Disclaimer: Kim Possible and all IP as it is presented in the canon animated television series is Copyright and Trademark by the Disney Company, using characters originally created by Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle. This is a transformative fan fiction work.
Author's Note: This Christmas story is set in the TSOD Universe, about two years after the events of Wedding Elements. It assumes the upcoming events of the rebooted version of The Shadow of Infinity, not the original TSOI.
THE SPECTER OF DEATH – REINDEER GAMES
Story Copyright Dale W. Robbins (crimsonhawk)
Monique Rochon strode down the street in the Gaslight District of Vancouver, British Columbia. Her hands were buried deep in the pockets of her very fashionable red parka jacket and the fur-lined hood was pulled up deeply over her head. Snow was falling gently from the sky and Christmas music was playing softly in the background.
Monique stopped by a window display and gazed into it, sighing. Inside the window were two male fashion manikins. There should have been two outfits on those manikins. But they were gone. The manikins were bare.
It was Christmas Eve. Monique had intended to pick up the outfits tonight for her husbands' Christmas presents. What she hadn't counted on was someone else with two men to buy presents for being rich enough to buy the outfits. She had banked on her Team Possible salary making her the only person with the need of both outfits and also be the only person with the money for both outfits.
The outfits had been custom tailored specifically for men of action, adventurers like sportsman, mountain climbers, world travelers, and the like. They had been sharp and attractive, just like Monique's husbands. And they had been primarily dark red with blacks and browns mixed in.
Red was the favorite color of both of her husbands and Monique herself.
Monique bit her bottom lip and stared longingly at the naked manikins for several more moments. Then she growled in frustration and started walking back to her car.
She had only herself to blame. Despite the fact that the men she called her husbands (disregarding Canada's laws against polygamous marriages)—William and Edward Goldberg, the Wego Twins—had the superpower of duplication and could easily take care of every parental chore all at once on their own, Monique had insisted on shouldering the lion's share of taking care of their newborn baby, Omari Isiah Goldberg. It was a mother's protectiveness playing itself out, she knew. But, with the Weegs' powers, they could take her place on Team Possible, still fill in their own roles on the team, and assist her in parental duties without breaking a sweat. And she was going to be damned in she was going to miss out on being a mother just to chase adventure like the rest of the team.
That decision had cost her this small victory, though. While the loss was minuscule compared to the joys she was experiencing as a mother, Monique still chided herself for having waited until the last moment to try to buy her husbands' gifts.
Worse yet, with it being Christmas Eve, most of the small shops were in the process of shutting down for the day early… if they had even been open at all. And Monique did not trust any chain discount store open on this day to have anything even remotely appropriate for the grown-up loves of her life.
As Monique approached her car, she fumbled for the keys and pressed the electronic lock button to unlock the doors. She was still grumbling and in a dark mood, so she almost missed what she saw next.
Just as she was about to step into the car, she saw it.
At the other end of the parking lot was a small reindeer.
Such a sight wasn't out of the realm of possibility. This was Canada, after all. Despite it being quite rare this far into urban developed areas, sightings of moose and reindeer were still not unheard of. But two things caught Monique's attention here.
The first was the reindeer's size. Reindeer were normally large, similar in size to horses and moose. But this one was more Monique's height. Average height for a woman was actually quite short of a reindeer.
The second was its behavior. It was dancing erratically and spinning in place. Like it was panicked. Like it was in a hurry.
Like it was trying to get Monique to follow it.
Monique paused at that thought. That's exactly what it was doing. It was trying to get her attention and get her to follow it.
Something was wrong.
Monique's eyes narrowed in determination. She shut the door to her car and started running after the reindeer, electronically locking the car behind her almost as an afterthought.
The reindeer, satisfied that it had gotten Monique's attention, spun and bolted into the brush behind it. Monique dove in after the reindeer.
As soon as they were in the thicker portions of the brush and trees behind the buildings, Monique flexed her wrist and felt the satisfying sensation of her collapsed longbow being teleported into her hand. Monique silently blessed the younger brothers of her best friend, Kim Possible, for having invented and perfected the technology that allowed all of the team members to be ready at a moment's notice.
The reindeer bounded for several thousand yards through the brush and trees before leaping back out into the open. Monique followed.
Monique gasped when she came out of the copse. She had expected to be in other part of the Gaslight District… or at least another part of the Vancouver metro area.
What she saw was mind boggling, to say the least.
Monique and the reindeer stood at the edge of a village. But this village had quaint, old-fashioned cottages with gingerbread walls, gumdrop window sills, candy cane corners, and cocoa barque shingle roofs. Sleighs and sleds were parked all over the roadway. And a stone castle with all sorts of holiday decorations stood at the other end of the village.
But not a single soul could be seen. Monique and the reindeer were all alone.
