Feel like I'm behind on this chapter - got some new ducks today, spent more time playing with them and pondering names for them than I should have. Still haven't named them all. Also the next chapter will probably be delayed slightly too, because I might have Jury duty tuesday. If it cancels I'll magically have all day to write instead. This chapter was hard to write, and I also am very tired, so I really hope that the writing towards the end doesn't look loopy or weird. - Not The Milk
After some time they finished with the hand painted eggs. The rest of the eggs, Bunnymund explained, would be done with less of a hands on approach. The majority of the group decided it was time to take the kids back home.
"So, how did you ever get them here without their parents knowing?" Cupid asked the group curiously. Sandy grinned impishly, an arrow forming over his head and pointing down to himself. "Aah. Well, who doesn't love a nap?" She laughed. "Don't make a habit of that, do you? Wouldn't want them to think they are narcoleptics."
"You coming with us?" Jack asked, picking Jamie up and placing him on his shoulders.
"Nah, I want to explore this place a little. Never been in a warren, it's kind of cool. I also want to see how he does the rest of the eggs." She replied with a wave.
Sandy looked a little peeved, glancing back and forth between those staying and those going. "Go on." Annamore nodded to him. "I'll see you tonight." He shrugged and floated off down the tunnel. Reaching down she picked up Sophie and gave her a hug. "You have fun today?" She asked, peering at what face she could see behind the crazy hair. Sophie grinned and held up an egg she painted in proof of her fun.
"Good to hear it. I'll see you later. Good bye, Jamie." She handed Sophie to North and winked at both of the children before starting to walk off. "Hey, wait a second." Jack asked, why do you want to hang out with the kangaroo all of a sudden?"
"Oh, that's easy. We're the ranged weapon brigade. We are required by law to be friends, exchange secret handshakes, and target practice together." Annamore kept a straight look on her face as she spoke, although it was difficult for her.
"She's right, mate. It's in the handbook." The rabbit hopped over and handed her another basket of eggs.
It was North's turn to look confused. "What handbook? I got no handbook."
"Like I said, that's because you guys don't have long range weapons. It's very hush-hush. Now get going so he and I have enough time to work on our handshakes." The winged girl said firmly.
"Wait, what about Sandy?" Tooth asked, confused.
"He's mid-ranged." Bunny replied, as if that settled it.
"Yeah. And everyone knows mid-ranged is almost short-ranged, and if we let mid-ranges into the club, why, we'd have to invite everyone." Annamore turned the group and sent them down the tunnel after Sandy, before turning a smirk to Bunnymund.
"Blimey, that was a good one." The Pooka smirked.
"It's in the handbook? That was smooth. But it's a good cover for why I'm really still here." She met Bunnymund's curious gaze with a mischievous one.
"And that is?" He turned to lead her down the tunnel. "You saw my gardens, right? It's hard to plant geek around those guys – Jack would make fun of us. So you grow your eggs on plants? You need to show me this."
She spent the rest of the day assisting him, and spent a couple hours the next morning helping him hide eggs. "I thought it might be fun to try something new." She explained when Sandy questioned her about it the next night. "I mean, I shoot people all day. It's a great job, and there are few things better than seeing people fall in love. That's pretty important. I rarely get to see cool things like kids finding toys or presents, nor do I get the joy of being able to give children snow days or dreams."
The protector of dreams nodded his understanding, glad that Annamore finally got to experience something more than shooting people for the first time since she became Cupid.
Another month went by when Annamore finally admitted to herself that something bad was happening. She had half the work load as usual, which wouldn't be a big deal if it was just one day, but it had been slowly decreasing each day.
Eventually Sandy noticed something was worrying her and called her out on it, threatening to make her sleep for the next week if she didn't answer him. "Fine, you win!" She covered her face in mock fear. "No one needs to sleep that long, not even you!"
