Before Life was put in charge of managing the story of Magical Girl Shiny Star in the world between fiction and reality.
The night was serene and still, a gentle layer of perfectly copied snow from a perfect copy of winter blanketing the world outside Life's current place. Said place was a cozy, warmly lit cottage, the embodiment of living had brought years ago for occasions like this, where inside, the soft crackle of a fireplace provided the only sound, weaving a melody of comfort and tranquility. Amber flames flickered, casting playful shadows that danced along the wooden walls.
Life, dressed in appropriate clothes for the cold and festive weather, sat in an oversized armchair draped with a plaid blanket, his eyes reflecting the fire's glow as he held a steaming mug filled with the best hot chocolate he could ever make. The scents of cinnamon and pine mingled in the air, evoking memories of Christmases past that he would never forget.
On the mantle above, stockings hung in anticipation, and a small, decorated tree stood nearby, its lights twinkling like distant stars, essential decorations for this time of the year.
When he took a sip from his mug and tasted the sweet, rich, and creamy hot chocolate, the blonde man couldn't help but grow slightly anxious as he reflexively glanced at the grandfather clock and saw the time displayed.
7:59 P.M.
"Anytime now..." Life told himself, waiting with bated breath for the next minute to pass.
Just in time, the man dressed in warm clothes for the season soon heard a knock at the cottage's door as the time on the clock turned 8:00.
Life only needed less than a second to be at the door without wasting time after perfectly copying a certain cosmic energy from a certain speedster in red.
Upon opening the door, he was welcomed by a skeleton face that always managed to make his heart flutter every time he had a chance to meet her. Even after an insurmountable amount since they first met, her charm and beauty hadn't lost any of its luster. To think there was a time when Life so arrogantly believed that no one could stand by his side as an equal, where he was cursed to always be alone at the top, he couldn't be happier to be proven wrong.
Death, Life's wife, stood at the cottage's entrance wearing clothes for the weather like the embodiment of living, although unfortunately due to her skeleton body, said clothes ended up slightly bigger than they should.
Not like Life himself minded; if anything, he couldn't help but blush slightly at how unbelievably cute she looked in them from his perspective.
"Hey, sorry for the wait," Death apologized. "Traffic was...busier this year." She sighed upon admitting to that.
Life casually waved it off. He knew how busy Death was with her job, just barely managing all the deaths from reality and fiction, the latter in particular the most troublesome of the two with fictional characters dying...just to be brought back to life not too long after, a problem that wasn't present in reality barring a few exceptions. So Life completely understood why his wife had arrived an entire hour later than agreed upon. "It's okay, I unders-"
His skeleton wife cut him off by grabbing his hand and pulling him away from the house. "Good, then let's go, we might JUST arrive on time!"
"Wait, where are we going again?" Life asked as the couple trudged through the snow to a circular blue portal Life had just noticed. He safely assumed that's how his wife got to where he was.
"To our annual duel with them, did you forget?" Death asked without stopping moving or looking back at her husband.
Life's eyes widened as the memory of the two couples' annual tradition hit him like a bullet train. The excitement over spending time with his wife after so long made him have tunnel vision and forget everything else around him. "Oh yeah..."
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"Do you think they are going to arrive this year?" Magic, a young adult woman with long rainbow hair each strand representing a unique type of magic, dressed in green robes and a pointy wizard hat of the same color that had a red bauble hanging from it that emanated a bright reddish glow, asked her husband Technology, a young man with short white hair who stood by her side, whose clothes were more appropriate for the current cold weather.
The young man, who had been impatiently tapping his foot on the snow up until now, raised his left arm as if to look at the time and muttered something before a light-blue holographic screen materialized in front of him, showing the time. "Hmm...maybe we should schedule for next-"
The impatient man was cut off from speaking further as a blue portal he was too familiar with materialized out of nowhere a few meters away from the duo after a few brief sparks of energy in the air surrounding it.
Almost immediately upon the portal's sudden appearance, Death and soon Life came out of the portal. The portal promptly closed behind them once its function was done. "Hey~, did you guys wait for too long?" Death asked in a slightly abashed tone as she waved at the couple waiting for her and Life.
"No, actually, we arrived just fifteen minutes ago, so forty-five minutes past the time we all agreed upon," Technology explained matter-of-factly, although everyone around could tell.
"Noted." Life nodded, feeling just slightly ashamed over having almost forgotten the annual tradition he, Death, Magic, and Technology have been doing in the last few decades.
