Short-ish Stories

A Demon Christmas

"Hang the lights? Got it!" Zola gave Korra a sharp nod.
"Good. I will be back in an hour." Korra closes the car door and drives away.
"Alright!" Zola waves as Korra leaves. She hasn't been given this much responsibility before! Ever since Zola had moved in, Korra mainly let her do whatever she wanted, occasionally giving her ideas and suggestions that she didn't have to do if she didn't want to. But this time Korra had directly asked her. Not as a master, but as a friend. Zola was fine with that and would gladly oblige. But the big question was how. They were at Korra's human family's vacation home, a home that the Drake family never used anymore and Korra has just kinda taken. It was just an average-sized two story townhouse, but to Zola it felt like a mansion. It was pretty freaking huge and Zola was just a tiny demon, how was she supposed to do this? Her race didn't even have wings! Welp, she may as well get started. And that meant untangling the lights. Fun. She looked at the lights. Great. They were a mess. Welp, time to start. She picked up the bundle of lights. Tossing it around in her hand, she managed to find one of the ends. Yay! Just a push here, an unweave here, untie a few knots, push harder.... use foot to he- shoot. Her leg is stuck. Now she has to untangle that on top of the rest of her lights. A few more pulls... and-oh jeez. She just made it worse. And it's only been five minutes! She sighs. This is gonna take a while... five more minutes... ten more minutes... it's been half an hour....almost there... god damnit.

Zola is now stuck. The lights have gotten tangled around her entire body and she can't escape their hold. She tries to take a step but ends up falling over instead."Ow!" She cries. That hurt! And she can't do anything about it. She kicks her legs but nothing works. Ugh! Why did she agree to this? She groans and pulls at the lights with her teeth. Still nothing... Wait. She pushes her elbow out of a little cavity in the lights and- BOOM! Her arm is out! Score: Zola: 1, Lights: ...still over 9000.... and just that took like 10 minutes! She would not be free by the time Korra returned. She doubted Kora expected her to be finished in an hour but she also doubted that Korra expected this! She groaned and gave up. Suddenly, an idea struck her. This would be great! She hopped over to the wall plug and carefully plugged in the lights. Boom. Korra now has a Christmas honari to put the presents under. Now to stand here until Korra gets home. Fun.A few minutes later, a red Lamborghini pulls up into the driveway and Korra steps out carrying a few bags of stuff. She walked over to the door and set her bags down. She took out her keys and something caught her eye. Twinkling...? She looked over at the twinkling and almost bursts out laughing. "Zola, what happened" "What do you think happened?" Zola replies. "Hang on" Korra walked over to her friend. "I think I got this..." she yanks on one of the lights. "Not helping!" Zola coughs."Shit.... this is going to take a long time..." she mutters. "Actually, screw it, we need new lights anyways." Korra unplugged the lights and messed with her robotic hand. Her middle finger and pointer fingers folded out into a pair of scissors and she carefully cut the lights off of Zola."Thanks but what are we going to do about the lights?""Damnit..." Korra facepalms. "I dunno..." Zola claps her hands. "I have an idea! We still have those vintage lights from your adoptive parents, right?" "Yeah..." Korra replies, confused."And we have been watching a pretty cool show lately, right?" Zola grins. It slowly dawns on Korra what Zola is suggesting."I think I see what you are thinking..." she grins.A few hours later, the sun had set. Korra and Zola has spent the hours before sundown completely redoing the living room of the old house. The wallpaper looked good enough, so they didn't have to change that, but they did need to run to the store to get some black paint. Now they sat on the old sofa watching a show on one of the few modern things in the house (an Apple TV). The main lights were off and the Christmas lights were on behind them, creating a replica of one of their favorite scenes from their favorite show. It definitely wasn't their plan but it sure was fun to set up. As they watched the show, a weird look came across Korra's face. She looked at her friend."Zola, two things. How will we take this down and what if we accidentally summon the Demogorgon?"