Blessed Combat

13 - The Game of Cat and Mouse

It took the tall and short team ten minutes to arrive in their destination. Arma squatted down low along with Zessica behind a heavily snow coated bush a few feet away from five or so aberrant moving snowmen. Arma’s heart almost stopped beating when one of the snowmen halted to a stop and sniffed the air, causing the tall lad wonder whether it had picked up their scent already. Fortunately for him, the snow man simply growled in a bass low tone before turning its attention to the ring formation again. Only then did Arma let himself exhale out a sigh of relief.

“Okay...now what?” Arma asked and turned to find in place of where Zessica should have been, he was asking to nothing but thin air. Arma’s eyes widened in disbelief; staring at the empty spot for several seconds. Then he anxiously turned his attention around him, wondering where a small ivory haired girl could have gone.

‘Where’d she go? And why did she had to go disappear on me at this time?!”

Arma thought as panic settled in. At the corner of his eyes, he saw something move ever so slowly towards the middle of the ring. The tall lad almost slapped his forehead and swore out loud. If it weren’t for the dozen or so snowmen guarding at whatever that was in the middle, he would have done just that.

Zessica, very much camouflaged thanks to the white winter dress she was wearing and her flawless pale white skin, was using her weak presence to her advantage. Arma was more or less impressed to find it was working. Not one single snow monster sensed the small fry inching her way closer toward the center of the ring. Even Arma had to strain his eyes to catch sight of her. Once or twice when he blinked, it seemed like she vanished into thin air again till he saw several spots of sky blue, red and black moving about. It couldn’t be helped that she was so easy to miss.

The tall lad watched her stop from her tracks several times and continued forward again. He wondered where she got her courage from to take such a huge risk in walking through so many vicious snow men. She then suddenly squatted down, extending out her right hand slowly, as if reaching out towards something. As seconds ticked by, Arma saw what seemed like an invisible barrier for it rippled from her touch, causing it to reveal the dome-shaped force field and a distorted view of a small wooden cabin.

However, this was a mistake that Zessica had made unintentionally.

When the barrier rippled, no doubt it attracted the attention of all the snowmen guarding it. All of the aberrant sniffed the air and turned its head with frightening accuracy towards the small girl. Arma saw her that she was unperturbed by the sudden tight situation she had engulfed herself into for she didn’t as much bat an eye. Although, he did see her gulp nothing but air due to the tension.

Knowing that there was no chance in hell Zessica would survive with an unfair of number of opponents that was facing her, Arma did something that his brain cells could spare him to do. He ran forward with a snowball in hand and aimed it precisely at one of the snowmen. Even though he had expected it, he couldn’t shake off the disbelief that was expressed comically when the snowball smacked onto one of the snowmen’s back, not even leaving a scratch.

“Hey you overgrown snow ball! Over here!” Arma yelled loudly, flailing his arms like a wild monkey high on bananas. The gesture was well rewarded, maybe just a bit too much. Due to Arma having a higher presence than any normal teenager, he was more or less stupefied to find that all of the snowmen were now very interested to beat him to a pulp. All of a sudden, the courage for him to walk straight up to one of those terrifying creatures writhed away in shyness and Arma found himself raising both his hands in surrender.

“E-easy...Uh...Hi!...I am sure you want to beat the heck out of me but...c-can’t we negotiate? C-call it a truce?” Arma stuttered awkwardly, his mind already loosing rational thought. One thing spiralled around his mind and that was to get the heck out of there. He didn’t expect them to answer, which they only responded as a growl but he was more or less wishing any other person who was in his shoes right now good luck because he really needed it...like now.