Jingle Bells

Hello from the future once again. It's been a week since my last post. (Or has it for you? Who knows? Wibbley wobbley timey wimey and all that.) We're abroad, trying to get into Belgium undetected.

Sorry, where did I leave you? Oh yeah, strange shape in the sky. As it came closer, I could make it out better. It WAS what I thought. Now, I have to admit, after all I've seen, and from Hints Dragon has dropped, I'm fine with Santa. Seems perfectly possible. But this? This was a boy riding a flying reindeer. There was a small flurry of snow, a faint ring of sleigh bells, and a teenage boy on a reindeer galloped to a stop in front of us. 'Season's greetings! Name's Jingle. You must be Tempest, Diffy's told me SO much about you!'
He stroked the reindeer's neck, and it galloped of round a corner. 'He'll be noticed from now on, it's too risky to continue with him.'
So then we waited for the others, but we had to set off eventually. Diffy has heard since that two of them were killed trying to make it to us, but the others are unknown at the moment. We slowly made our way (Carefully, he has spies everywhere) across the channel, and when possible, I sped us through Europe. Diffy has managed to hide us very well a lot of times, but the weird subjects he makes by 'flipping' rebels brains are weirdly resistant, because there isn't enough sentience left to react fully, or something, so we were illusionless against them (His passive stuff works, they see him as we do, but he can't do distractions, or hide us from them. It's bizarre.)

Oh yeah, Jingle. Joining the list of mimicries we've encountered or found through research (Water, Snake, Wolf, Ice, Sand, Phoenix, Quite a lot of Rag's stuff, Smoke, Metal) and the manipulations that go with them, is Christmas. Don't ask, I don't know, and currently can't see responses anyway. Strictly one-way transmissions. Jingle is a natural force of Christmas magic. He manifested Christmas the year I left, and can essentially create, mimic, and manipulate all things Christmas. He hasn't really made much use of the full extent of his powers recently, apparently there hasn't really been a Christmas since HG took over. He's mostly just hidden, using the odd scattering of snow, reindeer, or 'pine powers' to escape capture. As soon as we set off, and his ride had left, he became quite serious, and seemed fairly low spirited. Poor guy, must be hard having lived in the world like this for the past few years.

So, now we're trying to get into Belgium. There are huge numbers of 'flipbrains' as Diffy calls them, on patrol, so he can't use his powers to get us past. There's a stronghold here. A VHS member is being held inside, and if we're right about who and why, it will be a major blow to HG if we can break them out. I don't want to say too much in case we're wrong, or if they're....no. He's keeping everyone alive. They're 'useful' to him.

Wait! A gap in the patrols! We need to catch one, but there! He's standing alone! And he's got his back to us! Idiot. Bye for now!