Five sledges aimed and rushed into the arctic night at a hundred miles per hour. The ground trembled like an earthquake under the charging reindeer. The part where Peter assumed they would be sitting was filled with equipment, so he was left to stand on the footboards, the snowy tundra between his legs like an icy treadmill daring him to step on it. Yuzuka stood directly behind him, crushing her breasts deep into his back. Even though two thick winter jackets separated their flesh, it was more intimate than Peter could have hoped for.
“Can’t these things fly?” Peter shouted.
“No. These reindeer are too young to fly. But we’re not going too far.”
“What’s with all the supplies?” He gestured towards the ladders and climbing gear in front of them.
“In case of emergencies.”
It is widely believed that the North Pole is a great flat sheet of ice, smooth and perfect as a girl’s leg— not so! Ice can twist and crumble into all sorts of snaggledy-doo shapes the human mind could never imagine. Off and away into the vast snowy night were glaciers the size of mountains, shaped like frozen corpses, and up above, the cloudless night sky glittered with stars and a serpentine aurora twinkling blue and green. For miles they careened through sastrugi, hard snow sculpted into a decorative cake frosting of ramps and ridges. The irregular shapes tossed the sledges left and right and kicked them up into the air, so much so that Peter felt as though they would tumble sideways, reindeer and all, like a drunken, street racing Porche driver.
What a merry race these five sledges made— dashing through the snow! Throwing caution to the wind! Get the hell outta here caution! Now is the reign of fun! Yes, it’s all fun and games until someone gets horribly maimed— or in Peter and Yuzuka’s case: blinked out of existence— sledge and all! Their sledge shook as though they had run over a child, or some other idiot creature too small to cause damage to a speeding vehicle, and then they were gone. Their bewildered elven companions looked back and only saw their missing companion's reindeer trailing behind— quite sledgeless and peculiarly running backwards like moonwalking caribou. The four parties turned around to find the snow behind them had opened wide some fifteen feet across and a mile in either direction, as if it were the grin of an abominable snowtitan. This chasm devoured poor Peter and Yuzuka and now slurped down their harnassed reindeer like a carnivorous spaghetti dinner!
Over the precipice of an icy bottomless pit our heroes’ sledge dangled vertically. The amazonian elf Yuzuka and Peter hung on for dear life— Peter, remaining cool and calm, unleashed a string of swears at the top of his lungs, some newly invented in his near-death experience. Below them awaited a black void. Down they slipped in a shower of crumbling ice— inch by inch! Hold on, Yuzuka! You too, Peter! Up above the elves ran out anchoring ropes and flung ice picks at the reindeer’s hooves, giving them a footing to arrest their moonwalking further back towards the abyss.
Yuzuka, that elven Adonis, with her great elven biceps, pulled herself up the sledge and out of the hole. With the other girls she heaved and ho’d Peter out from what would have prematurely ended our Christmas isekai.
“Ha-ha-ha!” Yuzuka smiled. “We almost died!”
“Ha-ha-ha,” Peter said. “Is that funny?”
Yuzuka dramatically popped a flare. Her face and clothes went aglow in its magenta light. She dropped the fiery torch down that bottomless pit, and they watched as the icy walls, semi-transparent and semi-reflective, zigzagged as though it were alive by the touch of the plunging light. Peter did not see the flare land. It simply disappeared into darkness.
“The North Pole is all ice, but it isn’t solid. There are millions of crevasses like this. Sometimes they’re visible, sometimes they’re covered by a snowbridge. It’s why you don’t go running into the wilderness alone. Elves can live a long time, but fall down one of these and it’s all over.”
“So do you map out their locations?”
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Yuzuka laughed. “It’s ice, Peter. It’s constantly melting, freezing, moving. You map out a crevasse and a year or two later it’s a mile off in another direction. We probably went over a dozen on our way here and didn’t even notice it.”
Tomboyish Yuzuka stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled like a showoff, then bellowed out, “Let’s go!”
They carried on into the night, Peter’s heart pounding a little harder now that he was imagining them riding over bottomless pits bridged over only by a couple feet of packed snow. At long last, the sound of crashing waves and echoing ice filled the darkness ahead, and Peter saw in the vast plateau forgotten by God hundreds upon hundreds of penguins. Penguins— the special needs child of bird species. They waddled to and fro, slid across the snow on their bellies, tumbled into the ocean and jumped out onto land. If it weren’t for their fat and airbag shaped body, these defenseless shortbus riders would have gone the way of the dodo eons ago. Yuzuka assembled Peter’s rifle, clacked the ten-round box magazine into place, handed it to him and said, “Show me what you can do.”
“You want me to shoot the penguins?” he said.
“Of course. Penguins are nature’s target.”
The idea of punching a whole straight through a fluffy, cuddly penguin was not an invitation that Peter was eager to fulfill. But nothing motivates a boy quite like a female audience. Boys run harder when girls are watching. They drink more when girls are watching. And if kicking their own mother down a flight of stairs would impress girls, boys the world over would be practicing their dropkicks in their bedroom mirror. So Peter flicked down the bipod, got down on his stomach, put his eye against the scope and…
“What the hell are you doing?”
Peter looked up at Yuzuka. “I’m gonna shoot a penguin like you said.”
“Why are you… lying down?”
“This is how you use a sniper rifle,” Peter said.
