DISCLAIMER: This tale is my entry in the "2nd Annual Snow Daze Holiday Story Contest." Nothing belongs to me if you've seen it on TV. There's a lot of Christmas stuff I don't own, either. Who knows how much of that will get dragged outta the attic. Soundtrack for this chapter: Sounds Like Christmas by The December People; Orion Machine by Takashi Yoshimatsu; Helicopter String Quartet by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Realizing he didn't have a chance alone against Shego, Du desperately shouted for backup. "Fonebone! Bestertester!"

Fonebone and Bestertester remained where they had fallen.

"You've killed them," Du snapped. "Two of GJ's finest."

Shego leaped down from overhead. "I doubt it." The emerald harlequin stalked toward them, a malicious smile on her lips. "It doesn't work like that on people. If it did, Kimmie wouldn't be here today. Would you, Kimmie?" She walked over to the young woman, stroked her cheek with a clawed glove. "I could have killed you a long time ago," she purred. "Tell the man."

Kim strained against her restraints, to no avail. "I thought you and Drakken were out of the villain business. Jet-setters now. Pardoned and reformed."

"Pardoned, yeah. Reformed – not so much." Like Kim, Shego had barely changed. There was a little silver in the jet-black mane; the lines at the corners of her eyes were slightly more pronounced. "But no one can do anything really big with your monkey-fu boyfriend guarding the world." Her hand was at Kim's neck.

"Husband."

"Husband, huh? I hadn't heard." She whispered something in Kim's ear. "Just between us girls – you could have done better, Kimmie."

Beyond them, Du was frantically pushing an alarm button.

"Just between us girls," Kim retorted, "I did better than you, Sherri."

Shego stepped back, her features implacable, the only sign of her rage the fire in her eyes.

"Take that however you like," Kim added.

The green woman laughed. "Someday I will kill you, Princess. But not today. It's Christmas Eve."

"Christmas Eve?" Kim exclaimed. "How long have we been here?"

But there was no answer. Instead, with a single leap, the villainess pounced on Du, pinned him in a second to the wall. "That button won't work," she told the terrified GJ agent. "I didn't get the reputation I have by leaving loose ends. Now," she said, pressing a finger to his forehead, "it's time for nappy-nap."

There was a tiny green flash.

The disc fell from Du's hand; Shego grabbed it as he collapsed. "Sleep tight. Dream about sugar plums or something." Holding the disc, she sauntered back to Kim. "Been following you for a while. Found out about your 'quest'." She snickered nastily at the word.

Kim ignored it. "How?"

"There is a grapevine. We keep close tabs on you and monkey-boy."

"'We' being you and Drakken?"

"'We' being a lot of people. There are still plenty of supervillains just waiting for an opening. Even some new ones. Wireman. Absolute Zer0. Dogwhist-"

"So what'd you hear?"

"You had your computer whiz start looking for Snowman Hank. You know Dr. D's a big fan of that crap."

"Yeah. I remember. He would be."

"I thought it would make a great Christmas present. And it would be even better if I let you find it for me, and then took it from you." She turned the disc over and over in her hands, like a child marveling at a wonderful Christmas ornament; its shiny silver surface cast strange reflections in her greedy emerald eyes. "Nice of Du to spell its powers out for me. I didn't know what I was getting. Drakken loves mind control stuff. He'll figure this out in no time." She laughed. "I've stolen the key to the world."

"Ja, you have." Another sinister, all-too-familiar voice. Global Justice HQ was turning into Grand Central Station, it seemed. "Und now… you vill hand that DISC over… to ME."

Deliberately ignoring the bellowed ultimatum, the green woman calmly reached down, put the disc in her leg pouch and smiled, eyes narrowed.

"Dementor," Kim snarled, yanking vainly at the chains that bound her. "So you're a Snowman Hank fan too."

