REWRITTEN 4/24/16

Enia: Sorry if there are typos, everyone was talking all around me and I couldn't concentrate properly.

Apparently We Stole Their Booze

(Molotov Cocktails Are Fun)

"IIIIIIIIIIT'S SNOWING!" a voice bellowed as loudly as it could, the sound pulsating around and around the dark room, shattering skulls and bursting eardrums. I shot bolt upright in my makeshift bed, my arms raised and ready to fight as my heart thundered out of sight.

Eight voices chorused in unison: "SHUT UP, TEEMO!"

"But it's snooooooowing!" he crowed happily. I glared at him through squinted eyes. Teemo was prancing about in the center of the library, flapping his arms like a bird. "And it's Christmas!"

"And we care why?" Arin demanded in a slurry voice.

"I don't know. Also, there's someone knocking on our door."

That cleared the fog of sleep from my eyes in an instant. I scrambled from my blanket nest, hauling myself up by the lip of the desk next to me, and hurried over to Teemo, grabbing my boots as I went. "Why the hell didn't you lead with that?"

He shrugged as he led the group through the gently shadowed second floor and down the dark stairs. "I don't know. The snow seemed more important."

I banged my head against my palm. The first floor of the library was a deep, shadowed grey, the giant wall outside blocking most of the natural light from reaching the windows. The smell of rot still hung faintly in the air. We would have to get some Febreeze or something; the circulating air from outside just wasn't making the cut.

Teemo hopped through the broken front doors, his feet crunching on the broken glass. I dropped my boots to the ground and stuffed my feet inside of them, leaving the laces untied. Outside, the wind was cutting, whizzing straight through the black jeans and dark green shirt I had changed into the night before. Teemo gestured vaguely at the unseen street. "They're on the other side of the wall."

I rolled my eyes, brushing a clump of falling snow from my face. Already, there was a good three inches piled on the ground. "No, really. I thought they'd gotten through the impenetrable stone wall and were standing here beside us, invisible."

Onyx and Samik snickered as Arin hid a grin behind her hand. Teemo scowled at me. "Don't give me that sass."

I grinned and wiggled the top of my head back and forth mockingly. My hair moved in sync with my eyebrows.

"Shall we go say hello?" Samik asked, stepping forward and stuffing one foot into the carved ladder.

I nodded, and Samik led the way to the top of the wall. I gestured for everyone else to go and got on the ladder last, following close on Minka's heels. As soon as Samik's head appeared over the top of the wall, a din of angry voices broke out on the other side. I saw Samik wave good-naturedly, but he stepped aside and waited for the rest of us to join him without saying anything.

I stood up on the flat, stone path and stood in line with my friends, my arms folded across my chest as I stared down at the group of ten grungy men clustered in the road below us. They stood, feet planted wide, amidst the corpses of the munchers we had killed last night. The men were shaggy and unkempt, wearing dirty, frayed clothes, their backs bristling with weaponry. Each of them also held a pistol or some larger gun in their hands, but none of them were aimed at us yet.

One of the men, the leader I presumed, stood slightly in front of the larger group, his shotgun held across his body threateningly, matching the dark grimace on his face. His greasy brown hair hung in scraggly waves about his scowling face which was mask by a thick layer of untrimmed stubble.

I instantly dubbed him Mr. Happy Face on account of his pleasantly grinning countenance.

"Which one of you is the leader?" he demanded.

I leaned forward so I could glance down the line on top of the wall. Everyone shrugged and looked at someone else. "We don't really have an official leader," Arin answered finally.

Mr. Happy Face's gaze latched onto the toughest and strongest looking member of the group; William. It made sense that the human would assume William was in charge. The werewolf was big, well-muscled, and scowling, emanating an air of confidence and easy violence in his battered leathers and angry expression. The rest of us were considerably smaller in stature and looked more like normal people in our jeans and mismatched t-shirts. Though we were all incredibly powerful, we simply didn't exude the same natural 'Fear Me' vibe as William did.

"You in charge here?" Mr. Happy Face demanded.

"If you like," William replied coldly. His ice blue eyes were sharper than rocks and ready to fight.

"I've got a bone to pick with you." Mr. Happy Face waved his gun to emphasize his words.

"Really. Which bone?"

I hid a grin in my elbow at Mr. Happy Face's confused expression, his brows furrowing towards his chin. "…What?"

"You said you had a bone to pick with me. Which bone? The humorous, femur, radius…" William rattled off a whole list of bone names, growing more and more obscure with each word. I dropped my elbow and grinned openly, winking at Onyx. As much as I hated William, I had to admit that was a brilliantly crafted comeback.

Mr. Happy Face turned a deep crimson color, his already stony expression turning jagged and sharp. He stabbed his gun up at us angrily, finger on the trigger. "Don't be smart with me, boy!" he roared, and the rest of his posse growled in agreement. "It's just an expression! I've got a beef with you!"

"Really? I like beef," William said in a monotone.

Teemo laughed out loud, the sound winging up into the heavy, gray clouds, and Mr. Happy Face fired a warning shot into the air with a jab of his wrist. "Now y'all listen real good and enough of the bandying words!"

