An Ennead Christmas Poem

Twas the night before Christmas, and through all Domino
There was a great battle of Shadows and snow,
Bakura on one side, and Yugi on the other,
They chased through the streets, pelting each other.

With Jou, Honda and Anzu joining the fun,
They fought and they played till the battle was won.
Then back to the shop they travelled together,
To escape from the worsening weather.

When all were inside and the snacks all given out,
From downstairs there came a great shout.
Down to the shop, Yugi shot like a dart,
Hoping against hope that there were no dark arts.

Down on the ground floor, Ojiisan was pale,
As morons bagged up things that were not for sale.
The Pharaoh took over and drove them away,
But they swore to come back yet another day.

Unwilling to let them ruin the holiday season,
Oneesan gave chase despite rhyme or reason.
She cornered the group while hunting her prey,
Insistent that for their crimes they would pay.

The gang turned on her, each much bigger by far,
One picking up a huge metal bar!
The Pharaoh didn’t flinch, she knew what to do,
And warned the gang that from now they were through.

They laughed and they laughed, doubting she was a threat,
Until she called forth the Shadows and challenged the set.
It took little time to beat them, they were just that thick,
And none of them had expected that trick.

Switching back with her light side, the Pharaoh retreated
Ready to relax now her task was completed.
They headed for home, through the dark and the snow,
Though now with the weather their journey was slow.

Her friends met her halfway home, having been worried,
And out of the storm they hurried and scurried.
Once back at the shop, the festivities did start,
Easing the worry in the Mutous’ hearts.

Gifts were exchanged and snacks were demolished,
The worry from earlier was completely abolished!
And by the time her friends left, Yugi was quite ready,
For tomorrow’s holiday. She wished it was here already!

Once friends were all gone and mess tidied away,
Yugi went to bed to await Christmas Day.
So completely exhausted from the earlier fight,

That before too long she was out like a light.

She wasn’t awake when there were sounds from the roof,
With a thud and a jingle, she missed foot and hoof.
Oneesan however woke in a flash,
And headed to find out what would make such a big crash.

In the living room near the tree, she found a strange man,
He obviously had some evil plan.

Dressed all in red with a white beard and a sack.
She watched as quite quickly he started to unpack.

Confusion flowed through her as he left behind toys,
And vanished away with a great deal of joy.
And as she headed back to check on her light,
She heard him call "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

NaNo2013: Speedster's Secret: Part 14

Luna’s mother had provided her with a stocking to open before breakfast, only a little thing with five presents in but it was nice to feel included even if it meant she got woken up at six. After the stocking presents had been opened, she helped cook the full English breakfast that the family shared before those who wanted to go to Church went to do so while Juliet and Michael stayed behind and played with the board game that had been slipped into Michael’s stocking.

Once everyone was back and the roast turkey had been put into the oven to cook, they all settled in the living room to open the presents under the tree. They were halfway through doing so when Michael’s phone went off.

“Sorry.” Michael apologised as he pulled it out of his pocket, “What the...?” He murmured as he flipped it open, “Spike? It’s Christmas Day, mate. You know I’m busy until... what?” There was silence from Michael for a minute or so, then he scrambled across the room, face white and eyes wide, turning on the TV despite the objections of Luna and his parents.

“Mikey?” Luna asked, worried as he seized the remote and flipped over to the news channel where a harried looking reporter was reporting from the top of a building.

“What you see below me,” She was saying as the camera panned across a horde of robots and robosuited individuals, all of whom were stood between the military and the warehouse Speedster had scoped out a week ago. “Is a standstill that has been reached by the military and the robot army belonging to Sawyer. The military are hesitant to attack the people trapped inside the now fully controlled suits of metal armour, while Sawyer seems content to ensure that no one can enter the complex while his forces raid banks and shops.”

“It’s Christmas Day!” Luna protested, forgetting about her parents for the moment as they watched a cannon unfold from the arm of one of the robosuits and open fire on the armed forces opposite. “There’s a rule!”

“Our rules, not his.” Shade pointed out, irritation obvious and having shoved Michael aside easily to watch this for himself. “It’s a clever plan.” He continued, wishing he had thought of it himself, “Using innocent bystanders as shields for his robots. They can’t open fire without being accused of massacring thousands of disabled people.”

“Michael!” His mother sounded disturbed that her son seemed almost approving of what was going on.

As the military finally seemed to make up their mind, a burst of air sent everything that wasn’t nailed down flying. Luna palled and shot out the living room door, able to hear someone moving upstairs. Shade followed at a more sedate pace, easily able to hear the argument going on upstairs.

“Speeds, you can’t!” Luna was protesting, “Not alone!”

