Chapter 11 Halloween Morning

When Athena's sixteenth birthday came around she, as usual, treated it like any other day, but it seems that Victor had found out when her birthday was, likely rooting through files the city had on people such as the day of their birth, and he spread the word from his wife to other people who worked with her and of course to Kozmotis, whom he had also befriended.

He had also been trying to find out Kozmotis' birthday as well but had no luck. So he would try to pester him later about it.

"You never told me your birthday was today." Kozmotis said as he walked up to Athena who was sitting by the riverside, where they often were able to find one another easily if they couldn't find them anywhere else.

"My birthday is no different than any other day besides to remind me of when I should start telling people something different for my age. And you've never told me your birthday either." She responded.

"Well I don't really know my birthday. I know the month but not the day." He replied.

"Oh." She responded in understanding and asked, "So what month?"

"The tenth." He responded.

"Good to know." She answered.

"Don't plan anything." He said.

"What makes you think I'm going to?" She asked in fake surprise.

"We've known each other for about four years now. I know the expression you are wearing. It is the expression you have when an idea or plan starts to form in your mind." He replied thoughtfully

"Well then. Ruin my fun then." She responded. He smiled and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer saying, "You make it too easy."

"I most certainly do not." She protested.

"You do. Accept it or try to not be so conspicuous." Kozmotis answered. Athena made an attempt to pout but it was an amusing sight. Kozmotis chuckled in amusement.

"Pouting does not work for you dear." He said to her.

Athena sighed sadly saying, "Of course not."

"Do not let it depress you." He said to reassure her.

"Oh I'm not, I just wanted to see if that would work. It seems that it did." She replied with a smile.

Kozmotis rolled his eyes with an amused smile, "Okay so that worked a little. But if you want pouting to work then you'll have to work on your pout."

"I do not believe I need to work on pouting if simply acting sad works just as well." She replied.

"You mean it works better." He corrected.

"Right." She replied.

Halloween came on a Friday this year. Luckily, so students and adults could be out late without worrying about school or work. Although it made no difference for the Guardians. Sandy often worked harder during Halloween because of the scary stuff and kids getting bad dreams because of them. After Halloween was when Tooth worked harder, like after any other candy and sweets filled holiday. Jack wasn't working very hard since all he did during fall was bring the wind that blew the leaves off the trees. Bunnymund did virtually nothing besides help Athena. She taught him how to carve pumpkins and let him spread candy and decorations but had to get on his case several times about carving and decorating Easter related things.

North was starting to work harder but helped out when he could just as Jack and Tooth did. Jack was the only one of the four who could help that did not have a problem with the style of decorating. The others were too high strung about scaring the kids.

"North, part of Halloween is to experience fear, finding joy in fear. If you don't want to do anything scary then decorate with bats and black cats or simple things. Candy or decorate for those celebrating Samhain or Día de los Muertos. Come up with food ideas for those having a feast for the dead, send recopies something. We don't need to do much for scary. The humans and Pitch have that covered." Athena said patiently while flicking her wand almost non stop from one direction to another with different colors of streams of magic flying out the window.

"Um what are all those streams of magic?" Jack asked.

"Different things. Signals to my servants for jobs, creating more as horror attractions open. Others to hunt down nightmares or magic to help the humans out with their own preparations like pumpkins for the last minute buyers later in the day or giving teachers ideas for their kids to do during all the Halloween excitement, fixing costumes or supplies, you know anything that needs to be done that some don't have time to get done." Athena explained while looking over her checklist. As things were crossed off and disappeared more would appear.

"Is this what Christmas is like for you North?" Jack asked him.

"No, it's much more organized, although my two lists do change when necessary. This is chaotic." North responded.

"Well unlike Christmas which is strictly a day for one holiday, my holiday has many different cultures and religions involved which hold different traditions depending on the people. The popularized Halloween came from Samhain, the Pagan new year, but there are still Pagans who use the older traditions as well as other cultures who celebrate today as the day of the dead. Everyone celebrates today differently while most cultures celebrate Christmas in similar ways. They may have different representations as to where the gifts come from but many cultures there are gifts that come in the night or appear somehow. For one person to rule over a holiday like Halloween it can be very chaotic." Athena responded.

