“This is ridiculous. We were supposed to be done pandering to the Celestials for numbers!” Natsuko said.
Sofiane pitched the bridge of his nose. After all the preparations, all the tinsel and lights he’d strung up around The Devil’s Cut, the pine tree he lugged into the bar and decorated, the cookies he baked for Daisy to decorate, and all the outfits he planned for them, now he also had explain to Natsuko why all of this was necessary.
“Listen, this is for a different set of numbers and a different set of Celestials. This isn’t about Emanations or Use-Numbers or anything, this is about favorites and followers and comments. It’s totally different,” Sofiane said.
“It’s literally the exact same thing! You’re even going to make me wear a stupid Santa outfit, I know you are!” Natsuko said.
“I swear on my life I would never,” Sofiane said.
Natsuko squinted at him. “Fine. But I still say this is selling ourselves to the Celestials for numbers, even if it’s for ‘followers’ or whatever, we’re still doing stupid and humiliating things because the Celestials want us to!”
Sofiane ignored her and returned to stirring the pot of mulled wine behind the counter of the Devil's Cut. The event was starting soon and for once he expected it to go more smoothly if Natsuko was liquored up. He was unaware he was ironically reproducing the things they were trying to escape from in the main branch of the story, but as Shuixing had discovered on one of her journeys to Numberspace, they were all emanations of characters in a web serial called Forgotten Girl Quest, and if they didn’t play along with the Christmas Interlude Special Event, the main story might go on hiatus prevent them from escaping from Po-Lin.
These jovial, yuletide festivities were a life-or-death special event that Shuixing had sworn him to silence about. They all had roles to play to ensure the story’s statistics went up through fan service, but the terrible existential knowledge of their existence on RoyalRoad could very well ruin the event if anyone besides he and Shuixing found out. Annoying as it was to deal with, even Natsu being a grumpy spoilsport was part of the mini-arc of her finding the Christmas spirit towards the end of the chapter. If she knew that character development was part of her unwitting performance, Natsuko would throw a fit and leave the chapter.
“Here,” Sofiane said, thrusting a piping mug of mulled wine at her. “Drink.”
“Hey, I just overcame my alcoholism! The Celestials are gonna think this is some kind of regression if I start drinking again,” Natsuko said.
“Okay, I’ll toss it.”
“No!” Natsuko snatched the mug out of his hand. “Don’t waste perfectly good alcohol!"
On the other side of The Devil’s Cut, Team Harald was busy wrapping present.
“We should just chuck everything in bags,” Harald said. “Or, hell, just hand them to people. Who cares if they're wrapped? It’s still a surprise if you give it to them at the last second.”
Margaret rolled her eyes. “We’re not going to leave gifts unwrapped just because you’re too clumsy to wrap them correctly.”
The pile of gifts around Harald, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bar, were crumpled and lumpen with ends of tape sticking up. Margaret’s presents were the exact opposite, each intricately folded and perfectly-shaped regardless of the dimensions of the gift itself. She was, however, working at a rate of around one gift per 15 minutes due to wrapping one-handed with the other holding a glass of spiked eggnog. The real workhorse was Faisal turning out one immaculate present every thirty seconds.
“How come you’re so good at this, Faisal?” Gomiko asked, struggling to wrap a bottle-shaped gift without ripping the paper.
Faisal shrugged. “Just a character trait, I guess.”
“Oh good, you finally have something other than being the straight man. Congrats!” Natsuko called out from the bar counter where she was sucking leftover wine out of an orange slice garnish.
Faisal blushed at that and Margaret gently patted his hand. “It’s okay, Faisal, you play an integral role in the party dynamics by contrasting with our stronger personalities."
“Thanks,” Faisal said. “Maybe I’ll get one of those little character card things and it’ll list my likes as: ‘Wrapping gifts’ and my dislikes as ‘interesting dialogue’.”
“That’s better than mine would be,” Gomiko said. “Mine would just say ‘Sofiane’ under likes.”
“That’s all you need, babe,” Sofiane called out from the bar where he was ladling mulled wine into mugs.
Gomiko snorted. “Uh-huh. Right. Well, my standard for a long time was literally even having a name, so that’s an improvement. And I do have other interests, they’re just not important enough to show off.”
“Like what?” Harald asked, giving up on his half-wrapped ball of crumpled paper and tossing it in a bag.
“Mixology. I like making drinks. Alcoholic and non-alcoholic,” Gomiko said.