“No, no, no, no, no… stand up. Let me show you.”
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Peter stood up and handed the rifle over to Yuzuka. She told him to watch carefully, and she held the rifle with one hand, took a deep breath, jumped up in he air, spun around, and when she landed on the ground pointed said, “Ka-pow!” This was, according to Yuzuka, the ancient shooting technique known to riflemen around the world as the 360° no scope. Adored by try-hard gamers, Peter was all too familiar with it thanks to his hours upon hours of DeathBlood. Quick-scoping was an exploit that took advantage of the way the game engine was coded, turning the sniper rifle into a shotgun, no soldier in real life actually ran around with a six foot long rifle. And here was the weapons expert telling him to do exactly that.
So Peter one handed the rifle, and practiced jumping and spinning in the air. Yuzuka coached him, reminding him to hold his breath just before the jump, like in the video game. And after each jump and pirouette he felt more and more ridiculous. The end of the rifle bobbed up and down wildly, and Peter’s bicep started to burn as he tried to keep the rifle pointed straight.
Yuzuka put on some earmuffs and told him to fire next time. Peter leapt. He spun. He landed. The rifle roared and flew up out of his hand as if someone had just struck it with a sledgehammer. Yuzuka took out a spyglass and looked into the field of scattering penguins. There in the bald spot of snow was a splash of red, like a tomato the size of a small child had popped.
“You got one!” Her smile was adorable, eyes lit up like Christmas. “Do it again!”
Peter figured his bullseye was just dumb luck. After all, there was a hoard of penguins all bunched together. It would have been difficult to miss, regardless of how dizzy his brain felt swirling around inside his skull. But he did it again, and again, and again. Jumping. Spinning. All the while Yuzuka shouted, “360° no scope! 360° no scope! Yeah! Fuck that penguin!” Peter dropped down to his knees panting. Even though he wasn’t moving, the entire world spun like an illusion. He wanted to look at the squawking hoard of penguins out in the distance, but they too were twirling madly about.
“Reload, Peter!”
His frigid fingers fumbled at the box magazine. No matter how he tugged and pulled at it, it refused to come out. He searched the rifle for a button or something to release it but couldn’t find it. Yuzuka came over and showed him how it was done. He tried to focus on the mechanics and order of procedures. Then she grabbed him and pulled him up to his feet.
“Okay, Peter, now when I say go I want you to charge into those dumb birds and kill as many as you can in five minutes! Quick scope! Quick scope! Charge!”
Peter dashed off into the hoard of penguins. They squawked and circled around dumbly, as if Peter were invisible and inescapable. Yuzuka ran beside him like a warrior princess, screaming a battle cry, telling Peter to shout crazily at the penguins to unleash his inner warrior. Peter quick scoped into the thick of penguins. The snowlands thundered with gunfire. Black feathers and blood shot up into the sky like offal fireworks.
“Quick scope, Peter! Quick scope! Aaahhhhhh!”
Raise the rifle. Shoot. Lower the rifle. Raise the rifle. Shoot. Lower the rifle. Over and over. It was some insane bicep curl, and Peter’s only rest was when he had to reload, at which point Yuzuka shouted at him, “Faster! Faster! Now go!” How many penguins did Peter kill in those five minutes? It would be impossible to tell. Their carcasses would have to be measured by volume as one measures a liquid. Yuzuka jumped up and down giddily as she watched Peter take snapshots into the fleeing wall of penguins, and then she was so fired up from the carnage that she too took out a pistol and started mag dumping it into the tuxedo’d birds. White snow stained red.
Peter dropped down to his knees again, panting cold air into his lungs. He couldn’t fire the rifle one more time even if he tried. His arm was limp and lifeless, the muscles burning within.
“What a rush!” Yuzuka’s eyes blazed with madness as she reloaded her sidearm and holstered it. “Those stupid penguins never stood a chance!”
Yuzuka drew a knife and ran off towards a penguin corpse and came back with something steaming in her hands. It was a bloody heart.
“Take a bite!” she said. “Gain its penguin powers!”
“Ladies fist,” Peter said.
Yuzuka whacked him in the chest and grinned. “You trying to make be blush?” And then like a great white shark she opened her mouth and dove face first into the heart, smearing blood all over her elven features. She devoured half of it in a single bite. Still chewing she held it out in front of Peter’s mouth. Peter was going to take a nibble, when Yuzuka pushed the whole thing in. To Peter’s surprise, the taste was not bad. No different from a bloody nose. But it did not have the texture of meat. It was oddly chewy and tough, and the more he chewed the worse it felt in his mouth.
“You know, Peter, my lips touched that and then your lips touched it. That’s an indirect kiss.”
Peter might have blushed if he wasn’t focusing on not vomiting. Yuzuka sat cross legged in the snow and tried wiping the blood off her gloves on something clean, but couldn’t find anything other than her own chest. The other elves began collecting the penguin carcasses around them and loading them onto the sledges.
“This is the secret to hunting, Peter. It isn’t patience. It isn’t silence. It’s charging headlong into what you want. This is how you kill prey, and this is how you capture the hearts of girls.”
“I’m not…” He was still breathing heavy from the massacre. “...a very decisive person. I like to… take precautions.”
“Yeah… you’ll never lose your virginity that way.”
Yuzuka got up and left Peter behind as he looked weakly at his blood stained rifle. Then he turned to her and said, “What?”