The shopping precinct was strangely deserted. Jingly music could be heard in the background and festive decorations and lights were aplenty, but there was no one in sight.
Until Jesnails entered through the roof, floating down like a messianic feather with a rope tied discreetly around her waste.
Due to a slight miscalculation, she was upside down.
Her hair, however, allowed her to touch the ground quite comfortably. She rolled over onto her feet, removed the rope from her person and looked around. She was in a great, shiny-floored open space with shops lining the walls. There appeared to be absolutely nobody with whom to spread her name.
She considered this for a moment. It probably forebode something.
'Fo' shizzle,' she said aloud.
* * *
An old, decrepit memory of days gone by thundered down the street, its engines growling and snarling. It was a caravan of begrimed red trucks, their huge, archaic, ungodly wheels churning and sludging the snow beneath. Their exhausts spat and spluttered like phlegm-filled coughs, leaving a trail of vaguely marbled liquid on the ground.
All things electronic in nearby buildings flickered and short-circuited as they passed. Happylights exploded. The trucks left in their wake fear and darkness.
On the back of the rearmost truck was a hologram of Santa. He was tapping the palm of his left hand with a broken bottle, which he held in his right. He didn't look very jolly at all.
Sparks flew as they suddenly slammed down the brakes, sliding on the ice and spinning around, finally grinding to a halt in a haphazard sprawl.
The doors were flung outwards and the backs opened up, and lots and lots of men in padded red Santa costumes climbed out.
* * *
In the centre of the open space were three cylindrical tubes, each containing an elevator. Jesnails turned to them as they lit up electric blue. They were being operated.
She walked slowly towards them, stood several metres in front of the middle one, and waited.
The first to arrive at the top was the one on the left, followed almost immediately by the one on the right, and then the one in the centre. Seeing three menacing-looking Santas in a row through the transparent doors, Jesnails knew that it was time to pound some padded backside.
The doors opened with a ping.
'Yo, biatches,' she said. She kicked out at the centre Santa, who fell backwards, hitting the control panel on his way down and causing the elevator to plummet. The Santa on her left cried out and jumped onto her back. She span around, trying to throw him off as his mittened hands closed around her throat. She leapt into the air, diving so that the Santa hit the ground first. When she got up, half a dozen fake Santas were now waiting for her.
She launched herself at them, punching the first right between the eyes and catching the side of another's head with her elbow. She dropped to the floor to avoid a vicious swipe, and swept the attacker off his feet with a capoeira-style strike, cracking his nuts with a sharp kick.
The elevators pinged as more foes arrived. Jesnails started to work faster, sending Santas cartwheeling in the air with head-height kicks and stumbling into each other as she smashed into their soft chests with palms of power.
She hadn't noticed the rows of elevators lining the walls on either side of the floor. Now they were glowing blue, too. Whole waves of Santas started pouring forth. Jesnails was becoming overwhelmed. She was slapping a Santa silly when three more suddenly came up behind her, lifted her up and sent her flying through a shop window.
The masses of Santas watched, waiting to see if they'd done the deed. Several readjusted their padding and beards.
Then she reappeared, fragments of broken glass glittering in her clothes and afro. She strolled forwards with her hands behind her back. The Santas, angered by her refusal to be dead, advanced with refreshed vigour.
Then Jesnails revealed what she had been hiding, whipping something long and metallic from behind her back and swinging it up into the air.
'Check out my polizzle!'
The nearest aggressor got clonked on the head. The rest slowed and stood back, watching her newly improvised weapon apprehensively as she span it around in her hands, making whirring noises as it sliced through the air.
'I rizzles yo' asses, dawgs!'
The Santas dared to attack and got every which way clonked as the first had, Jesnails deftly twirling the pole around her person like a drum major's baton.
'PILE ON!!' yelled one of the Santas.
In a final act of desperation, the fake Santas piled on top of her. She tried to fend them off, but there were just too many of them. She struggled for oxygen as the padding of the Santa suits started to suffocate her. She fumbled around for her last means of defence and found it: a tiny button protected by a small plastic case attached to her belt. She managed to lift the case, and pressed her thumb firmly down on the button.
A great pulse of electricity shot through the building. She grimaced as it passed through her, but her afro managed to absorb most of it. The fake Santas fell away as it tore through them. Jesnails got up, grabbed the pole and smashed a window with it before jumping from the building, hundreds of feet above the ground. The shock of electricity hit the elevators, causing them to explode. Fire ripped through the elevator shafts along the whole length of the shopping precinct. Jesnails' parachute opened up and she drifted away from the building as the whole thing combusted and collapsed.
'Damn straight,' she said.
* * *