Guys, I will give you a warning- this is a long one. You can skip about all of the middle, as I got a bit distracted... Okay, I went completely off track. But you know how I am with fight scenes... they need to be long and epic.

Dark

Dark cradled Jack in her arms like a child as she flew him back to the Pole. The volcano had been close enough to North's workshop that she hadn't bothered to use the shadows, rather feel the refreshing chilly air on her face, trying to revive Jack as best she could. She rather liked the thought of him waking up in her arms as she carried him to safety, with no memory of what she had just put him through; it would make it a lot easier on her conscience.

Jack was much heavier than Dark had expected, and she struggled to keep them both in the air, arms and legs crossed around him as he lay on top of her, head lolling on her shoulder. The air felt almost warm against her skin compared to Jack's touch, his breath an icy gale on her neck. Poor Jack, Dark thought, giving him a squeeze.

She wondered what was going on his head, hoping he wasn't going through too much pain. Annoying as Jack was, she had begun to feel terrible as he roasted over the lava. She had been seriously feeling the heat too, using the shadows to protect her from the brunt of it. The pure temperature had completely burnt Jack's arm, the skin blistered and ugly. It was pressed against her chest, covered in a bandage of shadows.

"Come on, Jack," she whispered, and he mumbled something in response. "Pardon?"

"Jack Frost..." she felt his lips moving clumsily against her neck as the North Pole came into sight, swimming with lights in the descending night.

"Yes, well done- that's your name," she replied, rolling her eyes.

Snow caught in her hair as they tumbled through the glass doors at the top of the balcony leading to the Globe, and Dark was relieved to see Piper waiting for her, Tooth lying in a heap at his feet. He smiled when he saw her and she asked, "Do they all fall asleep when you break the memories?"

Piper shook his head. "Tooth didn't- I had to use my pipe. What did you do to Jack?"

"Let's just say it involved a volcano..." Dark replied, dragging Jack over to rest on a wooden bench. She slapped him lightly on the cheeks and he stirred, but his eyes remained closed. "Now what?"

"Now," Pitch said, entering the room and dragging a sleeping Sandman by the foot, "We wait. Well, you're waiting. As much as I would love to see the Guardians stumble around with amnesia... well, I have more pressing matters to deal with."

"Of course you do," Dark replied, almost angrily as he tossed Sandy beside Tooth. Pitch had become almost obsessed with Jaxon. Even though it was because of his long due revenge, she couldn't help a slight feeling of bitterness at being forgotten. But you were only there for a distraction, Dark reminded herself, keeping a level expression.

Pitch cocked his head, giving her a searching look. "Oh, and you might want to help Jak, the last I saw North was giving him no easy time. He's in one of the rooms below us."

"Damn," Piper hissed as Pitch disappeared, and Dark hurried after him down the carpeted stairs and through to the closest room, where they could hear banging and cursing. Biting her lip, Dark kicked open the door to reveal a very angry looking North cradling his head in his hands. At the back of the room, Jak stood pinned to the wall by one of North's giant swords, sagging and lifeless. Piper cursed from beside her, and Dark felt fear be replaced with fury.

North looked up at them, his face twisted in an expression of utter rage and hatred that made Dark's fear return very suddenly. North rose to his fullest height, standing above them like an avenging bear, face red. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME? WHY CAN'T I REMEMBER!"

Flinching with every word, Dark backed out behind Piper. "He's all yours."

Piper shot her a look, face no less stern in anger but slightly marred with dread. "Thanks."

North charged and Piper ducked, swinging a punch into North's stomach that did absolutely nothing. Dark kicked at North's face, but he was too tall, and her heel skimmed off his chest uselessly. He swung a colossal fist at her and it caught her in the chest, sending her spinning across the room to land against a cabinet of toys, which fell on top of her as she hit the floor, covering her eyes to avoid the glass. Her hair thrashed wildly as she struggled to stand, but the cabinet was made of fine wood and impossible to budge.

