A/N: First off, thanks, guys, so much for the support after last chapter! I've had some issues with being over emotional and stuff this semester, so it really helped to read all the supportive reviews. Thanks :D

But, I'm still snarky and in an annoying apartment situation, so this is coming to you live from the suckish home of a rather pissed off college student. Ignore the following rant if you like, but it does explain why I've been sorta non-existent in the posting realm for the past few months. (This story not included, since it's apparently been getting all my love lately…. I swear I'll work on the others soon, too.)

So, my apartment sucks, and I've been hunting for a new one, but due to my change of graduation date, it's nearly impossible to find a place that's the right length of time for me, lease-wise. At the same time, I'm trying to sublet my apartment, and I swear the landlords are trying to sabotage me. But I'm also paranoid, so who knows. Anyway, there's that, then obnoxious amounts of schoolwork all due at the same time, along with obnoxious exams, and long hours at work (which is counting as an internship), which I love, but duuude I wanna die after shifts 'cause I'm so tired, but instead I have to go home and get back to homework. I've been working on my stories as much as possible, but school's drained a lot of my creativity this semester, so there hasn't been much progress. In fact, most of the progress has been either in this story (which I write out during my lunch/dinner breaks at work) or on new story ideas since my ADD is on the fritz right now and causing me to keep jumping to new plotlines without finishing the old ones. I've come up with like three new ideas in the past month alone, and they'll eventually either be posted as teasers or put into my adoptable collection (please adopt them, I wanna see these ideas go somewhere if I can't do it myself).

Anyways. Story. Some explanations here, but also a lot more questions. So. Yeah.

Again, probably shouldn't expect more for another half a month or so (especially from this one, I'm trying to make sure I post for other stories first, since they've kinda gone neglected….).

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"I don't get it!" Jack yelled across the workshop as he blasted back a few dozen nightmares. More just took their place.

"Get what?!" Bunny called back, hopping just a bit closer to grab his spinning boomerangs.

"Why hasn't Pitch shown up yet?!"

If they weren't in the middle of a life-or-death battle, all the Guardians (and yetis, and elves—well, no, they did, anyway) would've paused at that.

Then, an all-too-familiar laugh echoed around the room.

Bunny glared over at Jack. "You just had to mention it, didn'tcha, mate?"

"Silly rabbit," the obnoxious British accent echoed just like the laugh. "I'm not there because I'm not the one attacking."

There was some obvious confusion as the Guardians pointed out that it was Pitch's own monsters attacking.

"I've lent them out to a friend," the disembodied voice replied. "And may I just say, they've taken quite a liking to him…."

Another laugh rang out before the nightmares redoubled their efforts. Luckily, whoever was controlling them didn't know their strengths and weaknesses nearly as well as Pitch, and black sand was scattered much more often than blood.

Still, the battle raged long and hard before, finally, the last of the nightmares retreated and the Guardians had won.

The five gathered in the middle of the Globe Room as the yetis (and the elves, but mostly the yetis) began to clean up.

"Who could have joined with Pitch?" Tooth mumbled after a long pause.

"Coulda been Hal," Bunny grumbled, crossing his arms.

Jack rolled his eyes. "You're just mad that he tricked you last year on Halloween. And you were asking for it!"

"Jack, have you heard complaints from seasonal spirits?" North demanded, trying to narrow down on who, exactly, their new enemy was.

White hair flopped about as Jack shook his head. "We've all been happier than ever with the weather extremes increasing over the years. Warmer summers, colder winters, rainier springs, windier falls. No complaints."

North frowned. "Then who—?"

Sandy leapt up between them all, sand fireworks exploding over his head to catch their attention. Once the other four were blinking at him, he made a sand-Pitch, plus sign, and a book.

"Pitch and a book?" Bunny asked skeptically.

Sandy shook his head rapidly, making an arrow to point at the book, which grew larger.

Jack blinked. "A long book… a novel?"

Sandy pointed at Jack, nodding happily.

"Novel… novel means new, right?" Jack thought out. "Someone new teamed up with Pitch!"

"But… there haven't been any new spirits in a long, long time," Tooth mumbled.

"Maybe… it is not spirit," North replied. "It is something new."

Bunny was the next to catch on. "Somethin' we don't know how to fight."

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"Well, isn't this sweet?"

