"Check it out! A snowball fight competition!" Minako showed the poster off to the other girls as they sat around in Makoto's bakery the next morning. "Isn't that nutty?!"

"How does that even work?" Ami wondered.

"It says one of the parks is taking advantage of the new fresh snowfall to have an intense fight with snowballs. Anyone can join and the last one standing wins!" Minako read.

"Wins what?"

"Uh, it doesn't say."

"Let's go!" Usage startled them by speaking up. "Let's invite Hotaru-chan and Setsuna-san too! How could they say no to a snowball fight?!"

Rei sighed. "Sure, why not. It's not like we've done weirder."

Just as the flier had boasted, the entire Juuban area had been visited by the snow fairy, who brought huge piles of crisp, sparkling snow everywhere that shone like jewels on everything. Most schools and businesses were canceled that day due to the weather, and so kids took to the slick streets, running around with each other and shouting.

The competition in question was based off the more famous game in Hokkaido, just a bit smaller in scale. The poster highly suggested the teams dress up, so the girls got dressed in their old cosplays from when they attended the video game con years ago.

"We look so good!" Minako boasted as she spun around and posed. She paid for their tickets and picked a random spot, setting her heeled boot on a snowbank. She wore neon pink and yellow on a leotard and had a sheer skirt and top wrapped around her body.

"Aren't you guys cold?" Ami asked shyly, wearing the least out of the girls, only a simple sheer robe.

"Nope!"

"I'm shocked this even fits me still," Makoto mused, showing off her leotard and tights. Both strained around her thick waist and thighs.

The competition area was made up of several half-finished forts a good distance away from each other. In the center was a red wooden stage with speakers, where two women stood, dressed in warm winter layers.

"Welcome to the 23rd annual Juuban Snow Festival! We hope you have a good time here!" The girl with a young face and red snowsuit waved. "First, our snowball fight!"

"Sorry I'm late." Usagi said formally, wandering over with her hands in front of her. Since she never went to the con in her youth, she had to make her own on short notice, and wore her hair pulled back tightly with a pink disc, a white visor covering her eyes. The rest of her outfit was a tight bodysuit in hot pink that hugged her motherly hips. "I couldn't think of what to wear!"

"Looking good!" Minako praised her. Hotaru and Setsuna showed up too, the girls gasping at Setsuna.

She wore an incredibly short green cheongsam with ballet shoes, a high slit cut up both sides. Her hair was pulled up into a bun tied with golden sticks. She smiled.

"Setsuna-san?!" Rei asked in disbelief, looking her over.

"Who says I can't still be fashionable?"

"This'll be easy! We're up against a bunch of old hags!" The opposing team of boys laughed, pointing at Makoto and Setsuna. "They don't realize they're not hot!"

"Hey! We still got it!" Minako fumed and started building their fort up bigger. Rei and Makoto helped her, while the other girls began stockpiling their snowballs.

Hotaru was dressed in a long grey tunic with purple leggings and boots, a grey veil and headdress covering her, being the most conservatively dressed of the group. She helped the others with the fort, thinking she might be better at it.

"Alright, let's begin! The Star Warriors VS the Baseball Boys! Who will win this intense fight?" The girl grinned knowingly as a bell sounded. The girls got into position, hiding behind their fort.

"They're just some losers who talk big, they don't even look out of high school yet. We can take them." Makoto said.

"Then I feel bad for bullying high schoolers!" Hotaru pouted.

"Even though they're jerks?" Rei said. "It's just a friendly game."

"And we're great at defeating pompous losers! So come at us!" Minako shouted, standing up and launching an array of snowballs. The boys ducked, but one of the slower ones got hit in the face, making a bell sound.

"Two more strikes and you're out!" The announcer grinned.

The boy huffed at Minako and sent some snow her way, but she dodged it with ease. Rei and Makoto fired a shower of snowballs too, trying to hit weak spots but finding the boys too crafty for them.

"Is that all you got?!" Minako taunted, sticking out her tongue.

"Like we're going to be beaten by some old ladies like you! You need to be put in your place!" A black-haired boy in a blue jersey shouted back at her.

