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Alex always loved winter. There was snow, school holidays, cold that worked as a great excuse for hot chocolate even with usually very health-conscious Ian… and of course snowball fights. While Ian perhaps couldn't be counted on to be home in time for Christmas most of the time (the reason for which wasn't that hard to figure out, once he found out about his actual job and personally met some of those stupid billionaires that saw Christmas and New Year as perfect timing for yet another of their ridiculous schemes), he always made sure to spend at least one week with him when there was snow, even taking him out of school for a week if he completely missed the holidays. And so Alex's earliest winter memories are of the two of them having hot chocolate in some mountain cottage after an exhausting all-out snowball fight. When he got older, snowball fights usually came after skiing excursions and other similarly useful skills, but not a holiday passed without a mandatory competition in who can be the sneakiest in figuring out how to bury the other in a pile of snow and make sure they're shivering long afterwards from the snow stuffed down their collars.
And when Alex got a bit older, snowball fights changed and became a lot more elaborate schemes with extremely loosely defined rules of what exactly still counted as a 'snowball fight'. He still remembered how Ian first spent a day explaining to him how to build a makeshift cannon to better assault the opponent when he was almost six, and then left for a week to give him time to build his own – because that year's holidays were spent in their house in Chelsea, there might or might not have been a neighbourhood wide alert sent out about the dangers of walking – the majority population in their streets comprised elderly people with one younger couple without kids- (driving was still fairly safe that year) past their house whenever they were outside… and that not seeing them wasn't nearly assurance enough that they weren't still out there somewhere. Likewise, making sure you had enough hiding places by building igloos and other obstacles was fairly standard, but it was only after Alex was a bit older that Ian introduced the concept of making discreet ice patches to trip up your opponent. And once this started, cars stopped driving past their house completely for the whole week Ian was home. Because ice patches never seemed to end with their front yard, but stretched onto the pavement and the road as well.
And then Jack came. Alex wasn't aware of it at the time, but when the news of there finally being a sane person in the house – that wasn't planning on going home for the holidays that year – broke in the neighbourhood, people were toasting their good fortune with eggnog, believing that it would be finally a year in which they'll be able to access their house by any direction, and not just after making a fifteen-minute detour each time. Complaints from someone living in the house would probably finally do the trick since calls to the police about the danger Ian and Alex presented for the neighbourhood with their snowball fights always somehow got dismissed. And based on the number of people Ian interviewed for the position (and that quit after a week at most), he was very keen on keeping this last one, perhaps enough to finally accept some kind of compromise.
That bright flame of hope was doused completely on the very first day of the annual snowball fight… when that American girl enthusiastically joined in! The neighbours were observing the whole ordeal from the windows, waiting for her reaction and inevitable when she'd exit the house and get showered with a ton of snow, slipped on the ice and got a snowball to the face to top it off… only to get a nasty surprise. While Jack slipped on the ice patch and got snow to her face, her reaction wasn't to yell and Ian, but rather to grab some snow herself and give back as good as she got. It was at this point, that the neighbours decided to simply go away on a holiday each year to avoid them.
For Alex, however, Jack's arrival meant that he now had a new opponent for the times Ian was gone, and a new ally in his and Ian's yearly fight… a new ally that came with a lot of cool new tricks that he could test on unsuspecting Ian even. The first time Ian returned home in winter after hiring Jack, he was welcomed with a water balloon encased in a snowball as a welcome home gift, and it only escalated from there. So Alex could probably be excused for viewing snowball fights as a matter of life and death with the only limitations being your creativity. Especially when Tom just took one look at the literal battleground that was their yard that winter (with cannons peeking out from behind makeshift barriers, a giant ice rink and a bucket filled with water balloons) breathed out a soft 'awesome' and enthusiastically joined. It was all completely normal, and his neighbours simply refused to join in because of their age and brittle bones.
