As I sat by the cold, frost-gripped window of my hotel in Twinleaf Town sipping my peppermint latte, I watched the delicate snowflakes drift gently to the snow-covered ground. The clouds in the sky above darkened into deeper shades of gray and blue as the evening grew, the dim golden lamplights of the rustic Twinleaf skyline glowing warmly against the wintry scene. Further beyond were the forests of Route 201, its leafless trees standing side by side with the tall conifers, softly and slowly blending in with the clouds as the distance became farther.

It was quite literally the most perfect, romantic Christmas evening one could have imagined. Perfect and romantic enough, indeed, to set a wonderfully miserable, sappy Christmas story. In fact, it is here where I sat by the window of this hotel room that my wonderfully miserable, sappy story began, drinking in the beautiful winter scenery. But before I carol to you about my Christmas story, let's get my introduction out of the way.

I am Cynthia, the Master Champion of the Sinnoh Region. Take a moment to let that sink in your head.

When people often hear of my name, multiple connotations are associated with who I am. For starters, I am consistently being tailed by the press, whether they are internationally reputable newspapers or big-name gossip tabloids. It doesn't help when you're at an airport trying to fly to another country, or if you're at a dock about to board a ferry to another region, or even if you're on a train to another city, and the hungry media is lusting after your image and dying to have you answer their questions. Sure, I might have some more respect for those that are reputable newspapers (since they portray me as a distinguished Master Champion with a flair for subjects in the liberal arts, including ancient history, classical music and literature; on the other hand, the tabloids are ever-so-persistent on matters such as "Will Cynthia ever marry a man?!" or "Does Cynthia finally have a boyfriend?"), but ultimately, they are all the same: I am nothing more than a massive money-maker for them. It gets even worse when I start mentioning that there's an unofficial fan-club of me – something my lawyers and I have been trying to get rid of, thus I can't quite call this war a victory of mine yet – with both fan-boys and fan-girls hailing me as their superior icon. I might as well be the leader of a religious cult, but those problems aren't as bad when I remember that there are disgusting men and women who have sexual fantasies about me. (The Internet, as I understand, is one of the most horrifying places one can visit when certain... sexual terrains are explored. I even advise myself to avoid it from time to time, lest I stumble upon into something so nasty I could barf my way to death.) You might as well give me a gun to shoot myself.

So, take all of this into account when I tell you that I have a boyfriend named Lance (yes, I, Cynthia, have a boyfriend, and yes, it is that Lance, the Master Champion of Kanto and Johto), and that I'm impatiently waiting to find if there was any available transportation left for me to visit him in Kanto.

Let me explain: I was all prepared and ready to set off to Kanto. I packed all of my necessities in a duffel bag (clothes, toiletries, spare books for reading), and over my typical black outfit (though I did opt for black jeans and heeled, knee-high leather black boots instead of the normal black pants with ankle boots), I wore my elegant, double-breasted black winter coat that fell down to my knees, a dark red scarf that wrapped around my neck (in an attempt to fit into the holiday mood), and a rather cute, felt black hat, topping my head. My shoulder bag, which I would carry with me, carried my miscellaneous possessions: my laptop, some notebooks, and other little things that I viewed as serving me useful whenever it was needed. All of my presents were wrapped and ready for gifting, including Lance's own gift, all placed in my duffel. This amount of preparation led up to one big event: the Saffron Christmas Gala.

The Saffron Christmas Gala was a major event for Lance. Every year, because he was the Master Champion of both Kanto and Johto, he was invited to be the Host of the magnificent jubilee yet again. In fact, while the Saffron Christmas Gala had the tradition of annually inviting some famous person to be Host, whether they were a celebrity, a world-famous coordinator, or the mayor of Saffron, Lance had been chosen as the Host five times. This year, since he accepted the invite to be Host again, it would be his sixth. As I had sensed, and as he had explained, this was a big deal, and he took pride in being able to partake such a historic event.

But more than that, it was this event that brought us together as a couple. It was because and during this event that we started going out together officially. Before that, Lance was just a distant, famous figure in my life, someone who I had simply known and wouldn't mind getting to know more. Even while I was a younger trainer, since my teenage years, I had heard of him as some kind of prodigy Pokemon trainer, and thus I was given a sense of familiarity with him not like that of a childhood friend, but something more like some famous TV figure that I knew because it was common knowledge. Later on, I had learned of him that he was Mr. Perfect in every sense, with both men and women falling for him like lemmings: he was a foot taller than me, going well into the six-foot range for his height, athletic, as he had a very well-built body, and reasonably intelligent, so much that he was a skilled jack-of-all-trades in every subject out there imaginable. He seemed like the type to date other famous figures like pop singer-actresses, or the daughters of big-name CEOs. This man had quite the impressive reputation.

