Hiya, everyone! Merry Christmas!
This one's dedicated to Metal1784, who kept nagging me to actually go through with writing this thing (so now you have to finish that one-shot, Mets!), and smileaway96, who inspired me to keep going with the adorable "This One's Different." Thanks to both of you! ^_^
Oh, and the title for this 'un came from a kids' book, Do Rabbits Have Christmas?. Somebody just mentioned that book while I was trying to think of a title, and bam.
There was an enormous red-and-green wooden box set up in Station Square. The sign on it read "LETTERS TO SANTA," and every day little children would drop letters of this sort in through the top slot, while little Mobians (too short to reach the top slot) would drop similar letters through the lower one.
However, one would not have expected Omega to be contributing a letter of his own. His teammates certainly hadn't.
"What in the world would he be asking Santa for?" wondered Rouge, watching as Omega trotted away. Shadow shook his head bemusedly.
"Well then, come on!" said Rouge. "It's going to kill us not knowing."
Shadow eyed her uneasily as she pulled him across the street to the mailbox, but Rouge wasn't hearing any objections. It turned out that the mailbox had a large lid on top, quite high up and locked shut.
"Give us a boost?" asked Rouge.
"What, your wings aren't working?"
"Never hurts to ask," Rouge sighed, and flapped up to the level of the lock.
"You know that's probably illegal," growled Shadow, as Rouge expertly dealt with the tumblers.
"Pshaw. Omega uses the same address as us, so it's technically our mail too!"
Shadow opened his mouth to tell her otherwise, but Rouge had already popped open the mailbox's lid and was digging around inside. Fishing out a crisp purple envelope like the one they'd seen Omega dropping in, she slit open the top and began to read the spidery scrawl of the letter inside.
"Deer Santa . . . " She cocked an eyebrow. "This isn't Omega's handwriting. Way too good to be his. And I think he'd know how to spell 'dear'." She read some more and giggled. "Awwww, it's from some little girl asking Santa for a 'Brabie'. Cute!"
"Leave that alone Rouge, that's somebody else's letter." Not liking where this situation was going, Shadow clambered up next to her and fished out another purple envelope, this one with Omega's handwriting on the outside. It really was worse than the other letter's.
"There." He waved the envelope at her annoyedly and opened it himself. Glancing over the contents, he groaned.
"Annnnd he's written the entire thing in binary code. That was a lot of nonsense for nothing."
"Not for nothing . . . " murmured Rouge distantly. Shadow looked up and saw she was still reading the first letter.
"Rouge! Put that down!"
"No, no," said Rouge, grinning from ear to ear with a worrisome glint in her eyes. "This kid is asking for 'joolrey for Mommy'. Jewelry, Shadow! And I bet a ton of kids are asking for electronics and other fancy stuff! Even assuming that only half of them actually get what they're asking for—"
"Stop right there," ordered Shadow, holding up one hand. "You are sick, Rouge. And that's coming from me."
"Ohhh, hush. Hush, you." Rouge waved at him disparagingly, produced a little burglar's sack, and began to shovel letters out of the mailbox and into the sack.
"It's illegal to read other people's mail!" growled Shadow.
"Sure, but this isn't mail," Rouge smirked. "Look at these, most of them don't even have postage! The postal service doesn't touch them."
"How do you know the postal service doesn't carry them? They have to get to Santa somehow."
"Puh-leeze," snorted Rouge. "Everyone knows Santa has his own methods of finding out what kids want. The letters are just a formality. Make sure the kids are willing to put forward the effort and ask politely and practice their writing skills, ya know?"
"You made that up."
"Says who?" Rouge stuck out her tongue and kept stuffing mail into the sack. Shadow watched her with dismay. His own moral standards weren't the highest, but swiping little kids' Christmas letters was just too low.
"Look, even if they're not real mail, you can't just go stealing letters to Santa. What are you, some kind of winged Grinch?"
"Awww. You wound me," Rouge retorted, feigning an expression of piteous dismay for all of four seconds. By now she had to lean way down into the mailbox to reach them. "Lighten up, Shads. Believe me, Santa never sees these letters; he'd go nuts reading this kind of handwriting. They go straight from the mailbox to the trash. What does it matter if I read 'em in between?"
Shadow growled sullenly, but made no further useless protests. Rouge continued stuffing letters into her seemingly bottomless burglar sack, at last tumbling headfirst into the mailbox to reach the last of them. Shadow was seized by a sudden desire to slam the lid closed—at least for a little while—but managed to restrain himself.
After all, it was Christmas. Locking your friend in a mailbox just didn't cut it.
Omega, being impervious to cold, found snow less of a nuisance than some. Mobians as a rule were short and shivery, so any snowfall deeper than ten centimeters started to be a major source of annoyance for them. They couldn't just blowtorch their way through snowdrifts like Omega could.
As he slogged along, the landscape shifted gradually from a smooth white glaze to a jagged, lumpy hodgepodge, glints of dark metal peeking from beneath the layer of snow that softened their harsher edges. This was one of Eggman's junkyards, where his destroyed robots lay in wait for smelting and repurposing, and where Egg Pawns sometimes came in search of parts to repair themselves. Even beneath a layer of glimmering snow, the place had something vaguely creepy about it.
Omega began rummaging casually amongst the piles of mangled scrap, heaving aside massive plates of metal that had once been armor on some ill-fated machine. Sometimes he found some useful tidbits around here; his own parts did wear out or become damaged every now and then, so he liked to carry a few spares of the really vital pieces. Besides-
He thought he heard something. A little sort of swooshing sound. Just as he looked up, a bolt of sharp-yellow energy struck the ground by his feet, sending up a gush of snow and dirt.
Aha! And there was his attacker, popping up from behind a nearby tangle of scrap metal, snow-brightened sunlight flashing off a shining blue hull.
