Author's Note: Daria and its associated characters are the property of MTV/Viacom. This was not written for money or any other compensation. It is only fanfic and written for the pure enjoyment of it.

It was the night before Christmas, and all through the land, not a creature was stirring. Not even Scarlett the Fairy. Her stocking was hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nick would soon be there.

O.K., let's stop right there with the sappy stuff. One, because it's not really original, and two, because, our young heroine was quite awake...and waiting patiently for Santa...with a net and a tranquilizer dart.

You see, the previous year, Scarlett had asked Santa for the drummer of Backflash to be shrunk down to fairy size for a day so that she could have a date with him. But it never happened, and she got stockings instead.

Just so you know, fairies really hate getting clothing for Christmas, too. And since Santa Claus welshed on her gift the year before, she wanted to voice her complaints straight to the big man himself.

She did try to complain after the New Year, by contacting North Pole City directly (fairies can do that, you know, since they have better cell phone coverage than we humans can get). But she could never get past the elves running interference for ol' Saint Nick. Which, of course, frustrated her no end.

You may not know this, but fairies and elves don't really get along with each other very much. Elves consider fairies flighty little twits, and fairies consider elves stuck up and conceited.

By the same token, both fairies and elves do not like dwarves at all. While dwarves are really good workers and very dedicated to their jobs, they are also quite...uh, let's see how delicately I can put this...raunchy. They're known to cavort with scullery maids and former princesses. The real problem is that they sing about their deeds proudly, in rhyme no less, and fairies and elves consider that quite gauche.

But that's another story.

You know how you're supposed to leave milk and cookies out for Santa on Christmas Eve? Some people leave out Budweiser and cookies, but that only attracts reindeer, as any civilized person should know. Well, fairies leave out muffins with sprinkles and mead.

Yeah, the combination does leave something to be desired. But, it is also common knowledge to fairies that one of Santa's weaknesses is mead. Well, that and most any brunette between the ages of nineteen and twenty-seven, but I won't go there since this is a classy tale.

You would expect Scarlett to be standing next to the small fireplace in her small home, but no, you would also be wrong. She was hovering over said fireplace, dressed in a knee-length black nightgown, and a look of total determination on her face.

It wasn't easy for her to wait, for she could hear the Lawndale High School Football Team singing Christmas Carols from house to house. You might think that's unusual, but when it's mandatory that you volunteer, anything is possible.

Scarlett wanted to go outside and personally "cheer" some of the players on, particularly Kevin Thompson and the three Js. Although, it is doubtful that they would find the experience very cheerful. But, hey, you take your chances with ticking off a fairy.

With grim determination, she ignored the butchering of various Christmas songs and hovered over her fireplace. At least, she tried. It was difficult, after hearing such "classics" as Silent Night, Pigskin Night, It Came Upon a Touchdown Clear, and Santa Claus is Coming to Halftime.

Now, there wasn't any fire blazing in the fireplace, because Scarlett had a brand new furnace installed, and besides, the fireplace was just for show. Besides, Scarlett didn't like having to dust very much and her new furnace generated much less dust than did the fireplace.

It also reduced the chances of our young fairy catching her wings on fire, like she did the year before. Don't tell her that I told you about that, O.K.? It'll be our little secret.

Normally, she would pass the time with some fruit juice and a strawberry cheesecake muffin. But since said muffin had the same effect on her that chocolate does on chocoholics, she would be in danger of losing her concentration.

So she waited quietly.

Finally, as midnight approached, our young heroine was really getting tired. She yawned repeatedly and fought to keep her eyes open.

Then she heard a light thump come from the roof. Now, to children all over, that sound meant that Santa's reindeer had landed. To Scarlett, it meant that she'd have to clean reindeer droppings off her roof, yet again.

Reindeer should fast before Christmas Eve, you know. At least, that's what Scarlett thinks. After all, it's a drag having to clean off the roof on December 26.

Then some old soot fell in the chimney, and our young fairy heard the sound of shuffling. Suddenly, there was a pair of black boots and the bottoms of red pants that could be seen in the fireplace.

