milliways_bar | party post: hail the conquering heroes

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party post: hail the conquering heroes | outside, tree fort

Anyone in the main barroom or out by the lake today will be treated to an odd sight. Dozens of girls, shouting, squealing, running through the backdoor and across the lawn, arms laden with all manner of treats — and one boy, tied up, pulled along with them.

The gang makes their way to the forest, where a tree fort rises above the ground. It's quite a fancy fort, equipped with slingshots, water balloon launchers, and other weaponry and defenses. The interior paneling has some Cybertronian script on it. There's a tire swing outside fashioned from a tractor tire, a crow's nest, and the entrance may be had by ladder, drawbridge, or manual elevator. Inside there are comics, pudding snacks, and the sort of things you'd expect to see in a tree house. It was clearly designed by somebody who really loved their gadgets, and knew what they were doing.

Kate and Natasha have seized the property. Being outlaws in need of a hideout, and all.

"This way!"

Natasha is already inside, leaving all entrances open to the returning posse and offering cover from anyone who might be following. Once the snacks are secured and the prisoner is dealt with, everyone can breathe a huge sigh of relief.

And enjoy the fruits of their labor.

[ooc: ~~give us one minute to set up some thread headings before tagging~~ We're open for business! This post is wide, wide open to everyone — boy, girl, adult, child, animal, mineral, etc. The girls will be inside the tree fort, but it's completely visible from the ground for any who want to stop by and see what's going on, or sneak their way in. ^__^

tiny!tag: age spell plot]

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Steve's not entirely either at a loss or uneffected by the scene of chaotic girls running every which way, shrieking, and doing whatever that girl did with her hand that blew up part of the bar beside the,, that he's really going to want to know what is when there aren't more pressing things.

Like the scattering girls, who are laden with obvious stolen goods, who were still making off with that little boy.

While the kitchen was exploding around them still. With the blast and the mess still going off like a geyser.

Making Steve pause for too long, torn about the mess in this place, that wasn't his Academy, and he didn't even have the faintest idea who to inform before it became an even bigger mess all over this place. He didn't have to think of it long though, because the girl who'd jumped up before him was yelling toward the girls and taking off right after them, and two people was better than one for that job, against that many girls.

Someone else in the room would just have to get the rest. Because running he had down. Especially when there weren't a dozen guys with broad shoulders and brick-hard shoulder pads and football helmets trying to slow him down. When he could throw his weight into it and it's not long before he's at least catching up to side of the girl with the long blonde curls who was yelling at least, watching the smaller girls in the distance swarming into a tree fort like spooked ants.

Well, crap.

She'd forgotten how fast little kids can move when they put their mind and all their sugar-fueled energy toward it, and they seem to have that homing instinct children have for a stronghold working in their favor, too. She sees them making a beeline towards the tree house, but not in time to stop any of them. None are close enough for her to catch them by the scruff and she slows to a halt as the last one disappears up into the fort, watching as they drag their unwilling prisoner along with them. "Great."

That's to herself, but it could be to the boy she's just noticing decided to come along. He's faster than she is, but that only means he caught up with her, not that he was in time to grab any of the little delinquents, either, and she turns to him with her hands on her hips, catching her breath. He must be about her age, and he joined in the chase, so something clicks unconsciously in her head, aligning them against the wild pack with their hapless prisoner.

Not that she needs a partner. She could get that kid back on her own, if it came to it.

That he stops comes down to the children vanishing in, as much what's becoming a slowly trained habbit, more than anything like instinct, to stop when the people he's in sync with do. It how things work where he comes from. Flawless formations and whatever.

But what it isn't? Is totally not the time to feel like his tongue gets a size too large when he gets a better look at her this time. Not the time to get cemented shoed over the face of a pretty girl. Not even if the closest he came to girls were excursions out on free weekends from The Academy.

"We can still do it," comes out fast and sure, maybe because he suddenly has more than one reason to hope he is, sure, when he's looking from her to the stronghold. Kids forts are never unassailable. Steve raised his hands around his mouth, without any more thought than that, like a megaphone and yelled up to the girls, "Give up the little boy, and we won't be forced to come in and take him back."

Because they're basically a 'we' for this moment, right? They both headed this way for the same reasons.

A hush falls over the idyllic grounds.

"You can try!"

The taunt is followed by a quick flash of a blonde head, hiding to one side of a window.

"But you'd do better mindin' your own business!"

She's not sure exactly how they came about to be standing shoulder to shoulder against this bunch of girls gone half-feral with the adrenaline rush of theft and sugar, but she has to admit, with another quick glance at him, that he seems like a good ally to have.

She sneaks a second sidelong look, gets a better reckoning of brown hair cut painfully short, square jaw, broad shoulders, lean build. And tall. Like, tall, compared to her. And...yes.

Well...well, good. Maybe it'll intimidate the kids into behaving.

