SaM - Operation: KRAMPUT Pt.1

Step 1: Formulate!

Sam was only a tyke, but he had sloughed through enough birthdays and Christmases to learn this much: lousy gifts remained lousy in perpetuity.

Christmas morn of this year inspired an addendum: Flora Pets were among the lousiest of lousy gifts. Not least of all because Sam couldn't find anyone who knew what they were.

Except Santa. If the tag stuck to his present could be trusted, that is. But Sam knew it wasn't worth asking. Every one of his North Pole-bound letters coming back "Return to Sender" had made that much clear to his soft, impressionable self over the years. He might have blamed the scribbles Max kept slipping into the margins if this hadn't been happening before he met Max. What a square, that fat old elf. Or at least his army of pointy-shoed secretaries.

Sam tried asking his parents again later, mostly because they were there, it was convenient, and technically he wasn't allowed to call Max. His mother made a comment about the funny things immortal men who made toys and lived in cold, far-off places were bound to come up with while his father said he was too busy making sure his new volume of Kierkegaard didn't drive him insane. His older sister ... well, he hadn't been asking her anything, but she announced to the household she was going to be busy "strategizing," whatever that meant. She would be commandeering the phone for the next three hours and sorry Mother would just have to wait to take care of the usual family business it was that important blah.

By the time Nadine freed up the phone line for Sam to call Max -- Mom would just have to wait it was that important and other blatant lies blah dee blah -- he only needed twenty more seconds to realize it was kind of a lame mystery after all and he just wanted the present to go away ... which was about twenty seconds too late to stop himself from explaining everything to Max. Fortunately, Max insisted the Flora Pet's existence was in violation of the space-time continuum's tenuously maintained integrity and had to be destroyed.

The operation would be conducted as a joint effort, naturally. On New Year's Eve, just as naturally.

That night came six nights later and it saw Sam perched on his bed, waiting for Max. The offending piece of novelty stood on the dresser across from his bed, a couple feet above eye level. Just high enough to throw him off any pretension of being at ease.

Though why he felt that way he couldn't tell. This was one of those rare evenings where everyone who meant anything to him (other than Max, of course) had made plans specific to the goal of not invading his personal space. They were off doing other things -- going to New Year's Eve parties, attending impromptu debate team meetings, all that jazz. Fine with him. There had to be one advantage to suffering through a five-year-long grounding during the holidays, whatever Sam's guidance counselor kept gabbing about "family issues" and the need for a therapist-flavored intervention.

But Max was late. Almost an hour late. This left Sam twiddling his thumbs and staring at the Flora Pet like a long-lost cousin he hadn't parted with on either the worst or best of terms. Actually, Sam had no idea what got up his craw about that silly thing except its tackiness.

... Maybe he didn't hate it as much as he'd thought. He blamed that on having to take care of it as a cover for tonight's exploits. But hey, he'd managed to get it growing! Which was strange because everyone in his family had thumbs as black as Bubba T's grease-slicked mullet. Sure, it hadn't thrived under his care -- he had even mostly, kind of followed all the instructions -- but it had developed a greenish peach fuzz amidst the terracotta. That had to count for something, right?

As Sam entertained the possibility that he hadn't watered the thing either yesterday or the day before (much less today, but that was beside the point, maybe), a ball of white fluff came crashing through his bedroom window as lightening struck outside.

Sam was only a little startled by this, and he didn't make a move except to tilt his head at the ball rolling to a stop on his rug. "I was starting to think you weren't coming," he said.

Max untucked his limbs and sprang to his feet, beaming. "Did you see that?!" It was as though he hadn't heard Sam at all. Which was probably the case. "I think I almost didn't smash the whole thing to pieces this time!"

"That was at your place," Sam said. "You did it from six stories up instead of two."

"A minor detail. It's not my fault you live in a dumb ol' house anyways."

"It has central air. I'll keep the house." Watching Max pick shards of glass from his body reminded Sam to look at the broken window as his friend had implicitly asked. Keeping tabs on these sorts of stats was very important business. "Hmm. Yeah. I think that's the cleanest you've cleared one so far."

Max pumped the fist that wasn't carrying a handful of glass into the air. "Woo-hoo!" He paused, glancing at the top of Sam's dresser. His face contorted into a light grimace. "What's that gnarly thing?"

"The Enemy of Time and Space Itself." Sam tried to make it sound as cool and Meaningfully Capitalized as it had in his head a second ago.

