Saturday, December 22, 2018
A Nerd Club Christmas
"I do not very much enjoy Christmas."
It was Christmas Eve, and here a child with messy black hair hid under her sheets, grumbling to herself while peering at a book with a flashlight.
"Mother and father do not listen to me. I am certain I just got frilly girly things again. I bet they're pink."
The girl known as Viola Brown sighed, her cheeks puffing out. Long has she wanted to run away from home, start her own life where no one would make fun of her for liking the occult. She'd go far away and change her name. Viola was nice, but Brown was much too plain. Maybe something like... like...
She looked down at the book she was reading again. The Official Pokemon Handbook. She'd read it cover to cover many times, but she always came back for more. The pages were open to the two-page spread devoted to Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar, and she stared at those pages with wide, wistful eyes.
"I wish I could be a Pokemon Trainer. They get to go wherever they want and have adventures. Pokemon would not judge me."
Her eyes fell to the list of attacks the Pokemon could learn. The words "Night Shade" drifted over her vision.
"...Nightshade..."
"Uuuuuugh. Well, this Christmas is gonna suck."
A white mage with a brown bob cut muttered and grumbled as she tossed her bag of holding onto an old creaky cot. "Is this bed even going to hold us?"
"It'll have to do. This was the best room I could afford." said another white mage. This one was taller, with long blonde hair. She looked around at the other white mages milling about the sparse old room. Aside from the grumpy brown-haired one, there was also a petite, tiny girl with long brown hair and an even shorter but significantly rounder girl with a huge mess of blonde locks tucked into her hood and robe. "Look on the bright side!" the chubby one said. "This is way better than being out in the cold. Can you imagine being stuck outside in this weather? And on Christmas Eve?!"
"Yeah, yeah, I guess it's better." The bob-cut mage grumbled.
The petite white mage approached the tall one. "Um... big sis? I have a present for you."
"Wha... for me?"
"O-of course! You've been... so brave, helping us get through this journey. When Mom left us and Dad died, I was so worried. I didn't know what to do. But you pulled us together and showed us the way forward. I... I want to thank you with something." The little white mage produced a small dagger from her pockets, presenting it to her older sister. "I got this in the shop the other day... I thought it might come in handy."
"Well!" White Mage 1 took the knife in her hands and looked it over. "How thoughtful of you! What a nice, practical gift. This will definitely help me, don't you worry." She pulled her little sister into a hug. "Thank you, Four."
"You're welcome, One."
Sumireko's family opened gifts and invited relatives on December 24. Rachel's family did the same on December 25. And so the two girls had hatched a plan - Rachel would join Sumireko on Christmas Eve, and Sumireko would visit Rachel on Christmas Day. Twice the fun, twice the parties, and extra presents. A foolproof plan!
Looking at her small but beloved spread of gifts, Sumireko gnawed at a chocolate bar shaped like Santa Claus while Rachel tried on a cute red hooded cape she'd gotten as a present. "Wasn't that fun?" Sumireko asked with a big smile and a mouth full of chocolate.
"You bet!" Rachel squeaked happily, posing cutely. "Hey, hey! How do I look?"
"Wow, that hoodie cape really suits you!"
"You think?!"
"Yeah, definitely! You should wear that all the time!"
"Haha, I'll think about it!"
Soon, the two teen girls would drift off to sleep, excited to do it all over again tomorrow.
Less than two months later, Rachel disappeared. It would be over six years before they crossed paths again...
Looking outside her window, Dolby is laying on her stomach atop her bed. Her head tilts back and forth and she kicks her legs idly as she listens to Last Christmas through her retro headphones. She imagined snow falling outside, sighing peacefully as nostalgic thoughts filled her mind. She remembered all the Christmases of her past... though it was frustrating how fuzzy the memories were. She wanted them to be clearer, but she just couldn't firmly recall the memories. Vague, cloudy memories of the past drifted at the edges of her brain, and when she reached out to them her hand passed through like mist. Maybe if she indulged harder in the past, it would help her remember...
As she swayed back and forth, the lock of hair hanging down over her face shifted in front of her eye. She noticed something within it and her happy demeanor became muddled.
"Wha...?"
She grabbed at her hair, peering at the lock carefully.
"A grey hair? And there's a second one... a third! ...Weird." She frowned. "Man, I guess I'm getting old. I wish I still looked healthy..." She sighed. Just another reason to double down on the nostalgia, she supposed.
A chirpy electronic voice interrupts Dolby's thoughts.
"Dolby! C'mon, we're about to start unwrapping presents!"
Dolby grinned widely and exclaimed "I'm coming, Amiga!" before getting to her feet and strolling off to join the rest of her family, feeling just a little stiffer than she used to.
"A Christmas party? No thank you, miss Lee, I need to study."
"Seriously?"
Edea Lee crossed her arms and quirked an eyebrow at the apprentice mage. "Christmas only comes once a year. You can study later. What are you even studying for, anyway? Exams are over for now."
"It's never too late to get the jump on next year."
"Ugh!" Edea facepalms. "You're hopeless. Well, at least your schoolmates all agreed to come. I can only imagine how frustrated I'd be if they were all as lost in their studies as you."
