Hellion sighed to himself as he sat back on the tabletop, wondering to himself how much longer Emily was going to be. Currently the digitized human was in a private area of the guildhouse, one that was technically connected to the rest of the public areas instead of the Admin Only area but set such that no NPC’s would enter it. Normally he would only have been in here inside of the Mech Kyoto, but Emily had other plans.
His best friend had talked about an “important update” that needed to be done to the faux human, and summarily kicked him out of the Admin Only area while she was kept busy performing it. Hellion might have complained, but this WAS only a month since that time Kyoto was destroyed when he snuck out and then he was dragged out of the Admin Area by Lucy on accident. Thankfully he had kept safe in a potted plant by the hidden door until Emily finished and located him again. Then two weeks after that he had gotten bored while Emily was doing some coding in game, and by accident had ended up dangling from her hair in front of her face giving her a scare.
So here he was, safely out of harms way and literally out of Emily’s hair until she was ready, and then she would come back for him. At least she had provided a snack and water for him, as well as a television, but on the other hand she had forgotten to give him a remote that he could actually use. Even better this lounge area was brand new and fairly well out of the way, so he would not experience any unexpected interrupt-
**ZOT**
-ions. For a few moments Hellion remained sitting down, before it dawned on him that he was currently no longer sitting alone on a clean table top, but instead was in the midst of a loose crowd of naked male figures on bare dirt. With a jolt the tiny man stood up and looked around wildly, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened and why there were several tinies around him. The mostly slack jawed and dull eyed expressions on their faces told him exactly what they were, the basic NPC’s that Emily had added to the game for fun. Then Hellion received his answer, in the form of a familiar set of booming voices above.
Towering like a pair of buildings not far away from Hellions position was Lucy and McKenzie, two more of his and Emily’s friends who had yet to be told about his current state of entrapment and reduction inside of the game. The former was looking at the latter, who had a virtual keyboard present in front of her in the air. “So why exactly did you call up a bunch of those tiny things? What does that have to do with what you wanted to show me?” Lucy was her usual droll self as she spoke to her orange haired friend, but also was showing genuine interest and confusion.
McKenzie simply gave a smug laugh while typing, before saying “What I want to do works better with some of them here, and this way we don’t have to hunt a bunch down. Now watch as I start the event…now!” With a slightly exaggerated final keystroke the energetic girl activated something, and suddenly the world around them all changed. The nearly bare slightly grassy ground was replaced with a layer of white puffy powder, the tinies around Hellion were spontaneously no longer naked but instead were wearing little red and green outfits, and McKenzie herself was no longer in her Admin uniform but instead a mildly briefer red one with white fur trim. In short, everything had gone Christmas themed with snow on the ground, McKenzie in a Mrs. Santa dress, and the tinies dressed as elves. In fact when Hellion glanced down at himself, he saw that he was also dressed as an elf.
It took the young man a minute to work things out, but eventually he figured out what had happened. Over the past week Hellion had overheard Emily talking about the upcoming holidays, so clearly she had made a sort of Christmas Event to apply to the game, and just as clearly McKenzie had either found it with her Admin account or had been tasked with testing it out. As for him, this was another one of those annoying edge cases catching him out again. Unfortunately for him Emily still was insisting on leaving all of the actual Admin Powers at his disposal with Kyoto, so while he was out of the mech he was just as vulnerable to Admin abilities as anyone else. Since the game was not yet fully live the only people here were NPC’s and Admins, so a simple recall of random non-Admin targets had hit him as well. Normally being in an Admin Only Area would have protected him, but he had not been IN the Admin Area had he?
Still Hellion had other things to worry about, as he was dragged out of his musings by a sudden series of color changes. He refocused on Lucy and McKenzie to see the former also with her console out, and the flashes were her swapping from her Admin uniform to a reindeer suit, then an elf costume, and finally her own Mrs. Santa outfit. Once that was done the smiling brunet was about to close her console, when she paused and noticed something. “Oh, this looks interesting. Take a look at the event at the top of page 3.” McKenzie did just that, and her already present grin grew wider. Nodding her head in agreement she clicked one something on her screen, and Hellion watched in slowly mounting horror as more tiny elves appeared, and walls of light blue ice rose up around the area just shin high to the girls but towering to him. Finally a digital scoreboard appeared in the air displaying the two girl’s names, a timer, and a simple infographic stating that Green Elves were worth 1 and Red ones 3. Naturally his own costume was red.
