Silent Night

With only a few days remaining before Christmas Eve and Christmas Day itself, Aurdel and all of the students of Class 1-A worked tirelessly to prepare the dorm building for the holidays. Each of them did their part, going at it day and night to make everything to the best of their ability and beyond. Ribbons, wreaths, bells and garland were strung across the many hallways of the dorm building, with holly, candles, dioramas, aluminum trees and fake snow filling the spaces in between. Dropping down from the ceiling was a mix of decorations, with hundreds of LED snowflakes and meticulously designed and craft paper snowflakes covered with glitter and other reflective material. When the main lights went off the room would be filled with glowing shapes, forming a sort of aurora that would change color as the lights did. But the crowning achievements of their labor was the one that had taken the most effort, and the one that served as the centerpiece for their celebration. The Christmas tree.

The tree was around fourteen feet tall and eight feet wide, taking up a massive space next to the large dining table that sat in the middle of the door room. He and the boys were barely able to squeeze the tree through the pair of open doors, working slowly and carefully to make sure that they didn’t damage or destroy any of the branches. But no matter how much work it’d been to set it all up, it had absolutely been worth it. Glass, metal and ceramic ornaments, massive strings of light, wooden toys, mountains of tinsel, lines of foil garlands, gingerbread men, candy canes, charms and miles of string lights. When the lights went off in the room the tree stood out like no other, a monument to all of their hard work and their intentions to celebrate the holidays. But there was one thing that was much more important than all of the decorations, and that was the people who were celebrating.

“Merry Christmas!” All of Class 1-A was gathered in the main room, dressed head to toe in Santa outfits both green and red. Each and every one of them was filled with an excited spirit and surrounded by a happy glow, even those that were typically more reserved or those that didn’t really act as kind were no exception. And frankly, it was infectious. He was no exception. And so rather than go against the mood, he joined in with them. Keeping his armor on, he draped a large red Santa outfit he’d made himself on top. Then he took off his helmet, keeping it at his side and he put on white beard and hair wig. After that he walked out from around the corner and into the main room.

“Guys, look! Mr. Aurdel is finally showing some of his face!” Ashido jumped out from Nora here, catching him off guard as she shouted to get everyone’s attention.

“Hold on, it’s not- “ Before he could even give a response the class came practically barreling over, everyone wanting to get a look at him. “Look, I understand that I don’t really show my face at all, but is it really that interesting to get a look at my face?”

“Of course it is! We already told you that we have a betting pool for whoever can get the most details correct about your face. You should really see what some people think you look like online!”

He became exasperated, “I would really rather not be reminded of the kinds of things I see online about myself.”

“Darn, he’s got blue eyes and a small scar,” Jiro scratched the back of neck, “That’s a bad way to start off what I had for my bet.”

He raised his hand, “Look, this isn’t the time to be gawking at my face. It’s Christmas Eve, you should be focusing on and celebrating that.”

“Mr. Aurdel is right,” Ida proclaimed, fixing his glasses, “Christmas is only once a year, and with all the time it took to prepare it would be a waste to not enjoy it!”

“Right, thanks for the food!” With that the class gathered backed around the large table in the center of the room, digging into the feast that they had in front of them. Dozens of plate covered with food littered the table, with cooked chickens, turkeys, hams and sausages, bowls of warm rice, potatoes and dumplings, large pots of stews, soups and chowders and trays covered with fresh bread, cookies, brownies, eclairs, cannolis, donuts, cakes and so much more.

“You know,” Kaminari spoke with a leg of turkey in one hand and a cup with hot tea in the other, “It really stinks that after the break we all need to start our work studies. We’re probably the busiest first years this school has ever seen.”

“I can’t really blame them for wanting us to get the experience, there’s a lot of stuff going down. Besides, I don’t have any issue with the extra work.” Kirishima shrugged it off, “I’ll be working with Fat Gum and Amajiki again, and hopefully that will give me the chance to make a new form that can truly be called unbreakable.”

“Manual’s agency is still open to the work study program, so that’s where I’ll be going,” Ida ate neatly with a knife and fork on his plate, contrasting the other boys who almost all tore into their food voraciously. “What about you Midoriya? Are you going to keep working at Sir Nighteye’s agency?”