Satisfied, he sat down next to her, their feet hanging off the edge of his dream cloud. She gathered her thoughts together to explain what was happening. "Sometimes the amounts of people I need to shoot vary in a given year, often related to things like baby booms twenty years earlier, and the like. But that's a predictable drop or increase, and it never changes this drastically. There's simply a lot less love, all of a sudden."
Sandy pointed at her, concern written on his face. "My power is love. I don't get much power from being believed in, like you guys. So long as people feel love, I'll have some power. But if love dies…" She trailed off, lost in thought for a moment. "Not that I believe that's going to happen. I mean, this is probably just a fluke, I feel fine so I don't think it's reduced too drastically."
He gave her a rather fierce look, a sword appearing over his head. "You're saying you won't let anything happen to me?" She questioned, trying to translate his intent. He nodded at her, taking her hand in his. "Hey, don't discount my ability to fight, too." Annamore smiled despite herself. "But thank you. I mean, we don't know if there's anything we even have to fight. This might fix itself, so try not to worry about me, OK?"
He nodded, a silhouette of the other guardians appearing now. "I don't think we need to do that yet, but if it gets worse, I will, promise. I mean, I'm not getting weak after all. I'm sure it'll be fine!"
He didn't look convinced, but let her be.
A week later Kirai was stalking along a sidewalk in the city, looking for likely looking targets. He preferred striking in subtle ways. It was a simple matter to fill a teenager with hate as they screamed how much they hated their parents, or a person working the graveyard shift at a job, or a racist old fool. Humans were simple creatures, once they started hating one thing their fellows tended to not notice as the hate spreads into other parts of their lives.
Spotting a young woman walking along the dark street, muttering under her breath, he nodded cheerfully to himself. Stepping in line behind her, he didn't worry about being seen. People believed in hate, but no one knew his name, and so no one believed in him.
He raised his sword and stabbed it towards her back, only to be stunned when his arm was stopped short before he connected. Glancing at his arm, he saw a golden stream of sand wrapped around it. He twisted his sword hand, severing the stream, and spun around to face his adversary, his original target forgotten.
"I admit, I was hoping I wouldn't have to fight any of your for a while." Kirai nodded sarcastically to a very angry looking Sandman. "Do we really have to do this?"
Sandy cracked both whips toward the leather winged man in answer. One, he blocked with his sword, the other managed to break skin on Kirai's face. "Oh, you mean business don't you. Have you already figured out what I'm doing?"
Sandy nodded, his face growing even more serious. He struck again, managing to wrap one around Kirai's leg. He whipped him around, meaning to slam Hate into the concrete, only to have the whip cut again mid-air. Kirai smirked at him from the air. "Taking this rather personally aren't you? Well, I have a secret for you buddy. I don't share my toys." He made a gesture to something behind Sandy, causing Sandy to turn. He didn't turn fast enough, and found himself pinned down by a large nightmare.
Kirai landed next to him, clapping. "You deprived me of my target, how about you take the hit instead?" Before Sandy could break free, he found himself stabbed in the chest.
"Later, Sandfreak!" The avatar of hate flew off into the night, sacrificing the nightmare to his escape. He was cackling gleefully. "Oh, Pitch is going to love this."
Annamore woke feeling sick for the first time since becoming immortal, but worked through the slight dizziness to manage to hunt down and shoot her few targets for the day. She was happy to get back to her cloud to rest, and instead of gardening, she flopped down outside and dozed while waiting for Sandy to show up. He'd shown up every night like clockwork to check on her ever since she told him what was going on.
When she woke up it was already past sundown and her friend was nowhere to be seen. Concerned, she took flight and sought out some of the areas she could usually find him. Not finding him, she flew out to his island to check there. Not seeing him there either, she started worrying even more. Without thinking she flew to the pole and knocked, shivering, on the big door of North's workshop. "Glad it's not winter anymore…" She mumbled under her breath, holding her wings close to her body as she waited. She knocked again, pounding this time. "Open up!"
