DW: Secret Santa - Christmas for All

DigitalWars: Secret Santa

"Where's Aroon?" The girl asked as she  shifted her eyes around the golden lit place. The brunette haired boy shivered in his green and black attire from the cold wind that blew in from outside the sliding doors.

"He took the three down to the fountain to play," the boy answered. The girl, relieved, nodded as they both started walking. "Do you know what Aroon was asking for?" When the girl didn't respond, he tapped her shoulder, "Julia?"

"Huh?" She blinked at him. "Oh! He said anything that looks remotely like from the ocean. He gave us quite a lot of money so I guess it's whatever we choose." Julia really wanted to get something special for their little digital friends but what was usually seen as sentimental to humans wasn't necessarily useful to digimon. Most of them only cared for food and something to play with. It probably would've been better if they made something for their friends, something edible.

The two walked through the mall with little in mind, it didn’t help that the brunette, Dae, kept getting distracted by books, it also didn’t help that she too was rather distracted. “No!” she said at one point, closing a book from Dae’s hands when they stopped by a bookstore near a jewelry shop, “We’re not here for ourselves! Christmas is coming and we’ve got to get something for our digimon.”

“Not so loud,” Dae mumbled, looking around but he sighed. “Sorry, I just really wanted to see the contents of that book…” he looked longingly at the romance novel she had placed back in the shelf near the shop’s entrance.

“I know, me too,” she shook her head. “Let’s start by getting something for Wally. We have it narrowed down a bi—” suddenly her phone starting blaring out the Gangnam Style. Her face flushing red from how loud her cell was, she quickly reached into her pocket, straightening her hat and fumbling to open the phone since the other customers were beginning to stare. Not Dae though, he dreamily went off elsewhere she didn’t know. Flipping her phone open, she simultaneously looked for her brunette friend, “Hello?”

“Didi!” a pitched voice shouted rather loudly in her ear as she moved the phone away, “Didi, Didi, Didi! I’m hungry!”

“Stop hogging the phone, let me speak to her!” another voice shouted, “Juli! You can’t come here; we have a surprise for you.”

“I thought a surprise wasn’t supposed to be told?” a third voice questioned in the background. While that odd conversation was happening, Julia spotted Dae leafing through a few novels in the teen section. “Hey, Aroon, is it okay if we tell Julia the surprise?”

“Wha—ahh!” she heard a lot of bickering and yelling on the other line before she heard Aroon’s voice, “Julia, ignore what you heard, there’s nothing going on here. Hippi, stop! This isn’t Di—I mean Dae’s number! Cynusmon, cut it out! Wally, do not jump in there! I’ll call you back.” And then the line went dead.

Sighing, Julia pocketed her phone and tapped Dae’s shoulder. Startled, he turned and gave her a sheepish smile, “Ready to go?” she asked, and he slipped the book back in its shelf before nodding. The two left the bookstore and Dae came up with an idea to buy ingredients so the two could make something for their digi-pals which Julia loved the idea.

Stopping by a baking shop, they looked through the assortments of candy, decorations of all sorts of yummy goodness like gingerbread houses, gumdrops, sweethearts, pocky sticks and anything you could really name! A lot of licensed products too, the store looked like a candy house for children with the workers dressed up like Santa elves, golden lit and warm like home’s sweet chimney while children and parents came in and out with bags of sugary condiments in their hands.

“Wow…” Dae breathed as he stopped in front of a glass display of Santa’s eight reindeers pulling a sleigh with Santa in the back, holding his reins jollily as he prepared for flight. At first Julia thought it was a toy but they realized it was a cake topper which made her smile. She would’ve loved to see a Christmas cake, there were so many ideas one could do with just that theme. “What should we bake them? A cake, cookies, cupcakes…?”

She pondered that for a moment, “With Hippi’s appetite, a cake sounds good.” Though she would’ve loved to do cookies too, there were a handful of cookie cutters she wanted to buy. Suddenly a thought occurred to her as she snapped her fingers, “We can be like Cake Boss!”

“What?” Dae asked, surprised, furrowing his brows.

“You never watched this show? It’s a reality show from America,” she tried, but he didn’t seem to get it. “Well, it doesn’t matter, we can make a certain theme for our cake and decorate it based on that.”

He seemed to be catching on, “So like a cake of an ocean. All of our digimon are water type,” he smiled, and before she could agree he went over to the wall where the many cookie cutters were hanging on. “Let’s see…”

Scanning the wall, she spotted shapes of dolphins and stars which she thought they could use, reaching over to get them, Dae helped out instead. “Thanks! What else should we get?” They went around the store, picking up ingredients of flour, sugar, sprinkles and certain other ingredients to make the best cake ever! When they got to the line in front of the cashier, Julia realized they needed an oven for all this to work out.

