It was a wonderful day to kill Santa Claus, and that made Tiana furious. It should have been dark, stormy, tortuous - the pitch of midnight spilt like so much paint over a landscape torn and ravaged by the creeping fingers of giants. It should have been a night to chill the blood and freeze bones. It should not have been a balmy day with a warm sun, and a subtle breeze sighing over gentle hills. But the weather was lovely, and Santa would die.
Tiana maintained her cheery smile as her team set up - it wouldn't do for them to see disgust or disappointment - and examined their target. Santa's workshop looked exactly like she expected. It was a simple, if large, log house, with a smaller wing whose numerous smokestacks identified it as the workshop and another wing that was evidently a stable. The building was plain, barring candy cane fringes on the gables and snowflake patterns on the windows. There were giant candy canes standing in the snow, scattered among the pines, and the smoke from the chimneys smelt of hot chocolate.
Her team's second, Kristoff, came up behind her and eyed the workshop sceptically, hands on his hips. "Looks like an easy mission, eh?"
Tiana grunted. "Don't underestimate the Fat Man. There's no way he can fit all the children's toys in that little thing - he must be using some sort of spatial magic. Besides, did you forget how much trouble we had finding this place?"
Kristoff shivered. Not only had he not forgotten, he never would. For Santa's workshop, you see, was not at the north pole, but north of the north pole - rather a hard place to reach, after all. The journey of the future assassins had been a veritable Odyssey, replete with manifold adventures, but as they were bad people we shall no more recount it than did Homer the journeys of Neoptolemus.
"No, it’s likely - all but certain - that Santa is in contact with cultivators, and that they’ve been financing him rather generously, given that they’ve gone so far as to make his abode warmer than the Arctic is normally. We should proceed with extreme caution.”
Kristoff gave his assent, but wasn’t too concerned. After all, the two dozen goons they’d brought with them were also cultivators, even if they hadn’t completed the First Circuit, and Tiana and he were in the Second. (As in all good novels, their clothing was colour-coded to match their rank: the goons wore white camo, Tiana and Kristoff genre-appropriate silk robes.) There was no need to worry.
Their plan was simple: first, they’d break into the factory, destroy the machinery and wreak a slaughter among the elves. It was only then that they would lay waste to Santa, secure in the knowledge that even should they fail in their assault upon the man, they would yet have destroyed his holiday. Anyone can deliver gifts, but if the gifts aren’t there then there is nothing to be delivered. (The reindeer could be saved for last - what can a miniature moose do, after all?)
The party rested, made sure their gear was in working order, and enjoyed a brief meal of gruel to keep up their energy. Though cultivators, they had come modestly armed, with only machine guns, swords, and the equipment needed to make it north of the north pole. Other than Tiana and Kristoff, none of them had any spiritual weapons or magical equipment. (Tiana had complained about this - this was a major assignment, and she felt they were under equipped - but had been told that it was the result of budget cuts, and she would simply have to do more with less.)
And then their grim work began.
Tiana took half the troops, and approached from the front; Kristoff, with the other half, approached from the side. It was possible to surround the factory from three sides, including the back, leaving the elves room only to flee into the house. This, however, might strengthen the Fat Man when his final moment approached, so they had split their troops in half and only approached from two fronts, leaving a third free for unthinking elves to seek safety.
It was curiously silent. She could hear noises from the factory, but they were dim, quiet rumblings utterly at odds with the sounds of hammering and sawing one would expect from a workshop so close to Christmas. Tiana shrugged. It had been a long time since industrialisation began - perhaps the elves had fallen victim to automation, and been replaced with machine elves. If so, that would only make her work easier.
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She gave the signal.
It was a wonderful day in Santa's workshop. The elves were tinkering away, crafting all sorts of amazing toys for the good little children, and singing as they worked. The reindeers, conveniently nearby, were doing the bass line, and a pudgy red Santa could be seen in the background ho ho ho hoing.
And then all of a sudden over two dozen heavily armed cultivators smashed through the windows, guns blazing. The fa la la la la, la la la las ceased. The elves screamed as, totally unprepared, they were gunned down en masse. Tiny, childlike bodies were hurled through the air like ragdolls; the toys were painted red with blood. The reindeer started their trip to becoming delicious venison, and no more did Santa know who'd been bad or good.
Or at least, that's what should have happened.
Bullets clattered through the air, screams began to come from throats… and then nothing. The team looked around, stunned. For they were not in a factory - they were in a kitchen. Gleaming white tiles covered the floor, and retro cooking equipment was arrayed along the walls and in the centre of the room. The smokestacks were connected, not to any factory machinery, but to a dozen stoves, which were puffing merrily as they turned their contents into delicious treats. The drying racks were full of baking supplies, and on the countertops were row upon row or teensy weensy cloth bags, inscribed with unintelligible characters and printed with little hearts. At the far side of the room there was a pantry, full of baking ingredients, with a rug on the floor.
Nor was there anyone to slaughter, for there was no one at all in the room. The bakers had placed their goodies in the stove, set the timers, and departed, leaving Tiana and her crew to attack an empty room. The noises she had heard had merely been those of the stoves.
Said room would have been not only empty, but neat and clean, were it not for the glass littering the floor and the bullets embedded in the walls. Kristoff and his crew had come through the windows near the sink, coating the recently washed dishware with glass fragments and smashing the sink and cupboards in the fury of their assault. Tiana and her band had ambushed the counters on which the bags were sitting. Many dozens of the small bags had been annihilated outright, others reduced to powder or hurled onto the floor. Tiana, bewildered, grabbed a bag from the countertop and ripped it open, examining the contents. Her eyes went wide.
“Cookies?!”
And it was true: their deadly assault, meticulously planned, masterfully executed, had devastated an entire tray’s worth of Christmas cookies. (Cookies which had been baked with love and wrapped with care by Mrs. Claus personally, not that the attackers could appreciate that.) They were shaped like little hearts, and trees, and reindeer, and while Tiana could tell with a sniff that they had been made with spiritual wheat their annihilation was purely incidental to her goal, and the value of their destruction eminently doubtful.
Tiana swore, releasing a torrent of words entirely unfit for publication. But she was a veteran, and was used to divergences from the plan. Within half a moment of realising her mistake she had already reacted, switching to the second plan and giving new orders to the assault party.
“Set a fire in the pantry - make it a big one - and then follow me to the Fat Man’s abode. We’ll end him, and find the factory later - absent other information, the known target comes first.”
As she had commanded, so it was done, and the party reformed in three ranks to make their assault on the house proper. Behind them the pantry was ablaze, the fire spreading over the wooden walls and licking at the wooden fragments on the floor. Ahead, all that separated them from ending Christmas forever was a single door, which divided the cookie kitchen from Santa’s house. They were preparing for stage two of the plan when they heard the slow and rhythmic booming of drums from under the floor.
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
It came from hollows deep under their feet, a foreboding rumble, and the sound of small feet marching perfectly in time echoed up from the depths alongside it.
The sound of the drums redounded under the ground, moving with increasing speed from chasms below until it reached the pantry - now ablaze - and stopped. There was a brief rattle, and then an explosion as the bottom of the pantry floor gave way, hurling fire and crockery across the kitchen.
And then the elves arrived.