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Snow. Poets and artists and songwriters of Christmas songs may try to convince people that it's always pure, fluffy, and delightful, but those who live where snow is commonplace know the truth. A field of freshly fallen snow is not “a marshmallow world”. It's a battlefield.
At least it is for the children of South Park, Colorado. A Saturday morning of peacefully playing in the snow, making snowmen and sledding, can quickly devolve into a battle for school yard supremacy.
Stan peeked over the hastily built snow bunker, holding up enormous binoculars to his eyes. “I can't see the enemy forces, General Cartman. It appears that they have built their own fortress over by the swingset.”
“Very good, Colonel Marsh! How goes the snowball construction, Sergeant McCormick?”
Kenny placed another snowball onto the pile he had been building and turned to face Cartman. He held up his mittened hands with the thumbs up.
“Excellent! Major Broflovski? Have you seen our scout recently?” Cartman asked a pacing Kyle.
“No, and I’m beginning to get concerned. What if he was captured by the enemy? What if we have to plan a rescue mission?”
“Get a hold of yourself, Major!” Cartman exclaimed, grabbing Kyle by the shoulders. “Lieutenant Stotch will make it back safely! He must!”
“But what if he doesn’t?! This is Butters we’re talking about!”
Cartman froze. Kyle had a point. Butters wasn’t much of a fighter, and if he had been captured, he probably wouldn’t try to escape on his own. He was a sweet kid, and he wasn’t known for his ability to defend himself.
“My god. You’re absolutely right, Major.”
He dropped his arms from Kyle’s shoulders and beckoned Stan and Kenny to his side.
“Gentlemen, gather ‘round! You remember when we first started playing Snow Wars forty minutes ago that we promised that we’d never leave a soldier behind? The time to act upon it is now! We must leave the safe, warm bosom of our snow bunker and venture forth into unknown territory! For Butters!”
“For Butters!” the others cheered.
“So what’s the plan, exactly?” asked Stan.
“Uh...well...you see...Major Kyle is in charge of strategy!”
Cartman quickly ducked behind Kenny. He knew Kyle would try to hit him for nominating him, but he also knew that Kyle would never try to hit him if Kenny might get hit in the process. Kyle sighed, deciding to just go with it.
“Okay. So Craig and those guys’ base is over there, right? Stan, take a look through those ridiculously large binoculars again and see if you can spot any changes. Maybe you could see Butters’ hair over their bunker?”
Stan scanned the enemy base in search of a blond puff. Kenny leaned against his shoulder. He pulled down his hood enough to speak.
“Where did you get those enormous things, anyway?”
“What? The binoculars? They’re my Uncle Jimbo’s. I stole them from him a few weeks ago. I’ll give them back. Eventually.”
Kenny giggled and patted Stan on the back. “I’ve taught you well. So can you see him?”
“Yeah…yeah there he is!”
The other three boys quickly clustered around Stan.
“Oh, no, wait. That’s just Craig’s hat.”
He dropped the binoculars to the ground in a huff. Kyle held the bridge of his nose, while Kenny tugged on the strings of his hood, pulling it close. Cartman stomped on the ground, expressing enough frustration for all of them.
“Ahrg! I hate Craig so much!” he grumbled.
Kyle sighed. “I guess...I guess we’ll just have to take all of the snowballs Kenny made, or at least as many as we can carry, and go for it. Straight into danger. I don’t think they’ll expect it. They probably think that we will try to cause a distraction and sneak in from the side.”
“Instead, we’ll take them by surprise. Nice,” Kenny wickedly grinned.
Craig peered over the wall of snow. Stepping back and crouching down, he shook his head and sighed. What the heck were those weirdos doing on the other side of the playground? This was supposed to be a friendly snowball fight between friends. At least that's how it had been suggested yesterday after school. Yet it had morphed into an all out war, and now a pair of huge binoculars were looking straight at his head. Who had said anything about using binoculars? Stan and his friends took everything way too seriously.
“Hey Craig?”
The sound of Clyde's voice snapped Craig out of his head and back to the present. “Yeah?” he asked.
