Hey, guys, sorry I didn't get a chapter submitted last week. Couldn't get to the library. But I do have some good news. I finally have internet at my house! Yeah! So it won't be so hard to keep uploading chapters now! Whoo!

I also got this anon review that I thought I should address:

From: Spud (Guest)

Spud:*Spirit.
Not fairy.

I understand the confusion here since the fandom has kind of latched onto the term "spirit" at the exclusion of everything else, but there is no basis for doing this according to the legends themselves. The word "spirit" is a really ambiguous term in the English language and can mean so many different things, so I prefer to avoid that word whenever possible.

In the legends, Jack tends to usually be depicted as either a fairy (a winter sprite, a type of fairy), or a god. Both are different types of spirits. Most of the time when a legendary being has a discrepancy between whether they're considered a fairy or a god, they get downgraded to fairy for some reason. I'm not entirely sure why, but that's what I've been seeing over and over again, so I followed suit and labeled Jack a fairy as well. I'm more familiar with fairies than gods anyway.

But yes, fairy equals nature spirit, which is a kind of spirit. Most people would agree that Jack is definitely a spirit of nature, hence the usage of the word "fairy" isn't wrong, even though there were several other words I could have chosen. It's just the word I prefer, and the way he's addressed in all my fanfics.

Anyway, that out of the way, I hope you all enjoy the chapter!

Disclaimer: Just checked and I still don't own Jack or anything else within ROTG. Though granted, no one owns Jack. He wouldn't let them. Dreamworks just borrowed him for ROTG. *chuckles*

"What's happening to me?" Brent shouted as he stared at his hands in utter terror. I didn't know how to answer him, as I couldn't find the words to express myself that I was used to having. Either Chaos or Pitch took them away from me and gave them to Brent. And and then they took Brent's words and gave them to Amanda, leaving her the most articulate of the three of us. Yet she was the least likely one to be able to explain this situation, but one could always hope.

"Has Chaos switched our powers between us?" said Amanda.

I shrugged, still sobbing like a baby out of fear and frustration. I wasn't sure if this was a trick of Chaos trying to break us again, or of Pitch trying to elicit more fear from us. Either way, the plan seemed to be working. I was terrified of giving up my powers to Brent, and I hadn't the slightest idea how to live with a child's mindset, despite how often I'd insisted upon being a child in times past. Now I strangely wanted nothing more than to be able to grow up, and grow up quickly.

I wrapped my arms around my legs as I curled into a tight little ball. "I wish mamma was here."

"Well, your mamma isn't here, Jack, so you're going to have to figure out what to do about this situation," said Brent as he stood up and strode over to me, swinging his arms back and forth huffily. "Come on, snap out of it. We don't have all day!" The cold picked up and whipped at my face as Brent spat his words at me, and I buried my face further into my knees, whining even louder. Our abilities may have gotten swapped, but our personalities sure hadn't. I would never have spoken to him like that.

"Come on, Jack!" He gave me a swift kick to the shin, causing me to yelp in surprise and then scramble away from him before he could think of something else mean to do. "You're the only one who ever seems to understand all this hocus pocus stuff we've been going through since we got here, so stop acting like a kid and figure this out!"

It was as good as having a death sentence dropped upon me, because I couldn't think of a thing in this condition. Not to mention that Brent was just plain terrifying to me in my current state. What little resolve I still retained melted away right then into a full fledged tantrum. I knew Brent would be furious with me for this behavior since Jack was still in me somewhere, but I couldn't get past the child, which only made the tantrum escalate even more quickly once it started.

Thankfully, before Brent could raise his voice again, Amanda stepped in front of me and spread her arms out protectively, shielding me with her body. "Stop your bullying, Brent. Can't you tell he's just as helpless as we are? All of us have been switched, and he clearly inherited his traits from me and doesn't know how to deal with it."

"But he needs to stop!" Brent flailed his arms, seeming to grow more frantic with each pump, a gesture that was reflected in the intensity of the snowfall around him. "He needs to tell me what to do. Why do I have his powers? Why couldn't I have been switched with you instead if we had to switch?"

Amanda shook her head, closing her eyes solemnly as she attempted to remain calm and be the smart one of us three. It was a relief that someone was managing to keep their head through all of this, but I felt a pang of guilt lurch in my stomach at the notion that it was Amanda, of all people. I was supposed to be protecting her, not the other way around. Yet here I was, debilitated by a childish fit that I had no control over.

"I don't know why we switched the way we did, Brent. I would venture a guess that either Chaos or that Pitch guy is getting a huge laugh out of this."

Brent's emotional weather patterns spiked yet again, causing both me and Amanda to shiver and cling to each other for warmth. Upon seeing this reaction, Brent started chewing on his fingernails in his worry, and the weather got even more harsh. "But what do I do? I don't know how to control Jack's powers. I could end up killing you!"

He made a very good point. My powers were deadly in the wrong hands, which was why I was panicking so much in the first place. The realization that Brent was aware of this made me calm down just a bit, and I whispered just loud enough for Amanda to hear. "M-My st-st-st-staff."

"What?" She leaned closer to me and cup her hand around her ear.