Max breathed an "oooh" as he took a couple steps towards the dresser -- then spun around, frowning. "I find it underwhelming."

"Can't always help how Evil chooses to incarnate in our plane of existence," Sam said with a shrug.

"It needs to try harder next time," Max said, wagging a finger. He stopped this about as quickly as he'd started it, a glee Sam recognized as having nothing to do with what they just talked about washing over his face. "This stuff tickles," he said, shoving the fistful of glass under Sam's nose. "It'd be a shame to let this evidence of my evolving feats of awesome go to waste."

Sam might have asked how those thoughts were related if he didn't know it would be useless. That, and he was too busy being intrigued by Max's suggestion and leaning back to ensure he didn't breathe in bits of glass by accident.

"I guess we could use them on the Flora Pet," he said, giving the shards an appraising squint. "Not sure my BB gun will take glass as ammo, though."

"Then we'll use a blowtorch!"

"We're setting it on fire?" Sam had been in more of a shooting mood, but this sounded neat too.

"Of course not! We'll melt the glass into pellets, condensing them to a molecular density and structure stable enough to withstand the pressure buildup in the gun's barrel."

Sam stared and stared for a long moment. Then felt his brows crease. "You're making that up!"

"Sounds good to me."

"That doesn't make it true."

"I fail to se -- wait. I know where this is going."

"Really? I mean good!" Sam wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It was getting tedious, having the same arguments over and over and over again.

" ... Tell you what," Max said, after a moment of what could have passed for thoughtful consideration. "We go with my idea, you get to come up with the rest of the plan."

"Really? I mean -- " Sam stopped this time. Now squinting for very different reasons, he leaned into Max's face. "Seriously?"

Max shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

Sam straightened. Max had never let him take the lead before. Ever. If this was the bargaining chip that had eluded him in all these months of hanging out together, he --

Wait.

Sam leaned forward again, trying to look inscrutable. "Give me first dibs on regulated fire arms 'til my Gram-Gram says you're de-addled enough to only be a danger to yourself and I'll do it."

"Sure!"

It took all of Sam's wherewithal to suppress his shock.

"Deal!" Sam shook Max's hand on the off chance Max would start rethinking the terms without the distraction. "We'll give it a shot."

"Tee hee. Shot."

Sam winced. "But with the added stipulation we abstain from bad punnage from this point forward."

Max suddenly looked unhappy. "I don't know what 'abstain' means, Sam."

"Then I won't say it again."

"Okay!" Max resumed poking at the shards gathered in his palm before adding, "Go grab yours so we can get this show on the road."

Sam arched a brow. "My pile of glassy detritus?"

"Your blowtorch." Max shot Sam a scowl that communicated this fact should have been completely obvious.

"What? Nuh-uh! My dad doesn't own anything like that."

"Oh well. Mine does!" From whatever place Max kept pulling stuff from came a blowtorch, hefted awkwardly in his free hand.

"Whoa."

"Yup. See? I've totally got us covered."

"No, I mean I didn't know your dad was around."

"Of course he is!" Max said indignantly. "He's got visitation rights for every leap year on Hanukkah, remember?"

"Uh ... " Sam honestly couldn't, but he had given up on getting the machinations of Max's family straight in his head. It hurt too much.

Max plopping his tush on the floor indicated he was done being indignant, anyway. "Oh yeah. How's that first round of holiday punishments going for you?"

Sam was about to give a straight answer when he realized Max probably hadn't told anyone he was leaving tonight and not one of them would know or care a whit.

"You tell me," he said, glowering.

Max seemed to consider this. Curling his upper lip -- presuming that was the anatomically-correct term for that ... part; Sam kind of doubted Max had proper lips -- he ran a finger over both rows of teeth. "I'm still picking out bits of the manger from my teeth, for one thing," he spoke around his finger.

"That's not what I -- " Sam felt his face lapse into something ... shrewd, perhaps? In any case, he'd remembered something. "How about the Baby Jesus?" he said in a low voice.

Max shook his head. "Nah. I coughed the rest of him up in a hairball months ago. I could tell. It was disgusting." He flashed the sort of terrible grin Sam's father might have considered blasphemous under the circumstances.

"Yeah. And of course I was the only one who got in trouble. Real trouble," he added when he noticed Max readying to shoot back a retort.

Max didn't do much of anything for a moment. "Your parents are weird," he said, picking up one of the longer shards and using it to prod at the invisible gaps between his teeth.