Taking her second mug of mulled wine with her, Natsuko stood up from the bar and wandered over to throw an arm around Gomiko.
“Heyyyy. I feel like we don’t get enough character interaction time, you and me,” Natsu said. “How do you feel about a little screen time action?”
Meanwhile, over by the Christmas tree, Daisy and Pechorin were decorating a tray of cookies. Daisy’s goal was to make cookies themed after everyone. She started with her own, which was a sugar cookie with a cliff of pink frosting, a tablespoon of pure glitter, and streaks of glossy red icing which she tried to write her name with before running out of space at ‘S’. She got around this by running a thin trail of red icing in a squiggly Y-shape over the top and curving down around the side of the cookie.
“Hehe. Nailed it,” she said.
Across from her, Pechorin was busy painting cookies with black frosting. Once he had enough, he used red icing to spell out ‘seasonal depression’ across the plate. Daisy looked up from her own work as Sofiane handed them both mugs of mulled wine and finally caught sight of Pechorin’s handiwork.
“Umm… nice work?” Daisy said.
“It’s a statement piece,” Pechorin explained. “Sweetness by itself is saccharin and shallow. However, when paired with reminders of the world’s bitterness and disappointment, the sweetness develops a more mature and complex depth to it by contrast.”
“Wow… Uh… Very deep! Please don’t touch any more cookies, though. I still have everyone’s personal cookies to do and if you try and spell ‘re-gifted present’ I’m not gonna have any left to work with,” Daisy said.
Pechorin nodded. “I understand.”
He got up and moved somewhere else leaving Daisy to her task of decorating the remaining cookies with the sweet end of the bittersweet continuum. Shuixing’s cookie she decorated with a deep blue background before adding little cerulean bubbles. Sofiane’s was mostly bare except for lattices of lavender lace and ribbons winding across it. Pechorin’s was all black but Daisy added splotches of glossy red icing resembling blood splatters.
At Natsuko’s Daisy ran into a conceptual block. Obviously it would be red, but beyond that, she wasn’t sure what else to do. The obvious decoration was a bottle, but somehow that felt like a lazy cop-out. Daisy took a few sips of her mulled wine while she pondered what to do before she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up to find Sofiane staring down at her.
“Put little pink hearts on it,” he said, his face somber and serious.
“Really?"
“Just do it,” he said.
Daisy pouted. Something was off about both him and Shuixing but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Sofiane had been running around micromanaging things as if the universe would collapse if the Celestials weren’t amused by them and Shuixing was pounding down hard whiskey in the corner and staring off into space. Daisy resolved to get to the bottom of it after she was done putting little pink hearts on Natsuko’s cookie. However, as she was standing up, Daisy had a terrifying realization of existential proportion:
“Oh gods, we aren’t in appropriate Christmas outfits!” Daisy screamed.
The reaction to that announcement was not what she expected. Natsuko and Pechorin both groaned while Shuixing and Sofiane dropped what they were doing to grab the boxes with everyone’s outfits, thrust them into people’s hands, and shooed them out the door.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“You said you weren’t going to put me in a gods-damned Santa outfit!” Natsuko said, taking her third mug of mulled wine with her as Sofiane pushed her out the door.
“And I’m not, now get changed!” Sofiane said.
Apart from Sofiane, the men were changed a few minutes later and ended up standing around the emptied bar waiting for the girls. Their outfits were all red-and-green gift-wrap tuxedos with their weapons and little chibi versions of themselves printed across the front. Pechorin’s tuxedo was printed with un-festive pistols and tiny frowning versions of himself.
“This is not very dark and brooding…” Pechorin said, matching his chibi-version’s frown.
“Yeah, I… don’t know how I feel about this,” Faisal said, his own chibi version wrapping gifts in different positions all over his tuxedo. “Aside from being tacky, we only established the gift-wrapping thing as a personality trait half an hour ago.”
“It’s not that bad. Quit whining,” Harald said.
His own design was of himself flexing or swinging his halberd.
“Um… I think I agree with Faisal on this,” Kane said, wearing a suit printed with chibi versions of Yuna with X's for eyes and himself crying over them.
Pechorin stroked his chin. “Of the four, yours is by far the most comically tragic. I am envious.”
“D-Do you want to switch? I don’t really want to wear a tuxedo with my dead teammate all over it…”
Pechorin agreed and by the time the girls were filing back in, he was wearing the dead Yuna tuxedo and Kane was wearing the brooding Pechorin one.
