Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians

Chapter 4: Tea Time

Jack shifted awkwardly as he and Bunnymund stood outside the alley. He sighed and leaned against his staff for support as his head tried to sort through all the memories that had suddenly been dumped on him. Choosing to dwell on them later, he turned to the rabbit next to him.

"So what do we do now?" he asked, trying to put life into his voice, though his words fell flat in the dead silence. Bunnymund seemed to shake off whatever past experiences he was reliving and turned to face the ice spirit.

"Guess we go to England," he said with a shrug. The rabbit tapped his foot on the ground twice and opened up his tunnel system before grabbing Jack's hoodie and dragging him through it.

"What about Hal?" Jack asked as they whizzed through the mossy tunnels.

"What about him?" Bunnymund replied.

"He still has the memories!"

"Once we rescue the others, we can confront that sorry excuse for a Guardian." Soon after their short exchange, they popped out of the tunnels in the middle of an alley. Jack looked around to see the brick walls and groaned.

"I'm sick of alleys," he muttered under his breath.

Bunnymund snorted. "If you want to pop out in the middle of a busy street, be my guest."

Jack decided not to respond to that and instead stepped out of the alley to glance around. "So where are we even looking?" he asked, watching the London Eye spin around slowly.

"Heck if I know, mate." Bunnymund shrugged. "The tracking device we have is for Hal and he's probably still in Reaper's alley. My guess is the April Fool is hanging out in his realm as well."

Jack grabbed his staff excitedly. "Well, then we can just go to his realm then, right?"

"Hold on, mate," Bunnymund said, grabbing Jack by the back of his hoodie before he could fly off. "The April Fool is kind of like Hal. His realm exists in kind of a pocket dimension, separate from this world. You can't enter unless you're invited or, in Hal's case, unless you know the password."

Jack rolled his eyes and blew a stray strand of white hair out of his face. "Well what now? Walk around until we fall into another dimension?" He saw a sheepish look on the rabbit's face. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," he muttered. "That was seriously what we're going to do?!"

"Well, unless you have a better idea," Bunnymund growled.

"Maybe we can reason this out…" Jack said. "I was thinking-"

"You deserve an award," the rabbit muttered, cutting him off. Jack shot him a glare.

"Like I was saying, I was thinking that since Hal's realm showed up in a place that reflected his personality, wouldn't the April Fool's be the same?"

"There's only one flaw with your plan, mate. None of the Guardians know what his realm looks like, as he never invited us there when he was a Guardian. The only information we got out of him about his realm is that he said it was always moving," Bunnymund stated.

"Always moving?" Jack asked, confused. "Is that even possible?"

The Easter Bunny shrugged. "I don't know, mate. The Fool was always a little off in the head."

~~~~~Five hours later~~~~~

"Are we lost?" Jack asked gazing around to see nondescript buildings and streets.

"I know exactly where we are," Bunnymund replied, sniffing the air.

"So… we're lost."

"…" Jack took the rabbit's lack of reply as an affirmation of his suspicions. He ran a hand through his hair.

"What if Hal was just messing with us and the others are on the other side of the world?" Jack questioned.

"I don't know," Bunnymund answered sheepishly. Jack sighed in defeat and leaned against a building while tightly gripping his staff. Bunnymund hopped down the street to look into yet another alley and Jack shook his head before turning his gaze towards the sky.

"We are never going to find this place," he muttered under his breath as gray clouds floated across his field of vision. Suddenly, he saw a bright red speck in the sky, clearly standing out against the gray background. Jack squinted and saw that the object was getting larger and closer. He glanced away from the mysterious object to try and get the Easter Bunny's attention.

"Yo, Bunny!" he called to the rabbit, who took no notice of him. The object was getting larger at an alarming rate. "Bunny!" Jack yelled, waving his arms, to no avail. By now, the object was about 20 seconds away. Jack rolled his eyes and decided to pull out all the stops. "YO! KANGAROO!"

That got his attention. Bunnymund whirled around, anger clearly visible on his features, just in time to see the object land about 10 feet away from where Jack was standing, crashing through the pavement and creating a good sized crater. Bunnymund was over there in one bound and whipped out his boomerangs. "What the devil is that?" he asked, pointing at the large red object lying in the rubble.

"I don't know," Jack responded, leveling his staff in the object's direction. The two approached the object slowly and finally they were close enough to see it was a large red metal orb, smoking slightly from impact. Jack glanced at the rabbit to his left. "5 bucks says something nasty happens in the next 10 minutes."

"I agree with you there," Bunnymund replied.

"Should we touch it?"

"I don't-" was all the Easter Bunny managed to say before the orb split apart down the middle like a giant fortune cookie. It spewed a nasty smoke that smelled like rotten eggs. "Crikey," Bunnymund gagged, eyes watering. "Who the devil would do that?" He clutched at his sensitive nose.

"I'd hate to have your sense of smell right now," Jack muttered, pinching his own nose shut. One hand over his nose and mouth, Jack poked at the orb with his staff which caused a small envelope to fall out. Jack exchanged a look with Bunnymund before cautiously picking up the envelope and opening it.

He read aloud, "Mr. Frost and Mr. Bunnymund are cordially invited to the realm of the April Fool today at 2 o'clock this afternoon. Refreshments will be provided, courtesy of the kind employees of Hatter Mansion. This is a casual affair, so please come as you are. I hope you will choose to partake in the games after tea is served. Your friend, the April Fool." Jack looked up from the card and its curling script to see Bunnymund still covering his nose to ward off the nasty smell.

"What time is it?" Jack asked the rabbit.

"How should I know? I don't have a watch," Bunnymund grumbled.

"You see? This is why we need to know where we are. Never mind, I have an idea." Jack called on his winds to lift him up high enough so he could look out all over London. "Bingo," he smirked with satisfaction and flew towards Big Ben. "Okay," he muttered to himself. "Looks like it's 1:50…" he flew back to where Bunnymund was still standing, only to see the rabbit had scampered on top of a dumpster while three dogs bared their teeth at him and attempted to climb on as well.

"Scram, stupid mutts!" Bunnymund growled, trying to avoid their snapping jaws. Jack landed on the fire escape in the alley and started laughing so hard, tears appeared in his eyed. "Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, bloody wanker," the rabbit growled, using his boomerang to shove away a dog. Unexpectedly, all three dogs stopped growling at the rabbit. Soon after, they tucked their tails between their legs and whimpered before running off. "And don't come back!" the Easter Bunny yelled after them, sheathing his boomerangs as he got off the dumpster.

"Er, I don't think they're running from you," Jack said, pointing behind Bunnymund.

"What do you-?" Bunnymund turned around. "Oh." A huge red swirling vortex had appeared behind him on the wall of the alley. "If the Fool thinks I'm going near that, he's got another thing coming," the rabbit growled, ready to hop away should a threat present itself.

The swirling red vortex suddenly turned an ominous shade of black and acted like a vacuum, sucking both Jack and Bunnymund towards it. Bunnymund tried to open his tunnels as and escape route and Jack tried to use his winds, but neither attempt worked. Both were slowly drawn closer to it and eventually pulled through.

