Christmas 2012 - The Great Odyssey Part 2
He felt kind of glad that the other guys turned just as fast and kind of bunched together, just like he did, because it was a pretty scary thing and it made him feel better to not be the only one who thought so.
Elves were not very tall, but they didn't really have big heads like they did in all the Christmas cartoons, and Duo was kind of glad of that, because that would have been weird. They did have pointed ears though (or the one standing at the top of the stairs, with his hands on his hips, staring down at them did at least), and they did wear the funny little shoes with the curly toes.
Quatre very carefully put the teddy bear he'd been hugging back into the toy pile.
'Who?' the Elf kind of sputtered, 'Where the heck...? What are...?'
Duo hoped the Elf didn't know too many more W words.
'We have to see Santa!' Quatre said all in a rush, because maybe he was tired of waiting for the Elf to finish a sentence too.
'Yeah!' Trowa said.
'We gotta stop him!' Wufei said.
'We're on a mission!' Heero said.
'Mr. Winner isn't home!' Duo said.
The Elf just stared at them. Then the Elf put his hand over his eyes. 'There is so not room in the schedule for this,' he said, but it didn't really seem like he was talking to them. It kind of seemed to Duo like when his Mom said she had to 'take a minute' .
'Let me get this straight,' the Elf finally said, moving his hand so he could look at them again. 'You're here to... stop Christmas? Because we don't see a lot of that.'
'No!' Duo was quick to tell him (why did people keep getting that part wrong?), 'we just want to change it!'
'Change...?' the Elf began, but then stopped and threw his hands in the air. 'No... you know what? I'm just a doll clothes designer; I don't get paid enough for this.'
And just like that, he waved them up the stairs and led them into another room. Duo had been kind of nervous that there would be more Elves, but the room was empty. The Elf (he wondered what his name was), sat them all down at a table.
'Look,' he said while he rummaged around in a desk looking for something, 'you kids seem to be having a little trouble getting yourselves... organized. You can't be babbling at the Big Man like a paddle of ducklings.' While he talked (and Duo kind of thought he was doing his own babbling, because he wasn't making a lot of sense), he was handing out sheets of paper and pencils. 'Why don't you work out just what it is you want to ask Santa for, and make some lists?'
Lists? They didn't need to make lists... they knew what they were there for! Duo thought the Elf was the one making things... comp'icated.
When the paper was all passed around, the Elf stopped and looked them over, while they all sat and stared at him (he wasn't like the Elves in the movies, and he wasn't like the Elves in the cartoons and Duo was wondering why fake Elves weren't like real Elves if there were real Elves to be like, but it kind of made his head hurt working it out.)
'Mr. Elf,' Quatre said, and Duo could hear the upset trying to come out again. 'Are... are we going to get to see Santa? It's really, really important.'
The Elf got a funny little smile then, the first they'd seen, and it made him seem less like Duo's Mom seemed right before she needed some chocolate. 'Well, aren't you the little charmer?' the Elf muttered, but then patted Quatre's head. 'If you can get past the Lady in Charge... we'll see.'
But then he looked all stern again. 'Now you just stay right here. Don't move, and I'll be right back. Work on those lists.'
He went out a door that was different from the one they came in, and he shut it really quiet like, but then Duo was pretty sure he heard the sound of running.
Duo turned back around and said (in a very quiet voice, in case the Elf was still listening), 'He was kinda... weird.'
Heero nodded a lot, but Wufei frowned. 'That's not nice,' he said, and it made Duo feel bad. It wasn't his fault the Elf was weird! It made him feel kind of pouty, but then he remembered that they were at the North Pole and maybe he shouldn't have said a thing that might not have been nice (even if it wasn't his fault).
'Sorry,' he muttered, and chewed on his lip. Quatre patted his shoulder, but they forgot about it when Trowa spoke up.
'What are we supposed to write?' he wanted to know.
'What we want to ask Santa for,' Wufei said, though he looked kind of doubtful.
'But,' Duo said, 'I sent Santa my list right after Thanksgiving!' His Mom had taken him to the post office to mail the letter and everything, with the special Christmas stamp on the red envelop even. Duo didn't want to make another list! That was like... like having to do homework twice!
