#I'm sorry if it slightly tastes like leoide I tried making it neutral-ish but I'm not immune to leoide

[starry-knight-coffins]

Hiii!!!

Guess what I was doing instead of writing my fanfic! Participating in a Tumblr event (tehe)

Wrote a little something for this event yo @bunnwich

Anyway, yeah. Hi, I was that funky weird anon who asked if it was ocs only bc I... Had no ocs. Glad it doesn't need ocs tho bc I'm like weak for Idia and Leona and seeing them together makes me very happy

So, ye

Enjoy?

Yuletide? Trusty reindeer?! Leona couldn't give a damn about any of that! What was with that drawing anyway? Why were there only two slips? Because of the headmaster's poor excuse of a joke, he ended up as some trusty herbivore for a radish sprout that looked like he'd pass out if Leona got too close. What a joke! All he wanted to do right now is go to the botanical garden and-

Also readable on AO3 tehe!

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Hm. He's got a little issue. Idia's little sprout brother stood between him and the botanical garden doors and, by the looks of it, Ortho wouldn't let him pass by so easily.

"Aha! There you are, Leona Kingscholar!" Ortho hovered over to him, displaying a rather cheerful expression, "Niisan has given me a request to go find you, so here I am! Will you spare us a moment of your time? I promise it'll be worth your while!"

Leona didn't want to go and see what Idia was up to, but if it was for that yule thing he probably had to, "Why does he want to see me?"

"He wants to show you a super cool mount he made to make Yuletide a little easier for you two to navigate."

"Alright, fine." Leona stepped aside for the little guy to show the way, "Lead us there."

"Roger!"

Leona followed Ortho for a long while, leaving the botanical garden and his morning plans far behind him. They walked past the school and several dozen trees, finally arriving at some discreet clearing far away from campus. A rather large sleigh sat in the middle of the clearing, filled to the brim with a generous amount of gifts and a single radish sprout.

"Oi, radish sprout." Shouted Leona as he walked closer, the sleigh seemed surprisingly new, "What's all this about?"

"O-Oh Leona..!" Idia fumbled with his tablet for a brief moment before holding it in front of him, letting the device do all the talking, "Fuhihihi! Welcome, my trusty reindeer, to the most exciting event of your week! Do you like my sleigh?"

"It's… nice. I don't have to pull it around, do I?"

"Sevens, no! We're not going to do something so cringe! We're in the future, Leona, we have no need to use such a slow method of transport. Instead, I got us a mount that…" Idia pointed dramatically into the air, "Can fly!"

"Fly? Really?" Leona leaned against the sleigh, "You made a sleigh that could fly in two days?"

"It's easy to do, I just didn't sleep. Ezpz." Idia seemed pretty smug about his terrible sleep schedule, "Anyway, do you know how to properly drive a flying car? It's easy if you don't know, I can teach you the basics in under an hour."

-⛄-

Unexpectedly, driving around in a flying car with Idia and Ortho is… fun. Well, fun enough. Leona got free rein, so he could fly anywhere on campus that he wanted, but he had to listen to Idia talk about fifty different video games. The only thing they've done together game-wise is chess! Not videogames, chess! It's rare to see Idia so animated, though, so… whatever. He could listen to more nerd facts as he drove around if it meant that Idia wouldn't freeze in fear at every little thing.

"- and so, that's how you can get a total of ten cupcakes during your ACNH birthday party." Explained Idia as he shuffled through his bag, gripping his tablet in one hand and pulling out a bundle of crumpled paper with the other, "Anyway, you drive fine now, so we can get on to the main event."

"The main event wasn't me doing a couple loops with this car?" Questioned Leona as they passed by the top bit of NRC for the sixth time that afternoon, "I thought that was thrilling."

"We almost lost a couple presents!" Exclaimed Idia, smacking Leona lightly with his tablet, "And that stunt wasn't it! We need to test this sleigh and deliver a few gifts."

"Why?"

"I want to see if we can go no contact and just drop gifts on people, that's why I have Ortho in the back." Idia flipped through a couple of the pages in his hand, "You probably shouldn't run over anyone, but I encourage scaring people to death by nearly running them over. Particularly Azul, he beat me in Monopoly last week through dirty tactics-"

-⛄-

Yep. Nothing like walking through the snow miserably. Against all odds, Ruggie found himself running late. Not that late, but still, pretty late. His class went on past the bell, the line at Sam's store took forever, and now the hyena found himself crunching through the snow with Jack. He met up with the guy on his way out of the store but… still. It feels a little awkward that he's making Jack lug around all the laundry stuff he bought earlier. Jack was super willing and everything, but still. The help is appreciated at least.

"So…" Starts Jack, perhaps uncomfortable with the silence between them, "Have you heard what has been happening today?"

"Are you talking about the murder sleigh?" Questioned Ruggie, "Yeah, it would be pretty hard to miss the gossip floating around the halls about the mysterious flying vehicle that nearly mowed down a couple students today."

"Yeah, that sleigh." Jack keeps on trudging ok through the snow, "It didn't kill anyone yet, but it tended to target students who were alone in open spaces."

"... Yeah?"

"And we're alone… in an open space. We won't get run over next, will we?"

"Huh." Ruggie hadn't thought about that before, but they sure are walking in an open space with nobody else around, "Probably not. What's the chances that the crazy murder sleigh would want to-"

"Wait." Jack paused with a small twitch of his ears, "Do you hear something?"