Jack looked out the window and into the early morning. The magic had been flying around like this for the past three days straight, some of the magic would jumping into streams of dreamsand, strengthening it.

"You also help Sandy with dreams during Halloween?" Tooth asked.

"When I feel that I need to. Sandy's been working really hard, figure I'd help him out." Athena responded.

"But wouldn't that tire you out?" She questioned.

"Not really." She responded, clearly lying but she didn't look very tired.

"You've been sending out a lot more magic than you usually do on Halloween." Tooth observed.

"Have to work harder to keep the nightmares at bay. Do you have any idea how many horror movies have been playing the past week? Many channels have been playing Halloween movies nonstop, at least one a night. Week of Halloween they're just one after another, nothing else but scary Halloween episodes and movies and the movie theatres playing them one after another. Well besides the theatres playing Rocky Horror Picture Show. That's not scary that's just ridiculously hilarious." Athena replied.

"Rocky Horror Picture Show?" Bunnymund questioned.

"Let's do the time warp again!" The stereo played loudly and cut off.

"What does that song have to do with the movie?" He questioned.

"The song came from the movie. It's that movie where everyone brings rice, toast, waterguns and other stuff and jump up doing the time warp." Jack explained.

"We should go see a showing of it next year, it'll be fun." Athena added.

A shrill whinny of a horse interrupted the conversation and a swarm of nightmares swooped in breaking windows and busting the door open sending everything in the room flying.

"Kozmotis Pitchner you show yourself right now before I hunt you down and show you what your insides look like on the outside!" Athena yelled. She could handle her old inventions and old workspace being wrecked, she didn't use it on a regular basis and most of it was easily fixed. Pitch had messed up what she was presently doing including her organization. to an outside it looked like chaos, but for her she knew where everything was, it's function and when it was needed. Everything had it's place best for her and that's all that mattered to her. Now everything was messed up on Halloween.

"Did that anger you sweetheart?" Pitch's voice said, coming from all directions.

"Don't call me that! Show yourself right now! you just messed up my entire workspace and threw everything out of whack!" She snapped as the nightmares forced herself and the other four Guardians there to the middle of the room.

"Of course you know the organization, if it works for you then why bother fixing it?" He replied while stepping out of the darkness.

"Get out. Go do whatever it is that you do at three in the morning, like sleeping or something. Yeah go sleep maybe you won't be so cranky and mean if you got more sleep." She responded. Pitch rolled his eyes.

"I must have been completely mad when I married you." He said.

"Nope you were blazed out of your mind during the ceremony and then got drunk off your ass during the reception. It was the most hilarious think I have ever seen." Athena responded seriously before raising her wand and blowing the roof out and sent the guardians flying up into the air, North and Bunny were caught by Athena's broom, neither fitting very well so it dumped them on the roof of a nearby building before going back for Athena who grabbed a hold and flew off while blasting some nightmares apart.

"All of these fights are really getting redundant." Bunny commented.

"A fight? No this was merely sabotage and distraction." Pitch responded.

"Distraction? What did you do?" Athena demanded.

"You will find out soon enough." Pitch responded with a laugh before disappearing and the nightmares scattering.

"We have to find Sandy." Jack said immediately.

"We must split up." North said.

"That isn't safe...but we'd find Sandy faster that way." Tooth admitted before everyone went off on their own to find the Guardian of dreams.

Tooth found Sandy first and contacted the others. Sandy was okay but he seemed very tired. Almost everyone had nightmares, adult, child, teenager anyone that associated themselves with Halloween, it wasn't the entire world but it was a large portion. They had gotten that strong in just a few short weeks alone.

"How can we stop Pitch without the help of the kids and their belief?" Jack asked.

