Rigal's Merry Christmas II: Big Blue's Blue Balls

Rigal Phenex

I giggled like a schoolgirl. I just had no idea what else I should do. Kitten, daughter of the not-so-illustrious Killer Moth, had summoned me, a devil.

She'd initially offered her soul and virginity in exchange for power because she thought that if she had powers of her own, she could help her father. It was sweet, in a "You are why the dumb blonde stereotype exists," kinda way.

Except, instead of giving her soul to me, not that I'd have accepted the trade, she, being th dyslexic imbecile she was, sold her soul to Santa.

"So… Let me get this straight," my lovely girlfriend said. "Santa, Saint Nick, is real."

"That is correct," I confirmed.

"What? Is that why I've been getting coal in my stockings since I was four?" Kitten shrieked, offended. "Daddy kept saying he'll turn the coal to diamonds!"

"You're an idiot… And also, maybe the annual delivery of coal should have told you something…"

"Told me what?"

"That you've been on the naughty list for most of your life. Congratulations, Kitten. Even I've not received coal for that many years in a row. How does it feel to officially be naughtier than the devil?"

"I'm not on the naughty list!"

"You are. Anyway, you've managed to give your soul to Santa. I wonder if he thinks you're trying to bribe him or something…"

"Well, so what? I wasn't using it anyway."

"Ain't that the truth," I muttered. I gave Zatanna a look of doe-eyed innocence at her chiding stare. "What? We were both thinking it."

She punched me on the arm. "Be serious, Rigal. Kitten, no matter whether you think souls are real or not, not having a soul is a big deal."

"Yeah? What's the worst that can happen?" she asked.

"Well, the biggest issue is that you don't enter the River of Souls when you die. You know, reincarnation, Heaven, Hell, whatever other afterlife you think you might go to. And trust me, you will go to one."

"Psh, that's like, an eternity away."

"You might think that because you're young, but it's not that simple. A soul is the potential for life. Not having it will mean you can't ever progress, can't ever get better at anything you've ever done or will do. Worse, you'll slowly start to lose what life force you have until you slowly go insane."

"That… That doesn't sound good."

"Yup. You're really going to want that back, and soon."

"W-Well, what do we do?"

I snorted. It was finally sinking in just how massively she'd fucked up. I crossed my arms and shrugged. "We? What 'we?' You're the one who gave away her soul like it's a fucking party favor. No one made you do it. Neither Zatanna nor I have any obligation to help you get your soul back."

"What? You have to!" she cried, tearing up now. "I only gave it away because of your stupid bookmark!"

"You gave it away because you're an illiterate idiot who couldn't be assed to figure out the details of a demonic summoning ritual. You're on your own, brat."

"B-But… That's not fair…"

"Rigal," Zatanna said. I knew that tone. Her "hero-mode" was kicking in again.

"Zatanna, you know I'm right," I told her. "Magic can have capital 'C' Consequences. It's not our job to protect her from her own fuckups."

"Yes, but…"

"But nothing. I get that you want to help every poor schmuck in the world, and I love that about you, but I don't do charity work, not even on Christmas."

"Well… What if it's not charity work?" she asked, eyeing the athame. I could practically see the gears turning in her pretty head. It took no time at all for her to figure out what I was angling for. "What if we got something out of it?"

"I am always open to negotiation," I said, also eyeing the dagger. She saw it as her duty to confiscate dangerous magical artifacts from hapless imbeciles like Kitten before they did anything unfortunate… more unfortunate. So, good cop, bad cop it was. "Tell you what, Kitten."

"W-What?" the blonde valley girl asked, not realizing the silent conversation that went on right beneath her nose.

"I'll help you get your soul back. As part of this help, I will take you to the North Pole, where we can find Santa. I'll even assist in negotiating for your soul."

"Y-You will?"

"Yup. In exchange, I want that knife."

"This old thing? Fine, take it," she said, thrusting it towards me. "It's ugly anyway."

The athame was a curved fileting knife, all the better to get between bones, with an onyx-black blade. Its handle was made from ivory and cypress, with inlays of bronze for decoration. It wasn't ugly; it just didn't match Kitten's personal taste, which was to say, pink.