With a ringing of sleigh bells the time began to count down from 3 minutes, and the air was filled with a mixture of high pitched tiny screams and girlish laughter undercut by the faint crunch of black boots on snow. Naturally Hellion began to run as well, even as Lucy stomped on a green clad tiny and the number next to her name on the board went up to 1. The tiny human headed straight towards the nearest ice wall, hoping to find a crevasse or way to scale it, but he was hindered by the other tinies just running around semi-randomly. He already knew that shouting and waving was no good from experience, and his one other saving grace was that the girls were moving slowly and methodically around the fairly large arena, and he did not stand out much. Still it was disheartening to hear the sounds of boots on the low layer of snow crunching down, as well as seeing the scoreboard numbers jump up small amounts in time with them when he glanced that way.
It took nearly a minute for Hellion to reach the nearest edge of the arena, and when he arrived the outlook was not good. The ice while faintly transparent was also thick and hard, and that transparency came partially from it being smooth as glass. A glance showing a few other faux-elves bumping into or fruitlessly trying to scale the wall showed why that was, but it was a grim confirmation all the same. In the meantime McKenzie and Lucy were having a blast at the Elf Stomping game, their scores remaining mostly neck and neck. Both had different strategies, as Mckenzie tended for longer strides and more risky plays, ones that at times garnered her 2 or more tinies per stomp but other times netted her a miss. Lucy was more methodical but also tended to accurately hit her targets every time. Soon most of the ones in the center were gone, leaving the outer ring left with a couple more filtering into the middle over time.
With just a minute left to go the pair elected to start circling the perimeter of the arena, and so their scores continued to rise at roughly the same rate as before. Left behind in their wake were numerous red splotches on the ground, standing out more readily due to the white snow. At an unspoken signal they started on opposite sides of the play area and circled in the same direction, leaving Hellion to abandon the wall and start running once more as the brown haired Lucy turned in his direction. Again and again the sounds of her footsteps reached his ears as he fled, amplified slightly by the smooth hard surface to one side of him reflecting the echoes. He only remained barely ahead of her due to running straight, and the girl moving slower to stamp out any stragglers he left behind.
However despite this his friend was still catching up slowly, and now the formerly smooth terrain was broken up as he reached the halfway point and began to follow in McKenzie’s literal tracks. Her footprints were everywhere in the snow, as well as red splotches that looked all too familiar to him. At last her shadow fell over him, and Hellion looked behind himself and up just in time to see the oblivious girl smiling down in his direction with her foot raised. The trapped male could only let out a primal scream of fear as the black sole studded with white snow and red blood began to drop down.
Just as the boot began to press down on Hellion, the same chime of bells jingling from before sounded out, and that made the two girls pause. Looking over at the scoreboard, the timer was clearly flashing on 0:00 indicating that time was up. Glancing up the two girls then looked at their respective scores, and Lucy let out a small cheer when she saw that she had won 56-55. Of course McKenzie while lightly bummed that she had lost was a good sport about it, aided by them being so close in score that it honestly could have gone either way. A quick flash of her console had the game area fading away, the walls in particular vanishing into the ground without a trace. The surviving tinies naturally scattered, ignored by the girls, but Hellion did not.
This was because the miniaturized man was currently still pinned under the boot of Lucy, the sudden stop as she heard the bell followed by slower settling of her foot allowing him to just barely fit into one of the wide treads of the boot. He could not move much or in fact at all surrounded by the snow, an unfortunate mirror to what had happened a month ago when he had first entered this game. Above he heard the two girls talking, congratulating Lucy on her victory and handing over the next event over to her. The brunet thought for a few moments before deciding, saying “Honestly I think I just want to play a little in the snow, test out how it feels and reacts.” This was agreed upon by McKenzie, and in a dire case of Déjà vu Hellion found himself being swung through the air as the girl walked. However this time instead of hard tiles below him the tiny was greeted with snowy ground, and said snow was growing deeper at an unnatural rate as the girls clearly began to up the depth slider until it was several inches thick.
