I wrote this as an early Christmas present for my sister...well I say early because it's still a week early this year, but actually I started writing this the year Borderlands 2 came out and just never got around to finishing it until now. So yeah...merry Christmas, sis!

There was a noticeable drunken racket as bandits gathered in the bar for their annual Christmas Eve party. It was a jolly time of year that the raiders and murderers of Pandora looked forward to as an excuse to get away from their horrible families and go drinking with their buddies, which meant it was pretty much just like any other day in bandit owned territory with the exception that the bar was surprisingly less chaotic than usual. Unlike the normal drunken racket that could be expected from a bandit-run bar, the din was caused less by bar fights and arguing and more by passive-aggressive compliments and what might pass for merrymaking in a certain light.

What once had been a haven for bikers and any bored soul that just wanted to pick a fight for no reason was forcibly cheerful and well behaved as no one wanted to do something that could piss off that Santa guy who was said to bring them presents if they refrained from killing anyone for just another day. Come the day after Christmas, they all planned to turn a lovely residential neighborhood into Pandora's biggest bonfire to let out all of their pent-up aggravation from having to be so nice. For now, they had to pretend they actually liked each other and be nice to the midgets long enough to get the fat guy to cough up their presents.

A skag, old and scarred from the many fights that were had during his youth, lifted his head and began growling, his age-blinded eyes seemingly searching for something unseen. A marauder sitting at the table beside him reached under the table and stroked his head. "Easy, Tracker," he said to the elder skag, hoping to calm it.

"Something wrong with your skag, Dennis?" another bandit asked him with genuine concern.

He was about to reply when the door slammed open and cold air and snow poured in from outside. "I made it!" a familiar, annoying voice shouted.

The entire bar simultaneously groaned and Tracker stood up and began snarling and growling at the intruder, nearly knocking the entire table over due to his massive size. Dennis had to grab ahold of his collar to keep him from lunging and almost got dragged across the bar floor for his efforts. Oblivious to the collective reactions around him, Claptrap wheeled his way over to the bar and awkwardly attempted to climb up onto the stool. The bandits already at the counter tried to ignore the fact that he was there while the bartender reached for the vodka.

"You guys are so lucky I remembered what day it was! It would seem you forgot to send me an invitation again!"

"We never invited you!" the bandit to his right countered. The guy on the left requested the strongest drink the bar had. This was going to be a long night.

"How did you even find us? We moved the party to a different bar this year!" Dennis asked once he got Tracker calmed down again. The skag was sitting upright and alert, eager to chew up the tire on this psychotic robot. His owner had a good mind to let him, if only it didn't mean potentially forfeiting his gifts.

"Simple! I showed up at the other bar and noticed you guys weren't there, so I just visited every bar in the area until I found you again!" Claptrap said proudly. "It took me four hours, but I got here alright!"

"Want to head over to my place where he can't find us?" a bandit whispered to a couple of his friends. They all nodded and silently snuck out without paying their tab.

Claptrap glanced distastefully at the jukebox that was currently playing thrash metal, the typical choice of Pandora's bandits. "That doesn't sound very Christmas-y," he said.

"Don't touch it," the bartender warned after a long gulp of vodka.

"I'm just gonna go look and see what else you have!" Claptrap announced before wheeling his way over.

"Don't touch it!" the bartender shouted at him again. Claptrap continued to ignore him.

"Next year we should pick someplace that doesn't have a wheelchair access ramp so he can't get in," someone whispered. The others all quickly agreed that this was an amazing idea and wondered why they didn't think of it until now.

Claptrap looked through the jukebox's playlist for something a little more festive. So far all he saw were songs from Pandora-based metal bands with names like "Skag Phallus" and "RaKK-SLayeR". "You guys don't really like a wide variety of genres, do you?" Claptrap asked when the band names started getting scarier the further down the list he got. "Ah, here we are!" he said excitedly.

All the way down at the bottom of the list was "Jingle Bells", written in tiny, barely legible print, almost as if they were hoping no one would see it and actually request it. It was right below some awful country song and a fluffy, bubblegum pop song that were written in an equally intangible font. Claptrap put some money in that he found on the floors of all the bars he'd visited that night and had enough to request Jingle Bells 43 times before returning to the counter and standing next to the seat that he'd tried and epically failed to climb into earlier. They had to wait for the previous request, a twelve minute long love ballad by a band called "Buckets of Stalker Blood", to finish before Jingle Bells would start.