I gulped and tried again. "G-Give him m-my s-s-sta-aff."

She pulled away and looked at me quizzically for a moment, as though trying to confirm a mystery in her mind. "Your staff?"

I nodded and sniffled, then shivered as yet another gust of chilly wind roped its way around the two of us. She didn't waste any more time, even though I was sure she was confused as to why I was giving such an order, and she grabbed my staff. I was glad she'd obeyed me, even without understanding the reason. It just went to show how much she trusted me. I hoped I would never violate that trust.

A moment later, she slapped the staff into Brent's hand, and it instantly frosted over, a sight that made my stomach drop two miles down. My staff wasn't supposed to respond that way to anyone but me. Still, upon seeing the reaction he had with the staff, Brent then gripped it with both hands and started repeating some sort of silent mantra that I guessed was supposed to direct his energy through the staff, and little by little, the storm calmed down. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

"I did it!" he said, actually jumping in place a moment in celebration. "Me, the computer geek, actually controlled magic!" Both Amanda and I found the irony in that situation rather funny and lost ourselves to a round of chuckling despite ourselves. Upon quieting down again, Brent faced us with another question.

"What if—What if one of us needs to fly while we're switched like this? How—How would I—?" His voice trailed off as he looked off into the distance. Apparently he couldn't even bring himself to voice the thought that he possibly could fly through magic. Though I figured that if he could conjure up a storm and then calm it back down, that he could learn to fly too. But how well he would do at it, we would have to wait and see.

"You just—ask," I said, shaking my head and growling in frustration that I couldn't come up with better words to say. I'm not normally the most articulate person in the world, but I usually at least have more words at my disposal than I did at present.

Brent raised an eyebrow as he looked at me. "You ask who?"

"The wind," I said, and I raised my head to look up at him timidly. He looked skeptical and kind of perturbed at my sudden lack of any sort of eloquent speech, but after a moment of staring, decided to just shrug it off and see what happened.

"Alright," he said, and he pointed my staff at the air. "Um… wind? Make me fly."

I assume he expected nothing to happen, which made the next moment hysterical as the wind swam down and scooped him up and began tossing him around like a rag doll as he yelped in surprise. I laughed so hard that tears started running down my face. None of my tears were freezing to my face for once, which was a huge relief, so I laughed all the more and just let the tears run. Brent wasn't too happy with me for laughing instead of helping, but I didn't care. The situation was just too funny.

"Alright, you little monkey," Brent called from somewhere above me, still spiraling out of control at the wind's delight. "How do I get down?"

I continued laughing as I just shrugged and shook my head. There was no way I knew to teach someone how to fly well. After a while, one just learned how to communicate with the wind. There was no rapid way to teach that.

"Why you little-" he started to shout, then seemed to get an idea in his head as he turned and said, "Wind, put me down."

Well, I give him credit for one thing: he at least knew how to state his intention clearly enough for the wind to understand. He hadn't realized just how literal the wind tends to be though, as he was suddenly smacked face first onto the face of the earth, creating a cloud of dust in his wake that caused Amanda and I to choke.

After a couple minutes of him just lying there, groaning in pain, he finally pushed himself up, glared at me, then rolled his eyes and said, "I think from now on, I'll leave the flying to you."

I was fine with that, and my childish giggles as a result seemed to convey how I felt about this well enough for him to understand.

We sat in place for several minutes as we tried to calm down from the insanity that had transpired in such close succession for us over the last few challenges. We hadn't had a break to just catch our breath, and we still weren't being cut a break. But at least we weren't assuming we would die if we took a few minutes to chill in our current state. Well, except for Brent who was a little hotter than he was accustomed to, but he seemed fine otherwise, despite his whining about it.

Finally, Amanda had apparently decided she'd had enough of this nonsense, and she jumped to her feet and turned her face to the sky, raising her little voice high enough to be loud and clear for what I assumed to be miles all around. "Alright, Chaos, you've put us through enough of this nonsense, and I expect some answers."

Both Brent and I blinked at the sudden bravado the little girl displayed, neither of us sure what to think. She was acting like an adult, even though she was clearly still just a six-year-old, and I knew our personalities hadn't shifted with our abilities. It left me amazed at what kind of person Amanda really was deep inside if being given Brent's intelligence could bring this level of strength out of her. She was going to grow up into someone amazing… if we could just get out of this crazy place.

We sat and waited for a time, half expecting an angry retort from Chaos at being addressed this way, and half expecting him to not answer at all. It turned out to be the latter, which him completely ignoring Amanda. This wasn't okay by her, and she shouted once again. "I mean it, Chaos! We could seriously die here, and I can tell by the way you've made sure that none of us have died thus far despite insurmountable obstacles that you don't really want us dead. Now answer me, unless you want one or all of us to die from your negligence."

Ouch. Those words were harsh, and I found myself involuntarily wincing. I would hate to be on the receiving end of those words. And she did have a point. I didn't know how we'd managed to survive all those other obstacles, especially considering that I had actually managed to sort of die once. Yet here we all were, still very much alive. Maybe he wasn't actually trying to kill us.