As before after a minute Hellion managed to wiggle free, which he was glad for as several times he had felt the snow below him start to clump up and pack into the tread, nearly entombing him as well. Thankfully it fell away again, and the last time was the cause of his escape as it yanked him away with it. Emerging in the midst of a snowy footprint, Hellion got up and shook himself off a bit as he mused that while it was cold, the snow was not a biting cold and likely had been designed that way to avoid hypothermia and such. Looking around he saw McKenzie and Lucy in the distance stop walking, as well as a few festive tiny elves wandering around the snow. At least now he was free, and could start to work on getting back inside and to the lounge.
Hellion was turned away from the two girls as they were in the opposite direction of the guildhall to him, and ignored their slightly muffled discussions and open giggly laughter. This soon proved to be a bad move as it took him several seconds to recognize the sounds of crunching snow was getting louder, and he turned around to look only to see a rapidly advancing mass of white. Hellion felt a thrill of fear and panic as the mass grew larger and closer, and as he began to run away he started to take in more details when he looked over his shoulder.
It had been decided between the two girls that the first order of business would be building snowmen, and so the pair had started to gather up snow to form into balls. Once that was done they started in individual ones, and so began to roll their balls around the yard/field. At it happened Lucy was the one to head in Hellions direction, and the girl continued to roll the orb towards his position on accident adding more and more snow and mass to it. It was already thigh high to her, and still growing. Of course once Hellion realized that she seemed to be going in just one direction he turned and got out of the way, allowing the girl to pass by. However even that was draining on his nerves, as when he looked back to watch the ball pass by he saw several red and green specks scattered around it. It then dawned on him that those shades of colors matched the elf costumes he had seen before, and now that he was looking he could see several tinies half-sticking out of the snowball only to be covered by yet more snow as it rolled. That was bad enough, but then Lucy turned having reached a suitable point only visible to her and began to roll it back, once more in his direction.
Lucy and McKenzie were having a grand old time working on their snowpeople, the advantage of all the snow being virtual meaning that it could clump together perfectly and be thick enough on the ground to be worthwhile. As a bonus there would be no shovelling or slush involved, and aside from a few minor specks it was all clean and pure white. Naturally their paths for rolling the snowballs for their 2 orb high constructs were a bit meandering, but that was half the fun, rolling the large snowballs over and around the tracks they left behind. That it made it highly difficult for a certain tiny friend of theirs to predict and thus avoid their paths was completely unknown to them. Then once each had made their own snowmen and decorated by pulling items out of their inventories, and Hellion thought that this might be over, they started on the THIRD snowman, one that was being worked on them together.
Hellion continued to run and groan, noting just how much harder it was to avoid the snowball both girls were pushing. With two people working in it the sphere was both moving faster and was wider, meaning to divert from its path required more movement and dodging. Worse since the girls were walking side by side as they pushed, sometimes their outer feet would sneak out past the “range” of the rolling orb, and he had to go even further to avoid being under foot. However there was one good thing in that they were placing their snowmen next to each other clear on one side of this field of snow, so consequently they were spending more time around there and he had an easier time of things by just avoiding going there.
With the girls now putting the finishing touches on their combined construct Hellion took a moment to actually look at them, and he found himself slightly amused at how they had clearly modeled the snowpeople after themselves and Emily, Emily being the one they both worked on. Interestingly it was also clear that McKenzie had been the one to make the Lucy snowman and vice versa, but Hellion did not put much thought into that. Instead he continued to march towards the far side of the snow field and the guildhouse, passing by the tracks left in the snow from the snowman construction that were already starting to fill back in. There was also still a fair number of tinies out and about, so it was likely either more had been summoned and been outside of the arena from before or more had just shown up and the effect to make everything Christmas applied to them when they showed up.
Hellion’s musings were cut short when he heard a series of crunching noises coming from behind him and getting louder, so he dodged to the side out of habit and so avoided ending up in the path of one of the girls. A glance upwards to see orange hair revealed it to be McKenzie, who was lightly jogging to the side of the field. His curiosity was raised by this even as she stopped and turned around, facing back the way she came and looking in that direction. The boy could only realize exactly what new fresh hell he was in for as the girl bent over without looking down, and grabbing a fist full of snow and at least one tiny swiftly compacted it into a roughly round shape and tossed it, just as a similar mass of snow flew past her. The girls had decided on their next activity, and it was a snowball fight with him at ground zero. He could only turn and start to run back as the girl reached down again to gather more ammunition, this time closer to his former position.
