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From the snowy front lawn of Sheriff HQ, the maniacal laugh of a one-eyed cyborg echoed throughout Pure Heart Valley one winter afternoon.
“Fools!” Badgerclops shouted, fists balled at his hips. “None can stand against the might of the supreme evil mastermind Snow McThrowem!” His aura was as menacing as his red-and-green-striped reindeer sweater was itchy.
Several meters away from him stood Mao Mao and Adorabat, who were also a similar distance from each other.
“I’m not calling you that,” Mao Mao said flatly. His arms were crossed firmly over the chest of his large red coat, the hems of which were decorated with poofy, white faux fur. His coat was held together by an oversized black leather belt with a golden square buckle. His trusty crimson sash nonetheless kept his pudgy tummy tucked snuggly underneath.
“Get serious, Badgerclops!” Adorabat frowned at Badgerclops. The white pom-pom at the end of her crimson stocking cap bounced as she thrust her wings out to her sides. “The winner gets to open the first present tomorrow.”
“She’s right, Badgerclops. The stakes are already quite high. We don’t need a world domination plot on top of them.”
"Fine," Badgerclops said, dejected. "Let's start this totally normal snowball fight, then."
All three members of the Sheriff’s Department lowered their stances in preparation for the beginning of their most epic battle to date. They each waited in silence for the others to make the first move. Frost-speckled beads of sweat trickled down Adorabat’s brow, Mao Mao’s fingers twitched, and Badgerclops hoped he wouldn’t have to bend his knees for much longer.
Barely ten seconds passed since the start of the staredown, but the mustelid deputy refused to wait any longer. As he transformed his robo-arm, both Mao Mao and Adorabat swiped at the snow beneath them. Errant flakes hung in midair, motionless in the moment above the newly-formed ravines. By the time the first packed snowballs were in the air, a tall metal shield with a grated viewing portal surrounded Badgerclops’ front. The frosty projectiles disintegrated on impact with the shield, just according to plan. With his shield planted firmly in the snow, he moved on to the next phase of his plan.
From his robo-arm, a second gadget emerged to aid Badgerclops in this battle. A tripod-mounted turret planted itself next to his metal barricade. Connected to it was a vacuum with a tuba-like nozzle, ingeniously designed to gather as much snow as possible. From within the mechanism, almost-geometrically perfect snowballs would be made and then launched out of the turret’s barrel. With a confident smirk, he decided to demonstrate its effectiveness, and his unmatched mechanical prowess, by aiming the barrel at Adorabat, who was speeding towards him.
The chiropteran deputy had little in the way of a plan. She was at a major disadvantage in this snowball fight; her movement on the ground was not as swift as Mao Mao’s, nor did she have Badgerclops’ defensive capabilities. In the air her movement was superior, but her ability to throw a snowball was limited. Given the odds, a lesser sweetypie might have thrown in the towel.
Adorabat was no such sweetypie.
Between her feet she held one snowball, with her sole objective being to hit Badgerclops with it. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she had to figure it out fast, and while dodging a barrage of snowballs. The distance was closing fast, and there was little room for error. With no other option, Adorabat flew over Badgerclops’ defenses and dropped the snowball on his head like a bomber plane.
The angle was miscalculated, and a crouching maneuver was all it took for Badgerclops to dodge the attack. The snowball landed harmlessly in the snow behind him, while Adorabat sailed overhead without a means of defense. Her back was to him, and he pressed his advantage. He fired his turret on full-auto, and watched Adorabat start to slip as even her agile form began to be outmaneuvered by the arcing flurry of leading snowball shots. In no time, her glide was reduced to a frantic dive as she lost the ability to maintain a flight path, and careened towards the snow.
For a moment, Adorabat flew dangerously close to the ground, but that one moment was enough for a crimson hand to pull her down below the snow by her peg leg. She struggled against the unknown assailant until she was shushed by the guerilla’s gruff voice.
“Mao Mao?” she whispered between frantic breaths, glancing over her shoulder.
The sheriff nodded, a serious look in his eyes. He released his grip on Adorabat’s leg, allowing her to sit up straight. He sat hunched over, feet flat against the snow beneath him.
Adorabat examined her surroundings, and found that she had been pulled into a trench with a wall of snow obscuring their exact location.
“Y’all can’t hide forever!” Badgerclops taunted from behind his defenses. “Eventually you’ll have to get something to eat, and when you do,” his voice lowered to a serious, threatening tone, “I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Sounds like Badgerclops isn’t playing around,” Mao Mao said.
“What do we do?” Adorabat held her wings up to her mouth, her wide amber eyes already glassy with the sting of defeat looming over both of them.
“I have a plan, but I need your help to pull it off. ” A crimson glove was extended towards Adorabat. “Truce?”
She looked down at Mao Mao’s hand, contemplating the offer. She wondered if she could really trust him, if she really needed his help. Weighing her options, and seeing how stacked the deck was against her, she made the decision to place her wing in his hand.
Mao Mao gripped her wing and shook it in a firm handshake. He pressed his back against the barrier of snow and attempted to look over it. His whiskers were grazed by a high-speed snowball, causing him to recoil back down to safety. Fortunately, they had agreed beforehand that shots to whiskers, tails, and frayed ends of clothing didn’t count. “He’s got us pinned down, but that won’t be a problem.” He turned to Adorabat and leaned down to her level. “Okay, here’s the plan…”
Meanwhile, above ground, Badgerclops let out an obnoxiously loud yawn and itched his chest. “Seriously, guys. Can we wrap this up soon? Standing up for this long can't be good for my health.”