It took him embarrassingly long to realise that not everyone viewed snowball fights the same way. And the way he found out was even more so. Apparently, Nile had a reason for recognising him on sight and going at him with a sword before he could even get one word out, and it had very little to do with John's betrayal, and more with inadvertent mental scaring caused by him and Ian the year Jack returned to the US to spend Christmas holidays with her family, and Ian decided they would spend their week in the mountains again. It was also the reason Scorpia as a whole seemed willing to train him despite his father's betrayal. However, it wasn't until one evening at Malagosto that he found out the truth from a drunk Gordon when the rest of the students got sent away on a special training exercise that he was banned from.
Apparently, neither Alex nor Ian knew that their location that year put them within a ten-mile radius of that year's Malagosto's special snow training exercise, in which they had to practice their stealth by crossing the heavily snowed mountain range with accompanying valleys, avoiding detection and simultaneously picking off the members of the opposite team by spraying them with a special paint that only got visible later on under UV light, to make it harder fort hem to discern if they were hit already or not, while the instructors would be picking them off as well with the same type of paint.
It was just bad luck that one of the teams strayed a bit from the designed perimeter and found themself square in the middle of a big clearing that doubled as that year's war zone, that is, that year's Rider's snowball fight ground. Thinking they could take a couple of minutes to catch their breath from the run from their pursuers that had been going on for the last two hours, they gratefully took cover behind the strategically places barrier at the northern side of the clearing from where they could observe the surrounding forests to see if anyone had followed them.
They expected a calm thirty or so minutes before they had to tackle the trail again, more than enough time to work on their strategy for the last two miles. Nile in particular needed this time to make a plan that would finally put him so far ahead of Martha that he'd be guaranteed to finish first in his class. They'd been pretty much even for the last ten tasks, and this winter obstacle course was the last obstacle on his way to the top. It was going to be glorious. He'd finally show her up.
He turned towards his teammates to tell them his plan when he was distracted by a subtle swishing sound. It was all the warning they got before they were suddenly covered in small ice particles, doused in icy water, showered with snow, and when they desperately tried to escape their predicament a trap sprung on them and suddenly they were being hung upside down in a tree, having their faces pelted by snowballs… fired at them from the other side of the clearing? From some… trebuchets? How did that even work? And why?
These were the only thoughts any of them was capable of for the next thirty minutes, as they were sort of preoccupied with repeatedly having snow and icy water trickling behind their collars, marring their goggles and hitting them in the face and other exposed body parts.
Nile's last thought before he lost consciousness due to a particularly harsh snowball was that he could kiss being first in class goodbye.
The team was recovered barely forty minutes into their ordeal – the search started immediately after they failed to report to the finish line since they got some intelligence about MI6 being spotted in the vicinity – it wouldn't do to have several recruits lost to them before they managed to repay at least some of the invested money. Especially Nile (or, well, just Nile actually, but it hadn't taken much more effort to save the whole group) since his blade expertise already had some interested clients, and they pretty much already booked him in advance. Even MI6 and the CIA expressed their interest, and it really wouldn't so for them to get him for free just because they accidentally captured him.
Fortunately, the rescue ran smoothly and the group was recovered swiftly, without any lasting physical injuries – well, nothing that would put them out of commission for more than a month at least; the two less promising students were also quickly disposed of since their future usefulness wouldn't make up for the medical costs, while Nile's got added to his debt.
Unfortunately, the full scope of the injuries didn't show until later, two years to be exact, when the CIA wanted Nile's service for additional security for one of their politicians. Everything looked fine, until Nile saw the surveillance of all the places he was supposed to be shadowing the client, and saw a group of children in the middle of a heated snowball fight. It was as if someone turned off a switch – Nile froze completely – well, his teeth started clattering – and they could see all the colour rush from his face that became dangerously pale. The whole board was stumped, nothing seemed to be able to wake him from his fright until the surveillance recording was turned off and the snowball fight scene disappeared.
And it wasn't even the last of it! That same reaction appeared in every other member of his group as soon as they saw anything that even hinted at the possibility of a snowball fight taking place, which essentially eliminated several of their operatives from any prospective operation sat in an urban setting or any place that combined children and snow.
