Sercet Santa Story for Manning:
The Kaiba Christmas Party
  
  NOTE: This is not supposed to be linked in any way with any timeline in your story! So don’t go correcting me 'cos I couldn’t be bothered to re-read the whole thing! (You know how lazy I am!)
  
  Kaede placed her hands on the back of the chair and leant forwards to look over the boy’s shoulder. He was working (like normal); she didn’t really expect much more of him. She leant forwards even closer, trying to irritate him in some way. He seemed completely oblivious to everything that she was doing. Finally Kaede rolled her eyes and blew in the boy’s ear.
  Seto shivered complaining and leant back in his seat to look up at the girl leaning on the back of his chair.
  “Boo,” she said grinning.
  “What do you want?” Seto asked, narrowing his eyes at her.
  The girl shrugged. “Nothing much.” She stepped back just before the boy reached up to pull at her locks of hair that were falling in front of her face. The chair almost fell backwards and Seto reached forwards as fast as he could to grab hold of the desk. Unfortunatly he was just in time to steady himself.
  Kaede bit her bottom lip to stop from laughing, which was quite hard. She turned around and sat on the desk next to where the boy was glaring at her. Something caught her eye as she was trying to ignore Seto.
  “What’s this? A Christmas Party?” she asked, suddenly excited.
  “I already told you about it,” Seto muttered.
  “Oh…” Kaede had some memory of that. “Cool…”
  “Don’t worry about it, I already have someone arranging it.”
  “Oh…” Kaede thought for a moment. “Hey Seto?”
  The boy didn’t answer immediately. “…What?”
  “Can I organise it instead? Please?”
  “Why?”
  “I want to help,” she lied, the truth was she just thought that it would be a bit of fun.
  “I don’t need help, if I did I would just hire more people,” he stated.
  Kaede looked down at Seto trying to do the best puppy impression she could. When Seto couldn’t take it any more he rolled his eyes and went back to his work. “Fine!” he growled.
  Kaede jumped off the table, ruffled up the boy’s hair and skipped off before Seto has time to throw anything at her.
  
  And so Kaede started the long and tedious task of organising the Annual Kaiba Christmas Party. She was given some contacts for arranging things and a basic guest list. But really she wasn’t finding it as simple as she first thought.
  A few days later she intruded on Seto in his study again.
  “Setoooo?”
  “What?” he grumbled, not looking up from his laptop.
  “It’s about the Chirstmas party, is there anyone you don’t want me to invite particularly?”
  The boy didn’t reply, he kept on typing.
  “Seto!”
  The boy looked up and rolled his eyes. “No, I wasn’t listening.”
  “Uh!” Kaede scoffed. “Are you listening now?”
  The arrogant boy leant back in his chair. “Kaiba corp is especially busy this time of the year, you should know that by now,” he muttered blankly and then went back to his work.
  “I’m busy too! I have to organise this party!”
  “No, you offered to organise it, I have plenty of people who could do it for you,” the boy muttered.
  Kaede pouted slightly, leaning on the doorframe for a second longer and then walked away. It was always like this and it really pissed her off. She was always second, and probably third if Mokaba came into it!
  
