"Put the 'Death' back in Deathmas!"

Tezca Tlipoca was frowning. At least, it seemed that way: it was hard to tell when he had a giant bear mask over his entire head.

He was standing at quad, at the front entrance to the Death Weapon Meister Academy. From there, he could see just past the teeth-shaped, numerous students were gathering around one table, holding plates and napkins. Next to it, a boy was holding up a clipboard, where other students were writing something down onto it.

But what was occupying his attention was his scrawny buddy: a 17-year-old decked out in a priest's uniform, screaming to the heavens his message of divine justice or whatever nonsense he had flooding his head this week. Tezca leaves him alone for two weeks while he's on a mission down south, and he finds his best human buddy making a jackass out of himself.

"Justin!" Tezca called across the quad. "Stop screaming! You're scaring the first-years!"

If the first-years were scared of Justin Law, they made that point apparent by walking around the crazy man screaming into a megaphone at them.

"You shall give our Lord his due on the day that should have his name!" Justin shouted at the students.

"Stop!" Tezca called. "You look like an idiot! Bigger than usual!"

Granted, if Justin was scaring students, the man dressed in a sharp-toothed bear's mask wasn't exactly alleviating their fears, either.

Tezca felt his stomach growling. He didn't have time for this: best to be direct so he could get lunch already.

"Let's talk about this rational adults!"

"You are sinners in the hands of an angry god!"

Tezca felt his mouth curl into a sneer. "Well, so much for 'rational.' He's going full-on Edwards again."

Every year, Justin would do this: Christmas rolls around, and the guy starts preaching about Deathmas, some made-up holiday he concocted right after he became a Death Scythe.

"We shouldn't have a Christmas tree!" he would shout. "We should hang ornaments on our tree-shaped Lord!"

Yeah, Lord Death didn't appreciate that one: it was the first time Tezca saw him chop Justin.

"We shouldn't sing Christmas carols!" he would shout. "We should make a trendy remix with Europop beats that tell of the greatness of our Lord!"

That song wasn't too bad, but it was kinda preachy, Tezca thought.

"We will build snowmen!" Justin would shout.

Tezca didn't mind that idea.

"And enchant them to come alive, to be animated and go forth to convert others to celebrate a day of merrymaking and the slaughter of all on Lord Death's kill list."

And there went the holiday cheer, right out the window. Nothing says "Merry Christmas" than blood and carnage. Then Tezca remembered the tiny man on the cross that his mama used to show him an church-and he shrugged. Okay, maybe carnage is part of Christmas, but still, this wasn't some Silent Night, Deadly Night movie marathon. Well, maybe during the Death Room holiday party, but come on, that's tradition.

It wasn't that Justin was insane about Deathmas 365 days out of the year: just right after Halloween and up until December 24. Then he would fall into depression. Tezca would pick him up, get drunk with him on eggnog, then they would throw eggs at Christmas trees until the cops came. (Thank goodness it wasn't throwing eggs at nativity scenes: even Justin wouldn't go that far.) By New Year's Eve, with all the Christmas trees tossed into the garbage anyway, Justin would calm down and forget this Deathmas nonsense for another year.

"Santa is a false profit! Worship at the feet of Lord Death, not the man in red who breaks into your homes and munches on your baked goods and dairy products!"

But this year, Justin sounded like he was about to go off his rocker.

"Okay, buddy, you're done," Tezca said, as he stood in front of Justin and held out a hand. "Give me the megaphone."

"Put the 'Death' back in Deathmas!" Justin shouted again.

"I'm serious, man, enough with this War on Christmas nonsense. That stuff sounds insane. Give me the mega-"

"Put the 'Death' back in Deathmas!" Justin now had pointed the megaphone right into Tezca's face, the reverb deafening the other Death Scythe.

"Damn it!" Tezca said, clutching the sides of his bear mask where his ears would be. "Even if you can't hear me, I know you can see me!" Tezca tried to shout over Justin.

"Deathmas!"

Finally, Tezca clutched Justin by the collar of his shirt, held him in the air, then with his other hand gripped the cords of his earphones and tugged. "Ouch!" Justin screamed as he felt a burning pain shoot through his ears. "That's hurtful!"

