CHAPTER 11
"So let me see if I got all of this," Black Star began. "You're the real Rudolph?"
The monster sneered at the ninja.
"But you're supposed to be a good guy!"
"He's a product of a commercial enterprise, for goodness sake!" Santa screamed. "He infected this world through catchy songs!"
Black Star raised an eyebrow. "Okay, I'm lost."
Rupert intervened: "Rudolph was a promising candidate from among the herd. Yet his self-doubt and jealousy of others plagued him. His asocial demeanor hinted at an underdeveloped maturity, in need of nurturing rather than being thrust into the role as one of Santa's reindeer. We thought it best to hold off including him on the team." Rupert sneered at the monster. "I see the wait validated our decision."
Rudolph then spoke: "Upon being passed over, I departed from the North Pole, and I took to other means of spreading holiday joy through the most wicked act possible."
Black Star glared at the monster. "And what was that?"
"Creating catching holiday jingles!"
"You monster!" Black Star shouted, before pausing. "Wait, what?"
"He hooked up with a major corporation and wrote a song just about himself!" Santa added. "It was through that music he controlled the minds of so many children, tearing a bit of their soul with every listen!" He tightened his fists. "You ever wonder why you feel so irritated hearing holiday music playing over the speakers at every department store? It's because a bit of your soul dies and is transferred into this monster with each listen!"
Black Star was slowly realizing that this was the weirdest Christmas he had ever had. "Man, and I thought Soul got irate about piss poor music. How can you guys not like the song?!" He held a big smile, as he started singing: "Rudolph the Red-Nosed—"
Santa and Rupert slammed their hands around his mouth, shouting simultaneously, "Stop that! You want him to take part of your soul?!"
After removing their hands from his mouth, Black Star stared at Rudolph's face. "So that's why your nose is red—your Kishin soul is on top of your face, enlarging each time you get another bit of someone's soul in you?" He looked back at Santa. "I think I know why Kid is so weirded out every Christmas—what the hell have you been doing the guy?"
Santa sighed. "I have lost good people to you, son," he said. "Winky, Hermey, the Easter Bunny—"
"What?!" Black Star shouted. "Then who left those painted eggs in my apartment last year?!'
Santa slapped his forehead-this kid just wasn't getting it. "That's Tsubaki, you twit!" He stared back at Rudolph. "But this monster—it is because of him, not only do I give up my December delivering gifts, now I also have to deliver eggs every April. Do you know how hard it is to find a bunny suit in my size?!"
The conversation was enough time for Rudolph to dash at Santa, tackling him into the snow. As Black Star ran to tear the beast off of the jolly old elf, with his hind legs Rudolph kicked him back, yet the ninja was able to land on his feet. From this position, Black Star dashed to the left of Rudolph, attempting to knock him from the side. He leapt for the zombiefied reindeer's head, grabbing Rudolph by his antlers and tugging him away.
"My brethren!" Rudolph cried.
With order, the still mind-controlled reindeer stampeded at Black Star, tearing him away from his opponent, their hind legs stomping onto his torso as he desperately attempted to roll away.
Meanwhile, Santa and Rudolph continued to wrestle in the snow. Despite being a mess of bones and muscle with barely any skin covering him, the cloaked figured that was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was able to hold his own against Santa Claus, the two locking hands as they dug their feet into the snow.
"Weak knees, Papa?" Rudolph chided his opponent. "Not mine—strong hind legs. The kind that used to kicked across the sky for you."
Rupert clutched Rudolph's arm, holding it back from crashing again into Santa's gut. "
"I have back-up."
Rudolph sneered. "Behind the brat with the bad haircut?"
The reindeer's body collided against the snow, as it felt something flat and wooden knock him across his face. Looking up, he saw the still bright weapon in Santa's glove, having transformed into his hands from where Rupert previously gripped the reindeer's hoofed hand. The light faded, as Santa stood, tapping a cricket bat against his open right palm.
"Papa spank, then."
With that, Santa sent the bat back and forth across Rudolph's face, dislodging remaining bits of skin and fur from his decomposing skull.
"Monster!"
He slapped him again, sending Rudolph down onto his limbs, blood streaking from him across Santa's already crimson coat.