  As was usual for Kaede and her friends they all met up for coffee since there was no school. The weather was freezing, so much so that, to everyone’s delight, it had frozen all the pipes at school and the boiler had burst, and the teachers hadn’t been so harsh to make them go to school in such horrible conditions. It had started snowing a few days before and not disappeared, the chances were that it would stay like this until Christmas day but disappear by New Years Day.
  “What’s wrong, Kaede?” Ana asked, noticing how down her friend was.
  “Nothin’,” she muttered. “Just Seto being a prick, like always.”
  “Aww hun, it’s okay, just think of all the Christmas parties!” Yumiko said grinning.
  “I guess,” Kaede shrugged. “I mean, I’m organising one after all.”
  “Oooh, you mean the real big rich people’s do that Kaiba always holds?” Sakura asked eagerly leaning in and almost knocking her tea over.
  “Oh! Can I help?” Yuula asked instantly, raising her hand.
  “Uh… yeah!” Kaede grinned.
  “Me tooooo!” Ana whined.
  “And us!” Sakura exclaimed, wrapping her arm around Yumiko.
  “Hey, when did I ever say I would?” Yumiko complained. “But yeah, I’ll find some way to help.” She added, grinning.
  “Okay, how shall we do this?” Yuula asked.
  “Well, someone can be in charge of decorations, someone can be in charge of making invitations, there’ll need to be food and stuff… I guess I’ll be in charge of the guest list…” Kaede started mumbling.
  “Okay, I’ll do food,” Sakura suggested.
  “I’ll design invitations,” Yumiko stated, giving a salute.
  “Hmm, I’ll do a music playlist,” Kaede said thoughtfully.
  “No!” Almost everyone apart from Yumiko said.
  “I will!” Ana suggested.
  There was an even louder “No!”
  “Okay okay,” Kaede grumbled running her fingers through her hair. “We can all think of a playlist.”
  “Ooooh! It should so be fancy dress!” Yumiko exclaimed.
  “Yeah!” Yuula agreed.
  Kaede thought about it for a moment. “Well, there’s gonna be loads of old rich people that Seto has to invite 'cos of company relations so why don’t we just say that you have to wear like… one item that’s Christmas themed.”
  Yumiko nodded. “Makes sense.”
  So in the following week with lots of meetings over coffee for planning the invitations were sent out and the decorations, food and music was organised without any interference from Kaiba or anyone else.
  