A snow-fort war. A thrilling duel of the ages between the two couples where both sides would build a snow fort of their own and fight until one of the forts crumbled, with the winner having the opportunity to gloat their victory over the loser until their next duel. There were, of course, rules for said high-stakes war: no using over-metal and innate conceptual powers were only allowed on the snow from the respective players unless it was to defend against snow thrown by the opponent. Some minor rules were added throughout the decades, but they mostly reinforced the main ones.
"And...I see that you've brought company this time?" Life asked after noticing Technology's (and he supposed technically Magic's) adopted robot children a fair distance behind the latter, sitting on a stand like they were an audience.
Although the embodiment of living was able to immediately spot Hardware, Firewall, Internet, and Anti-virus, he did need a double-take to realize that the second youngest, C.P.U, had used its shapeshifting abilities to transform into a flag that had Technology and Magic's faces lined up side-by-side in the center of a red, romantic heart.
Said flag waved by a very enthusiastic (compared to the others in the audience) Anti-virus, the youngest of the sibling quintet and the one who looked most human out of them, with the appearance of a teenage girl. "Woo, go dad! Go, mom! Take it home!"
The proud father simply smiled at Anti-virus's encouragement before puffing out his chest in pride at Life. "What can I say, Christmas brings families closer than any other time!"
"I suppose," Life not-so-sneakily glanced at Death at the same time the latter did. "We're inclined to agree." Life finally told Technology with the former's wife cheerfully nodding in agreement.
"Now..." Magic stepped forward, a predatory grin on her expression. "Shall we begin?" she asked, with determined fire clear in her eyes.
The construction of the respective side's snow castles that followed was relatively normal...by the standards of everyone involved and watching. Magic used her powers to raise a Victorian snow castle out of the ground with Technology tuning the finer details to reinforce its infrastructure.
Life and Death, on the other hand, and ended up less balanced when it came to building the castle due to the latter's lack of areas of expertise where she could help, while the former had more than enough of the necessary skills. Not like it bothered either one; Life not only trusted but knew that Death's abilities would come in handy when the battle finally started.
When they finished construction, the couple that embodied existence and oblivion, respectively, stood on top of the best spot where they could oversee the imminent conflict. "So, wanna do the honors?" Death asked Life while offering a Christmas-themed war horn she had brought last year.
"Hmm...no, you do it, I already did the previous year." Life politely declined after giving it some thought.
"Very well then, my king~" The skeletal wife pretended to do a curtsy bow as she not-so-subtly teased her husband. She soon had to contain a snort from how he raised a hand to his face and looked away so he would not show the blush on his face.
When Death sounded the horn, she and Life also heard the sound of another horn more or less at the same time from Technology and Magic's side.
The time the embodiment of living has waited finally arrived.
"Rise, my minions, it's time for you all to serve your master until the end of the night!" Life declared dramatically as he gave life to the army of little snowmen he had created during preparations.
"As you command, master!" The army of snowmen shouted simultaneously while giving their life-giver a salute, every single one of them ready to succeed or die trying.
When the snowmen turned their backs to Life to attack the enemy castle, a voice interrupted them just before they moved out. "Hey, don't forget the scythe and hood, I don't want to see any of you go unarmed and without protection, understood?" Death interrupted the marching snow army with a motherly tone, soon throwing scythes and black hoods small enough for them to use and wear on the ground nearby.
The snow creatures paused momentarily before grabbing the tiny scythes and hoods and giving a small bow of respect to the one who gave them weapons. "Understood, thank you, ma'am." They all collectively thanked Death, who couldn't help but feel proud of them.
When they all finally finished dressing up, they looked like tiny, little grim reapers who were almost as cute as his wife. "...Nice." He slowly nodded with a smile upon realizing that.
Of course, it wouldn't be long before their army met resistance from the opposite side, with Magic channeling the magic contained in the red bauble on her hat to raise her own army of tiny murderous snowmen that marched forward to meet their enemies, but not before getting suited with the laser swords and energy buckles Technology threw at the snowy ground near them.
The fight was on.
If Life were to describe the following battle between snow armies from where he was, it would be the cutest epic battle he had ever laid eyes on. He almost came to regret not having recorded it from the beginning...until he noticed his wife was already on it, doing it with the closest thing she had to a smile with her skeletal face.
