A Very Cavalry Christmas

I spent the 24^th and the 25^th holed up in my apartment, well stocked with booze and guns in case of Christmas Ghosts or Santa Slashers or Krampuses or that angel from It's a Wonderful Life. Also, Die Hard was on.

That's the kind of life I live now.

I mean, it's not like I can go to Christmas dinner and be all like “Oh, by the way, I hang out with werewolves and psychics and shit and fight an extradimensional cult for the fate of all reality,” whenever someone asks me what I've been doing with myself lately.

But, perhaps through some Hallmark holiday special twist of fate, or mostly because I'd run out of whiskey, I went ahead and hit up the Cavalry's Christmas party, 'cause Cavalry Christmas is a thing now.

Kudos to whoever decorated the place, I have to say. With trees and garlands and bows and stuff around, the place looked actually festive. There was even mistletoe, which I have on good authority was put to use throughout the evening. I mean, what else do you expect when you get a bunch of drunk-ass monsters together?

We had guests, too- a bunch of out of towners from as far as Lake Charles, Miami, Phoenix, and Boston. Hell, we even had some vampire fly in from Switzerland, and I think he's gonna stick around for awhile.

This was a pretty interesting experience for me, as I really haven't talked to folks in other cells very often (what, with being terrified of mostly everything outside of Houston...and most things inside Houston, but I digress), and it's kind of gratifying to note that other cities are just as confusingly fucked up as things are down here in Houston. For example, I learned one should never go to Cincinnati. Horrible things happen there.

Things were quiet, which wasn't surprising. We kicked the teeth in of the local CUT goons last month, and I imagine they're still scrambling to recover. Unfortunately, I realized a couple of hours in that this meant that all you psychopath murdermachines didn't have anything to do. On a normal month, I could expect some horrible crisis to come up and distract everyone...but for Christmas? No.

And so, everyone turned to their favorite game of “taunt the puny mortal.” With ideas presented such as:

Let's give New Guy magic eyes! (Bad idea)

Let's make New Guy into a wizard! It's okay if he dies when we're doing it, because we can bring him back! (REALLY BAD IDEA)

Let's set New Guy up on a blind date! (This one didn't seem so bad until Striker decided to play Big Sister Supercommando Highlander, which kind of soured the whole prospect).

Let's show off S&M toys! (Why the fuck would you bring those to a Christmas party? Also, I do NOT have a thing for dominatrixes, not matter what anyone tells you. Assholes).

In a slightly more “productive,” avenue, Penny dug up that vampire guy who vampirized him a few months back, then un-staked him so they could have a “discussion.” In the torture chamber. I'd almost forgotten we had a torture chamber. Because nothing says “Merry Fucking Christmas” like our very own abattoir.

Anyway, since this vampire asshole is a Believer now, we can't just stake him and leave him out for the sun- but apparently, Penny's got some vampire mind control magic he can do to him to keep him on a leash. Maybe? We've at least got enough scary stabby people around to re-stake the vamp, if things really go to shit.

I'm sure there was a bunch of other stuff accomplished as well, as people periodically veered off here or there to have Division meetings or have emotional heart to hearts or whatever. A disturbing number of people decided to have these meetings in the torture chamber, though. What the hell, people- we do have couches and offices and shit. That's what they're for.

There were discussions of theology or time mechanics or who has the worst love life (I think that title still goes to Cora, though Ben the half-demon from Miami comes close), all lubricated by copious amounts of liquor. For once, I wasn't the drunkest dude in the room, which kind of threw me off.

We had a champagne toast (well, I stuck to whiskey at that point, since champagne and hard liquor will make me puke), and, of course, it fell on me to speech stuff up. And so, off the cuff, I came up with:

“To battles hard fought, to battles won, and to the battles yet to come.”

The meter's all off, but I never claimed to be a poet. Still, I'm proud of it. It's fitting. Because while we had enough time for a breather, I'm sure some new crisis is going to spring up before long. We've still got two names we didn't cross off the list, Wayngro's still got his whole 'open a portal to hell' scheme in the works, and I bet there's even more shit I couldn't even begin to explain because of bullshit magic.

See you next year, monsters.