Agrippa’s Christmas Special 2022

As I hope it won’t become a yearly tradition, the Christmas Special has been just finished at a time where one could generously deem the 25thof December to still be a thing in some time zones (which is no longer true as I finally set to edit this).

This year I’ve got another excuse, though, but as it’s currently very much not the 25th where I live and the Sun’s threatening to come up (it came up, then went down—at some point during those events, I was blissfully unconscious), I shall delay on my excuses and give way to the actual content you’re here to read.

So, without further ado… Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you enjoy this little, sappy gift.

April Seventeenth [Bat-Family]

Dick Grayson had always wanted a family, no matter how atypical.

He had first found it in the circus he grew up in, and later found it with a possibly clinically insane man and his overly competent butler. It had started something of a trend, as he kept building new ones wherever he went, but one of them, one that had endured, he had built with the Titans.

That had come with plenty of challenges, most of them long surpassed, plenty of them ongoing.

The one that was pertinent to the current situation, as he tried very hard to enjoy a Christmas Eve spent in the company of his two girlfriends and, possibly, if things went at all according to plan like he had learned to expect they wouldn’t?

Raven.

Raven and her own tradition to stick to him like glue when the 24th started.

On his left, sitting next to him on the well-worn leather couch of her clocktower, Babs glared at him.

On his right, Star cuddled against his side in the most feline fashion he could imagine without his mind drifting to Gar’s disturbing stash that they had both sworn never to discuss.

Floating above him, meditating with her legs crossed in a way that shouldn’t be done while wearing a skin-tight leotard, Raven…

Relaxed, if he was any judge of it.

Which was a bit upsetting, seeing as he was trying very hard to get into the spirit of things and watch Die Hard like a regular guy enjoying Christmas with his two regular girlfriends—okay, maybe he now understood why Wally had gotten a bit snippy on their last chat.

“Raven? Look, I don’t mean to make you feel unwelcome at my girlfriend’s place, but I’m wondering why you would come to watch a movie with your eyes closed,” he said in his second most diplomatic tone, the one that didn’t involve telling Tim where he could stick his retractable bo after one too many ‘Bat Deductions.’

“It’s Christmas,” the refugee from Azarath stated as if that explained everything.

“What?” he answered as if that certainly didn’t.

“It’s Christmas, you’re Dick Grayson, and I’m an empath,” she elaborated with an exasperated sigh at his lacking mental adroitness. “Where else would I want to be?”

Forcing his head against the plush backrest to stare up at the infuriating mystic, only to swiftly look back down when confronted by rotund curves inadequately shielded by what Raven had always insisted was traditional garb in her home dimension (and he had privately assumed to be something related to empathic exhibitionism), Dick tried not to blush.

“Yeah, makes sense,” Babs pensively stated with a nod.

“I thought you knew?” Star wondered with a head tilt that was as adorable as it was exasperating.

And Dick tried very, very hard not to get offended at the three women unanimously agreeing that he was the kind of sappy kid who would become empath-catnip just because the date brought up childhood memories of both two effusively loving parents and a quietly loving one who may still be amusingly embarrassed whenever the subject of Bat Santa Suits came up.

So he, instead, settled back to try and enjoy the Christmas classic bar none while sandwiched by two beautiful women and being literally hovered over by a third one.

“So… He’s trying to cover up a robbery by faking a terrorist attack? Isn’t that likely to end very poorly?” Raven asked.

“I’ve always been unclear on the specifics of the plan, friend Raven,” Star answered.

“The specifics are that it’s a very, very dumb plan. Look, if you just—” Babs joined in to tear apart his harmless, cherished entertainment.

And Dick Grayson, filled with warmth, love, and the Spirit of Christmas, tried not to scream.

Puella Monstrum Moecha Magica [PMMM]

Kyouko Thinks the Grinch Had a Point

Okay, so…

I hate Christmas.

I used to love it, don’t misunderstand. Growing up in a Catholic home, it was one thing to look forward to every year, and my sister and I would always make it something of a race to see who could wake up earlier to check the pile of presents. I had many happy memories, and some disappointing ones involving pairs of socks deceptively wrapped as if they could ever count as gifts.

Thing is? Being forced to live alone after my zealot of a father caught me using magic to find gold with which to fund his ruinous church was not a happy memory.

Being condemned as a witch? Not really fitting the whole ‘Christmas spirit’ thing.

