The Adventures of Santa Claus

Mortimer Dooms was a mild-mannered, portly stock boy at Food 'N' Stuff, a grocery store in downtown Urbergh. He earned slightly above minimum wage and owned an apartment in the city slums. Mortimer was seeing a pretty cashier at Food 'N' Stuff, Gloria Fem, who always said "I love you no matter how fat you are." Mortimer's daily life was fairly depressing, and somewhat dangerous, but he was satisfied with his subsistence job and girlfriend.

Also, he was a crafty supervillain raking in millions of dollars a month.

By night, Mortimer was known to wary shop clerks and security guards as Santa Claus. "Santa's mad, and he wants his presents back," newscasters proclaimed. Mortimer's Santa suit not only protected him from conventional weaponry, but also contained a wide array of gadgets for him to use to rob banks, jewelry shops, and candy stores, after which he'd launder his loot through foreign holdings accounts and Russian gangsters.

However, recently a new supervillain had been appearing in the Urbergh news. Steel Rock, the inept media named him, an unseen man in a large robot suit (there were no rocks involved). Steel Rock had been hitting up retail outlets, an amateur tactic, but was gaining notoriety for his clever burgling schemes. In his last caper he used an unconscious security guard to handle things so he could grip objects without leaving his own fingerprints.

Mortimer was worried about Steel Rock. "There isn't enough room in this city for two supervillains," he said to himself. Steel Rock put Mortimer in a moral conflict: on the one hand, he'd been thinking of hanging up his Santa Suit - things with Gloria were getting more serious, and Mortimer was becoming more worried about his own safety. On the other hand, it simply would not do to have Santa be upstaged by this newcomer.

"I've got it!" Mortimer one day yelled at no one in particular. Secretly, he had hit upon a spectacular plan: Santa would do one last gig, one final job in which he not only took more than enough to last the rest of his life, but would also show up Steel Rock and cement his place in supervillain legend. "I'll tell Gloria I inherited it from a dead aunt," Mortimer said to himself, "and we can go live together in the Bahamas."

So Mortimer did some thinking, plotted out Steel Rock's existing jobs, and discovered his pattern - apparently he was spelling the letter "I" on a map of Urbergh. Mortimer shrugged, put some observation bugs on Steel Rock's next target, and waited until he came to strike.

Finally, late in the night, Steel Rock appeared and broke into the coffee shop. Santa leapt from his shadowy hiding place and followed the robot inside. "This place is mine," he yelled, preparing to deploy his small army of miniature robotic spiders equipped with fireworks. His plan was to light up the sky and, after leaving Steel Rock unconscious, exploiting the distraction the show would create to rob the nearby financial office.

Unfortunately, as Santa finished his sentence, Steel Rock whipped around and shot an iron javelin out of his arm, impaling Santa cleanly through the chest.

Santa Claus stumbled and fell backwards. He panted and gasped for air, as Steel Rock walked over to him to give the finishing blow. Santa slowly moved his right hand to a button on his utility belt. Steel Rock loomed over Santa and aimed his arm at Santa's head. "It's mine now," the robot's pilot said in a mechanical echo.

Santa pushed the button on his belt, and a small rocket launched directly at the robot, sticking to its face for a moment before exploding.

The explosion dismembered Steel Rock, and shattered most of the Santa suit. "If I can't have it," he said, "no one will."

A feminine voice gasped out of the rubble of Steel Rock. "Morty?"

Mortimer's eyes widened. With some of the last of his energy, he turned his head to look at what remained of the robot, and its operator.

"Gloria?"

Gloria's eyes closed and her body went limp. Mortimer heaved his final breath and shut his eyelids as police sirens sounded in the background.