Krampus Returns

He was back. After many years of absence, the Krampus had finally returned to Earth. He'd be making up for lost time now, collecting children's souls and punishing the naughty. There was no time to waste. People had been quite naughty this year.

With snow falling soft on the countryside, there wasn't a foot print to be seen.  You could call it a kingdom of isolation but Henry Travers didn't look like the king, especially not with the recent addition of a partner in crime by the name of Carmen.  After an encounter with a particularly nasty blood mage, the alchemist hadn't been able to shake the young woman without fear of her charging headfirst into something even worse.  Left with few options, he'd allowed her to tag along for a while in hopes of giving her a proper education in the supernatural.  

Thankfully, they'd had the opportunity to cut the young investigator's teeth on some lower level jobs since then.  The sorcerer's convention was especially memorable.  Human sacrifices to gods that had faded from existence centuries ago.  Honestly, why was it always human sacrifice?  Used to be a time when people were content to just chop up a crow for their little magical arts and crafts projects.  Travers couldn't say much against that sort of thing.  Birds were a pain, at least on car wash day.  Especially on car wash day.  

He'd made it a point to establish a good working relationship with the young woman at the World's End.  Whatever relic was stashed in that place was packing some powerful mojo that made long distance travel almost too easy, case in point being the American alchemist's current presence plugging along a suburban neighborhood in Germany.  

Henry hadn't wanted to believe his contact at first but Ole Chip had never steered him wrong before and while the old man wasn't the hunter he used to be in the field, he was still a damn good investigator.  All sorts of cultures had some kind of lore regarding a Santa Claus type figure and unfortunately, the majority were more malicious than merry and the secondary signs were pointing to just that kind of creature appearing in the area.  

"Pop quiz, based on the information Chip gave us, what kind of creature are we dealing with?" he asked the young woman in the shotgun seat, never taking his eyes off the road.

Magical teleportation was a pain on cell reception. Now they were in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere in the country of Whogivesashitastan with no signal for the last mile and a half. And it was Christmas, too. She should be updating her blog right now, not freezing her ass off looking for some weird monster.

Off in the distance, a child was crying and screaming, a loud smacking noise echoing along with it. It was enough to take her eyes off her phone, to say the least. Reaching the source of the noise, it turned out to be some hairy, hooved monster lugging a sack on its back and beating a little boy's ass with a handful of branches, tongue waving wildly in the air. "I...honestly have no idea what I'm looking at," she said in utter bewilderment. Needless to say, this was not a common occurrence, even with the things she'd recently encountered. "Do we...stop it?"

Some fat old man, can you believe it! He was gone for just a couple of centuries and this, this what they replaced him with. Ridiculous! Where were the old sacrifices, the old shrines of worship, the symbols of warding and decorations to appease him? Now they all had lights up, there were song books dedicated to this, Jesus character lying about. A tree riddled with a gross collection of sparkling nonsense.

Well no more, he had had enough of this. From now on things were going back the way they were, the good ol' days of discipline and punishment. Keeping the people in their place.

Selecting a child of which he just knew had been naughty, chalk it under intuition. He began the age old art of discipline with the classic, whoopin stick, upon him.

The screams were music to his ears, and give him that warm cozy feeling like nothing else could. It was like drinking the finest mead in the world, distilled from sweet fruits and blissful honey; and alcoholic to the boot.

But that would be insignificant compared to the delicacy of the very life of these humans themselves. The sweet tender taste of satisfying that unending desire for life, with death.

Something came along to ruin his fun however, a noise in the distance. Some sort of hum and a crunching sound. He looked around, there was a metallic construction near him. What one earth...

He squinted at it maliciously, smelling the air, there was the pungent scent of some newer substance. He could only compare it to the burning of oil lamps back in the day. It must be coming from that thing whatever it was, but what else lay inside of it?

Perhaps it was another pesky construct of some other god, fool enough to try and claim this territory which he had arrived at first. Maybe it was not a god at all...maybe it was just that pesky blacksmith from the north. He had been forging legends while just a mortal. Maybe one of the others gave him immortality and this is what he had come up with after hundreds of years.

He called out to it while it was still some distance away.

"Wayland! Is this another of your pesky works!? I have not forgiven you for the damage you helped do to Grendel, we were good friends at the time, and it was you who armed the northmen against him! I do not forgive you Wayland..."

The car that continued to race towards him did not stop as he called out to it, and the lack of response only mad him more angry. He bared his teeth and threw down the child, maintaing his grip on the switch however.

He wasn't sure what would happen now but he was very eager to stretch his legs, and perhaps avenge his dear friend from that gruesome death he suffered. Maybe Wayland's little tools hadn't done much against him, but still. It was the thought that counted.

The Hudson Hornet's tires whirred against the snow covered German roads, propelling the classic car forward until their target finally came into full view. Henry had known that this thing worked quickly but the evil Santa had moved even faster than he'd anticipated. Had they wasted anymore time finding it, he may very well have escaped with the child. Luckily, they'd made it and it was time to deck this monster's halls with a painful fruitcake of fruity pain.