“I’m honestly not too sure,” Midoriya said, taking a bite out of a cookie, “I did learn a lot while I was working with him, and it was a mostly okay experience, but after I had a conversation with Sir Nighteye he didn’t seem to think there was any way for him to accommodate the changes with my quirk. It’s a shame since I wanted to see more of him and Mirio at were, but I was also thinking about working with Mr. Aurdel.”

“About that, I’m not sure if me taking you is actually for the best.”

“Why’s that?”

Aurdel took a long sip of the hot tea. “While I do enjoy your company as much as everyone else’s, the fact is that you need to have access to a wider pool of experience and knowledge. Since you’re already my student that means you’ve already tapped into some of that knowledge, but I don’t want it to become the sole source you have.”

“I see…”

“Would you quit all this talk about hard work?!” Mineta interrupted, protesting their conversation. “You wanted us to enjoy Christmas, right? So stop talking about it! It’s supposed to be a holy day of rest after all.”

“You’re right, so I hope we’re not too late to join in.” One of the two main doors opened.

“Trick or…! Treat?”

“You’re thinking of Halloween, but you’ve got the right spirit.”

“Ah, Eri!” Aizawa and Eri stepped in through the door, the latter wearing an outfit just like everyone in the class.

“Demons out! Demons in!” Eri scattered a handful of beans, not knowing that this was a custom from the wrong holiday. But seeing her dressed up and trying her hardest to fit in and have fun, it warmed his heart. A smile crept onto-

“Aha, I knew that she would be able to get him,” Mirko pushed open the second door, revealing herself, Gentle and La Brava.

A little bit of embarrassment rose from him, he tried to quash it. “You’re always just trying to push my buttons, huh?”

“If someone has the knowledge of how to do it, then they should do it. And that person may as well be me.” She picked Eri, playing with her hair as she carried her over.

Midoriya was somewhat shocked, “I never would have thought that you would show up Gentle.”

“Neither would I, but Ms. Mirko suggested that we come along. I graciously accepted since it gave me the chance to thank you.”

“Deku, you know him?” Uraraka asked, she’d managed to weasel her way on the couch next to Midoriya.

Nervously he scratched the back of his head, “It’s sort of a long story.”

“I was still a Villain then, and I was trying to leave my mark on history by breaking into the festival and showing myself to the world. But Midoriya beat in a battle before I could accomplish my plan.”

“I still think we could have gotten away with it if he hadn’t been there,” La Brava said.

“I’m not sure about that,” Aurdel interrupted, putting down his cup, “I recently took a look at the program you were planning to use to get past the security system. And I can tell you now, that wouldn’t have worked.”

Mirko walked over to where Aurdel was, setting Eri down on his lap. She looked up, “I painted these eggs,” and held up a handful of decorative Easter eggs.

“They look very nice, you do a good job with them.” He gave her a pat on the head, she giggled and smiled.

“You two look really natural like that,” Ashido commented, “Like father and daughter!”

“Really? Well, I have to say that sounds-“ All of a sudden, Eri put aside the cluster of Easter eggs she was holding. Then she dove in and gave him a great big hug, “-nice.” He was caught off guard by the gesture, as he kept herself close and pressed her head against him.

“Aw, that’s so cute!” There was a gush from the crowd around them, with them likely enjoying how much he’d become embarrassed from the sudden.

Mirko leaned over the couch with a satisfied look, “Yep, just like father and daughter.”

He let out a sigh as he returned the hug, holding Eri. “You know, I don’t think I’m ever going to hear the end of this?”

She tilted her head, “You don’t like it?”

“No, I do. It’s just that I know when someone like me who tries to act tough all the time does something soft, they’ll be made fun of to no end.” He stood up, picking her up and lifting her above his head. “But I guess if it’s to keep you happy, then, then I guess I can deal with the teasing!” Eri laughed and smiled as he raised her up high, and he did the same. “Now come on, there’s plenty of food on the table. You’re a growing girl and it means that you need to eat.”

“What about sweets?”

“We have plenty of sweets for you to eat, you can take as many as you want.” And with that, and with everyone there, the celebration could truly begin.

“…Deck the halls with boughs of folly! Fa, la, la, la, la-!”

