Later that afternoon, Rouge stashed the sack of mail in a closet and went to the living room. She found Shadow slouched on the sofa, eyes half-closed, his chin on his hand and his elbow on the sofa arm, while some cheesy Christmas special jabbered from the TV.

"Awright, no more," announced Rouge, striding over and flicking off the TV. Shadow, however, didn't bat an eyelash. Rouge followed his gaze, and realized he hadn't been watching the show after all; he was watching Omega, who stood next to the TV. The robot appeared to be very preoccupied with getting something off his fingers. First he would tug something off his left hand, then he would switch and try to pull something off his right hand, then the process would repeat. Rouge squinted.

"Did . . . you get into my stash of refrigerator magnets?"

"They are proving to be incorrigible," said Omega plaintively, waving one hand about in vain as an insurance-company magnet clung stubbornly to his index finger. "Efforts to remove them prove futile."

"I took down my refrigerator magnets two years ago for a formal party, and I've been searching for them ever since. You walk into my kitchen for three minutes, and you find them," sighed Rouge, tousling her ears. "Figures."

She caught Omega lightly by the wrist and tugged the magnet off his fingers, giving Shadow a reproachful look.

"You could've helped him out, you know."

"He didn't ask," said Shadow a little too innocently. Rouge rolled her eyes.

"And you yell at me for behaving badly for Christmas."

Shadow closed his eyes, unimpressed.

Rolling her eyes again, Rouge shook it off and rubbed her hands briskly. "All right, let's get hopping. Where'd I put that box of garlands?"

Over the rest of the afternoon, Rouge's home got a bit of a Christmas makeover. Although really, the team members' contributions varied: Shadow mostly dozed on the sofa (seeing as there were no cookies to be had), Omega endeavored to help with the decorating (the fact that the tree was not to be burned disappointed him greatly), and Rouge did her level best to be comparatively merry and keep everything under control ("Omega sweetie, we don't stick sparklers in Shadow's hair.").

"These traditions of yours lack logic," grumbled Omega, attempting to disengage his foot from an affectionate strand of tinsel. "What purpose lies behind all of this? Why do you practice such things?"

"It's just . . . tradition," shrugged Rouge. "It's things you're just supposed to do around Christmastime. Have trees and lights and presents, and be jolly and all that."

"Why?"

"Well, there are lots of different reasons," said Rouge thoughtfully, trying to tease the plug out of a tangled mess of lights. "Everything has different meanings and all. But mostly it's just . . . you know everyone's doing it, and they have fun doing it, so you do it too. I guess."

"If you find these things amusing, why do you not do them all year?"

"Geez, no more questions." Rouge whapped Omega's arm reproachfully. "You're making me doubt my motivation for untangling these freaking lights when I'm going to be putting them away a month later."

Omega was quiet for a while. Still, he knew organics generally had very short memory spans in these matters, so he asked another question anyway.

"What about the charitability?"

"Oh, the gift-giving and stuff?" Rouge chuckled. "Well, it's all about the love, ya know? You're supposed to be extra-nice and help people this time of year. And giving someone a present shows you care about 'em and all that jazz."

"But we do not?"

"Nahhhh. Way too sappy," said Rouge, making a face. "I mean, I'm fine swapping gifts with Blue and the fox kid and such, since they're into mush like that—but sheesh, imagine walking up to that and trying to give it a pretty present!"

"That"—namely Shadow—opened a lazy eye.

"Not to mention you get plenty enough gifts for yourself anyway," he remarked drowsily. "How do you figure mail theft into that charitability picture?"

Rouge put down the lights and regarded him grumpily for a moment, then turned to Omega.

"Changed my mind. Still got those sparklers somewhere?"

Rouge's patience didn't hold for long. As soon as evening came, she shooed Shadow and Omega off, dumped the sack of mail on her living room floor, and settled down on her sofa with a pair of fuzzy slippers. She proceeded to go through all of the letters systematically, sorting them into piles of "not asking for anything expensive," "asking for jewelry," and "asking for electronics/other good stuff."

It was, she discovered, a rather thankless task. Most of the handwriting was absolutely abysmal—cute the first few times, but after a while it started to give you a splitting headache. The pickings were surprisingly poor, too—it turned out not too many kids were asking for stuff that a bat burglar would be interested in swiping after all. Still, Rouge was too stubborn to admit, even to herself, that it had been a bad idea. And besides, she did get to see the letters from Cream, Charmy, Marine, and even Tails—and, to her amusement, several of the older Mobians too. She had a good chuckle over some of the things the others were asking for.

Eventually, though, the monotonous process of open-read-sort wore her down, and as the night grew later her head began to nod. She considered getting up to fix herself some tea, but she fell asleep before she could go through with it.

In the wee hours of the morning, a cold draught blew across her bare shoulders, making her stir and mumble in her sleep. At last the breeze became uncomfortable enough to wake her; she groaned and stretched her sore back, dimly realizing she was still clutching an unopened letter in her hands. Why was it so cold in here? Had somebody opened the window? She looked to see.

