For the Winter/Holiday prompts:
3, 26, or 31 with our special boy Benjamin (Bellhop) and whoever you want to put with him? Let him have something good, after all the shit I put him through. XD
BEHOLD I HAVE RETURNED FROM THE CHRISTMAS WASTELANDS BEARING GIFTS
since i already did 31, i chose 3. Family (Found and otherwise) and 26. Snowball fight!!
All's Fair in Love and Snow-war
“This is the crucial choke point,” Sephiroth said, pointing at a spot on the map. “You and I will flank them here, and push them to the choke, where we’ll have our support units waiting in ambush, to take them down. With any luck, we’ll be done in time for supper. Any questions?”
“Couple,” Cid said, scratching his head. “By support units, you mean Cloud and Vinnie, right?”
“And, uh. What’re these blobby things, here?”
“So, you want to set up the ambush in the hedges, and hem ‘em in at the workshop?”
“No. That’s the house. This is the workshop.”
“They kinda look the same.”
“I didn’t have much time to make a map.”
“It’s kinda wrinkled, too. And the ink’s runnin.”
“I dropped the napkin in the snow. You understand the plan, correct?”
“Good. Father, Cloud, how are the munitions coming?”
“Be a lot faster, if you two were helping,” Cloud returned, from their improvised bivouac, a few meters away. “My fingers are gonna freeze off.”
Sephiroth frowned. “I told you to wear your mittens. Why are you wearing those gloves?”
“I can’t do anything with mittens on, it’s like having flippers.”
“You really won’t be able to do anything without fingers.”
“That’s one advantage of being dead,” Vincent said sagely, as he scooped up snow with his bare hands. “Cold doesn’t bother me, at all.”
Before anyone could reply to that helpful nugget of paternal wisdom, something came whistling through the air, toward the group. In the blink of an eye, Masamune flashed out and sliced the incoming missile in two. It burst in a puff of white.
“We’re under attack!” Sephiroth shouted. “Fall back to defensive positions!”
Cloud and Vincent ran for the hedgerow, while he and Cid dove behind the corner of the house, just in time to be missed by the barrage of snowballs that rained down on their former positions, to disintegrate harmlessly, on the white ground.
Sephiroth leaned out for a split second, and drew back just before another snowball exploded against the side of the house. “Two. The others must be attempting to outflank us.”
“What do we do now, general?”
“Plan B. Hold the line here, and try to draw them into the ambush. I’ll circle around the other way, to head off their reinforcements.”
So saying, he vanished, a silent blur of silver, in the snowy night. Cid picked up a big snowball in each hand, from the pile Cloud and Vincent had left for them, and took a deep breath, prepared to face the enemy down. With a battle-cry, he leapt out and fired off his two shots, before high-tailing it toward the ambush.
His retreat, however, was in vain. Nero was using his darkness tentacles to make and throw snowballs, with dizzying speed, and unleashing them in a nonstop fusillade, like a gatling gun. Regular, un-augmented, human Cid had basically no chance against the onslaught, and was knocked flat on his face.
“Man down!” Benjamin shouted, popping out from behind Nero. “Mr. Highwind, are you alright? Is anything broken?”
“Come on, now, I ain’t that old yet,” Cid protested, as he scrambled up. Luckily, he had landed in a deep, soft drift, and only suffered from a faceful of snow, and some minor bruises to his pride.
Just as he got to his feet, several snowballs came flying out of the hedgerow at extremely high velocity. Two were stopped by darkness tentacles, but one struck Benjamin square in the chest, exploding and knocking him backward. He didn’t hit the ground, since a darkness tendril caught him, but he was doused from head to toe.
“Tss! Ah! Cold! Cold!” he yelped. “How did so much of it go right down my collar!”
“Get back to cover, quickly,” Nero said, holding an arm up, to shield him. “I will avenge you, little brother!”
All Cid could do was get the hell out of the way, as Nero restarted his snowball gatling-gun and advanced toward Cloud and Vincent’s concealed position.
“Since we’re out, we may as well go get some dry clothes,” he said to Benjamin. “I gotta check on Ollie, anyway. That robot cat’s the only one watchin’ her, and she might outsmart him and get into mischief.”
“B—but I can’t leave Nero on his own,” Benjamin objected.
