Ugh I'm sorry this is ridiculously late and I'm sorry that it's not great, but I had a really hard time working on it (shout out to HeavensLuminousArc for helping me come up with an idea), and I'm tired and just really done with it now so yeah
I hope everyone had a happy Halloween!
Out of Hand
...
Tooth was so tense that she had long since forgone sitting on the edge of her seat and was instead hovering just above it. Beside her, Sandy was wide-eyed, more awake than he rarely ever was. The twitching of Bunny's ears was the only sign of his own unease (and irritation), while North bore an expression that was somewhere between amused, horrified, and incredulous. Jack, however, was more annoyed than anything.
"Are you serious?!" he cried, gesturing widely. "Are you actually stupid?!"
"They can't hear ya, mate," Bunny rolled his eyes.
On the TV, the group of teenagers had decided to split up into two groups. The camera followed one of the groups as they made their way deeper into the overly creepy house, the music picking up with each step they took. They opened the first door they came across, revealing a set of rickety wooden stairs leading downwards, and they decided that was the perfect direction to go.
"Yeah, sure, the basement is the perfect place to go in a horror movie," Jack mumbled. Bunny gave him a look, but it seemed pretty clear that he shared the sentiment.
When the inevitable jump scare revealed itself, Tooth startled so badly she ended up closer to the ceiling than she was to the floor. Bunny and Sandy flinched, and even North seemed a little startled, even though they'd all been expecting it. Jack would never admit it but he'd jumped too – it was a bit hard not to – but the movie was so predictable! It wasn't even decent horror; it was just a compilation of stupidity, jump scares, and gore. Why they were even watching it, he'd never know; it wasn't exactly the sort of thing the Guardians usually invested themselves in. But, then, perhaps they were making an effort because it was Halloween.
It took far longer to reach the end of the movie than Jack would have liked, and when they did he certainly wasn't the only one relieved.
"Can we maybe pick a more family friendly movie next time?" Tooth asked, trying to calm her mini fairies, who hadn't coped well with the scarier parts.
"Yes, I am thinking this is good idea," North agreed.
"And preferably something less predictable," Jack threw in.
"Come, Jack, surely even you were bit frightened."
"Startled, sure, but it's a bit hard to be freaked out by CGI ghosts and Hollywood gore when you've been to as many of Jack-O-Lantern's Halloween parties as I have. And that stuff's real."
"Yeah, but the ones at the party aren't out to get ya," Bunny pointed out.
"Most of them are pretty nice when you get to know them," Jack shrugged, starting towards the door. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go make a snack."
"Make it a healthy one!" Tooth called after him. Jack waved in acknowledgement, but whether it was merely that or an agreement was impossible to tell.
Bunny shook his head. "There's no way he wouldn't get spooked if that cheap-o Hollywood stuff was real."
Sandy suddenly raised his hand, drifting upwards to get the others' attention. The others stared at him as he sped through his thoughts.
"That's a bit mean, don't you think?" Tooth admonished.
"Ah, come on, it's harmless fun," Bunny grinned. "What do ya think, North?"
North stroked his chin in thought. "I think, if we are careful to only give little scare, and not go too far, there is no harm, no? Jack certainly had no trouble making up his mind when Jack-O-Lantern paid us a visit a few years ago."
"There, Tooth, see?"
Tooth heaved a resigned sigh. "Alright," she relented. "But we go easy on him, okay?"
"Do not worry, Toothy," North said. "I have idea!"
...
...
Jack rummaged through North's considerably large freezer in search of ice cream to put with the candy Jamie had given him earlier that night. Tooth would probably have a heart attack, but if he promised to brush well afterwards he could probably get away with it.
It wasn't long before he spotted the tub of vanilla wedged between a turkey and a bag of frozen peas, and he pulled it out, using his heel to shut the door behind him as he turned back to the bench where he'd left his haul. And paused.
Sitting beside the bowl he'd already gotten out was an old fashioned porcelain doll.
