Sword and Snow

Avuri

The true opening move of the fight was Emery essentially gripping Briar's entire face in her hand and lifting them up briefly before launching their body across the barn where they fell in a heap where Cruz and Karn. And, naturally. the hand she had held Briar's face with had been the hand holding a pile of manure. When Briar popped back up after being thrown, their face was completely smeared with it but they were otherwise fine.

From there the fight completely turned as Emery and Avuri began their counterattack. The worst part for the kids was that they refused to make any of their first attacks 'lethal'. Instead, while the kids had all taken a few hits during their own fight, their parents seemed to be actively trying to completely coat them in the manure.

They barely even paid any attention to the kids' counterattacks. With their clear advantage in both speed and technique, their mothers weaved expertly between thrown balls of manure. On the off-chance that one actually came close to landing, a last moment burst of extra speed was enough to slip past or under the throw.

The only attacks that gave them any pause at all were Kord's. The boy had not only reached the Sky Realm, but was also regularly sparring with Ray - and the training was making him ever more dangerous and wily. He was doing his best to avoid his mothers' attacks, which he managed to do occasionally, but he was far more focused on trying to land his own throws.

More than once, Avuri had to readjust at the last moment because Kord threw an almost perfectly timed attack at just the right angle to trip her up or make it hard to avoid. He was using the chaos and his teammates to great effect. Like a sharpshooter, he was trying to be patient and waiting for the opportune moment to take his shot.

He got closer to landing those throws than Avuri would care to admit. And more often than not, too.

Just Kord alone wasn't enough to make a difference though. Avuri weaved through the flying balls of muck while throwing her own. Occasionally, she smashed a handful of crap into someone's back or chest, but generally avoided faces as Emery had clearly decided that was her job. Swept legs and trips were common as well, as Avuri quickly realized that with the mess in the barn, making someone fall face-first onto the shit-stained ground was just about the best way to get them dirtier.

It didn't take too long before the older kids who were in the thick of things started flagging. Avuri and Emery were moving too well for them to keep up, and they were pushing themselves to do so. They started to just lay on the ground when Avuri put them there instead of jumping back up. And eventually, the entire group was just coated in brown and gasping desperately for breath from their backs.

But that wasn't quite the end. Emery moved over to where Elise and Fia had been crouched, trying and failing to hide behind a large pile of hay, which was now equally covered in brown spots like the rest of the barn. Almost as soon as Avuri and Emery had begun their counterattack, the two of them had stopped throwing their own muck and surrendered. After which, they proceeded to hide, not watching the rest of the unfolding fight.

Avuri felt a little bad for them as she watched Emery stalk over to them, having crafted a large metal shovel with her Qi. She was pushing the wide shovel along the ground ahead of her, scooping up an absolutely disgusting amount of manure while she moved. "Em, isn't that a bit far?"

"Hm?" Emery's mental response had sounded far too innocent for her own good. But the sheer enjoyment that flowed with the mental words was too much for Avuri to actually try to stop her.

Instead, Avuri was making her way to the barn stall where the thirteen year olds were hunkered down. Kaili had similarly shouted that they surrendered just before the tide had turned, and they had followed through on that, choosing to not throw any more attacks from their bunker.

Avuri didn't want to actively attack them the way Emery was about to get Elise and Fia, so she came up with a slightly different plan. She reached out around her with her Qi. Manure held a pretty significant amount of moisture, which she was able to use to latch onto the stuff and raise it into the air. She had to go somewhat slowly, because if she actually pulled, it would rip the moisture straight out of the stuff. She just wanted to gather a bunch of it into the air and let it hover together.

Let it hover together and slowly drift over the top of the barn stall. She heard the sudden squeaks and squealing from the children inside, which turned more desperate as they realized that Avuri was holding the door from the other side. They had no hope of pulling the door from her grasp, unfortunately.

And once she was sure that her cloud of manure had covered every bit of the stall, she let go. The entire mass dropped into the stall with a rather satisfying series of messy, wet plops which was followed immediately with groans and calls of 'Ew!' and 'Gross!'. Avuri smiled to herself as she peaked over the top of the wooden stall, only to grin wider and laugh when she saw the huddle inside.

She hadn't been subtle or quick with her 'attack', which left the children inside plenty of time to react. Wulf, the lone boy in the crew, had valiantly sacrificed himself, trying to cover his sisters from the falling muck. They had managed surprisingly well, with all four of them huddled in the center of the stall while Wulf had taken off his shirt and used it and himself to block the falling manure.

As he stood up, globs of crap sloughed off him in big chunks, which had been the driving force behind all four of them sounding so disgusted.

"So," Emery said, heroically placing her fists on her hips, "are you all ready to clean up now?"

More groaning filled the room as everyone slowly sat up, still acting distinctly defeated.

"Can we at least get ourselves cleaned up first?" Briar asked.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Emery turned toward Avuri and raised her eyebrow comically. "What do you think? Should we make them stew in it a bit more?"

Avuri turned her attention to Elise, who was shaking the crap off her hands and arms after Emery had dutifully covered her and Fia from head to toe in it. "I think we can clean everyone up first."

"Yeah, that seems for the best." Emery responded mentally, then turned toward Briar to respond to them out loud. "Alright, Briar. We'll get you all cleaned up before we make everyone do the cleaning."

Avuri took that as her cue, and spun up her Qi. With their recent advancements between the dragonblood and her Cultivation with Emery, Avuri found it remarkably easy to quickly assemble a massive sphere of water floating in the middle of the barn.

"Um."

"Momri?"

