Poor Old Saint Nick
Christmas began to show up everywhere and everyone was filled with the spirit of good will and joy towards others. Well almost everyone. Suki was working on it though. She was stuffing the guys full of Christmas treats, forcing them to watch as many Christmas specials as possible and heaping them with affection. Out of desperation Trowa, Heero and Wufei did their best to pretend that they had the Christmas spirit just to make her lay off. That day, a week before Christmas found everyone standing on a city sidewalk, freezing their butts off while they waited for the Santa Claus parade to begin.
"I can't believe we let them talk us into this." Wufei grumbled as he looked over at Trowa who was looking equally uncomfortable with their surroundings. "Why did we let them talk us into this?"
"Because Suki promised to make her chocolate caramel cake again if we came." Heero pointed out dryly from Wufei's other side. Why were there so many people around? Didn't they have nice, cozy homes they could be in instead of freezing their asses off outside? He was here because his stomach had demanded it. What was their excuses?
"Quit complaining, you guys. It'll be fun." Quatre said as he sent the three downers a dark look. "It wouldn't kill you to enjoy something normal you know. Just because there won't be any explosions or bloodshed does not mean it's going to be boring."
"What could possibly be interesting about standing around while people drive by in horribly gaudy floats with hideously dressed people?" Cat demanded to know from her spot in Anna's arms. "And where did Suki go anyway? She said she would be right back."
"Maybe she got lost in the crowd. I'll go find her." Duo offered since he knew Quatre had to stay to keep their spot and the others wouldn't want to go. Heading off he soon returned with Suki, both loaded down with things.
)
"We got hot pretzels and apple cider!" Suki beamed as they carefully made their way over since it was more then a little crowded as the time for the parade drew near. "I ran into the cart guy and was just trying to figure out how I was gonna get all this stuff over when Duo came to my rescue." Suki said with an extra beaming smile in Duo's direction.
Everything getting passed out the boys soon found themselves holding large pretzels and delicious apple cider, now feeling just a little bad for bitching about coming. "Thanks, Suki." Heero said as he took his, getting a huge smile in return since normally he never thanked her for anything. After all he didn't want to encourage her.
"You guys are very, very welcome." Suki said, her eyes all bright and shiny as she bounced slightly, eager as a child on Christmas Eve. She loved parades. She loved Christmas and she loved being around Heero. This was shaping up to be one of the bestest days ever. "Is it going to start soon? Is it?"
"It should be coming any time now." Quatre said with a smile, her joy contagious. He'd never seen someone who loved life as much as Suki did.
"Where's my pretzel?" Cat wanted to know with a pout, the smell of the warm bread and spicy apples driving her nuts. She wanted some too damn it.
"You can't have one, silly. I can't imagine it would be good for cats and besides, it would make you thirsty and this cider is too hot for you to handle." Suki said even as she ripped a piece off of hers and held it out to Cat until her friend had finished it off. "Now be good and don't run off. We'd never find you with all these people around."
"And don't attack Santa this year, okay?" Anna added as she sent Cat a warning look.
"She's attacked Santa before?" Quatre said with a weary look in Cat's direction, getting a dirty one in return. Good God but had she attacked some poor Santa while she was in human form? The terrible thing was, he could believe she'd do it too.
)
"I was only seven for Christ sakes. Give me a break, will ya?" Cat said with a hiss, not at all pleased with this line of conversation. "I'd just found out he wasn't real and I didn't take it so well."
"Didn't take it so well?" Suki repeated as she sent Cat a what are you talking about look. "You call that not taking it so well? I call it assault and battery."
"Hey, he lived, didn't he?" Cat said sulkily, really not liking this at all. She'd been traumatized God damn it. Everyone had been lying to her, telling her the stupid jolly old elf existed. She'd had every right to be just a little upset when she found out that none of it was true.
"What did you do to Santa?" Duo wanted to know, his eyes wide as he stared at the idea of anyone harming a hair on Santa Claus's jolly head. Especially a kid.
"I didn't want to go, God damn it. My dad had left me with our neighbor at the time since he was away on duty. The stupid idiot got it into her head that we should go shopping and that her stupid son and I had to go see Santa. I told her I didn't want to see him, I told her I didn't want to sit on his lap. But did she listen to me? Hell no. She plunked me right down on that coffee high son of a bitch who started ho hoing and asking what I wanted from Santa." Cat snarled, getting all worked up at the memory of that Christmas of long ago. "And I tried to stay cool. I tried to tell him I didn't want to be on his lap, that I didn't want any of his friggin candy canes or presents. That my dad would get me whatever I wanted and I didn't need anything from him. But no, just like the stupid neighbor he wouldn't listen to me. I was just some stupid kid after all. So there he is, Mr. Serious Coffee Breath, grinning maniacally and then he shoves a candy cane in my face and tells me I can't have it till I tell him what I want. So I told him I wanted him to be blown into many, unidentifiable pieces. Then I took that candy cane and shoved it down his friggin throat. See how he likes it."
