"We're late!" Mimi said, for the hundredth time.

Palmon rolled her eyes even as her human partner was running. It wasn't a huge problem they would meet the others five minutes later than planned. They weren't saving the world, they were just planning a Christmas party for the Digidestined... Their third since they'd defeated Myotismon for the second time, true, but still only just planning a party.

Still, Palmon was amazed Mimi could run that fast in her miniskirt. It would have been far trickier in her usual boots but for once the pink-haired girl had taken that issue into account and wore sneakers instead.

"Slow down, Mimi, it's not that big a deal..." Palmon tried.

"It was my idea! Besides, do you know what happens if they've had an idea? The three of them will have agreed to it and I won't be able to change their minds!" Mimi said.

If she had not been running, she would have shuddered. Yolei and Kari were both sweet girls, but Mimi knew Kari was opposed to any mistletoe at the party. The younger girl was fearing Davis taking advantage of it, or the older girls trying to ensure that she was caught under a sprig at least once, and each of the other three Digidestined girls tried to steer her to a different target.

Mimi tried to pair her with Davis, as she was sincerely sure they'd be so cute together. Sora tried to trap her with Takeru in the kiss zone, and claimed her opinion had far more weight to it thanks to her crest of love. Yolei meanwhile had tried to keep getting Ken and Kari to kiss, because she sincerely loved freaking out her boyfriend and her best friend.

Yolei meanwhile might have been going the wrong way and putting too MUCH mistletoe into the plan. Mimi had hoped going out with Ken for the past couple of years would have reduced Yolei's obsession with bearers of the y-chromosome but if anything the fact she could use it to prank her boy made it even worse, even if it was fake... Wait, y-chromosome?  Argh, she'd been hanging around people like Izzy for too long! Or was it just all the biology homework she was ignoring to come here?

Either way, if last year's party was anything to go by, Yolei and too much mistletoe was a danger to everything male in a five hundred yard radius.

Sora meanwhile would likely wind up either putting too many flowers into the mix, and call that her contribution to the party funds, or try to side with Kari partially to cut down as much mistletoe as possible...

Her thoughts of potential party planning pandemonium came to a halt with her when she saw a tree moving in front of her. This wasn't unusual, but Mimi had never met a Digimon like this before.

It was a walking christmas tree, with shimmering baubles and hanging decorations of many colours on its body. It also had tinsel of red, gold, and silver, draped all over it, and a golden star atop its head. It lacked limbs beyond a pair of trunk-like legs, but it had a semi-normal face in that it wasn't made of tinsel and baubles, but a normal looking mouth and eyes.

Semi-normal of course, because it was still a tree.

Despite the festive and harmless first appearance, Mimi knew enough to be alert. She'd learned the hard way in some instances that which looked the least threatening was probably going to try and bite your face off, and that had just been a puppy when she was five... Never mind the countless times in the Digital World something that looked cute turned out to be a destroyer of worlds.

"Uh... Hi." Mimi began, glad to hear Palmon catching up behind her, but not glad to hear Palmon gasp.

The strange tree didn't respond to either of them except to stare.

"...Let me guess. Trouble?" Mimi groaned. Palmon was about to reply when tinsel shot forth from the tree.

"Mimi! Look out!" She shouted instead, but too late. The human was wrapped up in the tinsel, and lost her balance.

Palmon's response to this was to Digivolve, and Lillymon's attempted response was to Flower Cannon the tree, grab her tied up partner, and fly off above the top of the trees.

"Okay, what is that and why did it tie me up in tinsel?" Mimi asked as Lillymon flew.

"That was Tinselmon! For a Christmas tree he's not got a very festive mood!"

Mimi sighed.

"Well, I guess we had better go warn the others. And can you untie me?"

Lillymon landed in an tree to attempt to do so.

"Have you free in a second, Mimi..."

However, more tinsel shot out and wrapped around the plant-fairy Digimon, dragging her away from Mimi's sight.

"Lillymon!" She cried out, only for more tinsel to then drag her down. As she screamed, she was tugged towards the ground, seeing Lillymon being pulled into place in front of Tinselmon.

"Not in the spirit of the season to run away from a nice present..." Tinselmon said, with a deep voice that sounded suited to saying 'ho ho ho' often.

"Present?! That's a sick thing to call it! You steal minds!" Lillymon shouted

Tinselmon's eyes flashed red for a second as he glowered at her, and then his baubles glowed, the many coloured decorations shimmering. Mimi could only watch as her partner stared directly into the light show, and Lillymon's eyes went blank. As the glowing went on, Lillymon slumped, not unconscious as such, but no longer awake normally either.