Piper was facing down North alone, looking very worried at the strength of his foe. North twisted, lithe as a cat to face Piper again. Piper looked at him, considering, but suddenly the great warrior leaped at him, slashing with his sword. North may have been out of practise, but he still remained the greatest swordsman on Earth. If Piper had been outdoors, with more room to manoeuvre, he would have easily had the advantage with his pipe, but in the small room- it was all he could do to stay away from North.

Piper shoved his pipe between his teeth and rolled, trying to keep as much distance between them as possible, but North wouldn't have it. As Piper stood, he swung his sword again, whipping it through the air in a straight line for Piper's face. Piper only just seemed to feel it coming, as he had such little time or space to duck, and he squeezed his eyes shut in terror, whistling on his pipe. The blade stopped millimetres short of his face, jerking in North's hand and spinning away across the room.

Piper gave a shaky laugh of relief- just as North's fist caught him square in the face.

He was knocked backwards, pipe flying from his grip. Blood swirled in droplets through the air from his nose as he landed on his back, coughing in wheezy breaths. North paused, observing the man before him. Then he bent down and picked up Piper's pipe.

Piper's eyes jerked open as if North had picked up him, and what ever pain he had felt disappeared as he jumped to his feet, shaking his head in terror. "No," he pleaded. "Not the pipe."

North only gave him the coldest of looks, before twisting the small, wooden flute in his gigantic hands. The resounding crack echoed around the room. North gave a yell in surprise and pain, dropping the wood to the floor as Piper laughed. Half of his fingers had broken with the effort of trying to break the pipe.

Piper held out a hand and the pipe shot into his grip. Tucking it into his breast pocket, Piper stooped to pick up North's sword. North tucked his hands into his armpits with a wince, and made to run at Piper. Piper lifted the sword, tendons straining in his forearms, but it was too heavy for him to even raise the point off the ground. Swearing, Piped dived out of North's way, blowing on his pipe, but all it did was make North stumble slightly. North turned to face him again, a deadly look in his eyes.

Then a familiar, jesting voice spoke out in the room. "Lol, you guys forgot that I'm a skeleton."

Dark's head whipped from the fight to look at Jak as he grinned at them, sliding North's sword from his abdomen without so much as a wince. His pumpkin head widened in a smile of spikey teeth, and North turned to him, angrily. "I stabbed you."

"And a wonderful job you did of it," Jak replied, then dodged as North dived for his sword, bringing his arms around the great swordsman's throat in a tight chokehold. North gagged and turned, using his sword like a backscratcher to pry the pumpkin head off. Skeleton or not, Jak dropped off at the sight of the long, curved blade.

Jak did the opposite of Piper and stayed close, keeping warily behind North as he swung this way and that. Finally North jumped, twisting in the air to face Jak, whose face twisted in a grimace as stumbled away.

"Let me out!" Dark hissed as he passed her, trying again to prise the thick cabinet off her back, where the hard wood was digging in painfully. North was by far the deadliest of the Guardians, and they would need all three off them to take him down. She wriggled a hand free and pointed in North's direction, twisting her fingers and manipulating the shadows to fly into his eyes, blinding him with darkness.

A small tune echoed through the room suddenly, and she tried to twist her head to look at Piper as he played. There was something familiar about the piece... maybe Mozart, something she recognised at any rate. The music began to slow down gently, and North's movements became slower and sluggish as he stumbled towards the sound, reaching out like a blind man with maimed hands. Suddenly, the song ended on one long, quavering note, and the great giant dropped to the ground.

"Finally," Piper sighed, panting. "He's a lot harder to knock out than his yetis."

"Yeah, that's nice," Dark replied, as politely as she could manage with the last reserves of patience. "Now can you get me out from under this thing?!"

Jak went to lift it up, but Piper blew his pipe again and it exploded in a blast of wooden shards. Dark got to her feet with difficulty, and gestured to North's sleeping figure. "Why didn't you knock him out earlier?"

"I didn't get the time," Piper replied defensively, then, "Now help me with him, I want all the Guardians together in case they wake up. Where's the rabbit?"

"Dunno," Dark told him, ignoring the 'I want' comment. She raised a hand and shadows flew around North's leg and began to drag him painstakingly out of the room backwards. Piper and Jak both grabbed a leg, and with much effort pulled him up the stairs, North's head cracking against each one, but nobody seemed to care.