Which has turned out great, don’t misunderstand, because I’m now a very wealthy young woman with her own apartment in the kind of place where a concierge takes care of the small minutia I can’t be arsed to deal with.

Which… I usually don’t take much advantage of, truth be told, because I’m quite used to just jumping through my window when I go in or out of the house, but something about this miserably cold day makes the dragon part of me want to just crawl back into my cave and sleep until the air is once more sanely warm.

So I shiver under my maroon coat as I push open the glass door, only to see Mr. Tanaka perk up behind the counter as he looks at me more attentively than with his usual, perfunctory nod.

He’s a good man. I’ve never caught him with a phantom of me hanging around.

“Miss Sakura? A moment, please?” he says as he dives under the wooden counter.

Which is somewhat unusual, so I approach him, and right as I reach him, he jumps back up, holding…

A Christmas present.

I arch an eyebrow.

“Ah… Oh, no!, Please, don’t misunderstand, a young woman came by earlier and asked me to pass it on to you,” he says with what should be embarrassment and is actually a suppressed, warm smile.

“A young woman?” I ask.

“She didn’t leave a name.”

The eyebrow comes back up. Mr. Tanaka, still holding the parcel wrapped in red paper with small Santa drawings doing cute, un-Santa things—because Japan—tries to look innocently at me.

“Could you maybe describe her?” I am finally forced to ask.

The smile grows wider.

… This is getting about as annoying as a Santa phantom would be.

“Well, I’d say she was about your age, blonde, with ringlets—”

I snatch the package from his hands and rush to the elevator.

Not. Blushing.

And certainly not hearing a quiet, entirely unprofessional snigger from behind me.

The wait to my apartment is far too long, and I keep looking at the green ribbon wrapped around the damn thing as if it has personally offended me, but then I open the door to my apartment and jump on top of my leather sofa with perhaps a bit of magic assistance before my claws come out and the ribbon and paper turn into finely minced confetti.

… Because I’m wary of a trap. Yes. That sounds reasonable enough. Also, it’s why I rushed away from the civilian. So as not to turn him into collateral for whatever plot Mami has ongoing.

Definitely.

So it is only with wariness and tactical acumen that I open the glossy white box to find inside a… a porcelain teapot, a package with an assortment of teas, and a cake recipe book.

I blink at it.

Then… Then I see the small card with painfully rehearsed, fancy calligraphy that I know for a fact doesn’t come naturally to the at-times spacy blonde.

‘To my best apprentice, Merry Christmas. Mami Tomoe.’

I…

I am going to fuck her so hard the next time I see her.

But just because I’m grumpy during Christmas and I need to work out my frustrations.

Really.

Wake-up Call [Worm]

I am not nervous.

Well, maybe I am a bit nervous, because it’s the first time I’ve shopped for Christmas presents, even if mostly with money borrowed from Mom, and Rex is looking at the rectangular package he’s holding with perhaps a bit too much wariness, knowing from the scrawled ‘To the best big brother in the world’ who to expect it from.

And… I did insist they open their presents first, because I wanted to see how they would like them, or if they wouldn’t, and Mom told me she loves the book on medicinal herbs a lot, but she’s Mom, and that’s basically on her job description, so I’m not entirely reassured, and Dad isn’t here (because that’s actually on his job description), so I don’t know how much he’ll like the pipe I got him after learning that smoking from a pipe is less likely to give you cancer (though more likely to give you tongue cancer, but, really, I think the lungs are more concerning, not to mention kinda vital), so Rex’s the only one whose sincere opinion I can count on, and…

Sometimes, I really wish my head came with a pause button. Really, anything to make the thoughts stop before I go off on yet another tangent would be great. Like, I’m pretty sure I’m only this clumsy because I keep getting distracted, and…

And…

…

“Will you open that up already?!” I ask my infuriating older brother sitting across from me on the couch he’s claimed while I sit on Mom’s lap on our couch.

“I don’t know. I think it’s funnier to just look at your face,” he says with a wide grin that only gets a bit smaller when Mom frowns at him.

Justifiably.

“Gee, fine, just let me… Darn, this tape is strong; I might have to—”

“Just tear the stupid paper already!”

“But you went to so much effort to wrap this for me,” he says with all the fake innocence he can muster in blue eyes slightly lighter than Dad’s.

“So you could unwrap it!”

“Which is precisely what I’m doing, instead of tearing—”

“I swear if you don’t do it, I will, Rex—”

And then Mom hands him a pair of scissors.

