AN: I really wasn't sure how to start this story. I have a list of ideas for chapters, but since this is a series of one-shots and arches, I wasn't quite sure which one to use to kick things off. So I decided on this one. It's pretty short, but I thought it was a funny one.

For those of you who don't know what this story is going to be about, this is the description I like to use: Series of one-shots and arches taking place before, after, and maybe even during the events of Winter Wonderland. The story will be similar to the layout of Muppet Hands' story "Snowflakes" and Twisted Skys' "Invisible" story. Two of my favorite ROTG stories. It'll be a piece where each chapter will just contain whatever I fancy writing about at the time, or any requests people submit. Currently NOT taking requests right now, though.

RECENTLY RE-EDITED (12/27/16)

Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians or Alice: Madness Returns.

Alice pursed her lips in thought as she looked down at the map in her hands for what seemed like the hundredth time in the past five minutes.

"She's got a smile that it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything was as fresh as the bright blue skyyyyy."

She held back a frustrated sigh at the new inconvenience. Her eyes trailed over the map and its barely legible directions that someone, presumably one of North's yetis, had hastily written down for her.

The state of the map itself was questionable, even more so than the directions, with smudges of paint staining the surface that could easily be mistaken for landmasses, rips that could be mistaken as dangerous ice crevices, and specks of glitter that weren't exactly misleading, but still annoying if one were to get it in their eye.

Alice looked up from the useless paper with a scowl and scanned her barren surroundings while adamantly ignoring the enthusiastic show-tunes of her traveling companion. The freezing winds whipped around them, ruffling the skirt of Alice's blue, winter coat dress and the dark strands of hair that escaped her fur-lined hood. Her gloved hands held on tight to each side of the flimsy map as its corners flapped in the wind, threatening to get swept away if she let her grip become too lax.

"Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I stared too long
I'd probably break down and cryyyyy."

She felt a vein throb in her forehead as her frustration grew towards their unreadable directions and the annoying, white-haired cockroach testing her patience. The entire situation was just one big mess that showed no signs of straightening itself out, and Alice was finding it more and more difficult to maintain her sanity as time wore on. She wondered why the universe always seemed to transpire against her. Had it not toyed with her enough throughout the years?

Apparently not.

"Whoooaaa, whoa, whoa, Sweet child o' mine,
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, Sweet love of mine!"

The reindeer standing stationary next to her, huffed out a cloud of hot air through its snout. It stomped its massive hooves against the snow-covered ground, showing that it was getting uncomfortable standing still for so long, especially as they drew closer to their deadline. It was pulling a sleigh, fully stocked with important workshop supplies such as craft wood, tools, sewing material and crates of miscellaneous toy parts.

Alice patted its flank in comfort without looking up from the map as she tried to figure out exactly where they were and where they needed to go. They were currently a few hundred miles off from the North Pole, traveling with a pair of yetis in the middle of a snowstorm. It wasn't a blizzard. The visibility was still decent enough to navigate through, but Alice didn't doubt it would turn into one a few hours down the road. She hoped to be back inside Santoff Claussen by then. While her companion had ample experience in the area, Alice wasn't quite as dexterous at battling the weather, especially on its own turf.

Not to mention how time-sensitive their situation was. Before they had embarked on their arduous journey, North couldn't have made his point clearer on how imperative it was that they return with the workshop supplies as soon as possible.

Due to a large shipping mix-up with incoming supplies, the workshop was running low on some of its most essential toy-making material and there wouldn't be a new shipment coming in until a week before Christmas, which was far too soon to make up for a setback of this magnitude. That final shipment before Christmas was intended as excess material that was to be put aside for any last minute touch-ups and then moved into storage until the Yetis were ready to open up shop again in February.

However, the workshop was out of just about everything by the time someone finally caught the mistake, putting both the workers and North in a difficult position. Healthy toy production decreased as their supplies continued to run low at alarming rates.

Short on snowglobes and time, North employed the help of the other guardians. He sent them to scour the globe and collect the supplies they needed to restock the workshop so the yetis could finish making the children's toys in time for Christmas, which was only three weeks away.

Bunnymund claimed it couldn't be done, being his usual grumpy self, while the others reluctantly found themselves agreeing. Three weeks might seem like more than enough time to collect a few crates of supplies, especially with the work divided between them, but time seemed to move four times faster inside North's workshop and Christmas tended to sneak up on its occupants rather spectacularly.

North wouldn't listen to any of it. He dismissed their doubts like a bad joke and began assigning jobs. He told Bunny to go back to his warren and gather up all the paint he had leftover from Easter and bring it back to the Workshop. The pooka made a fuss of course, complaining that his homemade egg paint and dye wasn't meant to be used on anything but eggshells, but North promised to replace every can used by Easter next year with a flippant wave of his hand.

Tooth and Sandy were sent to find more wrapping paper for the presents, given permission to raid a few craft stores if they needed to, while Jack and Alice were sent out into the arctic tundra with one of his reindeer and two of his yetis to fetch a sled full of tools and wood. North had given them a map with directions to some random logging field scribbled across it, where they would find the supplies already packed up and ready to go, courtesy of North's "secret" supplier. They found the logging field easily enough, but the directions were written half in English and half in Yetish, making it almost impossible to decipher their path back home.

The snowstorm that rolled in soon after they had obtained the supplies, didn't help make things any easier, either.