'But,' Quatre said, his voice kind of small, 'that's not why we came... right?'
'But the Elf doesn't know that!' Heero said all at once, like he'd just figured something out.
'He thinks we're just kids!' Trowa said, catching on to what Heero meant.
'He doesn't know we're on a mission!' Wufei said, not sounding all doubty anymore.
'But... I thought Santa knew everything?' Duo said, still feeling confused.
That made the other four stare at him for a minute before Heero figured that part out too, 'But Elves don't!'
And then they all grinned, back on track, and bent over their papers to make sure they were done before the Elf came back.
When the door opened again though, it wasn't the same Elf at all, it was an Elf that was kind of bigger, and sort of looked like he could be an in-charge Elf. His hat was fancier anyway, and his curly shoes even had bells on them. There were two other Elves behind him, peeking around him with wide eyes.
'Well trim my tree,' the big Elf said.
'There really are kids in the Elf hall!' the peeking Elf on the right said.
'Where'd they come from?' The peeking left Elf said.
Wufei stood up and said in his very serious voice, 'We come in peace.'
Nobody quite seemed to know what to say after that, so the Elves stared at the boys, and the boys stared back.
Finally (about the time that Duo was thinking maybe they should just turn around and go find their sled and go home), Quatre stood up too and said, 'Please Mr. Elf... we have an important message for Santa.'
The big Elf (Duo wondered if maybe, being the in-charge Elf, if he wasn't more of a Major Elf, or even a Captain Elf, more than a Mr. Elf), kind of huffed and puffed his cheeks out and took off his hat and rubbed his hand through his hair.
'Well now,' he finally said. 'That's all well and good, but you have to get past the Missus first. She does all of Santa's scheduling.'
So they all jumped up, gathered their papers and ran to line up in front of the Captain Elf (Duo had decided that a Captain was better than a Major) and said all together, 'Ok!'
Captain Elf blinked at them for a moment, and looked kind of like Trowa's cats looked when they all five ran after them at the same time. 'Well now! I say when we go down to see Mrs. Claus!' he said, kind of stern like, and then, 'And I say we're going right now!'
So off they trooped, the Captain Elf leading the way, and the other two following behind; the Impossible Five in the middle. It kind of made Duo feel like getting marched to the Principal's office, except the two Elves in back kept whispering and giggling behind them.
'Where are all the other Elves?' Trowa asked.
'At the wrap party,' Right Elf said (only he was on the left now).
'But... shouldn't they be getting ready to leave?' Heero asked.
'Pish,' said Left Elf (who was really right now), 'all the time in the world yet.'
'But it's late!' Duo said. 'And Santa has to go everywhere!'
Right Elf snickered. 'Can't start until it's midnight in the very last place in the world.'
Quatre turned around and walked backward to look at them with his are you crazy? look. 'But... there won't be enough time!'
Left Elf gave him a wink that Duo just only saw out of the corner of his eyes, because he was still walking forward, and only turning his head. 'We just stop time until we're done,' he said.
'I knew it!' Wufei said, and Duo remembered when Wufei had argued with Meilan in class about whether Santa was real or not. Duo couldn't wait to tell her how wrong she was. Though... maybe he'd let Wufei tell her, since she was kind of mean and scary sometimes.
'Enough talking,' Captain Elf said, and Duo hoped that Left and Right Elves weren't going to be in trouble for telling Santa's secrets.
But then the long walk was over (how could there be so many halls and stairs and doors in a house that wasn't even as big as Quatre's??), and Captain Elf was leading them into the biggest kitchen Duo had ever seen.
It must be, he thought, where every Christmas cookie in the world came from. Where every Christmas everything came from! Donuts and cookies and cakes and pies and things that Duo didn't even know what they were, but he wanted to try them all the same, even if he was what his Mom called a 'picky eater'. He didn't care; the kitchen smelled like every good thing to eat in the entire universe, and Duo wanted to try it all.