"Dear God." Quatre whispered, staring at Cat with a mixture of horror and fascination. "Then what happened?"
"Well he was choking on the damn thing so one of the equally messed in the head elves had to pound it out of him and my neighbor got me the hell out of there and told my dad to put me in therapy." Cat said with a shrug of her furry shoulders. "Of course I explained to him that it was simply self defense but I was still grounded for a week. I didn't get half the things I wanted on my Christmas list either but I think that was because half of them required a special license to purchase, much less operate. And hey, the parade is starting."
)
"See. That wasn't so bad, now was it?" Suki said as she skipped along on the way back to the cars, holding onto Heero's hand in a really strong grip so that he would have had to work at it to shake her loose. In other words he was scolding but tolerating. "Those were some pretty awesome floats. Maybe we can all come back next year. Wasn't it great, Anna?"
"It was pretty good." Anna agreed, feeling more then a little idiotic carrying around a cat wrapped up like a baby in a blanket.
"Hey Anna, you could play Mary right now." Duo said with a chuckle, reading Anna's face easily enough.
"You do realize that that would make Cat your all powerful savior and the daughter of God." Wufei pointed out dryly, the idea of Cat having that kind of power not only frightening but downright bone chilling.
"Now that...is a truly terrifying thought." Duo said slowly with a mock shudder though the idea was really pretty terrifying. She would not be a merciful and compassionate dictator. "I can see her causing the end of the world real easy."
"Stop, you're making be blush." Cat said with a chuckle, the idea an appealing one.
"Hey, Cat. If you tried to kill that Santa when you found out he wasn't real..what did you do about the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny?" Suki asked suddenly, the question popping into her head. "Or did your dad not tell you about them?"
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"Well for the Easter Bunny...I caught my dad hiding my eggs when I was around eight and he said he was doing it because he'd accidentally shot the guy the year before thinking it was an intruder. After the whole Santa Claus thing he figured it was best I didn't know the truth about the rabbit just yet." Cat said with a chuckle, the memory a far better one then the Santa Claus incident. "As for the tooth fairy he always said she never came because she knew if she tried I'd catch her and take all her money. My dad would always take me out for dinner or something though, when he had the time. I kept all my lost teeth in an old pickle jar until I was about ten and sold them to some little kids to use."
"You sold your baby teeth?" Trowa said not sure whether he was shocked at the shooting of the Easter Bunny or impressed by her resourcefulness in selling the teeth. He'd never been visited by the rabbit and his teeth had gone into the garbage or thrown somewhere else. "Well I suppose that makes more sense then throwing them away."
"Hell yeah, made a tidy little profit off it too." Cat said with a pleased look on her furry face.
"You're so weird." Suki said with a shake of her head, wondering if her friend's antics would ever stop surprising her. She really doubted it.
"As I recall you and Anna tried to capture Santa when you were little." Cat pointed out dryly.
"Yeah but most kids who grow up with the story of Saint Nick try to stay up and meet him at least once. Not many try to kill him with one of his own candy canes." Anna pointed out just as dryly. "And when we did capture our father we didn't try to kill him either."
"You didn't need to seeing as you knocked the poor guy unconscious."
)
"You knocked your dad out thinking he was Santa?" Duo wanted to know, not quite trusting Cat's word since it was Cat after all.
"Well you see we set a trap and when it was sprung Daddy was so surprised he fell backwards and whacked his head on the wall and the tree." Suki said with a giggle, the memory a good one. "He was dressed as Santa too so at first we thought we'd killed Santa Claus. Our bawling had mom rushing in and it was hard to say what surprised her more. Daddy laying on the floor with the tree on top of him or us screaming that we were going to hell because we'd killed Santa at the top of our lungs."
"You were screaming, I was simply yelling for mom." Anna corrected though that wasn't exactly the whole truth. She just preferred to remember it her way.
"You were too screaming." Suki shot back with a smirk, knowing how much her sister hated to be reminded of anything even remotely embarrassing that she'd ever done. "Luckily Daddy was okay and forgave us for knocking him out since we were upset enough at the idea that there wasn't a real Santa Claus. Of course Mom put it that Santa is more the spirit of Christmas then an actual person who rides around in a sleigh."
