Hi! If you like epic magical battles, the Guardians fighting to protect the world and its children from Pitch Black, the not-my-OC-but-I'm-using-him Hell, and other dark spirits the likes of which the Guardians have never fought before, AND Jack Frost and Jamie Bennett being awesome in general, then this might be the right story for you!

Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians or any the characters named in this story (except for a few OC's). That honor falls to William Joyce and Dreamworks.

**I don't know exactly how it happened, but the disclaimer has become a character in my pre-chapter commentary...

Jack: Disclaimer! You finally said it in a normal voice!

Me: Thank you Disclaimer!

Disclaimer: You're welcome.

WHOOSH! (a portal opens on the ceiling)...CRASH!

Jamie: Ouch! Sorry!

Jack: JAMIE! Are you okay?

Jamie: Yep, all good.

Me/Disclaimer: There goes the lamp! (Me: Again.)

Jamie: Whoops.

North: Hello Jamie!

Bunny: Now you're starting to sound like Jack, Jamie!

Me: Oh dear...

Chapter 1: The First Strike

"We never know how high we are

Till we are called to rise;

And then, if we are true to plan,

Our statures touch the skies—"

~Emily Dickinson~

So, the Guardians defeat Pitch and save the world from disaster, Jack Frost gets believers and they all live happily ever after, right? Not so fast. Because, like every other villain, Pitch Black had to come back to get his revenge, a chance to rub in the fact that he came back after such an epic defeat. It had been three years since Jack Frost became a Guardian when Pitch returned. Easter was just a couple months away, and Bunny still had five million eggs to finish up. This was no time for PITCH BLACK to reappear!

The Guardians hadn't actually seen Pitch yet. He had stayed in the shadows, just like he had before. However, the Guardians were alerted to the presence of a hidden enemy when Jack, Sandy and Bunny didn't show up for an emergency meeting at the North Pole. North had sent the Aurora out when many lights had abruptly gone dark in Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Netherlands, Slovakia, Serbia and Italy.

"They are never late, North! Especially Bunny!" Tooth burst out almost an hour after the aurora had gone out and still three of the five Guardians hadn't shown up. She and North stood side by side in front of the Globe of Belief, next to its control panels. Both were beginning to worry about their friends.

"Tooth, give them a little more time," North looked at the agitated fairy with a neutral expression, but internally he was actually trying to not think of all the bad things that could have happened to their friends. After a full minute of a staring contest with Tooth (and one of her mini fairies named Sera who was perched on her shoulder) North gave in.

"Fine! We will go find them." He bellowed, and began ordering his yetis to prepare the sleigh. The sleigh was ready in a matter of minutes. The two Guardians took off though the launch tube, soaring up into the gray Arctic sky and hoping that nothing terrible had happened to Bunny, Sandy, and Jack

"Wait, Tooth. Where should we look for them first? They could be anywhere in the world." North suddenly realized that he didn't know where they were headed. Tooth looked at the miniature globe on North's sleigh for a moment before she answered, "Let's check Bunny's Warren first...then we should probably head down to Antarctica. To check for Jack at his new ice palace, you know? I guess we'll have to check Burgess on the way there. We should also watch for any dreamsand trails."

North nodded once in agreement with her plan. He took out a snowglobe and whispered, "Bunny's Warren!" A cone-shaped portal sucked them away and all the while, both Guardians seriously hoped that the lights going dark hadn't been some horrible sign of things to come.

The Warren had been ripped apart. As soon as North and Tooth had arrived, a falling boulder had almost crushed them, the sleigh and the reindeer. The back of the sleigh actually did get clipped as the stone continued to roll down Bunny's half collapsed "tunnel hill", where the tunnels for each of the six populated continents branched out from.

"What happened here?" Tooth's eyes widened in horror as she flitted around, gazing at the broken stone pillars, torn grass and flowers, collapsed tunnels and smashed eggs. She put a hand to her mouth. All but two of Bunny's sentinel eggs had been blasted to pieces and the tunnel leading to the Indian sub-continent had a fire burning fiercely at its entrance. The worst thing about the chaos was that, as North ran through the maze of rocks looking for the missing Guardians, and Tooth and Baby Tooth went looking for clues down in the tunnel valley, North found a second fire in the small canyon-like meadow where the egg-tulip's grew.

Every single egg and flower had been burnt or crushed into the earth. "No," North whispered, watching the orange flames burn the once beautiful green, colorful meadow. Then a scream rang out almost directly behind him. He turned sharply to find the Tooth Fairy as pale as a ghost, flying straight for him. Sera Tooth zipped to him first and immediately began pushing him back towards the tunnels.

"NNNNOOOORRRRRTTTTTHHHH!" Tooth screamed as she flew, looking for the old toy maker. She spotted him standing in front of yet another fire. North breathed in relief, at least the scream wasn't because Pitch had showed up.

"Tooth, what is it?!" North asked as Tooth grabbed his arm and started yanking him back to the valley in front of the tunnels. He didn't receive an answer until they were standing in the center of the small valley.

"Look! Just look at that North!" Tooth pointed at a rock wall between the burning India tunnel and the tunnel to Central Asia. North's blue eyes searched for what the fairy was pointing to. Then he found it. Tooth was pointing at a trail of blood.

The dark red was splotched in a big mark on the stone entrance, a trail of it leading into the flames slowly consuming the Indian Tunnel, and also leading back to exactly where the two Guardians stood/flew. North stepped back jerkily, suddenly feeling sick. The fire back in the tulip-egg garden suddenly shot an explosion of sparks into the air in the distance.

North heard a rumble from inside the tunnel. "Run! The tunnel's collapsing!" He grabbed Tooth's hand and shoved Sera into his coat pocket, running to safety at the sloping edge of the decimated valley.

The whole hill gave a giant shudder, sending flames and black smoke flying out of the tunnel to India and making the grass catch fire right where the Guardians had been standing a few seconds before. Tooth's violet eyes filled with anger as sparks caused the Russian and Western European tunnels to go up in flames as well. She could think of only one spirit who would go this far to destroy the hope in the world:

Pitch Black.

AND SO IT BEGINS! Please review!

...and also, to Snowflakes: Would you like me to change anything about the tunnel entrances? Yes, the entrances to the tunnels are stone. Thanks for telling me about that...