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“Wooooow!” It had taken until the middle of December, but Netto had finally wrangled Meiru out from behind her keyboard and Enzan from his desk so they could spend the weekend hanging out. They were headed to the big arcade in Downtown Densan, and the shopping district was decorated in bright greens and reds for the holiday season. Shoppers packed the street, and there was a distinctly festive chill to the air. “Can you believe it’s almost Christmas already?”
“Don’t remind me,” sighed Enzan.
“It’s not another cringe commercial, is it?” Meiru asked him.
“Worse. A charity single.” Dourly, Enzan said, “From now on, you are the only songwriter I’m interested in working with, Sakurai.”
“Yowch. But also, uh, thanks!”
“When do I get to hear it?” Netto asked. “You let me hear that Halloween thing you did.”
“The one that Sakurai wrote, you mean?” Enzan reminded him. “And never, if I can help it.”
“Challenge accepted,” Netto shot back with an evil grin.
“I miss Halloween,” Meiru sighed. “We had so much fun this year…”
“Well, we’ll just have to also have fun for Christmas!” Netto said rather than let Meiru and Enzan begin reminiscing about cobwebs in the middle of the ornament-bedecked Downtown Densan. “We can eat lots of cookies, and go ice skating, and leave an Elf on the Shelf for Meijin-san…”
“Elf on the Shelf?” asked Enzan.
“It’s a kinda new thing, they weren’t around when we were little,” Netto explained. “It’s an elf that watches you and tells Santa how good or bad you’ve been in December.”
“It’s weird, is what it is,” Meiru said flatly. “Having a gaggle of elves spying on you in your house sounds like a nightmare.”
“It’s not like that!” Netto protested. “They’re nice elves!”
“That’s what they all say,” Enzan remarked ominously. “Until the Elf Gestapo finds you’ve done something wrong…” He mimed a noose around his neck with his thumb and index finger.
“They’re all reporting to the Elf-I-A,” Meiru agreed solemnly. “The K-Elf-B.”
“Stooooop!” Netto rounded on his friends, both clearly uninterested in stopping. “I know Christmas is an uncool capitalist holiday or whatever, but it can be as fun as Halloween!”
“Halloween has fewer expectations surrounding it,” Enzan pointed out.
“Yeah, it’s cute to see little kids into it, but Christmas is honestly really stressful for me,” sighed Meiru. “I have to get the house ready for when my parents come home, and there’s a lot of other events I wind up committed to through my piano teacher…”
“Okay, that is it.” Netto reached out and took his friends’ hands. “We’re going to go have fun!”
“Wha, right now?” Meiru asked, bewildered as she was pulled along.
“Yes! For all I know, you two’ll just vanish on me before it’s Christmas, and then nothing’s going to still be happening around town. We’ve got today, so we’re using it!”
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In the center of Downtown Densan was a sort of town square-type area ringed by shops, where a massive Christmas tree was set up. One of the tiny trams decorated to look like trains that always popped up around Christmas was there, too, running a circuit around the tree in order to ferry small children from where they’d started to where they’d started.
To Netto’s surprise, some Elf on the Shelfs were set up around the perimeter. Even though they were simple little dolls and remained totally still, more and more seemed to appear before his eyes the longer he spent looking around, nestled in the tinsel decorating the streetlamps and miming various poses in the shop windows. Staring down at the town square with their painted-on, flushed-faced, boggle-eyed smiles.
“They are not creepy,” Netto said, shooting Enzan a glare.
“I haven’t said a word,” Enzan retorted coolly.
“But you were thinking it,” Netto pointed out. “I could see it all over your face, ‘Meiru-chan was right, those things really are creepy’.”
“You haven’t even told me what they are, but for you to be getting so defensive over them, they can only be one thing. What does that say about them?”
As Netto seethed, Meiru wondered, “What’s the plural of Elf on the Shelf, anyway? Elves on the Shelves? Elves on the Shelf?”
