Special Delivery


Meanwhile:


The snow lay deep and crisp and even, the way it only does in Christmas stories. No footprints, no animal tracks, not even a stray shrub poking clear of the surface. It was perfect.

All was still.

A cloud of powder shot into the air with a WHOOMPH and a stream of cussing.

She sat up. The snow that had covered her for - how long? - took its time to settle back down. As it drifted she dug out her legs and struggled to her feet, stamping her boots and brushing down her thick Washington-winter coat. Well now. This was new.

A short distance away, another figure burst spluttering from the white. "Oh baby," he shrieked.

She rumbled towards him like an advancing Panzer brigade. "And who the hell are you?" she spat. "Where is this? What did you just do?" She pulled up a few feet short, fists on hips. She continued glowering for a moment, then seemed to relax. "Name's Barriere," she said. "You call me Ms Barriere." She scrutinized her companion. "And whoever did plan this, I am prepared to assume it wasn't you."

"That's so sweet of you," said Fetish Lad in his black latex mankini. "What was your first clue?" He rose, shivering, and felt around in the snow. He located his ball gag, a live salmon and a small drawstring bag. "And there I was, all set for a quiet evening in. What on Earth is going on?"

They stood in deep snow. It lay thick in every direction, as far as they could see. The sky was blue and cloudless. Harmanda Barriere frowned into her cell phone. "No signal," she said. "Not even on the satellite system. That ain't right. And GPS says... huh. Might've guessed. What about you? Got anything can help us?"

"Oh wow," said Fetish Lad. "Just look at my little nipples, standing to attention."

At this point, Warren Kennedy-Rockefeller-Hearst-De Sade IV, the crimefighter known as Fetish Lad, noticed... something. There it was again. Just at the edge of his awareness. He blinked. A third figure had joined them. Or had he been there all along? This one stood on one leg, leaning on some kind of pole. He was dressed in animal hides, with a fur-trimmed hood that obscured all but his eyes and nose. He neither moved nor spoke.

Harmanda turned to face him. "Hah. Alright, now you listen here. I am not in one slightest bit amused, and you've got a count of three to tell me the whole story." She steamed gently in the freezing air. "One."

The stranger didn't move.

"Hang on," said Fetish Lad. "I know this guy."

"Two," said Harmanda.

"He was on that show. That reality show."

The stranger twitched, just very slightly.

"Which one was it... Pampered And Petrified?" No response. "Rollercoaster Tattoo Parlour?" No response. "Rumrunning With The Stars? Mine Clearance Academy?"

Harmanda Barriere wagged a finger. "Pagan Idol," she chuckled. "I mean, not that I watch it."

"Hell no," said Fetish Lad. "Me neither. Not since Brandii left. Wow. You, you're the harpoon guy, right?"

The stranger turned towards Fetish Lad. His voice was low and dangerous. "I'm sorry. You have me confused with someone else," said Sniiqattaaq, Inuit god of harpoons. He looked down his nose at the Perverted Avenger. This was awkward, given the god was six inches shorter, and it meant an undignified kink in his neck and spine. Fetish Lad knew all about undignified kinks and said nothing.

But Harmanda grinned. "Cut it out," she said. "You remember me, don't you? The old superteam? Your government liaison?"

Sniiqattaaq gave a start. "Mistress Harmanda?"

"Long time no see. Almost didn't recognise you under all that fur." She patted his shoulder and looked over at Fetish Lad. "Last time I saw this guy he wore nothing but beluga-hide Speedos."

"Sounds yummy," chattered Fetish Lad. "And this is lovely, but certain of my extremities are already turning blue and what exists of my costume is starting to get brittle, so can we, er - "

"Barely-dressed one," said Sniiqattaaq abruptly, "you are indeed ill-prepared for the conditions." He raised his arms. "I shall entreat mighty Sedna to deliver unto us a walrus."

Fetish Lad raised an eyebrow.

Harmanda smirked. "'Cause you've seen The Empire Strikes Back, right?"

"Cripes," said Fetish Lad. "I was thinking more about, you know, a spare parka."

"Oh, man up," said Harmanda. "Hang fire on the walrus, Sniiqattaaq. Just tell us what's going down."

The god looked pained. "I cannot say, Ms Barriere. Like you, I awoke here. I do not recognise this place. It is not my Arctic. The conditions are... wrong. A dark power is at work."