)
"My older sister Alena popped the bubble for me when I was about six or seven." Quatre said with a knowing look. "But by then I'd pretty much given up on the big guy anyway since I never got the one thing I wanted most."
"What was that?" Heero wanted to know, wondering what on earth the Winner family couldn't afford to buy Quatre.
"My mother." Quatre said with a shrug before looking over at Wufei. "What about you, Wufei?" Wufei was the only one other then himself that had lived in anything resembling a family environment.
"We didn't have a Santa Claus or his equivalent." Wufei said with a shrug of his own, not really of the opinion that he'd missed out overly. Over all it sounded like more trouble then it was worth in the grand scheme of things. "Chinese New Year has always been a big thing though and the adults would give us children small gifts and money."
"Father Maxwell and the nuns would play Santa at the church for us kids but since we were all orphans we weren't really fooled. Not that we were going to say that and risk not getting presents from the guy." Duo said with a chuckle, remembering those days with a sad fondness touched with regret. He wished he could go back and tell his younger self so many things, to say so many things to the Father and the sisters there. Maybe someday he'd get to do the latter though.
)
The talk centering on Christmas most of the way to the car and they were half way home before Quatre finally broke after Cat had mangled the latest Christmas carol to come over the radio. "CAT! I swear if you can't sing along with the Christmas carols properly then you aren't allowed to sing at all."
"Well I think her versions are sorta funny." Duo said with a chuckle, stilling chuckling over her rendition of Santa Baby. "Her version of Santa Asshole was rather...imaginative."
"I'm driving and that means I'm in control so Cat behave or you're going into the trunk. You know I will and Quatre sure as hell can't stop me." Heero warned, hoping to avoid a big argument even though he secretly found Cat's improvised lyrics much more amusing then the original ones.
"You guys suck." Cat pouted from Suki's lap, not at all pleased to have her entertainment interrupted. Her lyrics were so much better then that sappy, repetitive crap they were playing. If she had to listen to them without making fun of them she was going to go insane. Then they'd wish they'd let her sing them her way.
"So you love to say." Duo said as he patted her head, not surprised when she shot him a dark look. "And hey, when you get home I can lock you in some room with a radio. You can mangle the carols to your heart's content until you lose your voice."
"If it weren't so bloody cold out I'd go hunt a mouse and leave it's carcass in your bed for a Christmas present."
"EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! CAT!"
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"I wouldn't put one in your bed, Suk so quit looking at me like that." Cat said reasonably, her ears ringing a little from Suki's rather loud opinion of her idea.
"The poor little Mickey Mouse." Suki said with a sad look on her face as she looked down at Cat with a how can you say that look. "How could you be so mean? That poor mouse wouldn't have done anything to deserve that."
"Sometimes I wonder about you, Suki. I really do."
Before he could intervene Quatre's cell phone went off and picking it up Quatre put it to his ear and exchanged a few words with whoever the caller was before hanging up. "Heero, change of direction. We've been ordered to report to Preventers as of now. Lady Une didn't say what it was about but..she sounded like she was barely holding it together."
Everyone going quiet both vehicles broke speed limits getting to Preventers and opting to stay Suki, Anna and Cat were left in a waiting room to wait for a report on what was going on. It was two hours before Duo came down to tell them to go home, looking like he'd aged twenty years in the couple hours since he'd been laughing at Cat's lyrics.
)
"It's bad." Anna said simply as she and Suki got to their feet, Cat in Anna's arms.
"The project Quatre was working on with the others...well it was an even bigger deal then we thought. Some people..an organization don't want it going through. They've hired a terrorist group called Venom to kidnap Maia, two of Quatre's sisters and three other young relations to other members of the project."
"Venom? They only get involved if there's serious money to gain. Your opponents must have connects with them or a lot of money of their own." Anna said grimly, thinking it was entirely possible the hostages were already dead. It wouldn't be like Venom to leave them alive once they were assured of no interruptions to avoid future problems. "Are you sure they have them all already? That Venom really has them? Not another group trying to hide their involvement? Venom usually doesn't hire out."
"We've confirmed that they have the girls and that as yet they're still alive or appear to be. As to the terrorist group we've tangled with them enough times that I wouldn't be surprised it they volunteered for this. They're asking for Quatre and the other businessmen involved to turn ownership of all their assets to the organization plus other things from other members of the group including the end of Preventers. If the orders aren't followed by Christmas Eve..then on Christmas Day they're all going to find body parts of loved ones under the tree."