Danny startled awake, blinking up at the gray-toned man before him. Serenity snorted lowly, annoyed that her master had finally found her again after all these years.

"It seems one of my mares has found a little treat all her own!" Pitch Black chuckled, glancing between the two. "And what a delicious treat you must be, Daniel Fenton."

Danny winced slightly at the name, not having heard it spoken aloud in almost a century.

"Or, I'm sorry, should I call you Danny Phantom?"

Now he flinched back as if struck, his alias sending a wave of powerful emotions through him, almost none good. But above all, and Pitch knew this as he always did, was fear. Fear of the past, fear for his family and friends, fear for the future, fear of failure—

Fear of it happening again.

Danny clung even tighter to his last remaining picture, hugging it to his chest.

And bringing it to Pitch's attention.

"Oh?" he said. "What's this?" Then he slunk into the shadows cast by the multitude of trees in the forest, snatching the photo away from Danny and echoing around him. "A picture? Oh, and of the Manson family, too! Well, this must be from, oh, the 2090's or so? What a beautiful little girl! And I do remember her mother and grandmother well. Such delightful fear in Samantha—"

"Shut up!" Danny screeched, clapping his hands over his ears.

"—especially since the New Years' Bombings."

Serenity curled tighter around Danny as he hissed out, "Stop it!" at the Nightmare King.

Of course, this sort of reaction only spurred him on further. "What?" Pitch asked, barely smothering his smirk. "Oh, I'm sorry, did I bring up a bad memory?" He frowned. "But I would've thought you'd like hearing about your wife. After all, you haven't seen her or your family in, what, a century?" Pitch shook his head, tsking. "Shame on you! What sort of father runs off five months before his daughter is even born?"

Danny recoiled back into Serenity, tucking his knees up under his chin and squeezing his eyes shut as his arms latched around his legs.

"Of course, it would've been hard on you, wouldn't it? Watching your wife and daughter grow old over the years while you stayed the same, preserved forever as you were that day you stepped into the Portal. I suppose I would've run, too, rather than try to figure out how to explain that to my daughter. But you still could've spoken to them! Didn't they at least deserve that?" Pitch gasped mockingly. "Did your wife even know you survived the bombing?"

Danny grimaced, burying his face in his knees, starting to shake.

Pitch smirked. "Seems she didn't. Pity. You let your wife give birth thinking herself to be a widow while you ran off to hide!"

The teen flinched, edging his face further into his knees. The shaking grew to near-epileptic proportions.

"And yet, even after all those years of thinking you dead, she still remained faithful. She didn't even date after your so-called death!" Pitch glared down at the boy, picture clenched in his fingers. "She was a better person than you ever were, hero," he spat, adjusting his grip on the stolen photo. Now, he held a corner in each hand.

"You don't deserve this picture."

Danny had just looked up when Pitch twisted his hands away from each other, rending the image in two.

And Danny's world stopped.

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The Guardians were still panting heavily when they reconvened in the Globe Room. North had had the others head to their homes to gather supplies to stay at the Pole, stating that it would probably be best to remain together until they found out who had teamed up with Pitch.

Now, they passed off their things to the yetis to put them in their respective rooms as North brought their attention back to the issue at hand.

"We must learn who new threat is."

Bunny huffed, crossing his arms. "How d'ya expect us to find that out? All we know is Pitch lent 'im the nightmares!"

"So we look for where nightmares are," North said simply.

Sandy shook his head, waves of sand flashing quickly overhead. Jack managed to translate, drawing from prior knowledge and experience. "A few nightmares always slip past Sandy's defenses. They're everywhere."

"Well that's jus' great!" Bunny exclaimed, rolling his eyes and throwing his hands in the air. "Our only lead's a dud!"

"I wouldn't say only lead," Tooth murmured, hovering by the globe and staring at something on it.

The others glanced up at her. "What? What is it?"

"The green light's back. It's in Tueur's forest."

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Pitch didn't need to stick around after sending Danny into a catatonic state, but the fear was just too delicious to leave. Instead, he perched in a shady tree, far out of sight of the ground below but close enough to still taste the fear. It was no wonder his mare abandoned him, she'd never go hungry if she continued to feed off the boy!

However… Pitch had noticed the light creeping into her eyes, a silver light that shone deep inside and just at the edges. The boy was changing her, not back into a dream, but to something else entirely.

