Grimjack’s boot sent the door of his now useless deliverance pod flying across the snow. His black metal gauntlets gripped the sides of the doorframe, and in his anger the servos in his arms activated and he bent the metal outwards as he hopped out.

“I swear on the Millennial King’s frozen left heart that I will turn Gorgi’s insides into outsides if I ever see him again.”

The song played on repeat the entire trip. He had even looped his suit’s diagnostics into it, so it restarted every time the song did. Now he was in the frigid landscape of Earth’s northern glacier. It had been a long time since this planet was habitable for baseline humans, but especially not the northern wastes. All that was here was ice and death.

“Well, howdy hi there stranger!”

A high-pitched voice called out and Grimjack’s instincts kicked in. In a flash, he opened the hidden compartment on his chest, whipped out his Delvonian disintegrator, and pointed the barrel where the noise came from.

“Wow! You sure have some fancy dancy toys there friend.”

Grimjack paused. His sensors said this was a plain old seal, but it looked strange. It almost looked like it was made out of clay, and only moved a few frames per second. It even had a little top hat and monocle on. Still, he didn’t trust it, so he kept his firearm trained at its head. Though, the strange creature did not seem at all phased by the weapon of death mere inches away from it.

“If you value your life, I need some information.” He grimaced under his helmet and considered just pulling the trigger and finding it on his own. But he couldn’t let a potential asset go to waste, no matter how annoying it was. “Where can I find Santa Claus?”

The seal chuckled, “Why you silly goose, don’t you know that this is Santa’s busiest time of year? He needs to focus so he can get ready for the big day.”

Grimjack turned on his gun, and as the chamber started to glow a dark red as it hummed to life, the seal chuckled a little less confidently. “Well uh, I guess if you really hafta see Santa. His workshop is just over those spires to the North. But be careful, the mean old Grump lives up that way.”

Without a word Grimjack spun his gun in his hand as he slid it back into its hidden holster and left. The seal called another warning about the spires, but as soon as he heard it was about the Grump, he tuned it out. No point in hearing superstitious nonsense, when he’d learn more about whatever beast was lying in wait by seeing it in person.

As he got closer to the spires, he could see that they were just a jagged, frozen mountain range. Then, a violent storm picked up. It threatened to sweep him off of his feet. Luckily, he had experience with strong storms during his training on Terrarium 7. The real problem was losing visibility. His navigation software could keep him going in the right direction, but he was sure predators here would have ways to keep off of his sensors in a blizzard.

He made it up to the mountains, and still nothing had shown up. As he crossed over the top he could feel an oppressive presence. There was something up here with him. Something was watching him, while it managed to avoid his sensors. All of his systems were telling him nothing was there, but his warrior instincts knew there was something nearby.

A booming voice echoed out all around him. “You invade my mountain! Tell me why I shouldn’t just kill you where you stand.”

Grimjack cracked his neck from side to side and activated his speaker system. “Try me.”

“Hah!” the voice cackled in laughter. “Very well, you may pass this time, but if you dare cross again your life is forfeit.”

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Grimjack snorted in his suit as he pressed onward. It was all talk of course.

The storm didn’t let up. He crossed through the mountain without any more trouble and found himself on another barren plane. As he was about to sigh at the lack of any workshop, his sensors picked up a huge power reading far in the distance. Whatever was there was using power equal to the energy of a small star. He wondered what sort of cloaking technology they had to be able to hide it from beyond the mountains.

“What…what is this…” Grimjack muttered as he approached a massive red and white painted metal wall that pierced up into the sky.

There was no gate in sight, and climbing it would take too long, so he put his left hand against the wall. With a few buttons pressed on his wrist console, he pulled his hand away leaving a handprint of groon gel. He took a couple steps back, paused a moment, and then took a couple more. With the press of a button, he detonated the explosive.

The ensuing fireball washed over Grimjack, but in his suit this was nothing. As it burned, he walked past it and through the new hole in the wall. It looked abandoned. Worse yet, it looked homey and comfortable. Gentle wood architecture, candy cane poles, Christmas lights all around, bright colors, why it looked like this place had never heard of war, yet alone been in a galaxy that has been at constant war for hundreds of years.

