Hope, Faith, Love, Luck

Biting back a comment regarding how the boy’s height would make that difficult, he smiled and took a step back, onto the curb. “No thank you. I don’t know why you are covered in oil, but I don’t care to have any of it wind up on my clothes.” Idly, Graham’s fingers pried at his cravat. As airy as his tone was, his eyes were sharp and eerie as ever. Many a person in Kisaragi had remarked on his unnerving gaze, and it hadn’t faded regardless of the strength of his powers.

Smart ass. I only dress up for one man and one man alone. Come to think of it... is Liu free tonight? Sidetracked by thoughts of his dashing partner, Santa momentarily forgot that he was all riled up. 

A little bit of Alessi’s attitude was starting to slip through, he rested his head on his hand and thought about something they could both do and understand what the fuck it was.

Slip-n-Slide? What the fuck is that even, it sounds like some sort of horrible sexual position.

"Ah! I know!"

"Swimming!"

"Ahh i’m just kidding you know, I would never hurt someone like that, yes you were right I probably should have waited a little bit before eating. But I was just so excited"

He gently blew some steam off of the remainder of the sausage and placed it into his mouth, the flavors were absolutely perfect now that he could properly taste them and not be incapacitated by the sensation of a thousand suns burning on his tongue.

It was around this time that Alessi started to realize he shouldn’t have placed a firepit in the middle of the street: there was barely any comfortable way for him to sit!

Speaking of, Alessi pulled the skewered sausage away from the fire and took a bite out of, totally ignoring how hot it was. The sausage made a loud snapping noise as he bit into it, he was right, the casing on it had a good strong snap.

"Mmm! Impressive, I was right!"

"Oh…"

"Oh!"

Okay now he finally realized that he shouldn’t have bitten into a piece of meat that was almost on fire.

"Oh it’s very hot! It’s very very hot! But it’s so good!"

Santa pulled his sausage away from the flames and let it stand in the open air, clicking his tongue as the sweet smoky aroma wafted about. He wanted to try what Alessi had been crooning over, yeah, but he wanted to avoid scorching his tongue off while he was at it. "I mean, think about it. If it's really that hot and I bite into it, I'll just drop the damn thing." Yet after he said those words, he brought the wiener to his lips and chewed around the casing.

A voice had called out to her and Lucina turned around. For some reason… She knew he was calling out to her. And she had seen him on the streets before. They have talked at least once, if she remembered correctly, but it was short and nothing really big.

     "Oh, hello! I believe we may have spoken      to each other once before. However, I      believe I’ve seen you around the city as      well.”

Lucina’s royalty status didn’t really faze her. She was a princess, but she treated everyone with respect regardless of their status. She had no reason to be rude to them if they were simply common folk. She placed a hand on her chest and bowed respectfully.

     "My name is Lucina. It’s a pleasure to meet      you, Santa. Was there something you needed…?”

Averting his gaze for just a brief moment, the young (gentle)man cleared his throat and stuffed his hands into his pockets. Boy, did he need new pants. Time for him to start a mental shopping list. Better ask Akane and Liu if they need anything, too. Wait, what? Oh, right. Breaking the space-time continuum.

A nervous laugh spilled from his lips. He hadn't thought this through one bit. "No, not really. I just... I dunno. I know this is pretty out of the blue and all, but... you look like the kinda person who's seen a lot of things." Perhaps even things she shouldn't have known about. He waited, then, with bated breath for her response.

"Oh it’s you again! Hahahah, yes this is rather crazy isn’t it? I just got the idea of making some barbecue and the middle of a busy street seemed like the best place to do it!"

Alessi took the long fork Sethan had used to puncture a cars tires and stuck it into one of the sausages. He hovered it over the fire and hummed a small little song to himself. The smell of the cooking meat was starting to mix with the firepits smoke and created a delicious aroma that basically personified Independence Day at its most basic level.

"I'm not even gonna ask how you came to that conclusion." Most people would have thought it was a crazy idea, but... well, Santa was gonna have to re-evaluate what the standard was at a place like Hive City. People just didn't fear for their lives these days.

It was finally July 4th and everyone in Hive City was celebrating in their own special little ways: talking with friends, cooking things, trying to purchase illegal fireworks to set off later tonight, the whole shebang. It was rather nice to see everyone coming together to celebrate in a nice way.

Then there was Alessi, who scrounged out a firepit from a dumpster, walked out to the street and lit it. Any traffic that would come by would be halted by a man with dust mop hair sitting in the middle of the street and opening a pack of sausages he “borrowed” from a grocery store.

Horns were honking loudly and some cars just said “fuck it” and drove around him, which only made Alessi laugh loudly. He took enjoyment out of the fact he was disrupting traffic, hell, he even summoned Sethan and used it to puncture the tires of one particular car that almost ran his fire pit over.

Today was a good day

While he was making his way through town, Santa overhead a cacophony of car horns going off. That wasn't the commotion he had expected, but he was still thankful for the plugs. A turn around the corner and he realized what was going on. He clicked his tongue in surprise, wondered if it was a good idea to get involved, and then decided that free food was totally worth pissing off a bunch of people in the right lane.