“There. Now you can cut the tape, can’t you, sweetie?”she says in her most Mom tone.

Rex, rebellious teenager that he is, reaches across the coffee desk to grab them, mutters a ‘spoilsport’ that’s low enough for plausible deniability, and cuts the tape before opening the powder blue paper that is somewhat wrinkled, but only because…

… Okay, because I’m clumsy. Sue me.

“Cluedo?” he asks, blinking at the recently uncovered board game.

“It’s… Well, you have those shooter games of yours, but they’re all, like, fast-paced, and maybe we could play this together so that you don’t feel like you have to carry me, and… And… Do you like it?” I finally manage to ask.

Rex looks at the big box of the detective game, then, without saying anything (because he’s a jerk), walks to the big Christmas tree at the end of the couch and rummages through the pile before getting out a single one.

That he hands to me.

“This isn’t an answer. An answer consists of words,” I tell him with my most sisterly glare.

That he answers with a brotherly eye roll before scoffing and forcing the yellow-wrapped box into my hands.

“Open it,” he says.

I look at him suspiciously before getting my nail below the tape so I can pull it up without taking off the color of the paper, and…

Seven Years later:

“Liz,” Taylor says after catching a glimpse of the contents of my wallet when I go to pay for our coffee and tea, “why do you carry Monopoly money?”

I stumble for a brief moment, but, thankfully, the place’s busy enough that Taylor doesn’t have her full concentration on me.

So, with a brief—

Fake money. Cliché. Assumption of intent—

Ah, right. Thanks.

“It’s for the next time I need to tell Alec what his opinion is worth,” I answer.

In response to the alleged preparations for a practical joke, Taylor chuckles in that way she has of warming my heart.

And, just this time, I allow myself to lie to her as two very different kinds of warmth rise inside of me, one bitterer than the other, as my fingers brush along the edge of a worn, fake bill that I took out of a worn, fake home when I ran away from it.

It’s still worth more than anything else in this wallet.

Ginosko [Original]

No longer having to hide my relationship with Lawrence from Magda has been an incredible relief. The lack of stress is almost palpable, and I honestly don’t know why we even bothered in the first place, given she’s our shared best friend and the one other person I would trust with my secrets without a second thought.

Except both me and my boyfriend are the kind of people who don’t have second thoughts, but third, fourth, and fifth thoughts. There could be an entire branch of statistics devoted to measuring just how many orders of thoughts we can have, and that’s before we start talking with one another and further aggravate the spiral of doubt, optimization, and over-analyzing.

So, as obvious as it should have been that we should’ve trusted Magda from the very beginning, it’s the kind of obvious that only becomes so in hindsight.

Much like my current situation.

“Are you sure… about this?” a blushing Magda asks while holding the red, synth-silk tape.

Tape that is currently wrapped around my breasts and sex.

“I can’t ask anybody else…” I tell her, refusing to meet her eyes, much as she refuses to meet… A lot of things.

Magda forces herself to look at me rather than at the glossy, shimmering fabric cascading down her hands. Then something shifts in her green eyes, and…

And she pulls.

I try to hold back the gasp that overtakes me when the tape digs into my breasts even as it pulls them together tightly enough that they overflow over the red band barely covering my nipples. Try to, and fail, if Magda’s even redder ears are any indication, seeing as they are now rivaling the metallic tint of her hair.

And then she twists the two extremes of the tape over the middle of my chest and starts tying them into an overly elaborate ribbon that has her constantly brushing her daringly Daisy fingers over skin that’s very sensitive when being tied down as a present for my lover in preparation of what I hope will be a night-long session of bondage, and why am I thinking about this right now—

“Can you… stop breathing? Please?” Magda asks, her eyes unnaturally fixated on the ribbon rather than on anything that surrounds it. “You are very distracting.”

I bite my lip and nod.

Which, somehow, makes my breasts move just enough for them to brush against her hands right before I thought to disconnect my vocal systems from my sensory feedback.

… The moan that comes out is not my fault.

“Patricia! For… oh, darn, just… Just hold still for a moment, will you?” she says.

I nod. But more slowly.

And immediately disengage my vocal systems. And my breathing.

And my tear ducts. Just in case.

“There, all done,” the blushing ex-sexbot mutters when she finally finishes tying my ankles together after a mutually embarrassing moment when her eyes drifted up my legs to where shining silk is tightly pressed against my lower lips.

“Just… Just one more thing?” I say.

