Operation Merry Christmas
Author's Notes- Not much to say about this, really. Random and probably extremely cracky FOXHOUND humour. It needs a bit of work, but most of it's been on my computer since last Christmas, so I'm probably not going to get round to fixing it now. Concrit is very welcome, so is any feedback at all.
Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.
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When they had agreed to join FOXHOUND, none of the members had realised that if they applied an elaborate cypher to every second, fifth and nineteenth line in the contract, rearranged the letters by sorting them into the order they appear on page 54 of 'Five Go To Smuggler's Top', transliterated them into Russian characters and then sang them out phonetically pretissimo to the tune of ''I'm a Little Teapot", any native Amdang speaker would hear something that sounded in their language a little bit like "I also agree I will take part in Christmas celebrations with the other members of FOXHOUND, every year".
No one knew why Liquid had such a complex about Christmas, not even Psycho Mantis. The others had requested that he find out many times, but although he would happily go rummaging through Liquid's mind to determine his deepest neuroses and useful information like whether he was secretly turned on when he discovered that blonde from the typing pool that he'd been chatting up for a month was actually Decoy Octopus, he wasn't touching the Christmas thing. He had a feeling it would be much like that unfortunate serial killer incident, except it would involve some sort of jolly Saint Nick-esque alterego infecting his mind, and forever bouncing around his head urging him to hand out candy canes and roast chestnuts over an open fire and sing Christmas carols door to door.
Christmas at the FOXHOUND Headquarters was always an ordeal. In fact, just living there was an ordeal most of the time. Raven was perhaps the most bearable, mainly since he spent a lot of time outside talking to small woodland creatures or sitting around meditating and being no more irritating than a placid, organic boulder. Liquid had the whole complex about his family. Wolf had both a pack of house huskies, distracting bosoms and a habit of floating around the headquarters, completely out of it on diazepam. Mantis had the slight problem of a serial-killing entity bouncing around his head, although he had became a bit more tolerable since he had started channeling some of his rage onto the internet. All of FOXHOUND greatly feared what would happen when their technical experts were no longer able to get Mantis around his permanent ban from LJ's Childfree community.
Octopus refused to pick one identity and stick to it, which meant not only did one have to live with a bunch of sick, twisted psychopaths, but one was also not quite sure which sick, twisted psychopath was which. However, they had found ways to get around this. For example, if one was faced with a possible Octowolf, all one had to do was set a large, angry dog upon it. If it was savaged, it wasn't really Wolf. And if one thought they might be talking to a Decoy Mantis, the quickest way to find out was to loudly and deliberately mentally notice how skintight black leather really brings out someone's ass. If you suddenly found yourself on fire, it probably wasn't Octopus.
Anyway, when it came to Christmas, all members of Foxhound would vastly prefer being sent to singlehandedly take over some small country, living in the sewer system for weeks and undergoing a little hardcore interrogation on the way. The worst part was undeniably the songs.
They started at the beginning of November and went on until New Year. They were stuck in everyone's head for the entire duration and several weeks afterwards. Wolf would be unable to practise sniping properly- just as soon as her mind cleared, a bar of 'Jingle Bells' would come floating along, her bullet would go wild and take the end off someone's nose two miles away. The entire building would quake as Raven burst into a merry, rumbling rendition of 'Away in a Manger'. And as for Mantis, he got to overhear the telepathic equivalent of several hundred people all singing different Christmas songs, alternated with random inane thoughts like "I can't believe that fat cow is wearing the same skirt I bought!", "Mmm, I think I'll have cod in parsley sauce for me tea" or "I hope no one realises I blocked the second floor toilets,". After a few unfortunate massacres were out the way, he usually spent the rest of the festive period wearing little tinfoil hats. For some unknown reason, Christmas songs were capable of smashing clear through the strongest known telepathic shields in the world, something that FOXHOUND researchers were currently attempting to utilise.
This Christmas was no better than the rest. As usual, Liquid woke everyone up at 5am on Christmas morning by playing 'Silent Night' at the sort of volume that guaranteed absolutely no one would be enjoying a silent night for miles around. It was even more difficult to get out of Christmas celebrations when they all had chosen to live on the premises for various reasons.
Liquid was secretly ashamed of the fact that while he could survive in the most hostile environments on earth, pilot any vehicle including those intended for space exploration, or single-handedly subdue a small country's uprising, he had never quite mastered the art of cooking or washing his socks. He blamed Big Boss entirely for that. He'd skipped straight through major life skills and taught Liquid how to kill and eat an enraged anaconda without stopping off at other useful lessons on the way, such as how to make toast or heat up a ready meal. On the other hand, if the ready meal ever attempted to strangle Liquid and he was backed into a corner with no available weapons, he would be able to take the ready meal out with a mixture of fusion martial arts and a single, hastily removed sock.
