Animal Crossing

The Jingle Express

Prologue

(Laina, Mrs. Jingle, Joy, Noel, Jangle and his Shadow Dogs, Karangle, Bangle, Durangle, Narangle, and Fandangle are © me, but Laina's player is Animal Crossing. All other characters are © Nintendo. )

It was Christmas Eve and every animal town was sprucing up to make their homes and themselves to look the part. There were holiday parties and banquets going on in homes, filled with chatty friends who feasted on the light snacks and sipped on champagne and sodas until the Christmas dinner was served.

Children played indoor games, mostly video games, or played outside and had snowball fights or built igloos and snowmen. They were especially excited about the arrival of Jingle, the black-nosed reindeer with the star-eyed glint in his eyes and the Santa Claus of all the animal towns. They had been good (or tried to be) all year so that Jingle could slip down their chimney and leave sweet treats in their stockings and well-deserved gifts under their tree.

As every animal town was busy, way up in the Polar Powder Station, Jingle and his helpers were their busiest.

Candy cane fences encircled Jingle's house, his workshop, and his small train station. Multicolored firefoxes, dressed in green shirts, red overalls, and galoshes, were running from the workshop and to the train station and back again

The workshop looked like a big barn house painted all red with green borders. Inside, the firefox helpers sat a long table and built toys for the billion of good boy and girl animals in every animal town. They hammered nails into colorful wood pieces to make toy cars and trains and doll furniture, pushed stuffing into dolls and stuffed animals and dressed them in bold bowties and light pastel dresses, and hot glued and snapped computer chips and small wires into NES systems and games.

When they completed their toy, they placed it on it a moving conveyor belt and it was taken inside a machine to check to see if it was ready to be shipped to its new owner. Defect toys were pushed out into a machine and out into a box and it had to be repaired or rebuilt.

Perfect toys were rolled out and fell in open white gift boxes. Near the end the exiting belt were helpers to check the gifts. They looked in it to see what kind of toy it was and who it would go to, then they placed a lid on it, wrapped it up in a red ribbon, and let it roll all the way to the end and into velvet white sacks.

When the sacks were full, more helpers picked up the heavy sack and ran outside with it while those who would rather stay warm put another sack under the conveyor belt. Helpers ran through the snow under the mid-afternoon sky with the sack and ran to Jingle's personal train station.

It was a small train station where Mrs. Jingle would sit inside on a couch by a warm fireplace and wait worriedly, looking out the fogged up single pane windows, for her husband, who would sometimes return home late. Sometimes, she'd wait for hours and wouldn't return to the house to grab a bite to eat so a small kitchen was installed to warm up microwavable small chocolate cakes and gingerbread cookies and mugs of hot cocoa.

Instead of a special sled pulled by 8 tiny reindeer, Jingle drove a magical train. It was painted red with white cotton frills just like Jingle's red suit. The locomotive was like an RV; it had the driving controls in the front and in the rear was a small cabin with all the comforts of home. Behind the locomotive were small car holding a huge pile of coal: the train's fuel supply and behind that was a long line of train cars, shaped like sleds, full of sacks of toys for the animal children. Jingle's helpers loaded sacks after sacks of gifts into the cars and sometimes had to attach more cars to load more sacks.

Not too far away from the train station and the workshop, right across an old arch bridge, was the home of the famous reindeer himself. He was in his study, checking his list again and watching through his telescope that allowed him to watch the children all around the world to see if they were behaving as he finished his hot cocoa

"Jingle, you must have looked over your good list at leas one thousand times," his wife, Mrs. Jingle, walked in with a tray of cookies and another hot mug of cocoa, taking away the empty mug.

"I'm just double checking on the children, dear." Jingle said after writing a name on the list and peeked in the telescope again, "Checking to see if they're being good for me to come and bring their gifts."

Mrs. Jingle smiled, giving her husband a kiss on the cheek, "I'm sure they're being extra good for you,

Jingle. I'll go and prepare a little dinner for you. Would you like me to add anything?"

The reindeer stared up at his wife with a cute, innocent grin, "Can you give me more of your delicious cookies, please?"

His wife laughed and nodded, but before she could get out the door, two of Jingle's helpers, Joy and Noel, a green and a pink firefox twins, ran in looking panicky.

"Jingle, something's coming this way." Joy squeaked.

Noel nodded, "And it's an uncomfortable presence."

"What do you mean, you two?" Jingle was confused until he felt a strong feeling in his gut. He told his wife to stay in the study as he slipped on his coat and followed the twins outside.

Jingle ran halfway from his porch and gasped as he looked up at the sky. In the distance, the whole sky was becoming pitch black, but it didn't look like rain or thunder clouds. Everyone working in the Polar Powder

Station stopped what they were doing and looked up at the oncoming darkness.

Some became afraid and ran into the workshop. The strange blackness came closer and closer and it even blocked out the sun, blocking the sunrays and making the whole area dark as if were a stormy night, and a cold wind blew over Jingle and his home, making him very cold although he was wrapped in his heavy red coat. Jingle squinted his eyes and noticed that the simmering clouds above looked like an army of evil, black canines with red eyes and glimmering fangs. They dived down toward the ground, barking viciously, at the helpers, scattering them everywhere. They pounced and clawed at them and ran over dropped gifts, crushing them under their powerful paws.

Before Jingle could do anything, he found himself surrounded by the demon dogs. They bared their fangs at him and barked loudly, making him too afraid to try to escape.

He looked up to the sky again when he heard a dark, familiar chuckle and watched as a large black cloud slowly lowered down to him. Sitting on the cloud and probably the one responsible for all this mess, was a reindeer, just like Jingle, but one of his antlers were upside-down and the other one looked like it was rotting. He wore Jingle's suit, but instead of the joyful red and white, it wore solid black. The almost identical reindeer was accompanied by a female reindeer dressed in a light-blue and white thick-furred Eskimo parka coat and her antlers were encased in crystal ice with icicles hanging on the underside of them. High-pitched, impish giggles came from behind both of them and four smaller versions peered from behind him, snickering almost evilly.

The look-alike reindeer smirked at Jingle with no sign of light in his eyes, "...hello, little brother."