“Oh my god, you guys are completely off key!” Jiro looked up from her guitar, absolutely astonished. “What happened to all that practice that we did for the school festival?!”

“What are you talking about? You were the one that did all the singing for the concert!” Kaminari shouted.

She became exasperated, “But you were all supposed to be backup singers too! Sure you weren’t the main voice that was being heard, but you still needed to sing at a certain key to reinforce what I was singing.”

Ojiro scratched the back of his head, “I guess we were so busy with everything else that we really didn’t have the time to keep practicing our singing.”

“Well how are we supposed to sing carols if you guys can’t match the key?”

Aurdel sat quietly with Eri, watching the others as she chewed on a brownie, when he suddenly looked up. “Can you sing?”

“Can I sing?” He pondered the thought, “Well, yes, but-“

“No way,” Sero said, “You’ve got a deep voice, but there’s no way you can sing.”

“What do you mean? I have a larger vocal range than you think.”

“Since when?!”

“How do you think I manage to get those robot dummies to mimic your voices?”

“Didn’t you use vocal synthesizers?” Jiro asked.

“Well, yes, but I needed something for the synthesizers to form an effective template off of. And I couldn’t exactly ask each of you individually to sit down for an hour and talk into a microphone.”

“An hour?!”

“Yes, an hour. Though that doesn’t account for all the time you spend doing warm ups to speak so long with an assumed voice. All in all I have around thirty hours of audio recordings sitting on a hard drive.”

“I wanna hear you sing!” Eri said, quickly latching onto him.

He gave a nervous laugh, “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.”

“Come on, sing!” The class started to join in on pressuring.

“Look, I don’t want to embarrass-!”

Aizawa put a hand on his shoulder, “It’s only fair.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You saw me embarrass myself when I was doing karaoke with Mic, then you left before you had the chance to do the same.”

Mirko walked back into the room, holding Koda’s pet rabbit in her arms. “Oh, was that what I interrupted?” He lowered his head a little. Crap. “In that case, I want to hear it.”

He let out a sigh, “Looks like I don’t really have a choice, huh?”

“Nope.”

He racked his brain, trying to think of what he was supposed to sing. The last time he’d sing a Christmas carol was… Well, it’d been a while. But after a moment he made up his mind. He cleared his throat, and everyone waited with great anticipation for him to sing. Eri especially.

“Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King! Peace on Earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.’ Joyful all ‘ye nations rise! Join the triumph of the skies! With th’ angelic host proclaim, ‘Christ is born in Bethlehem.’ Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King!’” He finished the first verse of the song, and looked around. “Well?”

“I mean it sounds great… But the carol you picked is kind of out there.”

“Huh?” He must’ve had an incredible look of astonishment on his face.

“It’s not that it’s a bad song!” Jiro said, “It’s just that nobody really sings stuff like that anymore. I doubt most people even know the lyrics to that song.”

He stood up with Eri still in his hands, “It sounds like no one has an appreciation for the classics anymore.”

She shrugged, “It’s an old song, you can’t really blame people for it falling out of fashion.”

“An old song? But Deck the Halls is nearly just as old.” She shrugged, “Well, that’s one way to make me feel old.”

“You’re from the future, right?” Kaminari pointed out, “Why don’t you sing something a carol that only you would know?”

“Evidently I did sing something that you guys didn’t know,” he shook his head, “The problem is that when I’m from, nobody bothers coming up with new Christmas carols anymore. It’s just mostly the same old ones. And for the people that don’t sing the carols, they just sing those same Christmas songs that keep getting a new cover by some celebrity every other decade. If not, they're just the same songs completely.”

“Does that mean they’re mostly the same songs that we have?” Ashido asked.

“Yes, plenty of them.”

“Does that include…”

“Yes, that DOES include the song All I Want for Christmas. And no matter how many official complaints I put in with the UNSC’s Recreation Corps, and no matter how many injunctions they receive, someone will always put the song on loop for at least two hours on Christmas Day. It’s such a recurring problem that serving as a station engineer on Christmas Day has become a serious occupational hazard.”

“What’s that mean?”

“That because someone continues to put a song that’s used for psychological torture km the airwaves every Christmas, statistically five people are killed every year because some people are unwilling to simply turn off the radio for that time. I’ve even seen a satellite get blasted out of orbit because some navy boys couldn’t keep a cool head.”