From this, you could imagine my confusion when I got a personal invitation from Lance himself inviting me to the Saffron Christmas Gala last year. I still remember the invitation now: the sepia-colored paper was heavy and thick, with golden print in Victorian cursive courteously stating, "You are cordially invited to the annual Saffron Christmas Gala!" My own name had been personally written in his handwriting with jet-black ink from a fountain pen, as well as a message: "If you possibly can, dear Cynthia, please join me in this event. I would love to meet and get to know you. Fondly yours, Lance."

The next thing I knew, I was utterly confused and bashful. What exactly was I supposed to do? There had been no one else in my life with such appeal and intelligence to invite me to an event, especially one who was romantically interested in me. I had heard previously about rumors of Lance having interest in me, and I saw tabloids from the corners of my eye from time to time screaming about Lance's interest in multiple women, including me. Of course, rumors being rumors and tabloids being tabloids, I never believed them. Not until that invitation, at least. I remembered reading the short message over and over, focusing on his word choices: "dear", "would love", "fondly yours". There were so many things that I could not fathom from the message. I even extended my research out to actually Googling my own name with his, and the results I received were astonishing: he was "eyeing" me, and that as time went by, I was the "only one" on his mind. Every disbelieving article I had gathered up all led up to the conclusion that he truly was romantically after me.

Initially, I thought I would rebel in disgust. I had no interest in participating in any romantic relationship, as I found most of them unappealing and superficial; besides, I had too many ambitions and projects that were too important to give up for someone else. Yet, I softened just slightly just for this one time, allowing myself to open up for new experiences. I said to myself, "Okay, Cynthia. You've been busy anyway for the past few years of your life. Might as well take a breather with this Saffron Christmas Gala and see what happens with Lance."

So I went. I responded to his invitation by letter, as it had asked me to do should I choose to go. Soon enough, another envelope came for me, expressing his delight that I could attend. He promised that he would have a first-class hotel room reserved for me in Saffron's most expensive and luxurious hotel, and said I was welcome to wait there until he returned so that we could properly meet each other. Upon my arrival, I checked into the hotel, but as I found it unentertaining to simply wait for him, I went out in a disguise to explore all of the holiday commotion.

I can still remember the brilliant red, green and golden streamers and sparkling confetti that littered the streets, all gleaming fantastically against Saffron's tall and glassy towers, ornamented Christmas trees placed in each corner of the street with red-bowed wreaths adorning the city lampposts. Screams of delighted children and cheers of happy crowds filled the air while a jazz band in the distance blared out "Deck the Halls" some lengths away. Scattered scents of peppermint and eggnog helped decorate the wintry cold, with occasional scents of warm gingerbread and hot chocolate passing by.

Amidst all of this, I was unintentionally pulled aside by a street vendor selling gingerbread lollipop cookies, and the vendor hadn't realized a potential customer was staring at his goods until he saw me (through my sunglasses) eyeing one. Him being a wily vendor, and me being a terrible sucker of sweets, I bought one outrageously overpriced gingerbread lollipop cookie.

But before I could even take a single bite of my needlessly-expensive gingerbread cookie, I suddenly saw that Lance was watching me. And that he had seen me fish out an unnecessarily large amount of cash for a small treat.

You could imagine me now, standing there frozen, feeling like a criminal caught robbing a bank. I probably had the most hilarious look of stupidity and pure embarrassment, sweating internally in panic, all while keeping on a dumb grin in an attempt to smooth the awkward silence between us. He said, "You're pretty cute when you blush."

Then, he led me away from the busy streets, softly speaking about how if we had stayed out in the streets for too long, even in my disguise, we would be caught by the media, and we ended up in some quiet, abandoned alley somewhere near the outskirts of Saffron, and somehow by then I had finished eating my gingerbread lollipop cookie, and we kissed. So our first kiss tasted like gingerbread.

I was pretty sure that for the rest of that day, I looked like some breed of a euphoric dunce.

From then on, we admitted to each other our mutual desire to make a commitment to each other, regardless of our statuses to the world. It was the reason why I was sitting here, staring out the window as I anxiously waited for news regarding travel to Kanto, hoping for some possibility of to get there by the end of tonight. This was going to be our one-year anniversary as a couple, and I was determined to make an extra special moment in my life about it.

It would be extra special moment for good reasons. Though we shared our first kiss in less than a day of actually knowing each other, we had somehow both convinced ourselves that we were right before each other. At least, I had somehow convinced myself of this, and I had assumed he did as well.