"The thing is the children still believe. This isn't the same gain to power, maybe if we could get people to not fear Pitch then it would help stop the nightmares like when Jamie faced the black sand without fear, but that will be very hard to do before Halloween is over. Everything is so messed up and it's all my fault. I should have been keeping an eye on Pitch during Halloween." Athena replied with a frustrated sigh.

"Yeah, yeah this is like the eighth time you've said that. It won't help so for now let's try and do what we can to distract the kids from fear throughout the day. Remind them why Halloween is fun and isn't scary." Jack said, bopping Athena on the head with his staff, causing her hair to become frosty. She shook it off and nodded in agreement.

"Right of course. I'm just wasting time. Let's go." She responded before opening a portal.

"Hey Sandy. this should help you feel better." Athena said, tossing him a bottle with a bright gold liquid in it. Something she made up on the spot to help keep give Sandy more energy, healthy energy not like energy shots. She then opened a portal and allowed it to suck her in and back out at the other end as the rest of the Guardians headed off as well.

Alone in the old prison Pitch Black paced around the globe. He didn't expect the lights to go out, he wasn't even paying the globe any attention. His mid reeled as several different memories ran through it. Only a few but they were enough to stay on his mind. The first time he and Athena kissed, their wedding day, the day Athena discovered that she was pregnant and their daughter's birth.

He couldn't help but smile in amusement at the memory of Katherine's birth. He had been trying to give Athena encouragement through the labor and all while the Midwife took care of her, Athena was fairly bad tempered that day and looking back on it, it was pretty amusing.

"Kozmotis Pitchner I cannot listen to your encouragement and the midwife at once so silence yourself immediately!" Athena snapped through the ragged breathing.

"What you should do is be quite during the instructions and let Athena hold your hand like so." The midwife said putting his hand in his wife's, well his fingers.

"Those are my fingers, not my hand." Kozmotis said confused.

"Your fingers can withstand better, don't want Athena breaking your hand now do we?" She responded.

Even with Athena squeezing her husband's fingers so tightly he did not react to the pain, only kept his jaw clenched tightly, knowing full well that was probably nothing compared to the pain Athena was currently experiencing. Once the baby came out the midwife cleaned her off and took care of her and Athena before handing the baby off to Kozmotis to hold safely.

"I want to hold our daughter." Athena said after a little bit.

"You need to rest." The midwife responded.

"I gave birth to that child through blood, sweat and pain I will be allowed to hold her." Athena snapped and then turned to her husband with a sweet pleading expression. He quickly gave in and handed their daughter off to her.

"You said your mother's name was Katherine right? We should name her Katherine." Athena said. Kozmotis smiled and sat by the two people he cared most for.

Immediately a loud ringing filled his ears and pulled him from the memories, forcing him to shove them to the side and cease caring about the few memories he had gained.

Bonjour: Sorry, sorry, sorry for taking so long I had a hiccup of writers block at the beginning of the week. Note I nor my sister has reviewed this so do not be surprised by the mistakes, sorry Vivian but I wanted to post it now because I've prolonged posting long enough. Another note I have recently discovered that Katherine is not the name of Pitch's daughters name (from the books) but sine I already named their daughter Katherine (which I would have kept regardless of the canon name and idea since this story is based off the movie with some book details, not based off the books). Forget her real name, I'll look it up later but she becomes Mother Nature, awesome right?

Also the OC's I only got a few suggestions, I thank those who sent them and I plan to use all of them:

Mikomi121's idea, I do in fact have a character that could work for your idea

's OC Crystal

Phantom of the Black Pearl's OC who shall remain unnamed for now because of reasons

my sister (VivieAnne) volunteered her OC but has yet to give me real info on her...soo yeah

and moonlight phonex101 had asked about when the characters would be announced but I don't think you sent me anything unless you were just curious.

If anyone wants to send in more characters that is fine. Note the more characters I get sent in the less part they will have in the story as a whole but I am willing to write side chapters once I finish the story as a whole if you so desire but I need them immediately. Please and thank you.

Thanks to those who have sent in ideas/OC's