Yes, it's late (past New Year's, even), but given that we're still in the twelve days of Christmas I figure I can sneak this in! A bit of a Korpsmas story for Regan, inspired by the classic Christmas story of John McClane at Nakatomi Towers. Ho ho ho.
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Regan yawned, her shopping basket dragging her arm down with its weight. It seemed like she wound up doing this every year, where Christmas would somehow sneak up on her. At least this time she had the excuse of having had an extremely turbulent year to keep her busy. The mare smiled a little bit to herself, and tugged up the hood of her hoodie a little higher.
<You have been doing so well, Regan. You should be proud of all you've accomplished.>
"Th-thanks, ROSE." She smiled a little bit wider at the AI's praise, even as she couldn't help a blush coloring her cheeks behind the bubbled lenses of her RCG's. Her tail gave a flick behind her, sending a ripple through the long golden spill of horse hair.
<You're welcome, dear.>
Regan sighed and shuffled forward as the line moved. That was always the problem when she procrastinated on her Christmas shopping, it seemed like everyone else around her did the same. The lines were atrocious this late in the season, and the real pain for Regan was that it never seemed like she could ever find just the right present for people, much less at a price point that she could afford and felt appropriate for Christmas gift-giving.
<Don't forget, Regan, it's the thought that counts.>
Regan grumbled under her breath. Yeah, sure, maybe it was the thought that counted, but nobody had ever accused the mare of having an overabundance of emotional intelligence; how long had it taken to figure out that she was transgender, after all? In fact, there had been at least a few missions that she'd been on where she had explicitly been brought along not to contribute to any kind of tactical planning, but to function as muscle.
The filly snorted to herself. Well, to be fair, none of those missions, and none of those statements, had been made since she had joined the Korps. Every indication was that they valued her insights and input: if she was being fully honest with herself, Regan felt like she was a rookie all over again. Everything was new all over again: new people, new objectives, new ways of doing things, and it made the mare's head spin with the sheer variety of new experiences. It seemed prudent to listen more than she spoke, and she wound up learning a lot, but it meant that she was around a whole new group of people. It felt like being the new transfer student at school, or being the new character added to a sitcom mid-season, where everyone else already knew all the jokes and catch phrases and she was struggling to get caught up.
Speaking of paying attention and listening more than she spoke, Regan frowned as someone pushed past her in line. About to speak, the mare paused; the deer pushing past her was wrapped up, a trench coat pulled tightly around him. Shit, and he wasn't the only one, Regan could see multiple other figures moving toward the front of the store, dressed similarly to the deer. All were large, all were male, and all seemed to be moving with a singular purpose. "Uhh, ROSE, this isn't looking good, are you seeing this?"
<Indeed. Notifying other Korps personnel in the area of a potential disturbance.>
"Thanks, ROSE. Hopefully-”
"EVERYBODY DOWN!!!" The deer who had pushed past Regan shouted out. His trench coat came open, revealing a tactical vest and body armor, and the cervine produced a short barrelled assault rifle from under the garment. The rest of the trench coat mafia followed suit, and Regan groaned. This was the last thing that she needed, another delay on this shopping trip. Well, that was all well and good, just let them rob the place and then they'd leave...
But apparently the deer (he seemed to be the leader of the group) wasn't done speaking. "We, the Christmas Crusaders, have come to liberate you good people from the clutches of consumerism and restore the True Meaning of Christmas." Ugh, something about the deer's tone made it clear that "True Meaning" was capitalized, Regan was sure, but the cervine forged on, regardless. "You will be just the first citizens set free from the greed and commercialism that this holiday has become, and you all will be the blessed first to celebrate this holiest of days as it was always intended: with 'Christ' first and foremost."
Regan groaned with dismay, and she wasn't the only one. She'd heard about a war on Christmas, talking heads on TV got all up in arms about it year after year, but this was the first time that she'd ever heard of someone bringing literal guns to the "war." Only in America, she supposed with a sigh.