Suddenly, a snowball hit the window on his shield, snapping the badger back to reality. Seconds later, another snowball landed the same place. The assault continued, leaving just enough space between each impact to optimize the amount of time the snow blinded him.
Badgerclops growled in frustration. “You think that’ll stop me?” He then proceeded to fire his turret blindly at the area in front of him. A conic barrage of snow significantly slowed the flow of snowballs coming at him. In seconds, the snow obscuring Badgerclops’ view of the battlefield fell to the ground. Before him was a sight that caused him to stop firing his turret in surprise.
The trench’s barrier was down, and the only thing that stood in the snow was Adorabat, angrily tossing a snowball like a baseball into the air with her right wing.
Panic set in. Badgerclops looked all around him, at the trees on the hill, at the roof of their house, but the one he sought was nowhere to be found. Time slowed down to a standstill, and his own foggy breath seemed to hang in mid-air. The scene before him seemed completely undisturbed, save for the smallest of fractures from the blanket of white that sat beneath him. And as that disruption began to tear like a mighty fault line, even as he tried to sluggishly maneuver his robo-arm around, he knew he was too late.
Mao Mao delivered a snowball shoryuken to Badgerclops’ chin.
The force of the uppercut was enough to lift Badgerclops off of his feet. He landed on his back about a meter away, where he laid motionless in the snow.
"Did we get him?" Adorabat asked.
The sheriff carefully approached the fallen deputy, ready to act at a moment’s notice. He scanned Badgerclops then prodded the big guy’s feet with one of his own, producing no more than a groan. Mao Mao put his hands on his hips, cocking his head upwards as a toothy grin formed on his lips.
“Phew! Good work, Adorab—” As he turned to face Adorabat, a snowball struck his left shoulder. He saw his little deputy with her wing outstretched, the frosty projectile she previously held nowhere to be seen. His victorious visage shattered, his eyes staring with a mixture of hurt and fear at the expressionless junior deputy.
Mao Mao clutched his chest, still not quite believing what had just transpired. His features contorted as he pretended to experience waves of pain. His every breath was either a gasp for air, or an exaggerated grunt. “How could you betray… your own father?!” He stumbled forward and lost his balance as he made his way to Adorabat. With one final “bleh,” the sheriff fell sideways into the snow in front of her, defeated.
Adorabat stared, horrified, coming to terms with the consequences of her actions. “Mao Mao…?” she called, wishing for him to say or do anything. She received no such response, nary a twitch from his paws that were now outstretched in front of him. Throwing her wings out to her sides dramatically, she cried into the heavens, “What have I done?!”
"You've fallen right into my trap," a voice said behind her.
Seemingly back from the grave, Badgerclops had returned to the fray, and was now pointing his blaster at the back of Adorabat's head; however, instead of its usual blue glow, the end of Badgerclops' blaster held a single snowball. "Any last words?" he asked her.
There was a moment of silence as Badgerclops waited for an answer.
"Yeah… say 'hi' to Mao Mao for me!"
Before Badgerclops had time to react, Adorabat turned around and beaned him with a close-range snowball throw. Internally, he was impressed she had managed to land such a precise shot without aiming it first. Externally, he staggered backwards in a campy, overacted way similar to Mao Mao’s theatrical performance. A pained cry preceded his fall to the ground, the badger suffering the same fate as his friend.
The champion of this combat stood amongst the bodies of the ones she held most dear, taken from her by her own wings. She was spared little time to mourn, however, as a rhythmic beeping rang in her ears. The source of the eerie tone seemed to be Badgerclops’ robo-arm, so she approached it to investigate. As she did, the frequency of the beeps grew. In the seconds it took her to reach the arm, the beeping had become a steady one-note hum.
Suddenly, the arm detonated like a bomb, blanketing the yard in a new layer of snow. For several seconds there was naught but silence. Adorabat was the first to poke her head out of the snow, then Badgerclops, and finally Mao Mao. They punctuated the afternoon's activity with a fit of hearty laughter.
"Well, I suppose that's that," Mao Mao said. "Congratulations, Adorabat. You win."
"Yeah! Good job, dude!" Badgerclops said cheerfully.
Adorabat giggled, her smile practically emitting a ray of pure joy. “Thanks, guys.”
“I knew you could do it,” Mao Mao said. "Now let's head inside and warm up with some hot chocolate."
"Chocolate!" Adorabat screamed at the top of her lungs. She leapt out of the snow then made a beeline for the front door. She swung it open and sped inside, where the worrying sounds of banging pots, breaking glass, and a revving chainsaw, filled the air.
Turning his robo-arm into an oversized hair dryer, Badgerclops melted all of the snow off of himself and Mao Mao. He approached the sheriff, who was brushing the snow off of his jacket.
Mao Mao quickly took notice of Badgerclops' presence and stopped what he was doing. His friend offered a small smile, one of satisfaction with the way the snowball fight turned out. He reciprocated the expression while brushing snow off of the reindeer decal of the deputy’s sweater. They each placed a hand on the other's back and wordlessly returned to the comfort of their home.