“Seriously?!”

“You would not believe the incredible lengths that some people will go to instead of having a reasonable solution to a problem.” He stopped walking, standing next to Mirko. “Now get back to singing, since you all had your chance to watch me make an embarrassment of yourself.”

Mirko looked towards him. “Eh, I don’t think it was that bad.”

“Well, everyone's a critic until they have to do something themselves. Why don’t you do it?”

“Nah, not my thing.” She ran her hand across the back of the pet rabbit.

“So what exactly are you doing over here then, communicating with your people?”

She smirked, holding up the pet rabbit. “Family, actually, I’m sure you can see the resemblance.” He shook his head as she laughed, something catching her eye. “Hey Eri, do you want to hold him?”

“Sure!” Eri opened her arms, ready to accept.

“Careful!” She’d nearly fallen out of his arms, “If you’re going to take something like that in your arms you need to be careful. Here, I’ll set you down.” He put Eri back on the ground, letting her take the rabbit into her hands. She then scurried off, giggling as she stroked its hair. He then looked back. “What?” Everyone was staring at him, seemingly expectantly.

“Didn’t you see it?”

“See what?” They pointed up, so he looked above his head and saw- “Now hold your horses, I’ve already been embarrassed once tonight. I don’t need it to happen again.”

“Oh come on, don’t you know it’s bad luck to refuse someone standing under the mistletoe?”

“It’s supposed to be bad luck only if the lady refuses.”

He raised his hands, “Alright, now look-“

“If it makes you feel better, then why don’t we make it a challenge?”

He stopped, “A challenge?”

“Yeah, a challenge. We’ll fight, and if I manage to beat you then you can’t say no.”

He thought for a moment, there was no way he could lose. “Alright, fine.” And before he could get to ball up his hands into a fist, Mirko had already kicked off her boots and swung her leg. “Woah!”

“If you’re going to fight, then take it outside,” Aizawa dryly remarked.

“Nah, I got something planned to win.” He put up his arms as she brought her legs against him, over and over. Striking him from both sides to keep him from pushing back with a response. He took a step back each time to try and get proper footing, but the loose carpet they’d put on the floor as part of the decorations wasn’t doing him any favors. Eventually he did manage to throw her back, but the punches he threw she easily bobbed and weaved under. She knew how he fought too well. But the same could be said for him.

The next time she went in for a kick he moved his arm, wrapping it around her right leg and using the leverage to flip her onto the floor. As he dove to quickly try and out her in a hold she kicked with her left leg and struck him hard in the chest, pushing him back. She then managed to quickly spring back up from the floor, using the momentum to kick him again and push him even further back.

“Yeah! You can do it, Mirko!”

He turned his head towards his class for a moment, “Why are you cheering her on?!”

“Because it’s more entertaining!”

He grit his teeth as Mirko leapt up, hitting him with an axe kick. “You know, you can’t beat me in a straight fight with my armor on. So what exactly is your plan?”

“Something like… This!” Then she charged straight towards him, making a blatant attempt to tackle him. He was able to quickly respond, catching her mid-tackle and making the motions to throw her over his head when-

“You’re going to hit the tree!”

“Huh?” Aurdel hadn’t been properly maintaining spatial awareness, as a result he hadn’t noticed that Mirko was slowly pushing him in the direction of the Christmas tree. At the last second he pulled her back towards him and away from the tree, unintentionally giving her the momentum she needed. Mirko pivoted in the air, grabbed him by the shoulders and then pulled herself in. By the time the two of them hit the floor she had wrapped her legs around his neck, putting him in choke hold. If this was a real fight he’d be dead. “You know, even for me that’s a dirty move to play,”

“Well, you should know that sometimes people have to play real dirty to get what they want.”

“Yeah, I know.” She leaned over, moved the wig a little and then planted a kiss on his forehead. “There, does that make up for it?”

His face was a little red, “Somewhat, it would have been better if it didn’t hurt.”

“What, your pride?”

“No, my neck. You wrapped your legs around my neck and whipped me onto the ground at full force. In fact, I think we may have left a hole in the floor.” Mirko shrugged, and all he could do was let out a sigh in response.

