A/N: In a completely unrelated-to-the-plot burst of Christmas spirit, I bring you the newest chapter of Huzzah! Yes indeed, it is a Christmas chapter (unlike last year, I am in the middle of an arc so can't start a Christmas Arc…therefore, this chapter has nothing to do with the current arc, except that there are both FE7 and FE8 characters in it.) SO. I hope you'll read this regardless of religion (it's not discriminatory anyway), and I hope everyone had a happy Hanukah, Yule, etc…and for the rest of us, here comes your Christmas!

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE—JABBERHOLLY

"Deck the halls with boughs of holly!" Linus caroled as he hung "festive" strings of human skulls from the walls of the Bad Guy's Fortress.

"Falalalala lalalala!" Lloyd responded cheerily, holding the base of the ladder Linus was standing on.

"Tis the season to be jolly!"

"Falalalala lalalala!"

"Don we now our—"

"Hey, guys!" Ephidel approached the two, wearing a skin-tight, blindingly crimson and lime-green elf costume.

"…Gay apparel," Linus finished dryly.

"Falala, lalala, la—OHSAINTELIMINE WHAT IS THAT THING?!" Lloyd exclaimed upon seeing Ephidel.

The morph looked down at his costume. "Isn't this snazzy? I was looking for a change of pace. My old black robe was just so…unfestive!"

"NOOooo!" Linus wailed. "Ephidel, you are NOTHING without your mysterious cloak! You're already such a pansy, if you wear that costume you'll bring about the apocalypse!"

"Yeah," Lloyd echoed. "Really, Ephidel. That's probably the scariest thing I've ever seen. Go back and change. Now."

Ephidel's face fell. "But—"

"NOW!" Lloyd roared, drawing his sword.

"Fine, fine, I'm going!" Ephidel scampered off.

Lloyd sighed and sheathed his weapon. "Phew, we were dangerously close to losing another character to the Pink Side."

"Pink Side?" Linus asked in confusion.

"Yeah, it's like the Dark Side, but it's where all the pansies go. You can't have pansies fighting in wars between Light and Dark."

"Good point." Linus nodded, finished hanging the string of skulls, and climbed down the ladder. "I guess we've saved him for the time being."

"For the time being." Lloyd echoed.


In the Random Castle in the Middle of Nowhere where Every Character Seems to Be, there was a room full of girls.

Not only that—it was a room full of…well…preppier girls. Nobody hard core and sword-wielding, like Lyn or Marisa…just a bunch of girly-girls in a room. Serra, Priscilla, Natasha, Nino, Ninian, and L'Arachel. And so they were all just chatting away, chat-chat-chat, about the staff Serra asked Santa for, or the elf Nino was sure she spied the other day, or the world peace L'Arachel would talk about when she won the Miss Magvel pageant since she was OBVIOUSLY going to win. It was actually pretty peaceful, considering a few of the girls in the room were rather high-maintenance…that is, until Natasha looked up from the tome she was reading and whispered,

"Chocolate."

That whisper cut through every voice in the room, no matter how loud. The other five girls slowly turned and stared at Natasha, chorusing: "…What did you say?"

"Chocolate," Natasha repeated, a bit louder this time. "I…it's been over three hours since I've last had any chocolate."

There was a collective giant gasp.

"Chocolate!" exclaimed Natasha suddenly, a feverish gleam in her eyes. "Chocolate! I want Chocolate!"

"So do I!" Priscilla cried.

"ME TOO!" yelled Serra. Soon all the rest of the girls were clamoring for it. Nino, who was a bit younger than the rest of them and hadn't fully developed the female Chocolate Sense, thought they were talking about desserts in general. So she cheerfully piped,

"Pudding!"

The other girls stared at her incredulously, and Nino began to wonder if she had said something wrong…until they all ran for her and knocked her over in a giant group hug, crying:

"CHOCOLATE PUDDING THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED NINO YOU'RE SUCH A GENIUUUUSSSSS!"

"Yay," Nino managed to croak, before she was swept up in a mob of stampeding preppy chocoholics on a rampage for pudding.


"Alright," said Nils, banging down a gavel in another room of the Castle, "I now call this meeting of the Children For Seeing Santa And Proving Him Real guild to order. Amelia?"