"I'd like to see you try!"

The flurry of snowballs started again, both groups flinging them at each other. Other groups around them were playing too, but they barely noticed.

"Take this!" A boy in a white jersey yelled, throwing a big ball particularly hard and smacking Rei right in her back when she had it turned, making her cry out in pain.

"You lost a point!" The girl yelled. Rei glared at the other team as she tried to rub her back, heading off to the timeout square.

"We must avenge her!" Hotaru said. Minako nodded in agreement. Setsuna looked at the girls, then looked at the boys.

"Forgive me for this.." She walked over to the fort and turned around, bending over and pulling up her dress, revealing her backside. The opposing team hollered and cheered as she shuffled back into position.

"You think you can distract us?! We aren't into older women!" A brown-haired boy in a red jersey shouted, and Minako presumed him to be their leader.

On the stage, the young girl continued to grin, looking back at her partner who was reading a book calmly.

"You should be enjoying this! Can't you feel their bloodlust, their excitement to be out here?! It's basically a bloodsport!" She sighed happily. "So much emotion in the air!"

The girl, dressed in a white snowsuit, briefly looked up. "Right…"

The girls and boys continued to pummel each other with snowballs, having several close calls but no good hits. Usagi kicked the fort in irritation at one point and almost toppled the whole thing.

"This is so unfair! Why do we keep drawing?!" She whined.

"They have less people than us, yet we can't even get a hit in…" Ami sighed, trying to calculate.

"They move faster. If we try to find a weak spot…" Setsuna suggested before trailing off.

"Uh, I don't feel so good." Minako warned, her hand on her head. The girls all looked over in alarm, seeing her stumble.

"Could it be hypothermia?!" Rei worried, running back over to the team.

"Hey! You got hit! Get off the playing field!" The announcer shouted at her.

"No, hypothermia doesn't look like this." Ami shook her head. Usagi looked around to see several other people suddenly collapse on the ground, including the opposing team.

"Now we can feast properly!" The announcer laughed, ripping off her disguise and revealing she was Ares the whole time. The girl next to her pulled off her clothes too, revealing she was Hermes. "This whole competition was a trap!"

"Oh no!" Ami gasped.

The other girls nodded at each other. Usagi took a step back and rushed off to hide, while Setsuna and Hotaru ran off. The four Inners pulled out their transformation brooches, all shaped like stars in their respective colors.

"Mercury Eternal Power, Makeup!"

"Mars Eternal Power, Makeup!"

"Jupiter Eternal Power, Makeup!"

"Venus Eternal Power, Makeup!"

The four transformed into their Eternal forms, appearing in front of Ares and Hermes.

"Stop right there! We won't let you ruin the wintery fun of this park any longer!" Sailor Jupiter cracked her knuckles.

"The Sailor Senshi…" Hermes blinked, while Ares stomped her foot.

"No! You can't do this! We were just trying to get a meal!" She whined. "How dare you spoil our fun! Take this!" She pulled out a clay tablet and a paintbrush, writing rushed strokes on it before she tossed it at the ground. "Get lost!" Her and Hermes vanished in a ray of light.

"Krýo!" The monster who formed from the tablet shouted. She was short and skinny, wearing a dress made from a snowman and icy blue hair in a pixie cut. "Take this!" She blew cold air onto the girls, making them shiver.

"I'm s-s-so cold…!" Sailor Venus rubbed her arms together, hugging herself. Krýo laughed and twirled around, noticing the unused piles of snowballs everywhere. She picked some up and chewed them, spitting out sharp ice.

"Jupiter! Oak Evolution!" Jupiter spun around as she did her attack, cutting Krýo with the leaves. She winced in pain.

"Mars! Snake Fire!" Sailor Mars thrust her right fist out and fired a giant whirlwind of fire with a snake's head in it out at Krýo, melting her entirely. Mars took a few deep breaths to calm herself down as Usagi slowly slipped out of hiding.

"I wish we could've refreshed her." Sailor Venus said, looking down at the ground. "Even if she was a random object that was corrupted and not a person, it's still not fair."

"You know it must be this way." Setsuna reminded her sternly.

