A/N: Right, so as you are probably aware- unless you live under a rock or something of that ilk, it is Christmas. The following chapter, NOL-laig Shona!, is designed as a pseudo-Christmas special for Ninjas Of Love and, as such, is not- and should not be interpreted as- a canonical part of the book's storyline, and rather should be seen for what it is, a non-canonical oneshot-type chapter as a Christmas present to all two of you who read this. I love you, and merry Christmas!
The bedroom was dark and silent, save for the wind whistling its breathy, signature tune in through the window, which had been left ajar by whomever had been the last to get to bed the night before. Inside the room, three hunters- and their three huntress friends, along with Weiss- were asleep, visions of goodness-only-knows dancing around their heads. You, dear reader, may have noticed (if you are of a mathematical disposition) that three plus three plus one does not account for both Team RWBY and Team BECK. Alas, it is true that seven students lay tucked up in their bunks, as one Miss Ruby Rose excitedly checked the time on her scroll.
The screen of the device lit up her corner of the room with a distinctive blue light which stung Ruby's eyes. As they slowly became accustomed to the overwhelming brightness, they picked out four numbers, in angry red on a background of darkest, emptiest black. 04:55. Perfect, Ruby thought to herself, her hands involuntarily rubbing up against one another as if she were some kind of comic book villain, I can wake everyone up and get Christmas underway. And- and this is the master part (Ruby, you genius)- Yang can't even complain it isn't morning. Because, guess what, sis, it is! Very early morning, but it's morning! On Christmas Day!
Ruby jumped out of bed so quickly that she left a small pile of blood-red petals on the bed. Why? Semblances. Honestly, that's as good an explanation as I have so it'll have to do. With a leap and a bound, she traversed the dormitory, finding the light switch with all the ease of isolating, and using, the Higgs Boson particle in a practical way. Flicking the switch with her stubby, fleshy finger, she made sure to wake her colleagues by simultaneously submerging the entire dormitory in the ochre light of the old lightbulb and letting out an almighty, almost Fus Ro Dah-like scream of "It's Christmas, guys!".
As she assaulted their senses with all of her usual subtlety, the other residents of Ruby's apartment stirred- with varying degrees of happiness at being woken up by Miss Rose. These ranged from Kerian's unexcited, yet wistful "I guess it's time to day drink", all the way to Weiss' tactic of pulling the sheets over her head and mumbling something about Ruby's rectum and a halberd.
Eventually, the octet managed to semi-sleepwalk their way into the living room, where the usual seating arrangement had been eschewed in favour of a semi-circle around the Christmas tree. Ruby was the first to look at the tree, and was therefore the first of her friendship circle to notice the new additions to the room, that sat underneath the tree, in amongst the myriad dropped needles that had fallen from the Atlesian tree. Eight bags. One scarlet-red. One snow-white. One jet-black. One golden-yellow. One mauve. One Campo Viejo-crimson. One sea-blue. Last, and quite frankly least, one a burnt orange. "Guys! Santa's been!" Ruby yelled excitedly, clearly thinking that the necessity of inside voices disappeared on Christmas Day and drawing a harsh shush from a sleep-deprived Charlie who had just been awoken before five in the morning.
"Can we open the presents now?" Ruby asked, every word coming out of her mouth at the pace of a Japanese bullet train so that each word crashed into each other like Ruby had been talking Atlesian. With a sigh, Weiss simply let out a defeated "yes" as she sat down on the old, red, leather sofa.
Inside every bag was three gifts left by Santa Claus (who was, unbeknownst to even the heiress herself, Weiss' great-uncle Shiro Schnee), and Ruby elected to open hers first. She had received a t-shirt bearing the logo of heavy metal band Ënginëbrain, a palette of dust, and a box of Patchian chocolate called Cadbury's Roses.
Weiss decided to go second, so that she could start on making the Christmas breakfast relatively quickly. The young Schnee had been gifted a crystal bottle of some kind of expensive-looking perfume, a large packet of vegan jerky, and a pair of stunningly high, and stunningly white, stiletto heels. Quietly placing them all back in the white bag, she skulked off to her favoured place at the kitchen counter.
Blake silently grasped her black bag, and tore it open with her slender, claw-like fingers. Inside her bag lay a new tin of premium tuna, a new notebook for her to sketch lewd fanart in, or to write her, shall we say, citrusy fanfiction inside, and- finally- a brand new novel called Chrysalis that had been written by the same person as had authored her favourite book, Yamaku.
Yang couldn't wait much longer to open her gifts, in spite of how much she was desperate to prove to her peers that she didn't much care- thus she was the fourth member of Team RWBY, and the dormitory in general, to open up her bag. She had also received a trifecta of gifts from the jolly, red-loving property redistributor. Yang had been given a copy of Road Scrapper for her PolyStation 4, a cute little yellow and black bandana to wear around her head, and a t-shirt bearing the slogan "I'm not gay, but my girlfriend is", cueing much eye-rolling from one Emi Kostova.
