“Okay, ladies, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Laura said to the seven other girls with her as they all hunched over a diagram that she had drawn on the snow. “Rarity’s on defense duty; Pinkie’s on ammunitions. Fluttershy and her animals are going to be our distraction while everyone else is on offense. AJ and Sunset are going to attack the left flank while Rainbow Dash and Twilight take on the right.”
She hardened her face into a scowl and said with a growl, “As for me, well, I’m going to take down the general. Any questions, ladies?”
“Yeah, I have one,” Sunset said in a thoroughly unamused deadpan. “Aren’t you taking this a little too seriously? It’s just a silly, little snowball fight.”
Laura glared at Sunset and replied, “Oh, but you’re wrong, Sunset. This isn’t just a ‘silly, little snowball fight.’”
She inhaled deeply and bellowed, “THIS IS ALL-OUT WAR! And I! WILL! NOT! LOSE!”
“You and Zephyr Breeze made another stupid bet that the loser has to do whatever the winner tells him to do for a whole day, didn’t you?” Applejack scoffed as she rolled her eyes.
“Nobody asked you,” Laura snapped at AJ before turning back to the rest of her team. “Now, are we combat ready or not?”
The rest of the girls collectively sighed and gave their half-hearted agreements.
“Then, what are we waiting for? Let’s get to our battle stations!”
“Hold on,” Twilight interrupted. “I have one question. Isn’t having us use our magic technically cheating? I mean, it does give us a huge advantage over Zephyr and his team.”
“Normally, you’d be right,” Laura replied, dismissively waving her hand, a sinister smirk spreading across her face, “but you know what they say about love and war.”
She went into serious mode again and yelled, “Now, if there are no more interruptions, GET TO YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!”
Nobody wanted to argue with her any further, so they simply complied with her order.
Meanwhile, behind a different snow fort, Zephyr Breeze, Flash Sentry, and Micro Chips were setting up all sorts of fancy contraptions along the fort’s walls. They had catapults of various shapes and sizes and a pitching machine designed to throw snowballs instead of baseballs.
“I don’t know, Zephyr,” Micro Chips said. “Having these machines do the throwing for us kinda feels like cheating.”
“Well, you know what they say,” Zephyr replied with a smug smirk. “All is fair in love and war. Besides, knowing Laura she’s probably talked the girls into using their magic on us.”
“What I’d like to know is where you got all this stuff,” Flash pointed out.
“Oh, the pitching machine I bought from work with my employee discount. Everything else I got Micro Chips and the rest of the science club to build for me,” Zephyr replied nonchalantly.
Flash looked at Micro Chips with a confused stare.
“He was very convincing,” Micro Chips explained, frowning in embarrassment.
Shortly after the three of them finished their setup, they were joined by Sandalwood, Bulk Biceps, Heath Burns, Snips, and Snails.
“Well, about time you guys got here,” Zephyr scolded. “Any later and Laura and the girls would have wiped the floor with us.”
Before he could say another word however, he felt a snowball whiz past his ear. The snowball ended up striking Heath on the shoulder.
“Aw, man. Out already?!” Heath exclaimed as he walked away from the opposing snow forts and sat down under a tree.
“The first shot has been fired!” Zephyr cried. “Man your stations everybody! Move! Move! Move!”
Zephyr scrambled to turn on and load the pitching machine while everyone else loaded and fired the catapults. A shrill collective shriek erupted from the girls’ snow fort as they dodged the barrage of snow.
Laura looked through her binoculars and saw the catapults and the pitching machine on the boys’ snow fort.
“Zeph, are you using machines on us?” Laura shouted to Zephyr as she set down her binoculars.
“Love and war, baby, love and war,” Zephyr shouted back with a laugh.
Laura smirked before she scowled in determination.
“Applejack!” Laura cried. “You know what to do.”
Applejack nodded as she, Sunset, and Pinkie Pie began packing together the biggest snowball they possibly could. When they had formed one that was as wide as they were tall, Applejack hoisted the snowball over her head with her super strength and tossed it towards the left side of Zephyr’s snow fort. Flash’s eyes widened when he saw the monster snowball zooming towards him and Snails.
“Move!” he cried, grabbing Snails and diving away from the snowball’s trajectory.
The snowball slammed into the snow fort, burying three catapults under a pile of snow and causing the wall to crumble. Zephyr stared at the fallen wall, his jaw slack in utter astonishment. Then, he turned back towards the enemy fort, still completely dumbfounded.
“Love and war, babe, love and war,” Laura shouted with a devious smirk when she saw the look on Zephyr’s face.
Zephyr sighed romantically as he placed his hands over his heart.
