Author's Note: Okay, lol, not necessarily some of my best work, but for this little section I got a big case of writer's block, yet tried to push on through it. The "fun stuff" with Scott taking over as Santa will be happening soon, so then Bernard won't be miserable... all of the time, at least. :-) Enjoy!

December 24th. Christmas Eve. One of the few nights a year when Chelsea was in the workshop at the same time as the main worker elves. There was an extreme amount of hustle and bustle going on, and the female elf was having a hard time keeping everything in order as everyone prepared for Santa Claus to take off in his sleigh to deliver toys to the children of the world. Everything was going to be ready on time... at least, everyone hoped it would be... and only a few last minute things, such as wrapping and actually putting the presents in to Santa's bag, were left to be done.

"Silver bells! Why can't these children at least try to clean up after themselves?" Chelsea asked out loud, annoyance showing in her voice. For no reason in particular, and on Christmas Eve of all days, the brunette elf had suddenly been put in to a bad mood. All of her peers around and for some reason, Chelsea was barely keeping it together.

"All right, guys, just fifteen minutes left! Lets get this stuff in the sleigh and ready to go," someone shouted from the top of the stairs, almost as if they were in an authoritative position. Not that they really had anything to worry about, as the last of the presents were being loaded up as the words were spoken, giving them a reason to sigh as if to release all of the pressure that had been building up to this moment.

If she had really been paying attention, Chelsea would not have had to look up to see who the voice belonged to, but as she had been slightly more preoccupied with getting every little bit of spare ribbon picked up off of the floor, she hadn't had time to recognize it. As she went over to a large, festively decorated trash container so that she could be rid of the trash she was carrying, the relatively old elf looked up to see who had made the announcement.

Bernard. She really, really should have known that, considering he was her superior and everything, but it had been so long since she had really been forced to be around him that she occasionally forgot he was even around. That wasn't really much of an excuse, though... Chelsea still had to report to Bernard every once in awhile, considering that he didn't usually stay around once the clean-up crew went through the workshop. He trusted them to do whatever it was they did and then dealt with the actual making of the toys, wrapping, and every other "important" job that you would expect at the North Pole.

"Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea! D'ya wanna come with me t' watch Santa take off?!" Trisha asked, her voice and everything about her absolutely bubbling over with excitement.

"No, that's all right, Trisha," Chelsea replied as warmly as she could, considering the mood she had somehow put herself in. "You go on ahead and I'll try to get caught up on the cleaning, if I can..."

"Aw... come on! It'll be fun, I promise," Trisha begged, hoping that the older elf would change her mind.

"Well..." Chelsea hesitated. She really wasn't in much of a mood to watch Santa depart. It wasn't just the fact that she was in a bad mood or that she had heard that the current Santa Claus was a complete jerk, but it had just never seemed like a big deal to her. Then again, after she had seen 1,544 of the take-offs, they all started to look the same, and somehow the 1,545 take-off just wasn't appealing to her in any meaning of the word.

"All right," she finally consented. It couldn't hurt to go and watch, right? Besides, it would temporarily pacify Trisha, which meant that the younger elf might be able to remain focused on the task at hand, cleaning up, once they got back.

"Yay!" Trisha exclaimed with excitement before grabbing hold of Chelsea's wrist and pulling her towards the area where the reindeer were waiting to take off. "Then we can go t' the party an' everythin'!"

Oh goodness... the party. How could she have forgotten about the party? Christmas knew, she had to clean up after the huge mess every year, how could she have completely forgotten about the thing? Maybe in her current state she just wasn't ready to remember all of the things that had made up all of her years at the North Pole. Simple things seemed to be forgotten today, and the Christmas part had been no exception.

In all honesty, Chelsea almost intended to just go back to her little home and skip the thing entirely. No one would notice if one little sanitation elf was missing, right? Maybe Trisha would, but with all of the merriment even she wouldn't care for too long that her friend had, for some reason, decided to opt out of the festivities. Parties just never had been Chelsea's favorite thing, unlike all of the other elves... sometimes the poor girl wondered if she was really even an elf, or if this was all some cruel joke that had been played on her, putting her around all of this never-ending happiness.

"Isn't that great, Chels?!" Trisha asked with excitement, trying to get a response from Chelsea to a statement she had never even heard.

"Huh? What?" Chelsea asked, snapping out of her daze.

"I said that one of the other elves told me that it's official now: I gets t' be makin' toys for next Christmas 'stead of workin' on the clean-up crew!" Trisha giggled, finally releasing her grip on her friend's wrist as they made it to the sleigh's 'launch pad'.

"Oh... yeah, that's fantastic, Trisha!" Chelsea said with a smile. "I'm sure you'll do a great job."

"I hope so..." Trisha replied, then got a bit of a pitying look on her face. "Don't worry, Chels... you'll make it t' the main line someday!"

