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To be fair, Gildarts Clive had never stood much of a chance because it was winter and he had picked a snowball fight with the wrong people – and even his best friend’s tactical skill could not safe him right now because they were outnumbered and their opponents went by the following names: first of all, there was Cornelia Alberona who was, in Gildarts’ humble opinion, the most attractive girl on the entire campus and thankfully his girlfriend and also a physics student which meant that she was considerably better with angles and stuff like that than he would ever be. Then, there was Ur Frost – who had been Gildarts’ other best friends since forever and who was into archery which meant that she, too, knew a thing or two about angles. And, finally, Gildarts’ very own roommate had turned against him. Silver Fullbuster was a business student like Gildarts himself but the black-haired man was from the North where, according to Ur who was from the same area, people were born with a Snowball Fight Gene.
(It was hardly the weirdest story she had ever told anyone which said a lot about her.)
But whether or not there was indeed such a gene, Gildarts was slowly realising that he had picked a fight with the wrong people and that, once again, he really should have listened to Ivan who had told him that he would regret it. Just like Ivan had previously told him that he would regret drinking the beer another branch of the chemistry department had produced. Or that he should never ever let a chemistry student mix a painkiller for him because the pharmacists-to-be were far better at it. Then, according to the chemistry student’s general assessment, Gildarts was immune to any sort of good advice.
(“It seems like whenever I tell you ‘Gildarts, no’ you make a point out of going ‘Gildarts, yes’ on me.”)
(Sometimes, Gildarts wished that the other one would not be right all the time, it was annoying.)
The point was, Gildarts and Ivan were losing and neither of them liked to lose. But when they were up against two women who did not miss and a guy who had a vicious mind, there was little they could do aside from waving the white flag after being soundly defeated.
“Surrendering already, honey?” Cornelia asked amused as she smirked down at him, her cheeks reddened from the cold as she threw a snowball into the air, only to have it caught by Ur who looked entirely unfazed by all what had happened. Well, Gildarts would do something about that, he decided. She could not walk away from this battle without being at least a little bit ruffed. So far, she looked like she had just gotten out of her latest meeting and this was nothing Gildarts was going to stand for.
“Was going to offer to make different teams since Dreyar got some class now,” he replied as he looked at his roommate, one eyebrow arched like he was the villain from the alternative movie Ur had made them watch a while ago. “So how does it sound to you, Fullbuster?” he continued as he wiggled his eyebrows at his roommate. “You and Frostbite again Conny and me.”
“You do realise that this is basically the formula for your defeat, Gil?” Ur asked as her eyes gained a competitive glint, one that had never announced anything remotely good for anyone.
“Even your luck’s going to run out, sooner or later,” he said as he smirked at her before he approached her quickly, reaching for the tree behind her to get a handful of snow to shove down the back of her shirt. And within seconds, her carefully maintained act of being a legendary ice queen crumbled because she squealed.
“You’re going down,” she hissed as she had gotten rid of her jacket and the snow on the inside of her pullover and if it had been any other tiny, petite girl dressed in just her sweater and her not-snow-drenched clothing, he would not even considered it to be a threat but Ur’s mind – much like Ivan’s – could be a vicious place when she felt the need to be dangerous.
“Counting on it, Frostbite,” he said before he grabbed Cornelia’s wrist and dragged her away.
“Please tell me,” his girlfriend started as she started to form a snowball, “that you aren’t trying to hook up your roommate with Frost – because we’ve been over this, Gildarts.”
Gildarts remembered that conversation very well and truth be told, he still disagreed with Ivan and Cornelia. Of course, it was not their business to play matchmaker for anyone – much less for their friends – but for all the criticism they had both voiced, there had not been a single argument that had made him feel like his idea was indeed a bad one. If anything, it had told him to consider all the consequences and once he had done this, he had found that he was still very much in favour of this.
(Just like he was in favour of getting Ivan to just ask out the shy blonde with the green eyes who was in his math class and on whom he had been crushing since they had met.)
“We have been over it, indeed,” he said as he pressed a kiss to her temple before he looked over his shoulder. “Where did they go, anyway?”