The window was indeed open. And there were tiny little people in green and red suits piling through it.

Now, normally Rouge would have done something. Normally she would have leaped up and hollered at these tiny intruders, or chased them out with an umbrella, or heck, at least given a flabbergasted yowl. But right now she was simply shocked into complete inaction. She sat there, still clutching that letter, and gaped in disbelief as the little people, all chattering a foreign tongue in little high-pitched voices, swarmed around on the living room floor.

They were gathering up the letters, very efficiently. The opened ones, the unopened ones, stuffing them into their teeny sacks, messing up her nicely-arranged piles of sorted letters, and still she was too dumbfounded to even move.

At last the tiny crew had picked up all the letters on the floor. Most of them pattered away towards the window again, their now-plump sacks slung over their shoulders, but one particular little fellow lagged behind. He mumbled to himself in a bewildered fashion, searching all around as if he'd lost something. At last he stopped hunting on the floor, happened to glance up, and saw the letter Rouge was holding.

A hop, and he was standing on the sofa before her. With a scowl on his tiny face, he swiped the letter from her hands, whapped her sternly on the nose with it for good measure, and hightailed it out the window.

Now Rouge regained the power of movement. She shot to her feet and skidded to the still-open window—but all she could see were teeny-tiny footprints receding into the distance, already vanishing as the snow blew about in the wind.

The next morning, Shadow showed up with a ream of G.U.N. papers that needed signing. He knew Rouge would be expecting the visit, and he knew paperwork was far from her favorite, so he was rather surprised when Rouge opened the door, gave an elated yelp, and yanked him indoors by the arm.

"I don't like this already," he informed her, but Rouge paid that no mind.

"Shadow! There were elves!"

He studied her blankly. She took him by the shoulders and shook him.

"Freaking elves, Shadow! In my house!"

"Rouge." He disentangled himself gently from her grip. "I suppose it's none of my business, but aren't you a little young for that kind of eggnog?"

"Eggnog?" Rouge blinked at him for a minute, then snorted angrily and resumed her spiel. "Don't make smart comments! I fell asleep reading all those letters, and when I woke up, there were tons of elves coming in through my window and taking all of them away!"

Shadow rolled his eyes.

"It was a dream, Rouge. Maybe you do have a conscience after all, and it felt guilty."

"Stop being a smart aleck! You can't stand there snarking when there are little elf people breaking into random houses!"

"Definitely a dream. Brought on by a bit too much of little bat people breaking into random houses."

Rouge seethed.

"If it was a dream, you fruitcake," she hissed, "why are all the letters gone? Huh?!"

Shadow went to the closet and noted the clear absence of letters. He shrugged.

"Okay, I get it. This is one of your stupid jokes. You knew I didn't like you stealing the letters, so you hid them all somewhere and made up a story about elves to fool me."

"Sha-dow!"

Shadow ducked aside nimbly and studied Rouge's furious expression. He knew she was good at acting, but he'd seen her do it often enough that he could usually tell when she was putting it on. And right now, she really did look desperately mad.

"Okay," he sighed at last, burying his fingers in his top quill and raising his other hand in surrender. "Okay, I believe you. Little elves came and took back the letters you stole. No need to lose your mind over that."

"No need?! With tiny magic burglars on the loose?"

"They wouldn't have bothered you if you didn't take their letters," retorted Shadow. "Besides, that's not what you should worry about."

"Oh yeah? What should I worry about, wise guy?"

"How low on Santa's 'Naughty' list you've landed now that they know what you've been doing."

For a moment Rouge's eyes went wide and her ears sagged outwards; almost instantly though, she recovered and gave an unconcerned scoff.

"Psh, that? It doesn't matter. I was already on the 'Naughty' list to begin with anyway."

"You don't know." Shadow folded his arms, leaning back against the sofa. "You were really pretty decent earlier this year. You saved that kitten from getting run over, remember?"

"Ehh, one kitten." Rouge waved dismissively.

"And you didn't do as much burglaring as usual."

"You think? I don't know, I think I was doing about average."

"And you gave the Faker a Chaos Emerald, that one time."

"Well, the whole world needed saving." She rolled her eyes.

"Plus you didn't plunder any orphanages . . . "

"I'm not that bad!" Rouge gave him a look. "For Pete's sake."

"Fine, fine." Shadow was surprised how much effort it took to retain an emotionless expression. He'd gotten used to bantering with Rouge, over the years . . . darn him if he didn't enjoy it sometimes. "But the fact of the matter is, you were acting better than usual. You might very well have been on the 'Nice' list."

"Yeah, well." Rouge rubbed her arm ruefully. "I kind of blew it now, didn't I?"

"Kind of. Yeah."

A bit of silence, during which Rouge chewed her lip and studied the carpeting. At last she sighed and looked up briskly.

"Well, what's done is done. No use fussing over it now. I guess you came over with the usual paperwork, huh?"