The other goons started moving through the stalled lines, relieving shoppers of baskets and carts loaded down with holiday purchases. An elderly rabbit several shoppers ahead in line raised a protest in a querulous tone, but subsided quickly when one of the thugs, a panther, lifted his gun threateningly. A small child somewhere in the crowd started crying quietly.
Fuck. Now the thugs were coming her way. Sure, she didn't really feel confident in many of the gifts that she was looking for, but at least they were something.
"Come on, miss. Hand it over."
"I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM." Regan blushed as the words erupted out of her, but the wolf before her with the cut-down shotgun seemed every bit as nonplussed as Regan herself. It didn't help Regan's embarrassment that the outburst had every single eye in the place focused on her, other customers and gun-toting terrorists alike.
"Can't you hold it?" The wolf was clearly annoyed.
However, despite his clear displeasure, Regan persisted. "No. It's an emergency." Well, shit, in for a penny, in for a pound; she leaned in closer to the canine to whisper. "It's that time of the month."
The wolf visibly recoiled. Hah. Success. Small victories were all well and good, but Regan was careful to keep the satisfaction off of her face as the wolf looked back at the stag running the show. He rolled his eyes, but nodded his antlered head. Score.
"Right." The wolf grimaced, and adjusted his grip on his firearm to better menace Regan with it. He had a full head of height over the mare, and he looked ready to use that advantage to be as intimidating as he could. "One trip to the restroom, but don't try anything."
"Sure." Regan turned toward the restrooms.
"Ahhp-bap-bap-bap-bap." The wolf interjected, and Regan blinked. "You're not gonna need that shopping basket with you. Leave that here."
Aww, fuck. Regan weighed her options for a moment. These "Christmas Crusaders" had a crowd of people at gunpoint; the mare was confident in her abilities and could trust that she wouldn't be hurt, but was less than confident that others around wouldn't be hurt in the crossfire. She would need to play this carefully, and play it smart, and that meant, for now... Regan grimaced and set the basket down on the ground.
"That's it. Now, nice and easy." The wolf flicked the muzzle of his gun over toward the restrooms, and Regan started moving. As she walked with her lupine escort, her eyes tracked through the crowd to pick out the rest of the Crusaders. There was the stag running the show, but milling through the crowd were also the panther she'd spotted before, a Weasel with another shotgun, and some manner of hawk with a goddamned katana. What the feck.
Fluorescent lights automatically came on with a click and a buzz as Regan entered the restroom with her canine escort: she'd hoped that walking into the women's restroom would at least give him pause, but no dice. He'd just walked in like he owned the place. Ugh. It was fairly typical for a public restroom, too, with a bank of enclosed stalls opposite a set of sinks and mirrors.
"Right. Time to do... what you need to do..." The wolf looked clearly uncomfortable discussing the subject of female biological needs. So much the better. He was even uncomfortable enough to add in a quick "And no funny business!"
"Wouldn't dream of it," Regan replied as she ducked into one of the stalls. She wasn't going to have much time to plan before her captors started getting suspicious. Once in the stall with the door closed, Regan pulled her hood down; a hand went instinctively to her forehead, and Regan smiled as fingers delicately ran over the deep green gem embedded in her forehead. She couldn't see it, but she knew that the golf-ball-sized gem with its kaleidoscopic depths would be glowing ever-so-faintly, its luminescence building as Regan prepared to unleash its power.
"Well, Stature, it's time for you to come out and play, I think," Regan murmured under her breath.
"What are you mumbling about in theeeEEEE-" The wolf's question was cut off midway through by a yelp of surprise as that green glow rapidly built into a blinding flash...and then a white-furred arm punched its way through the stall door, a strong hand gripping tightly around the wolf's throat.
