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Waverly General Shopping Mall. 3082 hours 'til Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know.
"Why do supervillains always have to have themes?" Wendy groaned, shaking snow out of her hair as the last of the rampaging snowmen returned to an inanimate state. "I mean, okay, taking over the world, getting revenge for perceived wrongs, total ego tripping, I get that."
The Middleman looked at her with moderate concern.
"From a, you know, hypothetical point of view," Wendy added. "Not that I'm planning on doing any world domination myself any time soon. But at least world domination I understand. The impulse to wreak havoc? Perfectly cromulent. The impulse to give said havoc a winter motif, regardless of the actual season? Now you've lost me."
"It's called dedication to the craft, Dubbie," the Middleman told her, dusting snowflakes from the shoulders of his Eisenhower jacket with an elegant coat brush that he just happened to have with him. "Anyone can get results. But in the hurly-burly mad dash of the modern world, it's nice to see someone who still cares about traditional values, like taking pride in their work."
"Yeah," Wendy grumbled, pulling a wreath off of a nearby storefront and tossing it, Frisbee-like, into the nearest trashcan. "Not to mention cultural imperialism, commercialism, and all those other bad –isms."
"You know, I'm surprised at you," the Middleman said, holstering his Yuletide cheer disrupter – and just the fact that they even had such a thing was giving Wendy a headache. Never mind that they were having to use it – "I hadn't taken you for such a Grinch."
"Now who's over-sympathizing with the bad guys?"
"Come on, Dubbie! Can't you look at this admittedly aberrant cloud and find a silver lining?"
"No, because Christmas is four months away, I don't have snow tires, and oh yeah, the snow is coming from the ceiling, not a cloud. The weather inside should not be frightful!"
The shoppers in the mall around them were starting to stir from the gift-and-baked-good-buying-haze they'd been in when the Middleduo arrived, and as Wendy's voice got louder and more pointed, a couple of the ones nearest to them actually turned in response to the noise.
"It looks like our shoppers are starting to wake up," the Middleman observed. "We have to hurry and clear the area before they notice anything odd."
"Are you kidding me?" Wendy asked, watching the Middleman grab an axe and walk up to the giant Christmas tree that had sprung, pre-decorated with tree-topping angel and everything, out of the ground minutes before, setting off the Middlemobile's holiday-cheer detector (and that was a thing, why, sweet zombie Jesus, her life was a joke).
"I never kid about seasonal holiday paraphernalia," the Middleman answered. "Now gosh darn it, Dubbie, felling a tree is a two-person job."
"Yeah, it's also a little unnecessary at the moment." Wendy jerked her thumb to point at the nearest, most awake-looking shopper in the mall.
"Christmas decorations already?" the guy asked. "Ugh, it gets worse every year."
"I know, right?" Wendy asked sympathetically. "It isn't even fall yet."
The Middleman looked slightly disappointed. "Well, effort not spent here can be better applied elsewhere. Ida said there were two other shopping malls showing inappropriate levels of holiday cheer."
"Doesn't Ida think all kinds of cheer at all levels are wildly inappropriate?" Wendy asked.
The Middleman didn't even try to correct her or put a positive spin on her words.
"Are you really that bummed?" Wendy asked, putting an arm around his shoulders. "Fine, I promise you, I will help you fell a Christmas tree. But only when it's actually Christmas."
"Well," the Middleman smiled his goofy smile. "All right."
Their watches started beeping.
"Looks like we've got another mall to hit up."
Wendy sighed. "We have people in non-conscious state flocking to a shopping mall, and I still don't get to go all Dawn of the Dead on anybody."
-
Middleman Top Secret Headquarters. 3080.5 hours 'til Christmas. So be good, for goodness' sake.
"Ida!" The Middleman called out as he bounded through their top-secret headquarters. "How is the situation looking?"
"You tell me, Kris Kringle," Ida's voice came from the next room.
The Middleman hurried briskly toward their command center. "Have you isolated a pattern on HEYDAR – "
Wendy, following less enthusiastically in a mode that could charitably be called "trudging," was several feet behind the Middleman and so had a spectacular view as he stepped foot into their command center, only for that foot to find that the floor inside had been covered in ice. In short, he slipped, wobbled, and fell backwards onto a snow bank. He sputtered, tried to stand again, and only kept his balance by grabbing a bough of holly that was decking the hall.
"What in the name of Rankin and Bass have you done with the place?" the Middleman asked, managing to sound much less vexed about his fall than Wendy was about not having caught it on video.
Ida, balancing perfectly in the middle of the room on a pair of ice skates, stared him down through her schoolmarm glasses. "What have I ever done with this place besides carry all the dead weight?" And with that, the glare was transferred from the Middleman to Wendy, who rolled her eyes and leaned against the doorframe rather than risk putting herself on frozen, uneven footing. "This one's on your two buckos," Ida continued.
"Us? All we've been doing is disrupting this holiday nonsense, all over town, with no help from you, by the way," Wendy said. She sniffed. "Is that cocoa? I smell cocoa. With little marshmallows."
"This is no time for the munchies," Ida said. "Whatever's causing the unseasonal seasonality is getting worse, not better."
"You mean I went all Black Friday on shoppers at three different malls for no reason?" Wendy said, dismayed.
"Now, Dubbie," the Middleman said, having recovered his composure, though he was still clinging pretty tightly to the wall. "Just because we haven't accomplished our larger goal doesn't mean that our smaller accomplishments are meaningless."
