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 delta squad glove-covered hands, he noticed a fine layer of frost and snow lining the angles and crevices of his smartgun harness, the khaki 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 Shiva’s Snowball looked like this.
His first thought was that his ship had been hijacked; somehow, the CLF had crept onto the Almayer while he was asleep, throwing him on some backwater planet in the outer rim 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 smartgun ammunition on him, 10x28mm caseless rounds WITH a gun that would fetch top dollar in any underground market, and a quick pat-down of his thigh revealed that his M39 submachine gun was also still there, along with four spare reloads in his webbing and harness rigging. Maybe they just didn't know that he had them on him, but a grown ass motherfucking man taking a nap in full smartgunner 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 VVS diamond-encrusted Rolex watch, which read 0343 standard 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 even mapped. Quietly, he sighed, reaching up to brush some stray frost off of his light-blue USCM beret.
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 Smartgunner, with combat experience in similar conditions to back it up, he dashed up onto his feet, stumbling in the thick snow as he reached down to draw his trusty M39 submachine from his mid-ride SMG holster. It was encrusted in ice, to the point where some icicles had actually grown off the front end of the KAC suppressor, but that didn’t bother him. The close-combat red dot sight lens was 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, before deciding to just lay center mass with the 2.5 MOA dot of his optic. His posture, silhouette, and equipment screamed “don’t fuck with me,” but he was given a rude awakening when this aggressive stance 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, feminine one, instead of that of a brutish male or wild animal. 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 she 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 rank, Lance Corporal, but his full name. Tal Ravis. If she threw Yahalom into the mix, he'd probably have passed out. His facial expression loosened up, but as a man who’d faced down predators and countless CLF, UPP, Xenos, PMCs, and the occasional other rare deep space Jew, he couldn’t back down. Not from this, whoever this fucking joker was.“Spare me the shit,” 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 M39 submachine gun. 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 the Disco King, a pygmy CLF fighter, and a rare Deepwater Russian, 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 Freelancer intro said the same thing, right?
“So what are you, then, the fuckin’ Grinch?”She wasn’t exactly impressed with his response.
“Uh...huh,” Tal let out, lowering his SMG entirely and holstering it back into the M276-pattern SMG holster rig strapped to his right thigh. Despite the giant black sword attached to her hip, adorned with evil-looking red 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 ship 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 sound of a sword being unsheathed in front of him, until he saw his M56B Smartgun, the dark metallic sheen of the furniture and the distinctive bright red ammunition counter on the receiver giving its position away in the snow. Quickly, he leaned down, taking up the weapon, and conducted a chamber check, before assuming a ready position, waddling up to stand besides the woman. He’d claimed it’d always came 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 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 USCM prepared meals and stale USCM protein bars 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 M56 head-mounted sight over onto his right eye, 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 that delivered the knockout punch 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 reindeer-furry-man hordes were upon them.
“Ah fuck, incoming, northwest, waste the motherfuckers!” he called out, pointing into the distance. There was no real use in calling out a specific contact direction other than to sound cool, since 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 first big one, he let loose with his M56B, firing wildly 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 Armat fucking Battlefield Systems.
One had somehow managed to close within visual range, and he caught a glimpse of what he was fighting up close. Dark brown reindeer men, growling and salivating, covered in fur with a scent that smelled like raw musk mixed with piss and dogshit. Gritting his teeth, he tucked and juked as it pounced at him, his beret falling into the snow as he staggered briefly, leveling the weapon back onto target. Thankfully, it had miscalculated it’s trajectory, overshooting fairly closely just above him. Underneath the belly of the beast, he raised the muzzle of his weapon, firing two quick bursts 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 smartgun rounds meant that they 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 meat trimmings.
Breathing quickly, he turned around, standing up again and raising his weapon. The sight of him was jarring, the motherfucking Goy Eviscerator himself, in the flesh, red in the face, covered in blood and god knows what else, and all bets were off now. In what amounted to nothing short of a blind rage, he continued to gun down the hapless reindeer men as they charged across the plains, 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, although Tal could care less about her right now.
“Come on, motherfucker! Come and get it, you furry fucks! Oh, you want some of this too? Fuck you!”
He could hardly hear his 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. 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 looked down, noticing the ammunition counter reading a steady “000”. Cursing under his breath, he looked down, finding an empty 50-round non-disintegrating link sitting in the snow, where it sizzled gently. A roar in front of him stole his attention away from even thinking about refilling his weapon from his M56 powerpack, however, and he looked up just in time to see one of the bastards landing right in front of him. Dropping the smartgun, staggering forwards as the M56B Smartgun (Birth Control) snapped back onto his M56 combat harness, he drew his M39 SMG, firing it into the wolf’s frontal armor. Unfortunately, even with a red dot, suppressor, burst fire assembly, and AP rounds, the submachine gun was ineffective against the creature’s frontal armor, each round deflecting harmlessly of the thick fur. 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 his smartgun harness, tossing him into the snow and climbing atop 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 soles of his marine combat boots to cram some exposed intestines back into the chest cavity in case 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 chunks of kidney off of his harness. 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 filled his M56B with a spare belt, the ammo counter lighting back up with a bright red “50” and indicating that he was ready to rock and roll, with the characteristic, blank, detached thousand-yard stare of someone who’d just come harrowingly close to being vored, 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 beret off the floor and clearing snow off of it with the blood-coated palms of his delta squad gloves. Once the liner of the beret had been stripped of any stray globs of frost, he slipped it on, seating it and making sure it was on snug 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 it’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.Man, he thought, sighing, Wasn’t this fucking story supposed to come out seven months ago?
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Chibi Leon by Okand37. Huge thanks to her!
(Huge thanks to Okand37 for making this cute boi !)
