Sword and Snow

Avuri

Avuri had seen her fair share of ridiculous sights over the years, and many of them were in direct relation to her children. Looking back, she had to admit that her life with her family growing up and then in the Frozen Mountain sect was very structured and uptight, barely ever allowing for anything exciting or unusual, and that had left her unprepared for the craziness that came with raising children. Let alone so many of them at once.

But even the last sixteen or seventeen years of raising kids hadn't prepared her for the scene that Wrynn led them to in the barn. The poor girl had said that Cruz had made a 'poop bomb', and her entire left side was coated in manure. What she hadn't mentioned - or, perhaps, didn't see after she ran to get them - was that an entire war had erupted in the barn. And had attracted more than just the husbandry team that she said had gotten hit by the initial explosion.

Like Wrynn had said, the inside of the barn was completely coated in manure. Whatever Cruz had done must have been quite impressive in Avuri's eyes because the barn wasn't small. But somehow the entire thing had gotten a remarkably even coat of 'paint'.

On the other hand, there were also piles of manure literally everywhere. Most of them were about the right size to have been balled up by hand and thrown, but some were larger than that by a fair bit. There were also splat marks on every surface where the poop balls had impacted with the various animal stall walls, the floor - even the stacked hay bales in the back of the barn were splotched with it.

The barn's state, however, wasn't the thing that caught her attention most, though. That award went to her eleven children who were in the middle of it all, still literally throwing manure at one another for all they were worth.

It looked like, after Wrynn had run to get them, a free-for-all had broken out, and it had ended up drawing in basically all of the kids that were old enough to probably know better. Even Kord was in the mix, throwing poop with the rest of them.

Lia, Elena, Kaili, and Wulf, the thirteen-year-olds, were hiding behind one of the cow stalls, hucking balls of manure over the fence together, having entered an uneasy alliance. But judging by the poop stains all over the inside of the stall, it seemed like it took some convincing before they had teamed up.

Karn, Briar, Enrik, and Kord had formed the most vigorous portion of the fight, the four of them looking like they had taken the fight to the natural extremes of what they were capable of. Kord was by far the cleanest of them, using his newly enhanced body and skills to dodge the vast majority of the incoming attacks. Meanwhile, Enrik, Briar, and Karn were all covered in the brown mess, while still moving quickly, attacking, and dodging to the best of their ability.

There didn't seem to be any formal agreement, but Avuri noted quickly that they definitely focused their fire on Kord for the most part, while occasionally catching one another off guard.

Elise and Fia were on the outskirts of that fight, caught between trying to stop the four from making the mess worse, getting attacked by the younger kids, firing back at both other groups, and desperately trying to avoid getting more manure on them - and failing.

And then there was Cruz. The boy had apparently gotten his just deserts, face down in the middle of everything, completely covered in manure from head to toe, and ignored at this point. In fact, it looked like he had been pinned under a large ball of manure, with just his head poking out on one side. Avuri suspected he was purposefully remaining there, deadly still, to avoid getting targeted again.

Avuri and Emery stood there, unsure what to do, for a moment. The emotions flowing between them were split; part of them wanted to just sigh and walk away, leaving the kids to clean up the mess. Another, smaller, part wanted to yell and discipline them for making such a huge mess.

But the part that seemed to be winning in both of them was the desire to get involved. In the end, they were just throwing poop. It was a mess, sure, but they were all Cultivators. No one would get sick from this like might have been a concern for normal people. And while it smelled pretty bad, it was nothing compared to the impurity gunk. Plus, Avuri could probably clean it up pretty quickly if it was necessary.

Of course, that wasn't part of their plan that fell into place pretty quickly, though. Avuri and her wife shared a quick glance and a smile just because they could.

They would go in, get involved, take out all of the participants quickly, then make them do the cleaning. Obviously.

And they would start with the oldest kids, too. The youngest might surrender before they had to get their own facefull of poop after seeing the older ones get mercilessly destroyed.

"Mom? Momri?" Wrynn said, sounding worried. Avuri figured she could probably tell what they were thinking, given Emery had a bit of a battle-hungry grin spreading over her face. She was about ready to let loose just for fun, and that excitement was bleeding into Avuri, too.

"It's fine." Avuri said, running her fingers through the girl's hair. As she did so, she used a bit of water to loosen some of the manure from it, pulling a handful of manure away.

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Wrynn's eyes trailed up to Avuri's hand, where she was molding a ball out of the manure. Wrynn smiled weakly and asked, "That's…not for me, is it," timidly.

Avuri smiled, trying to make sure that Emery's infectious excitement didn't tinge it with anything threatening. "Of course not. We just decided we didn't want to yell at them, so beating them all at their own game seems like the best option."

Wrynn seemed to consider that for a moment and nodded. "Good luck?"

Emery took the opportunity to snort derisively at that. "We don't need it. Not for this."