"What did you do to her?!" Mimi yelled.

"Why, this, of course..."

Mimi was unable to look away as she stared into the kaleidoscope of colours.  At first, she resolved to fight, struggling against the tinsel binding her. But then she started to doubt the point in fighting. She felt sleepy, tired, like it was a good idea to just give in and go away from thinking for a while. She felt her body begin to sag into a relaxed trance, and as she went deeper, started to not care at all about anything but the blissful...

Mimi slumped in her bindings, and Tinselmon released the pair as he gently lowered them to the ground. The two stood, swaying, with eyes blank and wide open, faces and entire bodies simply slumped and relaxed. Two strands of golden tinsel raised the right hands of the pair.

"Here is your gift now, ladies. A fine gift it is too... The gift of never having to do anything ever again. An eternal holiday for you!"

The tinsel began to melt down where it held their hands, the golden liquid flowing up their bodies, the entranced pair not resisting as it flowed upwards. It began to cover their heads as it left their shoulders, and began plunging downwards and outwards to encase the two.

***

"What the... "

Mimi found herself in a place of pure white light, frozen in place, her right hand held up. She found she could speak, and then saw Tinselmon before her, but smaller.

"Hello there. This is your mind. Well, for now, it is. Soon it'll be mine. " The chibi-Tinselmon explained.

"What... What do you mean?" She protested.

"Well, right now, your body is nearly covered by the tinsel, so in a second the red strand should be coming..."

***

The gold coated them both from head to toe, still flowing and writhing like liquid over the motionless pair.  Tinselmon released a red strand of tinsel, aiming for the heads of the pair. It landed on their foreheads, and began melting in underneath the shimmering upper layer of gold, spreading downwards and upwards.

Below the gold, the shape of Lillymon's helmet shifted to something smaller and looser, as an identical shape began to appear on Mimi's head.  The other alterations were harder to see, though Lillymon's dress also rearranged in shape.

***

"What... My clothes..." Lillymon gasped. She had felt her petal-helmet shift, and could see her pink dress was becoming a red one, with white fur edging.

"A perfect little Santa dress for you. If it's embarrassing to wear, don't worry. In a way, I'm wearing it. Just, in your body."

Lillymon felt her head begin to throb, even in her entranced mindscape. The light grew brighter...

***

After the red withdrew, a silver strand had taken its place. This strand glowed gently at first, but grew more intense. The gold stopped shimmering, and began to withdraw...

***

Mimi couldn't even scream as the glow blinded her. She felt herself moving, flowing like liquid, from one place to another. She couldn't feel her body any more, and then, her senses except for thought shut down. She couldn't feel anything, and then even that was gone as her conciousness was placed into hibernation.

***

The silver strands drew back, melting down into a silver ball each. The balls glowed gently, and then became like glass, showing a silvery light within. Trapped inside each, was the image of Mimi and Lillymon's sleeping faces. Their minds had been downloaded into the baubles. Still living, and protected, but no longer in their bodies, and now in a suspended animation.

What had replaced their minds was a small copy of his personality, linked to his mind, but with some basic independence. It wasn't much, merely a way to keep in connection remotely or let it react and act without his input if required. Tinselmon could at any time return their minds, overwriting the chunk of his personality he had uploaded into their bodies.

But that was no fun.

The golden liquid had withdrawn into a gold bracelet on their right wrists. This was his prevention of a small problem. The soul, still within the body, would try to call the mind back in. The soul was powerful in its call and even locked in his bauble in hibernation and with his personality copy in control, the original mind would be drawn back. It would simply delete the personality copy, and take back the body.

His solution was to disrupt the call. The Golden Rings drew that call into themselves, leaving the mind unable to hear it.

His ultimate aim was an eternal holiday season for all. First, creating his bodyguards and minions. Then, to the human world, and he would give his gifts to all in the three stages. And his first two such minions were ready.

Mimi and Lillymon both stood now, their appearances altered to be wearing near-identical short-sleeved red santa dresses. Their eyes were blank and unfocused still, and they wore knee-length white stockings. Both wore red elf slippers, and each wore a red Santa hat. Lillymon retained her wings, and had green vine-like hair flowing free from where it had once been concealed by her petal helmet. Mimi's own pink hair remained as normal. Each also had sprigs of Mistletoe in their left hands. The belts worn as part of the dress were thick, black leather, with a large golden buckle, but were purely decorative. The tinsel strung around the belts however, was a key part of their power.