She arches an inquiring eyebrow that is thankfully entirely unlike Lawrence’s insolent one, and I look at a small square box on my bedside table.

She, after some hesitation that I’m pretty sure has everything to do with her returning blush, picks the box up, opens it, and…

“No. Absolutely not. Do you even realize how dangerous it would be for you to wait for him while completely immobilized and muted? I won’t put a ballgag on you—”

“Magda… I have wireless coms,” I gently remind my concerned friend.

She blinks at me.

Then blushes once again as she nods and holds the red rubber in front of me until I bite down on it so she can tie it behind my head.

Then the picture is complete, and I’m left kneeling on my bed, the red, satin sheets artfully waving in shimmering hues and highlights beneath my bound thighs as Magda’s knots hold me in place with my back arched and my chest thrust forward.

She, for reasons I’d rather none of us consider too deeply, pets my hair a couple of times before nervously retreating to the door, and then, just her head peeking in, she looks into my eyes.

“Merry Christmas, Patricia. I hope you and Lawrence have a wonderful evening,” she says, her soft smile coming through once more after being worryingly absent during preparations that ran far longer than I expected.

I nod in answer, trying to smile around the gag, but the movement makes the ribbon tied around my neck tighten, and I moan incoherently once again.

For some reason, that makes Magda run out of the room and slam the door to my apartment loudly enough that I briefly worry about the neighbors.

Then I just settle to wait for Lawrence to arrive, and—

“Hey, Trish, sorry to do this to you, but those errands you sent me on are taking a while. I’ll be about an hour late. See you later, and Merry Christmas,” Lawrence’s message states.

I… blink at the AR display. Do an infinitesimally brief mental calculation.

And whine incoherently around the rubber ballgag as I settle down for a longer wait.

All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! [Oregairu]

If I postulate such an apparently preposterous claim as the thesis that shounen is predicated on gifts, most would immediately think about the sharingan or some other such wildly uninteresting cheat code and nod sagely.

In a way, they would be right, but I’m not talking about the innate gifts of the individual, but about those they receive. Gifts in the sense of presents. Things you get out of the generosity of others, be those others a sadly deceased grandfather figure who gave you a magic baton with which to win any cheerleading tournament that would accept an obviously juiced kid on steroids with a monkey’s tail, a magic, flying cloud you got from an ephebophile that will become sadly obsolete as soon as everybody in the franchise decides that touching the ground is for peasants (both the cloud and the porn addict), or the blond hair you got from a frazzled author who needed to come up with something before the deadline with a desperation and sense of urgency that all parents can relate to when December nears its end.

Yes, indeed, the shounen genre is about getting gifts, about receiving the generosity of the universe itself with a nod that is barely adequate as a show of gratitude before proceeding on with the story. Be said gift a sealed fox in a can, a devil fruit, or even a weird, chainsaw-adjacent dog, plenty of stories would have amounted to nothing without the author’s generosity.

Thus established my previous claim, and with academic rigor that not even a certain Christmas Cake would dare argue about how irrelevant it was to the essay’s stated topic, I can assert with absolute confidence that no one is better suited to the art of present-giving than a seasoned otaku. It’s something we have assimilated as part of our everyday life, and not even the gaudiness displayed by isekai authors and their propensity toward pointless opulence could sway us from our considerate, thoughtful ways.

None can rival an otaku when it comes to giving presents, and, thus, it stands to reason that an otaku’s natural time to shine is Christmas itself. Indeed, Christmas is, bar none, the festival of otakus—and Winter Comiket is mere proof of my statement.

It is thus with a certain bewilderment that, after having assimilated this lifelong teaching about my own place in the universe, I find myself… challenged.

“Seriously?” Iroha, wearing a Santa outfit with a daringly short skirt that contrasts the chastely fastened collar and cape, asks while standing in the middle of Shizu’s living room.

“I… I really should’ve seen this coming,” Haruno, wearing a Santa outfit that could be adequately described as barely functional lingerie, commiserates from the open door to the balcony from which I’m guessing she intended to furtively intrude upon us to give us her surprise. The surprise being herself.

“You really, really should have, oh vaunted genius,” Shizu, wearing a Miss Claus outfit that has neither cleavage nor a short skirt but that clings to her curves with shimmering red velvet in a way that makes me want to run my hands all over her, grumpily states from the doorway to the hallway that leads to her bedroom.