"If by 'weird' you mean 'obnoxiously uptight,' sure." Sam gave the floor an appraising look before deciding it wasn't worth wondering where the other pieces of broken glass went off to. "But I think I'm making strides," he continued, clambering off his bed. "Just having you over is risking ... well, loads of stuff not even you'd find a way to like. And this time I'm only slightly paranoid about everything going horribly awry." For instance, Sam knew he could blame the broken window on a drunk pigeon trying to highball it into his bedroom. That sort of thing wasn't unheard of.

But Max scoffed. "I guess those would be strides. For the terminally lame and dweebish."

"Takes one to know one," Sam said, without thinking.

Max didn't seem to take offense beyond looking vaguely disdained. At first. "The dweeb tells lies," he opined, drawing his legs in until his foot pads were nestled against each other. "We hereby refuse to give audience to the dweeb's further ramblings."

"There's only one of you, headbucket." Sam pondered flicking the back of Max's ear to punctuate this before thinking better of it. "And I thought you were the one who told me baby steps were a completely legi -- "

"OmmmmdweebienodweebiehearnodweebieOMMMM."

And then Max was on his back. Sam suspected it had as much to do with Max rocking himself into that position as the old bell tower tolling in the distance.

Sighing, Sam trod over to his side. Max was curled up and using his free hand to dig a finger into his left ear, so Sam plugged the other one until the peals died to nothingness.

Max pulled out his finger too, peering at Sam through slitted eyes. "This thing," he hissed. "We must annihilate it."

"Maybe when we're old enough to get past the 'You Must Be This Tall to Enter the Historical Monument' sign," Sam said. It had something to do with small children and visiting circus midgets sticking wads of gum and C4 under the bell tower's eaves one time too many, if he recalled correctly. "Or you grow out of it," he added. "Whichever comes first."

Max just hissed again, kicking the air and writhing and giving Sam every indication he wasn't going to be useful for the next few minutes. Sam was okay with that, though. The clock tower had reminded him they were an hour behind schedule and the scheme was now his to cook up. Time to get a move on.

"I'm gonna start gathering the supplies for tonight." Sam didn't wait for Max's acknowledgement before trouncing over to the dresser, pulling out the two bottom drawers and using them as makeshift stairs to reach for the Flora Pet.

It came after all that: "I'll get the BB gun!"

Sam glanced over his shoulder to see Max on his feet and looking right as rain. "You don't even know where I -- "

Out came the uppermost drawer. Stupid errant toe, Sam thought, only having a split second to wonder why he thought-spoke the word "errant" before landing in an ungainly sprawl on the floor.

He lay prone long enough for Max's face to appear above his, staring back. It whipped to the side a moment later. "Found it!"

At least the (surely accidental) kick Max ploughed into Sam's shins as he jumped for the BB gun knocked the wind back into him. Somehow. He sat up to find various and sundry personal affects flung every which way, the Flora Pet wobbling to a standstill next to his right hand, and Max handling the gun in ways which made it clear such an instrument of gratuitous juvenile recreation had never graced his presence. Which wasn't true, but Sam was still trying to block out that memory. "Hey," he said, "where did that glass you were holding g -- "

"None of your business, Sam."

... or the blowtorch, Sam finished in his head. That had disappeared a while ago. He pushed these thoughts aside for the next time he forgot he didn't really want to know where Max stashed his stuff. "I wish different things would stop cutting me off," he remarked instead, getting to his feet. "Including me."

"I think the universe is telling you you talk too much," Max suggested.

"The universe can bite me. I like talking."

"Blah blah, here." Max tossed the BB gun, which Sam latched onto with a catch fielded more by his forearms than his hands. "Boring is more your thing. I find the unbridled power of heat and flames better resonates with my inner lagomorph."

"What about your outer lagomorph?" Sam hefted the BB gun in a manner that demonstrated he kind of actually knew what he was doing.

Max grinned. "Boobies!"

Sam shook his head. "We're not old enough to like girls, Max."

"Oh." Then, after a few seconds: "Can I use the blowtorch now?"

"In the interest of curbing property damage to its intended target, no. When we get outside." The window didn't count, he'd just decided. But in the midst of deciding that, the word "outside" and a glance at the afore-thought window struck Sam with nascent inspiration

"Say ... " Laying aside the gun, Sam picked the doomed knick-knack from the floor. "Do you still have that giant slingshot you swi -- um, borrowed off that 'Hunk-a-Lunk-a-Pumkin' contestant?"

