Project: Magnus

The first thing Cap­tain Remark­able noticed when the world came back into focus was white. The sec­ond thing he noticed was the dis­tinct absence of cold. No bit­ter 'wrap your arms and shiver' kind of cold that one would asso­ciate with so much white­ness, not even a notice­able change from the temp on the Daedalus.

“Where are we?” the cap­tain asked look­ing around.

“North Pole,” replied Faulkner.

“The toy fac­tory. Why isn’t it cold?”

“You’re assum­ing it is in a cold cli­mate area?”

“Well yea, it’s called the North Pole isn’t it?”

“It’s not called that because of it’s loca­tion Cap­tain but merely for his­tor­i­cal purposes”

“Okay, so why come here?”

“Because I don’t know any­thing about the loca­tion they are keep­ing the Prime so I want to be as pre­pared as possible.“

“And by that you mean?”

“I mean that I need to grab some gear and weapons and locate where they are keep­ing him. The plan is that we will tele­port in and extract him with min­i­mal muss and fuss. Now excuse me a moment while I check in and gather some things.”

“Under­stood.”

---

The first thing Cap­tain Remark­able noticed when the world came back into focus was white. The sec­ond thing he noticed was the dis­tinct absence of cold. Again. "And where might we be now?"

"Some­where I cer­tainly didn't expect to be, although when I think about it, it does make per­fect sense."

"What… oh my,” said the Cap­tain as he took in the vista before him. Every­where there were peo­ple. Peo­ple push­ing car­riages filled with chil­dren (scream­ing and oth­er­wise), peo­ple car­ry­ing bags full of shiny pack­ages with col­or­ful bows. Peo­ple going up and down mov­ing stairs and peo­ple going in and out of var­i­ous lit­tle shops. And every­thing was inside. That was the bit that took the Cap­tain most by sur­prise, the fact that all these peo­ple and boxes and bags and shops were all com­pletely enclosed in a build­ing that appeared to be many, many times the size of his ship.

It was, need­less to say, a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ing. Even for the Captain.

"Wel­come Cap­tain, to the Mall,"

"What is this place?"

"Well, it's called a mall. Basi­cally it's exactly what it looks like, a but(but?) of stores and peo­ple under one roof. Think of it as a mar­ket indoors."

"But it's so… big."

"Thank­fully it's the same size on the inside as it is the outside."

"I'm sorry?"

"Noth­ing, inside joke. Okay, expla­na­tion time. Remem­ber how I men­tioned that there were mul­ti­ple ‘San­tas’? Keep that in mind, I’ll come back to it. The first thing you need to know is that we are in a dif­fer­ent dimension.

Any­way, see the crowd gath­er­ing on the far side of the open area? That is where they are keep­ing the Prime."

"What, out in the open like that?"

"It's a per­fect cover really. Here the peo­ple con­sider him the giv­ing of gifts to good lit­tle boys and girls and go on an annual pil­grim­age tak­ing their chil­dren to sit on his lap and relay to him what they want as gifts."

"Seri­ously? Kind of takes the fun and sur­prise out of it a bit doesn't it?"

"The peo­ple here have com­mer­cial­ized the hol­i­day to the point of hi-​​jacking sev­eral of the hol­i­days that typ­i­cally come before Christ­mas. They don’t care about what it means of what kind of psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age it does to any­one. They just want stuff. It’s got really bad in recent years here so we tend to avoid this dimen­sion if we can.”

“You said to remem­ber about mul­ti­ple Santas.”

“Right. Well, we typ­i­cally have a Santa for each dimen­sion or plane. In some cases mul­ti­ples is there are worlds that require it. How­ever, this is the first time a Santa, Prime or oth­er­wise has been to this dimen­sion in many gen­er­a­tions. The rea­son is because they have co-​​opted the Santa image. Remem­ber I men­tioned that this was the per­fect place to hide and being a per­fect cover ear­lier? That’s because this world is filled with malls like this one. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of them. And every sin­gle one has a Santa. Not an offi­cial Santa, just some­one dressed up as what they have come to believe Santa looks like. You’ll notice that they the Prime has a white beard and a red suit now.”

Cap­tain Remark­able stood star­ing at the gath­er­ing crowd try­ing to get a glimpse of the Prime, “So how do we do that with all these peo­ple around?”