"Okay, Cindy Lou Who," Wendy rolled her eyes. "But isn't O2STK supposed to keep headquarters from getting whammied by stuff like this? Excepting all the times we get whammied by stuff like this, of course."
"Wendy does have a point," the Middleman turned to Ida. "Shouldn't the Berlin-Curtiz field be protecting us from this sort of Yule disruption?"
"It should," Ida said. "But this thing's gotten a lot bigger than Berlin-Curtiz. See for yourself." She skated over to the Middleman and handed him an envelope.
"What's this?"
"Now, correct me if I'm wrong," Wendy said, craning her neck and screwing up her eyes to see the envelope just well enough to recognize the handwriting. "That looks like a letter from my mother."
"It sure is," Ida said. "She sent you a Christmas card, accompanied by a lovely and studiously nagging note."
"You opened my mail?"
Ida smiled at Wendy's anger, either incapable of being shamed or just not caring. "I sealed it back up for you," she said. "Steam power. Can't beat the classics."
"You shouldn't be opening my mail in the first place!"
"Maybe if you didn't live in an opium den you wouldn't have to have your mail sent to the office," Ida said blithely.
"Sweet Post Master General, Ida," the Middleman exclaimed. "The Middle organization does not condone the casual invasion of other's privacy!"
"Except for all the times that we totally do condone the casual invasion of others' privacy," Wendy amended. "But some professional courtesy would be nice here, Ida."
"I'll keep that in mind if I see any professionals."
"I'm tabling this discussion for the moment until such a time as we can properly discuss the issue with the thoroughness it deserves, but don't think I'll forget it," the Middleman said, pointing sternly at Ida and Wendy in turn.
"What did I do?" Wendy yelped.
"But more importantly – or rather, more urgently," the Middleman said, opening the envelope for himself. "Ida was right about one thing. This is a Christmas card, from your mother, in Florida."
Wendy sighed. "Come on, now you're reading my mail too? Ugh."
"Cheer up, Dubbie. Think of it as a bonding exercise."
"Frankly I think we could all use a little less bonding."
"Oh, look," the Middleman said, grinning at the front of the card. "There's a cute pun here involving kittens and the Spanish words for Merry Christmas." He flipped the card open. "You know, Dubbie, your mother has a point. It would be nice of you to introduce her to your gentleman caller."
The look Wendy shot her boss could have frozen over the entire room, had an unknown and presumably hostile force not already done so.
"Um. Perhaps you should read this later, in private," the Middleman said, stuffing the card back in the envelope.
"Can we maybe spend less time worrying about what my mother thinks is an appropriate Hallmark purchase and more time worrying about the fact that every mall in town – and presumably also Florida, and perhaps the entire world – looks like Vermont in December, despite it being neither temperately nor temporally appropriate?"
"I've been doing some research while you meat-bags ran around playing reindeer games," Ida said, skating back over to the HEYDAR. "It looks like this might be the work of a repeat offender."
"Wait, you're not telling me that there was another spontaneous outbreak of Christmas before this?" Wendy asked, finally driven to step out on the ice, kept upright by sheer exasperation. "Who the hell would possibly think that was a good idea twice? If you want to take over the world there are so many easier ways. Buy out Google, for starters."
"Perhaps you're being too cynical," the Middleman said. "Perhaps this is a good-natured but misguided festive soul, trying to do something good by spreading Christmas cheer and just failing to think through the consequences."
"No, the cynic wins this one," Ida said, pulling up an image of a short, scowling guy who had "mad scientist" written all over him. "Meet Dr. Wallace Davis, AKA The Snowman. First cropped up on O2STK's radar twenty-five years ago when he was studying yetis in Antarctica."
Wendy crossed her arms. "Please, do I look that gullible?"
"Yes, come now, Ida," the Middleman concurred. "Everyone knows yetis live in the Himalayas."
Wendy despaired.
"These were Antarctic yetis," Ida added. "Nasty pieces of work, all of them."
"We're just going to let that blatant species-ism sit there, aren't we?" Wendy asked the Middleman.
He shifted his weight uncomfortably, nearly spilling onto the ice a second time. "We're just tabling it for the moment," he promised.
Ida continued unabated. "As soon as Dr. Wallace Davis came back from the South Pole, he started going all White Witch and tried to make it always winter, and always Christmas."
"Why would he do that?" Wendy spat.
"Perhaps he's to be pitied," the Middleman said. "Living alone on an iceberg for months can't have been good for his mental stability. He must have been a lonely, miserable unhappy man."
"Well it's not good, but it's a reason," Wendy grouched.
"That, or the yetis gave Dr. Wallace Davis some bad ideas," Ida added.
"And a Middleman stopped him?" the Middleman asked.
"Not exactly," Ida said. "The Middleman swept in after the fact and hushed the whole thing up, but Dr. Wallace Davis took himself out of the picture. He fell prey to one of the occupational hazards of being a supervillain, or more accurately of being a dumb supervillain."
"Overthrown by his own underlings?" the Middleman asked.
"Destroyed by an evil robot?" Wendy guessed. "We haven't done robots in a while."
"Wrong," Ida said. "He accidentally froze himself inside a giant icicle."
After a long moment of silence, Wendy asked, "So wouldn't that pretty much remove him from our suspect pool?"
