Brockton Bay, December 26th, 2010, Sunday

'Twas the night after Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a the vamp;

The stockings were boxed up in large Tupperware,

Save for the ones in the wash covered in cat hair;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

why Alucard slept like that went over everyone's head;

After paperwork filed and all that work crap,

Emily had just settled down for a long winters nap,

When down on the first floor there arose such a clatter,

She rose from her bed, with gun drawn to batter.

Away to the door she flew like a flash,

Tore open the door and down the stairs with a dash.

The moon shown silver in the window,

Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to her wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, some bobbles and things,

little tinsoilders covered in dings.

A ball rolled on painted with a glitter clad sparrow,

her gun swept the room,her eyes narrow;

"Alright punk come out, before I get mad."

Piggot growled out loud as if expecting some lad.

It wouldn't be the first a robber came to call

she hoped they would surrender to keep blood off the wall.

The dry leaves of the fallen Christmas tree rattled and shook,

another ball rolled by her, with a rattling hook.

Emily hit the light and surveyed the scene

half hidden under the tree was a coat made of green.

The gun was thus lowered, and a hand met a face,

this fucking town, what a mad stupid place.

She grabbed the tree's top, the angel missed,

hefting it upward, she was a bit pissed

On the ground lay a cat, of the large kind

fur covered in pine bristles and all the tinsel she could find

the floor under her was soaked through and through,

the tree stand had dumped and drenched the cat too.

Emily sighed with a curse, glaring at the feline,

the beast was off like a shot, to a hide, bee line.

An inarticulate cry ended when she nearly choked

"GODS DAMN IT POCKY, EVERYTHING'S SOAKED!"

Brockton Bay, December 28th, 2010, Tuesday

"I hate this time of year." Mouse Protector grumbled.

Miss Militia raised an eyebrow at that. The pair of them were currently on patrol and walking along the Boardwalk, making a show that the heroes were still around and not run off for the holidays. Granted all they had stopped was two muggings and a shoplifter, but here they were.

"Really? With how you act around Christmas?" Miss Militia asked.

"Oh don't get me wrong. I love the holidays, it's just this week. From after Christmas to New Years eve just feels like a long Thursday afternoon."Mouse Protector explained. "I could never get the hang of Thursdays."

Miss Militia stared at the shorter woman for a bit longer as they walked, unsure if this was a joke, a reference, or the rare moment of Mouse being serious, so she simply offered a faint hum of acknowledgment as they continued the patrol.

Brockton Bay, December 29th, Wednesday 2010

Emma Barnes stared at the letter before her on the table. Her nails clawed at the surface before she screamed out and shredded the letter.

Madison Clements looked up from her phone as her friend lost her shit. Emma had invited her over when the letter arrived, which to be fair, Madison thought was kinda dumb, but then again Emma was kinda obsessed with Sophia so she probably expected this to be a big reveal of her going to Arcadia.

"I take it the news is not good." Madison deadpanned.

"I failed it. How the fuck did I fail this!? The test was stupid, stuff they've been teaching us all year. I should have gotten into the damn school." Emma ranted.

Madison wisely remained silent and went back to her phone, letting the girl bitch, this might take a while. One did not survive around Emma and Sophie without learning to read their moods. With Sophia gone there had been a bit of a power vacuum, and while no one wanted to get on Emma's bad side with how vicious the girl could be, it had been Madison who had taken control of the network the other girls had built. Sophia had been the muscle and Emma the brains, though Madison had been the face for the most part, using Sophia's weird jungle animal logic and keeping everyone focused on certain lower ranking students so that everyone felt they were better than some one else, thus they were less likely to be aware of those above them.

Sure it sucked for the people on the bottom of the hierarchy, but who cared about them, they were on the bottom for a reason.

