"...define "damage"," Chris said, looking nervous. 


"Well, so long as you didn't break an ornament... it should be- you 
broke an ornament, didn't you?" 


Chris nodded. "| wanted to see what the inside of one of those 
candles looked like." 


"For Wotan's sake!" The elf threw up his arms. "This is why my kind 
don't deal with your organization! You always mess up everything!" 


"...how bad is it going to be?" 


The elf thought for a moment, and simply said, "Do you have the 
means to escape a universe at your disposal?" 


Tristan spoke up. "...as a matter of fact, yes." 


"Then | suggest you all run into there and escape this one." With 
that, the elf walked off. 


Tristan stared. "...did | just instigate an XK scenario?" 

"He was probably exaggerating. I'll ask the Krampus about it 
tomorrow," Katherine said, smiling nervously. 

On the ninth day of Christmas, 87 gave to me... 


Nine minutes of swearing and cursing in German later, the Krampus 
stared at Katherine. "The tree is from Alfheim?!" 


"Yes..." 


"And you broke its ornamentation?! Around me! Oh for the love of..." 
He rubbed his face. "You need to banish me. Now. It might help." 


"What's going to happen?" Katherine said. "Tell me. What is going to 
happen if we don't?" 


"Oh, nothing much. Just a Christmas tree coming to life and trying to 
kill me." 


Katherine's expression went flat. "...1 believe you." 
"Really? No flat "what" reaction?" 


"This is Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin. Last Thanksgiving, we had animate 
turkey corpses attack the site. At this point, nothing surprises me." 


"Right..." The Krampus rubbed his face. "All-father isn't exactly 
pleased with the Wonder-Maker intruding upon his territory." 


"...how is Santa Claus intruding on Odin's territory?" 


"Think about it. Leader of an important organization in the north, all 
sorts of servants of lower class than him, great flowing beard..." 


Katherine sighed and dug some aspirin out of her pocket, rubbing 
her scars as she swallowed it. "Right, so. Either we watch you duel 
to the death with a Christmas tree from Valhalla, or we banish you 
and let said Christmas tree tear us apart." 


"That's the long and short of it," said the Krampus, biting the head 
off of a gingerbread man. 


".,.1n all honesty, I'd rather have you here. We stand a better chance 
if we have something to fight against it.” 


"| was afraid you'd say that." The Krampus sighed. "I'm willing to bet 
that spirits of other holidays don't have to put up with this." 


Katherine shrugged, and was about to respond, when there was a 
knock on the door of the lab. She peeked outside, and saw all three 
of the Bailey brothers outside. "...what do you want?" 


"We hear our brother screwed up,” Trevor said, poking Tristan in the 
side. 


Tom nodded, giving Tristan a noogie. "We wanted to see if there 
was any way we can help un-screw it up." 


"...right, okay... this is going to need some planning..." 


On the tenth day of Christmas, 87 gave to me... 


"That's at least ten sprigs of mistletoe I've seen you hang today, all 
of which are from my greenhouse.." Dr. Partridge frowned at Tom 
Bailey. 'What exactly are you playing at? Do you want the entire site 
to start gluing their faces together?" 


"Quite frankly, we're trying to prevent the site from being destroyed 
by a psychotic Christmas tree." Tom started to hang the mistletoe 
from the door to the entomology wing. 


"Again?" 


"Hush," Tom frowned as he hung the mistletoe from a strand of red 
string."The Christmas of 2008 never happened. We all agreed on it." 


"There was Christmas in 2008?" Snarked Tristan as he passed by, 
putting up sacrificial gingerbread men along the hallway. Tom 
pointed at Tristan, Tristan pointed at Tom, and they both went 
"“aaaaay|" 


"...[ will never understand how Tyler Bailey could produce sons like 
you..." Dr. Partridge shook his head, and started walking off. 


As he went, Tom shouted after, "Y'know, our mom might have had 
something to do with that!" 


Tristan laughed, and continued pinning the cookies to the walls. 
Tom looked over at him. "So, Weiss is still... relatively lenient, | 
see." 


"Anything for the good of the site, Tom." Tristan smiled. 


"Not exactly what | meant." Tom shook his head. "By the way, point 
of interest: Trevor hung some mistletoe over Dr. Hennessy's office." 


Tristan frowned. "...and this is relevant to me how, Thomas?" 


"And | know you're bullshitting me! You only call me Thomas when 


you're bullshitting me." 
Tristan sighed. "Is it that obvious?" 


"Tristan, the stain on your collar is the same color as her lipstick. On 
a related note, wash your fucking shirt once in a while." 


"...look, if anyone at the Site finds out, Claire will be ruined. Think 
about it, the head of Multi-U sleeping with the kid of the person who 
invented the MUTA..." 


"Could be worse," Tom said. "You could be a chick." Tristan threw a 
gingerbread cookie at the back of Tom's head; he winced as it 
collided. "What was that for?!" 


"For reminding me there's a universe where we're the Bailey 
sisters." Tristan shivered. 


