A certain Mister Ravis stirred awake in what he assumed was his bed, groaning as he reached his left arm up to help prop himself up. Strangely enough, the bedding seemed softer underneath him, almost pillowy, significantly softer than the all-metal berthing rack he had installed in the back his Scimitar, Cruel Summer. But more importantly, it was cold. Not the soulless, detached chill carried by exposed metal, no; it was a biting chill. He knew this feeling, as he'd felt it years and years ago when he was a child back on Manhattan, and once a slight breeze blew past and cut through his layered attire like some kind of natural armor-piercing round, he knew what was up.

With a gasp, he opened his eyes, his sympathetic nervous system kicking into full gear as his heart rate increased and his pupils dilated, finding that instead of his ship, he'd been displaced in what looked like a forest clearing, a thick sheet of snow surrounding him in the dead of night, nothing more than dim moonlight illuminating his position. Tilting his head and looking down at his hands, he noticed a fine layer of frost and snow lining the creases of his tan combat shirt, the dark colors of his outfit, typically reserved for arid environments, contrasting with the winter wonderland that he now resided in. Taking a few seconds to compose himself, he looked around, noticing what looked like evergreen pines sparsely distributed throughout the area, each one carrying a layer of fresh snow. Where the hell was he? It certainly wasn't any planet he'd ever been on, hell, not even Sprague looked like this in the wintertime.

His first thought was that his ship had been hijacked; somehow, bandits had crept onto his Scimitar while he was asleep, throwing him on some backwater planet in the outer Omicrons and making off with all of his stuff. But that didn't make sense, as he still had all of his equipment on him. In particular, he had roughly 300 rounds of high-explosive-incendiary, armor-piercing ammunition on him, 6x28mm high-velocity caseless rounds that would fetch top dollar in any underground market, and a quick pat-down of his plate carrier revealed that all of his 50-round stick magazines were still present, the weight bearing down on his shoulders signifying that they were still full. Maybe they just didn't know that he had them on him, but a man sleeping in full kit wasn't exactly inconspicuous.

Looking at the flick of his wrist, he drew his left sleeve back, shivering as the chill met his exposed skin. The discomfort was a necessary sacrifice, as it revealed his high-speed digital watch, which read 0343 standard Sirian hours. Thirty minutes. He’d been asleep for thirty minutes, dreaming about...milkshakes. Not nearly enough time to steal a ship and throw someone on a planet that they’ve never seen, especially considering how well Tal got around the sector.

Footsteps in the snow behind him caught his attention, little scratches of some kind of leather boot against the frost, and so he spent no more time sitting around and brooding. With the speed expected of a highly-trained private military contractor, he dashed up onto his feet, stumbling in the thick snow as he reached down to draw his trusty FWG-5 machine pistol from his drop-leg holster. It was encrusted in ice, to the point where some icicles had actually grown off the front end of the weapon, but that didn’t bother him. The tritium-illuminated guttersnipe sights were as clear as ever, and so he leveled the weapon at a strange, dark figure in the distance. It’s silhouette was bulky, and so he wondered where to point his weapon, utilizing the central axis relock system with the lightweight laser pistol at roughly cheek-level, canted 45-degrees to the left for maximum close quarters combat effectiveness. His posture and equipment screamed “don’t fuck with me,” but he was given a rude awakening when his posture alone didn’t deter the figure.

Then, it spoke.


It was a voice he didn’t expect from his initial perception of the shadow, a rough one for sure, but it wasn’t as brutish or masculine, or, hell, as wild as he expected. Come to think of it, the hat did look awfully familiar, but why the hell would someone be wearing it out here…?


His silence was met by a follow-up, almost as if they were mocking him. Tal responded by tightening his posture, gritting his teeth as he prepared for what he believed to be imminent combat. The mention of his name caught him by surprise; who the hell was this, and how did she know him? Not just his first name, Tal, not his nickname, Underscore, and certainly not by his former rank, Lance Corporal, but his full name. Tal Ravis. If they’d thrown Yahalom into the mix, he'd probably have passed out.

His facial expression loosened up, bordering fear, but since Tal feared no man, he stood his ground, leaning forwards and presenting as small of a frontal profile as he possibly could.

“Spare me the bullshit,” he demanded, the anxiety evident in his almost-cracked tone of voice as his question echoed across the fields, “Who the fuck are you supposed to be, huh?”

In response, the figure slowly stepped out of the shadows while giving a hearty chuckle, revealing itself.


She was no man.

Tal’s face drooped, his hands shaking slightly as he gently lowered the pistol. The woman standing before him, no more than five feet tall, was dressed in some kind of Santa Claus getup, fit with some kind of dress. The bag of presents she was hauling over her shoulder looked nothing more than heavy, and this was coming from a man who’d made a career out of carrying machine guns around all day. Whatever. Disappointed that he wasn’t going to add anything impressive to his list of things he’d killed, which by now included a Bretonian, a Pygmy Maltese Man, and a rare Deepwater Gaul, he took a step back, not understanding a damn word of what she was telling him. Instead, he decided to start with an introduction, or something.