I rolled my eyes and groaned theatrically, clasping a hand to my heart. "The poor grammar…it burns…" I muttered under my breath to Onyx. She snorted and elbowed me in the ribs.

"What do you want?" William demanded icily, his patience with the pompous man having run out.

"We want what you stole from us back."

"Thank you for that very descriptive explanation," I said in what I thought was a soft voice.

Apparently, it wasn't soft enough, or else the nasty, trickster wind caught my words and flung them down to the group of dirty men. Mr. Happy Face practically had smoke coming out of his ears, and he instantly trained his gun on me. "Shut your face, girl, before I blow it off!"

I yawned and patted my mouth with my hand, bored with his shenanigans. "Why don't you just tell us what you want," Arin suggested, her voice as perfectly icy as William's. It was actually scarier coming from her.

"Those two wooden crates full of booze," Mr. Happy Face clarified through gritted teeth.

"And you just assumed we took them?" Samik cut in, cocking an eyebrow skeptically.

"You know what they say," Zeus added in a cheery voice. She still had on her Christmas garb. "To assume makes an ass out of you and me."

"In this case, mostly just you," I finished, and Zeus leaned around Onyx to give me a fist bump.

"I know you took it!" Mr. Happy Face yelled. A startled bird took to the air, cawing in annoyance as it winged away and disappeared behind a building. "Only drunk idiots would pull the stunt you did last night, and we saw the lights coming from this place the night before that!"

"Who says we were drunk?" Minka demanded, glaring down at the ragtag group. She was the smallest of us, but the intensity radiating off her body was enough to make some of the men in the group quail. "And even if we were, that doesn't mean we were drinking 'your' booze." You could practically hear the sarcastic quotation marks in her voice.

Mr. Happy Face gestured wildly at the Honda. "I saw that car drive off!"

"Yeah, but did you see one of us taking the crates?" David asked.

It was like we were a real team for once, all working together to shred the group of men in the street to tiny, bloody pieces.

As Mr. Happy Face spluttered, Onyx touched my arm lightly and winked before disappearing down the ladder. I watched her run into the library, wondering what kind of mischief she was up to, and then turned my attention back to Mr. Happy Face and his comrades.

"I know it was you!" the man in the street yelled, child-like.

"Careful," Teemo warned brightly. "You might strain something. Not to mention attract some unwanted attention that we certainly wouldn't help you deal with."

"Like we'd need your help," Mr. Happy Face sneered, and his posse growled their agreement. "You bunch couldn't take a single zed."

"Um, hello? Do you see the piles of bodies around you?" David asked harshly.

"We're the ones with all the weapons," the man threatened vaguely, and I wasn't really sure what that was supposed to mean.

My stupidity took over. I yawned with exaggerated boredom and stepped forward slightly to the edge of the wall, spreading my arms out. "Go on then, shoot me."

Mr. Happy Face stared at me suspiciously, eyes narrowed, mouth in a line. "What?"

"You heard what I said. Shoot me."

Shrugging, figuring me insane for asking for my own death, he raised the gun and took aim at my chest. It didn't occur to him to be concerned by the fact that none of my friends were trying to stop me. A sharp crack split the air, shattering snowflakes and cracking clouds. A puff of smoke drifted from the muzzle, biding adieu to the tiny piece of metal. The bullet zinged proudly through the air, ready to complete its suicide mission and carve a hole straight through me. I grew larger and larger in its sight, and the bullet spun, gathering speed, confident it would strike me and fling me off the wall.

At the last second, the bullet found that I was no longer where I was supposed to be, and it flew past harmlessly, burying itself in the library's concrete side.

I sat on the edge of the wall, banging my feet on the stone idly, like I hadn't a care in the world. Mr. Happy Face's mouth dropped open, falling in unison with the barrel of his gun. I grinned at him brightly. "Somehow, I think we'd still win."

I had to give the man props for quickly regaining control of his expressions, clinging to his anger with desperate strength. "Whatever," he blustered, the red in his face giving way to pale white. "Just give us back what's ours."

"Alright," Onyx said, startling everyone when she appeared on the ladder behind us, a clinking bundle of rags propped against the wall and her arms. She pulled a bottle of bourbon out and held it up. "This what you're looking for?"

Mr. Happy Face nodded, eyes gleaming greedily.

Onyx bobbed her head up and down as if that was what she'd expected all along. She uncapped the bottle with her teeth and stuffed a rag into its mouth. "A light, if you please, Enia."

"My pleasure." I rubbed my fingers on one end of the cloth. A spark jumped at the friction and burst into flames.

Onyx crawled fully onto the top of the wall and stood. "Here you go!" She yelled and flung the flaming bottle at the miscreants.

The missile carved a beautiful arc through the air, trailing fire and sparks in its wake. Every single pair of eyes on the street widened into giant discs. "Scatter!" the leader and turned tail like a rabbit.

The Molotov Cocktail struck the ground and erupted in a blast of fire, searing the munchers to a crisp and tanning the intruders' fleeing backsides. Onyx hurled a second missile after them for good measure, and we laughed as the resulting explosion cause them all to jump three feet in the air.

"Merry Christmas!" we yelled at their retreating backs.

Enia: I don't really have much to say today other than I'll love you forever if you leave a review!