"Theoretically, he could just have been cryogenically frozen – " the Middleman started.
"I swear on the frozen head of Walt Disney, if I have to deal with one more pervy popsicle – " Wendy fumed.
" – Of course, it could just be that someone else has discovered his research and is making use of it," the Middleman hastily amended his statement. "In any case, we've got to find the culprit responsible. I won't let snowstorms engulf the planet on my watch."
"Not to mention the crass consumerism of it all," Wendy added.
The Middleman eyed her carefully. "Should we have a talk about this anti-holiday spirit of yours?"
"Let's table that for now," Wendy said. "Shouldn't we be looking for the last known resting place of the icicle man? And please tell me we don't have to go to the Fortress of Solitude and yetis."
Ida looked happy, which Wendy could only assume was a bad sign.
-
The Middlejet, en route to Antarctica. 3074 hours 'til Christmas. Hear those sleigh bells jingle jangle.
"I hear Antarctica is lovely this time of year," the Middleman said, breaking the frosty silence that had settled over the cockpit for most of their flight. "Think of it as a wonderful opportunity. Very few people get to visit Antarctica."
"Because most people have better sense than that," Wendy groused.
"Come on, Dubbie. Can't your rotate that frown 180 degrees and look on the bright side?"
"I did look on the bright side, it gave me snow blindness." Wendy flipped a few switches that weren't strictly necessary for their flight to remain stable, but distracted her from the disappointed look on the Middleman's face, which was eerily reminiscent of the look on her mother's face whenever Wendy made up excuses not to introduce her to Tyler. "Fine, on the bright side, this all gave me an excuse to fly the Middlejet again." She ran a hand over the jet's console, her face breaking out into a grin. "And, thanks to the Middlejet, this little glacial detour of ours is only going to take a few hours out of our day, instead of whatever assuredly heinous amount of time is usually required to get to Antarctica."
"That's the spirit, Dubbie!" the Middleman patted her on the shoulder.
"That doesn't mean it's okay for you to hum Christmas carols," Wendy warned him.
"I wouldn't dream of it," the Middleman said in an innocent tone of voice that absolutely meant she'd just been spared "Here Comes Santa Claus."
"Well, keep it that way," Wendy said. "I've got to focus on flying this baby. Where are we landing, anyway? I don't suppose Mad Dr. Wallace Davis is going to roll out a landing pad for us."
"That would be a bit of unprecedented hospitality," the Middleman agreed. "Still, I have my contacts."
"You know people in Antactica."
"Remember, Dubbie, networking is of the utmost importance. Especially in a people-oriented line of work like ours."
"I thought ours was more of an explosion-oriented line of work."
"Explosions only enhance the need for good people skills," the Middleman nodded seriously.
"So who are these buddies of yours? Giant sentient penguins?"
"Of course not."
"Well yetis are a thing, apparently, which I feel like you maybe should have told me before now."
"They tend to keep to themselves and not cause problems," the Middleman said. "No, my polar contacts are research scientists."
"Oh."
"You sound disappointed."
"I just thought they'd be someone special, someone Middleman-y. I mean, isn't Antarctica full of scientists? To the extent that Antarctica is full of anything?"
"Well," the Middleman said, a hint of a mischievous smile creeping onto his face. "They do have a few projects that are off the books."
-
Outside the (off the books) Columbia research base, Antarctica. 3072 hours 'til Christmas. In the lane, snow is glistening.
"Whoa, fellas, whoa," Wendy said, bringing the dog sled to a halt.
"The spoken commands are not strictly necessary," the Middleman told her, stepping away from the sled and consulting the Yule-cheer detector once more.
"You were the one talking about style," she reminded him. "Anyway, Antarctic dog sled pulled by giant robot dogs, lent to us by mysterious Laotian research scientists who are apparently your bowling buddies? That's kind of a weird situation. Let me keep something familiar."
"I hadn't known dog sledding commands were in your wheelhouse."
"Let me rephrase. Relatively familiar."
"Hmm," the Middleman hmmed. "I don't like the looks of this. The Yuletide forces are growing at a much greater rate than Ida projected. I shudder to think what damage this is having out in the rest of the world. We ought to have gotten here sooner."
"Well, we'd have saved twenty minutes in landing time if you'd just let me pull a Crazy Ivan," Wendy said. "I did the best I could to hurry us here. Who knew that globe-encompassing snowfall could mess with the flying conditions so much?"
"Who indeed," the Middleman mused. "Though of course, good old Saint Nick does manage to pull off such a flight every year."
Wendy jerked a thumb back over her shoulder. "If you try to tell me that Santa Claus is real I am going to turn this dog sled around and leave you here."
The Middleman looked abashed. "I have no comment on the matter."
"That's even worse than just giving me an answer," Wendy complained.
"An open mind – " the Middleman started.
Wendy never got to hear about the wonderful advantages of an open mind, because there was a terrible, monstrous roar that split the landscape around them.
Wendy and the Middleman jumped to the alert, but it was too late. Before either of them could react, giant ape-like creatures sprang out from the snow and grabbed them up.
"Yukon Cornelius's gold!" the Middleman somehow found breath to say, even as one of the yetis slung him over its shoulder. "The Antarctic yetis!"