"This is uber unreal," Monique breathed, stepping forward. "WBMC, man!" She then turned and noticed the reindeer's quizzed look. "Way beyond my comprehension," she clarified before turning back to the village.
She's refocused her attention just in time, too. Just as she'd spoke, other reindeer were emerging from behind corners and sleighs and open doors. These reindeer were full-sized and, unlike Monique's companion, were decked out in full Santa's reindeer regalia… with the reds and greens, the bits, the bardings, the silver bells, and everything.
The hellish red glow in their eyes was beyond unsettling, though.
The little reindeer with Monique panicked and hid behind her.
Monique grit her teeth and studied the reindeer carefully.
"I think I'm going out of my mind here," Monique confessed, "but I'm going to play along anyway. I take it these are the actual reindeer who are supposed to be pulling Santa's sleigh?"
The little reindeer nodded nervously.
"And I take it, then, that some villain has taken over and put these reindeer under his or her mind control."
The little reindeer nodded again.
"And Santa's also in trouble?"
The little reindeer cowered behind Monique as the larger reindeer drew closer. It nudged Monique forward.
"Right," Monique agreed. "Time to see what I can do here. Here's to hoping that the mind control isn't as mystical as you reindeer are."
With that, Monique took an archer's stance, snapped her longbow to full length, brought it up, and pulled back the drawstring. A quick dance of the fingers on the hand holding the bow itself and an arrow teleported into place, already nocked and ready to fire. Instead of a sharp arrowhead, this arrow had a tiny cylinder at the end.
Two reindeer became four and those four became eight as more and more reindeer emerged from various hiding places and closed in on the pair. The little reindeer cowered and cooed plaintively as Monique kept her stance. The eight reindeer converged together in front of Monique, several hundred yards in front of her, and as one looked at her with those hellish red eyes. Those eyes lit up and the reindeer looked like they were about to charge.
"Now," Monique breathed quietly and let the arrow fly.
The little reindeer screamed as it watched the arrow fly straight at the lead reindeer. Suddenly, the tiny cylinder on the arrow exploded. It expanded into a large netting of wires and the arrow planted itself into the ground in front of the reindeer.
The large reindeer all looked at the arrow and net curiously. Then it happened. A sharp, shrill sound ripped through the air, emanating from the arrow. The reindeer all reared back, as if startled.
"Electromagnetic pulse," Monique explained to the little reindeer behind her. "With any luck, anything those guys are wearing to carry a mind control frequency will short out and the sharp noise will snap them out of the effect that's currently holding them."
Sure enough, several of the silver bells that the reindeer were wearing around their necks fizzled and popped violently, causing the reindeer to skip back. Then the reindeer shook their heads and looked back up at Monique.
Their eyes were all a natural brown now, instead of a hellish red.
"That was easy," Monique sighed, lowering her bow and allowing it to collapse into its compact form. "Apparently, whoever is doing this wasn't expecting anyone to be here, let alone me."
"So very true!" came a girl's voice from off in the distance.
Monique looked up and saw a sleigh pulling up beside the larger reindeer. On top of the sleigh were three individuals. A tall and muscular blond haired man sat alongside a woman whose features were almost completely obscured by the hoodie she was wearing. In the front of the sleigh, standing in a stereotypical supervillain pose, was a slender, black haired woman. All three were dressed extremely fashionably in various European trends while still accounting for the cold weather.
"Chino, Hoodie, and Espadrille," Monique growled, tensing up her stance. "The Fashionistas."
"Oh, you know of us, do you?" the lead woman queried. She looked surprised.
"I'm a member of Team Possible, Espadrille," Monique replied. "Who is lead by, you know, the girl who put you all in prison, Kim Possible."
"You must be Monique Rochon, then," the man uttered, standing up to tower behind Espadrille. "The vile little urchin who stole our designs for Kim Possible's new mission uniform several years ago."
"Actually, Chino," Monique smirked, "it was a naked mole rat who stole the designs, not me. I simply went off of what he remembered of your drawings."
"It was still stealing!" the other girl, Hoodie, shouted. "You will pay for that!"
"Oh, yes," Monique growled, instinctively snapping her bow back to full length. "Let's completely ignore the fact that Kim put you in prison for stealing fashion designs in the first place."
"Two wrongs don't make a right," Chino noted, causing Espadrille's eyes to roll in exasperation.
"Okay, good point," Monique sighed, hanging her head.
"But now that we have the exposition out of the way," Espadrille stated, "perhaps we can move on to eliminating you."
"Yeah," Hoodie added, standing up next to Espadrille. "We have a Santa to hold hostage and fashion designs to steal, once we have his reindeer back under our control."
"Hoodie!" Espadrille snarled, smacking the other girl upside the head.
"Seriously?" Monique asked, her eyes crossed in bewilderment. "You're holding Christmas hostage so you can take Santa's sleigh around the world and steal all of the fashion designs that way?"