Claptrap noticed that it was abnormally quiet in the room, almost as if everyone had gone silent the moment he'd walked in the front door. He had to do something about that or this party would surely die! "So, what do you guys wanna talk about?" His question was answered with dead silence. "Oh, I know! Wanna hear about the time that I, Claptrap, saved Christmas?" Claptrap asked excitedly, hoping to rouse their attention.

The bandits glared at him. They wanted to dismantle him and set his parts on fire so they'd have something to do with all those marshmallows that Mac and Gerald brought to the party, but they also heard that bad behavior could get them coal on Christmas. The gift of fire was a pretty tempting reward for all they'd done over the years, but they each had their hearts set on something with a little more firepower than that this year. Reluctantly, they fought their urges to torture the robot and instead tried to continue ignoring him.

Assuming that they just didn't hear him, Claptrap wheeled over to the center of the bar and shouted, "I have a story to tell! Doesn't anyone care?"

"No," someone replied.

"Oh, you joker!" Claptrap laughed, quickly dismissing his comment.

"I wasn't joking," the bandit replied.

"It all started last Christmas!" Claptrap began.

The bandit sighed. "And he just keeps talking anyway."

"Hyperion had just outlawed Christmas, because Handsome Jack figured that no one would want to buy guns from Hyperion if Santa just gave them away for free!" the robot continued. "So he had Santa and his elves rounded up and publicly executed and fed his reindeer to the skags at the Exploitation Preserve..."

"Does anyone remember any of this actually happening?" Dennis whispered to the guys at his table. His friends within earshot quickly shook their heads.

"And so with no one to bring toys to all the good little boys and girls of Pandora, it was up to me and only me to assemble a new reindeer team and take Santa's place!"

"Unfortunately, it turns out that reindeer are a lot harder to find on Pandora than I thought..."

Claptrap stood on top of the hill and looked down at what wildlife Pandora offered him. The landscape was dark, but illuminated just enough by the moonlight and the distant glow of the Pandora Tire Fire. "Um, these will do, right?" he asked himself.

He watched a stalker and a skag fighting over a human femur that still had a little meat attached to it. The skag jumped back when the stalker lashed at him with her tail. Neither of them seemed to notice the robot that was watching over them from atop the hill.

"I'm gonna need more than that if I hope to pull a sled," Claptrap said thoughtfully.

He looked around to see if there was anything else he could use. There was a lone spiderant munching on some kind of dead plant and another smaller one looking around warily, casting a glance towards the fighting skag and stalker nearby to make sure they didn't suddenly become a threat. Nearby a smallish brat bullymong was taking a nap inside a nest carved out from a cliffside, oblivious to the nearby fighting. Claptrap felt something squishy bumping against his tire and saw a chubby little scythid looking up at him. She waggled her bottom like a happy little puppy and scurried up on top of him to snuggle against his head.

"They'll work!" he shouted excitedly. This time he got the attention of the skag and stalker. Both of them picked their heads up and looked at him curiously. The spiderant continued munching on the dead plant like a cow while its companion hissed threateningly. "Now I just gotta find some way to teach you all how to pull a sled..."

"Wait, wait, you mean to tell me that you got several wild animals with absolutely no social interaction outside other members of their species to work together and pull a sled for you?" one of the bandits interrupted skeptically.

"Yes!" Claptrap nodded.

"Do all those animals even live in the same environment together?" another asked.

"Possibly," Claptrap nodded again. "It all depends on which part of Pandora you're in, really."

"How did you convince them not to eat you?"

"Simple. It turns out wild animals really love Christmas cookies!" he explained.

The bar was silent as none of them could think of an appropriate comeback aside from, "Of course they do..."

"How many times is this friggin' song gonna play?!" someone shouted from the other room when Jingle Bells started up a seventh time. "Someone put Skag Phallus back on!"

"Wait, this song's been playing more than once? I just thought it was a lot longer than I remembered!" someone else added.

"So once I had my sled team put together, the next step was finding some toys..."

"Hurry it up! We only have three weeks to go until Christmas!" Claptrap shouted. He looked over several charts and graphs that someone had handed him. He had no idea what they meant, but he was told that they were important, so he pretended to know exactly what he was reading so that he wouldn't look stupid.