"Brute!"
He kicked him in the head, knocking the reindeer back into the snow.
"Naughty person!"
He slammed the bat over Rudolph's hind quarters. Santa lifted the bat again, holding it in the air. "I give you your ending, Rudolph. By the will of my weapon, Rupert, I claim your soul."
As Santa sent the bat falling to the ground, he was blinded by a red light—a laser, beaming from the Kishin reindeer's nose, singing Santa's hair and beard as it knocked him down into an explosion of snow, it too melting by the temperature of the monster's attack. As he attempted to sit up, his back pressed against the brown dirt, a hoof pressed against his neck, as Rudolph stood before him.
"I kill you, Papa," Rudolph uttered, his nose brightening by each second, "and now, I go down in history!"
CRUNCH!
Blood gurgled out of Rudolph's mouth. He glanced down to see star-covered mittens, now covered in muscle and nerves, ripped through his abdomen.
"No," Black Star whispered, his face sliced from reindeer hooves and his back aching from escaping the stampede. "You just go down."
Black Star looked to the heavens and shouted: "Finishing Strike! Black Star Big Wave!"
The soul force ripping through every part of the skeletal reindeer tore his body apart, an explosion of his remains littering the snow around him. Black Star was thrown back against the throne, splintering its back, knocking out the child. Rupert, barely conscious, managed to dig himself into the snow, and hold down the nearby Donner. Other reindeer, awakening from their mind control, let instincts take over to hold against the wind ripping across the tundra. Santa felt the most force of the assault, bits of his previous colleague knocking against him, as he shut his eyes against the mess.
The explosion slowly silenced. Santa slowly opened his eyes, feeling a red glow still upon him. It was not a nose: it was a Kishin egg. The large man struggled to right himself, limping a bit as he approached the soul, and cradled it in his hand.
A tear rolled down his cheek, freezing as it crossed his face.
His lips quivered, as he looked to the heavens, and shouted one painful syllable.
"Hoooo!"
o-o-o
El Santo leapt from the tunnel's ceiling-having crawled there when Kami was not looking-and body-slammed her to the ground, which sent Soul flying out of her hands. She was able to knock El Santo off of her-then he knocked her to the ground, smashing her in the face with a folding chair.
"The fuck?!" she screamed, as El Santo lunged at her. "A folding chair?!"
"Seriously, where did that come from?" Soul had transformed out of his weapon form, ducking from attacks from the one-armed mummy and the mummy who lost his jaw. He bisected both with his bladed arm, shaking off his limb to knock off the blood. He dashed back to Kami, leaping into the air as he transformed into a light that re-formed into his weapon in her hands, and with it, she was able to knock El Santo down, but still unable to cut through his skin.
"Ha!" the mummy shouted—until he was slammed into the tunnel's wall, a bullet lodging into his shoulder.
Liz had only expended a few bullets, yet she made her shots count in order to cover her colleagues. "Fall back!" she shouted.
"Who's calling the shots here?" Kami rejoined.
A bullet sailed past her head, knocking back the bespectacled Bradbury.
"The one firing them!"
Kami studied Bradbury, twitching on the floor. Shrugging, she dashed to the Volkswagen, hiding behind it.
She growled. "No matter how much I slice them, I can't get out their souls!" She slammed her weapon's blade hard against the stony floor.
"Hey, Kami! Watch where you swing me!"
Kami glared at Soul, not bothering to attempt an apology. "I'm the one protecting your soul here, Death Scythe."
Soul's reflection appeared in the blade, as he looked with sympathy to his meister's mother. "Azusa threatened to take back all my souls for breaking protocol." He glanced at the amalgamation of mummies. He bared his toothy grin. "But I find ways to break all the rules without paying the consequences. Come on, Kami-you know we have away to stop this."
Kami did not look up. She continued to study the dirt. Yet as Soul spoke, her eyes hardened.
Liz studied her, recognizing that the meister was meditating on some plan. "Soul," Liz began, to distract him while the meister strategized, "even your Kishin Hunter move did little. What is it about those mummies?"
Soul looked at her. "I think it has something to do with whatever spell they put onto their soul transference. But with that kind of magic, you need something pretty heavy to accomplish it."