“They probably put their mysterious northerner genes to use by plotting an ambush,” she said drily as she looked around, scanning the place for possible spots from where an attack might come because, as Gildarts knew very well, she could read angles like a pro. “You really had to put together two people who fought more snowball fights than we combined?”
If she had been anyone else, Gildarts would reacted but he knew his girlfriend and he knew that she was merely venting off her frustration and did not actually mean anything of it. This was the advantage of having dated the same person for years now, he supposed. He did not fall for the traps she put up anymore because he knew when to just smile and play along.
“Actually, Corn, I’m pretty sure that there is no such thing as northerner genes,” Gildarts’ roommate said as he approached them slowly, hands in the pockets, seemingly harmless. Nonetheless, everything in Gildarts screamed that this was a trap and that they should run – only that he could not determine where because Ur could be, tiny as she was, hiding literally everywhere.
“Frost says it exists and I was in her biology class back in the days; she usually knew what she was talking about,” Cornelia replied as she continued to scan the area, her purpleish-blueish eyes narrowing as she stared into the darkness and her stance tense as she had apparently come to the same conclusion as Gildarts himself; that Silver was currently distracting the distraction while Ur was working on something Gildarts would more likely than not hate.
“Oh, I never doubted that she knows what she talks about,” Gildarts’ roommate said cheerfully as he took his hand out of the pocket, a hand that had been wrapped around a snowball he was now throwing up into the air and catching again and again, a behaviour that unnerved Gildarts – especially since Silver who claimed to never miss actually did miss when he threw the snowball.
If not the entire setup had already screamed ‘trap’, this would have sealed the deal for Gildarts.
“Hey, Ghostbuster,” Cornelia started from where she was halfway hidden between a tree and Gildarts, her voice laced with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. “Where’s Frostbite?”
“Well, I suggest you ask her for that answer,” the black-haired man replied with a grin and for a second, his gaze shifted upwards to something that was above their heads. “Or, you know, you could check her social media. I’m pretty sure she took a picture.”
Considering that the trap was most certainly already closed around them, Gildarts merely frowned as he took out his phone and unlocked the screen before he checked the only social media Ur actually used which happened to be the portal tied to their university’s intranet. And, sure enough, she had updated her profile less than a minute ago when she posted a slightly blurry selfie. But Gildarts knew what he had to look for and he found it without much of a deal. Namely, he spotted Cornelia and himself in the background of the picture that had been taken from a certain height.
“She’s in the trees,” he managed to conclude before the first snowball hit his head.
“So that’s what she meant that whoever got the higher grounds would win,” Cornelia said as she twirled around but the snowball still got her shoulder. “She’s being mean about this.”
“I personally felt like it was cheating but she assured me that it was merely strategy,” Fullbuster said as he flung the second snowball at Gildarts and this time, he met his aim. “I’m actually offering you a swift surrender – if you pay for our mulled wine.”
This was mean but Gildarts knew that they had lost the moment they had gotten into the sole spot of the campus’ areal where the trees were standing close to one another. It was unlikely that Ur had predicted this from the get go but she was certainly not the kind of person who would ignore an opportunity like this.
“…okay,” Cornelia said as she brushed the snow off her shoulder. “We surrender.”
“I see no white flag,” Ur called from somewhere up in the trees. “Do it properly or I’ll keep going.”
Sometimes, Gildarts really cursed the person who had come up with all those stupid rules for proper snowball fights but then, he usually remembered that it had been him and then, he decided to blame it on whatever idiot that had given him the wine on the day they had built up the Holy Rules of Snowball Fights.
And in this case, the blame would be all Ivan’s (for a change) because his father had been the one to send a box of wine so that they could celebrate Ivan’s birthday.
“Alright, alright, we surrender,” Gildarts said as he waved around his handkerchief. “That okay?”
“Always happy to see you see reason, Gil,” she replied before somewhere in the trees, there was the unique sound of boots hitting snow heard when she left her hiding place.
“Well, that was a brief battle,” Silver said with a shrug as he threw Ur’s jacket at her. “But then, it means that we won’t get pneumonia for running around without a jacket.”
“I’m never sick,” Ur said as she wrapped the jacket around her shoulders. “But thanks for caring.”