Octopus had tried to live alone, but unfortunately required extensive brainwashing to remember who he was. He moved back in, after a tragic incident in which he became convinced he really was Shirley from reception and spent three weeks living as her before anyone noticed. He was puzzled that he had managed to keep up the illusion right down to the level of getting his bikini line waxed, fooling her boyfriend and being able to tell the difference between white, off-white, cream, magnolia and ivory at fifty paces. Also, before the Shirley incident, he had been arrested seven times by vigilant neighbours who kept noticing that different people kept entering his apartment. Unfortunately, he couldn't simply return to his original face before entering, since for ease of disguise, Octopus would now come second only to Mantis in a "Least Remaining Original Facial Features" contest.
Mantis had found that surprisingly, living under the same roof as several confirmed sociopaths with various issues was actually less torturous than living in an apartment block listening to aforementioned inane thoughts about cod in parsley sauce. Also, his landlady evicted him since no one would believe he wasn't running some sort of S&M dungeon out of her flat.
Even with his stupendous salary, Raven couldn't afford his own grocery bills, and fortunately, the FOXHOUND building had no limits on portion sizes at the midday buffet. And even if it did, no one was going to tell the large, hungry man who had just driven into the canteen in a tank that they couldn't simply "Load 'er up" . Also, it was impossible to fit a tank in his house's three allotted parking places.
Wolf had done the best out of all of them. She had managed to survive almost a month in her chic little apartment before the bimbo upstairs finally realised her pack of wolves were not actually the new designer breed "Huskypomdoodles" that she had claimed they were. She had been the last to move back in. Ocelot had been the first, since he'd never even tried. He had enemies everywhere, and reasoned that if they broke into Foxhound, at least they'd be worn out from killing everyone else by the time they got to him.
They gathered in the room where they usually received missions. The Christmas tree in the corner was now looking decidedly droopy, having being there for almost four months. In fact, Liquid had got so excited and wriggly as soon as it entered the 120 days before Christmas, that upon finding a lack of Christmas tree sellers, he'd simply hijacked a jet, flown over to Norway and temporarily taken over the country while he found the perfect tree.
"Presents!" Octopus cheered, and hoped no one had noticed. He already had a slight inferiority complex about his lack of bad-assery. It was quite embarrassing when FOXHOUND were being introduced to someone. "This is Ocelot, the sneakiest, most sadistic double agent of all time. In fact, the only person known to ever successfully pull off an octuple-cross. Here is Wolf. She can kill you from three miles away. Any closer, and you'll be too stunned by her bosoms to put up a fight anyway. That's Mantis, he can turn people inside out with his brain. Liquid, clone of the most perfect warrior of all time. This is Raven, he functions as a sort of small, organic tank. Oh, and that's Octopus. He's really good at playing dress-up."
Anyway, in the spirit of things, he had dressed up as a perfect Santa Claus. No one else looked too enthusiastic, so he decided to start them off by handing out his own gifts. Strangely enough for someone in the notoriously freakish FOXHOUND unit, Octopus was actually capable of giving fairly normal presents. "How lovely," Wolf said, unwrapping yet another set of bath salts and then sliding off her chair and passing out on the floor. It wasn't because she was so overcome with joy, but because in the spirit of Christmas, she had switched her diazepam for the sorts of tranquilisers generally used to sedate large, angry jungle animals.
"This is for you," Octopus said.
"The ravens will be pleased," Raven rumbled, actually looking quite happy himself. Octopus had thoughtfully given Raven a box full of sand sheets, seed bells, millet sprigs, mirrors and other toys, and some gigantic oversized jammies for Raven himself. Liquid seemed happy enough with his novelty singing Christmas themed socks, and a brave man might have suggested that Mantis seemed quite touched when Octopus's present consisted of various novel hats and masks to layer and help filter out the Christmas songs next year.
"And this is your present," Octopus said cheerfully, handing over a book-shaped parcel. Ocelot's eyebrow raised.
"It's.. er, Harry Potter," Octopus looked nervous. "I believe it's quite popular-"
"Material gifts are bad," Raven said sternly, cutting in with his presents just before things got messy. He had given cash donations in everyone's name to various charities.
Mantis's idea of gifts depended very much on his mood. If he couldn't be bothered adding to their various neuroses, he simply found the first thing they wanted that wasn't himself dead, and ordered that. Of course, that was also potentially embarrassing. Wolf would never get over everyone realising that she had always secretly wanted a Beanie Baby, just one of many preteen pleasures she had missed out on over the years.