“Rules are rules, Benny,” Nero called back to him. “Besides, I don’t want you getting sick. Go ahead inside and get changed. I can handle those two, just fine.”
“You heard him, big brother has spoken. Y’all have fun!” Cid was already pulling Benjamin away, out of the icy shrapnel that was hailing down on them, as Nero’s darkness swatted the incoming snowballs from the hedgerow.
As they were running toward the house, there was a noise like a sonic boom, and a huge plume of snow erupted into the air, on the other side of the large property, out by the workshop.
“Looks like Weiss and Sephiroth found each other,” Benjamin observed.
“Those two idiots better not demolish my shop,” Cid groused, as they stepped in the back door. “They’ll be spendin’ their winter buildin’ me a new one, no matter how cold it is outside.”
Sephiroth and Weiss had indeed met, and were chasing each other to and fro, throwing up plumes of snow in their wakes, and huge explosions wherever they clashed.
Sephiroth’s pale lips curled, with a cold smile. “You’re out of your depth. May as well give up, now.”
Weiss’ booming laugh rang out, only somewhat muffled by the blanket of snow. “Ha! Not a chance! I’ve been itching for a proper fight with you!”
“This is a snowball fight,” Sephiroth reminded him, as he pulled a massive, drum-fed auto-cannon out of nowhere. “No non-snow weapons.”
Weiss grinned broadly and leveled the barrel at him. “Oh, but this fires snowballs.”
Sephiroth narrowed his eyes and summoned Masamune. “Then this blocks them.”
On the other side of the yard, the others were in something of a similar scenario, as Nero’s fusillade was being frantically blocked by Cloud’s huge sword.
“You’re not supposed to use weapons!” Nero shouted, through the barrage of white.
“If darkness tentacles don’t count as a weapon, then neither does a sword!” Cloud shouted back, blocking another dozen snowballs, in that two-second interval.
“Whatever, blondie! Let’s see how long you can hold out!”
“Tch! You’ll run out of snow before I give up!”
It was then that Nero realized he hadn’t heard or seen his father, who should have been with Cloud in the ambuscade. Just as the thought occurred to him, he heard an ominous snarl, behind him. He whipped around, in time to see the gigantic, sinuous body of the Galian beast looming up from the snow, lifting something over its head with both titanic arms.
That was all Nero managed to say, before he was struck with a snowball the size of a family sedan, and sent hurtling backward. Unfortunately for team Vincent, the snow-boulder rammed directly into Cloud, too, who went rolling along with Nero, both of them stuck into it like some kind of slapstick cartoon.
The gigantic projectile had been thrown with tremendous force, but it wasn’t packed very tightly (so as not to injure the target), and before it even reached the back wall of the property, it lost momentum and collapsed, leaving both Cloud and Nero completely buried.
“You’re—out,” Cloud panted, as they pawed their way out of the snowbank.
“So are you,” Nero retorted. “Friendly fire still counts.”
Cloud grimaced. “Damn it, Vincent. He was supposed to be our secret weapon, not a liability.”
“That’ll teach you to rely on a big, dumb beast.”
“You’re one to talk. You have Weiss on your team.”
As if on cue, they heard Weiss laugh, from the other side of the workshop, to which they were now fairly close. However, a whirlwind of snow kicked up at the same time, turning the entire area into a howling blizzard. Nero threw out a mesh of darkness tendrils, shielding them from the icy blast, as they huddled reflexively together.
“I guess no one’s playing fair,” Cloud remarked.
Nero shrugged. “With this family, what did you expect?”
Meanwhile, Sephiroth’s supercharged blizzaga spell had sufficiently blinded Weiss, rendering his cannon useless, and soon he succumbed to a volley of snowballs, coming at him seemingly from all directions at once, under the cover of the gale.
When the last one struck him full in the face, Weiss collapsed onto his back, laughing breathlessly. “I yield, I yield! You win this one!”
Sephiroth appeared, towering over him in the grey haze, and extended his hand. “Good game.”
“Good game, indeed,” Weiss said, as he was pulled to his feet. “But for whom?”
Catching the mischievous glint in his silver-blue eyes, Sephiroth instinctively turned to look behind him. The whirlwind of snow was dying down, and as it cleared, an eerie and chilling spectacle was revealed to him. He was standing at what was now the center of a ring, comprised of…snowmen.
