Festive Fencing

“You fucking beerch,” Wattica snarled, the black sword in her claws rearranging itself back into a massive gun aimed at Comet. “You’re going to pay for that!”

“Don’t attack her with magic!” Sevviya barked, eyes glowing bright with astral sight. “Her clothes are… extra-reactive! They feed on intent!”

“Intent of what?!” Wattica asked, retreating away from Comet.

“They weaponize the concept of ‘Naughty’!” Sevviya yelled back. “If you target her with malice, the artifact-chain inverts the attack, uses your own mana and belief in the Slayer to convert your body into dungeon bloom!”

Comet looked victorious. The bells on her choker jingled menacingly as she dusted herself off. Another prad pulled hissing Carrla away, spraying the tiger’s hand-stumps with black liquid from a small container with a green cross in a circle.

“Saint Nikky protects her jolly reindeer!” the Maned Wolf claimed smugly. She swiped the air with colorful claws, leaving a trail of frost twinkling in the air. “You want to hostile me again? Go ahead! You’ll be struck down by your own crystalline hearts! You’re all slaves to the Frontenachii dominion, forced into wickedness by your masters! You know in your souls that you are all naughty!”

A few of the gathered prads winced ever so slightly at the judging words of the Herald.

“You’ve got something non-magical to take her down?” I asked the growling Wendigo beside me.

“Null rounds. Handy shit for stopping high-level mages,” Wattica replied. “They disrupt aetheric fields on impact, won’t care about ‘intent’ or ‘naughty lists’ and should punch a hole through her festive sweater, ribcage, and the booth behind her.”

“I’d rather not damage her that much,” I said. “We need to interrogate her about the dungeon warship without wasting time on incarnation.”

“Let’s try a manual solution,” Wattica stated. “Kendra, Seclii! Null fields on, we’ve got us a clever witch to disarm!”

A prad female hawk and crocodile stepped out, holding black swords. Their armor rearranged itself into small black pyramids. Other prads stepped away from them as the floor around the pair of sword-wielding knights turned completely gray.

“Chop up her outfit!” the Wendigo ordered. “Try not to damage her too badly.”

The swordsgals blurred as did the festive wolf. My gun unit processors accelerated and time slowed, allowing me to track their fight. The hawk and crocodile were fast, but sadly not as agile as Comet.

The Maned Wolf rapidly exhumed a pair of candy-cane colored rapiers from her sweater pockets, repelling the black swords with sharp clangs.

Snowflakes flew around Comet, hissing as they evaporated against the gray bubbles surrounding the Nullifying-field-armed prads.

“An anti-magic projection?” Comet chirped, dodging a swing from the hawk. Her candy-cane rapiers collided merrily against the null-swords again, sending sparks. “Null-fields cannot stop the passion of a fit, living heart! The holidays are a physical burden! You must pick presents with love and wrap everything swell as is tradition!”

The hawk soldier dove forward, black blade aiming for Comet’s stick-on antlers.

Comet dropped to a crouch, long, spindly legs acting like loaded springs.

“Hold still!” The crocodile roared, lunging.

Comet exploded upward, vaulting over the reptile’s head. She flew out of the null-field’s range, reached into her extradimensional pockets and pulled out two large cylinders.

“Wrapping time!” she declared.

Thick, glossy paper unspooled. It didn’t look like an ordinary kind of wrapper and shimmered with reinforced fibers, visibly tough enough to tow a truck.

She landed behind the crocodile. With a manic giggle, Comet whipped a roll of red and gold foil around the knight’s snout.

The croc girl tried to free her jaws, but the paper held.

Comet spun, moving ten times faster than a biological creature should. She circled the irate crocodile, unspooling yards of the high-tensile material. “Round and round we go!”

The crocodile slashed with her null-blade. The paper caught the weapon, bunching up and failing to shear. It was sticky and quickly bound her arms to her torso.

“Get off her!” The hawk thrust her sword where Comet stood a second ago.

Comet leapt sideways, using the bound reptile as a springboard. She threw a second blue and silver roll at the avian.

The roll hit the hawk in the face, unraveling instantly.

