A/N: Hello, boys and girls. Merry Christmahanaquanzica Day.
Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!. Or Santa. Which is probably a good thing.
Santa Claus sometimes wondered why he'd ever taken this job in the first place.
It had its benefits, but really. Children's smiles and bringing joy to the world— and free cookies, ccouldn't forget those—were nice, of course, but sometimes, the rest of it was just too darn much.
Like the list. Oh, how he hated the list. He couldn't stand marking people down as "naughty." Some people did terrible, horrible things, but others weren't so bad, really, and having to lump the millions and billions of people and the things they did and their reasons for doing them into two incredibly broad categories like "naughty" and "nice" was beyond difficult. It was like he was on jury duty all year long. And he tried to curve things as much as he could, but that wasn't always easy when you were having such a hard time trying to find something good to say about someone.
Santa was a firm believer that everyone was good at heart, but honestly. There had to be a limit.
Kidnapping Santa Claus definitely pushed that limit.
Yep. Kidnapping Santa.
Kids these days.
"I'll ask you again," perpetrator number one said. Santa recognized him. Creepy spirit who lived in that ring. He'd asked for a set of kitchen knives for Christmas last year. Santa had brought him spoons.
What? They wouldn't let him take knives past customs. International airport security was a horror.
"Ask me what?" Santa said tiredly. Oh, he was going to be so behind schedule. Mrs. Claus was going to kill him.
"Where is your base of operations?"
"It's the North Pole, you moron," said Marik, Bakura's partner in crime. "Duh."
"Shut up and let me do this."
Santa was fairly certain that Marik had his own filing cabinet in the records room. It had yellow CAUTION tape wrapped around it.
"Boys," Santa said, "can we get this over with? I still have three billion houses to visit, you know."
Marik and Bakura ignored him in favor of starting an argument over the benefits of tying him to the Christmas tree.
Santa sighed and reached for the cookies. It was going to be a long night.