It was also coated in her blood. And she was giving it to me. I had to remind myself that she couldn't possibly know the significance, or the danger, of handing over a ritual knife coated in her own blood.

As strange as it might seem, consent mattered where magic was concerned. It was why fey and vampires needed specific permissions to enter dwellings. They weren't the only ones either, just the most well-known. The amount of shit I could do to her with her literally serving her blood to me on a ritual medium couldn't be overstated.

I took a deep breath and wiped the knife clean with a handkerchief before burning it to ashes. The knife went in my dimensional pocket. Dead useful things, those. I couldn't wait to get back home so I could start studying this thing. Maybe this thing was only good for rituals, but even that would be a big boon to my research.

I motioned towards her closet. "Go get changed, Kitten. Dress warm, won't you?"

"R-Right now? It's time for bed!"

"It's also time for Santa to ride his sleigh. We need to hurry."

"F-Fine," she said, heading for her walk-in closet.

I nudged Zatanna towards her. She'd dressed for Jump City's nightlife, which was to say, hip-hugging jean shorts, a white blouse, and a leather jacket. She looked incredible, but maybe not for the North Pole. "You might want to borrow something from her too, Z."

"Alright, but it'd better not be pink," she grumbled. "You know, I didn't think our Christmas date would be to go mug Santa, but here we are."

"What can I say? I live an exciting life."

X

The North Pole was… exactly what we expected. Which was to say, it was a frozen wasteland. It was also dark because the North Pole saw sunlight for six months out of the year and we weren't visiting during the sunny half. On the plus side, the stars were breathtakingly majestic.

We appeared near a big glacier. That was a strange oddity about this world. From what I remembered, there was no landmass over the North Pole in my old world. By whatever quirk of tectonic drifting, there was one here. It wasn't large, maybe ten square miles or so, but I could now understand how Santa could have his workshop here.

"I can't see anything," Kitten complained. She had on a thick, pink parka with a fluffy hood that was apparently from this year's winter selection of a famous fashion brand.

"Just enjoy the stars, princess. Your eyes will adjust to the dark in a little bit," Zatanna said, not having any trouble with the dark.

She'd picked out a warm winter coat from Kitten's wardrobe and had changed her jean shorts for longer pants, but hadn't bothered to bundle up as much. Devils, even reincarnated devils, were made of sterner stuff, after all.

She also had on a polar bear beanie with thick, woolen ear flaps that bounced around each time she moved her head. She was adorable and I had to clamp down on my urge to squish her cheeks and kiss her silly.

"They are pretty…" the heiress mumbled. "I've never seen the stars like this before."

"There's a lot of beauty right outside your mansion. All you have to do is look," my girlfriend replied gently. Was… Was this a growing moment for the heiress? Did I dare hope? "Right, so where to, Rigal? I don't see a workshop or a merry band of elves."

I gestured towards the glacier. "We ask for directions."

"Ask who? I don't think even the Eskimos come this far north."

"I'm swearing you both to secrecy. You are women. You are not welcome in this most sacred of man caves," I said with utmost gravity. I turned and placed a hand on each of their shoulders to emphasize how serious I was, and to cast a warming spell for them, but mostly the seriousness. "And yet, in flagrant violation of the bro code, I have brought you here. You are being permitted to know of its existence on account of Kitten's extraordinary circumstances. You will not speak of this place to anyone, on pain of disappointing the biggest, bluest puppy in existence."

"What? Does Clifford the BIg Red Dog's cousin live here?" my girlfriend snarked.

I smiled and picked up Kitten in a bridal carry, making her yelp cutely before nestling into my arms. My wings flared out behind me as we took to the air. "Come on, love. You'll see. I suspect he knows we're here already."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

We crested the glacier in record time. Zatanna was easily the best flyer in my peerage, myself and Max excluded for being born with the ability. She had a certain adventurousness that many of my retinue lacked and she loved to fly between New York and Gotham rather than simply teleport to visit Shadowcrest.

I smiled at the audible gasp that left her. The sight was every bit as beautiful as I'd imagined. Superman's Fortress of Solitude sat at the top of the glacier, its crystalline structure looking like a modern art sculpture.

I wondered how the various governments never noticed this thing. Maybe there was a kryptonian artifact there that masked it from Earth's primitive surveillance. Or maybe the governments did know and decide that giving Superman a place to rest and relax wasn't worth arguing over.

