Merry Christmas!

 

On Christmas Eve: the anniversary of Nottinghamshire's Temple is celebrated, citizens from the city and all over come to see the star atop the town’s grand Christmas tree.

Laughter and music filled the air, while people partied and exchanged gifts. The aroma of gingerbread and peppermint swirled around everyone too, as this was a rare time of happiness: due to the temperatures, crime dropped hilariously low and people could truly enjoy themselves now.

Yui rushes to the townsquare, she hopped part way there as she was still trying to pull up her stocking! "Geez, I know I couldn't of put on weight with all the running around we do: how is it getting stuck!? Did I get teenager sized stockings?" she wonders as it gets stuck on her thigh... she hopped until she nearly runs into a man! "Sorry!" she laughs, then stops hopping for a second...he looks at her and smiles warmly... but stops too: they looked very familiar to each other, though Yui couldn't place him at all.. "Have we met?" she started to ask... but hears "And now the man of the hour: Penance Samaaaaaaaaa!" from the square, so Yui rushes/hops away... the olive-skinned man watches her wistfully until she disappears into the crowd..

"Ah, am I late!?" Yui asks upon reaching her friends, who are standing together... "Yui? I thought you were just gonna watch on tv!" Violet ask, "Me too! No joke, what took you so long?" Rei adds with a laugh. "I was actually here earlier setting up, then I went back home.. then.. oh yeah, Seirro and Zoro wanted to hang out! Then I remembered I didn't get anybody any gifts, then I remembered I didn't buy anything for the party!". Now all of her friends focus on her: Yui notices they were all wearing different colored dresses, with Violet and Coroni's standing out with sequins and ribbons, but the others all looking fairly simple ...but Yuri's was solely a shoulderless black dress, she only wore maroon stockings with it, so it otherwised looked like: "Did you just cut the shoulders off of your uniform?!??" Rei snickers, "Also, do you only wear black? You only have black dresses too!" Fuwa realizes. "I got it from my parents I think: Mom wears lots of black and Daddy likes her alot..." Yui giggles thinking of the last time she visited her parents. "Um..." Violet nervously starts, "Don't say `Daddy`..." Fuwa says with annoyance. "Sorry, I always called him that.." Yui nervously laughs, "It's not her fault everybody twisted the meaning to everything, especially foods..." Coconi says, "Right, I remember saying how much I like cake and everybody thought I liked to ...you know.." another friend says, "I know what you mean, Miki." Tommy says in annoyance "I mean we're all around our 20s,  but we don't talk like we lost our freaking minds..and we probably sound old for that.". "Yes..." Miki agrees with a sheepish smile, "I'm glad at least we kinda are similar... It'll be weird if one of us had aggressively used slang.." Coconi laughs a little, Rei adds "Yeah, I'm glad my friends outside of don't have brainro..". she's interrupted by a speaker of the temple: "Yo you peons! Ain't this shit bussin'!? While you swallow our food, givvit up fo' the #1 sigma male: god!". The crowd started clapping until a blazing aqua colored flame bursts out before them! "I'm a Kami, Kilik. Let's not upset anybody." Penance warns, "You right, giga chad. You tha GOAT!" he replies... So Penance simply turns away from his worker and greets the crowd: "Thank you all for coming to the anniversary of Vengeance Academy: as you may or may not know: this academy was founded on Christmas day when I had to ensure demons were no longer birthed into this world, this temple stands as.."..... as he spoke...

......and as the clock struck midnight, signaling the start of Christmas Day: an far colder chill swept through the city. Two witches, cloaked in shadows crashed the party with a cackle that shattered all windows and dishes there. The Vengeance Soldiers all looked up at the witches, glaring in surprise: " How didn't we feel them at all?!" Yui asks, "The last 2 missions were caused by witches, one or both of them may of learned how to mask theirselves!"

The women readied their weapons to defend the people, but suddenly, a deep growl echoed from the crowd. They turn around to see Liberator walking up from amongst the humans: "Heheheheheh, hello again, ladies!". " Liberator!!?" Fuwa wonders "This is going to be a attempt at revenge, for him and the witch who kept mending him back together." "How astute, but isn't it ironic we're getting revenge on the Vengeance Academy anniversary?!! This is going to be gooooooooooooood!" the werewolf howled! "Girls, two of us should be evacuating the people: the others can't safely because they don't have powers." Miki says, Fusagi agrees "Maybe you and Violet? I can use combos with the others to make sure we won't fight until the people are safe!". "Pffffft!" Liberator started to laugh, when he's suddenly burned away! "Foolish idiots, why dost thou try this in my presence?!!! Wast this whole interruption just to spite us all?!" he asks in a surprisingly deep voice, this scares the civilians as they're lead away! 