Stature maintained her grip as she left the stall. Regan's superpowered alter ego gained over a foot of height and easily doubled the normally-slender mare's mass with pure muscle. That green gem set in her forehead gleamed brightly in the stark fluorescent lighting, showing the dramatic changes to her costume: gone were the oversized hoodie and pants used to conceal her body, replaced with a one-piece suit that covered from her chest down to her hips, simultaneously showing off D-cup cleavage and a slight gap between muscular thighs. Fishnets, meanwhile, broke up the white fur of her arms and legs, running from hands and hooves to mid-thigh and mid-bicep. Fingerless gloves, along with the mare's RCG's, completed the ensemble... which brought her back to the current moment, and the wolf that she had by the throat.
"Ah. Right. Sorry." Stature grimaced, and then casually slammed the canine through the neighboring stall door. She winced; the action wasn't quiet, by any stretch of the imagination, but in the wake of it the wolf dangled from her grip, limp and unconscious. A quick check confirmed that he was breathing, and Stature sighed with relief. He'd have some pretty rough bruises, likely a few broken bones, and probably a concussion, but he'd survive.
However, the mare was reminded of the seriousness of the situation by a crackle of static as a radio on the wolf's belt came to life. "Steve? Hey, Steve, everything okay in there? What was that noise?"
There was a pause, and Stature held her breath. Maybe they'd...well, honestly, the mare had no idea how these assholes were going to react; everything past asking to use the restroom had been flying by the seat of her pants.
The radio crackled again. "Fred, Steve isn't answering. Check the bathroom.”
"Fuck. Uhh, ROSE? Any suggestions?"
The AI's voice was calm and reassuring, even when offering bad news.
"I'm open to suggestions," Stature replied.
<Well, first of all, they can't shoot at what they can't see...>
Stature blinked, then looked up toward the faintly-buzzing fluorescent lights illuminating the room. A slightly villainous smile tugged at her lips.
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"Fred" turned out to be the weasel with the shotgun. To his credit, he paused when he arrived at the restroom and found the lights extinguished. There was a click, and the beam of a flashlight attached to the barrel of his gun played across the tile floor.
"Steve? Hey, Steve, what the fuck, man? Where the hell..." the weasel's voice trailed off as his flashlight illuminated the two wrecked stall doors. He took a step deeper into the restroom, moving cautiously; Fred knew what he was doing, checking corners and blind spots, sweeping the room methodically. Clearly he had some kind of tactical training, perhaps former (or even current, ugh) military or law enforcement. The flashlight attached to his shotgun cut a stark swathe through the dark as the weasel approached the wrecked stalls. The first was clear, but Fred gasped as he reached the second and spotted the wolf's unconscious body.
Immediately, he was on the radio. "Boss, Steve is down. I-..." Fred took an instinctive step back, and something crunched underfoot. The light swung down to check, and reflected off shattered glass shards spread across the floor. The weasel frowned, and swung the flashlight to the mirrors, but they were still intact. Besides, the shards were small, fragile, and curved; they looked like they had come from a tube, maybe...
"Hey."
Fred brought the shotgun up, but he was already too late. The light illuminated Stature against the ceiling for a split-second before the mare dropped like a ton of bricks. There was just enough time for an impression of a mass of white fur, a flash of pink visor, and a glowing green gem before Fred was slammed to the tile under Stature's weight and the back of his head impacted with a noise like a cantaloupe-powered Newton's cradle. When Stature rose to her hooves, the Weasel stayed down, groaning faintly.
"Two down, three to go." Stature grinned to herself.
<Indeed. ROSE's voice was as calm and steady as ever, but the mare was sure that she detected a note of satisfaction, maybe even pride, in the AI's voice. <Don't get too distracted, though. Time to move into Phase Two.>
“R-right!" Stature blushed a little. Phase two, right. Stature picked up the wolf's radio, and then dragged a small wire from her RCG's to plug into the device. Data started scrolling across her visor, and the mare grinned as a wireframe map of the building popped into the corner of her vision.