He had determined that humanoid females made the best means of being able to spread the code they carried, and this appearance was the most festive and likely to lure humanoid males in for the second stage. Suitable males would be targeted, suitable humanoid females would be converted into more minions, and the information gained from each absorbed mind could refine his targets.

He studied the information from Mimi and Lillymon. It confirmed two things. That his initial hypothesis that attractive human females should work to lure in the right kind of males, and that more human Digidestiend females were nearby.  Perfect to lure in the male Digidestined, for either the second stage, or the third.

And what better way to begin than by testing his new helpers?

***

Kari, Sora, Yolei, Gatomon, Biyomon and Hawkmon all stood waiting on Mimi and Lillymon. They'd picked a small log cabin that was empty in this part of the Digital World, and Mimi had been the one to suggest it. It seemed unlikely to the girls she had got lost.

The six waited outside it though, using it as just a landmark. And were getting bored.

"So... Mistletoe..." Yolei tried to begin. Hawkmon had begun to groan, only for Biyomon to shout something.

And then there was a golden glow around the two bird-Digmon, which turned from light into a beam of darkness.

"Oh dear. It seems they were naughty this year and not nice..." Said Tinselmon, firing the beam causing the anti-glow around the pair of Digimon from his head-star.

Gatomon was already Digivolving, and Angewomon was there before the humans even realised what was happening.

"A christmas tree?" Kari asked in confusion as Sora and Yolei gasped.

"That tree turned Hawkmon and Biyomon into coal!" Yolei cried out.

"Yes, my Naughty or Nice beam! If they were good as gold, they would have been gold. But naughty Digimon and Humans get coal..."

"You know it's completely random, Tinselmon!" Angewomon retorted, readying a Celestial Arrow. She had to halt her attack though, as Mimi and Lillymon dived in front of her target.

"Mimi? Lillymon?" Sora asked.

The pair did not respond, and the tinsel from their belts shot out, first wrapping around their hands, and then shooting towards the four remaining targets. The three humans and one Digimon found themselves unable to control their bodies, puppets on tinsel strings.

"What? I can't move anything but my neck!" Yolei protested.

"True, but my little helpers can move you instead..." Tinselmon chuckled.

The puppet masters made their four puppets each walk forward together, forming a line before Tinselmon.

"Who shall I give the gift to first? The Angel, perhaps? But Christmas is also about love..." He said, looking at Sora. He shifted to gaze at Yolei.

"But you embody love too, and more sincerely."

"I'll embody punching your pine cones out of your head if you don't let us go and turn Biyomon and Hawkmon back!"  Sora said.

Tinselmon's eyes turned red, and a second later, Sora was entranced. Her body controlled by the tinsel strings, her head fell loosely

"Any other futile verbal resistance?"

Yolei and Kari said nothing, stunned by what was happening.

"What did you do to her?" Yolei said softly, frightened by the way that Sora's uncontrolled head was lolling back with blank eyes.

"The pink-haired one asked that. Mimi, was she?" Tinselmon said, getting close enough for Yolei to see the sleeping ethereal shape of a tiny Mimi-face asleep within the bauble that held her mind, with Lillymon in the adjacent bauble. Yolei stared in sheer horror, and would have been paralysed had the strings of puppet-tinsel not already held her fast in place.

Tinselmon regarded Kari now.

"Ah, but what would Christmas be... Without light?"

Kari cried out as her hand was pulled up, and a golden string of tinsel latched onto her hand and began melting

"Let her go! Stop this!" Angewomon cried out, earning entrancement for her troubles. Yolei's feelings of horror only grew as Kari's strings were released, and her friend fell down to the ground and screamed.

The melting tinsel spread up her body even as Kari struggled to free her arm. It reached her head, and her cries became muffled and then silenced, as Tinselmon completed his process. Soon enough, another silver bauble was made. Yolei still stared, stunned, as Kari, now dressed like Mimi and Lillymon, stood up. And her face lay sleeping in a bauble beside Mimi.

Tinselmon pondered for a moment as Yolei's mind caught up with her body.

"Hm... She desired someone called Tai to save her but he is out of the way. The wrong side of the city from his Digimon partner for a Soccer game. Does this sound sensible, Yolei?"

The purple-haired girl was almost catatonic now, so with a sigh, Tinselmon put her fearful mind to rest and used his Bauble Trance attack once more. Kari's screaming during the conversion had been quite unsettling as well.


