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“This is insane.”
“Insanely fun.”
“We’re going to get ourselves killed.” Umi stood at the top of the massive, snowy hill, with a particular smug looking Nozomi on one side of her, and a rather concerned looking Eli on the other. Nico, meanwhile, was marching around in front of the trio, walking between the two large sleds that were laid across the snow, before gesturing down a hill so tall Umi swore she could see the ground moving further away with each passing second.
“Before we start, let’s go over the ground rules,” she said.
“You’re not actually serious about this, are you?” Umi asked. “This thing looks like a death trap.”
“Hey. Nicochi and I spent all day working hard on this,” Nozomi insisted, elbowing Umi in the side as she spoke- thankfully, Umi’s bulky winter coat was enough to protect her from the worst of it. “You’re not really going to back out now, are you?”
“That seems a little unfair, doesn’t it?” Eli asked. “If you two made the course, you’ll know the layout better.” The course that Eli was talking about was, admittedly, less of a proper course, and more of a haphazard minefield of bumps, ramps, walls, and moguls, laid out along the entire length of the hill, all the way down to the bottom. If anyone actually tried to ride a sled down it, Umi had a distinct feeling they wouldn’t be making it to the bottom. Not that that seemed to be deterring Nozomi and Nico.
“It’s really not that much of an advantage, trust us,” Nozomi insisted. “You can know this course inside and out, but once you start trying to take a sled down it all bets are off. These things don’t exactly handle well,” she added on, tapping one of the sleds with her foot as she spoke- and sending it sliding forward as she did so. Fortunately Nico was right there to stop it with her own foot before it got very far, looking over the rest of the group with a gravely serious expression.
“The rules are simple,” she said. “Make it to the bottom first, taking any route you want. If you leave your sled for any reason you forfeit. You can try to take out the walls if you want, but we packed those things tight. And lastly, throwing snowballs to sabotage your opponents is permitted.”
“Also,” Nozomi added on, “the huge mound halfway down the hill has a boulder inside it, so if you hit that, you will die.”
“Why would you do that?” Umi asked.
“No further questions!”
“Great,” she muttered, before turning her attention over to Eli. “Do we really have to go through with this?”
“I do admit, it seems… Pointlessly dangerous,” Eli agreed, though no sooner had she said that than Nozomi was leaning past Umi and towards her, shit-eating grin on her face.
“Is somebody a little scared?” she asked, before waltzing forward, grabbing Nico by the hand and pulling her closer. “It’s alright,” she said. “If you two just want to admit Nicochi and I are the better couple, just like that, we won’t complain.”
“Do you actually expect to be able to goad us like that?” Umi asked.
“No, not really,” Nico replied. “I mean, I know you’re secure enough in yourself to not care about losing.”
“We didn’t lose,” Umi said.
“Well you would, by default.”
“We wouldn’t.”
“You would. That’s how these things work,” Nico insisted. “It’s okay. There’s no shame in being a loser.”
“We’re not losers! We haven’t even lost yet!”
“But you’re gonna.”
“Give me that!” Umi huffed, marching over towards Nico and snatching one of the sleds up from her feet, before storming towards the makeshift starting line.
“Really. That actually worked?” Eli sighed. “Astounding.” With a roll of her eyes she followed after her girlfriend, and meanwhile Nico and Nozomi set their own sled up a few feet away from Umi, lining the front of it up against the starting line. Umi had already claimed the front of the sled, and Eli settled in behind her, kneeling down and reaching forward to wrap her arms around her girlfriend.
“Don’t get too comfortable back there,” Umi warned, eyes already scanning the slope ahead as she tried to mentally chart out a route. “I’ll handle the steering as much as I can, so I need you to man the weapons.”
“The… Weapons?” Eli repeated.
“The snowballs.”
“You’re really getting into this, aren’t you?”
“If we’re going to do something stupid, we might as well do it right.” Eli didn’t respond to that, and though it was probably just because she had no words, Umi decided to take it as a tacit agreement regardless.
“Are you two ready?” Nozomi called out, looking over from her own spot on the back of the sled, while Nico sat up front. Umi had the feeling that was just so she would be able to grope her girlfriend mid-sled, though she also had to admit she was intimidated by the thought of Nozomi’s throwing arm. Not that she was going to say that out loud.
“We’re ready!” she called back. “Count us off!”
“Alright!” Nico declared. “On your mark! Get set! GO!” As soon as she’d said that both she and Nozomi were throwing their hands down against the snow on either side of them to push their sleds that last little bit of distance over the edge of the hill, and Umi was frantically doing the same. They started at almost exactly the same time, which was good; nobody got an unfair advantage. The similarities began and ended there, though.