"Uh-huh. So?"

"Great! Have you ever played skeet?"

Max stared back at him oddly. "I don't think we're old enough to know about that either, Sam."

"No no, it's nothing like that. It's -- " Was he about to go into all the finer points of the game? No. No he wasn't. The dweeb tells damn dirty lies, after all. "Damn" and "dirty" because that's how all the best black-and-white PIs described these things at the dollar theater, of course. "You, uh, fling stuff in the air and shoot it," he went with instead.

Max perked up with an "ooh!" and just as quickly frowned. "What's that have to do with anything?"

"Everything. It's gonna be great. You'll set up the slingshot with the Flora Pet, pull it back, let 'er rip, then I'll blast it from the air after a few seconds. If we're lucky we'll launch it high enough and blast it into enough pieces for the debris to -- "

"Wait a second! I'm not gonna let you let me christen Bertha like that!"

"'Bertha'?"

"My slingshot," Max said, nodding pointedly. "I'm saving her for a proper baptism with the blood of my first kill."

"That's so dumb!" Sam grimaced. Nah, that wouldn't do. He'd been trying to get away from saying that sort of stuff since hitting double digits anyway. He paused to consider his Max-tailored wheedling options. "Look. Think of it this way: you're the only one with enough muscle to chuck that thing as high as we need to." Which Sam didn't think was true anymore, but hey. "In fact, I think you could get it flying over, like, Queens before I get my shot in."

Max put on another good show of turning things over in his head. "There is that freckle-faced shmuck with the big ears who lives down that way," he said at length. "He keeps stuffing bottle caps between my toes while we're sitting in homeroom." The corners of his mouth upturned in a sudden, wicked grin. "Maybe some of that crap will rain right on top of him and give him a concussion or a broken nose or cancer!"

Sam nodded eagerly. "Maybe it will." He had an idea who Max was talking about. Actually, now that he thought about it for more than a half-second, a whole swathe of the boys they went to school with fit that description and M.O. But whoever-it-was probably sucked and had it coming anyway.

"Neat! Can we go now?"

"Soon. One last thing," Sam said. "We've gotta figure out a good launching ... point ... "

But he trailed off, breaking into what might have been a slightly maniacal grin. Of course! It would be perfect!

"Can't we do that later?" Max said, looking agitated. "All this planning is slow and boring and I'm probably gonna start gnawing on your bedpost if we don't do something in the next five seconds."

"I don't have a bedpost, Max. But it's okay, I figured it out! We, Max" -- Sam paused for dramatic effect; he'd always wanted to do that -- "we are going to launch the worst Christmas gift I've ever gotten from the roof of my house!"

"AHA!"

Lightening flashed again as Sam whirled around. He might have wondered more about the ominous meteorological phenomenon hell bent on defying the clear night sky outside if the sight before him wasn't so very, very much worse.

"Look, Sam, it's your older sister!" Max gave her a cheerful wave.

Sam was one syllable into muttering a word he wasn't allowed to say before Nadine's evil eye shut him up.

"Go on, Sam!" Max was bouncing on his heels. "Ask her why she got home so early. The ceaseless clockwork of domestic cliché mongering demands it!"

"No she didn't!" Sam shot back. "We're running an hour behind, remember?"

"Actually," Nadine cut in, "I was planning to be out all night with the team until -- well. You're more than free to ask." She was leaning against the door jamb to Sam's room with arms crossed and legs posed to effectively block the way out. "Go on," she said, eyes going lidded. "I'm sure you're dying to know."

"Ooo, foreboding," Max whispered.

"Shhh!" With a requisite gulp, Sam stammered a, "U-uh, sure. What happened?"

"Some jerks egged Sylvie's front yard and pulled semi-automatics on us when Craig went out to yell at them." She held a hand to her face before buffing its neatly-trimmed claws on a blouse sleeve. "We had to flee for our lives."

"Oh."

"Wait," Max said. "Are you talking about Sylvie Carmichael?"

Nadine's eyes widened almost imperceptibly. "Yes."

"Okay. You totally had it coming then."

" ... Excuse me?"

Max flipped a dismissive hand at her. "Anybody who's anybody knows the mob's been gunning for Sylvie Carmichael's gramps since the Roosevelt administration." He paused to wriggle his nonexistent eyebrows. "Theodore, that is."

She spent a few moments opening her mouth to stillborn words before regaining her composure. "It's fortunate," she enunciated, tucking a stray curl behind her ear, "I have more class than to snipe that of course you would know such a thing."

