Collecting the teeth.
Tooth sat down. She held the tooth boxes that were left. Baby Tooth rested on a broken box nearby.
Jackie and Maria crouched beside Tooth.
"We're sorry about the fairies," Jackie told Tooth.
Tooth sighed. "You should have seen them. They put up such a fight."
"Why would Pitch take the teeth?" asked Maria.
"It's not the teeth he wanted," Tooth explained. "It's the memories inside them."
Jackie and Maria stared at her. "What do you mean?" they asked.
Tooth led Jackie and Maria across the palace lagoon. The water under Jackie's feet hardened into ice with each step, creating a bridge of ice of her and Maria.
"That's why we collect the teeth, Jackie, Maria. They hold the most important memories of childhood." Tooth showed them a wall of mural. It was a picture of memories being gathered. "My fairies and I watch over them, and when someone needs to remember what's important, we help them. We had everyone's here," she said. "Both of yours too."
"My memories?" Jackie asked.
"From when you were young," Tooth answered. "Before you became Jacqueline Frost."
Jackie shook her head. "But I wasn't anyone before I was Jacqueline Frost."
"Of course you were. We were all someone before we were chosen," Tooth said.
"What?" Jackie didn't fully understand.
"I know I had a life before being turned into Maria Wild by the Man in the Moon because I remember my life as Malinda Wielder. But Jackie has no memories of her life before being turned into a spirit by the Man in the Moon." explained Maria. "And I still have no memory of being turned into a spirit.
North entered the conversation. "You should have seen Bunny." he chuckled, talking about something that the three females had not been paying attention to.
"Hey, I told you never to mention that!" Bunny said.
Jackie was struggling with this new information. "That night at the Pond…I just…why, I assumed. Are you saying…are you saying I had a life before that? With a home? And a family?"
"You really don't remember?" Tooth asked.
Jackie's face was blank. "All these years, and the answers were right here." She looked around the crumbling palace. "If I find my memories, then I'll know why I'm here."
Maria winced in sympathy for her surrogate sister, Jackie was putting her hope up a little too much in her eyes. Maria had retained her memories but she still wanted to know how she was torn from her human life. Jackie loved to here of Maria's past life, but she couldn't hide her jealousy over it.
Maria was brought back from her reminiscing by Tooth's cries.
"Oh no. The children!" Tooth cried "We're too late."
"No! No! No such thing as too late," North said. "Wait. Idea! Ha!" North knew how the Guardians could help. "We collect the teeth."
"What?" Tooth asked.
"We get teeth! Children keep believing in you!" North declared.
"We're talking seven continents," Tooth said. "Millions of kids."
"Give me a break!" North told her. "You know how many toys I deliver in one night?"
"And eggs I hide in one day?" Bunny put in.
North turned to Jackie and Maria. "And if you two help us, we will get your memories."
Jackie looked to Tooth, who agreed to the deal. Sandy gave Jackie a thumbs-up. Bunny just groaned. Jackie looked to Maria, who smiled and shrugged her shoulders. Jackie turned back to North and smiled.
In Shanghai, China, North shot out of a chimney and raced across the rooftop. "Quickly! Quickly!" he said as Bunny popped up a roof away.
"Here we go, here we go," Bunny chanted.
Jackie and Maria zipped past Bunny. "Hop to it, rabbit. We're five teeth ahead!" said Jackie.
"Yeah, right," Bunny replied. "Look, I'd tell you two to stay outta my way, but, really, what's the point? Because you both won't be able to keep up, anyway!"
"Is that a challenge, cottontail?" Jackie asked.
"Oh, you don't want to race a rabbit, Sheila," Bunny said.
"A race?" North asked Jackie, Maria and Bunny. "Is it a race? It's going to be epic!"
"Well good luck in keeping up with me." stated Maria with a wink, she then suddenly turned invisible with a childish laugh.
Tooth darted around with Baby Tooth struggling to keep up. "Four bicuspids over there!" She pointed left. "An incisor two blocks east! Is that a molar? THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!" Tooth was overwhelmed by the task in this city alone. She flitted off the rooftop and straight into a billboard advertising toothpaste. "Ow," she said, moaning and rubbing her head.
Jackie leaped to the top of the billboard to check on her. "You okay?"
"Fine," Tooth said. "Sorry. It's been a really long time since I've been out in the field."
"How long is a long time?" Jackie asked.
"Four hundred and forty years," she replied. "Give or take."
Before Jackie could respond, Tooth noticed a tiny glow under the pillow of a nearby room. And without another word, Tooth rushed off.
Inside a dimly lit bedroom, Jackie was about to snag a tooth when Bunny popped out of a hole in the floor. Bunny grabbed the tooth and gave a smug laugh, Jack shot frost at him in response making him cry out in shock.
In the next city, North discovered two teeth under a pillow. He nabbed them both. "Yipa!" he said triumphantly as he hurried off.