Umi and Eli’s sled had made it all of five feet before Umi was eyeing the snowy mound coming up in front of them. Not too large just yet, at least, but she’d noticed they appeared to get larger the further down they went. Apparently Nozomi and Nico had wanted to create a ramping sense of difficulty.
“Hold on tight!” Umi called behind her, and she felt Eli’s arms wrap around her more firmly just before they hit the bump. She honestly hadn’t been prepared for just how massively it upended their sled as they hit it- it hadn’t looked that tall, but then again, neither did speed bumps. Hit them fast enough, and they still hurt.
Fortunately she managed to get over the bump and onto the other side without falling from the sled, and judging by the fact that Eli’s arms were still around her, she hadn’t been lost either. The bad news, however, was that a sideways glance was enough to confirm that Nico and Nozomi were already pulling ahead. And the snow flying through the air directly towards Umi’s face indicated that they wanted to stretch that lead even further.
“Ah! Shit!” Umi cried out, wincing as she got a cold, hard blast of snow right to the face.
“Are you alright??” she heard Eli’s voice come from behind her.
“I’m fine! Return fire!” she insisted, forcing her eyes to stay open so she wouldn’t crash their sled, even as the snow began to melt and frigid water dripped down into them.
“Roger!” Eli shouted back, and a moment later Umi felt a slight pull to their sled as Eli’s hand pushed down into the snow, gathering up munitions. Seconds after that a streak of white was flying through the air over her head, and although Umi felt a little bit of it sprinkle down and land on her hair, far more went soaring towards their target- and nailed Nozomi directly in the face.
“Et tu, Elichi?” she gasped, clutching her chest and tossing her head back with an exaggerated flourish.
“Stop being dramatic and focus!” Nico shouted back at her, though Umi couldn’t say she was going to complain if Nozomi went and got distracted. Umi herself, on the other hand, was still wholly focused on the task at hand, feeling the chill air lash against her face as they sped down the hill, made even worse by the residual snow that was still clinging to her skin.
“Up ahead!” Umi called out, eyeing the tightly-packed snow wall that was rapidly approaching them. “Left!”
“Left!” Eli repeated, and then Umi felt Eli leaning with her, and she did the same, causing their sled to veer sharply to one side. Even then they only barely managed to actually clear it, and Umi could feel the edge of their sled catch on the edge of the wall and cause the sled to shake, nearly knocking them loose yet again. Thankfully they managed to hold on, and they were closing distance as well.
Nico and Nozomi looked like they were having a hard time with some of the moguls they themselves had prepared, sled bouncing up and down aggressively and losing much of its speed as it hit several that were tightly packed together in a row, and Umi saw that as their window of opportunity.
“Aim for the ramp!” she said, attempting to angle their sled towards the snow ramp that was rapidly barrelling up on them- and hearing immediate protest from Eli as well.
“That sounds like a fantastic way to crash.”
“It’s the fastest way! Trust me!”
“If you say so,” Eli conceded, and Umi was glad that her girlfriend wasn’t going to fight her on this at the moment- they really didn’t have the time for that. Umi leaned onto the sled a bit more as they came up on the ramp, curling her fingers tightly around the front and bracing herself for the impact, and she leaned forward even more as if that would somehow help them to get more speed, or make their jump that much more dramatic.
“Hold on tight!” she called back, and as she felt Eli’s arms wrap around her she could tell her girlfriend was doing just that, and not a moment too soon. Umi clenched her teeth down at the sudden jarring sensation as their sled hit the ramp and pivoted back up, and for a split second they were careening towards the top of it, before they were soaring through the air and-
Very quickly crashing back down to the ground. Umi was honestly disappointed by how short a time they managed to stay airborne, but she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised by that. It wasn’t like the ramp was all that big, and even if it felt like they were going fast, when they were in the middle of a race and there was wind whipping at her face and obstacles everywhere, it probably wasn’t nearly as intense as it seemed. That said, it was still intense enough to jar every single bone in Umi’s body when they hit the ground again, and their sled skidded and stumbled as it touched back down on the snow, momentarily worrying Umi that they were going to lose control of it completely. From the looks of it, Nico and Nozomi weren’t faring much better.
“Right! Right right right right RIGHT!” Umi heard Nico shouting, and as she looked over she saw Nico leaning to the right so hard she looked like she was damn near going to fall out of her sled completely, with Nozomi doing the same behind her. One glance further down the hill was enough for Umi to see exactly what they were trying to avoid as well: a massive, domed mound of snow that, Umi had to assume, could only have been the boulder Nozomi had warned them about before they started.