And I, wearing a Santa outfit that is making me thoroughly uncomfortable after I let Saika and Zaimokuza talk me into wearing tight shorts and a shirt displaying what I can only describe as ‘male cleavage,’ stare at the three of them, trying to gauge which of us won our challenge for Christmas.

Of course, I think I’m the winner, but that’s only because I’m peerlessly unbiased, humble to the point of self-disparagement, and because all three of my girlfriends are wearing sexy, Christmas-themed cosplay.

That last part may actually cinch it.

Yui’s Lily Garden [Oregairu]

Sometimes, Christmas is about the past, about sharing something you already shared with the people who had always been there.

I have spent many holidays like that with Mama, alone in our apartment until Sable came along. And somebody could’ve pitied us, the spurned child and the divorced mother, but we were… we were happy. I was always happy with Mama, no matter anything else that I may have felt other than that.

Because… yes, money was tight, and I didn’t always get what I wanted, or what my classmates told me I should want, but I got plenty of hugs, and kisses, and laughs, and that makes up for… For everything, really.

Because I’ve met people who had all those other things, the ones that can be bought, and lacked the cheap ones. The priceless ones that Mama always gave me.

I wouldn’t switch with them for anything in the world.

“You look so beautiful,” she whispers, adjusting my hairpin one last time before tugging the furry, white stole in place once again.

Her eyes are shining in that way that means she’s holding back tears, but she’s smiling, and I’m always confused about what that means, if it’s good or bad, but she’s Mama, and she’s the one who knows best, so… So I have to trust her even if… Even if…

Darn it, I’ve spent too much time around self-sacrificing martyrs to let this slip without comment and trust that things will be okay.

“Mama?” I ask while looking up into her shining eyes before deciding that that isn’t enough and stepping forward to wrap her in my arms. “I can stay. With you and Sable. Like always.”

She grabs me tightly for a moment, tight enough that I have to let out a sharp breath, but then she pushes me away with her hands on my shoulders and a smile that…

I think she’s proud?

“Go away, Yui. Go away and be who you are,” she says before opening the door of our apartment and pushing me out, quickly closing it behind me.

It detracts a bit from the moment that I have to open it back up so I can get Sable back inside. The dog is sneaky.

Yet Mama laughs at his scurrying ways, so I guess I’ll forgive him. Just this once.

…

Okay, maybe not just this once.

***

I take a walk there, under the cheery Christmas lights of the busy streets, the bustle of people and cars sometimes allowing pieces of a soulful carol to drift through, and I find myself enjoying the crowded loneliness, the… the feeling of being surrounded by so many yet alone with my thoughts as the winter’s breeze sometimes cuts past my cheeks and I huddle on the warmth of Mama’s borrowed stole.

So I enjoy the walk. The non-silence. The… The moment before.

And then I reach the community center where Hachi, Iroha, and Yukinon are waiting for me so that we can help the kids put one last performance before all of us but Iroha head to college.

Like we did last year.

Except… except so many things have happened since then, both painful and sweet, that I…

Sometimes, Christmas is about sharing what you already shared.

And, sometimes, I think as I greet my girlfriend with a kiss that makes her lean back until the taller girl is below me…

Sometimes it’s about learning what more we can share.

Of Sisters and Shadows [Worm/Persona elements]

Christmas was never a big deal for us. I mean, yes, we had the presents, and Amy and I would always rush down the stairs to see what the most elusive parahuman in the world had left us, but… Well, the big family gatherings everyone always complains about? Those weren’t a thing. New Wave was always a family thing, and we didn’t have a day of the year when that changed in any meaningful way.

So I really shouldn’t be feeling this mopey just because I’m spending Christmas alone with Amy in our home because the rest of the family is forbidden from entering Brockton Bay until the S-ranked mystery that either kills you or powers you up beyond your wildest dreams is somehow elucidated.

“Stop moping,” the grumpiest healer in the world says from her side of the green couch.

“Not moping. Shut up,” I eloquently riposte from my own armrest while decidedly unmopily wrapping my arms around my legs and tucking my chin behind my knees.

Amy, for some bizarre reason, sighs the sigh of the non-believers.

“Vicky, I swear, I can flood you with endorphins with a single touch—”

“Such a romantic—”

“Something that I won’t do unless you keep giving me reason to think you’re being mastered.”

I glare at her. She smugs back.

“If you keep using that excuse, it’s going to get hard to believe you really are just keeping my best interests in mind, you know?” I tell her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she has the gall to say.