“...I know you,” he managed to sputter, after several seconds of what must’ve been awkward silence. Truth be told, he didn’t, at least, not over all of those seasonal garments, but it seemed like the right thing to say. After all, that one bartender in the Edison Trent miniseries said the same thing, right?


“So you’re like the fuckin’ Grinch, then, yeah? I can get behind that.”

She wasn’t exactly impressed with his response.


“Uh...huh,” Tal let out, lowering his pistol entirely and holstering it in the drop leg holster tied onto his right thigh. Despite the giant black sword attached to her hip, adorned with evil-looking circles running up and down the blade, she didn’t look like she was approaching him with malice. The whole situation was a little hard to believe, but a quick pinch of his arm returned enough of a painful sensation that he couldn’t be dreaming. What the hell was even going on?


“Understand what?” he asked, lowering his arms to his side and standing back upright, albeit very slowly. She’d cut herself off, but she didn’t even bother to continue explaining this strange new predicament that he’d been thrown into, assuming she was the mastermind behind it all.


Oh, hell no.

“Your reindeer?” he started, anger being to flare up in his voice, “You took me from my home and dragged me all the fucking way out here to make me your reindeer? What, you couldn’t pick anyone else?”


Before he could respond with another torrent of expletives, however, low growling coming from the treeline caught his attention, and by the looks of it, her’s, too. This probably didn’t happen all too often, and definitely didn’t sound right.


Appearing along the pines were tall, hulking figures, native wildlife, by the looks of it. Their growls were deep and throaty, typical of what would be considered apex predators on most planets, and so Tal entered fight-or-flight mode, crouching down slightly with his arms out to the side.


Tal looked at “Santa Alter” in utter disbelief, thinking that she was crazy if she was going to try and fight it out with these things. Thinking on his feet, he looked around at the ground, as he heard the sounds of a sword being unsheathed in front of him, until he saw his XV-15 automatic rifle, the dark, blue-ish gray color of the furniture and the distinctive bright red ammunition counter on the lower receiver giving its position away in the snow. Quickly, he leaned down, taking up the weapon, and conducted a chamber check, before assuming a high ready position, waddling up to stand besides the woman. He figured by conventional wisdom that it’d always come down to the infantryman and his rifle, and this time was no different, except he’d be fighting alongside Santa Claus.

It was still a bit difficult to process, but assuming this was real life and not a dream, his life was very much on the line. If the enemy was in range, then so were they.

The first of the 10-foot-tall wolfmen-esque creatures dashed from the treeline, letting out an earth-shaking roar as it lept, prancing on all fours at an incredibly fast speed on a direct collision course with him. Maybe it was the smell of synth paste or something still on him from his late night snack, but these things were evidently out for blood, and so he was weapons-free. Without a second thought, he flicked the rifle’s fire selector from safe to full-motherfucking auto, shouldering it with his thumb-over-bore, leaning in as he let loose a short, controlled burst at the pair of glowing red eyes bearing down on him at 100 meters. As it crossed into the clearing, moonlight illuminating it against the trees and snow, he could see where the rounds impacted, the hide of the animal thick enough to trigger the detonation chain of each individual round. Behind it, he could see tufts of fur, bones, and chunks of organs blow out of the creature as the rounds went off on impact, shattering it’s internals in a hail of agonizing fire and leaving it lifeless before it managed to clear another 10 meters. First blood had been drawn, and it was Underscore with the rifle that delivered the knockout uppercut on Mike Tyson himself. The rest of the pack then roared in unison, all along the treeline, at what he must assumed was the death of their leader. Dozens of pairs of red eyes appeared in the shadows, and before he knew it, the werewolf hordes were upon them.

“There they go, over there, get ‘em!” he called out, pointing into the distance. There was no use in calling out a specific contact direction, they were just about coming out of the goddamn walls at this point.

Tal took no time in engaging, while Mrs. Claus took point with her sword and charged back into the enemy, letting out a warcry of her own. Whatever. Her death was inconsequential to him at this point, and his own sense of self-preservation kicked in. Assuming a stance just like the one he’d used to down the big one, he let loose with his XV-15, firing short, controlled bursts at the bobbing and weaving figures closing in on him. Each one fell like the last, exploding in a glorious display of pyrotechnics and gore as they were shredded by the power of Ageira fucking Technologies.

One had somehow managed to close within visual range, and he caught a glimpse of what he was fighting up close. Dark brown wolfmen, growling and salivating, covered in fur with a scent that smelled like musk mixed with piss and dogshit. Gritting his teeth, he tucked and rolled as it pounced at him, his helmet falling into the snow as he came back up to a kneel. Thankfully, it had miscalculated it’s trajectory, overshooting fairly closely just above him. Underneath the belly of the beast, he raised his weapon, firing a long burst from the hip that had a terrifying effect on his target. At this range, they were going too fast to detonate immediately, especially since the wolf’s hide was nowhere near as thick as modern body armor, but the terminal ballistic properties of the mini-Raufoss rounds meant that the high-velocity rounds yawed on impact, the copper jacket fragmenting into shards that carried off into the wolf’s organs and arteries until the detonation train was eventually set off. This had a gruesome, somewhat delayed effect, as the rounds exploded in all kinds of fashion until the beastman was essentially sawed in half, showering Tal in blood and guts before landing in the snow as little more than a pile of hide and ground wolf meat, it’s insides looking like someone had thrown a hamburger patty into a tennis racket.