“It cer­tainly makes it more dif­fi­cult, but not impos­si­ble. And I’m sorry, but I need you to serve as a dis­trac­tion while I make a grab for the Prime. It’s risky but we don’t have much time, they will fig­ure out we are here soon but they don’t know about you yet. It might be enough.”

“Okay then,”the Cap­tain said as he took the gun look­ing thing from Faulkner, “let’s go get us a Santa.”

Faulkner smiled, “That is a Gar­land Gun. If they get too close just point and shoot. It will fire sil­very ropes to entan­gle them, but know this; the minute you fire it they will know we are after the Prime. You have to time it prop­erly or they will be able to cir­cle back and stop me.”

“I under­stand,” replied the Captain.

“And par­don me for say­ing so Cap­tain, but a few min­utes ago you looked like you were about to pass out, now you seem like this is a nor­mal every­day thing for you. I know I’m not that good of a sto­ry­teller, so what gives?”

“When I thought this giant Mall thing existed on a planet in which I’ve been just about every­one, it unnerved me. How could this exist and I not know about it?

How­ever, when you explained that it was a dif­fer­ent, what did you call it, dimen­sion? Right, when you explained that it began to sound like some­thing Harley would say, and after hav­ing him as a crew mem­ber and shar­ing in his adven­tures for all these years, I can deal with things I don’t understand.”

Faulkner barked a laugh, “Fair enough. Okay, let’s go.”

Phineas stared. He wasn’t sure if he was hugely impressed, or supremely ter­ri­fied by what he was look­ing at. Either way, it held him in awe.

“What were you try­ing to do?”

“I was try­ing to cap­ture Santa!”

Phineas did a dou­ble take at Harley. Being four­teen inches tall and twenty seven inches long might be aver­age for a Dawg of his breed but it didn't’ allow much room for a grin the size of the one he was cur­rently wearing.

“Why.”

“Because I want my pressies.”

“What does that have to do with cap­tur­ing Santa,” asked Phineas as he sat on a stool and looked around for the plate of cook­ies he had brought down.

“You have to cap­ture Santa so he will give you presents. That’s how it works.” Harley, real­iz­ing some­thing wasn’t right cocked his head and looked at Phineas who was eat­ing a cookie, “Isn’t it?”

“Um, no. You don’t have to cap­ture Santa for him to give you presents. He brings them to all the good lit­tle boys and girls."

"And dawgs," Phineas quickly added, "He leaves them for you under the tree. No cap­tur­ing involved.”

“Are you sure?” Harley asked nar­row­ing his eyes and star­ing at the metal con­struct designed to hold Santa.

“Yes I’m sure you nut job.”

Harley looked crestfallen.

“Well he must have some really cool tech­nol­ogy,” he announced cheer­ing up and danc­ing around the room.

“I’m sorry?”

“How else would he be able to travel around the entire planet in a sin­gle night deliv­er­ing toys to all the good lit­tle dawgs everywhere?”

Harley bab­bled as he dashed around the room twist­ing dials and flip­ping switches. The Santa Trap was fairly new and had never been tested until today, but it was based on a pre­vi­ous design so he was con­fi­dent this would work.

Granted the pre­vi­ous design had blown up rather fan­tas­ti­cally. He cast glances over at the large metal object sit­ting in the mid­dle of the room. It eas­ily stood six feet tall, was shaped vaguely like a bul­let and had any num­ber of wires and hoses com­ing out and going in.

To this day Phineas was unable to fig­ure out how a Dawg as small as Harley was able to build some­thing so large. It didn’t seem phys­i­cally pos­si­ble since he was only twice his cur­rent height even when he stood on his hind legs.

Appar­ently Harley ignored the laws of phys­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties. At least it the the only expla­na­tion he could come up with.

“He must to have a quan­tum deluxe time dila­tor or flux capacitor.”

“A what or a what?”

“Or maybe he’s dimen­sion­ally transcendental.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

Harley stopped fid­dling with the screen he was adjust­ing and looked over at Phineas, “No idea but it sounds cool,” He said as he smiled.