“She totally gets me,” he muttered to no one in particular. Then, he returned Laura’s devious smirk as he turned up the settings on the pitching machine and loaded it with more snow. The machine began to fire snow at a faster rate, chipping away at any areas of the Laura’s snow fort that were not covered by Rarity’s gem shields.
Rarity tried to keep her defense up with Zephyr’s sudden onslaught, but the increased firing rate combined with Rarity’s natural slowness resulted in Rarity getting hit in the face. She cried out as she dramatically sprawled herself on top of the snow, trying (and failing) to “die” as elegantly as possible. Zephyr cheered when he saw that his machine had hit one of his targets.
“Flash! Snails! Try to rebuild the wall,” Zephyr ordered. “We’re still in this fight, and I’m not surrendering just yet.”
Flash sighed and rolled his eyes but went along with Zephyr’s command. Snails, however, decided to just keep flinging snowballs at the girls the old-fashioned way.
Laura growled under her breath, seeing that Zephyr had taken out her main defense. Her scowl intensified when she saw Zephyr’s men attempt to rebuild their defenses. She didn’t want to admit it, but her enemy was clever and gutsy but not clever nor gutsy enough.
“Dash! Throw faster!” Laura yelled.
Using her super speed, Rainbow Dash began rapid-firing snowballs like a machine gun. Everybody on Zephyr’s side of the snowball fight quickly ducked and covered, except for Flash, who was halfway done with fixing the collapsed wall, and Snails, who didn’t have the sense to move out of the exposed part of the snow fort. Unsurprisingly, the two of them got hit.
“Yes!” Rainbow Dash cheered at her two hits. She started to dance as she gloated, “I’m the best and the coolest and the awesome-est. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!”
“Rainbow, look out!” Twilight cried, pushing Rainbow Dash from the path of a snowball and taking the hit herself.
“Twilight!” Dash cried, standing up. Before she even realized what had happened, she was knocked to her back by a snowball the size of a bowling ball.
“YEAH!” Bulk Biceps cheered.
“That’s what you get for gloating,” Micro Chips shouted triumphantly, pointing at two fallen girls.
Laura growled as she silently cursed Dash’s need to show off. She glared at Zephyr and his fort with a fiery determination. She had to end this quickly, and she knew just how to do it.
“Fluttershy!” she shouted at the timid girl. “Time to put our plan in action.”
“Um, about that,” Fluttershy nervously replied. “My animal friends have some concerns that what you want them to do is technically cheating.”
“Just tell them the same thing I told Twilight. All is fair in love and war, and this, my friend, is war.”
“Um, okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
Five minutes had passed, and both sides had fallen into a steady rhythm of throwing and dodging snowballs. Laura and Zephyr knew that victory lay in whoever can effectively break out of that rhythm and struggled to be the first one to do it. Unfortunately for Zephyr, Fluttershy had finally talked her animal friends into helping Laura win.
The whole debacle started out innocently enough with some birds perching on the catapults and refusing to go away. Then, squirrels and chipmunks began crawling into the boys’ clothes and tickling them, rendering them unable to operate any of their machinery properly. Finally, Fluttershy’s particularly rascally rabbit Angel Bunny hopped over to Zephyr’s pitching machine and gave it a good kick, knocking it over into the snow before Zephyr could stop him.
“No, Angel Bunny, bad!” Zephyr scolded while trying to get two chipmunks out of his jacket and a squirrel out of his pants. “Dang it, Laura!”
Immediately after the pitching machine hit the ground, Zephyr heard Laura scream, “CHARGE!”
The animals scurried out of his clothes, and he turned around just in time to see his girlfriend break through the wall of his snow fort like the Kool-Aid man and tackle hug him into the snow, spraying fresh powder everywhere.
Zephyr looked up and found himself looking right into Laura’s eyes. He tried to move, but he couldn’t because Laura was pinning his shoulders to the ground and straddling his midsection.
“Looks like I won, babe,” Laura cooed in a sultry voice.
“Only because you cheated,” Zephyr deadpanned.
“Love and war, baby, love and war.” Laura brought her face closer to Zephyr’s so that their noses were touching.
“Oh, alright,” Zephyr conceded. “What’s the first thing you want out of me? A foot massage? A head massage? A salon day courtesy of yours truly?”
Laura smiled flirtatiously and said, “Oooh, all of those sound good, but why don’t we start with something simple and work our way up, shall we?”
“Uh, simple how?”
“Just close your eyes and pucker up,” Laura singsonged.
Zephyr didn’t need to be told twice. The two of them pressed their lips together with Zephyr lifting his head to lean into the kiss. The two of them kissed to their hearts’ content and then longer just to make their friends uncomfortable.