"Yes, thank you, Jane Goodall," Wendy yelled back at him as the yetis took off at a run. Their loping gait left her bouncing around, upside-down, in a way that made her feel violently ill. She tried closing her eyes, but that only increased the feeling of motion sickness. "I don't suppose you have any useful information?"
"If Dr. Wallace Davis is our man, there's a good chance they're taking us to him," the Middleman said.
"Wonderful. And then what? Get turned into sugar plum fairies?" Wendy sighed. "Today just gets better and better."
"There's always tomorrow," the Middleman told her.
"Unless the world ends," Wendy shouted, trying very hard not to be sick. "That's more or less the definition of apocalypse."
-
The Antarctic base of Dr. Wallace Davis. 3071 hours 'til Christmas. Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
Just as Wendy was sure she'd pass out from yeti-induced motion sickness – had, in fact, starting hoping for that fate – their captors punched through a wall of ice, revealing a door with a keypad lock.
"Mrrghraaw," the yeti holding the Middleman said, before trying to punch in a code on the keypad. Of course, his fingers being as large as the keypad itself, he couldn't quite get the code right.
"Ggrnnnzz," one of the other yetis said. It pointed toward the yeti holding Wendy, which was (to Wendy's chagrin) noticeably smaller than the other yetis.
"Nnyp," Wendy's yeti said, and tried punching in the code. It still didn't work.
"Oh for crying out loud, let me do it," Wendy said in exasperation. She tapped the yeti on the shoulder. "Turn around. Around. There, there you go. What's the code?"
"Aaarb yrnnn twwwll," one of the yetis said.
"You don't happen to speak yeti, do you?" Wendy asked the Middleman.
"I'm a little rusty," he confessed. "And this seems to be a different dialect than I'm used to. It's fascinating, really, if you think about how long this sub-culture has been existing, separated from their Himalayan brethren – "
"You, big yeti, you tell me what to push," Wendy said.
"Aaaaarrrrrb," the yeti said, holding up two wicked claws in Wendy's face.
"I'm going to assume that that is you telling me to punch in the number two, and not you flipping me off," she said, hitting the two on the keypad with her all-but-frozen fingers. "Next?"
Two of the yetis had a whispered conversation – or what Wendy thought was supposed to be a whispered conversation. It sounded like rush hour on an interstate. They came to some sort of conclusion and turned to face Wendy, the big yeti holding up all six of its fingers and the yeti next to him holding up three of its fingers.
"Okay, nine," Wendy said. "Now what?"
It took them a good five minutes, but they eventually opened the door and were admitted into Dr. Wallace Davis's secret subterranean Antarctic hideout.
Any hopes Wendy had had that this was some kind of copycat, and not the cryogenically frozen madman himself, was dashed when she saw the immaculately dressed, mustachioed, white-lab-coat-clad man waiting for them. He was a perfect match for the picture from Ida's HEYDAR search.
"Damn," Wendy said. "I shouldn't have let Ida sucker me into that bet. Now I owe her twenty bucks. What the hell does a robot who never leaves headquarters even need twenty bucks for, anyway?"
The Middleman shrugged as best someone can while dangling backwards from the back of a large, hairy, hostile, folkloric primate.
Dr. Wallace Davis looked quite put out that his presence wasn't commanding their attention, but Wendy figured if he wanted to be impressive he should've employed minions who could open their own front door.
"Foolish feeble-minded meddlers!" the mad scientist boomed, or at least tried to boom. His voice came out as more of a donkey-like bray. "What business brings you to my island?"
"You can't claim Antarctica as your island," Wendy said. "Not cool. You get one tiny private island, max, and even then only if you're the queen of England or Steve Jobs' heirs."
"Quiet," Dr. Wallace Davis whined. "Soon all the world shall be my winter wonderland, and there is nothing you can do! Nothing! Ahahahahaha!"
"Did he just actually say the words 'ahahahahaha' instead of laughing?" Wendy asked the Middleman.
"He does seem to be an unusual fellow," the Middleman agreed. "Quite unbalanced. I think it's time we did something about this, don't you?"
"Oh, absolutely," Wendy said, and pushed a button on the remote in her pocket.
The team of gigantic robotic sled-dogs busted down the door and swarmed the room, quickly overpowering the yetis and cornering Dr. Wallace Davis atop an icicle stalagmite that Wendy had the sudden, morbid thought might have been his resting place for the last twenty-five years.
Then she got too distracted to worry about where and how Dr. Wallace Davis had been kept on the rocks, because the yeti holding her started fighting the nearest robot sled dog and, consequently, dropped her head first onto the icy floor of Dr. Wallace Davis's underground hide-out.
By the time she was back on her feet, rubbing what was sure to become a big bump on her forehead, the battle was pretty much over. The Middleman did strike a blow to the eleven-foot-tall yeti that had formerly been holding him captive, but given that the yeti had three robot sled dogs cornering him, it wasn't quite as impressive as it might have been.
"Got that out of your system?" Wendy asked drily.
The Middleman looked perfectly innocent – but then, he always did, unless soft-serve ice cream machines were involved. "I was simply doing my part, Dubbie."
"Sure," she said. "And you weren't at all resentful of being carried by bipedal tauntauns over some of the rockiest, coldest terrain on earth for an hour."
"Of course not," the Middleman said, in that way that meant "of course." "Holding grudges is beneath people in our positions of power."
"I'll keep that in mind, right after I shove a boot up this guy's ass," Wendy said, tilting her head toward Dr. Wallace Davis.