As the concept of living turned his gaze back to the fight, his eyes were met with an explosion in the middle of the battle. He only needed a glance at Technology to know he had been responsible for throwing a snowball with enough strength and speed to emulate a blast the size of a grenade. Obviously not as lethal as the real deal, it was all still snow at the end of the day.
As the concept of technology threw another one, Death came to the rescue this time by raising a finger in the direction of the snowball. Before the snowball could make contact with anything, it melted into liquid in mid-air, the embodiment of the end having ordered it to die.
Life couldn't help himself from fist-bumping the air in excitement. "Nice! Now my turn!" The concept of living declared, preparing his counterattack with a snowball created from a pile of snow he had gathered near him for an occasion like this.
As both grown men kept throwing snowballs at each other's army, an idea crossed Life's mind, an awful idea, a wonderfully awful idea. The blonde man only needed to glance at his wife once for the latter to know the former had a plan and they needed her help.
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"Hmm..." Magic hummed to herself as she watched the battlefield occurring in front of her, not failing to notice how the scales of battle didn't seem to be tilting on either side. She briefly considered buffing her little army or debuffing the enemies before waving that thought off. "No, that wouldn't work, they would immediately see through it and Death would just kill the effect. Maybe I could—"
Her thought process was stopped in its tracks when she noticed a snowball just shy away from hitting the red bauble hanging on her hat. As time slowed down around the master of all magic and the surprise of the attack escaped her body, she found the one who had thrown the ball of snow with a simple glance in Life's direction. She closed her eyes in slight relief, having anticipated something like that from happening and having preemptively cast every high-level defensive spell and enchantment she knew around herself and her clothes.
There were so many protective layers around Magic's body and clothes that even to slightly damage something as fragile as the red bauble she had been using, they would need a power equivalent to the Big Bang concentrated into the size of a 5mm bullet, something that a snowball was physically incapable of outputting no matter how potent the throw was. Phew, I admit, you almost got me scar—
Her expression and thoughts turned blank for a tenth of a millisecond when she felt all the magical protections suddenly vanishing as the snowball kept getting nearer. WHAT?! How's that possible?! Unless...
Magic's eyes soon grew wide as saucers as she took a proper look at Life and found that most fingers on the hand he had used for the throw were missing. Wait, wait, wait, don't tell me...Death placed a barrier of death around the snowball with Life throwing the ball so I would've never considered Death having anything to do with it!
The rainbow-haired woman glanced to her side and met the eyes of her husband, who, although his mind had already processed what was going on, his body, unfortunately, wouldn't be fast enough to react in time to help. As she took in the distress in his eyes and the cheer from the audience that was their adopted family, a new wave of determination to fight back filled her to the core. "DAMMI—!"
BOOM
When the red smoke from the massive arcane explosion caused by the sudden release of magic dissipated, Magic breathed a sigh of relief as she had managed to protect herself, her husband, and the castle they stood on top of by calling forth arcane energy from her own body, her hair shining brighter than usual. It had been the equivalent of building the wall of China to protect against a single five-year-old child, but her panic and determination to win had made her forget about how overkill using her real power was. "Phew, that...was too close for comfort. Heh, how do you think of that, Li—!"
Magic's words died in her throat as her eyes discovered that not only Life but Death was also missing. Where are they? Are they both hiding inside the castle? she guessed.
Technology raised his hand to point at the skies as his wife frantically searched for them. "Up there!"
When the woman with glowing rainbow hair looked up to where her husband pointed, her jaw threatened to slacken as she saw Life and Death in the air preparing a combined diving kick straight at her castle with a perfect copy of a full moon behind them.
Such a maneuver was risky due to the rules dictating that neither couple could touch the solid ground that wasn't from their respective snow castles. So, if the human and skeleton couple were doing this, it could only mean that they had decided to end this once and for all.
"Magic! Help me move the castle!" Technology's voice cut right through Magic's brief shocked awe like butter.
A nod was the only reply the woman with arcane hair needed to give as they got to work; they needed to move the castle out of the way before it was too late. While Technology tried to stall the enemy couple's diving kicked with energy barrier after energy barrier which got "Killed" by Death touching them, Magic used the few milliseconds they had left to cast [Instant Teleportation], something she would've succeeded at if it wasn't for what happened next.
CLONK
Something had hit Magic's head, cutting the few seconds of concentration she needed to cast the spell short. Her eyes grew wide once she saw what hit her.
A scythe, more specifically, the same little scythe carried by Life and Death's small army of snowmen, was thrown at her face and if she had to judge from the angle that it was currently in, it had been by the blunt side of it she got hit. "SHI—!"