“Well, seeing as you’re not in the mood for subtlety, then I guess I’ll just have to come out and say it: you have a fetish for dubcon, and—”

“I do not!”

“Really? Because I seem to remember someone turning her equine crimes against nature into bondage.”

“And I seem to remember someone cumming her brains out at that!”

“You made me cum!”

“I most certainly did!”

And I chuck a pillow at her.

Or, well, a part of the backrest. The detachable part. No tackily-colored couches were harmed in the making of this innocuous pillow fight.

“Oh, you’re on,” Amy grumbles as her weird, segmented wings unfurl from her back and grab the backrest.

What follows is a not-quite home-wrecking skirmish that ends up with both of us laughing under my mattress.

Then the vegetable abomination in the backyard neighs harder than usual, and our laughs grow that much louder as Amy scrambles with her extra limbs to try and get away from my six shield-wielded pillows.

And… well, I guess I was never big on that whole ‘family reunion’ thing.

But it’s always nice to spend the holidays with someone you love.

A Pure Knight’s Natural Enemy [Konosuba]

Seasonal events are one of the joys of RPGs. And by ‘joy,’ I mean ‘bothersome hassle that should be expunged from the servers with holy fire.’

Time-limited items? Quests that you can only do if you’re available at times when people with actual lives shouldn’t be in front of a keyboard? Constant reminders that somebody else is enjoying a romantic date through the fancy streets of Tokyo while you’re living the recluse life? All of my games holding such events at the same time and not leaving me a physically feasible way to complete them all, forcing me to choose between them like a deadbeat parent between unwanted children?!

Yeah. Seasonal events.

They are crap.

“Do you like this… Master?” Darkness says, fidgeting in a way that’s about to have her cleavage explode out of the low-cut hemline Aqua masterfully sewed for her particular hentai Santa girl uniform.

…

She even has her hair in pigtails! That’s not fair, Darkness! You already have the adult, sinful allure going for you; how dare you infantilize your usual aesthetics so as to allude to something forbidden that no sane man should strive for? How dare you bashfully play with the tip of the right pigtail in a way that hints at insecurity and concern and the need for a firmly guiding pseudo-parental (yet not really, Mister Officer) figure who will bend you over his lap before subjecting you to the kind of discipline that will make you squeal in shameful pleasure? How dare you infringe on Megumin’s territory?!

“Oi,” Megumin, glaring darkly at me from beneath the brim of something that looks like her usual hat except for the white fur trim and the sown face being made to look like that of a snowman by divine hands, darkly grumbles.

Darkly.

Look, let’s just say that the short girl is currently in a mood.

“You just said all that out loud, Mister Kazuma,” Yunyun softly reprimands me while wearing her own Santa costume, a thing so tight that, if I slapped her butt as her insolence so rightly deserves, would make her breasts bounce out of their impossibly tight confines with a possibly cartoonish sound effect. “Ah! No, they wouldn’t! I… I am not a lewd girl!” Yunyun lies while crossing her arms and, apparently, trying to hold her breasts down manually.

“You’re terrible,” Megumin unfairly accuses me before shyly laying a comforting hand on the shoulder of her yuri destiny.

“I know! Isn’t he perfect?!” Darkness enthusiastically asks in a way that makes things both above and below her waist bounce.

“Not yet,” Aqua states. “Not until he’s gotten his present,” the sartorial goddess purrs while sauntering up to me in her own mini-costume, one that thoroughly emphasizes the natural sway of her rotund hips with her hands behind her back and the tip of her tongue doing things that shouldn’t be done without my dick between her lips.

I mean, I think I have an inkling about what my present may be, and my Orcish blood is roaring in warful defiance.

Just… in a place most suited for its might. After all, why waste a good blood roar on something pointless like your ears when you can get ready for the long, arduous battle ahead just directing it slightly southward?

Truly, the depth of the teachings of my ancestral people never ceases to amaze me. I wonder what other secrets lay still uncovered?

I mean, not my dick. Because my ski—kilt is doing anything but covering what the four Santa girls are getting me ready for and precisely how throbbingly prepared I am.

So, when Aqua stands on her tiptoes in front of me, just slightly too far away for me to touch her without using my hands, and she smiles first down, then up into my eyes…

Well, I expect her to drop to her knees like her recently assumed and self-imposed maidly duties would suggest she’s getting ready for.

But she, instead, takes something out from behind her back, a parcel wrapped in glossy paper and big enough that she needs both hands to present it to me, and I…

“Is… Is this?” I ask with fearful, reverent hope.

