Now normally I wouldn't be too happy about being woken up at six in the morning by a hyperactive roadrunner. But everything's different on Christmas. "C'mon-Holly-get-up-get-up-get-up!" Rev said excitedly.

Despite how tired I felt, I couldn't help but smile. "I'm getting up." I sat up in bed and yawned. "Have you woken up anybody else yet?"

"Slam-and-Lexi-but-I-didn't-have-to-wake-up-Tech-he-was-already-up-but-I-still-have-to-wake-up-the-others-" He was rocking back and forth on the heels and toes of his feet with excitement.

"Why don't you go do that then?" It may be Christmas, but it was still far too early for a million words a minute. Rev gave me a wide grin before zooming out of my room. I chuckled as I pulled on a pair of fuzzy slippers. After one last yawn, I padded into the hallway.

Slam was there, as were Lexi and Tech. I went over to my boyfriend and wrapped my arms around him; he did the same. "It's Christmas," I said slyly. "Looks like I can kiss you again," I said, reminding him of my 'promise'. I was about to kiss him, but we were interrupted by a loud "Yuck!"

We both turned to see Duck, his sleeping mask resting on his forehead with a grossed out expression. I shot him a half-hearted glare.

"You're lucky it's Christmas," I told him. He had the decency to look slightly sheepish as Natalya was pulled out of her bedroom by a bouncing Rev.

The evergreen tree was in the centre of the main room. As tall as Slam and twice as wide, there were strings and strings of lights, constantly flickering. Behind it, the snowy mass of Acmetropolis sprawled out. Underneath the tree were countless presents – some were small, neatly wrapped boxes or large, lumpy packages or large silver bags with red tissue paper.

Unlike in my household, where we opened gifts youngest to oldest, we opened our presents in a random order, so Natalya was the first one to open a present. Which was alright, because she had a lot less than the rest of us. The team and I had collaborated on a gift for her.

I watched her open her gift - a large, neatly wrapped box - with anticipation. When the gray wolf had finally peeled away the tape from the edges and lifted the lid, I saw her eyes light up and I grinned. She reached inside and gingerly pulled out a large, shiny black tablet. One corner of her lips curved upwards as she turned towards us.

"Is this what I think it is...?" she said, sounding even quieter than usual.

"A high-tech voice and finger-print activated work folder organizer that can hold up to fifteen years of information and can never be hacked?" Tech said slyly, smirking. Natalya took a short gasp - it was even better than she thought it had been. "The one and only."

The surprise was evident on his face when she rushed forwards and hugged him. It was brief hug, but still, it was one. "Thank you all so much," she said happily.

"It was actually Rev's idea," I explained. Rev flushed and reddened even more when Natalya gave him a quick hug to say thank you. Once she had let go and gotten back into her seat, I gave Rev a wink. His whole face was red now and he gave me an embarrassed look. Teasing him was fun.

Duck got the next present, then Lexi, and Ace, and Rev and Tech got a copy of "Storming Giants" which he gave me a big kiss for, much to Duck's obvious distaste. Everyone continued to exchange presents until there was only one left. A small pile of art supplies and clothes were at my feet as Ace walked over and picked up the last present.

"To Holly," the leader read, "from Slam and Tech." He handed me my present and I said a quiet thank you to him before casting a curious glance over at Slam and Tech.

Feeling extremely excited, slowly started to open my gift, which was in a large box. I peeled back the tissue paper and found... A small slip of paper. "Go to the art room," I read aloud, feeling confused but still eager and excited.

All eight of us rose up from the couch and the floor and got into the two elevators, four in each. Soon, we were at the art room Slam and I shared, the heartfelt plaque as shiny as ever.

I opened the door and gasped when I saw what was there. Standing in the place where my old one had stood, was a brand new art easel and canvas with a bright red bow tied across the blank canvas. Near the bottom of the canvas were small, blue buttons with large space in between.

"I love it," I told them happily. I looked at it quizzically before turning back to them. "Er, what is it exactly?"

"An electronic art easel," Tech answered. "That allows you all the options of an ordinary art canvas, as well as all the art options on your MyTab, which it is also connected to."

"All drawings on easel on MyTab too," Slam nodded.

