The winter storm raged and many families were in the comfort of their homes waiting out for Christmas. Even during a storm, there was still much to celebrate. Everyone was calm, happy, and content...
"Help me! Somebody, please, help!"
The snow fall made the streets, cars, and even the lights dim in view to where he could hardly see anything twenty feet away in any direction. The teen boy nearly tripped before regaining his balance. He passed snowmen set up in yards and cars with the windshields written on them. At first, they looked like normal kid fun until he began noticing the snowmen were becoming abundant and set up closer to the sidewalk with horrifying faces. The windshields now held designs of monsters and some even had blood if he was quick enough to notice them.
Faint laughter seemed to come from the snowmen he passed lingering now on the edge of the street. He couldn't tell if they were moving each time a new one popped up in his sight as he ran or his mind was playing games on him. Some of them even looked like ones he had seen before further back so could they teleport?
Ste-e-ven. He heard a ghostly voice call from one of the snowmen he passed. Terror was becoming too hard to ignore.
He slowed as his body was trying to protect himself from the cold more so than waste energy running, and it was draining him too fast. The snowmen in view didn't move as he walked, struggling to breathe.
We know what you did, Steven. We saw you.
"Ple-ease help me! Help," he screamed, his voice weakening.
He peered at the ground for a second and looked back up only for all the snowmen now gathered at the street edge to somehow have their heads turned towards him, staring him down silently. They weren't like that a minute ago.
"We saw you, Steven, how you bullied your little sister since she could walk, ripped up her toys, almost drowned her," a new and more sinister voice said somewhere in front of him. "You caused her to lose her faith and now, she's crying and your own parents seem to regret having you. Such a shame, you were once a good little boy but your envy of no longer being an only child and your greed for her having more toys to play with led you to become a monster...just like me."
Steven didn't press forward and instead stood there freezing, carefully watching the snowmen still staring at him. His body felt weak, shivering like his heart was slowly freezing over. Was he dying?
"You're not dying, only suffering. It's my job to punish those who hurt the faith of Christmas. Your heart has been cold since you were eight, now you're just feeling it," a form said in the far snowfall like a shadow, a horned shadow.
The shadow had to be as big as a car, maybe larger. A hooved metal foot came down into view and the cars on the side shook. Why they didn't shake before when the masculine form was close by confused the freezing teen. Then the figure came up to him, stopping mere feet away to stare him down with a hiss of warm air blowing from slit nostrils. The boy ignored the snowflakes catching on his face as he stared in awe at the monster.
The creature looked robotic, had a semi-human-like facial structure like one of those Transformers he had seen wandering around but had a slight elongated snout with fangs, and horse-like ears attached to the side of the helm. Two giant horns curved from the side of its head like abnormally large goat antlers with a few smaller spikes sticking out from the forehead. The red optics and orange horizontal irises with black horizontal pupils made it look like the creature had goat eyes as well. The upper torso was the same as a common Cybertronian chassis with the arms and the servos the same as well though with sharp claws, but the lower half resembled more of a satyr though the legs looked heavily muscular and the hooves were huge like a cow's mixed with a horse's design. The tail was more reptilian in structure but thin. Then there was the mockery human-like coat it wore meant to be a shaggy and unkept version of Santa's signature red and white color scheme.
"Who-who are you?" The boy said in a fearful whisper.
The creature laughed, "I...am Krampus, punisher of naughty children like yourself and the demon of Christmas chaos."
"Bu-but I-I-I didn't do a-anything to h-hurt her! It was a j-joke! I-I didn't mean to!" He began to cry.
Krampus smirked and he gave an amused sigh, "Oh, if that were true, I wouldn't be here. Santa Claus isn't the only one who watches to see if you're naughty or nice, Steven. I do too."
Steven backed away as he saw smaller shadows creep up behind Krampus, past his hooves and into the visible sight of the boy. A teddy bear with teeth as sharp as a shark, a jack-in-the-box that looked like a killer worm from Hell, and a group of elves that were obviously Minicons but looked way more demonic than any type of Minicon he had ever seen.
"I'm afraid that you have stepped over the line this year. And now, I will honor your family's grief by disposing of you forever in an eternal punishment, just like they wished for. Imagine that, their Christmas wish was for you to disappear. Can't be any more of a screw up than that for your own family to hate you for what you've done."
The teen was a mess as the living toys and the Minicon helpers approached. Just as a Minicon's servo reached out for him, a bullet shot straight through it, and the Minicon let out a wail. All optics turned to a figure leaping from the rooftops and stopped directly in front of the teen. His weapons ready and fired on all the toys shattering them. The Minicons backed off, but the larger mech merely laughed.
"Ma-ax, how delightful! Come to save the day again. Run out of lost souls to rescue this year?"
Max wasn't smiling and kept his guns trained on the Minicons while looking Krampus straight in the optics, "Hello, Crossfire, I see you're still a dick."
Krampus didn't like the use of his real name and bit his lip. "Tell me, Guardian, did you not learn from last year about interrupting my job? Granted, I only had two days before Christmas to hunt your sorry ass, but I almost won had I gotten another day to do it."
"And my job is protecting children."
"My job is punishing naughty children for all eternity...or worse, killing their families and making them live to realize what they lost," Krampus scowled. "That's no thanks to Primus."
