"We are online, sir." Steve turned to see a bird on his shoulder, shaking it off he went to go look at all the damage his family had done.
"No." He said watching as all the screens came to life showing different news channels all with the same thing on. "Two billion items delivered, and we didn't leave a footprint in the snow. And now-"
"Sir?" I timid elf called interrupting him for the, he lost count now, time. "We have lost 80 percent of our data." Steve turned to him looking at his screen, it read,
ERROR_CODE 14 LAST CHRISTMAS SAVED: 1981
"No, no. We have 18 pulse data reservoirs of a trillion terabytes!" The elf looked a tad scared,
"Sorry, auto-save was off."
"Shall I slap his, sir?" The elf let out a shocked noise, "Quite hard?" Peter grinned while holding up his hand.
"Sir," A female elf called his attention, "There's a polar bear on Level 6."
"Sir? Why is Arthur out there?"
"He missed one. A nipper. I mean 47785BXK." Ernie told them with a sarcastic smirk on his face. Steve looked up and let out a breath trying to remain calm. All the elves gasped, a seal made its way down the stairs and the damn bird pooped on his shoulder all in the span of 5 seconds. Steve just stared at his now ruined suit.
"Sir, we've got something. Bryony Shelfley, it's her HOHO." Steve jumped to the screen that read that.
"Call her. My number. Big screen." He growled out wanting to get this under control before even more people found out about it. After just a few short seconds the crazy elf answered it,
"Grand-Santa says he's not here."
"Hi. I'm looking for a missing relic." Steve decided to start it off. While holding his espresso.
"Steve, three words." His grandfather started,
"Is the first word "help"?" He handed his espresso to Peter.
"Yes!" Arthur replies relief and hope flooding his voice, "You can help us, Steve!"
"It was him!" Grand-Santa yells pointing to Arthur trying to get out of being in trouble more than likely. "Frosty the Madman. He forced me to come." Arthur looked at the old man confused, Steve already knew it had been Grand-Santa, he more than likely talked Arthur into going. "Elf, back me up if you want a career." He watched as Grand-Santa tried to weasel his way out of it.
"I forced you?" Arthur asked disbelief in his voice, pointing at Grand-Santa, with the reigns in his hands.
"You see? Look."
"What did you want, Grand-Santa? Let me guess." He stuck out his finger then brought his hand to his chin in mock thought, "Hmm." His arm crossed under the other, "A picture of you in the sleigh delivering the gift." His hand waved about as he talked, "to show me how it's really done?" He turned away from the screen not listening if the man was going to try and defend himself or not, "You know the picture they'll have tomorrow?" He rhetorically asked before dramatically turning and walking back towards the screen, "You, led away in handcuffs! The Santa who was seen." He raised his arms up motioning to everything around him, "By everybody on Earth! The Santa who ruined Christmas." Peter jumped up to be seen by the sleigh,
"Ruined it!" He parroted. He watched the screen as Grand-Santa pulled the reins away from Arthur,
"We'll fix this, Steve. We'll be back home in the wobble of a reindeer's buttocks." He called with a smile, "And Evie can go back in mothballs. You can forget she ever existed." He glanced over to Arthur to see the hurt and betrayal on his face.
"You can't just go home. What about Gwen?" He asked pulling the reins from his grandfather once again. For a moment Steve was touched, Arthur cared so much that this little girl got her present from Santa he went and faced most of his fears for her. To bad no one cared like that when I was little. It does a kid good to have their hopes crushed at least once. And with that his sour mood continued,
"Gwen. For that, you'd threaten my whole operation?"
"Steve, you said if there was any way to get there, you would." Arthur tried to reason with his brother. While fighting for control of the sleigh. "Well, this is it. Look." He stated with a smile grabbing the HOHO and showing him the sleigh, or at least what was left of it. "The old sleigh is perfect, uh," He stated picking up a piece from the back, "Right. Well, anyways, it goes really fast even with bits missing." He showed the control panel, then he turned it towards the reindeer, "And we've got quite a few reindeer left." The camera came back around to them, "And, if I'm sick again I could be sick in a bag." Arthur tried to reason still,
"I'll wrap him one." Bryony nodded happily from the back ground, Grand-Santa just looked at the screen wondering if Steve would go along with all of this.
"We can help them!"
"No one missed, sir!"All of the other elves started to agree, the holiday spirit seeming to consume them all.
"All correct presents, present and correct." Steve watched as all the screens went from the damage they had done to everything they could do, with his help of coarse,
"With your help Steve, we can do it!" Arthur encouraged even further, everyone turned to look at him. Maybe I could, it wouldn't be so bad for every child to have a gift that they wanted would it? And besides I'm just cleaning up Fathers mess. They would have to see it – his train of thought was interrupted though,
"Grand-Santa and Arthur would be the hero's of the night, sir!" The shattering glass is what broke it all, it broke the nice train of thought, it broke the possibility that maybe things could and would go right for once. It broke all of Steve's hopes of a happy Christmas as well.
"Come home now!" He ordered, "If we all just gave in to Christmas spirit, there'd be chaos."
"We're on our way, Steve."
"No!" Arthur yelled no willing to give it up, "Santa will want us to get to Gwen. Ask him. Please." He begged, Steve could see this was his last effort the last thing he had to fight with, a small smile was on his lips as he tried to figure out how to word it to his younger brother, it wasn't a smug smile, or even a happy one. It was one of those sad smiles, like you knew where this is going and you couldn't do anything else to stop it.
"Arthur this is Dad we're talking about. There was a time when he cared about every last gift tag, but now he just wants to be loved and get some rest." Steve knew he had won, there wasn't anything left to fight with now. Arthur had finally come to the conclusion that Steve had come to many years ago.
"No. He's lying awake, worrying his beard off about Gwen." Steve's face set in a firm line, his eyes showing how sad he actually felt about his little brother having to learn this lesson for himself, wishing it would have been in a less devastating manner but, it was something he had to learn. Quickly he pulled up their fathers number on his HOHO,
"Off to the land of nod. Please do not disturb until December 26th. Is that it, dear?"
"Yes, Press the red-" His mothers voice was cut off as his father presumably did as he was told. Steve hung up the phone looking at his brothers broken face, that seemed to be how everything was around the North Pole, at least to Steve.
"No," He sat back, "Santa's the most caring man in the world."
"So why are you here, not him?" Bryony asked her own voice close to breaking. Grand-Santa grabbed the reins and pulled knocking them all off the sleigh and promptly ending the call. Steve let out a sigh.