"Nobody is more upset at this than me. My whole job was to save people who were corrupted, and now what?" Usagi sighed. "I'm still trying to work with the Silver Crystal. There has to be something I can do."

Around them, the teams started to wake up, so the girls quickly returned to their civilian forms and hid behind their fort again. Minako peeked out from behind it and created a giant snowball she hugged to her chest, rocking back and forth.

"We're refreshed and back! You witches can't beat us!" Their leader boasted, thumbing his chest. Makoto tossed a large snowball in her hand, and the two looked at each other with a mutual grin.

"Never say never!" Hotaru quipped. The two threw their snowballs with as much fury as they could muster, hitting the leader right in the face and knocking him down, along with a random guy on their team. The bell rang twice and they cheered at their victory, Minako and Makoto high fiving each other.

"Congrats to The Star Warriors for winning this round! Come get your congratulatory hot chocolate!" The speakers announced.

"How could we have lost to you?!" The leader demanded. Makoto helped him up with a smirk.

"We may be 'old hags', but with age also comes wisdom. Remember that when you graduate." She slapped his back.

Setsuna sipped her mug and her eyes widened. "This is made from real Belgian chocolate!" She sipped more.

"Really? How can you tell?" Rei asked curiously.

"I have it a lot with Haruka and Michiru, so I can recognize the taste."

"How much do they have it?" Ami asked, sipping hers.

"We eat it almost every other day!" Hotaru announced proudly, making Ami spit her drink out. "Haruka-papa loves sweets, so that's why!"

"Those guys really do live on an entirely different plan of existence than us, don't they?" Minako sighed.

"I had fun today, despite everything." Makoto said. "With everything that has gone on recently, it's nice that we can just have a day like this, sitting and relaxing like our old selves."

"I agree!" Ami said quickly.

Usagi watched her friends in silence, sipping her hot chocolate.

When she returned home that evening, she found Mamoru in the kitchen and organizing jars in the cupboards.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, Usagi wasn't drinking her formula earlier, so I got some baby food jars. I wasn't really sure what she would like, so I just bought a bunch." He showed her the jars of peaches and apples. "There's even some strange ones, like macaroni and cheese!"

Usagi felt her queenly mask slipping again, but fought to keep it there. "A good idea. We also shouldn't let her get used to just one type. Babies like variety, so I hear." Tomorrow she would begin the daunting process of introducing solid foods to Usagi.

"I get the feeling she'd like the peaches the best." Mamoru laughed.

/+/

Underneath Mt. Sakurajima, there wasn't much else of note in the hideout, everything was grey and rocky, so the inhabitants did their best to amuse themselves. Aphrodite sat on a modified crystal, trying to fix her foundation. Zeus did pushups in one corner, counting under her breath. Hermes read in silence as she leaned against a wall again, trying to finish her book. Ares played with her dolls again, more half-heartedly than last time.

In another corner stood the shadowy woman, her appearance still a mystery. She wrung her hands around, looking down at the ground.

"We've been waiting years for this opportunity. Decades, centuries, millennia! We must be diligent if we're to be successful."

"Sending out another one of us so soon?" Aphrodite puckered her lips.

"No, you four are doing perfectly fine for now. For now. The others have more power, they're much more important to the later plan, but you four are necessary now."

"Stop speaking in riddles! I want to understand you!" Ares whined, picking up Hermes' book and chucking it at the shadowy woman, where it landed at her feet.

"That was uncalled for." Hermes gasped.

"I don't care! She's been like this for ages!"

"I think her brain is scrambled," Aphrodite closed up her compact. "Not like it really matters! Aren't we all a little loopy after so long?" She twirled around.

Zeus stood up after her workout and shook out her hair. "Let me have the next plan. The last one was fun!"

The shadowy woman leaned against the wall and hugged herself. "Queen Serenity…."

/+/

Krýo-Greek for 'cold'.

The snowball fight in Hokkaido is a real thing, done every year and is a huge event. People are encouraged to dress up and do raunchy taunts to the other team.

I'll forever be upset Usagi never canonically went to that video game con so we never got to see her outfit, so I hope my idea was fitting for her!