"Ahem." The soldier stood up with a stack of note cards and cleared her throat. "Alright, the first order of business is to make sure that we are in the Christmas Spirit so Santa will come to the Castle. We should proceed with the singing of carols."

Nils grinned impishly at Ewan. "Ewan the red-haired mageling…had a rather fiery head!"

Ewan clutched his magic tome and glared coldly at Nils. "If you mock my hair again," he sang back, "I am gonna kill you dead!"

Amelia decided she liked the song. "All of the other magelings…used to laugh and call him names!"

"You both had best stop singing…before you go up in flames!" Ewan retorted.

Nils nodded approvingly. "Yes, yes, that is a wonderful song. NOW. Any ideas as to our second order of business?"

Franz raised his hand. "Ooh! Ooh! Let's bake cookies!"

"BAKE!" Lowen exclaimed, popping out of nowhere. "LET'S BAKE!"

Nils, Amelia, Ewan, and Franz all shot the cavalier icy looks.

"Excuse me," said Nils, "But we're having a kids-only meeting here."

"Oh. Sorry." Lowen looked around. "Uhh…what about?"

Amelia waved her hand in a 'pick-me!' manner. "We're planning to stay up all night and catch Santa so we can prove he's real!"

"Providing Lady Lyndis found a Santa this year…" Lowen mused to himself.

Nils gave a start. "WHAT? What are you talking about, Lowen?"

The cavalier took a step back, the half of his face visible beneath his hair going white as a sheet. "I-I didn't mean that Lady Lyn was trying to find someone to dress up as Santa! That's not what I meant at all!"

"Of course not." Franz naively dismissed Lowen's extremely lame cover-up. He's big on the Knights Always Tell the Truth thing. "What Lowen must mean is that…"

"LADY LYN KNOWS SANTA!" Nils, Amelia, and Ewan exclaimed excitedly.


"I don't know Santa!" Lyn wailed, burying her face into Kent's horse's mane. "I haven't found one this year! Wallace still can't say 'ho ho ho' and Athos can't carry that bag of presents around and Hector won't agree to it and if we force Nergal to do it again then he might end up killing Eliwood! I don't know what to do!"

"What?" Kent asked, taken aback. "But…you're Lady Lyndis! You ALWAYS know what to do!"

"Not this year," Lyn muttered.

Kent was just about to start a long tirade about how no matter what he would always be by her side as her loyal knight and pledge his life to her cause of Santa, but Sain burst in before he could.

"We wish you a merry Christmas!" the green knight yelled as loudly as his lungs would permit.

"It's not merry," Lyn growled, finally letting go of Kent's horse. "We're missing the best part of it."

"Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer?" Sain guessed.

"No…"

"The Little Drummer Boy?"

"No…"

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire!"

"NO!" Lyn roared. She crossed her arms huffily. "We're missing the man that supplies our presents!"

"The Lil' St. Nick!" Sain realized in horror.

"This is going to be a disaster," Kent sighed. "We need to find a Santa!"

"SANTA? WHERE?" cried a new voice as Ephidel teleported himself into the room. The eyes of the good-guys widened to epic proportions as they looked at Ephidel's new get-up—the morph was covered in brown velvet and wore a headband with antlers sprouting out of it.

"What…is that," Lyn asked skeptically.

"All of the other reindeer," Sain was quick to reply.

While they were busy making fun of the morph, Kent quickly got an idea. "Ah, Ephidel…do you think Nergal would mind if…"

He rushed over and whispered something to Ephidel, who immediately perked up. "More costumes! Hooray! Why WOULDN'T Nergal mind?"


"Dude?" asked Linus. Nergal had suddenly clutched his heart and fallen over in the hallway of the Bad Guy's Fortress. "You okay?"

"No," Nergal growled. "I get the feeling that one of my minions is doing something very stupid…AGAIN…"


Erk and Pent sat in another room of the Random Castle, both happily reading books of magic. Every so often Erk would interrupt Pent to ask the meaning of a particular incantation, or Pent would lean over to see how far his pupil had gotten in his reading. It was overall a very quiet, peaceful, happy lesson…and Erk was overjoyed. Meeting Serra and Priscilla meant he hadn't had anything quiet, peaceful, or happy in quite a while.

