North sat in his personal workshop, practically sulking and feeling helpless as the same time. He wanted nothing more than to go out and look for Jack again, but the yetis wouldn't allow it. They'd all agreed that the two icicles that had impaled his shoulder had done too much damage for him to do anything strenuous just yet. To make sure their Russian boss didn't sneak out, they locked up the snow globe room and kept a guard at each possible entrance. They even locked the sleigh up and returned the reindeer to their stables, which were also locked and guarded. It obviously wouldn't be permanent and they equally concerned for Jack, but they feared North might cause irreversible damage to his shoulder if he went out.
Bunnymund was also under close watch, as he couldn't return to his Warrens. Toothiana had tried to comfort him about the Warrens by saying now that Jack was awake, the massive blizzard was retreating and the Warrens would start to thaw out. However, Bunnymund would again remind her that if the Warrens did thaw, they would be dead underneath. And that having Jack awake now might present more of a problem than before.
Toothiana and Sandy weren't confined Santoff Clausen because they'd only been grazed and had tasks required of them nightly. While Toothiana had chosen to stay behind, Sandy had gone out in search for Jack. That made the others feel a little better and it put himself at ease. More so than staying in one place would do.
It was hard to keep track of Jack; he wasn't following any kind of pattern. Because of that, Sandy always arrived just moments after the winter spirit had fled. All the ice and snow was so fresh that gentle clouds of frost still rolled off of them. Every place Jack had been to, and left from, looked like the beach they'd caught him at. They were all frozen warzones, grounds for every fight between Jack and whatever nightmarish creatures Pitch was sending after him.
As the Great Winds pushed him in the general direction Jack had gone off to, Sandy couldn't help but wonder what the Nightmare King was up to. Controlling Jack could make sense. Attacking him could also make sense. But putting both plans together? Sandy had a hard time understanding that. The only thing he could think of was that Pitch was trying to drive Jack insane, but Sandy didn't know why Pitch would want that. Being the oldest of the Guardians, Sandy had been around long enough to know that a deranged spirit was dangerous for everyone. When the world was young, he'd seen other elemental and seasonal spirits lose their minds. For the most part, it had been fire and water spirits who'd gone insane during the shaping of the world. All though they were extremely dangerous, there had been enough of them at that time to balance each other out.
But Jack was the only one now. There weren't any others to balance him. He would have free range of the world if he wanted. And if the Guardians' earlier encounter was any indication, they wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Sandy swallowed thickly and urged his biplane to fly faster in the directions the Winds led him.
xXxXx
Toothiana sat somberly up in the rafters of Santoff Clausen, having given up on trying to cheer up North and Bunnymund. She thought about going back to her palace, but couldn't bring herself to leave. She let out a downcast sigh, watching the yetis order the elves around or shooing them off into other rooms so they could do their job. Then she heard the distinctive chirping of her mini-fairies and perked up.
Nearly a dozen of them came flying through the workshop, hardly taking care to avoid the yetis, and flew straight up to her.
"Girls, girls! Calm down," Toothiana hushed, "What's wrong?"
Baby Tooth gave several panicked chirps looking between Toothiana and the object the other fairies carried. Toothiana hadn't noticed they were holding something until now, but when she saw it, her heart skipped a beat. The mini-fairies held a golden capsule, with a certain brown-haired trickster's face on it. Toothiana tentatively reached out for it and the fairies gave it to her with worried expressions.
"Baby Tooth, what…."
She trailed off as she touched the top of the capsule. The golden tube shuttered and its lid disappeared into glimmering diamonds before revealing the teeth inside. In any other situation, she might have thought the fairies were trying to play a trick on her as Jack had done once before. Once. He'd learned very quickly it was a horrible idea to switch the pictures on the ends of capsules.
Toothiana let out a choked sob, starring at its contents. Inside it, rather than the perfect white teeth Jack had had growing up, there sat dulled and graying teeth. A few of them even looked as if they'd suddenly contracted a cavity and were slowly beginning to decay.
She felt herself trembling as she continued to stare at them. She'd never seen this happen, at least, not with teeth that had been so perfect for so long. Sure, maybe a recently lost tooth with a cavity might continue to decay a little while longer, but it would stop within a month. But Jack's teeth had been well taken care of and maintained for over the three hundred years they'd been in her care. Toothiana quickly retouched the capsule to bring its lid back into existence and shot off from her perch to find North, wherever he may have wandered to.
She zipped through the workshop, asking yetis and elves if they knew where North was. If they didn't, which was the case for most of them, she darted off before they could even finish their sentence. Eventually, she caught him sneaking his was to the stables and flew up behind him.
"North!"
"What! I was only taking walk, I was not— Oh, it is you, Tooth," North sighed.
"North, something's wrong with Jack," she panicked.
"Yes, we know," he groaned, "But yetis will not let me leave."
"I'll help you."
"…What? You would break orders for something?" North asked, "What is problem now?"
Toothiana held the capsule out to him. He gave her a suspicious look before taking and touching its lid off. At first, he was unimpressed by the set of lack luster teeth. Toothiana scowled and gently tilted it, careful not to dump the teeth out. Seeing the picture of who they belonged to, the situation then dawned on him.
"Forget what yetis say, I am boss-man and I say we are leaving," he stated, handing the capsule back to her, "Come, we get Bunny and come up with escape plan."
North turned away from the stables and marched back into Santoff Clausen. Toothiana followed closely, casting fearful glances at the still open capsule in her hands.
xXxXx
"Kids, you should really go out and do something other than sit in front of the TV all day…" Jamie's mother sighed.
"We will later," Jamie replied, without tearing his gaze from the screen.
"You'd better," she warned, "I'm going out to the store and when I come back, you all better be outside."
The other children's parents had thought the same thing and sent them out to get fresh air. But they'd all managed to wind up at Jamie's house and back in front of the TV. After Jamie had talked to Toothiana nearly a week ago, they'd relaxed a bit, comforted by the Fairy Queen's words and the fact that the blizzard was retreating.
But then one of them caught a news bit indicating the harsh ice storms striking down in random places and told the others. Then they were all back to worrying and panicking about the spirit. To make things worse, none of the Guardians were answering any of their tries to summon them. Each reported storm lasted only a few minutes, but was always more intense than the previous.
While many people had fled the southern hemisphere if they could, a majority of them had remained feeling that they could brave the cold weather. But this new string of bad weather was striking a new fear in them. News crews were interviewing people whose home towns had already been struck by what the children knew to be Jack's unwarranted attack. Without being able to predict any kind of pattern, people were in constant paranoia their towns would be next.
Jamie and the others were less concerned with what the people had to say than with the footage that showed on the TV. Heavy and lethal looking spears of ice pierced into buildings, stalagmites erupted from the ground, and banks of snow piled higher than semi-trucks in some places.
"Maybe you should try kidnapping a fairy again…" Pippa suggested quietly.
o0o0o
Author: I'm so sorry I didn't update sooner, I really appreciate all the reviews. I just got a bit caught up in reading a web comic and didn't realize that the reviews had passed the number I asked for. so, as an apology, I won't ask for a certain number this time.