Here's a little Christmas based story for all you Vanilla/Vector lovers out there! Comes in three chapters, one a day with the final chapter coming out on Christmas Eve!

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"Bye mom, I love you!"

"I love you too honey! Be careful when you cross the roads, stop, look and listen!"

That was all she could say before she realised that her daughter was out of earshot, her small, innocent figure skipping down the sidewalk passing through the rather quiet street. This was a scene that she had come to familiarize herself with over the past year or so, Cream always walked to school. She closed her eyes and sighed, one day this scene would not reappear in her life.

"Oh well" she thought, shrugging her shoulders. "I have ages until that day, I may as well get to decorating, Christmas is coming soon..."

So she set off to do what she had been doing for the past few days. The decoration boxes had been piled up next to the staircase, full of various different shiny objects. Tinsel, baubles, fairies and stars, every single one shining brilliant beneath the bright chandelier lamp hung upon the ceiling.

In previous days, the way that she and Cream had stacked the boxes were like a pyramid; the bottom ones didn't seem to hinder the balance. But Vanilla had already sorted out those lower boxes, and she knew, looking at the somewhat overflowing boxes spewing their glittery contents like a fountain, that in order to continue, she needed to get to the box at the top so she could avoid causing the whole tower to crumble and create a great mess.

Here was the problem though, it was out of reach. She walked up to the tower and tried to reach her arms up to the box, but she couldn't get a decent hold without losing her balance. She went on her tip toes, but the extra height made little difference. She wasn't in reach of a ladder, so she tried to go on the banister of the staircase and reach it from up there. But to get to the right height took her further away from the tower stack, and she could only lightly touch the edge of the papery box.

After ten minutes of struggling, she sat down, defeated, on the stair.

"It's no use..." she hummed to herself, feeling a little down at her predicament. "I can't get the box at the top. Cream won't be back from school for another five hours or so, and I haven't got time to waste! I need to get decorating in time for Christmas!"

She sat her head in her hands and looked at her front door, which had a little Christmas tree hanging from the door knob. She sighed wistfully, and closed her eyes for a second.

"If only I had a big, strong man..."

Vanilla had been having these strange fantasies for some time now. Whenever she was in a fix, or found that the pressures of housework were building, she would always like to sit down somewhere comfy and let herself get dragged into the same old fantasy. It kinda went like this: she would be in a fix, trying her best to reach something, or clean a stain, etcetera. Suddenly, there would be a ring at the doorbell, and as she slowly opened it, a hunky, handsome man with toned muscles and a face everyone would want to kiss would walk in, with long wavering hair and a pearly white smile. Topped with the most perfect tanned skin that shone in whatever light that was nearby, this guy was the complete package of any girl's fantasy.

He would help her with everything, possessing the strength to reach the biggest of heights, scrub out the toughest of stains, rid the dust of the most intricate corners, and plus, he would go out of his way and do something extraordinary, like cook the most elegant of food, completely revamp the garden and even redecorate the house into Vanilla's idea of a dream abode. And everything he did, from the simple tasks to the unreal, everything he did flowed, and watching him seemed as if he was performing magic right before her very eyes...

The day would become a montage of all these thoughts. Some days, the montage would last ages, her record being thirty three minutes. Then some days, she would just skip to her favourite part, the ending. As the sun is dusking, the two step outside the front door, in front of the beautiful, warm sunset, and gaze into each other's eyes, the hunk holding his jacket slung behind his shoulder, his skin slightly aglow and glistening with sweat from his efforts.

"I have to go now honey, duty calls for me at the police department" The Police Department. The fantasy hunk would either say this, or other jobs Vanilla found heroic, like a fireman, a secret agent, or a high end prosecutor. It usually coincided with whatever serial TV show she was in tune with at the time.

"Oh, but you can't!" she'd helplessly moan. "The house is still a mess..."

The hunk puts a finger to her lips and shushes her silently.

"Don't worry" he says quietly. "I'll be back again..." And then he'd lean in, ready to seal the perfect day with a kiss...

It never got that far. It was cruel fate that stopped the fantasy, every single time. The phone would ring, or the TV would suddenly flick off the menu and onto a random children's channel that Cream happened to be watching before she went for school, filling the house with the blaring, sharp noise of cartoon sound effects. A letter would come through the mail, or something happened to fall over, a noise, or a distraction, anything and everything. It always disrupted that last moment, the moment she cherished so badly, the moment she so desperately wanted to experience again, ever since the days of her youth.

And the distraction this time? It was the door bell, sounding. The little chime that played snapped Vanilla right out of her lucid deep fantasy as she shook her head, suddenly awake. She quickly got to her feet and opened the door, almost expecting a hunk to be at the other side of the door, ready to solve all her problems.

Upon opening the door, she shot a gaze at the rather tall figure that stood at the doorway. With his unnatural green skin, protruding door, headphones and soft yellow belly, this by far was not the hunk she was expecting...