“‘Elf on the Shelf’ is like its name, so I guess it’d be Elf on the Shelfs,” Netto said. Now distracted from his sulk, he got down to business. “Whatever. We are having holiday fun! Right now! And the first step of holiday fun is to get some hot chocolate!” Luckily, Netto had been by before, and could confidently point out the proper food truck. “Over there!”
As they waited in line, Netto couldn’t help but people-watch, noticing face after face. Most of the adults were… tired. Through the window of one of the stores, he could see the telltale sights of a customer picking a fight with an exhausted checkout clerk, gesticulating wildly at the defenseless employee. Maybe Meiru and Enzan did have a point; underneath the cheery surface, there were an awful lot of people here decidedly not having fun on what to Netto was supposed to be a fun holiday.
With that in mind, he made sure to leave zenny in the tip jar once it was his turn to order a hot chocolate. He’d already tried the peppermint one that most people were walking away with, so this time, he went for a double-chocolate with toffee sauce. Meiru got peppermint with marshmallows on top, while Enzan got a spiced chocolate.
Once they had savored the first sips of their hot chocolates, Meiru asked, “Well, what do we do now, Holiday Master? It’s a little early to go around looking at lights.”
“I’m glad you asked!” With the warm sweetness of his hot chocolate to bolster his enthusiasm, Netto felt unstoppable, even though there it felt like there were even more Elf on the Shelfs around than when they’d come in. Maybe they really were a little unnerving in their elfly judgment, staring down from above in this number. “For your information, there’s a whole ice festival going on at the Radeon, complete with a sled track and a castle you’re allowed to explore in!” Netto explained, gesturing to the hotel standing tall over the end of the square.
“If there’s an entrance fee, you’re paying for all three of us!” Meiru immediately stuck Netto with, to which Enzan looked distinctly amused. Netto winced; he knew he should’ve seen that one coming.
It was absurd to think that there were more Elf on the Shelfs the closer they got to the Radeon, posed atop food trucks and on door handles and even one lying cheekily across a parked car. They weren’t moving, after all. Their painted-on eyes didn’t blink, and their stuffed bodies didn’t twitch. It was just a doll for children and gullible adults such as Meijin. They weren’t really spying on them. After all, they couldn’t actually see.
Netto gulped down another swig of hot chocolate. Surely it was just the breeze making their little limbs appear to shift slightly. Enzan and Meiru had gotten under his skin talking about them, and he would be damned if he admitted it and gave them more ammunition. He glanced up from his cup and found an Elf on the Shelf staring right back from the garland on the nearby lamppost, unmoving. Watching. Waiting.
He tried even harder to dismiss it all, which lasted for maybe half a second before Meiru said, “Netto, Enzan, is it just me…?”
Then he saw a red blur out of the corner of his eye, then three more. The bustle of Downtown Densan grew far more panicked, chatter turning to screams. The confusion separated Netto from his friends and a solid sip’s worth of hot chocolate from his cup as the sky turned red with Elf on the Shelfs propelling themselves downward. He narrowly managed to avoid spilling the rest on a staggering passerby with at least ten of the things somehow stuck to his face and hands.
Netto guzzled the rest of his hot chocolate in two gulps, not willing to slosh any more even in the circumstances, and ducked under an overhang. There, shielded from the elfin rain, he was safe to draw out his PET. “They can’t really have plug-in ports, can they, Rockman?”
“I won’t know for sure unless we get closer—“ With new alarm, Rockman shouted, “Netto-kun, behind you!”
Netto whirled around to see an Elf on the Shelf hurtling toward him at an angle with its vapid little smile still painted on its face, its felt-covered hands outstretched to dig into his eyeballs.
A plastic candy cane yard decoration swung out over Netto’s head in a perfect arc, catching the Elf on the Shelf with a hollow thunk and sending it sailing harmlessly back where it had come from. He turned to see Enzan standing in front of the overhang, the candy cane slung over his shoulder nonchalantly.
“Enzan!” exclaimed Netto. “My hero!”