Trevor walked by at this point. "...| dunno. | thought that | was kind 
of hot in that universe." 


"Of course you would think that," Tom said, going on to the next 
doorway to put up some mistletoe. "Right, so, we have less than a 
day until that tree wakes up. Is the site going to be evacuated?" 


"Probably," Trevor said. "It's the safest thing to do." 


"And we're going to miss an all-out brawl between two holiday 
spirits?" Tom frowned. "Dang it.” 


"I'll see if we can at least get the security footage of it after the fact," 
Tristan said. "Has Hastings figured out how to move the tree yet, by 
the way?" 


"He's working on it." Tom paused meaningfully as he heard a 
chainsaw rev up from the direction of Common Area 3, followed by 
the scream of a D-Class as the kickback of said saw made him lose 
an arm. 


"...Well, at least this Christmas won't be green," Tristan said, pinning 
another Gingerbread man to the wall. 


On the eleventh day of Christmas, 87 gave to me... 
At 11:00 in the morning, all hell broke loose at Site 87. 


The majority of the site had evacuated the night before, but a few 
had stayed behind, all by choice, in order to study the events. From 
botany, Dr. Partridge and Christopher Hastings were there to 
observe the tree's behavior; from Occult Studies, Dr. Sinclair and 
(reluctantly) Dr. Hendricks, to keep the Krampus in check; and from 
Multi-Universal Affairs, the Bailey Brothers, ready to shove both the 
Krampus and the Tree in the Multi-Universal Transit Array if the 
need arose. 


"Right," Dr. Partridge said. "Explain to me how this all works again." 


"The gingerbread cookies will act as sacrifices for the Krampus in 
place of blood sacrifices," Sinclair explained, "and will empower it to 
fight E-2512. The mistletoe acts as a mechanism to contain E-2512, 
(in theory, at least), the bottles of Coca-Cola will act as the spiced 
wine for the banishing ritual for the tree-" 


"Magic, got it." 
Katherine frowned. He wasn't incorrect, but why bother asking in the 


first place? 


Meanwhile, in a parallel universe that actually had facilities to 
contain a psychotic Christmas tree and had done so before, Tristan 
Bailey was meeting with his counterpart. Or at least, he thought it 
was his counterpart. 


"God, that goatee looks ugly," Tristan said to his other self. 
"Yeah, | know," said Tristan-2. "I'm thinking of shaving it off." 
"Oy!" Trevor said, having an identical goatee to Tristan-2. 


"But it looks good on you!" Both Tristan and Tristan-2 said, blatantly 
lying. 


«Are you jackasses ready to contain this thing,» Asked Dr. 


Hendricks over their earpieces, «Or is this going to be 2008 all over 
again?» 


"What happened in 2008?" asked Tom-2, pushing up his glasses. 


"Do you have a paleontology department at 87 in this universe?" 
Tom asked, adjusting his hat. 


"Yeah?" 
"We don't have one in our universe anymore." 


"...yikes," Trevor-2 said, fiddling with his own straw hat. 


Meanwhile, in our universe, the Krampus stepped into Common 
Area 3, nostrils flaring as it bit the head off of a gingerbread man. 
The tree simply stood there, taunting him. 


"Well?" 
No response from the tree. 


"Come on, | know that you want to do this. I'm a spirit of a Holiday, 
you're a Christmas Tree. Just get it over with already." 


More silence. Dr. Partridge coughed from behind. "See if you can 
get a sample of its needles." 


The Krampus turned its head to say something along the lines of 
"piss off", and got blindsided by a sucker punch from the Christmas 
Tree, which had grown arms and legs and had leaped forward to 
attack the creature. 


It was at this point that Christopher Hastings finally began to 
question the choices in his life that had led him up to this point. He 
would have questioned it more, had a blast of energy not come from 
the tree topper and hit Dr. Partridge in the chest, sending him 
sprawling. 


At that point, Chris started running away. The Krampus stayed 
behind to fight, peppermint-scented blood dripping from the wounds 


as he was pushed back to the first mistletoe barrier. The tree let out 
a screech and attempted to muscle through the wall created by the 
sprigs of berries, and fired a ball of green energy through it, 
obliterating the barrier. 


The Krampus dove out of the way in time, and the ball hit the ceiling, 
causing it to sprout pine needles, which then started to rain down on 
the Krampus, impaling the creature and pinning it to the ground. 


He would recover, but not before the Christmas Tree tore apart the 
entire site looking for the one who damaged it. 


Chris ran all the way down to Multi-U, leaving the doors to the 
stairwells open on every level so that the tree would search the 
entire facility until it found him. He just hoped Dr. Sinclair was right 
about the tree wanting to get him after it took out Krampus, and as it 
turned out, she was. 


He just didn't count on the tree being able to use the elevator. He 
gawked as the doors to the one on the Multi-U level opened, and a 
fifteen-foot-tall tree thing stepped out, the topper glowing bright red 
and green. 


"| hate this job." 