Comet grabbed the loose end and yanked.

The hawk stumbled. Comet scrambled up the side of a booth, jumping over the avian’s head, effectively creating a pulley system with the paper. She wrapped the material around the hawk’s hands, pinning them tight against the hexasuit.

“Gotta make it look neat!” Comet yelled, pulling the roll until the hawk’s grayscale-field casting armor creaked.

She kicked the back of the crocodile’s knee, forcing her down, then shoved the hawk on top of the reptile.

With a final flourish, she bound them together, looping the pair into a tight knot.

The two prad girls lay on the floor, groaning, whimsically mummified into festive presents.

“And a bow on top!” Comet slapped a large, sticky red bow onto the hawk’s chest.

She stopped in front of her victims, panting.

“Hmpf.” She looked at Wattica, smoothing her skirt. “That was rude. Guests deserve cocoa, not null-swords.”

Wattica scowled at her defeated champions and smug Comet.

“She beat them with stationery,” Galateya commented, observing the situation through Sage’s wall monitors.

“A clever way to oppose nullification. Howevah, she fights like someone desperate,” Sage added. “Someone who knows she is cornered.”

“Is she cornered, though?” Galateya asked.

“She’s absolutely cornered,” Sage insisted.

“Kawartha is outside the pub in a Corpse Seeker. She’s already barricaded the exits with twenty ton concrete blocks,” I said with my human lips. “She won’t be able to get through such, right?” I glanced at the Skinwalker resting her head on my shoulder.

“The limitation of concept rewriting magic is that it cannot eat through solid rock that quickly, especially on a linear world,” Sage replied, “she deffo trapped.”

“She can’t gate out, right?” Galateya asked.

“Gating requires the presence of a very powerful dimensional mage and a softer, much more malleable Astral. I’m watching out for their moth. If she makes a move, I’ll intercept the targeting vector and yeet it at the big hole in the moon.”

“Plus Kawthy is blocking local gating with a barrier shield projected from her Seeker. Sage, can you mess up many incoming gates like that?” I asked. “Prevent the Greens from infesting our Earth with their magic forests?”

“Alas, no,” Sage sighed. “Screwing with moths requires my utmost attention. I cannot disrupt a location I cannot physically focus the skulk on. I’m not an omnipresent critter.”

“That was a very pretty dance,” I addressed the panting Maned Wolf as the Emperor. “But, can you dance faster than null bullets?”

Comet glared at me.

“Do you get that you can’t keep this up forever, Comet?” I asked. “Wattica can shoot the clothes off your body. Along with the limbs attached to them.”

Comet’s fur paled.

“G-go ahead,” she let out, calling my bluff. “I’m… I’m not afraid of death or pain! I will be reborn within my Lady’s Workshop! Hurt me enough and my heartcore will implode, seeding festivus!”

“Sage, how come Sergey didn’t turn into a tree?” Galateya asked. “He’s been face-humping her sweater for like an entire minute, no?”

“No magically-backed ill intent,” Sage answered. “The artifacts weaponize the attacker’s own mana. Also, I think that they don’t see humans as a danger. No magic to reflect as our lovely humans are magically inert, have no heart cores.” She pawed at me from behind.

“So the humans can undress her without blooming?” I asked as my human self.

“All signs point to yes,” Sage answered.

“I’m giving you ten seconds to undress then we start shooting!” Wattica barked at the festive prad.

“Hold your fire, Commander,” I ordered as the Emperor, raising an armored hand.

“She turned my Knight’s paws into a festive hedge,” the Wendigo girl growled. “I am going to shred her!”

“And risk the magical backlash of turning the entire bar into a ginger-bread house?” I countered. “Look at her. She’s a walking booby trap rigged with tinsel.”

Comet Evergreen puffed out her sweater-covered chest, projecting defiant, albeit slightly concerned, merriment. “Yes! My Saint’s protection is absolute! Strike me down, and you shall all become ornaments on the Great Tree of—”

“Zip it with the threats, Herald,” I cut her off. “You’ve already boxed yourself into a corner. By turning Carrla’s paws into landscaping, you’ve pretty much admitted to everyone here that you’re a baddie.”