The guy had the nerve not to quail, which was pretty impressive considering one of his legs was caught in the maw of a giant robot Siberian husky, and considering Wendy was bearing down on him with the same facial expression that had made Tommy Tam find religion.
"What, exactly, do you claim is my crime?" Dr. Wallace Davis asked. "All I attempted to do was spread Christmas cheer and take over the world. Where can you fault me?"
"Are you even listening to yourself?" Wendy demanded.
"In case that rhetorical question didn't clear up your confusion," the Middleman interrupted. "It's the second part we have a problem with."
"No, hang on, I want to have it out about this Christmas business," Wendy fumed. "I mean, in the name of crispy bacon, isn't it bad enough when stores put out Christmas displays before Halloween's even over? Why on earth would you want to make Christmas happen even earlier than that?"
The Middleman's perfect posture sagged by several notches. "Dubbie, stay on target..."
"It isn't bad enough that coffee shops, breweries, and otherwise fine dining establishments start putting pumpkin and peppermint in everything come October 1st?" Wendy was building up quite a head of steam by now.
"Stay on target," the Middleman reminded her, his voice rising half an octave.
"Yeah, I got you," Wendy said, throwing her hands up in the air. "Fine, fine, we're here to stop your nefarious plans to blah blah whatever the hell you were trying to do. God, I hate supervillains."
"Remember, Dubbie, hate leads to – "
"What, are you trying to catch 'em all on the Jedi master front?" Wendy said. "Fine, you take over. I'm going to pet the robot dogs until I calm down a little."
"A fine decision," the Middleman said, sounding only slightly alarmed, before stepping up to confront Dr. Wallace Davis. "The game's up," he said. "We're apprehending you and your accomplices, so you might as well tell us how to reverse the effects of this Yule-instigating-ray."
Dr. Wallace Davis giggled.
In Wendy's experience, nothing ever good happened when the bad guys were giggling.
Her phone started ringing.
"It's too late," Dr. Wallace Davis said.
Wendy stepped away from the confrontation between her boss and the holiday-obsessed scientist to pull out her phone. The caller ID showed LACEY.
"There's no stopping the Yuleray now," Dr. Wallace Davis continued. "The frequency has already spread to all time-zones, all latitudes. You're too late. Soon, all the world shall be Christmas...and so all the world shall be mine."
"Hello?" Wendy said, picking up her phone, because she always picked up for Lacey.
"Dub-Dub!" Lacey said. "Noser and I are leading a protest at one of those shady corner tree lots that chop down evergreens by the acre and tie them on top of gas-guzzling SUVs. You in?"
"Gee, Lacey," Wendy said, keeping Dr. Wallace Davis in the corner of her eye. There were Christmas tree lots up? Already? The Yuleray's effects certainly were spreading. "I'd love to, but I'm sort of tied up at the moment."
"You okay?" Lacey asked. "You sound like you're calling in from a subterranean base in Antarctica during a blizzard."
"You know how it is," Wendy said. "AT&T."
"Gotcha," Lacey said. "Look, I'll put you down as a maybe for later, right? We've got some great signs drawn up already. All on 100% recycled plywood, of course."
"You painted over the signs from that Bill's Gills Kills protest at the seafood restaurant, didn't you?"
"By the way, I owe you five dollar's worth of carmine paint," Lacey said. "So much more effective than vermillion, what was I thinking?"
"I tried telling you," Wendy sighed. "Just leave the color theory to me in the future, okay?"
"Okay. So look, we'll probably be here until you get – what was that?"
Wendy's stomach dropped.
Dr. Wallace Davis smiled, which did nothing to improve the situation.
"Lacey?" Wendy asked, carefully keeping her voice level. "You okay?"
"Yeah, we're fine. There was just some kind of earthquake or something."
Wendy's stomach continued to drop, moving well past the Earth's mantle. "Lacey," she said. "We aren't over a fault line."
Even over the phone, connection strained by the transcontinental, subterranean nature of the call, she could hear a rumbling noise.
"It begins," Dr. Wallace Davis said. Giggling, again.
"It already began," the Middleman said. "It began about, oh, ten hours ago now, I suspect."
"It continues, then," Dr. Wallace Davis said, in an exasperated tone that Wendy would have been impressed with if she hadn't been concerned about what she was or wasn't hearing from the other end of the line. "Are you two always so prosaic?"
"Lacey?" Wendy asked, heart thumping in her ears so she could hardly hear anything from the phone or the cavern around her. "Lacey, what was that?"
"I don't know," Lacey answered. "Something weird. Almost like...it's funny, it almost looks like those trees are moving."
"Lacey?" Wendy said.
The only response was she got was the beeping of a dropped phone call.
She pulled the phone away from her ear to double check but there it was: lost call.
"What did you do?" Wendy demanded, stalking up to Dr. Wallace Davis.
He didn't look nearly as scared of her as he should be, oh, he...should...be. "Nothing," he said, "and everything."
"Do you villains take classes on obfuscation?" Wendy asked.
"Well," Dr. Wallace Davis admitted. "I was a philosophy major before I switched to environmental sciences. So, yes, basically."
"What happened to Lacey?" Wendy growled, grabbing Dr. Wallace Davis by the lab coat lapels and shaking him violently. "What did you do to the Christmas trees, you festive fruitcake?"