The midgets he was exploiting for elf labor were getting fussy. They had been working for sixteen hours straight and wanted a break, but Claptrap knew that if he gave them one they'd never be finished in time. Besides, if he gave one a break then he'd have to give them all a break and soon they would start to think they could just take breaks every once in a while, and that wasn't good!

"Midge has to go to bathroom!" one of them complained.

"I want to be dentist!" another pitched in while he wrapped up a present with "Happy Birthday!" wrapping paper scavenged from the hall closet.

"Chop chop! I want that sled full of toys come Christmas Eve!" Claptrap demanded. He stopped at a table where a psycho was sticking a bunch of popsicle sticks into a ball of glue and paper clips. The psycho admired his odd creation proudly and dropped it into a box to be wrapped. "Carry on," Claptrap said before wheeling away and leaving the psycho to his devices.

A midget had just finished assembling a Torgue rocket launcher from the parts in the box. He attempted to pick it up and move it to the wrapping station and instead fell over backwards with the heavy launcher crushing his tiny midget lungs. "Midge Midge need help!" the midget gasped, his little legs kicking wildly while everyone else just stared at him.

"This is the last time I recruit illegal midget labor through the ECHOnet!" Claptrap grumbled.

"Dammit!" a badass marauder shouted, angrily stabbing a table with a combat knife when Jingle Bells played for the fifteenth time.

"Easy, Liam. Find your happy place," someone else advised him.

"I was in my happy place! And then it was invaded with Jingle Bells!" Liam sobbed. His friend reached over and comforted him while he sobbed into the table, shooting Claptrap nasty looks all the while.

"I wonder what's wrong with that guy?" Claptrap wondered aloud. Meanwhile the other bandits at the bar were beginning to wonder if that new shotgun they were hoping for was really worth it. "So anyway, once I had the sled team and the toys together we were ready to go, right?"

"But then it got all dark and shit out."

"Huh...it's a lot darker and shit out than I thought it would be," Claptrap sighed. Who knew nighttime would be so dark?

He looked to the rest of his sled team, who were pawing and clawing at their harnesses, all except for the scythid who was scurrying around, happy that people were finally paying attention to her instead of trying to squish her for once. A few midgets brought out the last of the gifts and loaded them onto the back of the sled before heading back inside for eggnog and debauchery to celebrate the completion of their work on time. The sound of loud music and breaking glass could be heard as their silhouettes crashed around by the windows.

"Maybe I should have asked Scooter to put headlights on the sled when I commissioned it?"

And tires, one of the spiderants grumbled when he realized they'd mostly be dragging the sled across rocks and barren desert instead of snow and ice. He doubted they'd even make it far enough to find snow. Half the team would have dropped dead from exhaustion by then.

He doesn't pay us enough cookies for this, the skag seemingly agreed.

Claptrap wondered what he should do. "None of you by any chance would happen to have a bioluminescent nose from eating Eridium, would you?" The animals all exchanged glances, probably not even sure what that meant. The scythid, meanwhile, climbed to the top of the bullymong's head and jumped off, fluttering down harmlessly with the aid of a couple flaps of skin that she normally kept safely tucked away from view. "Didn't think so," he sighed.

Claptrap wandered over to a nearby bounty board and leaned against it while he considered a solution to their dilemma. All of a sudden a flashlight shown on him. "Heyoo!" Steve greeted him while he replaced the burnt out fuses of the bounty board.

Claptrap watched him work, carefully removing the dead fuses and tossing them aside into the dirt before replacing them with the fresh ones he carried with him. His eye went from the bounty board fuse box down to the flashlight in Steve's hand and he realized that he'd just found the solution to his darkness problems.

Satisfied that the board had been repaired, Steve was about to walk away when Claptrap surprised him by jumping up and shouting, "Perfect!"

"Heyo?" Steve replied in confusion. He had a bad feeling about where this was going.

A few moments later, Steve was hooked up in a harness at the front of the sled team, holding a heavy duty industrial flashlight. The scythid was hopping around his legs excitedly and the skag was sniffing him and drooling. Steve made a mental note to murder Claptrap as soon as he got out of this harness.