"Nein. I thought it vas the most HORRIBLE TRIPE on TELEVISION! I vas after your Battlesuit. A beautiful thing. But zis, zis is zo much the better. A Battlesuit can vin a fight. That disc can CONQUER A COUNTRY. And vhen I haf decoded ze mystery of it, ze whole VORLD VILL OBEY PROFESSOR DEMENTOR – und ENJOY IT!" The short man grinned viciously, brandished a strange, multicoloured flashing wand connected by a wire to a box on his belt. "Now make vith the disc overhanding."

Shego spun around in a battle stance, both hands crackling with green energy . "Come and take it, Shorty. I'm not afraid of you or that kid's toy you've got."

"But you SHOULD be." He pointed the wand at her; she jumped nimbly away from what she supposed was its beam, spun in the air and came down hard on her side. In something close to panic she forced herself to stand, reeled, and fell.

Across the room, Kim stiffened in her restraints, groaned, closed her eyes, teeth clenched.

Dementor held the little wand high; its strange lights cast eerie shadows on his face. "Do you like it? Its signal works directly on ze INNER EAR, inducing ze VERTIGO in EVERYONE WITHIN RANGE." He tapped his helmet. "Everyone but ME, of course. Zis is much more than ze stylish headgear."

Shego was again struggling to get to her feet. The room was whirling around her, the floor wobbling like a ship in a storm.

"I had ze infection of ze ear vhen I vas six," said the evil scientist. "I knew then vhat a veapon zis vould make."

With a scream of pure fury she flung a plasma bolt that came nowhere close to its jeering target; losing her precarious footing, she fell again to the floor. The rippling, liquid image of Dementor towered over her, the wand in one hand, a nightstick in the other.

A nightstick. A simple bludgeon.

And he was smiling. "Give me ze disc und ve can dispense mit ze ugliness."

"No… this can't be happening!" She was a master thief. A adept in martial arts. A superhuman. She couldn't be defeated by a Bavarian midget with a stupid helmet and a club. Plasma flared from both her hands; the green flickering was now more than she could handle, and she had to power down or lose her lunch.

Dementor's smile was demonic. "Strange how the UNREAL exerts so much POWER on us, Frau Lipsky. Ze room ist not spinning, you KNOW that. And yet you cannot STAND, you cannot aim your PLASMA, you cannot DEFEND YOURSELF." The nightstick came down. "And now you can join Agent Du in the sugarplum dreaming."

Taking the disc, he nodded in Kim's direction. "Sorry about your luck, Fraulein Possible. But ze vertigo vill end in a stunde or two–"

"Frau Stoppable." She was getting tired of telling people. Maybe it hadn't been on the Paparazzi Network, but didn't anyone even read the Middleton Examiner anymore?

"Oh, so he and thee – I hadn't heard." He glanced at the unconscious Ron with a hint of confusion, shrugged his shoulders, whipped out a communicator. "Myron! I need ze copter on ze roof, mach schnell!" At the exit he turned for the traditional villainous farewell: "Auf wiedersehen, Frau Stoppable. Ven ve meet again, you vill give me your Battlesuit happily. And ze best part is – I VILL NOT NEED IT!"

The madman had barely departed when Will Du stirred, groaned, and tried to stand up. "What th –" He managed to grab hold of a stanchion, clinging to it as if he might fall off the earth if he let go. He saw the green woman sprawled on the floor, gasped.

Kim answered his unasked question. "Dementor showed up after she knocked you out."

"We – we've got to relocate this place." The world was rocking from side to side. "Is she—"

"She's down for the count. At present. You've got vertigo. New superweapon," Kim told him. "And Dementor's got Snowman Hank."

"We'll get him before he can do anything with it." Du looked slightly greenish; he closed his eyes. It seemed to help a little. "Our best minds couldn't crack the coded signal."

"Hello? It's Dementor. He can do it. He will do it." She rattled her manacles. "I can stop him."

"Global Justice protocol forbids the release of –"

"Forget GJ protocol and let me go! He's getting away!"