'Wow,' they all said together, and Duo wanted to ask the Captain some more questions, but he was gone and instead there was a lady in a flour covered apron who just had to be Mrs. Claus.
'Gracious!' said Mrs. Claus, 'Visitors? On Christmas eve? Where on earth did you young gentlemen come from?'
'The south,' Wufei said importantly.
'The Elf hall,' Heero said practically.
'The other side of Northgate mall,' Quatre said helpfully.
'Hamburg Street,' Trowa said proudly.
'Uhm... my room?' Duo said, thinking that was where it kind of started. At least, for him.
Mrs. Claus seemed kind of confused, but she didn't rub her face or hair like the Elves had, she just said 'Gracious!' again.
'Please, Mrs. Claus,' Quatre said, 'we need to see Santa really bad!'
'Well now,' said Mrs. Claus, wiping her hands on her apron just the way Duo's Grandma did, 'why don't you boys sit down here and have some cookies and hot chocolate with me, and you can tell me all about it.'
That sounded like a fine idea to Duo, because all the adventuring and mission stuff had made him very hungry, and all the wonderful smells were making his tummy talk to him.
Mrs. Claus handed around the plate and they all rushed to sit at the big table with their star shaped cookies.
'Please Mrs. Claus,' Quatre said between bites. 'We have to get Santa to move Christmas!'
'We think a week will do it,' Trowa chimed in.
'My Mom said we had to ask Santa because it's his schedule,' Duo said, trying hard not to talk with his mouth full.
'It can't be Christmas yet,' Heero said, 'because Mr. Winner is in the Air Force.'
'This is the best Christmas cookie, ever,' Wufei said, and Mrs. Claus held the plate out so he could take another one.
'Gracious,' Mrs. Claus said, and kind of looked like she wanted to rub her face like the Elves did, but she didn't. Just adjusted her little glasses and then took her own cookie. 'Didn't you boys kind of wait until the last minute?'
'We didn't mean to!' Heero said, and seemed kind of embarrassed. 'We would have been here sooner, but we didn't know!' And they all nodded to back Heero up.
'Well, you have come a long way,' she said, kind of like she was talking to herself (just like Trowa's Mom did, and it made Duo look around for cats). 'And I certainly can't make a lick of sense out of what you're saying... best let Santa sort you out.'
They gave out with a cheer and started to scramble down off their chairs, but Mrs. Claus waved them to sit still. 'Finish your cookies, and I'll get one of the Elves to take you down. '
Since Wufei had gotten a second cookie, Duo didn't feel at all bad about grabbing another, and everybody else did too.
'Best ever!' Wufei mumbled around his mouthful. 'In the whole world!'
Mrs. Claus was at the door, talking to someone and Duo heard something about reindeer, because Mrs. Claus said, '...passing the buck...'. The someone turned out to be one of the Peeking Elves, though Duo had lost track of Right and Left.
'Come along, gentlemen!' said Peeking, and they stuffed the last of their cookies in their mouths, said a crumby 'Thank you!' to Mrs. Claus, and rushed to follow their guide.
Peeking led them down yet another hallway in a marching kind of way, and the boys lined up behind him, marching just the same. After a few minutes, Peeking gave a little hop, so Heero (who was right behind him) gave a little hop when he got to that spot on the floor, so the rest of them did too. That kind of made Peeking snicker, and a bit later, he veered sharply to the right. It was kind of like follow the leader then and Peeking seemed to find it pretty funny, so they flapped and duck-walked and hopped their way along until they came to a big door, where Peeking finally stopped.
'You guys are a riot,' he said, and reached for the door handle. 'Now mind your manners and remember that the Big Man is on a schedule... you can't be here all night.'
That sounded kind of scary to Duo, like something bad would happen just like in the fairy tales, if they were still there when the sun came up. 'Will we turn into pumpkins?' he asked, and Peeking blinked at him for a minute.
'No,' he finally said, 'we don't do the pumpkin thing here.'
Well, that was a relief, Duo thought, and then the door was opening and Peeking was waving them in.
'Thank you, Mr. Elf,' they all said together, having just been reminded of manners, and Peeking grinned at them.
