From Latin to English, aurora borealis translates to "northern lights" or "northern dawn".
Amasianman-Never fear! There will be more love...but I am saving it for later, for more "desperate" times in a later story of Aurora Borealis.
chacha-Thank you for the nice review! And yea, I wish I could see one too. (I am told that here has been one as far as down here where I live...but, never in my lifetime.) :)
4face-Thanks so much for the reviews and the nice compliment!
Chapter 6: The Northern Lights
Jack Frost had never been so glad to crash-land in a trash bin. Still, that didn't mean he loved the 'trash' part. But the trash bags covered his fear scent and noisy landing from the portal well enough that he thanked it silently for being there at the right time. When he was able to climb out of the bin, he found himself in the alleyway between the Burgess Petroleum station and Concord St. Sera and Baby Tooth were staring at him. "Don't even think about laughing." Jack told them, dead serious. The two mini-fairies didn't.
After taking a minute to brush trash out of his hair, Baby Tooth and Sera quickly darted into his hood or pocket. Holding his arrows so they didn't rattle in the quiver, Jack darted behind a pile of boxes as a squad of nightmares streaked past the alley on the Burgess Petroleum/Main Street side. A battle cry from North sounded out, as well as a lot of slicing sounds.
Knowing full well that while he was in the shadows, Pitch could sense him far more easily than in the light, Jack "hopped" from one darkened patch of ground to another, until he reached the end of the alley. "Sorry about the bumpy ride guys," He whispered to Sera and Baby. A small hand (Sera) patted the back of his neck reassuringly. Jack suddenly had to stop because he ran into something that he hadn't noticed in time. He silently cursed all objects called 'ladders' as he clutched his aching forehead and glared at the painful inanimate object. "I will not punch inanimate objects; I will not punch inanimate objects." Jack silently chanted, remembering the last time an inanimate object hurt him (he still had a few hard feelings toward that wall of ice.)
Baby Tooth poked her head out of his hoodie pocket with a concerned look on her face; Jack did a fake thumbs-up sign. Then he jolted, tripping over his own feet and almost falling face-first into the street lamp's light as he saw Pitch Black himself. The Nightmare King was laughing manically as he went scythe-to-whips with Sandy in the middle of Main St., who (to Jack's amazement) simply smiled his you're-so-going-down smile. Pitch apparently, did not think he was going to. "Losing" wasn't exactly in his vocabulary anymore!
Thinking on the spot, Jack clung to the ladder rungs, pulling his body as close as he could to it as he climbed the ladder. Crouching down, Jack half walked half crawled to the roof's edge and peeked over. He barely avoided a stray whip as it lashed over the top of the building, and quickly ducked back under the 6-inch flat roof barrier. Sera flew out of his hood to hover next to his right ear, followed by Baby Tooth who hovered by his left hand. He looked back at the darkness of the night, and the moon and stars. "Look, I was a Guardian for a reason, and…And you know that while I'm human I can't be one. But-but please, I just know that if I get another chance, if I prove myself, I will be who I was meant to be and I can earn it back!" Jack whispered to MiM. He didn't care anymore that all he got was silence.
Taking the bow off of his shoulder, Jack put the quiver on his back and took an arrow out of it. Within seconds he had it aimed at the boogieman, hoping to stall him; pin him to the ground for maybe a moment. And being Jack Frost, he had to add a little fun and mystery to his slightly crazed and little idiotic heroism. (Getting distracted, he wondered idly to himself if he had some kind of hero-complex.)
Hidden in the nighttime shadows on the roof, Jack gauged that if he could pull it off and he was fast enough, he could shoot Pitch if he stayed in sight and also pull his bow back to remain "the mysterious archer" for a little while longer. Baby Tooth and Sera hid with him after Jack muttered his half-plan to them.