If Hellion had thought that the snowman making had been bad, it was a near literal walk in the park compared to this. The two girls were not content to just stand apart from each other and toss away, they were actively moving and dodging around, their paths unpredictable to make themselves harder to hit. Of course this also made things much more dangerous and difficult for the tiny Hellion, as one moment he would be running for a wide open space and the next a happily shrieking girl would be bounding in from the side cutting him off. Nearly as bad as the scoops of snow for ammunition were the girls feet themselves, their boots carving the fresh powder leaving long trenches and deep pits in their wake, or pushing up walls of snow that threatened to collapse upon him like a wave. Even the times he was well away from the girls he was unsafe, as missed shots could and would strike the ground like meteors. Some were densely packed enough to retain their shape for several moments and form craters, while others were looser and exploded into cold shrapnel.
Time and again Hellion would pass by other tinies in the midst of this battlefield, and each was a sobering reminder of what was at stake should he finally run out his luck and get caught one way or another. The little people were mere afterthoughts for the duo above, if they even thought of or noticed them at all, and so they were constantly falling victim to their antics and collateral damage. Hellion had to watch as many tinies were idly scooped up amidst the snow and formed into weapons, and he wasn’t sure if it was better for them to be on the outside where they would be subject to the full brunt of any impacts or be deeper within where they were more protected but also more liable to suffocate or remain trapped unable to move or escape. Time and again the fleeing human had to watch the unfortunate things get blasted by the exploding snow shrapnel on landing, or pass by ones fallen into the inescapable pits of their bootprints. He even saw the clear red stains of ones crushed underfoot directly, and a few “survivors” embedded at the bottom of footprints whole but unmoving in the snow.
The mini snow war between the two girls continued for many long minutes, their stomps, grabs for snow and missed shots soon turning the formerly smooth field into a quagmire of a no mans land. On occasion Hellion could see a tiny person struggling to navigate the massively uneven terrain with great difficulty, a fact he was deeply sympathetic to. More than once a minuscule figure had time to escape a descending boot or scooping hand, only for the torn up snow to slow them down enough that they could not escape in time. Still Hellion thought that it might almost be over one way or another, as the girls seemed to be pleased but also winding down in their energy levels, and he was also nearing one of the edges to the field. If he could just get a little further...
Alas, it was not to be. Just as he was nearing the rough boundary of the field, a shadow fell over his position. Out of instinct the small man turned his head to look just to see Lucy looming over him, bent slightly over and her head turned to look behind her in the direction of McKenzie. Her hands reached out in his direction and helplessly Hellion could only watch as they landed on either side of him before coming together, dual waves of snow rising up to engulf him between them. The next few seconds were chaotic and confusing, the tiny person feeling himself being lifted up and tossed and turned in several directions, the snow compacting until it was nearly fully flush and firm around his entire body. Then there was a final grand acceleration and he found himself spinning end over end inside of the snowball as it was tossed through the air.
Just as he wondered how long this torturous few seconds was going to feel stretched out, with a great crack the snowball hit McKenzie in the back and basically exploded. For a second Hellion was tossed up into the air from the impact blast, until he hit a white soft object that was warmer than any snow he had felt before. Without thinking he grabbed on tightly, and after a moment of just a bit of swinging back and forth with no other major movement he opened his eyes to look around. Despite all odds the little person found himself clinging to the white puffball hanging from the tip if the Santa hat the girl was wearing.
A minute or so later the girls called a truce, both thoroughly satisfied with the game and unsure of who really “won.” Laughing the pair began to walk back towards the guildhouse, idly brushing themselves and each other free of errant snow still clinging to their bodies. That that also made several stunned or trapped tinies plummet to the ground or even be crushed went unnoticed, the blood either washing away with the snow or blending into the red of their suits. As they headed in doors they did not notice the little stowaway clinging to the bobble of McKenzies hat, swinging and bouncing in time with her steps and slowly feeling slightly ill from all of the semi-wild movements.
Entering the building interior and finally warming up along with their erstwhile friend, Lucy and McKenzie moved to a private room that Hellion was able to notice was mercifully close to the private lounge that he had been in before all of this had kicked off. He just had to safely get down off of the girl and he would be just a short jog away from safety. Of course that was not by any means an easy task at the moment, seeing as he was dangling at head height behind the girl from her hat with only the hardwood floor and flashes of moving feet below him. Hellion decided that it would be better to wait for the girl to stop somewhere first, and then he could look for a way to either drop onto another surface that wasn’t as far down, or even climb up the hat and go the route across her body.
