CHAPTER 10 — SANTA'S RED LIST
"He's making a list… checking it twice… and feeding it to the wolves."
SNAP.
The candy cane broke in half, and so did the elf's spine.
Aki's foot crushed the tiny creature's chest as it gurgled in its own syrupy blood. Not red… not sweet. Thick. Black tar. Screaming. High-pitched like glass shattering.
"THEY'RE NOT ELVES—THEY'RE SOMETHING ELSE!" Aki roared, blade raised.
Behind him, Cotton's bullets tore through five more, their heads popping like ornaments under pressure.
"You don't say?!" Cotton yelled, reloading mid-flip.
Toma stood at the center of the chaos, shirtless, his fists dripping in elf gore, laughing through the madness.His mouth full of roasted leg. "Y'ALL SAID THESE THINGS TASTE LIKE LAMB!" he howled, punching a crawling elf in half at the waist.
📍 LOCATION: Southpole Village Square
Once candy-colored. Now ash and fire.
The team had made it only a few yards into the village before the attack began. The "elves" weren't real. They were skinwalkers—withered, bone-snapping, jagged-teethed nightmares wearing the faces of elves. And they were fast.
Really fast.
🎯 COMBAT BREAKDOWN: 🔪 AKI
He ducked low—slash to the knee. Elf falls. Spin up, vertical cleave—half its body peels off like a banana skin.An elf lunges—he sidesteps, grabs its wrist, forearm glows faint red—intent to protect—he sees 1.2 seconds ahead. Just enough.
Blade up.CRACK.Elf jaw slices clean off. It screams with no throat.
Another charges.Aki backflips, lands on its shoulders, slams the katana straight through its skull and out the jaw.
"I'm not gonna die on a snow-covered toilet bowl of an island," he mutters, panting.
💥 COTTON
The bear ain't talking anymore.Just gunfire.
He dual-wields a 9mm and a sawed-off, dancing between claws and limbs, using his own body weight to flip a skinwalker over his back and unload both barrels into its face.
One of the elves grabs him by the leg.
Bad move.
"Wrong move, Rudolph."
BOOM!The micro draco goes off. Elf's head gone. Splattered across the igloo behind them like abstract art.
🥊 TOMA
Barefoot. Covered in blood. Grinning.
"Come on you creepy Christmas bitches… I'm still hungry."
One leaps at him. Toma doesn't dodge—he headbutts it mid-air, cracking its skull open like a coconut.Another tackles him—he's pinned—his hand slowly reaches into his back pocket… for a breadstick.
He bites down.
POW.
HIS FISTS IGNITE.Not fire—raw heat. His hunger makes him stronger.
"I GOT MY SECOND WIND!!"
He grabs the elf by the jaw and rips it open. Vertically.
🎅 THE BIG BAD — SANTA
A silhouette in the blizzard.
**12 feet tall. Horns. Not a beard—tentacles. Not a sack—**a body bag, still writhing.
Santa steps into view.His mouth stretches like it's dislocated. Voice deeper than death itself.
"You're on my red list."
He snaps, and the snow itself shifts.
From the earth rise "Reindeer"—not animals.Stitched together corpses, running like spiders. Glass hooves. Ribcage antlers. Screaming from stitched mouths.
One slams Aki through a peppermint lamp post.
Another grabs Cotton, dragging him across ice like a chew toy.
Toma?Toma's got three on him and still bites an ear off. "YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD JUMP ME?? I'M BUILT OFF RATION PACKS AND STREET BRAWLS!!"
❄️ FINAL MOMENT OF CHAPTER:
Santa lumbers toward them.The sky shifts red.
Aki coughs up blood, standing—forearm glowing again.He's seeing too far now. Too much. He whispers—
"...We all die here."
But Cotton plants his paw on Aki's chest.
"Then let's make it hard as hell to kill us."
Cut to black.The words:
TO BE CONTINUED...