"Oh, the Christmas trees," Dr. Wallace Davis said, dreamily. "Your friend is going to be in for an interesting time."
"You – " Wendy said, pulling back her fist and taking aim on Dr. Wallace Davis's face.
A large hand dropped out of nowhere and caught her fist before Wendy could let fly. "Now Wendy," the Middleman chastised her. "We can't abuse our privileges here. I won't stand by and let my own apprentice desecrate the basic principles of the Genuva Conventions."
"You mean the Geneva Conventions?"
"No, I'm referring to a similar set of rules established by the Genuvans," the Middleman said. "It's a common mistake, though the Genuva Conventions do predate those of Geneva by about 6000 years, in addition to originating hundreds of light years from here."
"So what are we supposed to do," Wendy waved a hand in front of Dr. Wallace Davis's face. "Just ask nicely for him to stop destroying the world?"
"Please," Dr. Wallace Davis rolled his eyes. "Even if I would give in to that, I removed the possibility that I could be corrupted. The Yuleray is already in place, and there's no turning it off now. It cannot be stopped. All must commit themselves to the new world order. My plan is sheer – "
"Oh god," Wendy moaned. "He's regressed into full-blown supervillain cornball mode. I swear, if he makes some thematically appropriate pun like 'have an ice day,' I will not be held responsible for my actions. I will taze him."
Dr. Wallace Davis looked at her mulishly.
Wendy stared him down.
" – sheer elegance in its simplicity," he finished.
Wendy tazed him.
"I didn't say I wouldn't taze you, anyway," she told his unconscious form.
"Wendy," the Middleman sighed. "Did you really – "
"Let's table that," Wendy suggested. "So what are we supposed to do now?"
-
"You've really made love to the pooch on this one," Ida said. "Dr. Wall-eyed Daffy over there was right about one thing. There's no stopping that Yule-train once it's left the station."
"And the train?" the Middleman asked.
"Nothing but a whistle in the distance."
"Little Drummer Boy," the Middleman swore over his Middlewatch. "So what are our options?"
"Take a firearm to this Yuleray?" Wendy suggested, stomping a foot on the ray's casing. "Or a hatchet. That'd be more work, but I feel like it would be more cathartic."
"Violence is sometimes the answer, Dubbie," the Middleman said. "But not in this case. Besides, firing on a metal-plated weapon of mass reconstruction? You'd shoot your eye out."
"Let's not be so hasty," Ida piped up. "It couldn't hurt for the junkie to try."
"Ida, stop scheming to get me tragically injured," Wendy hollered.
Ida just sneered. "Well, if you can't stop the Yuleray, I suppose your only option is to invest in long underwear."
"Thank you for that suggestion, Ida," the Middleman said drily. "But I don't think we're quite at that point yet."
"Suggestion nothing," Ida said. "I'm trading stocks as we speak." She cut off the call.
"What do you think, Wendy?" the Middleman asked. "There has to be some avenue we haven't explored yet."
"Hook me up to the Yuleray," Wendy snarked. "My anti-Christmas spirit could counteract its Christmas spirit and return the world to normal."
"You may have an idea there, Dubbie," the Middleman said.
"Um, no," Wendy said. "That was sarcasm. Remember, we had this talk, about sarcasm vs sincerity, and how most of what I say is the former? Besides, I don't exactly come equipped with a USB port."
"I noted your sarcasm and dismissed it," the Middleman said, punching buttons on his Middlewatch. "I was referring to your suggestion that we draw on a force that could counteract the effects of the Yuleray."
"And that is?"
The Middleman looked at her very briefly before returning his attention to his watch.
"I'm not going to like this at all, am I?" Wendy sighed.
"I'm fairly confident you won't," the Middleman said. "I'll fill you in on the way."
"On the way where?" Wendy asked.
-
An undisclosed location in Greenland. 3067 hours 'til Christmas. Fa la la la la la la la la.
"For the record, I hate this idea," Wendy said as they stepped up to the front door. It looked like a perfectly normal front door, though the fact that it had a wreath hanging over it did nothing for her mood.
"Duly noted," the Middleman said, knocking heartily on the door. "Unfortunately, I see no preferable alternative. If you have one..."
Wendy thumped her head against the door and let it rest there. Her "no" came out rather muffled as a result. "Desperate times and desperate measures."
The door was pulled open, causing Wendy to stumble into the house.
"Can I help you?" asked the short, prim woman who had opened the door. "Or have you just come caroling?" She turned her eyes toward the Middleman. "Oh, it's you," she said, pushing the door an inch or two closer toward shut. "So I'm guessing you're not here to sing to me."
"I'm always up for carrying a tune," the Middleman said. "But I don't think this is the moment."
"No, I agree," the woman said, crossing her arms and giving him the evil eye. "I assume you're here about my ray."
"Yes, because two rays make a right," Wendy grumbled. "We need to talk to you. Can we come in?"
The woman in the doorway glanced up at the sky, where heavy clouds were disgorging a steady stream of snowflakes. "I can't say it wouldn't amuse me to leave you out in the cold," she said. "But then I'd be out here, too. And I'm not paying to heat all of Greenland. So come on in."
-
The Middleman had given Wendy the scoop on the way over to Greenland, before taking the controls of the Middlejet so that she could have a quick catnap.
She kind of wished he'd let her take the nap and then caught her up to speed, since the conversation didn't leave her in much of a state to sleep.
