It was a snowy day in the city of Royal Woods, and why wouldn't it be? It was December, the month of Christmas! It was only natural for an endless barrage of snow to fall from the sky, covering the streets in it!
Perfect for a little snowball fight, as Luan and Lisa could attest.
"I may not be allowed to use machinery since the snow day incident from last year, but that doesn't mean you're getting an easy win, comedic sister unit!" Lisa boasted as she prepared a snowball. "I'm the undefeated snowball battle queen for a reason!"
Lisa threw her snowball, and Luan narrowly dodged it before throwing a snowball of her own.
"That's because nobody's dared to challenge your authority, until I came along!" Luan boasted in return. "And once I take the title from you, you're going to eat your words!"
"Hopefully separately," Lisa blurted as she prepared another snowball. "I don't like to eat words that are mixed up."
Luan chuckled and prepared to throw a snowball... until a familiar voice spoke:
"Luan?"
The joker dropped her snowball to the ground and turned around to see none other than Maggie.
"Hi, Maggie-!"
And then she got hit by a snowball.
"Yes, victory is mine!" Lisa shouted with pride.
Luan simply threw a snowball at Lisa in the middle of her victory dance, causing her to fall into the snow-covered floor face-first.
"Sorry about that, Lisa's really into snowball fights," Luan calmly said as she goth approached her. "Anyway, is there something you need?"
The goth smiled, almost as if she was hoping the comedian would say. "As a matter of fact, I do need your help; You see, my family somehow forgot to get a tree to use as our "Christmas Tree" for the holiday, and now, I need you to help me cut down a decent tree."
The joker hummed. "I don't know, Maggie. I mean, I don't like self-deprecation, specially because it involves a person putting themselves in a sad mood. But it sounds like you need somebody strong to get this done, and I'm strong with comedy, not strong in... strength."
"Can you operate a saw-blade?"
"I guess so?"
"Then you'll do, let's go."
The goth grabbed the comedian's arm and dragged her to the main street, where they looked around as they headed closer to a patch of grass with several trees in it, all with some number of snowflakes covering them.
"Wow, those trees look beautiful," Luan remarked as Maggie nonchalantly took out the saw-blade. "But, uh, which tree are we going to cut down? And is it even a good idea to do that?"
"Simple, we're going to cut down the one in the middle; It's not bigger than our house, and it has the perfect number of snowflakes, in my opinion anyway," the goth walked to the tree she was talking about, with Luan following her as she added, "As for your second question, does it really matter? People do this every day on Christmas time, and nothing bad ever comes out of it."
Maggie raised the saw-blade to Luan. "Now, please help me cut it down."
The comedian hesitantly grabbed the other end of the thing, and promptly helped the goth slowly but surely cut down the large tree, with the only thing heard being the sound of the saw as it cut through the tree's trunk.
Once they cut it all the way, the tree slowly tipped to fall to the right, giving the girls just enough time to go to that side and catch the falling tree. And though Luan showed a bit of difficulty at first, she managed to gather enough strength to keep her grip on the thing.
"See? I knew you were strong!" Maggie told the comedian with a small smile. "Well, not really, but this is still a plus! Now let's go back to my house before he spots us."
Luan raised an eyebrow. "Who's he?"
"Hey!"
The girls turned around and saw Flip flailing his fists up and down in a fury.
"What are you doing with my merchandise!?"
The girls immediately ran away as fast as they could, prompting Flip to turn around and shout:
"Release the hounds!"
Nothing happened.
"I need to get some hounds. Preferably cheap ones."
Meanwhile, back with the duo...
Maggie and Luan reached Maggie's house and dropped the tree on the ground, giving themselves some time to catch their breath.
"Haha, that went a lot better than I thought it would," Maggie remarked in surprise. "I honestly thought you were gonna ruin it with one of your pranks, but-"
"Maggie, we stole some of Flip's merchandise! He's bound to flip out!" Luan giggled, but then put on a serious tone as she lifted the tree, or tried to at least. "But talking seriously, we need to give this back to him before he sends somebody after us!"
"Whoa, hold it right there, Luan!" Maggie scolded before forcing the girl to put the tree down. "Flip's well known for being both a cheapskate and a sleazy businessman, surely nobody will mind if he's missing a tree or two."
"Maggie, stealing stuff is not okay!" Luan hissed.
"Oh yeah? You know what else is not okay?" Maggie grabbed Luan by the neck of her sweater and pulled her closer. "Ripping off people during Christmas time every year, and suffering absolutely no consequence for it, while the people you ripped off have to live with the fact they've been tricked during a time that's supposed to be joyful!"
Then the emo pushed Luan away as she bitterly added, "And that's exactly what Flip's been doing ever since he started his "Christmas tree" business! I mean, where do you think he got the trees in the first place?!"
The comedian tilted her head and raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"Follow me."
Luan, though hesitant to oblige after what the emo made her do a while ago, felt that there was something more to this situation, so she nodded and followed the girl to the backyard... where she saw a part of the snowy ground that seemed to be lower than the rest. So they walked to it, and dug the snow until a disturbing
A large hole in the ground, where something was clearly ripped out of it. In fact, the hole seemed to be just perfect for the tree they just got...
Oh no.
"I heard some construction noises while I was trying to sleep last week," Maggie started to explain, while Luan heard her and turned to look at her with worry. "However, since I'm sort of a pessimist, and I thought I was just hallucinating, I went back to sleep. And by the time I woke up, our tree was no longer in our backyard."
Luan shivered. "No..."
Maggie sighed. "So, my family and I went to look for a new tree, and we went to see Flip, who sold those trees at "reasonable" prices. We looked around for a while... until we found one familiar tree."
The emo and the comedian exchanged looks, and without saying a single word, they went back inside, and brought the tree to the backyard. Once they had brought the large tree there, they rolled it until they spotted a marking on the trunk.
"Property of the Frosts."
"He stole your tree?!" Luan exclaimed in horror and disbelief. "W-Why would he do that?!"
"To get a quick buck, what else would someone like him do?!" Maggie snapped and put her hands on her pockets. "He took the tree we spent years taking care of just so he could sell it for a couple of bucks, just like the sleazy jerk he is!"
Luan turned back to the disturbing sight as Maggie sternly continued:
"He repeated this nonsense with every other family in Royal Woods, outside of yours for some reason, and he needs to pay. If you want to stop me from doing something bad like stealing stuff, fine, I understand, but if you really think that's more important than stopping a sleazy business from continuing to rip-off people, then I'm glad you practiced your comedy, but that's a big, unfunny joke."
With that said and done, Luan could only look away with regret and shame as Maggie tried to put the tree back to it's former glory. She then got up, and with a determined look on her face, she went to Maggie's side and tried to help her.
"What are you doing?" Maggie asked in confusion.
"It's kinda insensitive for me to act like you're in the wrong for trying to get your tree back," Luan sighed and gave Maggie a smile. "The least I could do is help you put the tree back together, right?"
Maggie smiled at the statement, and the promptly worked together to put the tree and trunk back together.