Normally, a snowman is a charming winter sight, but normally, they don’t appear from thin air, in large groups, surrounding and silently staring at one, with those soulless, charcoal eyes.
“What…what is this?” Sephiroth asked, bewildered.
By way of reply, he was rushed by the army of snowmen, who threw their powdery bodies at him with reckless abandon. He obliterated many of them, but even with his superhuman speed and strength, he couldn’t avoid being swarmed and dogpiled by the hundreds of kamikaze snow-soldiers, and was quickly submerged.
The moment he was down, the ones who hadn’t jumped on the pile simply stopped moving and fell apart, where they were, returning to the snow from whence they came.
Weiss practically passed out from laughing, but did manage to compose himself enough to reach into the heap of dismembered snowmen and haul Sephiroth out, bedraggled and fuming, like a wet cat.
“What in Gaia’s name was that!” he demanded, as a fire spell flared up around his person, quickly restoring him to proper dryness. “I didn’t know you had the ability to animate objects.”
Weiss looked innocent. “Me? I had nothing to do with them. It seems you’ve forgotten my other teammate.”
“Nonsense. Nero and Benjamin’s darkness doesn’t—”
“He meant me,” a third voice called out.
The two young men turned to look in that direction. Emerging from behind the hull of an old helicopter, which Cid was keeping around for who knew what reason, was a dark-haired man with a neatly-trimmed beard, wearing a parka and ushanka cap, and sheepishly waving his mittened hand.
Sephiroth was dumbstruck. “Commissioner Tuesti? You’re responsible for the snow golems?”
“Yep, those were mine. Uh…ha ha, sorry about that. I’m no match for any of you, so I had to improvise.”
“But how? Since when can you animate snow?”
“Well, to be honest, I didn’t think it’d actually work,” Reeve admitted. “I’ve only ever used my inspire on mechanical devices, since I can visualize the internal workings. But Weiss thought I should give it a try, so I did, and voila! Army of snowmen! They weren’t very strong, and they didn’t have minds of their own, like my Cait Siths, but they were good enough in a pinch.”
“It was…very impressive,” Sephiroth conceded, eyeing the man with new respect. “I shall have to take care not to underestimate you, in the future.”
“I think this means you won, Commissioner. Which means team Weiss takes the victory!” Weiss declared, slapping Reeve heartily on the back, and then catching him, as the friendly pat nearly sent him sprawling.
“That depends on the rest of our teammates,” Sephiroth pointed out. “We don’t know who’s still standing.”
“We’re both out,” Nero’s voice piped up. He and Cloud were just coming around the corner of the workshop, to join their respective partners.
“Benny and Cid are out, too,” Cloud told the group. “What about you guys?”
“All out, but Commissioner Tuesti,” Sephiroth said. “So, that leaves only my father unaccounted for.”
“I wonder where he went,” Cloud said, peering around. “I didn’t see anything, after he used us as bowling pins. He might be lying in wait, somewhere nearby.”
A shadow seemed to deepen the night, as Nero sent his superfine darkness tendrils out to search the general area. After a few seconds, he rolled his eyes and withdrew them. “Lying in wait, my ass. He’s curled up in the workshop loft. The beast must’ve gotten sleepy from the cold.”
“Aww, why does that sound so adorable?” Cloud laughed.
“So, he took out one of our own, and then went off to nap,” Sephiroth sighed. “Father wins most unreliable teammate, at least. But it would appear that team Weiss does, indeed, take the victory.”
Nero trotted off to wake his father, and the two followed the rest of the group back to the house.
When they tromped inside, rosy-cheeked and glowing from the exercise in the cold—stopping to remove boots and coats in the entryway—the scent of baking cookies wafted over, and made the atmosphere cozy and cheery.
In the kitchen, Cid was stirring up a large pot of his famous spiced hot-chocolate, and Benjamin was just taking a tray of cookies out of the even.
“We won!” Weiss announced proudly.
“Well, Reeve won,” Cloud corrected. “Vincent forfeited, by falling asleep.”
“There was a blizzard, all the sudden. The beast doesn’t like not being able to smell what’s going on,” Vincent defended, through a deep yawn. Then his eyes lit on the wire rack of cookies, cooling on the counter. “Hey…is that a gingerbread me?”