Despite the kids' mild concern at the growing ball of water, Avuri tensed her spiritual muscles for a moment before forcefully detonating the sphere. She needed to create enough force with the blast that the water essentially blasted the manure off everyone, since she wasn't about to focus for ten minutes to create a soft rain to rinse everyone; she was still exhausted from earlier. Plus, it functioned at a little bit more punishment for the literal poop fight.

It mostly worked as she had expected. With an extra touch of Qi, she was even able to direct a cascade of the water around so that it didn't only hit the areas facing the origin of the blast. While she wouldn't have said everyone was entirely clean, she was at least confident everyone in the barn was clean enough to get to work on cleaning up the mess.

But what none of them had expected was the sudden rush of the smell of manure. Avuri hadn't considered it when she splashed the entire barn with a huge amount of water, but in addition to cleaning everyone off, it had also acted like a stink bomb, jostling the majority of the surfaces the manure had stuck to and amplified the barnyard smell. Especially with the door to the barn still locked shut.

Even after Avuri quickly acted to evaporate the excess water in the barn to avoid making everything just wet and nasty, the smell lingered.

Shouts and complaints came at her from every side, but Avuri refused to act like she hadn't done it on purpose. Instead, she leaned into the mistake.

"Consider cleaning up with the extra stench part of your punishment. And get to it."

The kids slowly worked their way to their feet with groans all around. They looked almost as exhausted as Avuri felt, which was still novel for her. It had been a long, long time since she had felt her muscles complaining of overtaxing. If anything, she felt something akin to satisfaction at the burning in her limbs, finally able to push them during regular training again.

She felt a similar group of feelings emanating from Emery, too, as they chose to supervise the children's clean up. Emery unlatched the door and opened them wide to at least allow the foul smell to air out. Avuri hoped that the overwhelming smell of the manure wouldn't take over too much of the Basin. The farm smells already had a tendency to spread more than their fair share as it was - she didn't need literal shit adding to it.

If nothing else, they could probably create a strong enough updraft to draw the air away and up into the sky if they had to.

It didn't take long for the cleaning to run into a couple roadblocks. They typically used leftover straw and wood shavings to soak up the nasty bits and then shovel or pitchfork it out in large clumps, and that worked great for day to day work. But when the concern wasn't just the floor where most of the shavings were, but also the stains on the walls, suddenly things got a bit more complicated.

The kids had to fetch buckets, which Fia, as a water Qi specialist, was put in charge of filling. They moved as a large group from area to area, splashing down the walls and doing their best to scrub the stains, or even strip and grow new wood with Qi where appropriate. There was a lot of cleaning to do, but it was going quickly enough that Avuri didn't feel too bad about making them do it without help.

As the children eventually moved into the second half of the room, it occurred to Avuri that they hadn't actually addressed the issue that Wrynn had said kicked off the whole shitshow.

"Cruz?"

Avuri's voice made the boy flinch.

"Would you like to come join us over here for a minute?"

He gently set the brush and muck-coated dustpan he had been helping with so he could make his way across the barn toward Emery and Avuri. He clearly knew he was in trouble, given the timid, wooden gait he used to get there.

"Yes, Momri?" He stared at the ground, cowed by the whole situation.

"Would you care to explain how this whole fiasco started?" Avuri asked.

That seemed to be the confirmation he needed to show they knew. He raised his eyes to look at Avuri first, then to Emery. Neither of them had put any effort into looking mad, because neither of them really were all that mad. It hadn't really gone far past annoyance. If anything, he may have lucked out with the faux-battle having put both of them in a good mood, Avuri mused.

His gaze dropped again before he seemed to deflate. "I'm sorry. It really was an accident." He stopped to take a breath before his words started coming faster as he rushed the explanation. "We were in the middle of getting the manure out of the stalls, and had the big cart in the middle of the barn with it all. I really didn't mean to make the whole thing, like…explode."

Cruz lowered his voice and leaned in, eyeing the other kids who were still working. "Mom, I was just practicing cycling my Qi while we worked. Then Cherry came out of nowhere and scared me. I accidentally threw a small fireball and…" he mimed the manure exploding.

Emery narrowed her eyes at Cruz. "Where are the animals, anyway? You said Cherry scared you?"

"She did. I don't know how that big dog is so quiet, but she is." Cruz said. Avuri had to admit that bit, at least, was plausible. Cherry was a big, fluffy white dog that they kept around the barn, but she wasn't any use as an actual farm dog. Somehow, despite her size, she was remarkably good at suddenly appearing behind you and knocking into your legs if you weren't paying attention.

What wasn't quite clicking together was a small fireball making a manure pile explode. It could've lit one on fire, sure - manure and compost were surprisingly flammable - but to make it explode?

On the other hand, if Cruz was startled while simply practicing with his Qi, there was another potential option; he could have accidentally made his own technique explosive by accident, which would've caused the initial boom. Of course, the ensuing fight was to blame for eighty or ninety percent of the mess that they were working on at this point. And Avuri suspected that Wrynn, who had her entire left side covered in manure, was probably just unfortunately close to the initial blast, because no one else was coated quite the way she had been.

Cruz stood there quietly looking at the ground while Avuri and Emery had run through the whole thing together mentally, coming up with at least similar ideas.

"We're going to talk to you later, Cruz." Emery said.

"Don't look so upset." Avuri said, when he slumped. "Lucky for you, we don't think this whole thing was entirely on purpose. But we're going to need to check a few things with you later. For now, go help finish the cleaning."

"Okay…" He said, and turned to join the others.

"What do you think?" Avuri asked.

Emery just shrugged. "I'm not sure. But piles of shit don't normally just explode."