“You think that if we spent the whole day adding more to this bunker, we’d be able to make an igloo?” Clyde asked.
He continued to pack snow on top of the barrier surrounding them. Craig knelt next to him, mindlessly patting the sides.
“Uh, I guess. The ceiling would be hard, though. It’d probably cave in on us while we’re working on it,” said Craig.
“Ahh! Oh god! We can’t do that! We’ll be buried alive and they won’t find our bodies for days!” Tweek was hovering above them, clutching the to-go cup of coffee that his parents had thrown at him on his way out.
“Jeez, Tweek, calm down. This playground is full of people. They’ll be able to find us just fine,” said Clyde with a roll of his eyes.
“Be-besides, there wouldn’t even be enough snow to cov-covehhh-cover all of us deep enough to be buried alive.”
Jimmy sat in his self-made ‘snow chair’—a packed down pile of snow with a spot to sit in scooped out—and gave Tweek a big toothy smile. His comment did not have the desire effect on Tweek. He cried out and quickly latched his mouth to his coffee cup.
“Hey! Focus, you guys! Do you really want Cartman and his cronies to be kings of the playground? I sure don’t.” Token had been keeping quiet and working on making snowballs that would be easy to throw, but he decided he needed to speak up. “You know we’d never hear the end of it from him. It’s the kind of thing that he’d bring up again when we’re teenagers, or heck, even when we’re adults!”
“Accurate,” Craig said flatly. “So what should we do about it?”
“Well first, Tweek could put down his coffee and join us in making more ammo.”
They all turned to stare at their anxious friend. “No way! I need this coffee to keep my hands warm!”
“D-don’t you have gloves?” asked Jimmy.
“Ngh, I did, but I lost them,” Tweek muttered.
“Really, Tweek? I thought you were going to pin them to your coat like I’d suggested?” Craig crossed his arms and shook his head.
“I was , but then I got distracted by th-”
Tweek was interrupted by a sudden snowball flying over the barrier. He felt like he was watching it in slow motion as it headed straight towards him. It hit his coffee square in the center, sending the cup and its contents straight to the ground. He stared down at the coffee soaked snow. His mouth was agape. A quiet, choked noise struggled to come out his throat, until it suddenly changed into a blood-curdling scream.
Tweek launched himself forward and scooped up a bunch of snowballs into his arms. He ran out from behind the bunker and began to throw them bare handed at the oncoming army.
“Tweek, what are you doing?” Token called out. He quickly turned to the others and shrugged before they all dove for the snowball pile.
Kenny was taken by surprise when Tweek suddenly appeared in the open field, throwing snowballs willy-nilly. He flanked to the right, ducking and dodging each of Tweek’s surprisingly accurate throws. Kenny was so busy paying attention to the snowballs being thrown that he didn’t notice the girls’ snow family they had been working on all morning.
Kenny ran into one of the snow people, knocking it over and sending him falling into the rest of the family. The girls screamed in abject horror.
“What the heck! What is wrong with you?!” Red yelled at Kenny.
“Yeah! You destroyed our sassy snow queen and her court! We'll kick your butt!” yelled Bebe.
“You'll pay for this,” Wendy said calmly.
She flipped a long piece of purple scarf over her shoulder and made an about-face. She and the other girls left, calmly and quietly. Once they were out of sight, the boys quickly forgot about the snow destruction that had occurred and refocused on the war at hand.
The distraction by the girls had given Craig and those guys time to gather their ammunition and surround Stan, Cartman, Kyle, and Kenny. The four boys looked at each other. They had allowed themselves to be caught off-guard, and they were about ready to accept defeat.
But Eric Cartman never accepted defeat.
“Heeey Craig! Clyde! Token, my old friend!”
Token raised his eyebrow at Eric, then shot glances to Craig and Clyde. They nodded in agreement, and took steps forward, closing in on the other gang.
“Hey, hey, relax guys! Jimmy, my pal! Do you have any new jokes for us? Tweek! How’s your coffee this morning?”
Tweek let out an exasperated grunt. “You knocked it out of my hands, you jerk!”
“It’s l-literally iced coffee now,” Jimmy added, flashing a bright, brace-clad grin.
