I just noticed that I may not have been sticking to one spelling for grey/gray. I don't have a favored one myself and the way I learned it in school varied every year, depending on where that year's English teacher was from. Sorry if that bothers anyone. I'll try to stick to "grey" from now on.

This is set a few years after the movie. It's a sort-of companion piece to Snowballs And Fun Times

Jack made his way south From the North Pole, laughing. He was always eager to bring winter to a new part of the world and he had decided that southern Chile could use some early snowfall. This was the part he liked most, bringing the first snows. The ones that people greeted with joy, having come to miss it during the warmer months. They were less enthusiastic about it, by the time spring came, thought children who knew how to have fun still welcomed it.

Speaking of such children, maybe it was not so late in the spring that he could not bring some late season snow to the town of Burgess. Belief in him had spread in the town he called home so that now few were the young children who could not see him. He was still invisible to most, elsewhere in the world, but he did not mind. One step at a time.

He grinned as Burgess came into view, wondering where he should start. He would freeze his lake again, he decided. It always brought him some satisfaction to do this, especially this late in spring or early in fall. It would upset the ducks, but the ice wouldn't last the day, once he left. After that, he could find some victims for a snowball fight.

Jack dove in the general direction of the lake, enjoying the freefall for now. As caught up in the moment as he was, he did not see the cloud of black sand seemingly materializing in front of him before it was too late. With a shocked cry, he only had time to raise his arms to cover his face before crashing right through it.

The sand only offered minimal resistance, though at that speed it was still quite painful, but the nightmares he glimpsed during the short contact were disorienting. He pointed his staff in the direction of the sand and sent a blast of ice that way, trying to recover his bearing before the one he knew to be behind this could do anything more.

That did not work out too well, however. Not only did his ice mostly missed the black sand, but even as he sent out the blast, a large black scythe connected with the arm holding the staff, sanding it snapping to the side painfully. Had he been human, the arm would have been cleanly severed. But it took a lot more than that to really hurt a legend, especially a Guardian.

His entire arm felt numb after the blow and it was all he could do to simply keep his fingers warped around the staff enough to avoid dropping it. It was sadly not enough to keep the grey hand, whose long fingers curled themselves around the shaft, from simply tearing it free of his grip. Jack would have fallen, had the black cloud not moved underneath him to catch him. It felt more solid this time, but still assaulted his mind with nightmarish visions.

"Pitch."

The man slowly grinned at him, looking smug. He held his scythe in one hand and Jack's staff in the other. His skinned crawled when he saw, and felt, the staff, free of its usual frost, into Pitch's hand. He remembered well what happened last time. But Pitch was not exactly in a position of superiority, here. No impressive waves of the nightmare sand ready to crush any who would attack him. Only the two small clouds holding them up and the wicked-looking black scythe. Maybe he could talk himself out of this.

"So nice to see you again, Jack. I knew you'd come back here. I was waiting for you."

"That's flattering, but I don't have time to play with you. Just give me back my staff, and I'll be on my way."

It did not exactly sound commanding. The Nightmare King's grin widened and he let go of the scythe, letting the black sand swirl around him instead, ready to be used however he saw fit. He grabbed the staff in both hands, turning it around slowly to inspect it. Jack shuddered.

"I'm not here to play, Jack."

"What do you want, Pitch? You can't be thinking about rising against the Guardians yet. You wouldn't stand a chance."

"Oh, I'm not that ambitious. Not yet. It's a little early to start bringing fear to the children again. But I should be able to manage one child. A single, helpless little child."

For one panicked moment, Jack thought that Pitch had taken a hostage again. That he was planning of harming an innocent child in a petty revenge against the Guardians. It took him a minute before it dawned on him that it was him Pitch was referring to. Jack glared, not enjoying being called helpless. Or a child, really. He had been seventeen when he died.

"I told you before, Pitch, I'm not afraid of you."

"No?"

Pitch stroked the thin staff with his thumb in an almost loving way, his grin turning even more sinister. The sensation was almost impossible to describe, like dark fingers ghosting against his soul. It creeped him out more than he cared to let Pitch know.

"It's a shame that, unlike you, I can't just force people to fear me. Wouldn't that make things easy? To be able to just touch them with my darkness and let the fear take a hold of their mind? But that's alright, I like a challenge."

"W-what are you talking about?" Jack asked, confused.

"Your snowflakes, Jack. The way you can just twist the mind of others into having fun, whether they want to or not. Such a shining example of the forces of Light."

"B-but... I can't force anyone to feel like that. All my snowflakes do is let people see that they can have fun. It doesn't even make them want to have fun. But who doesn't want that?"

Pitch's face was carefully blank at that. His hands squeezed the staff painfully tightly as he looked into his eyes, as if searching for a lie. Jack was confused. Had the Nightmare King been trying to make him doubt his place among the Guardians again? He felt like he was missing something here.

"Who doesn't, indeed?"

What happened next was not a surprise. Jack saw it coming and braced himself for the pain, but that did him little good when the staff snapped in two pieces, not nearly as fast as the first time. It felt like a part of him was being ripped apart. Everything turned to white and his mouth opened in a wordless scream.

Then, the cloud of black sand let him fall through. He had no strength to fight off the nightmares clawing at his mind as the sand briefly surrounded him, but their touch mercifully did not last. He fell for what felt like forever, before his back connected with the water of his lake in an impact that rattled his bones.

He did not have time to sink that the water underneath him froze, letting him float on the surface on his little ice platform. When he had time to catch his breath and order his thought somewhat, Jack was confused. What did Pitch hope to accomplish? They had been through this before.

He understood when he saw the black cloud float away, taking Pitch and the broken staff away from him. He would need the staff back, to repair it. Obviously Pitch did not plan on giving it to him.

And there was nothing Jack could do about it.

To be continued

I decided to cut this one, since it could pretty long otherwise and I'm not sure I'll write all of it today, since my attention is requires elsewhere. It's likely going to be three parts. I'll see how it goes. I kept getting distracted while editing this, so some of my normal awful spelling and grammar might have survived. Please tell me if you spot anything wrong.

It was almost hilariously hard to write the part with Pitch and Jack's staff without it sounding too much like something else. I swear I could write an entire smut fic out of the stuff I kept coming up with.

Also, as of writing this, I still haven't found a title for this one. Everything I can think of sounds like it could be the title of a bad movie sequel. Let's just go all out and call this Revenge Of The Boogeyman.