  On Christmas Eve, a few hours before the party started, Kaede walked around the mansion, trying to hide her proud grinning when she saw everything fall into place. All the rooms were full of tinsel; there was a huge decorated Christmas tree in the main hall and table ready for food.
  She climbed up the stairs in her dressing gown, ready to start putting on makeup and her dress. She was a bit disappointed that no one was there to get ready with her, but her friends were all going to arrive early anyway.
  Slowly she approached the always closed
  “Aren’t you going to get ready?” Kaede asked, leaning on the door in her dressing gown.
  “Something just came up,” the boy simply muttered not even looking up at her.
  The girl’s face fell, “Oh.” She stood up slowly and closed the door behind her.
  Kaede swirled around in front of the full length mirrors in her room. The new dress was an early Christmas present from Seto, there was no way that he had picked it out for her, he probably asked someone else to. It was a very nice dress but Kaede felt slightly detached in it. She wrapped a scarf over her shoulders, it was deep green with white pompoms on it and made Christmas colours with her crimson hair and it went surprisingly well with the slender grey silk of the dress.
  It was a relief when her friends showed up. Yuula was the first and she skipped around the hall in amazement at the decorations in her small light blue dress and pompom boots, almost knocking into the Christmas tree when she wasn’t looking until Duke, who strangely enough was wearing streams of tinsel in his hair, pulled her out of the way. Sakura, wearing a pale green dress and really big holly wreath earrings, with Yami, who had decorations hanging off his ridiculously spiky hair, and Ana, wearing deep red and a large red collar with bells on, with Honda, who wore reindeer antlers,  arrived shortly afterwards. Yumiko arrived fashionably late, wearing a dress a slightly darker shade than her newly dyed electric blue hair with overgrown snowflakes tangled in her hair. She had brought her brother Art the albino, who was wearing a feather bower with tree decorations tied on, and a guy from her art college who was wearing a jacket made from wrapping paper.
  Kaede beamed. “I can’t believe how great you all look!”
  “I know, it’s hard being his great,” Yumiko muttered fanning herself.
  “I love your dress,” Sakura sighed. “I wish I had a super rich boyfriend.”
  “You look so cute!” Yuula exclaimed once again to Duke waving her arms around, he was starting to look a bit scared.
  “Tea’s not here yet?” Sakura asked.
  “She’s coming later with everyone else,” Kaede grinned. She had taken full advantage of the use of the Kaiba mansion and had invited almost all of their class at school to the party, just starting later when many of the oldies would have left; that’s when the party would really start!
  The DJ started the music and they got first picks of the food. After a while the other guests started arriving. There were a few groups of well dressed old (well… older) people with Christmas ties, some lovely ladies with dresses which any normal person would have to sell their vital organs to afford, but they all had their own part of the room to mingle.
  The party was a great success; everyone who helped with it couldn’t help but bleam with pride. But Kaede couldn’t enjoy herself like everyone else was. Yuula and Duke continued to pick at the buffet, Yumiko proceeded to try and repair her friend’s jacket when the sleeves kept ripping off whilst Art just stood and watched and Sakura was getting annoyed when Yami turned back into Yugi for a while.
  The snow crunched under the expensive shoes which Kaede knew would probably ruin them but she didn’t really care at that moment. The garden just outside the Hall looked magical covered in snow, a perfect retreat from the loud music and hot stuffy air or the hall. The scarf she was wearing didn’t do much for the cold but she liked the tingling feeling of chill on her skin for that moment.
  Sitting on the bench in the garden she could still hear the music pelting out of the speakers only slightly muffled by the tall glass windows. She could see her shadow in front of her, cast by the chandeliers inside. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply, the cold air almost hurting her throat.
  Suddenly she felt something over her shoulders, she opened her eyes and there was a coat around her.
  “Hey,” a voice behind her said.
  Kaede looked in front of her and saw another shadow standing over hers. “Seto? What are you doing out here?” she asked tiredly, rubbing her eyes.
  “I’m hiding,” he muttered.
  “What?” The girl looked up and then stopped breathing completely.
  “You said I had to wear something Christmas themed…”
  Kaede stared up at the boy. The suit that he was wearing (all apart from the blazer which was keeping Kaede warm) was fine and all, as expensive as everything else at this party, but he looked absolutely ridiculous. He was wearing a Santa hat. “Mokaba gave it to me,” he cringed.
  “It… looks good,” Kaede managed to say whilst trying in vein to keep a straight face.
  The boy rolled his eyes as she burst out laughing, unable to contain it for a second longer. “Yeah, this is why I’m hiding.”
  “Why didn’t you find a tie or something like everyone else?”
  He looked away. “I forgot.”
  “I thought that you were working?” Kaede muttered as the boy sat next to her.
  Seto looked at her with narrowed eyes. “Who the hell works on Christmas Eve?”
  The girl giggled and leant into him, she could feel his warm skin through his shirt. She hardly realised it when he took hold of her chin and tilted her head back to kiss her.
  “I…” the boy sighed, “I’m sorry that I’ve been ignoring you.”
  “It’s okay,” Kaede whispered, unable to speak properly.
  “I guess I need to be a good host…” he muttered, standing up.
  Kaede almost fell sideways when he support left her.
  “Do I have to wear this?”
  Kaede didn’t answer in words, she only smiled wider. She stood up and took Seto’s arm, leading him to the door to the Hall.
  When the boy walked into the hall everyone looked at him. Kaede glared at her friends who immediately stopped laughing. Seto himself didn’t say anything; he only walked with Kaede to the centre of the dance floor and started dancing with her.
  “I’m really impressed; you did this all by yourself.”
  “Not really, my friends helped with all of it,” she said, blushing and looking away.
  “No really, I didn’t think you would be able to do it, I mean, I would never have had the patience for something this tedious.”
  The girl laughed and went even more red as he pulled her in closer to him. She looked over his shoulder, everyone else was dancing too, but all her friends were watching her, grinning. Yuula waved and Yumiko gave her the thumbs up from behind her friend.
  Kaede looked back at Seto who bent his head down for another kiss but stopped just short. “Merry Christmas,” he breathed.
  “Mmm,” Kaede agreed.