At another home, Bunny got several teeth from a sleeping child. "Jackpot!" He glanced around the room. There were hockey posters on the walls, and the shelves were loaded with trophies. "Looks like you're a bit of a brumby, hey mate," Bunny remarked.
North stood by a boy's bed. "It's a piece of pie!" he said softly. But as he reached forward, Bunny came up through a rabbit hole in the floor. While the two Guardians competed for the tooth, Sandy slipped between them and took the prize for himself.
"That's my tooth!" North whisper-yelled at the Sandman's back. "Sandy! Sandy!"
Bunny continued on his mission to sabotage Jackie. When Jackie came into the next room, Bunny opened a rabbit hole and Jackie fell through. Bunny took the tooth and then disappeared down another rabbit hole.
North had spotted another tooth under a child's pillow, but when he reached under the pillow to get it, it had gone. North heard Maria's distinct fading laughter as he realised the advantage Maria had over all of them.
Tooth reached under a child's pillow and pulled out a tooth. The tooth was perfect, but there was a mouse attached to the root. Baby Tooth immediately tackled the mouse, shaking him free.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Tooth pulled Baby Tooth back. "Take it easy there, champ. He's one of us. Part of the European division." Tooth turned to the mouse and then asked if he was okay in French,
"Ca va?"
In yet another city Bunny was about to grab his next tooth, but when he reached under the child's pillow, he found a note instead. The note showed an arrow pointing towards the window. Bunny followed the direction of the arrow. There he found North, holding the kid's tooth and grinning.
"Huh?" Bunny said in surprise as North dashed towards another house.
Bunny was certain the next tooth was his, but when he reached the roof, he heard the cracking sound of ice and frost. "Crikey!" Bunny began to slip. Tumbling down the slick, tilted roof, Bunny passed Jackie. Jackie easily reached out and snagged the tooth from Bunny.
"Yes!" Jackie cheered, but an instant later a stream of dreamsand surrounded Jackie.
Sandy waved good-bye as he snagged the tooth for himself. But the tooth was suddenly lifted from his grasp and disappeared, Maria's childish laughter could once again be heard.
North dropped down a chimney into a cottage. He was excited to get this tooth and increase his count. As he touched down on the wooden logs in the fireplace, a fuzzy paw reached out. "Ha-ha! Ho, ho, ho!" Bunny laughed as he lit the fire.
Ahh!" North screamed, bursting out of the hot and blazing chimney to the cool safety of the roof.
North, Sandy, Jackie, Maria and Bunny met up on a roof-top. The competition had been good fun, and they each had a large sack filled with teeth.
"Wow!" Tooth was impressed. "You guys collect teeth and leave gifts as fast as my fairies."
The Guardians stared at one another.
Tooth surveyed their panicked looks and asked, "You guys have been leaving gifts, right?"
They were all too embarrassed to reply.
"Oops." Maria said to Jackie.
A few minutes later the faithful Guardians stood in line at a coin dispenser. They each took a turn stuffing wrinkled bills into the slot, changing cash into coins.
Then they got back to work.
North took a tooth and then put a coin and a candy cane in its place.
Bunny carried coins in his thick, fuzzy paws. He left a coin and a pair of Easter eggs on a child's bed.
Maria and Jackie stopped momentarily to look at what Bunny and North were leaving for the children.
"Those are going to be some very confused children when they wake up." remarked Maria, she then flew off to collect more teeth and leave gifts for those she had already taken teeth from.
Baby Tooth took a tooth from beneath a feather pillow and stuffed a heavy coin under it.
Tooth left a coin for a sleeping child.
Sandy entered a house through the doggy door with a coin in hand but then saw North plugging in a Christmas tree and leaving presents, he tossed his coin away and left.
A toddler spotted the Guardians through his bedroom window, jumping from roof to roof. He was so surprised, he dropped his cup of juice.
Finally the Guardians climbed back into the sleigh. Nearby, a Nightmare spy watched North take up the reins. As the Guardians lifted off into the sky, the Nightmare vaporised down a street drain, slipping into the sewer.
Pitch was inside his darkened lair, standing near a light-covered Globe, exactly like the one in North's Workshop. Hanging on the walls around his head were the stolen boxes of teeth. The teeth glittered in the Globe's light while Mini Fairies stared out, trapped in cages.
Pitch poked a finger at his Globe. He turned to the Nightmare that was slithering into the room. "Why aren't the lights going out?"
The Nightmare let out a soft whinny.
Pitch stamped his foot angrily. If the lights weren't going out on his Globe, it meant that children still believed. His voice boomed. "They're collecting the teeth?"
The Mini Fairies began twittering at the news. Their hopeful, tiny, voices echoed throughout the Lair.
Pitch swirled to face them. "Oh, pipe down," he demanded. "Or I'll stuff a pillow with you." Scowling, Pitch raised a hand and formed an image of Sandy in nightmare sand. "Fine, have your last hurrah. For tomorrow, all your pathetic scrambling will be for nothing."
Pitch crushed Sandy's image with his fist.