Scarlett waited as Santa Claus moved out of the fireplace with a practiced ease that betrayed most everybody else. Then she activated her net the same time she threw her tranquilizer dart.

She tripped as she did so, however, so the dart hit the back of her left thigh at the same time the net landed - on her.

Santa Claus chuckled as the now-groggy fairy struggled with the netting that pinned her to the floor. Her legs kicked in futility, her wings poked out through openings in the net and she couldn't even move the ever-present lock of red hair that prevented her from seeing her quarry.

Santa's chief elf was also present, and unbeknownst to either Scarlett or Santa, he had a digital camcorder and recorded our young heroine's struggles with the net. Let me tell you, that became a big hit with Elf Tube dot com. Especially since the video kept showing close-ups of her legs. That resulted in a poster that was very popular in the elf barracks at North Pole City.

No, that poster never got photoshopped. Santa, after all, has his own Standards and Practices, of which he's the chairman, and you should hear some of the elves complain about that. But that's neither here nor there.

I kinda feel sorry for that particular elf, especially when Scarlett finally gets her Internet hookup. For fairies do check out Elf Tube on occasion, and when she finally sees that video...she's bound to go all Jackie Chan on him. Or worse.

Santa helped the trapped fairy get out of her predicament, and with a gentle, yet firm, hand, tucked her into her bed. She made her protests about the previous year's gift, but he only smiled as he laid her on her side and pulled the covers up to her neck.

Did you know that Santa won points by tucking her in on her side? It's not commonly thought of, but fairies don't sleep on their backs, because of their wings. After all, it's bad enough when certain young fairies have flyaway hair in the morning. Flyaway wings would be even worse.

Don't say anything to Scarlett about that, O.K.? She'd be upset with me if she knew I told you.

Right after being tucked in, Scarlett fell asleep, a smile on her face. Nobody is quite sure how Santa does it, not even fairies. Elves won't talk about it, of course, because Santa has an excellent intelligence department, and they don't want to chance that.

As you might know, Santa Claus used to be depicted as an elf, prior to the first appearance of Ultra Cola's rather fantastic Santa art. That was part of Santa's disinformation program that worked until the 1930s. Then, an elf named Morty gave an Ultra Cola artist a picture of Santa, and well, his cover was blown.

It's a real shame about what happened to Morty.

But that's another story.

Santa left Scarlett's gifts under her Christmas tree, a sparsely decorated Bonsai tree set up in along one wall of her living room. Then he helped himself to muffins and mead.

Needless to say, it took several elves and two of the reindeer to get the now-inebriated Saint Nick back up the chimney and some real hard work to finish their work for the remainder of the night.

For weeks afterwards, many millions of people wondered why the song Where, o Where, are you Tonight? was at the forefront of their minds. For a brief spike that lasted more than six weeks, the sales of Hee-Haw videos went through the roof.

But that's also another story.

When Scarlett woke up the next morning, she got up and remembered what had happened with both the net and the tranquilizer dart. She blushed from the embarrassing memory, but then rushed to her Christmas Bonsai tree and opened up her gifts with excitement, a quality that fairies share with children.

She got three Backflash CDs, as well as an autographed poster of their drummer. She also got a black sweater with an ankh embroidered just below the left shoulder.

None of this was the same thing as a date with said drummer, but she was satisfied with what she got. After all, she had to admit that it was hard to buy things for fairies, since they were pretty much self-supporting in many ways.

So for Christmas day, Scarlett the Fairy had her favorite music playing, and enjoyed some of her Bacon Explosion that she still had from the fall (suspended animation is an amazing thing), as well as some strawberry cheesecake muffins.

But as she sipped on her hot chocolate, Scarlett remembered that Santa's chief elf had a camcorder during their visit. Her eyes widened as she remembered that her bare legs kicked around...

--END--

Author's Note: I'd like to thank the following people for their comments on this story when I first posted it on the PPMB: Roentgen, Richard Lobinske, Brother Grimace, and Doggieboy.