As Edea sauntered off to join the party she was hosting, Rifa sighed quietly and returned to her book. "Christmas does sound fun and all... but I'm a grownup now. My schooling should come first. If I were to flunk..." She shuddered. "I can't even entertain that thought!"
She buried her face in her book, and soon forgot all about Edea and her classmates.
For weeks afterward, whenever she wasn't busying herself with something else, Rifa's thoughts returned to that night she skipped celebrating Christmas, and regret filled her thoughts. Regret, sadness, and loneliness.
Every time, she pushed those thoughts away the best she could and threw herself back into her studies.
Tokiko's head was down, looking at her own feet as she crunched through the snow. Swaddled up in heavy layers of clothing, the youkai was barely recognizable. Even her distinctive hair, horns, and headwing were covered up by a thick wool hat.
As she approached the center of a large open field, she saw a shape come out of the swirling snow.
"Ah... so you ARE here..." Tokiko mumbled to herself as Letty Whiterock, the Gensokyo winter spirit, appeared before her.
"Hmm?" Letty tilted her head. "You're quite a ways from the nearest town, miss. What brings you here?"
"I came because I heard you were seen around here." Tokiko said shyly, hugging herself and hunkering down as a gust of wind kicked up. "I needed to make a request."
It had become something of a Gensokyo tradition for some youkai to write letters to Letty as if she were Santa, with the hope that she would return from her time spent near the Kobbers with rare and exotic gifts for her fellow Gensokyo inhabitants that had yet to see these mysterious people who had managed to lure so many Gensokyo residents to visit them. Letty had started it when she came back to Gensokyo in 2014 bearing gifts for the needy, and it had snowballed from there. Now she was practically Mrs. Claus.
"Um... Couldn't you have just wrote me a letter or something?"
"I missed the deadline." Tokiko admitted lamely. "So please, I know it's short notice but I have a Christmas request!"
"I-I'm listening, but I can't promise anything with so little time to help you..."
"For Christmas, I want..."
Tokiko shuddered, and not because of the cold.
"I want companionship. A-and answers to who I am, and where I came from. A-and, and... and the courage to become a Kobber."
Letty blinked. "Oh."
For a moment, Tokiko looked ready to turn back and wallow in her own misery, but then she saw Letty smile, and the winter spirit offered a hand.
"Well, I may not be able to do ALL of that, but I've got companionship covered! And maybe, if we talk it out, I can get you some extra courage."
Tokiko took Letty's hand, and the two of them headed back for town. And that was how Tokiko ended up spending a Christmas with Letty Whiterock.
Nerd noises.
Good GOD, the nerd noises.
When you pack this many nerds into the same room, things get a little crazy volume-wise. All seven members of Nerd Club, past and present, were crowded around a large table, making small talk with one another. Gloria was getting acquainted with Tokiko, the oldest Nerd Club member talking with the newest. Viola and Sumireko spoke of the esoteric, while Rifa and Dolby exchanged thoughts on Christmas music. Other friends of the nerds were invited to the party as well, folks such as Odyssey, Koakuma, Tenshi, Yamame, Zeldoten, and Maria all invited to join the festivities if they wished. Maybe some didn't show, maybe they all did. The important thing was that the place was not just busy, but loud, and as Rachel took in the sensory overload, she finally had to roll her eyes and raise her voice.
"Hey! Hey, guys!"
The nerd noises continued.
"GUYS!"
No dice, Rachel.
She did, however, get their attention when she hoisted a power drill into the air and revved it. Sumireko nearly jumped out of her seat! Rachel smirked and put the drill away. "OKAY. Now that I have your attention... Dinner is almost ready, but before we have a nice Christmas Eve dinner, I wanna make a toast." She lifts a glass. "I... wait, what is this?"
"Parsee Reserve. Finest chocolate milk you'll ever taste." Gloria replies.
Rachel grimaced. "Chocolate milk. For Christmas Eve dinner. What are we, five? Where's the alcohol?"
"Didn't buy any, didn't want any." Sumireko said simply.
"Ugh, fine." Rachel raised up her glass of Parsee Reserve. "Listen, I know we've all had ups and downs in our lives. Everyone has. And I just wanted everyone to take today to remember that the worst is over and the best is yet to come. We're young, we're ambitious, we're Kobbers. Some of us found love, and all of us found friendship. I'm far from the only nerd here who used to be a shy loner, am I right girls?"
A murmur of laughter from around the table.
"So I want to tell all of you guys here right now, it may not be Thanksgiving any more, but I'm sure as hell thankful for you guys. I don't know where I'd be without any of you, especially Sumireko." Rachel nodded at a smiling Sumi. "We've all seen what happens when Christmas doesn't go according to plan, right? Well, don't worry about this year. It took a lot of finagling and more than one long-distance trip, but we got all the nerds here in Vegas. Everyone's healthy, happy, and got their holiday shopping done in time. We did it, guys. Rest assured, this Christmas is gonna be fantastic."
She raises her glass forward, reaching out to the middle of the table. The other nerds smile and begin to follow suit.
"To all my friends at Nerd Club... Have a merry Christmas!"
The nerds cheered and clinked their glasses together, and then the nerd noises resumed as dinner began to arrive.
Though, considering Rachel's speech, the nerd noises never actually stopped.
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