Um...so...here's that surprise chapter I mentioned in an AN a while ago. I hope it's entertaining. (You know what, I'm just going to stop writing now, so my rambling can be kept to a minimum.) Chapter title inspired by Dumbledore's line in the first HP book: "...death is but the next great adventure."

XxTMRxX

Chapter 27: The Next Great Adventure

Bunny decided that that he really didn't like the afterlife very much. Actually, he didn't like it at all. The main reason he didn't like it was not related to the fact that he hadn't considered the possibility that he might end up in the afterlife, or even that something existed after life. (He was the Easter Bunny; he had given it some thought.) No, the real reason he disliked the afterlife was due to the other spirit he'd found wandering around the vast empty space—pure white in color and devoid of any geographical features—that made up the afterlife.

"This cannot be happening. I must be dreaming, this can't be the right afterlife. You're here, so this is clearly the wrong one." Bunny, having just arrived to the afterlife he and his unwelcome companion were apparently in, rubbed his eyes with one paw and tried to deny what he was seeing.

"As much as I might have wished you dead in the past, I can't really say I'm glad to see you here." Pitch Black stood in front of the Easter spirit with his arms crossed and a mildly annoyed expression on his face.

"I could say the same." Bunny stated bluntly, reaching over his shoulder for his boomerang only to find that his holster was empty. He clenched his paws into fists as he lowered his arm. Anger coursed through him the longer he stared in disbelief at his enemy.

"Weapons aren't allowed here," Pitch said, noticing Bunny's confusion about his lack of boomerangs.

"Oh yeah? What about a plain old punch to the—" Bunny leapt at the nightmare king, intending to fight him one way or another, only to hit an invisible barrier a foot away from the other spirit.

"That doesn't work either. I should know, I've been here longer than you." Pitch said, before gesturing with one hand at Bunny in a vaguely accusatory manner. "And, if you'd stop trying to attack me for one second, you'd realize that I'm not the same Pitch Black you so dearly want to punch in the face!"

The incredulous expression on Bunny's face might have been comical had either of them been in a happy mood. "There are so many things I don't believe about what you just said that I don't even know where to begin. How about you start by telling me why you're here? And where is 'here' anyway?" Bunny eventually asked, his tone demanding.

"The answer to your first question should be obvious, Aster. I thought you were smarter than that. I mean, how did you end up here?" Pitch smirked at him, taunting him the way he had with all the Guardians for centuries.

"Don't play games with me now, Pitch! I know that you're dead, and I'm dead. I just had my entire purpose in life literally ripped out of me, so I would like some straight answers from you and nothing else. I want to know why I have to be stuck with you of all people in the afterlife!" By that point, Bunny had just about lost all of his patience with the spirit of fear.

"Oh," Pitch's dark golden eyes widened in understanding, which was the last thing Bunny expected to see. "I don't think this is the afterlife. I think it's actually between life and death, a kind of limbo. But that's just my guess."

"And why should I trust anything you have to say?" Bunny snapped.

"You have no reason to, and you don't have to. But neither of us have anything left to lose now. We're literally stuck between life and death. Whether or not you believe me is up to you."

Bunny began to disliked this "Not-Afterlife" even more. "Well for your information, I don't trust you and I never will!" He said, before turning his back on Pitch and beginning to walk away from him into the strange landscape of white light. Before he had even gone a few feet, thick fog began to obscure everything around him.

"It's impossible to get past the mists, I tried that too." Pitch's voice echoed behind him. Bunny rolled his eyes and continued walking.

He hadn't gone far when a piercing wail sounded through the fog, stopping Bunny in his tracks. He folded his ears down against the high-pitched wailing instinctually, but even after the sound faded, it stayed loud in his memory. In the utter silence that followed, Bunny felt an uneasy prickle go up his spine. The longer he stood there, the more he began to sense a new presence in the fog around him.

"Pitch?" He called out, cautiously looking over his shoulder.

There was no answer.

Something shot past his right side with a rush of wind and freezing mist. Bunny didn't see what it was, but it sounded like it was heading in the direction of the former Nightmare King. Bunny groaned. He wanted to figure out what was going on with the strange, featureless limbo between life and death, but that would require him to go back to Pitch, and he would probably end up fighting whatever lived in the fog. Without weapons, of course.

Why couldn't death just be easy?

In the end, Bunny did follow the invisible thing back through the fog. In retrospect, he should have realized that that one decision would change the rest of his not-quite-afterlife.

Pitch had stayed in the exact spot that Bunny left him, the only place in their personal "Not-Afterlife" that was free of the cursed fog. When Bunny finally broke through the fog, he saw trails of mist circling the air around the former spirit of fear, who was lying in the ground unconscious. The invisible things, whatever they were, clearly wanted something from Pitch and Pitch alone.

Bunny found it unnerving to see his usually irrepressible enemy taken down so easily. 'Is this anything like what Tooth saw when she killed Pitch?' The Guardian couldn't help but wonder. And how would he fight the invisible monsters if they tried to attack him? The fog was the only evidence of their movements, and they moved far too quickly to catch.

Bunny was able to get within a few feet of Pitch without being attacked by the ghost-like creatures. The fog around him grew colder, darker and more menacing. For a moment, Bunny thought he heard the sound of Nightmares approaching. Then it became the sound of rolling thunder. The ground felt like it was tilting beneath him and he fought to stop himself from falling into the fog that now looked like billowing black smoke.

