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“You want a what?” Santa blurted out looking startled, leaning in as Kakashi whispered in his ear and finding himself cheek-to-face with a plush pug. He hmmed thoughtfully and tried to ignore the beady eyes staring him down.
“Well that is a bit of an unusual request, but I'll see what I can do for you,” he commented after a small silence. Kakashi nodded and slid off the man's knee, bumping into Iruka who was trying to eavesdrop on their conversation.
“Now be good little boys and have a good Christmas,” the bethroned Santa ordered as he waved them off. “And don't forget to visit the temple on New Year's Eve!”
Iruka hopped back and forth and waved his dolphin plush at the man, almost knocking away the toy drum an elf tried to give him. Kakashi seemed to think about it for a moment before offering his own small wave. Behind them Kohari was being her normal excitable self and had her camera set to multi-shot and was busy blinding all and sundry with her flashes, determined to document every moment for Nanori who was on-call at the moment.
Umino Ikkaku, Konoha University Hospital EMT and First Response and Trauma Care Instructor, decided to exercise his particular trauma per re nata extraction skills and grabbed the boys by their free hands before carefully hurrying them past the velvet ropes towards freedom, bowing his apologies to the half-blind patrons waiting in line as they passed, trying vainly to pretend they weren't associated with the crazed paparazzi woman. Kohari followed them mindlessly, camera still flashing away as she captured everything from window displays to fake presents on stands.
Kohari almost walked into a rack of candy canes in the shape of a Christmas tree before Ikkaku confiscated her camera with a stern look. She pouted for all of three seconds before she saw something outside the mall that made her positively light up.
Ikkaku looked at her with dread. An excited Kohari rarely meant something good.
She ran to the glass doors and jumped up and down like a child, pointing outside and shouting, “Look! Look! Look!”
Iruka tried to run towards her only to be halted when Ikkaku failed to release his hand. He looked towards his father and stamped his feet in an imitation of the pee-pee dance before groaning out an aggravated "Please", tugging relentlessly.
“No running indoors,” Ikkaku scolded. “You could fall and crack your head open.”
“I won't crack my head open,” Iruka whined, stamping in his odd dance, not realizing they had steadily been moving towards the doors the whole time.
“We're here,” Kakashi uttered in his typical bored manner, hiking Pug-kun higher against his side. Iruka blinked at that.
“Look, Iruka-chan! Kakashi-chan!” Kohari crouched to their level and pointed outside. Their eyes widened.
“Horses,” Kakashi breathed.
“I wanna ride!” Iruka shouted, already trying to push the door open.
“Buggy rides?” Ikkaku asked skeptically. “Do you know how many horse and carriage related accidents occur every year in Amish country?”
“This isn't America,” Kohari retorted, stealing back her camera and darting out the door, Iruka slipping through the gap behind her.
Ikkaku looked down at Kakashi who merely stared back with unnerving calm.
“She's right, you know,” the silver-headed boy said. “This isn't America.”
“One day I'll explain sarcasm to you, Kakashi-kun,” Ikkaku sighed, pushing the door open.
Kakashi shrugged and pulled away to inspect the horses lined up at the curb.
“Let's ride—” Kohari started to point to a sturdy Clydesdale attached to a large sleigh-like buggy when Iruka cut her off.
“This one!” he shouted, jumping up and down and pointing with his whole body at a carriage attached to a white horse. More specifically, he was leaning at, waving his arms at, pointing his dolphin plush at, kicking his feet in the general direction of–a delicately sprung Cinderella-styled pumpkin coach covered in shimmery blue and white lights and gauzy white fabric drawn by a spindly-legged fairytalesque horse with a plumed headdress on its forehead.
Ikkaku was aghast.
Kohari was enthralled.
“Yes, that one!” she cried, running to jump in on Iruka's body-pointing party.
“That's girly,” Kakashi stated.
“Is not!” Iruka shouted, clambering in as the driver opened the door for him. “It's pretty!”
“I don't want to ride in a girly cart with a useless looking horse,” Kakashi declared, pointing towards a matched pair of Clydesdales attached to an open buggy. “Those are better.”
“You're just jealous because I got here first,” Iruka declared, settling himself more firmly in his seat.
“Kakashi-kun, you don't do have to ride if you don't want to,” Ikkaku offered. Kakashi stared forward, lower lip pushed out petulantly.
“I don't like that one,” he groused.
Ikkaku sighed. He was really not good with children and Kakashi had the oddest way of going back and forth between being a tiny adult and a small child. He couldn't keep up.
A sudden shout and the patter of stampeding feet made them turn at the same time, Kakashi's eyes widening before he bolted for the “girly carriage”. Ikkaku shrugged, thinking he'd changed his mind, and climbed in after.
As they pulled away, a little boy wearing a bright green outfit with a fluorescent orange scarf and matching boots ran to the curb and made a moue of dramatic disbelief. The disbelief turned to outraged competitiveness when he saw Kakashi and he pointed an orange-mittened finger in their general direction. Kakashi slumped low in his seat and peeked over the edge of the window at the boy, ducking as the boy began to point with both hands.
“You have beaten me to the Carriage of Brilliance, my rival!” the boy shouted. “Next time, you shall not be so lucky!”
At tall man wearing a dark green jumper came to stand by the boy and peered in the direction of his shouting before snorting and ruffling his hair. The man waved at the carriage and turned the boy's head before nudging him towards one of the other buggies.
“I want a rival too,” Iruka declared, a pout forming. “Tell Gai to be my rival too!”
“I think you have to be in the same class to be a rival,” Kakashi mumbled, sounding depressed. “You're behind me in school. I'm in kindergarten already.”
“Grr, not fair,” Iruka grumbled. “I should have asked Santa for a rival.”
“I don't think Santa can bring you a rival,” Ikkaku soothed, casting a warning look towards Kohari. She was starting to get a crafty expression which boded ill for many. She instantly gave him the most innocent look she could.
“So, Iruka,” she said, a skilled arbiter of misdirection and smooth changes of topic. “What did you ask Santa for?”
“Hm...” he pondered aloud, tapping his chin with his dolphin's nose. “Hm... hm... hm...”
He grinned broadly and pointed at Kakashi, finger almost touching his nose.
“Same thing I wished for last year! I wish for Kakashi and me to be together forever!” he shouted.
“You can't ask Santa for that,” Kakashi groaned, pushing Iruka's hand away. “You have to ask him for stuff he can give you, not stuff you already have. And 'sides. I'm not going away.”
“Fine then,” Iruka groused, annoyed at having apparently wasted his request to Santa two years in a row.
“What did you ask for?”
“A brain,” Kakashi deadpanned, shrugging.
“A what?” Kohari blurted out, looking startled.
“So I can study it,” he continued, casting her a look that said it should have been obvious. “How else can I become a great neurologist like my father?”
“Um, well I hope Santa brings you what you want,” Ikkaku mumbled, making a mental note to leave Sakumo a note about his son sometime.