ROSE chimed in, and four dots appeared on the map. <Tracking four additional devices in the building using the same frequency. One is stationary, but the remaining three are converging on your position.>
Stature looked down at the weasel lying prone at her hooves: damn right one of the radios was stationary. She snorted expressively. "Just let me know when they're right outside..."
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Panther, hawk, and stag were silent as they approached the restrooms. Where the first two maintained their focus on the restroom, the stag kept his attention on the crowd of cowed shoppers. Whatever was going on, it was pretty clear that the hostages were their best bargaining chip, and he wasn't about to give that up.
"Into position." His voice came out as a low hiss, and both the hawk and the panther nodded.
"Prepare to enter." The stag growled out, and the other two readied their weapons. They were good soldiers, and the stag was happy to have them with him for this operation. Weapons ready to do violence, they nodded back to the stag and backed up against the restroom's exterior wall just outside of the doors.
"Right. Entry in three... two..."
Before the stag could reach "one," the wall behind the panther and hawk exploded outward in a shower of tile, metal bits, and drywall. Stature simply went through the wall like it wasn't even there. Battered by debris, the goons on the opposite side of the wall had no time to react before the super-powered mare seized panther and hawk and slammed them up against one another. It took several hits before they stopped struggling and Stature dropped them unceremoniously to the ground.
<There, that's four down, only one to go, and...oh.> ROSE'S voice trailed off, and a flashing ping directed the mare's view toward the buck. Rather than move to assist his fellow "Crusaders," the stag had moved back to the crowd of erstwhile shoppers and seized a young rabbit by the arm; she trembled in fear, the lapine girl couldn't have been older than six or seven.
"That's enough of that." The deer lowered the muzzle of his gun level with the rabbit's head. "You're gonna get a lot more polite, or things are gonna get real messy."
Stature's eyes narrowed at the deer and his hostage; the rabbit whimpered, and Stature's ears flicked back angrily. "Really? You're going to threaten a kid on Christmas? It doesn't seem very much in keeping with your 'true meaning of Christmas' spiel."
The stag's brow furrowed in a scowl, and Stature could watch his fist tighten on the grip of his gun. "Guess that's up to you. Any more hijinks like that, and people might get hurt."
ROSE's voice in her ear was calm but insistent, and Stature swallowed.
"Just wanna make sure I understand why you're all doing this." The mare flicked her tail behind her, all of her attention focused on the gun in the deer’s hand. "Robbing a store I get, but taking stuff from folks just trying to get gifts for their loved ones doesn't seem in keeping with the spirit of the season."
"The spirit of the season?" The stag's eyes narrowed in outrage. "The only 'spirit of the season' that matters is the Holy Spirit, and everyone here needs to remember that: I don't even see one cross or other indication of Christianity for this Christian holiday."
"Wait..." Stature's brow furrowed in confusion, tugging wrinkles around the base of that green gem. "You want big corporations to use religion to advertise their products to you?"
"That's not the point," the buck growled out in reply. "The point is that I walk into a store like this and everything is too politically correct to even mention the word ‘Christmas.’ All the employees wish everyone 'Happy Holidays' when they should be saying 'Merry Christmas."
"What if someone doesn't celebrate Christmas?" Stature felt a strange sense of rhetorical vertigo at the deer's rant, like she was about to tumble down a yawning gulf of grievance. "People celebrated around the solstice for thousands of years before Christianity came around, and even beyond that there's Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's is right around the corner, and that's not even getting into Tet and other Lunar New Year celebrations..."
"This is America." The buck's tone was angrily insistent as he adjusted his grip on his gun. "We're a Christian nation where people are too afraid to put 'Merry Christmas' on the greeting cards, and Christmas crackers get renamed to 'Holiday crackers.' Political correctness has run amok!"
Stature glanced to one side; among the pile of confiscated holiday accouterments was a box of brightly-colored crackers, each one emblazoned with foil text reading " Merry Christmas." "Riiiiight...and where do you go to find these holiday crackers?"