Having arrived the two girls began to set up the next holiday event that they wanted to test out, and they had picked a room with a fairly large clear table to do it in. While Lucy used her console to summon the requisite items, McKenzie busied herself moving the chairs around the table out of the way so that they could get right up to it. As she grabbed the first chair and turned around to walk it away, McKenzie’s hat swung as well from the rapid turn, and as it did so a small shape was launched off of the puffball on the end towards the tabletop just as the items began to materialize.
Hellion bounced a few times on the hard table before he hit something coming to a stop, a slightly hard stack of something long but also somewhat thin. Groaning from the landing he turned and examined the impromptu backstop, seeing that it was composed of several rectangular shapes of equal size stacked on top of each other like cords of wood. However they did not feel or look like wood, and didn’t smell that way either. In fact the smell was quite nice, and familiar as well, bringing to mind Christmas. Another deep sniff and he got it, this smelled like…gingerbread. With a dawning comprehension Hellion looked around some more, seeing more stacks of the baked good as well as bowls and piping bags filled with white icing, and various small candies. Blatantly obviously the girls were about to make Gingerbread Houses, and he was in the middle of the supplies.
The two girls started right away in preparing their houses, gingerbread boards set up as solid bases and walls quickly forming with thick icing mortar. Hellion escaped notice of the girls, errant crumbs and loose candies from an accidentally elbowed bowl of them making his small size not stand out. This was only enhanced by him rapidly turning a corner to get behind something when Lucy glanced his way, only to back right into the tip of one of the piping bags and getting a spurt of leaked icing on him. Now his movements were slower than before, and from the “wrong” angle he looked like a small dollop of icing almost asking to be wiped up.
Still the small guy persisted, hiding and running where he could as he tried to get further away from the girls and out of their reach, even as said reach extended by them leaning forwards. His stealth was put to the test, and it seemed to be working out. He was even only slightly phased by the environment changing around him, as items were picked up and put down seemingly at random, and the girls were building their houses piecemeal so literal walls of food could end up cutting him off forcing him to run in another direction. However his luck, already stretched a mite bit thin after his long day avoiding the worst, finally was stretched too far and snapped back.
Hiding behind one of the partially assembled pieces, a chimney based on its relative smaller size and rectangular construction, the tiny boy saw a possible route clear to the other side of the table. However before he could make a run for it, he heard the two girls decide that now was the time to begin final assembly. Before he could make a break for it Lucy picked up the chimney he was behind to add to her house, and he was inadvertently scooped up with it. This only lasted for a few seconds as she brought it closer to herself before a mixture of Hellion jumping and her tilting it made him fall out of it, but it was enough that when Hellion fell downwards it was into the already half-assembled base of McKenzies house. The guy recovered quickly and looked around, but the walls on all four sizes of him were in place with no big holes, and even as he did this the space grew dimmer as the orange haired girl placed her roof over top of it.
Hellion could still see a few small gaps around the edges that he might be able to squeeze out of, but as he approached one of them he got a premonition of danger and backed off, just in time to avoid the sudden mini-wave of icing as it was piped along that seam filing it in. In short order every gap was closed off, and aside from a window too high and too filled in to reach he was sealed inside. From here Hellion was forced to listen to the rumbles of the foundations and walls shifting as the girl decorated her house with the candies alongside Lucy, and with it facing directly towards her trying for the window was not an option. At last things seemed to calm down, and he was able to more clearly listen to the girls as they finished complimenting each-others designs and taking quick pictures.
With all of that done Lucy turned towards McKenzie and asked her “So then, now that we are finished what should we do next? Put them on display?” Her friend looked thoughtful for a moment before giggling and shaking her head no, and elaborated. ‘Nah, we have the pictures, and there isn’t a guarantee that they will last after we end the event. We are just testing this after all, and I have a better idea anyway.’ By way of further exploration, the orange haired girl carefully picked up her house in her hands, and smiling as she tilted it slightly she brought one corner to her face and took a large bite. Lucy laughed lightly and admitted “True, and isn’t this made to be eaten anyway?” before doing likewise and picking up her own creation to start snacking. Their games before had built up a bit of a virtual appetite after all.