He started running, but he was out of breath from going down about 
a dozen flights of stairs. Arcs of red and green light went over his 
head, impacting on the walls and turning into pine needles, holly, 
myrrh, frankincense, and it occurred to Chris that he should stop 
identifying the various Christmas-related plants and run for his life. 


As he ran down the corridor, panting loudly, he drew a sprig of 
mistletoe from his pocket and held it in front of him like Van Helsing 
would hold a cross to Dracula. Unfortunately, at the moment, the 
tree was acting more like Alucard. It simply kept lumbering towards 
him, and the entrance to the MUTA was over fifty yards away. He 
could run for it... 


But it was too late. Christopher was knocked to the ground by a 
blast of green light hitting the hand with mistletoe in it. He yelped in 


pain as he felt pine needles grow through his hand. The mistletoe 
sprig was thrown to the ceiling above the tree, where it clung. 


An entire bush of mistletoe burst from the modular ceiling, toppling 
the tree to the ground where it flailed about, unable to regain its 
footing. Christopher Hastings was somewhat aware of this as he 
blacked out. 


"Hastings? Hastings!" 


Christopher was awoken by a slap to the face. Dr. Sinclair stood in 
front of him, smiling. "Oh thank God! We thought you were dead!" 


Christopher blinked awake, looking around. The Christmas Tree was 
flailing about on the ground, and as being loaded up onto a small 
cart by six Bailey triplets, with Dr. Hendricks assisting, lining the cart 
with mistletoe just to make sure. Chris as he looked at his arm; it 
was bloody, covered with pine needles which had burst outwards 
from under the skin. "Son of a bitch!" 


"We're getting you to surgery." Katherine looked up at the mistletoe 
bush sprouting from the ceiling. "Fascinating... The blasts appear to 
have transfigured parts of the site into holiday-related plants, 
including mistletoe. It hoisted itself by its own petard." 


Christopher blanched as he realized something, standing up slowly. 
"...Dr. Partridge got hit..." 


"Hell." 


They ran (or, in Chris's case, hobbled) off to where Dr. Partridge had 
fallen, only to find an odd, small shrub where his body was. 
Christopher stepped over to inspect the plant. "...small tree of the 
genus pyrus." 


"English, please?" 
"Dr. Partridge is a pear tree." 


Katherine wanted to laugh, but all she could do was scream 
impotently. 


Foundation procedures, his behavior during enhanced 
debriefing, and the nature of several other anomalous 
artifacts found on and in his person, his claims are 
presumed to be genuine at this time. The Foundation is 
currently canvassing the area for any indication of 
the presence of the other missing persons referred to in 
the above containment document. Dr. has been 
treated with Class-B and Class-C amnestics and 
transferred to Site 73 for long-term observation pending 
determination of how to address the issue of other 
persons temporally displaced as a result of SCP-869. 


+ Show revised Special Containment Procedures 


Revised Special Containment Procedures, 8/23/1948: 
All persons identified as having arrived in the present era 
as a result of SCP-869 are to be taken into Foundation 
custody as soon as possible. Subjects are to be 
debriefed and released into the civilian population after 
undergoing amnestic therapy. Fingerprint records from 
temporally displaced persons are to be preserved for the 
purpose of testing to confirm the identity of persons 
reported missing within SCP-869 after its construction. 


The names of temporally displaced persons are to be 
permanently expunged from the record. All 
foreknowledge of events yet to occur acquired from 
debriefing is to be made accessible to Level 5 personnel 
only and is to be referred to only for the purposes of 
verifying that subjects are genuine victims of temporal 
displacement. The Foundation is to take no action, 
directly or indirectly, based on foreknowledge acquired 
from persons temporally displaced by SCP-869, either to 
prevent or to encourage the occurrence of events 
described therein. 


SCP-869's containment document is not to be filed in the 
central database. Upon the construction of SCP-869 in 
20 , research personnel are not to be informed of the 
existence of this document. After SCP-869's containment 
file is approved and filed in the central database, it is to 


On the twelfth day of Christmas, 87 gave to me... 


Twelve piles of paperwork stood before the various members of 
various departments. One for incident reports, one for casualties 
sustained, one for property damage, and so on. There was only two 
casualties for the whole thing, thank god, and even then, Dr. 
Partridge had already regained sapience and the ability to talk, but 
was excused from doing paperwork for the time being. 


"Because of course he is," muttered Chris, doing two piles worth of 
paperwork at the same time. 


"What do you expect, Hastings?" Tom sighed, filling out 
Containment Form 281-C while Tristan next to him filled out Multi- 
Universal Negotiation Form 88-B. "He got turned into a fucking tree. 
He has an excuse." 


"My subdermis got turned into a conifer!" Chris held up his arm, 
which was in a sling, wincing as he did so. "Ffffffff....." 


Dr. Sinclair sighed at him, getting up from a finished pile of 
paperwork regarding cross-contamination of anomalous objects. "| 
can take care of a few sheets, if you want. Just expect calls from me 
when it comes to requisitioning stuff." 


"Egh.... thanks, Sinclair. You're a lifesaver." He sighed. "Merry 
Christmas, eh?"