Billy opened his next, purely in the interest of starting with the first letter of his team, just like RWBY had done. He had been given a piece of classic technology in the form of an Innuendo Gay Boy, a selection box of Atlesian boiled sweets, and a spanner. "Hey, Ruby! I can fix Penny when she comes round later." His jibe drew a stifled laughter from the girl with the red-and-black hair.
Emily gestured to Charlie to open his first in an act of sibling chivalry, so Charlie walked over to the tree. He waltzed back, brandishing a wine-red bag which he handed to Em. She rolled her eyes yet again (her eyes may have actually been rolled more than a Rizla) but took the package gratefully. Inside it, she found- to the surprise of literally nobody- three gifts. The first was a box set of series 1-10 of ProSmall's Hunt Race, a series where male hunters parade around a stage in huntress' clothing for entertainment. The second was a book of poems, all written in Patchian- much to her half-brother's chagrin. Last but not least, she also received a pair of plain black thigh-high socks. "I love Hunt Race! It's so Christmassy!" Emily exclaimed, as Charlie pulled a face that seemed to rest somewhere between vicarious disappointment and pure discombobulation. "How?" The hunter's voice proclaimed a sense of pure bafflement. "I mean, Santa Queen does ride on her SLAY! And ProSmall always knows how to make the Yuletide gay. Christmas is as straight as a candy cane, sis." Emily said excitedly, drag slang coming out of her mouth with an unsettling regularity. "I hate you." Charlie said, deadpan, as he picked up his bag.
Inside it he had received a very-chunky looking screwdriver that he claimed had special powers, as well as a framed picture of himself and Em- well, the person that was now Em- sat together as young children, atop a big, green tractor. In the background, there were two adults smiling; one was a dark, ruggedly handsome man with a beautiful beard, and the other was a rather alternative-looking woman who looked to be smiling with no light left behind her eyes. Charlie placed it face down and examined his third present, wowed at Shiro Schnee's spot-on knowledge of him. In his hands, he held a brand-new, brown leather Stetson hat, an almost exact replica of the one he already owned- of course, minus the innumerate dents, scratches and honestly unexplainable stains.
This left one bag, and one hunter. Mr. Kerian Furry, who almost immediately tore the bag apart, freeing the wrapped gifts inside. The fox grabbed the first box, and again nearly shredded it in her eagerness to open it. Inside it was a neon-pink case for his scroll, made even tackier by the cheap plastic jewels that sat in a geometric pattern across the case. His second gift was something that, even he had to admit, was a supremely picked out gift. It was a scarf that had been knitted in the colours of his favourite Patchian rugby team, Mará Scarlets. The third gift was something of a peculiarity, something even the strange Em had never seen before. It was a pair of headphones. Well... actually, it wasn't. It was more of a... quartet of headphones? Whatever the word is, they had been specially designed for Kerian's bizarre combination of furry- though entirely superficial- fox ears, and humanoid- entirely cartilage-made- ears.
***
The eight hunters gathered around the table that lunchtime, to tuck into Weiss' self-proclaimed culinary magnum opus, her heavily-hyped Christmas dinner. The spread of meat, vegetables, roast potatoes, and generous helpings of whatever the fuck Yorkshire puddings actually are smelled sumptuous; upon seeing the food upon the table, Ruby and Yang's pupils appeared to dilate massively, Weiss looked halfway between smug and just prideful, and Blake simply looked at it, trying to find the fish. Billy was not surprised especially- no-one on Patch had been rich by Atlas' oligarchic, plutocratic standards, but the Daltons had certainly been in the upper echelons of Patchian society and so Billy had enjoyed plenty of slap-up Christmas roast dinners in his time. Kerian was very much confused- Christmas dinner had always been fish and chips for him- be it during his vagrant early years in Menagerie, or later on after he was accepted into Signal School (he was the only member of Team BECK to have prior experience with academic hunting). Meanwhile, Charlie and Emily both stared at the spread, jaws slack as they were taken aback upon spotting more food than they'd ever seen in one place before. I don't know how much the average Patchian potato farmer makes- but it's less than needed to make a proper slap-up Christmas meal, I'll tell you that for nothing. Which is, incidentally, quite close to what said farmer makes.
As such, the two siblings used the mile-high piles of food as an opportunity to make up for lost time, and between them finished off a damn near obscene number of roast potatoes, parsnips, sprouts, Yorkshire puddings, and not far off an entire turkey. That said, it's not like their six cohabitants were exactly slacking. Weiss, as one example, could- for reasons made very obvious in Ninjas Of Love- not eat the turkey, and so filled up on everything else.
After nearly everything had been demolished, the group strolled through to the living room, each and every single one of them feeling like both Chartreuse Copson and Ellie Kostova had some 17 years previous- that is to say, they felt as if they were carrying some kind of baby, even if it was made of food. As Yang flicked on the Christmas special of Automatic Gear, she felt her eyes slowly close. Slowly close, as Emily's head began to rest on her ample breasts.