A Karma Girl Christmas Read Online Free PDF

with thin, wispy white hair that had a few faint streaks of gray. His eyes were green, though—as bright and green as his costume.
    “What brings you to Oodles o’ Stuff this late at night?” I asked.
    “I suppose I could lie and say I needed one last present, but we’d both know that’s not true. Fact is I’m here to take all of the presents—every last one.” He had a pleasant, if slightly scolding voice, one that made me think of a teacher constantly chastising a student.
    The Mintilator turned back toward the tree, making the sequined spearmint leaf on his chest sparkle and gleam. He seemed content to just stand there and stare at the toys, so I took the opportunity to creep a little closer.
    “But why steal a bunch of toys?” I asked. “Especially when they’re supposed to go to needy kids? That’s pretty harsh, even for an ubervillain.”
    He turned back to me and gave me a triumphant smile. “Exactly. In fact, that’s rather the point of my whole little endeavor here tonight. Tell me, Karma Girl, what do you know about me?”
    “I know you’re really, really, really into hand-washing,” I said, creeping forward a little more. “You like to steal delivery trucks full of hand sanitizer, mouthwash, and toothpaste, and Halitosis Hal is your archenemy.”
    He gave me a thin smile. “And that’s it, right? That’s all you know about me?”
    I didn’t know what he wanted me to say, so I just shrugged.
    He sighed. “That’s the problem, you see. No one thinks of me as a real threat, as a real ubervillain, despite the fact that I’ve been kicking around this town for thirty years now. I’m just some kooky guy who goes around Bigtime forcing people to practice good hygiene. I’m not even a B-list ubervillain. I’m barely even D-list.”
    His voice was calm and pleasant, but I could hear the cold anger in his clipped tone. No, definitely not harmless.  
    “So you what?” I asked. “Decided to come here and steal the toys from the charity drive so people would take you seriously?”
    He shrugged. “It was the most evil thing I could think of. Besides, do you know how much some of those toys cost? I can make a fortune selling them on the Internet. Not to mention the solidium the tree is made out of. Do you know how valuable that metal is? I can make several million breaking up the tree and selling off the branches. More than enough to fund my long-awaited retirement. And that’s exactly what I plan on doing. Taking the money and running. I hear Cypress Mountain is especially nice this time of year.”
    Sadly, it wasn’t the strangest or most bizarre ubervillain plan I’d ever heard. Truth be told, it was pretty damn clever—not to mention profitable.
    I shook my head. “We both know that I can’t let you do that. If you won’t be reasonable, then at least be logical about this. Even if you could knock me out or even kill me, how would you get all of the toys out of here? Not to mention the tree itself? There’s no way you could get them all out the door before the store opens in the morning.”
    “That’s something else no one knows about me—the fact that I always come prepared,” the Mintilator said.
    He pushed back his white cape, and for the first time, I realized there was a holster clipped to his utility belt, one holding something far more deadly than hand sanitizer—a gun.
    The Mintilator pulled the gun out of the holster and held it up where I could see it. The gun was an overly complicated-looking thing, with lots of little buttons, switches, and most worrisome, a glass tube filled with a strange green gas. In my experience as a survivor of radioactive goo, any gas, liquid, or pill that was neon-colored never, ever did anything good.
    “What’s that?” I asked, wondering which way I should dive when he decided to point that thing at me and pull the trigger. Right, I’d dive to the right and put the sacks of presents between us.
    “Oh, it’s just a little something I