Not if the leader's any indication, though, taunting them from a window high up, and Emma starts forward, stung and annoyed, hands fisting hard, temper flaring. "You better let him go, you little brats. This is your last warning!"

He did say they'd go in and take him back, right? Stands to reason that'll be the best plan. She never was all that great at negotiations.

The sudden pop up of the young girl with blonde hair, mouthing off all confidence and sass, hits Steve almost better than any object pelted their direction could. Slamming him in the middle of the chest with clips and flashes of Mary. Back home. When there was a home back once that wasn't just an endless parade of boys with big dreams and great references both behind and in front of them.

It just adds a completely different kind of fuel to fire of needing to rescue a little boy. One who could be.

"Yeah," Steve called up. "That's not going to work for us. Take your one chance. Send him down, or I'm headed up."

Edited 2013-10-23 01:21 (UTC)

Up in the crow's nest there is a small mass of dark red and very tangled hair. The hair is attached to a little girl with a dart gun, who is totally on guard duty, and totally not recovering from a sugar induced meltdown. Nope.

But her emotions, like with most children, just give fuel to her defiance.

"So?" Natasha shouts back, and fires the gun. It's not the best weapon, but she's always had remarkably good aim.

Kate grins, finding the confidence to lean into the window fully.

"So?" she echoes. "You ain't got no way of comin' up. You can try, but we'll fight back!"

The tree fort is locked up tight, and though the port where the ladder goes might look like a good entrance point, it's highly defensible.

Plus, the girl called them brats. They don't have to stand for that.

There's a swift humming sound, and then a muffled pop! while she snaps back in surprise, and Emma's eyes cross as she stares up at the quivering suction-cup dart sticking straight out from her forehead. "Seriously?"

She glares at the thing as she reaches up to yank it off her head, and shakes it at the lit window. "This means war!"

Or storming the fort, at the very least.

Throwing the dart off to the side, she starts towards the tree, head on, temper and single-minded stubbornness fueling each step.

Steve is busy dodging another really well aimed dart, that nearly smacks him in the head. Because he swears he feels it ruffle his hair, and he doesn't have all that much hair as it is, as is expected with the regime rules. Which is the reason it takes him two steps, still counterbalancing for dodging getting smacked on the head almost, and he then has to run steps up to catch that girl.

Hand on her forearm and pull backing back, still in otion. "Hey, woah! This'll work better if we do it together."

You could always do more, faster, better if you were working in tandem with a team. It's what they are always saying back at the academy, and they aren't wrong. He knows that, even if he doesn't always play along as much as he should. But it's right here, too. Which is just another version of capture the flag, isn't it? Retrieve the captured boy.

Rather than giving her time to answer that, because she looks like a spitfire, all ready to go off. "C'mon. I can boost you up first and follow. No one said we had to take the front door, and I'm willing to risk a couple more darts if you are."

Edited 2013-10-26 03:37 (UTC)

"This is yer last warnin'!"

Her voice gets a little more twang to it, like a real fancy outlaw. Or like Wyatt Earp, and the Masterson brothers. Get outta this town, varmints, or we're gonna tussle.

"We don't wanna cause trouble, but y'won't take us alive! We got ways of defendin' ourselves."

Wuh-oh. Natasha fires darts at the youths, wavering between getting over-excited and Conserving Her Ammunition.

But should they come close, she'll switch to water-balloons.

She gets hauled back before she can go too far, momentum carrying her in stumbles back towards the hand on her arm, and snaps her eyes up in a glare, mouth opening and ready for a fight, but he's not arguing with her.

And maybe it does make a little sense. She's wiry and strong, but he's tall, and they're going to need a way up into that fort.

"Fine," she says, ducking another dart (that kid's going to take out an eye if she keeps that up) and pulling a really? face at the notion that these hardened little criminals might choose death over dishonor. "Let's go."

Steve gets smacked in the upper arm with a dart this time.

It doesn't stick because of the cloth of his shirt, but it definitely hits and makes him look from the blonde girl in front of him toward the younger faces peeking out the window at them. It's not damaging, but it is going to get annoying.

"Great." He released her arm, while headed for the tree and dodging the occasional, well aimed for a kid, dart. Waiting until they got close enough to the tree, he could lace his fingers together and lean down, with nod up toward the tree. Adding last minute, because it hadn't been added yet and they were teammates of a sort now. "I'm Steve."

The darts keep firing until Steve and Emma get out of range.

And then they stop, but Natasha will still be there when the teenagers get back.

Waiting.

She's got her foot in his hands and her fingers on his shoulder, ready to lift herself up to grab the near lowest platform of the fort, but she pauses for a second to grin like she's sharing a secret, hair swinging haphazardly over her shoulder.

"Emma."

He's solid beneath her and she counts a quick one two three and reaches for a branch as he boosts her up, something large and solid enough to hold her weight, and swings up onto it, trying to keep to an angle that'll make aim difficult for their sharpshooter. When she gets a hold with one arm, she leans with the other to offer Steve a hand, tipping her head towards a nearby window. "Storm in force, or split up?"