A Change in Spirit

Aurdel laid down in the main room, resting his head on a pillow on one of the arm rests of the couch. He kept one hand on his head, aware what some of his students were bound to try. As he looked to the left he already saw one such attempt. “Don’t even think about trying Ashido, you’re not going to get this wig off of my head.”

She quickly stood up, looking away and whistling. “Ah, I wasn’t doing anything! I was just… standing here!”

“Yeah, right. And I’m actually Santa.” He furrowed his eyebrow, “Look, all you see right now is all anyone is gonna see until I feel that it’s the right moment.”

“But that’s no fun, you can’t make people wait for something like that!” She quickly turned, “Mirko, can’t you do it for us?! You’re right there, and he really can’t punish you for doing it!”

“Nah, I think I’ve had my fill of teasing for the day. You’ll just have to wait some other time to get a look.” She leaned against the couch with her arms folded, and a smug look on her face. “Besides, if you think you can bribe me to pull off the wig so I can see his face too then you’re out of luck. I’ve already seen his full face.”

“Seriously?!” She looked towards him.

“It wasn’t done intentionally… But yes, Mirko has seen my full face.

“That’s not fair at all!”

“Life isn’t fair. You should find something else to complain about instead of not being able to see my face.” Eri walked up to him, pulling on the red jacket he wore on top of his armor. “Is something wrong?”

“Um… Can we open the presents?”

“Sure,” he quickly stood up from the couch, letting go of the hat and wig. Ashido quickly made an attempt at swiping it as he stood up, but missed. “Sero, can you set it up?”

“Right,” Sero put down his plate, walking over to the Christmas tree. Then he fired off his tape, breaking it into sections and attaching one to each of the presents underneath. The kind of traditions they had for giving gifts in Japan was different from what he knew, but he’d encourage it all the same. “Alright, it’s all ready!”

Everyone quickly gathered around the tree, each grabbing one of the strands of tape. “You all know what to do. On the count of three. One, two… Three!” Once he reached three, they all pulled on the strands of tape. Presents went flying across the room as everyone pulled with great force to avoid getting intertwined with someone else’s. Everyone would receive a gift. And to say that there was a wide variety of the gifts received would be a vast understatement.

For example… “Yippee!”

“Don’t throw them!” Ashido had received a set of dumbbells, something that anyone could have bought but still deeply reflected the person who’d gifted the item.

“Woah…” On the other hand, you had the give that Ida managed to pull out of the pile. Three bars of solid twenty four karat gold. Something like that didn’t take long to realize who’d given the gift, as there were very few people who could afford to own gold bars, let alone give them away as a gift. Just like the other gifts it too was reflective of the giver, but with something like this it was hard to tell whether giving away gold to those of lower class could be considered genuine compassion or facetiousness. Ultimately he fell back on the former and didn’t give it much thought.

However there were a few give that stood out from the others, mostly because of who they were given to. “This is-!” Perhaps the best in his mind were the gifts that Midoriya and Uraraka had received. Not necessarily because of the value of the gifts, but the people they’d received them from. Each other. Even though they’d probably deny it if you asked them, he knew that there were some mutual feelings between the two of them. You could tell from the way they acted. It was the sort of puppy love you would expect from kids as young as them. And while encouraging relationships wasn’t exactly a requirement of his job, he couldn’t discourage them if they occurred. Because while camaraderie is a strong thing that could help people get through things, often deeper relationships could do better. And if-

“Hey, look what I got!” Eri approached him, proudly presenting the gift that she’d managed to pull out of the pile.

“That’s… Great! Why don’t I hold on to it for a while? That way I can carry it back to your room later.”

“Okay!” Quickly he took the large sword from her arms, putting it to the side. He actually had no idea how she’d managed to drag it out of the pile of the presents, since it was both much larger and heavier than her. But if that was her gift then he supposed that would stay her gift.

He walked over to Tokoyami, knowing that he was the one who’d put the gift in the pile. “Is the sword actually sharp?”

“A blade without an edge is like a toy without batteries, it is unusable without them.”

“Ah, right.” Safe to say, Eri wouldn’t touch that sword for a long while.