“Your Christmas present. Come on, open it, open it!” she says, almost bouncing with excitement, unlike when she bounces on top of me with—right.

My present.

I hesitatingly reach toward it, and then my freakishly large fingers that Darkness says are just right (for something) crinkle the paper as I take the present from the maybe not-so-useless goddess.

Then I stare at it, afraid to have this dream burst when confronted with the cruel reality that will surely mock me once again as soon as the present goes from my expectations to the sadistic manifestation of the schadenfreude of the cosmos.

“Open it already!” Megumin says before kicking my shin and then bouncing up and down in self-inflicted pain.

So I take a deep breath, gather my courage, tear the paper, and contemplate…

Black pants.

Black, orc-sized, glorious pants!

“So? Do you like them?” Aqua asks.

“Seasonal events are the best!” I answer.

Megumin blinks at me, Darkness frowns, Yunyun tilts her head adorably, and Aqua looks dumbfounded.

But none of that matters because, in front of me, I hold the true meaning of Christmas: not constantly popping up very visible boners!

Wordsworth [Worm]

I have been told I have the potential to be one of the most powerful parahumans in history. Triumvirate-tier.

In fact, I have been introduced to all three members of said Triumvirate in hopes that I would, somehow, hit it off with living legends.

With the kind of people my wife always suspected of hiding dark secrets.

And Legend is amiable enough, Alexandria equally so, even if in a more calculated way, while Eidolon felt about as awkward as I did through the whole event.

So, no. I don’t have a deep, meaningful connection with any of them. Nothing that allows me to call for their help during an S-class crisis.

Much to my relief.

Because it was always Taylor who dreamed of being a hero, and I just… I just wanted to find my daughter and maybe make the city that tormented her pay.

Pay like I won’t ever be able to.

So, yes, it is with relief that I’m absent from any meeting with the movers and shakers of the superpowered world while I browse the internet in my new quarters doing something that any regular parent should already have done:

Looking for a Christmas present.

Books would be the obvious choice, yes, but Annette’s ghost, the only one of mine that would be able to help with this decision, shakes her head softly enough that her weightless hair moves side to side as if underwater.

And I understand what she means—what the echo of her means. That it would not only be too on the nose but that I no longer know my child well enough to choose a book for her that is meaningful. That is right.

Clothes also seem like a dead-end, even if I finally have enough money to get her something that would rival Emma’s wardrobe—

I bite the inside of my cheek at the flash of sheer rage, and Annette rests her barely there hands on my shoulders, trying to comfort me in a way that makes my insides clench and my breath catch.

The right person for the right job.

If the job was making me feel worse than Scrooge, my power is perfectly on point.

So I take another shuddering breath and switch tabs on my browser, trying to come up with any kind of idea, a glimpse of insight that will let me choose not something perfect, but at least adequate—

“Danny? You’re supposed to be in the cafeteria right now,” Miss Militia—Hannah says, leaning on my doorframe while wearing her usual fatigues and scarf.

I clench my hands over the gray desk and push with my foot against the floor to make my chair swivel until I face her.

“Is knocking something parahumans no longer do? I’m a bit unclear; my powers didn’t come with an etiquette handbook,” I say.

She… grins.

Damn it, Hannah, you’re supposed to get offended at the grumpy, middle-aged man and leave him to contemplate his misery in solitude, you know?

“And you wonder why I think you and Colin would really hit it off,” she instead says with fondness that is clearer than her own green eyes.

Just to be clear: they are completely unlike mine. Yes, both are green, but hers are a vivid, crystal hue, while mine are…

Mine.

“Maybe we would if the man’s idea of quickly bonding didn’t involve making me cram tinkertech safety procedure manuals,” I finally answer with an eye roll.

She has the grace to look sheepish.

“Don’t hold it against him. The idea of you making a duplicate of him without having ever been trained to handle his inventions makes him more anxious than you would think.”

“Well, it’s not like there’s much of a risk of that, is there?” I tell her with a rueful smile as some very vivid memories of Colin’s social graces come unbidden to my recall.

Our first meeting was the worst of it, when he immediately brought me to his lab and was somehow surprised that his specter didn’t come forth to do maintenance on his bike.

…

It’s a really nice bike.

Hannah was… far more sensible. A couple of meetings before asking me to get coffee in the cafeteria. Gracefully accepting my rejection without drawing away, and giving me space to get used to being here, in this place.