The warm, content, excitement and thanks I felt couldn't be properly expressed in words, so instead I ran and pulled them into a long, tight hug until even Slam said, "Holly... need to breathe..."

I let go and beamed up at them until my cheeks hurt, but even then I didn't stop. "Thank you," I said, trying my best to express my gratitude. This was the greatest gift anyone had ever given me.

Tech smiled at me, as if he understood how I was feeling, and Slam ruffled my hair with a large hand. "You're welcome," the coyote said.

"Hot chocolate?" Slam suggested after a moment of happy silence.

Ace grinned. "Sounds good to me."

As the eight of us exited into the hall, I expected Natalya to say she needed to do some work and break in that new folder of hers. But instead, she stayed with us, as Rev happily told her the various options the folder was there, and she was smiling. It was a pleasant surprise.

And it looked like maybe Rev's crush wasn't onesided.

(0)

The next few days flew by and January and the new year, 2776 had to be thought about to write. To be honest, I don't remember much about New Years - except that Duck won at Barbie karaoke and may have permanently scarred all of us, especially Natalya, for life.

The holidays were almost over when Zadavia popped up as a hologram. "Hello Loonatics, Holly, Natalya," she greeted, giving us a brief smile. Natalya joined the others and I around the table. The gray wolf was outfitted in a black uniform with a white triangle and accents, whereas mine were blue. "I hope you had a pleasent holiday, and I'm sorry that it must be cut short, but Massive has escaped and is robbing a bank downtown - Westword St. 34 - the police have tried to apprehend him but have failed. You know what to do. Zadavia, out."

I pulled on my jetpack with my club slung over my shoulder in a sheath of sorts. It had the power to have the reverse gravity of whatever Massive inflicted upon me, and had proven very useful the last time we had fought him.

We quickly flew to the bank Massive was, which was easy to spot since people were screaming and running everywhere.

Massive was currently tearing down the walls, but he looked up when he saw us fly in. He raised his hands and shot his gravity powers at us, but we all managed to dodge it and land successfully.

Natalya and I kept to the shadows of one of the only walls Massive hadn't torn down while Ace, Lexi and Tech confronted him head on. Ace took a quick look at all the chaos and I could see his expression had turned into his decision-making face. "Rev, Duck, get these people outta here!" The two birds sped off to do their job while I took my club out.

"We meet again," Massive said. This time his powers did hit Ace, Lexi and Tech. He made them fall to the ground and kept them there with one hand focused in on their direction.

He shot his powers in my direction, and I felt my body rise up into the air, but my club kept me stationed to the ground. My head swiveled around to see if Natalya had been affected, but she was standing the shadows on the other side of the room. How did she get there so fast? It must have been one of her powers: shadow traveling. But either way, Massive hadn't spotted her.

The huge villain grunted in annoyance and lumbered over to me, still trapped in his gravity rays. A huge hand reached up to grab me when something's fist nailed him in the face. It was a person, made out of shadowy mist: a shadow person, who lured Massive away from me and kept fighting and angering him.

Man, why does Natalya get all the cool powers?

Slam joined the battle, successfully causing Massive to slam into one of the remaining walls. I thwacked Massive on the head with my club, seemingly rendering him unconscious. Slam gave me a smile.

Ace, Lexi and Tech were freed from the gravity powers and so was I. Duck and Rev had come back, the people now evacuated from the crime scene.

I hefted my club in the air preparing to strike again as Natalya, the Loonatics and I moved in on him. Lexi shot a couple of brain blasts at him Duck 'gooed' his large hands to the ground so Massive couldn't use his powers. Slam held his arms down as Tech clamped the anti-power handcuffs and pulled Massive to his feet.

The fight hadn't been very long, but I was still panting. I hadn't accompanied a mission in at least three months, and I was rusty. At least I had managed to hit Massive once right?

"Nice hit," Natalya said quietly, standing behind me. I turned around to see her giving me a rare, small smile.

I grinned at her. "You weren't too bad yourself you know."

Slam pulled Massive to his feet and checked that the handcuffs were secure. Sirens were wailing as we exited the destroyed bank, police cars parked outside. A couple of officers came and took him into one of the cars and they drove off.

"Good job team," Ace said, joining the rest of us after he had finished giving a short report to the remaining officers. "Seems our work here is done. We can head back to HQ now."