“Yep!” Benjamin chirped. “I made everyone! This batch is still hot, though, so we’ll have to wait a bit, to decorate them.”
“Am I the one with the spiky hair, or is that Cloud?” Weiss wanted to know.
“That’s Cloud. This one’s you,” Benjamin said, setting the second cookie sheet on a trivet. “See? You’re a lot bigger.”
“No fairsies!” Cloud complained. “I have to decorate a smaller cookie, just because I’m small?”
“Sephiroth can share his with you. Look how big it is.” Sure enough, the Sephiroth cookie was not only quite a bit taller than the others, its long hair and coat added a lot of area to its silhouette. “Besides, there’s no rule that you have to do your own.”
“I’m doing Weiss,” Nero announced.
“I’m doing Nero,” Weiss added immediately.
“Alright, but what about the cookies?” Cid interjected, with a grin.
Everyone groaned, and there was a chorus of ‘ugh, terrible’ and ‘no more dad jokes’ and ‘such vulgarity, in our goddess-fearing household’ and so on, till Cid chased them out of the kitchen with his ladle, and they all ran upstairs to change clothes, before the cookie decorating commenced.
Benjamin stayed in the kitchen, carefully transferring cookies from the sheet pan to the cooling rack.
Cid, who was adding more Fireball cinnamon whiskey to his already almost flammable hot chocolate brew, heard a sniffle, and turned to look at the boy. “Hey, kiddo, you ok?”
“Hm? Oh. It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” Benjamin answered, hastily dashing away a tear.
Cid was unconvinced. “You’re cryin’ over them pretty cookies you made, for nothin’?”
“It’s stupid. I don’t want to s—say it out loud,” the young man mumbled.
“Suit yourself, but if ya don’t tell me, I’ma tell your brothers you been cryin’ and they’ll—”
“No, no, no!” Benjamin sputtered, waving his hands. “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you!”
“Go on, then,” Cid prompted.
“It’s just that sometimes, this starts to feel like…a real family.” His voice wavered with emotion, and he cleared his throat to steady it. “It’s like…everything I ever wanted, all at once, a—and it’s too much. It hurts, in my chest, but not the way bad things hurt. I know it’s a dumb way to say it, I—I can’t think of the right words. Just forget it.”
“Nah, I know just whatcha mean,” Cid said, with a sympathetic smile. “That’s the way I feel every time I look at Vinnie, holdin’ Ollie. Hurts, kinda. Like my heart’s so fulla happiness, it swelled up a couple sizes too big. Ya know?”
“Yes, that’s exactly it!” Benjamin laid a hand on his chest and frowned. “But…why does it hurt? Why would happiness make us cry? That doesn’t make sense.”
Cid shook his head. “Dunno. Some things just don’t make sense, kiddo. But I do know that when you get that swelled up feelin’ in your heart, it’s better to just roll with it, insteada overthinkin’ it. Live in the moment, and save it up in your memory. Cause life goes fast. Y’never know when there won’t be any more of them moments to make into memories.”
Benjamin considered this, then nodded. “I will. Thank you, Mr. Highwind.”
Cid opened his mouth to say the boy could just call him Cid, but the rest of the group came traipsing back in, just then, in the midst of a voluble dispute regarding what counted as an illegal weapon, during sanctioned snowball fights.
Weiss maintained that a sword was a real weapon, but a snowball cannon was not, Sephiroth argued that if cannons of any kind were allowed, then so were swords, Nero was saying that darkness was organic to his body and could not be considered a weapon, Vincent was agreeing, clearly applying the same logic to his Galian beast form, Cloud was explaining to Ollie that his name was ‘Cloud’ not ‘mama’, Ollie was blithely squeaking ‘mama’ at him, and no one was listening to Reeve, who was insisting that their family snowball fights were absolutely not sanctioned events, since there was no governing body responsible for setting regulations and overseeing the tournaments.
Cid glanced at Benjamin, who had a strange expression on his face, and whose eyes had turned dewy and pink-rimmed. “Ya havin’ one of them moments again, kiddo?”
“It—it’s not that,” Benjamin choked out, a tear rolling down his cheek. “I just tasted the hot chocolate. I think…can sinuses catch fire?”
HAPPY HOLIDAYS THANK YOU FOR THE ASK 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
