After the Easter Fiasko


The blizzard raging across the South pole did little to slow Jack down. Everything was a huge mess. Just when he was starting to consider the guardians as friends and was doing something more than just bringing snow and ice, things fell apart. Sandy… Sandy was dead, killed by Pitches arrow. Bunny's egg hunts had been destroyed. The guardians were now horribly weakened and they blamed it on him. Because he had been tricked everything was gone. Bunny had very nearly slugged him. And that was when Jack had ran.

That was why he was going to the one place and one true friend he had, where he felt safe, Icecros's Cave. There it was, even in the blizzard Jack found the unmistakable entrance in the cliff wall. Landing he called, in a subdued voice, "Icecros." The Returning Echo caused his gut to tighten. "Ice, ice, cro, cro, os, os." It was distorted and broken, nothing like the dragons finally kept smooth walls produced.

Jack entered to find a horrible mess. Snow and ice chunks had been blown into drifts that, if he hadn't been a winter spirit, would've been a chest high feat to plow through. The icicle stalactites and stalagmites had been allowed to grow to the point that they connected and made a forest of columns. Icecrose would never have allowed this to happen. He obviously hadn't been here in a long time.

"But then where is he?" Jack ran out of the cave calling his friends name, too frantic to think clearly. The storm stole his words and his emotions were only making it worse. The desperate boy soared to the Dragon's training ground, to find it empty. He scoured every inch of the territory finally ending up at the Peninsula they had watched the polar day on. "ICECROS!" Again the storm stole his words.

The feeling of Icecros's scale under his hood brought only a small relief… Wait the scale! Jack fiddled with his hoodie, his hands were shaking too much with emotion for precise movements, and something in his pocket rattled. Jack took out the tooth box pitch had used to delay him. His hurt and fear became a boiling rage. He ran to the Peninsula's edge and tried to hurl the tooth box into the Arctic Ocean. But he couldn't. A second attempt yield the same results. In defeat Jack let his arm fall to his side. Even after everything that had happened he still couldn't bring himself to throw the one clue to his past away. He looked at the painted image of the brown haired boy on the box's side. Is that really me?

"I thought this might happen." Jack's rage returned and found a new target. "They never truly believed in you. I just wanted to show you that. But I understand."

Jack spun and attacked the speaker. Pitch threw his hands up, blocking the ice with sand. Jack used the distraction to leap behind the bogeyman. "You don't understand anything!" He shouted as he attacked again.

"NO?" Pitch challenged as he easily spun and blocked. "I don't know what it's like to be cast out?"

Jack dodged Pitches counterattack by leaping high into the air. "Ahhhhhhh!" The winter spirit screamed at the top of his lungs shooting all he had at the bogeyman.

Pitch sent a wall of sand to intercept. The already difficult vision conditions, because of the storm, got so bad you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Jack landed and looked for pitch. "To not be believed in?" Jack spun as pitch walked into view. "To long for, a family." Panting Jack gave pitch and obvious look of disbelief. "All those years in the shadows, I thought: no one knows what this feels like. But now I see I was wrong." Jack loosened his tense muscles, and pitch put a hand on his right shoulder. "You don't have to be alone Jack." Pitch crossed in front of him, moving his hand from the right shoulder to the left. I believe in you." Pitch moved behind Jack and returned his hand to the boy's right shoulder. "And I know children will to!"

"In me?"

"Yes! Look at what we can do!" Before the two spirits, a twisted and deadly looking spire had been molded from the collision of their powers. "What goes better together with cold then dark? We can make them believe!" Pitch started talking quickly as he got more and more excited. "We'll give them a world where everything, everything is-"

"Pitch black?" Jack gave him a critical look!

"… And Jack Frost too." Pitch answered awkwardly, but then he smiled. "They'll believe in both of us!"

"No!" Jack shrugged Pitches hand off his shoulder. They'll fear both of us. And that's not what I want. Now for the last time, leave me alone." He turned his back on pitch and started walking away.

Behind him he heard Pitch say: "very well. You want to be left alone, DONE! But first."

"Tweet!" Hearing the familiar sound of baby tooth's chirps, Jack turned back. Clasped in the boogeyman's hand was a struggling mini tooth fairy.

"Baby tooth!" Jack started for pitch. "Au, au, aw!" Pitch squeezed the fairy who gasped for air, stopping Jack in his tracks. Only then did Pitch loosen his grip letting baby tooth breathe.

"The staff Jack, you have a bad habit of interfering. So hand it over, and I'll let her go."

Jack only smiled. He reached around his neck, but found nothing. His smile became a look of terror as he began searching desperately for Icecros's scale.

"Looking for this?"

Snapping his head up Jack saw the scale, swing back and forth by its court, in Pitches other hand. "How did you-"

"Simple pick-pocketing trick. You didn't think I'd leave you with something so powerful did you? I'll just hold onto this trinket for you. And you can give me what I ask, or do you not care what happens to her?"

Jack looked from baby tooth, to the scale, then his staff. With a heavy sigh he gave in, he would not let baby tooth get hurt. He handed his staff over. Pitch took it, pocketing the scale to free a hand, and admired it like a battle trophy. "Okay, now let her go!"

"Hmm, oh, right, right, right. Catch!" Pitch tossed baby tooth into the air like she was a baseball. Jack ran to catch her but stumbled as an excruciating pain raked his body at the same time a loud 'snap' sounded.