A few moments later, six Santa-slaves stood, and one was sending a message to her former friends. Yolei's face had joined Angewomon, Sora, and Kari in baubles, and her face betrayed no expression as Tinselmon controlled her to draw the younger Digidestined males in for a trap, and a test of the next two stages.

***

"You're paranoid, Ken..." Davis laughed. He, Cody, and Ken had arrived first with Wormmon and Veemon. Ken had been with his friend as they received the message. The girls had a surprise for the boys in this cabin.

"I'm just saying, all four of them, together? Plus their Digimon? This can't be good."

"Maybe it's Mistletoe?" Davis grinned, as his compatriots shuddered.

"Davis, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and last year's party was it."

"I thought it was funny..." Cody admitted.

"Half the girls that were invited spent the night chasing me around the place!" Ken said, recalling both the fear of what Yolei would do if he had been seen kissing

"What happened at that party? Takeru just grins every time I ask him what happened to him..." Cody spoke up

"The other half of the girls happened to him, the lucky little...  Just because all the older girls had a crush on his brother..." Davis chuckled.

As they reached the cabin, though, the mirth stopped. The two coal statues had put the boys on alert...

"What the hell..." Ken hissed, as their Digimon readied to fight. Davis and Ken cautiously looked at the coal-statues as the Digimon kept watch.

Stingmon, Flamedramon, and Ankylomon all span as someone landed behind.

"Warn us when you sneak up!" Davis hissed at Takeru and Pegasusmon.

"Sorry. We saw this from the air..."

Before the human could climb down from his Digimon partner's back, there was a glow. All four Digimon, plus Takeru still on Pegasumon's back, and Cody standing further away from Davis and Ken, cried out. And then, the glows around them changed to gold, or the anti-glowing blackness.

In perfect coal replicas, Cody, Flamedramon, and Stingmon stood. In shimmering gold, Anklymon and Pegasusmon, with a startled Takeru still on his back, as golden as the statue he was mounted on.

"I'm aware that testing Stage Three before Stage Two was odd, but it had to be done." Tinselmon said, as the six Santa-slaves appeared behind him.

Before either boy could speak, they found themselves with eight puppet-strings of tinsel each, two of the girls each controlling them. Kari and Yolei however, merely stood before them.

"What did you do?! Who are you?!" Davis cried out.

"I'll let you know before I give you your gift. I am Tinselmon,  and I plan to give the Human and Digital worlds an eternal, peaceful, holiday season. I have a three-stage process to help my dream. Stage One, I gift the right kind of humanoid female with the powers you see before you."

"The baubles..." Ken growled, having caught a glimpse of his girlfriend's face trapped in one.

"Oh, she'll be letting you join her in a minute, don't worry. I assume you're worried about your girlfriend?" Tinselmon taunted, then continued.

"Stage Three, those too dangerous to me or otherwise unsuitable for earlier stages, I see if they were Naughty or Nice. Naughty, coal that will never burn away. Nice, Gold that will never grow dull or tarnish." Not ..."

"And Stage Two?" Davis said, trying to think of something to escape, and reasoning it had usually helped to keep the crazy bad guys talking in the past...

"Oh, easy. Very easy. Quite a gift for you both."

Yolei and Kari both moved forward, raising their mistletoe sprigs over their heads, and kissed a boy each. Ken stared sadly into the blank eyes of what had once been his girlfriend, somehow knowing what was happening. Davis meanwhile was wide eyed with surprise.

Both had little further time to think, as their eyes became blank. The Mistletoe glowed, and began to form into a silver ball in the hands of both girls. The minds of the boys receiving the Mistletoe Kisses were being drawn into the same hibernation as the minds that had once inhabited the bodies kissing them. Soon, both Ken and Davis were nothing but mindless drones, obedient only to their new mistresses: The Santa-slaves that had kissed them.

The girls each wrapped a wreathe of silver tinsel from their belts around the necks of the boys, and they soon wore a silver ring there instead. This would serve the same purpose as the golden bracelets.

"Stage Two. A kiss from a beautiful girl, a gift to the right kind of humanoid male everywhere. And some females, apparently, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Why, if any of you still had conciousness  you'd be downright shocked at some of the things Mimi can think of..."

Tinselmon chuckled, and led his Six Santa-slaves and the two new Drones towards the real world. Tinselmon had much planned for Tokyo this christmas, and more planned for the rest of Earth too. He just hoped he could be ready for the big night, Christmas Day. It wouldn't do to be giving out gifts late, after all, and he had billions of gifts to give...  However was he going to carry all those baubles? It would be a great Christmas for him to find out.