He felt the tension of the fight contained in that one bowstring. He couldn't break it without disaster falling, so the only thing to do was loosen it. The arrow raced through the air like the wind itself, and with barely a 'thump' it hit its target. And the four Guardians wondered where the heck it came from. Jack giggled like a toddler at the Dreamworld theme park in his mind as Pitch yelled in anger, Jack's arrow knocking him into a lamp post. It only grazed his skin and snagged his cloak's collar, but the way Pitch yelled, Jack would've guessed that he had accidentally shot the dark spirit in the heart.
He listened intently, hearing the Guardians talk about the arrow and taunt Pitch as they surrounded him. He heard Pitch clash with them again, and then he heard his name among the insults thrown left, right, up and down. "Yea, right; like Frost will be some almighty Guardian again! After what I did, I wouldn't be surprised if he stopped believing in you guys and forgot about all he'd tried to live for!" Pitch snorted with contempt and scorn, flinging a ball of nightmare-sand at North, who blocked it and ducked as Bunny's two boomerangs soared over his head. Jack felt small spark of anger in him; He would NEVER stop believing! Even if he had to spend the rest of his life a human mortal! He stood up from his crouch, and walked calmly to the roof's edge. He said nothing, and therefore remained hidden as he stood watching the battle, balancing on the edge. Baby Tooth and Sera shared a look, one that said, "How long ago did this stop being a good idea?"
Silently, Jack aimed another arrow, this time at Pitch's feet. That would get the Guardians attention, and Pitch's. Then he released it, and with a satisfying thunk, it sunk into the asphalt next to Pitch's left toes (oh the perks of magically reinforced weapons!) "Like hell I'll stop believing!" He said in the sudden stillness of the battleground. Baby Tooth and Sera hovered at his sides, one near his left arm, and another just above his head. Both were frowning at Pitch Black like there was no tomorrow. He tightened his grip on his bow, making mental note of the telephone wires above him. "A camera would be nice," Jack thought, pulling off his traditional 'Jack Frost Smirk', also known as that smirk as he watched the many faces of shock appear on the Guardian's and Pitch's faces.
With the glint of mischief in his brown eyes, Jack shot another arrow and it hit a nightmare by the 'Burgess Bait and Tackle' shop. Then he leapt off the roof. Using his bow as the handle, he slid down the telephone wire until he was close enough to the ground he could drop without dying. He landed next to a nightmare and kicked out at it. As soon as his foot connected with the 'mare, the dark horse turned back to golden dreamsand. "Of COURSE; I'm a believer now!" Jack told himself. He was just like Jamie and Sophie and all other kids and teens under eighteen!
"Jack?! What the heck! You're human and you have a—why do you have a bow and arrow and you can't fly, so you could've, ya could've just died!" Bunny flipped his lid as Jack spun around and shot an arrow at a stealthy nightmare behind North. Tooth had been staring at him like he was the ghost of Christmas past (and Jack knew from experience that meeting her was worse than the Ghost of Christmas yet to come. He wasn't entirely helpful when it came to the future) but as soon as the arrow exploded the nightmare she called out, "Thanks Jack!" and went back to punching the stuffing out of Pitch's army.
"No duh I can't fly!" Jack replied, angrily punching an oncoming nightmare in the face and turning it into a couple of dreamsand dolphins. He smiled; maybe being a human believer wasn't as bad as he'd thought. Pitch Black was about as shocked as he could possibly get, even after finally freeing himself from Jack's arrow.
"Frost? What are you doing here?" He growled out, tossing another nightmare-sand ball at Bunny, who sidestepped and Sandy sent a dreamsand baseball back at him. Jack sighed, like Pitch was asking a question that had a obvious answer. "I help my friends. What are you doing here?"
Pitch didn't answer. Instead he pressed his army harder and soon the Guardians and Jack Frost were forced into the woods surrounding Burgess. In an afterthought, the Guardians were relieved. They were relieved to hear Jack Frost finally say those simple words, "I help my friends." Not allies, acquaintances, or any common chance-meeting. It had taken three hundred years of loneliness, three years of Guardianship, (seventeen years of a regular mortal life) and a fortnight, but that night, he was, at, last their friend.
