~The Shy and The Stubborn~ (the santa clause)

Chapter 5: new job

"You sure you're gonna be alright out there?"

"No, but it's not like I have much of a choice."

Maxine helped Justice gather some of her basic working materials on the day she returned to work, in preparation for Justice's temporary 'move' to Bernard's office after her recent and very last minute promotion. Obviously, such a drastic change in environment would prove to be quite stressful for our protagonist, but if she wanted to keep her job in the factory she'd do what she'd have to. 

As soon as they had arrived, Bernard ushered Maxine away and rushed for Justice to accompany him to the tech workshop, alongside Curtis and Santa. She was zoned out for the most part, but what she took away from it was that you couldn't be in two places at once, which was simply common knowledge - until Curtis tried to challenge it.

"...maybe you can."

They were in the tech workshop by that time, which was needed by several other worker elves. But for the time being, they needed it to themselves. 

"Okay everyone, can I get the room for a minute?" Curtis asked around, loud enough so that the other workers could hear him, "thank you, thank you, can I just- one minute? thanks."

Within about a minute, the room was empty aside from those Justice had entered with, Curtis bringing them to the large machine in the centre of the room. 

"Welcome," he began, walking over to the creation, "I've tripled the ram, reconfigured the circuitry paths..."
"I see you've externalised the power source, to make better use of the electro-magnetic..."

Oh god, it was all nonsense to Justice. She didn't know science or physical creation, all she knew was art and literature, she couldn't make sense of a single word any of them were saying. Next minute they were arguing, then Santa was getting into the machine. Bernard looked away anxiously, though Justice watched intrigued alongside Curtis as the man went in and the machine buzzed and whirred. Justice couldn't help but cover her ears as she didn't like the loud noises it made, though they weren't loud enough to send her into a meltdown as they all rushed over to the other side of the machine where Santa came out. 

He complained to Curtis about there being a stinging sensation, before his clone emerged. And to all of your horrors...

"He's naked!!" 

Justice was quick to cover her eyes, while Bernard went to grab him a blanket to cover up.

"It's incredible!" Curtis exclaimed in excitement, proud of his creation. 
"Yes it is," Santa agreed as he waved at the toy, grabbing the blanket from Bernard and wrapping it around his clone, "can he talk?"

Curtis gave him an unsure shrug as he motioned for him to try it himself, by this point Justice had uncovered her eyes to observe the plastic man and Scott went in for his first attempt.

"...hello?" he began hesitantly.

At first, all that poured out was a slur of groans and moans, like he was learning how to speak for the first time. However, once Santa repeated himself once more, the toy's eyes opened as though he'd turned on like a computer, and he spoke.

"Hello?" the toy repeated in a similar tone.

Bernard simply stared in utter disbelief, unable to comprehend what on earth was happening. Justice was much the same - she had never seen anything like this. 

"Ho, ho, ho," Santa tested out, and to his amazement the clone copied him exactly. 

And from there, chaos would ensue...