"This is a… man cave…?" Zatanna asked in wonder. "Looks more like a bit of abstract art."

"Porque no los dos?" I asked back. "Come on, let's go knock."

"Big Blue, you said. Superman? This is Superman's man cave?"

"You could even call it a super man cave."

"Sometimes, I forget why I agreed to date you. And then you say things like this and make me wonder if I'd gone temporarily insane," she deadpanned.

"Ouch, harsh. You just don't get my sense of humor, Z."

"Ugh, gross. Flirt when you're not on my clock," Kitten said. Given her choice of boyfriend included Fang, I wasn't sure her taste in romance could be trusted. "How are we supposed to knock? I don't see a doorbell."

I conjured a brilliant ball of fire in my hand. The light bounced off the many faces of polished ice, bathing us in a bright, warm glow. "The only way I know how."

Before I could, a hidden door opened, revealing the Man of Steel himself. He was dressed in a nightgown, arms crossed and looking distinctly unhappy to see me.

Next to him was the Pulitzer-winning journalist herself, Lois Lane. She had on a similar nightgown, though several sizes too big on her slim frame. Clearly, she'd borrowed one of Clark's. She looked just as annoyed to see us as Clark did.

"There's no need for your brand of 'knocking,' Rigal," Clark said with a deep, disappointed frown.

"So, what was that about a man cave?" Kitten asked.

"We've been betrayed," I replied solemnly. "I'm very disappointed in you, Clark. You've betrayed the bro code."

"The bro code?" Lois said with an amused quirk of the lips.

"No such thing, not here in my fortress," Clark defended. "And the–"

"Don't worry about the name thing," I said, waving him off. "Zatanna is obviously trustworthy and if Kitten tells anyone your real name, I'll rip out her soul and slow-roast it over hellfire until Lady Deedee herself comes to collect."

"W-What? I didn't agree to that!" Kitten yelpted.

"You did when I took this job. Obviously, anything involving Santa is secret, which extends to the North Pole at large. I then swore you to secrecy about this fortress, which includes Clark over here."

"I didn't say yes!"

"I'm a devil. Your consent is irrelevant. The only thing you should worry about is what I'll do to you if you do otherwise."

"If we're done threatening people into silence, what are you doing here?" Lois demanded. We'd met several times over the past year, usually to her misfortune.

It wasn't like I was trying to ruin her day, either. Once, Toymaker, one of Superman's regular villains, asked me to distract Superman by kidnapping Lois for an afternoon. I had no plans to harm her of course, so I teleported her to a cat cafe in Tokyo.

Turned out, she's allergic to both cats and dogs. They were mild allergies, but dropped so suddenly in so much fluff, the outcome was obvious. She spent the afternoon covered in hives and coughing up her lungs. Given my tendency to just know things, Lois didn't believe me that I genuinely had no idea. To this day, she hated my guts.

"Zatanna and I are on a very important mission. Kitten is here to test my patience. Better question: Why are you here? This place isn't exactly comfy for regular humans."

"If you must know, Clark and I had a nice dinner and were watching a romantic movie before visiting his family for Christmas tomorrow," she huffed.

Kitten gasped as if she'd been presented with the secret to enlightenment. "W-Woah, no way! D-Did we just cockblock Superman?"

"Wha–! No!" Clark, ever the wholesome boy scout denied, rather ineffectually Given his reddening face.

"We did!"

"And clamjam me, sister," Lois said accusingly.

"Lois!" Clark yelped.

"Can it, farm boy. A gal has needs and these three know exactly what we were going to do."

"I'm so, so sorry, Lois," Kitten muttered, horrified. "Oh, god, I'm going to hell for this, aren't I?"

My lovely girlfriend rolled her eyes like pinballs. "Really? This is what makes you self-reflect?"

"Hey, alone time with a hunky boy is sacred!"

"You are so shallow it's not even funny anymore."

"Not everyone can have a gorgeous boy toy!"

She leaned into my side with a possessive smirk. "Jealous?"

"You're a bitch," Kitten grumbled, defeated.

Clark coughed insistently. "Changing the subject, why are you really here, Rigal?"

I smirked. "I told you, an important mission."