Avuri had just enough to roll her eyes and pat Wrynn on the head one time before Emery, for all intents and purposes, vanished. Avuri quickly pushed a mental message toward her wife, telling her to take it easy on the kids. Not to mention, they had been regularly using their full strength during training recently, so it was perhaps even more important now than ever to make sure they held back.

Avuri, for her part, almost wanted to stretch before she jumped into action. But, as sore as she and Emery were, it was just that - soreness. They could both ignore it easily enough if they had to.

Emery's sudden appearance in the middle of the battle seemed to cause a short spike of alarm in all of the kids. At some point in the middle of her dash, Emery had scooped up six balls of manure, and was in the midst of juggling them when she appeared.

To their credit, the kids immediately reassessed the situation and made the absolutely correct call to team up against their mothers. Suddenly Emery was surrounded on all sides by flying balls of poop, all aimed at her.

She dodged between all of them gracefully. As some passed her cleanly, they hit unintended targets instead. Briar's attack had crossed the circle and hit Karn square in the chest, while Kord's throw had sped passed and splattered across Fia's shoulder. But they were hardly deterred, especially when Emery went on the attack.

From where she was in the center, she launched her own manure balls. Each one was almost perfectly on target, aiming for Karn, Kord, Enrik, and Briar in the middle of the barn, but also Fia and Elise, who were just beyond that clash.

Unfortunately, because her throws were perfectly on target, but she had pulled back on their speed to avoid hurting anyone or damaging the barn, it made them easy to avoid. Not a single one landed.

Avuri took that chance to slip into the fight. She dashed in behind Karn as they dodged Emery's attack. Rather than throw another ball of manure, Avuri chose to go for a more direct approach. She had scooped up more of the dung as she closed in, and splattered the entire handful across Karn's back with a wet-sounding slap. The force of the slap, which was significant but not dangerous, still made them pitch forward. They gracefully tucked into a roll and popped up, spinning around to face his attacker.

She had already moved on by then, of course, but they still shouted, "Get them!" while trying to track Avuri's movements around the room. She wasn't going full speed, so they were somewhat able to track her and throw a ball of manure at her, which she ducked under.

At the same time, though, they had made the mistake of turning their back to Emery. With a flourish, Em slipped between the flying dung aimed at her, scooped up two large handfuls of poop from the ground, and smashed the entire lot onto Karn's hair. She even went the extra mile of vigorously messing up their hair to make sure she really got the manure stuck there.

And all of that was done before she swept their legs, caught them by the poop-stained shirt, and tossed them on top of Cruz with a satisfying squelching sound as they crashed into the large pile of manure that Cruz was buried under.

There was a brief pause in the chaos as the rest of the kids considered surrender. Avuri even briefly moved to lower her already reloaded hands, thinking that Em's statement had done the trick.

Briar was the first to move, spinning lightning fast and whipping a ball of manure at Avuri. It was well aimed, and Avuri had just a fraction of a moment to decide how to approach the rest of this little fight. Still fueled by Emery's enjoyment of the game, she made a decision that she might not have otherwise, standing still and letting the ball of manure slap her squarely in the face.

The barn, which had been prepared to continue the chaos of the fight, went deathly silent in an instant. Even with their shared link of emotions, Emery seemed shocked that Avuri had gone through with taking the attack - to the face no less.

"Love? Can you bar the doors?" Avuri asked Emery silently. She felt the agreement before the actual response came, so Avuri decided to hell with it - she was going to have some fun.

Her mind flashed back to the few times that Emery's family had been visiting, and the absolute chaos that occurred whenever Vale went on a 'rampage'. It was so normal for them to get absolutely demolished by their father as a team, and they walked away from the experience full of laughter every time. That image and experience was functionally her guidepost as Avuri wiped the crap off the bottom half of her face and grinned as maniacally as she could manage.

At the same time, Emery used a bit of Qi to reach out toward the doors of the barn and the metal inlaid in them. With a satisfying clunk, they closed and she slotted the locks into place. The kids could easily break out of the barn by breaking a hole in the normal wooden walls, sure, but they still recognized the threat for what it was.

"Oh, shit." Briar breathed. They took a step back as Avuri shook the muck in her hand down to splatter on the ground, then slowly bent down to gather another handful of manure.

"Uh. We surrender?" Fia said hesitantly.

"We do too!" Kaili shouted from the stall the younger group was hiding in.

"Momri? Your look is scaring me." Elena said, just barely peeking around the corner of the wooden stall.

Avuri didn't even bother to clean the top half of her face. It would've taken practically zero effort to simply sweep it all away with some water. But that wouldn't have made the same impression.

"You all," she practically growled, keeping her voice low, "not only interrupted our nap with this, but made a huge mess, got shit literally everywhere, and then proceeded to throw it at my face?" She eyed Briar specifically as she said the last part, widening her grin just a bit more for effect.

"Um…" Briar muttered, taking another step back. As they did, they bumped into Emery, who had snuck right up behind them while all eyes were on Avuri.

Emery was wearing a similar manic smile to her wife, hefting her own pile of shit.

"Ready?"