"We're going to meet a woman named Rosemary Malthus," the Middleman told her.
"Since she's in Greenland, I'm assuming she can't be anyone good," Wendy said.
"You oughtn't to disparage an entire country like that," the Middleman said.
"Then maybe you should stop using them as one giant correctional facility," Wendy retorted. "Am I right, or am I right?"
"You are as astute as ever," the Middleman said. "We had a hand in relocating Rosemary Malthus to Greenland a few years ago."
"What did she do?" Wendy asked. "Mind-controlling pandas? Monopolizing the world's supply of sushi?"
"She built a heat ray which would speed up the process of global warming exponentially, wiping all living things from earth in a matter of days," the Middleman said.
Wendy looked at him.
He looked at Wendy.
"She planned to use it to threaten the assembled governments of the globe into caving to her sinister demands," the Middleman continued.
"Which were?" Wendy asked.
"I can't remember the specifics," the Middleman said. "A lot of the usual – money, power, prestige. Something about a sequel to Labyrinth."
"How did we stop her?" Wendy asked.
"Well, we didn't, exactly," the Middleman answered.
Wendy rubbed her reddened, jet-lagged eyes. "This hasn't been a grand day in Middleman history, has it?"
The Middleman continued undeterred. "She took her global warming ray to the assembled governments of the globe. They told her that she couldn't prove global warming was caused by mankind and they'd think about it and get back to her."
"O-k-a-y," Wendy drawled. "That got a little dark. So what are we looking this Rosemary Malthus up for, exactly?"
It was the Middleman's turn to sigh. "If we can get her to repair her global warming ray, we can use it to counter-act the effects of Wallace Davis's freeze ray."
Wendy stared at the clouds outside the plane.
Finally, she said, "This is so effed up on so many levels."
"Language, Dubbie," the Middleman reprimanded.
"Effed isn't a bad word," Wendy protested. "It isn't even a word."
"Precisely," the Middleman argued. "There's no reason to contribute to the further degradation of the English language."
-
Their conversation with Rosemary Malthus was, so far, proving to be just as awkward as the one they'd had in the Middlejet.
"Let me get this straight," said the former global-warming mastermind. "After exiling me to a frozen wasteland, you want me to save you from a frozen wasteland."
"Basically, yes," Wendy said.
"And what exactly is supposed to induce my participation in this venture?" Malthus asked.
"Charity, kinship with the human race, the goodness of your heart?" the Middleman suggested.
Malthus laughed an evil, biting laugh, which showed up Dr. Wallace Davis' laugh by a mile.
"But it's Christmas," Wendy added.
"Nothing warms my heart less," Malthus replied.
"Exactly," Wendy continued. "If you don't help us reverse this, it won't just be a matter of Christmas coming early. Every day will be Christmas. Everywhere you go, Jingle Bell Rock will be playing on the radio. Every trashcan will be overflowing with Starbuck red cups. You'll never get to dress up for Halloween or get blitzed on New Year's again. And every TV station is just going to play A Christmas Carol all the time."
Malthus started to respond, then stopped herself.
"And not even the good Christmas Carol," Wendy concluded. "The Zemeckis one. Motion captured. With Jim Carrey."
"Fine," Malthus snapped. "You have a point. But I'm doing this purely out of self-preservation, and not from the goodness of my heart, which I don't have, because my heart is full of winter and snow. Got it?"
"Agreed," Wendy said. "We won't ruin your reputation with your supervillain buddies."
"Wonderful," Malthus said drily. "Now, we'll just have to collect a few spare parts before I can repair the global-warming ray."
The Middleman leaned forward in his chair. "You said when we displaced you that you had thoroughly dismantled the global-warming ray."
"Is he always that gullible?" Malthus asked Wendy.
"It's kind of adorable when it isn't annoying," Wendy confirmed.
"In truth, the ray is only a few tweaks away from being completed," Malthus answered the Middleman. "And it always has been."
"Well kiss my foot and have an apple," the Middleman exclaimed. "How do you like that deception?"
"From a global-warming causing supervillain?" Wendy asked. "Pretty standard, I'd suppose."
"Look on the bright side," Malthus said. "This way our repairs can be completed all the sooner and your white Christmas will be averted for another four months."
The Middleman scowled. "There's a principle involved."
Wendy patted his arm. "Let's table that for now, okay?"
"If we've put all of this behind us," Malthus said, standing. "I'll call my lab assistant to get my equipment together. A bright young woman, by the way; thanks for sending her to me."
Wendy and the Middleman exchanged troubled looks.
"I get the feeling we've hit the point of diminishing returns on Greenland as a emigration point for attempted supervillains," Wendy said.
"A solid point," the Middleman said. "But perhaps it would be best to table that for the moment."
"We're never talking about any of these issues, are we," Wendy said.
Malthus dialed the phone. "Eleanor? Yes, our opportunity has arisen. I'll meet you at the lab in an hour."
-
Middleman Top Secret Headquarters. 3064.5 hours 'til Christmas. Ring a ling, hear them sing.
Wendy returned to the control room, dusting every last trace of Dr. Wallace Davis from her hands as she went.
"I take it our guest is situated comfortably?" the Middleman asked.
"If by 'situated comfortably' you mean 'locked away in the brig complaining that his arm hurts,' then yes, call us a four-star inn." She nodded her head toward the lab that Ida had prepared for Malthus and Eleanor. "And the Wicked Witches of the East and West?"