It was enough reason for Scorpia to start digging to find who exactly was responsible for the fate of their operatives, and when it came to light that it appeared to be honest to God coincidence that they interrupted Ian Rider and his nephew on their holidays… Well, let's just say that Nile knew exactly what he was doing in the Widow's palace when he attacked Alex with his swords and that he was pretty disappointed that the boy's body hadn't been found the next day when they reopened the room.
The conversation with the famous shrink that they took the operatives to was… enlightening to say the least.
''I'm afraid your operatives won't be available for missions any time soon,'' finally said Dr Kelly.
The board just stared at him. It was Zeljan that spoke up first. ''You needed a month of talking to our operatives and all you have to tell us is that they won't be available for missions in the near future?!'' he was fuming. ''We paid you a small fortune to fix them!''
''As I was saying, it will take a while for them to overcome their traumatic experience,'' calmly explained the shrink.
''And I believe you paid me so generously to determine how that could happen to one of your best, and the answer is most intriguing.''
This seemed to have piqued Dr Three's interest. ''Oh? How so?''
''Well, based on the intelligence provided on the culprits it appears that it was the younger Rider that was responsible for the majority of the traps that traumatised your employees, and what's more, it all seems subconscious – he came up with brilliant mental torture without outright planning for it! Just imagine what he'll be capable of in the future after some more years of training under his uncle.''
''So you're suggesting we hire him?'' Chase leaned forward in interest.
''Well, I wouldn't dare presume to give any suggestion, but the truth is that the affected operatives won't be capable of functioning in any urban winter setting (at least not without at least a decade of therapy, which is probably counterproductive), so this way you can turn this whole ordeal into something lucrative. Just try not to expose him to snow when accompanied by your recruits, because the surveillance you had on him painted a rather disturbing picture, it appears his uncle has him conditioned to treat snowball fights as a matter of life and death, and not just that – he appears to believe it to be completely normal, going so far as to brainwash his housekeeper and best friend into sharing that belief. It really is quite amazing when you look at it from that angle.''
All the members were silent for a few long moments.
It was once again Chase that spoke up. ''So, to sum up, there is zero chance for Nile to carry out the CIA mission – ever – and we should look into getting either Rider to come work for us, but preferably the brat.''
Dr Kelly nodded and was summarily dismissed.
It was due to this conversation that no board member doubted Julia Rothman's decision to recruit Alex, despite him foiling two of their recent ops and not even after he so spectacularly failed to show any killer instinct at all on his Rorschach test. Anyone that can come up with traps and ideas that manage to traumatise one of their most promising recruits of the last generation using nothing more than snow, water balloons and some rope in addition to what he found in the woods showed more than enough promise in the field of psychological warfare, even if he somehow happened to spectacularly fail every single class. Especially since the whole thing hinted at him being very good at 'accidents' that somehow always resulted in dead bodies, but rarely with any proof that he planned it that way because most of them were just downright ridiculous.
It was, however, also the reason for a small change in the training schedule – no one wanted to risk sending Rider on a snow-related mission with yet another batch of recruits – they needed more operatives capable of carrying out the mission around Christmas time around the globe, not just in Australia with their summer temperatures.
The potential to have Alex mentally scar the agents of their rivals was just too good to pass up. It even made up for the very uncomfortable conversation in which they had to explain to Byrne, that no, he could not get Nile's assistance for the assignment that he already paid a hefty sum for, and yes, they would return the money with interest and yes, they'd stay away from any operations they were offered that would bring them to the U.S. for at least a year. Because there was nothing quite like mental trauma for your enemies to remember you by. And the one that left the smallest amount of proof for someone to go to court with. After all, what were they going to say? That their client got so scared of snow that he could barely function, just because he got caught in a friendly snowball fight? Please, not all judges operated by ridiculous American court standards.
The whole story left Alex feeling quite bemused, and with the belief that Scorpia Executive Board related to their crazy customers a tad too much with their crazy schemes, but if the last couple of months taught him anything, it was that there were times when it was better to keep your mouth shut, and the situation he was in probably fell into that category.