The twenty-fourth of December.

Very conveniently, no articles had popped up this month. No dangers whatsoever in Ponyville. Like everything magically got better in time for Hearth's Warming, so it could go back to being crap in January. Like all Christmas specials in TV shows and such.

How was I spending it? Sleeping, playing games on the DevIce, and spending quality time with Asylum.

Hey, if they're giving me a break, I'm gonna take it.

Though I will admit, I was almost afraid of going to sleep. Not because of bad dreams, but because I was scared I'd wake up with the Ghost of Hearth's Warming Past there to send me on some trippy quest about me being greedy. Or with an angel there to show me what life would be like if I wasn't around. Or with some green guy stealing our stuff.

Luckily, no blatant movie ripoffs had shown up just yet, though I wasn't uncrossing my fingers just yet. Mostly because I didn't have my fingers crossed in the first place, because I had no-

"Arrell, you're narrating out loud again."

"Sorry."

I rubbed my neck sheepishly as I stood up. For the past few minutes, I had been lying in the bed I shared with Asylum, while she was beside me reading a book. Apparently I started voicing my thoughts after a bit, which meant one thing: I needed some air. I said as such, then left the room.

The next day was going to be Hearth's Warming Day, and...honestly? I wasn't too excited. I wasn't not looking forward to it, but it wasn't exactly like Christmas back on Earth. The only people I could spend it with were the other four members of the Winter Solstice, unless I wanted to travel and meet up with any of the ponies I met during my article-gathering life, which would be tiring and take me away from Ponyville. So it was just me and four others, none of whom were bothering with gift shopping, simply because none of us cared for luxuries that we didn't already have.

Though I will admit, there was something I was planning on giving Asylum. I had already purchased it earlier in the month and kept it secret from her, and now I was just waiting until the right time. I didn't want to give it when the others were around, because then that might get awkward with me being the only one to get anypony anything. So I had to wait until the next day, when we were at home alone.

I sighed, rubbing my temple as I walked along the snowy road, the sun slowly setting in the distance. Holidays shouldn't be this boring and stressful at the same time.

"Don't touch that!"

The orange pegasus mare laughed. "Come on, it's just a box. What's the worst it can do?"

Her friend, a green earth pony stallion with white hair, frowned. "There's been a lot of weird objects showing up in Equestria lately, and they don't look any less innocent than that box. Heck, I know of some that look more innocent. Look at that thing!"

The orange mare looked at the box. It was mostly gray, with odd ridges and notches preventing it from being a perfect cube. In the center of each side was, in the middle of a light gray circle within a dark gray one, a pink heart. It didn't look particularly harmful, but like her friend said, neither did any of the other weird things...

"...fine. But we can't just leave it here. Somepony else might find it."

"Well, neither of us are unicorns, so we can't use magic on it." The stallion sighed and rubbed his neck. "Just wait here by it, Diamond. I'll go find a Royal Guard, or that Windigo guy, or something. They'll know what to do."

Diamond sighed, blowing her black mane out of her eyes. "Fine, but hurry up. I don't want to look suspicious just sitting by a big heart-patterned box all night."

The stallion nodded. "I'll be back as soon as possible." With that, he galloped off, leaving her on her own.

"Looks like it's just you and me, boxy," she said with a chuckle to the inanimate object. She sighed again and prepared to wait a while.

Take me with you.

Diamond jumped, looking around as she heard a whispering sound. "Hello?"

Take me with you.

She looked at the box. "...wh-what...?"

Cut Diamond...take me with you...

So much for having the month off. My supposedly peaceful walk was interrupted by a random stallion coming up to me and asking for help with a "possible weird object". Which, so far in my job, had translated to "article".

He took me back to where he left his friend, only to find that both she and the article were gone. But on the ground, there was a strange scribbling in red paint on the wall of a nearby house...at least, I hoped it was red paint.

"STOP WATCHING," I read. "Uh...was your friend a schizophrenic? Or paranoid?"

"No!" he cried. "Diamond was perfectly fine! Whatever this is, that weird object thing must have done it!"

"Is this her writing, at least?"

"How should I know?! I've never seen her write with paint!"

I facehoofed. "Look, calm down, stallion-whose-name-I-don't-know. We'll figure this out. Just take a few deep breaths." He did so, and seemed to visibly calm down. "Now...this weird object. What did it look like?"

He finally spoke in a calm, if shaky, voice. "Well...it was a box, kind of...it was gray, and had a heart on it."

"...a heart? As in, a pony heart, or...?"

"No, a drawing of a heart. Like this."

He dragged his hoof through the dirt, drawing a somewhat crude heart. It finally clicked in my head.

"Box with a heart on it that seems to cause paranoia...oh goody." I facehoofed. "Do you know where your girlfriend would go if she was scared?"

"She's not my-"

"Just answer the damn question. I'm the guy helping you here, I have a right to tease."

He grumbled something before finally answering. "I don't know. Not much scares her. Maybe she'd go home, but we're staying in a hotel right now, so I don't know if that'd be 'safe' enough for her..."

"Well, it's better than nothing. Show me the hotel room."

He nodded and started trotting off. I took one last look at the graffiti, rubbing my hoof on the fresh writing and examining it.

"...thank Celestia. It's paint. At least that's one less thing to worry about."

With a sigh of relief, I took off after the green stallion.

Author's Notes:

"OoO Chapter" means "Out of Order Chapter". This chapter is not a bonus; it is normal and canon, but it takes place in a time that the story is not yet in, but needs to be done now...specifically because it's a Christmas special. I will be changing the title to a proper chapter number and rearranging its place in the chapter list once the story reaches the right point in time.

Anyway, the chapter...the Christmas special thing went through a few revisions. I was at first going to parody five different traditional Christmas movies, one for each of the Winter Solstice, but I could only think of three - which I at least referenced in this chapter, so see if you can guess them. That idea failed, obviously, so my next idea was to make it be about Arrell being afraid of Hearth's Warming because of the legend of the Windigoes being defeated all those years ago on the same day. That flopped, too, because I soon realized there was no justification for it because he was perfectly fine last year.

So I finally decided to go with an original story, which is not going to be completely Christmas-centric; it'll take place around Hearth's Warming and have some backdrop themes, but the main idea is going to be more on simple character development and a fun article hunt. Enjoy!