Breathing quickly, he turned around, standing up again and raising his weapon. The sight of him was jarring, an angry ethnic Jew red in the face, covered in blood and god knows what else, and so, all bets were off. In what amounted to nothing short of an adrenaline-fueled blood rage, he gunned down the hapless wolves as they charged across the plains, rows of hostiles collapsing in short order to a hail of automatic gunfire. Santa, in the meantime, was picking her own fights with the assailants in some kind of honor duel nonsense, off to the side and outside of assistance range. It looked like he was on his own for the time being, and so he channeled his inner ultimate badass.

“Come on, motherfucker! Come and get it, you furry fucks! Oh, you want some of this too? Fuck you!”

He could hardly hear his moto taunts over the constant gunfire, as the ambient sounds were muffled by the active-hearing protection system built into the headset that remained tight over his ears despite the loss of his helmet. The next challenger to step up to the plate disappeared in a puff of pink mist, although after that burst, his weapon returned a dull click and a whirr. Noticing a lull in his rate of fire, Tal tilted his rifle sideways, noticing the ammunition counter reading a steady “00”. Cursing under his breath, he ejected the magazine, taking the hot plastic out of the upper handguard and throwing it to the snow, where it sizzled gently.

A roar in front of him stole his attention away from slapping in another reload, however, and he looked up just in time to see one of the bastards landing right there, just a few feet from his face. Dropping the full magazine and his rifle, he drew his FWG-5, firing it one-handed into the wolf’s frontal armor. Unfortunately, even at full power and 2200 RPM, the pulse laser pistol was ineffective against the creature’s frontal armor, each flash of heat and light dissipating harmlessly into the thick fur with a hiss. Backing up ever so quickly, he ducked and dodged a sharp swipe, managing to fire off two more bursts before the animal up and grabbed him by the plate carrier, tossing him into the snow and climbing on top of him.

Utterly helpless, he watched as it bared it’s claws, growling deeply as it plunged them towards his head. Fast thinking and reflexes swerved his head out of the attack’s path, allowing him to live for just a few more seconds, and he followed up with a swift right hook that actually sent the thing reeling, even if it was only for a brief moment. It paid to have hard-knuckle gloves for times like this.

It responded in kind by roaring right in his face, and Tal reached his hand out to block the torrent of bad breath and saliva flying right at his unmasked face, grimacing at the smell and droplets of slimy wolf spit landing on his forehead. It reached it’s arm up again, ready to bring it back down and send him to heaven, but by some grace of God, a flash of red swung by and sheared it’s arm clean off, showering Tal in even more blood. A followup slice came through, the werewolf giving out a faint whimper, and Tal lowered his hand to find Santa Alter kicking the upper half of the now-bisected corpse of the beast off of him. Unlike him, she wasn’t covered in blood and spit, and was simply carrying her sword and presents like it was no big deal. Panting heavily, Tal crawled out from underneath the severed lower half of what would’ve been his killer, using the sole of his boot to cram some exposed intestines back into the chest cavity incase they flopped out onto his scampering legs. In silence, he sat, looking down at his bloodstained gear, until Alter offered him her gloved hand. Sighing, he reached up and took it, using her surprisingly high amount of strength to pull himself off the ground, wiping some residual kidneys off of his plate carrier. She gave him time to collect both himself and his dropped weaponry before she resumed speaking, as if nothing had happened at all.


He looked up at her as he slapped the fresh magazine into his rifle, the ammo counter lighting back up with a bright red “50”, with the characteristic, blank, detached thousand-yard stare of someone who’d just come harrowingly close to death, as if his post-combat physical appearance alone wasn’t enough to give off the impression that he wasn’t in the mood to put up with this bullshit right now. Upon seeing this, however, her face only seemed to light up with a sheepish grin, as she pushed the boundaries even further.


“Yeah, yeah, fine, fuck, fuckin’ whatever, I’ll do it,” he interjected, picking his helmet off the floor and clearing snow off of it with the keratan-coated palms of his assault gloves. Once the liner of the helmet had been stripped of any stray globs of frost, he slipped it on, seating it and making sure it was snug with the straps actually on this time.


With a snap of her fingers, she materialized an ornate sleigh before the duo, climbing on and holding the sack of presents over the spacious rear compartment.


Tal stepped forwards towards Santa Alter, without much of a choice other than to find an undamaged wolf carcass to curl up in in the hopes that’d he’d be warm enough survive the night. Whatever, he didn’t have much left to lose now, anyways, and so he climbed onto the sleigh, looking back at the carnage they’d inflicted as his new ride seemed to take off on it’s own power. Startled, he jumped up and into the passenger’s seat, looking up into the starry night sky as they ascended. There’d be more stuff here, but it’s 5 AM, I’m out of inspiration, I have a final in 2 days, and Discovery doesn’t mesh well with the game I stole this from.