“What?!” Comet gasped. “I am NOT a baddie! I am a… A bringer of joy! A good girl!”

“Good girls don’t mulch people’s hands,” I pointed out. “Good girls bring presents, not dispense pine-needle leprosy. You hurt her and thus… By your own logic, that puts you squarely on the Naughty List.”

“No!” Comet defended herself, vanishing the candy-cane swords back into her pockets. “It was self-defense! She attacked me, smacked me into the table! The sweater judged her ill-intent! I am pure! I am the nicest reindeer of all!”

“If you are so nice,” I said, “then you have nothing to fear from the innocent, right?”

“What?” She blinked.

I turned my head toward the corner of the booth where Sergey was trying very hard pretending not to exist.

“Sergey,” I boomed.

The astrophysicist flinched. “I didn’t do it! I don’t know what ‘it’ is, but I… I have rights!”

“Sergey,” I said with a warmer tone. “You are about to become a hero of humanity. You are going to disarm the bomb.”

“Bomb?” Sergey looked around wildly. “What bomb?! Where?”

I pointed a metal finger at Comet. “Her.”

Comet growled. “You better not touch me! My sweater will consume you! It will turn your bones into candy canes!”

“No, I don’t think that it will,” I stated, trusting in Sage’s advice. “Carrla attacked you with intent to harm. Does Sergey look capable of malice, Miss Herald?”

We all looked at Sergey. He looked like a wet owl in fogged up glasses.

“He tastes like he’s about to pee himself,” Wattica observed dryly. “A puddle of liquefied fear. Very yummy.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Pure innocence. Sergey, I am giving you a direct order as the Emperor of Earth. Take off her sweater.”

Sergey choked. “You want me to… strip the alien wolf lady?”

“To save the world,” I said. “Think of it as… unwrapping a very dangerous present.”

“I am not a present!” Comet yelled. “I am—”

“Do it, or the Wendigo will have no choice but to shoot her arms and legs off,” I told Sergey. “And if she accidentally kills her, the resulting X-mass implosion might turn you into a fruitcake. Literally. Do you want to be a fruitcake, Sergey?”

“I… I have a gluten intolerance,” Sergey muttered.

“Then get to work.” I said.

Sergey swallowed hard and reached out with trembling hands.

“Don’t do it!” Comet hissed, baring her teeth. “It will bite your hands off! It has conceptual teeth! Knit, purl, KILL!”

“She’s bluffing,” I said confidently, hoping I wasn’t about to get the nerdy astrophysicist killed. “You’ve touched the sweater already. It can’t hurt you.”

Sergey reached out, his fingers brushed the fabric.

Everyone flinched slightly. Wattica and her prad kobolds kept their fingers on the gun triggers.

Nothing happened.

No pine needles. No frost. No explosions. Simply a guy touching a sweater.

Sergey blinked. He poked the fabric again. “It’s… soft?”

“It’s a cashmere blend!” Comet blurted out, indignantly, batting his hand away. “High quality! Obviously it’s soft! Hands off!”

“See?” I said. “The sweater doesn’t mind you. You’re just a harmless human, one who doesn’t believe in See-Mass, doesn’t give a fuck about the Slayer. Now, take it off.”

“I… okay.” Sergey looked at Comet. “Ma’am, could you… lift your arms?”

“Ma’am?! I will not!” Comet indignantly crossed her arms over her chest.

“Sergey,” I sighed. “Be more firm. Start with the fake antlers. She can’t defend all of the artifacts. Everyone human, help out. Disarm the Herald!”

Sergey seemingly made a decision and lunged for the reindeer antlers.

Comet blurred in the air, once again showcasing that pradavarian physiology was no joke.

She ducked under Sergey’s grab, grabbed his wrist and simply… set him aside. Gently. Like one might move a toddler who was about to touch a hot stove.

“No pawing the merchandise without permission!” Comet yipped, vaulting over the table. Her skirt fluttered, bells jingling frantically.

“Humans! Intercept her!” I bellowed. “Prads and Omnids, keep away from her!”

“For the Emperor!” Dave roared, abandoning his beer and diving over the booth.