"Pagan demigod. Think evil Santa. When I give the signal, get that kid out of here and find us some Christmas tree branches," the alchemist said while increasing the car's speed even more.

Gently adjusting the car's course, Travers continued bearing down on the ancient creature who was evidently unfamiliar with the nature of automobiles. Thankfully, the child had been thrown free which would make ensuring his safety that much easier. On their present course, the Hornet would pass right alongside Krampus, missing him by a foot or two to his left. Or at least it would have, had Travers not opened his driver side door at the last moment to crack the child beating monster right in the face with a metal battering ram going over fifty miles an hour.

As soon as they passed the monster, Henry hit the hand brake and pulled the car into a tight sliding stop, putting it into park before exiting through the still open door. "Now, kid!" he yelled, drawing his handgun with his right hand and leveling it on Krampus' form. The blessed lead rounds probably wouldn't be enough to put it down for good but they should be able to slow it down long enough for Carmen to get back. If they didn't, he had a few tricks in mind using the baseball bat held in his left hand.

"Wait, does that mean Santa's real, too? She was suddenly getting flashbacks to a Christmas a few years back. The safe assumption was that vibrator "From Santa" was just a joke gift from a friend, but now...

Gripping the overhead handle with all her might, she braced herself for the crash. With the slide in motion, she tried to push away from the side. Hopefully, the heavy coat necessitated by the cold would prevent any bruises. No time for that, though. There was a brat to rescue.

Falling out of the vehicle, she scraped through the snowy ground to run for the kid. Grabbing them by the pants, she pulled them along towards the forest. Plenty of pine trees not too far from the fight. Tossing the child into a pile of snow, she shooed them with her hand as she continued forward to grab a low hanging branch from a tree and tug. The slick ground wasn't good for traction, but the wood was already tearing and cracking. It'd snap off quickly.

Krampus was slammed by the door quite hard, his switch falling useless out of his hand as he was flung bodily away from the child. Immediately he was up in anger however and was about to dash forward and furiously strike at the man who got out of the bull like creature.

But there was all of the sudden burning brands of metal, with those filthy blessings laid on them, piercing and striking him mercilessly. He screamed a wretched scream and sank down on to a knee for a moment as the bullets tore through him.

But he would not be put down, and though he was breathing laboriously through just one functioning lung and his left arm had been damaged considerably he charged forward nonetheless.

His right arm grabbed a stray metal trash can near him and flung it in the direction of the man. The trash contents spewed everywhere obscuring him for a moment, and his strength was sufficient to turn the garbage can into a damaging missile.

Krampus paid little attention to the wench and the child, they seemed to be the least of his problems at the moment.

Surprisingly, the blessed lead rounds were proving to be far more effective than Henry had expected. Beyond simply slowing the mad pagan entity down, the bullets had brought Krampus to his knees and were apparently inflicting noticeable damage. Deciding to press the advantage while he could, Henry continued pumping the remainder of his magazine into the creature while it reached for a nearby trash can with its one good arm. Some people might have praised the monster for its tenacity, dedicated to throwing trash at the Alchemist to the point of trying to withstand even more bullets to the chest.

Henry was not one of those people.

As his gun ran dry, Henry was already dropping to the ground to avoid the speeding trash can hurling at him. While he was able to avoid it, the projectile bounced sharply off the rear paneling of his car, leaving a sizable dent in the metal which would be paid for in the blood of this dastardly pagan monstrosity.

Heavy snow had continued to fall throughout the night, accumulating at a several inches of white powder across the lawn already and Henry was going to take full advantage of it. Tapping his bat against the snow as he landed on his side, Travers used the power of transmutation to alter the molecular state of a thin band of snow between himself and Krampus. While the total mass which Henry could change at any given time was limited, by stretched the path to such a thin margin, he was able to extend his range and save additional space to also transmute the snow under and immediately around Krampus in one fell swoop.

In the blink of an eye, the once powdery ice crystals were returned to a liquid state only for Henry's bat to once again tap the little channel of water through the snow to again invoke transmutation. The puddle in which Krampus knelt was immediately flash frozen in an attempt to immobilize the creature.

Fibers of wood finally snapping, the branch came free, sending her falling into the snow. A soft landing of no concern. "Branch!" she shouted, running towards Henry with the piney piece of wood in hand. Retrieving her mace from her pocket, she unlocked it and shot a stream of burning vengeance at its face from a distance away, moving around it all the while to deliver the required item. "Now what?" she asked, still spraying at the monster and handing things off to the alchemist.

Ice hm? That is an interesting choice indeed, but there more than a few tricks up this old gods sleeves. His territory had been of the oldest regions of wintery domain and the like; as such he did indeed have his own control over these elements.

Krampus felt the burning substance in his eyes, and it irritated him to be sure, but he gave it little attention. The pain was minor compared to the bullets, it affected him little, and closing his eyes to it only helped him even more.