Liquid was just cheap. He always was. Instead of saving up his hard-earned pennies to buy himself the new helicopter he wanted, he would single-handedly steal some experimental weapon and blow bits off a country until it gave him the damn helicopter just to shut him up. Everyone received novelty paperweights this year.
Ocelot presented them with the deeds to various small countries. "I got bored over the weekend," he explained. He had also inexplicably given Liquid a manicure set, although Liquid was not usually the sort of man to keep his hands in particularly good condition. Even Ocelot wasn't sure why he had came up with that idea, he'd just had an odd dream the night before.. a sort of tickly feeling, kind of like the times Mantis tried to poke through his mind to see what double-crossery he was currently up to, and something happened and Mantis was spending the next three days in the medical ward suffering from the mother of all migraines. Or the odd sort of tickly feeling he'd had during that dream when he'd suddenly found himself slogging up a river while everyone he'd ever killed wailed and moaned and shook chains at him and expected him to actually give a damn about it.
"My turn," Wolf finally came awake. Her presents were always interesting. She was usually blissfully out of it on tranquilisers, leading her to pick the oddest assortment of gifts. They were usually picked based on how shiny they were, which left Octopus struggling to rave about the various pieces of spangly costume jewellery he received year after year. At least it came handy on that unfortunate assignment he had to disguise himself as a fourteen year old girl.
This year, Raven managed to remain fairly polite when he was inexplicably given a bra. Liquid suspected the glittery hair slides might actually come in handy for controlling his unruly, 80s hair band locks, although he managed to cover it up with a hasty sneer of displeasure. At least they were small and easily concealable, and he could instantly think of forty interesting ways in which one might dispatch a man using only a glittery hair slide, if he ever found himself in such a position.
"Food," Raven said unhappily, interrupting the present-opening just before Ocelot would have discovered his present (fortunately, by the time he did open it, he was considerably mellower thanks to the numbing effects of copious amounts of alcohol that one needed to get through a FOXHOUND Christmas). Technically, it was still early morning and rather too early for Christmas dinner, but Raven's Hungry Face looked like he fancied a couple of raw, live dinosaurs garnished with strips of Chuck Norris and Samuel L Jackson, and so it was not something usually disputed.
Christmas dinner was another tradition that none of them understood. Firstly, Mantis hadn't eaten anything since 1989 and apparently thrived on a diet of pure malice. Secondly, Raven usually cleared the table before anyone else had even finished the starter. And thirdly, like the majority of adults who grimly struggled through them every year in the name of tradition, none of FOXHOUND actually liked sprouts or Christmas pudding. Even those who had grown up in the most wartorn, impoverished regions and had happily eaten anything that stood still long enough still wouldn't touch the damn sprouts.
"There's a bit of a problem," Ethel said, popping her head around the door. "'Ave any of you got a machete I can borrow?"
Ethel was in charge of the FOXHOUND canteen. She was a short, stumpy middle-aged lady and probably the only person in the building who wasn't trained in ways to kill someone seven times before they hit the ground. She was also completely fearless and terrorised most of FOXHOUND in various ways. Liquid still bore the scars she had somehow inflicted with a ladle (he truly admired that, he had never worked out how to kill someone with a ladle without laboriously battering them to death over a period of several hours) after she had caught him trying to skin a cobra in her 'nice clean kitchen!'. Wolf never knew quite what to do once Ethel started scowling at her and telling her she'd never get a nice man if she went round looking like a hussy. It had been Ethel who had finally realised where Decoy Octopus had gone, when she marched up to 'Shirley from reception', wiped her lipstick off and told 'her' to stop fooling around. And every time she saw Psycho Mantis, she started muttering something about needing to fatten him up and grimly pursuing him with a plate of sandwiches, moving in that deceptively slow, unstoppable way that only Terminators had previously mastered.
Liquid politely inquired why Ethel might need a machete. Very politely, since he wasn't entirely sure if she had ever got over the cobra incident, and the ladle hadn't even had any pointy edges to inflict those scars with. Ethel came into the room, indignantly waving a large goose around with her free hand.
"I need summat to kill this," she said, waving the goose around more to illustrate her point. "Otherwise it'll be quiche for Christmas dinner-"
FOXHOUND looked at the goose. The goose looked back at them with its sad, beady little black eyes, and honked, forlornly.