She couldn't finish that sentence before her opponents came crashing down and kicked a hole right through the snow castle with enough force to destroy the whole castle before Life and Death touched the solid ground.
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As soon as Life dug his way out of all the couple of meters of snow that had inevitably buried him alive, he breathed a sigh of relief over his crazy plan actually working."Phew...that...was..."
"AMAZING!" Death completed his declaration in ecstatic excitement as soon as she got out of the pile of snow burying her.
"Heh, did you have any doubt it would be anything less? Let's do it again next year!" Life raised both arms in excitement and happiness over his wife's continuous appreciation for his attempts at making her undead life exciting whenever he had the chance.
"Please...don't..." Technology tiredly said as he got out from the snowy terrain with the help of Internet and Anti-Virus, the oldest and youngest of his adopted robot children, respectively. Life couldn't help but release a snort out of the contrast in appearance between the two, with the oldest one looking the most robotic out of them with a single mono-eye that glowed blue for a head, while the youngest was almost indistinguishable from a regular human, the ONLY reason Life could tell from a first glance was that he sensed no life from her.
"Are...you guys, okay?" The embodiment of living asked more out of courtesy than genuine worry for their well-being, as he knew from personal experience that it would take more than that to do any meaningful damage to his two opponents. As he glanced to the side, Life caught Magic as she got help from Hardware, Firewall, and C.P.U, with the latter of the brothers having transformed himself into a construction crane where their adoptive mother held onto his hook as it rose.
"Besides my wounded pride over having to recognize that you won? Yeah...We'll walk it off." Technology waved Life's concerns away before walking up to his wife and offering his hand for her to hold, which she gladly accepted with a smile. As the black-haired man smiled back at his mage wife, they turned their attention back to the man responsible for his pride needing healing. "Anyway, if you excuse us, we're going to commemorate Christmas back home. Again, if you guys want to join us, the offer is always open." Technology offered, knowing already his offer would be rejected like always, but it was the thought that counted.
"Thanks, as always, but," Life glanced at his skeleton wife, who gave him a knowing nod. "We would like to enjoy the rest of Christmas by ourselves," he said as he wrapped an arm around Death's torso.
"Understood, then I guess I'll see you next when I want you to repay me for that favor...or next holiday, whichever comes first. Now everyone, say goodbye to Uncle Life and Aunt Death!" Technology's expression turned into a snicker at his attempt to tease Life.
"Bye, Uncle Life! Bye, Aunt Death!" All of Technology's robotic children played along, more or less in unison, with C.P.U having transformed back to his original form of a tiny humanoid figure that now comfortably sat on his dad's shoulder.
"Merry Christmas!" Anti-virus waved to Life before she left with her family.
Life waved back to her."Merry Christmas to you too, kid." After he saw them all leaving in a blue portal, he and Death soon did the same, both smiled with satisfaction after hanging out with Technology's family.
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Back at the cottage, Life and Death only needed to step foot inside of it for a few seconds before the former heard the latter's voice behind them. "Oh..."
When the blonde man turned around he saw his wife checking the time on her pulse watch. "Is it time already?" Life felt dread creeping into his being as he muttered that question.
"Unfortunately." Death sighed, clearly wanting to stay longer with Life even though she knew it wasn't possible. Or at least, not without jeopardizing the cycle of life and death.
"I see...well, better not keep them waiting, those souls aren't going to guide themselves," Life chuckled before turning around, not wanting his wife to see how sad his face most likely looked at the moment. "Tell Afterlife and Cemetery I want them to have a merry Christmas," he said jovially, trying to put on a happy facade so his wife wouldn't feel pressured by him.
Unexpectedly for Life, he heard footsteps getting closer instead of farther away from him, and before he knew it, Death had embraced him from behind.
After calming down from the surprise and relief he felt from Death's sweet embrace, Life closed his eyes and reached his wife's left hand with his own left hand. "I love you," he muttered as a tear escaped his eyes.
His skeletal wife slowly nodded while nuzzling her head against his. "I know." She planted the closest thing to a kiss she could with her lack of lips on his cheek before slowly ending the embrace.
When Life opened his eyes and turned around, Death was no longer there. With a deep sigh, Life's expression turned into a smile filled with newfound energy at the prospect of the next time Death will have another break from her job.
As far as Christmas days go, this was certainly one of his best ones.