~~~~~?~~~~~

Jack sat up and rubbed his head. "Why do I always seem to hit my head?" he muttered. Bunnymund sat up next to him and looked around at their location.

"Uh, mate? Are you seeing this, or am I in some kind of messed up dream?" Jack finally focused on something other than the impending headache to spare the new scenery a glance.

"What the-?" Jack started, totally forgetting the pain in his head. The had fallen into some kind of mad Wonderland. In fact, Wonderland is the perfect place to compare this to. There was a narrow path from where they were currently sitting made from checkerboard black and white tiles. Lush green grass grew on the edges of the path and was dotted with colorful flowers. Every now and then, a twisted looking purple tree with pink leaves would be on the side of the path. The sky was a sunset pink with blue swirls of clouds racing across it.

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," Jack stated dryly, taking in the landscape.

"Well, what do you suggest we do now, mate?" Bunnymund asked, getting over his awe of the place.

"Isn't it obvious?" Jack asked, retrieving his staff and getting to his feet. He pointed to the black and white tiles. "We follow the yellow brick road. Er, black and white tile road in this case." Bunnymund shrugged, having no better plans, and began loping off along the path with Jack right behind him.

Along the way, they passed forests with eerie bird calls and shrieking laughter emanating from them. They crossed bridges over orange streams, whose color clashed horribly with the grass. They walked for what seemed like hours, the path becoming more dirty and scuffed as they walked further along it. Finally they arrived at what appeared to be a giant golden bird cage.

Jack got closer and his eyes soon widened in recognition. "Those are the others!" he cried, darting over to the cage to peer through the bars. Sure enough, North, Tooth and Sandy were all sitting down in the middle.

"Jack!" North yelled, scrambling over to the bars. "You have to leave-!"

"Well, that's pretty ungrateful," Bunnymund strolled up to the bars. "After we came all this way to save you." He pretended to be offended.

"You don't understand-!" North began, only to be cut off by Tooth.

"We're bait, Jack!" Tooth said.

Sandy was apparently having an intense conversation with Bunnymund, sandy pictures of a jester's cap and handcuffs appeared over his head as he attempted to explain the situation. He then pantomimed that the Fool had captured them to lure out any other Guardians.

"I get it, mate" Bunnymund reassured him. He turned back to the ice spirit. "We need to blow this joint as soon as possible!"

"Oh, that's not very nice~" a sing song voice behind them said. Jack and Bunnymund whirled around to locate the source of the new voice. What they found was a table laden with tea and various cakes and it had a couple of white chairs around it. This wouldn't have been extremely odd, had the table not been floating about three feet off the ground.

At the head of the table sat a man in a full jester's costume. He hummed to himself as he buttered a roll. He sighed as he put the knife down and took a sizeable bite out of the bread, smiling in satisfaction.

"I went through all the trouble of sending an invitation~" he pouted.

"It smelled terrible," Bunnymund growled.

"Really?" the jester's eyes lit up. "I'm so glad! I didn't know how much gas to put in, so I just put in a canister full~"

"Nevermind that," Jack said. "We just want our friends and the memories. Let them go," he said commandingly.

The Fool waved off his comment, a look of boredom on his face. "I'd rather not talk about business right now. So dreadful." He took another bite out of his roll. "Perhaps you would like some tea or a pastry instead? Alice makes the most wonderful scones~" the Fool smiled.

"Oh, but where are my manners?~" he looked shocked at his supposed lack of hospitality. "My name is the April Fool and this is my realm." The April Fool's face seemed to darken sending shivers down all the Guardian's spines. His smile grew wider, if that was possible, revealing rows of white teeth with sharp canines. "Welcome to the Mad Tea Party. Stay a while, won't you?~"

A/N: Ta-da! And that's the April Fool! So I hope y'all have had a good New Year and break or whatever. I've been surprisingly busy lately... *shrugs* Oh, right. Quick side note. I'm not gonna be able to update for a few weeks (sorry about that) but hopefully I'll be able to update fairly regularly otherwise.

Anyways, please review! Thanks to everyone who has reviewed/followed/favorited. Y'all get the stamp of awesomeness! :D