"Perfect! Now we can continue on our mission to bring joy to all the good little boys and girls of Pandora!" Claptrap shouted out with glee. "Onwards, minions!" he shouted.

The animals in the sled team turned their heads and looked at each other. The stalker was licking herself, the scythid was crawling up Steve's leg, and Steve was backing away from the skag. Claptrap sighed and went back inside, returning with a piece of meat that he promptly taped to Steve's back. He hopped back in the sled just as all the animals lunged forward in an attempt to get the meat while Steve tried to run as fast as he could. The sled slowly began to inch forward as they dragged it across all the hard rocks and dirt. His plan worked perfectly!

"Thanks, Steve!" he shouted to his lead minion. He couldn't tell in the dark, but that hand gesture Steve flipped him didn't look very G-rated and therefore should not be mentioned in an ostensibly family-friendly Christmas tale.

The entire bar erupted into cheers and thankful applause when the bartender finally walked over to the jukebox and unplugged it on the twenty-third Jingle Bells. He then pulled out a radio from underneath the counter and set it to a local bandit-run music station, swatting Claptrap's hand away and breaking the dial off when he tried to change the station to find more Christmas music so that the station could never be changed again.

"Why do you even have Christmas parties if you don't do anything related to Christmas?" Claptrap asked honestly. He turned to the bartender and asked, "I mean, aren't you upset that you have to work on Christmas when they aren't even celebrating it?"

"I'm Jewish," the bartender replied bluntly.

"Oh...well I guess not then..."

"It's mostly just an excuse to get away from my psychotic husband," a nomad admitted. Several other bandits nodded as they thought of the loved ones in their life that they wished they could just take out to the middle of nowhere and drive off without like an unwanted skag pup. There were many things that bandits were well-known for and family values was not one of them.

"So, is this story over now or what?" Dennis asked. He absentmindedly stroked his skag's head, which was now laying in his lap and hoping for handouts from the plate of food on the table.

"Oh, of course not! I still have much more to tell!" Claptrap replied, either ignoring or failing to notice the collective groans around him.

"Kill me now!" that guy from the other room shouted again.

"Unfortunately I soon discovered how incredibly lazy my incredibly lazy minions were..."

"What do you mean, you're exhausted? You've barely been dragging the sled for three hours! At this rate we won't even get to Fyrestone by sunrise!" Claptrap scolded his sled team.

His menagerie of Pandora's wildlife were all collapsed in a heap, all of them tired of pulling and ready to give up. The smaller spiderant had fallen asleep leaning its oversized head against the skag, who was munching triumphantly on the piece of meat, and Steve pet the friendly little scythid when she crawled into his lap and started squeaking. The bullymong and the stalker were both picking a fight with the other spiderant, all of them growing weary and listless from the grueling work conditions.

"Come on! Get moving!" The animals all turned on Claptrap and began growling. The stalker and the skag took a couple steps towards him threateningly. "Okay, fine! Take a quick smoke break and then get back to work!" Claptrap gave in.

He sighed and stepped away from the team for a moment. Pulling a map out of his storage drawer, he glanced over it and saw that they had barely made it a mile from their starting location. "Dammit!" he shouted, wishing he had feet so he could kick a nearby rock. Perhaps he should find a way to motivate them all to go faster? He could make Steve a meat dress like he saw some pop star do on TV once, or he could try a trick he saw in every motivational underdog movie ever...

When he returned to the sled team, they were all smoking around the sled and waiting for him impatiently. "Well team, looks like we might have to call it a night," Claptrap said in a bummed out tone of voice. The animals shrugged and got ready to head off their own separate ways. "I know you all tried, and it's a bummer, but I just don't think we're going to make it." The spiderants dug through the sack and stole a Christmas ham from amongst the guns and toys on their way out. "Unless by some miracle you all find a way to get there faster and..." Claptrap suddenly noticed they were all starting to leave. "Hey! Get back here! This is the part where you're all supposed to reject our imminent failure and become motivated enough to work harder and save Christmas!" he shouted after them. The animals all grumbled when they realized he wasn't actually going to allow them to leave and reluctantly gathered back together.

