It is well after dark when North calls the Guardians to Manny's empty office once more. Each one of them is in their pajamas and looking rather severe with their colleague.
Bunny crosses his arms over his bare chest, leveling a glare at North as he asks, "You're sure, mate? It was him?"
North paces restlessly, back and forth, "Of course! It had to be! I know it was! I can feel it… in my belly."
"So, wait, you called us here, in the middle of the night because of your belly?" Bunny replies, eyebrows slowly climbing toward his hairline.
"Is more than that! I am telling you, it was Pitch!"
Tooth's eyes widen and her tone is disbelieving, "Pitch? Pitch Black? Here?"
Her wings buzz animatedly for a few seconds before she drops like a stone into one of the chairs in front of Manny's desk.
"It was him!"
"All right, all right. So if it was him-."
"It was!" North interrupts, Bunny ignores him and continues.
"-what are we going to do about it? Why was he here?"
Sandy waves at them from his perch on the edge of Manny's desk, attempting to get their attention. When Bunny and North continue to argue incessantly, he turns to Tooth only to find that she has turned her eyes to the floor, a troubled expression on her face, and is leaning her head against her fist.
He hops off the desk, waving his arms and jumping up and down. It gets the poor man nowhere. He grabs a small crystal bell from Manny's desk and gives it a good, enthusiastic ring.
When each of his friends finally looks at him, he signs out his suggestion.
"That… that makes perfect sense!" Bunny cries and they run from the room, leaving Sandy to try to catch up.
It's about two days before Jack feels like he's far enough away to call his mom.
The phone has rang twice when a shaky voice answers, "Hello?"
"Hey mom-."
"Jesus Christ, Jack! Where have you been?! We've been going-!"
"Mom. Mom! Calm down. Something happened at school. I- kids… found out. I had to leave. I wanted to make sure you guys were all right. I'm- I'm sorry I didn't-."
"You could have at least left a note or something! You've had me worried sick!"
"I know, I know and I'm sorry. I'm… in Canada. I just wanted you to know that I'm okay. I love you both and I'll be home as soon as I feel like it's safe. I love you. Bye.
"Wait, Jack-."
Jack hangs up and then leans his weight against the side of the car. Truth be told, Jack isn't in Canada yet, he's only barely in New York. The station wagon only took him as far as the next two towns over, after that it's been five or six other cars, only taking him short distances. Any time he couldn't get a ride, he walked.
His current ride has stopped outside the RST Petroleum station in Middletown, New York. This one's a little, old lady who's offered to buy him a Sprite. She's really nice and can take him as far as Poughkeepsie.
Jack turns his phone back off and sticks it into his pocket. Looking at the sky, he knows that the solid block of clouds promises snow. Jack takes a deep breath of the cool air, sighs, and then climbs into the passenger seat, again. The ground outside his door is covered in a thin, barely visible sheet of ice.
The globe sits in the center of the ground floor of the manor. It's large enough to warrant its own room, but there are no doors. It's quite the center piece.
The globe has been there since shortly after the manor opened; it was a project North had worked on with Manny. It was one of their first collaborations and one that both men are very proud of. The lack of doors to the room keeps the globe in constant view to passersby within the school. The point of it is to instill hope and wonder into the hearts of every student. There's not a single person in the school that isn't allowed to visit the globe room.
The globe itself is a work of scientific wonder. It is like any other globe in most of its appearance- the countries are visible, clearly labeled, as are the oceans. The lines of latitude and longitude are finely painted in and don't obscure the view of borders or countries.
But, the most important and remarkable feature of the globe are the millions upon millions of tiny lights that speckle its surface. Each light represents a mutant on the planet. It is there so the students know that, despite being surrounded by hundreds of other mutants in the school, they are not alone. There are more like them all over the world and even if they feel isolated, there will always be someone who knows what they are going through.
It is possibly the most important object in the school. Which is why Sandy's suggestion that, if it were indeed Pitch Black that had visited, he would have gone right for the globe.
When the Guardians arrive to the globe room, they find that nothing looks to be out of the ordinary.