Chelsea shrugged, not wanting to show her slight disappointment about losing yet another friend to the workshop while she continued to be stuck as a janitor. "Yeah, I know..."

"Is everything ready, Bernard?" Santa asked as he stood in front of the mirror in his office, tying his sash and other such things. Just a few last minute wardrobe adjustments before taking off in his sleigh. Bernard had just come back from making an announcement to the elves, informing them that they had to have everything ready and in the sleigh within the next fifteen minutes.

"Yes, sir... it should be soon, at least," Bernard replied, knowing that he probably shouldn't have added on the last part which cast a hint of doubt over whether things would be ready or not, even though there really wasn't any reason at all to worry. The elves had never messed up before, why would they now?

"You know, Bernard, I'm not really sure you're cut out for this head elf job," Santa informed the much older, yet much younger looking man. "These elves have been slacking off all year, even today, and yet you don't seem to care at all that things just aren't getting done like they should be."

"Well, I..." Bernard stammered, surprised at being called on something like this. The other Santa he had worked under had never questioned his ability to be a leader, and this guy didn't even seem to know what he was talking about.

"With that wrapping paper incident, you should have been all over that before it even became a problem," Santa went on to explain, though Bernard still wasn't really understanding where this mini-lecture was going.

"I did the best I could, and it didn't even cause that much of a problem," Bernard barely explained, trying to figure out where this speech had come from.

"Well, the best that you could do wasn't good enough, obviously, or it never would have happened," the legendary Christmas figure told him as he headed towards the door so that he could get to the sleigh with a few minutes to spare. It would have looked incredibly bad for him if he made such a big deal about things being on time and he couldn't even be where he needed to be on one night out of the entire year.

"I... I don't think I understand where this is going," Bernard said, looking and feeling quite confused by this point.

The bearded man gave an exasperated sigh just as he was about to leave the room. "When I get back, I'm finding a replacement for you, Bernard. There has to be another elf in that workshop who knows how to get things done. Maybe that Curtis boy... he's a lot younger, but a lot smarter, too... I don't know, I'll worry about it once I get back."

Without another word, Santa left the room, leaving a stunned Bernard to flop down on a red, cushiony chair. It went without saying that he was more than a bit stunned by this news, considering that he had never realized that there was any sort of problem with the way he ran things at the North Pole. Even if he wasn't really the most cheerful elf ever to hold his current position, though that was quite easily attributed to the fact that the current Santa wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine himself, Bernard had always gotten the job done. To his knowledge, none of the other elves had ever complained about anything he did, and... well, this just wasn't fair!

But what was he going to do about it? Whenever someone became Santa, they were officially Bernard's boss, and whatever they said immediately became the law. No if's, and's, or but's about it. How could he just sit by and let this happen, though? Was he just going to sit by and watch as his position as Arch Elf slipped through his finger tips? In a word... yes. In more than a word... most definitely. There was nothing he could do about it, so why try to fight it? It wouldn't help his ability to regain the position later on, if the thought came up in the mind of one of the more... clear-minded Santas.

After taking a deep breath, the curly-haired elf stood up and straightened out his clothing. If he was going to be removed from his position as head elf, he was going to do it with dignity, and that meant he was going to go out there and deal with the rest of the elves as if nothing had happened. They were going to get the Christmas party underway, without waiting for Santa to get back, which despite the general nice, friendly nature of the elves, everyone was in agreement that the more of the party they could get done without the current Santa there, the better.

Not that it was going to be a party of any real proportions this year. The elves hadn't discussed it as a group, but Bernard had spoken with a few of the elves closer to him in rank and they had decided not to do anything big or too exciting. Unbeknownst to the others, the party was going to be over long before Santa got back so that they didn't have to deal with his shouting and generally bad temperament.

Bernard walked out of the room just in time to see the other elves filtering back in to the workshop from the area where Santa had taken off in his sleigh. Normally, he would have been there to wish Santa well and send him on his way, but the thought just hadn't occurred to Bernard this time around. The only thought that passed through the dark-haired elf's mind was to somehow sabotage the sleigh in the hopes that it would crash, and... well, there had to be other men in the world who would believe enough to take on the role of Santa Claus.

When those thoughts passed through his head, Bernard almost felt the urge to yell at himself over the things he had been thinking. He was an elf, for Christmas's sake! He was supposed to be cheerful, and dreaming of anything that would ruin the Christmas of millions of children everywhere just wasn't supposed to happen. The Arch Elf felt bad, he really did, but there was only so much someone could be asked to take, and for once in his relatively long life, he had reached that limit.

"All right, guys, lets get this place cleaned up a bit and then we'll get the party underway!" He informed the elves, receiving a loud cheer as a response. Bernard forced a smile, though forced or not it was one of the few happy expressions anyone had seen on his face in quite some time, knowing that he probably wouldn't have received half of the reply if they knew how uneventful this party was going to be.