Hellion had been briefly confused at McKenzie’s words as she denied the first suggestion at what to do about the houses, which was a shame in his opinion as it might have been a prime opportunity to escape someway, perhaps out the window. His disappointment was harshly interrupted as the whole confection shook and was lifted upwards, and as he tried to figure out why one of the corners was suddenly beset by a deafening crunching sound. He turned his attention to it just in time to see it crumble and vanish behind a wall of interlocking white objects, which were in turn hidden behind a shutting pair of fleshy walls. It was only when he recognized the shift in hue between the pink surrounding the closed entrance and the rest of the pale wall and that it pulled back to reveal McKenzie's face as she chewed that he realized he was in the most danger yet.
Hellion desperately ran and climbed around the house, desperately searching for an exit even as the girl came in for more bites. Getting close to the hole she made was seemingly too dangerous, as the way she had angled the house made reaching it a literal uphill struggle, and he didn’t want to consider what she might do to a bug/tiny hiding in her meal. To say nothing of the much simpler danger of being in the location she was about to bite next. The solid construction of the house made it too sturdy to break at his miniscule size, and the walls seemed to love echoing the crunching sounds of the girl chewing directly into his ears. At last the choice of what to do next was taken out of his hands, as unexpectedly McKenzie tilted her house the other way for her next bite.
Hellion was knocked off of his feet as the floor seemed to tilt 90 degrees underneath him, and his forwards lean to remain upright just turned into falling flat on his face. He tried to get up, but errant crumbs and a loose gumdrop that had fallen inside slide and rolled past and around him, keeping him knocked down until her built up too much momentum to stop. He could only stare forwards as the maw of McKenzie began to open wide before him, showing the dark cavern within. The girls tongue and teeth were lightly studded with previous remains of the house and its materials, strands of saliva stretching between her teeth and her uvula lifting up out of the way. In desperation the miniature man called out in fear, but Lucy at that moment took a bite herself, the crunch overshadowing his voice entirely.
At the very last possible moment the teeth and lips surged forwards, and shut mere inches in front of Hellion where he bumped into them. The impact with the girls soft upper lip was cushioned and warm from Hellions perspective, and it was here that the spot of icing stuck to his back came back to near literally bite him. As McKenzie pulled the house away from herself, Hellion found himself stuck to her upper lip, the icing acting like glue to keep him there. If the chewing had been loud before, now it truly was deafening as it occurred right next to him, transferred not just through sound but also direct vibrations. The tiny could now both hear and feel each individual munch and crunch, boards of gingerbread a foot thick to him snapping like twigs, hard candies shattering like rocks, and gumdrops nearly squealing as they were sliced and mashed.
After all of that was the dreadful sound of finality, the all-encompassing *GLUCK* of the girl swallowing her mouthful down, after the rest of the sounds had faded to a more generic slosh of mush. Hellion began to prepare himself for her to take her next bite, only for her to be stopped by the brunette beside her. Enjoying her own house, Lucy glanced over towards McKenzie and saw something off, and piped up with “Oh, you have a crumb stuck to your lip.” Taking her friends advice McKenzie let her tongue slip out from between her lips and slide around them, soon enough locating the sweet spot with a slightly firmer centre. The tongue then proceeded to press into it and stick the morsel onto itself, then withdrew into her mouth to savor it. Hellion again was unable to cry out, as the offending wet muscle had landed on his face and it was all he could do to hold his breath.
Taken into the dark moist cavern of his friend’s mouth, Hellion felt true despair at his situation. He could not see any way out of this situation, even as the nearly hot wet saliva melted the icing off of his body. He still stood up to gain control, or at least tried to, but the bucking surface below him made that nigh impossible. The surface for all the texture provided by the tastebuds was not enough to overcome the lubrication of its saliva layer, and Hellion himself was also becoming covered with the same substance making things worse. It was seemingly all that he could do but to wait to discover his fate, be it chewing by the teeth, drowning in the saliva, crushed by the tongue into her palate, or just being swallowed down.