“Don’t die!” Eli called out, though it sounded more like a legitimate warning than trash talk.
“We’re doing our best!” Nozomi called back, leaning hard enough that she was nearly scraping her shoulder against the ground as she tried to pull their sled to the side. For a moment Umi almost forgot to watch the course in front of her, so distracted by what was taking place beside her instead, holding her breath with anticipation. Anticipation that, as it turned out, was well warranted.
Nico and Nozomi managed to pull their sled far enough to the side that they didn’t crash face-first into the boulder at high speeds and die, as Nozomi had prophesied, but they didn’t manage to steer clear of it entirely either. The edge of their sled ended up catching against the side of the mound, being lifted up and tossed violently into the air, and that proved to be too much to handle.
Umi watched with equal parts horror and glee as she saw Nico and Nozomi, almost in slow motion, go flying off of their sled, practically floating in the air for a few drawn out moments, while their sled floated right there beside them. And then, just as quickly, they came crashing back down to the ground, plummeting into the snow and sliding several more feet each, bodies leaving tracks behind them.
“Looks like we won!” Umi called out triumphantly, though her victory was cut short by what Eli said next.
‘“Not yet!” she warned, and Umi finally remembered to pull her attention back to the course in front of them just a moment too late. Her eyes went wide with horror as she saw the wall rushing towards them at a breakneck pace, and no matter how hard Umi tried to throw herself to the side and change their trajectory to avoid it, it was far too close, and they were travelling far too fast. All Umi could do at that point was brace herself for impact, and hope for the best.
“The best,” in this case, really just meant “not dying,” because staying on her sled seemed entirely out of the question at this point. With how hard they hit the wall, and with how much snow was packed so tightly into it, she would have needed superhuman strength to have not been sent flying at that point. Even with Umi’s best attempts to hold tightly to the front of the sled that didn’t change the fact that the sled itself was sent tumbling end over end as they crashed through the wall with another bone-shaking impact, and now Umi got to feel the same weightlessness she imagined Nico and Nozomi must have felt for just a moment before she was crashing into the cold, mercifully soft snow beneath them as well.
What was less merciful was the fact that Umi crashed face-down, and she pulled herself back up abruptly, shaking and shuddering and trying to wipe the freezing cold snow from her face as quickly as possible. After another moment she started to frantically look around her surroundings as well, realizing she hadn’t seen where her girlfriend had landed, though her fears were assuaged when she saw Eli picking herself up off the ground just a few feet away, dusting snow off her own body as well.
“Are you alright?” Umi called out.
“Nothing a nice warm shower won’t shake off,” Eli replied, before she glanced up the hill, and Umi followed her gaze to see Nozomi and Nico walking down towards them, dragging their battered looking sled along behind them.
“Well well,” Nico said, wearing a triumphant grin on her face that was quite undercut by the fact that her hair was wet and matted down against her own face now. “Looks like a draw.”
“A draw?” Umi repeated, brows immediately furrowing down. “What are you talking about? We won.”
“Uh, you both crashed.”
“But you crashed first. We lasted longer.”
“Ah,” Nozomi cut in, raising a finger as she interjected. “But the rules were simple: make it to the bottom first, and if you leave your sled, you forfeit. If nobody makes it to the bottom, nobody wins.”
“That’s absurd,” Umi insisted. “We were clearly the winners here. You’re just changing the rules now.”
“Aww, don’t be a sore loser,” Nico taunted. “It’s not a good look on you.” Umi grit her teeth together even more tightly at that, Nico’s words never failing to find a way to irritate her, before she was grabbing at the snow in front of her and balling it up tightly.
“Fine,” she snapped. “You want to see who’s a winner and who’s a loser? We’ll settle this a different way.”
“What are you-” Eli started to ask, though she couldn’t even finish the sentence before Umi let the snowball fly loose, firing it through the air directly towards Nico.
“Hey!” Nico shouted, only to let out a pained “ACK!” as it smashed her straight in the face, sending her staggering a few steps backward.
“I’ll avenge you, Nicochi!” Nozomi promised, already doubling down to hastily scrape snow up off the ground, while Umi was readying her next volley as well.
“Are we really doing this right now?” Umi heard Eli ask from beside her, but she couldn’t be deterred by this point.
“Of course we are,” she insisted. “We have something to prove! Now grab some snow and help me!”
“Goodness gracious,” Eli sighed. “Some days, you’re just as bad as they are.”