"Are you going to hurt anyone?" He asked, in a tone that begged me desperately to let him get back to romancing Lois. Despite my rules-optional personality we weren't always at odds, after all. I was something of a quasi-ally of the League at this point.

Naturally, being the sadistic devil that I was, I replied with the truest, sanest answer applicable here: "We're here to rob Santa. Say, Clark, buddy ol' pal, wanna come help us get on the naughty list?"

Clark took a deep breath. He stared up at the stars, as if imploring them for patience. Or perhaps Rao's guidance, because those backwards kryptonians worshiped jars of tomato sauce for some reason.

In hindsight, maybe building an altar out of Rao's marinara jars for Clark's birthday may have been a bit culturally insensitive…

"Explain…" he said tiredly.

"Long story short, this idiot here," I thumbed Kitten, "is the reason we blondes have a bad rep."

"Hey!" she cried, but we all ignored her.

"She wrote up a magic contract and signed her name in blood using a magic dagger she found. Except, turns out, she's dyslexic and misspelled 'satan.'"

"Pft, you're kidding," Lois snorted, always quick on the uptake. "She sold her soul to Santa?"

"Exactly. But she did manage to tear my bookmark, summoning myself and Z here. Now, she gave up her magic dagger in exchange for me taking her to Santa."

"But Santa's not real… right…?" She looked at me, then at Clark. Being the savvy journalist she was, she immediately noticed him refusing to meet her eyes. "Clark! Why didn't you tell me you were neighbors with Santa?"

"It wasn't my secret to tell, Lois," he said stubbornly.

"Well, that's it. I'm in. This is the scoop of the century.'

"Lois, you can't! Can you imagine what will happen if the world finds out Santa's real?"

She groaned. "It's like your identity, isn't it? Just my luck, I get clamjammed with a Pulitzer-worthy story and I can't even capitalize on it…"

"Anyway, that's why we're here," I told the duo. "A devil is looking for Santa so he can beat up ol' Father Christmas to save a dyslexic satanist's soul."

"I… I don't know what to say," Clark mumbled. It wasn't often the Man of Steel was caught so thoroughly off guard, but I was proud to say I'd achieved the feat more times than anyone else alive.

"Our cause is just. You know it in your heart; there is only one possible answer."

"I can't believe this…"

"Say it, Clark."

He looked at me, grinning like a loon. He looked at Kitten, the "victim" dumb enough to sell her soul to Father Christmas. Lastly he looked at Lois, who seemed hellbent on satisfying her curiosity, even if she couldn't report on this one.

He took a deep breath and released it in a powerful sigh. This was the sigh of a defeated man, a man who'd resigned himself to a most horrible fate.

"Fine… Let's go mug Santa…"

X

"And so, the unlikely team headed out to confront Santa over the soul of an innocent girl…" our resident reporter mumbled under her breath, but not quietly enough to go unnoticed.

"Does she narrate everything like David Attenborough doing a nature documentary?" Zatanna asked Clark, nodding towards Lois.

"She does that," he confirmed. "She's a journalist, even when she's off the clock."

"Huh… I wouldn't say Kitten's innocent though."

"We can't leave her without a soul. I'm told bad things happen when that happens for too long."

"Yeah, I know. Besides, how many people can say they've met Santa and mean it?"

"You're an adventurous sort," Clark replied with a wry smile. He then called to me. "Rigal, what do you know about Santa?"

I shrugged. "More than you? Less? It depends, there are a few different iterations of him across the timelines. I've never met him in person?"

"Different iterations?"

"Yeah, like how there's a version of you somewhere out in the multiverse that landed in Soviet Russia instead of a wholesome-as-fuck farm. That version grew up to be known as the Red Son and basically took over the eastern bloc."

"That… I don't think I'd get along with that version of me."

"No, he'd probably kill you. Some variants of Superman are much stronger than others. Anyway, back to Santa… Seeing how you haven't tried to beat his ass silly, he's not the version that enslaved a race of snow elves and systematically starves them to keep them short and beaten down for his sweatshop."

"Holy shit, Santa does what now?" Kitten gawked.

"Definitely not," Clark said firmly. "Are there any good timelines? Or do we live in the best one?"

