"So, what do you think?" Zelda asked, spreading her hands wide to show him her dress.
Roy wasn't quite sure what to think. "Well, the beard is a tad itchy, and the coat is just a little too warm. It also feels a little wet in here? Has this suit been washed?"
"It has."
"Also, I think some of my hair is stuck in the rim of the hat, and–" Roy pulled his coat closer together to keep it from slipping off, "–and all this white stuff is rubbing my skin the wrong way."
"Yes, but what do you think of me?"
"Of you?" Roy pulled his gaze off his own clothes and to Zelda, in an elf costume of all things.
"It's very green," he said.
"And it does not stick out in this setting, which is the most important thing, isn't it?"
Shrugging, Roy said, "I guess so. I thought you were going to hide in the snow."
"I could have," Zelda said, "but people will notice a lump of snow whispering to you. They will not think it strange if Santa Claus has an elf to help him out. You see, the lesson to be learned here is that you must be prepared to do whatever it takes to be in a position to help, no matter how uncomfortable it is."
"Uncomfortable?" Roy inclined his head to the side. "How it in uncomfortable? You look just fine."
"I'm cold," Zelda said with a completely straight face.
"Ah." With this warm coat, Roy had completely forgotten about the cold. And it was the Summit stage, so obviously the conditions were set to match, cold weather included. His face flushed with embarrassment, and he reached over behind the gingerbread house for the spare coat Mario had left back here. "If you're cold, you can wear this."
Zelda smiled that same, brilliant smile she'd always showed him, and she raised a hand to stop him. "I will be fine. I have my own ways of keeping myself warm."
"How so?"
Zelda snapped her fingers. A tiny flame appeared above her hand.
"Oh. That's good."
"I always come prepared. And with that out of the way," she said, and she started pushing him toward the chair in the middle of the set, "I believe it is time we start preparing you."
As Zelda had predicted, the first child appeared at 3:00, fifteen minutes before the exhibit was supposed to open. Roy barely noticed, peeking over the list of words Zelda had given to him, but he made sure to note that the child was there.
Skinny limbs coming off a white shirt, and red-orange... bangs? that also came down the sides of her face like pigtails, Inkling fidgeted with the fence, glancing around nervously behind the closed gate. Briefly, Roy glanced around to see if any of the others were there, and he let out a sigh of relief when they were nowhere to be seen.
It's just one child, he said to himself. I can do this. There's no need to worry about it. If anything goes wrong, I can always ask Zelda for help.
His eyes strayed to the side, where Zelda stood at attention. Her hands stuck to her side and her cheeks glowing from the colorful lights dotting the carpets and the set, she looked like an icy cold carving of perfection, frozen that you didn't dare touch for fear of melting it, but warm enough that anyone looking at her could convince themselves that the rays that she'd stolen were her own.
"Zelda," he whispered from one side of the mouth, "how do I pronounce reindeer? Is it like r-ee-n-deer or r-ay-n-deer?"
"It's rain-deer," Zelda whispered back. Her soft words were easy to miss, but the way they tickled his ear made them crystal clear. "You might want to be more prepared, now. The exhibit is about to open."
"It is?" Roy put his list to the side and looked up. Sure enough, there was a buzz, and the gate clicked open.
How she always knew that, he didn't think he'd ever know.
As Inkling pushed past the fence and skipped toward him, Zelda nudged his side. He looked at her in confusion, to which she replied, "You must welcome her."
Welcome her? Oh, right–
"Ho ho ho! Hello there, little girl!" Roy said, spreading his arms wide. "Have you been a good girl this year?"
Inkling stopped just in front of him, and she frowned. She put a finger to her lip, tapping her foot as she hummed. "Are you okay, Santa? You look kind of different this year."
Roy froze. "W-well so do you! You've grown so much this year, haven't you?"
For a moment, Roy didn't think Inkling would buy it. The way her eyes narrowed and tapped her foot faster said that she was still skeptical, and a bead of sweat rolled down the back of his neck.
In the end, however, she just sighed and looked away. "I have, haven't I?"
Then she threw herself into Roy's lap before he could prepare himself, and Roy grunted from the sudden weight on his chest.
"Now then," he wheezed out, "have you been a good girl this year?"
"I've been very good!" Inkling chirped, and she started swinging her legs back and forth. "My friends have been too. Are you still going to deliver presents to them?"
"I don't see why I shouldn't."
"It's because they don't believe in you. They say you're not real, and that you're just Mister Mario dressed up in a suit. But that's not true, is it?"
What was he supposed to say to that? Was he supposed to lie to her?
Helplessly, Roy exchanged a look with Zelda, but she just motioned for him to take care of it himself. She hadn't put anything in the notes about this. How was he supposed to just make something up in the moment?