"Where'd you come from?" he asked.
The doll, predictably, didn't say anything. Jack side-eyed it as he scooped ice cream into his bowl, and then added an excessive amount of chocolate. When he was satisfied, he picked up the bowl in one hand and reached for the doll with the other, only to find it had somehow moved further down the bench.
Jack stared at it for a long moment. Had he accidentally moved it while he was scooping? Probably. Shrugging the mystery off, he grabbed it and headed back towards the main production centre of the Workshop. One of the elves had probably snatched it from a workstation. He'd just put it back on his way back to the Globe Room.
He didn't see any similar looking dolls on his trip through the Workshop, but there were some ragdolls. Jack placed the porcelain doll with them. The yetis would know where it came from, surely.
"I'm back!" Jack called as he re-entered the Globe Room. His voice trailed off, though, when he realised the other Guardians were no longer there. Probably went for a bathroom break or something, he concluded, flopping back down in his seat and taking a bite of his ice cream.
He almost choked when he looked over to the seat next to him to find the porcelain doll staring at him. Carefully, Jack put his bowl down on the floor, never once taking his eyes off the doll. He was positive he'd left it in the Workshop, so how on Earth had it managed to get all the way here?
Unless...
Testing a theory, Jack turned away to stare absently at the Globe of Belief. After counting to ten in his head, he turned back to the doll. Just as he'd suspected, it had moved. He lowered himself down on the couch in front of it so their eyes were level. It did look like a regular doll – a bit creepy but otherwise ordinary. But looks could be deceiving.
"Is there a spirit hiding in there?" he asked.
The doll said nothing.
"If you're stuck, North'd probably have a better idea of how to get you out than me."
When even this failed to earn him any sort of result, Jack shrugged. "Well let me know if there's anything I can do to help," he said, stooping to reclaim his dessert. When he straightened again, the doll was so close to him it was nearly on top of him, one hand stretched out. Jack stared down at it, brow furrowed. He glanced down to the hand, then to his ice cream, then back to the hand, and finally to the doll's face.
"You want ice cream?" he guessed. Which was fair, because ice cream was great and here Jack was, rudely eating in front of it without bothering to offer it any. And he had found the thing sitting beside his bowl when he'd been getting himself some. "Okay, I'll be right back."
Behind a tapestry on the far side of the room, the Guardians watched Jack leave in frustration.
"I cannot believe idea did not work," North said, disappointed. He'd thought the creepy animated doll would be perfect.
"Nice try, mate," Bunny smirked.
"Okay, I've got one," Tooth piped up. "Give me ten minutes to set it up."
...
...
"Sweet Tooth!"
Jack paused on his trip back towards the Globe Room, bowl of ice cream resting in one hand. Tooth flew towards him from the other end of the room. She seemed a little fidgety but otherwise fine enough that Jack didn't immediately conclude something was wrong.
"Hey, Tooth, what's up?" he smiled at her.
Tooth forcefully looked away from his teeth, shaking her head to stay focused. "Could you do me a favour?"
Jack raised a brow. Tooth normally didn't ask for favours, and even less often from him. "Sure, what is it?"
"Could you run down to the store room and grab a towel or something? Sandy accidentally spilled some eggnog and North wants to clean it up before the elves start licking the floor."
"No problem," Jack reassured her. He glanced down at the ice cream. If he took it with him it'd melt before he got it back to the doll. "Hey, could you take this to the Globe Room? There's a doll on the couch who wanted it."
Tooth accepted the bowl with a strange look on her face. Jack, already riding a draft towards the store room, called back that it was probably better not to ask.
It took only a few seconds and a quick stop to ask for directions to reach the storage closet in the washroom where the towels and linen were kept. The closet, Jack soon discovered, was more like a room, with shelves lining every wall and even some free-standing shelves, though he couldn't see more than what the washroom lights illuminated; he didn't intend to be more than a few seconds and so didn't bother with trying to find a light switch. Who knew they needed so much linen?