"Hard at work," the Middleman assured her.
There was a loud clanging noise
"And we're sure that's a good thing?" Wendy asked.
"I trust them to finish work on the global warming ray," the Middleman said. "Though there is always the possibility that they'll field a few extracurricular projects on the side, so I've sent Ida in to keep an eye on them."
The thought of Ida breathing down their necks did wonders for Wendy's mood.
Right up until the Middleman had to jinx it all by saying:
"You know, that all could have been much worse."
"Are you kidding?" Wendy demanded. "We got kidnapped by yetis – "
"We handled the situation admirably, and they took us straight to our objective."
" – How about the part where we had to drag two mad scientist and a mad scientist-in-training into our top secret headquarters?"
"Now we can pay them the proper attention," the Middleman said. "Besides, Ida's changing all the passwords the moment they leave, just in case."
"How about the part where we advanced global warming?"
"Well, given that the global temperature had already dropped precipitously, that isn't quite the crisis it could have been," the Middleman said. "And we were alerted to the budding partnership of Rosemary Malthus and Eleanor Draper in time to take action."
"Or how about when my roommate had something nefarious happen to her at a Christmas tree lot?" Wendy said, looking angrily down at her phone. "Why isn't she picking up, damn it?"
The Middleman looked nearly as worried at that as Wendy was. "You know, the global warming ray is up and in effect. The Yuletide cheer frequency should be dispersing. If you need to go find Lacey, I can handle the post-mortem."
"There's a little more to do than that," Wendy said. "Dismantling both rays, shipping the lot of the mad scientists off somewhere that isn't Greenland..."
"I can handle the post-mortem and the details that precede it," the Middleman added.
"So the post-mortem and the mortem?" Wendy asked.
Her phone started ringing.
She yelped and dropped it in the melting sheet of ice that was still partially covering the floor.
"Oh shit oh shit oh shit." She scrambled to pick it up, so worried about it being waterlogged that she didn't properly read who was calling. "Hello? Lacey?"
"Hey, Wendy Watson," Noser's drawl came from the other end of the line. "What time of year is it?"
Wendy's heart rate started to drop to a less-lethal level. "Hopefully it's not when the world falls in love," Wendy said. "At least not for another few months. You and Lacey okay?"
"We sure are," Noser said. "There was some kind of mix-up at the tree lot. Something about raccoons living in the trees."
"Raccoons?" Wendy asked, wondering who had been responsible for crafting that cover story, and what it had really been covering for. "You don't need a rabies shot or anything, do you?"
"We stand unharmed," Noser promised. "And Lacey's walking in the air because of how successful her protest was."
"Really?" Wendy grinned. Lacey's protests could and had been described in many ways, but 'successful' was not usually one of them.
"They are closing down the tree lot as we speak," Noser said. "Lacey's throwing a celebratory party in the sublet, starting now and ending when there's more work to be done."
"Sounds great," Wendy grinned. "Count me in, as long as you promise there will be no hot cocoa."
"I think we had more robust beverages on the menu," Noser said.
"Great," Wendy said. "See you in a few."
She hung up and turned her pleading eyes toward the Middleman. "So you were just talking about how I could go?" Wendy reminded him.
"That was when I thought you'd be running off to save innocent civilians," the Middleman said. "But oh, all right. Have a good time, I can handle this lot."
"Don't work yourself too hard," Wendy told him. "Make Ida help out. And have a little fun while you're at it."
"You're attitude certainly has picked up," the Middleman told her. "Did your heart grow three sizes today?"
Wendy raised an eyebrow. "Did you have to rush me to the hospital for cardiac failure? Then no."
-
Wendy and Lacey's illegal sublet. 3064 hours 'til Christmas. If only in my dreams.
Wendy could still see vestiges of Yuletide around her as she drove across town and made her way up to the sublet, but by and large they seemed to be fading away – snow was melting to slush, green and red banners were fading to grey, and the terrible Christmas/secular winter pop music was being replaced by the usual terrible pop music.
It looked like her long, merry, ante-Christmas nightmare was over.
So she wasn't at all prepared to open the door to her home and find Frosty the snowman waiting for her.
Her instincts kicked in as she dropped low, into a fighter's crouch, and tackled the snowman head on.
"Whoa, Wendy Watson, party foul," she heard Noser's voice calling from the loft.
Wendy looked up at Noser, Lacey, and a smattering of their neighbors and friends, who were watching her with bemused expressions.
She looked back down at what had been a totally harmless, lifeless creature made of snow, and was now a totally harmless, lifeless pile of snow with some accessories jumbled on top.
"Add snowmen to the list of holiday accoutrement that Wendy doesn't like," Lacey sighed.
"Au contraire," Wendy said. She was still crouched low, which meant she was able to move her hands without giving her movements away to her audience in the loft. "Snowmen are fine, if a trifle cliché and chauvinistic. But they're not quite as good as the other traditional use for snow."
"What's that?" Lacey asked.
Wendy grinned, wickedly. "Snowball fight!" she hollered, throwing a snowball up to the loft where it hit Noser's ugly holiday sweater with Sensei Ping-trained accuracy.
The shrieks, laughter, and feuding that ensued almost made Wendy think Christmas should come early every year.
But not really, because seriously people, it's August.