Theme #20: Santa

Written for Kairukashi's Christmas theme challenge on the KakaIru Livejournal community.

Because I've always been vaguely terrified of Santa.

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Being an orphan, Iruka knew quite well the importance of family. He craved the warmth of familial ties, and hated it when others took their loved ones for granted. This being understood, it was not surprising that Iruka became the spokesperson for Christmas in Konoha, even though it had previously been a little celebrated holiday in the village. As the holiday season approached, he was even willing to take time out from his regular lesson plans to teach his students a little about the meaning of Christmas.

"So, you're saying this Sanpa guy sneaks into people's houses at night and nobody wakes up?" Young Naruto asked in disbelief when Iruka explained about the jolly old elf.

"It's Santa, and yes. That's what he does." Iruka confirmed.

"We've got to stop him! Is he powerful?" Naruto asked. Iruka sighed, and wondered why this was the only time the kyuubi boy would pay any attention in his class.

"We don't need to stop him, Naruto. He sneaks in to leave presents for the good girls and boys in the houses."

"Why would he do that?" Little Sasuke asked, doubting the motives of this suspiciously generous saint.

"And what if the kids in the house HAVEN'T been good?" Kiba asked nervously.

"He does it because he likes helping other people. If the children haven't been good, he leaves coal. Now, if anyone else has a question, please raise your hand and wait to be called on." Iruka tried to restore order in his classroom.

Sakura raised her hand from her desk in the front row. "How does he know, Iruka-sensei?" She asked when she was called on.

"Yeah, how would some fat guy know if we've been good or not?" Naruto echoed.

"Why does he get to decide?" Kiba growled.

"Has he been watching us?" Choji wondered aloud.

"Maybe he's some sort of pervert." The usually silent Shino added. The class gasped.

"No, no! He's not a pervert! He…arg! Here, why don't you listen to some Christmas songs? Maybe they can do a better job explaining this than I can." Iruka switched on a tape player and a Christmas song began to play.

"Oh, you better watch out, you better not cry,

You better not pout, I'm telling you why,

Santa Clause is coming to town!

He's making a list, checking it twice,

Gonna find out who's naughty or nice,

Santa Clause is coming to town!

He sees you when you're sleeping,

He knows when you're awake,

He knows if you've been bad or good,

So be good for goodness sake,

Santa Clause is coming to town!"

The children were silent for a moment, and Iruka thought he'd finally gotten through to them. Then a wail arose from the middle row, and all at once, his classroom of seven year olds was sobbing.

"He's coming for us!" Ino screamed amidst her tears.

"Santa's a stalker!" Sasuke cried.

"He's watching us, always watching!" Hinata whined, searching wildly for the elusive enemy with her pale eyes.

Iruka tried desperately to calm his frightened class, but the sobs prevailed. The noise was so loud that even Shikamaru woke up, looked at the name 'Santa' written up on the board, and mumbled something about it having the same letters as 'Satan'.

"It's a sign!" Naruto screeched. "We have to defeat this Sanpa guy, or we're all DOOMED!"

Iruka sat back down at his desk and began hitting his forehead against it. Only five days left till Christmas, and it looked like his students were going to organize an assassination of Kris Kringle himself.

The bell rang and the terrified students left, still looking around suspiciously to see if they could catch a glimpse of this 'Santa' and his agents of evil.

MERRYCHRISTMASMERRYCHRISTMAS

Four days later, as midnight approached on Christmas Eve, Iruka was about to head home from his late shift in the Mission Room. Hey, the downside to the village not celebrating Christmas on a wide scale was that they only got the day of the Holiday off of work, instead of the whole week.

The chuunin gathered up his papers and headed out the door, but was stopped by a gaggle of semi-drunk jounin, whose philosophy on celebration seemed to be 'get drunk and have a good time'. They each took a turn grasping his hand and shaking it sporadically.

"We wanted to congratulate you, Iruka-sensei." Genma said, swaying, but still remarkably composed.

"You've done something none of us have ever even hoped to achieve." Asuma chortled, giving Iruka a pat on the back that nearly sent the poor chuunin flying.

"What did I do?" Iruka asked, honestly confused, but not really expecting a coherent answer from the drunken jounin.

"You instilled terror into the hearts of every Academy student in your year. Amazing. We've been trying to rattle them for months now, but it seemed like nothing would scare them." Raido revealed with a smirk.

"We salute your youthfffful gen…genius!!!" Gai slurred.

Iruka shook his head and pried his hand free of the jounin who was shaking it furiously. "I really have to be going now." He said tartly.

The final jounin in the group, a slender, silver-haired man with a dark mask, walked right up to the retreating chuunin and seized his recently liberated hand.

"Iruka-sensei, is it? It's nice to meet you." And thus, on that fateful Christmas Eve, as all the western children in various time zones slept and dreamt of dancing sugar plums (curious, since they do not and have never danced…), and as all the students in Iruka's Academy class huddled in their beds, clutching toy kunai and shuriken and shaking their tired heads to stay awake in order to ward off the evil Santa and his minions when they attacked, Umino Iruka and Hatake Kakashi met for the first time.

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AN: You know what? I may go on and actually do twelve themes. You see, I get ideas for fictions when I brainstorm when I'm half asleep, and I only got about three hours of sleep last night, so when I read the list of themes, a bunch of little ficlets wrote themselves in my head. Screw studying for exams! I won't be doing them in the specified order, though, as I kinda have the stories loosely connected, and want to keep them in chronological order.