Enzan dispatched another Elf on the Shelf, then hauled Netto to his feet. “So much for your ’nice elves’,” he said pointedly as they started running.
“I didn’t know they could do this!” protested Netto. “I still don’t know how they’re doing this!”
“That makes two of us.” The onslaught was merciless, but rather than continue to hide behind Enzan, Netto snatched a wreath off of one of the shop doors to take a few swings for himself. Around them, the felt-covered carnage was unfolding with alarming speed, the lucky members of the crowd watching from indoors with wide eyes and the unlucky ones laid out on the frosty ground or staggering as they tried to pull the little dolls off them. Netto weaved around the fallen shoppers, clubbing Elf on the Shelfs with his wreath all the while.
Finally, Netto and Enzan found themselves confronted by the giant Christmas tree in the center square, which seemed to be swallowed by a mass of skittering dolls. Behind them was a growing mob of smiling elves; Netto backed away from the ones crowding in from the side and found his back touching Enzan’s, the Net Saviors totally boxed in.
Then, there was a snap as the wires anchoring the tree were cut, and the towering throng of elves toppled. The Elf on the Shelfs that weren’t squashed beneath it were pitched into the air. As they landed, they swarmed together with the ones already on the ground. But before they could fully regroup, they were mowed aside.
To Netto’s bafflement, they’d been taken out by the kiddie train from the square, and Meiru was in the conductor’s seat. It pulled to a halt. She’d rigged up some kind of device in and around the ornamental smokestack, presumably to make the train go faster. Netto could not begin to guess at the efficacy of it, considering there was definitely a string of lights holding one of its pieces to the other.
“Get in,” Meiru ordered. With no other options open to them, Netto and Enzan climbed aboard, Netto hitting his head on the roof of the tiny train car when he tried to straighten up. Meiru floored it.
“I’d have to guess they’ve got some kind of simple receiver in them, because I’m picking up signals. Whatever’s controlling them is broadcasting from the arcade,” Roll explained to the squeezed-in Net Saviors. Netto could see Elf on the Shelfs bouncing violently off the sides of the train, smears of paint and cotton fluff appearing along the windows.
“So, not far from—“ Enzan was cut off by the train rattling violently, a thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump traveling from the locomotive in front of them to the caboose behind them. Netto opened the tiny door and peered behind him to see the remains of an Elf on the Shelf or six rapidly receding, then ducked back inside as one of its brethren launched itself at his face for the second time that day. It bounced harmlessly off the door as Netto shut it, and they hurtled onward toward the arcade.
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“This way!” Roll directed them once they’d made it inside.
“Easy for you to say,” Netto complained. The aisles of game machines were rustling with tiny felt-and-plastic creatures. He readied his wreath while Enzan held his candy cane at the ready, while Meiru hefted— “A baseball bat?! That’s not festive at all!”
“It’s red,” Meiru shrugged.
Armed and ready as they were, wave after wave of Elf on the Shelfs fell to the Netbattlers’ counteroffensive, Netto and Meiru charging ahead while Enzan watched the group’s back. Roll came to a stop in front of a game called Super Sledder, with a cyber world filled with ice and snow. The three of them lifted their PETs with their free hands. “Plug in!”
The virus defenses were surprisingly robust for something of this nature, but then, what the Elf on the Shelf army had done to most of the shoppers outside was no joke. “I just need half a minute, you two!” Roll told her fellow Navis, spreading her antennae while accessing the control panel with her hands. Rockman and Blues promptly set to work busting viruses.
In the real world, the Operators were occupied with escaping the wrath of the Elf on the Shelf horde. They’d gotten more coordinated in their desperation; Netto belatedly realized they were being forced in a certain direction once they’d been fenced into one of the aisles, between the skee-ball machines and the coin launchers.
