"Run!" Elsa yelled, dragging him into the next room.
This one was full of adults, who yelled at them for help, but they ignored them and kept running.
"This must be where Frozone went," Jack said as they dashed through the open door and into the tunnel.
"Wait for me!" Peri said, stumbling behind.
"What happened to you?" Elsa asked as Peri jumped on Jack. "It was never a good time to ask."
"Is now any better?" Jack yelled.
"Syndrome took my pixie dust," Peri explained. "Now I can't fly or do magic."
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Yeah, get back to the Pole!"
They had reached the end of the tunnel by this time, and Jack stopped.
"We can't stop now," Elsa hissed. "They could be following us!"
"Yeah, or they could be searching the island for escaping intruders."
"The jungle is huge," Peri said. "We can hide in there."
Quickly, they dashed across the opening and into the dense canopy of the trees. Their pace slowed, but they kept moving forward.
"Where exactly are we going?" Elsa asked breathlessly.
"I'm trying to decide what to do first. Break out Frozone or help Peri get her magic back."
"Guys," Peri whispered. "Don't look now but there is a very weird bird following us. Over your right shoulder, Jack."
Jack spun around and saw a bird with a mechanical eye flying behind them. The bird opened its beak and began to scream alarms.
"Back to the Pole, back to the Pole!" Elsa screamed, starting to run again.
"INTRUDER ALERT, INTRUDER ALERT," blared a loud voice across the entire island.
A minute later, they burst through the trees and onto the beach. Elsa was so scared she didn't stop, just kept running into the water. Jack and Peri, now flying behind her, were surprised to see the water turned to ice at her feet. But there was no time for questions. At that moment, drones began flying from the lair directly at them, firing guns. Elsa zig-zagged across the water, trying to avoid them. Some waves she leaped over. Others were so big she simply crashed through, breaking their momentum and leaving odd rings of ice in her wake.
"WHERE are we running TO?" Elsa demanded as she literally dodged a bullet.
"Crap, the plane blew up," Jack realized.
He shot a blast of ice towards one of the drones and knocked it out, but there were still five more. Groaning in frustration, Elsa built a huge ice bridge, bigger than she'd ever built before, and ran up it, above the drones. Then, she turned on the spot and knocked them all down at once.
"Beat that, Jack Frost," she exclaimed.
"Give me a break, I've got Peri and I was trying to come up with an escape plan."
Shading her eyes, Elsa looked back at the lair. "Where's that humming noise coming from?"
"Planes!" Jack realized. "Keep running!"
Elsa turned but in her haste forgot that she had left the bridge uncompleted. Screaming, she fell towards the water. Jack flew after her while simultaneously reaching in his pocket for a snowglobe. He caught her right as the planes fired missiles.
"South Pole!" Jack yelled, throwing the portal and diving through it.
With a sharp twist, they tumbled into the snow of Antarctica. Groaning, Elsa sat up and glared at Jack.
"What did you say South Pole for? We're supposed to be at the North Pole!"
"Yeah, well I thought I'd confuse them."
"They're not stupid," Peri said.
"Yeah…I realize that now. Sorry. But it doesn't matter. We can just go from here. Wait, where is it?"
"Please tell me that's ice," Elsa said, pointing at the clear shards on the snow.
"Um…" Jack nudged the pieces with his toe carefully. "I think that might be the snowglobe."
"It doesn't just magically reappear in your pocket?" Elsa demanded angrily.
"No, you're supposed to catch it as you go through. But I guess, because we were being chased, I forgot."
"Jack!" the girls yelled in frustration.
"Sorry."
He grinned helplessly. Elsa tried to stay mad at him, but it only lasted all of five seconds. It was, she was discovering, hard to stay mad at Jack Frost, Guardian of Fun.
"Never mind. Where do we go from here? I don't suppose you know your way around Antarctica, do you?"
"I've only been here once before, last time we fought Pitch. But I don't exactly have the whole continent memorized. Either way will get us going in the general direction of the North Pole, though. Come on!"
Reluctantly, Peri climbed on his back again. Grinning, he picked up Elsa by the waist and flew off.
They flew for several hours over blank, endless, never-changing landscape. But then, finally, there was a dramatic change in scenery. Ahead, near a clifftop, a large, twisting spire of blue and black ice rose from the tundra and curved dramatically, like a claw. Jack gasped and set the girls down in front of it.
"What is that?" Peri asked.
"Me," Jack replied. "This is what happened when I fought Pitch here."
Elsa shivered. "It's incredible…and terrifying."
"I know. He tried to convince me to join forces with him."
"What happened?" Peri asked.
"I said no, and he threatened to kill Babytooth unless I handed him my staff."
"You didn't do it?" Elsa said.
"Of course I did. But he didn't let Babytooth go, she freed herself and then Pitch broke my staff in half. My staff is like Peri's pixie dust. All my magic is inside here."
He turned around and started walking towards the cliff. "Pitch used his own magic to throw me down this chasm. I thought I was done for."
"And then?" prompted Elsa, looking over the edge.
"Babytooth gave me my memories back, which gave me the strength to fight on. Down there is where I pieced my staff back together."
"And that's where our ice mysteriously disappeared to?"
"Yep. That's it."
"But what really made it happen?"
"I don't know. Maybe the Moon knew you'd be needed to help defeat Syndrome and Pitch?"
"I don't really care," Peri said wearily. "I just need to get some more pixie dust. It's what keeps me alive."
"Right," Jack remembered. "The good news is I know where we are now. We're pretty close to Bunny's Warren. His tunnels can take us to the Pole almost as fast as the snowglobe."
"How much further?" Peri gasped.
"About two hours, I think. I don't know, it's hard to tell. I'm not used to carrying two extra people."
"Can you hold on that long?" Elsa asked Peri.
Peri shook her head. Elsa tilted her head thoughtfully for a moment; Jack let her think. Then, she lifted Peri back into the piggy-back position and frosted her over.
"Hmm, ice hammock," Jack said. "Not bad."
"What's a hammock?" Elsa asked.
"Considering you don't know what a hammock is, that's brilliant," he amended. "All set, Peri?"
"Yeah," she said, leaning her head against his back.
"Well then. Let's get moving."
Again, he picked Elsa up and began flying.
"I wish I could fly," she grumbled. "This would make it so much easier on all of us. But no, I'm useless at that."
"Yeah, but you can create life out of snow. Nobody else can do that."
"Honestly, I find it all a bit freaky," Elsa confessed. "I mean, where did I get that power from?"
"I don't know. Maybe the Man in the Moon?"
"Is he your answer to everything?"
"That pretty much sums up my life. Do you have any better theories?"
"I've just come to accept that I'll never know," Elsa said.
They flew on in silence.
"How's Peri?" Jack asked after awhile. "She's been very quiet."
Elsa leaned over his shoulder to check. "Still there. She's sleeping."
"I bet she had a pretty nasty experience back there. Whatever Pitch and Syndrome did to take her magic away, I bet it wasn't nice. We'll stay at the Warren tonight to let her rest."
After that, Elsa lost track of time and sunk into a stupor, half awake and half asleep. She barely even noticed flying through the green tunnels up into the Warren until Jack set her down. Suddenly the world started spinning, and her feet felt weak. Unable to support her own wake, she collapsed back into Jack's arms.
"Elsa! What's wrong?" she heard him say.
She tried to answer but her head rolled back and the world started to dim.
"Bunny! Bunny help!" Jack called frantically, his voice fading as the world went out.