"Then it's time to quit yapping, gentlemen, and find us some answers." She addressed Fetish Lad. "Listen up. Back in the day, before your freaky time, there was a team. Righted wrongs at sea, so they saw it." It was my job to keep them in line, she didn't add. And it damned near killed me. What she did say was: "Sneakycheeks here was the tracker. And if whoever brought us here is still around, he'll find 'em."

Sniiqattaaq knelt and scooped a handful of snow. He assessed its composition, inspected the alignment of the crystals, judged its rate of melting. Licked it. Satisfied, he brushed his mitten off on sealskin britches and pointed his harpoon to the horizon.

* * *

"A travel blanket," wailed Fetish Lad. "Anything."

"Another mile of your whining," growled Harmanda, plodding onwards, "and the cold will be the least of your worries."

"But I can't feel my toes..."

"Ain't you got any of that warming lotion left?"

He looked in the drawstring bag. "All gone. There's just luminous bodypaint and bacon-flavoured lube."

Silence, but for soft crunching footsteps.

Fetish Lad wiped fine snow crystals from his eyebrows. The breeze was against them. "So, uh, Sniiqattaaq, I guess you met Brandii, right? Before she got all her own shows. What's she really like? I mean, reeeally? As a person?"

Sniiqattaaq tightened his grip on the harpoon.

"And I'm confused. Because after you did the show I thought you and mighty Sedna were on non-speakers."

"That is, as your people say, business as usual. But with the rest of the pantheon, she is presently on refuse-to-acknowledge-the-existence-ers." Sniiqattaaq stopped mid-stride. "Wait," he said, and vanished.

Not vanished, not quite. But if Fetish Lad hadn't been walking beside him, hadn't just been talking to him, hadn't known exactly where to look, he'd have noticed no more than that the drifting snow didn't pass through a roughly god-shaped volume of space. And then he was back. "Our quarry is close," grunted the god. He gestured with his harpoon to a rocky ridge and mimed creeping up slowly.

The three heads peeked over the rocks and into the snowfield beyond. Something dark was moving in little circles, too far ahead for Fetish Lad to see. Sniiqattaaq raised a hand to his brow and squinted. "Great bear," he breathed.

"A bear?" yelped Fetish Lad. "But I'm reeking of salmon and - "

"Mild oath," said Harmanda. "All the guys had one, back in the day." She rummaged in her clutch bag and produced a dainty pair of binoculars. "Well. Huh." She passed them to Fetish Lad.

"Great bear," said Sniiqattaaq again. "It is like nothing I have ever seen."

"What, you've never seen a penguin?" snorted Fetish Lad.

"Wrong hemisphere," said Harmanda. "But look closer."

Warren Kennedy-Rockefeller-Hearst-De Sade IV examined the penguin. Its eyes were... a little too big. Its beak, a little too smiling. It was wearing a long stripy scarf. It appeared to be ice-skating.

Harmanda shook her head. "And a red woollen hat with a little pompom. That ain't natural."

"Umm," said Fetish Lad.

Sniiqattaaq pulled off his glove and stuck a finger in the snow. "It is an abomination. But I do not believe it is the cause of this. There is something else."

"Umm," said Fetish Lad, pointing.

"Something approaches. Many somethings. And quickly."

"Umm," said Fetish Lad, pointing back along the triple line of footprints.

They spread out and braced to face the charging Santavores. Sniiqattaaq raised his harpoon. Harmanda drew an ivory-handled Taser. Fetish Lad uncapped a bottle of bacon-flavoured lube. SEASON'S EATINGS, boomed the voice of the Birthday Bandit.

And all hell broke loose.







Frostbitten footnotes:

Harmanda Barriere is rumoured to be a parody of an existing comics character. She was last seen planning and implementing the Special Protocols Against Metahumans, but has clearly been in the business for quite a while.

Fetish Lad (Warren Kennedy-Rockefeller-Hearst-De Sade IV) is a wealthy playboy who uses his knowledge of unorthodox sexual practices to fight crime. He says.

Sniiqattaaq is the Inuit god of harpoons. He spent time in the Warmer World as part of the pre-Lair Legion superteam Deep Justice, as mentioned here. More recently he's been keeping a low profile since his reluctant involvement with troubled reality show Pagan Idol.