The Crone Sisters laughed, then the mousey giggled "No, we're not that petty! You see: Doesn't anyone realize that you couldn't sense anybody before we came?" Yui then realizes more souls coming while the witch was distracting them: "Underground, in the academy basement!" she thought aloud! "Oh! I forgot about her!" one witch says, "Medias won't be happy, but you can't get there in time!". "Yui, Violet, Rei, Coconi, Miki, Fuwa and Tommy: all of you shalt go to the academy, my ability is limited like unto all deities that are in the physical realm, but they shant do anything else here now. As for the academy, don't let them go to the last floor! Hurry!" Penance orders. The women hurry to the academy, Rei then suggests "Should we fly!?". "We might need to actually transform this time!" Tommy says. "Let's wait until we're closer then: it's almost as risky as Soul Heart, but uses stamina as well!" Fuwa reminds her friends!

They reached the academy, and rush inside to the basement! They then hear footsteps and turn around to see Miki and Violet! "Sorry, it took a while to get everybody to safety!" the former explains, "Understood. What do you think about transforming now?" Tommy asks, "Let's wait until we see them. It takes alot of energy to do it.." Violet replies.. "Then let's go!" Tommy says and they rush into the darkness.......until they come upon Medias! "You saw through my illusion.." she says with a smirk "But that has cost you your life!". She fires many "Vector Snakes!", Rei and Fuwa both create a wall of fire to block them! "She's going to distract us!" Miki warns "Penance Sama said to go to the very bottom, but she's stopping us here!". "True, I can get glimpse of her mind despite the black magic defenses: there's others! Miki.. who do you think should run interference?" Fuwa asks, but Violet says "Me and Rei could easily! "But I can block the guys down there too!" the woman herself says, then runs forwards as she tries to mow down Medias! But the witch bounced over the wall of fire and rains down "Vector Snakes!" Violet starts to create a storm cloud while her friends dodge through the waves of spear like magic blasts: Coconi slices her way through, Miki's boomerang reflects every snake, Fuwa causes the snakes around her to freeze together and Tommy's "Soul Heart" zaps them back! Yui though simply ran, unable to focus on both deflecting while running: so Medias tried to prey on her weakness, and redirected ALL remaining snakes to her!!! But just before they reached, a horrible storm destroyed them via Violet's rod! "I'm your opponent..." she says "You're not hurting anyone else!".

Meanwhile: The girls rush through a lower floor, and sees Ragnoroc! " A kid!?" Fuwa asks, almost stopping! "Something worse can happen if we waste time: we can address him later!" Rei explains in anger. "..." Yui suddenly stops in surprise: recognizing the child! "It's you!?" Tommy says as she stops too! "Wait, Tommy.." Rei says as she stops: "THAT'S the demon!?". " Yeah, I'm surprised it's just letting us go." she replied. "Change of plans: Fuwa, Coconi: I'll catch up, Tommy, you can help them more than I can." Rei says.. which confuses the purple-haired woman, but she goes with it: "Alright, good luck!" Tommy replies and goes with the others. Rei now stands by Yui. "Her chains could hold that werewolf, but not this thing.  I think with Fuwa's help though, she could become scary.." Rei says "But we should end this now, so they won't need to worry about thinking of something!". She suddenly uses "Deimos and Phobos!" and blasts Ragnoroc! Yui stares in surprise, then reminds her "I hope you remember our report...". "Don't worry: it's holy fire!" Rei explains casually, but Ragniroc leaps out of it "Children, innocent children are the perfect defense against it!". " SHITSHITSHITSHIT!" Rei cursed as she dodged, Yui does too "You're stronger than the demon!" she says "Remember who you are!"..... "...... I..." Ragnoroc let's slip in a different tone, but gets back sarcastic, cynical and snarky: "I'm going to eat you!!!". The demon jumped at Yui, but Rei shoots it away with a fireball! Yui now leaps at it, and starts punching the demon! "I remember this being more effective than before!"_Yui thought as she swung, Rei gets excited and rushed beside her "Swap out!" she says and punched ragnoroc HARD with her flaming fists! She kept beating it until it screamed insanely, making the women's ears start to bleed! While Rei holds her ears: it pulls a broad sword from it's throat as they laughed "At what exact point and time did you think I was actually going to lose?!" ragnoroc asks in a far more angry and damming voice... but it drops the sword, and Rei leaps up despite her pain to get it in a half-nelson! "Freaking burn in hell!" she started, the child started to cry until Yui says "Wait a minute, ...they..they overcame the demon?". Rei slowly lets go of the child and it falls to the floor and cries in pain..."Okay... I can't deal with cryin'..so bye?" Rei nervously says and ran!