Just then, as Hellion began to fully devolve into nihilism, it could be said a Christmas miracle happened. At that moment Lucy took another bite of her Gingerbread house, but the way she had been eating it had been right down the middle. A bit too much pressure on the sides had the whole structure crack in half and lightly sandwich her face, the sound of which attracted the attention of McKenzie. Seeing her friend in such a state, briefly frozen practically holding the house to her cheeks filled the orange haired girl with great mirth, and uncontrollably she began to laugh out loud. Naturally she turned her head to the side, and such was the force of her laughs that a few blobs of spittle, and more importantly one little tiny human were launched out of her mouth and onto the ground behind her.
Hellion had not known what to expect when his ear drums were nearly blown out by a massive pressure wave of sound, but he thought he knew what was coming when he was temporarily blinded by the mouth opening up. However instead of a rapidly approaching half-eaten gingerbread house, the small teenage was greeted by the top of McKenzies fist and a view of the room beyond. Then another series of pressure waves hit him, and the spasming flesh around him tossed him up into the air where the wave caught him and launched him at high speed out of the mouth. Amidst the sound Hellion recognized it as laughter, but then he hit the ground at speed. Thankfully he was moving mostly horizontally, so most of his momentum was bled off over time and space rolling and tumbling on the ground. It still was not a fun experience, but as he came to a stop Hellion found he did not really care.
Letting out a whoop as he stood up and a few laughs of his own just out of joy of being alive, the male turned away from the pair and saw that he had ended up right next to the door. Wasting no time lest something ELSE happen to him around them he sprinted out the door and around the corner of the frame. As expected he saw that he was not all that far from his “private” lounge, and he practically set a new personal land speed record for how fast he ran to get back there. He only relaxed once he squeezed in underneath the locked door, and just as importantly his elf costume faded away leaving him back in his regular clothes. They didn’t even stay dirty or smelling of wet gingerbread, which was an unexpected but most welcome bonus in his opinion. Thoroughly glad to be back in a safe space, he somewhat exhaustedly climbed up a provided rope to end up back on top of the table he had started from, whereupon he allowed himself to fall backwards onto a cushioned napkin to rest.
Not five seconds later there was a familiar shimmer in the air around him, one that Hellion recognized came from Emily’s teleportation effect. The light show lasted a few seconds, a courtesy to give him time to know what was coming, and then the tiny boy vanished from the lounge. He reappeared the next instant inside of the real Admin Only Area, laying upon the open and awaiting palm of Emily. Seeing his sprawled out state the tanned blonde giggled, saying “Alright, that’s enough lazing about, I have something to show you.” A part of Hellion REALLY wanted to blow up at Emily, but he found he really couldn’t. There was no sign of anything that had happened to him over the past few hours, so how could she know? He would just bring up really locking down the lounge later, so that this did not happen again.
Standing up in her palm and seeing her eyes lit up with the Admin Mode that indicated she could fully hear and see him, Hellion said “Alright then, what was it you wanted to show me? Is it whatever it was you were working on before?” Emily just nodded while smiling a knowing and mysterious smile, and standing turned around and began to walk. Hellion could see that she was heading towards the bay that Kyoto usually stood in when being worked on or not in use, and he wondered what was going on. He was not left wondering for long, as when Emily turned the corner he finally got a look at Kyoto.
Bodywise the mech was the same as ever, female in form and fairly attractive by most standards. Hellion personally had a bit of a mixed feeling about that fact, as on the one hand she was always helpful and acted as an excellent “face” for him when he went out into the wider game world to interact with people. On the other hand said appearance was also clearly a female version of himself, once you knew to look, and he wasn’t sure that feeling attracted to her might be some form of narcissism. However her current state did not do anything to solve this conundrum, seeing as she was not in her usual admin uniform or even naked. Instead the mech was decked out in what amounted to a series of Christmas ribbons, bows, wide strips and so on strategically placed to show off lots of skin while also remaining almost decent.
Hellion mentally began to blank out at Emily’s explanation about the upcoming Christmas season and wanting to do some special things, his attention solely focused on the robot. Seeing his attention on her Kyoto somewhat shyly, somewhat seductively place her hands behind her back and twisted a little side to side, showing that if nothing else the ribbons were firm and sturdy enough that she was not going to pop out of them any time soon. She then said to him in her cutest voice “Hello Master, what do you think of your present?”
Perhaps it was everything he had gone through before now exhausting him, or perhaps it was the display on sight before him being a step too far to handle. Most likely it was both. Regardless, Hellion mentally gave up, and stiff as a board fell face first forwards on Emily’s palm in a dead faint.