Let It Snow |1| The Weather Outside Is Frightful
It was summer time in Limerick city; sure it was barely raining at all, except when it was. Fortunately for the sake of this story it wasn’t right then and B-Man was taking Eugene for a “walk” in the People’s Park. A length of dental floss was tied loosely around Eugene the wasp while B-Man held the trailing end. He strolled through the park and saw some of the regular sights and sounds; teenagers playing football or occupying gazebos to smoke fags and look cool in, families playing with their kids, hippies and goths having an extremely boring and uneventful cold war concerning who gets to smoke joints in the rocky bit away from everyone else, groups of people in their twenties and thirties; “Young professionals” attempting to drink sneaky cans out of the view of the park warden. Unfortunately for the young professionals, B-Man spotted them.
“What’s this craic now?” demanded B-Man to a group lying on the grass under the shade of some ash trees, his warden’s hat and light blue shirt giving him authoritarian powers within the confines of the park.
“Er..” said one lad with a top knot. B-Man immediately took a dislike to him.
“Err my arse. I’d let ye off drinking if it was just a few cans.” B-Man said “but ye’ve two feckin’ slabs of Crapberg. Can’t let this slide lads.” B-Man surreptitiously tied Eugene’s leash to a belt loop of his pants.
“Ah, please…”
“No. No. Nope. No way.” Said B-Man lifting up the beer in both hands, “This is confiscated. You can keep the beer you have in front of yourselves. You can get the rest back if you submit a request to the council. Should take six to eight years.”
B-Man did a smart turn and began to walk quickly back towards the warden’s hut dragging Eugene with him.
“And clean up the rest of those cans after ye!” he shouted back over his shoulder.
B-Man strolled back to the Warden’s hut, put down the slab and produced his ring of keys. It took a couple of moments to locate the right one then he opened the door, brought in the cans, and dropped them on the work bench. He put a few of the cans in a mini fridge and then sat back in his favourite old wooden chair, cracked open one of the confiscated cans and put his feet up on the table, gazing out the window.
“Ah, loverly.” Said B-Man as he sipped on the beer. He yanked on the dental floss leash and took out Eugene’s matchbox from his pocket. “Get back in there ya bugger.” Eugene buzzed back into the matchbox, threw the end of the dental floss back out and closed the box himself.
Just as B-Man was about to start ruminating on lost loves and other summer time mental wanderings he noticed that some snowflakes were falling outside the window. He took a look at the can, shrugged and took another slug. Sighing, he stood up and walked outside.
Utter chaos greeted him as the snowfall had turned into a fully-fledged blizzard; people were running for the gates with picnic baskets on their heads and blankets over their shoulders, salad was tossed everywhere and the only people who looked happy were the goths whose make up was no longer running.
Out of the blizzard emerged two RoboVikings on cross country skis, their shiny metallic heads and arses reflecting the white snow. One of them lifted a large cow’s horn to their mouth and blew a mighty noise out of the thing altogether. Their arms extended in length to the ground and started windmilling, scooping up and firing snowballs at the fleeing citizenry.
“Feck sake” muttered B-Man, taking a final sip from the can before throwing it on the ground. He ran back into the shed and slammed the door. Quickly he pulled his costume out of his back pack and got dressed. He spotted a big yellow scarf left on the coat hanger by another warden and took that too. For dramatic effect he kicked open the door and ran back outside.
“Hey! Evildoers! Feckin’ stop that!” he commanded at maximum volume. They ignored him however and skied off to chase the remaining picnickers. B-Man huffed for a bit then ran over to the large maintenance shed beside the warden’s office. After a couple of minutes banging and swearing, the door to the shed burst open to reveal B-Man sat atop a large ride on lawnmower brandishing a rake. Accelerating the mower to top speed he chased down the RoboVikings who were firing snowballs at a group of teenagers in a gazebo.
Like a modern day knight, B-Man levelled his rake while the mower approached speeds in excess of eight miles per hour. With a mighty cracking sound he lumped one of them in the back of the head, the aggressive android hit the ground like a bag of aluminum spuds. The second RoboViking fled to the football pitch with B-Man hot on his tail.
The chase was on, the RoboViking shot snowballs back at our hero as he attempted to catch up, jumping up and down in the seat of the mower as it gave all the power it could. B-Man chased him past the gazebos, through the playground and over the pitches. Finally the electrical evildoer made the fatal mistake of trying to ski uphill, B-Man quickly caught up with him and smacked him full force in the head.
Suddenly, out of the snowstorm emerged Dr. Viking, wrapped up in a huge fur coat. “Ha! You think you can stop me and my RoboVikings just using a rake! Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!”
Enraged, B-Man attempted to hit him with the rake but five RoboVikings emerged, their rocket boots screaming as they descended from the sky, and shot snowballs at B-Man, burying him up to his helmet.
“You have only seen a fraction of the power of my weather machine! Soon all of Limerick will be covered by 6 to 10 centimeters of snow, rendering your automobiles totally useless! Cross country skis will be the only method of transportation and then the city will be mine! Ha ha ha!”
“What use will it be being in control of the city if everyone is stuck inside and economic activity is completely stopped? It’s not like you can make money off a shop if it can’t open.”
“Shut up! Ha ha ha!” Two RoboVikings laid flat on the ground and the villainous Viking shoved his feet into where their bums should be.
“That’s disgusting” B-Man.
“Mind your own business! Ha ha ha ha!” shouted Dr. Viking as the androids’s rocket boots started up and he buggered off into the distance on a pair of robot/man skis.
“Ah bugger this.” said B-Man as he tried to struggle his way out of the snow pile. Activating his awesome apis abilities he convinced a couple of nearby swarms, all quite surprised by the recent snowfall (well, as surprised as bees can get) to converge on him. Flying close and using their oft underrated dancing powers they managed to melt the snow within a couple of minutes. B-Man emerged furious, enraged, absolutely fucking out of his head with anger.
“We get fuck all nice days and you ruin the best one of the summer! You Danish bastard!” he screamed at the sky. He picked his phone out of his pocket and tapped at it. It was time to get backup.