'This is not what I thought being dead would be like,' Bunny thought, as the dark fog closed in around him. The invisible things in the fog were getting bolder, whirling around Bunny and trying to intimidate him with their sheer speed and numbers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a young woman appear out of the cold mist next to him. He leapt backwards to get away from her and forced his tired body into fighting stance. He only remembered that his boomerangs were gone after he had already reached for the empty holster on his back.

Bunny watched the woman carefully; he couldn't afford to trust anything or anyone yet in this land of endless fog. She stared back at him with blue eyes that seemed to gaze directly into his soul. Her midnight blue dress was decorated with tiny gems that shone like stars on a clear night, and her hands were cupped around something Bunny couldn't see.

The invisible fog creatures seemed to notice the new arrival then. All of them, including those circling Pitch, rushed toward the woman with the same ear-splitting wails that Bunny had heard earlier.

The woman thrust her hands upward, opening them to reveal a blue crystal blazing with light. The air began to crackle with magical power. Bunny had only a few seconds to crouch down as low to the ground as he could before jagged bolts of frost and blinding light exploded outward from the crystal, blasting the fog and invisible creatures away.

For one moment, Bunny was able to see the creatures for what they were. Hundreds of wolfish, wraith-like animals became visible as the dark fog dissipated. Then the creatures too dissolved into nothing as they were hit one by one by the bolts of frost arcing through the air.

Although slightly confused by the sudden turn of events, Bunny could recall seeing something like this powerful display of magic before, when Jack had frozen Pitch's entire Nightmare army in the sky over Burgess. There had been no blinding explosion of light then, but the glowing bolts of frost were the same. But that couldn't be possible, not unless Jack…but no, the other Guardians wouldn't have let that happen, would they?

When the magical explosion of light faded, Pitch and Bunny were left in the middle of an empty space devoid of anything whatsoever except for the strange all-pervasive white light Bunny had noticed when he first woke up in the "Not-Afterlife". Bunny got to his feet and went to ask the woman—definitely a spirit, but not one he recognized—who she was and what she had just done, only find that she had vanished. In her place stood the translucent, ghostly form of someone Bunny very much recognized.

"Hey Kangaroo," Jack Frost grinned at Bunny, leaning on his trademark staff that looked as ghostly as the spirit himself.

Bunny couldn't keep from gasping at the sight of the spirit of winter. No matter how much he pretended to be annoyed by Jack, he had come to care for him. The Guardian of Hope knew Jack well enough after three years to tell that his current smile was forced, and the manner in which he leaned on his staff was his subtle way of lessening the pain of an injury. As for the staff, Bunny distinctly remembered it breaking apart and falling off the edge of the Grand Canyon. And something was wrong with Jack's eyes; one minute they were their usual striking blue color, and then a few rays of amber would appear around his pupils. The amber rays would slowly grow, and then recede from his eyes completely. Bunny remembered Jack's eyes having appeared that way when Dark had joined Hell.

"Jack?" the Easter spirit asked, already dreading the answer he would receive. "What happened to you?"

A pained expression flickered across Jack's face for a moment before he schooled his features into a look of barely contained anger. It wasn't an expression Bunny had ever seen on the usually fun-loving spirit's face. "I couldn't stop Chaos on my own, and now it will be a lot harder to defeat him." Jack replied.

"What?" Bunny didn't want to believe it was true, even as his heart fell when he heard the name Chaos.

"I'm sorry, Bunny. It was me. Hell and Dark made me open Pandora's Box. They…destroyed hope, they destroyed your Center. If I had just been stronger, resisted them longer—"

"No…" Bunny whispered, his fears now confirmed.

Jack stopped talking altogether, looking away from Bunny. Amber rays still appeared and receded in his eyes.

After a long period of silence, Bunny finally spoke again. "You're wrong about two things," He said, and the lighter tone in his voice made Jack look back at him in surprise. Bunny smiled slightly, trying to let the winter spirit know that he wouldn't blame him for everything he had been forced to do by Hell and Dark.

"What do you mean?" Jack asked.

"It wasn't your fault Jack, and hope wasn't completely destroyed. MiM, Terra, Udaya and Tempus made sure to protect part of my center in MiM's moonstone just before I, well, died."

They were both dead, and although Bunny had no idea how to move on from that while stuck with Pitch Black for eternity, the knowledge that Hope survived was enough to make Jack smile for real.

"I can't remember the last time I saw Tempus and Udaya," The spirit of winter commented.

"When would you have meet Tempus and Udaya? Even I can't remember meeting them in person before now." Bunny was instantly curious.

Jack's eyes, completely blue again, meet his emerald ones, and his smile turned into that mischievous smirk Bunny knew all too well (really, that smirk was famous throughout the immortal spirit world.)

"Oh, you know, back when I was Nightlight," The winter spirit replied casually.

It took a few moments for Bunny to comprehend what Jack had said. "You have got to be kidding me. That's—that's got to be a joke. Ha-ha, very funny."

"My history of telling jokes notwithstanding, I'm actually serious about this," Jack insisted. "I was, and have kind of always been Nightlight. Even when I forgot, and was reborn as Jack Frost."

Of course, that was the moment Pitch decided to wake up.