Max folded his weapons when he noted the Minicons retreated far past their master most likely to go back home. He replied in a vindictive tone, "You deserve this. Primus upgraded your looks fortunately but your job...what do you expect from killing sparklings and younglings back on Cybertron simply because you found them annoying? And you were an Autobot."
"Just because I followed Optimus against that tyrant Megatron doesn't mean I upheld all his innocent beliefs-"
"Innocent children died because of you! You think you forced to punish naughty human kids as a horrific monster is bad, what about those parents who will never see their children grow up because of you!? I personally think you should've been condemned to something much worse for what you've done, but I guess Primus didn't even want to deal with you!" Max yelled.
Krampus stomped his hoof, the snow falling off roofs nearby from the rumble it produced. "Yes and? I know what I am, what I've been damned to be for the remainder of whatever this forsaken life is. However, you seem to fail to realize how little I care. What's in the past is done and now, I can torment children to my dark spark's desire. And I'll destroy anybody foolish enough to try and stop me, Max."
The teen was clinging to Max's coat and he gestured for the kid to keep behind him for safety.
"Here's the thing, hero, last time you rescued one of my victims, I saw to it to hunt you down for the remainder of days until Christmas. I almost had you. This year, I'll start by giving out this warning: I'm hitting Detroit tonight, the city that seems to hold some very good friends of yours, first at the very beginning of my first day on the clock and if you interfere, I will hunt you all twelve days while my minions kill every naughty child on my list across the world. But if you desist like a smart person would do, I'll go about simply punishing the children as I normally do no matter what the outcome and you'll live another Christmas to save all the children between now and then you want. So, what will it be?"
Max didn't want to admit he would cause more harm pursuing his need to fight Krampus than letting him torment and possibly leaving kids family-less this Christmas. Krampus would not tiptoe around a promise to kill, and he couldn't protect himself and save those children all over the world at the same time. There would be infinitely more deaths by Christmas than what Krampus had in mind on a normal schedule this year. He couldn't risk it.
He sluggishly tensed but nodded, "I...won't interfere."
Krampus' goat-like optics, the eyes of a true monster, gleamed at his defeat. "Goooood, and to start, I suggest moving over and letting me finish my job here. Dear Steven needs to be taught a lesson."
Max cracked his knuckles in balls at his sides, frowning with utmost fury.
But Krampus shook a clawed digit with a smirk, "Ah ah, don't go back on your word now. One boy is not worth the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. The choice is yours."
He really hated himself right now. To the boy's horror and his regret, he stepped aside and walked backwards to see the teen slowly put his arms down after losing the grip on his coat and stare at him blankly, as if the teen had just given up on life. For once, Max turned his back on the kid, and he could feel the disapproval from Zeliria but at the same time, his island realm knew as much as he that there was nothing he could do about it.
He heard the kid scream and Krampus lunging. All he could do was close his eyes. There was no telling what Krampus would do to the poor boy in his workshop of lost souls and dead dreams. The real Santa Claus, Sunstrike, could do nothing to help them either.
Sunstrike could only protect children on Christmas and bring gifts as Primus set his permanent job as. He had no control over his polar opposite, Crossfire. It was funny, Sunstrike was a Decepticon who made people happy and Crossfire was an Autobot who killed and tortured children. Both were turned into Earth legends by Primus. Max knew though, he had to speak with Sunstrike soon about Crossfire's bloodlust rising every year.
A small golden glow reflected on the snow, originating behind him and he turned with a sickened expression as Krampus crashed something in his servo. The teen was nowhere to be seen.
"Thank you for being such a good sport, Max. I enjoy my job more than hunting you down and wasting precious time I could be using to torment children," Krampus smirked, shaking his head and showing off his horrendous ram horns. "I hold no ill will against you specifically. It's just business. I hope you come to realize that."
"Yeah...business," Max muttered, staring the monster down disgusted.
"See you next year, Guardian. Hahahahahahahaha!"
Krampus shot straight up into the air and did a twirl when he hovered before bursting into a golden light and disappearing into the raging storm. Max could still hear his laughter over the high winds and the snowfall as if Krampus was still beside him, taunting him.
Max rarely found himself unable to do anything but, in this circumstance, there really wasn't anything he could do without killing whom he was reborn to protect. It was like Primus made an enemy to counter him. For once, Max seemed at a loss of purpose. Every Christmas since the early 1900's, Krampus was the one enemy he couldn't counter with anything. Not the Allspark, not outside help, not his wits, powers, or his combat experience. There was...nothing.
Everyone knew he hated Christmas, but he celebrated it for the girls because they loved the holiday so much. What the girls didn't know and hopefully never found out was he didn't hate it because he saw it as pointless or was just a natural Grinch, Krampus was main reason. Every Christmas, he couldn't do anything to help the children of the world. It was all up to them to save themselves and their families from the demon. Every Christmas, it was a reminder that he could only watch as a monster destroyed everything Christmas represented in one night.
After December 12th, he hated Christmas. And lo and behold, today was December 12th.
AN: I decided to twist the story of Krampus to be an Autobot gone wrong and yes, the real Santa is a kind Decepticon. Just goes to show that just because you're on a side doesn't mean that side is full of good or bad people. I'll explore the Santa concept in Krampus' introduction story in the future.