The door finally opened, revealing Phil. She pushed her way in, shaking the snow off her feathers. Looking at her funny, he grabbed a blanket, tossed it on her, and stomped off with an odd noise. A minute later he returned with North. "Annamore? What are you doing here? You look terrible."
"Gee, thanks. Sit down, this'll take a few minutes." Accepting a hot chocolate from Phil, she told North everything. "And now I can't find Sandy. This isn't like him."
"So you flew all the way here, weak? Why didn't you just call?" North looked confused.
"Oh. I guess I panicked. I didn't even think about doing that." Now that she was here and talking, she shook her head at her panic.
"It's fine. I'll call the others; if Sandy is OK, he'll come too." He led her into the room with the large globe that showed all the believing children. He reached for the signal and pressed it down with a twist.
Jack and Tooth were the first to show, then Bunny. Before they could fill their friends in on what was going on, Sandy walked in too, perfectly normal. Annamore was torn between happiness to see him and annoyance that he'd made her worry. He didn't even look at her as he grabbed eggnog and waited for North to explain why they were called.
"So, what's the emergency?" Jack asked, looking pleased to have something to do.
"I was going to say the emergency was Sandy's missing, but apparently he's not. So secondary emergency is that I'm slowly losing my powers?" Despite his previous worries, not an ounce of concern showed itself on the Sandman's face. A cold feeling snuck into her gut, one that made her feel slightly sicker than the thought of losing her powers.
The thought of her powers being lost set most of the guardians into an argument about what that could mean, and she had multiple questions tossed her way as well.
Instead of answering the questions, Annamore continued to stare at Sandy. "That's not right." She stood and walked over to her friend, the other guardians falling silent as she did. Kneeling in front of him, she looked into his eyes. He looked back calmly, and with no malice, but all the care was gone. "You've stopped loving me, haven't you?" She asked him, her voice oddly level.
He shrugged, and the cold feeling solidified into ice. "What happened yesterday?"
He did his best to relay the details of the fight to them, but all they could glean from him was that the enemy had bat wings, a sword, and was working with a nightmare. He made it clear that the enemy was responsible for Annamore's loss of power, and that he tried to fight him and got stabbed, but that he took no damage.
She rested her head on her knees in defeat, dealing with conflicting emotions. She started laughing, drawing stares from the others. "Are you alright?" Tooth asked, a sympathetic look on her face.
"I was just thinking… This is what I wanted when I first shot him, right?" Annamore questioned, a bitter look on her face.
"Yeah?"
"Then why does it hurt so badly, now that it did?" She stood up, not meeting anyone's eyes. "Sandy, you still want to give kids dreams, right?"
He nodded emphatically. "And you're fine? Don't feel weird or anything?" Another nod.
"Great. I guess now we know what to look for in the enemy, I can head back home, I need all the energy I can get. I'll start trying to find this guy tomorrow."
"Wait!" Jack said, glancing back between her and Sandy. "You're just going to leave him like this?"
"This is how he felt before I accidentally shot him, since it was an accident the first time… I think it'd be an abuse of power if I did it again, just to make myself feel better." Jack looked like he disagreed with her, but he didn't attempt to argue.
She walked to the door, the guardians following. "We'll help you look tomorrow. If Sandy cannot beat this guy alone, we might need group effort." Tooth said kindly.
"Thank you, guys. I appreciate it, especially since I'm not a guardian." The cupid attempted a smile for Tooth, before looking at Sandy again. "We can still be friends, right, Sandy?" He thought for a moment then nodded, a slight smile on his face. She smiled for real now, feeling that things weren't completely hopeless then. "I'll see you guys tomorrow, then."
"I'll take you back, mate." Bunnymund walked up to her and scooped her up. "You probably should limit the flying if you can help it, right now."
She sighed, knowing the rabbit was right. "Yes, because tunnels are a perfect cure for all life's problems."