Uncertain how big the spill was, Jack settled on just grabbing a couple of different sized towels; if he got too many, well, it was better than too few. The shelf immediately to his left held what looked like an assortment of bed sheets, which North would probably not want to be soaked with eggnog. Jack ventured a little further in, using the glow of his staff to see. Finally, he found some handtowels on one of the free-standing shelves and grabbed the first three off the pile. That would be enough, right?
He turned, ready to fly back to... wherever it was Sandy had spilled the eggnog, but stuttered to a halt when he ran straight into a bed sheet. He quickly took two steps backwards and flew around it – it had probably just slid off the shelf or something. He could come back and put it away properly once the floorboards were no longer at risk of elf mopping.
As the door clicked shut, a small swarm of mini fairies phased through the sheet, chirping in disappointment.
...
...
"Really, Tooth, a floating bed sheet?" Bunny deadpanned.
The fairies had rendezvoused with them in North's office, bearing the news of their failed attempt at spooking Jack; after, of course, they'd created and then cleaned up a spill in the Globe Room. Sandy still wasn't happy about being blamed.
"Have you got a better idea?" Tooth challenged.
"Good old fashioned jump-scare ought to do it," Bunny replied, cracking his knuckles. "Just you watch."
...
...
Jack was on his way back from the washroom, where he'd left the soiled towels with the yetis, when the lights went out. He paused mid-stride, staring up at the ceiling even though he couldn't see anything. Had the globes died? He should probably let someone know so it could get fixed before someone (the elves) got themselves into trouble.
Thankfully, he was close to a stairway that would lead him up to the main part of the Workshop. Resorting to hovering on a draft just above the steps (didn't want to trip or fly into anything), Jack zoomed up a couple of flights in mere seconds.
He rounded the corner of the last flight before the Workshop. Out of seemingly nowhere, something large jumped out from behind the bend, yelling like a banshee. Jack startled badly enough that he dropped down to his feet, but his instincts were already kicking in. With one swing of his staff, he hit the thing full-on, coating it with ice. There was a loud cry and the sound of something falling over the side of the railing, and then silence returned.
Jack leaned on the banister, trying to peer into the dim below to see what he'd hit, but it was too dark to see anything. What the heck had that been? A yeti? He'd have to go check it out after he reported the blackout to North. If it had been a yeti, Jack really hoped it wasn't too badly hurt by his attack.
...
...
Bunny groaned. He was lying on his back on the floor of the lowest level of the Pole, frozen stiff and in a fair deal of pain. That had not gone as planned. It certainly didn't help that his fellow Guardians, after making sure there was no lasting damage, had resorted to teasing him.
"'Just you watch', huh?" Tooth giggled.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Bunny rolled his eyes – one of the few things he could still actually move. "At least he acknowledged my attempt."
"He is proving difficult to scare, no?" North said, stooping to lift Bunny off the ground. It was going to take a little while in front of the fire to thaw him out. Bunny, for his part, didn't protest about being carried too much, eagre as he was to regain feeling in his body.
In the corner of his eye, Bunny saw a flare of gold – Sandy, he suspected.
"Yes, Sandy, I think you have your work cut out for you," North replied to whatever had been said. "You have idea? Then good luck, my friend."
...
...
Once again, there was no one in the Globe Room. Jack frowned to himself as he scanned the space, but apart from the odd elf or two, the other Guardians were nowhere to be seen. Just where had they disappeared to? Ever since the movie had finished they'd been rather hard to track down. How was he supposed to report the broken lights if he had no one to report to? Maybe he should try finding Phil.
As it turned out, Phil was on his break, and Jack's search and the directions he'd been given led him back through the section of the Pole with the light problem. Except the light problem appeared to have been fixed. All the lights were working fine, and it was like they'd never gone off to begin with.
