Alright, you have permission to throw knives at me! I'm so sorry! Haha I know, for the first time ever, this was wayyy longer to update but starting was harder than I thought it would be. A whole month! Nerves, maybe? Excitement? The editing process, sickness, stress or fatigue, I can't reeeally categorize where I stood for last few weeks lol but I'm so happy because it's finally here and that means, we really did it! Now, this is my last shot to tie in some old themes before it all changes so protect your butt lol...and let's do it. And again, as always, thank you so much everyone. How you still make it out of this alive, I will never understand but you are awesome readers! Much love to you. (: (Now let's see how many of your predictions come true.) And to answer Katrin, thank you so much, but nope! Dean isn't Eugene from Disney's Tangled. He's basically a Dean Winchester model from Supernatural (a show I rarely watch but it's characters are hella great). But filler characters are always fun shells to randomly toss in and I'm glad Dean got a good reception. Thanks guys. :)
*This chapter was broken and beta'ed in different ways by three people. Myself, Crisbel, and my friend Jonathan, both of whom wanted this slice of pie (in all its horrific unedited glory lol) at the exact same time so, I gave it to them first-come-first-serve since there is actually a small list of you guys wanting to beta a chapter, which makes me all fuzzy inside but also very honored. Thanks guys! And to you two, thanks for being so patient with me, with this final installment, and with all my spazzing hehe. Cheers!
**And finally, to all my linguistic peeps (adam*anallaer/cuzarobincantlivewithoutflying, CatnipFrost, Rosary-Stefanys-Strigidae'31, ToothianaFrost, crywolf-girl23, The Dangerous One, iris9093, Shadigan Shinen, and kshep.n7) thanks again for all the help you gave me! I finally crossed the last couple of phrases on my sheet so we are good to go! Okay guys, you know what to do. Relax, take breaks, and good luck scrolling. :P I'm gonna finish shaking off my jitters now haha, but they never really go away! ...At least it's snowing again.
"It's all over now."
The Center gene...oh my stars.
Should the moon sparkle brighter than this, I would be a very lucky human being.
Isolated as an artificial DNA primer, we made it our life's work ...to synthesize the forks of two partner strands (one green, the other blue) inside one template molecule. And how it has extended its own lifespan to a level of science we cannot understand is still beyond many of our theories.
Some argue it is merely the polymerase chain reaction as it was intended to be. Others believe the gene's nucleotides are simply, so deeply rooted to the elemental world as we have yet to even fathom. And for the few, like myself, believe it is...just magic. But there is no denying the beauty in this helix, no matter what type of believer you are.Because for all the semantics behind its birth and all its wild imaginings...it shines.
In both the figurative, and the literal sense. Jeen nyha...'My moon', heh, does it shine.
The Center gene, as we have observed only so many opportune times in these decades, is the change that the world was waiting for, but the change that few will ever see. Under this microscope, I can tell you that as much.
It is green, a strong and neon green that sparkles in the light once it has found an acceptable DNA strand worthy of its infiltration and replication. But once it has made a home within the Center...the gene becomes their beacon of emerald energy, coating the skin and bones with elation.
It is, as I have said, truly magnificent.
And when it activates, that tiny, shimmering green little thing becomes both the answer, and the question, to many non-earthbound phenomena. Then it turns light blue, floating in beautiful suspension...rising and falling in the GUARDIANs' biologies yet, perfectly synced with the physical world around it.
It constantly pulsates and expands with stimulation, even...even whilst sleeping when it is dormant.
'Set', I could talk about this mindful, impossible feat for hours...but we do not have the time. We never do. But while I can praise the Center for finding peace in my agents' core, I also carry my cynicisms...
I am no stranger to danger. My work primarily starts at night, and I find myself looking into the darkness for hope that cannot be independently found, but self-constructed. Fear breeds in the dark and it is up to those who, while afraid of the truth, are still searching for light that I must watch over and seek answers for myself. In my own right, I guess I can call myself a GUARDIAN of sorts too.
My agents who willingly given themselves up to something with no predecessor, or other branches for support. The gene stands alone in this science and so, it is up to each and every GUARDIAN to figure out their centers for themselves and stabilize its purpose in this world.
'Hyrut'...Curious.
The Center gene is a mystery...a phenomenon...but its carriers will never know a more unique feeling in the world.
Their bond to something so tiny, but far greater than anything ever perceived, will be a part of them forever, no matter what changes, no matter what pressure will put it to its ultimate test.
It is a part of them. It is what makes them, now whole, and tethers them to their sense of reality.
It is their center, and only others with centers themselves, can truly understand what that feels like, what that really means...It will connect them forever. As a dear colleague once said to me, 'La unión hace la fuerza'...Union is strength.
'Set', that green like neon flames and the blue like moonlit beams...
...will connect them forev–
Don't even think about it.
Who are you?
You all right? I never asked or checked if you were hurt yet.
Fine! Come on, let's dance! Right now!
I can't protect you like this and we don't know anything about him.
Do you dance?
So you keep your eyes on the people, and I'll keep my eyes on you...I've told you everything I can, there are no secrets left with me!
ANYONE! PLEASE!
...sorta like friends now, right?
Especially you! ...She's always mattered hasn't she?
I never am ...Tooth!
I-I kn-n...m...
Gm mhfm fmhmf!
I'm glass ...I-I'm glass.
Tooth, don't look down!
I'm gonna die a-anyway!
Stop it! Stop it!
No, no, no, no!
RUN, TOOTH! RUN! ...TOOOTH!
...
Run.
Running.
I used to run...but not anymore.
So help these demons.
This storm is mine.
...
5:42 a.m.
The Holding Dome and all its stone-weathered majesty was ruined by the war that had ripped through. The curved grey walls were cracked and filled with holes all the way up to the broken skylight. Rope and electrical wiring hung like dead tendrils from the damaged platforms and fallen ladders. A few lights survived as they surrounded the circular containment. They gave the dome enough of a pale yellow glow even though it was waning in comparison to what it was actually shining down upon.
In the illumination, debris, iron and steel littered the ground. Large concrete stone blocks that had almost killed everyone in their breakage and crash to the floor became the headstones and wedges for support of the last ELFs and Nightmares struggling to get up on their shattered femurs or twisted backs. For the one tenth of the men and women who lived however, and the other tenth that vanished back again into Pitch's facility, the rest covered the floor.
Bodies ranged from sputtering for life to complete stillness. They were unmoving and their dark suits and left the impression add if someone had just finished playing the world's worst human version of checkers. Blood red and midnight black...tattered greens and gas mask golds...it was all there, not to forget the contorted positions and frozen expressions hiding under each hood (or the wide eyes that were exposed without one).
At least there were no body parts, but there were shotgun shells horrifically mixed in with all the discarded blades and cords, and at its core, that's what it was. Horror. It was horror. It was too much for those who had never seen anything close to a real fight in their life. But at least it was cold.
Everything was cold.
Like frost.
And it made Toothiana sick.
Tooth felt her blood run like ice, cold and sharp as a needlepoint. It ruined her.
BT covered her mouth.
...
"T...T-Too..."
Mr. Sanderson turned.
He dropped one of his whips, his heart beating out of his chest.
Tatiana's knees hit the floor.
4:00
3:59
3:58
Pitch pulled back, his eyes on the vial and the liquid inside. He watched until every drop vanished inside the needle, traveling down to her trembling neck.
Tooth struggled against it.
Every time she wanted to pull it out and throw it away, she squeezed her eyes shut tighter and held it in place.
Every ELF and Nightmare nearby who sensed it, who saw it, stopped. They turned their heads and paused in their kills, taken aback.
"No!" Tiana tried to run.
"N–No, let me! Let me g–"
"Tiana!"
Tina and Tuhina yanked both her shoulders. The 13-yr-old yelped when her mutated arm moved painfully.
"T..." she coughed.
"Toothia–"
You're like Santa Clause giving us all the things we need for Christmas.
North turned at the sound with Phil.
North croaked slowly as his sword lowered unwillingly.
"Princ...принцесса..."
Tooth choked on her breath.
"A-Aahn!"
The cold rush finally stopped.
The needle's pusher was close as it ever was to its plunger and her fist felt smaller.
No more chocolate.
Aster tried to form the syllables on his tongue but they wouldn't come out and he felt like the ground had swallowed him up.
When she swayed a little, severed threads appeared in the work of his gloves.
"Thi–"
Tooth sobbed angrily.
Pain moved down through the needle. Her nerves twitched.
But when she peeked through her eyelashes, she realised that the dome had gone almost completely silent.
3:47
The room still felt gigantic as ever and the changing clouds in the sky (with Petrov and the other rescue carriers) morphed the distorted shadows moving across the destroyed concrete. And with it, the cold swept through.
Frigid winds became the aura that surrounded everything. Breathing air and exhaling was like creating a smokescreen, and that prickly-numb sensation took over every muscle movement.
Everyone felt trapped in it. No one could escape.
And as the handmaidens dragged themselves back together in a tight circle, warmth was no longer a luxury. Because with Tooth standing all by herself, they felt like they deserved it.
So as the silence continued to drown the room in their punishments, the room grew darker...the mess seemed irreparable...the blood rushed in their ears...and the princess looked like she was miles away.
3:40
"What have you done?"
Pitch's tongue was wrought with ice and black fury. He had no remorse for his lost tooth or the blood in his gums.
"What have you–"
Tooth said nothing back...
She was scared out of her mind but she swallowed it down and tightened her fingers. Cold and shivering, she gripped the syringe and pulled it out steady.
When the needlepoint was finally freed, it was red with her blood.
"The ingredient! My ge–"
"Newsflash! You don't own me! And I w...H-H'I would choose...I w–" Tooth stopped.
She gulped.
Her eyes were blazing but as Pitch watched, she changed. She then made a point not to look at anyone but him. And in the depth of her courage, she managed to stop stuttering.
"I...would choose anything over you. And I'll fight your goddamn fear with your own fear! Of losing your precious, scientific–"
"You've sullied the only thing that makes you special," Pitch thundered. "If you die now, and you leave behind nothing!"
"I know my place!"
"Your place?" he countered. "Your place?! The base of your center is the only one left carrying the prima gene! What about your legacy!?"
"WHAT ABOUT IT?!"
Pitch fell silent. Her echo expelled throughout the dome and carried the weight of everyone's...
Tooth gritted her teeth.
Her face turned severe.
"I would rather kill myself," she heaved. "I would because...for what little, for everything I'm worth, and for every trick and skill you will always best me at... Look at us. Look, Pitch...I still got under your skin first."
Then in the light of the dome, without the cover of her long hair anymore, a spot of blood from the puncture appeared just above the line of her turtleneck.
"How could she..." Dean's green eyes grew wide and had no comeback for once, remembering all that he could about the tiny, prissy little woman he'd watched scream and dive out of danger. Linae and her teammates gazed up too – so did the elite Nightmares.
"She–"
"I look stupid, incredibly, and maybe I am but...if you thought that me throwing this on the ground and crushing it with my boot or running away was going to solve anything... well then, you clearly don't know how strong I can be."
She laughed hoarsely. "I KNOW you, Pitch! I can't stop you and you won't rest until you stop hunting me, and no matter where I hide or where I go...you'll send more Nightmares, make more syringes, and you'll destroy my island anyway. So I won't run forever. My heart is done hiding and so am I! You hear me?"
Jack nearly dropped his staff.
"I...Am...Done."
His world slowed down as he just stared at her. He watched her chest heaving in and out, slow and like a balloon.
"T..." his eyes grew like saucers, his heart racing faster than...than...
"To–"
But she wasn't even looking at him. All Tooth saw was Pitch, and Ja–
"I'm gonna change, Pitch."
Tooth smiled ruefully and Aster looked at her like an unsolvable code.
"I'm gonna change and when I do...there'll be no pure Center gene left."
The hacker's heart raced – with sharp ears he heard Jack's breathing grew labored and tight.
"Almost there..." he whispered and his face scrunched inwards like a rabbit whose ears were flattening against his skull.
"...we were almost there."
Pitch stared at Tooth, eyes wide with something indescribable for the first time in a long time.
Tooth dropped her eyelids. "This was never your end game..."
And with a breath of conviction, she gave him one last stare then dropped the empty syringe.
She crushed it under her boot, letting the fading (but pungent) peppermint aroma rise up to choke her.
"...it was always mine–"
She stopped.
Everyone reacted.
Tooth's fists suddenly twitched at her sides and she clutched at the front of her turtleneck with a terrifying sob.