I turned my jetpack on, letting it warm up, before I shot up into the air like the others. Natalya seemed a little nervous - maybe she was scared of heights. Rev popped up beside her, a gentle smile on his face. "Don't-worry-about-falling-I'll-catch-you," he promised. Natalya's lips twitched upwards.

"I'll hold you to that," she told him.

All of us swooped down over the city. The wind pushed my hair back, just like it did with the two bunnies' and two canines' ears. I was just enjoying the view, when I saw something strange. Something white, and glittery, was walking down the street. And it was a lot taller than a person. There may have been snow everywhere, but this clearly wasn't just my eyes playing tricks on me when I looked at the high snow drifts on the street corners.

I pointed at the white thing. "Uh guys, what is that?" Tech pulled up beside me as we all slowed our flying pace. He squinted at it on the ground.

"It's snow... that's walking," he said slowly, looking puzzled. "Even those ice vikings we met couldn't do stuff like that."

"Rev, would ya take a closer look?" Ace said. The roadrunner sped downwards the circled above the walking-snow drift a couple times before zooming back up to us.

"It's-walking-snow-all-right-some-kind-of-snow-monster," Rev explained. People on the street were beginning to notice it and started to run away. The monster ice pathways behind him, the ice spreading.

"Looks like this thing needs to have a meltdown, c'mon guys." We followed the male bunny downwards towards the snow monster. Ace and Lexi combined their powers together and shot it towards the snow monster - he immediately began to melt, but turned towards us and bellowed in rage.

Icicles shot out of his hands, which I narrowly missed. Duck threw some eggs at him and the bunnies' continued their work. Rev and Slam used their speed and the Tasmanian's tornado affect kept all the snow away from it so it couldn't build itself up again. Soon, it was just a puddle of water on the ground.

"Wonder where that came from," Lexi said. Rev's eyes were glowing - checking his internal GPS system - but when the glow faded he told us that no villains were in the vicinity.

"We'll have keep a look out for any more of those." Tech had taken out a device and was pushing buttons, perhaps already installing a new system to look for more snow monsters. Once he was done he pocketed the device again. "I don't know about you, but I'm tired. We should go back to HQ."

"Alrighty Tech, lead the way," Ace replied.

(0)

A few days had passed, but no more snow monsters had been sighted. Meanwhile, the team and I had worked on taking down the Christmas decorations. Duck and I had been given the job of taking down the lights from the tree, but I was the one who was actually doing the work. Duck had some "beauty-sleep to catch up on". Yeah right.

It wasn't too bad though. The lights hadn't gotten tangled and I was almost done anyway. Then, I could finish the drawing of one of my favourite chapters of the Storm Trilogy on my new art easel, which got more awesome by the day.

I was starting to wrap the lights neatly into a sort of knot, like you would do to a skipping rope, when I touched the plug and felt my fingers tingle, and the tingling feeling went up my whole arm. It was a particularly large shock, but it didn't hurt.

The weird thing was though, I had forced Duck to unplug it, and he hadn't felt anything. And there was nothing that would have caused it to shock me - no socks or carpet that would have charged it. Strange.

I shrugged it off. It was probably just a fluke - I think Tech had told me they had had them for almost three years.

I finished taking the lights off and put them in the cardboard box, which I then loaded into one of the HQ's Christmas-supplies storage rooms, and then went to work on my drawing.

A/N: ...

Well I am a horrible human being for having such a long delay. However, I do write this in my free time and real life can often take up more time than usual - however I have a break coming up, which means the next chapter will be up probably within a week and half, two weeks tops. In fact, I'll be starting chapter 7 pretty much right as you're reading this.

So, who or what made that snow monster? Why did Holly feel that shock? Did you like the Christmas presents? Leave guesses and replies in the box below.

Also, although some of you already know this, I'm putting it here cause this is the main stream one: A Holly Fox community has been put up, called "Machines and Mistletoe" where Holly Fox and HollyTech fluff abounds.

I've also put up a brief character study of Holly called "Bookmarks", which you can read if you want to. All future stories that feature Holly will be put in the community - at least those written by me. If any other writers want to use her in an oneshot or the like, let me know through a PM or review and I'll be happy to check it out and add to the Community - doing the latter only with your permission of course.

So, that's it. Happy March everybody!