There was a puff of feathers and blood, which is the usual outcome of a goose having its head telekinetically ripped off at the same time as it's filled with bullets from two revolvers, one sniper rifle, one machine gun and the sort of artillery usually mounted on light aircraft. Octopus didn't have much in the way of weaponry on him, but he did hurl his Santa hat with quite malicious intent.
"Quiche it is then," Ethel said, satisfied, and disappeared back into the kitchen. She had dinner prepared within the next hour or so, an hour in which Octopus found out he rather liked Harry Potter, Ocelot thought of ten new ways to kill someone with a paperback edition of The Philosopher's Stone and Raven ate the entire Christmas tree out of hunger. Once everything was ready, Octopus decided to give a little speech. Since as always, he was getting far too into the role his costume required, this turned out to be a ten minute speech upon the true meaning of Christmas. Concluding that it was truly a time to reflect upon goodwill, selflessness, peace unto all, remembrance.. and family.
It took him about a fifth of a second to realise what a bad idea that was.
Liquid had been cloned in a laboratory and still bore grudges towards his 'father' and superior siblings. Wolf's entire family had been massacred. Ocelot's mother had killed his father, and in turn, she was killed by her mentor. Mantis had accidentally been the indirect cause of his mother's death, and although he couldn't help being two little gametes that had fused together at that particular time, he probably could have stopped himself incinerating his father and every other known relative for several miles around. In fact, Raven was the only one not thoughtfully wielding a table knife in Octopus's general direction. He noticed the odd looks, and shrugged. "What? I go to see my granny every summer."
In the end, Liquid would reflect upon it and conclude it was perhaps the most enjoyable Christmas yet. In fact, instead of murdering Octopus, everyone decided to get into the Christmas spirit. Barrels and barrels of the stuff, in fact. Even Raven managed to get stupendously drunk, despite it requiring unholy amounts of alcohol that were probably set aside to clean a fleet of light aircraft.
Liquid got over his neuroses very slightly. He still wasn't sure if one good Christmas made up for years and years spending them crawling around in swamps, toasting a frog on a stick for his Christmas dinner. However, he discovered that drunkenly having a snowball fight with tanks and helicopters was every bit as much fun as his six year old self had fantasised it would be. Particularly when Wolf was too tipsy to notice her chest had made a break for freedom, although that was a part his six year old self had never even dared to dream of.
Ocelot wasn't going to get drunk and let his guard down, so he poured himself one drink to last all day. Unfortunately, he realised someone must have surreptitiously added about twenty shots to that one drink when he suddenly found himself talking to a moaning spectre that appeared out of nowhere and kept clanking its chains and telling him to renounce his evil ways. Ocelot thought that was a bit odd- he'd never have known that the ghost of Christmas past wore glasses or wailed "Sad, so sad.. feel the sorrow" a lot. However, since the only natural explanation was that he was completely plastered, (and because the alternative was sitting around sober watching FOXHOUND act like this), he took himself and an enormous bottle of whisky off to watch appallingly soppy family films, yell at those damn kids to keep the noise down, and generally act like the grumpy old uncle that Liquid had secretly always wanted.
Mantis thought (for a very brief moment) that using his telekinesis to win a snowball fight might be more enjoyable than using it to abruptly reverse the positions of every mobile joint in the human body. Then that moment was gone. However, thanks to weighing in at a portly 90 pounds on a fat day, one sweet sherry was sufficient to get him drunk enough to go on a mission with Octopus to a) find some reindeer and a replica sleigh and b) telekinetically fly Octopus in his Santa costume all around the nearest town. In conclusion, it was probably worth it, even if the next morning he was ordered to take himself and his hangover all the way back around town to wipe everyone's memories before rumours of sinister, genetically modified reindeer got out. Well, except for the youngest children. He told himself that was just because his head hurt too much to bother.
Octopus got far too into his role of Santa, hence the afore-mentioned flying reindeer. In fact, for six weeks afterwards even the most extensive brainwashing didn't cause it to wear off, which was frankly embarrassing when FOXHOUND were off assassinating the dictator of a small country and instead of jabbing the man in the neck with an undetectable, heart-attack simulating toxin, Octopus presented him with a train set and told him not to be such a bad boy next year. Remarkably, it turned out that all the dictator had ever really wanted was a train set, and upon that kind gesture, he instantly renounced his evil ways and decided to throw his cocaine shipments into the sea, order his army to stop indiscriminately massacring nearby countries and use the profits from his diamond mines to buy toys for orphans for next Christmas. And thus, the spirit of Christmas prevailed. Or at least, it would have done if FOXHOUND's Plan B hadn't involved Liquid lurking in the shadows, wielding a glittery hair slide with murderous intent.