The globe is the only source of light in the room and it slowly turns itself upon its axis. Tooth makes a few laps around the circumference of it while North checks its base, axis and degree of rotation. Sandy and Bunny search the room over.
The room is meant to be a hub for student activity as well. Students are welcome to gather in the globe room, to study or hang out.
There are large windows covered by thick, velveteen curtains. A cushioned seat with pillows on either end makes for the sill of all three windows in the room and bookshelves fill the rest of the space of the walls. Even without doors the room is possibly the quietest room in the whole manor during the day. During the night, it is one of the more peaceful rooms. It is not unusual to find a student or two sitting inside, after dark, just watching the globe spin.
Tonight, there is no one. The power outage had warned many students to stay in their rooms and not to wander.
"I don't see anything. Nothing's out of place, or missing." Tooth breathes, hovering a distance back from the globe to take it in as a whole.
"The mechanisms are working fine." North says, standing from his crouch at the base of the globe and dusting his hands on his pants.
"I haven't found anything wrong." Bunny says, joining them from the right side of the room.
Sandy comes from the left side of the room and holds out his hand, a turbulent expression on his face. Cupped in the center of his small palm, illuminated dimly by the globe, is a mass of glittering, black sand.
The first hint that something is wrong is that the traffic on the interstate has slowed to a crawl.
Not that that's an unusual thing when a car accident happens. Traffic tends to get backed up. What is weird is that, when they pass where the car has veered off the road and into the ditch, there are hoof prints in the freshly fallen snow. It's going to be a pretty difficult next few hours for the rescue teams working because of the snow that's been falling off and on all day.
Traffic has been redirected to the left lane and is only trickling by the accident. The old lady Jack is riding with rambles on about how tragic it is and she hopes no one was seriously injured. Jack lets her words graze over his consciousness and watches the scene of EMTs and firefighters scurrying around the car. They pass by the front end of the car and it looks like the driver plowed right into a rather large animal before sailing into the ditch.
Something by the tree line off the road catches Jack's eye. What he sees makes his blood run cold.
A large, black mare with flaring yellow eyes rears up onto her hind legs and punches her front two legs through the air. He can't hear anything, but he imagines there would be a horrendously loud cry coming from the animal.
It turns tail and disappears into the trees. Jack swallows thickly and sits facing forward in his seat. If his breathing speeds up a bit or his fingers clench a little tighter into the armrest, well, no one has to know. No one but Jack, that is.
"Be prepared for an all-out battle in the legislation, today. They're bringing up the topic of mutant registration! It's definitely been a- a really controversial subject in the weeks before we found out that it was going to be a federal issue, and today we have a few guests with us to talk about mutant registration and where they stand on the issue.
With us, we have Father Sturges from a parish in New York City and Dr. Mary Bennet, a nationally acclaimed geneticist-."
Tooth grimaces and turns the channel to some other mundane television station.
She really hates politics; she's more into peace and not really picking at issues that aren't as important as others. Why can't the government and all those right-wing whackos leave mutants alone and focus more on things like the economy or poverty or something? Registering mutants isn't the most important thing right now, in her opinion. But that's politics, isn't it? People arguing over how their opinion is better than everyone else's?
She combs a hand over the bright plumage on her arm, straightening her feathers.
She also hates that, when humans look at her, they think freak, monster, or beast because of the physical manifestation of her mutation. She hates that when other mutants look at her, all they see is a fairy princess.
Tooth can be tough too, dammit! No one's seen her in a fight alongside her fellow Guardians, but if they did…oh, they would think twice about only seeing a fairy.
She huffs a breath from her nose and smooths out her ruffled feathers. The theme music for the local news starts up and Tooth can't help but wonder if there will be nothing but arguments on this one, too.
The announcer runs through a short tag line of each story.
"...a car accident off the 211 has left a woman in critical condition and authorities are baffled… reports of large, black horses have been coming in from all over the state. Are they true? Or are they a rumor being spread by pranksters…?"
That last one has Tooth up and out of her seat, making a beeline straight from her room.