Something felt like it was spreading across her body.
Everything her skin touched felt wrong.
"It's happe–"
"Tooth?"
She started to crumple on her knees.
Jack leapt up and grabbed Pitch by the collar of his coat.
He yanked him back violently and swung around him to get to her, losing his grip on his staff as he did. Being the closest, Aster and the others watched it clatter as he ripped off of his broken gauntlet and ran.
"Tooth!"
She sobbed again. Her toes were curling in pain and a spasm ripped up her legs. Tooth gasped and tried to catch herself one of the blocks of concrete beside her. When the stinging subsided, she dug her fingernails into the stone.
"Holy cr...It's happeni–"
"Tooth!"
"No, Ja–Stay awa...A-Ahhn!"
She bent her head.
She didn't know what was happening to her but she couldn't risk his life if she contaminated him or let his chance to escape disappear. But it was Jack, and she knew that he would never leave her behind.
And that was probably what ached the most.
Tooth gripped the front of her turtleneck again.
"I...I DON'T–"
Suddenly, his arms were under her, trying to get her head up. He tried not to upset the bullet graze in her arm.
"Hold on to me, Tooth, we gotta get you outta here."
"No, Jack! ...N–"
Tooth gasped for air and wriggled violently in his hold. She tried to turn Jack away from Pitch and push him in the direction of the others.
"Will you just pl–"
"You let me lose you before, so shut up! You–Why would you..."
His breath was angry, desperate like sand grains in an hourglass.
Jack couldn't see her straight.
"...and you give heart four minutes to go into cardiac arrest...and then it will stop...and die."
"Why would you–"
"Let me go! I'm not...H'it's not safe!" she screamed but he wouldn't let go.
"Jack bring'er here!" Aster shouted – his hands were shaking. "Jac–"
"Arhh!"
Tooth shut her eyes as another wave of passed through her. It made her want to crawl out of her skin...it made her want to pass out.
"Jack! JA..."
All at once, she froze. Her eyelids slipped down halfway and her head fell back in his hand.
Jack's heart skipped.
"Tooth?"
He held her tighter and pushed her hair out of her face.
"Tooth?"
When she didn't respond, Jack shook his head and turned her face slightly in his grip. The drop of blood was shining in the light.
"What's wrong with..." Tina cried. "What's wrong!?"
"No," Jack's mumble turned shaky.
"No, no, no! Come on, T..."
Without thinking, he leaned down as he brought her neck up higher. Jack touched her neck and pulled at her turtleneck, wiping the prick of blood with the back of his glove. She was hot to the touch but no one had any blood thinners and they–
He pressed his lips to her neck and gripped her like an anchor against him.
'Come on! I ca...I can't let you die!'
He thought for one dying moment that it was like snake's venom and that if he pulled hard enough, all the menthol would transfer into him and she'd be okay. Tooth gasped and a flush ran down her entire body.
When she shivered, he came up for air and looked down again.
A tear dripped down her face she couldn't stop and her skin was turning pink with tiny patches – almost like Tuhina.
"Jack!"
His lips turned red but he didn't taste anything, feel anything in her blood – and he panicked.
He shut his eyes.
"Jack, stop! I'm not...I-I am not–"
He seized her cheeks and pulled her face to his–
"Jack, please g–"
"AH!"
The curvature of his staff's hook suddenly wrapped around his neck. In a violent pull, he was yanked back by his weapon, with Pitch on the other end.
Losing his hold on Tooth, the spy was viciously separated from her and watched in a split-second window as she tumbled back hard onto the concrete floor.
Tooth convulsed.
Pitch looked at Jack rampantly.
"This is not about you, GUARDIAN!"
Jack shouted furiously and twisted his torso into a complicated flip to try and get out.
His boot came around with the serrated edge running along the side and Pitch started for a brief moment under all the hate until he forcefully pulled the staff down. He brought Jack to his knees.
Tooth lifted her head from the ground.
"Pitch, you...H-hahhh!"
She clawed at her collar.
"My...m'ski–A-Ahh!"
"Toothi–YOU BASTARD, LET ME–"
Pitch's glove-free hand swiped itself across his face, catching his cheekbones, and sent Jack's fear trigger into a frenzy.
His vision flickered black and a terrible cloud filled a spot in his brain for a pocket of ti–
"Ahhh!"
Jack watched as the quick appearance of his fears and demons flooded behind his wild eyes.
Emma.
The scum he'd let get away.
The tunnel back in–
...It all came back like Nightmares and serial killers, choking his throat and assaulting his senses.
Jack struggled in a fit of panic.
'It's not real. It's not real!'
"Jack!" North's deep voice traveled across the dome. "JACK!"
The ELFs moved into action.
Like rapid-fire, the sounds of several guns and knives being unsheathed were heard. They aimed at the last of the Nightmares while Phil and his men roared, angry and grabbing necks of the surviving Elite Nightmares. Pitch's ON-X gripped them back.
Everyone had each other in arm's reach–
Pitch yanked the staff sideways again and tossed Jack from out of its crook. In a painful crash, the 24-yr-old rolled across the floor some feet away.
As Jack landed on the broken concrete, Pitch eyed Tooth, petulant and ashamed.
She had bowed her head into the ground, writhing in pain.
"Pi...Pi–"
He tossed Jack's staff carelessly. Tooth hissed, refusing to give in.
"It's over..." she heaved.
"It's already over!"
"..."
Pitch froze. He then fixed Tooth with a dark look.
The air shifted around him.
His energy felt contorted, spent, and absolutely wasted on his final attempts at victory. Everything his men could've done and didn't, should've done and wouldn't...It all led to this even if he was partly to blame himself for all his voracious mockery of everything and everyone she believed in.
3:02
3:01
3:00
Tooth's heart leapt in her throat.
Suddenly, he started to move...advancing towards her.
His shadow was elongated and his shoulders were relaxed, but his jaw was visibly tense and the crease in his brow was deep. She felt every drop of cold fury transform the air around her and when she looked up, Pitch wasn't just livid.
He wanted to kill.
Tooth panicked.
In a hurry, she scrambled up on her knees and backed away until she could turn around a–
"And if anyone dies tonight," Pitch seethed, "it will be my hand, not fate's!"
"T!"
Tooth immediately broke into a painful run.
She gritted her teeth.
"Tooth!" BT screamed but the tear dripped down her cheek.
"Here! Please com–"
2:52
Tooth shut her eyes. A pain erupted in her stomach.
She kicked at the ground with her boots and pushed harder but her small feet were no match for his strides which were twice as long as Jack's.
The sound of Pitch's ragged breath trudged after her. Blood pounded in her ears. Her anger grew with every step.
The ELF's tried to scramble – Pitch's Nightmares made it near impossible.
"Try! Try to come and get me! I'm a...I'm already d–Gah!"
"Princess, don't run from me!"
"A-Ahh!"
Tooth nearly ran into a fallen ladder.
When she caught her breath she sped off again but each time she gasped for air, her chest grew tighter.
She clutched the icy fabric over her heart.
"Princess!"
Pitch's tone for once didn't sound demanding. It sounded desperate – probably because all his acclaimed success was going to disintegrate in a short amount of time.
But it wasn't like the princess had a normal biology, or an artificial one like the GUARDIANs. Her Center Gene was bonded to her, and that meant Pitch didn't know exactly when Tooth's DNA would fall apart from the potency – or if it even would.
"You ...DO NOT...get to ...deci–"
"Yes I do!" she shouted back. "YES I D–"
She tripped on an ELF's body.
Stopping herself at a large stone block from a fallen platform, Toothiana slumped against it and clutched at her heart.
In its pain, she felt like she was having a heart attack. But she couldn't stop.
Pitch was coming, he'd be on her any second and she vowed never to let him touch her again!
Tooth lifted her head and with a small push off the rock, she stumbled away again. Achy feet and painful muscles, her heart beat a mile a minute.
Everyone seemed to be yelling at her–
"...ooth..."
"To...ieee!"
"...OP..."
...they seemed to be...weren't they?
"...ana...re you...shmmm...mms..."
Weren't they?
Tooth's forehead creased and her eyebrows furrowed together. She strained her ears but their voices sounded farther away than she...remembered.
She tried to slow down her run and lift her head, wondering just how far she'd have to run.
Until–
"M-My...m'h...my hair is–"
The ends of her... the ends of her hair...
...were floating?!
Or–
No...No, they were falling back down as she stopped running, but falling... falling really slowly.
Tooth blinked twice, freakishly and horrified. She lifted a hand to touch a stand.
Her mouth fell open.
Her hair was moving in moving in slow motion.
Everything was.
2:43
2:42
Tooth looked around. Her breath caught in her throat.
The world seemed to slow down even further and in all its dying noise, she was mortified by the silence – but even more so by what she was could see around her.
'What is...No. What the he–'
Everyone looked like they were moving through water. She felt fine, but they all seemed sluggish and lethargic.
Toothiana lifted her head around to North and the ELFs.
Their bodies were still stiff in their showdowns with Pitch's Nightmares – they looked like statues.
One of Phil's lieutenants though started to lift an arm in behind her, slow and fluid in the air current. She watched his sleeve drag with gravity under it. Tooth shook her head.
His eyebrows lifted up–
"...aaa...aaa!"
Tooth turned fast on her heel to the left. The echo of Aster's shout started to die away but he wasn't looking at her. She watched his green eyes swivel in the blur and his head turn slowly back and forth.
Tooth raised an arm.
"Edmund?! B-But I'm over...I'm ov–"
She stopped.
When he couldn't hear her, she panicked and her cheeks started to burn. Tooth dropped her arm over her eyes and squeezed them shut.
"A-Ah–"
"...re...ss...eeee!"
When Tooth looked again, she pulled her gaze away from her friend and looked at the handmaidens behind him – her hair ghosts slightly in the swift motion. Tat and the three were all looking in the same place she was before, still trying to find her, but it didn't look right. It didn't feel right.
Why couldn't they see her?!
Tooth's hair floated back down to their sides. She gulped shakily and lifted her hands in the slow motion.
With trembling fingers, Tooth pushed her fingers back and forth in the air. They blurred a little as they swung but they moved faster than everything around her.
"But how is th..."
It wasn't real.
Nothing like this happened except in movies and in books. This was real life. And even if it the Center Gene made things more unbelievable than they should have been, she...this wasn't...
She exhaled shakily, wondering how to get out and how to stop it–
The fog of her warm breath dissipated in the cold wind... but something caught her eye.
Tooth lowered her right hand slightly and squinted at the air in the distance. She caught a glimpse...and then...
Water droplets.
She leaned in.
The tiny beads of water had fallen from the sky through the broken skylight. Tooth recognized them from before when a few came down during the earlier fights. The water moved gently through the winds and she was terrified that she was able to see them with such detail. Tooth made a fist and leaned in.
She said nothing, only feeling a little mesmerized until she watched them more closely.
Suddenly, the water droplets shrunk.
Her eyes grew wide and as her hair floated again, she felt the wind...
...the North wind.
Shrinking down to almost nothing, the droplets turned into white snow crystals and transformed themselves into–
"Sn...S-Snowflakes?"
She followed them. So miniscule and barely noticeable, Tooth watched with a bated breath as they grew slightly in size and the detail of each arm grow out into six beautiful dendrites. They sparkled in the poor yellowing light then floated higher on some invisible wind in a wide figure eight before they pulled away.
Tooth followed them with her eyes until the pain in her side came back and she cringed at the floor again.
But she knew...
Wind didn't make infinity curves like that on its own, and with everything moved slower than her, Tooth would have never been able to notice that before.
She tried getting up.
Tooth turned over her shoulder and looked behind her.
Pitch was a dark blur still coming for her...but Jack...
Jack getting up off the floor with his cut hands splayed out on the gravel and his knees digging the concrete. She watched his blue eyes shine wide and his blurred face turn in slow motion. He looked frantic.
His lips formed and small 'o' and his eyebrows scrunched together.
"...ooo–"
"–eess!" Pitch's echo roared. "YOU..."
Tooth got up.
She was almost straight again but when she turned around–
"W...M-m–"
Her vision turned red.
Saliva pooled into her mouth and her stomach muscles made an upheaval.
"M-Mm–!"
She dropped on the ground and the second she caught the concrete, she threw up.
2:12
2:11
Time sped back to normal.
The muffled sounds and the unnerving silence vanished in a vacuum and nothing was moving through low gravity anymore.
Tooth emptied out her stomach and coughed violently.
