kaisou | video;

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WHO: Amal and you
WHERE: Kami State Park.
WHEN: Mid-December
WHAT: Amal finds out firsthand that Santa is basically a demigod.
WARNINGS: n/a

[video;]

[The camera is pointed at Kaisou's golden aurora borealis and the beautiful blanket of stars in the sky.

Then Amal's face comes into view. He's panting and a little beat-up but somehow still alive. There are twigs in his hair and leaves stuck to his outfit, but he doesn't seem to mind.]

Holy hells. My friends, you won't believe this...

Santa Claus is RIPPED. And he hit me so hard I flew out of the portal...? I don't remember the impact, but he gave me a nice coat to land on.

Still! That was awesome! I'm going to have to get stronger if I want to duel him again next year.

[HUH]

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No, no, you're fine! I'm just--

[GIGGLING MORE]

--oh, apologies, I just cannot believe that happened.

Hear me out, it makes complete and total sense.

I've been here for more than a year now, right? Long enough to hear the songs they sing about him. They talk about him like he's an omniscient being. Supposedly he can watch over all his worshipers, who are mainly children, and he knows if they've done good or bad things. So I thought to myself, surely this Santa guy is a primal... Probably summoned by the collective spirits of children. I was curious—what kind of primal would a spirit like that be? Full of joy and merriment? I remember how fun the fight against the Lord of the Revel was.

["I've connected the two dots."
"You didn't connect shit."
"I connected them."]

A year later, we get the opportunity to aid him and his people directly. So I helped out for a while, and eventually asked for an audience... and then I asked him for a duel, because he must be incredibly fast to be able to circle the world in a single night. And strong enough to carry millions of presents!

He gave me a few chances to back out, but I was insistent. And then as I'm watching, he sheds his outer coat in slow motion, and I see him grow before my eyes. It's like the coat was just a glamour to hide his true size: a brazen hulk of a man, covered in tattoos who has never missed a day of weights in his godsdamned life. And he grabs not one, but two swords off the wall and I realize...

This man... this primal of primals... is so powerful I can feel the energy radiating off him in waves. I can imagine that I am about to have a lot of fun in a very short amount of time.

I dodged like I've never dodged before. He got so close that I'm sure I lost a bit of hair. He moved like nothing I've ever seen, like time just casually moved aside for him and him alone.

It was incredible. And then he got one hit on me and the next thing I knew, I woke up out here.

So, is he a primal? Do we have a problem on our hands?

[Rhel doubts this, as evidenced by the giggling because look. Amal was so clearly delighted by this there's no way they have a problem.]

He is not. Or at least, not in the sense that he's out to drain the world of energy and mana crystals. I still don't know his origins, though... The legends say he's some kind of elf, which I find hard to believe. I've never met an elf that stacked in my life.

[NOT EVEN ESTINIEN.]

...not even Estinien? Or Aymeric?

[What.]

Not even close. Santa would put Slafyrsyn to shame. He's probably twice his size, no exaggeration—width and height.

Twelve. That is impressive. I wonder what magic is in his coat, in that case, as I would very much like to learn it.

[Amal doesn't respond, but he's chuckling a little immaturely.]

Actually, he's a saint. The exact definition of a saint varies on which church you ask, but generally saints were humans that exhibited great amount of holiness in their lifetime.

St. Nicholas, or Santa as many call him, is easily the most famous one.

Edited 2022-12-14 02:50 (UTC)

How does this world define holiness?

Doing good deeds, performing miracles, remaining true to the teachings of their god...stuff like that.

The churches are the ones who decide who is eligible for sainthood, so admittedly some who have been canonized throughout the years are more contentious than others if they actually deserved the title, but that stuff is usually the criteria.

Interesting. I wonder how this saint became...well, a gift-giver to children and apparently those with the stones to challenge him to a duel.

Well according to the Professor, St. Nicholas said to have revived some boys that had been murdered and shoved into pickle barrels. So maybe that earned him the job of being patron saint of children.

[....]

Of course, saint stories have a way of getting embellished over the centuries, so I'd take that with a grain of salt.

...the only question I have about that is why pickle barrels, honestly. That doesn't sound any more absurd than anything I've dealt with back home.

Haha, your guess is as good as mine! I wonder about that too.

Amal's little meeting does make me more curious to meet him though...

A saint! I see... So he's an agent sent by a god of this world? The uh... big God?

[SHIT DOES THAT GOD EVEN HAVE A NAME? HE HAS NO IDEA.]

[Yeah he can't blame Amal for the confusion there.]

Mm, that's right. Santa's job is to deliver presents on Christmas, which is the birthday of Jesus Christ, the son of the "big" God.

That's right! I remember hearing about the Son. Sorry, there's so much of that religion I'm unfamiliar with...

[Mostly because he hasn't bothered to learn it, but.]

So the date isn't a coincidence. That says a lot about this saint's work, and his patron too.

When things get really rough, children are some of the first to be forgotten. I'm glad someone like Santa is looking out for them.

Haha, it's fine. There are a lot of religions on Earth and they're all pretty complicated, so it'd be unfair to expect an isekai to know about them.

[Jun will give a little nod]

Mm, I agree. It seems like his popularity is well deserved.

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