DISCO INFERNO

Lagann landed so gently Kamina barely felt it, a credit to Simon's precise piloting skills. Kamina hopped out of the cockpit and stumbled as soon as his feet touched the ground. Or rather, where the ground should have been. The white powder was so lightly packed that Kamina fell straight through it, an inch or two to a deeper layer of something harder. Even this deeper layer crunched and sank slightly beneath his sandals. 

“Careful,” he called out to Simon, who was scrambling over the lip of the cockpit. “Whatever it is, it's not stable to walk on. Watch your step.”

Simon nodded, and managed to land more gracefully. His thick pigmole leather boots seemed better suited to the task than Kamina's light sandals. Simon crouched to examine the powder more closely and gently ran his fingers through the loose top layer. “It’s cold!”

Kamina could have told him that - his exposed feet were already starting to complain - but watching Simon discover all the wonders of the surface was more rewarding. Less rewarding was watching Simon stick a fingertip of mystery substance in his mouth. And Yoko called Kamina impulsive. 

“Huh, it's water.”

“Water?”

“Yeah, it melted from my body heat and turned into water. This must be another form of ice.”

Kamina stooped to get a handful for himself. “It's pretty different from those little cubes Littner folk put in their drinks.” Ice had been its own neat surprise; whatever technology Littner used to make it hadn't been available in Jiha. Kamina still remembered the headache he got from chugging ice water too fast, so he licked the handful of ice powder cautiously. Sure enough, it melted on his tongue into a chilled trickle of water. 

Kamina's investigation was interrupted by his ear piece chiming. “What’s the hold up, you two?” Yoko’s voice was staticky and muffled from the distance, but still intelligible. “Your icon on the map stopped moving.” Kamina knew she would deny it if pressed, but she sounded slightly worried. 

“Everything's good up here. We stopped to get a closer look at this weird white stuff we're pretty sure is some kind of ice.”

“You mean snow?”

“Is that what it's called?”

Another, more annoying voice chimed in over the comm, “It's when rain freezes high up in the clouds and doesn't get warm enough to melt on the way down.”

“You're telling me that not only does water regularly fall from the sky, but sometimes it's frozen, too?” 

Leeron launched into a deeper explanation of the water cycle, which Kamina dutifully nodded along to. He only distantly noted the soft crunching of snow under Simon's feet, too engrossed in any new knowledge of the surface. So it came as quite a shock when Kamina's vision was overtaken by white and a ball of cold smacked him in the face. Stunned completely stupid, Kamina could only stand there with a face covered in snow as his brain worked back up to full speed.

By the time he cleared the snow from his eyes, Simon was doubled over and cackling with glee. “Your face! You shoulda seen your face.”

Oh, so that's how it was, huh? Two could play at that game. Kamina quickly scooped up snow with two hands and packed it into a ball, then hurled it at Simon. It struck him in the shoulder, exploding into a burst of white powder. Fully distracted from Leeron's lecture, Kamina clicked his comm back off to better focus on pelting his little brother with snowballs. Simon ducked behind a fallen tree, returning fire when he could. Holding up his cape as a shield with one arm, and keeping up the pressure with the other, Kamina ensured Simon stayed pinned down as he closed the distance.

“Gotcha!” Kamina lunged. He latched on the back of Simon’s collar, and shoved his snowball down the gap between the jacket and Simon's skin. Simon shrieked at the sudden cold, ripping out of Kamina's grip to desperately try to shake the snow free from his jacket. Kamina threw his head back and laughed, not seeing Simon turn and charge at him until Simon's shoulder rammed into his stomach. The force sent them both crashing to the ground. 

The loose snow plumed around them as they wrestled. Simon wore a playful scowl as he tried to shove Kamina's head into the deeper snow drifts. Kamina grabbed fistfuls of snow and mostly missed Simon's collar, instead smearing it through Simon's hair.