They both jumped when the bang­ing started. It had been a quiet knock­ing at first, and think­ing back Phineas real­ized it had been there a while, he had assumed it was sim­ply part of the machin­ery. The sud­den increase in vol­ume and inten­sity dis­pelled that illusion.

“When you guys are done chat­ting would some­one please let me out of here?"

Harley flinched.

Phineas sim­ply stared.

“Who exactly did you catch?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

“You said this was designed to catch Santa.”

“Well yes, but that doesn’t mean some­one else can’t acci­den­tally get caught.”

“Some­one else did get caught,” came the voice from the metal container.

Phineas crept over to where Harley sat on the desk, “Dude, you caught the captain.”

Harley’s eyes widened. He stood, jumped off the desk and began to trot quickly towards the door.

“Where are you going, are you actu­ally run­ning away?”

“I pre­fer to call it a strate­gic retreat.”

Phineas walked over the the cap­sule and began try­ing to pry open the cap­sule doors, “Get over here and help me get the cap­tain out of here.”

“Are you insane? He’s going to kill you if you let him out.”

“No he won’t, he knows who is respon­si­ble for this. You’re the one he’s going to kill.”

“Me?!”

“Who else on this ship comes up with these kinds of schemes.”

“Seri­ously, you’re just going to throw me under the bus like that?”

“You two are aware of the fact I can hear you right?” came the muf­fled voice again.

Harley blanched. Which for a black and brown haired Dawg was an impres­sive feat.

Harley trot­ted back over this his chair and worked his way back onto the table. After a moments hes­i­ta­tion he flipped a switch and pressed a cou­ple but­tons caus­ing the metal mon­stros­ity to shiver. As it the door opened as the ships cap­tain slowly stepped out.

“Heh. Sorry captain.”

“Harley, what. Are. You. Doing?” asked the rather annoyed Cap­tain Remarkable.

Harley froze, his ears erect and swivel­ing back and form, search­ing, “I hear something!”

Phineas and the Cap­tain turned to look towards the door.

Out­side there was a sound. A faint, quiet lit­tle sound that echoed through out the entire ship. A sound that slowly grew slightly louder. It sound, at first, like a hard rain when it fell against the hull of the ship. As it grew it changed. Now it began to sound like bells. Hun­dreds of small metal bells. The kind one might find on a sleigh.

Phineas turned to look at the cap­tain, a look of dis­be­lief on his face,”Santa?”

Harley grinned, “Santa!”

It's a bit dark but you can tell what's going on. ¬†I took it late-​​ish at night, will try to get a bet­ter one soon.

He makes a damn decent keeper

Harley sat and waited.

He con­tin­ued to sit, and con­tin­ued to wait but now added 'glare' to his action list.

He had con­sid­ered sim­ply star­ing but glare had more men­ace and con­sid­er­ing that as a Silky Ter­rier he was taller sit­ting than stand­ing it made more sense to glare and sit.

It hadn't moved for sev­eral min­utes, teas­ing him. He remained per­fectly still, only his hair moved now and again blow­ing in the occa­sional breeze.

Sud­denly it twitched!

A slight wind was start­ing up again so it made sense that it would move, but he had to be on his guard in case it decided that was the per­fect chance to escape.

Care­fully, he raised his back haunches and shifted, with extreme care, into a posi­tion more suit­able for stalking.

Slowly he lifted his left forepaw.

No move­ment.

He slowly extended it out in front of him and shifted his weight slightly.

Still no movement.

Care­fully, oh so very care­fully, and slowly, he low­ered it again and shifted his weight for­ward more.

A twitch.

Harley froze.

Had he been seen?

Did it know he was there?

Should he pounce now?

It was too far away to get to in a sin­gle jump, but it might be pos­si­ble in two.

The breeze came again.

A dou­ble twitch!

He crept for­ward a tad faster now.

Sud­denly the wind gusted faster, lift­ing it into the air.

It was escaping!

Harley gave chase.

It drifted upward slowly, just out of leap­ing range.

He was about to give up when the wind died a lit­tle and it sank back to earth, skit­ter­ing across the ground.

He sped up and just as it began to lift into the air again when the wind picked up he pounced.

He grabbed it securely between in his teeth, lifted his foot to free it, turned and trot­ted back to the porch with his head held high and a grin on his face as he car­ried the yel­low candy wrapper.