Many hours would pass as their celebration went on. Words were spoken, good food was had, carols were sung and gifts were exchanged. Morning turned to afternoon, afternoon turned to evening and evening turned to late night. Soon enough it began to near midnight, meaning that the celebration was close to coming to an end. But before that happened there were a few things that he needed to do. He clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Since it’s getting late, and you’re all probably going to head off to bed. I wanted to take this chance to do two things. First, a chance to say a few words.” He gestured towards his class, “To you all, I want you to know how much I appreciate you being my class. Working with all of you, even if it was originally just for the purpose of teaching you how to become Heroes, has given me more opportunities than I could have even imagined. And I’m truly thankful for that. That’s why I’ve given all of you a gift. Though, I guess you could also call it a bribe.”

“A bribe?” They became confused.

He rubbed the back of his neck, “Well, look. I’m very sure that as soon as you go home tomorrow, you’re going to tell your family about all the stuff you’ve been doing. And, well, I figure that if I was anyone else I would have been thrown in prison by now. So please try to make it sound not as brutal as it has been. If they still feel angry after you try to play things down, I also wrote a personal apology to each of your families and attached them to your gifts to use.”

“Can we use them as blackmail to get our grades up?” Mineta asked.

“Very funny, but no. I don’t get blackmailed. And if you tried, I would just set your grades as low as possible.”

“But are you supposed to lower our grades if you get fired?”

“Look, all you need to know is that I have total control over the school's IT systems. Even if I get fired I could still manipulate every single bit of it.”

“What’s the second thing?” Midoriya asked.

“Well, I probably won’t be able to celebrate New Years with you guys. I’ll probably be busy. So I’ve organized a little something to make up for that ahead of time.”

“What? You ordered some fireworks to set off?” Sero said.

“Something like that. Here, let’s all go outside. It’s better to show what you mean than to just say it.” With that, everyone walked out of the dorm and onto the freshly fallen snow. The weather has cleared since earlier that day, the clouds having moved away to reveal a dark, wide open sky.

“Woah… All the other classes are waiting outside too. Just what do you have planned?”

“You’ll see,” Hatsume soon walked over, remote control and large metal frame filled with fireworks in hand. “Hatsume, is it all set up?”

“Yep! All programmed and ready to go, timed exactly the way you want it. I even added a little extra kick for the finale.”

“It won’t blow up on my back, will it?”

She shrugged, “I can’t give you any guarantees, I was pretty tired when I was working on it.”

He took the remote and rig, “I suppose then I’ll just have to rely on my luck.” After putting back on his helmet and sliding the rig onto his armor he synced up with the robotic body and took a deep breath. Then he began.

Aurdel activated the first fuses and then launched into the air using his thruster pack. He and the robotic body darted around the sky, using the colored trails of the firework in the rigs to draw shapes and patterns before launching them and allowing them to blow up once the fuse had nearly run out. Of the patterns they drew there were stars, faces, rings, hearts, Christmas trees and hearts. This went on for almost a minute straight before the show finally reached its climax. The two of them quickly began moving around the sky, turning at seemingly odd angles before proceeding in an entirely different direction. Soon enough the shape became clear. It was that of a rooster, the sign of the next year.

“Now to finish it…” He muttered as he finished the shape, quickly diving down. Then he and the robot body hovered in the air, lining up before moving forward to have the letters appear in the right order. Within seconds a message blazed across the sky in bold letters. ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.’ The message was allowed to hang in the sky for a few letters, before suddenly over a hundred firework shells started launching rapid-fire from each of the rigs and into the sky. He and the robot swirled around, not having actually expected this and just trying to keep up a natural appearance. Eventually the fireworks all finished firing and Aurdel dropped back down to the ground.

Eri suddenly ran towards him, jumping up. “That was really cool!” He picked her up with one arm, using the other to take back off his helmet.

“I’m happy to hear that, it took a lot of work to set up.”

Mirko walked over, “Seems to me like you’re missing a pair of wings, flying like that.”

Behind the fake beard and wig, he hid a smile. “Thanks, you wouldn’t believe how much EVA training and experience it takes to pull something like that off. Granted I feel like I’ve had my stomach and heart switch positions with how many sharp turns I pulled, and I’ll probably be hearing explosions in my ears for the next week.” He threw Eri a little bit up into the air, catching her as she came back down with a giggle. “Now, let's get you to bed.”