"So's going deaf," Tezca responded, evenly, as he lowered Justin to the floor. He sighed. "Why you do this to yourself, man? Every year you work yourself up into a tizzy over your made-up holiday-"

"Deathmas is real!"

"Point it out on the calendar," Tezca responded.

"It has no need for a calendar! It is in the hearts of all who believe!"

"Really? So if it's on the calendar that is your heart, where is that: before or after the left ventricle?"

"It resonates with the souls of those who have heeded the word of our Lord!"

"Before or after Lord Death told you that if you tried this again, he'd smash your record collection and re-assign you to the Antarctic?"

"It is that day where we celebrate the real lord and savior-"

"Please, don't do this," Tezca said, putting a hand over his face.

"Not some made-up God and his son who is merely a flim-flam artist and-"

Tezca seized Justin by his collar again. "Enough. You do not get to stand here and start talking shit about someone else's religion with having them talk shit about yours. I understand your frustrations with all of that stuff, given your childhood, given the nuns, given all of that. But enough. Stop using your trauma to mess with other people and telling them how to believe."

Justin's eyes stared sharply. "Let go of my collar."

"Make me."

The megaphone was already up in Tezca's face again. "Put the 'Death'-!"

Justin then felt pain explode in his fingers. Tezca had punched his hand, loosening his grip on the megaphone. Tezca then caught the megaphone with his right hand, transformed his left hand into a mirror, and shouted, "Solar Ray!" Angling his mirror towards the Sun, Tezca had managed to charge a laser beam, which he then fired at megaphone. Justin stared, his mouth condensing with fear, his face shining orange from the fire bursting from Tezca's beam. Then in front of his face appeared the melted remains of his megaphone, save for its handle, which was miraculously still whole. Tezca returned the handle to Justin's limp hands and said, "There. Knock yourself out."

Justin was frozen for a few seconds. Slowly his face contorted, wrinkles forming under his eyes, his lips peeling back to expose his teeth grinding against each other, his eyes narrowing into slits.

He then bellowed, right into Tezca's face: "Deathmas will never die!"

The last syllable was so elongated that it almost knocked Tezca off his feet, as he had to lean into the blast to avoid falling back. When the noise stopped, Justin righted himself and hunched forward. His mask was now halfway up his face, exposing his nose and jaw. He slowly stood up again, frowning at his fellow Death Scythe. "That's just rude," he responded. "And isn't Deathmas going to die anyway? It's got 'Death' in it."

"Shut up!" Justin yelled.

"I'm just saying that a PR firm would be a big help in better marketing the holiday. Maybe make it sound not so fearsome. How about 'Badly Wounded-mas'?"

Tezca was then thank his bear mask was so thick-as it meant he barely felt pain as Justin began whapping him upside the head with the melted megaphone, hitting him with each beat of his new chant: "It is called Deathmas!" With each bonk on the head, Tezca's mask let out a squeak like something out of a rubber duckie.

Tezca finally caught the melted megaphone with one hand and threw it behind him, where it clanged against the quad's floor. He seized Justin by the collar. "Why are you keeping up with this charade, man? It's not a real holiday!"

"The War on Deathmas is a thing! Don't you watch the news?!"

"I don't watch it: I read it. Or live it. One or the other. You know half the crap on TV is fake. Next you're going to tell me that 'Great Pumpkin' nonsense is real!"

Tezca then felt something sharp slash across his ankle.

"Ow!"

He looked down to see a cat wearing a witch's hat at his feet.

"Non-believer," Blair said, as she turned up her tail and sauntered away.

Tezca and Justin both stared as the cat departed.

"Well, that was random," Tezca sid.

"Indeed," Justin said, trying to sound more dignified as he moved his hands in between Tezca's, knocking them off his collar. He then turned at his heels and marched away from the cosplaying Death Scythe, back towards the entrance to the Academy. Across from the two Death Scythes was the bulletin board for DWMA announces-as well as a long temporary table set up, where numerous students were milling about.

"Hey!" Tezca called after him. "I'm not done with you!"

He sprinted to Tezca as he entered the Academy. Justin kept his eyes looking forward, not glancing at him. But Tezca could tell Justin still wasn't ready to conclude this conversation: he had not yet plug back in his earphones.

