The vein in my neck throbbed almost deafening. My eyes seemed to lose focus and my vision began to blur. I had to blink a few times, shake my head back and forth and separate my weight between both legs to keep from falling. Exactly like the tunnel did, if this man took you by surprise, the next thing was an immediate loss of the balance and senses. Every time I was near him I felt this sensation of having only partial control over my own body.

Pitch Black eyed my head to toe and disfigured his expression of relief changing it into a more serious one. He stood upright and turned around to start walking down the stone path, hands behind his back in a professional manner. I regained control over my legs by the time he was several yards ahead of me. I relaxed the tension in my hands —caused by the squeezing of them on the staff— clenching and unclenching my fists onto the grip. I rolled my shoulders just a little, but enough to hear a slight crack coming from my neck. I copied the expression of the man who was now too far ahead —although I think I raised the corners of my lips a little too much—, firmly grabbed my staff and started to rush up to get to him. I mentally prepared myself to get part of my energy absorbed once again, or at least to not be taken by surprise as it happened a few minutes ago. I stopped beside him.

We walked in silence for a while. I kept watching things around me: the stone walls, the different paths here and there, the goth decorated cages that hung ghostly from the ceiling, the dead-like quiet in the air; it all caught my attention. Pitch was like lost inside his own thoughts, probably searching for the most... kind way to ask if I had completed my mission. Unluckily for me, I had failed miserably, but at least I managed to get grip on some information as a consolation prize.

Being next to the bogeyman didn't take its toll and I didn't feel dizzy... Well, not as I felt minutes before; this made me wonder if he did it voluntarily or not or if I had finally got used to it and accepted as a fact. I swap hands to hold the staff and then he asked. "Could you bust in, Jack?"

"Hi. Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks for asking," I automatically replied in a sarcastically manner, while twitching my staff and then placing it over my shoulder casually.

He had asked it so directly I couldn't help myself. As those words slipped through my lips, I silently took them back. The disapproving look he shot me was enough to mentally write down a piece of advice: "No more sarcasm in this kind of moments". For a split second I thought dead-seriously he was going to pounce on me or something and make me spit a report on my day bit by bit, with duplicate just in case. But for some strange reason he seemed to think it twice and tried to calm himself down by shutting his yellow eyes tightly and rubbing his temples in a theatrical gesture.

Before he realized that the best option was obviously to strangle me, I decided to answer what he wanted to know. But I couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear. "I couldn't bust in," I said. "I tried to, but I can't get past the yetis."

That definitely didn't calm the beast that was about to explode. My brain automatically put in defense mode and I slyly walked away from him, getting ready in case he decided to attack. Clearly I didn't have the slightest chance of defeating him. He was much older than me, maybe even older than that bastard of Man in the Moon, and also we were in his lair, not to mention there was no ice or snow in sight.

"But I could see it from the windows." Pitch had made clear that any information of Santa Claus' workshop could be relevant and could help us to achieve our goal. "Listen, 'cause I won't say it twice, okay?"

I described as best as I could how the Christmas palace was; as the man who now walked beside me as we drove into the center of the lair had never been able to set foot on the North Pole. I explained that the workshop of Nicholas St. North had three entrances, each one with two-or-three-yeti guard. One was the balcony located on the penultimate floor that was big enough to perfectly fit at least thirty nightmare horses; another was the main entrance at ground level that had the most security of them all; and the last one was the sleigh ramp that at first glimpse seemed to have no defenses at all, but after I got inside past a couple of minutes I could see a platform full of yetis. I had escaped from there before anyone could spot me. I detailed the structure of the building, which by the middle of the floors was a globe like the one we had here but much bigger.

I told him about the strategic division of the floors. There were five: a ground floor which I could see almost nothing; and four floors overlooking the globe, the first three devoted to the world famous toy factory and the top one had several rooms I could not see beyond the red wooden door. I assumed it also had a basement-like type of underground floor where the sleigh was stowed, but I had no way to find out how many stories tall it was or how big could it be. And as I finished, we arrived at the most important part of the bogeyman's lair.

There the road ended with a falling that looked like it was beaten by something big making some of the cobblestones threatening to fall off if someone dared to touch them. Before reaching that end, before us stood what appeared to be the structure of a train tunnel: a stone passage with a roof in an arch-like style so low that Pitch almost needed to duck under to go through. It was not exactly a tunnel since it led to nowhere. It was rather like a decoration on the road. One with absolutely no light inside.

We both entered there —the temperature had a sudden change falling several degrees while we were in the dark— but I was the only one to come out. I turned around out of habit to wait for him, but here was no one behind me. I turned back and there he was, waiting for me behind our globe with a friendly gesture. While in the tunnel, Pitch had merged into the shadows and reappeared in that place. The road ended and I had to jump the gap separating the castle structure we came from and the platform that was held only by rocks that didn't outnumbered my fingers and seemed to rise above an abyss I wouldn't be surprised to find out it had no end.

Pitch assimilated all I had said to him and tried to devise a plan in which all those factors played in our favor. And as I landed on the platform I could tell he had come up with something. But he still didn't tell me, there had to be some loose ends he needed to tighten. Pitch only told me his strategies once they were complete and fool-proof (a.k.a. Jack-proof) not to confuse me later. I was more than okay with that.

The bogeyman placed a comforting hand on my shoulder, father-likely. With his other he gestured towards the dark globe we had in front of us. In most of the places there were tiny lights. Some of them went out, but they were almost nothing compared to those which lit up from time to time. It was a constant flow, one in which neither of us belonged to. Until now.

"You do know what those lights mean. Right?" He asked.

Of course I knew: kids who believed in their beloved guardians wholeheartedly. I gritted my teeth. They were those who would stay up all night when one of their teeth had fallen off, or those who strove too much to find a hard-boiled egg hidden in the bushes, or get extremely happy on Christmas Eve. I frowned, nodding in reply.

"There are too many of them, don't you think?" He commented materializing his face right beside me, whispering in my ear, hands squeezing both my shoulders.

I turned my neck to look at him. "We'll have to fix that," I said with my best crooked smile.

Pitch pet me twice on the shoulders as to congratulate me for saying such a remarkable sentence (not that remarkable but, whatever), chucking while walking only a step away from me. Then he looked at the globe with thoughtful eyes.

"Do the Guardians know we work together?" he asked, almost spitting despicably the word "Guardians".

"No..." I replied, question in my voice and one brow up. I couldn't understand where he was going asking that.

"No? That's a shame. Then, I think what we have to do..." he said smugly, "is give them all the good news."

I smiled wickedly.

Well, basically thanks to all of you who followed and review and uhg, you are awesome :D so here is chapter two and i KNOW i took so much time to update this thing. This is actually only the first half of the original chapter, but i decided to split it so i could upload more frequently. just so you know, i am actually ending the 5th chapter, but in spanish [in the original version that would be the first part of chapter 3] and i'm like super lazy to translate it [I have to write the whole thing like three times and then edit] but i promise i'll do my best :D

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU:

Virgo: i'm sooooo sorry this wasn't as fast as the speed of pikachu ;_;

Panda54: you are awesome, okay? thank you soooo much for helping me!

BabayBunny: I have already wrote some Hiccup, but i didn't translate it... i think you will all like it :3