Aurdel walked into Eri’s room, carrying her in. He also dragged the sword she’d received as a present with him. “I really liked all the stuff that we did today,” Eri said.

“I did too, it’s always nice to celebrate with other people.” He set her down, allowing her to scurry towards her closet. He then turned his head as she changed out of Santa outfit and into her pajamas.

“All the food was great, the decorations were so pretty and the fireworks were amazing! I hope we can all do it again.”

“Don’t worry. Next Christmas we’ll be able to do it all again, and when it does we’ll make it even bigger and better.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He turned around as he heard her run over to the bed, hopping up. “Now even though you’re supposed to be going to bed, it sounds like you’re still full of energy.”

She nodded, “I’m still really excited after everything.”

He crouched down next to the bed, running a hand through her hair as she sat there. “It’s good that you’re excited, but you’ve got to remember to save that energy for the next day. You don’t want to use all of it up in one day.”

“Okay.” She laid down in the bed, pulling the covers up over herself.

“Oh, I forgot. There was something I wanted to give you.”

“You have another present?” Aurdel reached under the bed, pulling out a box he’d hidden underneath it earlier. Then he handed it to her. “What is it?”

“Open it and find out,” he gestured towards the box. Eri carefully began to take it apart, first taking off the ribbon before removing the wrapping paper. Then she had it open. And out of the box she pulled out a doll.

“This is…”

“Because of how busy I am, I don’t get the chance to visit you as often as I’d like. So I wanted to make you something to show that even when it looks like I might have forgotten about you, I haven’t. “ The doll was modeled after him in his armor, modeled down to the last detail.

She squeezed it, “It’s really soft.”

“Then it sounds to me like you make it pretty accurate,” Mirko stood by the door.

He looked back, “I'm getting a strong sense of déjà vu.”

She walked forward, “Is it a bad one?”

“No, not really.”

He looked back to Eri, who’d quickly taken the doll and clutched it as she lay in bed. “You know, I think it would help her if you sang.”

“Would it really?” Eri nodded, “Alright, I’ll sing then.”

Mirko sat down at the foot of bed, resting her back. Aurdel then took a deep breath and both his eyes. “Rest your head you tired souls, rest your head for the night has tolled. Another day is over and our fun must end, but soon it will begin again. Tomorrow will come and bring new light, and with it will be a many new sights. With the birds that are chirping as they take flight, soon it will begin again. Soon it will begin… Again.” He exhaled, “How was-” He opened his eyes as spoke, “I guess it was good then.” Both Eri and Mirko had fallen asleep as he’d sung, the day must have tired them out. Standing up, he gave Eri one last pat on the head before picking up Mirko and putting her on his back, turning off the lights before walking out of the room.

As he left the building he found himself walking through the campus in a beautiful silence, everyone else having already gone to bed given that it was past midnight now. He stopped for a moment, staring up through the clear sky at the stars above. Thinking.

“You know, I have to wonder sometimes… Just what’s going on in your head?”

“Well for one, the thought that you were asleep.”

Mirko looked up, just like he did. “I’m being serious. When you’re working as a Hero you’re mostly reserved, pounding Villains into the dirt and seemingly getting angry at anyone or anything that tries too hard to try and figure you out. But behind closed doors you’re like an entirely different person. You helped your students with all of the set up, you celebrated with them, you joked, laughed, sang and played. You went above and beyond what anyone would have expected. In a way… You’re a lot like them.”

‘I personally believe that the greatest gift you can give to anyone… is peace. Peace of heart, peace of home and peace of mind. When you’re able to live in peace you’re able to heal, grow and be happy. I want to make sure that the people around me have a chance to live in that peace.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“It’s not possible for one person to shoulder the burdens of everyone else. And even if you try, what does that mean for you? Who’s going to let you have peace?”

His eyes stayed on the stars, “I don’t know.”

There was silence for a moment. “Then I’ll help you,” he turned his head, “That's what partners are for, right?”

He smiled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

After that he began to walk again, Mirko resting her head on his shoulder once again. There was a buzz at his side, he’d received a notification. But he ignored it. This moment, he hoped it would last forever.

He really hoped…