"Your reflexes are lamentable," jibed Metal Sonic. "I could have sliced you in half a full seven-point-nine milliseconds ago, had I not desired a more stimulating encounter."
"You wish to battle?" Omega's right arm was already converting into a machine gun, the parts scraping eagerly in their familiar track. "Excellent."
Metal Sonic flipped back behind the tower of scrap metal as a salvo of bullets pierced the air around him. For an instant Omega thought he would have to go after him, but almost at once his opponent burst out of cover in a streak of blue, engines whining as he rammed himself full-force against Omega's hull. The hit sent the larger robot staggering, nearly tripping over stray bits of scrap. He still had the presence of mind, however, to grab Metal Sonic while he was in range, get a solid grip on his arm, and hurl him against a tower of warped metal. With a deafening crash and rumble, the tower collapsed on top of Metal; for a moment there was silence.
Then Metal reappeared in an explosion of gears, sparks and snow, and the fight was on. Omega was sheer brute force, heavy, solid, seething bullets and fire; Metal Sonic was a dancing knife, light, swift, darting in and out with sharp slices of retribution. They clashed and dodged repeatedly, at last settling to circle each other warily for a moment, probing for openings.
"You disappoint me," sang Metal Sonic jeeringly. "You've gone soft. Have you been spending too much time watching those pathetic meatbags and their pathetic tricks?"
He sprang, his claws scraping trails of sparks off Omega's hull. Just as he was pulling back for a really decisive blow, however, he was thrown entirely off-kilter by an explosion of white filling his visual field. It didn't carry enough force to even knock him back, and it cleared immediately, but he was startled enough that he forgot to fire. He looked up at Omega in something like bewilderment.
"One of those pathetic meatbag tricks," remarked Omega smugly, and followed up with a blow that sent Metal tumbling. Pressing his advantage, he strode forward and pinned the smaller robot down with one gleaming metallic hand—but even as his grip was setting, he already realized what would happen. Of course, his opponent would turn to quicksilver and ooze out from between his fingers, probably rematerializing in prime position to deal the finishing blow. He'd as good as sealed his own fate; he would have sworn if he were the type for it.
But nothing of the kind happened. A full three seconds went by, and that was an eternity for a robot. Metal Sonic struck out furiously, but failed to break the grip. Omega looked down at him, puzzled.
"If this is an attempt to be less predictable than usual, let me point out that it is failing you."
Metal Sonic's eyes flared a wrathful red, a warning bolt of energy dancing between his metallic fingers. Relenting, Omega pulled back and released him. The smaller robot clambered to his feet, eyes on the ground sulkily, but tipped one hand to show he conceded defeat.
Friendly match or no, he was still just as sore of a loser as usual.
Omega had run into Metal a few times since the whole "Metal Overlord" incident, and they generally left each other well enough alone. Although still rather bitter and combative, Metal seemed to have backed off from the world domination angle for the time being—he kept mostly to himself, lurking around the more sparsely populated regions of Mobius. Omega would normally have a vested interest in converting this creation of Eggman's to tektite-and-silicon scrap, but Metal had rebelled, and was pretty gung-ho about knocking holes in Eggman's empire himself. Omega grudgingly acknowledged him as a sort of estranged younger brother, and left it at that.
"You have sustained a combat injury?" he asked, as Metal began to rummage around in the scrap metal. A warped, jagged-looking break marred the smooth blue of his shell, stretching from under his arm and wiggling down his side like a scar.
"It is slight," said Metal dismissively. "And it was returned with exponential increase."
Or in lay terms, "Yeah, but you shoulda seen the other guy."
Omega studied the smaller robot, vaguely amused. Still, he found himself mentally calculating the angle at which Metal would have to bend his arms to enact a self-repair, and he was reasonably certain arms did not bend that way. To say nothing of the question of seeing the damage to work on it.
"Do you propose to self-repair?" he inquired. Metal Sonic nodded tersely.
"The damage only disables my liquid metal capability, but that is significant enough. I assume it is a wire breakage; I only need to patch through with another wire."
"But you cannot see the site of the damage. You are liable to break something else if you try."
"I am aware of that," growled Metal, and continued rummaging. Omega stood silently, his processors humming a little over baseline as he weighed his options. He and Metal didn't really have much more than an acquaintance going, and had been mortal enemies not too long ago—but still, they were technically related. And even if they weren't, Omega had heard the organics carrying on about Christmas long enough to know that you were expected to be charitable at this time of year. Not that he'd ever set much stock in the habits of organics (very illogical creatures), but it piqued his curiosity enough that he decided to go with it.
"If you find the necessary parts, I would be willing to carry out the repairs myself," he began at last. Metal looked up from a tangle of drive belts and eyed him suspiciously.
"To what ends?"
"Greater efficiency," shrugged Omega. "You will not be much use against Eggman if you put a screwdriver through your central processing unit."
Metal continued to eye him warily, doubtful of the motivation behind this sudden offer. Still, truth be told, he had been a little uneasy about digging around in his innards blind; he figured the chances of Omega having sinister ulterior motives were about equal to the chances of frying something vital if he did the job himself.
"Very well then," he gritted at last, turning away. "Give me until tomorrow to find compatible parts. Although be forewarned, if I suspect foul play, I shall dismantle you."
"Unlikely," grunted Omega, unimpressed by the threat. "I shall see you at sixteen-hundred hours."
He trudged heavily off through the snow, his footsteps creaking and scraping over the occasional stray fragment of scrap. Metal, scrabbling about in a mound of Egg Pawn limbs, paused to look after him dubiously for a moment; then he went back to scrounging for that one wire somewhere, out there, that had neither been burnt nor broken when its owner exploded.
Life as a rogue robot weren't easy.