastian collapses. Maybe he's switched sides? Maybe he's HUGGING JIM FOR DEAR LIFE. He has magenta snow dripping down his cheek in bright contrast to his dark blue skin, and his chest is heaving. "Is there," he pants, "a point to. Surrender. At this. Stage?" Marrow is anything but disincentivized, her arms sprouting more bony armor plates as she continues swatting away. "Marrow, manners." This is a quiet warning from the shadows splayed over the ruined fort. When the warning doesn't take, Nox escalates. She slides into the young Knight's shadow and then right up the Knight herself, wrapping herself around the protruding spikes to blunt them. "Manners! The other fort is falling, young man, your brother in dire peril," this makeshift dark armor counsels Shane. "Hey cool," Shane is apparently too distracted by this to remember to claw. "That's like. The opposite of me, I don't /have/ those." Bones, maybe. He certainly does seem pretty bendy. "HEY BASTIAN!!" His black eyes widen at Nox's counsel, and he drops Marrow's leg, /sprinting/ across the snow towards the other fort. "You'll never take us al -- wait you're already surrendering, pfff chicken." "Now tell Tatters we've taken this fort," Nox whispers to Marrow as soon as Shane departs. "Whoa-hey!" Micah throws his arms out to help break Lucien's fall. He's got pretty good reflexes from working with kids that have a tendency to turn into ground-seeking missiles. "Gotcha, buddy." And then they are both promptly buried under yet more collapsing snow-wall. "GAH!" "I thought this was to the death," Jim sets Sebastian UPRIGHT, brushing some of the snow off his shoulders critically, "But if you want to turn yourself over into our custody, I'm sure you'd make a great meatshield." Except that his dubious inspection of TinySharkBoy's limited... meat... doesn't seem all that convinced. "Alright, y'know what? Just us some snowballs. -- Hey! Can a guy get some /green/ snowballs? What'm I /working/ with over here?" Doug doesn't fight snow battles to the death, and the fact that he is /not/ a target of anyone at the moment makes this a perfect time to affect his escape. As the battlements crumble, he scoots away, lobbing a few snowballs to cover his exit. "Later, guys!" he calls. "Don't freeze to death!" And then he's gone -- well, as fast as he can through the snow, anyway. "He started it!" Marrow GLARES down at her shadowraps, before backing off slightly and giving Shane a look that's half pleased and half baffled. "What bones? Pretty sure you've got fucking bones, du--" But then he's off. Brushing herself off, Marrow collects her hat and crams it back over her terrible hat hair, then takes Nox's advice and scrambles up to the top of the sagging, dilapidated fort. "HEY FUCKERS we got your fort! That means we win, right?" Probably not the proclamation Nox was hoping for, but eh. "I'm sure your head is okay," Tag reassures Micah, helping him sit up from beneath the collapsed snow wall. He even manages to fish a few snowballs from the wreck of the fort. Colorful ammunition /does/ have advantages. "Ohno, the Knights have taken Blue Fort! It's /Camelot/ now!" Without missing a beat, he turns a lavender snowball in his hand green and tosses it to Jim. "I'm a terrible shot anyway!" "I haven't done this in a long time," Lucien admits to Micah with a quick flash of a smile that is promptly hidden by more snow. He laughs, brushing it away from himself and the other man both. "I don't think I got your name." There is a barely audible sigh from the Marrow-shadow stretched behind the ruined Sharks' fort. "One supposes that must do," Nox murmurs. Then she readies herself and begins shoving snow forward in broad swaths to augment what's trying to fall down. It takes monumental effort but these walls /must/ be repaired. "I would re-arm, dear." Pause. "With /snowballs/. No spears, please." Alexandrine just grabs another snowball, hurling it at Doug's back. She misses. But then she's into things again, tossing more towards the /enemy/. Or, you know, those people she doesn't know. Somewhere in the distance, there is the wail of sirence. It's an /approaching/ distance, though. "Holy shit I swear I didn't do it!" Shane yelps. "It was a joke!" Jackson /squeaks/, scrambling up onto what remains of his Battlements, the shield above his fort vanishing. "-- Heyyy uh. Everyone. Want cocoa at my place? Less than a block away? That's /totally/ outrunning-cops distance!" "Jiminy /Cricket/, that was /cold!