Their echoes bounced viciously across the dome, and everyone jumped. Her sudden choking (and her disturbing reappearance) sent them spiraling.
Pitch stopped running and his forehead creased at the sight of the princess (who had just been within his reach)...now almost thirty feet away.
When she was done, she covered her eyes in pain. Her skin felt hot to the touch and it was like something was slicing her face.
He looked around for a clue, meticulous and mistrusting as always.
"How did you..."
How did she get so far in only three seconds? A moment ago he was almost ready to reach out and grab her by the wet collar of her turtleneck and suddenly...she was kneeling halfway across the holding facility in her own sickness?
His eyes were slightly wider than usual and he took a step forward.
"How did you–"
Tooth threw up one more time and she coughed loudly, nearly falling face first into her mess.
He faltered as he watched her bend her head to conceal her face.
She started gasping.
"Tooth!"
The sound of flats echoed toward her and when Tooth finished coughing again, four pairs of hands were suddenly there, all wanting to hug her.
"T...T-Tooth?" Tatiana called. Toothiana didn't answer and whimpered under her throat suddenly.
But when she finally pulled up her head...
2:03
Pitch froze.
Sandy's heart nearly stopped and the girls all pulled back with screams.
"M-mm...m–"
Tooth looked at Pitch...but her pupils were gone.
Wide and once beautifully expressive beads had blurred away...
...and her eyes were solid pink. Thick and blank like an insect's.
The mutation..." Pitch fell a step back, "it's setting in!"
And when Tooth trembled with pain, purple spidery veins started to travel down her cheeks from beneath her eyes.
2:00
1:59
"No!"
Jack froze when he finally saw what Pitch was yelling about.
His eyes went from wide to impossible.
Because it wasn't impossible.
IT WASN'T.
Jack's bangs poked the tips of his lashes and he shook them away.
He opened his mouth to–
"I'm sorry, Em... I'm sorry."
Emma's face came to the forefront of his mind, her face...and the nightmare he had about her all those years ago, back when he was a regular spy.
Jack gasped.
His breathing turned short and rapid. Frost unfurled under his shaky palms.
Everything from the blurred out eyes to the veins on Tooth's skin...he'd seen it before in his sleep. It was the reason that he'd panicked and tried to run home to his sister before they took her away. It was same reason why his life changed forever.
His lips quivered. "T...Tooth?"
She turned her head back and forth but her eyebrows lifted in fear. Her eyes made her sisters scream – Jack felt something crack inside him.
"T-Tooth!"
He scrambled to get up.
"Not again...Not again."
This was it though...This was it and no matter what he could try to do, even if he did reach her...unlike Emma, this wasn't an illusion.
Tooth was really mutating, she already was.
And it meant that–
"G...A-ahhrg!"
Tooth's eyebrows lowered back down and her eyes turned hard at the edges. She gasped angrily in the pain within her chest–
Tooth snarled.
Suddenly a strange energy lifted and the girls got up and backed away in fear. Their skin prickled in the closeness of hers like an electrical field being set off.
"What now, Pitch?" she shouted. "What. Now."
"The gene!" Pitch roared. "Your Center, you have...Do you see what you've done to yourself?! You're a monster!"
"Don't call me that!" she bit out and struggled to get up. But once she was on her feet, the atmosphere shifted.
She shook her head, short wet hair slapping her searing cheeks and making her rage build.
"You've called me your pet, your experiment, your goddamn treasure, and your tool, you son of a bitch!" she heaved and when she balled her fists and exhaled, Pitch noticed that for a brief second–
"Don't you ever call me a monster!"
Her hair at her scalp lifted slightly like it was caught in some invisible breeze...like a bird ruffling its feathers.
His mouth flew open.
"YOU–"
"I'm not the freak. I am not the fre–"
She patted each side of her face, wondering why it burned so much. She gritted her teeth.
And in her echoes, the gravel around her floated off the ground slightly and dropped.
No one noticed when her brain was on fire made for the show, and her heart was beating so fast–
1:39
1:38
"You were the reason for everything!" Pitch spewed at her. "And then you go and waste your life, just like every GUARDIAN does...Just like your mother!"
Tooth looked at him again.
"SHUT UP!"
The stones lifted higher and North, Sandy, Dean, and Aster saw the stones rise up then fall like weights again.
They made tiny craters in the concrete–
Jack was up in an instant.
He made a dash for her (quick to eye everyone around him) but in two steps, he skidded to a halt. Whipping his head to his left, he caught Pitch moving his hand to his coat.
Tooth drew in tight breaths of air but she refused to turn away from Pitch.
Her haunting features continued to perturb him – and he absolutely hated it.
"Too–"
"Wasting lives, huh? You're one to talk, Pitch!" she seethed. "YOU'RE ONE TO TALK!"
"So then what is your consolation? To hell with me? With all of this? Because if that's your answer," and he moved into his pocket again, "then so is everyone in this roo–"
BAM!
Pitch reeled back when Jack's powerful leg made contact with his stomach. The GUARDIAN pulled back to him, watching the ice flurries from his boot spread like a disease across the man's front.
"I don't what you're hiding in there, you son of a bitch," And the wind suddenly picked up speed as it swirled the area between Jack and Pitch. He tilted his head down slightly with the darkest look ever. "But you better fight me first!"
Then he surged in the space between them, going after the terrorist in unbridled frustrations.
"Ostanovis, Jack!" North bellowed Stop but the brawny Nightmare he had under his hold shoved against him.
"Stoy!"
His shout had no effect though and the others watched (still half out of their minds) as Jack and Pitch fought again. Hand-to-hand, the two were more direct, more violent, and almost too fast to catch.
Jack's threw up hooks and jabs and Pitch aggressively tossed down blocks and deflects with wide, agitated glances. There was a pit in Jack's stomach that just wouldn't go away and the longer he held Pitch in his gaze, trapped under all the lights he couldn't escape, the more it made the 24-yr-old nearly break the skin in his knuckles.
Jack pivoted on his boot when he heard Pitch's slight inhale and predicted the change in the 6'4 man's strategy, slipping away by the bridge of his nose. He gritted his teeth and leaned back when a second swipe came.
"Dammit to–"
Jack didn't even finish and reached up, grabbing Pitch's arm. In a furious yell, the wind churned around their joined grip and the damp blood still on both their sleeves turned hard.
Pitch made a sound of aggravation and tried to pull back. But when Jack wouldn't let go, Pitch shot out his long leg. The shorter spy felt it coming in the closed distance.
He shut his eyes.
"No!"
Despite his bruised torso, Jack let go and leapt sideways a little, kicking himself into a front aerial. The wind carried him over Pitch and just before he touched the ground, Jack grinded his teeth and twisted his body sideways.
They smacked the floor together in a burst of snow.
"Jack!" Aster shouted. "Jack! J–A-Ah!"
The ingenious GUARDIAN slapped his glove to his ear and bent forward slightly.
Tat looked at him.
"What's wrong?! Are you o–"
"Chhzzckzzzzz!"
Sandy squinted in pain against the complink too until something caught his attention. Looking away from Jack, Pitch, and the girls and the guys, he looked up.
So did North.
"Tchaikov–"
"Chhhzzz–back! We have to fall–chhzzz!"
"Nyet!" the Cossack ordered. "But the–"
"But Chief!" the ELF argued on the line. "Schzzz...cover! And the–chzzz–n't maintain the altitude!"
"Nou, fall back!" another ELF screeched from another line. "We must fall back! Maak gou!"
"Nyet!" North tried again before he fell into English. "No, we have not yet all–"
But it really couldn't be helped.
His electric blue eyes grew wide and with every inch, his eyebrows lifted and his short, white beard fluttered even more aggressively.
North looked around.
The dome had gotten very cold, almost to a sub-zero point. His wrists felt attacked by a siege of needles and when he tightened his hand on his sword, his fingers felt stiff. The chill was an extensive part of his body and seeped unprovoked into his skin.
'Nyet. It is not unprovoked.'
North spun on his heel.
"JA–"
"Look! Up there!"
North turned his attention again and heard Dean yell out.
His arch-level Nightmare hood was billowing beneath him and the female ELFs nearby had their hairs flying up in a torrent. One of them hugged her arms for warmth as a Nightmare looked up too. When North followed the man's pointing glove, he looked up through the skylight.
The open night sky had vanished.
The moon and all its stars were nowhere to be seen. The clouds were growing larger.
And from the way they were windswept, the direction was surging right over them.
Dean panicked.
"Shit, our carriers!"
Sure enough, in the unstable winds and thick cloud formulations, the rescue jets had to pull up and pull back.
Aster's eyebrows shot up.
"Bloody...No!"
Sandy's eyes grew wide and he gritted his teeth. He lifted his hands like they would come back if he waved hard enough.
"Bohze moi!" North adjured and Phil garbled a shout of urgency.
"Gerba gfubbalerg!"
The Chief whirled on Jack and shouted his name again.
His wind, however, stole the name from his lips.
"Jack!"
Jack abruptly turned but it wasn't for North.
With a sharp inhale, Jack turned fluidly into another aerial twist and knocked the shadow (along with the Nightmare attached to it) back with his sideswipe.
"Get away from me!"
Pitch rushed at him again and his breath turned white like a fog in the cold–Jack blocked the incoming downward punch and turned the fist outwards.
Pitch growled.
"Where is your sense of control, GUARDIAN?"
"With you," Jack ruthlessly knocked him back, "there isn't any!"
And as Pitch closed in, Jack made a two-step – he had no time to activate the serrated edge in his boots – and made a powerful right split knocking both the Nightmare King and his recovering henchman away.
When he landed, Jack pulled out the only small blade he had left. He glared at Pitch.
It was his last shot.
He took a step–
Someone grunted behind him.
Jack tightened his abdomen and swooped back around.
In the momentum, Jack averted a strike at his head and brought the knife up fast and true.
He watched it drive straight up into the ON-X's faceless mask.
The man underneath gurgled instantly.
Reaching for the blade hilt, he stumbled back without so much of a scream before he found it and yanked it out. Jack simply watched the face cover spread thick with blood before the Nightmare tossed the blade aside and tripped on his feet.
He went brain dead and died before he hit the floor.
Jack spun around looking for the only weapon he had left, furious and alarmed – Jack froze though.
Pitch stopped him in the strong breeze. The terrorist's arm did a sleight of hand and when he refused to blink...
...he caught something small and dark in the man's palm.
Pitch stroked it in his long fingers – he gave Tooth's deformed features one more look. Then he turned back to Jack.
Opening his hand up, Jack saw a panel and just one button.
One.
Jack's eyes grew wide.
"What is that?" he demanded and everyone looked to see. "Pitch–"
Pitch pressed it.
The click that followed resonated clear and sharp across the waste and concrete. Aster and North looked around jarringly for anything to react to its sudden activation.
Sanderson tightened his fists and prepared for the worst.
Tooth blinked down across the concrete beneath her knees and grinded her teeth.
Where was it?
What was it?!
Jack refused to turn his head and remained dead set on Pitch because he knew he (at least) had to be the one who couldn't let Pitch out of his sight, not even for–
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick...
Jack's eyebrows scrunched tighter together...but Pitch gave him nothing to look at.
Meanwhile, Tooth cupped her cheeks gingerly and knelt on the ground in a frenzy. Her sisters nervously (but bravely) knelt beside her again. She flinched when they touched her arms, afraid she would infect them but they wouldn't leave her.
The pain still erupted through her–
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick...
But she froze.
She heard the constant rhythm too.
"Ship shape, men!" North warned under his breath.
"Ship shape!"
Aster looked around wildly. Even a few of the ELFs lowered their guns and turned on their heels – one of the Nightmares froze. An ELF followed his gaze...he gasped into his mic.
The tech analyst turned when he heard the acute change through his powerful eardrum.
"What're you–"
But when North and Sandy and Tooth all followed where he'd stopped his head–
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick...
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick...
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Tick. Tick.
Tick.
1:05
1:04
Tick.
Tick. Tick..
Tick. Tick..
1:00
0:59
Tick. Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
North's breath left his mouth.
"Jack!"
Jack didn't say anything and didn't react at first, but when he sensed the tension rise...he finally caught red flashing in the peripheral of his vision.
He turned his head around slowly.
And like horror, like hurricanes and avalanches in his chest, his heart skipped a beat.
There was a light flashing–
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
...behind the faceless cover of the Nightmare he'd killed – and it looked like it was coming from inside his head.
Jack spun back around instantly.
"You put a bomb...inside your own soldier?"