Because we were both Master Champions, and were thus consistently bombarded with events to attend to and battles to compete against, Lance and I were always busy. Within our first year of dating each other, we only had around ten dates together, alone. Of course, there were occasional moments when the International Pokemon League hosted some other battle tournament or a fundraiser event, and whenever that happened, we requested to be with each other to help bring in a tremendous audience or help rake in enormous amounts of moolah. Still, those were never as valuable as alone time by ourselves. On both of our parts, I believe, we tried to communicate each other by messaging – texting, emailing, but the efforts were deemed quickly worthless, for neither of us found the time to reply to long messages that we had initially put so much time into. It was better, we must have decided, that we see each other and talk to each other face to face.

It was why I was so positive that this event would bring back the magic that had once enveloped the both of us, to bring us back into our romantic spirits. In spite of him being Host to the Saffron Christmas Gala again, which required an extraordinary amount of time and dedication, he promised to me that he would reserve for us alone, for us to exchange gifts and watch a sappy Christmas film together. Then, as he and I had both hoped, we would spend a week together up near the Mt. Silver Winter Resort with a cozy cottage reserved for us alone.

All of this added up to why this holiday season was going to be perfect, flawless, with nothing in our schedule to ruin our holiday season together.

But the snowstorm declared otherwise, sweeping all of our plans to hell.

After some time of impatient sighs and pacing back and forth around in my room, I heard a knock on my hotel door. Immediately, I opened it, greeted with a bellboy from the hotel lobby.

"Ah, Miss Cynthia," he said cordially, and bowed once. "I have unfortunate news to deliver to you."

"You mean..." I swallowed, not wanting to believe his next words. "There isn't any way to get to Kanto, at all?"

He shook his head. "No. I'm sorry."

"No plane? No ferry even?"

"No," he repeated.

I felt myself start to quiver a bit, so I steadied myself against the door. "That can't be!"

"Miss Cynthia." The bellboy was trying his best to comfort me, almost sounding like an inexperienced babysitter reassuring the kid about to burst to tears that everything was gonna be okay. "This snowstorm is going to be biggest snowstorm to hit all of the regions in one hundred years – a century! The weathermen have been predicting this for two weeks now. Surely you must have been aware of this!"

"Yes, yes, yes," I agreed, agitated, ready to bolt out of my hotel room to search for any other alternatives with my own pair of eyes, "which means that even though I bought this plane ticket three months in advance to Saffron in Kanto, there is nothing I can do about it!"

Hearing this was like expecting my flight to Kalos land to Lumiose in three hours, but instead a thunderstorm conveniently sided up near the plane and decided to doom us to the ocean below.

Before the bellboy could say anything else, I ran out into the hallway, making my way to the hotel lobby where the big TV screen had an annoyingly urgent spokeswoman declaring the weather an emergency snowstorm. I stopped in time to hear the next words, only heightening my disbelief.

"... All international and region-to-region transportations are cancelled under the current government-declared emergency..."

Immediately after, I heard my cellphone beginning to ring. I took it out from my pocket, glancing quickly at its caller ID, reading my grandmother's name. I looked at it in dumb shock before I picked it up.

"...Cynthia! ...Know you were supposed to go... the snowstorm... remember we're staying up at Snowpoint for...! They're still..."

"... As of now, the last transportation available before all transportations are officially closed include the express trains to Snowpoint, Eterna, Hearthome and Sunyshore from Twinleaf, Celestic, Pastoria... predicting that this will result millions of lost... up to perhaps a week of no public transportation after... snowstorm...""

"...Cynthia!"

"It's fine, so no worries," I spoke suddenly with fake cheer, forcing myself to swallow my regret and disappointment down my throat. I realized that I had been standing there, listening to multiple sounds and voices immersing into my brain. With constrained enthusiasm, I half-laughed and said, "There's always next year, right?"

But even then, I wasn't sure if I had faith in my words. All I could think of was how everything. Was. Ruined.

Author's Note: Let me say this right now, I am not out to bash WikiErrorShipping (Lance/Cynthia). I just happened to come up with a delightful, albeit possibly cliched, DarkSteelShipping holiday fan-fic, and Lance was the perfect victim to use for Cynthia to dump. This small fan-fic is also my [hopefully successful] attempt to get myself back into writing after one busy college semester of schoolwork and no fan-fiction writing. I intend to finish this by Christmas Day this year, and I'll call this attempt successful should I be able to complete it by then. Lastly, I'd like to say that this story based off of Maureen Johnson's entertaining Christmas story The Jubilee Express. You'll find similar parallels between her story and mine, so I do owe her the credit of the skeleton of the story as well as a lot of driving factors. Now, onwards to the next chapter!