"Not necessarily." They turned to Kami. "The stronger the spell, the more complicated it is. But complicated can mean that it has some weaknesses-shortcuts."
"Not following," Soul replied.
"You can either do a spell the proper way, or the easy way. You can either take years to organize the spell, practice it, let it grow from nurturing it"-she grimaced- "for example, I read that is what the Witch Medusa did with those snakes in her body, allowing them to fester through years of practice."
"How did you find that out?" Soul asked.
She smirked. "Interrogate enough witches, you learn a lot." She looked back at the mummified conglomeration. "But if you take the easy way, you have to sacrifice something. Let's say you want to perform a spell quickly-one way to get it done is to add some very big weakness to the spell, so that you get immense power but which can be stopped through easy means."
She removed from her pocket a lighter and a pack of cigarettes.
"I thought you quit," Soul remarked, narrowing his eyes.
"Just offering a visual example, before we, you know, kick the bucket because of death by mummies."
Liz had stopped shaking at that word, her anger with Kami outweighing any fear over some mindless beasts.
Kami ignited the expensive liquid lighter, starting her cigarette. She exhaled. "Take fire for example: powerful energy, but if you just start a quick flame, you can stop it easily with simple deterrents." She inhaled, then exhaled again. "Water, if we had it." She set her lighter on the floor, then took a pile of dirt from there and let it fall through her hands. "Dirt is another. But if you plan it out, get a controlled fire going, plan for all the possibilities," she concluded, removing the cigarette from her mouth, "then you let that blaze burn through everything, destroy all, and no water, no dirt, no nothing will stop it, right?"
Soul looked again at the mummified monstrosity, as it sat there, waiting for its opponents to tire themselves-by talking, Soul thought grimly. He turned back to Kami. "You think that those idiots transferred their souls by cheating? So, what is the flaw in their plan that would make it easy to take them down?"
Kami finished her cigarette, crushing the butt into the dirt below. "Don't know." She smiled. "But I think I know someone who could help us survive until we find out."
"Who?" Liz asked.
"Duck!" a voice behind the two women and the still transferred Soul commanded. After they looked at each other and shrugged, they did as directed-and a laser beam of light crossed parallel to the floor, burning through two mummies, leaving behind smoldering limbs and two red souls.
"The hell was that?" Liz asked.
"I told you help was coming," Soul said from within his weapon. "I sensed him a bit ago, thanks to your perception, Kami."
"I'll give you points for that, Soul-I didn't catch them coming until just now?"
"Mind cluing me in?" asked Liz.
"Please, please," the voice said from the hallway's edge. "I am a man who needs no introductions."
Emerging from the hallway, stood a squat figure, in baggy shorts and a backwards baseball cap.
Kami blinked. "You mean behind the monkey, right?"
Enrique growled at her, his mirror smacking her directly in the forehead. As Kami held a hand to what would be a nasty bruise, she saw reflected in the mirror what looked like, for lack of a better description, a skeleton with a bear head.
"Tezca!"
"Hey. How's it hanging, Kami?"
WRITER'S NOTES: CHAPTER 11
Yay, I get to write Tezca and Enrique!
But this chapter is a disappointment. It has been difficult trying to write what amounts to four different stories—Black Star and Santa, the women in Gallows Mansion, Liz and Soul and Kami, whatever Kid is doing—because of an ensemble cast. And now adding two more characters is weighing it down. One frustration I had with the last episodes of the Soul Eater anime was how little actually happened per episode, because attention was divided: Maka is heading to wherever Crona is, and that evidently takes forever; it takes forever for Kid to get to the Circus Town or whatever it was called; it takes forever for Black Star to run to find Mifune waiting for him—and all the fights wrapped up in pretty much one episode, barring Marie and Crona against Stein and Medusa.
At least this chapter concludes the Santa tale—and my apologies for sentimental drivel, but I could not pass up some pathetic opportunity to have Santa shouting to the heavens. As well, I like the image of Santa looking like Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead, complete with the cricket bat and blood.
Next chapter: The end of the mummy fight, a return to Gallows Mansion for some Maka and Tsubaki bonding, and onward to concluding this story.