Pitch said nothing to counter Jack's yell.
Nothing about Pitch felt more disturbed – even to his own men.
"Inside him?!"
Tuhina covered her mouth but the scream came out anyway.
"Tuhina?" Tooth lifted her head instantly.
"Tuhi?"
She rubbed her eye but when she looked–
"Wh...No, I–"
She blinked but it wouldn't go away because the world...
Her vision, it...
It had all turned...
Beep.
Beep.
Raising her neck, the Hypunjam princess tried to look for black, tried to look for yellow, tried to look for...for anything!
All she saw though was pink.
Pink and white.
Tooth's mouth fell open and her head moved shakily.
It was like...like some sick and horrible X-ray gone wrong. Everything was bathed in magenta but she could still see the outlines, and the details, of everything and everyone she knew.
Tooth tightened her fists.
She felt her hair close to her crown move by itself again when her anxiety flared up. This was all too much, it wouldn't end and–
Her lips trembled softly.
"Jack?"
She didn't mean to call him to focus on her. She meant it as a warning – in her mutating eyesight, she saw every piece of snow drift around the dome.
Like little white particles, she watched their spinning and they were building, moving, faster.
Jack whispered loud enough for her to hear, for her to see the outline of his lips move–
0:43
0:42
"You'd do this...You would do this."
The snow swirled harder.
Tooth watched them coil down at his fingers...
Beep.
Beep.
"Jack?"
Jack turned at the sound of her voice, but his snowflakes were incessant.
It was the first time since he'd seen her, heard her, that he when he saw her, he nearly tore himself inside-out with urgency.
He almost ready to run again too since his worry for her burned and built up like radiation. Her head flitted back and forth nervously and tilted at the strangest sights in her eyesight.
But to Jack, she was a bird.
As if sensing it, Tooth stood her ground with her teeth clenched and her fists balled tight.
She did not need saving.
"Whatever you're thinking of doing," she breathed. "Don't do it...you hear me?"
Beep.
Beep.
"Don't!"
The bomb though blocked out her voice.
In its echo, the light emitting from Pitch's (dead) right-hand man kept traveling around the sector.
The other ON-X guards turned their heads suddenly as they caught several of Pitch's Nightmares back away slightly in silent terror. One elite Nightmare even touched his face over his gas mask.
Dean stared at them silently.
Beep.
Beep.
Bee–
Jack took a step back away from Pitch, shaking his head slow and in cold malice and feeling his bangs lift with the snow. He couldn't believe the depth of the benevolence or the...capability in which it could even exist.
Pitch regarded him with an empty cold face, but Jack couldn't turn away.
"How could you? ...You used to be one of us, didn't you? You were one of us."
Pitch tilted his head down.
"This tiny bomb I've implanted in my Nightmare," he spoke low under the emphasis of the detonation beacon, "is loosely modeled after the American two-stage thermonuclear fission bomb, and it is my first and only attempt at creating a tamper ablation mechanism."
He stared into the faceless death of the Nightmare.
"When that detonation ceases, the spark plug will ignite and the core will melt. Once the implosion occurs, it will expand the gas velocity at approximately 25 kilometres per second and send the radiation far enough for 12 minutes, trapping you in."
Everyone gasped.
Jack's pale skin turned white and his jaw fell slack.
"And you?" he asked before his face turned dark with rage. "What about you?!"
"Me?"
Pitch gazed back down at him.
"Tell me what's it's like to lose something again, Jack. But tell me fast because...I'm not sticking around."
And he turned to Tooth with a dark smile.
"That, was never the plan."
Then in a flurry, Pitch dropped into a swoop around Jack and maneuvered his dark body under the GUARDIAN. Two blinks later, his body vanished and reappeared, flickering in the direction of the dome's door.
Jack's eyebrows flew up.
"NO!"
He rushed after Pitch's erratic shadow as the wind chased them both.
"Stop him!" an ELF panicked. "We lose him and he could start all o–"
North took five steps forward.
"Jack! Hurry!"
Tooth sensed the fast movement coming ahead.
"Tooth, w–"
BAM!
In the blink of an eye, Tooth rammed into Pitch.
No one caught how she'd managed it – even Tooth wasn't sure – but in her disheveled blindness she knew where he was and beat him to the punch. Quite literally.
"You're not leaving!" she screamed and after pushing him into a stop with both arms, she punched him hard enough to knock back his hard torso. Pitch was completely stunned.
"Pretentious, royal little b–"
In terrible howling wind, Jack's staff appeared. He yanked Pitch back by the length of his arm and the wind separated them from Toothiana, pushing her back into her sisters.
"Toothie!"
Pitch rolled against the concrete, back towards the center as Jack dropped his staff and faced him. When the terrorist pulled his head up, his hair was manic and completely out of his place – the reflection of his own demise.
"Two choices, Jack," Pitch grunted and spat blood on the floor ahead of him. "Watch me...or watch them."
He then bared his teeth shining red.
"But who's it gonna be?"
Jack shook his head. He shook it until he needed to see something else to...to...
He looked up at the sky but it made him sick; he turn left again, catching North and others in their petrified states.
He landed back to Tooth–
0:26
Tooth lifted her head.
She saw the outlines of his body, and his face, in the pink-white spectrum land on her. The white circles where his blue eyes were were looking straight into hers.
Her unnatural heart rate increased at the sight – and suddenly something in her skin jolted, with a fear she couldn't place.
"J...Jack..."
The others looked at her confused, but Tooth was already shaking her head.
He wasn't listening.
He couldn't undo himself from...
Her eyes were blank like pink canvasses and her cheeks, the soft and flawless ones he loved to run his knuckles over, were painted with dark lines like cracks in a road.
And he couldn't erase it.
The wind picked and the snowflakes churned harder.
Jack's eyebrows creased together.
But Tooth couldn't believe what she was thinking...that he might actually be–
"Jack, no..."
Tooth shook her head harder.
"No!"
0:21
0:20
Jack drank it all in, everything about her... Every detail, every inalienable perfection and crooked imperfection until his vision flickered and his hands pricked at his fingertips.
Beep.
Beep.
His adrenaline was spiking, his were fists clenched, and through her vision, she watched them vibrate.
Or...
No.
They were shaking.
"Jack!"
Her sisters looked at him in worry.
"Toothie, is he..." Tuhina looked up at Jack and not wanting him to–
"Tell him no again! M-Make him stay!"
His irises flashed white for a brief moment, nearly blinding her until he shut them tightly. Then he turned himself away from her...
...and was already running for Pitch.
Tooth's iced hair slapped her cheeks as she rushed into a sprint, launching herself from her sisters to go after him.
"NO!"
"Look at me! Tel–How do I find Pitch Black?!"
Aster's E-Lens' were going off.
The wind picked up at 34 mph...65 mph...79 mph...
Jack grinded his teeth and tightened his fists.
Pitch looked up just as a frigid torrent cut across his cheekbone. He put his hands out to stop Jack's tempest but when Jack snapped his wrist–
"Jack!" the Aussie shouted and moved to run too. "Stop!"
The wind knocked Tooth back.
The wind knocked everyone back and formed an impenetrable force field around Pitch and the 24-yr-old, before it blew in a circular tunnel picking up speed.
0:15
0:14
Something in Tooth cracked.
Jack didn't falter.
He quickly curled his left wrist out and dragged it in towards to his right. And as the gene burned in his chest and lighting up his vision, he commanded the North wind to break its funnel and attack him. It listened in their clandestine connection, and with a leap, Jack lifted his light body on the powerful air and aimed straight for Pitch.
The Nightmare King caught him too late through the snow and wind.
Jack made a giant scoop in the air – and the wind hit 90 mph around the two them, lifting stone and broken weapons...
"No!"
0:08
...and the Nightmare's dead corpse - with the bomb, still count-downing in his face. Jack landed on Pitch, pinning the taller man's arms to his chest.
He said nothing.
He forced Pitch's arm around him to latch across his shoulders and caught had ON-X in the crook of his elbow.
His Center flickered as the snowflakes multiplied just as Tooth reached the center of the dome. Jack had dragged Pitch and the Nightmare down, the second his fingers touched the concrete. But by the time she got close enough to the funnel–
0:05
0:04
"Jack! No!"
Jack tucked his chest in close to his knees and with a powerful yell, he tightened his grip on Pitch on the Nightmare trapped all three in his wind.
Tooth raised a hand out him.
"I'M BEGGING YOU!"
But...
0 : 01
...he jumped anyway.
0:00
0:00
0:00
"NOOO!"
The second Tooth blinked, he was a blur in a spiraling wind. Jack's bangs flew in the violent upward surge.
Then, he was gone.
"Ja–A-ahh!"
She fell with another spasm.
"Toothie! Too–"
"I don't want condolence! I want answers–Your callous attitude blinds you, J–"
Vision turning red and a neck stretching upward, Jack saw nothing.
Gravity didn't exist in that moment and his lungs were so hot that he couldn't tell the difference between what was hot and what wasn't.
All he knew was up, racing past the Dome's platforms and mangled ladders.
Jack pushed the wind, sending the powerful whooshing and ice crystals around in a dance, like a vacuum in reverse – and he didn't let go of Pitch and his dead assassin for anything.
His core pulsated energy like a lightning rod, washing down all the negative side-effects of Pitch's earlier sedative and the ELF's adrenaline shot until the only energy he felt was raw and purely his own.
Jack gritted his teeth.
His Center bit his skin under his bodysuit like a pair of fangs, mercilessly dragging its points up and down his body. All his bruises flared with internal cold and his bones pricked like hot needles. It ate him alive.
But he wanted more.
Gulping in the wind, Jack squinted his eyes and flexed his fingers. The North wind whipped tighter around him, giving him more leverage to hold Pitch.
"What are you doing?" Pitch snarled even though his eyes were hellishly wide after realising they were already over 100 feet off the ground...and he knew exactly where they were going.
"Release me!"
Jack said nothing, only feeling more provoked and lighter in his boots.
Something inside him kept waking up the more Pitch's frantic jerks and the wind blew. The skylight grew wide like a mouth with broken jagged glass teeth, ready to spit him out.
Jack gasped.
A second later, a surge of cold touched his heart and icy fingers like the arctic he'd grown to love. It wrapped around his throat, his chest...
Jack narrowed his eyes.
He breathed it in.
"Jack, y–" Pitch protested. "You bloody fool!"
A yell left his lips and with a quick, commanding twist of his foot, the wind kicked under him and sent the three of them rocketing up.
How?
No one could explain – except for the one person who mattered, and who was already shooting through the broken opening of the dome.
And in his exit, Jack's winds split into thousands of tumultuous air pockets and hit the roof of the circular sector full-force.
The three were swept through it instantly.
And except for a dying breeze and a few snowflakes, there was nothing left of Jack, Pitch, or the bomb they'd taken with them.
800 feet.
Beep.
1, 365 feet.
Beep.
1, 732 feet.
Beep.
2, 291 feet.
The open air of the Italian coastline was colder and much more unforgiving but without the dome to protect them, the wind circled around Jack responding to his elemental gene and throwing everything it had at the spy.
Jack welcomed its harsh torrents with flexing fingertips and a hot breath. He didn't blink once in the snow forming rapidly around him. His head was spinning and his energy spiked.
The wind resistance was unwavering.
He looked at across the Naples Bay, nearly a mile away and down below. The waves from the gulf were splashing the sides of the coastline violently.
Pitch's skin bubbled like goose flesh.
In its endless stretch of darkness, the clouds overhead started to drift towards them. Their fluffy ends stretched into ugly shapes and pulled like nothing the Nightmare King had ever seen.
He struggled in a tight mess. His slicked back hair went flying.
Neither had popped eardrums thanks to their earplugs.
"So that's it, eh?" Pitch shouted. "Wanted to give me a first-class seat before you really startedthe show?!"
A dull throb in his mouth spread across his gums. The princess' monstrous features came back like liquid fire, infuriating him. He forced his grip against Jack's.
"Argh!" Jack threw his head back and tried to hit Pitch in the chest. His heart was racing like thunder.
Pitch wouldn't let go, and when he managed to wretch part of his elbow free, he threw Jack off balance. The white-haired GUARDIAN nearly lost his grip with the Nightmare's body.
Beep.
Beep.
"Raargh!"
The terrorist's elbow jerked again and their bodies swayed in opposite directions.
"Stop it!" Jack seethed over the roaring torrents. "You can't break yourself out of this one!"
Pitch pushed against Jack and the gravity of the wind trapping him from behind.
Beep.