The ice grew warmer and began to quickly crack and then turn into mush, followed water, in his hay day he would have strangled this man with an icicle garrote or drowned him in a wave, possibly even scald the flesh off of him in a steaming blow of hot water. But alas, this was not his hay day. And he barely managed this little stunt as it was.

Nonetheless this sorcery would find himself unable to continue manipulating the water in this area. It was safely, his, to say the least. Not that he could do much with it other than stop him from being able to manipulate it.

Having waisted enough moments few as they were turning the ice into lukewarm water all around him, this included the snow. He opened his eyes after that moment of concentration and stuck his hand through the window of the car shattering it into many shards and grabbing a particularly big one to use as a weapon.

His wounds were beginning to heal, and the pain was subsiding a bit in him. He would launch himself at that pesky couple plaguing him with their presence very soon. But first he would take a handful of shards from the window with his other hand. Then toss them as hard as he could at the woman still spraying that substance at him.

OOC: Point of fact, the window thing makes no sense. Previous posts have established the car slid to a stop after hitting Krampus and Henry is standing between the car and the monster. Unless you have super stretchy arms, you won't be reaching those windows.

Carmen hadn't taken long in retrieving the branches Henry had asked for. In addition to that, the shot of mace to the pagan god's eyes was a pretty nice touch. If he paid her anything he might have been tempted to double it. For the moment though, he was content to grab the borrowed branch of the local coniferous tree (technically an evergreen) from her while rising to his feet. His empty gun abandoned in favor of the branch, Travers rushed the still trapped monster.

"Hit the heart!" the Alchemist shouted to the young woman even as he moved to remove the distance between them and the monster. For whatever reason, Krampus had chosen to close its eyes after being bound in the ice. Most likely, it was attempting to free itself from its confinement somehow but whatever methodology it had in mind, the key fact was that its attention was currently centered on freeing itself rather than watching the Alchemist. That was perfectly fine by Henry, who managed to cross the paltry distance between them while the ice transformed into an odd semi-solid sludge in order to ram the sharp end of his newly acquired branch into Krampus' chest.

While the creature would normally be able to shrug off a simple impaled heart easily enough (he assumed), the history of the "Christmas tree" could find its roots in numerous folk lore tales and pagan mythology. Almost universally, they were symbols to ward away evil in one form or another and there was no more malicious presence associated with the holiday season than Krampus. Put in simpler terms, the evil Santa would not be getting up from any evergreen impalements.

(OOC) Also, going to be That Guy and tell you that mace doesn't work that way. Mace is basically tear gas, so closing your eyes on it isn't going to help. Even with Krampus' healing factor or whatever, its body can't even reject the stuff with its eyes closed. And with her pumping more and more into it, it's just not doing. He's pretty blind right now.


"With what?" she questioned, having nothing on hand to stab with. All things considered, he was doing pretty well on his own. Stepping out of the way and discontinuing the spray, she went to the car and opened up the trunk from behind. Lifting it up, she dug through the cans, clothes, and bags, she grabbed the small survival shovel for posterity's sake. "I got a thing!" she said, not really sure what to do with it, but it would still be handy if things didn't pan out with the tree.

Spoiler:

Krampus did not expect this pathetic human to lunge at him, especially not with what seemed a branch from an evergreen tree!

Or at least that was what he imagined it was, he had a hard time seeing through that pesky spray the girl kept throwing in his face. The pain was building slightly and his eyes watered causing him to blink rapidly, but it would by no means take away his sight entirely.

The outstretched branch was close to his chest now, Krampus threw his right hand forward and grabbed the branch, then swinging his left arm with a shift of his body he would hit the mans arm on the top side of his elbow.

Krampus hoped this would cause the man to impale himself on his own spike, but just in case he didn't he lunged out almost blindly with his mouth and began to bite viscously at whatever was in front of him.

OOC: Kay then...

The pagan demigod had managed to catch the evergreen despite his injuries and partial blindness. Evil, child abusing monster or not, that was pretty impressive. That being said, he was still going to die. Rather than try to wrestle the branch away from the monster, Henry simply gave a sharp twist of his wrist to snap the branch in two and continue his advance with a thrust into the monster's throat. The awkward flailing from Krampus' left arm came as an odd sort of assistance in that regard, striking Travers just above the elbow and forcefully extending the alchemist's arm and thus his thrust towards Krampus' throat. As if intent on ensuring his own death, Krampus blindly lunged forward with his mouth agape right into the thrust. It wasn't as romantic or dramatic as a stab to the heart, but an evergreen wound was an evergreen wound in the end so it should have been more than enough to bring down this relic of a bygone era.

Despite the impressive armaments she pulled from the trunk, Carmen couldn't really do anything at the moment besides watch everything happen. There were worse ways to spend a fight, though.

Krampus pierced by the weapon that he had once thought would bring death to his opponent slid slowly and with a sickening sound down along the evergreen tree's branch. He did not speak a word and his lifeless eyes did not glow the malice that once seemed to burn so brightly inside of them.

OOC:You have won! Congrats XD

Please take your SP and I hope you had fun!