"It's not like our usual criminal underground network was getting the job done," Chino pointed out.
"Good point," Monique admitted. "But we've got two problems here."
"And what are those?" Espadrille asked.
"One," Monique began, "you do need to reestablish control of the reindeer. And with my EMP pulse arrow still in place, that's going to be a big."
Hoodie pulled out a blaster pistol from her hoodie pocket and blasted the aforementioned arrow into a column of rising smoke and ash. "There, first problem solved."
"Two," Monique continued, "now that you have the EMP pulse out of commission, you still have to find the reindeer and put new control collars onto them."
"We don't need to find the reindeer," Chino argued. "They're right… huh?"
Chino had held his hands up, as if to present the reindeer in question. But they were no longer standing where they had been previously been standing.
They were gone.
"That's weird," Chino admitted.
"No matter," Espadrille stated, pulling her own blaster out from her coat. "Once we eliminate you, Monique, we can track the reindeer back down and…."
Espadrille wasn't able to finish her statement. The sleigh the Fashionistas were all standing in suddenly lurched backwards. Chino, Espadrille, and Hoodie all fell forward and landed face first into the snow in front of them.
Monique did not waste a breath. She immediately nocked another arrow and let it fly. The arrow hit Espadrille as she lay on the ground and electricity arced over all three villains, shocking them into unconsciousness.
Monique looked up at the sleigh behind the villains and smiled. Behind the sleigh were the "missing" reindeer, tethered to the sleigh so that they could pull it out from underneath the Fashionistas.
Monique grinned in satisfaction and glanced down at the little reindeer behind her.
"I think that wraps it up for the day, little buddy," Monique said proudly. "Now, all we have to do is get Santa out of whatever fix the Fashionistas left him in and you guys can get all set up and ready to go."
The little reindeer's mood seemed to brighten considerably as Monique spoke those words.
In fact, his little nose lit up a bright red in delight in response.
Monique walked into the Team Possible lair north of the Vancouver metro area, dragging her feet. While defeating the Fashionistas and saving Santa Claus had lifted her spirits somewhat….
Monique's best friend, Kim Possible, suddenly ran up to her from further down the hallway. "Mo'! Where've you been?"
Monique blinked a couple of time and cocked her head slightly as she considered Kim. Kim was dressed in a red Christmas dress, with the white fur hems and the whole nine yards, and wore a matching red Christmas cap. It was very sexy, in a rather festive sort of way. And Kim held several gift wrapped boxes.
"Didn't Wade tell you?" Monique asked. "I caught the Fashionistas earlier today."
"He told me that," Kim admitted, setting the gifts down on a nearby pedestal and turning back around to take Monique's hands into hers. "He didn't tell me what they had been doing. He said I wouldn't believe him. He also didn't tell me why you were out there in the first place."
"Oh, that," Monique sighed. "I went down to the tailor shop to pick up those outfits I wanted to give the boys, but they'd already been sold."
"Wait, what?" Kim gasped, taking a step back.
"Yeah," Monique agreed, taking a deep breath. "It was my bad, girlfriend. I should have got out there sooner. I'll just make it up to the boys somehow."
Kim bit her bottom lip, turned back to the presents on the pedestal, picked two of them out, and turned back to Monique. "Here, Mo'."
"Thank you, Kim," Monique smiled, accepting the gifts. "This is sweet of you to remember me. Merry Christmas, sister o' mine."
"Actually," Kim drawled, shuffling her feet. "Those… those are the outfits."
"WHAT?!" Monique gasped, wide-eyed. She couldn't decided if she needed to stare at the boxes in her hands or at the redhead in front of her.
"I thought you were still here at home taking care of Omari," Kim admitted. "So I went out this morning and bought those outfits on your behalf. I tried to give them to you to give to the Weegs when I got back, but you were already gone."
Monique stood there, slack-jawed, for several moments before she finally hugged the two presents to her chest and started sobbing uncontrollably.
"Monique?" Kim worried, stepping up to the young woman.
"Girlfriend," Monique choked, finally looking up at Kim. "We did it. You and I. Because of what you did and me being out there and giving up and about to come back… We did it. We saved Christmas. We saved Christmas."
Kim smiled softly at her sister-in-law, her best friend, and her closest confidant outside of her wife Shego herself. Kim smiled and took the trembling woman into her arms to comfort her. "Yes, we did. We saved Christmas. I love you, Monique."
"I love you, too, Kim," Monique gasped before she finally relented to the hug and began crying into Kim's shoulder.
And outside of the lair, in the night sky above, a sleigh with nine reindeer flying away beyond the Aurora Borealis. Hearty, thick laughter could be heard from the driver of the sleigh as they drove out of sight.
"Merry Christmas to all!" the driver bellowed. "And, to all, a good night!"
[END THE SPECTER OF DEATH - REINDEER GAMES]