Beep.
Pitch's forearms gave a powerful shove into Jack's bodysuit and he struggled for dominance.
"Because no matter what you do, what you pull–"
The snow turned his face red with scratch marks.
"This is my storm, sweetheart. And you're here for the whole trip."
"... Would you like to bet on that?"
And with one more aggressive stunt, Pitch threw his entire chest forward and forced his arms apart. He made Jack lose his hold on both bodies.
"No!"
The wind kept them their close to the point if it almost feeling like flotation but when Jack tried to figure out which body to hang onto, he instinctively snapped his arms in and held onto to the Nightmare's corpse.
Gasping in cold air, he looked back and forth in the constantly changing scenes around him.
Pitch was gone.
He–
Jack's eyebrows flew up instantly.
A surge of black and lethal gold eyes nearly collided into him. At the last possible meter, Pitch's irises turned silver and his teeth were bared.
He pulled his last blade back.
Suddenly, a strip wind tossed itself at him on its own, protecting its winter conduit.
Knocking him back, Jack heard Pitch shout out and hurtled back like a billowing black bat. The knife plummeted back down to the earth.
Jack's heart was pounding like a sledgehammer. But when Pitch didn't descend back to earth and Jack realized as Pitch rode the circling back to him, that they really were trapped.
Jack snapped his wrist down and sent another band of cold air to show him down enough to get out of the way.
The north wind past through Pitch and kept going...
And going...
Unbeknownst to the spy, his thin slice of cold wind headed straight for a stationary warm front drifting lazily above the Naples coastline around them. Its wavelengths were gentle and heading east but the second the cold ribbon slashed through a part of it–
"Pitch!" Jack shouted. He gripped the Nightmare like the heaviest buoy he'd ever held, it tried to drag him down but the red light under the face cover made his blood boil. He failed to notice to shift in the atmosphere as the front boundary was disturbed and spread.
Jack narrowed his eyes in the uprising.
"Pi–"
He gasped when Pitch knocked into him from behind. Jack tried to catch his arm.
But the two separated again. Meanwhile the winds were getting colder...getting stronger...
Beep.
...
Beep.
"Tooth! TOOTH!"
"I'm...I–" She threw a hand to her chest in the wind – four minutes had to be over. Yet it was still beating...but also going way too fast to be normal.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
"Still here!" she gaped. "H'...But I–"
"главный!" an ELF cried to the chief over the complink. "S.O.S!"
"What?"
"Th-The sky! It is–"
Aster looked up.
"Sandy!"
The SANDMAN (who'd finally come down from the platform he'd been fighting Nightmares off) dropped beside the closer GUARDIAN. The two pressed their earpieces urgently.
"What, mate? What?"
"Chhzzk–temperature is decreasing on the warm front and it's destabilizing! Chzzz–weather satellite imagery and baroclinic variations are drastically changing, repeat! Rshhzzzz–boundary is...Jesus Chriscchzz–air pressure levels are tilting westward fast and...the directional flow i-is somehow changing patterns, it's...its turning south!"
"Eh?"
Sandy tossed him an extra pair of his own creation E-Lenses and the 27-yr-old shoved them on quickly while the shorter GUARDIAN put on his own. Aster narrowed his forest, green eyes up through the skylight again and watched as the readouts on the visor suddenly alerted to an increase in the PW and atmospheric pressure.
His thick eyebrows shot up.
"...Jack?"
A loud, blustery whistle in the air seemed to answer him back.
"Chzzz–'s moving! The Q-Vectors are indicating that a vertical motion is beginning to form because s-some unknown cold disturbance created a warm advection and it...it's moving upward!"
And that meant that Jack was only going to go higher.
"No, mate!" Aster cried. "N–"
Suddenly, a rumble went off in the sky and his E-lens beeped manically.
Something was coming down.
"Gerhu abuurfa!" Phil cried and North whirled back around.
"Is tail wind! Tail wind!" he translated and the huge surge of wind hit the corroded top of the dome and came through the rest of the open way.
"EVERYONE MO–"
Extra glass and a surplus breeze came down hard in instant, and through their skin-tight uniforms and thin layer of clothes, everybody shivered violently and bent to avoid the force of the cold.
In their dismal states, an ELF fired at an ON-X quickly. He got him in a headshot.
The remaining one fired back – he died five seconds later.
The Nightmares fell back, completely apathetic to Pitch's departure and the fucked up disaster around them.
"Idti!" one cried. "пойдем!"
The remaining goons tore haphazardly out of the Dome. They were still unaware of what the ELFs were freaking out about but decided to save themselves. Sprinting across the dead bodies and debris, they jumped over Aster's crater and vanished through the massive doors.
Linae spun and glared at them.
"That's right, y'goddamn cowards," she spat, "disappear like you always do and go hide back under your bed!"
Dean glared at them too.
"Red, y–"
"WATCH OUT! WATC–"
FWWWOOOM!
Without warning, another piece of the developing cyclonic wind hit the ground hard like a shockwave. The sheer strength of it sent blades and broken cords flying while the rocks and dust surged up. It was like someone had sneezed. And when it barreled for North and the rest, Tooth's four remaining sisters ran back together before it hit.
The dust blew into their faces and when a fleck of dirt hit Baby Tooth's turquoise–
"Ahhh!"
White spots erupted in her vision.
She screamed again.
Beep.
...
Beep.
3, 771 feet.
Jack screamed back, back at Pitch. The tiny ice crystals kept growing, becoming sharp as hail pellets.
"Come back here, Pi–"
–WHACK!
Jack let out a shout of pain. His muscles tightened in response.
The snatched Pitch away again, but the man's palm grabbing his pale wrist had already done its damage. A dark memory erupted from the electrical spark of their genes and Jack saw the tunnel again. He saw bodies on the floor, and his old life as a criminal.
"Tick tock...tick tock!"
Jack's wild hair turned wilder, tossing around in sixteen directions.
As the temperature of the front and the air pressure began to decrease, the chaos around Jack and his personal demon continued to travel upward. The winds were getting colder and the more Pitch was able to fly in and take a grab at Jack then fly back out again, the more the two realized that something around them was developing.
The snow circulated tighter and as much as Jack wished it wouldn't, nothing fuelled his heart more, or gave his rage a conduit to channel his energy into.
"If I wasn't holding this corpse, I'd rip your throat out!" Jack sn–
"Hahaha! Come on, boys!"
Jack shut his eyes.
"Ahhh!"
"Go ahead!"
Pitch reappeared.
"Try!"
He left a sweeping groove of his gene under the GUARDIAN's jaw.
"You think this storm will stop me?! Look who's having all the fun! So give me something to actually fear, Jack!"
"You're already afraid," Jack coughed and narrowly swooped out of the way when Pitch tried to reach for his face again. The sight of the grey hand, free of any leather protective bounds made Jack's hair rise on the back of his neck.
He narrowed his eyes.
"You don't have your asset! You don't have your operation! You don't even have your base anymore!"
Pitch turned in the upward winds again and faced him. For one fleeting minute though, a terrible shiver ripped up his skin from his toes to his chest, and that familiar throbbing from the cold bit at the tips of his ears, turning them red. But Jack would always be immune to the cold.
Or at least, a little longer than he or anyone could.
And as a dealer, Pitch couldn't stand those odds.
Jack saw the brief halt.
He gripped the Nightmare tighter.
"And you see this bomb?!" he taunted. "It's everything you worked so hard to make perfect, and it will be...You lose!You lose everything!"
"And it doesn't matter anymore!"
"What?"
"Because!" Pitch repeated.
Jack made the wind guide him into a spin and turned to face the mastermind. Both their hairstyles were unkempt and flying up like lightning rods.
He gritted his teeth.
"Because what?"
"Because...I still have you!"
Then the two rushed at the center.
Meeting at the newly-created eye of the spiraling clouds, they collided in a heavy fight with Pitch (brute force but lacking balance in the air) and Jack (flexibly mobile but carrying the 6'1 dead body-implanted bomb) attacked as best as they could at each other.
Jack blocked several punches and Pitch dodged a few well-deserved kicks before the two out flew each other in a game of Kill Tag. The stakes felt higher than ever with one person knowing that a right knock to the head would send them whisked away in the upward winds.
Jack was furious, and the storm only continued to reflect that – but he knew it would get worse than it already was.
"JACK! WHERE ARE YOU?!"
"Okay, who wants to do die tonight? (Jack smirked) And answer wisely because I think the Five-O will be here any minute to kick my–"
"Arrghh!"
His head pulled back and he growled viciously as Pitch's fingernails grazed the skin softly on his forearms – Jack suddenly regretted pushing up his sleeves more than he'd ever felt.
"H-Help us escape too, Jack! Yo–here's the fun in that, fellas? You gotta–alifornia Folsom State Prison is still looking f–"
"Look at you!" Pitch called in the small pocket of the storm's eye, feeling the temperature drop inject his bones with frigidity but not showing it. His coat billowed like shadows behind him.
"Even after all those nights ago and still, haha look where you find yourself! Who you are with!"
'W-Wind speed: 104 mph...temperature drop a-al-almost –18 °C...air pressure–'
"After rejecting my offer, we've come full circle haven't we? You've joined me!"
"Fuck you!"
"YOU'VE JOINED ME! Cold and dark forever, eh Jack? Hahaha!"
Pitch's discernible laugh carried all the way across the eye to Jack's ears.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
'The positives, Jack! The posi–"
But what were they?!
The only positive he could think was that Pitch was no longer down there harming everyone he cared about – that was his only saving grace.
Jack even looked down to confirm it, feeling his bangs slap his eyes before they tossed themselves back up.
He nearly jumped in his own skin.
The surface had to be at least 5,000 feet away, it was like...like standing at one end of the San Francisco suspension bridge and seeing the other side in only a little detail. The dome's broken-through skylight looked like a cracked eye staring back at him–
"Count backwards from ten for us...heh, in Russian Jack. Come on! Co–"
He tried to blink out the snowflakes. That's when he realized–
"A low...it's a cold-core l–"
"Jack, stop it! STOP IT! HE'S ALREADY DEA–"
"AHH!"
Images of blood and syringes submerged his brain in feelings he couldn't shake off, and burns impossible to explain in the storm around him. They went through his head and out of his chest like a burning piece of coal.
Pitch reappeared and grabbed onto him, his fingers stiff and frost-bitten.
"What's the matter, Jack!" he mocked angrily. "Where's the bite with all that all bark!?"
Jack screamed and tried to tear himself away.
Pitch glared at him then ripped himself away and let the winds hide his dark figure to prepare for another respawn. And for a brief moment, he heard the bomb again in the drowning panic.
Jack gritted his teeth.
Beep.
...
Beep.
Tooth gritted hers.
Her neck started to strain from looking up through the broken glass. Jack was just a white speck in the sea of pink, and she couldn't even tell if the speck was a speck or just a blob.
She balled her fists.
"Jack, you idiot!" Tooth screamed. The hairs close to the crown of her head ruffled gently by themselves again.
"You weren't supposed to...You shouldn't ha–This was my moment! Not–Argh, stop it!"
Blinking and squeezing her eyes shut, her pink-infrared vision started to sting again.
Her forehead was searing too.
Not to mention her fingers.
"Not again!"
Tooth rubbed her eyelids, afraid that with each grind she was upsetting the mutation more.
But she needed to watch the skylight!
No! She needed to run!
No! She–
And dammit, why wouldn't the burning stop?!
'...Wait!'
Tooth stopped rubbing.
Burning...
Burning...?
Her lip quivered.
No, her body parts weren't getting hot...
It was frostbite.
She was getting colder.
In fact, everything felt colder...the world felt colder.
"What the h..." Tooth tried rubbing her arms for warmth. "What's happening now?!"
She refused to fall down, or cry, or any of that shit anymore!
'But you'd think being Jack the freakin' Ice Man all the time that I'd...This is just sad!"
Everything about Toothiana felt numb. Her limbs felt all prickly from being poked with sharp needles but the nerves in her limbs felt like they were wrapped in gauze so she couldn't feel her fingers move.
'But what everyone? What about the–'
Beep.
Beep.
Without warning, her goosebumps turned into a skin flush.
Tooth's eyes grew wide with fear.
She bit down on her tongue.
Beep.
Beep.
She felt sick.
Immediately nauseated and flustered by everything around her...it had to be the gene. It had to be!
The snow made her sad, the concrete under her boots made angry, the sound of everyone yelling and the way she felt in her own skin made want to... All the emotions had basically just mashed themselves into one, ugly little ball and purposely shoved itself down her throat.