As for Emma the likely reason she failed the test was due to her obsession with the Hebert girl and with Sophia. That sort of thing didn't leave much room for study. Madison herself had a decent set of grades and didn't bother to take the test. She was quite fine right where she was at the top of the heap with only one crazy girl left above her as queen now that Sophia was gone.

And crazy didn't hold onto a crown very well.

All it would take was one more thing to send the girl down to the bottom and would let Madison be the top dog in the school. Emma was likely to go too far with something or simply break and when she fell Madison would rise from the ashes and those at the bottom would have a new member.

She didn't expect she would remain at the top of the heap for the rest of Highschool, she wasn't that arrogant, but which ever girl rose to the top after Emma crashed and burned would be some one she would hitch herself to, riding the high and letting the next girl burn herself out like a shooting star. By then high school would be over and she'd have to look for a real life, but this was something in the meantime. Though she had to remain friendly with crazy until the girl finally broke or did something that would ruin her. She should write a book about this, maybe call it Worm or something, make Hebert the hero, she owed the mouse of a girl that much for allowing her to get into her current position.

"This is Taylor's fault I know it. Bitch keeps distracting me in class with her fucking face."

Madison lowered her phone. Crazy was dangerous, but it was also interesting, how did she even make that connection? You know what she didn't want to know and she simply tapped record on her phone and let it record whatever Emma was gonna say. If this went tits up she would have this recording and a few others to show she was an objector to whatever stupid plan was hatched. Sometimes that was all it took to go from something serious to a slap on the wrist as she had found out in the past.

"Alright. I have a plan, a plan to make sure that Taylor knows her place as the worm she is."

Maybe Madison wouldn't have to wait that long at all for the crown.

Brockton Bay, December 31th, 2010, Friday

Armsmaster let out a small sigh as he stared at the flaming wreckage of the abandoned Westend mall.

Firefighters were combating the blaze, police and paramedics were everywhere, pulling screaming people out of the rubble, arresting those not quite as damaged and trying to make heads or tails of the thugs maddened screaming.

A loud explosion sounded as what was probably an old propane tank from the food court went off causing another section of the building to collapse.

The cacophony of sirens and screams and yelling was punctuated by the constant barking and howling of dogs.

Armsmaster turned from the fire to the four capes standing nearby.

Baskerville stood apart from the others checking over the dogs and not seeming to care about anything else that was going on. Likely she didn't, her three dogs sat nearby, their massive forms warding off any one who approached the cages without them needing to do anything other than continue to look like beasts from the deepest pits of hell.

The other three had been sent along to make sure Baskerville did not go too far in her rescue attempt.

Armsmaster hadn't selected them himself, he had let an algorithm he designed pick the ones most likely to help Baskerville succeed in rescuing the dogs, it was the same one he used for the Wards scheduling to save time.

He would have to overhaul the system or just scrap it entirely. He should have done more than tweak it after it put Clockblocker and Shadow Stalker on the same patrol.

Mouse Protector, Assault, and Alucard all stood before him wearing smiles that were far to innocent to be true.

Armsmaster looked at them, then back at the fire, then back at the three of them.

"I want a PRT standard issue report, full details, in plain American English, with no slang, song lyrics, rhyming, or embellishments, using the proper font and lettering size, at least ten pages of relevant detail, in triplicate, also covering Baskerville's portion of events, from each of you, with one copy on my desk one on Director Piggot's Desk, and one on the PR director Chamber's desk, Monday morning, January 3rd ,2011 by no later than 1pm eastern standard time according to the PRT's internal timekeeping program." Armsmaster ordered his eyes shifting to each of them wondering how many new orders he would need to add to his list after this.

"Awww what about our new years party?" Assault asked with a whine.

Another explosion made Armsmaster turn his head to the mall as something else went off inside of the building. He glanced to his HUD and noted the time tick over to midnight almost in perfect time with the explosion. The sound of gunfire and fireworks filled the air echoing across the city as the new year was rung in.

"You have just had it." Armsmaster pointed out and turned to get back on his bike.