An overwhelming sense of peace and joy permeated the whole little village inside of those ominous walls. It made Grimjack uncomfortable. No place should feel this safe, and no place should look this dead. He beelined for the largest building that had a big sign on it that read, Santa’s Workshop.

He scoffed at how ridiculous this all was. Why would someone put so much work into such an obvious scam? Why not just repaint Trindy Stix and sell them as Forsooth Pipes?

He didn’t even check if the door was unlocked. One well placed kick, and the door went flying in. He was surprised at how sturdy it was. Like someone had handcrafted it out of aged wood. As he walked inside things started to make more sense. The place looked like a tornado had torn through it. Everything was scattered and overturned. An obvious struggle had ensued.

Jingle jingle.

Without hesitation, Grimjack pulled his disintegrator back out, but his sensors couldn’t pick up anything where the noise had come from.

Jingle jingle.

He spun around inhumanly fast and fired a quick shot. It blew a massive hole through the wall as again, there was nothing there. He increased his sensors and tried to filter out as much noise as he could, but still nothing came up. Then he heard it, the floor creaked.

He turned towards the sound and began to fire as another jingling faintly rang in his ears. This time he knew he had hit his mark. Whatever had been making that jingling was hit square on with his disintegrator.

Jingle jingle.

He felt pressure as some kind of garotte pressed against the front of his neck. Somehow the jingling had not only avoided him twice, but it had gotten close enough to get a weapon around his throat.

“You better start talking quick.” A high-pitched voice whispered in his outer audio inputs.

“Delivery.” Was his gruff reply.

“What delivery?”

Grimjack activated the shock pads on his armor, reversed his arms direction, and reached behind him to grab whatever was holding him. He could feel it try to move, but managed to grab ahold of a limb, and with a quick slam, threw it down in front of him, smashing a small crater into the formerly beautiful wooden planked floor. A small bit of Christmas lights flew across the room away from the two of them.

“You’re turn. Why is there a fake North Pole set up here? What’s your game?”

He took stock of who had attacked him. He hadn’t seen anything quite like it. It was a small creature, maybe two feet tall at most, with long pointed ears, and a red and green striped body suit with a small puff ball on top that covered it entirely, except for its eyes.

“Buddy you got a lot of nerve breaking in here.” It had an annoyingly confident tone.

“Talk, or else.”

“Good will to all men ring a bell? Christmas? Fat man and a sleigh? The most powerful magical being of all time?”

“That’s a load of Hortle Spit. There’s no such thing as Santa.”

“So you’re not here with them?”

Grimjack tightened his grip and then leveled his gun at the small creature’s head. “Explain the situation, fast. I got a short attention span, and when I get bored my fingers tend to squeeze.”

The creature sighed. “Short story, Santa’s been kidnapped.”

Grimjack’s finger started to twitch.

“Alrtight! Geez. Some thugs attacked the workshop and made off with Santa. They were pros. Armor and weapons both had anti-cheer capabilities. There was nothing we could do. Two minutes after the first shots were fired, they were leaving with the big guy. Name’s Jangle by the way. I’m one of the top defense girls.” The apparent girl coughed and squirmed slightly in his grip. “But you, you weren’t prepared at all for this.”

“What do…” Grimjack couldn’t finish his sentence as the leg in his hand was suddenly replaced with sparkles and she was leaping towards his chest with her fist cocked back. He tried to move his arms up to block, but she was too fast. Her fist hit his chest plate with the force of a crashing Trandillian Cruiser. He flew through the wall and a couple smaller buildings until he hit the outer wall, denting it.

“Now, I’ve got a proposition for you cowboy.” She said as she leaned against the wall.

With a groan he pushed himself out of the nice new Grimjack shaped dent in the wall. It was a painful hit, but nothing was permanently damaged. “Yeah? Is it something like winner gets to keep the loser’s best weapon?”

She rolled her eyes. “Ha ha, very funny. I think we both just saw how an actual fight would go.”

“Then I guess you’ve never gone up against one of the horde’s shadow killers. We bounce back a lot better than you’d expect.” He said as his systems updated his various outputs based on the data it had just received from observing her.

“Settle down kiddo. How about instead you help me go and save Santa.”