"G-Hh!"
She grabbed for the front of her turtleneck.
Suddenly, words she'd remembered being said, conversations she translated... Tooth couldn't get them out of her head.
"Stå op...Sta–ฮึดสู้ต่อ...ฮึดสู้ต่อ...keep fighting, keep–"
She clutched the place over her heart.
Beep.
...
Beep.
6, 508 feet.
Jack clutched the front of the ON-X's elite Nightmare uniform, right over the spot where his heart used to beat. The dark red left behind from Jack's merciless slash was painting it black.
In the dropping temperature, the blood hardened with a thin layer of ice – almost everything did.
Jack shook his head, casting away all the ice crystals on his eyelashes and the top of his uniform. He couldn't search for Pitch if his vision was impaired.
Without it, Jack was still good at sensing others and finding clues in the darkness – but never to this magnitude, never. Not from every day spent as a wanted criminal or as a (to put it blatantly) mutational spy could he ever remember experiencing his Center to such a magnitude.
He exhaled ruthlessly. The warm puff of air get was snatched by the wind in a millisecond.
Then again, he had never encountered someone he had so much raging emotion for. But he'd be damned if he–
"K-Kutti ka bacha–he's back...J-Jack is–You miss me?"
Pitch's dark, lilting snicker ripped through the winds' howling for a fraction of a moment...
It vanished.
Jack's breathing grew erratic. He felt like he'd been hit in the back of the head with a sledgehammer.
'Come on, Jack. Fight it! Fight it!'
Pitch couldn't win. He couldn't. Not after every level of hell he'd watched the man unleash through his gene and through his cruelty.
And still–
"I can see your fear, Jack!"
Jack instinctively bent his head, afraid to be touched again and felt his muscles clench in his anxiety.
"And really," Pitch shouted in the wind, "even at this altitude!"
Jack bit down on his molars. He kept his eyes forcibly open but his head stayed down.
Pitch's twisted smile came back on his face despite his coat all damp and frozen in the frigid atmosphere. The hell with hypothermia and amputations – he'd be better off.
"You bring me up here, with all the power you have unleashed and yet, I still win to an extent!"
Jack's eyebrows flew up.
"Shut up!"
His eyes flickered with a lighter blue.
Pitch couldn't properly distinguish from memory.
"What's the matter, Jack! Come and get me!"
"I said shut up!"
And in a violent push, the cyclonic winds surrounding the two of them sent a mighty strip behind Jack and tossed him into the English terrorist. Jack gripped the front of Pitch's coat so tight that the moisture in the low air pressure system formed an eruption of frost across the Pitch's front.
Suddenly, a whistle of turbulence went off.
Pitch lifted his head from Jack's grip and looked around.
The altitude was much higher than 2 kilometres – he could tell in the lack of oxygen entering his frigid lungs. But the winds were quickly churning harder and the howling, the roaring,was anything but a natural occurrence...it sounded like a beast swallowing two men whole. And in the indiscernible landscape of the Italian city below, Pitch felt it.
The cold.
Like liquid nitrogen, Jack's powers coursed through him like a river seizing all his mobility in an instant and searing every extremity with force. The man's body shivered in response.
If death had a sensation, he knew Jack tied him for it because for every GUARDIAN he'd known, and every agent he'd destroyed with own hands, Jack's center had no parallel in destruction.
The condensation in the clouds was starting to swirl in towards them like a black hole. Fixed by gravity and the churning of Jack's gene, the clouds rose up in a circular pattern to catch the GUARDIAN and the low density of pressure surrounding him.
And while Jack didn't see it, he did feel it.
He felt his north winds, the powerful string of Westerlies carrying the clouds on their backs to him. He could almost taste the warm air mass being eaten like a piranha devouring its meat, consumed by the cold front cold until there was nothing left... He even felt his heart beat increase, his blood pressure rise, with every kilometer the vorticity of the cyclone was making.
And when the clouds themselves started to transform, leaving behind their fluffy, dotted shapes and morphing into clouds the sizes of building, churning enough electrons to handle any wind force and stronger than any gusts or hailstorm he could create on his storm...
Jack made one quick glance at the towering cumulonimbus clouds than back at Pitch.
The hurricane speed wind had turned his cheeks raw in the nearly –50 °C drop.
Pitch tried to jerk himself away from Jack as hard as he could.
The spy turned lethal.
"What's the matter? ...You've never seen an arctic hurricane before?"
Then with a commanding snap, Jack sent them higher into the eye. The snow made their visibility decrease and yet he still kept Pitch in place for another 100 feet.
A shiver rippled across Pitch's chest.
"You may have your storm, Frost!" he hissed. "But I've still got my hands!"
And before Jack could blink, Pitch twisted his body slightly in the tiny pocket of space and spun himself around as hard as he could.
Jack released his grip in a painful shout as he and the bomb-filled Nightmare both turned together.
But when his back was facing the terrorist–
Pitch rushed forward and he moved in to catch Jack...by the grip of his head. With his bare hands, Pitch splayed his palms over Jack's face, trapping him from behind. The winds roared and Pitch's fingertips were turning blue. But as the terrorist dug his nails into Jack's temple, his face was torn with savagery.
"IT'S STILL MY GAME JACK!" Pitch roared. "IT'S STILL MY GAME!"
And without the protection of his gloves, Pitch's center transferred itself through the contact with Jack's skin. It coursed down his cheeks, his neck, his entire body, and all the way up to his head, and into his heart–
"Break his neck, Jack! (His face became unreadable) heh come on, you know yo–SNAP!"
"Ahhhh!"
His scream was enough to rival his own storm.
"Let me go! What did you–W-Wh...LET ME–"
"FIGHT THE FEAR LITTLE MAN, FIGHT IT!" Pitch bellowed. "If I have to die before sunrise, then at least I'll have the pleasure of knowing you suffered right along with me!"
"Aa-ahh! He's too–"
Jack gritted his teeth.
(A whistle was heard) "Where are you?!"
Everything he wanted to forget–
(Jack played with the ends of her hair and whispered behind her) "Psst...Right here."
Everything he wanted to shut out–
(Gurgling sounds–then a caged ring surrounded by cheers) "You're pathetic, Jack! Get up! Ge–AAHHH!"
Everything he wanted to prevent...
"Mm-mm–Shh..." (Jack lifted a finger to his lips so the little girl wouldn't scream) "Don't tell Daddy–"
All at once, something inside Jack cracked the armour around his heart.
It was like being back on the lake again and seeing Emma–
Beep.
Beep.
Jack's body convulsed.
"No! Noo!"
He tried to jerk his head away from Pitch's hands in the unforgiving clutch but the man wouldn't let go. So they flew higher and higher up into the troposphere, disproving laws of science over and over...
Jack's mouth fell open, eyes blurred and gene searing hot–
"STOP IT!"
Beep.
Beep.
The winds grew stronger as the polar low surrounding them started to affect the coastline, the Bay, the entire city, below.
And as eons passed, the countdown was still there.
Beep.
Beep.
But for all the sounds, the whistling...the howling and the shouting, why had it felt like time had slowed down for him?
As things went from bad to worse, Jack's physical, mental, emotional, and dare he say spiritual conditions...they were all deteriorating. Peeling away the best part of him and he was terrified.
He was gasping under his breath like a coward.
Jack, Jack Frost.
He was panic-stricken. He was finding it hard to breathe because he was afraid, not because there was no oxygen or because the situation called for it. If anything, Jack's lungs still had enough cells capable of taking in a regular-sized areola of cold air unlike Pitch could.
But how would he know?
And how could he tell himself that when his heart and his head were in a war that was running out of time?
Beep.
Beep.
"JACK!"
A bead of cold sweat formed under Pitch's hands.
It froze instantly.
He was growing desperate about everything he hadn't done and wasn't finished doing, a petrified that the sinister claws locked over his face had a grip tight enough to twist his neck in – and Pitch probably would have if he wasn't so stiff from the sub-zero drop.
And Jack felt needy, wanting someone to save him from this, from all the past years he'd been suffering...and selfish, thinking about how he'd rather have anyone else with him in this situation over Pitch, even if that meant they were going to die too...and disgusting. He despised himself for thinking that...and vain. Vain, for a fraction of the moment, over how powerful he was actually capable of being. Here, in this moment, having made a natural disaster capable of wiping out half a continent and blowing, freezing to death, everyone if he wanted to. But it was stupid, and arrogant, and repulsive and...
Beep.
Beep.
Depressing.
Then dropping like a star and feeling so bipolar, Jack tensed up.
He tensed up and felt...so...alone.
"What's wrong, Jack?!" Pitch cried.
"W-Wrong–seconds! JACK, Y–re-re–would sooner–"
He suddenly missed everything, everyone, and he wanted to run.
"Where's your sense of fun now?!"
God knows Jack wanted to run.
And a part of him also wanted to die too.
"Over! Ove-Ove–OVERLAND–ulgarian Gendarmeri-HAHAHA!"
Jack shut his eyes.
He bit down on his tongue quickly.
"AAAHAHA–ab-abort! Missi-M–He's got a–"
"J-Jack!? H'I'm so–the words, Είστε όλοι ήρωες–Emma! You–ega-legacy–bene–"
"Aran polmeen–girl would ever want a cold, short, son of a bitch liAAHHH!–Keep MOVI–"Slich!
Everything he'd ever felt insecure about, the horrible qualities he'd beaten himself up over and promised to improve berated him like ash.
"'hat face is supposed to–たは決して諦めない必要があります–wanna take a look at mine–H'O-oh my GOD!"
He felt like he was swallowing the pain and the only thing washing them down was moist, frigid air that wouldn't properly melt in his throat.
Jack choked.
"...And wh-who am I, really? Really?! I'm not your kitten and you're a nobody–ou really think I'd root for someone like–"
And he had no name he could ever really go back to.
And he had an identity crisis and he couldn't be in one spot for long.
And he always thinking about his own safety, always thinking about himself...didn't he?
Hadn't he?
"Don't! N-Not here!–Clinch!–NO!–iodovo anyano–"BANG!
Jack's hand shook.
"Don't worry, Jack!" Pitch yelled. "Haha, no one will ever find out!"
Beep.
Beep.
...
'Everything changed... and it always changes!'
Jack's head twitched slightly in the unforgiving darkness. It was all the black and horribly contortioned with nightmares.
That's when–
"Everything's changed!"
A flicker.
Jack froze.
A flicker of yellow and white.
"Nosotros def–age-ag–group K1-K-K...Everything! (A man rushed at him, and Jack suddenly remembered how to block)–"
He squinted desperately under Pitch's palms.
Beep.
Beep.
His heart nearly turned inside out. There it was again!
Like sunlight.
Like a skip in a movie.
Jack saw the flicker of a good memory in all the bad – he gasped in a breath of air.
His lungs shuddered like his ribs were cracked.
Maybe they wer–
"–at the Gare du Nord terminal late this mor–I've had just about enou–SNAP! You see his eyes–veen gret skrakya, bretyam Fro–Kuch nahin. Nothing. Kuc–like we do everyday."
It was sunny and bright, and was there for only a second...but he saw it.
He saw a wing.
"Show yourself some respect, Jack!" Pitch said. "Die a warrior's death, bloodcurdling screams and all! Where is it, hm?!"
Black.
All black.
Then Jack saw the flicker again. The flicker of yellow and his heart skipped twice.
"Ev-everyd-d–SMACK!–heart rate dropping to 68 bpm...54 bp-p–(Flapping and fl–)"
He saw a beak.
It was the bird again!
'Don't leave! D...D'n...D-Don't leave!'
"Let go! Ja–ck, please! Le-L–Tweet twee–"
And again!
He recognised the little canary but then–
"Ahhhhh–uesta è la nostra missio–YOU F-F–What do you say, Jack? Hmm?! WHAT DO YOU SA–Okay Jack!...Hahaha cheeeese!"
Emma.
Her face was tilting up to his, standing in their parents' hallway like an old film on rewind.
And she was grinning, in all her 8-yr-old perfection and her missing teeth, visible and ready for the camera–
"LOOK WHO'S BACK? JA–J-J...Who're... Y-You're not my brothe...Y-YOU ARE NOT MY BRO–"
"N-N!"
Jack shook his head looking behind Pitch's hands again.
"Ch-Chosen Pr–Pr-Proto–ST-STAY AWAY FROM ME! EMMA, WAIT! EMMA–"
He choked on a scream.
