Project: Magnus

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Evil E.L.F.

“That is not nor­mal”, said Harley

“No, that is way past nor­mal” replied Phineas

The cause of their con­cern was a 6 foot tall ELF. Presently he was bran­dish­ing what looked, for all the world, like a toy gun. Only a few min­utes ago the ELF Com­man­der Faulkner and Cap­tain Remark­able had left on a mis­sion to res­cue the the CEO of the North Pole, one called Santa Prime. A being that wasn’t Santa, but appar­ently was one of many San­tas. A con­cept that still swirled around in Harley’s head.

Mostly how­ever, he was think­ing how he could score presents from all the Santas.

“I really hope that thing just shoots foam darts or some­thing.”, said Phineas inter­rupt­ing Harley’s thoughts.

“Hon­estly, I’m just hop­ing it doesn’t turn us into car­toon characters.”

The ELF solider stood in front of Harley and grinned. Not at all a pleas­ant type of grin, but more like an I'm going to get you kind of grin. It wasn't a grin Harley was par­tic­u­larly fond of and had every inten­tion of stay­ing very far away from.

Harley leaned toward Phineas and whis­pered," That's not nor­mal is it?"

"No," Phineas whis­pered back as he stared at the new­comer, " That is way past normal."

"Who are you?"

The ELF con­tin­ued grinning.

"In case you didn't hear me; I asked who are you?", Harley repeated.

"Call me Mel if you must."

"Mel?", chimed in Phineas, "What kind of name is Mel for an evil Yule Night terrorist?"

The ELF effected a look of mock indig­na­tion. It was eerily sim­i­lar to the _I'm gonna get you _​ grin, only with less men­ace. There was still plenty of menace.

"You've been talk­ing to Faulkner. I'm not a ter­ror­ist. Who am I terrorizing? "

"Um, " said Harley, "It's 'whom' and right now, me."

The ELF grinned again. That was enough for Harley. He turned and dashed across the con­sole head­ing for the other end of the room where he had stowed some of the gear Faulkner had left them before leav­ing with the cap­tain to res­cue the Santa Prime. He had no idea what any of the stuff did. He didn't remem­ber the instruc­tions Faulkner had given him because he hadn't paid atten­tion, fig­ur­ing there was no way any­one would find them out here in the Cloud.

He still wasn't sure how Mel found them, much less how he got on board. Come to think of it, he never got a clear answer for how Faulkner had man­aged it either.

He was going to have to pur­sue that line of ques­tion­ing fur­ther at a later time. Right now there was a mat­ter of the Evil ELF Mel on board.

Phineas real­ized where Harley was head­ing and quickly joined him. They both grabbed the first thing the came to, Phineas get­ting a large white and red bar­rel shaped object with what looked like a scope and a trig­ger. He shrugged, hefted it up to his shoul­der (not know­ing where else to put it) aimed in the gen­eral direc­tion of Mel and pulled the trigger.

Noth­ing hap­pened. The look on his face would have been price­less, and some­thing Harley would have teased him about for years, had he been pay­ing atten­tion. Instead he was focused on try­ing to fig­ure out the item he had pulled from the stash.

It was flat, about the size of a decent sized book and slightly thicker. There was a sin­gle but­ton on one side and what looked like a remov­able stick with a sec­ond but­ton on the other side. Harley removed the stick and vaguely remem­ber some­thing about not want­ing to be near when he pressed the but­tons. He quickly pushed the but­ton on the box thing and tossed it in the direc­tion of the Evil ELF Mel.

Now it's inter­est­ing to note that Mel hadn't moved. Well, in fact he had moved but only to sit down and watch with mer­ri­ment the activ­i­ties of Phineas and Harley. He watched with glee when Phineas failed to cor­rectly fire the CC Launcher. Not that being sprayed with hun­dreds of candy canes would have done much. True, it would leave a few welts but wouldn't stop him from his goal.

His mood changed how­ever when he real­ized what Harley had retrieved. A Gar­land Bomb. Some­thing he most def­i­nitely hadn't expected to see on this ship. Appar­ently Faulkner has been a lit­tle more pre­pared than he has expected.

His face fell as Harley tossed the bomb in his direction.

He turned and ran toward the door at the far end of the room in des­per­a­tion. His only hope was to out dis­tance the device. A hope that proved ulti­mately futile as Harley pressed the but­ton on the remote while the bomb was still air­borne. It det­o­nated between Mel and the Santa Trap effec­tively secur­ing him in place against the unit with fluffy, wispy, sil­ver ten­drils wrapped around the two. Not what he had planned and it put a seri­ous cramp on his day.

The whoop­ing from the other side of the room didn't help either.

"Nice shot Harley!", shouted Phineas

Harley danced in place.

Mel smiled to him­self. He had for­got­ten he was car­ry­ing a . He flicked his right wrist and dis­ap­peared. The Gar­land trap­ping him falling to the metal floor silently.

Harley stopped dancing.

"No fair!" he shouted.

Mel sud­denly appeared behind both Harley and Phineas with a soft pop­ping sound. They both turned to see him point­ing a small device at Harley. The device fired and green and red beams hit Harley, turn­ing him ice.

Phineas shouted and threw the CC Launcher at the Evil ELF, “Harley!”

There was a soft pop­ping sound behind Mel. He turned around to find a 6ft tall Dawger­ian Shep­ard dressed in a red coat and pants trimmed in white fur smiling.

The Shep­ard reached out to the shocked Mel and placed a small snowflake pin on his chest. A soft sil­very glow imme­di­ately enveloped the rene­gade ELF mem­ber, freez­ing him in place.

Phineas knelt beside the ice shaped lit­tle dawg, call­ing out the name of his friend.

He didn’t answer.