“Aw, you traded costumes, that’s so cute!” Daisy said as she skipped into the room wearing a green santa outfit with white fur hems so short they relied on Yishang physics to remain RoyalRoad-appropriate. The one nod to her usual color-scheme was a pink ribbon holding her blonde hair in a tall ponytail. Sofiane arrived next dressed as a golden angel complete with wings and halo that nonetheless threaded the needle of being innocuously non-denominational to Western Celestials yet exotically Western for Eastern Celestials. The only blemish was that he accessorized the outfit with a frown that didn’t match the angelic joy of the costume. The frown only deepened when he beheld Pechorin and Kane’s outfit swap.
“No. This? Not happening,” he said, gesturing at the two of them.
“I’m afraid what has been done cannot be undone,” Pechorin said.
“It can be undone in about three minutes in the bathroom. Make it happen,” Sofiane said.
Before Sofiane could grab them and drag them off to change he felt a hand on his shoulder. Shuixing was standing behind him wearing a low-effort outfit consisting of a long-skirt, black stockings, and an ugly Christmas sweater with the words ‘I am too rational to believe in Santa Claus’ embroidered on the front. The only other touch was that her regular eyeglasses had been replaced with frames shaped like the number 2048.
“Let them swap. It’s in character,” Shuixing said.
Sofiane sighed. “Fine. You can wear the dead Yuna tuxedo, Pech.”
“With pride,” Pechorin said.
Still grumpy about having to micro-manage the Christmas-themed chapter to perfection or otherwise put the universe on hiatus, Sofiane went over to the bar to slam down the rest of his now lukewarm mulled wine. This sour mood lasted right up until he heard Gomiko’s voice outside the door.
“I-I can’t! It’s too embarrassing! W-Why can’t I just wear the nose?” he heard Gomiko say.
“The outfit is the outfit, dear. The Celestials want to see it,” Margaret replied.
Margaret opened the door wearing an outfit that was an almost exact match of Daisy’s cute Santa outfit except that it was red instead of green and with her cigarette holder wand pinning her hair up. Her satin-gloved hand yanked at a furry brown hand pulling in the opposite direction of the door frame. The furry hand seemed to be winning until Margaret called Harald over to help and the two of them forced Gomiko into the bar. Now in full view, Sofiane understood why she had been so resistant: Gomiko had been put in a reindeer onesie with fake antlers and a glowing red nose. Her face immediately turned as red as her nose and she tried to dive back for the door.
Sofiane darted forward and caught her arm. “Hey, I think it’s cute, Frizzy."
She looked at him with eyes bordering on tears. “It’s so humiliating! I got it because I’m the only animal-themed Hero, but it’s just—”
He kissed her on the plastic nose and said, “I know. Just put up with it for tonight. And besides, it serves your adorable little face up on a platter so I can do this—”
Sofiane proceeded to blanket her face with bird-peck kisses until she was laughing and playfully pushing him away.
Beholding the proceedings, Pechorin said, “I’m gonna vomit blood.”
Faisal and Harald both grunted in agreement. Margaret, Daisy, and Kane, however, were all cooing about how cute it was. The public affection display lasted for almost a minute until the two lovers were pushed aside by a short, surly elf.
“Get the hell out of my way, I’m not drunk enough for this shit,” Natsuko said.
She was wearing a green elf dress, pointy ears and hat, slippers, and candy-cane striped stockings. Pechorin stifled a snicker at proving he was technically correct that he wasn’t forcing Natsuko into a Santa outfit. In retaliation, Natsuko shoved Sofiane into a table as she stomped back inside the Devil’s Cut to ladle herself a fourth mug of mulled wine.
“That’s everyone, right? No more stupid outfits?” Natsuko asked.
Sofiane dusted himself off. “Yes, we’ve just got the gift unwrapping left. Then we’re done with all this silliness.”
“Good,” she said before downing half the mug of wine in one gulp.
Once the last of the mulled wine was doled out, the Heroes all gathered around the Christmas tree. Assuming each Hero had a present for every other Hero present, there should’ve been around 90 presents under the tree. Fortunately, by Yishang magic, the presents were reduced to one per Hero, each of which were generated averages of whatever everyone had gotten them. The process of getting settled into seats, however, was more complex than anticipated. At first, Shuixing tried to replicate the sequential ordering she discovered in the post-chapter Statistics notes on RoyalRoad, but this quickly ran into issues when Sofiane insisted on sitting with Gomiko and Daisy wanted to sit beside Kane and after all of that had been settled, both Shuixing and Sofiane realized that among their duties as custodians of this alternative timeline was setting up a minimum of three yuri interactions with Natsuko. While the others were all sitting around the tree waiting to open gifts, Sofi and Shui convened behind the bar to figure out what to do next.
