In the Deep Midwinter (tags Jean, Open)

[Ginny Campbell]

"I'm free! Free!!" Ginny exclaimed, dropping onto the snow-packed ground with a thud. The end of finals meant another trip to visit her father and Chase before the holidays officially started -- she'd almost asked her mother if she could just stay in Vermont between now and Christmas, but the promise of an extra Christmas party in between had changed her mind. After all, what girl didn't want two Christmases?

She had contemplated dropping in on her father in his office, but the snow was simply too tempting to resist. She flopped backward, staring up at the grey skies and ignoring the fact that her hat had decided to fall beside her rather than remain on her head where it belonged; she was going to be so covered in snow anyway, what did it matter if it got in her hair, as well?

"I'm going to make snow angels!" She announced to the sky at large, but just as she began to spread her limbs wide a leg flashed past. She couldn't resist -- she reached out and tugged at the runner's ankle, causing him to tumble into the snow with her. "Ha! Gotcha!" She announced, sitting up and shaking snow out of her long tresses to stare at her captive. He looked young, younger than many of the Hammel students she knew. Possibly this was his first year here.

"Now that I caught you, that means you have to do what I want." She informed him with a grin, "So the first order of business...." She glanced around for inspiration; snow angels were not a very cooperative activity. "You have to help me build a snow fort."

[Jean Manne]

It was snowing! It was snowing! It was—well, okay fine, it wasn’t actually snowing anymore, but it had snowed, and the important part of it all was that there was white stuff all over the ground and a certain twelve-year-old boy was without classes and without over-protective brother today. Oh, hello, potential for extreme snow-play. How are you doing this fine afternoon?

Jean beamed happily, trying to decide if he wanted to roll around in the snow right where he was standing, or if he wanted to go out a little ways and build a snowman. Or a fort. Or a cave. Or… whatever else he could think of involving snow. Deciding that wandering out a ways yielded more options, Jean stretched out his arms and started sprinting across the field, the cold wind nipping at his face. This was gonna be awes—

“Whoop!” Jean shouted as the ground seemingly reached up and grabbed his leg, sending him tumbling to the ground. He stared up at the grey sky, utterly confused. Whoa. What just happened? A voice next to him prompted Jean to pull himself up to see a really pretty blonde girl grinning at him with snow in her hair. Hammel just kept getting better and better.

And then she suggested they build a snow fort. Jean beamed at her, heart instantly won. Any girl who wanted to build snow forts was awesome in Jean’s book. “Well…” He pretended to consider it. For about half a second, “I guess I wouldn’t mind building a snow fort. But it has to be a big one.” Jean added, nodding sagely, “Because we have to be able to fit more than one person in it.” He stood up, brushing the snow off his pants. “Come on, let’s go!” He reached down and grabbed the girl’s wrist to pull her up, “I’m Jean Manne, by the way. What’s your name?”

[Ginny Campbell]

"Oh, definitely a big one!!" Ginny agreed, allowing the boy to help her up. "It has to fit both of us. And....our army." She waved vaguely behind her, to indicate the fields of snow. "Our army of snow soldiers. That we will make to help us defend it against our enemies." Not that she had any particular enemies in mind, but hey, it was a fort! Defending against enemies was what they existed for!

She leaned down to grab her hat, ruffling his hair as she straightened. He was so cute! He reminded her a great deal of Niko, only with poofier hair. "Jean, huh? I'm Ginny. Ginny Campbell." With the older students she frequently came right out at the beginning as James' daughter, but she wasn't sure if Jean would know (or care) who the head recruiter was unless her dad had recruited the boy himself. He might, though. The last name Manne sounded familiar, but whether that was through older siblings she'd met and ought to remember or because her dad had, in fact, recruited Jean she didn't know. Right now, that didn't matter, anyway: What mattered was snow forts.

"Great! Where should we position ourselves??" She dusted off her hat by beating it against her jeans before using it to shade her eyes as she surveyed the land around them for the best location for a fort. "You look like you know the local terrain, you'll have to help me pick."

[Jean Manne]

“Yeah!” Jean yelled excitedly, “Our snow army! And we have to make lots of snow soldiers to stand guard around the area, and snow scouts to make sure no one’s gonna invade out snow fort!” He jumped up and down, energy peaking, “But we have to do that later.” He decided, tromping in the snow, “Because we have to build the fort first.” They couldn’t get ahead of themselves.

“Cool to meet you, Ginny.” Jean allowed the girl to ruffle his hair. Girls liked his hair, he learned, and it always worked out better for him if he let girls play with his hair. And besides, Ginny was awesome; she could totally mess up his hair. He smiled winningly at her.

Jean puffed out his chest proudly at Ginny’s question, “Yup! I’ve been here for a full year already.” He scanned the area, then pointed to a snow drift a little ways away from the training field, “How about there? I think that would be a good spot.” He tromped through the snow, struggling to move his shorter legs through the tall snow, with a large smile on his face.

[Ginny Campbell]

Ginny grinned widely at Jean's enthusiasm. "Cool to meet you, too," She giggled, allowing him to lead the way to the location he'd picked out for their fort. The snow was a bit too large for her new friend to easily navigate, but she resisted the urge to overtake his lead; it would make it easier for him to walk if he could literally follow in her footsteps, but she knew how much she hated it when her elders tried to help before she'd asked. He didn't seem to mind floundering in the snow, anyway.

"That looks like a great spot." She agreed. "Our snow scouts should be able to see anyone who tries to sneak up on us from there." Didn't look as if too many other people were out and about, though, so they might not have to worry about invaders. She hoped someone would walk by once they finished, though; that way she and Jean could ambush them from inside the safety of their as yet non-existent fort.