"Hunh," Jack said. Maybe someone had just turned off the light without realising he was in there? Though since when were the lights in the Pole ever turned off? Well, Jack supposed, it didn't really matter anyway; the lights were working and that was that. Which also meant he could now go investigate whatever it was that had jumped out at him.
Jack retraced his steps up the stairwell until he reached the point he was fairly sure the attack had happened. Then, sparing a look downwards, he vaulted over the railing, freefalling until he was just a few metres from the ground and then having the wind soften his landing.
There were a few ice crystals on the floor, but no sign of a body. Whatever it was must have recovered from the blow and run off. Hopefully it was just a yeti and not some sort of monster or they were going to have a problem on their hands. There were no noticeable tracks of ice or footsteps, so he had no way of knowing which way it had gone. Resolving to keep an eye out, Jack let the wind lift him back up to the higher levels of the Workshop.
Or, rather, he would have, if he hadn't spotted something lying on the ground not far off from where he'd spotted the fragments of ice.
Cautiously, Jack descended back down and crept towards it, staff at the ready. It wasn't until he was within a few metres of it that he realised what it was.
"Oh," Jack said, letting his staff drop down to his side. "That's unfortunate."
There was a corpse sprawled across the floorboards. And a fair bit of blood.
"Man, I really hope I wasn't responsible for this," Jack muttered, using the end of his staff to roll the body over. Cause of death didn't look to be gravity, and there wasn't any ice nearby. Not to mention the time of death would have had to have been a while ago from the looks of things, so Jack liked his chances of being innocent.
But that didn't answer the question as to why there was a body here.
There was something... off about this corpse, though. Jack had seen his fair share of dead people at Jack-O's parties (and whenever he'd seen his own reflection, to be perfectly honest), but none of them looked quite as... well, plastic, to put it bluntly. Now suspicious, Jack leaned closer and examined the face. That really didn't look like real flesh.
"Wait a second," he said, nudging the body with his foot. "This is a dummy!" But why would someone leave a fake corpse on the bottom floor of the Workshop? Was it because it was Halloween? Wait, was this what had jumped out at him? Someone trying to scare him, maybe?
Jack shook his head. It was going to take a lot more than a fake corpse to spook him.
...
...
This was getting ridiculous. They'd tried four different things and still the closest Jack had come to getting scared was when he'd whacked Bunny in the face and froze him stiff. Which, by the way, Bunny was still irritated about.
"There's gotta be somethin' we haven't tried," Bunny said, slamming a fist into his hand as he paced back and forth in front of the fire. And maybe he was more seeking revenge for the freezing now than he was about proving a point but still. He paused, ears flicking upright. "I have an idea. Sandy, I'm gonna need to borrow your corpse."
After trying and failing to find any of the Guardians, Jack had eventually decided to just give up and wait in the Globe Room. Surely they would turn up eventually. His theory proved itself correct when, barely five minutes after he'd sat down (and noticed that the doll was gone – ice cream untouched), the door opened and Bunny stuck his head into the room.
"Where have you been?" Jack asked, tilting his head over the back of the couch.
"Never mind that, mate. Got somethin' to show ya," Bunny replied, gesturing for Jack to follow before ducking back out of view.
Jack raised an inquisitive brow as he pushed himself back to his feet and followed.
The 'something' turned out to be a wardrobe in one of the guestrooms. The other Guardians were already waiting there, and they smiled warmly when Jack and Bunny entered. Jack, however, struggled to make sense of what he was seeing.
"This is where you guys have been? Staring at a wardrobe?" he asked incredulously.
"It's not just a wardrobe, mate," Bunny smirked. He walked over to it and opened one of the doors. "Stand in it and see for yourself."
Jack eyed the wardrobe warily. It looked pretty cramped with all those coats. Not to mention ordinary. "Um, no thanks."
Bunny rolled his eyes. "It's not gonna bite ya," he said, stepping in between a couple of coats to prove his point.