"Amanda, stop. Please stop."

Brent and I both looked at each other, then looked back over at Amanda, shock written on all of our faces. That request hadn't come from any of us. It had come from Chaos, and it had sounded a bit choked up. But whatever for?

"No!" she said, stamping her little foot. "I won't stop until you tell me what's going on. Why did you switch our powers?"

A moment of silence passed as we all held our breath, waiting for a response to come, and hoping none of us would be punished for her outspokenness. Finally, the voice of Chaos came rumbling over the hills once again. "I didn't do that."

Amanda was quick to ask, "Who did?" but Brent and I were already staring at each other as the pieces clicked into place. If Chaos hadn't switched us, then that meant that Pitch had. And if Pitch had the ability to switch our powers, then that meant that Chaos wasn't in complete control. Which meant…

I reached out with my mind toward Brent, holding my hand in position as though grasping for something intangible. He seemed to catch onto what I was doing and mirrored me. A spark passed between us, and I grasped onto that spark and pulled hard, feeling a familiar electric surge pass through my body. I fell over from the impact and then started into a fit of giggles out of sheer relief as the warmth left my body and was replaced by the familiar feeling of cold. I had summoned my powers back. On my own.

After regaining control of myself, I sat up and looked over at Brent, who was hunched over like a scared puppy, eyes darting between me and Amanda. He hugged himself and whimpered, and I sighed sympathetically, realizing that he had taken on Amanda's traits rather than summoning back his own. I wondered why, since it had seemed like he'd had the same realization I had.

A glance back at Amanda made me realize why. She'd never had the ability to vocalize her thoughts like this before, and because of this, she was getting to Chaos. Brent wanted her to continue doing so for a while. I got to my feet, picked up my staff from Brent, and went and stood by Amanda, looking up at the same patch of sky she was staring at. If Chaos were to try anything, I wanted to be there to protect her. Brent crawled over after me and latched onto my leg, a timid child afraid to be left alone.

"Look, Amanda," said Chaos once again, "your friends have figured out how to get their own powers back. Why don't you return to normal?"

"Because then I wouldn't be able to talk to you very well, and you know it!" Amanda's eyes shone with a fury I never would have guessed a six-year-old could possess. It made me jump slightly, but the Brent leech on my leg wouldn't let me move very far.

"Please, Amanda, just stop," Chaos begged. "I'm just evil. Just accept that and try to save yourself."

Amanda shook her head, then placed her hands on her hips in defiance, a gesture that's hilarious for a normal six-year-old, but was strangely intimidating on this one at this time. "If you were truly evil, you wouldn't be trying so desperately to convince us that you were, now would you? Why do you need us to think you're evil, Chaos?"

"Amanda, please!" If I wasn't mistaken, it sounded like Chaos was starting to cry. But Chaos didn't cry, did he? Wasn't he just heartless and sadistic? How was Amanda making him react like this? "It's just easier if you let me be the villain. Please just go. You're running out of time."

At this point, I decided to step forward and see if I could get a word in with Chaos myself, even though it was Amanda who had made him crack. Still, the fact that he'd cracked in front of all of us might mean I could get something more out of him, even if I wasn't the brilliant Amanda with Brent's stolen genius. "How are we running out of time?" I said.

I hadn't expected Chaos to react kindly to my butting in, but neither had I expected the sudden blast of stormy wind to my face that nearly bowled me over. "Why must you always butt in, Jack? Must you destroy everything you touch?"

Now that wasn't fair. I didn't even know what I was being accused of, and I sent a death glare toward the empty sky, more determined than ever now to figure out Chaos's secrets. "I beg your pardon," I said, "I do not destroy everything I touch. I still have these two alive and well, don't I?" I gestured to the boy and girl beside me, and gave a nod for further emphasis.

The stormy wind only increased in strength, blowing so fiercely that I had to plant my staff in the ground and cling to it in order to continue standing upright. "You don't even know what you're talking about, Jack! You know nothing! Nothing!"

"Then tell me what I don't know!" I yelled back. The wind stopped abruptly, but Chaos didn't respond. I wasn't sure if he was ever going to, but he had certainly revealed a lot to me in our small interaction. This guy wasn't just being sadistic like I had assumed, and he wasn't a complete stranger, at least not from his point of view. It seemed I'd offended him somehow, and all this must have been some sort of payment on my part. I still hadn't the foggiest idea what all this had to do with Brent and Amanda though.

My little spat with Chaos seemed to have been enough for Amanda to think through things in her head, and she stepped forward again and addressed the sky. "Chaos, when you say we're running out of time… do you mean we're dying?"

The silence that answered her question caused all three of us to shiver with fear. It was the clearest response Chaos had given yet.

Started dropping some big hints in this chapter. Anyone know what's going on yet? More hints will be dropped in the next chapter too, which I'll make sure to upload soon.

Reviews would be lovely. Feel free to talk about anything you like in your review. I'm really not picky, but the reviews help the story rating so much. I'll try to actually start responding to people again now that I have internet too. You guys have been so awesome to me through all of this and you deserve that much at least. :)

Take care, and have a lovely day! See you all next time!