The Chief of Global Justice staggered to a switch, managed to grab it as he fell.

On the roof, in the Christmas Eve night, Dementor waited, becoming angrier by the moment. Any minute Global Justice agents might show up, although Shego had done a vunderbar job destroying their alarm systems. More importantly, he insisted on punctuality in his flunkies. Finally he whipped out his communicator. "MYRON! VHERE…IST…ZAT…COPTER? I NEED IT NOW!"

There was a second of hiss and pop, then the perpetually befuddled voice of his lone minion. "There's someone here who wants to rent it. For some sort of, uh, string quartet."

"Helikopter…streichquartett?" Dementor mused, baffled. "Myron, zis ist not ze TIME, I am not ZE PATRON OF ZE AVANT-GARDE ARTS! BRING ME ZE – vait, he vants to rent it? How much?"

"He's talkin' a lot of devalued Euros. Is that a good thing?"

"Get his email. Ve talk vith him later. And BRING ME ZAT HELICOPTER!"

From behind the mad genius came a voice he had come to despise, over the years. "You won't be needing it today, Dementor."

"You haven't had enough? Then try ZIS on for ze sizing." His hand went to the box on his belt; he cranked a knob to full intensity, held the flashing wand above his head. His sinister glower dared Kim to approach.

And she did. Four cartwheels took her across the roof; the fifth became a vicious kick that sent the scientist flying. With a crackle of electricity, the diabolical weapon was shattered, fragments scattering across the roof.

Furious, he screamed his hatred at his enemy: "Zat cannot BE! NO ONE can resist the power of VERTIGO! NOT… EVEN… YOU!"

"I was a head cheerleader. We won the finals three years in a row. Your vertigo wand's nothing compared to some of those routines." A confident smile denied the nausea and dizziness that was sweeping over her in waves. Something else she'd learned in high school. "Some things you never forget."

"Very vell," snarled Dementor, yanking out a pistol, "ve return… to ze DISINTEGRATOR!" A beam flared out; with a frantic back handspring Kim avoided it, leaving an air conditioning unit to vanish from existence. Dementor fired again; a spin, a series of leaps, and she was again out of harm's way. Portions of the roof flared and disappeared. Briefly, crazily, she wondered if Global Justice had good insurance.

Dementor fired again. And again. Swore in German, panned the beam across the roof, leaving destruction in its wake.

Kim continued to dodge it.

It was a stalemate. The maniac couldn't get a bead on her, but she couldn't get close enough to disarm him. And as damage accumulated, she was quickly running out of roof to stand on.

The sound of chopper blades whuffling through the darkness brought a Teutonic guffaw from the diminutive scientist. He fired another shot, still holding Kim at bay, as the helicopter flew erratically toward the building, hovered shakily overhead. A hatch opened.

"Farewell, Frau Stoppable!" With a blast of short-range boot jets, Dementor shot into the air, caught the hatch and flung himself within. The door closed; the helicopter spun around and began to ascend, leaving Kim on the devastated rooftop, watching in despair. The Six Tasks of Snowman Hank was in Dementor's hands, and with it, the secret of total mind control.

There would be no more Christmases.

And then it was that the thing happened, the thing only Kim witnessed, the thing no one, not even Ron, ever completely believed. There was the faint sound of sleigh bells, the passing of a strangely-shaped shadow across the December moon. Something hurtled down toward the helicopter, something hard and heavy, something that might have been a huge sack full of coal. A hearty "Ho, ho, ho" wafted down on the wind, and the UFO was gone.

The bag crashed into the whirring blades; coal chunks and rotor pieces flew in a dozen directions. Out of control, the copter spiraled cataclysmically toward the earth below. A moment later an explosion threw its garish light on the desert landscape, shook the headquarters of Global Justice with its force.

The menacing legacy of Weapon XIII-666 had finally ended.

Definitely naughty list, Kim thought, watching the flames. Note to self: do not get on Santa's bad side.