No one quite knew how they ended up in the forest from the center of town, but they did. They were all tired, especially Jack. Immortals can go longer without rest, because they have eternity to live. Jack Frost on the other hand, wasn't immortal, he was very much a human and humans tend to get tired (some more easily than others.) The bad thing was that they all knew this.
Chances to win a battle or a war are hard to come by, but when you happen to find one, you just might want to make the very best of it. Tooth was the first to see one. Pitch had glared at Jack and Bunny (who fought back to back) for a few seconds to long, and Tooth was knocked into a pile of snow, Jack's snow, that was left over somehow from weeks prior. When the boogieman turned to leer at her as she stood up with a small shiver, he got a snowball to the face. She heard Jack laugh, and she didn't care that with her minute-made strategy, it could be the last thing she'd ever hear. "Not to self: Don't insult the nightmare king unless you have a painful death wish." She heard Bunny's voice in her head. So naturally, that's what she did.
Two minutes later she was flying through the trees with Sera and Baby not far behind, dodging branches and narrowly missing shadows and nightmares. They were leading the fight away from the innocent town, to the one place the Tooth Fairy could think of: Jack's lake. The minute she was in the center of the lake, she was surrounded and lots of gold/red eyes stared up at her. She was not the hunter now, she was the prey. Pitch Black rode his nightmare Onyx slowly up to her on the frozen lake as she, exhausted, dropped down to the ice. She backed up and skirted they white ice in the center of the lake, only standing on the blue. Her mini fairies darted around her because they had no idea what to do.
"Naïve little fairy." Pitch commented to no one, Onyx disappearing from under him. He glided over, scythe in hand, ready for the first death of a Guardian to be on his hands. "Ah," He thought, "If only it was the Frost child, the loose link, the chink in the armor." He raised his blade and was just about to achieve number five on his list of five wishes, when suddenly he fulfilled his number one wish instead of the fifth.
Jack Frost made no sound and in his mind made a vow that he refused to fall; to crumple in front of his enemy. So the blade of nightmares sliced him, cutting through the fabric of his hoodie to his back as he shoved Tooth across the ice. Pitch Black always stabbed people in the back.
Bunny, North, Sandy and Tooth all felt his pain. Some ancient connection that bound Guardians to believers was revived at that moment; Tooth at the lake, North just reaching the lake's shore and Bunny and Sandy in the forest between Burgess and the Burgess lake all felt the blade in their own way. And all Pitch did, was laugh.
Baby Tooth was the first at his side, Sera the second. Jack glared at Pitch, who watched, waiting for the moment when the pest who called himself a Guardian would be gone. Holding in his gasps of pain, Jack noticed the thin line between safe ice, and the kind that made him drown. "Oh." He whispered.
"Rule Five of the Guardians states that being a Guardian means protecting the children, and the world; sacrifices are part of guarding something that big, as are only killing, maiming or hurting anything only when necessary." Jack told his lake, without even knowing how he'd come by that information. He looked at the blur that was his bow (his quiver was at the edge of the forest). He knew what he had to do, even if he wasn't technically a Guardian of Childhood. Rules or not, this was the right thing to do.
Taking a small step back, his eyes told the Guardians (all four were at the lake now,) and the mini fairies to not follow him. The world was a haze of dreams and reality. He felt the ice begin to crack below his feet, but he had nothing to fear from that because, in the end, he wanted it to happen. With his last abilities and unknown strength, he thrust his bow into the ice.
Jack Frost never thought he would be glad to drown. But this time he was, because even with his eyes closed, he heard the ice split open and nightmare army hit the water. Then, whether it was seconds, minutes or hours later, Jack Frost died.
"You have already proven yourself worthy. I wouldn't have made you a Guardian otherwise."
The exact moment he stopped breathing, the great northern lights raced across the sky and the Moon's light streamed down through the clouds into the pond's watery depths that had served as a grave for too many nameless souls, and one that was named.