Once they were all together again, Claptrap noticed someone was missing. "Hey, where's Steve?" he asked. The animals started looking around and finally noticed that he was gone as well. They felt jealous that he'd already made it out when he had the chance. "Steve? Steve, where are you?" Claptrap called to him. The spiderant lifted a rock and looked underneath to see if he was hiding under there while the skag checked a nearby burrow and asked the residents if they'd seen him. None of them could seem to find him.

They all looked up when they heard someone honk a car horn. "Heyoo!" Steve waved to them from the driver's seat of a Bandit Technical.

"So you decided to use a car instead of a sled?" Liam asked, still skeptical of his entire story.

"Yes! It was a brilliant idea, one that I'm glad I thought of!" Claptrap replied enthusiastically.

"I thought it was Steve's idea," another bandit pointed out.

"Nonsense! Steve's not smart enough to come up with any ideas without my help!"

"Really? Because I've met Steve, and he was pretty damn smart. He speaks three languages and has a PhD in astrophysics.."

"Who's telling the story here, you or me?" Claptrap asked him aggressively. The bandit didn't feel like arguing with the idiot robot, so he just let it go.

"So anyway, after my minion, Steve, returned with the car I sent him to get for me..."

Claptrap had somehow managed to cram the entire sled team into the Technical. The scythid perched comfortably on the dashboard and squeaked like a dog toy with every bump that Steve hit in the road. Claptrap tried to read the map with a skag's butt in his face and a hungry spiderant chewing on the corner. He found himself constantly having to shove the bullymong's head out of his face...

"Wait, wait wait...you mean to tell us that you managed to cram a bullymong into the tiny ass, one-man cockpit of one of our Technicals?"

"You mean to tell us you managed to cram a skag, two spiderants, a scythid, one of those invisible bitches, a robot, and an entire human being on top of that bullymong into the tiny ass, one-man cockpit of one of our Technicals?"

"Terry, Gavin, stop interrupting and let me entertain you with my story!"

There was slime dribbling down the dashboard from the chubby little critter that was jiggling like a bowl full of jelly from the movement of the car and he could feel it dripping down onto his tire.

"Couldn't you have gotten a bigger car, Steve?" he asked angrily.

"Heyo?" Steve replied.

"You know I can't put them in the back, that's where all the presents are!" Claptrap replied. A wad of slime fell down onto the map. At first he thought it was the scythid's, but then he realized it was drool. "Who's drool is this? Vixen, is it yours?" he demanded. The stalker hung her head in shame.

"Heyoo!" Steve shouted.

Claptrap jumped up in his seat and shouted with joy, "We're here!" The animals all shrieked from shock at his outburst and the scythid jumped up and splattered on the windshield. She slid down and left a slime trail all the way to the bottom, then got up and scurried under the dashboard. "Now get out and start helping me!" he demanded, throwing the door open and giving the skag the boot. The other animals followed suit and ran around to the truck bed to await their orders. "And you..."

"Heyo?" Steve said with a glimmer of excitement, hopeful that he'd get to help pass out the presents and at least get to do something worthwhile on this journey Claptrap was making him take.

"Stay here and keep the car warm!" Claptrap commanded before leaping out and following the animals. Steve grumbled and locked the doors behind him.

Claptrap unloaded as many presents as they could carry onto the sled team. "Everybody got something?" Claptrap asked. The scythid jumped from the top of the pile in the truck bed and landed perfectly on the skag's head. She was holding a tiny little box with a disproportionately huge bow on top. "Perfect! Let's start at that house!"

The animals all turned their heads to see which one he meant and noticed it was surrounded by a six-foot tall fence and had a "Beware of Skag" sign on the gate. A rather large, hungry looking badass skag with charred-looking scales was lying on his side in the yard surrounded by bones, a few of which looked like they came from a reindeer. He had a human skull still clutched tightly in his forepaws and was biting the air in his sleep. Some permanent marker hastily scribbled on the side of a chewed up plastic water dish declared the skag to be named "Enrique".

Good luck with that, the smaller spiderant snorted before dumping all the boxes she was carrying onto Claptrap and turning around to wait in the car with Steve.

"Hey! You get back here and help, young lady!" Claptrap called after her. The door to the Technical opened and she lept up into Steve's lap and curled up in it for a nap. "I'm docking your pay!" Claptrap scolded her when the door slammed shut and Steve waved to him from the safety of the front seat.