He'd hidden that nightmare away for years until he forgot about it but Pitch had easily pulled it back out and–
"M...N-No I ca–"
'Hang on to the m-m! Y-You...have to you–'
"I'd rather you suffer at the hands of your personal demons than me, Jack!" Pitch spat. "I'd rather you lose everything, consider that pound of flesh!"
Like coins dropping from his hands, Jack desperately tried to reach down with everything he had and scoop them back up. If he didn't, he was afraid he would forget all the good memories entirely.
"And little by little, so do th–"
But he was gasping, choking, feeling it all slip through his fingers–
"Ah-Ahh!"
Jack bent his head forward, every bone in him was telling him to give up and hide. That part of him kept growing, gnawing, in his stomach to let Pitch take everything Jack didn't deserve and end it...and it tore him apart to even think, to even know he was even capable of that defeat in the moment, in all his rage...just as any human was.
"Something to believe in, J–HE'S COMIN–I'll race ya!"
The wind flow jerked sporadically.
Jack reached down again, leaving his breath shaky and hitched.
The wings didn't come back...
...but Emma did.
"I can't...I can't bre–Don't you see what I'm cap–Best big br–ther eve–JUMP! (Then kicked up dirt, so-someone's eyebrow–red sneak–)"
He blinked.
R...Red sneakers?
Suddenly, Jack saw water.
Water...and a boat. Then a railroad track he...he saw the front screen door of his house and a garage...and the headphone on his buddy's ear from highschool, and the stitches in his grandmother's favorite sw–
"When skies are–are always welcome he–wants some hot chocolate?"
"Fight of his short lif–all bets on the skinn–was school, Em?"
And at 7, 103 feet, it made sense.
He let out an involuntary sob.
Sifting through the horror of his now, and looking for the warmth that came from then, Jack gritted his teeth under Pitch's hands.
Beep.
Beep.
"Heey! Look who i–"
Eyes wide, Jack saw himself holding old pencils and flipping a bottle cap.
"Heh, so am I fired yet? Hahaha, you are definitely your father's s–"
He remembered the smell of his old bedroom and what the spaghetti he used to cook tasted like.
"Careful! It's–'ck! Ya gotta come outside and check out the rainbow–"
"Snowcone! Ge-G-et your snowcones here! Who wants to buy a–Jamieee! Hah–"SNAP!
Jack flinched and nearly reeled back into Pitch.
But gunshots kept going off in his ears.
CRICK! "(Someone was choking on) Give me a reason."
They were impaling his heart and reminding him that no matter what, he would never forget the sight of fresh blood spraying a wall.
Or that however his cooking smelt or tasted, he would still inhale car exhaust and be familiar with wet, underground stone because he used to hiding like a rat–
"I love-ve–o-ocaciones la realidad no es lo que importa sino la es-esperanza que tenemos-sos en– SMACK!– quienes creemos–"
The upward vertical motion kept spiraling in a controlled chaos but with Jack's spastic gene fluttering in his DNA, it only grew more violent.
ELF rescue flights continued to monitor it, unaware of Jack and Pitch in the midst of it all. Their body temperatures were so low they were virtually invisible at the center of the Eye.
"Udac–this will always be my home, Gr–One more step–Jack!–'s a bullet through her nec–You wanna know how I'll end up?! JACK–What'll happen to me?!"
"NOO!"
He saw colorful spires and palm trees, and thousand of islanders dancing at the foot of her throne. She sat smiling and beautiful in color as always...and then the world flipped upside down and everything had gone underground.
Dirty, musty, and rust covered with frost.
Criminals were fighting everywhere and terrified out of their minds. And at the top of the stairs in a large chair, he saw himself. In a dark outfit, his fingerless gloves were covering a part of his mouth in deep thought as he watched his world destroy itself.
He was smirking.
Jack was gasping.
Beep.
...
Beep.
And so was Toothiana.
"Chief, what do we do?!"
"Chzzz-–requesting order! North!"
"That storm is...Th-That storm is–"
"Baby Tooth, where do we–there's nowhere to run!"
The ELFs and Tooth's handmaidens freaked nonstop. They were normally ready for anything but the cyclone wasn't anything.
Jack wasn't anything.
"This way!" a female ELF shouted to the girls. "Or there!"
"Move here! Move here!" one of Dean's team members hollered to the other surviving ELFs. "서둘러라!"
"Saan?!"
"Argh, patiha lang bala!" one panicked on the mic in Ilonggo. "Dalagan!"
Tooth was still choking for air. Her head felt like it would burst and her heart wasn't any different. Even a little the pain under her ribs almost made her faint. But when would the peppermint...When would it–
"Zhan zai yi qi, bu yao fen kai!"
She turned and looked over her shoulder.
In a flurry, everyone was running to somebody and eventually, they'd realize that she was pretty far. But she didn't know where to run or who to go to.
Tooth bit her lip.
Not that she really could.
When she tried lifting her feet, something forced them to stay.
But that was fucking ridiculous! Why would she want to stay exactly where she was?!
What could she even do?!
What could she even–
Toothiana stilled.
...What could she even see?
And the princess stopped looking left and right.
She looked up instead.
Beep.
...
Beep.
Jack tilted his head up, trying to get away from Pitch's touches.
"Jack, don't you see!" Pitch snarled as Jack continued to pant wildly under his touch.
"Spies like us, like who we were, we don't get the happy ending!"
BANG!"Whoops–Emma is my little Di–BERDIRI! AHHH!"
"Go away! G-GET OUT OF M–"
"Plague me like–cold and dark-rk, Ja–Is he home ye–ELFs dispatched to your–"
Jack choked shakily under his breath.
There was nothing worse than feeling totally helpless in the moment when he thought he had all control.
He breathed self-control, he loved it.
That's how Jack had functioned for years, getting his own way and being on his own, and now suddenly–
"Don't touch my things, pretty b–OY!"
Jack blinked.
He'd...He'd forgotten about that.
Okay so, in that moment, he wasn't the one in control. But that was still just one instance, and he'd done it for Emma.
So he had never lost his command until Pit–
"Jack, no! Sto–Nyet! Stand down! WH–Not you, boy–am ending this!"
Jack's mouth fell open.
Okay, well...case in point. There was that one time too. And he wasn't too proud to say that he'd give anything to see Aster again–
"Frostbite!"
Or North.
"Jack!"
Or the handmaidens...and okay, Jack would admit that...after meeting them, he'd pretty much vowed right then and there to defend them with his life.
But not just them.
He meant it for everyone. The ELFs, the past GUARDIANs, his assigned foreign diplomats, his family, his friends...
Despite all his nightmares, Jack had promised to protect and watch over.
Because really, that was what he did best, what he was meant for, wasn't it?
"Bugger that, p–It's all guns and roses, eh? Hehe–BANG!–Don't be scared, okay? H-Help him Mr–JACK!"
...and who knew that better than her?
"Just relax, Jack..."
Beep.
Beep.
Suddenly images of Tooth flickered harder against Pitch's gene, frivolously poking through the tangled webs of his own torment.
They were nothing but flashes, just pockets of sounds and weird close-ups he never thought he'd actually appreciate but that he'd locked away in some secret box
It was enough to set his heart on fire.
Dry throat and weary-eyed, Jack inhaled.
But for the first time in a long time, the ice in his muscles...grew stiff in his catatonic awakenings–
"Agent Frost, are yo–An-A–you know I'm gonna make it up to–"
Jack saw her eyelid blink in some golden, unknown light, and he was so close he almost count each eyelash–
"I-I'm gonna d–yway, you–I'll go ask them to bring me up a sp–I-I don't get a lot of things–"BAM!
He saw her fingers, tan and tiny as they always were, tugging on an end of her dark curling hair and twirling it like a nervous butterfly–
"Nairy, how could you–h-h–One dance for me, p–"
He watched her pearly white teeth sneak out from behind her lips and gently bite down on the lower section as she smiled and thought one scatterbrained-mile-a-minute–
"Haha I win! Make him pay or–how close it was...to your heart, I mean–Let it snow, let it snow, let it–Wow..."
He even replayed the way her chest flushed pink when he brought her closer to him in their makeout, loving how excited she got when he helped glue her hips to his–
"Come on, mister! Wi–You are, Jack...Bye, Jack! Don't forget to write me–can get through this...We're so proud of you, honey."
Everything good, everything bad, and suddenly...
Beep.
Jack was panting.
Beep.
His head was pounding, his chest expanding–
"Do you understand?! There is. No. Ending."
He gritted his teeth.
Beep.
"No. "
Jack quickly moved one hand off the Nightmare and forcibly ripped both of Pitch's hands from his eyes. The second they were off and his face was free, the black went away and all the dark thoughts ebbed like seawater and erased like footprints in the sand.
Jack could barely talk, let alone breathe.
He blinked.
Beep.
Beep.
7, 869 feet.
"NO!"
His breath grew short and raspy.
The cold only got worse. But could he even tell? Even sense it?
Jack couldn't distinguish which side was stronger, and he...He'd panic again, he would. He would panic. Unless he chose–
"Fear."
Jack froze.
"Fear, ch–choose...choose love over fear..."
And he'd–
"...choose love over fear...and you'll always win–"
"Ge-G-et you taken ca–Stay close–her essence–YOU CAN'T HAVE HER!"
His eyebrows scrunched together, almost afraid.
Almost.
But if the good memories stayed–
"You did i–Vrrrrm–Just a walk in–over arch everything, everything you feel–"
If they could outplay the bad dreams, all the ones that had tortured him...
...and they would.
"Everything!"
And they did.
Even though at any given moment, Jack was terrified that he'd lose them.
Beep.
Beep.
"–ways mattered, hasn't sh–I know I screwed up!"
He could physically feel the infestation of nightmares leaving his body.
His muscles finally unwound.
"What is this!"
Pitch squeezed Jack's head tighter, trying to encase more the gene but the spy didn't tense up anymore. In fact, he was–
The snowflakes suspended midair for a fraction of a second. The wind ceased.
Pitch's eyebrows flew up.
But when the 24-yr-old turned, the Nightmare King couldn't believe it – the look on that face nearly made the hairs rise on the back on Pitch's long neck.
Jack was the first person ever to break from the fear gene...
...and he never looked so sure.
Beep.
...
Beep.
Tooth's completely blanked out gaze remained skyward. Her pink orbs continued to see the world in pink-white silhouettes.
Still, the possibility of never being able to see properly again for the rest of her life – however long there was left – pretty much decayed her last hopes.
Beep.
Beep.
"The bomb is is still active sir!" an ELF told North. "We can't get a visual in the cyclone but the electronic scanner is still picking up the mechanism's program detonator. W-What do we do?!"
Tooth never stopped looking...but that didn't mean the frown on her face wouldn't deepen.
She blinked several times, still frozen, still mad, still watching. And her heart was still beating wildly, still hurting.
Tooth covered her mouth.
Beep.
Beep.
248 mph.
Beep.
9, 875 feet.
Jack's eyes grew wide. He finally took in the cold-core he had created and the clouds he had summoned.
It nearly sent him over the edge.
The storm was anarchic, sending wind and the ice in various missions to tear his skin off. In its entire calamity though, he was still the cause.
Jack shivered violently. He then glared down and saw Naples.
The eye of the Dome looked like a fractured eyeball, and dark against the navy wash of the morning sky still far away.
And it was so cold.
Jack said nothing and frowned – but Pitch who felt the head motion, who'd said nothing since Jack's breakout, finally looked at the world below too.
His gaunt features darkened and his expression was not fierce...but still serious.
"You see what we leave behind?" Pitch said. It was a dull tone loud enough to carry over the wind, but it did not ring with triumph or emptiness, and for once, Jack was more inclined to listen.
Because who did Pitch have left to talk to?
...All they had was each other.
Beep.
Beep.
"A world that fears, that builds barriers to keep the monsters out," he continued, "they forget the monsters live on from the other side, and then lock those out who tamper with their nature, those who've tried to protect them from it."
"..."
Pitch's face turned hard with malice.
"This is not what I had envisioned."
Jack froze at his words.
Pitch looked down at his wispy white bangs. His face was void of emotion.
"I would've done anything to lead the new generation," he spat. "I would have controlled the criminal world. And this disease we're plagued by would be the least of my worries. "
And when he looked up...in that moment, Jack realized–
"Remember that you are not the only one who has suffered, Jack."
Beep.
Beep.
The wind kept circulating.
The altitude kept getting worse, but Jack–
Jack was frozen.
His face was still tight and serious too.
But his emotions...His...
The clouds turned uglier.