'Not a problem, boys,' he said, and then he shut the door behind them.
Santa Claus was... kind of bigger than the Santas that you saw at the mall. But Duo's Mom had explained to him how those weren't the real Santa Claus, but Elves in disguise. The real Santa was like... like... your favorite Grandpa, the principal, and Captain America all rolled into one. A little bit scary, but familiar and you just knew he was going to be nice.
He sat in a big rocking chair by the fire and didn't look at all like he was in a hurry. He still had lists he was going over and didn't even have his boots on yet! Duo wondered if maybe Santa was a little bit like his Dad (his Mom said that he would be late to his own funeral one day, which Duo understood to mean very late).
The room was decorated all over and there was a Christmas tree in the corner, and it made Duo wonder if there was a tree in every room in all of the North Pole. And maybe they never got taken down? Because that seemed like it would be a lot of work. It took his Mom all day when she decorated their house and they only had one tree! But maybe it would go faster if his Mom had Elves to help?
'Well now,' said Santa Claus, lying aside his papers, 'I don't believe we've had visitors to the North Pole since... oh, aught four, as I recall. What brings you young lads to see old Santa?'
But all of a sudden nobody quite seemed to know what to say. This was Santa Claus! The Big Man! And mean old Meilan and mean old Dorothy were all wrong! They were there... at the North Pole, and this wasn't one of those pretend Santa's in the thin, cheap fuzzy suits.
'You boys came a long way,' Santa said, and he was kind of smiling. 'Surely you want to ask me something? Or did you just come to feed my reindeer?'
'Please, Santa!' Quatre finally burst out, getting up his courage. 'We came to ask you to move Christmas!'
'Just a little bit!' Heero said, once somebody else had spoken up.
'So Mr. Winner has time to come home!' Wufei said.
'It can't be Christmas until Quatre's Daddy is here!' Trowa said.
But all of a sudden, hearing it all out loud like that, it didn't seem quite right to Duo. Quatre was their friend, and they wanted Quatre to be happy, but... what if there were other kids whose Daddy's were only home this week? What about all the kids who would wake up and be sad when it wasn't Christmas morning after all? This mission just didn't seem quite right. 'Wait...' Duo said in a very tiny voice.
The guys all turned around to look at him, and Quatre had the upset face and Duo felt bad and just stopped talking. But Santa took off his little reading glasses and leaned forward.
'Go on, little Duo,' he said and Duo's eyes got wide. Santa knew his name!
Duo thought about all those other kids and he said, 'My Mom was right... we can't move Christmas.'
He felt awful, because Quatre began to cry and Trowa gave Duo a mean look, but Santa was smiling all warm and encouraging.
'No, we can't,' he said gently.
Duo thought somehow that they'd known that all along, that maybe they just hadn't worked the plan out all the way. Like when he was doing math homework and didn't quite get all the way to the end of the problem (Duo wasn't really good with math like Quatre was).
Santa was still looking at him though, like he was waiting for the rest of it.
It was bigger than him though. Bigger than just Quatre. It was about all the kids in the world and all the families and... and... it needed something bigger to fix it. Moving Christmas wasn't the end of the problem.
Duo kind of didn't want to, because he was afraid of finding the same mad look that was on Trowa's face, but he turned to Heero. Heero helped him with his math homework sometimes, and Heero was the smartest person Duo knew. Heero helped him figure stuff out.
He was glad that Heero didn't look mad at him. In fact, Heero had his thinking face on, and Duo started to feel better right away.
'We gotta fix Christmas for everybody,' Duo said to Heero, and Heero nodded.
'Then...' Heero said, thinking so hard that Duo could (as Heero's Dad said) see the wheels going around. 'The war needs to go away.'
Duo thought about that, and it made sense. Wasn't it the war that was keeping Quatre's father so busy? And it made his Mom sad too! So that was two reasons. 'Yeah...' he said, but wasn't sure just how you went about asking for something to be taken away for Christmas. That seemed very... backward.
But then Wufei came closer and he said, 'Peace. We need to ask for peace.'
Duo knew that word! It was in all the Christmas carols!