Claptrap noticed that one of the bandits had fallen asleep during his story and woke him up. He didn't want him to miss the best part, after all. He only told a story once, mostly because he couldn't remember how it went the second time around, and he'd hate for him to be forever in suspense over the matter of how the story ended.

"How much longer does this go on for?" Dennis asked. "Tracker's getting antsy." The skag rumbled and snapped at the air, as if he smelled food somewhere.

"Fear not, for my story is only half finished!" Claptrap reassured him. "There's much more enjoyment to come!"

"Maybe I should have stayed home with my idiot kids this year," a bandit grumbled.

"So after we chose the first house..."

.

They slid down the chimney, how they got up onto the roof I don't know.

The stalker at least thought to use the front door and was already waiting down below.

The bullymong got stuck for a moment or ten.

Claptrap sighed and stated, "Maybe you should have just waited outside then."

While the mong waited for help to get him unstuck,

Claptrap pulled on his arms, flew backwards, and angrily yelled out, "Damn!"

.

Claptrap sighed and considered what to do about this situation most unpleasant.

He decided to worry about that later and went to give out his presents.

Shotguns! C4! A stick of dynamite or three!

Each one of these gifts he left under the tree.

And then once his noble task had been done

Claptrap arose from the floor and said, "Well, let's move onto the next one!"

.

And then Claptrap grabbed the stuck bullymong and he started to shove

When he heard a small sound like the coo of a dove.

He turned around fast and saw standing a few feet from the stalker

Tiny Tina, a child that was clearly off of her rocker.

Claptrap had been caught by this little orphaned daughter

Who'd got out of bed for a cup of cold water.

She stared at Claptrap and said, "What are you muthahumpas doin' in my house? Enrique! Sic 'em!"

.

Then Claptrap screamed like a girl and spun on his tire

When out of nowhere charged an angry, badass skag engulfed in hellfire.

Claptrap raced out of the house and ran from the skag.

The stalker and the bullymong looked on while Tina raided his goody bag.

She went back to bed after stealing all his toys

And left him to be mauled by the nearby varkids that were attracted by the noise.

"How did you finish delivering presents if you got eaten by varkids?" a bandit asked.

"I got better," Claptrap replied.

"Can I at least pretend there's an alternate ending where you died?"

"So once we got that out of the way..."

Enrique and the varkids eventually grew bored and wandered away, leaving the flame-charred robot behind in the dirt. "Ow..." he said when his storage drawer fell out. The bullymong and the stalker both joined him outside shortly afterwards. "Someone go ask Steve for the repair kit in the glove box..."

Once he had reattached his drawer and recalibrated his optical sensors, Claptrap wisely decided to move onto the rest of the houses. This time he remembered not to let the bullymong down through any more chimneys.

They left presents for everyone, bandits included. Of course most bandits were more likely to shoot at them then thank them when they saw them. The local skags also seemed less than thankful for the presents thrown down into their den and they didn't even bother to unwrap them before eating them.

"Hey look guys, Christmas presents!" Axton said when he came down the stairs the next morning and saw the mountain of gifts under the tree. "It's just like Kwanzaa!"

Maya unwrapped a gift and found a glue ball covered in popsicle sticks and paper clips stuck to the bottom of the box. "What the hell is this thing?" she asked.

"So then we delivered presents to everyone in Pandora!" Claptrap finished.

The room was dead silent. One skeptical bandit said, "Really? I don't remember getting any presents from you that year."

"Me neither," another agreed.

"Okay, so maybe we hit two or three small towns and called it quits when we ran out of stuff, and our attempt to fly the car into Sanctuary by driving it off a mountain at top speeds didn't work out so well..." Claptrap replied thoughtfully.

"Yeah. I'm sure that's exactly what happened," Dennis replied.

There was an awkward silence, and then... "Want to hear the story about how I saved Easter?"

Everyone in the room groaned and stood up, walking out the front door and leaving Claptrap the only one left at the bar. Dennis' skag, Tracker, brought up the rear and stopped to kick dirt from the floor in his direction. The bartender sighed, realizing that there was a fairly slim chance he'd ever see some of those tabs paid.

Claptrap's optic raised to look at the sole employee and only being in the room besides him. "So it all started when the Easter bunny broke his leg..." he began.

The bartender looked at the bottle of vodka in his hand, tossed it aside, and reached for the Everclear.