/" He manages to get up, helping to swipe snow from himself and Lucien. "Micah." He offers his own lopsided grin. "I really ought to stop meeting people like this..." Clearly that was a joke. "Lucien," Lucien says, standing and extending a hand to offer Micah a hand up from the snow. "How do you feel about cops?" Alexandrine looks around at the sound of sirens, a flicker of panic. She's grabbing for Ezekiel, to catch his hand. << You, we need to get out of here. Can you run back to the apartment? >> It's silent, but urgent, inside his head. Sirens! Nox stops her fort-building attempts, listening. Then zip, she's rippling over to the trench and galoshes that had been left discarded in the snow field. They're brushed off as best she can before she slides into them--they inflate in much the same way they'd deflated, leaving one grey-dark woman sitting on the ground reaching for her umbrella. "Tatters! Lily!" << Alone? Ok... you stick with Jax >> Ezekiel zips away, and mutters "Wow, that escalated quickly" "I'm generally indifferent unless they're coming at me with /sirens/. We should run now, shouldn't we?" Micah is hurriedly attempting to recover his bag and crutches. Thank all things holy that they're bright orange against white snow... "I don't have a good idea where to run /to/, though!" "Oh boy, I love cocoa." Jim says mechanically, slinging an arm around Sebastian's waist and hoisting his feet off the ground like a flour sack - it's his prisoner of war! "C'mon, even you'd like the shit old Jax can make." This is said to Lucien, with a firm pat on his back and a huge grin at Micah and Alexandrine. "Everyone outta the pool!" He points back over his shoulder at Tatters, Nox and the rest, "This ain't done!" "Welp." Tatters scampers up beside Jax and shields her eyes with her right hand, putting her beshielded left arm behind her back. "Uh, KNIGHTS, SCARPER." Glancing at the eyepatched fellow, she raises an eyebrow. "Mind a couple more, or should we, like, scarper elseways?" Elsewhere Marrow swears and crouches, muttering to herself as she grips the sides of her arm-shield and snaps them off, rolling her sleeves down and scampering back towards the others. Safety in numbers, and all. Lily is nowhere to be seen, but that's not unusual. "But it just a /snowball fight!/" Tag protests, pouting. "Well, okay, there was a /bit/ of hand-to-hand and shadow-to-hand, and...hey, I like cocoa!" He looks around and un-colors a few snowballs left and right before giving up. There were too many, scattered too far apart. He sighs. Then he shivers. "Actually, cocoa sounds /way/ better than victory right now." "Come on," Jax is extending this invite to Tatters and Nox and Marrow as well -- well, Lily, too, but she's vanished. "I'm just down the street, everyone can warm up and, uh, /not/ get ticketed. You run this way!" He's not leading, cuz Bastian is. He's directing traffic to follow the blue twins, waiting to watch the others and make sure of No Ticketing. "It was a snowball fight -- /with mutants/." Shane says this like DUN DUN DUNNNN. But he's bolting. Scram. "Are you sure?" This is Nox, appearing at Tatters' side and observing the fleeing mutants with something like concern. Her hair lashes behind her. "We could..." Oh, but real cocoa. She hesitates before chasing the bait. Walking, /solid/ walking is difficult but she does her best to be quick with the following. "Do you mind if I bring my --" Lucien is starting to ask Jax, but then he amends to, "Let me grab my siblings." He's scarpering in the opposite direction, towards the SmallChildPlayground. Undoubtedly he will Catch Up, though. With a nod to Jax, Tatters skids down the side of the fort, grumbling as she trots off, keeping pace with Nox and clumsily undeploying her shield and tugging her sleeve down over her lumpy, mishapen forearm as she goes. That'll need sorting out later. Lily...is still nowhere to be seen, but she could easily just be hanging out in blackspace. The wail of sirens is getting closer. Some of the nonmutants in the park are scramming, too. Just on General Principles. It's New York. Micah latches on to Jax's offer of a direction to run in. He lopes along through the snow on his crutches to the best of his ability, dodging around pits and mounds and bits of collapsed fort.