“So who called you?” Dae finally asked, absentmindedly playing with some small bells. Apparently, the digimon had something planned for them, but not wanting to ruin the surprise for at least one of them, she laughed it off.

“It’s a secret.”

---

Pulling the tray from the oven, Julia placed the batch of cookies on the stove while Dae all dressed up in lost sprinkles, sugar and cream was adding the finishing touches to their three tiered cake that was an aquamarine color with the second tier being decorated with fake scales of light purple and green, the first tier had elaborate designs where the cookie shaped dolphins were supposed to jump out of the water in giddiness. The first tier had fake clams and a starfish along with little edible figures of their digi-pals at the very top of the cake.

Julia stepped back to gaze at their work of art that she was quite proud of. Her phone went off like last time, but thankfully they weren’t at a shop, she fumbled with it in cream covered fingers, one hand hiding under a hot glove before she finally was able to push the speaker button.

“Hey, Aroon,” she answered, hoping he was on the line and not their little friends.

“Where are you guys? It’s like seven pm!”

Taken aback, both Dae and her looked up at the clock on the microwave not too far from the stove. True enough, the time read 7:08 p.m. “Oh, gosh!” she exclaimed. They had been baking four at least four hours if not more, where had time gone?  

“Well, it don’t matter, come to the rendezvous point, in ten minutes,” and with that he hung up. Dae and her exchanged looks, Ten minutes? They hadn’t completely finished the cake! Rushing to get everything in, the two scrambled across and to and fro in the kitchen to get the cake down as quickly as possible, but the time they finished, Julia had one of the mafia guys, Ernest, the driver take them back to the rendezvous point which was actually the mall. The cake proved to be too much for either of them to carry so Ernest came with them as they ascended the steps to meetup with Aroon and their digimon.

Something was odd though, it was quiet and dark and no one was here, they faintly heard the voices of the mallrats could be heard from nearby, none of the voices their friends though. Julia looked around as they ascended the last steps until they stood in the dark until the lights suddenly flickered on, revealing lanterns hanging on lines running around above with a Christmas tree garbed in lights of many colors, its shiny ornaments reflecting off the colors. A clothed table with chairs stood near the balcony next to the Christmas tree and from under the clothed table popped their digital friends.

“Surprise!” the three yelled at the top of their lungs. Dae and Julia broke out in laughter as Julia ran to Cygnusmon, giving her feathered friend a hug. Oh, the place looked very beautiful, was this the surprise? If so, Julia couldn’t believe that their hungry digimon could do all this.

“We made this just for you!” Cygnusmon told her, rubbing her head on Julia’s stomach. “For this ‘Christmas’ celebration you humans do.”

Hippi ran to Dae and practically tackled him into the ground. “Didi!” she shouted, “We got the place all fancy for you.” She wagged her tiny tail, closing her eyes and bobbing in the air.

Aroon came around the corner, checking his watch. “Man, you mates are late,” when he saw the cake in Ernest’s arms, he blinked a look of surprise, “I can see why.” His surprised turned to a smile.

“Oh! Ernest, you can put the cake down,” Julia gestured to the table. The mafia man nodded and did exactly what she told him without a second thought. “What is all this?”

“We wanted to surprise you!” Hippi announced. “So we decorated the tree.”

“And put up some lanterns,” Cygnuson finished, “And I see our efforts didn’t go in vain. You got us food.”

“Food!” Wally and Hippi shouted in unison practically running to the cake, aweing at it and oohing at the decorations.

“We got some presents for you too. It’s under the table.” Cygnusmon flew over to the table.

Aroon came over to his friends, helping Dae up. “We got forty minutes before the actual people who reserved this place come here,” he gave them a goofy grin.

“Then we better get eating,” Wally shouted from the table, desperately trying to reach the cake. Ernest stood to the side, awaiting orders and acting as if he didn’t see the digimon.

“Merry Christmas,” Dae suddenly said, pulling out two things from his coat pockets and handing each to Aroon and Julia. She was surprised to see that he had found time to actually buy something for them since he was always being distracted and she hadn’t seen him buy anything. She smiled and took it, finding the complete collection of the Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales. Aroon got a pocket watch which he seemed so excited for.

“I’d give you my presents but I left them at home,” Aroon smiled nervously.

“It’s the thought that counts,” she told them, “Happy Holidays.” And just then from somewhere in the distance, fireworks lit up the sky in showers of gold, red, green and white, bombing their beautiful colors and signaling everyone to notice the celebration that was happening everywhere.