This Means War
It starts with two sides facing off against each other across a field; one clad in red, the other in pink. They glared across at each other, readying themselves for a clash. There was a tense silence broken by restless fidgeting.
“Dragons,” a strong voice called out and the girls in red moved in sync, stamping their feet and shouting. Jensen’s niece, Juniper, folded her arms and gave the other team an unimpressed look. At the end of the haka, she gave a sniff and turned away, her other team mates following her.
“Go Petunias!” Jensen yelled, half rising from his seat. Cougar rolled his eyes and tilted his hat down over his eyes while Jo slipped her arm in Jensen’s and held him in his seat.
“The game hasn’t even started yet,” Eliot muttered from the other side of Cougar as he slid down on the bleacher seat and pulled his hood up to cover his head. Cougar grunted next to him. Alec and Ben leaned forward, looking fascinated. As children, their martial training and superior abilities had made team sports a complicated prospect. Parker was draped over Hardison’s shoulder, watching him work on his phone. Methos and Jane, Jake’s sister and Juniper’s mother, sat to one side, watching the rest of them indulgently.
“I want a clean game,” the referee said, voice starting strong but beginning to waver toward the end as he glanced from the Red Dragons’ rather large coach to the stands where Jensen and his family was sitting.
Things devolved from there. As aggressively enthusiastic as the coach was, Jensen matched him shout for shout, eventually drawing the twins into his spiritedness. Methos pinched the bridge of his nose when even Jo gave up trying to keep Jensen in his seat, with the twins chiming in and egging him on.
“Come on, Sam,” the Dragons’ coach yelled. “These amateurs have nothing on you!”
“Who are you calling amateur!?” Jensen demanded, up and out of his seat before anyone could stop him as he stalked over to the coach. “No one calls my niece an amateur!”
He punctuated his shouting by jabbing his gun (“Who let him have his gun?” Eliot moaned) in the coach’s chest. The man looked entirely unimpressed and, clearly reaching the end of his rope, he reached out faster than any of them expected and grabbed the gun out of Jensen’s hands. The twins were at his sides in moments with Jo, Eliot and Cougar not far behind. None of them were paying any attention to the screaming and chaos their actions had elicited in the crowd.
“You take that back,” Jensen said with a pout as the man shifted to try to keep Cougar and Jo in sight as they’d drawn their own guns while Eliot and the twins circled him.
“Dad?” one of the girls from the Dragons team questioned, drawing closer but still keeping a healthy distance.
“I’ll just be a moment, Sam,” he said evenly.
“They’re so embarrassing,” Juniper said, coming to stand next to Sam.
“I know,” Sam agreed, rolling her eyes. “They take it way more seriously than we do.”
“Twizzler?” Juniper asked, offering one to Sam who accepted.
“I’m Sam.”
“Juniper.”
“Dad, Juniper’s coming over for a sleep over,” Sam suddenly decided and Juniper grinned, turning an expectant expression on the adults.
Jensen narrowed his eyes at the coach and the rest of the family really hoped he wasn’t going to disappoint Juniper. Nothing good ever happened when Juniper was disappointed.
“Okay, honey,” the coach said, making him rise in the family’s estimation to someone with at least a small amount of self-preservation.
“So,” Methos began from where he and Jane were still sitting on the bleachers, distraught parents cowering behind them. Hardison and Parker continued to sit a little further away, making sure no cell calls to the police could be made. “Did you have a chance to try out that new biscuit recipe?”
“Not yet,” she told him. “But it looks like I’ll have a chance this evening.”