'Peace?' Quatre said between sniffles. 'That would let my Daddy come home?'
Trowa nodded and patted Quatre on the arm. 'The war would be gone if there was peace.'
And that was the end of the problem... Duo could feel it. He turned to Santa, who had a funny little smile on his face, and said, 'We came to ask for peace on earth.'
Santa's funny little smile grew all big, like their teacher Ms. Noin's did when one of them figured out a really tough problem. Like she was proud of them. 'Mighty tall order, boys.'
'Can you do it?' Quatre asked and it made Santa laugh.
'That would be telling, now wouldn't it?' he said. 'You wouldn't want to know what was in all of your presents before Christmas morning, would you?'
Duo thought about the times that he'd tried to sneak peeks into his Mom's closet right before Christmas, but he decided he wouldn't say that out loud. Santa gave him a wink anyway and Duo blushed.
'No sir,' Quatre said dutifully, but Duo wasn't sure he really meant it either, cause he looked kind of guilty when he said it.
But at least nobody was giving him mean looks anymore and Quatre even gave him a hug for figuring it out.
'Now don't you think you kids should be getting home to bed?' Santa said, picking his papers back up. 'It's pretty late for you to be out wandering around.'
'Yes, sir!' they all said together, and there was Peeking opening the door to lead them again. (Duo wondered if maybe Elves knew everything too after all, or if he'd just been listening at the keyhole.)
'Come along you little musketeers,' Peeking said. 'Time we got you home in bed.'
They gathered around and looked up at him (though they didn't have to look terribly far up, because Elves weren't really all that tall).
'Mouseketeers?' Wufei said, with his ick face on.
'We don't watch that show anymore,' Heero explained.
'We're too old,' Trowa said.
'So we're not mouse-people anymore,' Quatre added.
'We're the Impossible Five,' Duo said, though he didn't say that he sometimes still liked to watch the cartoon parts of the mouse show even if all the people stuff was kinda dumb.
'Oh,' said Peeking, 'I'll just bet you are. But all the same... off we go! On a schedule, you know!'
And off he went, stepping as high as he could with his leg out straight, so they stepped too and marched right back through the North Pole house and out into the yard.
Duo got all excited when he saw the sleigh again, and cheered without anybody shushing him. 'Are we going to get to ride in Santa's sleigh?'
'Good heavens, no!' Said Peeking, looking a little bit like Duo's Mom did the day she found the frog in the sink that Duo had rescued from the yard. 'All the weight calculations have already been done! Couldn't add another ounce, much less you lot!'
'Oh,' Quatre said, and his voice was kind of upset in the way it was when Ms. Noin assigned a lot of homework. Duo just knew he was thinking about that long walk home, because Duo was thinking about it too, and he was suddenly so very tired he just wanted to cry from not wanting to. It was so far! All the way home from the North Pole!
'Holy Christmas!' Peeking suddenly said, waving his hands at them, 'none of that! Not to worry! We have more than one sleigh at the North Pole, you know! None of that.... That leeking stuff!'
Trowa made a kind of funny sniffle sound. 'Really? We don't have to walk?' and Duo realized that he and Quatre weren't the only ones who hadn't thought about the getting back part.
'Wouldn't dream of it,' Peeking said, looking awfully relieved for some reason. And just like that, almost like he'd made it happen by thinking about it, another sleigh pulled up beside Santa's with just one reindeer in front and the other Peeking Elf driving it.
It wasn't shiny, or even red, but there looked like there was enough room for all of them and so Duo didn't care at all.
'In you go!' said the Other Elf and they were quick to scramble in. Peeking tucked a blanket around them and Duo found himself between Heero and Wufei and it was quite nice and warm. He just wished they'd thought to ask Mrs. Claus for some more cookies for the trip. Peeking Two climbed up in front in the driver's seat and was just getting ready to shake the reins when Trowa sat up straight.
'Buster and Bubba!' he cried and it made Duo feel bad that he'd forgotten all about their trusty adventurer sled dogs.
'How could we have forgotten the bottomless pits?' Peeking muttered to Peeking Two.
