Madoka
Christmas was Madoka's favourite season. And yes, it was a season in its own right. Everything felt different – people were a bit brighter, the air was a bit crisper, everything felt lighter than the dismal, dreary days of January and February before spring really arrived.
It always started the same way for her – a stack of blank cards on her workbench, ready to be written up and sent all across the world to all of her friends.
Some of them she had to make sure she did early, in order for them to arrive before her Jewish friends had finished celebrating Hanukkah. In fact, most of the cards were for school friends who had moved away from Metal City since finishing, and so she rarely saw them. It was a chance to catch up with what everyone was doing (she was far too busy to have any kind of social media life).
But the cards she always enjoyed writing the most were the ones to her friends around the globe who had come into her life through beyblade, though actually getting the cards to said friends was often difficult at best and outright impossible at worst.
Madoka leaned back in her chair and mentally ticked off the list of bladers for whom she had no address at all. Gingka hadn't been seen in nearly four years, and neither had Kyouya. No-one knew the whereabouts of Yuu either, which was somewhat concerning as he hadn't actually said what he was doing before he vanished. Cards to Bao and Aguma were hopeless – asking the Chinese post to find "The Winter Fortress, Somewhere In The Mountains" was never going to get anywhere, and whilst Da Shan was willing to take emergency messages over to them like "hey so someone's trying to destroy the world again can we have Aguma back", forwarding Christmas cards seemed a little bit pedestrian. So Madoka didn't write to them at all.
Julian Konzern and his team didn't exactly give out their home addresses to many people, but at least once she was friendly enough to warrant finding out this information the post was pretty reliable. Their cards were written in careful English, with many checks on the spellings and the grammar before she sealed the envelope. They tended to only have a short greeting and a hope to see the Europeans in the coming year.
Masamune always forgot to update his home address with the WBBA, and so Madoka just sent a pack of cards to the Dungeon Gym for all of Team Dungeon, with cards for King and Chris also enclosed in the hopes that one of the team would have more accurate information on their whereabouts. Those cards were also in English, but with a little more Japanese thrown in when Madoka didn't know the word, and merrily recalled the most important events that the American bladers had missed.
Kenta, Benkei and Hyoma actually had proper home addresses, but they were relatively close by so the cards just contained a greeting and a wish for a happy new year. Hikaru and Tsubasa's cards just got posted in the internal mail at the WBBA. Those cards were short too, though if Tsubasa had been looking too grim for too long Madoka tried to include an inside joke to make him smile.
And every day, almost, there would be a new envelope on her doormat when she opened the shop in the morning, with another friend writing a card back saying yes of course they had to meet up in the coming year (they wouldn't, and both of them knew it, but it was nice to pretend), or Kenta sending back a card with a small gift attached (she always told him not to, and he always ignored her), or Team Excalibur writing an extended essay in nearly-perfect Japanese to explain just how many more awards Julian had managed to win that year (surprisingly, the number had dropped in the past few years).
Writing the cards took a surprisingly long time, so Madoka usually set aside a specific night to write them all. Even though Kenta had come by with a rather battered Sagittario that afternoon ("I was training!" he explained, embarrassed. "And I kind of knocked a wall down on top of Flash Sagittario. Sorry.") she had put her usual repair work to one side for the night and set about working her way down the list.
A clatter upstairs disturbed her as she was writing the address on the seventh card she had finished that night, and she put down her pen with a frown. It wouldn't be the first time someone had tried to break in to her shop, but would-be thieves tended to underestimate the mechanic with a knack for knowing exactly which tool hurt the most when pressed into sensitive areas, and so she had never lost anything too valuable. But someone breaking in during December was always bad news.
When she got to the top of the stairs, however, the motion-sensitive lights were still off. Nothing in the shop had been disturbed, and even when she waved to bring the lights up, there was no-one there that she could see. Just in case, she unlocked the front door and stepped outside to make sure that the shutter on the main window display hadn't been damaged.
Nothing. Or – no, not quite nothing. Between two of the slats, something white was flapping in the wind. Madoka pulled it out, half expecting a challenge letter (it would not be the first time that someone had attached a challenge letter to her shop even if they were not for her), only to find herself holding an envelope with her name neatly printed across the front.
Who would deliver a Christmas card at this time?
She retreated into her shop, locking up again and heading back to her basement workshop. Once there, she pushed her pile of unwritten cards to the side and carefully slit open the envelope.
It was a Christmas card. No surprises there. On the front of the card was a picture of a snowy mountain, covered in glitter and with a small sleigh pulled by reindeer flying over it. A hand-written note was next to an arrow pointing at the sleigh that read ME.
That was even more confusing than the fact the card had been stuck on her shutters. Confused and slightly alarmed, Madoka opened the card to reveal painfully familiar handwriting.
My dear Madoka,
I'm sorry, I can't stay for long, not even long enough to say hello. Something vitally important has come up and I happened to be travelling through the area so I thought I'd drop this off on a 'flying visit', like Santa – you don't see me, just the evidence I've been here.
I hope you are doing fine. I've been trying to keep on top of beyblading news but it's pretty difficult without being in the tournament circuits. I often think of you and your amazing cake at this time of year. I miss being around everyone, but I can't come back just yet.
I want you to know that I am safe and well. I'm still working on dismantling the last bits of Hades Inc, and there's still so much more to do before I know the world is safe from them and their ambitions, so I hope you can forgive me that once again I won't be able to come back to Metal City for Christmas.
There's so much more I want to tell you, but I'm out of room. I'm hoping that I'll get all of this wrapped up by summer and then I'll make sure to come back.
Wishing you a very happy Christmas, and the best new year you've ever had,
Yours always,
Gingka H.
P.S. I'd just finished this when I bumped in to Yuu Tendo of all people. He says hi too, but don't tell Tsubasa he's in the area, he wants it to be a surprise…
Madoka let out a ghost of a laugh. Oh Gingka. It was good to hear from him, to know that he was alive at least. Not that his card really gave her much more information on his movements than that. She wondered if he had dropped off cards at Kenta's old address or at the WBBA tower too, and decided to open up late the next morning so that she could go and find out. If Gingka's post-script was correct, she might even end up running in to Yuu, which would certainly brighten her week up.
He'd managed one thing, anyway. With the knowledge that he was alive and well and nearly at the end of his mammoth quest to hunt out the last remnants of the companies that had caused all his friends so much pain, it was going to be a very happy Christmas indeed.
Madoka propped the card up over her workbench where she would be able to see it whenever she looked up, and then went back up the steps to grab her shopping list and add a few more things on to it.
After all, if Yuu was going to be coming by for Christmas, she was probably going to need some more food…
Christmas was always a season of surprises. That was why she liked it so much.