"Just how can you be so confident in this stupid fake holiday you concocted."

"Oh, Hero?"

Tezca watched as Justin approached the crowded table at the entrance to the Academy, pushing students aside as he approached a lanky boy seated there.

"Oh, hey, Death Scythe!" Hero said. "Looking for a status update?"

"You know it!" Justin exclaimed. He then wrapped an arm around Tezca, dragging him forward. "Tell me, how many signatures has our petition received."

"Petition?" Tezca asked.

"2,000! In Death City alone!"

Somehow, the eyes on Tezca's mask widened. "2,000?" He turned to the smirking Justin. "What, signatures?"

Justin simply nodded. "That's not even including online."

"We're trending!" Hero held up a pocket mirror, upon which showed the hashtag #Deathmas. "At this rate, we'll more than meet the signatures needed to get a response from Lord Death!"

Tezca stared at Justin. "Explain?"

Justin let go of Tezca as he seized his cross necklace and began sermonizing: "Lord Death, in his inscrutable ways as only a divine being such as him can understand, has grown tired of hearing of Deathmas from only the voice of one of his followers! He wants to have the message spread to others, to convince them to follow in this holiest of all holy days!"

It was as if light was shining down upon Justin-which was odd, since they were indoors at that point. Before doves could land on Justin's shoulders, the unimpressed Tezca turned to Hero. "What's altar boy trying to say?"

"Lord Death wanted to do outreach to know which issues people around the world are concerned about," Hero said. "Something to try to get the DWMA to be more friendly since, you know, the Avatar of Fear burst out from underground and kinda made us look back."

Tezca sighed and crossed his arms. "As tends to happen when you lie about keeping an unholy abomination underneath your school. Okay, so he set up that petition web site thingie-so what?"

Hero continued: "We need 6,000 signatures to get Lord Death to give more serious consideration about hosting Deathmas."

Tezca groaned. "How did you morons get even 2,000 signatures?"

"Appealing to the goodness of the people!" Justin bellowed, putting his hand up to the ceiling. "Thank you, Oh Lord!"

Hero smiled dismissively. "We gave away free pizza."

Tezca's bear ears twitched.

Justin frowned and closed his eyes. "Yes, yes, we also appealed to the nature of most students, which is a desire to take something free, even if it is not particularly satisfying." He clicked his heels together, stood upright, and pointed a finger in the air, keeping his eyes closed. "But we who feed the body will thereby feed the soul. For as someone fills their earthly needs, they will have found they are feel far less full. Rather than seeking only the base nourishment of cheese, bread, tomato, and spices, they will yearn for something that fills their spiritual needs."

He then clutched his cross again. "Which is why, in the name of the Father, the Son, and-"

"Um, Death Scythe?"

Justin opened his eyes. He frowned at Hero. "I wasn't done making my point."

The two then heard a loud belch. Hero grimaced and said, "I think your point was made about two minutes and four slices ago."

Justin looked back: the other Death Scythe was gone.

"Tezca?" he asked to the blank air, looking back and forth to see where he had gone.

Then he heard, from where the belch had emanated, a shout-the shout of someone with pizza crammed into his mouth:

"Put the 'Death' back in Deathmas!" Tezca shouted, biting through his first piece of pepperoni, lifting his mask just enough to get the food in his mouth without exposing his face. Surrounding students, each of them gathering their slice after signing the petition, looked annoyed at the cosplaying Death Scythe hogging all the food.

Justin and Hero stared, wide-eyed. Without looking away, Justin's hand blindly reached for the petition sheet on the table. Sure enough, at the very bottom, was the signature: "Tezca Tlipoca." Justin's eyes relaxed. He smirked. As he replaced his earphones, he said, "Hero, I'll be taking a break. Please see that our new acolyte visit the local coffeehouses and remind them that they are abominations so long as they fail to celebrate our Lord in every way possible."

As Justin departed down the hallway, Hero frowned. "Right. Get them to put 'Merry Deathmas' on all the coffee cups. I'm on it." The students leaned back in his chair. "I already asked seven times. I really don't see how one more time is going to work."

Another loud belch echoed through the hallway.