“There’s no one else, Luna.” Speedster snapped back, “None of the others are close enough and no one else can get close enough quickly enough. They’re firing on the cops, it won’t be long until they start firing back, innocent bystanders or not. I won’t let that happen. I can’t. This is my mess, I have to fix it.”

“And you’re changing into your costume from the film why?” Shade asked, poking his head around the door, watching as Speedster struggled with the zip on her catsuit, “You’re not a real superhero.”

“Because,” Speedster explained as Luna, who still looked torn about what was going on, batted her friend’s hands away from the zip and helped her do it up, “If I don’t wear anything that’s mine and at least try and hide my features the military may not trust me, but they shouldn’t be able to use facial recognition software either.” She finished as she slipped her mask down over her face, her eyes watching the pair carefully from the slits. “Now if you don’t mind...”

“Actually, I’m not here to stop you. You were told you had to clear up your messes.” Shade shrugged, “I just wanted to make sure you had this to give him. If he’s playing with the Club’s heroes, he needs to know the villain handbook.”

“You guys have a handbook?” Speedster looked amused despite the situation.

“Speeds, hang on one sec and I’ll come with you.” Luna promised, shooting into her room to get changed.

“Yes we do. Don’t read it, it’s for villain eyes only.” Shade nodded, watching his sister go, amused, “Also you’re not taking her, I need her.”

“No, I know I’m not.” Speedster reassured him, feeling weird in doing so, “I’ll make sure he gets this. You guys watch the TV, I’ll be on shortly.” With that she shot out of the building, waiting only until she had reached the road, at which point Shade heard one of Speedster’s signature sonic booms.

“Was that...?” Luna looked panicked as she slipped out of her room, half changed.

“Gone.” Shade nodded, amused at her reaction, “She had no intention of taking you. You’ll just slow her down.”

“But...” Luna looked hurt.

“Go get out of that mess.” Shade sniggered, “And do it fast. One of us will have to explain things to our parents and would you rather it was me?”

“No!” Luna yelped, shaking her head and darting for her room, “Very much no.” She continued as she shut the door behind her. Shade chuckled and headed downstairs, to where his parents were picking up everything that had been blown everywhere in Juliet’s first burst of speed.

On screen the military were setting up rather big guns and Shade couldn’t help but wonder with an amused detachment, whether Speedster would make it in time. Despite her speed, it was going to come close.

NaNo2013: Speedster's Secret: Part 13

Speedster let out a pained groan as she tried to sit up, only to end up slumped back into the groove she had left in the grass.

Luna had been right, Robotnik wasn’t evil, he had suppressed that part of himself in order to help people. She had no right to chase him around and cause him trouble, because he had changed when he had Fused. She just had to accept that he could change, there was nothing else to do.

She just had to ignore the way the personality contamination from her Fusion was trying to force her to keep watching. Ignore the way part of her mind was yelling that there had to be something more going on.

As she managed to get herself sitting and examined her surroundings, she realised there was one bright side to realising she had been acting like an idiot and allowing the personality contamination to control her thoughts and actions.

If she wasn’t worrying all the time about what Robotnik was up to, she could actually relax and enjoy the build up to Christmas. She hadn’t last year because it hadn’t been long after they had all Fused and they had still been settling the ground rules for the post-Fusion Club. The three days over Christmas itself had been fine, since it had been agreed that there was to be no insane activity over the Christmas period in order to allow people to enjoy time with their families. But the build up had been stressful and she hadn’t enjoyed it in the slightest.

This year she could spend it having fun. There was only a week and a half left to go after all.

She staggered to her feet, wincing as she did so and trying to work out where she was. She had been lucky when she had crashed in that there had been no one between her and the wall in the middle of nowhere that had acted a break. However since it was out in the middle of nowhere, there was no signs telling her where she was or what was the closest city.

It didn’t help she hadn’t been paying attention to the markers she had past as she had sped by. As she headed down the road, convinced that she had to hit a town or village soon, she pulled her phone out, grinning slightly when she realised that it had signal.

“Hi Luna?” She asked as her friend picked up the phone, wincing as her right foot hit the floor and jarred her sore leg, “Yeah, I’m fine. Honest.” She chuckled slightly when Luna started fussing at her, just as aware as Juliet that she only ever used her phone when she absolutely needed to, “I just wondered if you guys have access to the internet right now? Because I need you to google maps something for me.” She explained as she reached a sign with the road name on it. “Yeah, I got lost again.” She admitted, laughing at Luna’s frustrated huff, “I have a road name this time if that helps. I’m on...”

She gave her friend the road name and winced as Luna explained that she was about a five hour drive from her house. Normally that wouldn’t be too bad, but with her leg aching from the crash she wasn’t looking forward to using it to get home. Still, run home she did, collapsing on the sofa with a bag of ice at the first opportunity she had.