"Well..." Roy muttered, trying his best to meet Inkling's hopeful gaze, "You have your reasons for believing in me, don't you? I'm sure they are much the same. Perhaps some years, they didn't get what they wanted."
"I guess so."
"And speaking of that, what do you want for Christmas?"
Apparently, not all children received the memo that they were supposed to come one at a time. When the Villager children arrived, they all piled onto him at once and nearly crushed his legs in the process.
"Please–" he cut off as someone's arm smacked him in the face, "–one at a time please!"
None of them seemed to hear him, not as they all started yelling at each other and trying to push each other off. They all turned to him and tried telling him something, but they kept trying to speak over each other and they got louder and louder until something broke out from the messy conflict.
"Quiet!"
And everyone fell silent. Roy blinked. It took him a moment to realize that it had been his own voice.
"Ah..." He quickly shrank back into his seat and waved at the children frozen on top of him. "I can't give any of you what you want if you don't come one at a time. Can't you all wait your turn?"
The red villager pouted. "But it's my turn, first!"
"No, it's mine!" the pink one said, shoving him off the seat.
"It was your turn first last year!" the dark green one whined. "I never get to go first!"
"That's because no one likes you," the purple one yelled, and he grabbed the dark green one away. The dark green one swatted his arm away, and the purple one tripped, falling straight into the light blue one standing patiently behind him.
"Hey! That hurts!" the light blue villager cried. He shoved back, and oh gods this was another fight brewing, wasn't it?
"Hey!" Roy shouted, and all eyes returned to him. "Why don't we try picking who goes first differently? Something like... something like..." His gaze darted around for anything he could use, and his eyes landed on the bag of candy canes Mario had given him earlier.
"Why don't we pick candy canes and see who gets the shortest?" he said, and he pointed to the bag. He turned to Zelda, and when her eyes met his, he gave her a nod. "Miss Elf, can you pass me the candy canes?"
Zelda inclined her head, before she nodded back. Roy hoped that meant she got what he'd meant, because chances were, all the candy canes in the bag were all the same size.
She grabbed the bag and floated over the snow to pass it over. Roy accepted it with a mumbled thanks. He didn't miss how her hand glowed when she removed it from the bottom, or the thin grey wisp that followed her.
Roy held the bag out and shook it in front of the villager children. With eager smiles, the villagers descended into the bag and plucked out the candy one by one. They quickly huddled together, probably to compare candy canes, and, after a brief deliberation, the yellow villager stepped forward and hopped onto Roy's seat.
"Hey there!" he said in his best gruff voice. "Have you been a good boy this year?"
"I have," the villager mumble. "I've been better than everyone else too."
"No you haven't!" the pink one said.
"I have!" the yellow villager said. "At least I didn't pour cake batter into Miss Samus's armor."
"Yeah! But you still planted a tree in front of Mister Pac Man's door."
The yellow villager gasped. "Santa! She tattletold on me! Can you not give her any presents this year!"
"You tattletold too! You're not getting any presents this year too!"
Roy ducked under their argument. When he raised a hand to interject, they ignored him and kept shouting, and soon enough another brawl emerged out on the snowy set, leaving Roy to palm his face and sigh in frustration.
"Next," he called, staring off into the side, his head leaning up against the back of the chair.
Traffic was slow. Maybe it was only because it was the first day, but not many children had ended up showing. Maybe it was because there were fewer children in the Smash Mall than he'd thought; outside of the children among the Smash Mall fighters, what child would have wanted to come with their parents to shop?
With the exhibit closing soon, however, a steady flow had arrived at the door, which certainly hadn't helped with how tired he was feeling right now. As the last child left through the fence gate, he sat there, wondering how the other Fire Emblem fighters were doing and where they would be having supper when he heard the next child open the gates and step toward him. Sitting a little straighter and trying not to look like he had been here all day, Roy turned to greet him.
The child in question was short and dressed in a green tunic. Little fringes of blond hair peeked out of from under his hat, and when Roy looked a little closer, he could have sworn he looked like a younger version of someone he had fought before. He'd fought this child too, of course, but for some reason, this child's appearance was offputting him now of all times.
What was his name again? Link? As in, Zelda's boyfriend? Roy glanced over to her, but she didn't seem to notice, her attention focused on something else entirely.
"Hey there," he said, doing his best to smile warmly like Zelda's. "Have you been a good boy this year?"
The child, Young Link, the name occurred to him suddenly, stared at him for an entire minute, his eyes narrowed, before he said, "Are you real?"
Roy leaned away, and an uneasy frown crossed his face. The smile returned to his face quickly, however, and he asked, "Of course I'm real. What makes you say that?"
"My friend says that you're not real. He told me he'd give me a hundred bucks if I can prove that you're not real."
"O-oh. That..." Roy glanced over to Zelda for help, but her eyes were narrowed, and a frown had set on her face. He quietly followed her gaze, and just managed to see the top of a red hat poking out from behind a pile of snow.