"You can go right to the Christmas section and see for yourself."
Stature's eyebrows rose higher. "What section of the store did you say?"
"The Chr-..." He paused in the middle of the word, and his lips curled into a snarl. "Fuck you! You fucking liberals just want everybody to hold hands and sing Kum Ba Ya and talk about their feelings. I don't care about your feelings, I don't care about other holidays, I just want people to not be fucking afraid of the woke mob and stand up and say 'Merry Christmas' to one another!" He gestured expansively around the store with his gun. "And I'm ready to do whatever it takes to bring this whole corrupt system d-"
<NOW.>
With the gun taken off of the hostage, Stature crossed the space between them in a flash. The mare's hooves left the floor in flight, and there was a crack of a sonic boom as Stature accelerated to her top speed. She hit the deer and just kept going, carrying him along with her, dragging him away from his hostage before he had time to react. The speed of her passage whipped up winds that swept product off of shelves and scattered it in her wake. Their brief flight together terminated in a loud crash as Stature's path took them across the entire store into the freezer section, and the super-powered mare hit the glass doors deer-first. The impact sent up a flurry of ice cream sandwiches and bonbons... and as Stature picked herself up, the stag remained down, groaning faintly in a crater of frozen treats.
Stature snorted as she looked down on the unconscious deer. "Merry Christmas."
Huh. Was ROSE... smug? <Be warned, though. Authorities have been contacted-law enforcement is four minutes away, and capes will be on scene in... ninety... seconds.>
Stature blanched. The last thing she needed right now were a bunch of heroes asking uncomfortable questions...that was, if they didn't see the RCG's and throw down on sight. Ninety seconds didn't give her much time: even with her super-speed, she doubted that she'd be able to sort her items out of the pile of intended gifts that the damn Christmas Crusaders had piled all together. Ugh. Okay, she needed a plan B…
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"Shoplifting?" Khelim's brow arched up high; he was wearing his power limiter to cut down on the hypnotic force of his speech, but the warm tone of his voice was still enough to send a Shiver down Regan's spine.
"I didn't mean to!" The filly blushed deeply and shrunk back down into her hoodie. "I just didn't really have time for the shopping, cops and capes were on the way, and-"
The jackal cut her off with a chuckle. "Darling, we're the Korps. Supervillains. If anything, shoplifting Christmas gifts for people is a plus."
Regan still blushed. "Yeah, well, I still wish I could have had a little more time. I could have gotten some bigger ticket items if I was going to be shoplifting, anyway."
"You did manage to grab my favorite flavor of tea." Khelim chuckled as he turned the tin over in his hands. "And something else besides."
Regan's brow furrowed. "W-what? I o-only got the tea for you, I d-didn't get you anything else..."
"On the contrary." Khelim's voice was very nearly a purr as he gave a tap to his RCG's." You've given me a very happy holiday, indeed.”
Regan's response was forestalled by a ping on her own visor: a text message from Khelim containing only an internet hyperlink. Regan opened up the link, and blushed a deep red. A video started playing of a live news report, with a reporter speaking directly into camera while standing well clear of a knot of emergency vehicles. Lights flashed in the background, and text scrolled across the page detailing a foiled terrorist attack. A clip of some tiger in a colorful skintight suit filled the screen, blathering on about how the swift response of heroes to the scene saved the day, but Regan wasn't paying attention to any of that.
Her attention focused instead on a small figure in the background: a rabbit. Young, too, she couldn't have been older than maybe six or seven, but she was watching intensely as an unconscious buck wearing tactical gear was wheeled by on a stretcher. Somewhere, though, she had found the largest, pinkest sunglasses that she could, her expression triumphant behind them as she watched the stag get taken away.
Regan blushed furiously, at a loss for words, but Khelim just smiled and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "Merry Korpsmas, dear, and a happy New Year.