'Let's get them out of here before they chew up anything else,' Peeking Two muttered back, and then grinned at the boys. 'Sit tight and we'll fetch them.'
It was quiet after the Elves walked off, except when the reindeer snorted or thumped a hoof on the ground.
'We... did it,' Heero said, in a whispery kind of voice, almost like he couldn't believe it, and Duo felt him kind of scootch down and get comfortable.
'Yeah,' Duo said. 'All the way to the North Pole.'
'And we met Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus,' Trowa said in a way that made Duo wonder if they should have asked for their autographs.
'And Santa is going to fix everything,' Quatre said happily, and yawned real big and giggled.
'And we got to eat the best Christmas cookies ever!' Wufei said.
'Yeah,' they all agreed, and Duo was suddenly just so tired (it was forever past his bedtime!), that he could hardly keep his eyes open. Quatre yawned great big again and it made Trowa yawn too, and then Duo couldn't help himself and he yawned too. His Uncle Howard said that yawns were 'tagious, and now Duo believed him.
He fell asleep before the Elves got back, and must have missed the whole sleigh ride, because he woke up on his trunk under his bedroom window with his flashlight in his hand and his jammies on again.
And there was light coming in his bedroom window! I was morning! It was... Christmas morning!
Duo scrambled down from his trunk, feeling just a little bit tired from all the nighttime adventuring, and ran out to the top of the stairs. He wasn't allowed downstairs on Christmas morning until his folks were awake, so usually, Duo had to sit on the top step and wait, but this morning he heard voices downstairs, so he hurried right on down.
He was surprised when he ran into the living room, to find the TV on, because Christmas had a no-TV rule (until bedtime when his Mom got out that icky old Christmas movie and they all had to watch it together. Duo was really, really tired of the silly guy running through town wishing everything a Merry Christmas like he was crazy, but it was what his Mom called 'a tradition', and he got popcorn, so he didn't complain too much. Even if he would have rather watched Batman).
His Mom and Dad were standing in the middle of the room though, hugging each other and his Mom was crying a little, but she was smiling real big, so Duo guessed it was a happy cry and not a cry like she'd just burnt Christmas breakfast or something awful like that.
His Mom held out an arm and made Duo come and get smooshed in the middle of their hug and on the TV there was some news show on and there was lots of cheering in the background and people hugging each other and finally his Mom stopped squishing him long enough to tell him, 'The war is over, honey! They signed the treaty in Sanc this morning!'
Duo wasn't sure what a treaty was, but if it meant the war was over, he was sure that Santa had made Sanc his first stop and made them behave themselves.
'He did it!' Duo yelled, and his parents just looked confused so they didn't shush him. Duo squirmed out of the middle of the hug and ran for the front hall, shoving his feet in his boots as fast as he could, and then he ran out the front door.
'Duo!' his mother hollered, 'what are you doing!? You're still in your pajamas!'
'Santa did it!' he yelled back. 'I gotta see the guys!'
'Honey!' his mother yelled again, but Duo didn't have to go far, because Heero was running up his front walk and he could see Trowa climbing over the fence into old lady Une's yard (it was a shortcut, but you had to be fast before old lady Une caught you and yelled at you to get off her lawn). And Quatre was right behind him and Wufei was coming down the street from the other way and they were all yelling and Quatre was crying, but it was like his Mom had been crying and not at all sad, and it made Duo kind of feel like crying too, but he wasn't sure why.
'Daddy will be here before dinner!' Quatre was yelling before they even got over the fence, and Duo saw old lady Une come out on her patio, but she didn't even yell.
'The war is all gone!' Wufei hollered, waving his arms and running as fast as he could with his boots not even tied.
'And without moving Christmas!' Heero cried and grabbed Duo just to spin him around and knock him into the snow.
'Merry Christmas!' Trowa said, and then they all piled into the snow with Duo and threw some in the air because they didn't have confetti.
Duo just giggled and didn't even mind that his butt was very cold in the snow with just his jammies on.
And, he thought, even if the guys didn't get to stay with him all day, that just maybe it had turned out to be the most perfect, bestest, most awesomest Christmas ever, after all.
OWARI
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