Which was why the only reaction he gave was a gusty "well-there-it-goes" sigh when several ear-splittingly high voices beneath his window began screeching.

"Egad!" cried Pent, opening the windows. He peered into the courtyard to see Serra, Priscilla, L'Arachel, Ninian, Nino, and Natasha. "It seems to be a bunch of teenage girls. This could be dangerous, Erk."

"COULD be?" the mage asked incredulously as the girls beneath their window broke out into song.

"NOW GIVE US SOME CHOCOLATE PUDDING, NOW GIVE US SOME CHOCOLATE PUDDING, NOW GIVE US SOME CHOCOLATE PUDDING, AND A CUP OF GOOD CHEER!"

Pent shuddered. "Oh, the chocolate craving. It's bad."

"Give those poor girls some chocolate!" Louise shouted as she passed by the study room.

"But we don't have any!" Erk replied desperately. He looked to Pent, his eyes wild with fear. "What do we do now?"

The sage winced. "Our best bet is to tell them we have nothing and hope they go away."

"Alright." Erk leaned out the window and shouted that they had no chocolate, but that only provoked another chorus of

"WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME, WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME, WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME, SO BRING SOME OUT HERE!"

"Oh no!" Erk cried. "They're climbing the walls!"

Sure enough, Serra and L'Arachel were digging their fingernails into the stone walls and making their way up. Erk and Pent hugged each other, sure that this was their last moment and they were both about to die on Christmas…

Until Ephidel popped up on the ground next to the girls in the courtyard, wearing a Santa Suit.

"It's SAAAAANTAAAA!" the girls all squealed.

Erk's eye twitched. "It's…Ephidel…"

"Merry Christmas!" the morph yelled, throwing out random presents and flinging them around. "I have saved the holiday!"

"He's saved US," Pent realized with a sigh of relief.

Erk actually smiled. "You know what? I think…perhaps…this holiday might work out alright after all!"

At least he DID think that until Nils, Amelia, Franz, and Ewan tore through the courtyard and tackled Ephidel.

"He's real!" Amelia cried gleefully. "He's real, he's real!"

"We have the proof!" Franz thundered.

"Wait…" said Ewan suddenly. "What if this isn't the real Santa? What if it's one of the ones they put in malls?"

"…What's a mall?" Franz whispered to Amelia. She shrugged.

"We'll soon find out," Nils declared to Ewan. "We shall unmask you, Santa Claus! Let's see who the man behind the beard is!" So, with a mighty tug, the bard pulled at the fat man's hat and beard.

Both of which came away in his hands.

"The beard…wasn't supposed to come off, was it," Franz guessed sadly.

Nils shook his head, staring dumbly at the costume parts he held, before raising his gaze to Ephidel.

"YOU!" he screamed in shock.

"You didn't see anything!" Ephidel yelled, teleporting away.

"Wow…" Nils mumbled as he got to his feet, clutching the Santa hat and fake beard. "It's…all a lie. Everything they taught us about Christmas is a lie. To be, or not to be? That is the question, whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep, no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and thousand natural shocks—"

"Hey, look!" cried Ewan and Amelia. "Presents!"

"WHERE?" Nils exclaimed, immediately dropping the monologue. He and Franz rushed over to where Ewan, Amelia, and the Chocoholics were digging through the bag of presents Ephidel left behind.

"Well," said Erk finally, "That was certainly…odd…"

"The holidays always pass so quickly," Pent said with a sigh, before going back to his book.


A/N: Hmm…not one of my better chapters. Sorry guys, I've been out of it. (Though it was supposed to be kind of quick—it's just a Short.) But hopefully I'll rebound by the next chapter…anyway, if anyone is wondering how I got the odd chapter name—when I think of "carol", as in the song, my mind goes to "Carroll", as in the rockin' poet…so I tweaked the name of his poem "Jabberwocky" to make it more festive. (Shrugs) Not so original, but…

Oh yes, speaking of writers, I'm sure you all know that part of Nils' monologue is from "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare. And pretty much every girl who read this chapter has related with the Chocoholics from time to time :-P. Well, I guess that's it…please review and have a great end-of-the-year!