"The multiverse is a dark place, bud. If it helps, the former Satan Leviathan started a magical girl anime before she made this big self-sacrifice play and sealed away the Beast of the Apocalypse. Her little sister, who used to hate magical girls, still stars in the anime as homage to her."

"That's… That's sweet. But why magical girls?"

"Archangel Gabriel is into ninjas and Leviathan and Gabriel had a weird but intense rivalry over which is better."

"I… I don't follow."

"Yup. It's kinda weird how many supernatural bigwigs are japanophiles."

"I kinda want to watch a few episodes now," Zatanna said. "I want to know what a magical girl anime made by a devil lord looks like."

"I have the box set of the first few seasons somewhere because my older brother is the biggest media mogul in the Underworld," I told her. "It's pretty solid, actually. It's not my favorite, and probably too many tentacle monsters doing Japanese stereotype things before 'Milky Spiral Levia-tan' blows them away with glitter and the power of friendship, but it's altogether a watchable series with surprisingly deep themes and allegories to the Great War."

"Japanese stereo… Oh! Wow… Of course it'd be a porno. I don't know why I expected anything else."

"Again, it's got some deep allegorical messages. There was an entire arc about the death of Arthur and the shattering of True Excalibur, or as it was in the series, Artoria's self-sacrifice, Nero's betrayal, and the breaking of a wand called the Ever-Distant Utopia."

"Wait, I thought Excalibur was… No, I just realized that you have family who were alive for historical stuff like that…"

"Yup. I said we're immortal and I meant it. Back to the original topic, what's Santa like, Clark?"

"He's more or less what the stories say about him. He's a big, jolly, old man with an impressive beard. He wears a lot of red and delivers presents. There isn't much to say about the man," Clark said. "He does have an underground city but I've never visited and I can't see into its walls. The elves I've met have definitely been happy though."

"Magical wards?"

"That seems likely."

"I think I can narrow down the version we're dealing with then," I said. "He's probably a wizard from Turkey during the old Roman or Byzantine Empire who moved his city here to stay away from the bloodshed of the time."

"You say that like there's more than one wizard."

"Multiverse theory. There are more than one wizards who've done this. Good news is, he should be pretty conflict-avoidant as a rule of thumb."

"That's especially true if he's been feeding off the myth of Santa Claus to empower himself," Zatanna pointed out. "I mean, there's a reason this time of year is called the Season of Miracles, right?"

"Right you are, love. Sometime before, the story of Saint Nick got conflated with the wizard and he likely took advantage of it, sending out gifts this time of year to fuel his legend until that legend took on a life of its own," I explained. "Genuine, purehearted faith can be a powerful tool, especially when it comes from children, but it would also 'stain' the individual for lack of a better word, influencing their character over time."

I stared meaningfully down at Clark's belt, which I knew for a fact contained a vial of holy water, the kind sourced by Bruce from the most devout exorcist he could find. Every League member had a personal stash, just in case. It wasn't often that I directly fought League members, but "functional paranoia" was Batman's middle name.

I once tried to steal the Watchtower's stash of Nth metal for personal research. They didn't have much, but they had a small reserve aside from Hawkgirl's mace.

That was how I found out that she could slap me silly if I let her hit me. It didn't completely zero out my regeneration, but it inhibited my magic long enough for her to get the point across. Seeing how the metal was absurdly rare, Batman settled for the next best thing and decked everyone out in holy water.

"So he probably is as good as the stories say by now, even if he wasn't necessarily so when he started," Zatanna finished for me. She pointed at an odd-looking rock. "Is that it? I can feel a faint magical signature now that I'm closer."

"That it is," Clark confirmed. "Are you ready to meet Santa?"

"I'm going to laugh so hard if he isn't even here," I joked, prophetically, as it turned out.

Author's Note

Yes, I know the North Pole isn't on a landmass. Tell that to DC.

Did you know that in the show, Smallville, Lois was allergic to both cats and dogs? I thought it'd be a funny nod here.

More Christmas jokes? More Christmas jokes:

Q: Have you ever heard of Bert the Brown-Nosed Reindeer?

A: Yes, I hear he flies as fast as the others; he just doesn't stop as fast.

Q: What do you call Santa's little helpers?

A: Subordinate clauses.

Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.