“Shit!" Sofiane whispered. "We’ve got at least three more character interactions we have to push Natsuko through on top of reminding her she’s in the middle of an arc to overcome her alcoholism. There’s no way we get all that done before the chapter goes out t 7:15 EST!"
Shuixing rubbed her temples. “We’ve still got time. We haven’t done the present opening scene yet, after all. You made sure to set up the color-association yuri bait with Daisy’s cookies, right? Daisy painted the Natsuko-colored hearts that are supposed to lead into an erotically-charged character interaction?”
“I made damn sure,” Sofiane said.
“Good,” Shuixing said. “In that case we can, at a minimum, yuri-bait the Celestials with Natsuko and Daisy. And I’m sure I can whip something mildly romantic up between Natsu and I. The real trick is going to be coming up with an interaction between her and Gomiko.”
Sofiane made a face. “Must we?”
Shuixing glared at him through her 2048 new-year glasses. “Unless you want to put our entire universe on hiatus right as we’re about to find a way to escape Po-Lin, set up a gods-damned lesbian romance situation between your girlfriend and Natsuko.”
Sofiane massaged his decorative, free-floating halo. “Ugh. But how are we going to fit all of that and some kind of moral lesson about the true meaning of Christmas on top of Natsu’s overcoming alcoholism arc in the remaining words?"
At the mention of all the other things they still needed to pack into the Christmas Interlude Special Event, Pechorin watched Shuixing’s face fall into her hands. Unlike their main story versions whose continued existence was tied to chronological time extending as long as necessary to cover the story and characters elements required, their Christmas-themed emanations had a fixed word limit to attract and keep the Celestials’ attention. Their entire universe hinged upon whether they could force Natsuko into a yuri-themed encounter with another Hero.
Sofiane steepled his hands over his mouth. “Okay. At this point we are already a thousand words over the usual chapter length. If we want to fit three yuri-bait encounters, a gift unwrapping, a Natsuko character development mni-arc, and a lesson about the true meaning of Christmas into the remainder of this chapter, we need to start thinking strategically and stop wasting precious word count.”
Refusing to waste any more time and word count that could be better spent on precious story, setting, or character development that would engage Celestial readership and compel them to follow, favorite, or comment, Shuixing nodded.
“Good idea," she said.
However, right as Shui was saying this, Natsuko and Pechorin were engaging in a character-developing conversation which was clearly driving towards some kind of romantic climax.
The cause of this scene was Pechorin pointing out that a sprig of holly had been hung in the rafters of the bar which implicated them in a scene where they would be required to kiss one another. Both Shuixing and Sofiane looked on with horror as Natsuko blushed and prepared to ruin 150+ chapters worth of meticulous yuri-baiting on a single heterosexual kiss.
Shuixing gasped. “Oh no! If they kiss in the side-chapter it could ruin the emotional catharsis of the main-line story and torpedo reader engagement!”
Sofiane slapped her across the cheek. “Go! For gods sakes, go!”
Knowing what she had to do, Shuixing bolted for Natsuko and Pechorin sitting around the Christmas tree and right as the latter was about to finally pierce through the former's tsundere shell, Shuixing dove between them, timing her leap to intercept Natsuko and Pechorin’s kiss. For a fraction of a second, her lips grazed her Natsuko’s before Shuixing tumbled into the Christmas tree. For a moment afterwards, Shuixing lay tangled in a pile of lights, ornaments, and pine tree branches. The other Heroes gathered around her, shocked by her out-of-character display.
Natsuko touched her own lips, still tingling from the electricity of her best friend’s brief yuri encounter. In that split second, she had come to realize the true meaning of Christmas: Co-opting the positive feelings Celestials felt towards the holiday for the purpose of boosting engagement metrics.
“Did I save the timeline?” Shuixing asked, straightening her glasses.
Natsuko set aside her mulled wine, resolving not to bury the awkwardness of human interaction beneath a blanket of inebriation, and pulled her best-friend-turned-ephemeral-lesbian-romantic-encounter-partner Shuixing out of the pile of Christmas debris and said, “yes, Shui, you saved Christmas.”