And then she kept stubbornly showing up. Reiterating her offers, yet never crossing the line into annoyance. Just being there.

Like a friend would.

Sometimes, I can fool myself into thinking she means it.

“Danny Hebert, I have come to a conclusion,” the younger woman says with all the gravitas one would expect from one of the most experienced heroes in the country.

“And that is?” I ask with all the skepticism of a teenager’s parent.

“You are coming to the Christmas party,” she nods.

I… blink at her. Then look back at the monitor filled with terrible ideas for gifts for Taylor.

“I wasn’t planning to?” I ask.

“First lesson of heroing: plans never survive contact with the enemy,” she says.

And then she walks into my room, grabs my wrists with hands stronger than mine at my prime, and pulls me to my feet.

“Hannah… I know what you’re trying to do, but I really don’t feel like being around people.”

“Too bad. Because people feel like being around you,” she says with a smirk that shines right through her bandana.

And then she pulls me toward the door, ignoring my weak protests and only stopping to grab the domino mask of my provisional costume from the shelf on top of my bunk bed.

I almost panic, no longer used to having a forceful woman dragging me around for my own good, and then…

Then Annette’s ghost brushes my shoulder, pushing me forward.

I barely have time to look back at her encouraging smile before Hannah drags me away from the specter of my wife and the reminder of my ineptitude as a parent.

And, likely, toward a man who doesn’t know how to make friends but has a really, really cool bike.

Periodical Cicadas [Worm]

“Can you guess what’s next, Taylor?” the killer’s distorted voice asks me from the other side of the line.

I… I stop to look around me, at the mostly deserted street guarded by possibly hostile greenery (Seriously, haven’t they heard about the concretejungle in Florida?), but I don’t see any indication of the killer’s next plot. I just…

I frown, letting my swarm flood me with input from senses I still don’t fully understand, and there’s something… something in the air… a congregation of chemicals that feels more deliberate than anything has any right to be when dealing with senses no human being has, and I…

I still don’t have a clue.

“Nope. Are we playing twenty questions now? Is it my turn? All right, how about ‘are you a boy or are you a girl?’ Noah says it’s a classic but refuses to elaborate as to why.”

There’s a garbled chuckle from the other end of the line that makes my hackles raise and my hand clench around my phone.

Really, Dad, maybe I could’ve done without that particular restriction being lifted. Thank you so much for being reasonable about your deeply-held trauma and allowing me to have the basic tenets of functional teenagehood, but, really, maybe we could’ve started with driving lessons or some other thing I can use to kill people rather than being taunted by them.

“I’m afraid that’s out of the scope of this particular game, Taylor, but I’m sure you’ll like what comes next. It’s time for… a Secret Santa!”

I… blink.

“You are shitting me,” I tell the serial killer obsessed with arts and crafts with the deadest tone they may have ever heard.

And that’s including the actually dead people.

“I mean… It’s that time of the year, and I—”

“You are shitting me.”

“I just thought that, since you’re new here and barely know anyone—”

“It’s not a Secret Santa if only two people participate!”

“Well, I could… You know, I’m pretty sure I could whip up a couple of zombies… maybe golems? Some other participants, at least. How do you feel about ballet? I could kill the cheerleader squad real quick and have their limber corpses enact Coppélia?”

“What?!”

“Coppélia? It’s this story about an alchemist who tries to bring a doll to life as his daughter and—”

“No. No. Just… do you even realize how badly that would clash? Ballet is all about grace and your… What would you do? Literally puppeteer the corpses with your invisible threads? You would need a lot of preparation to have that be even remotely graceful, and what’s the point of putting up a ballet performance that doesn’t look like it’s even trying? A proper puppet show would need, at the very least—why am I discussing this with you?!”

“Because we’re kindred souls surrounded by pedestrian people who don’t appreciate true art?”

I pause for a moment in the middle of the road, still jaywalking as the only indication of my possibly serial-killing leanings.

Then I parse that whole sentence and facepalm.

“We’re no longer friends,” I tell the actual serial killer.

“Wait! You don’t even know what I got you for—”

And I hang up.

Then, like a sane person, I go toward Noah’s house so that he and Audrey can show me those movies they insisted are the only proper Christmas classics I should ever watch.

Then I parse that last sentence, head toward the nearest lamppost, and smash my head against it until the world starts making sense.

***

And that’s the last of it. Merry Belated Christmas, everyone!