Emma.

Emma of the dazzling bright grin that drags something reckless like it out of him, before he's boosting her up.

That's definitely better than the girl with the blonde hair and the sharp mouth. Not that he thinks it long, before he's shouldering up Emma toward the branches, feeling the burn in his forearms, shoulders, and digging in with the balls of his feet, feeling them slip and then hold, while looking up toward her reaching. Gritting his teeth and pushing up, thinking of the small boy.

Before he's staring up, shading his eyes, and watching her pull herself up. Definitely not her first time skinnying up a tree. Which is not something he expects of girls. Definitely not the kind of things girls in his old school were like. Or his sister was. Which is....interesting. Doesn't hurt the feeling like he doesn't have to carry her, when he's grabbing her hand and having to find even half-ledges in the tree to propel himself up the way she chose.

"Only two of them seem to be paying attention--" He's focusing on the words, more than wood digging into his palm, as he's getting up with her. "--I think we could take them head on."

Remember that other blonde girl? The one who's been suspiciously quiet?

A hatch opens up, as if from nowhere, and out sings a water balloon. Too fast to be thrown by hand, and far too accurate.

It hits with a loud, frigid splat! and the hatch disappears.

She's about to answer, after helping to tug him up into the branches, when there's a sudden flare of light, and then a water balloon pops with wicked aim against her hip, soaking her tank top and the flannel shirt she's wearing on top of it, until water creeps down her jeans leg.

"Son of a --"

She clambers to the hatch, and pounds on it, then looks back at Steve and jerks her head at it.

"Looks like an invitation in to me."

Steve's sputtering in surprise at a sudden splash of water that catches his arm and part of his face, even if he isn't the tragic. He can tell that the moment he's jerking back toward the tree, hands up on a branch for leverage, getting a glance at the dark splotch covering Emma's side.

That he's really not going to stare at while she's swearing and banging on the now closed spot.

Rubbing his neck, and looking at the bottom of the place. "Well past warning shots, yeah."

"I'll try for the window, if you want to wait and see if the hatch opens again."

Edited 2013-10-29 23:18 (UTC)

Unluckily for Steve and Emma, Natasha and Kate are not the only two girls paying attention to the coming invasion.

Noriko is ready with an opened and half-empty, mostly melted strawberry ice cream, the lip of the tub perched in the window and held up by a stool as she peers out to see the top of a much older boy's head. With effort she aims for him and tips it up, much like the cartoonish descriptions of pouring boiling oil on intruders. Only the melted ice cream is much stickier and harder to get off. "Banzai!"

Also unluckily, there are more hidden hatches than just the one.

FROM ABOVE, LIKE A BAT WAITING IN THE SHADOWS TO UNFURL ITS MIGHTY WINGS, COMES THE COLD CRUEL JUSTICE OF — another icy water balloon.

Aimed, yet again, for Emma's head.

She's starting to think that kid's got it out for her.

This one hits the crown of her head and explodes, dumping water through her hair and down the back of her neck while she gasps in shock. "That's it."

The damn hatch is going to open, whether it wants to or not. She reaches above her head for a branch to brace herself against, and brings a boot solidly down on the wood.

Thump. Thump.

Her teeth grit, and she lifts her foot well up, leans back against the branch, swings her whole weight forward. "Looks like --"

Thu -- crrrrack.

She tosses a defiant glance at Steve, lips pulling in something that's too fierce to be a smile. "I've got my way in."

Those hinges really weren't meant to hold up to repeated boots pounding at their weak side, but the hatch is plenty big for her to slide through once she's kicked it in.

Edited 2013-10-30 01:03 (UTC)

Steve's not expecting the ice cream.

But even more? They probably aren't expecting that Steve had a little sister.

You know why? Because having a little sister does one drastically important thing to an older brother. It teaches you how to take a small licking for a bigger prize just beyond that give. So, yeah, maybe there's ice cream dribbling down his hair and into his collar, but the little girl with the black hair has much bigger problem right now.

In the shape of one boy, cannonballing in through the window, taking its ledge, her stool, her ice cream tub, and her down with him, when he tries to roll for a summersault so that he doesn't end up slamming his shoulders (as hard as he does anyway).

Edited 2013-10-30 01:14 (UTC)

Noriko was not expecting that, no.

But she knows exactly how to deal with it; just as having a little sister teaches things to Steve, having a little brother has taught things to Noriko. Namely, that between a boy's legs are very sensitive bits, and that hitting or kicking them is quite painful. And fueling the impetus to use that knowledge is the rage that comes only from a fairly vain and very proud nine-year-old who loves her hair. Having ice cream in it is infuriating like few other things, and once she scrambles to her feet she zeroes in on Steve remarkably quickly.

And aims a balled fist directly for his groin, swinging as hard as she can from the shoulder.

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