“Ouch.” She grumbled as she took in the sight of bruising up her right leg and down her side. “At least it should be gone in a week.” She commented out loud, the almost empty house echoing the words back at her.

It didn’t stay almost empty for long as within minutes of her texting Luna to tell her she was home, her best friend had shot around to her house. Luna fussed at her for the rest of the evening, babbling excitedly about the breakthroughs she and the others had had on Dr. Styler and the project. Juliet wasn’t sure she had the heart to tell her that she had gone and staked out the building, stalked them home and then realised that she was being ridiculous. At least not right now. Especially after she realised that Luna was deliberately keeping the location of the lab a secret from her so she couldn’t shoot off and do exactly what she had spent the afternoon doing.

The following day, she had no choice but to admit what she had done. The others had expected her to react badly when it was announced that some billionaire with far too much money and who had sympathy for the plight of the people who needed the treatment Dr Styler and his assistant were providing but couldn’t afford it, was dropping a couple of million into a pot in order to pay for a large chunk of people to have the experimental robosuit system equipped so they could have a better quality of life.

When, instead, she had seemed resigned but hadn’t actually gone out of her way to do anything about it, the others had questioned her. Luna had been disappointed and Mako had gotten cross, but both had admitted that they were relieved she had already gone and done the recon without getting caught. They had expected her to shoot off at any time to try and with her leg playing up, Luna had half expected to be bailing her out of jail.

In the week and a half leading up to Christmas, Juliet had to ignore the news of thousands of people with physical disabilities streaming to the lab in order to get the treatment. It wasn’t easy, but she managed it by distracting herself with cleaning, followed up with decorating her house for the first time in a couple of years and even making cookies between trips down to the tree house.

When Luna’s parents came to pick them up for Christmas, she was glad to be out of the city. The robosuited population was increasing steadily around the labs as people in post treatment got used to their new forms, not that she had sped by to check on the lines and make sure there wasn’t any trouble there at all, and quite a few more ‘normal’ robots had come into the city itself, causing her a few problems when she went out to do her rounds, only for a bot or three to get in her way.

Ignoring what was going on wasn’t easy and she kept having to remind herself that as long as he wasn’t doing anything wrong, she had to stay away from the lab. Getting out of the city and into a whole different environment helped.

Chew Magna was peaceful and quiet in comparison to the busy city and Juliet found herself unwinding as she hung out at the lakes. It was cold, but not as icy and white, allowing her to zoom around and around the lakes when she wasn’t shooting back up the country in order to do her job, enjoying the local countryside, visiting Chedder Gorge, where they made the best cheesy chips ever, or going with Luna to the local orchard to feed the pigs that were allowed to live there.

It was Christmas Eve before she found a real disadvantage to it and that was when Luna’s horde of a family descended upon the small residence. Speedster found she couldn’t really cope with the sheer amount of people in the tiny house very well and as such took the opportunity to shoot over to her uncle’s place and drop off the presents for the following day.

Her uncle’s new wife was cross to see her, but her uncle was delighted that she had made the time to rush over. While he knew her secret, he hadn’t expected her to run over just to see him, not when it was so cold out. He dragged her into the warm house, plying her with hot cocoa and mulled wine, while accepting her gift of cookies and cake.

Her father had left her a present with her Uncle, which she took back with her when she headed back to Luna’s place where she arrived just in time for the family to decide that she was coming with them to Midnight Mass. Despite both her insistence that she couldn’t sing and Luna’s insistence that she didn’t normally get on in Churches very well, Luna’s family insisted that it was a tradition and she had no choice but to go.

It wasn’t too bad a service and she enjoyed the hot chicken and mushroom soup afterwards, and she was pleasantly surprised to find that she could open one present straight after it.

She kept the one from her father, along with all her other particularly important gifts, for later and opened the one from the Club for her. She was rather amused to find that it was a cyan glass paperweight that was cut like a gem stone and weighed a surprising amount. It reminded her of something she had seen in the memories she had gained in the Fusion and she chuckled as she put it safely in her backpack, glad that the cyan gem and the gems from her memories weren’t the same thing. Her hand brushed fabric as she placed it in the main pocket and she pulled out the item, becoming startled when she found that she still had her costume from the film in there too.

“Note to self, don’t forget to take this home.” Speedster commented to herself as she hung up the costume and fished out the mask that went with it. Snap had asked them all to take their costumes home after recording, since she had nowhere to store it at her parents’ house over Christmas and didn’t want to leave the complicated and slightly expensive outfits in her halls, just in case something happened.

She couldn’t help but wonder what Luna and Michael had done with theirs as she hitched the mask to the top of the coat hanger, but didn’t get a chance to ask as Christmas morning dawned bright and early and she got sucked into the excitement and traditions.