She stopped when Jean did, beginning to pack the snow drift he'd chosen into what she hoped would be a nice, solid wall. "So a whole year, huh? That's pretty neat. What's your ability? Your trainers won't mind if you show me, will they?" She loved the variety of abilities the meta population had; it was always so cool seeing what the different students could do. Some of them seemed to think their abilities weren't that interesting or were troublesome, but Ginny felt that they were all pretty darn awesome. These kids could do things most other people couldn't, no matter how hard they practiced. It wasn't like playing an instrument or track and field; natural talent played a small part, but almost anyone could succeed at those with enough determination. You couldn't just decide to have protruding spikes or control air, though. That just sort of happened through some genetic process she didn't entirely understand. She wasn't exactly jealous that she hadn't gotten her father's meta genes, she just found the whole concept fascinating.

[Jean Manne]

“Yeah,” Jean nodded, “It’s a tact-ic-ally sound position.” The cold and excitement tripped up his tongue, but he didn’t mind. Ginny didn’t seem to be the type of person who would judge him for having trouble with bigger words. Jean knew them fine, just sometimes he couldn’t say them. He scanned the near-empty field. “Hopefully there’ll be some invaders.” He commented, pushing the snow around, “Can’t see much use of a snow fort without snow invaders.”

As Ginny built up the wall, Jean dug a wide hole into the ground, the snow leaking through his gloves a little, making his fingers cold. “Yeah, a whole year.” He brightened when Ginny asked to see his ability. He was absurdly proud of his ability. “No! I could totally show you!” He ripped off one of his gloves (with some difficulty; geeze, RC had given him some huge gloves) and pulled out his trusty lump of metal. “Watch this.” He made sure he had Ginny’s full attention before turning back to the metal. He stared at it intensely and thought copper. The silver, misshapen lump shivered and turned into a copper-colored misshapen lump. Jean punched the air triumphantly, “Yes!” It rarely turned out that well! Catching himself, he grinned at Ginny, “I mean—uh—ta da! I turned it from… something, I forget what, to copper!” He puffed his chest out proudly, “I’m an alchemist.”

“What about you?” Jean asked, pulling back on his glove and slipping the lump of metal back into his pocket. He bent down to continue shoveling snow out of the bank. “Where are you from? Do you go here?” He hadn’t seen her around before, but hey. Hammel was a big place.

[Ginny Campbell]

"There will definitely be snow invaders." Ginny assured Jean confidently, scanning the horizon in the hopes of seeing another figure out there. Anyone who walked within snowball distance was going to find themselves under attack and accused of invading whether that was their intent or not: After all, the kid was right; snow forts were only so much fun without opposition.

She obediently turned her attention from the horizon, which was still disappointingly free of potential enemies, to the lump of metal her new pal was brandishing, watching with unfeigned interest as it changed colors. "An alchemist, huh? Wow, that's pretty neat. And real useful, when we finish our fort you can help make treasure for us to guard. or pay ransom if we have to." Every fort needed treasure, right?

She shook her head at his question. "Naw, I don't go here. I go to the University of Vermont. My dad works here. and my step-dad." Well, one of her step-dads, anyway, but no need to confuse the kid with anything too specific. "And my little brother. Not me, though, I'm just visiting."

With that she stepped back from her handiwork, grinning proudly. One wall down. "Oh, yeah, this is gonna be the most impenetrable fortress ever, nobody will get past our awesome. Not even yeti or...or...frost giants. No attacker will win against us."

Unless they attacked now, while they only had one and a half walls complete, but frost giants and yeti were pretty big so they should see them before they attacked. There weren't even any other people around, though, let alone any mythological creatures, so they were probably safe. Sadly. Ginny was surprised there weren't more students out and about; maybe it was just this section of the training field and everyone else was off playing in the snow somewhere she and Jean couldn't see from where they were.

[Jean Manne]

“Oh good.” Jean was thinking along the same lines as Ginny: anyone and everyone was basically fair game to be a snow invader, whether or not their intentions were actually towards invading. He patted the snow across the top of their one made wall and turned to the next one. Oh man, this was gonna be great. Won’t RC be jealous that Jean got to play in the snow with a pretty blonde girl? That was what happened when you went outside and had fun instead of moping in your own goop like RC usually did. Silly RC.

“Thanks!” Jean piped, looking proud of his handiwork. “I would totally make some treasure for our snow fort. Everyone will be super jealous.” He didn’t mention that gold was a little harder than other metals for some chemistry reason that he didn’t really know. Science was boring anyways. Unless you got to blow stuff up. But you didn’t get to do that until you were, like, super old. Like sixteen or something.

“You go to college?” Jean’s eyes went wide, “Wo-ow~ You’re so cool for an old person!” The words slipped out before Jean had a chance to think about them, but it was totally true! College kids weren’t supposed to go around making snow forts with twelve-year-olds. She had to be like twenty or something, too. That was crazy. “Why aren’t you like…” He racked his brain for things he thought college kids ought to be doing. “…Collegy things?” He finally settled on. Heck, he didn’t know. He wasn’t in college. “Do you have a car?” College people had cars, right?

“Oh, that’s cool.” And that explained why she was here and not at college. She was visiting her family. “Who are they?” Maybe Jean knew them!

This girl. Was. So. Cool. Snow yeti? Jean hadn’t even thought of those! “We are gonna have the best snowfort in the universe.” He announced to the work at large. “But after we set up the walls, we need to set up our snow guards and our snow enemies. And then we need to throw snowballs at them. And anyone else who tries to invade!”

[ooc: anyone who also wants to drop in, feel free to do so! ]