"Why do you even want me to? What's so special about a wardrobe?"
Bunny stepped out and gestured to the wardrobe in question. "See for yourself."
Uncomfortable and suspicious but curious nonetheless, Jack slowly made his way over to the wardrobe. He paused just in front of it and cast a look back at the Guardians, who nodded back at him reassuringly. Then, mentally shrugging, he stepped inside.
Nothing happened. "I don't see wh–"
His words caught in his throat as his staff was suddenly snatched from his hand and the wardrobe door slammed shut. Something heavy and humanoid shaped fell on him, along with several smaller things but Jack barely noticed, too busy banging on the door.
"Okay, very funny, let me out!" he called, shoving what he quickly realised was the fake corpse from earlier off to the side (that answered that mystery, then). When there was no immediate response, he pounded on the door a little louder. "Bunny! Seriously, let me out!"
Could they even hear him? Were they even still there? Jack, feeling panic starting to bubble up in his chest, rammed his shoulder into the door. It didn't budge. He tried to take a step back but was immediately met with a wall of coats and the back of the wardrobe. He was trapped in a small wooden box in the dark. With a (fake) corpse.
Was this what it was like to be in a coffin?
Jack regretted the thought as soon as it crossed his mind. His attempts at freeing himself increased in fervour, until he couldn't even hear his own voice practically begging them to let him out over the sound of his fists slamming against the wood.
"Alright, mate, calm down!" Bunny's voice reached him and Jack immediately stilled, breathing heavily. There was a few muffled sounds and the door jolted as Bunny tugged on it, but it otherwise remained shut. There were a few more attempts before Bunny, it seemed, gave up. "Jack, I think ya might've frozen it shut," came Bunny's hesitant voice.
Oh, god, he was going to be trapped in there until it thawed. And, with him so close to it, that could take hours, if it even melted at all.
"Do not worry, Jack," North said. "We will get you out."
"Why the heck did you decide it would be a good idea to trap me in here at all?!" Jack yelled back, letting his fist hit the door again, this time in frustration.
"We were trying to scare ya," Bunny confessed. "Ya said ya weren't scared of cheap tricks and we wanted to prove ya wrong."
"Well mission successful!" Jack bit out. He could feel himself shaking. "I'm really not okay in here!"
There was a dull popping sound, and the next thing Jack knew, there was a warm, small body pressed against the side of his neck. The owner of said body chirped up at him reassuringly.
"Baby Tooth?" Jack asked quietly.
The was an affirming twitter and Jack let out a relieved breath. It wasn't quite so bad with her there to ground him, but he was still far from comfortable and he was definitely not calm.
"Get as far away from door as you can, Jack," North instructed.
One hand absently stroking Baby Tooth, Jack moved until his back was pressed against the opposite side of the wardrobe. The door shuddered violently and the wood groaned under stress. Then, barely a second later, the hinges snapped and the whole door fell forwards, where it clattered loudly against the floor, revealing North wielding a crowbar on the other side.
Jack didn't dawdle. Light had barely filtered into the small space before he leapt out, one hand pressed to his chest as he snatched his staff from Sandy. Small plastic spiders covered in frost tumbled from his clothes.
"Never do that again," he growled, brushing off the ones that still clung to him.
"We're sorry, Jack," Tooth said sadly. The others nodded in solemn agreement. "We didn't mean for it to get so out of hand."
Jack nodded, too. It was obvious they were sincere. But he was still running on adrenaline. "I'm gonna... go get some air. I'll be back," he said, taking relief from the wind that picked up around him and carried him out through the hallways. He'd come back when he no longer felt like he was suffocating.
Guest Review Responses:
StarG4zer: Thank you! :3 For the most part, my updating schedule is non-existent, but if you're interested to know if I have any idea when the enxt one will be, or if there are any RL things that are gonna make an update delayed, check my profile; I post status updates there
Guest: Haha I'm glad you enjoy this fic enough to get that sort of reaction XD