[ WP ] A pair of sombre gentlemen in suits and shades appear at your door . Their ears are pointedly hidden . Are you a bad enough dude to rescue Santa Claus ?

Derrick was rather accustomed to the reliable way in which life played out every morning. This was not to say that life was boring, because boring and reliable are n't entirely the same thing. In this case though, it was, and they were. Derrick liked boring. He'd had a grilfriend once who had asked him to be more spontaneous. He had responded by sitting quietly in a room for hours, lacking the fundametal human capability for spontaneity. So it was with no amount of upset that Derrick opened his bathroom door to find something that he had not been expecting. Two suited dwarves stood awaiting him, they had their hands over their ears as if they had just heard some rather profane things, which they were no doubt about to share with Derrick. 
 
 `` Greetings, We-'' began one before Derrick cut him off. It was much to early for this kind of shenanigans. 
 
 `` You, coffee.'' he said pointing to one of them. `` You, clean.'' Without further ado Derrick dropped his shorts and stepped into the shower. As the water poured onto him some rather more primitive parts of Derrick's brain were kicking into motion, and chose this time to inform the rest of it that two suited midgets had just broken into Derrick's house. The rest of Derrick's brain laughed at these primitive parts, calling them all sorts of names and saying questionable things about their obviously lacking capability for rational thought. It was only when Derrick stepped out of the shower, to be confronted by a hot cup of coffee and the morning newspaper. Those same primitive parts of Derrick's mind were now rather unashamedly jumping around, and pointing out to the rest of Derrick's brain that it had indeed, it seemed, had a much more thorough education than its peers had assumed. This was because the coffee and newspaper found themselves attached to a small, suited elf. 
 
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 Derrick took the coffee and the paper. The elf was kind enough to wrap a towel around his waist before escorting him out of the bathroom. The room was spotless, and Derrick would have been happy if his body had contained enough caffiene to facilitate the feeling of emotions. The one elf joined the other at the foot of the bed, and they stared at Derrick, clad only in a cotton towel, as if he were a small god. 
 
 `` We have completed the tasks Oh Great One. Now as per the contracts of the Snow and Beard you must accept our request.'' Derrick nodded absent-mindedly as he sipped his coffee, completing a magical contract that had three-thousand years of magic and tradition behind it. This would have caught Derrick completely off guard, if he had realised at all. The elves set about explaining that Santa Claus had vanished from the North Pole. Well, vanished may not be the correct word, one elf admitted, more like kidnapped. Derrick took another sip of coffee to help him digest this news. The other elf turned to Derrick, handing him a pamphlet and a set of keys. 
 
 `` Everything you need to know is in there,'' said the elf, his fingers twitching violently in an attempt to gift-wrap the pamphlet which he had just handed to Derrick. Luckily some other fingers were on call to restrain these, and the pamphlet remained unmolested. The rest of Derrick's brain had now started to realise the gravity of the situation, and were thinking rather hard about the implications of what he had just seen and heard. This quiet philosophical contemplation was in no way helped by the fact that his eyes, which were now readily sending information to the brain, took their time in capturing the spontaneous combustion of both elves in great detail before sending a.zip file of the footage to the optical nerve clusters. Derrick stooped down, his hands sifting the piles of confetti that marked the deaths of the elves. 
 
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 END OF PART ONE