"'Class.' Naturally," Sam said flatly.

"Which doesn't change the fact that you" -- she tapped Max lightly on the head, making him snarl -- "are not supposed to be here."

"C'mon, Nadine, we're just doing dumb kid stuff," Sam pleaded.

"You know," Max said, "some minor property damage, pilfering of flamma -- ow! That was my weak ankle, Sam!"

"You don't have a weak ankle," Sam retorted. "Or maybe even ankles to begin with ... "

Nadine simply shook her head. "Look, I couldn't care less if you were planning to set your own bed on fire. Last time I checked, a certain someone is supposed to be grounded."

"For the next five Christmases!" Sam realized with mild shock that he was well past fed up. This didn't happen often, and he was at the point of being determined to roll with it, come hell or high water or domineering older siblings. "Even you know that's overkill. Can't you let it slide? As a late Christmas present? You didn't get me one this year, you know."

"And put my own hide on the line for -- " She paused, leaning down a little and poising a hand near one of her ears. "What am I getting out of this again?"

Sam averted his eyes. "Um ... strengthening of familial bonds?"

"Peace and goodwill toward men?" Max tried.

Her eyes went lidded again. "Yeah. Keep dreaming, kid." She straightened, sighing in that long-suffering way which got on Sam's nerves. "And here I thought I was going to have a peaceful evening after all that rigmarole. I always hate making these phone calls."

"Hey, Sam," said Max, "does she get a doggie treat from your parents every time she tattles on you?"

Nadine gasped sharply. "That was speciest, you little twerp!"

"But it's tru -- "

"Shut UP, Sam!"

Max's expression turned disapproving. "Tsk tsk, Sam. You're gonna keep taking her guff?"

"I don't have much of a choice," Sam said. "I'd get in even bigger trouble if I tried cutting the phone line again anyway."

"You'd better believe you would." Gracing them with a final huff, Nadine turned to saunter off.

"Pffft. You guys have no imagination for the macabre if you think that sort of bush-league stuff deserves the time of day. My mom wouldn't even bat an eye!"

For some reason this made Nadine freeze in mid-stride and slowly, slowly about-face. Actually, Sam could think of one: Max was strangely compelling whenever he said something smart. "At the risk of what giving in to my morbid curiosity might entail," she said, lips pursed, "what sort of thing does your awful little imagination believe would be worth our while?"

"Oh, something like this." And then Max whipped out Bertha.

"What the -- "

She was cut off by something moving too fast for Sam to see as it struck her square in the forehead. The shot felled Nadine like the old, rotted elm that went down in a blizzard two weeks ago.

"Whoa! I actually hit her!" Max leaned away from the slingshot to squint at the form crumpled in the doorway. " ... Is she dead?"

"H-how should I know?" Sam damn well knew what he could do to check, but he couldn't. He might lose plausible deniability if he did. "What did you throw at her anyway?" Did that sound slightly hysterical? Probably. Very probably.

Max shrugged. "I dunno, I just pulled something out." He started scratching his bum absently.

Resisting the urge to squeeze his eyes shut, Sam took a tentative step towards his sister, then a second. The hallway outside his bedroom was dark, but he didn't see a pool of blood forming around her head or anything. She also seemed to be breathing. "I guess she's just out col -- "

She abruptly rose to a sitting position. The piece of half-rotten fruit trailing from the red splat on her forehead did nothing to curb Sam's impression that he had seen something very similar during one of those late-night horror movie marathons he wasn't supposed to watch.

The livid glare she was leveling him and Max with made it even worse. "You ... are both ... DEAD!"

Max didn't look impressed. "Your sister's a walking cliché of filial strong-arming, Sam," he said. "Shall I pelt her with something else?"

Nadine had their attention back with a primal growl Sam had never heard except from his father that one time, and ... oh. Now she was peeling the piece of fruit from the top of her muzzle and --

Sam felt the spray of berry innards nail him in the face as she squeezed it to a slimy pulp.

Yes. Yes. He had seen this before.

He gulped.

"To the roof, Max!" It was the first and only thing he could think of on the fly. And boy did they have to fly.

Sam barely waited for a "Roger, Wilco!" from Max before barreling forward. He only glanced back long enough to make sure his friend was following -- and also observed enough in that instant to be left really, really hoping that foot Max planted in Nadine's face while escaping the bedroom would temporarily put her out of commission again.