The Elves seemed to prepare to spring, and Netto braced himself in turn. But only one or two went flying into the air, easily picked off by Meiru and Enzan. The rest fell over limply, back to being dolls. Netto looked around at them all, strewn on the floor, and then noticed a few of them still posed on the prize counter. One of these Elves was a bit shorter and rounder than the others, barely able to squeeze into the red onesie. “…Wait a minute.” Netto loomed over the rotund Elf on the Shelf, whose blobby little eyes were looking more alarmed by the moment under his green visor. “Bubbleman?!”
“Puku!” squeaked the miniaturized Navi in fright.
Meiru snatched up Bubbleman before he could scramble out of sight. “Why’re you ruining Christmas for all those kids, Bubbleman?!”
“I’m spreading fear and terror in the holiday world, puku!” explained Bubbleman proudly.
“I wouldn’t call that terror, per se…” Netto pointed out skeptically. “They’re a little, uh, small.”
Peeved, Bubbleman yelled, “Let go of me, puku, or else I’m gonna give you something to be scared of!”
“Not a chance!” Bubbleman thrashed about, but he was tiny in the Miniroid, and Meiru was as determined not to let go of him as he was to get himself free.
“There you are, Bubbleman!” To Netto’s surprise, Iceman hopped onto the prize counter in a Miniroid of his own.
“Bubbleman, pyu!” Aquaman followed suit.
“Iceman?! Aquaman?!” Alarmed, Bubbleman asked them, “What are you doing here, puku?!”
“We wanted to surprise you, since I’m here anyway for the ice festival!” Iceman explained.
Aquaman recounted, “We can build snowmen, and climb the big Christmas tree, and explore the ice castle… Pelulu…” He clasped his tiny hands together, staring up at Meiru with his big eyes. “I wanna do fun things with Bubbleman, pyu…”
“Meiru-san, Bubbleman isn’t in big trouble, is he?” Iceman asked worriedly.
Failing to hold out against the onslaught of cute, Meiru hedged, “Well, he is, but… I don’t know…”
“You two can keep an eye on him, right?” Enzan asked the small Navis. Netto had no idea how he was keeping such a straight face.
“We will, Enzan-san! Pelulu!” cheered Aquaman, Iceman nodding along.
Leaning in close to Bubbleman, Netto added, “And you’ll go have a nice time with them, right?”
“Puku!” Bubbleman gulped.
Gently, Meiru set Bubbleman down between the other two Navis in Miniroids. He was promptly dragged off among cheers of, “Bubbleman! Bubbleman! Bubbleman!”
With the arcade cleared out as it was by the recent invasion of Elf on the Shelfs, Netto and his friends were left in the tinny clamor of still-playing machines, no one else around to hear them.
“See? Those things are definitely creepy,” Meiru said, breaking the relative silence.
“That’s just because Bubbleman was using them!” protested Netto, though they had in fact been incredibly unnerving.
“They were worse when they were holding still,” Enzan said calmly, puncturing Netto’s argument like a peppermint stick through thin whipped topping.
With a frustrated sigh, Netto sat in one of the racing game cabinets’ seats. “This sucks… Bubbleman’s gonna end up doing more holiday stuff than we are, and you guys probably just wanted a break from the holidays to begin with…” He looked up at them, seeing from their shifting glances that he was right. “I really wanted to go, but I shouldn’t have pushed you into it.”
“Even if we hadn’t been in the town square, we eventually would’ve had to go there to stop Bubbleman anyway,” Enzan pointed out. Netto just sighed; that didn’t change how he’d heard what Meiru and Enzan were saying but totally ignored it.
“Say, we’ve got the whole arcade to ourselves for now, don’t we?” Meiru asked. “That never happens.”
“And we were heading here anyway, as I recall,” Enzan said.
Meiru nudged Netto’s arm. “Just because it’s not themed doesn’t mean we can’t say it’s festive anyhow, right?”
“Right! Because Christmas is supposed to be about spending time together,” Netto remembered, smiling. “Thanks, guys!” He hopped to his feet. “I’ve decided it’s also about beating you both at Snowboard X!”