“Hey, that wasn’t me! That was Kenny!” Cartman said, holding his hands up in the air and metaphorically throwing his best friend under the bus.
Kenny gave Eric a dirty look and mumbled something incoherent inside his parka. Jimmy and Tweek both moved forward, making the circle around Stan’s gang even smaller. The four friends were beginning to feel claustrophobic. Their defeat was imminent.
“Okay, look!” Kyle cried out. “This isn’t really fair. If you attack us now, the win won’t count.”
“Says who?” asked Token.
“Playground rules!” Cartman exclaimed. “Benjamin Franklin wrote them down in-!”
“Shut up, Cartman!” Stan interrupted. “Continue, Kyle,” he said with a smile.
“We’re outnumbered right now because we’re missing Butters. We thought you were holding him hostage, so that’s why we did the surprise attack. If you give him back to us, we can both retreat back to our bases and start over. That way, if you still win, it will be fair and square. Deal?”
Clyde furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “We haven’t seen Butters since we started playing. We thought he was with you guys.”
“You mean you don’t have him tied up captive somewhere behind that wall?” asked Kyle.
Craig shook his head.
They all spun around, looking in every direction for any sign of Butters. A few of them cupped hands to their ears in case they heard him talking or singing his trademark tune. After a few moments, Kenny pulled his hood down from his mouth and pointed with his free hand.
“Look! Over there! Next to the jungle gym!”
Everyone turned and headed over to where Kenny was pointing. Sure enough, they found Butters, alongside Kevin, Scott, and Timmy. The nine friends surrounded Butters, annoyed looks fixed on their faces.
“Well, hey there, fellas! How’s it going?” Butters happily greeted.
“Butters. What the heck happened? You were supposed to be our scout! You were supposed to go spy on Craig’s gang and then come back so you could tell us what you saw!” said Kyle.
“Well, I was walking around to spy on those guys, but then I saw Timmy got his wheelchair stuck in a snow pile! Me, Kevin, and Scott here worked together to get him out. Then we helped him make some snow angels!”
Butters looked mighty pleased with himself. His friends, however, were not. Kevin, Scott, and Timmy got the hint as Stan and the others closed in around Butters, snowballs in hand. The three waved to Butters and moved to another part of the playground as quickly as they could.
Cartman stepped forward. “Lieutenant Stotch. Going MIA is very serious. We’ll give you a five second head start, but then you’re going to have nine people aiming at you. One. Two.”
Butters scrambled up off the ground, brushing snow from the seat of his pants.
“Thr-”
A small snowball came in from overhead and landed squarely on Cartman’s head, knocking him back onto the ground. Another one came down, hitting Clyde in the shoulder. He touched his shoulder, then looked at his hand. Token and Tweek leaned to get a better look at the sparkling substance covering Clyde’s fingers.
“Is that...glitter?” Token asked.
A series of sparkling snowballs came whizzing by before they could get a confirmation, many getting a direct hit on one of the boys. They looked around, desperate to find the source of the attack. Their dire situation slowly began to sink in as the girls closed in around them.
“I told you, boys, you’d pay for this,” said Wendy.
She and the rest of the girls now had on shades and it appeared that they all had matching totes that were slung over their shoulders.
“Ready, girls?” she asked, reaching her hand into the tote.
“Ready!” the girls chanted back as their hands moved into the same position.
“Fire!” Wendy cried.
The girls pulled out silver-specked snowballs full of glitter from their totes and began an all-out snowball assault on the boys. They never even stood a chance.
When the glitter dust cleared, the girls stood triumphant. The boys lay strewn across the snow, glitter everywhere—in their hair, in their clothes, and on their faces. Bebe dusted the extra glitter from his hands as she moved over to stand next to Wendy.
“It pleases and sparkles,” she joked, sending the girls into a fit of giggles. “We run the playground now. Better luck next week, boys.”
As they slowly stood up and began their retreat back home to hopefully shower off all this flitter, the boys all realized that they had learned a valuable lesson that day. Never underestimate the girls. Especially when it comes to snowball fights.