Meanwhile: Fuwa, Tommy, Coconi and Miki gets to the final floor, there they see a giant eye shaped sack lying on the floor... it has no eyelid or lashes, but looks perfectly like a human eyeball complete with a ambiguous-colored iris, pupil, and many red veins in it... "Wh,what is THAT!?" Fuwa wonders as the women come to a stop.. "It's a container: I read they had meaningful designs before..at least when made by a academy with a deity." Miki reveals. "You made it!" the werewolf growls as he stepped up with another witch! "So you were already coming down here!?" Tommy asks, "Yeah, but you caught up so fast: we had to set up another trap." Liberator says, "The first was you thinking Medias was up there!" the other witch says with a giggle. "Lemme guess, now you're `ambushing` us?" Fuwa asks, "You'll have to do better than this if you this was your plan!" Coconi warns. "Pffft, we don't have to do much! Hell, if I weren't kinda spooked by Medias' plan, I would take a chance to get a snack, this is too easy! But we gotta run!" Tommy then launches lightning at them with "Soul Heart!" but they dodged, Miki threw her boomerang, but Liberater caught it "Hehheheheh, see? They're easy, Erika!" he laughs, "Y.." the witch almost croaked back: but a huge explosion engulfed them both! "Ah, you destroyed my boomerang!" Miki says to Fuwa, revealing the explosion was her powers. "I can repair it, but I needed something with enough elements to explode: That werewolf is too...organic, and the witch is drenched in dark magic.." Fuwa replies. Liberater suddenly jumped out of the fire and onto the eye to rip it open: but a beam of fire kills him! "I did it!" Rei cheered glad she ran into the roon, "We stopped them!" Violet cheers too! ....in reality: Rei hit Erika's corpse, and Liberator tears open the sack! Fuwa snaps her friends out of the hypnosis! "We went mad for a while, what do they have to trick us all so quickly!?" Fuwa wonders! Rei tries to shoot again, but black blood suddenly explodes from the sack! Liberater is set ablaze by it the burns completely away, and the others are rendered numb and unaware by the madness flowing from the thing inside the sack.... "....... THOSE ARE GIRLS!!!?" he screams, and takes a deep squat while covering his crotch, then jumps up through the floors! Back up in the darkness: Yui and Violet charge down the hall at intense speed! "You killed the witch??" Yui asks, "Yeah, she could only throw the snakes, a lightning storm killed her easy! What about that kid with you!?" Violet replies: Yui is carrying ragnoroc who's still crying "They need help!" Yui starts, then noticed long scarves going up into the sky:  "Ah! What is THAT!?" she yells. "I.. think it's part of what we're supposed to stop?" Violet realized! They both use "Soul Heart!" and try to fly, but the latter notices "I need to stand down!" as she takes a knee "I used up too much energy to kill that bitch..." . "Then please hold this kid?" Yui asks as she gives them to her, then flies to grab a scarf and is dragged into the sky!

As dawn approached: Penance had killed the actual witch that tried to distract him "I wonder why my enemies think of me as weak or inept: I killed for a living over a millennia ago!" he thought aloud, then quickly spreads fire over the ground: but his new seal was breached through by a very tall asura. "You..." Penance says, "I can say the same thing." the asura laughed some. "It's too bad you must go back after such a brief reunion. " Penance says, "I'd love to see me back in there too!!" the Asura replied and spits a laser at the deity, but Penance slaps it away with his flaming hands! Then wraps long chains around the asura, but he tears what hung on him and fires another lazer: it almost hits the deity: but Yuri deflects it quickly then starts transforming right then! "I didn't know it activated like this..." Yui thought as the ashura scoffed: "Die!" and jumped out of the air and started forming into a drill! Penance prepares to intercept but Yui steps out in front of him and nigh grabs the thing.. but the giant asura knocks her aside and rips through Penance: then he floated towards the sky as he says "If we're fortunate enough: we'll never meet again." and flies away...

 While everyone was alive and well: the missing Asura made both the civilians and fighters be in edge...