Ness? What was he doing here? Was this because they had made a mess in his store? They'd apologized for that, surely.
"Santa? Santa?"
Young Link's voice snapped him back to the present, and he turned to look back at him. "I'm so sorry, child," he said, "What did you say you wanted for Christmas?"
Young Link scowled. On an adult, it might have looked a little more intimidating, as was probably his intent, but on a child, it just looked like he was impatient. "I want to pet Rudolph."
"Rudolph?" Was he supposed to know who that was? Was it Santa's pet? Was Santa supposed to have a pet? Oh gods, he should have gone to Duck Hunt's Pet Shop and bought a pet dog for this.
"Yes. He pulls your sleigh. Where are your reindeer?"
Oh. Was that it? Roy let out a tiny sigh of relief. Zelda had told him that Santa's sleigh was, supposedly, pulled by a team of flying reindeer, and that was all the child wanted to see him?
"I'm sorry, but my reendeer are–"
"That's not how you say it."
Roy blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"You pronounced it wrong. It's not rEEn deer."
"Oh. Well, my riendeer–"
"That's not how you say it either. You're saying it all wrong. If you're really Santa, then why can't you say it right?"
"Ah... well..." Roy's smile wavered, and he looked away. What was he supposed to say to that?
"I'm so sorry," Zelda suddenly stepped in, and she placed a hand on Roy's shoulder. "Santa is a little tired today. He hasn't slept in so long because he's been up all night making toys for you all. Isn't that right, Santa?"
Roy could have fallen to his knees and thanked her right there. His shoulders dropped, and through the very long and very deserved sigh of relief, he said, "Yes, that is right."
"Santa is very old, you see. He forgets things like that," Zelda continued. "In fact, it's almost time for Santa's nap."
"Yes, that is right," Roy said again, this time with a little less enthusiasm.
It did, however, seem to work, on Young Link, as the boy looked a lot less suspicious of him. He hummed and pressed a finger to his lips, before he said, "Okay. I'll let you sleep a bit more, Santa!" and he skipped back out of the front gate.
As soon as he had left earshot, and Ness had scampered after him, Roy turned to Zelda. "Did you have to make me sound so old and decrepit? I'm only around the age of twenty."
Shrugging, Zelda said, "My apologies. It was neither the most graceful excuse, nor the most kind, but it achieved its intended result. Had I taken longer to think, it might not have been as easy to fix."
"Yes, I suppose so." Roy melted back into his chair and sighed. "Thank you for that. Is there any way I can repay you?"
"There is no need. As your teacher, it was my responsibility to keep you out of trouble."
Roy hummed. "That may be so, but I still feel as if I owe you a debt. I would still like to repay you, even if it is merely out of obligation."
"Then there is no harm in it, is there? I will say, kindness is not something that you do out of obligation. If you wish to do a truly kind act, it must come from the heart."
"Oh. I'm sorry for offering then."
"I did not say that I was rejecting it, would I? I was merely trying to teach you a lesson." Zelda huffed. "Perhaps this whole teaching thing is harder than I'd thought."
"No, no. It's fine, I assure you." Thinking quickly of something to change the topic with, Roy said, "You mentioned that you needed to find somewhere to bring your boyfriend to? I could help with that."
"You could?" Zelda's face lit up, her cheeks painted a rosy hue by the cold. "I would greatly appreciate it. Do you have anywhere in mind?"
"I mean... not right now, but perhaps tomorrow." Roy slammed a fist into his hand. "Yes, tomorrow. I have to meet up with the other Fire Emblem fighters tomorrow, but perhaps tomorrow morning. Would that work for you?"
"It most certainly will. I look forward to it!"
I do too, Roy thought as they stepped off the stage and went their separate ways. You're such a wise person, and I want to learn everything I can from you. Maybe someday, I'll be as good of a person as you.
The more I think about this chapter, the more I think it should have been part of the last chapter. That was the original plan, and I cut it for the sake of time, but then I didn't cut this part for time because I had to let it sit for an extra day, so there's that. Writing chapters is a lot like walking a dog; sometimes, they just run away from you and you end up having to spend way too long trying to reel it back in, and other times they just don't want to go anywhere and you have to drag out every word until you finish.
With Christmas break winding down, I think I'll have to can it with the daily uploads. My Christmas break was exceedingly short, and while I didn't get as much out of the story as I would have liked, I'm still glad to have started it, since it's let me start off the year on a pretty good note, and with school work piling on, it's going to be a little challenging, trying to cram in those 2 hours I need to write this out on top of all the homework. Already my drive has started to wane, though that could just be because of other things, but I'll have to settle back into something of a more weekly upload schedule for now.
Thanks to all of you who have read so far. It may be a while until I update again, but until then, remember to take care of yourselves out there because every single one of you is special. Stay safe out there, and have a happy new year!