"She's got eyes of the bluest skies
As if they thought of rain-"

Jack was laying atop the mound of supplies, lounging on his back with one arm resting behind his head and the other one holding his staff. He twirled the aged wood between his fingers while the leg he had propped up on his opposite knee, bobbed to the rhythm of the song he was singing. Alice walked just ahead of the reindeer pulling the sleigh, acting as mission navigator while North's yetis flanked either side of the sleigh.

"My eyes are green," she reminded the singing Winter spirit dryly, still without looking up from the map.

He had gestured towards her several times while singing to some unheard tune, obvious that he was singing to her and trying to be cute about it by making a spectacle of himself.

"I'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of paaaaiinn," Jack continued without missing a beat.

Alice halted in mid-step once again and turned towards the sleigh with a scowl on her face.

"I'm going to give you more than an ounce if you don't be silent!"

Jack twisted his head to look down from his perch and almost winced when he saw Alice glaring up at him from the ground. She looked ready to murder him.

"Aww, come on, Pleasance. I'm just trying to brighten the mood."

Alice's scowl darkened.

He was being annoying and he knew it.

She suspected that he was trying to punish her for the biting remarks she threw at him earlier when he attempted to help find an alternative route after their designated path had been blocked by a snow-slide. Alice had been insistent that she could find one on her own and told him as much in a none-too-kind tone of voice. Apparently, he had taken it personally, so now he was refusing to help altogether, which Alice wouldn't have a problem with (she could read a map just fine on her own, thank you very much) if only he would do so silently.

He hadn't immediately started with the singing. Naturally he started with the usual moaning and complaining. When she had snapped at him again for whining about how bored he was running errands for North (like she didn't have a million other things she'd rather be doing right now, either), it seemed like a good idea at the time to tell him to do something to entertain himself other than snivel like the overgrown child he was. However, she didn't think he was going to start singing.

"You need to take this more seriously," she huffed, putting her hands on her hips. "The workshop could be facing devastating setbacks if we don't return with these supplies soon."

"But these are the classics! Everybody loves the classics!" he argued. "Oh wait...except for you. I forgot that you hate everything, especially fun things. You'd rather walk around in the middle of a snowstorm, map-hogging like it's your sole reason for living."

Unimpressed, Alice reached up to slap the pale foot Jack had hanging off the side of the sleigh, but he dodged the swipe, pulling his foot up out of reach before retaliating with a raspberry.

"I should've left you at the Pole!" she snapped, throwing her hands up in the air in defeat and stomping forward to take point again. "North has severely overestimated your value. You are only useful for making snow and ice, and we are obviously in no short supply!"

Jack sat up and watched her go with a frown, realizing that the fight he was trying to pick wasn't going to happen. When the sleigh started to move again underneath him, he twisted his legs together until he was sitting crisscrossed with his arms propped up behind him to support the weight of his torso, his staff resting across his lap.

"Geez, I'm just trying to brighten the atmosphere a little. You said to stop whining and do something else. Music brightens the soul," he reasoned, looking towards one of the yetis and winking. "This guy knows what I'm talking about."

The yeti stood still as a statue, not letting on that he was even aware that Jack had spoken to him.

Alice ignored him as well, going back to her precious map and acting as if the winter spirit was no longer there. Jack's lips pursed in an annoyed pout, aimed at Alice's back. His tight expression mirrored a look that was purely childish. They sat in silence for several minutes while both spirits fumed privately over the other's unreasonable behavior. It went on like that until Alice started to believe Jack had finally given up on whatever game he was trying to play with her. Some long dormant self-preservation instinct must have kicked in at last-

"Say you're leavin' on a seven thirty train and that you're headin'
out to Hollywoooood.
Girl you been givin' me that line so many times it kinda gets like
feelin' bad looks gooooood."

Alice let out a frustrated cry, startling the yetis and reindeer walking behind her. She balled up the map in her hands and threw it at the spirit's head, who dodged it with a big, cheeky smile. It sailed over his head and landed on the other side of the sleigh in a pile of snow. The yeti closest to it reached down and picked it up before the wind could claim it.

"That kinda lovin'
Turns a man to a slaaaaaave
That kinda lovin'
Sends a man right to his graaaaave..."

The dark-haired spirit stood practically seething with angry as she tried to get a handle on her temper. Jack continued to sing away while North's yetis eyed Alice warily, but she ignored all of them in favor of counting numbers backwards in her head. It wasn't until she was confident enough to resist the powerful urge to chuck her Vorpal blade at Jack's head that she finally stopped and opened her eyes.

With their only map unable to help them, it was obvious they would have to use their natural sense of direction to find their way home. Between the yetis, Alice and Jack (who frequented this Godforsaken part of the globe more often than any of them, including the indigenous yetis), it shouldn't take them long to find their way back. It was really only a matter of getting Frost to take their situation serious, which would be almost as hard as the journey for supplies itself. She feared that an apology was in her midst.

Alice let out a sigh and reached out to take the discarded map from the yeti, unfolding it as Jack used his staff as a makeshift guitar and strummed away passionately on it.

AN: Short but sweet. Kinda.

There are two songs Jack sings in this chapter. The first one should be one most of you recognize; "Sweet O' Child of Mine" by Guns and Roses. The second is also a classic rock song, but perhaps not as well known as the first. It's "Crazy" by Aerosmith. I have a headcanon where Jack is into classic rock. Has anyone heard Chris Pine sing before? Jesus, he's amazing. I wish he'd do it more often.

You guys should know the drill by now. Make sure to leave a review if you enjoyed the first chapter and I'll make sure to write more. Also, if you find a mistake in the content, let me know and I'll fix it. Thanks!

~Scorpiofreak~