When they reached the place where they had left the Guardians, they were greeted with the sight of a bedraggled looking Jack being helped up by Bunny, who's midriff was covered in thick white bandages. Bunny looked up when he heard them, and gave a shout, hoping back and clutching his ribs in pain. A wicked smile lit up Piper's face as they finished dragging North over to them.

"What did you do to them?!" Bunny demanded, putting on a brave face despite the hand he kept protectively over his chest. Dark was glad he was alive despite her self- she had no hatred for Bunny or Sandy- or Jack (whenever they happened to be kissing). "What the hell do you lot want now- and Darkness, you two faced, cheating little rat-bag!"

His insults were weak and Dark gave a small chuckle, which drew Jack's attention to her. "Dark... Darkness?"

He was bleary eyed, and his white hair was mussed up, making him look like a cute, sleepy puppy. It was times like those when she felt the small stirrings of giddiness that someone like him could like her. It was times like those that made it hard for her. "Yeah, Jack; it's me. How are you feeling?"

"Leave him alone," Bunny snapped, probably thinking that enquiring to Jack's health was some tactic of violent deceit, which it might have evolved into, given time.

Piper sighed at Bunny. "You should have stayed away, you bastard of a freak. Now I'm going to kill you, which is more than a piece of scum like you deserves."

"Don't think for one second that I'm afraid of you," Bunny replied, drawing a boomerang angrily.

"You should be," was Piper's only reply as he gave a blow on his pipe. It made absolutely no sound, yet Bunny fell to his knees, crying out. Jack gave a yell of surprise and began crawling over to Bunny, and the giant rabbit flung his boomerang with startling accuracy at Piper. Only Piper made a sharp whistle and it clattered to the floor, useless. "Now," Piper said in a deadly voice, "before you die- you will tell me where you took her."

Bunny simply shook his head stubbornly, and the Pied Piper's unnatural calm burst in a scream of tortured anger. "TELL ME! TELL ME NOW!"

Things might have gotten extremely ugly, extremely quickly, but at that moment the moon rose up in the sky to shine down upon them. Even Piper looked up at it, and Dark was startled to see tears glistening with a moonlit beauty on his cheeks.

There was a pulse of an unearthly silver-bright glow, and it sent Dark to her knees, but no one else was effected by the sudden light.

"What was that?" she asked nervously. For a split second, she could have sworn she had seen a face in the moon- a face older and wiser than any man on Earth.

There was a yawn, and Jak twisted around as Tooth stirred by his feet, eyes blinking slowly open. North and Sandy began to do the same.

"No," Piper whispered, making towards North before he could recover, but at that moment, the North Pole exploded in blue and silver light that sent all of them off their feet. The world spiralled into confusion as Dark rolled to her knees, wincing with the exposure to brightness. Moonlight was usually the only form of light she could stand... but this, this was meant to stop her, to get rid of fear and darkness.

Suddenly, thin wispy arms were wrapping around her, and she looked up to see creatures made from moonbeams hauling her to her feet. They were doing the same to Jak, but Piper, who had lost his pipe and was trying to fight them, they forced to his knees. Bunny gave a laugh of triumph, face turned to the moon. "Thank you, moon!"

The rest of the Guardians got to their feet, looks of wonder as they surveyed the scene around them. The globe was lit up in light as bright as the Sun's, and these silvery creatures swarmed the place, waking the sleeping yetis and elves, fixing any of the damage that they had caused. Dark gave a small whimper of fear as Jack turned to her, his expression hard. Damn. And he didn't even remember what she'd done.

Just then, North turned to the moon and gave a gasp, pointing. "Katherine!" he cried. "That's it... Katherine- I remember."

Jack looked up in the moon too, tearing his eyes from Dark's. The moonlight made his irises shimmer silver as he too gave a small cry. "In the moon- look Tooth, Sandy- in the moon! It's my sister! She's... on the ice..."

Dark, Jak and Piper looked at each other, horror struck. None of them had expected the Man in the Moon to take part, but here he was. Giving the Guardians back their memories.