257 mph...268...
Beep.
...
Beep.
Tooth's mouth fell open.
Everyone watched as the clouds following the tail winds, suddenly started to rise and close themselves in.
Tooth's returned pupils shrunk in the terrible magnitude.
Jack's cyclone was entering into a final phase, transforming into an uplifting vortex.
"I can't see him..." she mumbled to no one.
"I can't see him and I...a-and I didn't even–N–!"
Tooth dropped to the floor.
Another wave of nausea came over her and as she coughed on her knees, she tried to throw up on the ground.
She sobbed and shook her head at herself, trying to fight it and pushing a hand to her forehead.
"Tooth?" BT cried when she noticed the princess struggling. "Tooth?!"
Tooth bit her lip as her eyes stung with tears and she blinked them open in the dying yellow lights of the Dome around her. She didn't answer – but Tat couldn't yell anyway.
A loud, thunderous boom echoed outside.
They looked up.
Tooth choked under the pain in her skin.
When she pulled up, her tears dripped down her cheeks – they turned red with blood.
She started to heave in cold gulps of his air.
"J...Jack! Ja...J-JAACK!"
'But why bother, Tooth? Wh...Why bother?!'
She already knew he wasn't coming back.
Beep.
...
Beep.
Jack said nothing.
He heard nothing in the wind but Pitch's words...he felt nothing in the cold sky but his fluttering Center...and he thought of nothing but the future he knew he was leaving behind.
"But I see you."
"Isn't that what we all want, Jack?" Pitch asked again.
Jack's frown turned into a straight line.
Everything seemed to slow down and his vision stopped seeing red.
The urge to kill Pitch was erased and there was nothing but...
Nothing but...
Beep.
"Marks want to be left and the worry, that fear, that surrounds the purpose for our existence...is the only real mutation that exists. Even kings like ourselves, like me...we are human. And I will face it alone."
Jack didn't answer. There was something in Pitch's tone, at the bottom and almost completely insignificant.
Beep.
Beep.
But it made him reach up silently for Pitch's cold but limp hand over his bodysuit.
Beep.
And he gripped it gently.
Beep.
"...You won't."
Beep.
Beep. Beep.
Beep. Beep.
The Nightmare's ticker began to increase in speed, signalling the tamper and the core about the melt around the fusion atoms.
Jack shut his eyes.
He then bent forward a little.
Beep. Beep.
Beep. Beep.
Frost immediately spiraled up his arms and hardened into ice like matching, white tattoos.
He then released one hand, stiff and shaky.
The North winds came spiraling in like a whirlpool while he paused for one, precious second to listen to the storm, to consume the docile peace.
His heart fluttered.
Beep. Beep.
His lips twitched.
And with a deep resigned inhale...Jack snapped his wrist out.
The wind listened.
Beep. Beep.
With every ice crystal, snowflake, and droplet left, they followed Jack and Pitch higher and higher until cold wasn't even a feeling.
290 mph...310 mp–
Beep. Beep.
...
Beep. Beep.
"North! The barometers are going crazy, we...a-and the temperature's dropping fast! We think it's...we think the cyclone is going to be high enough to send the bomb at a safe altitude but–"
"BUERH?" Phil asked.
"But what about–What about Jack?!" Aster snapped. "How's he–"
"I don't...th-the only way to get the bomb high enough is with his wind and if he's holding Pitch, h...H-He said he can do anything but...but he's the one taking it up there! H-He's the only one who can!"
"But if the expansion is still strong," Dean added, "it could still kill us all in the shockwave!"
Tiana covered her mouth when a scream tried to come out.
Beep. Beep.
...
Beep. Beep.
10, 749 feet.
The cyclonic warm air mass was virtually all gone.
Jack's powerful Westerlies had sent the warm front into extinction and as the cyclogenesis only continued, weaving and growing stronger, Jack didn't let his hand drop for one second.
Beep. Beep.
His face was hard, like a statue carved in pure ivory as he twisted his wrist out beside him and Pitch. His gaze was down on the world far below, squinted and unreadable.
Pitch said nothing, did nothing.
Beep. Beep.
He flexed his fingers and the wind tossed them higher.
His fingertips turned blue–
"Au secou–berhenti, jangan berputus asa–"
"Oh my god, who're–Jack, stooooop!"
"I've got you, T–until the sun burns out, I-I–Jack?...'s your match."
Beep. Beep.
...
Beep. Beep.
"I don't know if we're gonna make it!" an ELF screamed.
"Bloody Christ!" Aster looked up frantically. "Jack!"
Tooth looked like she couldn't breathe.
"J..."
Beep. Beep.
"Jack!" North yelled.
Beep. Beep.
"JACK!"
Beep. Beep.
Tatiana wiped her face. "J-Jack! Please don't–"
"JACK!"
Beep. Beep.
She turned to her older sister.
The wind blew her hair back and her tears kept slipping down her cheeks.
But she couldn't look down.
"...JACK!"
She'd never look down again.
"J-JACKSOOOOON!"
And she screamed his name from the bottom of her heart, until she was sure a piece of her soul left with it.
Beep. Beep.
...
Beep. Beep.
12, 103 feet.
Jack closed his eyelids.
The altitude was where the high density pressure returned...which meant little air, little heat...
Little chance.
"I don't deserve HER, or THIS, or–"
He could barely breathe.
"Set! Set kuvre, s-s–Scum of the-th–Ahhh!"
Beep. Beep.
Beep. Beep.
"Mhfffmmm! Pl-Please don't let–I've got you!"
"NO, JA-J–I am a gu–"
Beep. Beep.
Beep. Beep.
"New lif–No no no no!–REACH! FIGHT IT!"
"I DO! I...am."
Beep. Beep.
Jack peeked through his lashes one last time.
Everything was in sync, and every memory was no longer out of place.
Beep. Beep.
He hadn't erased them but for one moment it was almost like they didn't exist. He'd pushed them all away like snow in the wind, to a place that couldn't touch him, couldn't break him.
But he still felt small.
His soul felt tethered to the world below still and he wasn't ready to go.
He wasn't...but he had to be.
Beep. Beep.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
He had no more questions.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
No more doubts about who he was and who he was now.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
And god forbid if he could, he would go back and do everything he wanted to do, say everything he wanted to say.
He exhaled shakily, blowing away the snowflakes.
Jack shut his eyes. But he was a Guardian.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Through and through, and they guarded first. And everything else...
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Something inside Jack immediately plunged into his heart.
The wind hit him full-force, scratching his skin.
Jack pulled his neck up, feeling his Center rushing entirely through his veins like it never had before–
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The ice grew larger to the size of tiny blades, the clouds were so thick that they closed in like claustrophobia–
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Everything was igniting him and putting him out all in one.
His skin set on fire–
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
He threw his head back. Ice erupted and spread across his chest, his throat, and his heart in his release–
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
"AAHHHHHHHH!"
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Beep... Beep... Beep...
Beeeeeep.
Then...
...nothing.
...
A bright flash of white appeared then...
The speed and size of Pitch's fusion bomb lit the sky in the matter of milliseconds.
It sent everyone into a standstill.
No one said a word, looking up afraid and shocked over themselves again and again.
A ring of air blew out in all directions from it, completely shattering Jack's cyclonic vortex and casting the North winds into disarray. The radiation fire formed a mushroom head and burned through the sky with the heat from its core so intensely that it nuked Jack's entire Arctic pressure systems. Incinerating the snow and ice, the cumulonimbus clouds, his cold-core was completely obliterated. In its annihilation, a following shockwave from the chemical blast shot out instantly and traveled in all directions, heading towards the mountains, the troposphere...and the Naples coastline.
Every remaining ELF and Nightmare reacted instantaneously.
As Pitch's men all tried to run and vanish, the ELFs were stuck, looking skyward and unsure of what to do and who to save. Petrov and the other rescue carriers, being the fastest Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets North could ever mass-produce, flew like bats out of hell minutes before the bomb went off. They were all flying safely at lower altitudes, much to Sandy's reassurance.
But as the Nightmares dispersed, the ELFs regrouped and tried to stick together.
"Oh my God!"
"Holmes! Quick, hang on to–"
"Chzzk! Protegê-las foi uma escolha nossa!"
North's agents hooked themselves to anything earthbound (and each other) and watched as the descending ring of wind was coming for the Dome. In a heat, Dean and Linae fired their grapples and wrapped their arms around each other, being the closest of the ELFs while North looked up frantically.
"Z'dhat!"
He and two ELFs rushed in response, practically swooping down to grab Tiana, Tuhina, and Tina. Not sparing a second, Aster grabbed Tatiana and held her tight. Sandy was too small to hold any of them in the coming wind but he pointed urgently across the dome.
Sandy's brown eyes flickered gold and began waving urgently, his strong heart fluttering dark under his suit.
He didn't stop for anything and North soon realised–
"Bunny!" North shouted urgently. "Bunny!"
"TOOTH!"
Aster made one, last heart-palpitating rabbitjump for her and ripped across the–
FOOOM!
The shockwave finally arrived and hit the outer concrete lining of the skylight.
It tore through the ceiling like Jack's hurricane and from the intensity, the wind riding it was very warm and swallowed up all the cold in its wake, heading down and ready to slam the sector.
Tooth spun and saw him land just within sprinting distance. She ran for him and they both threw out their hands.
When she tried opening her mouth to call his name, her blood tears blinded her vision.
"Ast'-G–!"
"Almost there, sheila!"
He shot his hook into a safe patch in the ground and kept running.
"Almost–"
And with one leap of faith, Tooth jumped the little last inches she had–
FWOOOOOM!
The wind sent the broken concrete, discarded weapons, and corpses flying up and apart. The hot air only made the air pressure stronger.
"Edm–"
"Toothie! Ple–"
But it didn't matter...
"N-!"
...when Aster missed her hand.
The hacker and Tatiana were pushed back by the wind but didn't go far thanks to his quick fingers and the strong cable. All the ELFs held on for dear life.
But Tooth went flying back with a scream.
BT threw out a hand.
"TOOTH!"
The speed and force of the wind blew Tooth's tiny body so far she went all the way to the wall–
SMACK!
With an unforgiving sob, Tooth's skull and her entire body shuddered.
Nothing felt the same.
In the dying winds, she slipped immediately to the floor and crumpled on her knees.
Tooth cried horribly when she fell on her back. Her ribcage felt bruised and shattered and she couldn't see straight, tasting blood in her mouth. With a slight gurgle, she sobbed and tried to get up. But after a pain ripped down her tailbone, she couldn't do it anymore and grew tired instantly.
Her cheeks were burning. Her heart was beating too fast for her to get oxygen.
She looked around in a daze as the world started to spin in slow motion and when pulled her eyes up, she was through the skylight again.
The sky had turned orange.
The mushroom head cloud had grown nearly twice its size but–
BOOOOM!
The sound of the bomb finally reached them.
It went off like ten thunderstorms at once, ripping the sound barrier to shreds... wind speed did travel faster than sound.
Her vision turned dark and black splotches started to appear...and something inside her was physically moving.
She ached in ways she'd never felt.
Slowly, her brain started to fall numb and blurring what was real around her. The shockwave from the blast sent a high-pitched ringing through her ears that only reminded her of the tinnitus she'd suffered in Wales.
"Msmmm!...Mmssmm..."
Tooth's body slumped into a broken mess and frozen on the sky in mixed emotions.
A second later, a blurred outline of Aster appeared over her face, blocking out some of the skylight.
His lips were moving.
"Mmmsmm...smm msmm..."
Tooth watched his teeth move to form words and his lips forming strange shapes.
"Stay with me, Tooth!" he urgently cried. "Y-Y'gotta stay with me!"
But she didn't understand, shaking her head, sincere and heartbroken.
And when she looked back up through the skylight, she stilled all together. Two red tears ran down her face...
The sky was still orange.
Aster's hair was still frosted blue with his gene streak of silver but eventually...
Tooth's vision turned red.
Then everything fanned out into black...
...like frost.
Chapter's soundtrack: "Lost" – RED
If you do listen, you have to make it all the way to the very end in order to understand why it was chosen. It was my cousin Adrian's pick (because it gives him goosebumps lol) along with "Final Hour" by X-Ray Dog; not to forget Lauren's shares "117" and "Green and Blue" by Neil Davidge , Crisbel/bente36's choice "Requiem for a Dream" and Taylor's "Swan Song" by Within Temptation. These are a few of the final Jack/Tooth additions, plus dozens more.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the last cliffhanger of the story...?