Pitch sighed, knowing what he would need to do to stop it.

He always did hate putting down his mares.

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The world was frozen, stiff as ice, unchanging as one of Clockwork's screens paused. Nothing and no one, not even time itself, could penetrate the unmoving bubble around Danny. Serenity barely even managed, but still, she curled around him as she always did, offering her normal post-nightmare comfort. It didn't do much, given Danny's state, but he still subconsciously leaned into her.

Which was probably why the Guardians freaked out so much upon finding them.

Well, okay, Jack didn't, but North, Tooth, and Bunny stirred up a ruckus while Sandy tried to get a closer observation.

"It's him?" Bunny yelped, pointing at the boy and mare.

"He is working with Pitch?!" North added, readjusting his grip on his swords.

Tooth's hands covered her mouth as she gasped. "No wonder he fled from the Pole! He knew the attack was coming!"

Jack just sighed, remembering a similar moment on Easter about a century ago. "Um, guys? Don't you think you're—?"

"We must take him back to Pole!" North declared. "For interrogation!"

"—overreacting…." Jack grumbled to himself as the other three dragged the unresponsive boy from the mare, who began kicking up a fuss of her own until Bunny made Sandy knock her out.

All five were shocked when the Dreamweaver couldn't simply change her back into a dream. Instead of the mare turning gold and becoming whatever image Sandy dreamt up, the gold and black seemed to blend together, both colors fading out and leaving her looking like—

"Ice?" North wondered.

"Oi, Frostbite," Bunny complained, "quit messin' around and let Sandy do his job!"

Jack just shook his head. "It's not me. And it's not ice."

"Are you sure?" Tooth asked, looking skeptical.

Jack deadpanned back at her, "I think I know ice when I see it."

She blushed.

Jack looked back to the mare. "This isn't ice. It's something else."

"So, he is making nightmares into something else," North stated, scowling. "Something more dangerous."

"What?" Jack blinked at the leap in logic.

"We'd better get him back to the Pole 'fore he spreads it even more," Bunny suggested.

"No, that's—"

"Yes, let's head back," Tooth agreed. "It'll give us the chance to study what changes have occurred and hopefully keep him from attacking again."

Jack just sighed, realizing they weren't listening to him any more. He rolled his eyes as they jumped to conclusions, Sandy shrugging apologetically at him as they all climbed (or in Danny's case, were dragged) back into the sleigh.

No one noticed the chuckle from the tree tops as they left.

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Pitch faded out of the shadows in his lair, smirking over at his partner. "This is even better than planned," he boasted.

Red eyes flicked over to him from where their owner sat, stroking a nightmare's mane. "Oh? How so?"

Pitch's smirk grew wider. "I paid a visit to your little friend. Seems he had gotten rather attached to one of my mares, as well."

Fangs flashed as the other man grinned. "Yet another thing we seem to share."

"And even better," Pitch continued, "was that the Guardians saw him with the mare."

Red eyes blinked at Pitch, the hand stalling over the sand-mane. "They…?" Then, an evil grin spread across his face. "Oh, those Guardians are even more gullible than you said! They actually believe he's the one helping you?"

Pitch chuckled at the man's expression, knowing already what he was thinking. "They do, indeed. They've even taken him in for interrogations!"

A dark laugh reverberated out from the man. "Seems we've gotten them to do our dirty work for us. Who knew it would be so easy to tackle both at once?"

The Nightmare King grinned. "I always knew the Guardians were quick to judge, but this couldn't have possibly turned out better. With them thinking Danny's my new accomplice—"

"They'll never even think to expect me."

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A/N: Three guesses as to who Pitch's partner is! No, seriously, I wanna hear who y'all think it is. He'll probably be revealed next chapter. Maybe.

Also, the whole paragraph about Danny and Sam being married and having a daughter? Wrote itself. I was going to leave it ambiguous, but then Pitch just had to be a complete jackass. Oh, well, it got me more angst, so win-win. :D Just not for Danny.

And, yes, the New Years' Bombings. They shall be important. I'd love to see theories, but I already have it planned out (mwahahaha). And to the friend who helped me plan it, NO SPOILERS! Not that you would :3

So, yeah, read and review, see you in a few weeks. I'm off to do laundry and work on homework. Yay…. -.-;