Ruggie stopped in his own tracks, trying to catch on to the mysterious sound Jack was referring to. He could certainly hear something… it's faint, like the jingle of bells and the clunking of several… boxes? He wasn't sure. It was nearly impossible to hear the bells over the crunching of snow and their idle chatter, he's surprised Jack hear the noise at all. Still, why does it sound like that bell jingle is getting louder by the second?

"Where is that sound coming-?" Ruggie turned to look behind him, coming face to face with a sleigh in the sky that's coming straight at them, "Jack! The sleigh! It's coming for us!"

"What?!" Jack hauled the bags he held over his shoulder as he started running for it, "We have to go, Ruggie! Run-!"

"Don't run!" Yelled something from the sleigh that's hurling itself towards them, "Duck! Get down!"

Jack and Ruggie were on the ground in seconds, holding their breath as the sleigh sped on by over their heads. Part of him swore that he saw the vehicle graze the top fluff off of Jack's ears, it went way too close to them!

"Great seven…" Ruggie cursed as he slowly lifted himself up from the snow, "Are you good, dude?"

"I- Yeah." Jack's gaze seemed to follow the retreating sleigh that flew off into the evening sky, "Are you good?"

"Well, I'm certainly not roadkill." Ruggie spun around briefly, looking at their surroundings, "The stuff I bought isn't crushed or anything but- hey!" Ruggie pointed towards two neatly placed present boxes that had somehow appeared behind them, "Look! Did the sleigh drop these?"

"Maybe?" Jack carefully approached the gifts, grabbing one and flipping it around, "There's a tag here, this one says 'For Jack, from the green one and his reindeer'. Wait, it's for me?!"

"Does that mean the other one is for me?!" Ruggie quickly picked up the other box and grabbed the tag, it had his name on it, "Dude! It is for me!"

"Should we open them..?"

"Why not? It's not like the sleigh is coming back for them."

Jack merely nodded in agreement before tearing open his present, "No way! Succulent crochet for beginners, I was looking up this book last night!"

Oh boy, Ruggie was looking up different types of laundry detergent last night. He really, really hoped he wasn't about to get laundry detergent. Maybe he should save this thing to open later-

"What did you get?" Questioned Jack, eyes brimming with curiosity.

Well, no avoiding it now. Ruggie carefully undid the neat ribbon before tearing apart the wrapping paper, revealing… four dozen doughnuts? Oh yeah, the other thing he was looking up last night, how to easily make four dozen doughnuts while hungry. He never managed to accomplish that, mainly because the BOOgle results sucked, but now he got what he wanted with zero effort. Ruggie popped open one of the doughnuts, expecting to get some plain ones, but what greeted him instead were twelve doughnuts that seemed to be individually decorated to look like spotted hyenas. That's… really cute, actually.

Jack leaned over his shoulder to look at his newly acquired doughnut haul, pointing at one of the various hyena doughnuts, "Hey, Ruggie, that one looks like you!"

-⛄-

"Did you see their faces?!" Idia seemed close to tears besides him, face adorned with a huge grin, "Gold! They're expressions are almost as good as Azul's look of pure panic!"

"I got a pretty good shot of their faces!" Exclaims Ortho with his camera, "We can print you a copy if you want, Leona."

"Sure, why not." Leona couldn't help but smile as he saw the Shroud brothers do a fist bump, "Who are we scaring to death next?"

"They were the last people we had on our test run list, actually." Idia leaned back in his seat, "Can you land us near the botanical garden? You'll be free of your reindeer duties for the day afterwards."

"Oh. Yeah, sure." Part of Leona had hoped that this would last longer, for he's having a better time than expected with the Shroud brothers, but he shouldn't be selfish, "You don't want to land where we started?"

"Nah, too far, the botanical garden is closer." Idia grabbed his discarded tablet and held it up to his face, letting the device do the rest of the talking, "We can take the long scenic route to the field if you want to spend more time with me!"

"Hah, you wish."

Idia huffed behind his tablet as it continued to rattle out words, "You'd definitely fail if you were in an otome."

"Good thing I'm not in one then, yeah?" Leona landed the sleigh with ease outside of the botanical garden, "Here we are, radish sprout. Anything else you two need before I get goin'?"

Idia lowered his tablet to speak with his own mouth once more, "Yeah, I've got one more thing." Idia motioned towards Ortho with his hand, "You still got it?"

"Yep!" Ortho produced a present, dropping it onto Leona's lap, "Happy Yuletide, Leona!"

"Happy Yuletide, Leona. I had to get my trusty reindeer a little something so… tada. Take it with you as you get off, ok? No throwing it away!"

"Alright, alright." Leona carefully held the gift as he got off of the sleigh, "Are we still goin' to have our chess rematch this weekend?"

"Oh defs. " Idia did a little finger gun as he slid on over to the seat Leona once occupied, "This Yuletide job of ours won't stop me from kicking your ass." He quickly left after saying those words, guiding the sleigh off into the sky.

Right. What did Idia get him anyway? Leona tore open the wrapping paper, revealing a rather soft pillow with a nice silk pillowcase folded to the side. This is nice, it could probably replace his usual nap pillow as well…

Wait, does this mean he owes Idia a gift?